:.DX- «rY) '"+ M0 Y<. 19/V Martin Heidegger ,/ ~ D< ffRLldr6h ~ it\.Q Politics, Art, and Technology .J).es+r6U c1-; 6Yt: 1-I-e I dx ~ ~R IS' V,kRS'I~ q Ww. Wl'sfu ~ ~ f..ev:RoS~~'· f f· ! +-5 - J <=J £ Edited by Karsten Harries and Christoph Jamme ~ HOLMES & MEIER New York ! London \gqy vm Cmtents 7. REINER SCHURMANN A Brutal Awakening to the Tragic Condition of Being: On Heidegger's Beitrage zur Philosophie 89 8. OTTO POGGELER Heidegger on Art 106 9. DANIEL O. DAHLSTROM Heidegger's Artworld 125 Acknowledgments 10. CHRISTOPH JAMME The Loss of Things: Cezanne, Rilke, Heidegger 139 The colloquium, Art, Politics, Technology-Martin Heidegger 1889-1989, held at Yale University, attempted to confront what remains both dis­ ll. KARLHEINZ STIERLE turbing and challenging in a thinking darkened by National Socialism. An Eye Too Few: Earth and World in Scholars from both sides of the Atlantic came together, presented and Heidegger, Holderlin, and Rousseau 154 discussed often conflicting assessments of Heidegger's significance and complicity. The present volume preserves something of the substance and spirit of this encounter. 12. KATHLEEN WRIGHT I would like to thank all those who made this volume possible, not Heidegger and the Authorization of only the authors, but also my colleagues Harry Frankfurt, Cyrus Ham­ HOIderiin's Poetry 164 lin, Susan Neiman, and Georgia Warnke for their participation in the conference, and especially the graduate students who so generously as­ 13. DERMOT MORAN sisted me in numerous ways, above all Elizabeth Brient. The Destruction of the Destruction: I am grateful to Professor Otto Poggeler and to my co-editor Profes­ Heidegger's Versions of the History of sor Christoph Jamme: without his efforts neither the colloquium, nor Philosophy this volume would have come to be. And to Hans Winterberg, the former J7d head of the Goethe Institute in Boston: from the very beginning his 14. RANDALL HAVAS active interest and the Goethe Institute's financial support allowed plans Nihilism and the Illusion of Nationalism 197 to become reality. Miriam Holmes and Katharine Turok deserve special thanks for their 15 THOMAS MCCARTHY care and attention. Heidegger and Critical Theory: The First Encounter 210 16. KARSTEN HARRIES Philosophy, Politics, Technology 225 17. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION 246 Notes on Contributors 263 Index 267 ;x 174 Kathleen Wright 14. For the relation between Holderlin's poetry and politics, see Gerhard KUTZ'S Mittelbarkeit und Vereinigung-zum Verhiiltnis von Poesie, Refiexion und Revolution bei Holderlin (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1975). 15. From the estate of Karl Jaspers located in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach. Cited in Ott, Martin Heidegger, p. 131. 1 3 . THE DESTRUCTION OF THE DESTRUCTION: Heidegger's Versions of the History of Philosophy Dermot Moran In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger proposed a destruction (Destruktion) of the history of philosophy as an integral part of his phe­ nomenological ontology. Despite the obvious importance of this concept of "destruction," Heidegger never submits it to systematic critique; on the other hand he never revokes or revises the notion in his later writ­ ings. It remains something unthought in his thinking. Yet, given the importance that the term would play in the formation of the movement of deconstruction, the term itself obviously requires an extensive elabo­ ration and critique. Indeed, in keeping with Heidegger's own view of the responsibilities of founders and of great thinkers regarding the purity of their originary though~ we cannot absolve Heidegger from the implied responsibility to give us a pure reading of his own foundational concepts, and to protect them from distortion or contamination. Heidegger's impact on contemporary philosophy is in part associated 175 176 Dermot Moran Heidegger's Versions of the History of Philosophy 177 with his acute awareness of the historical and metaphysical traces which faith. Ghazali attacks all philosophers by attacking Aristotle because, every philosophical term brings with it, yet his treatment of philosophical he reasons, Aristotle himself had refuted all the other philosophers, terms varies in radical and seemingly arbitrary ways. Some terms-espe­ including Plato.6 In Ghazali's view, all philosophies lack certainty and are cially philosophemes such as ousia, phusis, alitheia, substantia, essentia, based merely upon opinion. If metaphysics were to have the certainty Wesen:, Grund-receive detailed critical treatment, often including a of mathematics, for example, then it could not be wrong, but, unfortu­ speculative etymological analysis or reconstruction; other terms are care­ nately, philosophy fails to live up to its claim to be science.7 Truth, then, fully announced as technical terms and yet receive no analysis or decon­ is found in faith not in philosophy. Ghazali then goes on to examine a struction. This is curious and appears to be a flaw in Heidegger's .list of twenty points where the philosophers in their arrogance claim to "methodology" (if we may be permitted to use the term as Heidegger know better than the religious authorities-including the arguments in himself is vigorously "against method").l The concept of "destruction" favor of the eternity of the world, the nature of the divine attributes has of course been popularized by the contemporary philosophical and (especially God's ability to know particulars), the incorporeal, immortal literary critical movement known as "deconstruction," and frequently nature of the soul, the possibility of bodily resurrection, and so on. Gha­ commentators have acted as if Heidegger's concept is the same as or zali's destructio here does not mean the abandonment of philosophy for similar to the term inaugurated by Derrida. Yet the two terms are by no faith. Rather, destructio is the criticism of reasonably reached opinion means identical and it will be necessary in the course of this paper to when it overreaches itself and claims a totalizing demonstrative scientific disentangle the strands of meaning and of influence. Derrida himself certainty. Ghazali has not abandoned philosophy. In fac~ ironically-or has acknowledged the role of Heidegger's concept in the formation of should I say inevitably-he is drawn to make use of philosophical argu­ his own procedure known as "deconstruction."2 But more importantly ments against the philosopher. Thus Ghazali himself unapologetically for our purposes, in terms of Heidegger's own conception of origin and makes use of the Christian philosopher John Philoponus to correct the futurity, Heidegger's introduction of the term must be held in some arguments of the Aristotelians (or, to be more accurate, the version of measure responsible for its later development, since according to Hei­ Aristotle as interpreted by AI-Farabi and Ibn Sina [Avicennaj) on the degger's own reasoning, origin contains all the "essential possibilities" of possibility of an eternal creation.8 We can see the web of textual interpre­ later meaningfulness. Thus Heidegger himself is-on his own terms­ tation that is implicit in this destruction. Destructio then, as it appears in responsible for the manner in which the essential meaning of the term its medieval form, is the attempt to situate philosophical claims in rela­ gets reinterpreted and appropriated'The origin (Ursprung) of the con­ tion to revealed truth, using the arguments of philosophy itself. Destruc­ cept already contains its later history, its aftereffect (Nachwirkung). There tion is already operating as critique within the region of philosophy, a is therefore a clear requirement that the term Destruktion itself be exam­ clearing of the ground already opened up by philosophical questioning. ined and questioned. Since destruction, for Heidegger, involves histori­ Soon after Ghazali, the greatest commentator on Aristotle, Ibn Roshd cal reworking and rereading, it will be beneficial to reread parts of the (Averroes), whom Aquinas merely refers to as "the Commentator," wrote history of philosophy, to search for the forerunner of Heidegger's own a defense of the nature of philosophy, the Tahafut al-tahafut (literally: conception.4 "incoherence of the incoherence" or, in its medieval Latin translation, Toward the end of the eleventh century in Baghdad, a Muslim philoso­ Destructio destructionis, "destruction of the destruction") in which he re­ pher, Ghazali (1059-1111), who was drawn toward Sufism, wrote a work futes Ghazali point by point. Averroes, not denying faith, goes on to ent~tled Tahafut al-falasifa, which received, in its medieval Latin transla­ restore philosophy to its proper place as rational investigation. This he tion, the title Destructio philosophorum, "the destruction of the philoso­ does through a destruction of the arguments Ghazali (borrowing from phers." Modern editors say that the word Tahafut can be translated in philosophy) had raised against philosophy. Again, the destruction of the different ways, but is more accurately rendered as "breakdown, disinte­ destruction is tied to hermeneutical reinterpretation of tradition; again, gration or incoherence."5The title then, most accurately, is the "incoher­ it does not take place outside philosophy but within it~ again, what is at ence of philosophy." It was, however, in the Latin version that the book stake is the truth of reason and of revelation. Here the concept of de­ entered into philosophy in northern Europe during the high Middle struction is tied to the discovery of essential truth, but the parameters Ages. Thus the term destructio as a philosophical term itself emerges are those of faith and reason. from the misreading of a medieval Arabic term. I have introduced the idea of the destruction of the destruction, not The Destructio philosophorum is a polemic against the claim of philoso­ merely as a concetta, a rhetorical conceit, but as evidence of the prehistory phy to be a certain demonstrative science, and a defense of the Islamic and the provenance (Herkunft) of the technique of destruction made 178 Dermot Moran Heidegger's Versions of the History of Philosophy 179 famous in Heidegger's Being and Time.