Decisiveness and Passion
In Heidegger’s Children, Richard Wolin quotes Hans Jonas on why he should have seen Heidegger’s Nazism earlier: it’s embedded in Heidegger’s talk of “resoluteness” and “decisiveness.” Says Jonas, whereas Heidegger accused idealist philosophy of being a step removed from the world,
one could accuse him of something much more serious: the absolute formalism of his decisionism, where decision as such becomes the highest virtue.” (132)
If this is right (and it’s been too long since I read Being and Time to be sure), it means Heidegger gives us no way of distinguishing a “resolute decision” to support the worst of German nationalism from a decision to work in a refugee camp or to definitely go on the Atkins diet next year.
I seem to recall this Cluetrain book that talks about the importance of passion. And in that it’s echoing Tom Peters’ call for passionate commitment to serving one’s customers. (I like Peters’ new book, Re-Imagine, btw.) Isn’t Cluetrain guilty of the same content-free call for a form of commitment?
Granted, we’re not talking about Nazism here, but what do you do with a pointy-haired boss who is passionate about creating a truly oppressive, soul-less business environment for the people who report to him? It’d be foollish to deny that PHB’s can ever be passionate. There are Taylorist guys with stopwatches dedicated to squeezing the life out of an organization who are completely committed to what they’re doing: They spend their spare time reading about it, they can’t wait to tell you about it, and they sleep well at night convinced that every day they’re making the world a little better.
So, no, passion isn’t enough. Passionate oppression is no better than dispassionate oppression. (It might be worse. I don’t know.) But decisiveness is often the opposite of passion. It wants to end the suspense and take an act, any act. It doesn’t like the doubt and uncertainty that is built into passion because decisiveness doesn’t like possibility. It wants the future to be nailed down, and the decision is the first bang of the hammer. Decisiveness is essentially disengaged from the openness that is the future. Passion is the embrace of that openness. Just think about the difference between a manager who is overly-decisive and one who is passionate about the company’s reason for existence.
Passion by itself isn’t enough: Some of them Nazis were pretty damn passionate. But pound for pound, I’ll take passion over decisiveness any day.
This sounds a lot like discussion around issues raised by the questions put to you most recently by a certain intrepid interviewer who must remain nameless at this time.
Or more succinctly:
“Take what you have gathered from coincidence
Your empty handed paynter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets…”
ZZZzzz… huh? whut… who’s there? Passion and decisiveness? Facets and diamonds? Hmmm….
You cant fight passion..
Final Score: Athens 20, Sparta 19
Although the Spartans had a virtually insurmountable lead at half-time, the Athenians came roaring back, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to eek out a victory in the final moments. Next season truly promises to be sparkling.
If Jonas is quoted as finding enough in Heidegger’s principle of “resoluteness” to predict his turn to National Socialism then I think he has fallen short. You can’t get Heidegger on Nazism with resoluteness alone.
I’m no fan of Heidegger’s construction of authenticity and resoluteness, but where Jonas and perhaps also your own concern that Heidegger had no way to distinguish between a resolute pursuit of National Socialism and work in a refugee camp are somewhat misdirected is due to an oversimplification of Heidegger’s move to avoid formal normative ethics. He might say, in response to both of you, that resoluteness isn’t an automatic connection to Nazism, or something like “passion” or “decisiveness” Instead, it is grounded on Dasein’s temporal and social context, one that we can only truly grasp by realizing our “throwness” into this context and by coming to terms with our inescapable death. It is this idea that gives Heidegger an out which helps him escape the kind of criticism you have directed at him, but also ties him to a kind of historicist and frighteningly conservative interpretation of the range of authentic choices we can possibly make. I think this is the best place to question Heidegger, and concede that his compound concept of resoluteness hides much worthy of objection.
Great comments, Konrad. You’re right (IMO) to put resoluteness in the context of Heidegger’s attempt to avoid prescriptive ethical principles. Thanks.
My understanding of the Jonas point isn’t that Nazism follows from resoluteness but that resoluteness allows one to choose Nazism, so long as one is resolute.
Two other points perhaps connect resoluteness to Nazism, though. (Note: No Jonas is contained past this point.) First, the second half of Being and Time connects resoluteness with destiny, and destiny does seem like a word meant to resonate in proto-Nazi Germany. Second, there is indeed an ethical content to resoluteness that fits nicely with authoritarianism (but not only only with authoritarianism). For example, if I were to say that ambiguity is a prized ethical characteristic, I think one would have trouble using that to get people to put their jackboots on.
Nope, haven’t read it yet. Thanks for the tip.
David, your point (“destiny does seem like a word meant to resonate in proto-Nazi Germany”) is well made. Harootunian (in “Overcome by Modernity”) uses the exact same strategy to connect Heidegger’s ideas to his “children” in Japan. In the Japanese case the “resonating” involved leads (as I am sure it also did in the European case) to a worship of community, “inherent” Japanese cultural characteristics. In the cases of Kuki Shûzô and Watsuji Tetsurô, two famouse pre-war thinkers, the argument is quite persuasively made.
–…the ethos of “authentic decision” that Heidegger and Carl Schmitt revered, what choices then remain? It is a troubling paradox, redolent of the era of German romanticism, to discover a thought so penetrating and rich, yet by the same token so bereft of constructive moral prescriptions; a thought that by virtue of its sweeping critique of the present age has virtually deprived itself of prospects for normative grounding.
Although there are few better guides to the history of philosophy than Heidegger and his disciples, they, like Hegel, often succumbed to the error of confusing the history of philosophy with history itself; yet the logics of the two realms, philosophy and history, often proceed in opposite directions.
…The “existential” paradigm initiated by Heidegger and refashioned by his intellectual heirs merits attention insofar as it has managed to preserve a distinctive manner of philosophical questioning, one of whose virtues is a willingness to remain out of sync with the predominantly utilitarian orientation of the “globalized” contemporary lifeworld. In a sense, then, the value of the existential tradition is as much “aesthetic” as it is “material.” It consists of an approach to thinking that refuses to be measured by instrumental criteria of use-value or effectiveness. In part, then, its value consists in the fact that it promotes a space for reflection about ultimate values or “ends” untainted by the pressures of “everydayness.”–
Yes, but, if this is so, what do we know? what did we learn after all? Should we not settle on computation being the end-all of thought, and, that way, figure that understanding the way we think is identical with learning itself (i.e., Kant)? That is to say that the logic of the mind is always computation of the cosmos, so that the angel is in the detail. A quark, for instance, is a fantastic find. Only computation could have revealed one. It may not be “real,” but the model works. That is what matters.
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I’ve found that logic is too cold, and passion leads to mistakes. I think it’s best if you find a balance. Careful planning with willingness to act, I suppose.