What is a Rune

by Collin Cleary

  On this account, both human dignity and moral responsibility are preserved (you will recall that I mentioned at the outset that these were at stake). My acts are still my own, because all those things that are said to “determine” me are not alien and other but a part of my being. Hence, I am not merely the plaything of “external” forces. Further, if this is the case, it follows that I and I alone am responsible for my actions.

  I have argued, further, that the “free will and determinism” problem really arises from a problematic conception of the self—from which we have constructed the idea that true freedom would be a kind of absolute choice, free of any influence by anything that the self has not chosen. I have tried my best to banish this false notion of freedom and of the self. However, it tends—in various ways—to creep back in.

  For instance, I could imagine someone objecting to what I’ve argued so far by saying, “All right, perhaps true freedom consists simply in our having the choice to will—or not to will—our determination. And this choice, unlike all our other choices, is truly free in the sense that it is not ‘caused’ or affected by any factors over which we have no control.” It is tempting to affirm this—precisely because the ideal of the “opposable self,” the detached judge, free of any constraints is so attractive. Sartre has a similar conception of “true freedom”: our “opposable self” is absolutely free to negate anything and everything, in some fashion or other. “Authenticity” means recognizing this and knowing that we are “condemned to be free,” whereas “bad faith” means disowning this freedom, and saying, “I couldn’t help it . . .”

  But I am skeptical. All sorts of factors—genetic and social—determine whether or not a person has it in him to will, or not to will his determination. There are individuals who are constitutionally incapable of willing their determination because for them this means defeat. It means complacency, surrendering control, “settling” for what has been handed to him by nature or nurture. And this can be a tremendous virtue—but it is not a “choice” that sprang out of nowhere, without antecedent factors or influences. Such an attitude belongs to a certain sort of character, and character is never self-caused. (Of course, the person who will not his their determination does not realize that this characteristic too is something he did not choose.)

  Some individuals will affirm their determination, and others will not. Ultimately, we can never explain exactly why some do and some don’t. But one thing is certain: it is not the result of a magical “choice” that was completely free of any antecedent factors or conditions. It is a choice that flows from the sort of man one happens to be—but that is shaped and formed by myriad things we do not choose.

  The same thing can be said about the Sartrean “true freedom” as negation. Whether or not I have the will to “negate” what nature or society has handed me is a matter of character. And it is also a matter of intelligence. It is a well-known fact that stupid people tend to simply accept what they are handed much more readily than intelligent people. Smart people are able to conceive of many more possibilities than stupid people, so they have more choices in life. Although, as I have argued, many factors will determine what choice a person makes from among the options of which they are aware, it is nonetheless true that intelligent people will be able to think of a wider array of options. Of course, intelligence is a hereditary trait; we don’t get to choose how smart we are. The will to “negate” the given is thus not something absolutely “free” in the sense of being devoid of antecedent factors or influences: it is very much the result of character traits, hereditary and environmental influences, and IQ.

  Further, I could imagine someone objecting to what I have argued by invoking a subject dear to my heart: the Left-Hand Path. Isn’t that all about rebelling against limits and boundaries, biological and social? Isn’t it about “self-overcoming”? My answer to this is really implicit in what has already been said: yes, the Left-Hand Path is all of these things. But it is not for everyone. Who will choose the Left-Hand Path? Only those who can. And this is, again, a matter of character. Again, freedom means becoming who you are. In fact, there are certain people for whom the opposable self may be exactly who (or what) they are. Their true being may be what I have called elsewhere the Self. But this is a topic I cannot explore in the present essay.155

  I suppose someone might also object to everything I have written by saying that it sounds awfully fatalistic. People sometimes confuse determinism and fatalism and think that the determinist position asserts that everything that happens to us is “fated” to happen. But this is not what “determinism” means. Though who we are is “determined,” this does not mean that everything that happens to us has been somehow pre-determined. When I walk out the door tomorrow I may encounter a salesman out to sell my something—or a madman out to take my life. There is nothing about me that necessitates either one happening. But there is much about me that necessitates how I will react to either occurrence. In a certain sense then, yes, one can say that I am “fated” to act and react in particular ways.

  And this leads me to the last point I will make. This has been a philosophical essay, an attempt to arrive at the truth about free will and determinism, without presuppositions. But the position I have arrived at is quite similar to the understanding of fate and personal destiny that we find in the Germanic lore.

  According to that tradition, even the gods are subject to fate. Some of the words used to refer to fate include Old Icelandic urðr and Old English wyrd, both of which are related to modern German werden, which means “to become.” There is also Old Saxon metod and Old English me(o)tod, which both mean “measure.” Fate, for our ancestors, is therefore something measured out to you, and something you become. Fate is not a “plan” for the individual or for the world laid out in advance: fate is what you are handed by heredity, by the past, and by the present circumstances you enter into. Fate is the “lot” that is cast for the individual by the three Norns: Urth (“what has become”), Verdandi (“what is becoming”), and Skuld (“what shall be”—given antecedent factors or conditions).

  Counter-Currents/North American New Right,

  April 25, 2012

  HEIDEGGER:

  AN INTRODUCTION FOR ANTI-MODERNISTS

  1. WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?

  The term “metaphysics” has been appropriated in recent years to function as a synonym for “New Age” or “occult.” I still vividly remember the two older women in my college metaphysics course who kept asking questions about crystals and astral projection, and who grumbled outside class that the professor was not covering any “real-world metaphysics.”

  As a branch of philosophy, metaphysics could be defined as the study of the fundamental nature of reality. It asks such questions as “What is real?”—and, as Heidegger will shortly tell us, “What is Being?” Metaphysics asks the most fundamental questions in philosophy—and thus it asks the most fundamental questions that human beings can possibly ask.

  What Heidegger teaches, however, is that metaphysics should be thought of less as a timeless, perennial area of human inquiry and more as a “project” that began with certain assumptions that were very much rooted in a particular time and place. The project of Western metaphysics then changed and developed and played out the consequences of those assumptions, until it reached a climax and, for all intents and purposes, came to an end. For Heidegger, what has driven the Western metaphysical project is the desire to give expression to what Being is. Curiously, however, Western metaphysicians have not only seldom actually identified this as their aim, they have systematically obscured the question of Being itself.

  Metaphysics begins with the pre-Socratic philosophers, some of whom speculated about a primal and eternal “stuff” from which all things derive. Others, like the Pythagoreans, believed in objective ideas after which the material world was fashioned. Plato’s “theory of forms” developed out of such speculations. Aristotle took up that theory, revising it and arguing for the existence of a G
od that causes worldly change and transformation through the unrequited love all things feel for him.

  Modern metaphysics makes mind and subjectivity central, and reality for modern metaphysicians becomes increasingly “mind-like.” The paradigm case is Leibniz, who takes up Aristotle’s doctrine of substance (true being) and argues that the only true beings are minds and that everything else is an idea in those minds. Kant argued against the possibility of metaphysics itself (especially the kind represented by Leibniz). But there is an implicit metaphysics in Kant: “what truly is” is the thing-in-itself, which lies forever beyond our ken. The metaphysical tradition culminates in Hegel (1770–1831), who makes “what truly is” equivalent to the whole of reality considered as an organic system (the Absolute), which completes itself through human beings coming to consciousness of it. One can see in Hegel’s philosophy all previous metaphysical ideas dialectically integrated into a new metaphysical system. This is one of the reasons Heidegger described Hegel’s thought as the climax of Western metaphysics.

  2. THE ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE & FORGOTTENNESS OF BEING

  Although the history of Western metaphysics exhibits rich variety, according to Heidegger all the great metaphysicians have “forgotten Being,” because they have all confused Being with a being; i.e., some particular thing that has Being. In short, they have violated what Heidegger calls “the ontological difference.” Those first coming to Heidegger always find this very difficult to understand, but it is absolutely crucial for comprehending his thought.

  For Heidegger, the central question of metaphysics is, “What is Being?” Things, like the keyboard in front of me, are beings: things that have Being, things that are. But metaphysics is concerned not with beings or things themselves, but with the Being that beings have. What do we mean when we say that this book is? We say that it “has Being.” What does this mean exactly? It can’t mean just that it’s physically present to me. I also say that ideas are, that memories are, that history is—but these are not physically present to me. The meaning of “Being” is the greatest mystery there is—and it is extraordinarily difficult to talk about. Especially in English.

  In English “being” does double duty, and we are forced to say that the book is a being, because it has Being. Matters are a little less confusing in German, where the Being that a being has (Being-as-such) is das Sein, which is a noun constructed from the infinitive of the verb “to be” (sein). Beings, the things that have Being, Heidegger calls das Seiende. This is actually a singular noun, and it is probably best translated “what is” or “that which is,” but this is understood to refer to beings, the things that are (or that, again, have Being). In order to avoid completely confusing ourselves in English, many Heidegger commentators have adopted the convention you have already noticed me following in this essay: referring to Being (big B), capitalizing the initial letter of the word that denotes Being-as-such, the Being that a being or beings (small b) have.

  This is not hair-splitting on Heidegger’s part: it is an absolutely crucial and valid distinction. The keyboard, the lamp next to it, the chair I’m sitting in, and I myself are all beings. We are called that because we are said to have Being. But what is this mysterious Being that we all have? One thing is certain: it cannot be a being. If Being were a being it wouldn’t be Being: it would simply be yet another thing that has being. To draw an analogy, you could say that what I have in common with my neighbor is that we both possess the characteristic of manness. But what is that? I’m not certain, but I do know that manness can’t be a man. If it were, it would be something that has manness, not the quality of manness as such.

  This distinction between Being and beings is “the ontological difference.” And it leads to some peculiar consequences. First of all, if we recognize that Being can’t be a being then that means that Being isn’t. A being is something that is; something that has Being. But if Being is not a being then we cannot say that Being is. And so Being is not. This seems exceedingly strange, because if Being is not, then how can Heidegger or anyone else talk about it? But the logic here is airtight: Being-as-such cannot be a being (again, a thing that has Being). As I will discuss in a moment, Heidegger points out that not only do we speak of Being, we deal with it all the time in a whole host of different ways. Therefore, the fact that we cannot treat it as a being does not mean that it cannot be talked about at all. We just have to find a new way to talk about it, which is what Heidegger tries to do (and this is the reason that reading him is so difficult).

  All the philosophers prior to Heidegger failed in the task of thinking Being, because in one way or another they sidestepped the question “what is Being?” and talked instead about some being or other—usually a very special or exalted being, but a being (a thing) nonetheless. Whether philosophers have spoken of a primal matter, or eternal numbers, or the Form of the Good, or God, or the One, or mind, or the thing-in-itself, or the Absolute Ego, or the Absolute, or Will, or Will to Power, Western metaphysicians have spoken only of some special, exalted, or supreme thing that has Being. But they have forgotten Being itself, Heidegger says.

  3. HEIDEGGER’S INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS

  These are difficult ideas, and those wishing to tackle them—and to see exactly how Heidegger proposes to speak about Being—can do no better than to read his Introduction to Metaphysics (Einführung in die Metaphysik). And the remainder of this essay will be devoted to an exposition of this important and readable text, which was originally a lecture course given by Heidegger at Freiburg University in the summer of 1935. It had special significance for him. In the preface to the seventh edition of Being and Time, his magnum opus, Heidegger suggested that readers seeking an accessible account of the question of Being should consult Einführung in die Metaphysik. The lecture series was published that same year, 1953. In fact, it was the first of his lecture series that Heidegger chose to publish, clearly indicating that he regarded it as particularly important. It was also the very first book by Heidegger to be translated into English (by Ralph Manheim, in 1959; a more authoritative translation was produced by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, and published in 2000). Being and Time would not be translated until 1962.

  Heidegger’s high estimation of Introduction to Metaphysics no doubt was due not just to the book’s profound elaboration of the question of Being, but also to the fact that it is one of his clearest and most accessible works. But it is also a work fraught with controversy. Heidegger joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in May of 1933, less than four months after Hitler came to power. Introduction to Metaphysics is, in fact, the work by Heidegger most closely associated with his National Socialism. It was in the pages of this book that, as we shall see, Heidegger referred to National Socialism’s “inner truth and greatness.”

  At the beginning of Chapter One of Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger asks the question, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” And he tells us that this is the most fundamental metaphysical question that can be asked. It is with this question that we can perhaps find some way to encounter Being.

  4. BEING & HUMAN BEINGS

  Heidegger tells us that the question, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” is not one raised exclusively in philosophy seminars. It actually occurs to us in states of despair and depression, or boredom. In these states, we are being moved by an original, philosophical impulse. The question becomes something real and vital to us—it is not an “abstract” philosophical concern. But what exactly does Heidegger mean?

  Consider depression. This is a psychological state in which we often feel a profound sense of meaninglessness. Things which normally seem significant to us or which give us pleasure suddenly seem pointless and empty. But it is not as if other, different things now seem more meaningful. No, depression is a condition in which existence as such loses its meaning. The smallest, most innocuous object or event may fill us with a gnawing sense of dread (this is the state that Sartre—whose thought was heavily dep
endent on Heidegger’s—called “nausea”). And we may feel the sense that existence as a whole is absurd. It may occur to us to wonder why any of this should exist at all. In other words, in such a state we are asking, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” Those exact words may never go through our minds—but we feel this question none the less. Even simple boredom can occasion this feeling.

  Now, what is really going on in these states is that we are preoccupied with Being. We are preoccupied with the Being that everything around us has, and we are asking “Why?” And so we realize, Heidegger says, that there is a deeper question underlying, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” and that is: “How does it stand with Being?” In German, wie steht es um das Sein?156 —which might be translated more simply as “What about Being?”

  Our ability to confront Being in states like depression and boredom gives us an answer to anyone who might think at this point in our discussion that the “Being” Heidegger is preoccupied with is merely an empty word. As human beings, we find ourselves from time to time preoccupied with Being—and we find it disturbing and uncanny. Oddly, however, Heidegger never refers to us as “human beings.” Instead he calls us Dasein, and this word is normally left untranslated in English editions of Heidegger’s work. Da means “there” and sein, as we already know, means “to be.” This term is found in ordinary German, where it can be a separable verb (e.g., “Ist jemand da?” “Is anybody there?”), or a noun meaning “existence” (e.g., ein angenehmes Dasein, a pleasant existence). One finds this term used by earlier philosophers; it’s a category in Hegel’s Logic, for instance.