Heidegger

Stimmung – you know the word.

Sure – Stimmung. Mood, right?

Or attunement … like in music.

Attuned … what are we attuned to?

All kinds of things.

What kind of philosophy is this?

Heidegger’s. We all pretend to hate Heidegger, but we don’t really. Heidegger’s everything in European Philosophy, even if we pretend he’s not.

What was he, some kind of existentialist?

Never call him that. Heideggerians hate that.

Heideggerians … are they really Heideggerians?

Americans, mostly. Who take it all very seriously. And get very pious about Heidegger. And speak pure Heidegger-ese.

I’ve never heard about Heidegger in Organisational Management. I don’t think anyone’s into Heidegger. I don’t think there’s a book on Heidegger in the Organisational Management Philosophy book series.

 

Was that his big idea: Stimmung? Sounds very … emotional … and irrrational.

That’s what some people say.

Sounds like he really wouldn’t approve of Organisational Management.

He really wouldn’t.

 

Heidegger wrote about death, too. He wrote quite a lot about death. About earth and sky and gods and mortals …

Sounds like a poet.

And he liked the poet Friedrich Hölderlin a lot. An awful lot.

A poet?

Helped him to philosophise. To philosophise in a new way.

A literary philosopher – just like you.

 

Did Heidegger write about God?

He wrote about the last god. Small g. Only a god can save us now.

The last god?

The last god.

So there were other gods, like, before?

Yeah, but this is the last one. And he wrote about the godding of the gods.

Godding? He was very into his gerunds. He world was worlding, the earth was earthing, and the gods were … godding.

And what are we doing? Loving.

Did Heidegger write about loving?

He had an affair … with Hannah Arendt. She was a famous philosopher, too. And Heidegger’s wife was having her own affair at the same time. The sons he thought were his were not.

Everyone’s at it … all the philosophers.

 

Heidegger … so he was your genius.

Sure, he was a genius

He had all these ideas?

Sure he had ideas.

And you’d like to be like Heidegger?

 

Was Heidegger right?

He didn’t see the evil. He didn’t see the horror. It was only the Jewish thinkers from the same period who saw that: Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem … That’s why he succumbed to Nazism.

You make Nazism sound like a disease.

 

Are there organisational manager geniuses?

Don’t be stupid. We regard genius is an outmoded idea.  We all work together. Like scientists.  Putting together big research bids. That’s how its done now. What would Heidegger say about that?

It’s just what Heidegger would expect.