Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Heidegger, Hitler, Racism and logic.
From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 16 Aug 92 16:12:19 EDT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <memo.578614@cix.compulink.co.uk> 
shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:

LS:
>... I just picked up on a thread by Michael Zeleny, in which he
>castigates Heideggers anti-semitic and Nazi symapthies.
>
>
>This probably isn't the place to raise the issues, but I have always
>been struck by how _logical_ bothe Nazis and Marxists are: I had an
>extraordinary conversation with a Nazi ex-patriot in South Africa,
>who used to run a local Christian chat show on the radio (you may
>choose not to believe all this - I had trouble myself). Anyway he was
>trying to convince me of the logical necessity of apartheid. His
>arguments were lucid and coherent. Eventually I traced them back to
>the key difference in our outlooks...
>
>"Right" he said " you have to admit that the slant-eyes - the
>coolies, and the blacks - they're different - right?"
>
>"No" I said " I don't admit that".
>
>"Well" he said "then there's no point in talking to you is there?"
>
>What frightened me was how compellingly he was able to build on that
>one, seemingly innocent assumption, to demonstrate that the
>difference should be preserved - by legislation - and that any
>inter-racial conflict was a natural result of that difference, and
>that he and I, as standing irrevocably on one side of that
>difference, were bound to defend our own side.

I suggest that your interlocutor may have been appealing to a different
sense of `different' than that used by yourself.  Not that his conclusion
that the said difference should be preserved would follow without begging
the question by assuming an automatic allegiance thereto.

LS:
>I have had similar conversations with Marxists.

So have I.

LS:
>Logic, by itself, can be a most dangerous tool. I hope that this
>story will go some way to explaining why I personally have stressed
>my own interest in elucidating the assumptions on which any
>philosophies are based, and also explaining some of the personal
>distaste I have for those who worship pure logic, without regard to
>the primary assumptions on which they based their arguments.

You wouldn't by any chance be dragging in Aunt Sally with your reference to
"those who worship pure logic", would you?

LS:
>If - as Michael has suggested - Heidegger was a raving Nazi, I would
>not personally allow this to detract from his performance in terms of
>logic: Many Nazis have displayed an unswerving dedication to logic in
>their implementations of 'final solutions' [Extremely final in many
>cases] and 'medical research'.  I _understand_ the
>Nazi/Racist/Elistist perspective: I don't _like_ it, and I feel that
>it is based on false premises, but I _understand_ it.

Heidegger's logical performance is not in question here.

LS:
>I feel bound to say here therefore, that because Nazism is
>distateful, surely should not prevent us from accepting Heidegger as
>a philosopher. As a human maybe, but not as a philosopher .....

Here is where you make a leap that is wholly unacceptable to me.  There is
a well-established sense in which the goal of all philosophical inquiry
consists in deducing an ethics from metaphysical premisses (I use the
latter term in a sense which makes it applicable to even the self-professed
"anti-metaphysical" thinkers).  Spinoza's _Ethica_ is a classic example of
one such attempt, and it may be argued that the fatal defect of such
apostles of existentialism as Sartre or foster children of positivism as
Quine consists in their inability to formulate any ethical principles.
Now, clearly an ethics is never deducible from logic alone; nor is
Heidegger's doctrine in any way limited to the same.  In this sense, it is
indeed important to note the moral failings of its creator, for these
failings throw light on what may be interpreted either as a fundamental gap
between theory and praxis, very likely due to an essential feature of the
former, or as prima facie evidence of its internal inconsistency, which
brings us back into the provenance of logic, or, finally, as a sign of a
fatal defect in its basic assumptions.  In no case does the philosopher
escape unscathed by the ramifications of his personal scrofulousness.

>Leo

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."