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Towards a Polemical Ethics: Between Heidegger and Plato

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Gregory Fried provides a novel way of understanding politics and ethical life he calls a polemical ethics, which mediates between finitude and transcendence by engaging in constructive confrontation with both traditions and other persons.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 26, 2024

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This video outlines a philosophical exploration by the author, who introduces a new book intended to serve as a precursor to future in-depth discussions about politics and ethics. It emphasizes the relationship between Plato and Heidegger. The author critiques Heidegger's view that Plato set Western philosophy on a misguided path, arguing instead that Plato's dialogues, which are inherently social and historical, illustrate a profound understanding of the human condition. The author believes that the essence of being human involves a dialectic between our rootedness in a historical context and our ability to transcend it.

This video then shifts to the author's intent for future research, which focuses on examining the inherent contradictions of American ideals, notably the notion of equality amid historical realities like racism and slavery. The author plans to engage in dialogue with figures such as Frederick Douglass, highlighting the cyclical process of interpretation and reinterpretation that enriches understanding and embodies what the author describes as a "polemical ethic." This video approach invites ongoing discourse about human existence, societal values, and the pursuit of ideals in the face of historical challenges.

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This book is meant to be a prelude to a more detailed

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examination of the politics that I'm interested

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in developing

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and as well as the ethical stance that I want to defend.

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Uh, so this is really at

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what I've called in this book at the meta ethical level.

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It's a, it's a deeper justification from the perspective

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of the history of philosophy and broad fields

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and philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, as well

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as ethics and political philosophy to set the stage for

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what I would like to be doing next.

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These are questions

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and figures that I've been working on

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for well over 30 years.

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Uh, the first book I read in philosophy when I was a

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teenager was Plato's Republic, so

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that's even more than 30 years.

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And Plato's Republic is a major focus of this book.

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And I started working on Heiddeger,

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35 years ago as a figure

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who presents to my mind one of the most important

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critiques of the Western tradition that I want to confront.

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And so in this book, I'm bringing two

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of my longstanding interests, Plato

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and Heiddeger into confrontation with one another

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for Heiddeger.

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Plato is a figure who set western philosophy

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as well as the attendant politics

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and ethics off on the wrong track in Western history.

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And I am interested in both taking that critique,

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not only of Plato,

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but the whole subsequent history of philosophy and politics

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and ethics, seriously taking that seriously,

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but also defending my interpretation

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of Plato against Heidinger

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and doing what the hegelians would call an abo of Heidinger

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that is taking his critique

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philosophically seriously,

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but also not simply,

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capitulating to it,

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but rather drawing from it to enlarge the conversation.

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So really this is a confrontation of Plato

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and Heider that resolves in Plato's favor.

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But by drawing upon the kind of questions

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that Heider is asking Plato to answer as I see it,

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that is one that I draw from Heiddeger

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and want to put into play with Plato.

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Heiddeger doesn't explicitly use the term in the way I'm

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doing now, but what I mean by it is that to be human

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is to be situated in a body

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that is one's own in a historical time

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and culture and language.

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We don't exist as disembodied

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thought beings.

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We exist as the individuals who we are as

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part of a rich community

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that has a deep history in all circumstances.

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So in that sense, we are all situated.

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That is where we begin with our understanding of the world.

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We can examine it, we can transcend it,

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but we always have to come back to it

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because we are tied to our embodiment

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and to the world that our embodiment brings with it.

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For me, the that is really the core

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of the confrontation between Plato and Heiddeger.

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Heider's argument against Plato is that he effectively

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abandons the understanding of what it means to be human

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as a situated historical being.

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For Heiddeger, all that we are is our situatedness.

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Our way of understanding the world is entirely grounded

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in the historicity into which to use his language.

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We are thrown and Plato, according

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to Heiddeger constructs, this world of eternal ideas

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that exist in a timeless zone

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that we can find access to

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through philosophical reflection.

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And that that's what truly exists.

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What's truest about us is our ability to leave

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behind everything that is situated by a, situated in us

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and achieve this kind of pure abstraction in the realm

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of the ideas that are eternal changeless,

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and transcendent.

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And for heiddeger that entirely destroys

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what it means to be human.

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But my argument is that Plato, in fact,

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entirely understands this point,

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and that is why all of his dialogues are dialogues.

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They're dialogues between human beings.

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They are dramatic literary productions that show

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human beings in their context struggling with

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very important questions about what it means to be human.

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And my argument is that yes,

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we always begin as human as situated.

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That is the human condition.

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But if we cannot transcend our situatedness,

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there is no way to break free from

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the limitations and confines of our present understanding.

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But we all have experienced that breaking free

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at some time in our lives, and we break free.

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We turn around

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and examine the world that we have been in hither to,

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and we reconstitute it in the light of something

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that broke us out of it, and we return to it

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and make new sense of it.

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And that process of being situated,

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embedded in a living world, having occasion

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to break away from it and then return to it

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and reconstitute it, is

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what I think Plato understood about the human condition.

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And what heidinger misses is that the capacity

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for transcendence as well as the reality

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of our embeddedness, our situatedness, the confrontation

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between those two is what most properly makes us human.

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And in my argument, Plato in fact

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gives us an access to that way of being human

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that is deeper

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and capable of responding to heider's radical critique.

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We are rooted in a, a world that we are born into.

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We did not choose to have the world that we have.

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We do not choose to have the understandings

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that we grow up in as children and so on.

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To be human is to be enmeshed in a world

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of meanings about everything that is meaningful

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to us from the most trivial things to the most grand

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or grandiose ones.

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We do not choose that.

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So we are always rooted in a historicity

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of our being human.

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But my argument is that

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although that rootedness is profound

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and often blinds us

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to what might be beyond the world as we see it,

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we are capable of breaking free.

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But if you entirely destroy our rootedness, you,

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you destroy also what it means to be human so

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that there's a dialectic between our rootedness

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and our departures from our rootedness that

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if done correctly, ever expands the horizons

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of our understandings

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and makes us open to fresher questions

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that go on to challenge what it means to be human

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in our rooted existence.

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Well, it is what I call the polemical ethics

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or polemical ethic, as what it means to be human,

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to engage in this cycle of interpretation

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and reinterpretation being open

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to the inconsistencies of the meaning

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of the world in which we are embedded.

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And not to see those as a threat,

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but as an invitation to a broader

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and deeper understanding of the world so that we

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force ourselves to reintegrate those things

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that stand out

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and don't make sense into a larger understanding with

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the understanding also that that is a process

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that never should end.

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We should welcome it rather than being afraid of it

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because it's what enriches the experience

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of a thoughtful life, as well as an engaged life

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with the community in which we belong.

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However, we construe that to be my future.

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Research takes a, a bold departure from the book

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that I've written on Heidinger

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and Plato to examine my own

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situatedness as an American.

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America itself is grounded in a profound

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contradiction between the stated ideals

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of its founding, that all men are created equal,

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and the historical reality of slavery, racism,

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colonialism, genocide.

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And if I'm to be true to the polemical ethic

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that I've advocated, I as an American need

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to confront that and try to make sense of it.

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And I am doing that in a philosophical conversation

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with a figure, who I think is a,

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a profound thinker in the American tradition.

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And that's the abolitionist

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and civil rights, actor Frederick Douglass.

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And if I can just read

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to you one quote from Frederick Douglass,

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which is in the conclusion to this book

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and leads into the next one.

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Douglass. Douglass gave a lecture

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in the 1860s during the American Civil War called Pictures

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and Progress on Photography and the Human Condition.

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And it's an extraordinary talk.

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And in that talk, he says, poets, prophets

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and reformers are all picture makers.

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And this ability is the secret

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of their power and achievement.

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They see what ought to be by the reflection of

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What is and endeavor to remove the difference.

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And to me, that is a kind

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of archetypical platonic statement to

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see in the idea or the ideal what ought to be,

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but also not to be blind to one's embedded,

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situated reality, but to have the courage

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and the commitment to try to, as he says,

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remove the difference in the contradiction

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between the real and the ideal.

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And so I am looking at not only his own

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career, but placing him into philosophical dialogue

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with other figures in the philosophical tradition, both past

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and present.

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