Picked this up at the following address: http://cercamon.wordpress.com/category/contemporains/heidegger/

Heidegger: English Bolshevism
Communism is the metaphysical constitution of peoples in the last section of the ending of the modern era, in that from the beginning of the modern era it has to place its essence, still veiled, in power. Politically, this comes to be in the modern history of the English state. The lasster is — to think it in its essence, leaving aside actual forms of government, societies and beliefs — the same thing as the Soviet Union, the only difference being that in England a gigantic work of simulacra gives to this deployment of violence the inoffensive and evident appearence of morality and education of peoples, whereas in the Soviet Union modern 'conscience' reveals itself with less restraint, yet without the pretention of realizing the happiness of peoples, in its essence of power. The Christian-bourgeois form of English bolshevism est the MOST DANGEROUS. Without the ANNIHILATION of the latter, modernity still persists. Definitive annihilation can only have the shape of essential SELF-ANNIHILATION, and this will be brought about with greater force through its overcoming of its own essential appearence as Saviour of morality.
 

Can't say this resonates with me at all. I know that given the choice between living in the UK or the USSR, which one I'd choose. And I did choose the UK over other options in the 1970s, when I didn't even give the USSR serious consideration. I guess I survived the MOST DANGEROUS.

I enjoyed the most recent post on the Cercamon blog: Strauss explains that to understand Heidegger, it's necessary to understand that in the end Heidegger prefers kitsch. Heh. On the other hand, Heidegger might argue that Strauss is merely demonstrating his cosmopolitanism, more than anything about Heidegger's way of thinking.
 

I quite like Strauss' piece on Heidegger in his purple book 'History of Political Thought" or something like that. After exposing in some detail the political thought of Heidegger's he euphemizes the impact using the nazi "error" and the possibility that the ultimate god is just a cold monster as Hitler proved to be. As for your preferring the UK to the USSR, well the rest of Europe seems to be agreeing with you since everyone seems to be going there for jobs and "fun" even when that means sex jobs. I think English culture is highly communistic in its zeal, if you see the "free-market" for what it is, namely a communistic fiction. They may call themselves "conservatives" but the only thing they want to "conserve" is the simulacra of English "propriety" even when the Iraq war shows how questionable this propriety is. Surveillance levels in England are ridiculous. The praising of labour by the elite is a form of Stakkanovism. And the alcoholism of this deeply feroucious and philistinic society, and proudly so, ressembles in my mind some of the stereotypes of the USSR. Oh and the belief in the results of science because they are "valid" and we "can make stuff" with them. Note that Heidegger predicts that English bolshevism will self-annihilitate when its moral veneer collapses. Let us wait and see.
 

I would hold that between Heidegger and Strauss only Heidegger is a thinker for he alone questioned. Strauss does not question — his answers are morally pre-determined. Strauss' "kitch" qualification, even though tempered with a grudging admission of Heidegger's intellectual stature, has a name, namely "ressentiment".

As for who is the most cosmopolitan of the two, appearence deceives. I hear that Heidegger's work reads very well in some Japanese circles, not to mention Arabic, Indian, let alone European. Strauss had to pose as a "cosmopolitan" being a Jew. Heidegger was free from that need to pose, confident that his cultural heritage, and in particular his language, towered above those of his enemies, namely Anglo-American positivists who are currently ruling the meaning of the world.
 

Strauss' piece on Heidegger in his purple book 'History of Political Thought" is by Michael Gillespie.

Just attributing that for the benefit of future historians reading this.
 

Weren't Heidegger's enemies the neo-Kantians? I'll have to check.

I wouldn't worry about Anglo-American positivists. They may have taken over certain university departments, but I don't think the rest of the world has noticed. I bet Sun Tzu, Plato or Foucault sell more books than all of them together.
 

Thank you for correcting my shameful error.

I must confess that my knowledge of the greats is very scant, busy as I am merely preparing for the task of reading them in their own tongue.

However, of this I am certain: Heidegger respected the neo-kantians, and Natorp among them. His foreword to "Plato's Sophist", i.e. to the published lectures thereon, contains a eulogy of Natorp, who had just died, as academic, person and philosopher. Heidegger directed his fire against a modernity, a "thoughtlessness", which like Nietzsche he traced back to English influence in modern history and thought, although of course also having its roots in a saturated continental tradition as well. Or perhaps it was the saturation of this particular tradition that made the victory of modernity as embodied by English modern history, which also saw the birth of the Industrial Revolution, possible. This was to be expected, however, given the fact that England achieved a form of centralized government and idea of nationhood long before other continental giants, still fragmented due to feudality, a feudality which the Norman invasion of 1066 served to undo.

With the Russian, Anglo-American victory over Germany in the Second World War, the spirit of modernity so to speak, "communism", whether it be state or market orchestrated, triumphed against any hope of an aristocratic elitism which essentially pervades Heidegger's thinking, if only because the roots of our languages stem from the conquering, warrior classes rather than the mob. This we know thanks to Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality.

Because thinking seems always to be a thinking back, back to the Beginning, it essentially favours the founding, that is, warrior, classes in history. who, out of their felt superiority, instituted meaning and hence truth. A cursory knowledge of pre-classical Greece, reveals a monopoly of the warrior classes even over religious practices and cults. The same no doubt must be true of early Rome and certainly the religions they had were designed for the aristocratic class rather than the majority of the population. Christianity met the desires and spiritual needs of the latter, "blessed are the sick, the poor in spirit etc", plus idea of "reward" in the after-life and demonization of the "evil one", the "prideful, deceitful one". The Devil is the Roman aristocrat. So it is always revealing to assess common perceptions of Heidegger today, many of which include the accusation of his being "evil".

I would surmise that Heidegger's favouring Time over Space to conceive of Being was also a strategic move in the war that still goes on between the active and reactive, the masters and the slaves. In the light of this war, technology appears to be a Trojan Horse, for it distracts the priests (scientists?) who are the true enemies of the warriors away from the very real temporal, spiritual battle, towards the intricacies of today and its anxieties.