Comments on: Heidegger the Shaman

By: Vee Har O

Vee Har O — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:24:04 +0000

A very lucid, clear, and human reflection of Heidegger.

Steve, thou are the new BOB.

By: +Wulfila

+Wulfila — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:03:02 +0000

That all sounds reasonable – maybe I’ve just become thin-skinned about the whole Heidegger debacle.

By: Steve Beyer

Steve Beyer — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:20:56 +0000

Thank you for your very interesting comment. You raise an important issue, which deserves thinking about. To what extent is the power of Heidegger’s thought vitiated by his personal failures? If he were, say, a philosopher of logic, then we might well sever the philosophy from the person. But Heidegger specifically claimed a nexus between thought and life, which presumably included his own as well. It is intelligible to ask of Heidegger — and probably not of the philosopher of logic — whether he is philosophizing in bad faith.

With that said, it may be worth dealing with Heidegger’s failings for two additional reasons. First, of course, is an appreciation of irony and a recognition that people are complex and imperfect. And, for me, there is also the temptation to point out that shamans are not flawless spiritual masters, but rather, like the rest of us, live in the valley of soul, with sorrow, sickness, regret, and mess.

By: +Wulfila

+Wulfila — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:50:33 +0000

None of the biographical info you have provided is untrue and what it reveals is not laudable, but is it socially obligatory to run Heidegger down for a couple of lines at the beginning and end of a presentation in order to earn the right to say anything nice about him at all? (I notice this tendency in most pedagogy or writing concerning Heidegger, when it’s considered acceptable to think or write about Heidegger at all).

I think we should resist the tendency to put warning labels on philosophers and their ideas. It should be taken for granted that no one’s ideas should be accepted uncritically – we shouldn’t need to provide special disclaimers. Plus it’s difficult to subsequently restore any measure of credibility to someone we’ve already thoroughly rhetorically trashed.

A good and lucid summary of the later work of Heidegger however – many thanks for it.