Spiritual poverty? On Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's critique against Heidegger's national-spiritualism

Abstract

According to Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger's later philosophy is characterized by a sort of quasi-religious "national-spiritualism" articulated by two theoretical procedures: on the one hand, by his attribution of a "geo-ethno-political" character to his ontological reflection, an aspect which would carry together with itself a fascist penchant; on the other hand, by his sacralization of Hölderlin's poetry, which would be interpreted by him as "sacred text". In my critical commentary to Lacoue-Labarthe's presentation of Die Armut (On poverty), a Heidegger's conference, I argue, firstly, that Heidegger's hermeneutics of Being is to be understood as the overcoming of his previous considerations about the German people's historical mission; and secondly, that Heidegger's hermeneutics of Being has nothing to do with the sacralizing of poetical texts, but rather with the search of another way of saying, by means of a non-calculative, post-metaphysical language. Key-words: Heidegger, poverty, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, spirit, philosophy, politics.