KT Answers: Unterwegs zu Heidegger Cul-De-Sac, pt.1
In this episode of our regular q&a podcast we answer reader’s questions about the influence of Martin Heidegger on Internet based rightist identiterian movements. In the first episode we give an outline of the current state of Heideggeriana in the mainstream academia which seems to lead us to conclusion that Internet fringe apparently understood him far better than his academic followers and interprets. This was made clear mainly by finalization of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe and publication of the so called “black notebooks” – diaries which, judging by his own evaluation, contained Heidegger’s most intimate thoughts and the central point of his philosophy. As the end result is that it is now obvious that he was indeed a committed national socialist, at least in the sense of what he understood as meta-political essence of national socialism, and that this is also at the very least quite close to his project of the destruction of traditional metaphysics, the sizeable chunk of contemporary philosophers now seem to realize how they have been building their academic houses quite near the entrance of the underworld, if not even somewhat further down the hole.
In the second part we’ll provide focused criticism of some crucial points in Heidegger’s interpretation of traditional metaphysics that seem to be especially endearing to both average academic Heideggerian or deconstrutionist and fringe dwelling identitarian.
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Branko Malić
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Another great podcast Mr. Branko!
The issue of Heidegger’s nazism got my attention since the publication of the Black Notebooks. And some years later I assessed his philosophy in my postgraduate dissertation in Jungian Studies, in terms of its perfect parallel with Nazi ideology’s principles. The main topic for me, back then, was to demonstrate that nazism and total destruction is the logical consequence of moral relativism and postmodernism brought to its extreme. In that, I used Husserl’s phenomenology and axiological universalism to tackle both Jung and Heidegger. Needless to say, most of my professors where not at all happy that “their most intelligent student ever” was writing a piece of original academic dissertation trying to show that the origin of their -even unconscious- philosophical presuppositions stood on principles, or lack thereof, that made things like the Holocaust happen. Especially when you are junghian scholars trying to make people “self-conscious” by way of the Coniunctio Oppositorum.
Now, since then many things have changed for me. And now both philosophically, and more importantly existentially, I am in the place that I should never have diverged from since being a Roman Catholic. And your project of Kali Tribune helped me a lot -really a lot- intellectually. So, thank you so much, Mr. Branko Malic. And it has a nice “flavour” the fact that this happened thanks to a man not too many kilometers away from Veneto, where I am from, and whose region’s recent history have had an impact in my personal biography. Nothing is ever casual.
I just want to make a comment on the topic of this Q&A.
In Italy they went straight over alt-right and white suprematism: they are into conscious accelerationism of dissolution, under the guise of social media trickster-behaviour, internet as the place of political and existential action and total absence of meaning and truth. These are mostly twitter based, between the age of 20 and 30, really marginal -although acknowledged even by politicians- profiles that call themselves “mattonisti” (literally the -ism of the brick) and even produced a mock-manifesto exposing their principles. Most notably they refer their whole “post- post ideology” to a precise article of this “manifesto”, 4.1: which is empty, no sentence, nothing, just the number “4.1”. So they quite literally refer to Nothingness as their center. They are completely aware of this, they even understand concept of “dissolution” and they embrace it. Not to mention how they see any conspiracy made manifest since pandemic started. Many of them, though, claim to be Catholics, which is a burden on them since this is completely ant-Christian: so they are either christians in error or people who use their being baptised as an identitarian flag
I am not aware of anything of this sort elsewhere and it has a very strange “sound” that this came up in Italy. Where quite anonimous-until-now to the general public mons. Viganò is making strong public conspiratorial statements against “great reset” and “satanic elites”.
God bless you.
Thank you Valerio. The second part will be going into meat and bones of the matter, since I’ll focus on actual Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle from his seminaries in the 1920’s. Unfortunately, this is something that should be properly done in writing, but then it would’ve been a subject in itself, not q&a. Hopefully, I’ll manage to point out just how terminally deceptive his approach to philosophy is.
As for your academic troubles, I studied under person whose masters thesis done in the eighties was a devastating critique of Heidegger’s misrepresentation of ancient philosophy. Of note is, however, that she wrote and defended it in Heidegger’s own Freiburg and had to do it before his epigones like Von Herrman and Wieland, while being only 26 old at the time, a woman and an American. Try to imagine how that ended up. Not to go into gossip too much, but suffice it to say that she mentioned how even the dress code of one of those gentlemen was quite evocative of the certain bygone times, an unequivocally daring combination of black and brown that seemed calculated to make equally unequivocal fashion statement.
As for Veneto, Serrenisima Republica used to rule my part of Croatia for quite a long period and most of the coastal Croatia was claimed by Italian nationalists later, but regardless of that Italian influence is strong and mentality is considered to be quite similar, so there’s no bad blood anymore.
As it always goes in Mediterranean:
Una razza, una faccia.
Thank you for your reply! Actually I thought that my comment didn’t go in, so I rewrote it with some other things. Sorry for some repetitions in that second comment, but it has also some other specific features that I find really interesting.
Thank you again!
Another great podcast Mr. Branko!
It always seemed to me that Heidegger represents in the history of ideas the point of collapse of modernity into postmodernity. And since as a kid the intuition of something extremely central(images of people in death camps and the whole bulck of nazi images), nazism as the historical pitfall of the modern world into its ultimate form which is a negation of itself. Indeed, my postgraduate dissertation in Junghian Studies tried to demonstrate how the moral relativism and postmodern approach of deconstruction can result only into nazism, whatever mask it may acquire. Tried to relate that to how Jung scholarship, that is, it being tought in universities, won’t prevent to get there as the extreme logical consequence. Needless to say, many of my professors didn’t like it. For the limits imposed to the length and scope -which had to be anyways about Jung- I couldn’t rely on traditional metaphysics(which I was just starting to reassess in the light of personal circumstances and of coming back to Christ, being me a Roman Catholic) so I deployed Husserl’s axiological universalism, especially because phenomenology is almost anything except many of the things that Husserl actually said. Obviously aware that phenomenology method could not be a foundation for a refutation of both Heidegger and Jung, but at least to expose the concept of truthfulness as “given”, and its moral sphere which can known in a universalistic way through the phenomenology of values that are present in the “things themselves”.
There is also the issue -a huge one in my opinion- of a supposedly jewish derivation of some of Heidegger’s concepts, namely Nothingness as the Origin. I refer in particular to Donatella Di Cesare, Italian jewish philosopher(by which I mean that she also studies jewish philosophy, being jewish herself) and former vice-president of the “Martin Heidegger Gesellschaft”. She had access to the first Black Notebooks and translated them in the Italian edition. She is quite explicit supporter of some sort of destinal meaning of jewishness in regards to the history of Being, Authenticity etc. Her book “Heidegger and the Jews” while acknowledging -once and for all- Heidegger’s nazism says a “shipwrecked man who crosses the night of the world, illuminated by profound philosophical glances and powerful eschatological visions” and in general how what she considers as the “highest thinking” could give itself to the most “abysmal horror”. Needless to say she is a postmodern self-proclaimed anarchist. What to make about a possibile connection with what seems some sort of esoteric and kabbalistic jewish notion of metaphysical Origin with Martin Heidegger is out of my reach and I don’t feel like getting into the matter any time soon.
On the alt-righter etc. In Italy now we have those who call themselves “mattonisti” (literally the -ism of the brick). They are a completely twitter based “movement” who proclaim for accelerationism, by way of trickster-like behaviour, internet as the place of political action, meaning and truth as non existent, in general acceleration of dissolution through comical mockery of postmodernity. They even produced a mock-manifesto for their “post- post ideology”, where principles are exposed, especially at the article 4.1 -the one to which they refer their whole ideological position and point “others” to when asked what they believe in. Well, this article has no sentence, nothing, just the number “4.1”. So they knowingly place Nothingness at the center. I doubt that most of them -between 20 and 30 years old- really understand what it means, some find it funny, some amusing, some entertaining: guess that this fraction of positions and motivation is what Non-Being is about. Needless to say they think that since pandemic started all -literally all- conspiracies have manifested themselves. Being on Twitter they interact with Italian parliamentary and govern’s politicians.
I am not aware of anything similar elsewhere. And it has a strange “sound” this happening in Italy, where until-now almost unknown to the general public mons. Viganò is making -since last year- strong public statements against “great reset” and “satanic elites”.
By the way, Thank you again for you work Mr. Branko Malic and cheers from Veneto.
God bless you and your loved ones.
From what I was able to read about Di Cesare’s ideas, she is quite typical for people who are essentially Heidegger influenced, never mind their ideological trajectory. Their main objection is that Heidegger was not destructive enough, i.e. that his Nazism was a result of him unconsciously retaining some traces of that tradition he so eagerly attempted to destroy. So, according to signora Donatella, if I understand her correctly, he himself was a “metaphysiche Jude” he denounced, wheres instead he was just a step shy of realizing that he should have become “post-metaphysiche Jude”, whereby “post-metaphysiche” means free of, in this order: Christianity, traditional metaphysics (code word for Plato and Platonism) and, last but not least, legacy of Roman culture with its pesky legal tradition, uninspired language and the original sin of embracing and spreading both Christianity and metaphysics onto the rest of Europe.
The thing is, however: Heidegger’s philosophy is based on obviously intentional distortions of ancient Greek classics that are conducted in such a radical way that only a willfully blind reader can believe that he can follow him in this without suspending his most elementary intellectual faculty. I mean, he literary omits passages, inserts passages, intentionally wrongly translates, all that in order to, somehow, let true thought of Platon or Aristotle “shine through”. Yet the only thing that shines through, when he demolishes the text, is Heidegger himself under the code word “Dasein” (I am referring to early lectures where he was laying ground for “Sein und Zeit”. It gets worse later, but keep in mind that some of his most famous pupils attended precisely these lectures and were, apparently, enamored by them to the rest of their lives).
This, in contrast to what I wrote about Di Cesare, I will not qualify with an “if” but I will state as obvious, discernible and demonstrable truth:
Heidegger is a liar and anybody following him in the light of him being demonstrably a liar is also a liar. And this is what itches the majority of contemporary academic philosophers in Europe and US, yet they will never admit it because the whole edifice they worship crumbles in the face of truth if only one correctly translates a single Aristotle’s passage that they willfully appropriated in its Heideggerian inversion.
I can tell you that in reading those inversions I noticed one very rare phenomena, I noticed before only once, in the context of someone slandering the already dead, righteous, person: it seems as if Aristotle, when you read his true words in parallel with Heidegger’s obfuscations, rose from the grave to refute him; it ends up seeming as if the very passages from “Metaphysics” and “Nicomahean Ethics” were written to point by point refute the intruder trying to appropriate them.
As for Heidegger, so for others: I believe that the very words of Tradition they are reading and misreading at one point come alive so they can choke on them.
Finally, to commit an intellectual salto mortale by shifting intellectual blame for Heidegger’s quite idiosyncratic (eigentlich) and minutely developed metaphysical antisemitism from Heidegger himself to “traditional metaphysics” in the light of him quite deliberately purifying this metaphysics of, supposedly, “not entirely Greek” and “not entirely German” (uneighentlich) elements is pure and simple perversion caused by some kind of philosophical Stockholm syndrome or, perhaps, something worse and more deliberate.
Thank you for releasing this.
The dissident right is really not my choice of terms, but it will have to do for lack of a better word. We can just as well label them neo-nazis, furries or Chaos Space Marines. What is important is whether they actually sincere in their opposition to the Big Pozz or are being led by the nose by it.
Now why do I bother with this? Because a plethora of these “bad guy” websites, like CC, Warden Post and Ron Unz chief among them, each catering to a slight varieties of the internet “fringe” let’s call it, really seek to outdo each other lately with slurries of pro-Zionist and anti-Christian articles. I don’t get why the SLPC and ADL even bothers to keep them on their lists these days. They should give them a medal!
The usual line of reasoning of these articles consists of the following. Now I have to ask you to prepare for the intellectual tour the force that I’m about to unleash. You see “Abrahamics” are bad because of all the Christian stuff they imposed on our brave blood drinking skull fucking pagan forebearers, except of course when they’re behaving like Jews which is something we should copy and emulate because survival of the fittest n shiet. Yes this is really the purpose of all these articles, to praise the ever beaten trope of Jewish cunning and ferocity while denigrating Christian values as supposedly making us weak in comparison. This stretch of logic is just so blatantly idiotic and in your face that you can’t help but laugh – only to go to the comments sections and read dozens upon dozens of people concurring with this sentiment instead of rightly calling the authors out for their bullshit. And then they just go on and on parroting all manner of historical inaccuracies and misconceptions so I simply gave up trying to type in refutations to this nonsense. So this, in a nutshell, is our glorious pissident movement.
I’ve decided to treat Collin Cleary’s set of articles a bit more seriously though, having left a weighty comment on CC to part 7, because at least they expressed what appears to be a serious sounding philosophical argument. I have to admit they even had me for a while. But only a little bit more, because when you come to think of it, the way his formulation (and I’m sure he would strenously deny this) of how every error of civilization could be ascribed to the inherent form in which thought unfolds, creates such a broad category that the very nature of reason would soon be found to collapse within it. It isn’t just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it’s the torching of the bathhouse and the very idea of having a baby let alone a bath. I’m not sure at the end of the day what his point is other than to just about demolish every single intellectual proposition ever put into words.
Anyway, I look forward to the next part with no small anticipation.
Well, to underline your conclusion, its just the trajectory of the modern philosophy which is at its worst when it finally turns on itself; something that doubtless happened to Heidegger and those who follow him.
In the history of 20th century thought, it would be hardly fair to single out Heidegger as the foremost bearer of this trajectory. Take for example the likes of Skinner, Quine, Carnap, Adorno and Foucault, just to name a few, and it only got worse and worse from then on. And before that of course Kant, who is spoken of at length in the critiqued article. I do not believe this negation or destruction of traditional thought to be Heidegger’s doing – it was the generally accepted starting position of Western philosophy at that point. Rather, starting from this assumption, he tried to elucidate something that would negate it – a negation of a negation so to speak, and he did so by attacking the entire history of western thought that has led to the primary negation in the first place, which is what Collin Cleary and the CC people are trying to do as well (which strikes me as just about the most anti-white position to take but oh well).
I would say even Popper elicits far greater distaste in me than anything that you have just demonstrated about Heidegger, because I don’t really consider the latter as presenting a logically complete proposition. What I’m trying to say is that if there’s some kind of denouement, a way out so to speak, in Heidegger’s posited issue with philosophy, then I don’t notice it, and what he says on the subject doesn’t strike me as sounding very convincing. I don’t think he himself believed them to be true in the later stages of his life. The fact that he received a Catholic burial seals the deal – I don’t know what the situation was like in Germany, but I don’t think the Catholic clergy were so liberal at that time as to provide the last rites without a final confession.
The problem is that Heidegger, in contrast to most of his contemporaries you point out, obviously had capacity to engage with someone like Platon or Aristotle and did this, as it seems to me, with intentionally insidious intent. For example, Popper just doesn’t qualify for this because he’s a mediocre thinker – he can prevent access to Plato in the sense of restricting the study to anachronistic “open society” exegesis, but he cannot reach the heart of his philosophy and inject poison there. Heidegger does this. He wants to invoke the gods of the underworld because he is sensible enough to know that there is an underworld, whereas some Oxford pedant who wants to preserve the security of his materialist worldview just senses and instinctually shuns the existence of abyss upon which it is founded. Heidegger, however, takes the plunge into it, or rather incites others to do it. I beleive that most of analytic philosophy is to this day on the pre-kantian positions which means it really has no real relevance outside what dominance of AngloSaxon cultural model borrows it and its adherents are just people who never passed some prepatatory steps into philosophy proper. Nobody ever lost his faith by reading Richard Dawkins, but some did by following someone like Nietzsche or Heidegger into the labyrinth.