Theory Interview: William Leiss
Dr. William Leiss in conversation with Laureano Ralon and Roman Onufrijchuk
Following interview, William Leiss, a student of Herbert Marcuse and, in his own right, a brilliant critical intellectual and writer, most recently, of utopian fiction, explores intellectual life from the postwar generation to the present moment. As the interview makes apparent, always there is the unsettled, and unsettling, legacy of Martin Heidegger. What is the lasting legacy of Heidegger: a prophet of the future under the sign of completed nihilism or a fully compromised thinker who, at a decisive historical juncture, chose to carefully align his thought with the political imperatives of German fascism? In Leiss’ thought, the “cunning of reason” is deconstructed by a consistent ethical appeal for a form of thought that is about truth-saying, in good times and bad. Of course, if there is to be found in this account of Marcuse and Heidegger something of the critical intellectual imagination in full flight across the the labyrinth of history, then we are left with the equally unsettling possibility that the unfinished debate between Marcuse and Heidegger may be about to break out again as the lightning-flash inaugurating the life of the mind in the contemporary century.”
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
Editors, CTheory
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