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Prologue: Defining Ontological Humility
- State University of New York Press
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Prologue Defining Ontological Humility In the Beginning . . . [I]t would be strange to think that the art of politics is the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world. —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics This book explores the concept of “ontological humility,” as developed from the work of twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger , and traces its role in philosophical thought from the seventeenth century to contemporary gender and race theory. While some recent scholarship in both philosophy and feminism points indirectly to this concept, it has not yet been named or systematically explored for its potential value in a range of fields, from epistemology and ethics to the protection of our environment and the understanding of oppression. The goal of this book is to demonstrate how ontological humility not only generates better philosophy, but might also show us how to lead better lives and how to live in a way that allows others to lead better lives as well. The initial argument is that the moral worth of Harry, Dumbledore, and others in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories is due to their humility in the face of the magic that was given to them and which enables them to be the witches and wizards that they are. Voldemort and his “Death Eaters,” conversely, are marked by their arrogance, their certainty that they deserve the power they have and that those who lack it are inferior. Voldemort, moreover, is motivated by what Rowling suggests is the ultimate arrogance, the desire to conquer death, while it is Harry and Dumbledore’s willingness to die that finally defeats the Dark Lord. 1 2 Ontological Humility The key to ontological humility lies in understanding that the same life options are open to “muggles,” too, and that many philosophers over the last four centuries have shared that belief. We are where we are, with the resources and liabilities we have, surrounded by a particular group of others like ourselves, because these things have been “given” to us by what Heidegger calls “Being,” in the same way that magic has been given to Harry Potter. We can believe that we deserve them because of some inherent or achieved virtue of our own, but whatever we might have done to merit our success in any endeavor owes far more to chance, or fate—this being “given”—than it does to our own efforts. Once one is convinced of this, a whole set of ethical imperatives is revealed that greatly narrows the range of morally valid options with regard to many of the major social and political issues of the day. As we will see, I find this theme throughout Heidegger’s work, but will focus for now on the connection he makes between the German words for “to send” (schicken), “history” (Geschichte), and “destiny” (Geschick). Heidegger relates this linguistic triad to how the world we live in and our place in that world is shaped, if not determined, by forces we can neither control nor completely understand. In his “Letter on Humanism,” he also links history and destiny to the “es gibt” (literally, “it gives,” but the German equivalent of “there is”), and to the world as “given” to us, rather than of our own making. One can, thus, see his criticisms of Jean-Paul Sartre’s version of existentialism in the “Letter” as based, among other things, on Sartre’s disregard for the contingencies of human life and the limits of human understanding. As opposed to Sartre’s assertion of human defiance in the face of Being, Heidegger, I will argue, champions ontological humility. The concept of ontological humility also offered an unexpected insight into why the work of some figures in twentieth-century European philosophy (Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida) held my interest, while that of their close intellectual allies (Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault) did not. And the same held true for philosophers in the so-called modern period (1600–1800). What provided the immediate catalyst for this book, however, was the realization that the Harry Potter saga, which I had been reading to and with my children almost since its inception, embodied the same kind of “ontological humility” that I found in Heidegger and others. Convinced that the theoretical and practical implications of the concept for living well and creating a better world were worth exploring more fully, I knew I could not pass up the gift J. K. Rowling had unintentionally given me. This book is...