The deconstructed ethics of Martin Heidegger, or, the university sous rature

Abstract

Could there be a better instance of ethical conflict at the scene of the modern Western university than the case of Martin Heidegger, who in 1933 became a Nazi, arguably to elevate his own standing and career? In this article I examine the opposing ethical forces that animated Heidegger’s brief foray into Nazism, to ask whether the same forces continue to be found in the technocratized university described by Bill Readings. I address Heidegger’s own philosophy as a context in which these conflicting ethical forces are confronted, using metaphorical references to Pollyanna and Cujo. This absorption of literary allusions within a contribution to educational philosophy seeks deliberately to break the stranglehold that empiricism has on the discipline of education. It regards the hegemony of empiricism as an ideological fetishism. I am using the work of Jacques Derrida to deconstruct the idea of the university, with Heidegger’s political opportunism as symptomatic of current patterns of self-marketing, self-promotion, and entrepreneurialism amongst academics.

Keywords:

• ethics
• Derrida
• Heidegger
• university

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Cf. Porter (1958, 45-6) Chapter 6, “A Question of Duty”.

2 Readers who notice that I use the masculine pronoun “he” to designate the teacher or learner may be assured that I am aware of the risk that this reinforces a phallogocentric structure; moreover, I am only too conscious of the gender-neutrality that normally accompanies that tendency within educational discourse, and have discussed this elsewhere.

3 School teachers, by contrast to university teachers, are not necessarily identifiable as intellectuals.

4 For English translation of this interview (which was not published until 1976, after Heidegger’s death) see: “Only a God can save us: the Spiegel Interview”, in Heidegger (1981).

5 “Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein Gefragtes]. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something [Anfragen bei…]. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes]….the inquiry does not become transparent to itself until all these constitutive factors of the question have themselves become transparent” (Heidegger 1962, 24-25). As Jacques Derrida interprets this passage, he shows that Heidegger is distinguishing the precomprehended entity about which a question may be asked, from the “horizon or this opening of being in which every being whatsoever appears [which itself] can quite obviously not itself be a being” (Derrida, 2016, 29).

6 “Today, in any case, the university is what has become its margin….the university is a (finished) product. I would almost call it the child of the inseparable couple metaphysics and technics. At the least, the university furnished a space or topological configuration for such an offspring. The paradox is that at the moment this offspring exceeds the places assigned it and the university becomes small and old, its “idea” reigns everywhere, more and better than ever. Threatened, as I said a moment ago, by an invasive margin, since non-university research societies, public, official, or otherwise, can also form pockets within the university campus. Certain members of the university can play a part there, irritating the insides of the teaching body like parasites” (Derrida 2004, 94-95).

7 Cf. King (1981, 23-24).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Peers

Chris Peers is Senior Lecturer in education at Monash University. His research focuses on the deconstruction of educational concepts. Chris is currently completing a second doctorate in cultural studies, with a thesis about Western philosophy’s conceptualization of the family.