I read Rudiger Safranski's book on Heidegger which in the end gave me a sense of his dark side and made me rather ill. There is no doubt whatsoever that Heidegger was anti-enlightenment and consulted with Faustian Principalities and Powers.
My reading of Postmodernism and Nihilism places Heidegger and his children (Marcuse, Arhendt, and a few others)at the epicenter of Postmodernism and Nihilism.
In conclusion I consider Heidegger a reckless mind and philo-tyrannical.
Nietzsche is in a class of his own and falls within the highest ranks of human philosophy. Those who deny his importance and effects on 20-21st century thought are either willfully disregarding that truth or just do not know.
It seems that Critical Theory and Consciousness Studies have supplanted old fashioned Philosophy.
We have been betrayed by most of the so-called intellectuals. Postmodernism has overrun American Academia where Foucault and Derrida still live on.
I live in Raleigh, NC where Duke University has become one of the beachheads of Postmodernism.
Nietzsche did make many correct predictions about the softening nature of man. Unlike Marx's "predictions" which are corrupting and based into this utopia of a masterless society through the submission of a single master, Nietzsche's was more an observer than a charlatan like Marx who makes people believe his prediction of a masterless society through the reality of a masterful world plantation type scheme. Marxists always mix lies with truth to make the lies believed, and the lie of the masterless society is believed in the scheme of the obvious trend toward a single masterful world society.
Except that while Nietzsche's super men do rely on other supermen of lower ranks. With Marx, no such thing exists, as the lower and middle class ranks are all destroyed to make us all slaves under a single master man behind the curtain whose lower level masters are only slaves doing his bidding and not real lords or scholars thinking for themselves. Under Marxism, the destruction of current masters is appealing but indeed a faustian deal in which only one master remains and profits from the downfalls of the competition at the hands of a manipulated proletaria which is urged to carry on the destruction. Master and slaves hence share something in common: they both distrust mid-level masters.
"Human nature as such is at stake, and even though it seems that these experiments succeed not in changing man but only in destroying him . . . one should bear in mind the necessary limitations to an experiment which requires global control in order to show conlcusive results."When I read this sentence, I could hardly believe my eyes. "nature" is a philosophical concept; it denotes that which identifies a thing as a thing of this kind and not of another one. A "nature" cannot be changed or transformed; a "change of nature" is a contradiction of terms; tampering with the "nature" of a thing means destroying the thing. To coneive the idea of "changing the nature" of man (or of anything) is a symptom of the intellectual breakdown of Western civilization. The author, in fact adopts the immanentist ideology; she keeps an "open mind" with regard to the totalitarian atrocities; she considers the question of a "change of a nature" a matter that will have to be settled by "trial and error"; and since the "trial" could not yet avail itself of the opportunities afforded by a global laboratory, the quesiton must remain in suspense for the time being . . . These sentences . . . reflect a typically liberal, progressive, pragmatist attitude toward philosophical problems. We suggested previously that the author's derailments are sometimes more interesting than her insights. And this attitude is, indeed, of general importance because it reveals how much ground liberals and totalitarians have in common; the essential immanentism that unites them overrides the differences of ethos that separate them. The true dividing line in the contemporary crisis does not run between liberals and totalitarians, but between the religious and philosophical transcendentalists [Plato, Jesus] on the one side and the liberal and totalitarian immanentist sectarians on the other side [Comte, Freud, Darwin, Marx].
It is sad, but it must be reported, that the author herself draws this line. The argument starts from her confusion about the "nature of man": "Only the criminal attempt to change the nature of man is adequate to our trembling insight that no nature, not even the nature of man, can any longer be considered to be the measure of all things"--a sentence that, if it has any sense at all, can only mean that the nature of man ceases to be the measure, when some imbecile conceives the notion of changing it. The author seems to be impressed by the imbecile and is ready to forget about the nature of man, as well as about all human civilization that has been built on its understanding.
The "mob," she concedes, has correctly seen "that the whole of nearly three thousand years of Western civilization . . .has broken down." Out go the philosophers of Greece, the prophets of Israel, Christ, not to mention the patres and scholastics; for man has come of age, and that means "that from now on man is the only possible creator of his own laws and the only possible maker of his own history."
This coming-of-age has to be accepted; man is the new lawmaker; and on the tablets wiped clean of the past he will inscribe the "new discoveries in morality," which Edmund Burke had still considered impossible.
It sounds like a nihilistic nightmare
anti-modern, yes
and consulted with Faustian Principalities and Powers.
B.S.!
My reading of Postmodernism and Nihilism places Heidegger and his "children" (Marcuse ... and a few others) at the epicenter of Postmodernism and Nihilism. It seems that Critical Theory and Consciousness Studies have supplanted old fashioned Philosophy.
We have been betrayed by most of the so-called intellectuals. Postmodernism has overrun American Academia where Foucault and Derrida still live on.
Generally, I share your disdain of American academia's fever swamps. However, most of these movements evolved as replacements for Marxism and were a reaction against Martin Heidegger (Note Theodor Adorno's Jargon of Authenticity is a direct repudiation of MH). These are examples of what I referred to as "dangerous ideas." They are not devoid of useful insights, but are put into evil practice even on our own Supreme Court.
MH himself derived his world-view from righteous indignation at the oppression of Catholics by Bismarck. He cut his teeth on Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, whose message is reminiscent of Edmund Burke and delivers a scathing indictment of liberalism.
On this background, MH produced a treasure trove of insights into cognitive behavior which have been quietly put to positive use in several disciplines, including in engineering.