Heidegger's Polemos by Fried Gregory

Author:Fried, Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2000-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

“WHO ARE WE?”

But what makes a Volk “our Volk"? During much of the principal period of our study (from Being and Time to the end of the Second World War), Heidegger regularly asks a simple question: Who are we? Wer sind wir?20 He begins asking this question in his lecture course of 1929-30, when the world suffered the first shocks of the global economic collapse, and it is an important theme in the Contributions to Philosophy. In 1929, Heidegger recognizes that “everywhere, there are convulsions, crises, catastrophes, emergencies” (GA 29/30, 243)—but he understands these as simply the foreground to a more fundamental emergency: the question of who we are in our belonging to Being. “Not this social distress, not that political confusion; not this impotence of science, not that corrosion of art; not this groundlessness of philosophy, not that feebleness of religion—the urgent need is not that this or that emergency presses us in one way or another. Rather, what oppresses in a concealed, yet most profound, manner is this: the lack of an essential oppression [Bedrängnis] of our Dasein as a whole” (GA 29130, 244).

This lack (Ausbleiben) of a great burden leaves Dasein facing—not a revelatory Angst before the abyss—but a concealed terror before the timeless boredom of an ontological void (die langweilende Leere). The economic, political, social, and cultural crises of the world depression in general and of the Weimar Republic in particular do not in and of themselves concern Heidegger, for these too are at most signs of Dasein’s inability to take on the burden of Being. The search for reforms and solutions will only cover over completely the “concealed” emergency. So instead, Heidegger seeks the way in which “our Dasein” is capable of accepting its burden (GA 29130, 248), “our” oppression by the insistent call of a destiny to confront Being as Da-sein and so to confront the question of who we are.21 Ultimately, as we shall see, his answer is that “we” are the German Volk, but that as an answer to the question, the Volk must remain a response, not a resolution. “Who are we?” must remain at issue in the awakening of a new attunement to Being.

The question Who are we? is akin to a question implied by the polis. What is the scope of political belonging? With whom is the abode of a historical community shared? The ancient “city” of Athens extended beyond the walls, homes, shops, public buildings, and temples of the urban area to the outlying farms, estates, and silver mines, and even to Athens’ colonies and subject allies. Still, these ontic, geographic features do not define the polis. As Hannah Arendt has emphasized, Pericles knew of the Athenians that “Wherever you go, you will be a polis”22 —having witnessed the polis survive despite the evacuation of the whole population by sea and the destruction of the city by the Persians. The polis is the ontological pole around which a historical Volk finds its horizon, and this pole is always ontologically in question in polemos.

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