Mystery

“Metaphysics is in all it’s forms and historical stages only one, but perhaps the essential stumbling block of the west and the precondition for it’s global dominance”- Martin Heidegger, On Metaphysics

Martin Heidegger, for all his admitted (and grave) failings, was in his philosophy one of the most powerful correctives for the entire western (as far as that term goes) philosophical tradition. In squarely assaulting the gross presumption of much of what had gone before – at least since Plato, certainly since Aristotle- in European thought, namely that the human subject is the centre of the universe and that the world is laid bare to human cognition, Heidegger returned the question of Being to shadowy and sacred immanence. He pointed towards an intuition of an indefinable enveloping all things, of which the human is but an instance of a vast and variegated whole.

I’ve often criticised the present ‘cultural’ mania for identity – be it ethnic, gender, racial, sexual, religious, political. I still do. I think, especially in the age of social media where we are all encouraged, nay goaded, into editing ourselves into profiles with very fixed characteristics, the potential for (and actuality of) mass manipulation, control, and the reduction of the human being to the most superficial and limiting markers is horrific.

At the same time, and in fact directly related to that criticism, is my understanding along with Heidegger of the largely ungraspable yet supremely dynamic nature of Being including our own. However, this is not to deny variation and diversity (to use that much overused term). Being is not anything static or objectifiable. Whatever appears in this world, as this world, is not subject to the god of our intellect for approval or disapproval. Whatever appears is- in one way or another – perfectly natural.

People are different while being inextricably intertwined. There are of course relative ‘identities’. In no way would I ever want to deny people their relative individuality. There are ethnicities, genders, religions, sexualities, etc etc. To deny difference is just as anti-realistic as to deny interdependence or fundamental unity. It is rather the fetishization of identity at the expense of the recognition of commonality I have huge misgivings about; the essentialising of the distinct which has it’s unconscious roots in the elevation of enduring or unchanging being and substance going back to Plato and Aristotle, but which became a stultifying and retarding dogma with medieval scholasticism, which Heidegger understood and opposed.

Heidegger was not the only one of course, and to claim that western philosophy has been homogeneous in it’s fetish for enduring substance, identity and immutable logos is yet another warping exaggeration. However, the problem continually rears it’s head as is evidenced (for me anyway) by the seeming invincibility of the so called culture-wars and by the fashion for identitarianism which (from both and every side) have eviscerated contemporary politics and knackered solidarity between people. People as they actually are, in all their multifaceted and dynamic presence. Each different and yet all just people.

What I get from Heidegger (and recommend to all) is a return to recognition of the mystery and dynamism of this world, including ourselves. We become more ourselves when we don’t impose, essentialise, and demand fixedness on the world, ourselves and others. We become more human when we realise that there is more to being than just humanity, and we become wiser and more humane when we acknowledge the limits of human intelligence and turn with an attitude of awe (and reverence) to the question Being.

(This I think will be the last post for a while. Thank you all very much for reading. I sincerely appreciate it!)