Heidegger's Style : On Philosophical Anthropology and Aesthetics

"Addressing Heidegger's continuing centrality to continental thought, Markus Weidler argues that Heidegger's prickly charm is best explained in terms of his great ingenuity, crafting a novel genre of writing which promises to harness the revelatory power of artworks for the purpose of philosophical inquiry. In doing so, Heidegger challenges the reader with a provocative form of artisan thinking, which for Weidler is central to understanding the significance of Heidegger's work overall. In Vorträge und Aufsätze (Public Lectures and Essays) Heidegger declares: 'once it has become anthropology, philosophy perishes from metaphysics.' Remarks critical of 'philosophical anthropology' are scattered throughout his writings, but so far commentators have not connected these tantalizing statements in any systematic way. This book deals with his hostility by addressing what we are to make of Heidegger's frequent but elusive dismissals of philosophical anthropology as a field of study. This examination of Heidegger's complex relation to philosophical anthropology traces how pioneering thinkers like Schelling and Schiller paved the way not only for Heidegger but also for some of his potential competitors, most notably Max Scheler and Georg Simmel. Weidler argues that confronting the puzzle over Heidegger's peculiar relation to philosophical anthropology is also one of the keys to explaining his popularity as a philosopher, which has endured despite revelations of his various personal and political failings."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 9 Abbreviations 11 Works by Heidegger 11 Works by Other Authors 12 Introduction: The Decisive Decade from 1936 to 1946 14 Part One: Back to the 1780s 30 Chapter 1: Philosophical Anthropology: Herder’s Pantheism as a Subtext for Heidegger’s First Schelling Lecture 32 Situating Heidegger’s first Schelling commentary 35 Kant, Herder, and pantheism 37 God as ground and God as existing 41 “Romantic philosophy of nature” and its detractors 45 Heuristic self-examination: Why start with Schelling rather than Hegel? 50 Chapter 2: Revelation: Heidegger’s Second Schelling Lecture vis-à-vis Scheler and Simmel 56 Schelling’s living God 60 Scheler’s religious phenomenology 63 Scheler and Heidegger contra Simmel 68 Simmel on life’s immanent transcendence 72 Heidegger’s second Schelling commentary as a philosophical teaser 79 Chapter 3: “The Origin of the Work of Art”: A Critique of Schiller Incognito and the Beginning of Artisan Thinking 83 Strife and play in the Origin essay 85 From preprophetic discourse to artisan thinking 92 Part Two: Battleground Nietzsche 100 Chapter 4: Heidegger’s Nietzsche Volumes: Nihilism, Physiological Aesthetics, and Volitional Metaphysics 102 Why Nietzschean nihilism is not “godless” 109 Physiological aesthetics and the meaning of “classical” 112 Volitional metaphysics: The will to perception 117 Chapter 5: Hegel and Nietzsche in Holzwege: Religious Skepticism, Witnessing, and “Subjectity” 120 Heidegger’s different Hegels 120 Religious skepticism: Resisting natural consciousness 123 Witnessing and unconditional “subjectity” 129 A “torn sock”? 133 Nietzsche and life’s perceptual appetite 135 Part Three: Poetics at the “Zero Hour” 144 Chapter 6: “Why Poets?”: Cultural Rebirth and the Poetic Inception of Piety 146 Culture critique and the monist movement 147 Examining Rilke’s angel 150 “Bodiless being” and representational thinking 156 Risking language 162 Chapter 7: The Letter on Humanism: Modulations of the German Poet in a Demonic Text 168 A cross section of four discourses 168 Dialectical twists in a demonic text 171 Communicative space and linguistic destiny 178 Three modulations of the German poet 181 Trust in “vital anecdotes” 185 CODA: Being and Time as an “Old-Fashioned” Book? 190 Chapter 8: Freedom for Death and Prussian Resolve 192 Critique of Iain Thomson 200 The memory problem 204 The contingency problem 208 “Running out into death” and “brute projection” 209 Conclusion: Faith and Fanaticism after Heidegger 214 Notes 224 Introduction: The Decisive Decade from 1936 to 1946 224 Chapter 1 225 Chapter 2 231 Chapter 3 234 Chapter 4 239 Chapter 5 242 Chapter 6 245 Chapter 7 247 Chapter 8 250 Conclusion: Faith and Fanaticism after Heidegger 254 Selected Bibliography 256 Heidegger 256 Single Works 256 General 258 Index 268 Addressing Heidegger's continuing centrality to continental thought, Markus Weidler argues that Heidegger's prickly charm is best explained in terms of his great ingenuity, crafting a novel genre of writing which promises to harness the revelatory power of artworks for the purpose of philosophical inquiry. In doing so, Heidegger challenges the reader with a provocative form of artisan thinking, which for Weidler is central to understanding the significance of Heidegger's work overall. In Vortrage und Aufsatze (Public Lectures and Essays) Heidegger declares: 'once it has become anthropology, philosophy perishes from metaphysics.' Remarks critical of 'philosophical anthropology' are scattered throughout his writings, but so far commentators have not connected these tantalizing statements in any systematic way. This book deals with his hostility by addressing what we are to make of Heidegger's frequent but elusive dismissals of philosophical anthropology as a field of study. This examination of Heidegger's complex relation to philosophical anthropology traces how pioneering thinkers like Schelling and Schiller paved the way not only for Heidegger but also for some of his potential competitors, most notably Max Scheler and Georg Simmel. Weidler argues that confronting the puzzle over Heidegger's peculiar relation to philosophical anthropology is also one of the keys to explaining his popularity as a philosopher, which has endured despite revelations of his various personal and political failings