Beyond Struggle and Power: Heidegger's Secret ... - Interpretation

2 2 Interpretation
and the Contributions are a political text, in a broad sense. Heidegger apparently
hopes to create the philosophy of the German people—and make the
Germans the people of his philosophy (43). But despite a certain craving for a
moment of revolutionary urgency, the text is far from a manifesto; it is hesitant,
vague, and focused on the essence of the people rather than on any
concrete policies. Heidegger has come to realize that there is a gap between politics
and philosophy. Because philosophy “opens up experience” rather than
directing and constraining it, philosophy can never “immediately ground history”
(37).
Philosophy should, however, develop a critique of the present;
after all, the need for a new grounding implies that contemporary humanity is
inadequate and groundless. “The Echo,” the most polemical part of the
Contributions, thus describes modernity as “the age of complete lack of questioning
and bewitchment” (124), an age of “nihilism” (138–41). Modernity is
dominated by “machination” (Machenschaft)—“an interpretation of beings in
which the makeability of beings comes to the forefront, in such a way that
beingness defines itself precisely in permanence and presence” (126).
Machination is accompanied by a craving for “lived experience” (Erlebnis)—
subjective stimulation, information, and entertainment (109, 129). The
manipulation of the ‘external’ world thus corresponds to a manipulation of the
‘internal’ world. In both cases, we simply control and toy with our representations,
instead of opening ourselves to an event greater than we are that calls for
genuine decision. A related phenomenon, “the gigantic” (§§70–71), characterizes
the contemporary triumph of quantity as quality. To be now means to be
measurable, and there are no limits to measuring. Nothing is seen as impossible
or unreachable any more, so the possibility of “the in-exhaustible
unexhausted” (137) is eliminated (Elden 2006, chapter 3).
Mass rallies and spectacles, such as the 1936 Berlin Olympics,
would be convenient examples of machination, lived experience, and the
gigantic. However, Heidegger intends to describe a pervasive understanding of
being that is not limited to massive objects and displays. Even the most private
and inconspicuous experiences have been infected by modernity’s reductive
and manipulative relation to beings. We all live in an age of decline.
But this decline, as understood by the few “future ones,” is not
simply a disaster but also an opportunity to undergo a destiny; these few are
ready to become “those who go under” in order to gain true selfhood (7, 397).
Like Nietzsche’s hero in the opening of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, they are willing