The title was “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”. You can search on that phrase or read one copy of it HERE.
Well, as I said: the account of Carroll put forward in Cecil’s article (dated 1995) needs revision in the light of the careful investigation of the mythology surrounding Carroll published earlier in 2002 in the TLS (I think it was the Feb 8 issue if memory serves–anyway, the girl Alice Liddell’s on the cover). High time for Cecil to publish an update I’d think. The photograph in question might seem a lot less suspicious, even damning, if much of the surrounding falsities about Carroll’s sexuality were cut away.
Anyway, what bearing this has on Heidegger I don’t know–I’ve no idea why it was mentioned in the OP. So carry on, folks.
It depends. There are scores of people here with expertise in their fields. If the problem has to with bringing together experience from different disciplines this is a reasonable place to do it. When it comes to “scholarly analysis” per se, it might be argued that the SDMB is in part an antidote to intellectual arguments interminably rehashed by academics involved in “publish or perish”.
I share your frustration, though, that conversations sometimes seem to get about 1/5 of the way through any reasonable conclusion.
Without knowing specifically to which remarks you’re responding, I’ll mention in passing that I know Heidegger from picking his books up and reading them in high school. I have no idea what philosophical school he is supposed to belong to.
I have found, talking with philosophers, such as my childhood friend who graduated cum laude from Berkeley, that labels such as “ethico-humanist” often obscure philosophy rather add to it – as conveniences for lectures and writing term papers.
[QUOTE]
Heidegger’s Naziism: I suppose your reaction to his having been a Nazi would be dependant on how much influence you believe “Martin Heidegger” had on the texts that bare his name. . . . This school, popular in the 30s, uses a crude brand of Freudianism to psychoanalyze the text based on what’s known about the personal life of the author. I guess in Heidegger’s case you’d try and find a Nazi subtext to Being and Time. This is exactly the kind of analysis used in some of the books produced in the 90s, mentioned by the above poster, that attempted to link Heidegger’s philosophy with Naziism.
[QUOTE]
The relationship between two beliefs that a person holds may be independent, or they may depend almost entirely on one another. My belief that rain comes from clouds would be entirely shattered if it was demonstrated that clouds are, in fact, an optical illusion. My belief that the Nazis were an embodiment of much of what is worst in human beings would be unchanged.
It may be impossible to figure out how much a “bad” thought affects another. Did Heidegger say X because he was a Nazi? Or did he become a Nazi because he believed X? Or did he believe X and belong to the Nazis because he believed Z? Confronted with these potentially irresolvable options, outside observers make a crude and obvious choice, which is to distance themselves from any thought that might have been tainted with Nazism.
But we’re fooling ourselves believing that if we distance ourselves from Nazis, or from other murderers, that means we’ve somehow purged that evil in ourselves. Equally we’re fooling ourselves if we believe we can read the philosophy of a Nazi, and remain completely, absolutely, and definitely unaffected by fascist thought. It’s not that Heidegger’s philosophy, per se, sounds like Nazism. My problem is that to divine what Heidegger wrote, I need to immerse myself in his beliefs, heroes, morality, goals, and environment. I’m no more interested in placing myself in a Nazi classroom than in Lewis Carroll’s arty photographs. “Alice in Wonderland” doesn’t show it, much, but “Sylvie and Bruno” has dark Victorian undertones I find slightly nauseating.
I didn’t say that he was a philosopher, only that he had a larger impact on philosophy than did Russel and Whitehead. I imagine that the notion that some true things are unproveable is a very large part of many modern philosphies. On the other hand, I’m not sure I can name any of Russel’s philosophical (as opposed to mathematical) contributions.
And as for the umlaut, I used Charmap. If you’re on a Windows machine, it’s probably somewhere under “accessories”. Macs have a similar utility, but I don’t recall the name.
Partly Warmer:
If you were to automatically dismiss anything associated with Nazism (is that the correct spelling? if so, thanks) you’d have to get rid of a good portion of modern society: NASA, rocket science, the interstate highway system and, of course, Hitler’s beloved Volkswagen were originally conceived by Nazis. The fruits of Nazi technological ingenuity–the most advanced in Europe at the time–were enthusiastically appropriated by the U.S. after WWII (von Braun–who rained V2 rockets down on London-- later had a hugely successful career at NASA).
Critics who have attempted to explicitly link Heidegger’s thought with Nazism have focused on the pseudo-agrarian terminology he used to iillustrate his ideas. Heidegger had a quirky tendency of elevating words and metaphors from everyday German peasant life to philosophical nomenclature. He often presented himself as a kind of workaday, philosopher-with-a-plow, appearing in one famous photo, circa 1950, in full Black Forest peasant regalia. In a similar way, the Nazis romanticized the German “volk”. But Wittgenstein also employed folksy, home-and-hearth metaphors to explain complex ideas so I think this tendency has more to do with a certain German zeitgeist of the early 20th century rather than Nazism per se.
I used blanket terms like ethico-humanist to describe philosophers like Schopenhauer not to be reductivistic but to explain in quick, readily understandable terms why Heidegger has nothing to do with existentialism. He never referred to the Cartesian “knowing subject” so dear to Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus and never made any attempt to devise a “philosophy of life”. In fact, much of Being and Time is concerned with deconstructing (“the destruction of metaphysics” as he says in B&T) pseudo-religious moral philosophies of which existentilaism was the latest example. He did this, not by putting another ideology in their place, but by examining the unspoken assumptions utilized in their language (B&T: enthullen/unverhullt–to unveil). This is the exact opposite of a moral philosophy like existentialism.
As you said, this is a message board–meant for edifying fun–and not some academic journal. If I explained precisley why S was an ethico-humanist we’d be here forever.
I read a biography of Von Braun’s rather carefully to understand his relationship to the Nazis. And, as it happens, I drive a Volkswagen. In the best of all possible worlds, I would prefer Von Braun had come from a different country, and a different era. And I would prefer to drive an American car – everything else being equal. This is not because I’m fearful the Nazi legacy might affect NASA (or my car, of course), but because I’d prefer no one connected with the Nazis benefited from their beliefs. However putting myself in the same frame of mind as a Nazi – learning his passions – attempting to reason about what’s worthwhile in art – about what it means to be a human being – is a quite different matter.
Right, I more or less got that. I was pointing out that an advantage of the SDMB is that there’s more freedom here than in academia to step outside one of the perceived correct academic positions.
To quote Rimmer from the “Red Dwarf” TV series: “Well, Sartre, we don’t like existentialists around here, and we certainly don’t like French philosophers poncing around in their black polo necks filling everyone’s heads with their theories about the bleakness of existence and absurdity of the cosmos. . . .”
A joke, of course. I used to belong to the Existentialist Guild at university.
Windows: look for Character Map in the Start Menu.
Macintosh: use KeyCaps.
Or see here: Keyboard shortcuts
Arnold, Thank you very much.
I have made a bookmark.