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Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida
In this book, the author presents an interpretation of four Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. In an attempt to place these thinkers within the wider context of the crisis-oriented modernism and postmodernism that have been the source of much of what is most original and creative in twentieth-century art and thought.
399 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1985
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September 9, 2024
Concerned with what has “come to be called the ‘failure of the Enlightenment’” (3), this volume sees its four subjects as “as responding (at one remove) to the Enlightenment pretension to construct a science of society modeled on natural science” (4). It traces the lineage from the Romantics, who “were the first to argue that the Enlightenment had failed” (5). Author here credits Lukacs for tracing “Nietzsche and Heidegger as participants in an ‘irrationalist’ current of thought having its roots in Schelling” (7)—the text provides a brisk introduction that moves from Kant to Gadamer.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche “stands as the founder of what became the aesthetic metacritique of ‘truth’” (33). In this project, the notion of ‘crisis’ is key—“the paradigm of crisis is the ‘death of god’” (id.)—and to announce the death of god is to state that “the present is in a state of absolute dereliction” (id.). This leads to nihilism, but Nietzsche’s preferred variant is “aesthetic nihilism”: “Instead of drawing back from the void, we dance upon it” (34). He emphasizes that the crucial apollonian development for civilization was illusion, a veil that “shields us from the harsh realities of existence” (40); “we know and at the same time do not know that the illusion is the illusion” (42) (cf. Baudrillard, Sloterdijk, RSB)—contradiction is in on the ground floor. This identifies Nietzsche with anti-rationalism (47 et seq.); he is at times assertative, idealist, and ultimately reaching for “the chthonic realm of myth” (64). This dogmatism develops into an unsavory concern for anti-historicism (75), “cultural unity” (80), and incoherent prophetics: “nowhere in Nietzsche’s text is there any clear indication of what eternal return in fact means” (83); rather, he “intended eternal return as a denial of both the Christian myth of redemption and the nineteenth-century bourgeois myth of progress” (84). Overall, Nietzsche’s myth is “a form of mysticism, a purely individualistic, even solipsistic creation,” “bound, in its absolute utopianism, to obscure the world as it is” (102).
Heidegger
Following on this, Heidegger is “a prophet of extremity—darker, more oracular, and more enigmatic than Nietzsche, but unequivocally committed to a similar notion of crisis” (106-7), and is associated with “the notion of cultural crisis,” which in his later work becomes “a conception of nihilism” (111), a “notion of apocalyptic change and regeneration” (114). Heideggerian nostalgia (and lukacsian optimism) relates to “the complete dereliction of the present” (115). Heidegger’s notion of crisis is “an awe-inspiring plot line, one that leads from Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, through Plato and Aristotle” and beyond (id.). In keeping with that plot, even Heidegger’s gloominess has an ancient lineage: “original Greek sense of homesickness (nostos, return home; algos, pain)” (119). This becomes, during the time of the Third Reich, an “idealization of the fixed world of the peasant” (135) and other items that worked in concert with NSDAP ideology. It becomes in his later years a “nostalgic, idealistic, technological catastrophism” (140). The influences however, despite the horrid mix here, are profound: Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ thesis is heideggerian, as are Marcuse’s arguments about one-dimensionality (141), developing later into an aestheticism (143 et seq.). “From a Nietzschean or Heideggerian perspective, it is perhaps legitimate to say that the problem with the Nazis is that they were not extreme enough” (146). A useful contrast:
Foucault
Foucault develops the perspectives of Nietzsche and Heidegger, accepting “their fundamental assumption of cultural crisis, of a derelict present, of a nothing out of which everything must be created” (183). Foucauldian extremity is found in “his aim to turn the present into a past,” in “every present, in all its aspects, that is called to judgment and condemnation” (id.). Heidegger “seems fascinated by the nostalgic side of Nietzsche, turning toward an ideal past that remains hidden in the dark mists of pre-socratic time, whereas Foucault embraces his imaginative side, seeking to discover or invent a ‘mythos of the future’” (185). Author works through Foucault’s other influences: psychology, structuralism, Hippolyte, Artaud, Bataille—finding also that “there is a hiatus in Marx between interpretation of the world and its transformation. It is this hiatus that Foucault denies” (196); the "crucial difference between Marx and Foucault: the former is afflicted with a desire for objective truth; the latter is not” (232). He has a “notion of radical crisis” (220), such that “the great artistic works of madness call our world into question” (id.). Dereliction of the present, for Foucault, goes a direction opposite of Nietzsche and Heidegger: “radical activism,” “absolute praxis” (233). “If Waiting for Godot is an appropriate allegory for Heidegger’s project, then we one can imagine an allegory of Foucault’s project entitled Running after Godot--it being understood that Godot will not allow himself to be caught, if he exists at all” (235). To demonstrate the radicality, Foucault solemnly contends that “sexuality has existed only since the eighteenth century and sex only since the nineteenth” (253).
Derrida
Last, Derrida: “To attempt to isolate a Derridean position or articulate a Derridean thesis is to misunderstand the character of Derrida’s enterprise” (260). However, “he radically undermines crisis thought” insofar as ‘crisis’ involves a turning point, which assumes directionality (266). Derrida is “by no stretch of the imagination a Heideggerian. On the contrary, he has been Heidegger’s most patient and most severe critic” (269), persistently attacking “nostalgic motifs” (id.). Derrida draws the sous rature metaphor directly from Heidegger (270), in order to crush him with it. Whereas Foucault “gives an apocalyptic reading of history,” Derrida undermines it (id.). He “deconstructs the prophecy of extremity itself” (298), and thus the wheel is come full circle.
A thick book, with plenty more good times for the entire family.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche “stands as the founder of what became the aesthetic metacritique of ‘truth’” (33). In this project, the notion of ‘crisis’ is key—“the paradigm of crisis is the ‘death of god’” (id.)—and to announce the death of god is to state that “the present is in a state of absolute dereliction” (id.). This leads to nihilism, but Nietzsche’s preferred variant is “aesthetic nihilism”: “Instead of drawing back from the void, we dance upon it” (34). He emphasizes that the crucial apollonian development for civilization was illusion, a veil that “shields us from the harsh realities of existence” (40); “we know and at the same time do not know that the illusion is the illusion” (42) (cf. Baudrillard, Sloterdijk, RSB)—contradiction is in on the ground floor. This identifies Nietzsche with anti-rationalism (47 et seq.); he is at times assertative, idealist, and ultimately reaching for “the chthonic realm of myth” (64). This dogmatism develops into an unsavory concern for anti-historicism (75), “cultural unity” (80), and incoherent prophetics: “nowhere in Nietzsche’s text is there any clear indication of what eternal return in fact means” (83); rather, he “intended eternal return as a denial of both the Christian myth of redemption and the nineteenth-century bourgeois myth of progress” (84). Overall, Nietzsche’s myth is “a form of mysticism, a purely individualistic, even solipsistic creation,” “bound, in its absolute utopianism, to obscure the world as it is” (102).
Heidegger
Following on this, Heidegger is “a prophet of extremity—darker, more oracular, and more enigmatic than Nietzsche, but unequivocally committed to a similar notion of crisis” (106-7), and is associated with “the notion of cultural crisis,” which in his later work becomes “a conception of nihilism” (111), a “notion of apocalyptic change and regeneration” (114). Heideggerian nostalgia (and lukacsian optimism) relates to “the complete dereliction of the present” (115). Heidegger’s notion of crisis is “an awe-inspiring plot line, one that leads from Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, through Plato and Aristotle” and beyond (id.). In keeping with that plot, even Heidegger’s gloominess has an ancient lineage: “original Greek sense of homesickness (nostos, return home; algos, pain)” (119). This becomes, during the time of the Third Reich, an “idealization of the fixed world of the peasant” (135) and other items that worked in concert with NSDAP ideology. It becomes in his later years a “nostalgic, idealistic, technological catastrophism” (140). The influences however, despite the horrid mix here, are profound: Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ thesis is heideggerian, as are Marcuse’s arguments about one-dimensionality (141), developing later into an aestheticism (143 et seq.). “From a Nietzschean or Heideggerian perspective, it is perhaps legitimate to say that the problem with the Nazis is that they were not extreme enough” (146). A useful contrast:
the Hegelian notion of aufhebung--of a simultaneous negation/preservation/elevation of previous thought—gives way, in Heidegger, to the notion of going back before the tradition, to a time preceding philosophy’s entrance into the world. Hegel insists that the beginning, of philosophy or of anything else, is ‘implicit, immediate, abstract, general’; it is ‘poorer in determinations,’ with the ‘more concrete and richer’ coming later. Heidegger, on the other hand, mythologizes the beginning, finding it more genuine and illuminating than subsequent appearances. (149)In this endeavor, it is best that he focus on “the obscure territory of pre-socratic philosophy” (150). “As the legends of Delphi and of the Sphinx suggest, enigma is the characteristic stance of the prophet and seer. It is the enigmatic, mysterious character of the Heideggerian text that makes it possible for his followers to attribute to his words a world-historical significance” (165). More, on aestheticism, romanticism, and so on—but “those who regard Heidegger’s thought as a secularized version of religious faith are right” (169).
Foucault
Foucault develops the perspectives of Nietzsche and Heidegger, accepting “their fundamental assumption of cultural crisis, of a derelict present, of a nothing out of which everything must be created” (183). Foucauldian extremity is found in “his aim to turn the present into a past,” in “every present, in all its aspects, that is called to judgment and condemnation” (id.). Heidegger “seems fascinated by the nostalgic side of Nietzsche, turning toward an ideal past that remains hidden in the dark mists of pre-socratic time, whereas Foucault embraces his imaginative side, seeking to discover or invent a ‘mythos of the future’” (185). Author works through Foucault’s other influences: psychology, structuralism, Hippolyte, Artaud, Bataille—finding also that “there is a hiatus in Marx between interpretation of the world and its transformation. It is this hiatus that Foucault denies” (196); the "crucial difference between Marx and Foucault: the former is afflicted with a desire for objective truth; the latter is not” (232). He has a “notion of radical crisis” (220), such that “the great artistic works of madness call our world into question” (id.). Dereliction of the present, for Foucault, goes a direction opposite of Nietzsche and Heidegger: “radical activism,” “absolute praxis” (233). “If Waiting for Godot is an appropriate allegory for Heidegger’s project, then we one can imagine an allegory of Foucault’s project entitled Running after Godot--it being understood that Godot will not allow himself to be caught, if he exists at all” (235). To demonstrate the radicality, Foucault solemnly contends that “sexuality has existed only since the eighteenth century and sex only since the nineteenth” (253).
Derrida
Last, Derrida: “To attempt to isolate a Derridean position or articulate a Derridean thesis is to misunderstand the character of Derrida’s enterprise” (260). However, “he radically undermines crisis thought” insofar as ‘crisis’ involves a turning point, which assumes directionality (266). Derrida is “by no stretch of the imagination a Heideggerian. On the contrary, he has been Heidegger’s most patient and most severe critic” (269), persistently attacking “nostalgic motifs” (id.). Derrida draws the sous rature metaphor directly from Heidegger (270), in order to crush him with it. Whereas Foucault “gives an apocalyptic reading of history,” Derrida undermines it (id.). He “deconstructs the prophecy of extremity itself” (298), and thus the wheel is come full circle.
A thick book, with plenty more good times for the entire family.
July 27, 2017
Yüzmek istediğiniz suların ne kadar derin olduğunu bilmek istemez misiniz? Aşırılığın Peygamberleri yani Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault ve Derrida’yı ilk duyduğunuzda mutlaka aklınızın bir köşesinde ‘Acaba ne kadar derindirler?’ sorusu geçmiştir. Çünkü bu Kriz filozoflarının silsile ile ilk adımda felsefelerini anlamaktansa sularının ne kadar derinlikli olduklarını kavramak daha önem arz eder. Bunun akabinde daha doyurucu ve zihin açıcı ilerleme sağlanır.
Benim için her birinin çok önem arz ettiği ve gerçekten her yönleri ile merak uyandıran Aşırılığın peygamberlerini belki de bir arada bu kadar açık ve anlaşır bir kitap ile bulmak biraz zor olsa gerekti. Her ne kadar Nietzsche ve Foucault hakkında bir şeyler öğrenmişsem de eksiklerimi tamamlamış oldum. Heidegger ve Derrida hakkında daha nitelikli bir bilgi sahibi olduğum ilk kaynak olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Kitabın detaylı bir incelemesini yapıp size sunmak yerine buradaki filozofları merak ediyorsanız ve doyurucu bir kaynağa ulaşmak istiyorsanız ısrar ile tavsiye ediyorum. Benim için bir başucu eseri olabileceğini söyleyebilirim.
Son olarak Derrida’nın Platon’un Eczanesini okurken içimdeki telaşı hissedip bana bu eseri tavsiye eden Görkem arkadaşıma çok teşekkür ediyorum.
Benim için her birinin çok önem arz ettiği ve gerçekten her yönleri ile merak uyandıran Aşırılığın peygamberlerini belki de bir arada bu kadar açık ve anlaşır bir kitap ile bulmak biraz zor olsa gerekti. Her ne kadar Nietzsche ve Foucault hakkında bir şeyler öğrenmişsem de eksiklerimi tamamlamış oldum. Heidegger ve Derrida hakkında daha nitelikli bir bilgi sahibi olduğum ilk kaynak olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Kitabın detaylı bir incelemesini yapıp size sunmak yerine buradaki filozofları merak ediyorsanız ve doyurucu bir kaynağa ulaşmak istiyorsanız ısrar ile tavsiye ediyorum. Benim için bir başucu eseri olabileceğini söyleyebilirim.
Son olarak Derrida’nın Platon’un Eczanesini okurken içimdeki telaşı hissedip bana bu eseri tavsiye eden Görkem arkadaşıma çok teşekkür ediyorum.
August 22, 2015
Derrida part is so weak since it is written in mid-80s (Derrida will turn to political and other aesthetic issues in his later writings). But it's clear that Megill has succeeded in prophecizing the extremity of Derrida's thought. Also, I liked the way the writer outlines and explains the 4 thinkers in a hermeneutical way.
July 26, 2012
A very good, older introduction to postmodernism; Megill focuses on notions of cultural 'crisis' in Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault and then argues that Derrida deconstructs the idea itself ...
January 15, 2023
By considering the transcendental aspect of philosophy, the author Megill, who discussed the approaches to the concepts of crisis, aesthetics, and the effects of both Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, the last representatives of this style, and how much thinkers are influenced by each other.
Inspired by Foucault and Derrida, and Nietzsche, Nietzsche's issues with love in the process of non-philosophy, the philosophy of representing and reasoning based on information obtained by the mere facts of the names at the point of outs against quite accurate, at this point, Heidegger, too, we may add, however, that Heidegger's philosophy in Western civilization affirming transcendence instead of adding existing political, religious, and philosophical existentialism to remove their waste at the point of his attitude thesis and resulted in the loss of transcendence. However, the author also Decried Heidegger among the transcendental philosophers, and a realistic extreme could have been put forward by preferring Spinoza instead of Heidegger. I have to say that I didn't find the book very full at this point.
The nature of transcendental philosophy is crisis. Because it breaks the order, disrupts the systematized, refutes the rules. In addition to this destructiveness, it builds a new and better one. Thus, he becomes the architect of an intellectual revolution, transformation. The one who comes after him will never remain the same as the one before him. Therefore, when postmodernist thought, art and philosophy are mentioned today, these names have been the ones that have revealed it, because they have revealed a crisis in philosophy.
It was precisely for this reason that the deconstructionist way of thinking emerged and influenced postmodenist philosophy, art and culture, and Foucault and Derrida became the natural pioneers of this style.
The book is quite beautiful in terms of seeing the contribution that these valuable names have made to the history of humanity. However, there are also many minor shortcomings. Nevertheless, I can say that it is one of the important books to read.
Inspired by Foucault and Derrida, and Nietzsche, Nietzsche's issues with love in the process of non-philosophy, the philosophy of representing and reasoning based on information obtained by the mere facts of the names at the point of outs against quite accurate, at this point, Heidegger, too, we may add, however, that Heidegger's philosophy in Western civilization affirming transcendence instead of adding existing political, religious, and philosophical existentialism to remove their waste at the point of his attitude thesis and resulted in the loss of transcendence. However, the author also Decried Heidegger among the transcendental philosophers, and a realistic extreme could have been put forward by preferring Spinoza instead of Heidegger. I have to say that I didn't find the book very full at this point.
The nature of transcendental philosophy is crisis. Because it breaks the order, disrupts the systematized, refutes the rules. In addition to this destructiveness, it builds a new and better one. Thus, he becomes the architect of an intellectual revolution, transformation. The one who comes after him will never remain the same as the one before him. Therefore, when postmodernist thought, art and philosophy are mentioned today, these names have been the ones that have revealed it, because they have revealed a crisis in philosophy.
It was precisely for this reason that the deconstructionist way of thinking emerged and influenced postmodenist philosophy, art and culture, and Foucault and Derrida became the natural pioneers of this style.
The book is quite beautiful in terms of seeing the contribution that these valuable names have made to the history of humanity. However, there are also many minor shortcomings. Nevertheless, I can say that it is one of the important books to read.
June 7, 2024
I think I stayed away from this book so long because I sensed it would fall into a ‘conservative’ camp of intellectual history. While I was never fully on board with the postmodernist or linguistic turn in thought from the 70’s on- I was much more sympathetic than I am currently. Everything changed with Trump. That may sound like a claim for high theory and its relation to everyday life that cannot be sustained. Nevertheless…
This book is one of the finest intellectual histories of the last 50 years. It’s chapter on Nietzsche replaces my formerly favorite book on N: Alexander Nehamas’ Nietzsche; Life as Literature.
The chapters on Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida are equally brilliant.
Wait no longer: read this book!
This book is one of the finest intellectual histories of the last 50 years. It’s chapter on Nietzsche replaces my formerly favorite book on N: Alexander Nehamas’ Nietzsche; Life as Literature.
The chapters on Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida are equally brilliant.
Wait no longer: read this book!
April 21, 2022
Okuduğu en kötü kitaplardan biri. Düşünürlerin kendilerini anlatmadan önce sunduğu genel çerçeve gayet derli toplu ve yeterliydi, ama düşünürler üzerine bölümler hiçbir yorum veya düşünce sunmadan sayfalarca boşboğazlar, düpedüz yanlış yorumlar, büyük resmi göremeden sığ ayrıntıları birkaç sayfa aralıksız sorgulamalarla tek kelimeyle berbattı. Filozofların düşüncelerini bilmiyorsanız, yazarın genel olarak ele aldığı konuya meraklıysanız ve türkiye şartlarında bu kitaba 50 70 veya artık sizin okuduğunuz tarihte fiyatı kaç liraya zamlanmışsa o parayı verebilecekseniz bu 4 filozofun "estet" yönlerini öğrenmek için okunacak ilk giriş kitabı olabilir...
January 2, 2021
One of the best book I had read during my tertiary education days which give a very good introduction to the development of philosophy and current trend of the collective mind during the 90s where Deconstruction was dominating the intellectual minds of many. A good grasp of the history of philosophy from other books would be a good foundation. I would recommend “From Socrates to Sartre:..” by T.Z. Lavigne.
November 5, 2016
good introduction to the continental gang
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews