Timely Meditations: Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics [Paperback]

Leslie Paul Thiele (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 1995

Focusing on the concept of freedom, Leslie Paul Thiele makes Heidegger's philosophical works speak directly to politics in a postmodern world. Neither excusing Heidegger for his political sins nor ignoring their lesson, Thiele nonetheless refrains from polemic in order creatively to engage one of the greatest philosophers of our time. The product of this engagement is a vindication of a democratic and ecological politics firmly grounded in philosophic inquiry. Using Heidegger's understanding of freedom as a point of departure, Timely Meditations lays out the philosophic and political nature and potential of freedom in thought, speech, and deed. This disclosive freedom is contrasted to both modern (positive and negative) and postmodern (Nietzschean and Foucaultian) variations. The result is an original and provocative study that challenges our present understanding of liberty while underlining dangerous collusion with the contemporary forces of technology. Timely Meditations marks an increasingly rare achievement today. For unlike many theorists who attempt to steer a course into the world of postmodern politics, Thiele does so without forsaking philosophic foundations and without abandoning practical hopes and tasks for rhetorical diversions.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1st edition (May 26, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691043361
• ISBN-13: 978-0691043364
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,552,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leslie Paul Thiele teaches political theory and serves as Director of Sustainability Studies at the University of Florida. His interdisciplinary research focuses on sustainability issues and the intersection of political philosophy and the natural sciences. His central concerns are the responsibilities of citizenship and the opportunities for leadership in a world of rapid technological, social, and ecological change. He is currently developing practical principles inspired by nature to guide individual lifestyles and organizational practices. The work is tentatively entitled NATURE'S COMPASS. Leslie Paul Thiele lives in Gainesville, Florida, with his wife, Susan, and his two sons, Jacob and Jonah. The family spends summers in the town of Nelson, B.C., Canada.

Customer Reviews

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars only the mythologizing of a people nationalizes them, December 15, 2010

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Timely Meditations: Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics (Paperback)

In spite of global economic tendencies, politics makes associations national in character and any attempt to sympathize with targets of the economic hit men will be highly suspect and might even be considered supportive of terrorism. The book Timely Meditations, Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics (1995) by Leslie Paul Thiele was published before the most recent wave of the wars on drugs, terrorism, and money laundering. Part Three: The Politics of Dwelling (pp. 169-252), starts with a chapter on Saving the Earth: The Plight of Homelessness. The next chapter considers The Devastation of the Midas Touch as a topic on The Challenge of Technology.

Individual attempts to work within national boundaries are considered in a section called The Fictioning of the Political (pp. 146-151). As this book analyzes its central problem, it goes right to the heart:

Heidegger's effort to blaze the trail for knowledge gave way to the celebration of art. (p. 147).

Heidegger's real politics emerged in an effort to reassert what he held to be the movement's "inner truth and greatness." . . . Nazism was a crude and distinctively modern attempt at the "aestheticization of politics." (p. 147).

If we understand architectonic Platonism to be defined chiefly not by its ahistoricism but by its effort to incarnate metaphysical ideals in the political world through a masterful, representative artistry, then Heidegger's effort at Freiburg remains eminently Platonic. In his attempt to bridge the gap between philosophy and the political exigencies of his day, Heidegger would seek the support of ancient metaphysical foundations. (p. 148).

For the Nazis and Heidegger, what lay hidden was the genius and historic destiny of the German people. To fiction the political, a people must be conceived as a unitary and organic whole with an identifiable developmental potential. (p. 148).

American ideals at the end of 2010 might consider Social Security, Medicare, and universal health insurance coverage the kind of organic whole that has been achieved by lesser nations before a gambling addiction shattered the political economy of the global financial system like a bobsled going down clear through to China. I already get Social Security and expect to have Medicare in a few years, but the funding for medical care is unlikely to keep up with a population that is rapidly aging. This will not be like the endowment Heidegger imagined in:

" . . . History is the transporting of a people into its appointed task as entrance into that people's endowment" (PLT 48, 74, 77). (p. 149).

Americans are likely to recant anything for which all the money has already been spent. We are not going to send people to Mars.