Philosophers at the Throne: Is It Only Heidegger?

The figure of Heidegger, through which the philosophical paradigms of the XX century are largely comprehended, does not allow for ignoring the question about the vital and ingrained connection between philosophy and politics. The question here unfolds both in the perspective of mutual influence and requirements applied to the philosophical position in its reflection of power, history, race, people, and in the perspective of fate and the possibility of philosophy. The «Heidegger case» allows us to raise the question of the word in public space, the possibilities of understanding and translating philosophical concepts into the language of an «unprepared» listener, as well as about the listener himself. German workers of that time were capable of hearing Heidegger’s speech and were inspired by it. Jaspers, on the contrary, paying tribute to the power of Heidegger’s thought, initially believed that it was precisely for this reason that insufficiently prepared students should not be granted access to it. The question of who is capable, ready, and can make out the meaning of philosophical speech problematizes the universality of philosophy, arouses suspicion and reproaches of elitism, and threatens to profanate philosophical thought. The publication of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks makes it possible to require a certain shift in emphasis when attempting to answer these questions. The tone here is set by the fact that the publication of Heidegger’s legacy was thought out by him himself and, without a doubt, it was a calculated gesture. In this case, we can pose the question to what extent this gesture is related to the response to the postmodern thesis about the author’s death, because it is precisely the fact that these works have been published which requires a rethinking of the entire corpus of Heidegger’s texts. Following this, the question about philosophy’s fate becomes inevitable: does not the project of Western European metaphysic’s deconstruction stem from the project of philosophy’s deconstruction itself? Finally, philosophy as such has its own logic, order of movement, and possibilities of resistance. In our attempts to abandon philosophy, and replace it with metapolitics, do we not fall into the trap of philosophy itself, which does not allow us to turn away from the philosophy of the subject, leaving Heidegger alone with his own thoughts? In this manner, philosophy not only consoles, but triumphs. Precisely this aspect is discussed in the conversation between Vladimir Mironov and Valery Anashvili.

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