"I have to leave it here as an open question whether his radical historicism translates into extreme historicism or relativism in his own thought. It certainly points in this direction. If history is a process of unfolding that relegates the truth about justice and nobility to a particular time period, it is hard to see by what principle one would make large cuts between historical time periods rather than short or sharp cuts, even between a given individual’s life."
I've wondered about this as well.
It seems difficult to square any absolute value judgments with Heideggerian historicism. Down that road lies Foucault and Derrida and that ilk, along with the strands of analytic naturalism that (knowingly or not) incorporate "deconstruction" into their anti-realist and relativist theories of mind and nature.
At the same time, I find it difficult to treat Heidegger himself as any such creature. Perhaps because I've been tainted by a certain 'left-wing' strain of Heideggerians -- I'm thinking here of Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, and even Charles Taylor -- and fellow travelers like Iris Murdoch, I've come to take Heidegger as less of an anti-realist relativist than a rather extreme sort of quietist about the "Background" of situated human life.
The fact of existence is the one thing we can't truly question -- after all, it persists within and throughout history and historical epochs of (un)concealment. Yet it seems ineffable, for it defies any final articulation in any language or conceptual scheme or whatever system of representations.
All that is to say, whatever might be Unconditional will always and necessarily defy any final and absolute interpretation, at least in human terms (here I think the comparison with and influence of Kant becomes important). Yet this does not mean there is no reality beyond Dasein -- if anything we know, and not without paradox, that Dasein's being is nothing of Dasein's own doing.
While this certainly opens the door to the "postmodernist" bogeyman and the reductive scientific nihilist alike, it isn't clear from me that Heidegger's thinking inevitably leads there, or that Heidegger himself endorsed any strong form of relativism.
Another excellent essay. These are good fun.
"I have to leave it here as an open question whether his radical historicism translates into extreme historicism or relativism in his own thought. It certainly points in this direction. If history is a process of unfolding that relegates the truth about justice and nobility to a particular time period, it is hard to see by what principle one would make large cuts between historical time periods rather than short or sharp cuts, even between a given individual’s life."
I've wondered about this as well.
It seems difficult to square any absolute value judgments with Heideggerian historicism. Down that road lies Foucault and Derrida and that ilk, along with the strands of analytic naturalism that (knowingly or not) incorporate "deconstruction" into their anti-realist and relativist theories of mind and nature.
At the same time, I find it difficult to treat Heidegger himself as any such creature. Perhaps because I've been tainted by a certain 'left-wing' strain of Heideggerians -- I'm thinking here of Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, and even Charles Taylor -- and fellow travelers like Iris Murdoch, I've come to take Heidegger as less of an anti-realist relativist than a rather extreme sort of quietist about the "Background" of situated human life.
The fact of existence is the one thing we can't truly question -- after all, it persists within and throughout history and historical epochs of (un)concealment. Yet it seems ineffable, for it defies any final articulation in any language or conceptual scheme or whatever system of representations.
All that is to say, whatever might be Unconditional will always and necessarily defy any final and absolute interpretation, at least in human terms (here I think the comparison with and influence of Kant becomes important). Yet this does not mean there is no reality beyond Dasein -- if anything we know, and not without paradox, that Dasein's being is nothing of Dasein's own doing.
While this certainly opens the door to the "postmodernist" bogeyman and the reductive scientific nihilist alike, it isn't clear from me that Heidegger's thinking inevitably leads there, or that Heidegger himself endorsed any strong form of relativism.
Great essay again. Please keep them coming.