Anti-modernity
Is it true that Heidegger viewed the NSDAP as simply another aspect of modernity which would inevitably have lead to the merely functional abyss in which we live today?
If this is the case, are there any philosophers who represents a genuine break with modernity and if so, who is the greatest example of this?
If this is the case, are there any philosophers who represents a genuine break with modernity and if so, who is the greatest example of this?
Comments (80)
I think I could guess what you are getting at here, but perhaps some clarification might help. A complete break with modernity, or just specific strands of it? A complete break would seem to imply a fundamentalist type of belief system. (Not saying it’s necessarily bad, it would just have to be comprehensive to even begin to counter-act all of modernity.) As for specific aspect objectors, there are many writers who might qualify (whether or not they are strictly philosophers). My favorites are Ken Wilber, who objects to the “flatland” materialism of the age; and Daniel Quinn, who posits that our “totalitarian agriculture” mindset has dire consequences.
There is an informal school of thought called 'perennialism' or 'traditionalism', centred around the writings of a rather reclusive French convert to Islam, by the name of Rene Guenon. His most famous book is called The Reign of Quantity. There are a number of other people often associated with him, specifically, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, and Ananda Coomaraswamy. Oh, and Julius Evola, and I suppose Oswald Spengler might be another.
All of them are unremittingly, witheringly hostile to the 'idea of modernity' generally. They see 'the modern world' as a degenerate shadow of a faded civilization.
As it happens, a lot of these are highly attractive to those with conservative and fascist political views - which is understandable, but also a bit unfortunate. But it's safe to say, they're generally counter-cultural in their attitude and are hardly taught in Western universities (although Coomaraswamy's writing on art criticism is pretty mainstream.)
If you're interested I have some further sources.
There's a huge literature in this subject, albeit not very well recognised by the mainstream. But well worth becoming acquainted with, in my opinion.
What are you referring to there, exactly?
The way I take it, after reading some ideas from Heidegger, is that modernity is essentially opposed to the idea of creativity and I believe Spengler agrees. All three political positions of modernity lead to the same thing; functionality taken for itself. To try to be creative within the context of modernity is impossible; some paradigm shift needs to occur which recognises all three positions as bankrupt and returns us to a state of true creativity.
How are they defining "creative/creativity"? (And in contrast with "functional" would be helpful)
So Collingwood is using Wilde's definition? And he's saying that there's a distinction to be had between "merely" functional living and "completely useless" living ("completely useless" to most people), while Heidegger and Spengler are saying that "completely useless" living (to most people) isn't possible at present for some reason, whereas it used to be?
Again, I asked how he defines "creative/creativity." If someone is going to make a distinction between "creative" and "functional" and say things like "it's not possible to live creatively," aren't we allowed to wonder just what they're claiming, whether what they're claiming has any merit, etc.?
So it's forbidden to define a term then? We have to just guess what people might be referring to, and interpret them however is required to make what they say insightful/correct? (And if so, why didn't you give me the same courtesy?)
But I can't do anything with a "functional/creative" distinction and "it's impossible to live creatively" otherwise. It just sounds like nonsense.
I didn't realize I'm not allowed to express my opinions on a message board.
Well, or I can comment here as I have.
Maybe you could clear this up. What does "creative(ly)" refer to re living?
of the neodialectic discourse of functional living which is a central theme of Baudrillard's The System of Objects emerges again in post-structuralism. However, Debord would see 'functional living' as a subcultural formalism that denotes the difference between functional identity and class.
No, you're right. We strictly enforce no challenges, no skepticism, etc. to anything on this philosophy board.
There is moderation.
Quoting räthsel
Quoting Terrapin Station
The question Terrapin asked of you was fine. You have not characterised 'functional or 'creative'. Seeing as they are technical terms within another philosopher's account you are referencing, and it is not fair to assume common knowledge of what those terms mean in the account with all participants in this discussion, it would have been nice for you to actually say what they mean for the author you reference.
That said, Terrapin often comes off as adversarial even when he is not. Part of how he posts. But you can actually have decent discussions with him if you thoroughly answer the questions. or you can ignore the questions if you think they are irrelevant or uninteresting.
Stop the flamewar you're trying to have. Neither of you will gain anything from it besides a warning, and it wastes my time.
I actually spent 10-15 minutes trying to research how Collingwood uses the terms when I first asked, but I never did find anything that explained it. So if the terms are important or common in Collingwood, there oddly doesn't seem to be much mention of them in writing about Collingwood. Even the SEP page about Collingwood's aesthetics had no mention of "creative" or "creativity."
Yes, apparently. Now simmer down.
If you have issues with how you have been moderated in this discussion feel free to start a complaint thread about me in the 'Feedback' board.
Are there any quotes you can give from the text you are referencing that might help?
But you wrote "I was reading Collingwood, who distinguishes between three types of living, which are either merely functional, creative (I think this is similar to the idea of genuine Being) or both. "
So now you're saying that he doesn't actually use those terms? His three types of living are something, art, or both?
Ok. Can you please tell me how Colingwood uses the terms you referenced?
I'm not your enemy, I promise. Nor am I trying to troll.
The distinction is about how materials are thought about, what intentions are, etc. with respect to making things like chairs and paintings.
That has nothing to do with waking up and going to the bathroom and going to the grocery store, etc.
If you think someone is trolling you, report it by PM and we'll deal with it. Don't abuse them or the mods or you'll be the one banned.
So how would we apply the distinction to living in general in your view?
Factually, or as a goal?
Thanks.
I don't know much about the distinction between art and techne in the later Heidegger, but at least the metaphysical side of your question in the OP is related to Heidegger's papers 'The Origin of the Work of Art' and 'The Question Concerning Technology'. He definitely contrasts artistic (or poetic) understanding and technical understanding, and displays suspicion and sorrow about the decline of poetic understanding and the growth of technical understanding.
For Heidegger, technical understanding is rooted in seeing the world as primarily transformable natural resources; as the substrate of a nature full of opportunities for humans to seize. This is contrasted to more 'primordial' senses of understanding associated with art, and a more primordial understanding associated with nature. Artistic understanding and a more primordial way of understanding nature are associated with the concept of 'dwelling', as in being engaged practically in a world we ultimately respect and care about. An analogy I like here is the love you have for your family (hopefully anyway) contrasted to seeing them as sources of income to exploit. The former is a cooperative and respectful experience for those involved, even if there are troubles, the latter can be so exploitative its practitioners might not even realise it's exploitative.
Throughout Heidegger's corpus, there's a heavy sense of nostalgia and forlornness for peasant life, associated with individual craftsmanship and pre-industrial agricultural communities. I've seen people try to make sense of his alliance with the Nazi party in terms like this. A central part of Nazi propaganda was the idea of the German people returning to an ancient (like Heidegger's 'primordial') heritage, mastering themselves, and valorising whatever communities they belonged to.
The Jews were characterised as technocratic usurers, greedy and exploitative of the people and resources they controlled. It is not so surprising that this characterisation of the Jews aligns itself with industrial mercantilism and the increasing societal importance of technical understanding; with the same notes of exploitation you can hear in Heidegger's concept of technical understanding. And the forlorn nostalgia longing for a return to more 'primordial' ways of being is definitely present in Heidegger's thought and is fully commensurate with the nationalist Nazi myth of the nation.
It's extremely dubious that previous the previous eras he was "nostalgic" for wouldn't have had just the same issues regarding the "art" and "techne" distinction he made.
Your explanation of it makes some sense of it, even if I think the distinction is both oversimplistic--it's far too black & white--and mythological.
Yeah he's definitely not trying to portray history in all its gory details and banalities, he's a lot more concerned with (his idiosyncratic notion of) philosophical history. Early Heidegger likes to put in in terms of a 'return' to fundamental questions about our lives that have become obscured through the history of philosophy. There are no battles or politics in Heidegger's history, only ideas.
Edit: and only ideas from great thinkers.
You got decent answers from 0 thru 9 and Wayfarer.
Don't take things too personally though, we don't all think in the same ways, something you see as obvious others won't understand or interpret differently and vice versa. But I agree it can be bothering when you want to talk about something and your thread seems to get derailed.
I have my own ideas of what's wrong with the modern world and my own intuition about what might be referred to as the "merely functional abyss" of today, however you were asking about published philosophers who wrote on the subject and I don't have any name to mention that wasn't already mentioned (not that I would know them all).
But still, in case you ever want to discuss the subject it can be useful to clarify what you see as a functional abyss in today's world (my own intuition on that would be that we are shaped to be more like tools programmed to function in a specific way rather than creative beings expressing ourselves independently).
Yes, the famous Heidegerrian phrase ' the essence of technology is nothing technological" is an attempt to distinguish our primordial relationality with a world from instrumental logic. We can see the development of his critique of technology out of his notion of the present to hand, and through his writing on the history of logic beginning with Plato and Aristotle and subject-predicate propositionality , up though the establishment of objective empiricism with Galileo and Descartes . Heidegger said us he wants, 'in a confrontation with the tradition', to rethink logic, to "revolutionarily shake up the notion of logic" from the ground up.
While it is true his examples of non present-to-hand involvement with the world limited themselves to individual craftsmanship and pre-industrial agricultural communities, it can be argued that potential future technologies that don't succumb to the present to hand propositionality of Gestell(enfarming) , that is , that are founded on a 'revolutionary shaking up of the notion of logic', should be possible for Heidegger. It would be matter of, as Derrida wrote, overtly and explicitly deconstructing what was already naively deconstructing itself in the guise of enframing thinking.
One could say, as you do , that such an approach to the technological would be Quoting fdrake.
I would add, though, that primordial Care for Heidegger, in its modification as heedful circumspective involvement with the world(the ready to hand) should be understood prior any particular sentiments about that we are involved with. Whether our affective comportment toward what we deal with is one of respect or neglect, fondness or dislike, what distinguishes the significance of handiness from that of the present to hand and enframing is simply what Heidegger calls the 'as' structure of hermeneutically taking something as something. Enframing is a privative, cut-off, levelled down, forgetful derivative mode of seeing, because it loses contact with its larger context of relevance. In enframing thinking propositional presencing “exhibits itself in the light of a cause-effect coherence”, and the danger is that
it does not consider “the essential origin of this causality.” Thus, Heidegger warns of the “supreme” and “extreme” danger of “not apprehending Enframing as a claim”. Note that claims matter to us, whereas the present to hand is supposedly there whether we re involved with it or not.
A "predicate" is "stated" about a "subject," the latter is determined by the former." "Positing the subject, positing the predicate, and positing them together are thoroughly "apophantic" in the strict sense of the word. "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But in the propositional statement "the as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. The "as" no longer reaches out into a totality of relevance in its function of appropriating what is understood. It is cut off with regard to its possibilities of the articulation of referential relations of
significance which constitute the character of the surrounding world. The "as" is forced back to
the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It dwindles to the structure of just letting
what is objectively present be seen by way of determination. This levelling down of the
primordial "as" of circumspect interpretation to the as of the determination of objective
presence is the speciality of the statement. Only in this way does it gain the possibility of a
pointing something out in a way that we sheerly look at it." The pure beholding of theoretical
staring-at is 'a failure to understand it. Assertion is a privation of simple seeing which
understands.
"In the first and authentic instance, this “as” is not the “as” of predication qua predication but is
prior to it in such a way that it makes possible the very structure of predication at all. Predication
has the as-structure, but in a derived way, and it has it only because the as-structure is predication
within a [wider] experience. But why is it that this as-structure is already present in a direct act of
dealing with something? The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and
take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is
always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as,
but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act. The non-explicitness
of this “as” is precisely what constitutes the act’s so-called directness. Yes, the thing that is
understood can be apprehended directly as it is in itself. But this directness regarding the thing
apprehended does not inhibit the act from having a developed structure.
Moreover, what is structural and necessary in the act of [direct] understanding need not be
found, or co-apprehended, or expressly named in the thing understood. I repeat: The [primary]
as-structure does not belong to something thematically understood. It certainly can be
understood, but not directly in the process of focally understanding a table, a chair, or the like.
Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so
original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it’s possible at
all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order."
Heideger rejected humanism because its form of subjectivity turns humans into objects ('standing reserve'). For Heidegger, even recognizing, as Nietzsche did, that instrumental reason is organized and directed via subjective value structures is still a form of technological enframing.
Did he suggest what he was going to replace it with?
As an "ontologically insufficient interpretation of the logos", what the mode of interpretation of propositional statement doesn't understand about itself is that thinking of itself as external 'relating' makes the propositional 'is' an inert synthesis, and conceals its ontological basis as attuned, relevant taking of 'something AS something'. In accordance with this affected-affecting care structure, something is understood WITH REGARD TO something else. This means that it is taken together with it, but not in the manner of a synthesizing relating. Heidegger instead describes the 'as' as a "confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, [and] at the same time takes apart what has been put together."
It wouldn't necessary be that Heidegger wants to discard the use of logic, so much as he warns us to be vigilant not to orient our thinking around the totalizing and flattening tendencies that can accompany a culture that celebrates objective causality as a privileged avenue toward truth.
Eugene Gendlin, an interpreter of Heidegger, makes this argument:"We need to go back and forth between logic and bodily-felt understanding. They build upon each other. It would be wrong to make an ideology of lauding one and pretending to do without the other."...patterns work-in another, more intricate order which talks back..."(The Time of the Explicating Process: A Comment on Thomas Fuchs’ “Body Memory”).
For my part, I can envision a technological and empirical thinking of the future that wouldn't need to 'dip into' logical formulation at all.
What we never generally never see is the *religious* dimension to this issue. Put it another way: if 'the idea of the fall of man' is meaningless to you, then you don't understand what the argument is about.
I don't know much about Heidegger (nor necessarily want to) but he studied to be a Lutheran pastor. So, he changed course, and didn't pursue a religious vocation, but he's still a fundamentally religious thinker. Religious, not in the sense of 'obeying the dicta of ecclesiastical authority' but in the philosophical sense of 'grappling with the meaning of Being' - which is first and foremost a (or the) religious quest.
So, so long as the question about 'what this means' is framed solely in terms of the utilitarian, what is useful, how it works, 'what does it mean' in a sense comprehensible to a secular-scientific sense, then the point is surely missed.
It's a shame you flamed out, I thought you had some interesting things to say. Pity about your temper.
Is religious the same as metaphysical? If Heidegger claimed to overcome metaphysics, could there be a post-metaphysical meaning of religion? Perhaps of a Kierkegaardian sort?
In a general sense, metaphysics and religion overlap, in the space of philosophical theology, first principles, and the like. They're not the same subject, but they tend to be merged in many discussions, so it takes quite a bit of study to understand the distinction.
I'm not studied in Heidegger, but my sense is that he was concerned with what theologian Paul Tillich called 'matters of ultimate concern'. I don't think he was at all conventionally religious, but that his work concerned many of the deep questions which religious philosophies seek to address. (I've never studied his criticism of metaphysics in detail.)
I like it. Kiekegaard had a very specific and cogent take on the religious. His greatest philosophical contribution was in liberating the religious existence from Hegelian phenomenology.
Thanks for answering. I can't make much sense of the answer, unfortunately, but it's too much to get into, because we'd basically have to have a conversation on every Heideggerian phrase, lol
That's an interesting perspective. It might actually help me understand Heidegger a bit.
I didn't bother to wade into the mudfight but I know heidegger's "introduction to metaphysics" he implicitly praises the "resoluteness" of a certain nascent movement and says something about how America and the USSR are "metaphysically identical". My understanding is that he only stopped supporting the Nazis when they lost.
I've read Evola. Wow.
I would characterize myself as some kind of "anti-modern" thinker, but neither along the lines of capital T tradition or whatever heidegger's project was.
One thing I definitely do not like among perennial types is the the assumption that all premodern thinking had the same aim/character. I pre-ordered Neil Price's The Viking Way
To live creatively is to break the "rules"
Are there really rules that aren't laws, though? And even if there are, what if someone doesn't want to break (some of) them? Do they have to live inauthentically to live creatively? That would seem odd.
At any rate, so let's supposed that there are rules that aren't laws. Why wouldn't it be possible at present to break them? (In the vein of the claim that it's not possible at present to live creatively.)
Modernity—typified by the Renaissance, colonial exploration and settlement, practical science, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise in class mobility—lost its way through the hereditary powers' fear of and contempt for class mobility. So, led by spreading upper-class deception dominating the universities, philosophers floundered and illogically blamed modernity itself for their dissatisfaction with modern life. They were tricked into nostalgia for the medieval stagnancy created by Birth-Class Supremacy.
It seems odd because you have it backwards, authenticity is the degree to which an individual's actions are congruent with their beliefs and desires, despite external pressures (“rules”). People make all sorts of compromises in their lives in order to be accepted. Many support shared fictions, that they know are fiction, in order to express solidarity with their ‘tribe’. Trump supporters are a recent and particularly ugly example of this.
In other words, let's say that it's a rule that you should help disabled people when you can.
And then let's say that Joe comes along, and Joe really likes to help disabled people when he can.
Well, per the definition presented, to live creatively is to break the rules. So if Joe isn't breaking the rules, Joe isn't living creatively. Thus, insofar as this issue goes, Joe can't live both creatively and authentically, because in order to break the rules, Joe has to act differently than his existential authenticity would have it--living authentically to Joe in this situation in entirely consistent with the rules.
In fact, someone might happen to agree with almost every rule. So they'd not be able to live both creatively and authentically, per this definition of what it is to live creatively.
If someone adhered to specific rules, like painting by numbers or something, they would certainly not be creative. Can someone authentically enjoy painting by numbers? Sure, it might be a pleasant distraction. Would the produced 'artwork' be their authentic expression? No. So in this case they'd be both uncreative and inauthentic, though they may authentically enjoy the distraction.
It seems like you're appealing to something like the normal artistic sense of "creative" there and not simply defining it as "living so that one breaks rules"
You mentioned being "creative and authentic" so I gave an example that addresses both. The person who started the topic referred to "genuine Being" in regard to the creative. I take that to mean being authentic or self-actualized.
You seem to be thinking of the subject in some kind of absolute sense where someone's life is either completely authentic or it's not.
So do you agree that "living creatively" involves breaking rules rather than following them?
In the sense that it was meant, yes, because I believe that modern society (myself included) is rather inauthentic in general.
Heidegger too critiques modernity, eg his essay on calculative thinking, but Heidegger also has some dubious credentials.
That is a rule.
The problem of the whole thread is that to define creativity is to negate it. As a rule, rules are derived from the known, which is the past, or tradition. and that encompasses science, technology, conservative and socialist. It encompasses anything that anyone might come up with that is understandable.
Except that I might, or you might, come up with something creative. The old masters, and the old philosophers were creative, but they are not creative now. And to be creative is to be at the cutting edge of now; to make the post that says something new. I'm surprised that in 3 pages no one has mentioned Pirsig. Dynamic and static value.
Do you believe that someone can just so happen to feel the same way that the rules have something?
I’m sure that many feel or believe that the rules have something. Creativity can’t exist without a foundation or something to work with.
As I tried to suggest with my analogy, many people enjoy painting by numbers. It can be a pleasant distraction. It doesn’t require self-reflection or anything that might take them out of their comfort zone. It’s like a gilded iron cage. No one knows how to escape it.