Heideggers Heritage: Philosophy, Anti-Modernism and Cultural Pessimism

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and is related to an ongoing confrontation with modernity and the history of Western
metaphysics. This vision is run through with some shocking antisemitic undercurrents
and an obscene ethnic chauvinism, as we shall see, and yet cannot be accommodated
from within the theoretical parameters of Heideggers thought. But it is imperative in
that case to distinguish between Heideggers philosophy and the political and intellectual movements he looks to hitch his philosophical cart on to in the 1930s. That is
not of course to rally to the cause of those who insist on the irrelevance of Heideggers
politics to his philosophy. That is an obscenely disingenuous posture given Heideggers
pointed asseverations as to the fundamental connection between his philosophy and
his political views.
Heideggers views on technology, in particular the many symptoms of the
technological condition, are clearly parasitic then on the views found in some of
the literature which was to the fore of the conservative revolutionary movement.
Notwithstanding, Heideggers account as to how technology has had the impact
on the contemporary landscape that it has enjoyed is operating in quite a different
register to anything we find in Spengler or Jnger, for example. Moreover, what
Heidegger proposes in terms of a response is again something that seems unique to
his own philosophy and, in particular, the notion of Gelassenheit as something which
will foster a rootedness resistant to the tyrannical designs of Gestell in the technological age. That is not to say that Heideggers philosophical posture in this regard
is unproblematic, but we have to at least begin to identify where the real problems
lie instead of perpetuating this interminable controversy by failing to deal with the
genuine philosophical difficulties.
Heidegger was adamant to the end of his career that finding a way to respond to the
manner in which the essence of technology governed how everything revealed itself
to us was the greatest challenge facing us as human beings. Nevertheless, even though
Heideggers later philosophy is rarely seen as politically problematic, what we do in
fact find when we get to Heideggers own attempts at a response is an unapologetic
return to the notion of the authentic rootedness of a people. When we consider that
Heidegger reiterates his concerns with the levelling influence of Gestell in his 1966
interview with Der Spiegel alongside his recalcitrant stance concerning democracy it
should, at the very least, give us pause!

Bodenstndigkeit, Gelassenheit and the Memorial Address

One of the terms most often invoked when discussing Heideggers later philosophy
is Gelassenheit (releasement) and yet, in one of his best-known discussions of this
particular term as the appropriate response to the levelling influence of Gestell (the
Memorial Address), we find that the term is discussed very much in the context
of an authentic rootedness (Bodenstndigkeit) of the people. Ostensibly Heideggers
Memorial Address was to be part of the celebration of the work of the local composer
Conradin Kreutzer on what would have been his one-hundred-and-seventy-fifth
birthday. However, Heidegger quickly begins to delve further and further into issues