"Politics and Ontological Difference in Heidegger"

by de Sá, Alexandre Franco (2014)

Abstract

This is the first English translation of the seminar Martin Heidegger gave during the Winter of 1934-35, which dealt with Hegel's Philosophy of Right. This remarkable text is the only one in which Heidegger interprets Hegel's masterpiece in the tradition of Continental political philosophy while offering a glimpse into Heidegger's own political thought following his engagement with Nazism. It also confronts the ideas of Carl Schmitt, allowing readers to reconstruct the relation between politics and ontology. The book is enriched by a collection of interpretations of the seminar, written by select European and North American political thinkers and philosophers. Their essays aim to make the seminar accessible to students of political theory and philosophy, as well as to open new directions for debating the relation between the two disciplines. A unique contribution, this volume makes available key lectures by Heidegger that will interest a wide readership of students and scholars.

Key Passage

In Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power” Jünger finds the key to thinking
about the elemental force as the basis of the world increasingly mobilized by the
“total character of the work.” For Jünger, the metaphysical place of absolute
Being is occupied not by the human being, individually or collectively conceived,
but by the elemental dynamic of the will to power. Th is is why, in line with
Nietzsche, Jünger represents for Heidegger the completeness and the inversion
of Western metaphysics. “In the form of the worker,” Heidegger argues, “human
subjectivity completes itself as unconditional and reaches its planetary
expansion.” 14
The dialogue with Jünger’s metaphysics of the worker allows Heidegger to open
the way to a political criticism that extends beyond the rejection of biologism and
ethnocentric thinking: it paves the way to thinking politics beyond the structures
of domination and sovereignty. With Jünger, Heidegger rejects the establishment of human being, both in the form of the individual and in the form of the people,
as the absolute being and supreme value. However, against Jünger, Heidegger’s aim
is not only to displace human beings from the status of absolute being, but also to
leave behind a metaphysical structure that is based on the relationship between
the absolute sovereign subject and the world mobilized by it.
When it came to politics, Heidegger’s appropriation of Jünger’s worker was
the basis for his rejection of the Nazi proposal to see in the people the ultimate
absolute being. In fact, Nazi ideologues, such as Alfred Rosenberg, identifi ed the
people as the supreme value, proclaiming that the state was only a political
instrument at the service of the people. “The state,” Rosenberg argues, “is not the
goal anymore, but only a means to the preservation of the people.” 15 Nazi jurists,
such as Otto Koellreutter, condemned the Hegelian legacy of putting the state
above society and the people, and of seeing in it the ground for people’s unity. 16
Based on Jünger’s thought, Heidegger, in his turn, appropriated Hegel’s conception
of the state as the basis for the political existence of the people. However, by
assuming Hegel’s political legacy, Heidegger did not want to transform the state
into the absolute being as an alternative to the people. Far from seeking to
attribute to the state the status of an absolute subject, Heidegger tried to leave
behind a way of thinking based on sovereign absolute being, whatever it may be.
Neither the people nor the state should occupy the place of Being. In his seminar
on Hegel, therefore, Heidegger’s focus was on fi nding a way to think the political
and the state without defi ning them as absolute subjects. In this context,
Heidegger found in Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political and the state the
much- needed interlocutor. (p.59)

Links to Reference

• https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=u_20mwEACAAJ
• https://books.google.com.au/books?id=u_20mwEACAAJ&dq=on+hegel's+philosophy+of+right&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjR0M2kg8vuAhUzguYKHYgzDOkQ6wEwAnoECAIQAQ
• https://books.google.com.au › bookshttps://books.google.com.au › books

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