Martin Heidegger: Ansprache University Speech 1933

Rector´s Address -- Rektoratsrede  "Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität"-- Self-Assertion of the German University --1933 

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The text is freely available in English at
 https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEEHeideggerSelf-Assertion.pdf

und auf deutsch:
http://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g31130/PDF/polphil/Heidegger.pdf


Heidegger's metaphors

It is a political speech delivered in everyday language and much easier to read than his written work, and so there appears in broad daylight what made his philosophy so successful. It is his insidious, brilliant ease in the use of metaphor, as if he were just another Rilke. His metaphors are radiant summaries obliging the reader to stop and think.

http://dekluizenaar.mimesis.nl/?page_id=4131

"The beginning has invaded our future........"

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Heideggers Metaphern

Es ist eine Rede mit politischem Inhalt, gar nicht zu vergleichen mit dem Nebelschleier von "Sein und Zeit". Man sieht sodann, was seiner Philosophie so ausschlaggebend weiterhalf: der Glitz seiner Metaphern, mit denen er wie ein zweiter Rilke allerhand Bedeutsamkeiten herzaubert.


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Heidegger's sentimentalism

Besides that, there is his sentimentalism. If you cannot see it, you have already fallen for it. It isn't a trap, though, for it is everywhere and turns his writing into a swamp.

Sodann seine Sentimentalität. Wer sie nicht sieht, patscht darin herum. Sie macht aus jedem Text einen Sumpf.
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The greatest thinker incl. moustache: "If we must be serious....".



Below is the jpg of the beginning in English und auf deutsch:

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I read a little further  to find the metaphor quoted  plus this reference to Nietzsche with its conditioned recommendation to be serious about the idea that God is dead.

Notice that Heidegger does not say "seeker of God", but "seeker of the god" which isn't really fair to Nietzsche. It is a wee little cheat. Never mind.

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Heidegger was a Nazi, but not a racist. At least in 1933 his prestige was big enough to allow him to discreetly stay away from that other orgy.

However, the ugly fact, which won't go away, is that in 30 years after the war he never even tried to face the disaster and to explain, no matter how tentatively, why Dachau "came into being" or why "neither modern political philosophy nor theology nor philosophy had the critical resources to respond to the disintegration of the liberal state." Introduction to Leo Strauss's "Spinoza's Critique of Religion" translated by Elsa M. Sinclair, New York: Schocken, 1965.
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Heidegger war ein Nazi, hielt aber wenig auf  Rassentheorie. Wie definiert sich ein Nazi ohne Rassenbewusstsein? Bekannt is mir nur Susan Sontags Artikel über Leni Riefenstahl: http://www.nybooks.com/articles .

Da verbleibt jedoch die hässliche Tatsache, dass Heidegger volle 30 Jahre nach dem Krieg sich  nicht einmal versuchsweise zu einer Stellungnahme bereitfand. Die im "Sein und Zeit" ad hoc betriebene Sinnvernebelung reichte offenbar nicht so weit.

Heidegger lived until 1976, and as far as I know there wasn't a single analytical word to be heard from him in all that time on that one question which won't go away either.
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Photo by Muesse at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Heideggerrundweg0009.JPG under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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Postscript December 2014

I found out only now that Heidegger himself thought he was indebted to Hoelderlin:  see http://dekluizenaar.mimesis.nl/ in de voetsporen van Heidegger.

I'll have to google elsewhere for a saying about "whitened sepulchre".
It's sickening. They are both

"whited sepulchres, inside full of dead men's bones and  filth."
Matthew 23:27

Line Drawing

The Greeks 

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Zeus is masquerading as a friendly and beautiful bull to get a Phoenician princess to climb onto his back. Her name is Europa.
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Greek mythology is full of stories of this kind. Zeus was always trying to seduce the ladies in many far-fetched ways. Once he famously changed himself into a swan.

The idea was to seduce Queen Leda of Sparta. ...... and the German poet Heinrich Heine wrote : "what a goose would you have been to let yourself be seduced by a swan!"

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Aktaion is getting torn to pieces and killed by the dogs he had raised, even as Artemis draws her bow at him.

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Apollo lets his friend Hyakinthos ride the oceans on a swan. --

The stories are not deep, but they were great to illustrate, because they are about beautiful heroes, courageous winners, and tragic victims. The drawings are figured out much more carefully than the stories they represent.

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Achilles killed Penthesilea. They were both heroes, and according to legend she killed herself in the simplest of ways:
She refused to continue breathing.


These stories have always carried a lot of weight and have been studied by the most influential people. They are similar to rumors and sometimes meant to be entertaining, but they feel fatuous.

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 Cave Art

Rock carving of an elephant. -- Photographed by Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it published at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Libya_5041_Petroglyphs_Tadrart_Acacus_Luca_Galuzzi_2007.jpg under the CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

It looks similar to a teacher's drawing on his blackboard :-)
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Contemporary

In modern times, the most famous line drawings are Picasso´s.


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Line drawing is taught and encouraged in all art schools. These two are from the Madrid art school by ghD:

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Most cartoonists prefer lines. 

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Representing a judge who opens a trap for the defendant to fall through. In this case the defendant is himself a judge: Baltasar Garzon.

http://elpais.com/autor/peridis/a/

Anonymous, Snoopy, and Peridis: most drawings are line drawings. Everybody draws lines around things.


Since these lines do not in fact exist, the question is whether they are learned like an early form of writing, or whether they are even ritualistic or ceremonial,  leading to the origin of writing:


"One has to do first a circle and then one has to put on a smile and some eyes and then it is almost finished, but one can also do some legs and arms left and right."

Children often attach arms and legs directly to the head. And even those who live in a flat in a city, will draw a little house always with a chimney stack and smoke coming out.

This is a pirate in his boat and a house with somebody sitting on his bed. -- Notice the smoke stack.

The drawing is part of a study by Norman H. Freeman published at http://www.answers.com/topic/children-s-drawings-of-human-figures

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The Origin of Writing  

Below is an Egyptian drawing.
It shows "The Heart being Weighed" :-)
It is at Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.

The photo is by Hajor, released under a CC Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egypt.Papyrus.01.jpg

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Their drawings were narrative, but so conventional that in hundreds and hundreds of years they did not change a bit.

And since they never changed, little by little they were used as signs representing words and later these signs became the letters of our alphabet:

The complete list of those letters is at http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/alphabet.html 

Quote: 

"If you don't recognize the letters, keep in mind that they have since been reversed (since the Phoenicians wrote from right to left) and often turned on their sides!"
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Define "line drawing": delineation: a drawing of the outlines of forms or objects wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
 
A black-and-white drawing with no graduation of gray tones; usually done in India ink. www.bctsouthflorida.com/BCT_Help_Center.php
 
A graphic representation made with lines and solids, as opposed to one made with tone gradations. www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects/buildingdictionaryl8.htm
 


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The Greek drawings are from http://www.theoi.com/

Machiavelli: The Prince - Chapters XV and XVI

The complete book is in public domain and very well presented at

 http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm

Strauss traces Machiavelli back to Heraclitus and Spinoza. It is the modern approach: Truth is subjective or at any rate irrelevant. Analysis and action must focus on the way things are perceived or talked about.

Heraclitus:

" In  God's view, all things are fair [noble] and good and just, but men have made the supposition that some things are just and others are unjust."

Spinoza:

" No traces of divine justice are found except where just men reign."  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Theologico-Political_Treatise_1862/Chapter_19

So Justice does not "really" exist. It is only a creature of man's imagination.  Strauss: Why would that make it worthless?

 https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussThoughtsOnMachiavelli_201411

   
Strauss sees the world itself as a mental construct that has to be treated as such, with care or caution. This is where he collides with Machiaelli and others:

Strauss: " By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world,[.....] which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.

Leo Strauss “What is liberal education"
http://www.ditext.com/strauss/liberal.html

According to Strauss, Machiavelli derogates that "true ground" of human dignity.
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Strauss's most famous quote is from the beginning of his book on Machiavelli:

" The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things."

Strauss uses it to say that popular opinion ("the surface of things") cannot be ignored if you want to get to the heart of things. That surface is made of opinions, the things people tell each other.

For Machiavelli, that surface is where the relevant questions must begun.
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MACHIAVELLI : CHAPTER XV
Concerning Things For Which Men..... Are Praised Or Blamed

Machiavelli: "Now let's see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince towards subject and friends. ............"

Machiavelli: "If everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue ........ may be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice... brings him security and prosperity."

Below is Chapter XV complete:

In public domain at http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince15.htm

In short: To appear virtuous  is better than being virtuous because it is safer.

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CHAPTER XVI
Concerning Liberality And Meanness

Machiavelli: "COMMENCING then with the first of these, I say that it would be well to be reputed liberal (=generous)."

Machiavelli: "However, liberality exercised......... in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it, injures you; for if one exercises it honestly, ..... ... it may not become known."

Machiavelli: "Therefore, anyone wishing to maintain ...... the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no show of magnificence; so that a prince ....... will consume ...... all his property, and will be compelled in the end....... to do ......... everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects."

Machiavelli: "Thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, wishing.............to draw back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being a miser."

In short: To appear generous is better than being generous because it is cheaper.

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Physics: Aristotle lost. Did Plato win?

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“In the field of physics, the organic commonsense approach lost out (eventually). And for good reason. The Aristotelean approach, commonsense based and scaled to human existence,  could not explain what was observed. [...]"

-- -- I'll have to add something of my own, because Big Brother sees if a post is simply copied from another one; once he even erased my polyglot christmas song collection for this reason :-).

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“The kind of physics that did succeed was and is abstract in its approach with mathematics its leading edge. Relativity and Quantum Theory simply defy common sense. The real world happens at the atomic level and at cosmological scales, and neither place is conducive to naturalistic commonsense physics as practiced by Aristotle and the Peripatetics."

So what is known about nature and matter cannot be ascertained by just anybody. Few people can find out whether Einstein was right, and it doesn't matter either way, because the sciences of nature have reached a point where their findings and specualtions  no longer have anything to do with modern life and its problems. 

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”So abstract methodology which puts abstract objects and concepts in the primary position is the way of modern physics. In that sense, Plato won the day. “

In fact, not just Plato, but physics and chemistry appeared at times to hold the explanation to everything, even to human existence, while the common sense approach seemed too simple to be of any help in dealing with kids, schools, banks, money, jobs, and  the old issue of how to re-organize "society" or the world.
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July 2003 RJK at  http://tinyurl.com/2wt4r3 Google Groups

Added Mai 2016
Eddington's Scientific Table 

copied from
Eddington's Two Tables http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Eddington_Gifford.html

Kant: What is Enlightenment ?

Kant's  Critique is a wonderful book, full of great things like an old museum where they had to fire the caretaker because there aren't any visitors anymore. Things have suffered neglect. How could he end up referring to people as “domestic cattle” ? 

Below is a translation (at Gutenberg in public domain), but I did look up the original German text, and it is just as coarse.

 
Another odd novelty was to read Kant saying “it is more nearly possible, however, for the public to enlighten itself.”  --

Really? Consider the effort it takes,  now,  for anyone to stay his course in the flood of print. In Kant’s time there was less of that, but,  for other reasons, then as now, most people’s formation also depended largely on circumstantial luck.
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In fact, I had seen an even more shocking thing some years before. The jewel and conclusion of his        Critique is his final statement that “in these matters” (religion) nature has given every man the same possibilities of knowledge.

Nature as Deus ex maquina!  Nature, always so kind, considerate and full of foresight and killing people by the million?
In Spain they would say:

"Para este viaje no hacían falta alforjas" : 

“for this trip we did not need the saddle bags”, meaning the  result does not justify our exertions, as Kant also had anticipated.
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Kant's Enlightenment essay is long and ends in yet another damper:

In a hagiagraphic allusion to Frederick II he says that this ruler can grant freedom of speech because he has a disciplined strong army allowing him to say:
 “Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like; only obey!”

Aber auch nur derjenige, der ............................ ein wohldiszipliniertes zahlreiches Heer ..... zur Hand hat, – kann das sagen, was ein Freistaat nicht wagen darf: Räsonniert, soviel ihr wollt, und worüber ihr wollt; nur gehorcht!
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These are ominous discoveries, and maybe they were not meant the way I have understood them.


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Leo Strauss: Science without Philosophy ?

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Oliver Cromwell and John Milton receiving a deputation seeking aid for the Swiss Protestants -- http://hoydensandfirebrands.blogspot.com.es/2013_04_01_archive.html

It was during the 1600s that Galileo and Newton founded modern science, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke started modern political theory.

"The distinction between philosophy and science or the separation of science from philosophy was a consequence of the revolution which occurred in the seventeenth century." 

 Leo Strauss “An Epilogue” http://tinyurl.com/orcskgb Google books

Descartes marks the beginning of a new era in the history of European thought, when he [.......] inaugurates the great anthropocentric shift in philosophy:
"I think, therefore I am,"  is the motto of modern rationalism.

John Paul II at
http://tinyurl.com/pyzge5r

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Originally, there were

"Aristotelian physics, Platonic physics, Epicurean physics, Stoic physics; to speak colloquially, there was no metaphysically neutral physics."  --  Leo Strauss “An Epilogue” http://tinyurl.com/orcskgb Google books

Notice in passing what Strauss ironically calls "colloquial".  It is in fact the language common to professionals everywhere, universities, industry, military, government and media,  language meant primarily for written use, but has by now become dominant in spoken English as well. Strauss  uses it, but says

“this is, of course, my bad, modern lingo, but I must make myself understood”.

Leo Strauss 1967 Kant Seminar transcript .... context: "While happiness is radically subjective - this is, of course, my bad, modern lingo, but I must make myself understood - there are conditions of  happiness...." 

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And then there emerged

"..... a physics which seemed to be as metaphysically neutral as, say, mathematics, medicine, or the art of shoemaking."   --  Leo Strauss “An Epilogue” http://tinyurl.com/orcskgb Google books

Notice he says "seem". I don't yet know what the precaution means.

Alongside medicine and mathematics, which were at the time the most prestigious fields of study, Strauss mentions  "the art of shoemaking" which "in the general consideration"  is of lesser rank.

It is another tiny little sample of Strauss's elitism, and he must take the heat for it,  though he only meant to prevent your fast reader from assuming that metaphysical neutrality is itself a university degree or otherwise somehow highly respectable.

Hence from Leo Strauss “An Epilogue” http://tinyurl.com/orcskgb Google books

"The emergence of a metaphysically neutral physics made it possible for "science" to become independent of "philosophy."

"It paved the way for an economic science which is independent of ethics, for political science independent of political philosophy, ..."

"allowing people to be studied like rats, which went on in all seriousness though with negligible results"

 Leo Strauss “An Epilogue” http://tinyurl.com/orcskgb Google books

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Conclusion

Science without philosophy has a hard time establishing a difference between sense and nonsense.

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Churchill¨s First Big Money

At the time an officer's pay was small, the family was no longer rich, and to maintain his horses and his uniforms Churchill needed additional money.

Through his mother's contacts Churchill obtained an assignment to cover the war in South Africa  for The Morning Post.

Churchill's mother was American. She was very beautiful and had had no time to look after little Winston. Later she became Winston's best friend and resourceful manager.

As soon as he arrived in South Africa, he joined a scouting expedition on an armoured train. The enemy derailed the train and Churchill was captured.

He broke loose from prison, but it was 300 miles through enemy territory. He hid during the day and ran by night and jumped on a freight train, but he had no food and had to give up.

It was around midnight. He went to a farmhouse and knocked at the door.

The man who received him put a revolver on the table:

They gave him food and a place to hide and sleep in a deep dark mine where rats tried to eat his candles. He woke up to "the patter of little feet".

"One actually galloped across me".

The farmers helped him escape. It made him a national hero in Britain. He toured Britain and part of the US telling the story of his adventures to earn the money he needed to enter politics.
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In South Africa he was declared WANTED, and things became more dangerous both for him and for those who offered help.



C r e d i t s

Freely available at
https://archive.org/stream/rovingcommissino001321mbp/rovingcommissino001321mbp_djvu.txt


It is about his upbringing, his failures as a student, his formation as a soldier, all of it great reading for about two thirds of the book.

Towards the end it is all British Party politics, too complicated to understand.

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Churchill considered himself an uneducated man and envied people who had gone to the university. His formation had been military only.

As to his style, it shows hard work in all of its clumsy, but brave eloquence. --
Some 10 years after this was published, this eloquence became brave indeed, known and heeded the world over. 
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Spain: the Street View

In Spain, traditionally, most people owned their homes. Spain is Nº 1 worldwide in this regard.

Long before marriage, young people started to save towards a downpayment. So when the European Bank lowered its interst rates, there were lots of  people ready to buy. Spanish real estate prices rose quickly, making it advisable to buy the flat today rather than tomorrow.

This was how the bubble had started. For about 10 years prices had risen, buoyed by banks who offered longer and longer payback terms.

To build all those houses, Spain had taken in thousands of foreign workers who incidentally added to the demand of housing. They were also easier to cheat since they could not read the mortgage contracts which they signed.

Young people ended up with debts payable over 30 or 40 years even if the bank took their flat back. 


There were at least 1 500 000 unsold flats and houses. House kept falling, but "stopping the housing slide involves fixing the economy, and fixing the economy involves stopping the housing slide" (Edward Hugh).


As it turned out, young people had lightheartedly signed away their lives for housing and infrastructures they could not possibly afford.
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Peridis: The Eviction -- El País news online, Madrid http://elpais.com/autor/peridis/a/

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The courts became loaded with foreclosures of houses and flats that nobody wanted.  Where would the evicted families go?

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And where did the cash go?

 Drawing by Erlich at 

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/01/16/vinetas/1358294681_530738.html

 
It is a good question.
Partly it went into the best roads, train tracks, train stations, airports.

Madrid train station photographed by Daderot in public domain at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Invernadero_de_Atocha,_Madrid_-_view_2.JPG


More locally, the money went into parks, public buildings, schools, hospitals, and into residential development.

Some of these constructions have become too expensive to maintain, many have become victims to vandalism and theft.

Below there is a photo of a road leading nowhere and lined with building plots, each marked by a street light, each equipped with sewer pipes, power and communication lines.

And Spain, who used to have the most diverse little towns and pueblos, many of them despised as "pueblo feo", now has come to this:

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Natural Law

In the West, existence had largely configured itself on the Christian reading of the Bible. The Second Table of the Decalogue was taken for granted as a law also by those many happy souls who never wonder where it came from. To them it was like summer and winter, simply what there is.

In fact all these happy people lucked onto a perfect undestanding what natural law would be if it existed, but unfortunately...

This precisely is the theme of the basic controversy in the philosophy of law: Is there any natural right? The answer which prevailed prior to Socrates  seems to have been negative:

In God's view, all things are fair [noble] and good and just, but men have made the   supposition that some things are just and others are unjust. --

Heraclitus quoted by Leo Strauss in "Natural Right - a History".

For instance a new gun law comes out. Aren´t there many people who will say that the new law is not just?
They believe that they have their own sense or measuring stick of what is right or wrong.

Unlike Aquinas, they cannot wonder about the ancestry of their views.
Aquinas thought that the natural law is in our conscience as part of the eternal law governing God`s creation.

Aquinas in Catholic Theology quoted by Cardinal Newman :

"The natural law is an impression of the Divine Light in us, a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature" (Gousset, Theol. Moral., t. i. pp. 24, etc.).

Aquinas in his "Summa":

Aquinas learnt from Maimonides who had access to some Greek sources through the Arab language. Maimonides, who was Jewish, wrote in Arabic. When you first see it, you cannot believe your eyes: the Catholics got their Latin originals from Jewish translations of Moslem Arab documents based on Pagan Greek text.

It is a tongue twister.  Once you are over your surprise, some bit of sadness sets in seeing that for centuries things like that remain known only sparcely and only to very few people and remain buried under tons of things to read.

A.N. Whitehead quoted by Leo Strauss in "Natural Right - a History".

                 

For Leo Strauss, the answer to Heraclitus is this:

Notice he says "the cosmic order may be thought to be",  because we don't know what it really is; we only know what can be thought about it.

But that is part of another problem.

The Big Names
 Heraclitus .. circa 500 BC
Socrates  ... 470-399 BC
Plato ...       428-347 BC
Aristotle ....  384-322 BC

Maimonides .... 1135-1204
Aquino ...        1225-1274
Kant ...           1724-1804
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Churchill: The River War

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The drawing itself is by Churchill. He was 24 at the time. He was looking for income, because as a soldier he did not make enough to pay for his horses and for his uniforms. He thought that he could make it as a writer. 

At that age he still considered himself an uneducated man. He envied people who had studied at a university. He tried to enroll, but they would not take him.

So the River War became an all-out effort at literary prose. He personifies the Nile and the desert and turns them into savage people, dangerous, tricky, brave and cruel in pages and pages of brilliant metaphor. -- The level falls off  each time he summarizes encyclopedia information. Skip it.

Churchill's theme, his Leitmotiv, is forever the limits of the human effort in war.

"It cannot be denied that a battle ( ... ) is an event which is not controlled by strategy or organisation. --  ( ... )  The human element — in defiance of experience and probability — may produce a wholly irrational result."

Success depends partly on luck. The most exhaustive preparations might get foiled by accident, and so  the book's greatest chapter is "The Desert Railway". The hero of modern warfare is  some anonymous engineer.

"The daring pioneers of modern war started on their long march through the wilderness, dragging their railway behind them. —  Infantry, cavalry, guns, and gunboats might follow with speed and convenience."

And so a modern reader might not enjoy Churchill's prose. -- Maybe.

Anyway, there is a problem. Churchill is considered a racist by many people, and it is a touchy issue, but his bias is cultural and more like exasperation at the strain that Muslims, Arabs, Egyptians and black people imposed on UK strategic aims. Here is a quote:

Churchill was born in 1874.-- The River War was published in 1899; he would have started to write it when he was 23, and -- remember -- long before all hell broke loose.

Unlike his other books, this one is in public domain and can be downloaded from the Gutenberg project at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4943


Credits:

The desert in Lybia is by Lucca Galuzzi under under the CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Libya_4985_Tadrart_Acacus_Luca_Galuzzi_2007.jpg and explained as " Leaving traces on soft sand dunes in Tadrart Acacus, a desert area in western Libya, part of the Sahara."

The elephant photo is by Ikiwaner  under a GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Etosha_elefant.jpg

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