PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2.4

PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2.4
Figures:

Jaeger’s third humanism

Great changes in German understanding of culture, history and philosophy after WW1
previous Greek-adoration turns impossible
Jaeger: its impossible to believe in idealized, beautiful, moral humanism
philologists like Jaeger were VERY important figures in German society
that is, until WW1, when their social position become untennable
post-WW1 Geistwissenschaften dried out, the traditional sciences took hold
Jeager: tries to revive humanism (after the death of neo-humanism), and prove the importance of philology
Influencial: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Dilthey
LEBENPHILOSOPHIE (lived/life-philosophy): beauty and pure ideals take a back side in such philosophers, we need to understand our dark side (irrationality, dreams, desires, instincts) to comprehend the human being
all of this was shown in WW1
understanding life as a dynamic force beyond pure reason

Jaeger’s critiue of 19th Century Neo-Humanism:

pure intellectualism
pure individuality, no focus on states and communities
only aesthethic/moral interest in the Ancients
concern only with idealistic art/culture (no concern for the violence of the Ancients)
no understanding of PURE ancient life (i.e. existence)
ignorance of Ancient socio-politics
NOT ATTEMPTING TO REVIVE THE ACTUAL, REAL, ANCIENT GEIST
having only a still-life, dead image of the greeks

Jaeger’s plan:

Jaeger’s hermeneutic understanding of antiquity:

Classicism understood Ancient art as still, dead, reflections of beauty, not REAL lived beauty, existential beauty. It reduced them to schemas of beauty and nothing else.
[Ancient art is only Forms and Ideas]
Classicism understood human nature as unchanging, seeing an ideal incarnation of it in the Ancients, not comprehending its historic binding (its Geist); it was unable to conceptualize the historisity of Ancient art
Lebenphilosophie: understanding the irrational forces behind a culture
neo-humanism promoted still lifes to the level of forms; it was essentially anti-hermanutic, never understanding the WHOLE
[hermeneutics: understanding texts through psychological, cultural, historical currents; interpereting the data of the soul]
artworks and texts are exteriorizations of previously inner forces; manifestations of the soul’s inner world
we pierce the veil of the artwork to understand the soul which created it
Geisteswissenschaften → hermeneutics, UNDERSTANDING
Naturwissenschaften → no hermeneutics, EXPLAINING
we discover Greek interiority, but also, OUR OWN INTERIORITY

THIRD HUMANISM (LIVING HUMANISM):

also present in Heidegger
understanding the configurations of the spirit which shaped humanism’s emergence
done through philology
Classicism: not Antiquity, but a projection of their own age onto Antiquity (precisely why they never understood Antiquity, they never grasped Ancient interiority)
for Classicism the Greeks were only a mode of expression of their own time
LIVING HUMANISM must encounter the Other (culture) properly, re-understand itself through it, enter into dialogue with the past
hermenuitics seeks to understand the Object being examined, but also the Subject conducting the examination (Classicism needs to be overcome)

Jaeger’s Paideia: The Formation of the Greek Man

on Greek education
it is not a study of idealized art, but of Greek society in its entirety
if we understand Greek education, we will understand their society
turn away from individual, emphasis on the state/community as individual-forming forces
individual excellency exists, but only in so far as to better the state
here Jaeger’s humanism turns political
in the POLIS: state power and culture are entwined, enforcing one another

Jaeger’s Political Humanism:

man is a political being first and foremost
the entire point of humanism is creating a harmonious state
human excellence is measured by the state
this is kind of proto-fascistic
Jaeger wasn’t a Nazi, but was very much adjesent to the movement (he did have a jewish wife howerver, and later left Germany for Chicago)
Heidegger, on the other hand, became very involved with the Nazis

HEIDEGGER: metaphysics to metapolitics

Fundemental Concepts of Metaphysics: similar goal to Jaeger, transforming the human being
also the study of animal/world
the projecting of LIBERATING THE DASEIN INSIDE MEN
something is obstructing Dasein’s authenthic expression
it is ourselves we must be liberated from
done by breaking Dasein open, placing openness within it, confronting pure ‘as’
having proper access to ‘as’ meaning accessing the difference between beings/being and Being
the ‘as’ refers to the manifestations of the Being-ness of beings
thus FCM → opening the history of Being wide upon
Heidegger wants a new era of Being, a new era for metaphysics
Heidegger’s Diltheyan historicity: understanding not simply data, but its eventfulness
Heidegger’s Ubergang, similar to Nietzsche’s Ubermensch

Heidegger’s grand plan:

however, the implication of Man & Dasein are Man & Dasein as German
awakening (the Dasein in) the Germans is a Nazi slogan
Metapolitics is his desire to awaken the Dasein in man, usher in a new form of man
Metapolitics: an age of homus metaphysicus
all of this ties very closely to Nazi Germany - awakening a kind of national spirit, focusing his project only on Germany, borrowing Nazi slogans, striving towards a uniquely German metaphysical destiny, a given return to tradition, even his idea of AUTHENTHICITY is one of being open towards your own blood and soil, being authenthic to traditions and your own peoples

Metapolitics (summary):

completion of metaphysics, overthrowing of metaphysics
essentially the study of the history of Being
overthrowing of Enlightenment/Humanist ideas (practical and theorethical philosophy fuse together)
no universalism, nationalism
rejection of ordinary people
demonization of sciences and technology (i.e. modern culture)
no longer universal men, but simply the ‘German’

?? notes