Once again, I was out for a morning cycle down the well-worn path I follow in order to lubricate the physique and stimulate the mind.  I listened to Lecture Two, Heidegger and the Rejection of Humanism, on audiotape.  I think the most interesting thing that I gleaned from this recounting of Martin Heidegger’s work is that he chose to be a fascist.  This was part and parcel of his notions of how we deal with anxiety and concentrate on selfishness to the detriment of humanism.

The “self” in the Twentieth Century, in Heidegger’s view, was formed by complexities causing stress and anxiety resulting in the necessity to choose a project to develop an authentic self - to the detriment of or abandonment of the values of others.  This is a self-centered philosophy that came to be epitomized by the “ME” generation.  The children of veterans of the second Great War rejected their parent’s settling for “normalcy”. Instead of being “normal”, they chose to celebrate putting off becoming adult - for adults face the anxiety of dealing with the inevitability of death.

All of us, however, face death.  If you are looking for democracy, it is what we all reach in the end.  However, before then, fearing the nothingness of death, the job of the descendants of those who freed us from fascism chose to live only in the present and avoid the work and toil that would create a continuity of the humanism that is present in all generations.  Generation X is one result of the philosophy of Heidegger who challenged conventional philosophical traditions. The Liberal humanist tradition caused a flowering of civilization at the end of the devastation of war where we were at the point where more people came to share in the bounty of our fragile planet. This planet seems to have been abandoned by the heirs of those who worked to save it. The Philosophy of Heidegger may say something about the individual but it also says a great deal about the lack of concern of the many. Today the “have” societies are in stark contrast with the “have-nots”.

I do not understand a philosophy that says we must be selfish and abandon the values of others.  It is difficult to understand the values of others but they exist and so I think we must exist together.  The alternative is to embrace such things as terrorism and war to make “others” subject to our will.  This, I think, is very much like the philosophy of extreme nationalism that makes government a God with the icon of a swastika or a fasces more important than the individual. In a democracy, the people are the government. How is it they fear themselves?

The present mood in America is one where fear of government is equal to our fear of death. Fundamentalists do not understand democracy.  Equality is achieved in death but it would better serve as a model in life. We need philosophy that serves all people. Selfishness is death to democracy – we need Liberalism and Humanism.