If one wishes to answer this question, one must first ask: “What is society?” One must reflect upon the fact that contemporary society is merely the absolutization of modern subjectivity, and that from this standpoint a philosophy which has overcome the standpoint of subjectivity must not intervene at all.
Another question is to what extent one may meaningfully speak of a transformation of society. The question concerning the demand for changing the world leads back to a much-cited sentence of Karl Marx from the Theses on Feuerbach.
I wish to quote it exactly and read it aloud: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
In citing this sentence and in following it, one overlooks that a transformation of the world presupposes a change in the representation of the world (Weltvorstellung), and that such a world-representation can only be attained through an adequate interpretation of the world.
That means: Marx rests upon a quite determinate interpretation of the world in order to demand his “transformations,” and thereby this sentence proves itself to be unfounded. It creates the impression as though a decisive statement had been made against philosophy, whereas in the second part of the sentence the demand for a philosophy is silently presupposed.
Wisser: In what way can your philosophy today become effective with respect to a concrete society with its manifold tasks and concerns, needs and hopes? Or are those critics of yours correct who claim that Martin Heidegger is so exclusively preoccupied with “Being” that he has abandoned the conditio humana, the being of the human being in society and as person?
Heidegger: This criticism is a great misunderstanding! For the question of Being and the unfolding of this question presuppose precisely an interpretation of Dasein, that is, a determination of the essence of the human being.