Heidegger and Auschwitz: A note

Whither reason?

(It will surprise no scholar of the matter that I reiterate this idea here. I merely wish to note a certain problem.)

The scandal of thought in the twentieth century can perhaps be summed up in the conjunction of the following three statements, and the reflection that this conjunction demands of us:

1) “Nothing is without reason.” Leibniz said this. Heidegger calls this, in his book of that title, “The Principle of Reason.”

If thought is reason, then this would be a consequence of Parmenides’s statement at the origins of Western philosophy that “What is for thought, is for Being.” Reason is generally what causes, explains, or justifies. Its use seems to secure what is said or claimed or observed with a necessity as the consequence of some prior given.

2) “There is no ‘why’ here” (“Hier ist kein Vernunft”), said to the writer Primo Levi by a guard at Auschwitz in reply to the question, “Why?”

3) “The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether it is seen.” The mystical writer Angelus Silesius, also quoted by Heidegger in the above-mentioned volume.

This conjunction of statements marks a problem of ethics that is a philosophical problem.

In America today, in particular, no one cares much about thinking clearly. People complain about, and justify their claims instead with, the famous “facts,” arguing over whose facts are true, which is to say factual facts, real facts, like observations confirmed by a (repeated) looking at the things themselves (as they appear). Such is arguing over what is real. Perhaps revealing the Cartesian doubt that nothing is real, and ascribing responsibility for the thing being shown or explained as being what it seemed to show itself to be, to the Other who says it is as such and not otherwise. Which is perhaps because what is can be negated; it can be supposed that in fact it is not, or might not be.

We still believe in things like fairness and justice. But the notion is common that this is not a matter of reasoning, so it must just be one of experience. Or else we have true judgments but only experts in reasoning can explain for us when and how this is so. Much in professional life is explained, especially to non-professionals subject somehow to the authority of the experts, as being true because said and authorized as true by someone with the right authorization to exercise authority. (Ever tried to persuade a psychiatrist you disagree with? It’s like persuading a police officer; good luck!)

I suggest that for starters we agree that each of the following statements is necessarily false:
1) Nothing that happens can really be explained. Whether so that we can know that it is just, or know what to about the seeming fact that it isn’t.
2) Everything is explained by the reasons that those who think can give for doing them.

What constitutes a good reason, or a good enough reason?

Reasoning largely concerns the given. What role then has imagination in thinking?

If evil is without reason, what about the good? If justification gives us justice but has been proven meaningless and blind, is the good of a life or world a happiness beyond law and justice?

People can very well “feel as if” (“feel that” seems to violate logic and sense) something that others do is unjust (not as it should be) because they don’t like it. If you take this up with anyone in authority or attached to it, they may give you a reason sufficient for them, which might well take the form “I know you don’t like it, but it is necessary.” What does that mean? Does all justification and so justice turn on necessity? On things being as they “ought” to be? To what or whom would social realities owe or have to answer in order that they can be as is “ought”?

(To God? But what does that mean? God has a model, template, paradigm or program for how things ought to be? The Orthodox Jewish philosopher Soloveitchik thought this; it is one view of the Torah and its “commandments".’ A view that inclines to legal positivism, preferring law as given in the hypothetical speech of the divine authority to holding as prior concrete persons as calling for some care or respect that goes beyond the fact of positive or negative authorizations; this quarrel has animated philosophical ethics since Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, which asks if the good is loved by the gods because it is good, or the good good because perfect beings love it.)

One answer may be to hold in suspect all actions that appear to need a claim to justification, along with those justifications, but in favor not of justifying injustice and its justification claims, but un-justifying being and doing from law and justice and justice’s demand that they be set right. With this would go all notions of a divine and supreme authority whose function is largely to be court of appeal on behalf of or against secular governmental claims, so that the highest authorities can be themselves criticized, which is possible simply because they do appear, as divine authority does not, God having no face, at least, metaphorically (but a face is a mask and metaphor) that we can see.

We want to think, and we may suppose that thinking is different from just accepting things as they are. We want to separate the seeming acceptance or recognition in perception itself from that of a legitimation. We want to say a truer No and a truer Yes.

I beg pardon of Heideggerians more adept in these matters than I. I actually believe that Heidegger’s thought gives us the tools to think (understand, criticize, and judge, that is, oppose) Auschwitz more radically, thoroughly, and decisively than almost any other thinking in the period since then.

To be continued.