Mihai Novac

In its widest acceptation, globalization amounts to a progressive 'interdependentization' of the various areas, levels and regions of human civilization. On account of globalization we are much more prone to becoming one, i.e. Humanity, than in the previous epochs. But what does this mean or, in other words, what is the envisioned shape of this One humanity is heading toward in the context of globalization? Is there in fact any meaning to it? On closer examination, we might find that the issue of meaning was not very much addressed in the discussions concerning globalization; certainly, it is not a major issue on the agenda of the institutions impactful upon this process. If it did make the object of someone's preoccupations, it was rather only of certain fringe thinkers, political and economic authorities tended to ignore, given that there were always more immediate and practical concerns at hand. However, an unasked question provides no answers and the lack of answers in this respect is very dangerous as it involves the risk of creating, willingly or not, a world without meaning. Socio-cultural arguments in this respect are there to be found by anyone willing to throw an unbiased look at our post-modern history: the industrial and technical revolutions went hand in hand with an over-instrumentalization of our Weltanschauung that, along with its obvious positive consequences, brought along homogenization, massification and alienation, in other words, lack of meaning. The European Union, for example, has just started facing the practical consequences of ignoring this apparently purely theoretical problem: its current legitimacy crisis, in favor of its more traditional state-nationalist counterparts, can be taken as a symptom thereof. This paper is, first, an attempt at asking the question of meaning in the context of globalization and, second, to provide it with an answer (mostly, but not exclusively, on the basis of Jung's analytical psychology). The answer might prove unsatisfactory but, on the other hand, as probably with most meaningful issues, the question itself is much more essential than the answer.

Allegedly, Heidegger never quite finished Being and Time: his initial intention had consisted in the determination of the meaning of Being as such, apart from Dasein’s own existentiality. Afterwards, however, and despite the growing public excitement revolving around the published unfinished version of his project, his preoccupations, thematic conceptuality and very language, apparently started to shift away towards a strange and unfamiliar stance which he would never leave. Quite surely, his Nazi flirtation and subsequent withdrawal did not help in bringing clarity over this. On the other hand, this was not necessarily unexpected (although not necessarily to be expected, as well). What I mean to say is that for someone reading Being and time in spirit and not in letter, the possibility of such a substantive rethought of his initial scheme is present throughout the work. One’s changing one’s mind with respect to oneself is, after all, one of the basic possibilities conveyed by Dasein’s achieved resoluteness [Entschlossenheit]. Furthermore, despite his apparent reorientation, I think we can speak of some sort of attitudinal unity between Heidegger’s initial and later work, conceptually mediated by the relation between Dasein’s Being-unto-death [Sein-zum-Tode] and the so called concealedness [Verborgenheit] of Being. That is precisely what I aim to lay bare through this conceptual reconstruction of some of his post-Being and time works: (i) On the Essence of Truth (1930) and (ii) Letter on Humanism (1946). Basically, I will try to show that if in Being and Time he tried to come to Being from Dasein, in his later work he tries to get to Da-sein from Being, fact which unsurprisingly brought along some reconsiderations but that, broadly speaking, essentially amounts to what he set out to do in his initial ontological project. Surprisingly, the most concrete instance of this pendulation between Dasein and Being is to be found, at least to my knowledge, in one of his more political works,  i.e. (iii) The Question Concerning Technology (1953), around which our present endeavor will mostly revolve.

Heidegger's political preoccupations came more explicitly to light after his provisional flirtation with and subsequent rejection of Nazi ideology. As known, his initial interest was far more ontological in nature. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that his "Being and Time" period was not rich in substantial subjacent political presuppositions and implications. The main focus of my present endeavor lies precisely therewith: basically this is an attempt at a non-esoteric conceptual reconstruction of Heidegger's philosophical path with a special interest in its political presuppositions and, maybe more importantly, implications. Its guiding thread is the relation between the question of Being (Seinsfrage), the so called Dasein (with special emphasis on the Being-towards-death/Sein zum Tode) and his notion of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit as being one's own). As such, what we are dealing with here is some sort of Heideggerian political existential analysis. Thereby I will try to provide (i) a sufficient thematization of the subjacent political stratum of his thought in "Being and Time", ii) an account of his flirtation with and, especially, rejection of Nazi ideology as part of (iii) a more general critical analysis of ideological modernity as essentially conducive to nihilism (the so called forgetfulness-of-Being, in its political sense, approximately Heidegger's version of alienation). In conclusion I will try to argue for an individualistic interpretation of Heidegger's political philosophy, one which is essentially opposed to Nazi ideology (as well as to any political ideology whatsoever for that matter). This is the first part of the aforementioned endeavor, corresponding to Heidegger's "Being and Time" period.

Motto: " There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. " 2 Abstract: Nietzsche's distinction between the master and the slave moralities is certainly one of his most notoriously famous moral and political notions. To claim that there are two main perspectives on the world, one belonging to the accomplished, the other to the unaccomplished side of humanity and, moreover, that the last two millennia of European alleged cultural progress constitute, in fact, nothing more than the history of the progressive permeation of our entire Weltanschauung, of our very values, thoughts and feelings by the so called slave morality, while all the more finding the virtue of this process in a future self-demise of this entire decadent cultural and human strain, is something that has shocked and enraged most of the ideological philosophers ever since. As such, at a certain moment, despite their substantial doctrinaire differences, almost everybody in the ideologized philosophical world, would agree on hating Nietzsche: he was hated by the Christians, for claiming that " God is dead " , by the socialists for treating their view as herd or slave mentality and denying the alleged progressively rational structure of the world, by the liberals much on the same accounts, by the 'right wingers' for his explicit anti-nationalism, by the anarchists for his ontological anti-individualism (i.e. dividualism), by the collectivists for his mockery of any gregarious existence, by the capitalists for his contempt for money and the mercantile worldview, by the positivists for his late mistrust in science and explicit illusionism (i.e. the notion that illusions are a necessary fact of life). However, being equally resented by all sides of the political, moral, theological and epistemic spectra might indicate that one is, if not right, or unbiased, at least originally and personally biased. Any view that coherently achieves such form of specific equal contestation, especially one that has so robustly continued to do so for more than a century, deserves some consideration.

Though the relationships between the two schools of thought have initially lingered somewhere between reciprocal ignoring and a more or less outspoken hostility, during the last three decades an increase in the degree of reciprocal interest has been noticed: some of the analytical psychologists  became aware of the potential relevance of the phenomenological method, with respect not only to theoretical issues but to therapeutic ones as well, part of the phenomenological community grew more receptive to the possibilities that this new and peculiar field of study, namely the unconscious, entailed for the application and use of the phenomenological method. Of course, the setting of the unconscious as field of study for the phenomenology, had already been heralded by names such as Ricoeur, Binswanger, Boss and so on, but this had taken place under the auspices of Freud’s psychoanalysis, while the Jungian approach, though seemingly closer in spirit to phenomenology, was initially ignored. Method: It is said that, if you will, as any form theoretical or clinical psychology is, in Jung’s words, a form of subjective confession, it appears that it comes more naturally to phenomenology to attune its sense of hearing to this confession, while abiding by its epistemological gentleness principle (Seinlassen), rather than to that of psychoanalysis. Results: By all means, a certain degree of invasiveness is here also required, but it will be possible for it to be kept at a much lower level and, the more important, it will take place while following, as Husserl would put it, the guiding purpose-idea of analytical psychology in its capacity as noematic phenomenon. Conclusion: This marked the beginnings of an ample project for the cleansing of Jung’s analytical psychology of its subjacent positivist assumptions and for the clearing up and elaboration of its fallowing substantial phenomenological layer. This project seeks to be a contribution in this regard, mainly brought from the standpoint of Heideggerian phenomenology as set in Being and Time.