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Title: Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question by Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington, Rachel Bowlby ISBN: 0-226-14317-1 Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr Pub. Date: 01 July, 1989 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Watch out for the whole world, not just for politics.
Comment: If you read this book, you might notice how one century tends to follow another, but certain problems could crop up, particularly in places which don't define the world quite like we do, philosophically or religiously. I expected to spend a full weekend trying to figure out what this book has to say, but it dropped right into my preconceptions.
Some questions are more unsettling than others, and the question of spirit in Heidegger is worse when Derrida makes it perfectly clear that Heidegger knew how to avoid the question in purely philosophical works, firstly in Sein und Zeit, but treated spirit like a bandwagen that "the leap" (p. 32) would land on for those "in the movement of an authentication or identification which wish themselves to be properly German" (p. 33) in his famous Rectorship Address six years later, in 1933. The key paragraph of that address pictures the Germans, for whom the "will to essence creates for our people its most intimate and extreme world of danger, in other words its true spiritual world." (p. 36) My confusion about this doesn't really start until page 41, where "Spirit is its double." The consideration moves to the Einfuhrung (1935) which "repeats the invocation of spirit launched in the Address. It even relaunches it, explains it, extends it, justifies it, specifies it, surrounds it with unprecedented precautions." (p. 41). What has become a concern for Heidegger is "The darkening of the world implies this destitution of spirit, its dissolution, consuming, its repression, and its misinterpretation. We are attempting at present to elucidate this destitution of spirit from just one perspective, and precisely that of the misinterpretation of spirit. We have said: Europe is caught in a vice between Russia and America, which metaphysically come down to the same thing in regard to their belonging to the world and their relation to spirit." (p. 59). The collapse of German idealism a century earlier was, to Heidegger, the problem of an age "which was not strong enough to remain equal to the grandeur, the breadth, and the original authenticity of this spiritual world, that is, to realize it truly." (p. 60). I dropped a lot of German words from the passages I quoted, and the bracketed "[to the character of their world, or rather to their character-of-world, Weltcharakter]", for the benefit of those who might have thought that he already said that. Plenty of attention is paid to language, but of all the foreign words which might mean spirit, I'm barely aware of how the Latin word spiritus might be sung in church with a different meaning than how German philosophers arrogate about geistliche or Geistigkeit.
Page 63 has a sentence on how the metaphysics of the latter word as well as the Christian value, "a word which will itself thus find itself doubled" form some "profound relationship with what is said twenty years earlier of the darkening of world and spirit." (p. 63). If you are following this, this might be the book for you, if you still want to know, "Heidegger names the demonic. Evidently not the Evil Genius of Descartes . . ." (p. 62).
Rating: 3
Summary: The Derrida you shouldn't begin with
Comment: "I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." Derrida has a flair for tackling different philosophical in unique and roundabout ways. If there can be any "main thesis" to this book (Derrida, I believe would "avoid" such a "thesis" statement) is an in depth and deeply nuanced examination of Heideggars' use of several german words "Geist, geistig, geistlich" and their evolution in his work, including his avoiding using them, over several years. The thread of discussing weaves through Heideggar's ever present idea of "questioning" the "question" and how, insidiously, through various textual operations, Heideggar privileges the "question" [fragen].This includes a look at Heideggar's seminal text Sein und Zeid (known to anglo-philosphers as Being and Time) and even several essays on one of Heideggar's favorite poets Georg Trakl.
In the end, this book is one of Derrida most dense, and "closed" discussions. What I mean by that, is that someone who is not sufficiently versed in Heideggar's philosophy, various emtymological aspects of teh german and french language, Heideggar's relation to Georg Trakl and ultimately the Nazi party, will be easily left out in the cold in this one. Derrida begins with several complicated questions and is ruthless in his close-textual readings and endless re-contextualization of Heideggar's work.
This is his forte. Its just not a great introduction text. Nor even a good intermediate text. Start with Of grammatology. Not Of Spirit. And return to it later with a deeper understanding of Derrida's strategy before tackling this one.
Rating: 5
Summary: about of spirit, too
Comment: An open question in the (by now) standard readings of Heidegger is his relation to Geist - spirit. From prescribed avoidance to evangelical inclusion over twenty five years, what motivated this change in Heidegger's pronouncements on spirit?
By following the formations, transformations, presuppositions and destinations of this sea change, Derrida once more opens the question of the question, that famous Heideggerian question or questioning which originates human kind: "Human being is that being which questions the being of its Being."
In reading any Derrida analytique, one is made aware all over again of the many echos surrounding every voice, every attempt to speak. This is particularly poignant with regard to Heidegger, and Derrida does not gloss over the German's naziism as much as trace the hubris of his fallen state.
Is there a conclusion? There is no conclusion. It's enough to keep talking...not to interrupt.
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Title: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) by Martin Heidegger ISBN: 025320478X Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger, Gregory Fried, Richard Polt ISBN: 0300083289 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive by Giorgio Agamben ISBN: 189095117X Publisher: Zone Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida, David Wills ISBN: 0226143066 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Studies in Continental Thought) by Martin Heidegger, Richard Taft ISBN: 0253210674 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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