Brief | Extended | Key figures | Credits
 Born
in 1889, Martin Heidegger is the most influential philosopher
of the twentieth century. After an apprenticeship with Edmund
Husserl, Heidegger in 1927 published his magnum opus, Being
and Time. This work set out to retrieve the 'question of being,'
forgotten since before the time of Plato. It was a profound exploration
of the essence of humanity. In 1933 Heidegger embraced the National
Socialist 'revolution,' becoming rector of Freiburg University.
His 'rectorate address,' culminating in 'Heil Hitler!,' is the
most infamous stain in the history of philosophy. Heidegger resigned
the rectorate in 1934. He continued to lecture, turning more and
more to close examination of ancient Greek texts, and to the 'poet
of poets,' Friedrich Hölderlin. Heidegger was banned from teaching
by the occupying forces after the war because of his Nazi affiliation.
One preoccupation of his later writings is the meaning of modern
technology, and at one point he controversially stated that mass
exterminations are in essence the same as modern agriculture.
He died in 1976.
Born in 1770, Friedrich Hölderlin has come to be regarded as one
of the greatest poets in the German language. He was a friend
of Hegel and Schelling, and his poetry reflects a preoccupation
with philosophical themes, as well as a profound consideration
of the meaning of ancient Greek culture, and its significance
in modern times. Hölderlin was not heralded in his lifetime, and
he was consequently forced to work as a tutor in bourgeois households.
His mental condition deteriorated at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, although he continued to write poetry, and completed
translations of two of Sophocles' tragedies, Antigone and
Oedipus Tyrannus. The unfinished Ister hymn was written
around 1803. When his health continued to suffer, and after a
period of institutionalisation, Hölderlin moved into the home
of a carpenter in Tübingen, where he lived from 1807 until his
death in 1843.
1942 was the year the National Socialists settled on the 'final
solution.' In that same year Heidegger delivered a lecture course
on a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin about the Danube river entitled
'The Ister.' The course explored the meaning of poetry, the nature
of technology, the relationship between ancient Greece and modern
Germany, the essence of politics and human dwelling. The middle
part of the lecture course is a reading of Sophocles' Antigone,
which Heidegger undertakes because of the importance of this text
for grasping the meaning of Hölderlin's poetry. The 1942 lecture
course contains Heidegger's most sustained discussion of the essence
of politics. Heidegger was only able to deliver two-thirds of
the written text of the lecture course. It was published as part
of his collected works in 1984.
 Born
in France in 1952, Bernard Stiegler spent five years in prison
for armed robbery. During this period of enforced isolation, he
became a philosopher. He was released in 1983. In 1994 he published
the first volume of his magnum opus, La technique et le temps
(Technics and Time). The work was an examination of
the essence of humanity in its relation to the essence of technology.
On the one hand, Stiegler is engaged in an argument about archaeology
and the history of technology. On the other hand, he is engaged
in an argument with Heidegger about the nature of the human, the
nature of memory, and the meaning of mortality. Although profoundly
indebted to Heidegger, Stiegler argues that Heidegger cannot grasp
the way in which man is originally and profoundly technical life,
for whom all access to the past and all knowledge of death springs
from a relation to technical prostheses.
 Born
in 1940, Jean-Luc Nancy has published on a vast variety of themes
from philosophy, literature and art. In the 1970s he was a frequent
collaborator with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and in 1980 they jointly
opened the 'Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political'
in Paris, the goal of which was to encourage philosophical work
on the essence of politics. Nancy, a close associate of Jacques
Derrida, has been the subject of a recent book by him. Nancy has
continued to publish works that try to push 'deconstruction' toward
a new foundation for political thought. In this project, he has
been concerned with themes such as community and the possibility
of founding politics on something other than identity. The work
of Heidegger has been of great importance for Nancy's work, both
positively and as what must be overcome.
 Born
in 1940, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is another close associate of
Jacques Derrida. He was a collaborator with Jean-Luc Nancy, the
two having written books together and jointly opening the 'Centre
for Philosophical Research on the Political' at the Ecole Normale
Supérieure. In 1987 Lacoue-Labarthe published La fiction du
politique (Heidegger, Art and Politics), containing
the results of his passionate wrestling with the problem of 'Heidegger's
politics.' It is considered by many to be the most thoughtful
and the most innovative work on the theme of Heidegger and Nazism.
Lacoue-Labarthe turns back to Hölderlin in this work, in an attempt
to find new terms with which to grasp the meaning of the extermination
of the Jews. Lacoue-Labarthe has also published French translations
of Hölderlin's translations of Sophocles, and has staged theatrical
productions of these works.
 Hans-Jürgen
Syberberg was born in Pomerania in 1935. After the collapse of
the Nazi regime he found himself in East Germany. He began making
films as a teenager, and at the age of 17 he filmed rehearsals
of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble theatre company with an
8-millimetre camera in East Berlin. He migrated to West Germany
in 1953, and has thus experienced life under Nazism, Stalinism
and capitalism. Syberberg's greatest cinematic work is a 7-hour
epic that appeared in 1977 under the title Hitler: A Film From
Germany. An impossible mixture of Wagnerian mythology and
Brechtian alienation, the film tries to enter into the Hitler
phenomenon in order to grasp it from the inside. It was not well
received in Germany, where it was controversial, but garnered
praise overseas, especially from critics such as Susan Sontag.
Suspicion of Syberberg's politics was inflamed when in the wake
of reunification he published a book critical of modern Germany.
Lacoue-Labarthe, who had cited the Hitler film favourably in La
fiction du politique, was among those who subsequently found
Syberberg's politics unacceptable. Syberberg continues with various
artistic projects, including a stage production of Hölderlin poems
in 1993 in Berlin.
Syberberg's website: www.syberberg.de
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