The "Official" View and "Facts and Thoughts"
The portion of the discussion of the rectorate discussed so far serves to introduce the middle portion of the article, officially devoted to the
rectoral talk. In the same way as Heidegger called for the "destruction" of the history of ontology in Being and Time in order to make out the claim for his interpretation of the meaning of Being, so Heidegger here undertakes to "destroy," to deconstruct, what otherwise appears evident in his speech. In the process, he sketches the main lines of what we have called the "official" view, intended to deny what can be denied, to reinterpret what cannot reasonably be denied in the most favorable light, and in general to preserve as much of his thought as possible from the taint arising from his Nazism.
Heidegger's deconstruction of his talk, his official reinterpretation of its stated purpose, has been largely successful in providing a more flattering reading of his life and work than they merit on the available evidence mainly because it has rarely been subjected to direct scrutiny. We need now to deconstruct Heidegger's deconstruction, his own effort to refute the rather obvious interpretation of the Rektoratsrede presented above. In this respect, my intention is to defend my interpretation of that text against Heidegger's own view of it, to defend a moderate reading of the talk as an effort to place philosophy in the service of Nazi politics against the rather more violent Heideggerian claim that this was not his intention at all.
Heidegger insists that "interpretation" means "to capture the Being of the entity despite its tendency to cover things up."[72] He maintains that an existential analysis constantly does violence to the claims of a so-called everyday interpretation. It will be necessary to do violence, not to Heidegger's speech, but to Heidegger's interpretation of it in order to bring out what is covered up in his text. The effort to do violence to Heidegger's auto-interpretation is designed to show that his reading provides a false appearance obscuring the essence of the text, which remains hidden.
Heidegger's reading of his talk is based on his view of interpretation. He remarks that for this text as with the spoken word, everything depends on something like interpretative goodwill as a precondition to the grasp of what is essential. "To be sure, in this case, as is the case with every spoken word, everything depends on the interpretation [Auslegung] and on the readiness to enter into what is essential and to get it into view."[73] This passage recalls Heidegger's well-known view that understanding projects possibilities, whose development Heidegger calls interpretation. For Heidegger, interpretation is never presuppositionless, but is always grounded in advance in a prior conception located in the fore-structure of the understanding, what Gadamer usefully calls a Vorverständnis .[74] According to Heidegger, the process of the development of an understanding is always the working out of a prior, incomplete grasp of the whole phenomenon in view.
Here, the reference to interpretation has a strategic value. In calling
attention to his theory of interpretation at the beginning of the crucial section of the discussion, whose announced purpose is to show that the aims of the rectorate are expressed in the rectoral address, Heidegger is careful to present a favorable view of the matter. Since he holds that all interpretation consists in the development of an initial preconception, Heidegger is concerned to supply a global statement of his purpose to serve as a guide, as the conceptual horizon, of the discussion to follow. As he wants the reader to accept his interpretation, everything depends on the formulation of an acceptable prior conception as the basis for the further development of the initial, incomplete understanding.
Obviously, we need not uncritically accept Heidegger's proposed prior understanding of the rectorate. We need only accept it if it provides what one can roughly describe as a faithful account of the rectoral address. On a reasonable reading of this portion of the text, his argument consists of ten elements, including:
1. a statement of the aim of the Rektoratsrede ;
2. a reinterpretation of the idea of battle in a supposedly authentically Greek sense;
3. a rejection of the obvious interpretation of the talk as inauthentic;
4. the assertion that official Nazism was displeased by the talk;
5. a statement of the tenuous nature of his relation to official Nazism;
6. a claim for the incompatibility between his view of the university and that of National Socialism;
7. a description of his decision to resign to protect the university;
8. an attribution of what occurred to metaphysics, which has become technology in the age of nihilism;
9. an acknowledgment of his conviction in the possibility represented by National Socialism;
10. an affirmation of the possibility to overcome nihilism through poetry.
These themes are main elements in Heidegger's defense through the simultaneous "destruction" of the obvious interpretation of his Nazism and the redescription of its main elements in order to conceal them within the "official" view of his relation to National Socialism. The fourth point is a purely factual matter, which falls to a historian. Point 5 has already been broached several times in the preceding discussion. Finally, the sixth point is a conclusion that either follows or fails to
follow from the other points, and hence need not be addressed directly apart from the elements that compose the remainder of the argument. I turn now to the other points of Heidegger's defense.
A beginning can be made through scrutiny of Heidegger's view of the purpose of the talk, which he states on no less than three occasions. In successive paragraphs, he twice maintains, using the same term, that "the heart [Kernstück]" of the address is "the exposition [Darlegung] of the essence of knowing and science; the university is to be grounded on that essence; and on that ground it is to assert itself as German university"[75] and that it serves "the interpretation of the essence of knowing, science, and profession that is based on training in science."[76] In a third, later passage, he remarks, in a somewhat different description of his intent, that "the atmosphere of confusion" prevented him from carrying out "those efforts that were my sole concern and that had moved me to assume the office: reflection on the ethos that should govern the pursuit of knowledge and on the essence of teaching [die Besinnung auf die Wissenshaltung und auf das Wesen des Lehrens]."[77]
Heidegger's characterization of his intent in the speech requires scrutiny. A closer look reveals that instead of a single, univocal description, he proposes in fact three descriptions related through a kind of family resemblance. These three ways of depicting the essence of the speech are similar, but not identical. It is one thing to provide an exposition of the essence of science and learning in order to further the German university, for instance through its "self-assertion." It is something else to interpret the essence of knowing, science, and the profession to which it leads.
Since Heidegger claims to capture the essence in the initial description, then he can desire to ground (gründen ) the university upon it. A description of the essence is apparently sufficient only for an explanation (Erläuterung ). Presumably a statement of the essence captures, in Aristotelian language, what it is to be that thing, whereas an interpretation provides a description of that thing. By implication the essence is unique and admits of one exposition only, although there is presumably more than one possible interpretation of something. An exposition and a description of the essence coincide only if a description is univocal. But since different descriptions are possible, which do not coincide, obviously they do not describe the same essence in the same way. In short, different descriptions from different perspectives provide different views of what, in terms of the description, appears to be different.
The two descriptions of the heart of the matter as the essence that grounds and as an explanation present similar but subtly different views. The difference is greater with respect to the third description of the rectoral address as a meditation on the ethos of knowledge and the
essence of teaching. The word translated here as the "ethos of knowledge" (Wissenshaltung ) combines two terms that literally mean "the pose, posture, or attitude" and "knowledge," and that together signify "the attitude of knowledge." In his third description, Heidegger is primarily concerned with getting clear about the attitude one should take toward knowledge and the essence of teaching. What these three characterizations have in common is a certain average assertion that the talk is about the essence of science and knowledge as it concerns the university, which should be understood from this angle of vision.
Now "Kernstück, " the word translated as "heart," is composed of two terms "Stück " and "Kern " meaning respectively "piece," "lot," "stretch," "distance," and so on, and "kernel," "core," and so on. The single, composite term can be rendered as the "central part" or "central portion" of the talk. Heidegger's claim, then, can be paraphrased as the assertion that the central portion of the speech is a meditation on the essence of knowing and science, and its relation to the university. Here we need to distinguish between an interpretation according to the letter and one according to the spirit.[78] As Kant complained, an interpretation can be literally correct with respect to the letter but fail to capture the spirit.
Heidegger's claim about the heart of his rectoral address is false with respect to its spirit but literally true. Heidegger is literally correct that the central portion of his talk concerns the essence of science and the German university. A passage on this topic occurs toward the middle of the talk. But his literal description of the Rektoratsrede does not describe it adequately; it fails to capture the spirit of a speech which it describes without regard to the context. The hidden motivation of this misdescription is not deeply buried. Since the rectoral speech was on the public record, it could not simply be denied. Heidegger's obvious intent, in a period when he is being called to account for his connection to Nazism, is to place it in a more favorable light than would otherwise be the case. For in calling attention to the meditation on knowing, science, and the university, he focuses on these topics to the exclusion of the surrounding remarks on the need to realize the destiny of the German nation through the Nazi state.[79]
It is important to be clear about the present claim. The main point is that in calling attention to the central part of the talk in a way that is literally true, Heidegger distorts its spirit. In effect, he takes the part for the whole by concentrating on the portion that occurs in the center of the talk, but which is eccentric to its main purpose. Hence, at the beginning of his defense, and despite his assertion of the importance of entering into the essential, of first getting the whole into view, Heidegger
misleadingly substitutes the part for the whole in a way that covers up the whole by focusing on the part.
Heidegger's reading of his speech is an instance of inauthentic hermeneutics, of an interpretation in bad faith whose aim is to conceal what he knows. As soon as we see that, despite his statement in the first sentence of this section, Heidegger's strategy is not to enter into what is essential and to avoid getting it into view, it becomes easy to see that what he says about the so-called heart of his talk is literally true but false to the spirit of the speech. One must be less sanguine about his qualifying remarks concerning the two descriptions of the heart of the talk, which are untrue to the spirit of the speech and even literally untrue, at the very least a clear misreading intended to change the sense of the talk.
A prominent aspect of the Rektoratsrede was Heidegger's insistence on the three forms of service: labor, defense, and knowledge in relation to the community of the people, the honor and destiny of the nation among other peoples, and the spiritual mission of the German people.[80] In the talk, he further described them as equiprimordial.[81] Now the insistence on the equiprimordiality of the three forms of service obviously strains Heidegger's claim to have concerned himself merely with knowing, science, and the university. Perhaps for that reason, Heidegger now maintains, despite his explicit statements in the speech, that knowledge is prior to the other forms of service. For the future university is to be grounded on the essence of knowing and science which allows it to assert itself as a German university.[82] Here, Heidegger's chauvinism is apparent in the implied limitation of an authentic relation of the essence of knowing and science to the German university only. He seems to believe that at best this relation is intrinsically inauthentic elsewhere. Here and in other writings, Heidegger's chauvinism is evident in his repeated insistence on German philosophy as the sole legitimate heir of Greek thought. Every other form of philosophy is, then, inauthentic, by implication not worthy of the name.
After his remark on the future university, Heidegger immediately presents a revisionary interpetation obviously meant to qualify his claim in the rectoral address about the equiprimordiality of the three forms of service:
Knowledge Service is named in third place, after Labor Service and Armed Service, not because it is subordinated to the former, but because knowing is what is authentic and highest, that unto which the essence of the university and therefore reflection gathers itself. As far as Labor Service, named in second place, is concerned, it may be permitted to remind the reader that long before 1933 this "service" grew out of the distress of the time and the will of the young, which gave it its shape. "Armed
Service," however, I mentioned neither in a militaristic, nor in an aggressive sense, but understood it as defense in time of need [als Wehr in der Notwehr gedacht].[83]
This statement betrays a visible unease. Heidegger's initial assertion that knowing is not subordinated to labor and defense is literally correct since they are equiprimordial, hence on the same level; but it is also false, since what is highest cannot be on the same level as anything else. In other words: either there was never an equiprimordiality, in which case knowing can be highest; or there was an equiprimordiality and knowing as a form of service is not higher than labor or defense. One should further be careful about the description of knowing as the highest since that emphasis runs counter to the effort, basic to Heidegger's fundamental ontology, to deconstruct the rationalistic emphasis in philosophy represented prominently by Descartes.[84] One should finally be hesitant about the description of knowing alone as authentic, since, then, nothing else, such as defense or work, can be authentic. In other words, and in Heidegger's terminology, it appears that only those engaged in knowing, by extension only members of the academy, are or possibly can be authentic. It is as if, in a strange version of the Platonic view that only philosophers can finally claim to know, Heidegger were to depict representatives of German philosophy as the only possible form of authentic human being.
Heidegger's reference to the historical origins of work service does not dispel the asymmetry between his depiction of the three pillars here and in the speech. For the explicit approval in the Rektoratsrede of the bond that binds into "the community of the people,"[85] he now substitutes a note as to how this form of service came about. But the most significant change is the effort to reinterpret, to deconstruct—in a word, to interpret away—his earlier understanding of defense. Unquestionably, Heidegger's present, literal comprehension of defense as defense in need-defense, perhaps more accurately defense in time of need, is meant to provide a reading of his intentions basically distinct from the Nazi military machine.
We recall that in his talk, Heidegger discussed armed service as a bond binding the student to "the honor and destiny of the nation" as a "readiness ... to give all."[86] Heidegger's present effort to provide a different view of his understanding of defense occurs in two stages, including a description of the content of the talk and a reading of the term "battle." In the first stage, he proposes an elaborate, fourfold characterization of the content of the talk as:
(1) The grounding of the sciences in the experience of the essential region of their subject matter.
(2) The essence of truth as the letting be of what is, as it is.
(3) Preservation of the tradition that has handed down to us the beginning of our Western way of knowing in the Greek world. (Compare my two hour lecture course of the summer semester 1932: The Beginning of Western Philosophy.)
(4) In keeping with this, our responsibility as part of the Western world.[87]
Even a cursory glance at this list shows that its items are not equally relevant to the rectoral address. The first item is neither stressed in, nor consistent with, the quasi-Platonic thrust of the talk. At the time, Heidegger underscored the manner in which the various forms of knowledge are finally grounded in philosophy, for instance in his claim that all science is philosophy, from which it draws its strength and essence.[88] On the contrary, in his present post-Platonic phase he now insists that science grounds itself in its subject matter. The second item, the essence of truth as letting be, refers to a view of truth as disclosure already prominent in Heidegger's early work, but not central to the rectoral address.[89] The theme of the preservation of the Western view of science originating in ancient Greece, which Heidegger names in third place, is certainly a main current of the speech. This is also the case for the so-called responsibility as part of the Western world.
Heidegger offers the second stage of his reading of the concept of defense service in a detailed series of remarks on the term "battle" (Kampf ). The relation of this term to Hitler's Mein Kampf in the immediate period leading up to the Second World War is difficult to overlook even now, and was even more obvious at the time. Heidegger's analysis develops a line of argument already broached in 1935, a mere two years after the rectoral address, in the lecture course published as An Introduction to Metaphysics . Here, Heidegger sketches the analysis of Heraclitus's fragment 53, which is the basis of his later attempt to "deconstruct" the word "battle." Already Heidegger argues that the word "polemos " means "conflict" in the sense of "Aus-einander-setzung, " literally "setting apart."[90]
Heidegger now makes use of his earlier analysis of "polemos " to draw attention from the clear link between "Kampf" and Mein Kampf . [91] Heidegger's remarks are obviously meant to deflect attention from the clear, but implicit, reference to Hitler—consistent with his overall effort in this text to minimize attention to his interest in National Socialism—through the simple expedient of reinterpreting the term "battle" to substitute another referent. This phase of the argument depends on an attempt to invoke an author's privileged access to his intentions. He insists that when he used the German term, he meant "battle" in a
specifically Greek sense associated with Heraclitus's thought, in which the word "polemos " does not mean "battle." We can paraphrase the intent of the argument as an effort to show that despite the apparently ordinary manner in which he used "battle" in the rectoral address, in fact he meant by this word something other than "battle." The claim, then, is that on the testimony of the author we learn that on occasion he uses ordinary words in extraordinary ways that do not mean what they say. The presupposition of this kind of interpretation is that sense and reference can just be separated at will, since in any given instance a new sense and/or reference can be substituted without regard to the usual way of using the term. Carried to the extreme, the practice to which this argument refers would obviously render not only textual interpretation, but even communication, impossible.
Heidegger begins by saying that he understands "episteme " and "aletheia " in their Greek senses; and similarly "battle," too, is understood here in not just any way. "Battle" is thought in the sense of Heraclitus, fragment 53.[92] He then goes on to make two points, based on his revised reading of the word "polemos, " or battle. To begin with he remarks that "polemos " should not be understood as "war" ("Krieg ") but rather as "eris, " or "strife" ("Streit "), in the sense of "confrontation" ("Aus-einander-setzung, " Heidegger's emphasis). For Heidegger, one can also render "battle" ("Kampf ") as "mutual recognition" ("sich annerkennende Sichaussetzen ") and as "being-exposed" ("Ausgesetztheit ").
This point is doubly difficult to accept. On the one hand, if Heidegger had had a specific Greek meaning in mind, it is at least odd that he did not specify his reference unless he meant intentionally to mislead. On the other hand, if he was thinking of Heraclitus's view of strife, then it is further odd to preserve the second, or alternative, meaning of "battle" as "mutual recognition." The presence of this second meaning of "struggle" undermines Heidegger's claim. It immediately calls to mind the well-known struggle for mutual recognition in the master-slave analysis which Hegel employs to understand the rise of self-consciousness within modern society.[93] The unexpected use of a Hegelian concept in this context, where Heidegger is pleading to be understood in terms of the hidden Greek roots of his thought, points to a different interpretation. For Heidegger's emphasis in the Rektoratsrede on the need for the German nation to struggle for the realization of its destiny is obviously more closely related to the struggle for mutual recognition, as Hegel depicts it, than to Heraclitus's supposed doctrine of polemos as eris .
Heidegger is, of course, aware that his interpretation is nonstandard. In the second stage of his argument, he protects himself against the more obvious reading of Heraclitus's concept of polemos , which he
regards as a misinterpretation. "Not only should we not think polemos as war and, furthermore, appeal to the supposedly Heraclitean proposition 'War is the father of all things' to proclaim war and battle as the highest principle of all being and thus to offer a philosophical justification of the warlike."[94] The expression "war is the father of all things" is contained in the usual—for Heidegger, incorrect—rendering of Heraclitus's fragment 53. Heidegger insists that it would be a further error to provide a philosophical interpretation of the warlike (das Kriegerische ). Not surprisingly, he says nothing about a philosophical justification of war, which he earlier offered in the rectoral address in his reference to Clausewitz.[95] He maintains that the essential meaning of "polemos " combines the terms "to show" and "to produce." "The essence of polemos lies in deiknumai , to show, and in poiein , to produce, as the Greeks say, to make-it-stand-out in open view. This is the sense of 'battle' thought philosophically, and what is said in the address is only thought philosophically."[96]
This argument is strained with respect to Heraclitus; it is even more strained in the context of an effort by Heidegger to minimize his association with National Socialism. Heidegger's revisionary interpretation of "polemos " turns on his claim of superior insight into the authentic meaning of the word. A standard reading of the Heraclitean passage in question renders this word as a so-called "metaphor for the dominance of change in the world."[97] Heidegger is entitled to read the term as he would like. But there is no reason to accept his reading as better than or even equal to the standard view. There is even less reason to accept Heidegger's present claim that he in fact was thinking of a specific interpretation of Heraclitus's doctrine of polemos when he employed the word "battle" in his speech. For all signs point to the more obvious association of "battle" with the struggle for German destiny, which on Heidegger's view of fate in Being and Time requires a battle, through Nazism—apparent in the unexpected use of the concept of "mutual recognition"—which is the main theme of the rectoral speech.
Heidegger's ineffective effort to "destroy" the obvious understanding of the term "battle" as meaning "battle" fails to convince. Heidegger's line of argument is intrinsically flawed since the assertion about the rectoral speech is independent of his view of Heraclitus. On grounds of interpretative indeterminacy, we must reject the presupposition underlying Heidegger's remarks on Heraclitus, that is, that we can determine the correct interpretation of his or indeed any other position. What is the correct interpretation of Plato's Republic? We need only to formulate the question to see that it cannot be answered. In the present case, the attempt to interpret Heraclitus's position is further complicated by the enormous temporal distance, the uncertainty of the texts, and so on.
Even if Heidegger were correct about Heraclitus, he would not be entitled to draw the conclusion he does. It cannot be denied that Heidegger is the author of his own speech. But this fact does not give him interpretative privilege with respect to the reading of this text. He still needs to show the plausibility of his reading by comparison with other possible readings in situ . His ingenious reading of the word "Kampf " as "to show" and "to produce" is simply unconvincing alternatives for the passages in the Rektoratsrede , in which this word is more easily rendered in standard fashion as "battle" or "struggle."
Here, Heidegger's awareness that it is plausible to understand the speech as a proclamation of his faith in National Socialism and not as the defense of the university is a motivating factor in his effort to present a different interpretation. In the same way as he has argued with respect to a single word that "Kampf " in fact did not mean what it says, he now maintains that his address in general was not what it seemed to be, and that it was what it was not. His argument is based on the concept of reflection, which he sees as central to philosophy in the full sense of the term. The argument begins with a claim for philosophical reflection as the sole determinant of truth in the full sense. For Heidegger, the essence of the university cannot be determined on political or other grounds, distinct from reflection itself.
From out of such reflection on the totality of the sciences, the university carries itself, by its own strength, unto its essential ground, a ground accessible only to the knowing that it cultivates. Its essence can therefore not be determined from some other place, from the standpoint of "politics" or of some other established goals [aus der "Politik" oder irgendeiner anderen Zwecksetzung].[98]
This is a version of the well-known Platonic doctrine that philosophy justifies the truth claims of all the sciences, including itself. But even in the rectoral address, Heidegger's quasi-Platonic insistence that philosophy founds politics was mitigated by other non-Platonic, even extraphilosophic concerns, in particular his basic commitment to German destiny in a time of need. For instance, in the initial paragraph of the speech, in a comment on the essence of the German university, he writes: "This essence, however, gains clarity, rank, and power only when first of all and at all times the leaders are themselves led—led by that unyielding spiritual mission that forces the fate of the German people to bear the stamp of its history."[99]
Heidegger applies his understanding of philosophy as determined by philosophical reflection only to the interpretation of the speech. For Hei-
degger. the very title of the address already indicates the role within it of genuine philosophical reflection. "In keeping with this fundamental conception and attitude [i.e., philosophical reflection] the address bears the title: 'The Self-Assertion [Selbstbehauptung] of the German University.'"[100] But this name was mainly misunderstood and covered up by the widespread failure to exercise genuine reflection in order to go beyond mere idle talk (Gerede ). "Only a very few understood clearly what this title alone, taken by itself, meant in the year 1933, because only a few of those whom it concerned took the trouble to think through what is said, to do so clearly and without mystification, cutting through idle talk."[101]
This statement requires qualification. To begin with, the statement is unclear, since, as we have already noted, "self-assertion" can be understood in different ways. The claim is further doubtful since the "German university" obviously does not, did not, and could not assert itself, whatever the locution means in this context. Obviously. there is no German university as such, although there are German universities. The concept of the German university is an abstract designation for its constituent elements. Moreover, universities do not assert themselves nor can they do so, although individuals acting on their behalf can claim to act in this way. In the talk, Heidegger, newly elected as the rector of the University of Freiburg, acted on behalf of his own university as well as all other German institutions of higher learning. It is important to make these points, although they may seem obvious, since Heidegger complains that in the main he has been misunderstood.
As concerns his speech, Heidegger asserts that few have gone beyond idle talk. In Being and Time , this locution designates an inauthentic form of speech, as a form of the everyday being, or fallenness, of Dasein.[102] On this basis, Heidegger now claims that the most obvious way of understanding his speech is the product of an ordinary failure to think through the situation, due even to malevolence, in short the result of a lack of reflection which fails to penetrate to the essence of the phenomenon:
One can excuse oneself from reflection and hold onto the seemingly obvious thought that here, a short time after National Socialism had seized power, a newly elected rector gives an address on the university. an address that "represents" ["vertritt"] "the" National Socialism ["den" Nationalsozialismus] and that is to say proclaims the idea of "political science," which, crudely, means: "True is what is good for the people." From this one concludes, and indeed rightly, that this betrays the essence of the German university in its very core and actively contributes to its destruction; for this reason the title should rather be: "The Self-Decapitation [Selbstenthauptung] of the German University."[103]
In this passage, Heidegger directly confronts the particular reading of his speech which is most dangerous for him. The comment on the view of truth as utility calls attention to a pragmatic approach, which Heidegger here attributes to a Nazi form of political science. Now in his fundamental ontology, he argued that the objects of experience are understood as they are in terms of the use to which they can be put. This is the point of his basic distinction between the readiness-to-hand and presence-to-hand.[104] In that sense, his early theory in Being and Time can fairly be understood as a transcendental form of pragmatism.[105] It is possible to read this objection as directed against his own earlier transcendental pragmatism as well as against an allegedly Nazi form of political science.
In retrospect, Heidegger's statement offers a remarkable anticipation of his persistent identification, present throughout his later writings, with a kind of ideal Nazism, distinguished from its real, Hitlerian form. By enclosing the words "represents" and "the" (as in "the" National Socialism) in quotation marks, Heidegger distances himself from a type of Nazism, namely that type which in fact existed and waged and lost the war, leading to his present predicament. In putting distance between himself and a variety of the genus, he is careful not to reject all types of Nazism. The extraordinary manner in which Heidegger here leaves open the door to further forms of National Socialism in the most obvious way only further undermines his effort to portray his rectoral talk as merely concerned with a defense of the German university.
Heidegger's attempt to refute the obvious, but supposedly superficial, reading of the rectoral address is unconvincing. He puts the problem as one of the representation of National Socialism. When formulated in this way, the claim is obviously ambiguous. As the rector of the university, Heidegger in fact represented National Socialism although he did not represent it as he thought he ought to, that is, as the leader entitled to lead the leaders, as the leader of the wider "movement." In sum, Heidegger simply fails to refute the obvious way of reading his speech as a claim to represent Nazism, and the failure of his effort inadvertently, but clearly, reveals his continued interest in a form of' Nazism "better" than the Hitlerian variety.
Heidegger goes on to observe that his address was understood neither by those to whom it was addressed nor by the Nazi party. He reports that Otto Wacker, the Staatsminister für Unterricht und Kultus in Baden, complained that the talk advanced a form of private National Socialism, not based on a concept of race, and that the rejection of "political science" was unacceptable. Wacker's reported reaction is certainly close to the mark. Heidegger did not explicitly base his talk on the concept of race, and he further mentioned neither Hitler nor the Nazi party.[106] But
this is not in itself unusual. The decision to join a political party or to practice a religion is only rarely based on a total acceptance of the views in question. Moreover, there never was a Nazi credo, a set of minimal beliefs to which one needed to subscribe in order to be considered a Nazi in good standing. Like many other academics, Heidegger was unenthusiastic about the Nazi program of racial hatred. Since Heidegger never accepted, and presumably rejected, elements of the party program, such as its biologically based form of race hatred, it is correct to describe even the view in the rectoral address as a private form of National Socialism. [107] Heidegger further objects to the failure to consider what he had in mind for "the sake of the inner renewal of the university."[108] But this "failure" is to be expected if, as in the present case, attention was directed toward the realization of the Nazi program and toward the university only as it contributed to that end.
Heidegger devotes a paragraph to removing any suggestion of anti-Semitism. This issue is significant since it has often been argued that Heidegger not only was not a racist but was especially well disposed to his Jewish students.[109] Heidegger has been accused of[110] and defended against the charge of anti-Semitism. [111] He responds to this accusation by twice pointing out that he refused to post the so-called "Jew Notice" in the university. [112] Among Heidegger's defenders, the question of Heidegger's anti-Semitism is confused by related issues, such as the concern to differentiate anti-Semitism from anti-Judaism.[113] Recently, the efforts undertaken to protect Heidegger against this charge have been refuted through the publication of a previously unknown letter, written by Heidegger in 1929, that is, before the Nazis came to power, which clearly shows his anti-Semitism in his pointed rejection of the" 'Jewification' of the German spirit [Verjudung des deutschen Geistes]."[114] In the context of Heidegger's Nazism, the definitive refutation of the effort to protect Heidegger against the charge of anti-Semitism is important for what it tells us about Heidegger, who can no longer be protected against this accusation. It is further important since it effectively undermines the continued efforts of Heidegger's closest supporters to defend his life and thought through a supposedly deeper understanding of his position.
Heidegger's opposition to biologism is sometimes invoked to distance him from Nazism.[115] Yet the antibiologism which Heidegger shared with many other intellectuals is compatible with anti-Semitism and Nazism. Biologism was not as important to Nazism, at least until well after National Socialism came to power, as the traditional anti-Semitism strikingly present in, for instance, Luther's works[116] and even in speeches before the German Reichstag, or parliament.[117] There is a distinction between biologism and anti-Semitism. The Nazi view that only a member of the community (Volksgenosse ), or someone with German blood,
can be a citizen, promulgated as early as 1920, was made explicit in 1933 in the so-called "Aryan paragraph" (Arierparagraph ). This defined "Aryans" as people with no Jewish ancestors and "non-Aryans" as those with at least one Jewish parent or grandparent.[118] Since the sole criterion for categorization as Aryan or non-Aryan was religion, not race, the anti-Semitism common among German academics, and espoused by Heidegger, is not antithetical to, but compatible with, Nazism.
Heidegger accords special attention to when and how he joined the Nazi party.[119] His aim is to show that he was only minimally interested in official Nazism. In this respect, he makes three points. First, he states that when he was already in office, it was called to his attention that the minister thought it important for rectors to belong to the party. Second, he accepted this invitation only on the explicit condition not to undertake any political activity. Third, as rector his membership remained pro forma only and he did not play any substantive role in the party.
This portion of the discussion represents at best a series of half-truths. It is false that Heidegger became a Nazi party member after he took office since it is known that he already belonged to the party at that time.[120] In fact, his sympathies for National Socialism go back at least to 1931, that is, before the Nazi party came to power.[121] It is also known that Heidegger voted for Hitler. Even sympathetic observers agree that he placed his hopes in Hitler in 1933.[122] It is further known that, even after his decision to resign as rector, Heidegger remained a party member until the end of the Second World War. It is fair to say that although Heidegger gave up his post as rector, there was never a break with official Nazism during this period.[123] In sum, despite his effort to minimize the relation to National Socialism, it is clear that Heidegger's interest in Nazism clearly antedated and survived his period as rector.[124]
Heidegger now turns to a description of the end of his rectorate. He describes his resignation as forced by an increasing pressure exerted on him to compromise his professional principles. He lists two instances, which he presents as threats to the university that arose in the second, or summer, semester of 1933. First, he says that it was made clear to him that the faculties required a National Socialist leadership, which entailed appointing deans based on political reliability as opposed to scholarship or teaching ability.[125] Second, he reports an effort, in accordance with the views of the medical, legal, and teaching professions, to divide the university into professional schools, which he viewed as threatening the unity and mode of academic training he favored.[126]
It is not clear why Heidegger resigned his position as rector. His description of his reaction to the twin dangers threatening the university is difficult to reconcile with his own claim to have assumed the rectorate only to protect the university. If he really desired to protect the univer-
sity, then he had even more reason to remain as rector when the threat increased. Although we cannot discount Heidegger's genuine desire to bring about a form of university grounded in his understanding of Greek science, this factor alone is insufficient to explain his decision to resign. It has been suggested, in reference to Heidegger's determination to achieve power in the university, that the resignation was provoked by the violent elimination of Röhm and the SA leadership, Heidegger's supposed allies.[127] Heidegger's desire to achieve hegemony in the academy, illustrated in the rectoral talk by the quasi-Platonic claim to lead the leaders, is evident in the present text in two ways: the repeated rejection of "political science" and a comment in passing on Krieck's spreading influence in connection with the need to install a National Socialist leadership in the different faculties of the university.[128] It would be odd for Heidegger to object to the promotion of a National Socialist leadership in the university since as rector he ran the university, as its leader (Führer ), according to the Nazi Führerprinzip . The objection to Krieck's spreading influence is plausible when we remember Heidegger's increasing dismay at Krieck's criticism of him.[129] But despite that dismay, Heidegger continued to collaborate with Krieck until September 1934, that is, even after he resigned as rector. [130] Still another reason is the evident indifference of official Nazism to philosophy in whole or in part. Although a number of philosophers, including Heidegger, made impressive efforts to achieve philosophical hegemony within National Socialism, the Nazis seemed rather unconcerned with philosophy in general. [131] The Nazi indifference to philosophy, of which Heidegger may only later have become aware, would have been difficult for him to accept since he took his own philosophical contribution with utmost seriousness, even to the point of insisting that without it Nazism could not be justified.
Heidegger presents his resignation as due to an incompatibility between his own and the Nazi view of the university and science, as well as between the National Socialist Weltanschauung and his own philosophy:
In my meeting with the minister, who immediately accepted my resignation, it became clear that a discrepancy [Zwiespalt] separated the National Socialist conception of the university and science from my own, which could not be bridged. The minister declared that he did not want this opposition, which to be sure [wohl] rested on the incompatibility of my philosophy with the National Socialist Weltanschauung . to reach the public as a conflict between the University of Freiburg and the ministry. [132]
This description has an air of unreality. It is difficult to imagine a Nazi minister telling an important official about to tender his resignation that to do so would enable him to recover his freedom of action. Heidegger is
correct to point to differences, or points of disagreement, between his and the Nazi views of the university and science. Such differences include the respective views of race, "political science," the quality of appointments, and perhaps the professionalization of the university. But these points of disagreement, some of which were already described in the rectoral address, were not new, and certainly did not come into being during Heidegger's short period as rector. Since these differences were in part already known to Heidegger and neither prevented his adherence to Nazism or his assumption of the rectorate, it is difficult to regard them as later motivating his resignation from the rectorate.
Heidegger traces the suggested incompatibility between his and the Nazi views of the university and science to the supposed incompatibility between his philosophy and the National Socialist "Weltanschauung. "[133] Heidegger's use of the term to characterize National Socialist thought recalls Husserl's attack on Weltanschauungsphilosophie , associated with Dilthey, and historicism as two forms of relativism, which leads to skepticism.[134] It points as well to Heidegger's rejection of the Nazi effort to develop a National Socialist Weltanschauung and even to reject philosophy in favor of a Weltanschauung . [135] In his application of this locution to the National Socialist view, Heidegger implies its inadequacy as a philosophy, the same point he made in the speech in his suggestion that it required genuine philosophical grounding;[136] and he further implies that it leads to skepticism and nihilism. Yet Heidegger overstates the degree of incompatibility between National Socialism and his own thought, since it was the area of agreement and not the disagreements which enabled Heidegger to turn to Nazism.
In the final part of this section, Heidegger reflects on the significance of his rectorate through a comment on its connection to modern science. This passage is important as a summary of his defense of his actions as rector and as an indication of the later evolution of his thought. "Unimportant as it is in itself, the case of the rectorate 1933-34 would seem to be a sign of the metaphysical state of the essence of science, a science that can no longer be influenced by attempts at its renewal, nor delayed in its essential transformation into technology [Technik]."[137] After noting that he only came to realize this afterwards, Heidegger refers to his 1938 lecture "The Age of the World Picture."[138] He then writes, in language that for the first time in this text directly recalls that of the rectoral address:
The rectorate was an attempt to see in the "movement" that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudities, something that reached much farther and that might some day bring about a gathering of what is German unto the historical essence of the West. In no way shall it be denied
that at the time I believed in such possibilities and for this reason renounced the thinker's most proper vocation in order to help realize them in an official capacity. [139]
This reflection is obviously intended to place the rectorate within the context of Heidegger's single-minded concern with ontology. For Heidegger, science is being ineluctably transformed into technology. This view implies that Heidegger's failure can be imputed to the ontological process itself, to Being, and not to his own failings, such as his failure to perceive the nature of National Socialism, his mistaken evaluation of its chances for success, his misunderstanding of the real possibility of leading the movement or reforming the university, and so on. Now the implied shift in responsibility is plausible only if in fact there is a fated transformation under way of science into technology. But it does not follow that the ontological process, or metaphysics, or history is ineluctable because Heidegger "failed." It is plausible to consider his "failure" as deriving from some rather more ordinary factors, such as a difference of opinion between Heidegger, who represented Nazism in the university, and other Nazi officials about the nature of the university and science, the increasing influence of Krieck, and so on. These are factors unrelated to the supposed transformation of science into technology.
Heidegger's effort to attenuate his own responsibility rests on a doubtful thesis about the link between technology and science. Obviously. there are different ways of understanding technology and its relation to science. In Heidegger's model, what once was science in the Greek sense gave birth to technology, which is in the process of devouring its father. But this reduction of modern science to technology is an inaccurate description. Many forms of modern science are unimaginable without technology; but this is not true of modern science as such, which cannot simply be reduced to technology. It is more accurate to say that modern science and modern technology interact, although neither can be reduced to, nor explained in terms of, the other.[140]
Heidegger's statement that in 1933 he believed that German destiny could be realized through a turn to National Socialism is an accurate account. It is entirely consistent with the spirit and letter of the rectoral address and with the first element of his threefold consideration in assuming the rectorate.[141] But it is inconsistent with his repeated claim elsewhere in this text that the heart of the rectoral speech is a concern with the essence of science and knowing. [142] The result is to call attention to a deep ambiguity in his overall aim in turning to Nazism. Here, Heidegger stresses his concern with the university as an end in itself; yet study of the rectoral address clearly shows that in his speech his concern with the university was subordinated to the destiny of the German Volk ;
and he never tires of proclaiming that his single concern is finally the problem of Being.
Heidegger's remark on the rectorate suggests that science is metaphysical. His observation presupposes a standpoint "beyond" metaphysics. Heidegger ends his reflection on the rectorate with a comment on how to surpass metaphysics linked to the so-called turning (Kehre ) of his later thought, including his transition from philosophy to thought, and indicating his growing attention to the importance of poetry.
What is essential is that we are caught up in the consummation of nihilism, that God is "dead," and every time-space for the godhead covered up. The surmounting of nihilism nevertheless announces itself in German poetic thinking and singing. [143]
Heidegger's point is that, like science, all of modern life is caught up in the nihilism following from metaphysics—precisely the theme of his Nietzsche lectures—although a way beyond nihilism and, hence, metaphysics can be glimpsed in poetry.[144]