Heidegger and abortion

This article from World Magazine about Wesley Clark’s stance on abortion (pro-choice) predictably gets nearly everything about existentialism wrong. Only God knows why they would attempt to critique a philosophy they hardly understand in order to advocate a position that in its public guise is wholly untenable.

In World Magazine’s (hereafter WM) rendering of existentialist thought, there is cast of exactly two: Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Never mind that Heidegger never considered himself an existentialist, and that much of Sartre’s “anger” at bourgeois practices such as marriage, church-going, and the rule of law was a result of his Marxist convictions. WM states that: “For Heidegger, the masses, lacking a true will of their own, can only become authentic by becoming one with the will of someone greater.”

This is presumably a reference to Heidegger’s notion of das Man, and is simply incorrect. In Being and Time, he says: “Das Wer ist nicht dieser und nicht jener, nicht man selbst und nicht einige und nicht die Summe Aller. Das ‘Wer’ is das Neutrum, das Man (S&Z, 126).” Heidegger’s point (and it can certainly be disputed) is that there is no such thing, ever, as private thought or private conscience. Our choices, preferences, and life hopes are always already present in a public structure. That is, our decisions, our means for self-actuation, are made available to us by the society of which we are a part. For instance, a tribal dweller in Papua New Guinea does not have the option of becoming, say, a plastic surgeon. Nor can he even begin to contemplate such a path. Conversely, a citizen of any advanced industrial democracy does generally not have the option of becoming a shaman, or engaging in polygamy. In both cases, it is clear that our lives are pervasively and profoundly shaped by our respective societies, to such an extent that we cannot opt out of them.

The lesson WM draws from its cursory analysis of this idea is that, since the majority of human beings are inauthentic (i.e. they are defined by das Man), they are easier to kill! Indeed, the article implies that this would be a legitimate course of action for a Heideggerian existentialist, and cites his support of Nazism as proof. It then goes on to attribute a similar view to Gen. Clark.

I am not especially familiar with the intricacies of Clark’s position. WM suggests that, for Clark and all the other pro-deathers, life begins with a mother’s decision. This is a needless obfuscation. Heidegger, a former Catholic seminarian who retained a sense of piety throughout his long life, would probably be against abortion. However, a view consistent with his version of existentialism would simply remark that abortion is inextricably incorporated into the cultural fabric of democratic states for whom individual autonomy is a critical value. A woman’s reproductive autonomy is less a choice than a fact of public existence in this period of Western modernity. It is ethically or morally legitimate then, only because it happens to be available.

Clearly, this is not a good argument for either side of the abortion debate. But I believe it is a fairly accurate guess at what someone like Heidegger might say. This just goes to emphasize the patent unsuitability of the whipping boy resurrected by WM to show up the alleged horrors of Clark’s beliefs.