Abstract
Through his recollection (Wiederholung) of the Socratic nature of philosophy, it becomes clear that for Martin Heidegger the chief mark of “authentic” philosophy is to ask questions rather than provide answers. To this extent, Heideggerian philosophy has contributed greatly to the “question” of ethics—examining the presuppositions of the ethical theories of the tradition and raising at a fundamental level the question of the very possibility of “moral” existence. Indeed, no thinker of the 20th century has been so thoroughly interrogated as Heidegger himself regarding the existence (or lack) of “ethics” in his thought. The positions cut across the widest of spectrums: from those critics who view Heidegger’s alignment with National Socialism and his own attempt to see his thought as some sort of foundation for the “movement” as reflecting a total moral bankruptcy to those who strive to show that Heidegger’s thought is an attempt to free up the very “possibility” of ethics from the ontically based moral theories of the philosophical tradition and who use his encounter with “modernity” as a springboard for thinking about a “postmodern” ethics.
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References
Attending Heidegger’s lectures in Marburg, Gadamer, for one, found it difficult to listen to Heidegger’s invective against inauthenticity, and then fully accept the insistence that nothing at all negative was meant by such invective. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophische Lehrjahre (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 214ff.
SZ = Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1979); BT = Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
Some commentators see this as a contradiction; cf. Michael Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger’s Concept of Authenticity (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981), 45.
Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, ed. H. Tietjen, Gesamtausgabe 31 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982), 42.
Francis Kaplan, ed., Les pensées de Pascal (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1982), 192–202.
SB = Martin Heidegger, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität. Das Rektorat 1933/34 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983); SA = “The Self-Assertion of the German University and the Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts,” trans. Karsten Harries, The Review of Metaphysics 38 (March, 1985): 467-502.
Karl Löwith, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933. Ein Bericht (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzier, 1986), 34.
Jacques Derrida, De l’esprit: Heidegger et la question (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1987), 61; Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 37.
Nevertheless, as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe points out, a principled opposition to anti-Semitism did not prevent Heidegger from cooperating with a movement for which anti-Semitism was a principal issue. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “La fiction du politique,” in Heidegger: Questions ouvertes, ed. Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Osiris, 1988), 190. This text is an extract of Lacoue-Labarthe’s full-length book, L? fiction du politique (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1988).
GA 39 = Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein,” ed. S. Ziegeler, Gesamtausgabe 39 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989); GA 53 = Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister,” ed. Walter Biemel, Gesamtausgabe 53 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984).
Martin Heidegger, “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” in Holzwege, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Gesamtausgabe 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann) 1977), 55 (hereafter Holzwege).
Martin Heidegger, “Zeit und Sein,” in his Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969), 5ff. (hereafter ZD); “Time and Being,” in his On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 57f. (hereafter TB).
PM = Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, in his Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 239–76.
Martin Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” in his Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 13–58.
Martin Heidegger, Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1959), 15-16; Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 46. “Besinnung” could also be translated as “reflection,” though this has a rather epistemological connotation. In the translation of Gelassenheit, “meditation” is used, but the Cartesian background here is difficult to avoid. Also possible are “consideration” or “deliberation” (proposed by Theodore Kisiel, “Science, Phenomenology, and the Thinking of Being,” in Phenomenology and the Natural Sciences, ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans and Theodore J. Kisiel [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970], 173), but these maintain something of calculation, for one normally considers things in view of future planning or deliberates upon options in order to choose the best one.
In a rather playful fashion, Heidegger brings out the longing of calculative thought for security by pointing out that a crucial figure in the development of calculative thought, namely, Leibniz, was also the inventor of “life insurance.” See Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1957), 202.
Martin Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” in Holzwege, 93; “The Age of the World-Picture,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row. 1977), 133 Thereafter QCT).
WHD = Martin Heidegger, Was heisst Denken? (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1957), 4; WCT = What is Called Thinking? trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 8.
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 144–69.
Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1957), 33; Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 40. See also Gelassenheit, 24; Discourse on Thinking, 53.
Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Gesamtausgabe 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 57; cf. also 126ff.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, ed. Manfred Frings, Gesamtausgabe 54 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982), 119.
Martin Heidegger, Der Feldweg (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 21.
David Kolb has pointed out the link between Gestell and the military notion of the ‘mobilization order’ (Gestellungsbefehl). Kolb suggests that “the military connotation is useful, since the military is a realm where everything is to be set in order waiting to be used at a moment’s notice. This instant and complete availability is much of what Heidegger has in mind by Gestell”—David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger, and After (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 145.
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Buckley, R.P. (2002). Martin Heidegger: The “End” of Ethics. In: Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 47. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9924-5_11
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