Heidegger’s ‘Heritage’: Philosophy, Anti-Modernism and Cultural Pessimism 51

Again, to recapitulate a variant of Lyotard’s perspicacious insight, if Bourdieu’s assessment is correct, then there really is no Heidegger controversy since we are not dealing with an important thinker and certainly nothing of philosophical substance is to be found in his thought. Or to put things somewhat differently, we are dealing with a very different controversy (which may interest some people), that is, the possibility that those of us who have been labouring away on Heidegger’s thought for so many years have been on something of a fool’s errand. Of course that is what some people would have us believe but it is not, I contend, the real issue that should animate people who become interested in this topic only to be dragged into the mudslinging that dominates the recurring ‘controversy’ which is really just a flimsy front for the ongoing hostilities between so-called analytic and continental philosophers.

Zimmerman and the ‘influence’ of Spengler

In Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, Michael Zimmerman examines the development of Heidegger’s thought through the 1930s, including the emergence of his critique of technicity, in the light of various intellectual, political and cultural factors that appear, so Zimmerman believes, to have forged Heidegger’s particular brand of ‘anti-modernism’. Zimmerman suggests that Spengler exercised a significant influence on Heidegger’s ‘mature’ conception of technology and mass society noting that though Heidegger appeared to offer some clipped criticisms of Spengler’s approach in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he nevertheless presented an account of technological society which bore a marked resemblance to Spengler’s descriptions. Unfortunately, as was Zimmerman’s interpretative Achilles’ heel in an earlier study,18 there is a propensity to rely on tenuously established genealogies when it comes to Heidegger’s paths of thinking. Zimmerman is inclined to paper over substantial cracks of incompatibility between Heidegger and his putative intel-lectual forebears (in this case Spengler) as he looks to amplify any and every possible affinity, no matter how superficial, as though crucial aspects of Heidegger’s unique philosophical vision reduce directly to his intellectual, cultural and political heritage.

Zimmerman discusses Spengler’s influence on Heidegger in a specific sub-section from Chapter 2 of Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity – the sub-heading reads ‘Heidegger’s Critical Appropriation of Spengler in the Fight Against Modern Technology’. He frames this discussion with a truncated overview of Heidegger’s brief discussion of Spengler in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. In these lectures, Zimmerman explains, Heidegger chose to ‘disclose Germany’s mood at the end of the 1920s’ by examining the ‘works of four representative authors – Oswald Spengler, Ludwig Klages, Max Scheler, and Leopold Ziegler. Heidegger’s comments on Spengler and Scheler are particularly important.’19 Zimmerman misjudges the tone of Heidegger’s highly qualified remarks in this short section from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics suggesting that Heidegger was largely in agreement with Spengler’s assessment of things; in fact, this short section from Heidegger’s 1929 lectures reads as a fairly straightforward criticism of Spengler, on Heidegger’s part.