The Letter on Humanism

I’ve spent all of today reading Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’… brain is mush.

Here’s one of the bits I liked though:

To think against ‘values’ is not to maintain that everything intepreted as ‘a value’ – ‘culture’, ‘art’, ’science’, ‘human dignity’, ‘world, ‘God’ – is valueless. Rather, it is important finally to realise that precisely through the characterisation of something as ‘a value’ what is so valued is robbed of its worth. That is to say, by the assessment of something as a value what is valued is admitted only as an object for man’s estimation. But what a thing is in its Being is not exhausted by its being an object, particularly when objectivity takes the form of value. Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a subjectivising. It does no let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets beings: be valid- solely as the objects of its doing. The bizarre effort to prove the objectivity of values does not know what it is doing. When one proclaims ‘God’ the altogether ‘highest value,’ this is a degradation of God’s essence. Here as elsewhere thinking in values is the greatest blasphemy imaginable against Being. To think against values therefore does not mean to beat the drum for the valuelessness and nullity of beings. It means rather to bring the clearing of the truth of Being before thinking, as against subjectivising beings into mere objects.

Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge; 1999), 251.

Filed under: Heidegger, Philosophy, phenomenology, quotations , Heidegger, Letter on Humanism

Page 123

I’ve been tagged in a book meme that consists of reaching for the nearest book of at least 123 pages, and citing sentences 5-7 of that book on page 123.

My dictionary tells me that ‘meme’ is a word of recent origin, modelled after ‘gene’, and from the greek ‘mimema’ (that which is imitated), and is a biological term suggesting a ‘cultural or behavioural element passed on by imitation or other non-genetic means’.

That is, it’s a biological term for chinese whispers. Here’s mine:

The putting into question of Husserlian phenomenology, far from being a “deconstruction without remainder,” has been for Derrida the point of departure in the elaboration central to his own reflection. This is demonstrated, I believe, by the notions of the contamination of the empirical and the transcendental and of ideality (without presence) that traverse and underpin his entire thinking. And which remains operative in his uninterrupted dialogue with Heidegger.

The book is Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger by Paola Marrati, trans. Simon Sparks (Stanford University, 2005)

Perhaps a bit of nonsense unless phenomenology, deconstruction and German philosophy is something of an interest of yours. The other nearby books aren’t much better!

Now I’m meant to tag another five… but I’ve only got four, so bear with me. (Wouldn’t you feel awkward tagging someone you don’t really know?) Chris, Ben, Craig and Ali.

Filed under: Blogging, books, phenomenology, quotations , Book meme, Derrida, Heidegger, Husserl, phenomenology

Phenomenology and history

For most historians, I gather, phenomenology lies somewhat outside the bounds of the discipline. It is, in the tradition of English and American historiography, neither a ’speculative’ philosophy of history (usually exemplified by Hegel and deemed somewhat disreputable), nor an analytic one. Nor does it fall within the accepted practice of historians, for the moment. This may change – I’ve noticed quite a few new books on phenomenology available, usually aimed at introducing the reader to Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty etc, assuming that they are coming to these authors from a different tradition.

From time to time articles appear on a phenomenological approach to history – indicating that some anglophone historians are working within this tradition. But these have been appearing since not long after Husserl published his Crisis, with little broad take up by historians. The result is, such as in a review of a book by David Carr (the English translator of the Crisis) on time consciousness, narrative and history, a somewhat baffled one. They find it difficult to place – it does not fit into their categories.

However, I can’t help thinking that there would be much benefit for english-world historians to adapt their tradition to allow some take up of phenomenological themes. If you are to speak about the political affect of histories, of their connection with our social identity, our consciousness of people as members of particular communities, traditions, nations, each with their own histories, then a phenomenological approach has much to contribute. In particular, it reconnects historical inquiry with experiences of history, without reducing history to only the present-day creation of a narrative structure pasted over the top of a now irretrievable random structure of events . It is no longer simply a group of professionals speaking to themselves about obscure debates and the obscure past, but is connected with questions about what it might mean to remember, what it might mean to experience the past in a particular way. These questions are already asked – I’m not saying phenomenology has the only access pass to these thoughts, but it does possess a methodological rigour that is of value. Perhaps I am strawman-ing here, (in fact I’m almost certain of it), but sometimes the straw man is real.

For some thoughts about what it might mean to experience the past, have a look at Meredith’s posts on memory in Berlin – on the way that memory in Berlin is a public act, that you are invited to take a part in, to participate in.  There are three posts, here, here and here.

Filed under: Hegel, Historiography, Husserl, history, phenomenology, random thoughts , experiences of history, foundations of history, phenomenology of history, writing history