Martin Heidegger's Critique of Freedom
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by eScholarship@BC Martin Heidegger's Critique of Freedom Author: Charles Robinson Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/655 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Political Science MARTIN HEIDEGGER’S CRITIQUE OF FREEDOM a dissertation by CHARLES ROBINSON submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2009 © copyright by CHARLES ROBINSON 2009 Dissertation Abstract Title: Martin Heidegger’s Critique of Freedom Author: Charles Robinson Advisor: Professor Susan Shell Boston College Political Science Department This is a study of thought and politics of Martin Heidegger. It presents an examination of his understanding of freedom, principally as he expressed it in Being and Time, but also considers some of his subsequent essays and lectures, as well as his Rectorate Address. Ever since Heidegger’s public embrace of National Socialism, his defenders and critics have argued about the possible relation between his thinking and his infamous political commitments. While many of his critics have linked his commitments to an alleged lack of understanding of freedom, some of his scholarly defenders have sought to present interpretations of his concept of freedom at odds with his infamous politics, in order to separate his thought from any association with Nazism. The conclusions of these critics and defenders of Heidegger are both mistaken: in Being and Time Heidegger sought the meaning of being in the authentic experience of human self- determination revealed by the conscience, which he worked out as “forward running resolve.” It was this militant concept of freedom that grounded his project for a destined community of battle to be championed by a free corps of freedom fighters, and led him to embrace, in the very name of freedom, the tyranny of Hitler’s new Reich. The study of Heidegger’s concept of authentic freedom reveals that, far from lacking any understanding of freedom, it was rather a central theme and concern of his philosophical efforts, and that his infamous political commitments were indeed its necessary and coherent practical consequence. Heidegger’s thought thus poses a more trenchant and pressing challenge to liberal (and leftist) politics than many of his critics and defenders appreciate. There have been comparatively few sustained thematic treatments of Heidegger’s understanding of freedom in English. This study accordingly hopes to contribute to an understanding of this central theme of Heidegger’s philosophical efforts, which not only reveals their necessary connection to his politics, but also promises to improve our access to the coherent intelligibility of his thought as a whole. i Contents Note on the Translations .................................................................................................... vi Note on Citations and List of Abbreviations ..................................................................... ix Epigraph...........................................................................................................................xiii Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 A. Modernity and the Politics of Freedom...................................................................... 1 B. Defenders and Critics of Heidegger’s Understanding of Freedom ............................ 4 C. Overview of the Present Study ................................................................................. 11 Chapter One: The Question of Being and the Problem of Freedom................................. 20 A. Being and Time as Analytic of Human Freedom..................................................... 21 B. The Context and Aims of Heidegger’s Discussion of Being Towards Death.......... 32 1. Summary of the Problem....................................................................................... 34 2. Being-in-the-World and the Disclosedness of the Dasein..................................... 34 3. The Worldhood of the World ................................................................................ 43 4. Existence and Understanding ................................................................................ 53 5. Understanding as the Project of Possibilities ........................................................ 61 6. Care as the Structure of Existence and the Problem of Wholeness....................... 67 7. The Essence of Interpretation and the Problem of Primordiality .......................... 72 ii 8. The Authentic Concept of Freedom and the Existential Interpretation of Death.. 82 Chapter Two: The Existential Concept of Death.............................................................. 87 A. The Experience of the Death of Others.................................................................... 93 B. The Preliminary Clarification of End and Totality in Relation to the Dasein........ 102 C. The Priority of the Existential Interpretation of Death........................................... 111 D. The Existential Ontology of Death......................................................................... 122 Chapter Three: Being towards Death.............................................................................. 134 A. Everyday Being towards Death.............................................................................. 135 1. The Public Interpretation of Death as Eventuality .............................................. 137 2. The Ambiguity of the Public Interpretation ........................................................ 138 3. The Temptation of the Public Interpretation ....................................................... 140 4. The Tranquilization of the Public Interpretation ................................................. 140 5. The Alienation of the Public Interpretation......................................................... 144 6. The Public Interpretation and the Dictatorship of the Average........................... 148 7. The Certainty of Death ........................................................................................ 157 8. The Indeterminacy of Death's When ................................................................... 169 9. The Concrete Connection between Death and Care............................................ 171 B. Heidegger’s Existential Project of an Authentic Being towards Death.................. 173 1. Being towards Death as Pure Possibility............................................................. 178 iii 2. Being towards Death as the Ownmost Possibility............................................... 183 3. Being towards the Unrelatable Possibility........................................................... 186 4. Being Towards Death as the Inescapable Possibility .......................................... 188 5. The Authentic Certainty of Death ....................................................................... 196 6. Angst and the Pure Understanding of Death........................................................ 201 7. The Whole of Running Forward.......................................................................... 204 Chapter Four: The Existential Interpretation of the Conscience .................................... 210 A. The Conscience as Dasein-phenomenon................................................................ 210 B. The Existential Concept of Guilt............................................................................ 238 C. The Difficulty of the Vulgar Interpretation of the Conscience .............................. 258 1. The Priority of the Bad Conscience in the Vulgar Understanding...................... 260 2. The Relation of the Call to the Being of the Dasein............................................ 263 3. The Relation of Guilt to the Deed ....................................................................... 267 4. The Question of the Critical Character of the Conscience .................................. 268 D. The Authenticity of Resolve and Running Forward Into Death ............................ 270 E. Forward Running Resolve ...................................................................................... 286 F. The Existential Interpretation and the Project of Freedom..................................... 306 Chapter Five: The Politics of Freedom of Being and Time ............................................ 348 A. Freedom’s Authentic Self-constancy ..................................................................... 350 iv B. The Problem of History as the Reconquest of Freedom’s Wholeness ................... 374 C. The Essence of History as the Happening of Authentic Freedom.......................... 390 Chapter Six: The Politics of the University .................................................................... 455 A. The Existential Concept of Science........................................................................ 458 1. The Origin of Science in Practical Concern ........................................................ 458 2. The Project of Mathematical Science.................................................................. 467 B. The Authentic Source of Science in “What