Heidegger on Freedom: Political not Metaphysical

Abstract

This essay analyzes modern and postmodern concepts of freedom and contrasts them to a Heideggerian understanding. Positive, negative, and what might be called Foucaultian or Nietzschean liberty are demonstrated to bear a common trait. In such modern and postmodern formulations, freedom is consistently identified with a form of mastery. This identification of freedom with mastery, I argue, encourages ecological abuse, supports the dangerous prerogatives of statist sovereignty, and strengthens the resilience of patriarchy. The political significance of Heidegger's alternative vision is addressed.

Postmodern Siyaset Felsefesi

“…Postmodern siyaset felsefesine göre, pozitif özgürlük anlayışında eylem, rasyonel benliğin, yani bütün insanların ortak ve aslî niteliği olarak kabul edilen "öz"ün açığa çıkarılmasının aracı olarak bir değere sahip olduğu için, yeni ve farklı olanın imkânı olma niteliğinden yoksundur. 18 Tersine pozitif özgürlük anlayışında eylem, bireylerin objektif ilgi ve ihtiyaçlarını karakterize ettiği varsayılan "rasyonel" benliğin 19 vücut bulabilmesine imkân veren belirli bir yaşam tarzının korunması ve hâkim kılınması yönünde işletildiği için farklı yaşam tarzlarını dışlayıcı bir fonksiyon görür.…”

Agency as response: A Heideggerian account.

“…His argument, rather, was that our solutions and responses on the whole tend to be loyal to the understanding of Being we share today increasingly in the globalized format of the technological understanding of Being. For the positive program of responses to contemporary culture from a Heideggerian stance, see George (2015a), Thiele (1994), and the many essays of Mikko Joronen, especially Joronen (2011Joronen ( , 2013. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…The self, of which we are concerned in anxious anticipation, is not an insulated self, free of external constraints (as in the idea of negative liberty), not a positively authentic inner self, unique in its individuality (as in the idea of positive liberty), and not the aesthetically produced protean–promethean self (as in the Nietzschean–Foucauldian idea of freedom). In all such conceptions of freedom, as Thiele (1994) stressed, there is the unflinching modernist–triumphalist “identification of freedom with mastery” (p. 281). Heidegger’s suggestion that freedom is response to what is disclosed by the world is, thus, a correction of both modernist and postmodernist conceptions of freedom.…”