Heidegger, Žižek and Revolution

164 Pages·2014·1.464 MB·English

by  Tere Vadén (auth.)

Heidegger, Žižek and Revolution
PERSPECTIVES OF CRITICAL THEORY AND EDUCATION
Volume 1
Series Editor
Olli-Pekka Moisio, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Advisory Board
Stephen Brookfield, University of St. Thomas Minneapolis, USA
Martin Jay, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Douglas Kellner, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
Michael A. Peters, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), USA
Juha Suoranta, University of Tampere, Finland
Christiane Thompson, Martin-Luther-University at Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Scope
This series maps the field of critical theory and its role in articulating the central
problems of education, schooling, culture, and human learning and development
in the current historical social, political, economical and global situation. It aspires
to build a consistent approach to philosophy and sociology of education from the
viewpoint of critical theory, as well as new openings for the future critical theory
of education. It will also examine examples of pedagogical experiments, new
utopian thinking, and educational policies with a strong accent on actual policies
and examples. Series will commission books on the Frankfur t School critical theory
in relation to the question of education and social settings of human learning and
development. It seeks authors who can demonstrate their understanding of the
history and systematical issues in the tradition of the Frankfurt School in the setting
of pedagogy, education and learning.
Heidegger, Žižek and Revolution
Tere Vadén
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6209-681-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-682-0 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-683-7 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858,
3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
A Revolution, After All? 1
Radical Heidegger as the Starting Point 2
Chapter 2: Metaphysics is Politics 5
Truth is Not Neutral 5
Heidegger and Žižek in Everyday Politics 8
Heideggerian Marxism and Žižek as the New Marcuse? 12
The Problem with the Liberal Subject 16
Chapter 3: Heidegger on Revolution 27
The Subject, the Worker, the Polis 27
“Nur Noch Die Jugend Kann Uns Retten” 38
Heidegger’s Step and Its Direction 52
Chapter 4: What is Wrong in Heidegger’s Revolution? 65
A Small Man Living in Hard Times 65
The Liberal Criticism: Too Much Postmodernism 68
Decisionism 71
The French Critiques: Too Little Postmodernism 79
Nazism as Anticommunism 82
Nazism as Asubjective National Experience 83
The Typical Marxist Critique 88
Žižek’s Untypical Marxist Critique and Praise 96
Chapter 5: Industrial Agriculture and Concentration
Camps or the Will and Evil 111
Chapter 6: Žižek on a See-Saw 127
Chapter 7: Žižek and Heidegger Avec Means 139
Bibliography 155
v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The origin of this text is a course on Heidegger and Žižek in the University of
Tampere; I want to thank all participants for lively discussions. The writing itself
was made possible through a grant by the Finnish Association of Non-Fiction
Writers. Warmest thanks also to Juha Suoranta and Mika Hannula who gave crucial
comments and criticism on the manuscript along the way.
vii

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A REVOLUTION, AFTER ALL?
If the last century was characterised by the widening scope and deeper penetration
of capitalism, modernism, economic growth, mass culture and representational
democracy in nation states, it was also a century of revolutions against these
developments. The October revolution in 1917 in Russia and the National Socialist
revolution in 1933 in Germany were the most impressive challengers to liberal
capitalism in Europe. In their distinct ways, both revolutions tried to reinstate ideals
absent from bourgeois materially oriented civilization and to tackle the problem
of economic and social inequality. Both failed and in the process took their crown
jewels, “socialist man/woman” and “Aryan master-race”, to their graves. But
inequality has not disappeared, and even if postmodernism has put a wet blanket
on utopias and ideals, most people are not happy with the vile harvest provided by
individualistic capitalism—vile, it is often assumed, because of wrong values or a
lack of values altogether.
The responses that Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
present in the face of the catastrophic failures of the revolutions they admire—
the socialist and the National Socialist—are similar. Both continue to insist that
revolutionary change is necessary, but at the same time emphasise the role of
careful and painstaking thought. The work of both thinkers is shot through with an
urgent awareness of crisis, propelling them to untiring and unyielding philosophical
resistance. In the 1950’s and 1960’s Heidegger speaks of the need to “be prepared
for being prepared” and hints that maybe we need to wait 300 years before a new
opening. Our contemporary Žižek is both more impatient and hesitant. At times
he predicts that capitalism will face a cliff very soon, at times he claims that the
20th century saw too much of the action urged by Marx (“Philosophers have only
interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”) and too little
calm and unhurried thought. Despite having once burnt their fingers and despite
the genuine care they want to take in matters of philosophy, both thinkers are set
alight by the idea of total upheaval: “If only we could think and enact a proper
revolution…”
Our proposal is that we spend some time attending to this hope for a genuine,
properly thought-out and enacted revolution. On one hand, we can agree about the
assessment of the situation. Really, things can not continue as they are. Heidegger’s
warnings about the dangers of technology and Žižek’s reminders of how exploitation
and injustice are a part and parcel of all types of capitalism hold true. A genuine
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