Phenomenology 2005

Volume 4, Issue Part 2, 2007

Selected Essays from Northern Europe Part 2

Lukas Marcel Vosicky
Pages 895-935

Anders’ Heidegger – Heidegger anders

The paper discusses the critique of Gunther Anders (1902–1992) against his Doktorvater Heidegger, on the basis of the studies written in Paris and during his American exile in the thirties and forties and published in Uber Heidegger (2001). Long before Sloterdijk, Anders rejected Heidegger’s defence against modern civilisation and technique; on the contrary, it is mankind which technology made “antiquated.” Anders was also the first one who drew the attention to Heidegger’s “pseudo-concreteness” as oblivion of the origins and of the bodily and economic needs: Dasein is “the self-made man as a mystic.” Heidegger kept silence on power mechanisms, and its anti-democratic philosophy is intricately related to the national-socialism. Anders explained the success of Heidegger’s individualistic nihilism in the French existentialism through the basic mistrust caused by the war. In a somewhat similar light may be understood Heidegger’s revival in the post-socialist East European countries.