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Rethinking the Political: Some Heideggerian Contributions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Fred Dallmayr
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Abstract

Recent literature on Heidegger concentrates heavily on his (temporary) involvement in or collusion with Nazi ideology and policies. Without belittling the gravity of the issue, this article shifts the focus somewhat by invoking a distinction which recently has emerged (or reemerged) in political thought: namely, the distinction between “politics” and “the political” or between politics viewed as partisan ideology or policy making, on the one hand, and politics seen as regime or paradigmatic framework, on the other. The main thesis of the article is that Heidegger's promising contributions to political theory are located on the level of ontology or paradigmatic framework rather than that of ideological partisanship. While not neglecting the dismal intrusions of the latter plane, the article probes Heideggerian cues for a “rethinking of the political” by placing the accent on four topical areas: first, the status of the subject or individual as political agent; second, the character of the political community, that is, of the polity or (in modern terms) the “state”; thirdly, the issue of cultural and political development or modernization; and finally, the problem of an emerging cosmopolis or world order beyond the confines of Western culture. In discussing these topics, an effort is made to disentangle Heidegger from possible misinterpretations and to indicate how, in each area, his thought pointed in the direction of an “overcoming” of Western political metaphysics.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , Fall 1990 , pp. 524 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1990

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References

1. The juxtaposition of paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic ages approximates Charles Péguy's distinction between historical “periods” and “epochs”—about which Merleau-Ponty writes: “When one is living in what Péguy called an historical period, in which political man is content to administer a regime or an established law, one can hope for a history without violence. When one has the misfortune or the luck to live in an epoch, or one of those moments where the traditional ground of a nation or society crumbles and where, for better or worse, man himself must reconstruct human relations, then the liberty of each man is a mortal threat to the others and violence reappears” (Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Humanism and Terror, trans. O'Neill, John [Boston: Beacon Press, 1969], p. xvii).Google Scholar

2. Vollradi, Ernst, “The ‘Rational’ and the ‘Political’: An Essay in the Semantics of Politics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 13 (1987): 19;Google Scholar see also his Grundlegung einer philosophischen Theorie des Politischen (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1987), pp. 29–56.Google Scholar For a German precedent for the distinction compare Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political (1932), trans. Schwab, George (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; for French precedents Ricoeur, Paul, “The Political Paradox” in his History and Truth, trans. Kelbley, Charles A. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), pp. 247–70,Google Scholar and Balibar, Etienne, Ferry, Luc, Lacoue-Labarthe, Ph., Lyotard, J.-F., and Nancy, Jean-Luc, Rejouer le Politique (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1981);Google Scholar and for American precedents Wolin, Sheldon S., Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 43,Google Scholar and Pitkin, Hanna F., Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 215.Google Scholar

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13. Heidegger, , Sein und Zeit, pp. 115–16Google Scholar (par. 25), 118, 124–25 (par. 26), 263 (par. 53). As Heidegger adds (p. 264): “As non-relational possibility, death individualizes; but, in light of its unsurpassable character (for each existence), it does so only in order to render Dasein as co-being sensitive for the others’ potentiality for being.” For a fuller discussion of co-being in Being and Time see my “Heidegger and Co-Being” in Twilight of Subjectivity, pp. 64–61.Google Scholar

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19. Habermas, , Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 101–102, 104, 136.Google Scholar Compare also his comment (pp. 133–34): “From this vantage Heidegger can so fundamentally de-struct modern reason that he no longer distinguishes between the universalistic contents of humanism, enlightenment, and even positivism, on the one side, and the particularistic, self-assertive conceptions of racism and nationalism, or of retrogressive typological doctrines à la Spengler and Jünger, on the other.” For Habermas's theory of individual and social development see his Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).Google Scholar

20. Heidegger, , “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, pp. 287–88, 294–98Google Scholar (translation slightly altered for purposes of clarity). Compare in this context Vietta, Silvio, Heideggers Kritik am Nationalsozialismus undan der Technik (Heidelberg: Niemeyer, 1989);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Zimmerman, Michael E., Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

21. “The Question Concerning Technology,” pp. 299–300, 306–307.

22. “The Question Concerning Technology,” pp. 307–308, 310, 313–14.

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27. Heidegger, , “Der Spruch des Anaximander,” in Holzwege, 4th ed. (Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1963), pp. 300, 343;Google Scholar“The Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, trans. Krell, David F. and Capuzzi, Frank A. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 17, 57.Google Scholar

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29. See Mehta, J. L., Martin Heidegger: The Way and the Vision (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), pp. 462, 466;Google ScholarNishitani, Keiji, ed., Gendai Nippon no tetsugaku (Philosophy in Contemporary Japan; Kyoto: Yukonsha, 1967), pp. 2–4;Google ScholarNishida, Kitaro, A Study of Good, trans. Viglielmo, V. H. (Tokyo: Japanese Government Printing Bureau, 1960), p. 211.Google Scholar Compare also Nishitani, , Religion and Nothingness, trans. Van Bragt, Jan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. xxv–xxviii;Google Scholar and Halbfass, Wilhelm, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 1988), pp. 169, 440–42.Google Scholar As Halbfass observes (pp. 440–441): “In the modern planetary situation, Eastern and Western ‘cultures’ can no longer meet one another as equal partners. They meet in a Westernized world, under conditions shaped by Western ways of thinking”—which conjures up the paradox of a simultaneous globalization and parochialization. Echoing Heidegger, Halbfass opts for a nonparochial path: “We have to transcend ‘what is European’ (das Europäischè); we have to reach ‘beyond Occident and Orient.'” Compare also the thoughtful comments of Leo Strauss: “The West has first to recover within itself that which would make possible a meeting of West and East: its own deepest roots, which antedate its rationalism, which in a way antedate the separation of West and East.” See his “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in Pangle, Thomas, ed., The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 43.Google Scholar

30. Heidegger, “Die Kehre,” p. 41; Halbfass, , India and Europe, p. 170.Google Scholar