Thomas Yaeger's Blog: Heidegger and Barbarism (Writing to @SemprePhi)

Monday, 10 February 2020

Heidegger and Barbarism (Writing to @SemprePhi)

This passage is from Heidegger’s lecture series on Parmenides, section 4. I was taught that the use of the term barbaroi by the Greeks originally designated those who were not speakers of Greek, and that the term did not necessarily have negative connotations. It referred to how other languages sounded to Greek ears. I don’t mean to suggest that the Greeks did not have an exceptionalist sense of themselves (they clearly did), but barbaroi was not initially conceived of as some kind of quasi-structuralist contrast with the characteristics of other cultural groups. Persians, Medes, Babylonians and Egyptians were barbaroi because they were not Greek, and often did not speak Greek (Those Egyptian priests who spoke with Solon during his visit to Egypt clearly spoke Greek).

Later of course the term barbaroi did come to have negative connotations particularly as a term used by the Romans), but not generally in Greece in the period between Parmenides and Plato (6^th and 5^th centuries BCE.)

So what is going on with the passage by Heidegger? He says that for the Greeks, the opposite to ‘barbarism’ is ‘’dwelling within mythos and logos’. This is hard to understand, since mythos and logos indicate quite different ways of thinking. Mythos concerns things which are unascertainable, and usually belong to the world of the gods and of the ancestors, all of which are necessarily wrapped up in a great deal of conjecture. Logos (i.e., ‘reason’) is more associated with things which can be ascertained by rational inquiry, such as investigations into historical, political and societal events.

Did the Greeks blur together their interest in mythos and logos as part of their definition of themselves in the sixth and fifth centuries? Or did they distinguish them as opposites? Or is this just a construct manufactured by Heidegger’s imagination? Where does Heidegger get this from?

The obvious place to look is in the pages of Herodotus. He talks about things which are mythical and difficult to establish as true or false, and also of things which can be ascertained, to an acceptable degree, by careful inquiry into the available information. Though Herodotus sometimes went adrift when he was describing cultures with which he had very little familiarity (Egypt and Babylon in particular). Herodotus spoke of the gods, and their supposed genealogies, but he did not use the term mythos in connection with matters of the gods. Concerning the gods, it is just so much more difficult to establish what is true, and what is merely a matter of conjecture. Plato likewise, left questions about the gods and their genealogies to those who had a better claim to know the truth than he did (those who claimed to be their descendants). The Greeks always imagined themselves as rational creatures, but knew the difference between speculation, and truths which could be established to a reasonable degree.

What Heidegger has to say about the idea of culture is partly correct, but also largely nonsense. Culture was not a concept in the Greek lexicon, for the simple reason that it was so much part of the warp and weft of life that it was hard to separate out as a concept. It was about observance, about ritual, literature and poetry. They had no word for their religion. Why should they?

But Heidegger characterises culture as the product of the ‘willful power of man’, and compares it to technology, suggesting that the Greeks would have regarded both culture and technology as barbarism, because they were ‘unmythical’. This is ludicrous. The best and most successful technology the Greeks created was the fleet that won the battle of Salamis against the Persians. The Greeks did not have a problem with that, and didn’t regard their victory as an instance of barbarism. This is technology, not culture.

‘Heidegger’s lecture series on Parmenides was delivered at the University of Freiburg in 1942-3. He does not provide a translation of Parmenides poem, or provide a thorough and informed commentary on it. Instead, his subject is the starting point for extensive riffing on ideas about Greece and culture in his head which are without evidential support.

The period in which Heidegger gave these lectures is important if we are to understand what is going on. Heidegger was a supporter of the Nazi party in Germany, and declared that the nature of reality was determined by that party. That makes it possible to say such things as: ‘what you are seeing and hearing is not what is happening’, and other remarks which effectively represent the abdication of reason. When reason and the evidential base have been left behind, it is possible to say all sorts of things, including remarks about the importance of reason which have no reason.

So the assertion that the Greeks understood the opposite to barbarism to be living within both mythos and logos, which is a contradictory pairing, as well as an opposition of concepts based on no evidence at all, needs to be explained. You quoted a scholar who has said that ‘Heidegger's readings of the ancients are heavily determined by the modern polemics in which he is involved… He also lacks a sense for the breadth and diversity of "Greek" thought’. That is correct on both counts, I think. Heidegger cannot be lifted out of the context in which he thought and wrote, but he can be understood, or rather what he thought can be explained, within that context.

The poet Robert Graves rued the fact that Greek mythology was a mess, and that it was often hard to make sense of it. The reason for this is that what survives exists without any documentation of how the various versions of myths (and associated genealogies, which often exist in conflicting versions), came to be constructed. The reason for the mess is fairly simple however – the stories and the genealogies were the work of poets and praise singers, who wrote to support the self-perceptions of their tribal patrons and war lords. Everything was in flux, and imagined genealogies could change as a consequence of defeat in war.

Myth serves many purposes, but often could be repurposed for political and dynastic interests. Sometimes a myth serves as a charter for political change. It doesn’t often serve truth, at least not when it forms part of politics. The writer Alfred Rosenberg, one of the architects of the development of Nazi ideology, wrote The Myth of the 20^th Century which contains much of the spurious and evidence-free thought which became the basis of the party and its intentions. His Wikipedia entry tells you what you need to know:

The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key National Socialist ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate" modern art. He is known [also] for his rejection of and hatred for Christianity.

All of this fantasy was forged from WW1 (even before) up to the outbreak of WW2. The party acted on the fantasy as if it was real, and behaved as if what they were doing was entirely rational. In which case both mythos and logos co-existed at the same time in Nazi Germany.

Essentially Heidegger is, by reading back from his own present, attempting to understand ancient Greece in terms of contemporary thought in Nazi Germany. Germany had long thought of itself as the natural successor to Greek civilisation. The fusion of mythos and logos he saw around him was what gave Germany its power, as he imagined an earlier fusion of these gave rise to the power and influence of Greek civilization.

Thomas Yeager, February 10, 2020.