Abstract

The axiom at the heart of this article stipulates that everything that can be extracted from Heidegger's thought by way of political contribution can be so extracted only from a position that is itself essentially non-political. This means that everything Heidegger says about politics, or that can be seen to resonate with our political situation, is articulated from a position or a space that is itself not political, a space that, furthermore, defines and decides the essence of politics. His contribution, then, is not to the political debate as such. Rather, it consists in asking whether what is historically at stake in politics and played out in political terms is itself political, and so a matter for political thought, or whether the questions and concepts of political thought are themselves shaped in response to a phenomenon, possibly an event, which it, as political thought, cannot interrogate, or even intimate. Following Heidegger, I envisage our political situation from a non-political perspective, and provide the measure for an evaluation of contemporary politics as an ontohistorical phenomenon. This, I do by following a lead Heidegger develops in the 1930s and 1940s, and by focusing on the concept of Macht, the translation of which will turn out to raise key philosophical issues. Despite its obvious political connotations and overtones, this concept will turn out to designate a phenomenon that is not so much political, as it is metaphysical: it is metaphysics itself, and metaphysics in its entirety, that is of power. This means that all metaphysics is metaphysics of power, and that power itself is through and through metaphysical. Politics, especially modern politics, turns out to be an effect of Macht understood as a metaphysical phenomenon. Having revealed the structure of power, its logic, imperatives and different regimes, I consider briefly the possibility of a politics that would not be governed by such a principle of power, the possibility of what I would call a politics of powerlessness, or a politics of the otherwise than power (Ohnmacht). Could that be ‘politics’ in the highest and ownmost sense? Could ‘Europe’ stand for such radical politics?