Martin Heidegger

Michael Gillespie provides the essay on the last philosopher covered in History of Political Philosophy, Martin Heidegger, who is perhaps the most controversial philosopher covered in the book due to his association with Nazism. For Gillespie, Heidegger was the first philosopher since Plato and Aristotle to seriously consider the idea of Being. It needs to be noted that Heidegger claimed his thought had no political bearings, but despite this he can still be called a political philosopher because of his affiliation with Nazism, which bears some discussion and more importantly, because of his concern with nihilism.

In particular, Heidegger was concerned with the idea of metaphysical nihilism as this did away with the ground of Being and through this idea, there could be no absolute truth. An outgrowth of metaphysical nihilism is moral nihilism which does away with fundamental moral laws. Heidegger sees two possible consequences of moral nihilism. The first of these consequences is banal hedonism. The second of these consequences of these consequences is the destructive desire to destroy everything. This is important because for Heidegger, at the root of nihilism was a misunderstanding of the idea of Being. This misunderstanding is itself rooted in the Platonic conception of Being as eternal presence. While the growth of nihilism might be a disaster, it can also be used to lay the foundation for a new foundation of the conception of Being that better understands the nature of Being. For Heidegger, Being cannot be simply understood unchanging, but must be viewed in history as Being in history.

The fact that humans have a conception of the question of Being is for Heidegger proof that Being is not set as an acorn has no question of becoming a tree. Being is thus not a question of what man is, but rather of how he exists. The question of Being fundamentally arises with the human confrontation with death as typically people simply blend in with the order of Being. Death though forces people to come into contact with questions concerning the nature of Being. This is important as Heidegger’s belief in a revolution in thought to reformulate the notion of Being caused him to look towards the Nazi party as a way of attaining this goal. It should be noted that he was never completely on board with the Nazi program as he thought that this should be done while maintaining the independence of the German university, which the Nazi government would not do.

Still, Heidegger had great hopes that the Nazi party could help reformulate modern humanity, which Heidegger saw as being too fundamentally tied up in technology. This dependency on technology has radically isolated the individual, separating the individual from a greater order. As a result of this, nature becomes seen as an other. From this, further division is created and conflict becomes more prevalent. This is an important point as Heidegger sees technological thinking as being fundamentally tied up in the act of thinking in categories. Realizing there is now a risk of floating off into nothingness due to this misunderstanding of Being, modern humans have turned to using history as an anchor to know oneself. From this has risen the entirety of historicist thinking.

Heidegger identifies three main ideologies of late modernity. These three ideologies are as follows: 1) Americanism, 2) Marxism, and 3) Nazism. Heidegger sees all three as being part of a subjectivist and nihilistic understanding that leads to the dictatorship of the public over the private and the elevation of natural science, economics, public policy, and technology. Despite these commonalities between these three ideologies, Heidegger is also careful to make note of the differences that exist between them. For example, Heidegger sees Americanism as being tied up in positivism, the industrial complex, and the elevation of economics and planning which organizes through the labor of the common person and rules through the market. Meanwhile, Heidegger sees Marxism as the product of humans being socially reduced. Interestingly enough, Nazism is seen as the most nihilistic form of modernity as it replaces reason with instinct and reduces all to a beast.

For Heidegger, the pre-Socratic Greeks were right to understand Being as a mystery and also to see the polis as the place where the gods and men met. Socrates also understood this through his use of the dialectic, so the real break begins with Plato and Aristotle. It is from this break that reductionist thinking, particularly in science was created. Heidegger is deeply concerned with the effects of reductionistic thinking, so much so that he also seeks to undo the traditional way of understanding history as for Heidegger history is not to be understood as a chain of events, but rather the destiny of Being itself. Still, it should be noted that Heidegger does not seek an overthrow of Being as much as he thinks it should be reinterpreted. Through this, Heidegger has essentially three goals. These three goals are as follows: 1) liberating man from all metaphysical categories and standards through a fundamental destructive reinterpretation of the history of Western thought; 2) fostering an authentic experience of contemporary nihilism by calling man to a resolute confrontation with death and meaninglessness; and 3) convincing man to accept his particular fate within the destiny of his people or generation made manifest in the revelation of Being.