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Thursday, April 13, 2017

Martin Heidegger: Ansprache University Speech 1933

Rector´s Address -- Rektoratsrede  "Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität"-- Self-Assertion of the German University --1933 

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The text is freely available in English at
 https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEEHeideggerSelf-Assertion.pdf

und auf deutsch:
http://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g31130/PDF/polphil/Heidegger.pdf


Heidegger's metaphors

It is a political speech delivered in everyday language and much easier to read than his written work, and so there appears in broad daylight what made his philosophy so successful. It is his insidious, brilliant ease in the use of metaphor, as if he were just another Rilke. His metaphors are radiant summaries obliging the reader to stop and think.


http://dekluizenaar.mimesis.nl/?page_id=4131


"The beginning has invaded our future........"

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Heideggers Metaphern

Es ist eine Rede mit politischem Inhalt, gar nicht zu vergleichen mit dem Nebelschleier von "Sein und Zeit". Man sieht sodann, was seiner Philosophie so ausschlaggebend weiterhalf: der Glitz seiner Metaphern, mit denen er wie ein zweiter Rilke allerhand Bedeutsamkeiten herzaubert.


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Heidegger's sentimentalism

Besides that, there is his sentimentalism. If you cannot see it, you have already fallen for it. It isn't a trap, though, for it is everywhere and turns his writing into a swamp.

Sodann seine Sentimentalität. Wer sie nicht sieht, patscht darin herum. Sie macht aus jedem Text einen Sumpf.
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The greatest thinker incl. moustache: "If we must be serious....".



Below is the jpg of the beginning in English und auf deutsch:


















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I read a little further  to find the metaphor quoted  plus this reference to Nietzsche with its conditioned recommendation to be serious about the idea that God is dead.














Notice that Heidegger does not say "seeker of God", but "seeker of the god" which isn't really fair to Nietzsche. It is a wee little cheat. Never mind.

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Heidegger was a Nazi, but not a racist. At least in 1933 his prestige was big enough to allow him to discreetly stay away from that other orgy.

However, the ugly fact, which won't go away, is that in 30 years after the war he never even tried to face the disaster and to explain, no matter how tentatively, why Dachau "came into being" or why "neither modern political philosophy nor theology nor philosophy had the critical resources to respond to the disintegration of the liberal state." Introduction to Leo Strauss's "Spinoza's Critique of Religion" translated by Elsa M. Sinclair, New York: Schocken, 1965.
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Heidegger war ein Nazi, hielt aber wenig auf  Rassentheorie. Wie definiert sich ein Nazi ohne Rassenbewusstsein? Bekannt is mir nur Susan Sontags Artikel über Leni Riefenstahl: http://www.nybooks.com/articles .

Da verbleibt jedoch die hässliche Tatsache, dass Heidegger volle 30 Jahre nach dem Krieg sich  nicht einmal versuchsweise zu einer Stellungnahme bereitfand. Die im "Sein und Zeit" ad hoc betriebene Sinnvernebelung reichte offenbar nicht so weit.

Heidegger lived until 1976, and as far as I know there wasn't a single analytical word to be heard from him in all that time on that one question which won't go away either.
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Photo by Muesse at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Heideggerrundweg0009.JPG under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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Postscript December 2014

I found out only now that Heidegger himself thought he was indebted to Hoelderlin:  see http://dekluizenaar.mimesis.nl/ in de voetsporen van Heidegger.

I'll have to google elsewhere for a saying about "whitened sepulchre".
It's sickening. They are both
"whited sepulchres, inside full of dead men's bones and  filth."
Matthew 23:27


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