The natural attitude

[Philip Brownell]

In scrolling through the article sent by Haydn, I found this in a
footnote, and I am thrilled to find, because I have contended just
this very thing about gestalt therapy–that we remain in the natural
attitude when we conduct therapy. We are not doing a philosophical
"thing" when we do therapy. While not lost in scientism, we are more
similar to neurology than philosophy when we are engaged in a clinical
pursuit such as psychotherapy:

12 In other words, the natural sciences/ neurology does not perform
the epoché and thus remains in
the ‘natural attitude’. As outlined, Husserl’s main methodological
procedure was to bracket or
suspend ‘all our natural attitudes towards the objects in the world
and towards our psychological
acts, [by] suspending all our theories about these matters, [Husserl
believed it will lead] back our
attention to [the] pure essences of consciousness’. See Moran, p. 136.
Neurology does not
undertake such a ‘bracketing’ towards an object. Thus neurology
operates in what Husserl termed
the ‘natural attitude’ (die natürliche Einstellung)

[Philip Brownell]

I have now also uploaded several resources for us. You can find then and download them at the web site for this group (http://groups.google.com/group/edith-stein-study-group)

Phil

> the ‘natural attitude’ (die natürliche Einstellung)

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

Yes. And yes again. I have long contended that our profession as psychotherapists, engaged and paid by patients/clients for a professional service needs much more attention in our literature than it gets. My therapy clients, my supervisees, my consultancy clients are not paying me to philosophise on their or on my own behalf.

I see our work certainly as informed by our knowledge - psychology for some, philosophy for others, spirituality for others - though always within the context of our professional service. My clients are at least deserving of an expectation that my being me is supportive of them, and, basically, worth their money.

My sense is that Edith's essential humanism - a typical Jewish competence - will reach through her methodology and touch the other...Lewin got close to this, Buber both lost and found the other in God, Levinas I don't know enough about (yet!), I doubt Husserl's interest other than as a hypothetical abstraction, and Heidegger lost the plot when he gave his support to an ethnic cleansing industry...so I'm pinning my hopes on Edith...and/or me in the last resort.

Seán

the ‘natural attitude’ (die natürliche Einstellung)

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil, 

What about the original links I posted to you and Dan from Maynooth, with a paper by Edith, a paper comparing and contrasting Stein & Singer and I believe a third paper.

Boy oh boy, our resources are growing!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Right.  I'll get to them ASAP.  The list will grow, I'm sure.

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Introduction:

My interest in this group is in developing an understanding of the milieu that included Husserl, Stein, Scheler,and Heidegger. I am interested in Stein the atheist, Stein of On Empathy, Stein’s ideas on intersubjectivity, and so on.

My side interests are Lebensphilosophie, Dilthey, and Levinas. 

I am a gestalt therapist in private practice in NYC. I teach, write, and lecture about it.  My website gives my details: www.danbloomnyc.com.

A year and a half ago I was introduced to Being and Time in a lecture course by Simon Critchley at the New School and my thinking has not been the same since. I’ve also studied phenomenology and Heidegger with Donna Orange. I”ll be studying Levinas with Donna this Fall. 

I am honored, and humbled, to be on this list with such distinguished scholars.  Most of my knowledge comes frommy commitment to auto-didacticism since my graduate degrees are in law (JD) and social work (MSW).

Phil and Seán:

Sean, what did you mean about  Heidegger> Are you dismissing Heidegger? On what basis?Please tell me you are joking.

Please tell me I don’t have to fight another round in this silly conflict here. 

I agree with what you both say about the natural attitude and  the reduction by implication, as you know.  

We can approach our work as psychotherapists from within a version Husserl’s “natural attitude.” But we need to be careful that we are modifying his method, that is leaving his  philosophical project and doing something else. His natural attitude and lifeworld were not psychological constructs. I just read it was A. Schütz who developed  “lifeworld" into an explicitly psycho-social concept. 

You both agree with me, I know.

I wrote a paper for the Gestalt Review about Husserl and GT.I drew a lot on the contemporary interpretations of Husserl. Among my paper’s points, I said we remained in a modified natural attitude when we worked as gestalt therapists.  I will not retract that. 

But that point has its limitations. 

So long as we utilize a “simple” phenomenological method based on a reduction, our approach could have limitations. 

How do we consider the existential-phenomenological dimension of gestalt therapy that remains within the therapist/patient world and sees a phenomenological approach as a process of (hermeneutic) interpretation and understanding rather than analysis?   That is, an approach that takes as a given the experiential world of the therapist and patient  — with its mood, its history, its anticipations, its developing temporality, its different and common perspectives. 

Heidegger does not make use of the "natural attitude" — and for good reason. Human beings are worlded. We cannot be un-worlded. No reduction is possible without doing violence to our being-in-the-world. The egoistic withdrawal that is the epoche is WITHIN the world. It is really existential splitting. Why use the concept of “natural attitude” at all. We have an attitude. We have a situated perspective and it is in-the-world.

Heidegger’s human beings as beings-in-the-world  speaks clearly to me as the ontological basis for the ontical process of our work. (This is a much too simple and misleading way of saying something better than this sounds!)

I think we can support the existential-phenomenoligical dimension of our work from Heidegger’s ideas. Laura and Fritz drew on them.

Yes, we  are not philosophers  when we work. We are clinicians. But our understanding of our work cannot be merely scientistic. 

Science can inform us. It is valuable beyond all measure. But it is incomplete both as a basis for our work a basis for our understanding of ourselves and others as human beings. 

Psychotherapy is also an approach to understanding human existence. 

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Since it's approaching my bedtime here, let me be brief: I have decided to ignore Heidegger for a while. It seems to me perverse to study Edith Stein, a former colleague of Heidegger's who ignored her work on Husserl's later papers, claiming it as his own, and who then supported the regime who killed her.

I know, I know, you're Jewish with more justification than I to want to distance myself from him. That's life.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

From what I can tell, the best Heidegger can offer you in this regard is this. 

We are all beings-with others. Others are always already there. Period. We are bound to one another as common beings in a common relational home. We have a common history. We are also with one another by virtue of a common mood, atmosphere, dispossedness. 

Heidegger refers to our feelingful relation to one another as authentic solicitude. That is a kind of grounded human concern. But he doesn’t explore that much. It is in B and T, though. Bob Stolorow points this out.

So he offers a philosophy that is the foundation, the basis, for intersubjectivity — but not intersubjectivity itself. The subject is not Dasein. Dasein is the existential being that is the possibility for the human subject.

But Heidegger does not have either a morality or an interpersonal ethics. That is a limitation in his philosophy pointed out by Stein and later by Levinas. 

(There is an interesting book I’ve been reading. It examines 3 possible kinds of ethics in Heidegger. The story continues.)

Heidegger acknowledged it himself. He said he didn’t intend for it to be there. 

But Heideggerians have worked this out. Levinas, for example. 

Dan

On Jul 18, 2010, at 3:48 PM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

Why not ignore Plato for supporting the Tyrant of Syracuse?

 I understand that the horror of Stein’s death and Heidegger’s cowardly opportunism create a situation that justify your decision. I support you in it.

I also respect the personal connection you feel with Edith. 

My own Jewishness does not feel involved here at all. 

love,

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

Sorry, Buddy, but you pushed a button or I did or something. "We are all beings-with others" - WOW. So let's exterminate 6 million of those others and philosophise about their beings-in-absence.

"Solicitude"??? Guten abend, fraulein Stein. Here is a gas chamber for you.

You know I'm into anniversaries just now, so let me rant and rave...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Ghandi abused his wife. 

George Washington had slaves.

Where is it written that a philosopher has to be a good person or to be honest?

There is no justification for his decisions. 

He is dead.

I will let you rant. 

This is a matter that I’ve never seen resolved between people. I’ve seen troubled Heideggerians work through their trouble, but I’ve never seen someone outside the Heidegger world be able to let go of it. 

And it keeps coming up. I innocently wonder why. 

love,

Dan

[Philip Brownell]

Hello All,
I have added several resource files. If you go to the web site for
the group (http://groups.google.com/group/edith-stein-study-group),
and then click on "files," you'll find them.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Great stuff, Phil. Well done and thanks.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Yes - I know, Ghandi beat his wife. But can you agree that we are not reading Mrs. Ghandi's published works in order to better understand also him, including maybe why he beat her...

Anyway: two nights ago, I watched "Downfall". Astonishing. An author, crew  and cast of contemporary Germans exploring with such honesty the warped elitism of Hitler and his cronies. A mother murdering her five children so that they would not have to face a life without National Socialism.

And last night, "Five Minutes of Heaven" a seamless blend of fact and fiction. The facts were that a 17 year-old Protestant paramilitary hitman kills a young Catholic tradesman in front of the youngest brother in the Catholic family. The hitman later spent 12 years in prison for another paramilitary crime and was released in one of the many amnesties leading up to the Peace Agreemant. He was a changed man, and worked tirelessly with former paramilitaries in confessional-type process groups. The fiction was created by an author who had interviewed this man - and the youngest brother who was married with two children. Having interviewed them, he scripted a "truth and reconcilaition" process between them...particularly moving for me as an Irishman was the compelling beauty of the fact that the Protestant hitman was played by a famous actor from the Catholic community in the North, and the aggrieved Catholic by a very well-known actor from the Protestant community. The actors were doing what the film was about, or something of that nature. 

And I have neither seen nor spoken to another person since the local supermarket cashier on last Thursday afternoon. So me, Edith Stein, impactful movies and, of course, some writing.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Sounds wonderful.  All of it.

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

I am moved by what you wrote.

Can we agree that the Heidegger’s character is not a matter for our inquiry?

This may be difficult since some of you are interested in Edith as a person here. That is, her personal spiritual development as it relates to her philosophy seems to be central to your and Phil’s interests

If we can’t separate Edith’s philosophical ideas from her spiritual development, then arguably we can’t or shouldn’t separate any philosopher’s ideas from her or his other personal developments. 

If we can’t make the separation, what do we do when we find some of their ideas uninteresting, insufficient, unjustifiable, or nonsense? Or dangerous? There are plenty of philosophers who supported or justified totalitarian or repressive regimes. 

Is there some kind of  intellectual holism in which a part of a person’s belief system is understood to exert an effect on the whole? 

Or where a proper understanding of a philosopher is deemed impossible until we understand the totality of her system?

I am proceeding with my Edith studies under the assumption that I do not need to explore her theism, her spiritual life, and so on. 

Her biography is compelling, moving, and tragic. 

I can’t ignore it, obviously.

(An irreverent idea crossed my mind just now. I just imagined a two character play. Edith Stein and Hannah Arendt. 

Imagine them meeting!

Hannah’s story is an amazing one, too. It lacks the heroic tragedy and redemption of Edith’s, to be sure. No one could say Saint Hannah! But — passion, mystery, conflict, betrayal, loyalty, — did I say passion?)

Be well, Seán,

Dan

On Jul 19, 2010, at 5:43 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Philip Brownell]

Well, I don't know how we hold to a holistic view of persons, especially a field-relevant perspective (the "big picture," the situation) and then repeatedly, when we find God in it, try to factor God out.  That's a pretty amazing, and consistent phenomenon that might be worth looking into all on its own.   However, with regard to Edith Stein, I don't get the feeling that it's the same as in the case of Buber.  I would request that we/you/anybody refrain from making a priori decisions about what he or she will or will not consider as the study progresses.  While I am interested in the spiritual, and I come from a theistic belief system, I suspect I could benefit from considering someone's point of view ON THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS IN STEIN, who comes from an agnostic or atheistic belief system.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Thank you - and see below:

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

I am moved by what you wrote.

Can we agree that the Heidegger’s character is not a matter for our inquiry?

Absolutely. As you know, my recent comments were highly contextual, and not indicative of any general intent. 

This may be difficult since some of you are interested in Edith as a person here. That is, her personal spiritual development as it relates to her philosophy seems to be central to your and Phil’s interests

More to Phil maybe than to me. My main interests are: Edith the person; her philosophical/psychological contributions; her understanding of the individual and the social collective. 

If we can’t separate Edith’s philosophical ideas from her spiritual development, then arguably we can’t or shouldn’t separate any philosopher’s ideas from her or his other personal developments. 

Yes, this is the heart of the matter. And I believe we can separate these, some of us more than others. And that's why we are a group! 

If we can’t make the separation, what do we do when we find some of their ideas uninteresting, insufficient, unjustifiable, or nonsense? Or dangerous? There are plenty of philosophers who supported or justified totalitarian or repressive regimes. 

Yes - Thomas Aquinas comes to mind...

 

Is there some kind of  intellectual holism in which a part of a person’s belief system is understood to exert an effect on the whole? 

Or where a proper understanding of a philosopher is deemed impossible until we understand the totality of her system?

I can't help wondering whether this is becoming more appropriate and even necessary... 

I am proceeding with my Edith studies under the assumption that I do not need to explore her theism, her spiritual life, and so on. 

Her biography is compelling, moving, and tragic. 

I can’t ignore it, obviously.

Sometimes, naming "the elephant in the room" is helpful... 

(An irreverent idea crossed my mind just now. I just imagined a two character play. Edith Stein and Hannah Arendt. 

Imagine them meeting!

Hannah’s story is an amazing one, too. It lacks the heroic tragedy and redemption of Edith’s, to be sure. No one could say Saint Hannah! But — passion, mystery, conflict, betrayal, loyalty, — did I say passion?)

Yes - and Calcagno mentions Edith possible romantic attraction to her fellow-student, Roman Inngarden...

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Phil:

I am not making an “a priori” decision, but marking my area of inquiry and current interest. You know me. These markers are gentle. I often over-ride them when my intellectual passions overwhelm.

Yet haven’t some of us come forward with our interests and declared them up front? I did so with mine. 

You, yours.

This might not actually turn out to be the case, but considering my other current areas of inquiry, I might not be interested in following this group’s discussion of Stein’s spiritual beliefs or her religious philosophy. 

I am similarly not interested in Levinas’s Judaism (and am given to understand that it is independent from his philosophy), for example.

By the way, I am not saying that we hold to a holistic view of persons and selectively factor out God!

Wow! I thought I was making a more subtle point.

Taken another way: is there always a Jewish writer, and not a writer? An atheist composer? An Italian artist? And so on. To what extent does a part predicate a whole? (am I saying that right?)

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

Well, Phil, we WERE warned about Religious Fanatics, so I suppose we may need to consider Agnostic Dan-antics also.

Yeah, dreadful I know. Though gentle, huh?

Not to forget my lapsed Catholic guilt...

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

“Agnostic fanatics” would be an oxymoron.

“Dan-antics” redundant.

[Sean Gaffney]

I don't find Dan-antics in any way redundant! I love them, looking forward to more!

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

Ingarden????? Another hole in my knowledge. Or hole in my whole. 

I checked out Ingarden on the Stanford philo internet encyclopedia.

Amazing. 

There was an important move AWAY from idealism post-WW I.

It must also be related to the reaction to the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism — and the famous Hermann Cohen. 

According to Safranksi, the neo-K’s were aggressive supporters of the war. They encouraged soldiers to fight in the service of ideas and not be so concerned with their physical suffering.

Lebensphilosphie was an alternative. It’s roots were pre-war, of course, but it really took off post.

(Seán — if you want to be wary of ideas, don’t look too closely into one of them, Ludwig Klages. )

 Husserl was a major opponent of Lebensphilosophie. Ideen was a covert attack on it. The first reduction puts out of court just what they  were paying attention to. The second reduction completely took care of everything. Right? (Ah this is not so simple… but Husserl remained opposed to philosophical anthropology to the end.)

How interested was Husserl in “existence“? The opinions range from completely to not at all.

How interested was he in affect, emotion, mood, and so on? It is an open question. Are they part of the Lifeworld? Or were they added by people like Schutz? (And Heidegger — the worldhood of the world)

Whatever contemporary Husserlians such as Zahavi, Welton, and Sokolowski say, it seems that Ingarden, Stein, Scheler, and Heidegger turned from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and didn’t pay may much attention to his “practical” phenomenology. But they didn’t have access to the Husserl archives. :)

Okay. This was bold of me. Serious academics will be reading this autodidact’s summary. So be it.

Dan

P.S. The Heidegger-Cassirer Davos Debate was the climax of the conflict of neo-Kantianism and what would become Continental philosophy.

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Nice contribution...I always like it when we weave connections as much as when we pick threads and unravel.

As for Klages - now he was a piece of work!

My attention is increasingly being drawn towards Reinach, Ingarden, Scheler and Stein and their shift away from Husserl...though not along with Heidegger, neither personally nor intellectually.

Folks: time to read and not flutter between books as I like to do...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I flutter.

But I also land.

The Davos book by Gordon was a find. 

[Sean Gaffney]

Have I REALLY just ordered another book?

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Did you???? ( I forget what I order. Packages arrive. I get surprised.)

You’ll like it. I found it to be  page turner.

Gordon’ previous book on Rosenzweig and Heidegger wasn’t. I started to pick and choose sections. There seems to be only so much Rosenzweig I can take. :)

It gives a great account of the milieu and especially the neo-Kantian context for Cassirer. Cassirer comes off better than Heidegger, by far. 

[Sean Gaffney]

Yeah, I forget, too. I have a special shelf at home for extra copies...it's overflowing! When friends come, I offer them their choice! Gifts to people I'm visiting for dinner? My extra copies shelf...

Just noticed today that Alfred Schutz isn't in "THE PHENOMENOLOGY READER" (Moran & Mooney). Strange...

I was excited to find Scheler referenced in Schutz, though neither Reinach nor Stein. Then I happened on a page with a nod to our Edith, and lost it. I was reading in the street outside an office where I had a meeting, and the person arrived and started talking to me. But she's there, and I'll find her...

Seán  

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[CROC...@aol.com]

Sean, Dan, and All,

 

I think getting hung up on Heidegger's personal failing--vast and despicable as it was--and thus dismissing his contribution to philosophical thought, is like looking at one blighted part of a forest and dismissing the whole forest as "ruined."  There aren't many pivotal thinkers in philosophy, east and west, but Heidegger will certainly prove to be one.

 

Sylvia 

 

In a message dated 7/18/2010 3:27:17 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, sean...@gmail.com writes:

Sorry, Buddy, but you pushed a button or I did or something. "We are all beings-with others" - WOW. So let's exterminate 6 million of those others and philosophise about their beings-in-absence.

"Solicitude"??? Guten abend, fraulein Stein. Here is a gas chamber for you.

You know I'm into anniversaries just now, so let me rant and rave...

Seán

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Hi Sylvia,

Good to see you jump in here.  I have been stimulated by the difficulty that Heidegger presents, and by the sense that we understand Stein, or Buber, or anybody really by the context of their lives and the narrative that exhibits their choices.  That is, a body of work is often best understood against the background of who the person is who produced it.  I don't think this is as simple as part for whole error (mistaking the whole forest for a blight in one part of it). Rather, as Seán (I think it was) illustrated in contrasting what I might call a repentant attitude with Heidegger's, I think there is a quality of character in the mix that for some gives the lie to Heidegger's values statements.  What we come away with is not feeling that the values were wrong, but that the person was false.  Authenticity?  Good faith/bad faith?  These are relevant. Instead of the forest for the trees metaphor, I am reminded of another one: a little leven affects the whole loaf.  

Phil

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil,

 

I don't think the leaven in the lump metaphor is an apt one in the case of Heidegger.  Nor do I think it is always, or even primarily, important to understand the life of the thinker to understand AND to evaluate that thinker's thought.  I think it often happens that people are able to think higher thoughts than they are able to live.  St. Paul makes this point in very strong terms, and I think most of us affirm higher ideals than we can and do consistently manifest in our behavior.

 

And speaking of context in connection with Heidegger's support of National Socialism, I think it's important to understand how devastated Germany was in the 20's, economically and in many other ways.  The reason Hitler got such a foothold in the first place was because of the hopelessness of the situation.  He talked like a savior, and in such a context desperate people are psychologically like the drowning man who is so irrational as even to drown a person who tries to save him.  I can imagine how people believed in Hitler when he came to power.  Put that together with the ancient anti-Semitism in Germany--even in its churches--and Germany was ripe for the sweeping attack on the Jews, and the violent assertion that "We Germans are no longer on the bottom--we are, in fact, the master race!  I imagine Heidegger saw Hitler as a savior, as did so many others.  And no doubt going along with the regime also bespeaks personal cowardice and ruthless ambition on Heidegger's part.  Yet none of that takes away from the fact that he has opened the door to a more purified approach to talking about what-is, more experience-near, and with an openness to the development of an ethics.  I don't think his personal failure "infects" his philosophical thought, and this is why I do not agree with the leaven metaphor.  Even Hitler could add two and two and come up with four!

 

Sylvia

 

=

[Sean Gaffney]

Sylvia,

Can you kindly point out in detail exactly what and whom you are referring to when you write "and thus dismissing his contribution to philosophical thought". 

Please. And I am very serious.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Phil:

I don’t entirely agree.

But I don’t think we are any of us can settle this here when the world of philosophers still is mashing this around.

You err if you think Heidegger’s “authenticity” is an ethical consideration in any usual sense of the word. And he never used the terms “good or bad faith.”

In Heidegger’s reply to Sartre in his famous “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger was explicit. He said his and all philosophy has its limits. He never proposed an ethical way of living or a guide for proper choice-ful behavior. 

We can understand that to mean that  authenticity and resoluteness are existential conditions for choice and not directions for choice. 

Unfortunately, one can make authentic choices among possibilities that are repugnant. This may be so even when one is fully engaged with others. This is a tragedy, of course. One can authentically choose to be an heroic fighter for either side in a war. 

There is evidence that Heidegger opposed the Nazis as the regime continued in its brutality. There is evidence that he did it too secretly.

But Heidegger the person is not relevant to Heidegger the philosopher who rekindled ontology as a serious concern. I will try to scan a quote from Levinas that addresses this and attach it to this discussion.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

Agreed!

Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander, anyone? :)

On Jul 19, 2010, at 2:49 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

Agreed.

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Sylvia,

I think you missed the point of the leaven metaphor.  It was not meaning that the leaven spoils the "higher thoughts."  The leaven in this case is his corrupting his own values, leading to an inauthentic self and bad faith.  These are not inconsequential, but they go to the person of Heidegger and not necessarily to his thought.  To me, it's not a simple question.  Where do person and person's thought diverge such that the body of thought can really be understood apart from understanding the person? Why do we insist on contextualizing any of these people, like Stein, by considering their influences?  No, I think you are too glib and quick in granting grace to Heidegger.

You might enjoy reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas. He describes the Germany in which Hitler came to power and Bonhoeffer's family (quite aristocratic and privileged) and how Bonhoeffer developed a moral compass in the midst of it that did NOT succumb to the Fuher Principle.

Phil

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:24 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Dan,

 

I think we keep on miscommunicating on this point.  I agree that Heidegger did not construe his concept of authenticity in any moral/ethical sense.  Yet it is open to such a construction.  I have taken it in that direction in my book (Essay 7 on living well as an individual).  The great strength of Heidegger, in my opinion, is the fecundity of his thought.  His vision was limited, but he laid the foundations--not only in B and T but in his later works--for existential truth and living, by which I mean what is involved in living well as a person and as a citizen.  He did not do this, but it can be done, and this can be accompanied by the clear statement that this constructivist path was suggested by Heidegger's thought, but not developed by him, certainly not in B and T.

 

When I have read Heidegger I have felt stimulated to think in ways that felt rich and true to me.  His rigid denials only indicate his own blind spots.  Or perhaps he did not want to be dismissed as just another existentialist!  He was a more serious fundamental thinker than that.

 

Love, Sylvia 

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:38:53 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

Phil:

I don’t entirely agree.

But I don’t think we are any of us can settle this here when the world of philosophers still is mashing this around.

You err if you think Heidegger’s “authenticity” is an ethical consideration in any usual sense of the word. And he never used the terms “good or bad faith.”

In Heidegger’s reply to Sartre in his famous “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger was explicit. He said his and all philosophy has its limits. He never proposed an ethical way of living or a guide for proper choice-ful behavior. 

We can understand that to mean that  authenticity and resoluteness are existential conditions for choice and not directions for choice. 

Unfortunately, one can make authentic choices among possibilities that are repugnant. This may be so even when one is fully engaged with others. This is a tragedy, of course. One can authentically choose to be an heroic fighter for either side in a war. 

There is evidence that Heidegger opposed the Nazis as the regime continued in its brutality. There is evidence that he did it too secretly.

But Heidegger the person is not relevant to Heidegger the philosopher who rekindled ontology as a serious concern. I will try to scan a quote from Levinas that addresses this and attach it to this discussion.

Dan

On Jul 19, 2010, at 4:06 PM, Philip Brownell wrote:

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil,

 

I find your response missing the mark.  I fully understand the leaven metaphor as I you applied it to what I had written, which I continue to reject.  Now let's talk as two Christians.  We both know about sin, and it's true that being sinners no aspect of our individual being/existence escapes the effects of sin--how and what we think, how we feel, how we act, the things that turn us on and turn us off (sometimes secrectly and ashamedly).  Yes, Heidegger was a big-time sinner, and his affirmation and affiliation with the Nazis shows it, being driven by faulty thinking, selfish ambition, and moral cowardice even after he became critical of Nazi cruelty.  But his approach to philosophical terminology and philosophizing is a lasting contribution to world philosophical thought, and it will continue to resonate and suggest new approachs for centuries to come.  what in particular he thought is limited in its scope, yet suggestive in its implications. His personal failings do not constitute a growing blight on his philosophical thoughts and writings.  To the extent that he praises the Nazis and throws in his lot with them, damn all that!  If and when we find enslaving and dehumanizing thoughts in his writings, we will throw them aside; but I do not know of any at this point. Personally he was an apparently unrepentant sinner--although we do not and cannot know that that was the case.  Whether he repented or not is between Heidegger and God.  I imagine St. Paul's saying "The good I want to do, I do not do, and the evil that I do not want to do, I do.  And there is no health in me," may well have resonated with Heidegger, familiar as he was with the Bible.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:48:50 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

I think you missed the point of the leaven metaphor.  It was not meaning that the leaven spoils the "higher thoughts."  The leaven in this case is his corrupting his own values, leading to an inauthentic self and bad faith.  These are not inconsequential, but they go to the person of Heidegger and not necessarily to his thought.  To me, it's not a simple question.  Where do person and person's thought diverge such that the body of thought can really be understood apart from understanding the person? Why do we insist on contextualizing any of these people, like Stein, by considering their influences?  No, I think you are too glib and quick in granting grace to Heidegger.

You might enjoy reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas. He describes the Germany in which Hitler came to power and Bonhoeffer's family (quite aristocratic and privileged) and how Bonhoeffer developed a moral compass in the midst of it that did NOT succumb to the Fuher Principle.

Phil

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:24 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Phil,

 

I don't think the leaven in the lump metaphor is an apt one in the case of Heidegger.  Nor do I think it is always, or even primarily, important to understand the life of the thinker to understand AND to evaluate that thinker's thought.  I think it often happens that people are able to think higher thoughts than they are able to live.  St. Paul makes this point in very strong terms, and I think most of us affirm higher ideals than we can and do consistently manifest in our behavior.

 

And speaking of context in connection with Heidegger's support of National Socialism, I think it's important to understand how devastated Germany was in the 20's, economically and in many other ways.  The reason Hitler got such a foothold in the first place was because of the hopelessness of the situation.  He talked like a savior, and in such a context desperate people are psychologically like the drowning man who is so irrational as even to drown a person who tries to save him.  I can imagine how people believed in Hitler when he came to power.  Put that together with the ancient anti-Semitism in Germany--even in its churches--and Germany was ripe for the sweeping attack on the Jews, and the violent assertion that "We Germans are no longer on the bottom--we are, in fact, the master race!  I imagine Heidegger saw Hitler as a savior, as did so many others.  And no doubt going along with the regime also bespeaks personal cowardice and ruthless ambition on Heidegger's part.  Yet none of that takes away from the fact that he has opened the door to a more purified approach to talking about what-is, more experience-near, and with an openness to the development of an ethics.  I don't think his personal failure "infects" his philosophical thought, and this is why I do not agree with the leaven metaphor.  Even Hitler could add two and two and come up with four!

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:06:14 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Sean,

 

I was referring to the exchanges between you and Dan like the following.  That's why I addressed it to the two of you.  I despise what the Nazis did as much as you do, and I'm horrified that Heidegger ever connected himself with them.  And I still admire his writings.  Anyone that can't get past his personal failings, and so doesn't appreciate his contribution, I believe is missing out on some writings that are of immense value.

 

Sylvia

[Sean Gaffney]

Sylvia,

Thank you. 

I would greatly appreciate it if you could be as specific in future also.

Summer greetings,

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

We are talking about different things. Aren’t we?

I am referring precisely to Being and Time.

I’ve read Lawrence Vogel’s (The Fragile We) on ethics in B and T and discussed authentic solicitude with Bob Stolorow.   So I know that there are different constructions — but within the limits I described in my email. 

I know that Dasein is inclusive of Dasein-mit and  fundamental ontology is social and historical. 

So authentic choosing is never a deworlded act.

Heidegger abandoned existence after B and T and paid attention to Being. I think you know that. Many say that his lack of a moral compass followed this turn. I don’t know about that.  

Heidegger rejected philosophy, praised “thinking,” lectured on Parmenides, Hölderlin, Heraklitus, and, famously, Nietzsche. In short, he became more and more poetic. 

He did find a kind of ethics, though. He strongly lamented technology’s interruption of the presenting of Being. (I believe I am using the right term here.)

This later Heidegger is not one who speaks to me.  But I really haven’t studied him much. 

One can construe philosophers in many ways!

Heidegger was famous for this.

In his infamous study of Kant, he told us that the proper way to read philosophical texts is to DO VIOLENCE TO THEM. He really said that. 

So, construe away!!!

Simon Critchley said to us, “How dare philosopher know what they meant by what they wrote?”

So, let’s construe away!

I don’t think we are miscommunicating. Are we?

Love,

Dan

[CROC...@aol.com]

Summer Greetings to you also, Sean. 

 

I was just looking back over your and Dan's earlier exchanges on "the natural attitude" and also found the following quote, which was also in my mind when I wrote what I wrote:

 

My sense is that Edith's essential humanism - a typical Jewish competence - will reach through her methodology and touch the other...Lewin got close to this, Buber both lost and found the other in God, Levinas I don't know enough about (yet!), I doubt Husserl's interest other than as a hypothetical abstraction, and Heidegger lost the plot when he gave his support to an ethnic cleansing industry...so I'm pinning my hopes on Edith...and/or me in the last resort.  (italics mine, SFC)

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 2:25:09 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, sean...@gmail.com writes:

Sylvia,

Thank you. 

I would greatly appreciate it if you could be as specific in future also.

Summer greetings,

Seán

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 10:18 PM, <CROC...@aol.com> wrote:

Sean,

 

I was referring to the exchanges between you and Dan like the following.  That's why I addressed it to the two of you.  I despise what the Nazis did as much as you do, and I'm horrified that Heidegger ever connected himself with them.  And I still admire his writings.  Anyone that can't get past his personal failings, and so doesn't appreciate his contribution, I believe is missing out on some writings that are of immense value.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:29:32 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, sean...@gmail.com writes:

Sorry, Buddy, but you pushed a button or I did or something. "We are all beings-with others" - WOW. So let's exterminate 6 million of those others and philosophise about their beings-in-absence.

"Solicitude"??? Guten abend, fraulein Stein. Here is a gas chamber for you.

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Dan,

 

No, I don't think we're really at odds, yet it sometimes appears that you delimit Heidegger too strongly!  what I mean is, I will "do violence" to Heidegger as I read him backwards from his later writings.  The essay on truth is very suggestive of a deeply spiritual and Buberian understanding of interpersonal relationships, as well as how to understand authenticity for an individual.  Anyway, I agree that he denied the ethical interpretation of key terms in his thought, and I can hardly imagine that he was unaware of them.  And, as I said, I believe he was deadset against being categoried as an existentialist.  Sartre also did ontology, but he was clearly political and ethical in  his primary interest; Heidegger didn't want to be thrown in with him, as nothing more than that.

 

Love, Sylvia

 

Sylvia 

 

In a message dated 7/18/2010 3:27:17 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, sean...@gmail.com writes:

Sorry, Buddy, but you pushed a button or I did or something. "We are all beings-with others" - WOW. So let's exterminate 6 million of those others and philosophise about their beings-in-absence.

"Solicitude"??? Guten abend, fraulein Stein. Here is a gas chamber for you.

You know I'm into anniversaries just now, so let me rant and rave...

Seán

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

From what I can tell, the best Heidegger can offer you in this regard is this. 

We are all beings-with others. Others are always already there. Period. We are bound to one another as common beings in a common relational home. We have a common history. We are also with one another by virtue of a common mood, atmosphere, dispossedness. 

Heidegger refers to our feelingful relation to one another as authentic solicitude. That is a kind of grounded human concern. But he doesn’t explore that much. It is in B and T, though. Bob Stolorow points this out.

So he offers a philosophy that is the foundation, the basis, for intersubjectivity — but not intersubjectivity itself. The subject is not Dasein. Dasein is the existential being that is the possibility for the human subject.

But Heidegger does not have either a morality or an interpersonal ethics. That is a limitation in his philosophy pointed out by Stein and later by Levinas. 

(There is an interesting book I’ve been reading. It examines 3 possible kinds of ethics in Heidegger. The story continues.)

Heidegger acknowledged it himself. He said he didn’t intend for it to be there. 

But Heideggerians have worked this out. Levinas, for example. 

Dan

On Jul 18, 2010, at 3:48 PM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Phil,

Yes. And yes again. I have long contended that our profession as psychotherapists, engaged and paid by patients/clients for a professional service needs much more attention in our literature than it gets. My therapy clients, my supervisees, my consultancy clients are not paying me to philosophise on their or on my own behalf.

I see our work certainly as informed by our knowledge - psychology for some, philosophy for others, spirituality for others - though always within the context of our professional service. My clients are at least deserving of an expectation that my being me is supportive of them, and, basically, worth their money.

My sense is that Edith's essential humanism - a typical Jewish competence - will reach through her methodology and touch the other...Lewin got close to this, Buber both lost and found the other in God, Levinas I don't know enough about (yet!), I doubt Husserl's interest other than as a hypothetical abstraction, and Heidegger lost the plot when he gave his support to an ethnic cleansing industry...so I'm pinning my hopes on Edith...and/or me in the last resort.

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

=

=

[Sean Gaffney]

Sylvia,

Again thank you for this clarification.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Sylvia,

Please find response in line:

On Jul 19, 2010, at 4:14 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Phil,

 

I find your response missing the mark.  I fully understand the leaven metaphor as I you applied it to what I had written, which I continue to reject. 

Phil:  I find that dismissive.  My sense is that you don't understand what I was saying, and so merely claiming that you do doesn't work for me. It doesn't HAVE to work for me, but that's what happens when I read your response up to this point.

Now let's talk as two Christians.  We both know about sin, and it's true that being sinners no aspect of our individual being/existence escapes the effects of sin--how and what we think, how we feel, how we act, the things that turn us on and turn us off (sometimes secrectly and ashamedly).  Yes, Heidegger was a big-time sinner, and his affirmation and affiliation with the Nazis shows it, being driven by faulty thinking, selfish ambition, and moral cowardice even after he became critical of Nazi cruelty.  But his approach to philosophical terminology and philosophizing is a lasting contribution to world philosophical thought, and it will continue to resonate and suggest new approachs for centuries to come.  what in particular he thought is limited in its scope, yet suggestive in its implications. His personal failings do not constitute a growing blight on his philosophical thoughts and writings.

Phil: And this is where you have not really seemed to understand what I was saying.  You continue to beat this idea that the blight is on his philosophical writings.  It might be, but I'm not claiming that it is.  I am wondering about the relationship between who one is and what one says.  My real assertion is that he was inauthentic and exhibited bad faith.  He cheated himself and others, and yes, he sinned.  As a sinner, he can be forgiven.  However, one does not fudge on the nature of the sin; one hates the sin and forgives the sinner.  Right?  In order to really hate the sin, one must comprehend its nature.  There is such a thing as premature forgiveness.

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil,

 

If you want me to take what you say here, y ou'll have to point to where you think his bad character tained his thought.  If it's just an abstract assertion without being pinned to where you think his thought went astray, then point to that.  Just say he was an inauthentic human being doesn't ground what you say, especially since you are using the term "inauthentic" in a way that he explicitly says he does not mean.  I happen to agree with how you are using the term, and I agree that as a person and as a citizen his embrace of Hitler and Nazism was inauthentic.  But please point to specific ways in which the leaven moved from his inauthenticity into his thought.

 

Sylvia

 

=

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

Okey-dokey.

I confess to being more or less an orthodox Heideggerian these days. I am studying him closely. It is also how I’ve been taught to read him. Critchley encouraged us to read Heidegger as inphenomenological traditon and to try to understand B and T as his response to Husserl. He also encouraged us to understand it backwards, that is, to read Div I in terms of Div II. This is also the perspective of another Heidegger scholar, Reiner Schürman, formerly of The New School. This gives a tight understanding of the text.

This approach enables me to appreciate Levinas’s understanding of him, for example. I don’t think we can understand Totality and Infinity unless we understand that Heidegger was Levinas’s interlocutor. 

Letter on Humanism was nothing more than a response to Sartre? Nothing more than Heidegger’s rejection of Sartre’s existentialism? 

Hmm. I don’t agree. It is more than that. 

I’ve read some of his Zollikon Seminars and indeed his comments on intersubjectivity are interesting. These are just about the last things he contributed. There is hardly anything spiritual in these seminars.

But I am not saying Heidegger can’t be read as a spiritual philosopher. Ernst Cassirer accused him of asking theological questions but refusing to give theological answers.

love,

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

To beat a dead horse:

Phil,

By his definition of authenticity, he was authentic in his support of National Socialism.

His choice was grounded in his sense of historicity and people, that is, community.

He withdrew his commitment when he saw that the party lost its original goals. This is documented in his biography. But he remained a party member, as did many cowardly people. 

He was inauthentic in his lying about it after the war. 

He was authentic when he refused to deny it when it was disclosed.

I am not prepared to say that his opportunistic conduct as an academic was all that different for many other academics around the world in many other times and places. His problem was that he wore a swastika pin. (His Rectorship address was contemptible, though.)

If you want to use other definitions of authenticity when talking about the philosopher of authenticity, I think you need to define your word fully.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

Can a person authentically choose to have an abortion? 

Can one authentically choose to be a soldier in an army at war with us?

Euthanasia? Can this be an authentic choice?

[Philip Brownell]

I see what you are saying.  Perhaps there is another way of looking at it. I am not as well-versed in Heidegger as you, and perhaps I never will be.  I do not want to argue for or against him per se.  Since when am I restricted to HIS definition of authenticity?  And I don't think he is the only philosopher of authenticity.  Please explain to me how he was consistent with himself (and his take on "chatter") if he mimed the Nazi "speaking points?"

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

You aren’t restricted to his definition. None of us is.

“Authenticity” was Kierkegaard’s word anyway.

Was Heidegger THE philosopher of authenticity? I think so, but the reason why is complicated since it involves how he linked authenticity into his “fundamental ontology” and so on.

On his own terms, though, he certainly wasn’t authentic when he mimed the party line. He was a coward. And an opportunist. When he obeyed the racial laws even though he was against racial anti-Semitism, he was entirely inauthentic. 

But he was authentic when he spoke in favor of what he believed was true about the National Socialists. This was in the early days. He fell more and more silent during the 1930’s. 

I condemn him for that. I judge him for that.

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Dan,

 

I also think it's important to understand the text.  And to go beyond it.  You and I are at different places in our intellectual odyssey.

 

I have to confess that I haven't read H's letter on humanism.  I was mainly speculating on why H was so insistent on being understood as an ontologist, and to head off any possibility of being categorized narrowly as "just another existentialist."

 

Love, Sylvia

 

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 4:10:55 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, D...@djbloom.com writes:

Sylvia:

Okey-dokey.

I confess to being more or less an orthodox Heideggerian these days. I am studying him closely. It is also how I’ve been taught to read him. Critchley encouraged us to read Heidegger as inphenomenological traditon and to try to understand B and T as his response to Husserl. He also encouraged us to understand it backwards, that is, to read Div I in terms of Div II. This is also the perspective of another Heidegger scholar, Reiner Schürman, formerly of The New School. This gives a tight understanding of the text.

This approach enables me to appreciate Levinas’s understanding of him, for example. I don’t think we can understand Totality and Infinity unless we understand that Heidegger was Levinas’s interlocutor. 

Letter on Humanism was nothing more than a response to Sartre? Nothing more than Heidegger’s rejection of Sartre’s existentialism? 

Hmm. I don’t agree. It is more than that. 

I’ve read some of his Zollikon Seminars and indeed his comments on intersubjectivity are interesting. These are just about the last things he contributed. There is hardly anything spiritual in these seminars.

But I am not saying Heidegger can’t be read as a spiritual philosopher. Ernst Cassirer accused him of asking theological questions but refusing to give theological answers.

love,

Dan

On Jul 19, 2010, at 4:39 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Hi Dan,

 

No, I don't think we're really at odds, yet it sometimes appears that you delimit Heidegger too strongly!  what I mean is, I will "do violence" to Heidegger as I read him backwards from his later writings.  The essay on truth is very suggestive of a deeply spiritual and Buberian understanding of interpersonal relationships, as well as how to understand authenticity for an individual.  Anyway, I agree that he denied the ethical interpretation of key terms in his thought, and I can hardly imagine that he was unaware of them.  And, as I said, I believe he was deadset against being categoried as an existentialist.  Sartre also did ontology, but he was clearly political and ethical in  his primary interest; Heidegger didn't want to be thrown in with him, as nothing more than that.

 

Love, Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 2:25:46 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

Sylvia:

We are talking about different things. Aren’t we?

I am referring precisely to Being and Time.

I’ve read Lawrence Vogel’s (The Fragile We) on ethics in B and T and discussed authentic solicitude with Bob Stolorow.   So I know that there are different constructions — but within the limits I described in my email. 

I know that Dasein is inclusive of Dasein-mit and  fundamental ontology is social and historical. 

So authentic choosing is never a deworlded act.

Heidegger abandoned existence after B and T and paid attention to Being. I think you know that. Many say that his lack of a moral compass followed this turn. I don’t know about that.  

Heidegger rejected philosophy, praised “thinking,” lectured on Parmenides, Hölderlin, Heraklitus, and, famously, Nietzsche. In short, he became more and more poetic. 

He did find a kind of ethics, though. He strongly lamented technology’s interruption of the presenting of Being. (I believe I am using the right term here.)

This later Heidegger is not one who speaks to me.  But I really haven’t studied him much. 

One can construe philosophers in many ways!

Heidegger was famous for this.

In his infamous study of Kant, he told us that the proper way to read philosophical texts is to DO VIOLENCE TO THEM. He really said that. 

So, construe away!!!

Simon Critchley said to us, “How dare philosopher know what they meant by what they wrote?”

So, let’s construe away!

I don’t think we are miscommunicating. Are we?

Love,

Dan

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:59 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Hi Dan,

 

I think we keep on miscommunicating on this point.  I agree that Heidegger did not construe his concept of authenticity in any moral/ethical sense.  Yet it is open to such a construction.  I have taken it in that direction in my book (Essay 7 on living well as an individual).  The great strength of Heidegger, in my opinion, is the fecundity of his thought.  His vision was limited, but he laid the foundations--not only in B and T but in his later works--for existential truth and living, by which I mean what is involved in living well as a person and as a citizen.  He did not do this, but it can be done, and this can be accompanied by the clear statement that this constructivist path was suggested by Heidegger's thought, but not developed by him, certainly not in B and T.

 

When I have read Heidegger I have felt stimulated to think in ways that felt rich and true to me.  His rigid denials only indicate his own blind spots.  Or perhaps he did not want to be dismissed as just another existentialist!  He was a more serious fundamental thinker than that.

 

Love, Sylvia 

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:38:53 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

Phil:

I don’t entirely agree.

But I don’t think we are any of us can settle this here when the world of philosophers still is mashing this around.

You err if you think Heidegger’s “authenticity” is an ethical consideration in any usual sense of the word. And he never used the terms “good or bad faith.”

In Heidegger’s reply to Sartre in his famous “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger was explicit. He said his and all philosophy has its limits. He never proposed an ethical way of living or a guide for proper choice-ful behavior. 

We can understand that to mean that  authenticity and resoluteness are existential conditions for choice and not directions for choice. 

Unfortunately, one can make authentic choices among possibilities that are repugnant. This may be so even when one is fully engaged with others. This is a tragedy, of course. One can authentically choose to be an heroic fighter for either side in a war. 

There is evidence that Heidegger opposed the Nazis as the regime continued in its brutality. There is evidence that he did it too secretly.

But Heidegger the person is not relevant to Heidegger the philosopher who rekindled ontology as a serious concern. I will try to scan a quote from Levinas that addresses this and attach it to this discussion.

Dan

On Jul 19, 2010, at 4:06 PM, Philip Brownell wrote:

Hi Sylvia,

Good to see you jump in here.  I have been stimulated by the difficulty that Heidegger presents, and by the sense that we understand Stein, or Buber, or anybody really by the context of their lives and the narrative that exhibits their choices.  That is, a body of work is often best understood against the background of who the person is who produced it.  I don't think this is as simple as part for whole error (mistaking the whole forest for a blight in one part of it). Rather, as Seán (I think it was) illustrated in contrasting what I might call a repentant attitude with Heidegger's, I think there is a quality of character in the mix that for some gives the lie to Heidegger's values statements.  What we come away with is not feeling that the values were wrong, but that the person was false.  Authenticity?  Good faith/bad faith?  These are relevant. Instead of the forest for the trees metaphor, I am reminded of another one: a little leven affects the whole loaf.  

Phil

=

=

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Yes, in my opinion.

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 4:28:11 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, D...@djbloom.com writes:

Can a person authentically choose to have an abortion? 

Can one authentically choose to be a soldier in an army at war with us?

Euthanasia? Can this be an authentic choice?

On Jul 19, 2010, at 6:03 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Phil,

 

If you want me to take what you say here, y ou'll have to point to where you think his bad character tained his thought.  If it's just an abstract assertion without being pinned to where you think his thought went astray, then point to that.  Just say he was an inauthentic human being doesn't ground what you say, especially since you are using the term "inauthentic" in a way that he explicitly says he does not mean.  I happen to agree with how you are using the term, and I agree that as a person and as a citizen his embrace of Hitler and Nazism was inauthentic.  But please point to specific ways in which the leaven moved from his inauthenticity into his thought.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 3:05:47 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

Please find response in line:

On Jul 19, 2010, at 4:14 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Phil,

 

I find your response missing the mark.  I fully understand the leaven metaphor as I you applied it to what I had written, which I continue to reject. 

Phil:  I find that dismissive.  My sense is that you don't understand what I was saying, and so merely claiming that you do doesn't work for me. It doesn't HAVE to work for me, but that's what happens when I read your response up to this point.

Now let's talk as two Christians.  We both know about sin, and it's true that being sinners no aspect of our individual being/existence escapes the effects of sin--how and what we think, how we feel, how we act, the things that turn us on and turn us off (sometimes secrectly and ashamedly).  Yes, Heidegger was a big-time sinner, and his affirmation and affiliation with the Nazis shows it, being driven by faulty thinking, selfish ambition, and moral cowardice even after he became critical of Nazi cruelty.  But his approach to philosophical terminology and philosophizing is a lasting contribution to world philosophical thought, and it will continue to resonate and suggest new approachs for centuries to come.  what in particular he thought is limited in its scope, yet suggestive in its implications. His personal failings do not constitute a growing blight on his philosophical thoughts and writings.

Phil: And this is where you have not really seemed to understand what I was saying.  You continue to beat this idea that the blight is on his philosophical writings.  It might be, but I'm not claiming that it is.  I am wondering about the relationship between who one is and what one says.  My real assertion is that he was inauthentic and exhibited bad faith.  He cheated himself and others, and yes, he sinned.  As a sinner, he can be forgiven.  However, one does not fudge on the nature of the sin; one hates the sin and forgives the sinner.  Right?  In order to really hate the sin, one must comprehend its nature.  There is such a thing as premature forgiveness.

  To the extent that he praises the Nazis and throws in his lot with them, damn all that!  If and when we find enslaving and dehumanizing thoughts in his writings, we will throw them aside; but I do not know of any at this point. Personally he was an apparently unrepentant sinner--although we do not and cannot know that that was the case.  Whether he repented or not is between Heidegger and God.  I imagine St. Paul's saying "The good I want to do, I do not do, and the evil that I do not want to do, I do.  And there is no health in me," may well have resonated with Heidegger, familiar as he was with the Bible.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:48:50 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

I think you missed the point of the leaven metaphor.  It was not meaning that the leaven spoils the "higher thoughts."  The leaven in this case is his corrupting his own values, leading to an inauthentic self and bad faith.  These are not inconsequential, but they go to the person of Heidegger and not necessarily to his thought.  To me, it's not a simple question.  Where do person and person's thought diverge such that the body of thought can really be understood apart from understanding the person? Why do we insist on contextualizing any of these people, like Stein, by considering their influences?  No, I think you are too glib and quick in granting grace to Heidegger.

You might enjoy reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas. He describes the Germany in which Hitler came to power and Bonhoeffer's family (quite aristocratic and privileged) and how Bonhoeffer developed a moral compass in the midst of it that did NOT succumb to the Fuher Principle.

Phil

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:24 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Phil,

 

I don't think the leaven in the lump metaphor is an apt one in the case of Heidegger.  Nor do I think it is always, or even primarily, important to understand the life of the thinker to understand AND to evaluate that thinker's thought.  I think it often happens that people are able to think higher thoughts than they are able to live.  St. Paul makes this point in very strong terms, and I think most of us affirm higher ideals than we can and do consistently manifest in our behavior.

 

And speaking of context in connection with Heidegger's support of National Socialism, I think it's important to understand how devastated Germany was in the 20's, economically and in many other ways.  The reason Hitler got such a foothold in the first place was because of the hopelessness of the situation.  He talked like a savior, and in such a context desperate people are psychologically like the drowning man who is so irrational as even to drown a person who tries to save him.  I can imagine how people believed in Hitler when he came to power.  Put that together with the ancient anti-Semitism in Germany--even in its churches--and Germany was ripe for the sweeping attack on the Jews, and the violent assertion that "We Germans are no longer on the bottom--we are, in fact, the master race!  I imagine Heidegger saw Hitler as a savior, as did so many others.  And no doubt going along with the regime also bespeaks personal cowardice and ruthless ambition on Heidegger's part.  Yet none of that takes away from the fact that he has opened the door to a more purified approach to talking about what-is, more experience-near, and with an openness to the development of an ethics.  I don't think his personal failure "infects" his philosophical thought, and this is why I do not agree with the leaven metaphor.  Even Hitler could add two and two and come up with four!

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 1:06:14 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

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[CROC...@aol.com]

I agree with what you say here, Dan.

 

Love, Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 5:33:41 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, D...@djbloom.com writes:

You aren’t restricted to his definition. None of us is.

“Authenticity” was Kierkegaard’s word anyway.

Was Heidegger THE philosopher of authenticity? I think so, but the reason why is complicated since it involves how he linked authenticity into his “fundamental ontology” and so on.

On his own terms, though, he certainly wasn’t authentic when he mimed the party line. He was a coward. And an opportunist. When he obeyed the racial laws even though he was against racial anti-Semitism, he was entirely inauthentic. 

But he was authentic when he spoke in favor of what he believed was true about the National Socialists. This was in the early days. He fell more and more silent during the 1930’s. 

I condemn him for that. I judge him for that.

On Jul 19, 2010, at 7:27 PM, Philip Brownell wrote:

I see what you are saying.  Perhaps there is another way of looking at it. I am not as well-versed in Heidegger as you, and perhaps I never will be.  I do not want to argue for or against him per se.  Since when am I restricted to HIS definition of authenticity?  And I don't think he is the only philosopher of authenticity.  Please explain to me how he was consistent with himself (and his take on "chatter") if he mimed the Nazi "speaking points?"

Phil

On Jul 19, 2010, at 6:21 PM, Dan Bloom wrote:

To beat a dead horse:

Phil,

By his definition of authenticity, he was authentic in his support of National Socialism.

His choice was grounded in his sense of historicity and people, that is, community.

He withdrew his commitment when he saw that the party lost its original goals. This is documented in his biography. But he remained a party member, as did many cowardly people. 

He was inauthentic in his lying about it after the war. 

He was authentic when he refused to deny it when it was disclosed.

I am not prepared to say that his opportunistic conduct as an academic was all that different for many other academics around the world in many other times and places. His problem was that he wore a swastika pin. (His Rectorship address was contemptible, though.)

If you want to use other definitions of authenticity when talking about the philosopher of authenticity, I think you need to define your word fully.

Dan

On Jul 19, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Philip Brownell wrote:

My real assertion is that he was inauthentic and exhibited bad faith.  He cheated himself and others, and yes, he sinned. 

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[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

We are in different places. I have lots of respect for where you are and how you got there. I like the way we are discussing these things.

I agree that it is important to go beyond the thinkers we study. To study thinkers is to think their thoughts and make them our own uniquely our own.

I think I go beyond Heidegger, for example, when I bring my understanding of his philosophy into GT. I think I did this with Husserl. I think you’ve done this with Husserl.

This is all hot stuff!!!!

Heidegger was furious with Sartre’s flip comment that “existence precedes essence.” Heidegger’s friend and translator into French, Jean Beaufret (I think) asked him to respond. And he did in Letter on Humanism.

Existence and essence (being) are equiprimordial. Existence and being may not be severed. 

“Existentialism” and “existentialist” were meaningless words to Heidegger and worse, they made travesty of his philosophy of existence.

Here’s a funny anecdote about Heidegger and Sartre. 

At the end of the war, Heidegger was obviously a mess. He was impoverished. Shamed. Banned from teaching. He had previously read Being and Nothingness, that is, when it was first published, and had at first and enthusiastic reaction and then when he read further, a much less favorable view.

But in the post-war years, Sartre was a “hot” commodity. What would your opportunist genius do?

He sent a letter to Sartre telling him how much he admired B and N, that it was an extension of his own B and T, that Sartre was a genius, and so on. He invited Sartre to visit. Sartre was delighted. But post-war circumstances precluded their meeting.

Jump forward.

It is now the late 1960’s and the young Heidegger scholar Hubert Dreyfus is interviewing Heidegger in the Todtnauberg hut. He sees a copy of Being and Nothingness on a table.

“Dr Heidegger, I see Sartre’s Being and Nothingness there. What is your opinion of it?”

“Dreck.” Shit. 

love,

Dan

[Philip Brownell]

Okay... BTW do you recall this is an Edith Stein study group?  Here's a tid bit:  in the Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty Edith Stein is referenced pages 116-122 in a chapter on "Motives, Reasons, and Causes."

Phil

[Philip Brownell]

I am thinking there will be a parallel between Stein's elucidation of the relationship of finite and infinite being with Merleau-Ponty's treatment of the "paradox" of transcendence and immanence. Further, this issue of the balance between transcendence and immanence is what many of the contemporary French phenomenologists are dealing with. It's all related.

Phil

[CROC...@aol.com]

Yews, hot stuff!  And I agree with Heidegger's assessment of Being and Nothingness!

 

Love, Sylvia

 

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[CROC...@aol.com]

Yes, I'm thinking we should be sharing this stuff with the AAGTMember list, and perhaps with the New York Institute list (maybe?).  I haven't yet settled down to deal specifically with Stein, altho I did read the piece that was first sent out.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/19/2010 8:57:35 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Okay... BTW do you recall this is an Edith Stein study group?  Here's a tid bit:  in the Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty Edith Stein is referenced pages 116-122 in a chapter on "Motives, Reasons, and Causes."

Phil

On Jul 19, 2010, at 10:43 PM, Dan Bloom wrote:

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[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

Thank you for the reminder about the focus of this group. This study group was started on the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT) list, and has occasionally connected informally back onto that list, and, no doubt, will do so in the future. Four of us are members of NYIGT. Three of us here are also members of the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT). However, this the Edith Stein Study Group, and has members-by-invitation who are not in any of the other gatherings mentioned above.

I would like to raise some issues:

1) This is a serious point: reading Dan on Sylvia on Heidegger allows me to better understand neo-Nazism. I am referring to the fervour with which you stay loyal to his thinking, and find ways to ameliorate his actions. I admire you for this also, and the rich contribution you are making to my learning.

2) What/whose definition of "authenticity" is most applicable to the life and work of Edith Stein?

3) Not everyone here is on the NYIGT List.

4) I am not on the AAGT List.

5) My understanding is that people here volunteered to join this Edith Stein Study Group, asked to join it, or were invited to join it. 

I feel a strong need to get clarity here. Acquainting myself with Edith Stein's life and work is demanding enough as it is for me. Sylvia, you are not the first to bring in AAGT and NYIGT. Even the use of these acronyms excludes others.

So: I would appreciate any and all responses any and all of you out there have to my 5 points above.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I do recall that… yet how could I restrain myself? 

I think when any of us posts something that triggers a reaction, we need to pursue that side-thread to closure.

This Heidegger thread began with questions about his foulness viz a ziz his profundity. We’ve ended it, I think, off-point, but with a sense of closure between me and Sylvia. This feels good to me. Also, I think we’ve helped build our sense of Stein’s world.

That said, I get your point. My exuberance get exuberant. 

I’ll check out the Cambridge Companion reference. Interesting.

[Dan Bloom]

I am interested in what you are saying.

Husserl’s use of transcendence and immanence might be interesting to consider here, too. I suspect it is VERY different from Stein’s.
I’ll look into M/P.

I’m afraid that once I open that volume I’ll get lost.

Des Kennedy and I had dinner in Phillie. Our purpose was to have it out about Heidegger and M/P. I think we disagreed about thrownnes. We had a wonderful time. Nothing was settled except the deepening of our friendship.

I love those Jesuits!!!

[Dan Bloom]

I loved Sartre when I was in high school and college. I fancied myself an existentialist. I was just lonely and depressed. 

Now I am taken by Heidegger. You guess my mood. :)

Now I like some of what he says. But the man does overreach. And that is an understatement. Compare him to the rest of the 20th Century French thinkers and he is almost laughable. Yet he had style. :)

[Dan Bloom]

1) I don’t see the parallel to neo-Nazism. I can make a stretch to it, but would rather not. Would you say the same about anyone who is studying a philosopher?

2) If authenticity means “genuine personal commitment,” how would this work for you?  A HD addition. It is arrived it through a standing-out of ordinary life occasioned by the sudden sense of inevitable death, which takes us out of customary time. Faced with this new sense of what is, we are faced with what is possible and the opportunity to choose among possibilities as our own.

3) Yes. Become a member and drive the locals crazy.

4) I know and respect your choice.

5) Welcome all.

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Yes - I like it: "genuine personal commitment", even if "genuine" is something of a synonym for "authentic". However "authentic" carries more connotations than "genuine". Let me try it out:

"Edith Stein's genuine personal commitment to her life, her work and her beliefs is the foundation of her authenticity in everything she did".

This works for me.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

The redundancy of “genuine” captures Heidegger’s “minesnessnes.” Maybe.

[Philip Brownell]

The books came in. I highly recommend Life in a Jewish Family, her autobiography. It is extensive, and with copious notes that are priceless, showing the world in which she lived and the people influential to her life.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Gotcha, Phil, and it and Sara Borden probably in my Stockholm post-office as I write. On my way there Thursday-Friday...

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Philip Brownell <philbr...@logic.bm> wrote:

The books came in.  I highly recommend Life in a Jewish Family, her autobiography.  It is extensive, and with copious notes that are priceless, showing the world in which she lived and the people influential to her life.

Phil

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I’m co-moderating a panel on Jews in Weimar Germany for the EAGT conference. This book would be great to orient me.

A problem with my book-buying mania is that I keep losing the books I own. I lost Amos Elon’s The Pity of It All, the Story of Jews in Germany. 

I ½ finished it, out it down, and it’s lost.

[croc...@aol.com]

writing down the names of the borrowers is the only solution!

Sylvia

Phil

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

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[Dan Bloom]

No one borrowed it!!
I discourage borrowing. I’d rather lend money.

It lost it. I have to buy a second copy. Grrr.

I have one final place to look for it. This weekend.