UC Santa Cruz

Abstract

Heidegger: Ontological Politics to Technological Politics. By Javier Cardoza-Kon

As Heidegger himself has done with Nietzsche in claiming that he will articulate what Nietzsche meant but never said metaphysically, I also do with Heidegger in terms of politics. On my reading there are two kinds of politics in Heidegger's middle and late thought that are, for the most part, murky and confused. There is a politics of ontology the deals with the encountering and articulating of what beings are and what Being itself is. There is also a politics on the more familiar level of societies and the policies that different groups establish and follow. It is in terms of the second type of politics that Heidegger is most often attacked, and for good reason. My dissertation will motivate an understanding of Dasein and Heidegger's thought beyond Dasein in terms of these two types of politics. This will serve to bring Heidegger's "turning" and eventual ruminations on technology into focus. I examine what it was in the confused and unarticulated relation between the two types of politics that not only allowed for his foray into Nazism, but also informed his Machiavellian views on technology. I conclude with an examination of contemporary issues in politics by putting Heidegger into a dialogue with Gianni Vattimo concerning the issues of violence, liberty, and the proliferation of 3-D printed firearms in the U.S.