Heidegger and Politics The Ontology of Radical Discontent [Paperback]

This book traces Heidegger's influence on a variety of political movements to fundamental ambiguities in his understanding of everydayness and nihilism.Heidegger and Politics shows the relevance of Heidegger's thought for contemporary evaluations of politics by responding to widespread confusion about the political implications of his work. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in political theory, political philosophy, moral philosophy, and intellectual history.Heidegger and Politics shows the relevance of Heidegger's thought for contemporary evaluations of politics by responding to widespread confusion about the political implications of his work. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in political theory, political philosophy, moral philosophy, and intellectual history.In this fresh interpretation of Heidegger, Alexander Duff explains Heidegger's perplexing and highly varied political influence. Heidegger and Politics argues that Heidegger's political import is forecast by fundamental ambiguities about the status of politics in his thought. Duff explores how in Being and Time as well as earlier and later works, Heidegger analyses everyday human existence as both irretrievably banal but also supplying our only tenuous path to the deepest questions about human life. Heidegger thus points to two irreconcilable attitudes toward politics: either a total and purifying revolution must usher in an authentic communal existence, or else we must await a future deliverance from the present dispensation of Being. Neither attitude is conducive to moderate politics, and so Heidegger's influence tends towards extremism of one form or another, modified only by explicit departures from his thought.1. What's the matter with ethics? Ethics and the problem of theory; 2. Surpassing ethics: the formal indication of existence; 3. The ambiguous everyday: on the emergence of theory from practice; 4. The dictatorship of the they and the clearing of l'