enowning
Saturday, October 28, 2006
 
It is rare to find Heidegger referring to contemporary political figures in his works, so I was surprised to find him addressing this barrage of questions at the Reich Chancellor. But not publically. Although written in 1939, this was published posthumously.
"There is no attitude, which could not be ultimately justified by the ensuing usefulness for the totality" (Adolf Hitler 30, January 1939)

Who makes up this totality? (Eighty million-strong extant human mass? Does its extantness assign to this human mass the right to the claim on a continued existence?)

How is this totality determined? What is its goal? Is it itself the goal of all goals? Why? Wherein lies the justification for this goal-setting?

When is the usefulness of an attitude ascertained? Wherein lies the criterion for usefulness? Who determines the usefulness? By what means does this determination justify itself in each case? Can and should the one who adopts an "attitude" also judge its usefulness and its harm at the same time?

Why is usefulness the criterion for the legitimacy of a human attitude? On what is this principle grounded? Who determies the ownmost of the domain of man?

From where does the appeal to usefulness as the measure of truth acquire its comprehensibility? Does comprehensibility justify legitimacy?

What is "totality", if not the quantitative expansion of a particular conception of man as an individual?

What does attitude mean? Does one arrive at what is fundamental to human being through an attitude? If not, then what does justification of an attitude by the totality and by the ensuing usefulness for the totality mean?

Is there not in this concept "attitude" already a renunciation of every fundamental questionability of a human being with respect to its hidden relation to beyng?

Is not man beforehand and ultimately tied here to the pursuit and control of beings in the abandonment by being? and what are "ideas"? Do they not count as names for the final 'dis-humanization' of everything that man still and always creates beyond himself, so that through "ideas" he inevitably falls below his ownmost? Are not "ideas" phantoms that serve solely the "eternal" forth-rolling and up-surging of "life" and fully close off man in his animality as a "living-being"?

Is not all "attitude" together with totality of a "people" shoved down the yawning abyss of "beings" insofar as attitude and totality always merely spin around themselves?

And does not such a 'casting-oneself-away' to being entail the ultimate renunciation of every inceptual, fundamental calling of man for struggling -- with a knowing leap unto beyng -- for the essence of gods and for 'the time-space' of their essencing?

P. 102-103
 
Comments:
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Thanks for the links.
 
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The link hasn't gone stale yet. And it's hosted on a university website, so it should be fairly good, remain accessible...if it breaks I'll change to DropBox.
 
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