MALIGN MASTERS GENTILE HEIDEGGER LUKACS WITTGENSTEIN

MALIGN MASTERS GENTILE HEIDEGGER LUKACS WITTGENSTEIN

Also by Harry Redner IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE DEED THE ENDS OF PHILOSOPHY THE ENDS OF SCIENCE A NEW SCIENCE OF REPRESENTATION ANATOMY OF THE WORLD (with Jillian Redner) AN HERETICAL HEIR OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT (editor)

Malign Masters Gentile Heidegger Lukacs Wittgenstein Philosophy and Politics in the Twentieth Century Harry Redner

First published in Great Britain 1997 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-25709-6 ISBN 978-1-349-25707-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25707-2 First published in the United States of America 1997 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-17324-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Redner, Harry. Malign masters : Gentile, Heidegger, Lukacs, Wittgenstein philosophy and politics in the twentieth century / Harry Redner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and inde1l. ISBN 978-0-312-17324-1 (cloth) I. Gentile, Giovanni, 1875-1944. 2. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. 3. Lukacs, Gyorgy, 1885-1971. 4. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951. I. Title. B3624.G5R43 1997 I 9O'.9'04--dc2 I Harry Redner 1997 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1997 96-37665 CIP All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced. copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road. London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97

To my mother, who survived the worst of totalitarian terror

Contents Foreword Introduction Part I Early and Late Philosophies The Primary Masterworks 2 The Turning (Kehre) 3 The Secondary Masterworks Part II Influences and Confluences 4 Fathers and Sons 5 Forefathers and Other Ancestral Figures 6 Friends and Followers Notes Personal Names Index Subject Index xi 23 25 53 83 113 115 149 174 198 211 215 vii

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now... T.S. Eliot

Foreword 'Since brevity is the soul of wit, I will be brief,' promises prolix Polonius. In this book I, too, promise to be brief. But brevity has its drawbacks - the Poloniuses of philosophy will no doubt demand the lengthy expositions and demonstrations of every point that I have deliberately avoided. To them I can only reply, turn to some of my other, much longer works if you want 'more matter with less art'. In particular, I can recommend my recently published A New Science of Representation, which establishes the overall background, both philosophical and historical, against which this work must be seen. There they will also find some of the punctilious presentations of arguments that can only be briefly adumbrated here. At the very least, that should convince anyone that I can be as turgid and tedious as the best of them. If what I have lost through brevity I have gained in wit, then so be it. Anyway, it has not been possible to provide complete accounts of four such copious writers as the malign masters whose extant Nachlass, most of it now in print, runs to tens of thousands of pages each. Anyone who believes that this work should be more aptly entitled Maligned Masters will easily be able to show that there are all sorts of things in these writings I have missed, that there are hidden virtues in these authors I have overlooked, and that there are many indispensable commentators I have not read. I make no claims to omniscience regarding any of this. I simply stand by the weight of my criticisms. Let those who disagree try to provide the counterweight to balance these. However, I should warn them in advance of any such attempts that I have not yet finished with this chapter in the history of philosophy. I intend to publish at least one more book, perhaps entitled Benign Masters, for I, too, have my list of champions to set against those whom nearly everyone else admires. Anyone too disheartened by the mainly negative proscriptions in this book might take heart from the more positive prescriptions to come in the next. What I wish to achieve with this 'negative' book is simply to spare others, especially the young, all the painful effort I expended trying to make profound sense of the temptingly fascinating works of the malign masters. I wasted many of what should have been my best years on such futile endeavours. However, if my experience, as condensed in this book, saves some others from embarking on a similar quest, then perhaps my blighted years might not have been so wasted after all. Though I hope this xi

xii Malign Masters book will be of use, I make no special claims on its behalf, nor do I wish to use it to preach to others. I see myself merely in the role of the boy in Hans Andersen's fairy tale who exclaimed that the emperor has no clothes. Those who are in the emperor's entourage - the prudent Poloniuses of philosophy, for whom a cloud can look as much like a weasel as a whale - will no doubt continue to see him resplendently attired. I can only reiterate that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophies.