Heidegger And Politics: The Ontology Of Radical Discontent

Description

In this fresh interpretation of Heidegger, Alexander S. Duff explains Heidegger's perplexing and highly varied political influence. Heidegger and Politics argues that Heidegger's political import is forecast by fundamental ambiguities about the status of politics in his thought. Duff explores how, in Being and Time as well as earlier and later works, Heidegger analyzes 'everyday' human existence as both irretrievably banal but also supplying our only tenuous path to the deepest questions about human life. Heidegger thus points to two irreconcilable attitudes toward politics: either a total and purifying revolution must usher in an authentic communal existence, or else we must await a future deliverance from the present dispensation of Being. Neither attitude is conducive to moderate politics, and so Heidegger's influence tends towards extremism of one form or another, modified only by explicit departures from his thought. Cover......Page 1 Half-title......Page 3 Title page......Page 5 Copyright information......Page 6 Dedication......Page 7 Epigraph......Page 8 Table of contents......Page 9 Acknowledgments......Page 11 List of abbreviations......Page 13 Introduction: Heidegger’s Challenge......Page 15 Objections to Reading Heidegger......Page 19 Heideggerian Political Legacies......Page 21 The Ambiguous Place of Politics in Heidegger......Page 25 The Challenge of Heidegger......Page 26 The Methods and Limits of This Study......Page 31 1 What’s the Matter with Ethics? Ethics and the Problem of Theory......Page 38 The Natorp Critique and the Priority of Distress......Page 44 Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Value......Page 49 The Neo-Kantian Acceptance of the Problem......Page 52 On the Breakdown of Neo-Kantian System......Page 54 Heidegger’s Contemporaries and the Problem of Theory......Page 58 Jaspers and Limit-Situations......Page 63 Formal Indication......Page 66 History and the Future Past......Page 70 The Sources of Heideggerian Politics in His Early Thought......Page 74 3 The Ambiguous Everyday: On the Emergence of Theory from Practice......Page 77 What Is Everydayness?......Page 82 Temporality and Everydayness......Page 85 Everydayness and the Traditional Beginning of Philosophy......Page 87 The Everyday Emergence of the Present-at-Hand from the Ready-to-Hand......Page 93 Dasein at Home in the World......Page 95 Dasein and Breakdown......Page 99 The Priority of Comfort to Breakdown......Page 100 The Emergence of Theory from Practice......Page 102 4 The Dictatorship of the They and the Clearing of the Everyday......Page 105 The Structure of Being-with......Page 107 Modes of Solicitude......Page 109 Models for Community......Page 112 Everyday Dictatorship: das man......Page 117 The They and the Absorption of the Public......Page 118 Chatter, Ambiguity, and the Masquerade of Everyday Community......Page 120 Falling and the Everyday......Page 125 The Clearing of the Everyday......Page 126 5 Disclosive Occlusion and the Promise of Nihilism......Page 133 Neither Ancient nor Modern......Page 136 Consciousness and Understanding......Page 138 Understanding: Thrown Projection and Clearing......Page 141 Understanding Projected Possibilities: Thrown Projection......Page 143 Understanding as Lichtung......Page 145 Irruption......Page 146 Understanding Nothing......Page 150 Understanding the Ontological Difference......Page 158 The Promise of Nihilism......Page 160 The Occlusion of Being by Beings......Page 161 6 Heideggerian Politics: The Past Is Not Dead, It’s Not Even Past......Page 166 The Silence of Authentic Discourse......Page 170 Open Nothingness as the Source of Dasein’s Potential Wholeness......Page 173 Liberation and Authentic Being-with......Page 175 Anticipation......Page 176 Violence......Page 178 On the Meaning of Resoluteness: The Abstract-Formalist Reading (AFR)......Page 181 On the Meaning of Anticipation: The Awaiting Letting-Be Reading (ALB)......Page 184 Authentic and Inauthentic Historicity......Page 188 Tradition and Heritage......Page 189 Repetition......Page 190 Conclusion......Page 196 Conclusion: The Paradox of Heideggerian Politics......Page 199 Particularist Revolution......Page 200 Quietist Awaiting......Page 205 Heidegger and Political Thought......Page 207 Works by Martin Heidegger......Page 211 Works by Other Authors......Page 213 Index......Page 227