Descent of the Logos Seminar Notes
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Descent of he Logos 1 Karsten Harries The Descent of the Logos Seminar Notes Fall Semester 2011 Yale University Copyright Karsten Harries Descent of he Logos 2 Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Hölderlin and Hegel 14 3. Patmos 30 4. Heidegger's Way I: From Theology to Logic 46 5. Heidegger's Way II: Transformations of Logic 57 6. Authenticity and the Burden of Freedom 67 7. Art Work and Thing 78 8. Earth and World 89 9. Truth, Thing, and the Fourfold 103 10. On the Way to the Fourfold 114 11. The Fourfold Reconsidered 128 12. Nostalgia, Kitsch, and the Interesting 140 13. Conclusion: The Descent of the Logos 153 Descent of he Logos 3 1. Introduction I would like to begin this seminar with a look at the interview Heidegger granted the German weekly Der Spiegel on September 23, 1966 and which was published, according to his wishes, only after his death, in 1976.1 Heidegger had wanted to address some of the charges that had been made in connection with his involvement with National Socialism, especially his brief rectorate of 1933-1934. Much of what he has to say in that interview repeats what he had already written down in 1945, shortly after the end of the war. I do no want to go into most of the interview here.2 In this interview Heidegger was asked about a notorious remark found in the Introduction to Metaphysics, where he had insisted that what today is offered as philosophy of National Socialism has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely with the encounter of planetary technology and modern man).3 The Spiegel introduced its question with a remark that Heidegger got caught up in the politics of “this supposed new departure … by way of the university.” SPIEGEL: After about a year, you gave up the function again that you had assumed in this process. But in a lecture in 1935, which was published in 1952 as “An Introduction to Metaphysics” you said: “The works that are being offererd around today,” today being 1935 “as the philosophy of National Socialism, but have nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely with the encounter of planetarily determined technology and modern human beings) are fishing for big catches in the murky waters of “value” and “wholes.’” Did you add the words in parentheses in 1953, when it was printed — perhaps to explain to the readers of 1953 what you thought of as National Socialism, in 1953 — or was this parenthetical remark already there in 1935? HEIDEGGER: It was in my manuscript and corresponds exactly to my conception of technology at the time, but not yet to my later interpretation of the essence of technology as con-struct [Gestell]. The reason I did not read the passage aloud was because I was convinced my audience 1 “Spiegel Interview with Martin Heidegger,“ trans. Lisa Harrries, in Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers, ed. Günther Neske and Emil Kettering, introduction by Karsten Harries (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 41-66. 2 See "The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts", trans. Lisa Harries, Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 13–32. 3 Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, Gesamtausgabe [abbreviated as GA, followed by volume] (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983) vol. 40, 208. An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (Garden City: Anchor Books. 1961, 166. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken. Zur Veröffentlichung von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935,” Philosophisch-politische Profile (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971) 67-75. Introduction to Metaphysics, GA 40. 208, original ed. 152, trans., 166. Descent of he Logos 4 would understand me correctly. The stupid ones and the spies and the snoopers understood it differently — and might as well have, too.4 Heidegger goes on to speak of our un-free relationship to technology. To gain a free relationship, we would have to stand outside the technological world. As it is, we do not have it in our control. Technology is neither tool nor instrument: SPIEGEL: It is striking that throughout time human beings have been unable to master their tools; look at the magician’s apprentice. Is it not somewhat too pessimistic to say that we will not be able to master this certainly much greater tool of modern technology? HEIDEGGER: Pessimism, no. Pessimism and optimism are positions that fall too short of the realm we are attempting to reflect upon here. But above all modern technology is not a “tool,” and it no longer has anything to do with tools. SPIEGEL: Why should we be so overpowered by technology...? HEIDEGGER: I do not say overpowered. I say we have no path that corresponds to the essence of technology as of yet. SPIEGEL: One could naïvely object: What do we have to come to terms with here? Everything functions. More and more electric power plants are being built. Production is flourishing. People in the highly technological parts of the earth are well provided for. We live in prosperity. What is really missing here? HEIDEGGER: Everything functions. That is exactly what is uncanny. Everything functions and the functioning drives us further and further to more functioning, and technology tears people away and uproots them from the earth more and more. I don’t know if you are scared; I was certainly scared when I recently saw the photographs of the earth taken from the moon. We don’t need an atom bomb at all; the uprooting of human beings is already taking place. We only have purely technological conditions left. It is no longer an earth on which human beings live today. I recently had a long conversation with René Char in Provence–as you know, the poet and Resistance fighter. Rocket bases are being built in Provence, and the country is being devastated in an incredible way. The poet, who certainly cannot be suspected of sentimentality or a glorification of the idyllic, said to me that the uprooting of human beings which is going on now is the end if thinking and poetry do not acquire nonviolent power once again.5 Heidegger emphasizes that technology has to rob us of the earth, has to make us rootless. To the extent that we live in the technological age we have become displaced persons: HEIDEGGER: From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today’s literature is, for instance, largely destructive.6 4 Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 54. 5 Ibid., 55-56. 6 Ibid., 56. Descent of he Logos 5 I want to underscore what is here claimed: the destructiveness of modern literature is tied by Heidegger to technology. This raises two questions: 1. What is the proper place of literature (and more generally of art) in our technological age? 2. In what sense is such literature destructive (as opposed to erbaulich [edifying]?)?7 The Spiegel interviewer then raises the question: what if anything can the individual still do to prevent the loss of our humanity to technology? Heidegger's notorious answer gave the Spiegel the title for its interview: HEIDEGGER: Those questions bring us back to the beginning of our conversation. If I may answer quickly and perhaps somewhat vehemently, but from long reflection: Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline; so that we do not, simply put, die meaningless deaths, but that when we decline, we decline in the face of the absent god.8 The Spiegel returns to the question of National Socialism which, in its way, according to Heidegger, sought to address the problem facing modernity: SPIEGEL: It has, of course, always been a misunderstanding of philosophy to think that the philosopher should have some direct effect with his philosophy. Let us return to the beginning. Is it not conceivable that National Socialism can be seen on the one hand as a realization of that “planetary encounter” and on the other as the last, most horrible, strongest, and, at the same time, most helpless protest against this encounter of “planetarily determined technology” and modern human beings? Apparently, you are dealing with opposites in your own person that are such that many by-products of your activities can only really be explained in that you, with different parts of your being that do not touch the philosophical core, cling to many things about which you as a philosopher know that they have no continuity — for instance to concepts like “home” [Heimat], “rootedness,” and similar things. How do planetary technology and “home” fit together? Heidegger’s answer reaffirms the direction in which National Socialism went even as he criticizes it: HEIDEGGER: I would not say that. It seems to me that you take technology too absolutely. I do not think the situation of human beings in the world of planetary technology is an inextricable and inescapable disastrous fate; rather I think that the task of thinking is precisely to help, within its 7 Here it might be interesting to bring in Nietzsche's understanding of decadence.