There are two dominant strands of Western Reason: one stressed by Husserl (and taken over by the Frankfurt School), the other being articulated by Martin Heidegger. In the first articulation, Western Reason begins with the Greeks and is built on the idea of rationality. It culminates in the modern sciences, to be precise technological reason, the domain that Hegel called Verstand (understanding). Verstand is strictly speaking not reason (Vernunft). The second strand of Western Reason is the Heideggerean one, again beginning with the Greeks and this time not culminating in the modern sciences, but in mythopoetics, to be precise European fascism that would, as Heidegger claim, rescue Western Dasein from the dangers of Bolshevism. Whilst the first stream of Western Reason ends in the modern sciences, the second one culminates in mythopoetics. There is it seems, a peculiar type of telos, almost a form of an iron law, what Heidegger called the “destiny of Being” which governs both these strands of Reason. We do not exist in the West. Yet we are gripped by this double edge of Western Reason.

¶ 9:01 AM