Standing Problems 265
alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, compulsion, number,
law, freedom, motive, purpose’, Nietzsche (1974: section 21).
- ‘From a doctorate exam—“What is the task of all higher education?”—To turn a man
into a machine.—“By what means?”—He has to learn how to feel bored.—“How is that
achieved?”—Through the concept of duty.—“Who is his model?”—The philologist: he
teaches how togrind.—“Who is the perfect man?”—the civil servant.—“Which philosophy
provides the best formula for the civil servant?”—Kant’s: the civil servant as thing in itself
set as judge over the civil servant as appearance’, Nietzsche (1968: section 29, 84).
- Some have suggested, for example, that Freud’sCivilization and its Discontentsis a
conscious reworking of Nietzsche’sGenealogy of Morals.
- In Heidegger the distinction appears in a contrast between ‘types’ of thinking: meditative
and calculative. The latter is what most humans engage in and for Heidegger it reveals little
about ‘Being’.
- I want to return to this doctrine later in the discussion of what postmodern politics looks
like.
- Ironic given Heidegger’s political affiliations.
- ‘Philosophy, even when it becomes “critical” through Descartes and Kant, always follows
the course of metaphysical representation’, see Heidegger (1993: 234).
- For Heidegger, Marx and Hegel recognized this homelessness of modern man and ‘This
homelessness is specifically evoked from the destiny of Being in the form of metaphysics,
and through metaphysics is simultaneously entrenched and covered up as such’, Heidegger
(1993: 243).
- In ek-sisting man ‘sustainsDa-seinin that he takes theDa, the clearing of Being, into
“care”’, see Heidegger (1993: 231).
- Heidegger’s answer (if it qualifies as an answer) to this is Being is ‘It Itself’. It is neither
God, nor a cosmic ground. rather ‘Being is farther than all beings and yet is nearer to man
than every being’; further, ‘Being is the nearest. Yet the near remains farthest from man’,
see Heidegger (1993: 234).
- Derrida thinks it is actually a mistake to associate Hegel and Husserl with anthropologism,
see Derrida (1993: 138).
- The term ‘structuralism’ has a comparatively recent history, dating from the early to
mid-twentieth century. Its most well-known rendition was as a social scientific (mainly
anthropological and sociological) method for studying differences between cultures, in
the hope of one day achieving a more genuinely universal understanding. The initial
idea was derived from Ferdinand Saussure’s structural linguistics. The central issue was
that language embodies our sense of reality. Saussure saw speech as a collection of signs,
underpinned by language. Language was understood as a formal system of underlying
deep structural conventions. Thuslangue(language) andparole(speech) were seen, on
one level, as distinct. Speech was a collection of signs that were, in turn, underpinned
by the deep structural conventions of language. Speech was therefore made possible by
language. Meaning was not therefore about an individual’s intention in speech. Mean-
ing was not attributable to individual speakers. Meaning existed in the relation between
the elements of language. The laws of language formed a deep structure to speech; these
underlying structures could be studied under the aegis of a scientific linguistics. This
claim is important since it reinforces the implicit anti-humanist aspect of structuralism.
In this sense, structuralism was opposed to the diachronic analysis of language—that
is focusing on the history of words, qua classical philology. Conversely, it argued for
a synchronic form of explanation, which implied that meaning depends on facts and
