The Nietzsche Lectures and Nazism

The turning in Heidegger's thought was not a single event, but a series of transformations of which he only later became aware. Among the turnings, there is Heidegger's political turning, on the basis of his understanding of metaphysics, to National Socialism. But perhaps there is also another turning, or at least another part to the turning, such as a turning against National Socialism? The view that Heidegger later turned against Nazism has often been expressed by Heidegger and his followers. In a remark on his lecture course from 1944/45, Heidegger states that his Nietzsche lectures were a confrontation with Nazism. In reference to his lectures on "Poetizing and Thinking," he writes: "This was in a certain sense a continuation of my Nietzsche lectures, that is to say, a confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] with National Socialism."^[242]

The view that Heidegger later turned against the "movement" is widely accepted by Heidegger's followers. For instance, Arendt locates a turn against Nazism between the first and second volume of the Nietzsche lectures, in which Heidegger purportedly comes to grips with "his brief past in the Nazi movement."^[243] Aubenque affirms that in 1935 Hei-degger tried to save an internal truth of National Socialism but that beginning in 1936 in the Nietzsche lectures he rejected Nazism as a possibility.^[244] Krell states imprecisely that in lectures and seminars after 1934 Heidegger began to criticize the Nazi ideology of Blut und Boden more and more openly.^[245] For Vietta, Heidegger's analysis of Nietzsche's view of nihilism constitutes a recognition of the intrinsic nihilism of Nazism.^[246]

In order to determine whether Heidegger confronted National Socialism in his Nietzsche lecture series, it is useful to note some of the differences between the lectures from this period as given and as prepared by Heidegger for publication. Examination of the text shows that in the published versions Heidegger sought to conceal his reliance on Nietzsche's concept of nihilism in order to draw political conclusions. So in the lectures on Schelling in the spring semester of 1936, immediately prior to the Nietzsche lectures that began that fall, in the context of a

remark on knowledge Heidegger suddenly interjects a statement to the effect that the efforts of Hitler and Mussolini to react against nihilism were determined by Nietzsche:

It is known in this respect that Mussolini as well as Hitler, both men who in different ways in Europe have introduced contrary movements concerning the political shape of the nation and of the people, are again in different ways essentially limited by Nietzsche, although it is not the case that in this way the authentic metaphysical region of Nietzschean thought immediately received its value.^[247]

Since it was known that both Mussolini and Hitler were interested in Nietzsche, the interest of the omitted passage is that Heidegger here signals that both were in fact determined by what they failed fully to comprehend. And in the first series of Nietzsche lectures, again in a passage omitted in the version revised for publication, Heidegger once more insists on the importance of his evocation of Nietzsche's slogan in the rectoral address: "'God is dead' is not an atheistic proposition, but rather the formula for the basic experience of the event [des Ereignisses] of Western history. I consciously put this statement in my Rektoratsrede of 1933."^[248] Here, Heidegger correctly emphasizes the continuity between his attitude toward Nietzsche both during and after his service as rector of the University of Freiburg.

One can admit the existence of a controversy with National Socialism in the Nietzsche lectures but deny that Heidegger here turns against Nazism. Obviously, a disagreement on one point is compatible with agreement, even a large measure of agreement, on other points. Those who follow Heidegger's description of the Nietzsche lectures as a controversy with National Socialism need to answer two questions: what is the nature of the controversy with National Socialism within the Nietzsche lectures? In what sense does it constitute a turning against Nazism? It is difficult to evaluate Krell's imprecise statement since it does not refer to a specific passage or text. Arendt's claim is not sustained by the inspection of the texts. Even were there a shift in tone, as she claims, between the first and second volumes of the Nietzsche lectures, it would follow neither that the second volume represented a confrontation with Nietzsche^[249] nor that Heidegger here severed his connection with Nazism.

In different ways, Aubenque briefly and Vietta in more detail both correctly point to Heidegger's controversy with Nietzsche and National Socialism; but both incorrectly conclude from the existence of an objection to the metaphysical acumen of Nazism, a complaint about it as theory, that Heidegger rejects Nazism as politics or its political goals. The controversy with Nietzsche, mentioned above, includes related cri-

tiques of such topics as his supposedly confused view of values, his allegedly unsatisfactory effort to come to grips with Platonism from which he is said to fail to escape, his questionable understanding of his relation to the Cartesian philosophy, and so on.^[250] But a critique of Nietzsche, or even of Nazism as a theory or theoretical entity, is not the same thing as a rejection of the political aspect of National Socialism.

In the rectoral address, Nazism is never named, although the reference to it is unmistakable. To the best of my knowledge, in the Nietzsche lectures National Socialism is never directly named and hence never overtly criticized. But Heidegger does criticize Nazism as an approach to Being, and more obliquely as a political movement that springs from an incorrect form of metaphysics. The controversy with National Socialism is perhaps most evident in brief remarks at the end of the long discussion of nihilism, where Heidegger opposes so-called authentic metaphysics, which rests upon the ontological difference, to an inauthentic metaphysics, or worldview. If the statement about the worldview is an allusion to National Socialism, then Heidegger's statement that "dominion over beings can develop only with the beginning of the fulfillment of metaphysics" is a veiled description of the way in which Nazism has become possible in the age defined by Nietzsche's metaphysics.^[251] Heidegger's objection, then, is that as a mere worldview National Socialism represents an inauthentic metaphysics, which must be rejected. In this way, Heidegger distances himself from every inauthentic form of metaphysics, including National Socialism, supposedly thrown up by nihilism.

It is probable that Heidegger here rejects Nazism as a theory of Being. Yet he does not object to the political consequences of National Socialism. A political rejection of National Socialism would only follow if he believed that a metaphysically bad theory is, in virtue of that fact, politically unacceptable. In my view there are two reasons to refuse this interpretation. First, although when Heidegger accepted the rectorship he allied himself with National Socialism as the Führer of the university, he never accepted the political hegemony of Nazism. Heidegger's refusal of Nazi political leadership is clear in his determined argument in the rectoral speech from a Platonic perspective that philosophy, not "political science," must lead the state. Second, in the rectoral address, in the lectures on metaphysics, in the lectures on Nietzsche, and in all his later writings, Heidegger maintains the goal, which he shares with Nazism: the realization of the destiny of the German Volk .

In sum, in his critique of National Socialism Heidegger apparently rejects its mistaken interpretation of Being. Yet he does not distance himself here or, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere else in the Nietzsche lectures or in other writings on the history of philosophy from political Nazism as such. In the limited sense that he criticizes National

Socialism as a theory of Being, Heidegger is correct to claim that his Nietzsche lectures represent a confrontation with Nazism; but the confrontation is mainly limited to Nazism as a form of metaphysics in the age of nihilism. It is obviously incorrect to interpret this limited confrontation with Nietzsche or with the metaphysical capacity of National Socialism as a turn against Nazism. There is nothing in the texts to show that Heidegger's turning is a turning against the political consequences of Nazism and even less to show that it is a turning against Nazism as such. In fact, since Heidegger apparently never accepted official, or real, Nazism with which he colloborated, and to which he belonged as an official member of the Nazi party, it would indeed have been difficult for him later to turn against it.