The King of Beingest Being

              In modern philosophy, certain names appear almost ubiquitously throughout the monumental texts, and the one and only king of the beingest being himself, Martin Heidegger, is among this highly revered nominal class of modernity’s philosophical influences.  However, ubiquitous though his work may seem, it is important to note that it only represents one school of thought on the subject of ontology (or the various forms this subject might take, i.e. phenomenology, existentialism, etc.) and it is a decidedly Middle-European one at that.

            Because his name has occurred so often in my readings while studying English (especially in works by Derrida, Foucalt, Lacan, and other such theorists), I’ve often wondered why English students are given so little in way of an education on Heidegger and his much debated ideas.  For instance, after all the time I’ve spent reading writers who are unquestionably and overwhelmingly influenced by Heidegger, all I knew about the man himself before approaching this reading was that he is often associated with Nazi Germany and that he was notable for his contributions to a particular school of philosophy called phenomenology.  On top of this, I also knew that it was this same “particular school of philosophy” that was largely responsible for the inevitable consternation that so often accompanies readings of theoretical monster-texts like Margins of Philosophy, so one might see how this limited understanding of Heidegger might lend itself to a biased position and narrow-minded view of his work.  This is the reason that I decided to assess whether or not, in my opinion, Heidegger’s philosophy deserves a more privileged position in Western academic settings.  Seeing that a reading of only one chapter of one book written by an author who has published multiple volumes of work in no way constitutes a complete assessment of that author’s work, the present writing will represent my early findings and opinions on the matter while attempting to create further avenues for inquiry.

            Approaching the writing of a Nazi-Phenomenon, Monster-text breeder such as Martin Heidegger does present its challenges.  For one, he wrote in German, and as aptly demonstrated by the sequential stream of translators notes that punctuates the English version of Being and Time that I am reading, German is a language that doesn’t always translate very well.  I truly think that a large part of the difficulty of understanding Heidegger’s philosophy lies behind this linguistic barrier between German and non-German speakers (this is true also in the case of Freud or Nietzsche ), but this is a topic for another conversation altogether.  Getting past the rough translation, I am immediately struck by Heidegger’s seeming intention to establish new jargon for pre-established philosophical ideas that already had a certain position in the structure of classical or Western philosophy.  One example of this would be Heidegger’s conception of Dasein and its similarity to Platonic philosophies of form (i.e. being and becoming).  By appropriating this Platonic ideal into his philosophy and then twisting it a bit so as to change its metaphysical significance in the context of his system of thought, Heidegger manages to redefine old concepts that then become all his own.  Not only is an extension of Nietzsche’s intention to depart from classical Grecian philosophy, but it also marks a decided deviation from the accepted tradition of Western thought marking a crucial moment in the history of Central European Culture.  After reading the chapter, I thought I might look further into the idea of this rift between two ideological factions and I stumbled onto this video on Youtube.  See Below.

            So it seems that Nietzsche is an incredibly important figure in the formation of the ever-widening chasm between Western and Central European philosophy, and I think he very well may even mark the beginning of this dichotomy’s formation, at least as far as textual chronology is concerned (that is to say Central European culture has long been rather free-standing in terms of its relationship to Western traditions).  I have to say, I have read Bertrand Russell’s work (as well as David Hume’s, John Locke’s, George Berckely’s etc.), and I find many of the ideas that Heidegger is trying to reinvent already in the pages of these writers.  I personally find the Western school to be superior and I’m not convinced Heidegger adds anything to these ideas that is entirely necessary.  I do like the fact, as Russell mentions in the video, that Heidegger is a “literary philosopher” as opposed to an “academic philosopher,” and I think this distinction is interesting.  I can begin to see the utility of applying Heidegger to certain ideas of literary criticism and perhaps I can see why the French theoreticians of the 60’s rely so heavily on him.  Anyway, at this point I’m undecided and hope to get some clarity on the matter as I delve deeper into the catalog of his writing.