Table Of ContentPolitical Readings of Descartes in
Continental Thought
Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy
Presents cutting edge scholarship in the field of modern European thought. The wholly
original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an
important and stimulating resource for students and academics from across the discipline.
Deleuze and the Diagram: Aesthetic Threads in Visual Organization, Jakub Zdebik
Derrida, Badiou and the Formal Imperative, Christopher Norris
Desire in Ashes: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, edited by
Simon Morgan Wortham and Chiara Alfano
Early Phenomenology, edited by Brian Harding and Michael R. Kelly
Egalitarian Moments, Devin Zane Shaw
Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries, Ivan Boldyrev
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anarchist Philosophy, William L. Remley
Why There Is No Post-Structuralism in France, Johannes Angermuller
Gadamer’s Poetics: A Critique of Modern Aesthetics, John Arthos
Heidegger, History and the Holocaust, Mahon O’Brien
Heidegger and the Emergence of the Question of Being, Jesús Adrián Escudero
Hegel and Resistance: History, Politics and Dialectics, edited by Rebecca Comay
and Bart Zantvoort
Husserl’s Ethics and Practical Intentionality, Susi Ferrarello
Immanent Transcendence: Reconfiguring Materialism in Continental Philosophy,
Patrice Haynes
Lacanian Realism: Political and Clinical Psychoanalysis, Duane Rousselle
Language and Being, Duane Williams
Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy,
Bryan A. Smyth
Mortal Thought: Hölderlin and Philosophy, James Luchte
Nietzsche and Political Thought, edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson
Nietzsche as a Scholar of Antiquity, Helmut Heit
Philosophy, Sophistry, Antiphilosophy: Badiou’s Dispute with Lyotard,
Matthew R. McLennan
Philosophy of Ontological Lateness, Keith Whitmoyer
The Poetic Imagination in Heidegger and Schelling, Christopher Yates
Post-Rationalism: Psychoanalysis, Epistemology, and Marxism in Post-War France,
Tom Eyers
Revisiting Normativity with Deleuze, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Patricia Pisters
Schizoanalysis and Ecosophy: Reading Deleuze and Guattari, edited by
Constantin V. Boundas
Towards the Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben,
Brendan Moran and Carlo Salzani
Political Readings of Descartes
in Continental Thought
Alon Segev
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2019
Copyright © Alon Segev, 2019
Alon Segev has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6971-8
ePDF: 978-1-3500-6972-5
eBook: 978-1-3500-6973-2
Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy
Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
To Ada and Immanuel with love
Contents
Preface viii
Introduction: Home and exile 1
1 Progress: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Georges Sorel, and
Martin Heidegger 17
2 Franz Baader: Cogitor ergo sum 41
3 Edmund Husserl: The crisis of the European man 61
4 Martin Heidegger: Homo est brutum bestiale 81
5 Franz Borkenau: Cartesianism and the exploitation of man
and nature 113
6 Franz Böhm: German philosophy at war with Cartesianism 139
Bibliography 163
Index 173
Preface
I began working on the Political Readings of Descartes in Continental Thought
over five years ago. The book does not deal with the philosophy of Descartes,
but rather discusses the political stance of other people towards Descartes’s
philosophy and the use they make of it in promoting their own political views.
I started working on the current book while preparing the publication of my
book Thinking and Killing: Philosophical Discourse in the Shadow of the Third
Reich. I am currently working on a book on the German theologian Gerhard
Kittel. These studies treat entirely different subjects in different historical
contexts and from different perspectives. Yet, they are linked through my
interest in the relationship between philosophy, theology, history, and politics.
Both philosophers and theologians profess to convey the truth to us. Their view
is, however, limited by the historical context and, knowingly or unknowingly,
they are often motivated by political agendas which determine their theories.
My purpose is not to judge, not to wreak havoc by exposing piquant stories
from the biography of this or that person, but rather to try to understand their
views. People rushed to judge Heidegger as a rabid Nazi and an anti-Semite
following the publication of the ‘notorious’ Black Notebooks, without trying
or even willing to deal with the complex context of those texts, which contain,
inter alia, sharp critiques of Nazi ideology, Alfred Rosenberg, unrestrained
technological expansion, the world wars and the arms race, the overuse of
power, and the outbreak of barbarism in the twentieth century. Likewise,
Husserl is commonly seen as the poor rational victim of his irrational, völkisch
disciple; the former is always mentioned in connection with his Jewish
origin and the latter has been branded as an evil Nazi. Led by these false
prejudices, people overlook Husserl’s chauvinistic political worldview and
overt aversion to non-European people as he voiced in his lectures in 1935.
Franz Xaver von Baader has been regarded as an ecstatic irrational Catholic
enemy of the Enlightenment. Careful study of his complicated writings and
the context in which he wrote reveals his close intellectual friendship with
Ignaz von Döllinger and his influence on the foundation of the Old Catholic
Preface ix
Church (Altkatholische Kirche) which emerged out of the tension with and
the separation from the Vatican as well as the attempt to overcome the schism
between the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Baader’s critique
was directed against the rational Enlightenment and nihilism no less than
against the irrational pietism of his time. Franz Borkenau has been regarded
as a supporter of Stalinism and thus his connection with the Frankfurt School
has been cut. Careful reading of his work along with the critique delivered by
Henryk Grossmann, who was commissioned by the Frankfurt School to attack
Borkenau, reveals his reliance on Karl Marx and an attempted Marxist reading
of Descartes.
Since the work on the current book lasted for a long time, during which
I was exposed to new material that led me to examine and revise my views very
often, the last stage of writing the book consisted mainly of adapting old drafts
to my current views. Exchanges with friends, colleagues, and students enriched
my perspectives and improved my understanding. I owe them all my gratitude.
They are many, and within the limited space of this preface, I can express my
gratitude only to those people whose help and support are more closely related
to the ‘end product’. I would have continued my research on political readings
of Descartes ad infinitum without ever reaching the point at which I could
stop to write down my ideas and turn them into a printed book had Andreas
Oberprantacher not invited me to give a seminar at Innsbruck University on
the political readings of Descartes and encouraged me throughout my time at
Innsbruck. Richard Wolin and Jerrold Seigel invited me to present my chapter
on Husserl at their seminar on intellectual history at the Graduate Center of
City University of New York. Their feedback on my text was helpful and led
to a fruitful exchange with David Carr, with whom I discussed earlier drafts
of my chapters on Husserl and Baader. Andrew Cutroffelo, David Ingram, and
Gregory Fried read part of the manuscript and encouraged me to complete
it with their insightful comments and suggestions. Rebecca Toueg read the
whole manuscript, the earlier and later drafts, and made helpful suggestions
on the style and content. I am blessed to have Liza Thompson, Lucy Russell,
Frankie Mace, and Daisy Edwards as wonderful editors.
