Heidegger 1: Metaphysics So What?

[koganbot]

Am currently reading Martin Heidegger's "The Word Of Nietzsche" (it's in The Question Concerning Technology And Other Essays, no preview available through Google Books, unfortunately), at the recommendation of Philosophy David 1.* I'm only a few pages into the essay, but I have a question that I think is quite discussable whether one has read the essay or not. Heidegger, elucidating Nietzsche, writes "Metaphysics is history's open space wherein it becomes a destining that the suprasensory world, the Ideas, God, the moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, civilization, suffer the loss of their constructive force and become void." My question would be: how important is one's belief or disbelief in "metaphysics" and "the suprasensory world" etc.? What if one had no opinion one way or another? Or one had strong opinions, but those opinions were irrelevant to most of what one actually did in one's life? What force in the world do such beliefs actually have? My impression so far is that Nietzsche, and most likely Heidegger as well, simply assume the importance of such beliefs/disbeliefs. Whereas I don't think we get to do that, to assume their importance rather than gauge their importance. (But then, being only a few pages in, I may be misinterpreting Nietzsche's and Heidegger's assumptions.)

For instance, if one doesn't believe in God, why would one assume that the idea of God necessarily has any constructive force to lose? What Heidegger means by "constructive force" is something like "determining the world from above and without." The idea of God could have social force, in the same way that belief in hell could have social force, but I don't see how it ever could possibly have "constructive force" as Heidegger seems to be using the term.

*It turns out that all philosophers at American colleges and universities are named David. This is to distinguish our philosophy departments from Australian philosophy departments.

Comments

[koganbot]

may not be an attempt at a new 'ultimate' but to rethink philosophy's task

This is probably what it is, but I wonder why he believes "rethinking philosophy's task" is necessary, given that we now know that philosophy's task, upon the conviction of Phil Spector, is to create new girl groups. I'd say that Puffy, Danity et al. produced better philosophy than The-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Electrik Red have so far. (Seriously, why would one think that there's a specifically philosophical task left to do? This is a question I don't think Rorty, for instance, ever even gave a rudimentary answer to.)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

well 'philosophy' has a certain authority in the C19th/C20th German academic world. HD exploits this in his political role as a University rector under the Nazis; when he (in my view) backs away, one of his concerns is to reclaim 'philosophy' from its exploitation in a nationalistic direction (since philosophy is seen as THE German attribute from at least Kant's time). This is almost certainly also a reason for giving the lecture courses on Nietzsche at this time. I think there is more to it than this for HD, but I think his position (or certainly the way he describes it) changes - it is different in Being and Time, in this period, and almost certainly different in his later work, where he distinguishes thinking from philosophy, and sees it as something that happens rarely, and poetically (the creation of new possibilities in language).