A Closer Look at Martin Heidegger

It’s not often that metaphysics makes the news. Metaphysics is about “being” – not “being there”, or “being here”, or “being John Malkovich”. Just being; pure being, no preservatives, no additives, no artificial colouring. Being. Boring.

So it was rather surprising to read in the New York Times that the artillery of political correctness is busy lobbing verbal cannonballs ("oafish", "vulgar", "vicious") upon one of the greatest metaphysicians of the 20th century. Critic Carlin Romano wrote this scathing attack in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"How many scholarly stakes in the heart will we need before Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), still regarded by some as Germany’s greatest 20th-century philosopher, reaches his final resting place as a prolific, provincial Nazi hack? Overrated in his prime, bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now, the pretentious old Black Forest babbler makes one wonder whether there’s a university-press equivalent of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance."
You have to have a deep and capacious brain to do metaphysics, and in the 20th century, few have been more influential than Martin Heidegger. The late American post-modernist philosopher Richard Rorty wrote that: “You cannot read most of the important philosophers of recent times without taking Heidegger’s thought into account.” Heidegger’s work is as dense as a Blackforest gateau and just as rich. His theories on world building, background coping and the timeliness of philosophy have helped shape post-modernist interpretations of today’s post-Plato, proto-Nietzschean society.

By no means am I a disciple of Heidegger. But you can learn a lot even from great minds. To me, a great mind asks fundamental questions, like, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Nowadays philosophers get distracted by peripheral issues or obsessed with minutiae.

Heidegger’s great achievement was to remind contemporary philosophers that their vocation is to remind the rest of us that the Big Questions are the ones that matter. Whether they answer them properly is another matter.

Metaphysicians are like musicians. Much as I like the Beatles for some of their piercingly beautiful songs, I have to acknowledge that they had pretty freaky ideas and lifestyles.

The freaky ideas and lifestyle of Martin Heidegger are upsetting the literati quoted by the New York Times. Heidegger had a great intellect but he was a very flawed man.

He grew up as a Catholic, but drifted away from the Church. After he became a well-known philosopher, he was elected Rector of the University of Freiburg in 1933. It was shortly after Hitler came to power and Heidegger quickly joined the Nazi Party. It is undeniable that he admired some elements in the Nazi philosophy, with its emphasis on the decadence of Western culture. It is said that he sometimes showed up at lectures in a brown shirt and saluted students with a "Heil Hitler!" He is often quoted as speaking of the "inner truth and greatness of this movement" -- referring to National Socialism. Heidegger could be a mean-spirited and nasty man.

How thoroughgoing a Nazi he was, however, is the subject of fierce debate. One critic contends that Heidegger was not so much interested in Nazism as being führer to the Führer, a guide to the leader of the German people. But this was as naive and fated to fail as were Plato’s trips to Syracuse to educate the local tyrant. One point in his favour seems to be that Hannah Arendt, the Jewish philosopher who analysed “the banality of evil” in Nazism was his lover and later defended him as naïve in making a “personal error”.

But Victor Farias’s book Heidegger and Nazism (1991) has argued that Heidegger’s intellectual insights are thoroughly intertwined with National Socialism. Now a new work from France by Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy, reaffirms Farias’s view by drawing on Heidegger’s vast unpublished writings.

In the light of this research, a New York Times feature by Patricia Cohen asks whether a Nazi really deserves a place among philosophers. Drawing on Faye’s soon-to-be translated work, Ms Cohen warns us that without an understanding of the soil in which Heidegger’s philosophy is rooted, people may not realize that his ideas can grow in troubling directions. “Heidegger’s dictum to be authentic and free oneself from conventional restraints, for example, can lead to a rejection of morality.” In fact, Faye concludes that:

"an author who has espoused the foundations of Nazism cannot be considered a philosopher… If his writings continue to proliferate without our being able to stop this intrusion of Nazism into human education, how can we not expect them to lead to yet another translation into facts and acts, from which this time humanity might not be able to recover?"

In other words, the long-dead Heidegger is not just an abominable Nazi, but a clear and present danger to youth, even to Western civilisation, whose books should be quarantined -- or perhaps burned. Cohen writes that in Faye’s view “teaching Heidegger’s ideas without disclosing his deep Nazi sympathies is like showing a child a brilliant fireworks display without warning that an ignited rocket can also blow up in someone’s face.” Romano has a better idea: treat him as a joke:

“His influence will end only when they, and the broader world of intellectuals, recognize that ... [he is] a buffoon produced by German philosophy's mystical tradition. He should be the butt of jokes, not the subject of dissertations.”

Steady on. Are these politically-correct writers serious? Do they really believe that German and English skinheads will stop tattooing their noggins with swastikas because they can’t read Heidegger? The likelihood of a youth who reads Heidegger joining a neo-Nazi outfit is near zero. If Heidegger was a Nazi, he is a defanged Nazi. Ideas do have consequences, admittedly. But the real question -- which the New York Times fears to ask -- is this: whose ideas should we fear nowadays? Which philosopher’s ideas justify destruction, violence and murder in our own society? Well, actually, there are lots of them. Where do you want me to start?

If we are going to burn books or purge libraries, why not begin with Peter Singer, who has a professorial chair at Princeton, one of America’s most prestigious universities, and writes in the New York Times occasionally. Youths who read his books on animal liberation have become murderous terrorists. Doctors who read them justify abortion and euthanasia.

How about Julian Savulescu, who holds a chair at Oxford, and advocates abortion and do-it-yourself eugenics? How about James Lovelock, who extols nature and calls for more plants and fewer people?

These are all dangerous ideas – and yet the New York Times is happy enough to lionise such people. No matter how bad Heidegger was as a man, his metaphysics will always hold great value. To my mind Heidegger’s admiration of Nazism should serve as a warning that great intellects can go dangerously astray. Trashing Heidegger’s reputation won’t make us more moral. What will, is a return to a firm foundation for what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful. Heidegger rejected this and ended up in Nazism. Contemporary philosophers reject this and end up in the scariest kind of nihilism. That’s what we have to be afraid of.

Richard Umbers teaches philosophy in Sydney, Australia. This is reproduced with permission from here.

World Take Note of Bajaur Refugees!

Children waiting for food in Bajaur Refugee Camps


In contrast to the aid made available for the Swat IDPs, the state appears to have forgotten about the internally displaced from Bajaur Agency. Accommodated in Kacha Garhi camps 1 and 2, established in September last year, thousands of people seem virtually abandoned.

The camp administration’s requests to the relevant authorities in terms of requisitioning new tents, since those distributed 14 months ago are now unusable, have gone unheeded, as have pleas for adequate water and sanitation facilities. Camp residents complain that the food aid provided to large families has been slashed by half, and monies promised under the Benazir Income Support Programme were only disbursed once during the past nine months. Further, they oppose the proposed shifting of the camps to Jalozai, which they say has far fewer facilities.

This shameful situation begs the question of whether the IDPs of Bajaur are somehow less than equal citizens of the country. The lack of response from the private and public sectors could be attributed to the onset of crisis-fatigue in a country battered by militancy and terrorism; if so, this only makes the Bajaur IDPs’ situation more grievous. With winter setting in, all possible aid must be provided to these families. Secondly, it is time to realise that the country is in for the long haul in terms of the battle against terrorism.

Recent reports have indicated that the tentacles of the militants have spread far wider than previously thought, and the theatre of war too may widen. There is therefore a possibility that people may be displaced from other areas such as North Waziristan and southern Punjab. It may be useful to create a humanitarian agency tasked specifically with aiding the country’s internally displaced. It is time to stop dealing with the IDP issue on a case-to-case basis.

From here.

Swine Flu Hits Pilgrims to Mecca

RIYADH: Nine people out of more than half a million who have arrived for the annual hajj pilgrimage have been diagnosed with swine flu, Saudi Health Minister Dr Abdullah al-Rabeeah said on Wednesday.

'The situation from the point of health, we are very happy. Out of the 600,000 arriving so far, we have only seen nine suspected cases of A(H1N1), and only two of those are in the hospital,' Rabeeah told AFP.

'The rest were treated and they were discharged,' he said.

Rabeeah said that altogether 70 people had died in the kingdom this year from swine flu, none of them pilgrims.

The fatalities figure is up from 62 reported at the beginning of November, and the total number of proven cases is about 7,000, the minister said.

Concern has mounted about the possibility of a major outbreak of the disease during the hajj, when more than three million Muslims converge on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in western Saudi Arabia in the second half of November.

The Riyadh government has deployed about 20,000 health workers to deal with flu and other health emergencies among pilgrims, Rabeeah said.

More than 6,000 deaths from A(H1N1) flu had been reported worldwide as of November 1, according to the World Health Organisation.

Two Koreas in Naval Conflict

SEOUL, Nov 10: Navies from the rival Koreas exchanged gunfire for the first time in seven years on Tuesday, damaging vessels on both sides and raising tension just days before US President Barack Obama travels to Asia.

North Korea has often used military action to force its way onto the agenda of major diplomatic events and has been seeking direct talks with Obama’s administration while alarming global powers by last week saying it had produced more arms-grade plutonium.

The United States will announce in the next few days whether it will start direct talks with North Korea, which could kick-start a fresh round of talks with regional powers on nuclear disarmament, a US official said earlier.

South Korea denounced what it said was an incursion by a North Korean patrol vessel into its territorial waters in the Yellow Sea that sparked a brief firefight near the spot where the two Koreas have had two deadly conflicts in the past decade.

Read the full report here.

US to Israel: Two States and Peace

(IsraelNN.com) A top State Department official spelled out on Tuesday that the goal of the United States in its negotiations in the Middle East is to pressure Israel into expelling Jews from Judea and Samaria in order to "end the occupation that began in 1967."

William J. Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said in his address to the Middle East Institute Tuesday that he sees the U.S.mandate as one of "determined leadership" and that American must be straightforward about its intentions. "Our goal in the region is clear," he said, "two states living side by side in peace and security; a Jewish state of Israel, with which America retains unbreakable bonds, and with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, that ends the daily humiliations of Palestinians under occupation, and that realizes the full and remarkable potential of the Palestinian people."

Although he made no mention of any demands upon the PA in order to achieve its goal of establishing a new Arab state within Israel's current borders, Burns was blunt about America's expectations of Israel.

"We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements; we consider the Israeli offer to restrain settlement activity to be a potentially important step, but it obviously falls short of the continuing Roadmap obligation for a full settlement freeze," he said.

Read it all here.

Michael Ramsey Treasure Found

An Anglican monastery in England could be the unlikely owners of a recently discovered hoard of silver and gold artefacts.

The 32 items were all gifts to Michael Ramsey during his time from 1961 until 1974 as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Details of the discovery in the River Wear, close to the former primate's retirement home near Durham Cathedral, were revealed last week. Initially, it was assumed the items would be shared between the cathedral, which owns the riverbank, and two brothers who found them.

But now the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, West Yorkshire, could have a claim on the items, which include a gold medallion from Pope Paul VI. It is not known how Dr Ramsey's belongings came to be in the river, and there is no record of his former home, on South Bailey, being burgled. It is believed they were thrown from the city's Prebends Bridge.

Community Superior Fr George Guiver told the Church of England Newspaper: "We were the beneficiaries of Dr Ramsey's will. I suppose we could contact our solicitor about this matter and may well do so."

From here.

Defining Jewishness

LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself.

Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another.

“This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application.

That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

The school appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule sometime before the end of the year.

The case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom last week, representing not just M’s family and the school, but also the British government, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the United Synagogue, the British Humanist Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal ruling threw the school into a panicked scramble to put together a new admissions policy. It introduced a “religious practice test,” in which prospective students amass points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work.

That has led to all sorts of awkward practical issues, said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, because Orthodox Judaism forbids writing or using a computer on the Sabbath. That means that children who go to synagogue can’t “sign in,” but have to use methods like dropping prewritten postcards into boxes.

It is unclear what effect the ruling, if it is upheld, will have on other religious schools. Some Catholic schools, accustomed to using baptism as a baseline admissions criterion, are worried that they will have to adopt similar practice tests.

The case has stirred up long-simmering resentments among the leaders of different Jewish denominations, who, for starters, disagree vehemently on the definition of Jewishness. They also disagree on the issue of whether an Orthodox leader is entitled to speak for the entire community.

“Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,” Mr. Benjamin said in an interview. “That the community has failed to grasp this has had the very unfortunate result of having a judgment foisted on it by a civil court.”

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one’s mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Lauren Lesin-Davis, chairman of the board of governors at King David, a Jewish school in Liverpool, told the BBC that the ruling violated more than 5,000 years of Jewish tradition.

“You cannot come in and start telling people how their whole lives should change, that the whole essence of their life and their religion is completely wrong,” she said.

But others are in complete sympathy with M.

“How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?” David Lightman, an observant Jewish father whose daughter was also denied a place at the school because it did not recognize her mother’s conversion, told reporters recently. “I find it offensive and very upsetting.”

Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism here, said the lower court’s ruling, if upheld, would help make Judaism more inclusive.

“JFS is a state-funded school where my grandfather taught, and it’s selecting applicants on the basis of religious politics,” he said in an interview. “The Orthodox definition of Jewish excludes 40 percent of the Jewish community in this country.”

From here.

My 30 years of research in Genesis supports the Orthodox view: “While right of primogeniture was figured through the fathers, blood line was figured through the mothers. This is evident even today among Jews. One is Jewish only if one's mother is Jewish.”

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/04/brides-naming-prerogative.html