Millerman Talks #15: Heidegger and Political Theory

On the influence Martin Heidegger has had on various schools of political theory (Leo Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, Alexander Dugin). Apologies for the weirdly inserted Aristotle excerpt, the technical difficulties, etc.!

[risenloudly]

3 years old ? And yet perfect for today. I can't believe I've never found you until now. Will be ordering a book

[vladimirkraynyk]

Valuable material, keep them coming. Thank you.

[eccekhayr]

Hi, Millerman! Your videos are just fantastic! Keep uploading more! Sorry, as for Heidegger, can you recommend me some books which will introduce me to Heidegger's political thought? I've seen some, but they deal with his political life and not political thought.

I love the interruption of your daughter! Sending greetings to her!

[rod]

Amazing work Michael.
In my country ( Argentina) the phylisophical work of Heidegger had a huge impact, and still has on some of the most influential leaders of the Peron political movement, would be awesome if you ever dig up on it. Dugin was there last month giving lectures at our political bases.

[matheuscarturani]

If you were to recommend a Heidegger's books for a better understanding of Dugin's 4th political theory, which one would it be?

[newideas]

You mentioned that you were going to post the audio, can you tell us where? Thanks for sharing your academic knowledge!

[theory_underground]

Right at the end, after saying how important Heidegger is to everyone, you reference Rortyians as though they have nothing to do with him. Perhaps true of his ashistorical liberal followers, but Rorty said you can't do philosophy in the 20th Century without reading Heidegger! He did a lot of very public work in relation to Heidegger, much of it showing how relevant his thought is to the pragmatic tradition. But with that said, I did get yelled at a lot once in a bar by a pragmatist after a conference. He was insistent anything of value I wanted to do or think about is possible without the three big H names. 😂

[DanSme]

How come Eric Voegelin isn't on your radar?

[Havre_Chithra]

Society just serves to reinforce power structures... Society seems to be based on those power structures... so... they must have existed before the society... they act like society creates the power structures rather than simply representing and reinforcing them....

[emil]

Amazing talks. I have not seen such in-dept political philosophy lectures. Why d'not you do this in a more organised manner, some sort of on-line course. Make a list of topic, give us a lecture, recommend some readings, and then we can have Q&A session. You may start with the Greeks and Romans, and progress further. You can set this up as a business, so students will pay to learn conservative philosophy. For each lecture, you will have fee YouTube 10 min introduction, and the complete lecture will be for money. How can I contact you?

[meofamily]

Mr Millerman, I have a problem only two minutes into this, my second view of your extensive collection of lectures: you claim that we must assume some sort of centrality to politics in our lives. Philosophy and ethics has made that claim -- the applicability of its teachings to every thinking person as a fundamental part of worthwhile life -- but, in the century or so since philosophy has gone into specialist vocabulary and academic abstractions, few people consent to that claim automatically.
There is, or there has been, a group of thinkers and writers who have stoutly asserted a centrality to politics to any life worth living, and that, as I understand it, is the Marxist school.
You do immediately buttress that assertion with a quotation from Aristotle (and your erudition makes your lectures of great value to me, despite our disagreements), but it is unreasonable to assume the applicability of something which may (or may not) be true of Athenian or Classical Greek society is retained in a completely different sort of society in which we live today: specifically, politics has very little, if any, effect on what sciences we study and how. -- that is, of course, unless you live in Communist Russia or China.
Regarding your outreach to your watchers at the very end, I have no skin in the Straussian, Duginian, or Rortian game. Personally, I came of intellectual age in an environment in which the highest intellectual calling was particle physics. That may be considered parochial; I cannot say. Having listened to the rest of your lecture, I will say that you appear to be focused more on philosophy than on the theory of politics.

[spcphd]

I really don't think it is helpful or accurate to lump 20th century postwar French thought together in the same pile, and certainly not as "post-Marxist" school of thought. It does not constitute a "school" in the manner analogous to Strassians or Pragmatists. 20th century French thinkers are not all "Marxists" or "neo-Marxists, " in the manner many right-wing intellectuals (i.e., Peterson) characterize them. Each thinker has its own complicated relationship to Marxism and left politics. Sartre indeed was an avowed Marxist and Left political activist; Foucault is certainly not a Marxist by the time the late 60s roll around, and in fact distances himself from Marxism at many points; Derrida is also not a doctrinaire leftist nor hardly a Marxist; Lyotard was critical of Marxism; Baudrillard was a Marxist in perhaps a very roundabout way. Except for Sartre, I don't think the appellation "marxist thinker" really fits well for any of them. "Marx" and Marxism and leftist politics are really not the focal points for these thinkers that the right typically frames them to be. It would be more accurate to call them social constructivists, poststructuralists (i.e., critics of structuralism in the social sciences), anti-essentialist thinkers. German thinkers in the 20th century, however, provide many examples of thinkers anchored in a Hegelian-Marxist school, including everyone in the Frankfurt School and that which follows in the form of critical theory.