1. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political , trans. George Schwab (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 30f.; Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1972), 31.

2. This tension has given rise to a huge amount of literature on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft by sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers. For an excellent survey see Manfred Riedel, "Gesellschaft, Gemeinschaft," in: O. Brunner, W. Konze, R. Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politischsozialen Sprache in Deutschland , vol. 2 (E—G) (Stuttgart: Klett, 1975), 801-862.

3. Several English commentators maintain that an individual authentic Dasein produces its fate or destiny by itself. (According to Guignon authentic Dasein does so insofar as its utopian ideal determines which hero it chooses [see above, chapter 1, section B]; for Birmingham see above, chapter 2, section C; see also below, chapter 5, section C.) Macquarrie and Robinson's phrase, «is determinative for it as destiny, » might contribute to this misinterpretation. For in their translation Heidegger seems to say that fateful Dasein is destiny and as such determines co-historizing. However, Stambaugh is certainly right in translating «ist . . . bestimmt als Geschick » (SZ 384) with «is determined as destiny » ( Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 352). That is, « destiny » is introduced as a technical term for fateful Dasein's historizing as a co-historizing. It is certainly the case that the one determines the other, and one might find this indicated by the phrase «ist . . . bestimmt als Geschick. » However, it is destiny that determines Dasein, and not the other way around. For «fateful Dasein» designates Dasein that has subjugated itself to heritage in the moment in which heritage constitutes itself. Dasein as fateful Dasein has given up its autonomy and has become the missionary of heritage (see above, chapter 2, section C). The term «Geschick» («destiny») replaces or further determines the term «heritage,» after heritage has constituted itself. In other words, in the moment in which heritage constitutes itself, it reveals itself as the primary entity in history, and as such it reveals itself as «destiny.» Thus, heritage as destiny is the primary actor and entity in history, and authentic or fateful Daseine are its means or organs. Heidegger makes this point in two ways. First, in the next sentence he says that the notion of destiny designates the Volksgemeinschaft («the community, of {the} people,» BT 436; SZ 384), and everyone familiar with the literature on community and society knew that the advocates of Gemeinschaft maintained that a Gemeinschaft existed prior to the individuals and had ontological priority over them (see above, this chapter). Second, in the sentence after the one on Volksgemeinschaft Heidegger himself states explicitly that destiny determines the Daseine. For he writes, «Destiny is not something that puts itself together out of individual fates, anymore than Being-with-one-another can be conceived as the occurring together of several Subjects. Our fates have already been guided in advance, in our Being with one another in the same world and in our resoluteness for definite possibilities» (BT 436; SZ 384); that is, destiny precedes the Daseine and determines their fates, and not the other way round.

4. See above, chapter 1, n. 33.

5. It is the difference between what the individual thinks of himself, and what, as he will recognize later, fate has allotted to him that, in hindsight, allows for facetious formulations such as the last sentence of the first chapter: «I, too, hoped to wrest from Fate {dem Schicksal abzujagen} what my father had accomplished fifty years before; I, too, wanted to become 'something'—but on no account a civil servant {Beamter}» (MKe 18; MK 17).

6. In Hitler's German text the Jews occur in the singular and with the definite article («mit dem Juden»). See on the definite article above, chapter 1, n. 17.

7. As has already become clear in chapters 1 and 2 and will become clearer in this chapter, one of the main theoretical problems of rightist authors was the question of how the vanished past was nonetheless still alive. The architect Hitler gives an answer that makes one forget that there was ever a problem: The past has never disappeared; the foundation of a building precedes and survives the shaky walls erected by the architects of society.

8. Because of the deplorable state of the bourgeoisie (which by opposing in the «most immoral way» even completely justified demands of the workers drove them into the arms of the social democrats, MKe 45; MK 47), Hitler has given up on them (which did not prevent him from making a strong case in his book for private property and capitalism and which, in 1929, did not prevent him and big business in Germany from forming an alliance). His targets are the workers who have fallen prey to internationalism and big business as well as the peasants. Still, the door has to be kept open for as many other Germans as possible. Both churches are treated with respect and are given political advice. The Catholic Church is even praised for its «amazing youthfulness . . . . its spiritual suppleness and iron will-power» (MKe 432; MK 481). The friends of the ancient Greeks are also invited: «Especially in historical instruction we must not be deterred from the study of antiquity. Roman history correctly conceived in extremely broad outlines is and remains the best mentor, not only for today, but probably for all time. The Hellenic ideal of culture should also remain preserved for us in its exemplary beauty. We most not allow the greater racial community { die größere Rassengemeinschaft} to be torn asunder by the differences of the individual peoples. The struggle that rages today is for very great aims. A culture combining millenniums and embracing Hellenism and Germanism is fighting for its existence» (MKe 423; MK 470).

9. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right , trans. T. M. Knox (Chicago, London, Toronto: William Benton, 1952), 86 (section 270). The notion is polemical since it is an ironic appropriation of the Romantics' Einbildungskraft, faculty of imagination. «Bilden» is «to educate» as well as «to form, to mold.» «Sich bilden» is «to educate oneself.» «Sich einbilden» is «to fancy, to fantasize, to hallucinate, to flatter oneself with the belief.» According to Hegel, the Romantics used Einbildungskraft precisely to avoid to bilden themselves. Hegel uses the term «Romantics» here in reference to the ironic romantics, that is, those who through Einbildungskraft, imagination, and reflection distance themselves from any possible content with which they might identify themselves. I use the term in my book in the other meaning (see above, preface, n. 14).

10. Hitler uses the words Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as they were used in the literature on the subject and in everyday language. As representative of numerous passages, I quote the continuation of the passage on the Greeks and the Romans: «A sharp difference should exist between general education and specialized knowledge. As particularly today the latter threatens more and more to sink into the service of pure Mammon, general education, at least in its more ideal attitude, must be retained as a counterweight. Here, too, we must incessantly inculcate the principle that industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community {Volksgemeinschaft} offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation {in verzichtfreudiger Opferbereitschaft }» (MKe 423; MK 470). Here one has the typical opposition between the supposed material egoism of Gesellschaft and the values of Gemeinschaft. Thus, in the next paragraph Hitler comments on the saying «The young man must some day become a useful member of society {Gesellschaft}» that such a sentence does not lead to the proper national enthusiasm (MKe 424; MK 470). «Kampfgemeinschaft» («combat group») is used especially when he talks about his Kampfgefährten and the SA, the civil war army of the Nazis, illegal in the Weimar Republic (MKe 490; MK 550).

11. See on Dr. Leopold Pötsch above, chapter 1, n. 33.

12. Note that, already grammatically, Schicksal functions like an Aufgabe, a task; the task it itself has given. This is the background of Heidegger' s assumption throughout his career that in contrast to a Vergangenheit (past) Gewesenheit (what-has-been-there) approaches us from the future.

13. He does not apply this logic to the supposed event that the originally pure Aryan race became impure by the admixture of inferior blood. The state of purity of the Aryan blood corresponds to the state in paradise prior to original sin, and the admixture of impure blood causing the first ecstasis out of purity is analogous to Eve and the snake in paradise. But in Christianity the fall is a single and sudden event, whereas in the case of the admixture of inferior blood it is more a kind of gradual decline. In contrast to the regaining of paradise in Christianity, which according to orthodox teaching, cannot be achieved by humans, in Hitler human beings, that is, the Germans can restore the state of purity if the one who is elected by fate to do so properly listens to fate's commands. Because of this inherent difference as well as for other reasons, Christian politics is never structurally totalitarian.

14. In the face of the fact that «the greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen beneath the bullets of Slavic fanatics,» «a light shudder began to run through me at this vengeance of inscrutable Destiny {Rache des unerforschlichen Schicksals}» (MKe 159; MK 174). Now, «a stone had been set rolling whose course could no longer be arrested» (MKe 159; MK 174). The war was necessary and unavoidable. If Austria had waited longer, its position would have become worse and worse. The «guilt of the German government» was that in its efforts to keep peace it had already missed several opportunities to launch the war; a war that was desired by the whole people (MKe 159ff.; MK 174ff.). «To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm {stürmischer Begeisterung}, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time» (MKe 161; MK 177).

15. Certainly this sentence marks one of the differences between Hitler and the German philosophers and sociologists of his time concerning theories of human beings as a Masse, mass, or Herde, herd. Perhaps with the exception of Benjamin, none of those scholars was taken in by the kind of phenomena to which Hitler refers. They more or less feared them and saw in them the threat of chaos and anarchy, for instance, in demonstrations of workers, or they explained them away with «idealistic» interpretations, as in the case of the Helden von Langemarck.

16. Due to this situation, one finds in Hitler's book sentences characterizing someone as the fate of someone else, for instance: «The danger of secret organizations today lies. . . in the fact that . . . the opinion arises that the fate of a people {Schicksal eines Volkes} really might suddenly be decided {entschieden} in a favorable sense by a single act of murder» (MKe 543; MK 609). Even if a person «decides the fate» of some people or the world in this sense, the individual nevertheless does not freely create the fate of the people, for he or she acts either in compliance to a call of fate or not. In the latter case the individual will fail.

17. In his report on his life in Germany, Karl Löwith quotes the National Socialist "laws of life" of the students, printed as an introduction in the guidebook to the Marburg University in 1939-40. There are ten laws:

(1) German student, it is not necessary that you live, but rather that you fulfill your duty to your Volk {deine Pflicht gegenüber deinem Volk erfüllst}! Whatever becomes of you, act as a German. (2) Honour is the highest law and greatest dignity for the German man. An offence against one's honour can be avenged only by blood. Your honour is loyalty to your Volk and to yourself. (3) To be a German means that you have character. You too are called upon {mitberufen} to fight for the freedom of the German spirit. Seek for the inherent truths resolved upon by your Volk {die in deinem Volk beschlossen liegen}. (4) Licentiousness and a lack of ties do not represent freedom. There is more freedom in serving than in following your own commands. The future of Germany is dependent on your faith, your enthusiasm and your preparedness to fight. (5) Those who lack the imagination to conceive of anything will achieve nothing, and you cannot light anything if you do not have a flame kindled within yourself. Have the courage for admiration and reverence. (6) One is born to be a National Socialist, even more one is brought up to become one, but most of all one educates oneself to be one. (7) If there is some thing mightier than fate, it is your courage to bear it without wavering {Wenn etwas ist, gewaltiger als das Schicksal, dann ist es dein Mut, der es unerschütterlich träigt}. What does not kill you makes you stronger still {Was dich nicht umbringt, macht dich nur stoker}. Praised be what hardens you {Gelobt sei, was hart macht}. (8) Learn to live in an orderly manner. Training and discipline are the foundations {unerläßlichen Grundlagen} of any community {jeder Gemeinschaft} and the beginning of all education. (9) As a leader, be rigid in your own fulfillment of duty, resolute {entschlossen} in representing what is necessary, helpful and good, never petty in the assessment of human weaknesses, magnanimous in recognizing others' necessaries of life and modest with your own. (10) Be a comrade {Sei Kamerad}! Be chivalrous and modest! Be a model in your personal life! The measure of your moral maturity will be seen in your relations with people. Be at one in thought and action. Model your life on the Führer's . (K. Löwith, My Life in Germany Before and After 1933: A Report , trans. E. King [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994]. 105f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht [Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1986], 100f.; the last sentence in the third law should be translated as «Seek the truths enshrined in your Volk!»).

Though otherwise the language of these laws is quite blunt, the authors preferred the comparative («more freedom») for what in fact means: there is freedom only in serving, and there is no freedom in following your own commands. You are something by birth and race. This is your fate. You have to consciously realize your fate, and to submit yourself to the commands ordained by your fate. You are not free to make up your fate by yourself. Rather, your freedom consists in that you subjugate yourself to your fate. Your fate and the self-declared masters of your fate reward you with the promise that only in submitting to your fate will you become a mighty master. As will become clear, the same redefinition of the notion of freedom can be found in Heidegger and in Scheler.

18. Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic , trans. M. Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 50; Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz , GA 26 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978), 62. At a crucial point in his analysis of being-with in Being and Time , Heidegger refers to Scheler (SZ 116, n. 1; BT 152, 491).

19. He uses this phrase with regard to the English people throughout the book. At the end of his book, there is an appendix: "On the Psychology of the English Ethos and the Cant" (PPS 218), at the end of which Scheler gathered all his reflections in a "Table of Categories of the English Thinking" (PPS 249f.). The English people mix up, to name just a few, «culture {Kultur} with comfort; . . . the warrior {Krieger} with the robber; thinking {Denken} with calculating; . . . character with narrow-mindedness; . . . the good with the useful; reverence of virtue with cant; . . . Bildung with mental isolation; honesty and uprightness with organic mendacity that makes actual lying superfluous; promise with the bonds of mutual contracts; loyalty {Treue} with exactness with regard to keeping of contracts,» and, of course, they mix up «Gemeinschaft with Gesellschaft» and «Gem[it with sentimentality» (PPS 249f.). The editor notes that Scheler had never been to England (PPS 692). On Heidegger's usage of the distinguished German words with the prefix «ge-» see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 133-135.

20. Thanks to the possibilities of the definite article in German, the German text is much shorter: «Das Maßlose fordert eine maßlose Quelle» (PPS 99; for similar usages of the definite article in Heidegger see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 148, 167, n. 37, 183f., n. 59; see also above chapter 1, n. 17). In fact, Scheler even offers a new proof of God's existence using the same medieval means as Descartes in the third of his Meditations . Descartes finds among the ideas in him the idea of a substance that is infinite, independent, all-knowing, and all-powerful and that has created him as well as all other existing beings. Since nothing can come out of nothing, and since something perfect cannot be brought about by something inferior, the idea of God cannot have been created by any finite being. Scheler experiences in himself a power for sacrifice that is beyond measure:

It is only at this point that the idea of war as an ordeal from God becomes fully clear. If God is a God of love, he will give the victory to that Volk in which the love is the most rich, the most profound, and the most noble.

It is precisely at this point that the genius of war becomes a religion, as though a matter of course—it becomes the guide to God, even for those who were previously unbelievers. For the power of sacrifice {Opferkraft} that thus, nourished by love, grew out of the soul, is too great, too boundless to be understood by reason {Verstand} as representing the sum of all natural and limited motives that reason perceives and whose power it can add up. The experience of this welling up of the power of sacrifice from the soul's roots directs the amazed gaze back to an origin {Ursprung} that is deeper and more universal than anything consciousness of one's natural powers and of the objects and contents attracting these powers can present. What is boundless requires a source that is boundless! By pursuing the origin of this source . . . . the inner gaze perceives effortlessly the sea of grace and love that nourishes the soul and within this sea it perceives the deity. In peace, only very few perceive it, and the majority just "believes" in it. Now, however, many perceive it, and many do so for the first time so that they will never be able to forget it again.—It is in this way that war as an ordeal from God becomes an experience {Ereignis} (PPS 98f.; see also another, in some sense very moving, passage in ibid., 106f.)

21. Note that Scheler's phrases «zurücktönen,» «to echo» —literally «to sound back, to resound» —and «antworten» («answer») are precisely the same as Heidegger's phrase «erwidert.» Fate calls out its demand. Either one does not listen, as those do who remain liberals or pacifists and thus become inauthentic Daseine. Or one listens to fate and reacts as fate demands, that is, one «echoes,» «answers,» or «erwidert,» that is, gives to fate the answer it wants to hear. Note that in Scheler's usage of «antworten» one has an Erwiderung, an Antwort, which is already in the dative (I «antworte jemandem») (and not only in the accusative; see above, chapter 1, sections B and C) a compliance with a demand.

22. Scheler says «no longer allein, alone.» «Allein» can mean «einsam» (lonely). However, he could not have said «no longer einsam,» for this would have reduced the entire event to a mere psychological problem of needy individuals. In addition, a phrase like «no longer einsam» would not have conveyed appropriately what his phrase «no longer allein» does communicate, namely, that «we» are no longer isolated from the «real» powers of life and history, for God is with us.

23. See Scheler's typology of the reactions of German liberals to the beginning of World War I in the introduction of Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg (PPS 12). According to Scheler, prior to WWI liberals made up «the largest group in the intellectual sphere.» After the beginning of the war, only a few still adhered to their liberalism, and they did so, according to Scheler, in the same way Schelling responded to the observation that newly discovered facts contradicted his system of natural philosophy: «all the worse for nature» («Um so schlimmer für die Natur!»). The majority of the liberals vacillated and considered, as Scheler puts it, «to explode a standpoint that new great facts have proved to be impossible.» It is to the latter that his book is addressed.

24. The second edition of Abhandlungen und Aufsätze was published in 1919 under the title Vom Umsturz der Werte (Subversion of Values). By that time, the war itself, its result (the defeat of Germany), the «November-Revolution,» and the Weimar Republic in Germany had pretty much disillusioned Scheler. In the preface to the second edition, he points out that he had already suggested the new title to the publishing house one year before the end of the war and that he hopes readers will not take the new title to refer to the outcome of the war and to the revolutions in its wake (UW 8). Similarly to the later Heidegger's assessment of the empirical National Socialism of the thirties and forties, in the preface to the second edition Scheler regards the war no longer as the decisive step out of Gesellschaft and the beginning of the rerealization of Gemeinschaft, but rather as a manifestation of Gesellschaft itself, which, however, at the same time might be the consummation in which the new order announces itself. The new title, «Subversion of values,» does not refer to the war and the revolutions, but rather to the beginning of the modem era when the emerging capitalist spirit subverted the order of values that was realized in earlier ages. Also since Scheler in this context provides a good formulation of the motif of «re-,» I quote almost the entire passage.

If these huge events {the war, its loss, and the revolutions in its aftermath} have any essential meaning at all for the mode and structure of the European preferences of values-and not only for the distribution of life goods among people, nations, and states according to the old preferences of values—(so far, for the answer to this question we have only conjectures), this meaning could only be the outward historical effect , widely visible, of that "upheaval" that is meant by the title of the book; an upheaval that not by event and deed {Tat} but rather in form of a silent process enabled the world view and ethics of the bourgeois-capitalist age to emerge more and more clearly out of an order of life and world that had been guided by the Christian religion and church. However, {these huge events}. . . quite possibly can be—together with their being the highest outcome of bourgeois spirit—the sublime peripetia, in which a reestablishment {Wiederaufrichtung} of the eternal order of the human heart. which has been overthrown by the bourgeois-capitalist spirit, announces itself. (UW 8f.)

25. Scheler gives no reason for his thesis that the parties of the working class remain within the confines of selfish interest. Already in Abhandlungen und Aufsätze , in the essay "Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus" (The future of capitalism), written in February 1914 (UW 385, n. 1), Scheler talks about the disadvantages of social politics and insurance politics by the state—the major achievements of the political struggle of the working class during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar republic—and lists «decrease of personal responsibility» (UW 383). Scheler emphasizes that, in his view, for the time being the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Heidegger talks only about what he regards as the disadvantages. He develops « solicitude » (BT 157; « Fürsorge, » SZ 121) as an existentiale. Concern with food and clothing and the nursing of the sick body are forms of solicitude. However, this is not what is meant by «solicitude» as an existentiale (BT 158; SZ 121). Solicitude as an existentiale has a deficient mode and two positive modes. Heidegger begins with one of the two positive modes: «For example, 'welfare work' ["Fürsorge"], as a factical social arrangement {"Fürsorge" als faktische soziale Einrichtung}, is grounded in Dasein's state of Being as Being-with» (BT 158; SZ 121). The need for this positive mode of solicitude emerges out of the deficient mode of solicitude. Heidegger continues: «Its factical urgency gets its motivation in that Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part in the deficient modes of solicitude. Being for, against, or without one another, passing one another by, not "mattering" to one another—these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is precisely these last-named deficient and Indifferent modes that characterize everyday, average Being-with-one-another» (BT 158; SZ 122). Of the two positive modes the one, namely, «'welfare work' ["Fürsorge"] as a factical social arrangement» is inauthentic:

With regard to its positive modes, solicitude has two extreme possibilities. It can, as it were, take away 'care' from the Other and put itself in his position in concern: it can leap in for him {für ihn einspringen }. This kind of solicitude takes over for the Other that with which he is to concern himself. The Other is thus thrown out of his own position; he steps back so that afterwards, when the matter has been attended to, he can either take it over as something finished and at his disposal, or disburden himself of it completely. In such solicitude the Other can become one who is dominated and dependent, even if this domination is a tacit one and remains hidden from him. This kind of solicitude, which leaps in and takes away 'care', is to a large extent determinative for Being with one another, and pertains for the most part to our concern with the ready-to-hand. (BT 158; SZ 122)

Of the deficient mode and the first of the two positive modes Heidegger says also: «Being with one another is based proximally and often exclusively upon what is a matter of common concern in such Being. A Being-with-one-another which arises [entspringt] from one's doing the same thing as someone else, not only keeps for the most part within the outer limits, but enters the mode of distance and reserve. The Being-with-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair often thrives only on mistrust» (BT 159; SZ 122). Of the second positive mode of solicitude Heidegger doesn't say much: «In contrast to this, there is also the possibility of a kind of solicitude which does not so much leap in for the Other as leap ahead of him [ihm vorausspringt ] in his existentiell potentiality-for-Being, not in order to take away his 'care' but rather to give it back to him authentically as such for the first time {erst eigentlich als solche zurück-zugeben}. This kind of solicitude pertains essentially to authentic care—that is, to the existence of the Other, not to a " what " with which he is concerned; it helps the Other to become transparent to himself in his care and to become free for it» (BT 158f.; SZ 122). And, following the sentence ending with «mistrust,» he writes on authentic solicitude: «On the other hand, when they devote themselves to the same affair in common, their doing so is determined by the manner in which their Dasein, each in its own way, has been taken hold of. They thus become authentically bound together, and this makes possible the right kind of objectivity, which frees the Other in his freedom for himself» (BT 159; SZ 122). The passage on authentic Dasein as the conscience of the other (see above p. 66) refers to the authentic mode of solicitude. By becoming the conscience of ordinary Daseine, authentic Dasein throws them, so to speak, out of welfare and drags them out of the parties that have fought for the welfare system: «In the light of {Aus} the "for-the-sake-of-which" of one's self-chosen potentiality-for-Being, resolute Dasein frees itself for its world. Dasein's resoluteness towards itself is what first makes it possible to let the Others who are with it 'be' in their ownmost potentiality-for-Being, and to co-disclose this potentiality in the solicitude which leaps forth and liberates. When Dasein is resolute, it can become the 'conscience' of Others. Only by authentically Being-their-Selves in resoluteness can people authentically be with one another {Aus dem eigentlichen Selbstsein entspringt allererst das eigentliche Miteinander}— not by ambiguous and jealous stipulations {zweideutigen und eifersüchtigen Verabredungen} and talkative fraternizing {redseligen Ver brüder ungen} in the ''they'' and in what "they" want to undertake» (BT 344f.; SZ 298; italics mine, J. F.). The last sentence is indeed a good example of rightist polemics against the parties on the Left and against those in the Center. The phrase «ambiguous and jealous stipulations» targets Kant's notion of « unsocial sociability {ungesellige Geselligkeit }» ( Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose , in: H. Reiss, ed., Kant's Political Writings , trans. H. B. Nisbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], 44) and the notion of contract in modem political philosophy. The phrase, «talkative fraternizing » (italics mine, J. F.) targets the leftist notion of solidarity ( «Brüder , zur Sonne, zur Freiheit!» as the song of the social democrats had it). Note that in this passage, Heidegger uses «aus» as well as «entspringt» in the sense I mentioned above (see pp. 49f.). Authenticity and heritage is the spring «from» which stable identity entspringt without silting up somewhere and without covering up its origin.

The entire passage on Fürsorge mirrors numerous passages in the literature on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Gesellschaft is «bad» (or, in Heideggerian terms, Dasein in its «downward plunge»), because in it Daseine act as isolated and selfish Daseine that mistrust each other and because liberal Gesellschaft has «always already» led into social welfare, social democracy, and socialism. Thus, authentic Dasein has to counteract, or, in terms of section 74 of Being and Time , it has to widerrufen Gesellschaft. In the section on solicitude, Heidegger merely points to « authentically bound together» ( «eigent-liche Verbundenheit»). In section 74, he will reveal the subject that makes possible this «eigentliche Verbundenheit,» namely, the Volksgemeinschaft («of the community, of {the} people,» BT 436; 384). Listening to this (« erwidert, » SZ 386; BT 438), authentic Dasein cancels Gesellschaft in order to make room for the rerealization of the Volksgemeinschaft. As to the terminology, Heidegger starts with Sorge and Fürsorge. Moving toward the Being-with-one-another Dasein encounters the Sozialfürsorge (the technical term as well as everyday language word for the institutions of social welfare; «Die " Fürsorge " als faktische soziale Einrichtung,» SZ 121; italics mine, J. F.; «'welfare work' {"Fürsorge"}, as a factical social arrangement,» BT 158; note that the phrase «Die "Fürsorge" als faktische soziale Einrichtung» is like «community, of {the} people»; in both cases, Heidegger avoids using well-known words—«Sozialfürsorge» and «Volksge-meinschaft» —by placing their first parts [«Sozial> and «Volks»] after the noun [«Für-sorge» and «Gemeinschaft»]; the occurrence of such thoroughly worldly and political notions like «Sozialfürsorge» and «Volksgemeinschaft» might have embarrassed some readers of a book on fundamental ontology). Authentic Dasein cancels Gesellschaft and Sozialfürsorge in the name of the proper Sorge of the Gemeinschaft. Notably, it was not a philosopher, but rather a sociologist and philosopher who pointed out Heidegger's politics in the passage on «Fürsorge» (see Pierre Bordieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger , 70-87).

English readers might wonder what it means that the authentic mode of solicitude leaps ahead of Dasein «not in order to take away his 'care' but rather to give it back to him authentically as such for the first time» (BT 159; «sondem erst eigentlich als solche zurückzugeben,» SZ 122). Does this imply or leave open the possibility that, prior to the moment of being given back, care was already given, or could have already been given, back to Dasein, though in an inauthentic way? The phrase «erst eigentlich» probably does not refer to the notion of authenticity but emphasizes the conjunction «sondern» («but») so that one might translate, «but rather to give it back to him as such.» This sentence seems to exclude the possibility that at an earlier time care was already, or could have already been, given back to Dasein, albeit inauthentically. It might be possible, though, that the phrase «als solche» («as such») is supposed to mean «authentic,» and that the translators meant the phrase «authentically» as an explication of «as such.» In that case, they might have understood the phrase «erst eigentlich» as «for the first time,» which is not impossible. (Unless she means «to first» in the sense of «first and foremost,» Stambaugh seems to have worked with both options and in the final editing not to have sufficiently clarified which of them she prefers: «not in order to take "care" away from him, but to first to give it back to him as such» [ Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 115].) Probably, such vaguenesses in Heidegger's text go back to his assumption that somehow the vanished beginning never disappears but is covered up by Dasein in Dasein's downward plunge.

Still, on both interpretations Heidegger's sentence is an example of his usage of the preposition and prefix «zurück» («back») (see chapter 2, n. 35). In this instance, it is not just an allusion to the need of repetition but—at least, for those familiar with the literature on society and community—an explicit statement on the issue of repetition. Something, a , can be given «back» to Dasein only if Dasein had already possessed a but lost it at a later point. In the deficient mode of solicitude, Dasein does not have care, or it only has inauthentic care. In the first positive mode of solicitude, care is even actively taken away from Dasein («This kind of solicitude, which leaps in and takes away 'care'» [BT 158; SZ 122]; «to take away his 'care'» [BT 159; SZ 122]). Thus, in the authentic mode of solicitude authentic Daseine give back to Dasein something that Dasein had prior to being in the deficient mode of solicitude. The deficient mode of solicitude is society or liberalism. The first positive mode of solicitude is social democracy as the «truth» of liberalism. (The factical urgency for Sozialfürsorge «gets its motivation in that Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part in the deficient modes of solicitude» [BT 158; SZ 121].) Thus, in the authentic mode of solicitude authentic Daseine give back to Dasein the care that Dasein had prior to its downward plunge into society and socialism. That is, authentic Dasein cancels society and repeats or gives back community to Dasein.

The English sentence, «The being-with-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair often thrives on mistrust» (BT 159; italics mine, J. F.), reads in German: «Das Miteinandersein derer, die bei derselben Sache angestellt sind, nährt sich oft nur von Miß-trauen» (SZ 122; italics mine, J. F.). The noun «Angestellte(r)» with its adjective «angestellt» designates clerks in the offices of companies. While a typist in Berlin-Mitte or on Wall Street is a «kleine Angestellte,» a person in a high management position is a «lei-tender Angestellter.» Especially in a decade plagued by high unemployment, Heidegger's sentence is a clear and realistic statement about capitalist economy. In this sense, one might even translate the phrase «bei derselben Sache angestellt» as «employed by the same company.» Authentic Daseine, however, «devote themselves to the same affair in common » (BT 159; italics mine, J. F.). This phrase reads in German: «das gemein same Sicheinsetzen für dieselbe Sache» (SZ 122, italics mine, J. F.). One might even translate it as: «when they form a Gemeins chaft and devote themselves to the same issue.»

Heidegger says that only the second positive mode of Fürsorge «makes possible the right kind of objectivity [die rechte Sachlichkeit]» (BT 159; SZ 122). As one sees, the adjective «right» presents the same problem as the subordinated clause with «as such.» Is there only one objectivity or are there several ones? So to speak, a right, a left, and a liberal objectivity with the two latter being the wrong objectivities? (On the «magical» character of «rechts,» right, and «links,» left, see above, chapter 2, n. 15.) The «rechte Sachlichkeit» refers to the mentality and attitude of authentic Daseine. However, from the beginning of this passage on Heidegger speaks about «Einrichtung[en]» (instead of «arrangement» in «'welfare work' ["Fürsorge"], as a factical social arrangement {Einrichtung}» [BT 158; SZ 121 ], one might also say «institution»). In addition, he labels a capitalist company as well as die Sache of the advocates of Gemeinschaft, the issue of the authentic Daseine, a «Sache» (SZ 122, «affair,» BT 159). (One should keep in mind that in German the noun «die Sache» can have a very emphatic meaning, as for instance in Hegel [«die Sache selbst»] or in a title of a book of Heidegger's: Zur Sache des Denkens [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969]; the rallying cry of the phenomenological movement was «'To the things themselves!'» [BT 50; «"Zu den Sachen selbst!",» SZ 27].) For these two reasons, one might also hear «Sachlichkeit» as the abstract noun to «Sache.» Only authentic Dasein provides Daseine with the right institutions, namely, the ones of Gemeinschaft. The (right) Sache has been toppled by the Sache that employs Angestellte. The Sache that employs Angestellte leads to the socialist Sache, the institutions of social welfare. Authentic Daseine recover the right Sache, as they recover Sorge from its various Fürsorgen.

As Lucien Goldmann observed, it can hardly be a coincidence that Heidegger refers to Lukács's term «Verdinglichung des Bewußtseins» in a programmatic passage at the beginning (SZ 46; «'reification of consciousness',» BT 72) as well as on the last page (SZ 437; BT 487) of Being and Time (L. Goldmann, Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy , trans. W. Q. Boelhower [London: Routledge, 1979], 27ff.). Heidegger also uses a term of the young Marx, namely, «Entfremdung» and its corresponding verb «entfremden» («alienation, to alienate») (SZ 178ff., 254, 347f; BT 222ff., 298, 399)- It is interesting that in German philosophical literature Meister Eckhart was apparently the first to use the notion of Entfremdung as the German translation of the Latin word «alienatio,» and he used it in the sense of, in Heidegger's terms, «to become authentic.» In order to hear God speaking one must be alienated from all that is one's own (see E. Ritz, "Entfremdung," Joachim Ritter, ed., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie , vol. 2 [D-F] [Basel: Schwabe, 1972], 512). However, the notion lends itself to a romantic understanding. In acquiring what is one's own and engaging in idle talk, etc., one lives in an Entfremdung (see on the prefix «ent-» above pp. 32ff.) from one's origin; one has become entfremdet, alienated, from it. One better cancel one's Entfremdung from it and return to it. Heidegger reconstructs the notion of Entfremdung with the conceptual means of his theory. Entfremdung is the result of falling. In the downward plunge into idle talk, curiosity, etc., Dasein «drifts along towards an alienation [Entfremdung] in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it» (BT 222; SZ 178). The notions of falling and downward plunge in turn are reduced to a primordial activity for which Heidegger uses another term with the prefix «ent-,» namely, «Entspringen» in its pejorative usage. Thus, in the passage on «Entspringen» from which I quoted above (see above, pp. 34f.) «alienation» occurs: «In the 'leaping-away' {Im "Entspringen"} of the Present, one also forgets increasingly . . . . Even when it makes present in the most extreme manner {Auch im extremsten Gegenwärtigen}, it remains temporal—that is, awaiting and forgetful. In making present, moreover, {Auch gegenwärtigend} Dasein still understands itself, though it has been alienated {entfremdet ist} from its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, which is based primarily on the authentic future and on authentically having been» (BT 399; SZ 348; the second «Auch» is probably parallel to the first one; thus, Stambaugh translates: «Even in making present» [ Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 319]). Such appropriations of Marxist terms by right-wingers and romantics were certainly one of the reasons why Adorno was always skeptical about the usage of Ver-dinglichung and Entfremdung and even seemed to have basically disliked the latter notion (see for instance, Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics , trans. E. B. Ashton [New York: Continuum, 1992], 189ff.). Adorno always preferred the Marx of Capital over the Marx of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts .

As one can see, Heidegger's argument against social welfare is similar to the arguments of Republicans in the United States against welfare in the 1990s. From the perspective of Scheler and Heidegger in the debates I address in this book, Republicans in the United States are classical liberals, and Democrats are social democrats or liberals who maintain that classical liberalism no longer works.

26. The English translator has left out the quotation marks at «society,» which is understandable given the huge number of quotation marks and italics in Scheler's text. One might regret the omission, however, since the passage is a good example of the polemical use of quotation marks. In the entire passage, «society» is the only word put into quotation marks. With them and with the addition of «so-called,» Scheler denigrates society, since, as he puts it, society «zersetzt» the Gemeinschaften.

27. See above, this chapter, n. 25; see also the last section of this chapter and section B of chapter 4.

28. As one can already see and as will become clearer in what follows, one might say that there is a contradiction, tension, or confusion, in Scheler or just simply an anachronistic ontology. In the realm of values, each of the four communal forms of togetherness has its specific rationality or style of synthesis of the individuals involved in it. Each of the types of community is free of the rationality of society. Society is one of the four communal forms of togetherness, but it is not a community. If the realm of values is properly preferred, the same holds true for each of the empirical communities. Each empirical family, state, etc., is free of the rationality of society. In this sense, each of the notions of society and the different communities designates an object or an area—an entity in the realm of values or an empirical group—distinct from all the other areas. At the same time, however, each of these notions designates a peculiar rationality that is independent of any area, and that can occur in any of the empirical communities designated by the notions taken in their first way of designation. Without the second way of designation, Scheler could not claim that in the modem age the rationality of society has invaded and taken over empirical families, states, etc. (see esp. section D). (This tension forces or allows Scheler to develop his project within, as it were, the historicized framework of Christian original sin and recovery. Scheler leaves out the theological veto upon the realization of recovery here on earth through human achievement. This is the first step of the alignment of his theory with the political Right.) In The Theory of Social and Economic Organization , trans. A.M. Henderson and T. Parsons (Glencoe, IL.: The Free Press, 1947), 136-139 (section 9); Wirtschafi und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972). 21-23 (section 9), in its first edition published in 1922, Max Weber uses, not just the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Rather, he adds the prefix «ver-» and the suffix «-ung»—«'Vergemeinschaftung'» («'communal' social relationship,» or communitization, as it were) and «'Vergesellschaftung'» («'associative' social relationship,» or societalization). This slight modification expresses his theoretical program; namely, to de-ontologize the concepts. In Weber they don't designate different areas or inherent ontological features of certain activities (childraising, love in matrimony, economic activities, etc.) but rather types of synthesis that can occur in every area or activity, without fixed ontological features of this or that activity being stipulated. This is an instance of the way politics is implied in Weberian science. This theoretical maneuver pulls the rug out from under the feet of any rightist politics, at least concerning the pretension to place rightist politics on a scientific basis. (In this context, Weber mentions only Ferdinand Tönnies's seminal book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschafi ; Tönnies himself deplored the use right-wingers made of his book; see my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin. ) Weber points out that there is no purity. The great majority of social relationships is informed by both forms of synthesis. (The awareness of the impossibility of the pure allows, one might add, a non-ontological mode of critique according to pragmatic points of view or according to, say, the liberal notion of human rights.) In addition, many sociologists regard the communal type of relationship as the most radical antithesis of conflict, which, in contrast, is considered to be inherent in the associative type of relationship. «This should not, however,» as Weber points out, «be allowed to obscure the fact that coercion of all sorts is a very common thing in even the most intimate of such communal relationships.» Furthermore, «the possession of a common biological inheritance by virtue of which persons are classified as belonging to the same 'race,' naturally implies no sort of communal social relationship between them.» Rather, as one would say nowadays, race is a social construct. Thus, there is no scientific basis for maintaining that every individual is a priori part of this or that Gemeinschaft, and for calling upon people to form that Volksgemeinschaft they already belong to in order to rerealize alleged biological features and the Gemeinschaft shaped by the latter. In the same way, a common language does not imply any sort of communal social relationship between the speakers. Furthermore, Weber writes: «No matter how calculating and hard-headed the ruling considerations in such a social relationship—as that of a merchant to his customers—may be, it is quite possible for it to involve emotional values which transcend its utilitarian significance. Every social relationship which goes beyond the pursuit of immediate common ends, and which hence lasts for long periods, involves relatively permanent social relationships between the same persons, and these cannot be exclusively confined to the technically necessary activities. Hence in such cases as association in the same military unit {Vergesellschaftung im gleichen Heeresverband}, in the same school class, in the same workshop or office, there is always some tendency in this direction, although the degree, to be sure, varies enormously.» With this passage, Weber makes indeed politics against the Right in two ways. A military unit should be regarded as in the first place a Gesellschaft—«a rationally motivated . . . agreement» of interests ( «Interessenverbindung , » thus, maybe better «union of interests»)—and not as a Gemeinschaft. The first sentence may be understood as an implicit call to withdraw one's emotional energies from Gemeinschaft and to «re-gather» them on Gesellschaft. A Gesellschaft is constituted by an «Interessen- verbindung » and/or by an « Interessenausgleich » («rationally motivated adjustment of interests»; when Scheler abandons any rightist politics, his key term will be «Aus-gleich,» see this chapter, section F). The fact that, on these two out of the thirty pages on the basic concepts of sociology, in a book of more than nine hundred pages, the most urgent themes and problems—race, language, military, and the economy—are presented shows that the two concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft were indeed the major framework within which political problems were discussed at the time.

29. One must not think that here Scheler propagates socialism or communism. See the remainder of this chapter.

30. This is my own translation of the German sentences, «Denn Gerechtigkeit fordert—sofern ihr Wesen rein erfaßt wird—durchaus nicht Vergeltung des Bösen mit Üblem. Nur aus einem Teil des Wesenskernes der Gerechtigkeit, nach dem es gut ist und sein soll, daß unter gleichen Wertverhalten auch gleiches Verhalten wollender Personen stattfinde, folgt— wenn es Vergeltung gibt—, daß diese auch Gleichwertiges gleich zu treffen habe. Nicht aber folgt aus ihr die Forderung einer "Vergeltung" selbst» (FE 363). In brief, in my opinion the sentence, «nach dem . . . Personen stattfinde» («according to which . . . should occur») is a general formulation of a sentence like this one: «"From consideration of" this area of tasks, e.g., "as" economic subjects, ''as'' bearers of civil rights and duties, etc., ultimate bearers can and must "obtain" as "equal" in a given case (which would be the object of a special investigation)» (FEe 509; FE 500). I leave it open whether one gets the same meaning as in my translation in the English translation: «Insofar as the pure essence of justice is grasped, it does not require the reprisal of evil through bad deeds. Only from that part of the central essence of justice according to which the occurrence of the same comportment on the condition of the same value-complexes is good and ought to be does it follow that if there is reprisal, it must aim equally at factors of equivalent value. But from this no demand for "reprisal" follows» (FEe 363). In the English translation the phrase «wol-lender Personen» («of willing persons») doesn't occur. It might be the case that the translator wasn't quite sure that, indeed, the German expression «Vergeltung trifft» simply means «reprisal (targets you and) punishes (you),» and that the «[V]erhalt» in «Wertverhalten » is used with a view to the German noun «Sachverhalt».

31. As indicated in the quote, the English translator has rendered the German phrase «so bunt gegliedert sie ist» with «mixed as it is.» For whatever reasons, for instance, the benefits of the American melting pot, the translator chose to prefer «mixed» over words like «structured,» which recommend themselves quite easily and convey the required sense. The translation is not just more or less inexact. Rather, it conveys precisely the opposite of Scheler's theories and political intentions. Like other rightist authors, he argues against mixtures, against processes in which distinctions and rankings he considers essential are leveled or confused. For Scheler, the liberal assumption that all human beings are equal is the most prominent expression of the «essence» of the modem age, that is, to mix up and level the essential differences in the realm of values that have been realized by the «right» acts of preferring in an earlier period. Processes of mixture are not—as the English translation suggests—a productive source and a means to realize the values. Rather, they are the processes by which the right order of values is overthrown and which terminate in socialism, chaos, and anarchy. In direct opposition to the disappearing of differences and rankings by processes of mixture, the German word «gegliedert» conveys the idea of «being ranked within a hierarchy of values and ranks, within which each of the different ranks and each of the individuals and groups related to one of them is clearly distinguished from all the others and the individuals and groups belonging to the latter.» The different peoples and races in history are part of mankind. Mankind, however, entails a hierarchy of the different peoples and races that liberalism and social democracy have done away with. One might also say that the mistranslation of the German phrase is a projection of the later Scheler onto the earlier Scheler (see section F of this chapter).

32. See this chapter, n. 20.

33. See, however, Scheler's critique of Sombart's interpretation of Thomas Aquinas and Protestantism in his Der Bourgeois und die religiösen Mächte , where he

34. In this passage, Scheler doesn't say more about «mixture of blood» in Sombart. In the essay on ressentiment, he says in a note that in «Sombart's opinion, the "Jewish spirit" is one of the chief causes of the development of the capitalist social structure. It is quite in agreement with my thesis that this spirit, which has had a lien on ressentiment for a long time, plays a major role in this process» (RE 194, n. 27; UW 129, n. 2). Sombart wrote a book of almost 500 pages— Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1911)—in which he wanted to show that the Jews have established capitalism and which certainly has its place in the history of anti-Semitism.

35. Scheler adds a note to this passage: «This was written in February 1914, that is, long before the war» (UW 385, n.). By this, he probably acknowledges that he has underestimated the anticapitalist potential of the conservatives, which, for Scheler they proved through their support of the war. The note is interesting because, as will become clear in what follows, according to Scheler the bourgeois ethos is bound to die out. However, this takes time. In the meantime, it is possible to speed up the process, among other things through World War I, sent by God as a gift.

36. Since I began with Scheler's war at the «Heimatfront» (the home front), let me just mention a further detail. According to rightists, in Gesellschaft we encounter selfish individuals, and we are lonely. It was part of the rightist ideology concerning war that, since this is the case with society, war is one of the few opportunities when we have an authentic relation to others; in the situation of combat, «face to face with the other,» we encounter «the other as other,» as one finds it, for instance, in Ernst Jünger's writings on war. We all know that killing in wars is not regarded as murder. However, one need not, and should not, justify this thesis in terms of the anachronistic framework of war as a fight between knights or as a duel between Prussian aristocrats, as Scheler does: «Whenever persons are given in war, the intention toward the negation and annihilation of these persons is so little given that, on the contrary, the principle of chivalry demands not only that the person expose himself to the same kind and degree of danger as he affords but also that he affirm the favor of the person of the enemy, in its value and its existence, the better and more courageously he fights and defends himself. A certain measure of positive valuation of the enemy is connected with the very agreement to duel» (FEe 314; FE 317f.). After Scheler had abandoned any rightist politics and turned to the Center in the 1920s (see above this chapter, section F), he worked in the last two years of his life, 1926-28, among other texts, on a book On the Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism , published only in the Nachlaß volume, in which he defended the idea of eternal peace and refuted reasons for war (in Gesammelte Werke 13: Schriften aus dem Nachlaß 4 , ed. M. S. Frings [Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1990]). On p. 86 one finds as one of his reasons against war the notion that through modern technology the principle of chivalry has become anachronistic. On the same page, he writes a sentence that Heidegger, as one would put it in German, sich hinter die Ohren hätte schreiben sollen, that is, should have read carefully and kept in mind. In his decisionistic phase, Scheler wrote much on the Held, that is, on the right-wing notion of Vorbild, example to follow. For instance, in the passage on the «power of war to forge communities {gemeinschaftsbildnerische Kraft des Krieges}» (PPS 77) from which I quoted above (see pp. 88f.), he says that «the common memory of war is the core of {each nation's} community of fate» and continues by saying that «the shared images of {a nation' s} heroes {Helden} represent the strongest force of {its} holding together and of {its} unity» (PPS 77). The Catholic Scheler continues in a way Hitler would not have: «This power forms a bond that in terms of strength by far surpasses belonging to the same race, language, and spiritual culture» (PPS 77). That is, the soldier is higher than the heroes, or paradigms, of the state and the Volksgemeinschaft, and he is higher than the other heroes of a Kulturgemeinschaft; the soldier is only below the hero, or paradigm, of the love-community, Jesus Christ, since for Scheler, prior to his Kehre, the soldier fights for Jesus Christ and the love-community. After his Kehre, Scheler refinds the general term Vorbild and dismisses the right-wing notion of Held: «It is not at all the case that the "Held" is the highest example {Vorbild} of man. Rather, the highest example is the kind-hearted man {der Gütige}, the saint {der Heilige}, the genius of a great and strong heart {das Genie des großen kraftvollen Herzens}» ( On the Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism , 86). Also such a sentence shows that only for rightists was the Held the highest example to follow and that, as I suggested in chapter 1, section A, the paradigm of the «German» Held after World War I was not, as it is assumed in the American literature, any distinguished individual, but rather the Helden von Langemarck (see chapter 5, section C).

37. See above, n. 24.

38. See above, n. 25.

39. On the entire passage see this chapter, n. 25.

40. On all the mentioned points see my book Fate, Community, and Society: From Kant to Benjamin .

41. See above, n. 8.

42. See above, p. 38.

43. The flag is an Erwiderung and Widerruf in Heidegger's sense. It erwidert the past, or what-has-been-there, insofar as it brings back the Aryan race, which has been spoiled and forgotten. This step requires that one widerruft the Weimar Republic and its flag, whose colors were black, red, and gold.

44. See Winfried Franzen, "Die Sehnsucht nach Härte und Schwere: Über ein zum NS-Engagement disponierendes Motiv in Heidegger's Vorlesung 'Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik' von 1929/30," in Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert and Otto Pöggeler (eds.), Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 78-92; see also above, chapter 1, n. 33.

45. Hegel, Philosophy of Right , 107 (section 324, n.)

46. On the occurrence of «Eigentum,» property, in the later Heidegger, see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 153, n. 59.

47. See above, pp. 107f.

48. For the details see above, pp. 1-7, 43-50.

49. For the details see above, pp. 50-67.

50. For the phrase «is determinative for it» see above, this chapter, n. 3.

51. For the details see above, pp. 60ff. Even after his personal Kehre with regard to Heidegger's philosophy, Caputo repeats the deconstructive interpretation, in which the Parisian deconstructive mood happily merges with the American idol of the self-made man: «Dasein gives itself a fate» (John Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger , 81). On «setzt sich . . . zusammen» and «the handing down of a heritage constitutes itself in resoluteness» (BT 435; SZ 383f.) see above, pp. 55ff. The notion «Konstitu-tion» is crucial and omnipresent in Husserl, and he also uses the verb «konstituieren» and its reflexive form «sich konstituieren.» Scheler develops four types of social units, namely, the mass, the life-community, society, and the love-community (see above, pp. 97ff.), and he distinguishes between four types of large-scale communities, namely, the church, the nation, the state, and the Volksgemeinschaft (see below, pp. 136ff.). He always stresses that a community is ontologically prior to its individual members, whereas society is ontologically posterior to its individual members. In that context, he uses the reflexive verb «sich konstituieren» («to constitute itself») frequently (FE 509ff.; FEe 519ff.) as a term for the ontological order of the elements of a social unit and the relationship between the whole and its parts. It would lead too far to inquire whether in some of its occurrences he also uses the notion in the sense Heidegger employs it, namely, in the sense of «to become active» (see above, pp. 57ff.). Having used «konstituiert sich» (SZ 383; «constitutes itself,» BT 435) in the sense of «becomes active» Heidegger uses its German translation («sich zusammensetzen» [«setzt sich nicht aus einzelnen Schicksalen zusammen,» SZ 384; «not something that puts itself together out of individual fates,» BT 436]) in the ontological sense and offers a German translation of «sich konstituieren» in the sense of «to become active,» namely, «wird . . . frei» (SZ 384; «become free,» BT 436).

52. On «Ausgleich» as Scheler's key term after his Kehre see section F of this chapter.

53. For the details see above, pp. 43-68. On «communicating» see below, chapter 6, n. 24.

54. For the details see above, pp. 13-21.

55. For the details see above, pp. 7-13, 21-28.

56. See above p. 25.

57. In German, one might say, here Heidegger «läßt die Katze aus dem Sack,» that is, he lays his cards on the table. As one might expect, neither Birmingham nor Guignon quote this sentence. For the terminological difference between «past» and «what-has-been-there» see BT 373ff., 432; ST 325ff., 380. Heidegger will always make the distinction between a past in whose rerealization he is not interested and a past that is supposed to recur, and he will always label the former «Vergangenheit» or «Vergangenes» («past») and the latter «Gewesenes» or «Gewesendes,» see above, this chapter, n. 12, and, for instance, the preface of the volume Vorträge und Aufsätze : «Denkwege, für die Vergangenes zwar vergangen, Gewesendes jedoch im Kommen bleibt, warten, bis irgendwann Denkende sie gehen. Während das geläufige und im weitesten Sinne technische Vorstellen immer noch vorwärts will und alle fortreißt, geben weisende Wege bisweilen eine Aussicht frei auf ein einziges Ge-birg./Todtnauberg, im August 1954» (VA 7). Without all its subtleties, this might be translated as: «[There are] ways of thinking, for which what-has-past is indeed past, but for which something-which-has-been-there remains still to come, [and these ways of thinking] wait, until at some point in the future thinkers will go these ways. While the ordinary and, in the broadest sense, technological representation even now wants [to move] forward and sweeps along all {all human beings? all the beings? all things?}, in contrast revealing/instructing/commanding ways sometimes grant a view of a single mountain range. Todtnauberg, August 1954.» One finds the shortest formulation of this notion in the following sentence: «Denn was gewesen, verharrt im Wirken, übersteht das Vergehen» ("Wink in das Gewesene," Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, 1910-1976 , GA 15 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983], 201; «For what-has-been-there persists in being active and rides out corruption»; see also above, chapter 2, nn. 5 and 33). This sentence and Heidegger's etymology of vorläufig (see above, chapter 1, n. 11) both confirm the impression that, in the sentence « Widerruf dessen, was im Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt» (SZ 386, « disavowal of that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past',» BT 438) the verb «auswirkt» («working itself out») is supposed to have the connotation of «aus» in the sense of «zu Ende,» that is, «coming to an end» (like the rivulet, see above, p. 33; thus one says a rivulet «läuft aus,» silts up, or a product «läuft aus,» that is, it is no longer produced), similar to Nietzsche's saying that what is falling already should also be pushed.

58. On openness and Entschlossenheit see above, chapter 1, section A. In the light of Heidegger's notorious statement on the German and the Greek language (IM 57; EM 43) it is interesting that, with regard to the words used by Heidegger, the Latin and the English languages have a clear advantage over Greek and German. For in German and Greek one can make Heidegger's point by listening properly to the word «erwidern» (see chapter 5, n. 70), not however by listening to the key term of the entire passage, namely, «Wiederholung» (repetition). For except for romantics «Wiederholung» has no normative connotations or aura. However, in English one can make Heidegger's point already by listening to the words «repetition,» or «to repeat.» For they go back to the Latin words «repetitio» and «repetere.» «Pefitio» means «an attack, thrust, blow» and also «demand» (or «re-quest» !). Accordingly, «petere» means «to make for, to attack, to assail» and also «to ask for, to beg» or «to request.» The prefix «re-» means «back.» Thus, the repetitor is one who demands something back from someone or who demands someone back. A repetitio is a re-clamation, the demand of something or someone back. Accordingly, «repetere» means «to ask back, to claim back, to trace back» and also the obedience to the request, namely, «to return to, to renew, to begin again.» Properly heard, therefore, in contrast to the German word «Wiederholung» the English word «repetition» already entails the normative aspect, which Heidegger develops in his formula of the «vorrufenden Rückruf» (SZ 280; the call «which calls us back in calling us forth,» BT 326) and in his usage of «entspringen» (see pp. 32ff.) and «erwidem.» Heritage, the past, «repeats» us, that is, it demands us back, it calls upon us to come back, since we sind ihr entsprungen, have jumped out of it and away from it into society. We «repeat» the call, that is, we obey it, kehren um, turn back, and return to the past. By this, we ourselves become the « repetition of a possibility of existence that has come down to us» (BT 437; SZ 385). We «repeat» the past, that is, rerealize, renew, begin again the past. In order to do so, we act onto the inauthentic Dasein the way the past has acted upon us, that is, we carry the call over to the inauthentic Daseine. We «repeat» the inauthentic Daseine, that is, we demand from them also that they «repeat» the past, that is, that they return to the past and rerealize it. That is, we make a « disavowal » (BT 438; SZ 386), not of the past, which has called upon us, but rather of Gesellschaft, which has entsprungen the past.

Inauthentic Dasein does not listen to, and does not respond to, the call, whereas authentic Dasein does so. Thus, one might perhaps translate Heidegger's phrase « erwidert vielmehr» (SZ 386; «Rather, the repetition makes a reciprocative rejoinder to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there,» BT 438) with «Rather, the repetition responds to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there,» in the sense that it responds to the call, that is, complies with the demand raised by the past while the meaning Guignon sees in the sentence would be expressed by «Rather, the repetition responds to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there with x,» with x being the placeholder for the specific answer of authentic Dasein to the past, which in fact in Heidegger's text does not occur. In Birmingham's interpretation, the x is authentic Dasein's polemos against the past, this polemos being even more radical than a military counterattack with equal weapons (TP 31). Thus, she writes: «The reply or response to historical possibilities is precisely that which disrupts identity and continuity» (TP 31).

59. One might speculate what it would say about Heidegger, and in general about problems of intellectual and political mentality, if indeed it were coincidental.

60. See section F of this part.

61. See Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 136; German edition, 134. If he had joined the party just one year earlier, his Tat, deed, would have been a good instance of the kind of activity called for by the sentences on Erwiderung and Widerruf. For I May was the holiday in honor of the working class. Thus, to make one's stand for the Volksgemeinschaft on any I May prior to 1933 (or, for that matter, on any other day of the year) meant that one helped the Volksgemeinschaft in its call for help and repetition by actively disavowing, fighting against, expelling, (the holiday in honor of) the working class. On I May 1933, however, the working class and its special day was already forbidden, and its leaders were already arrested. Thus, to join the Nazis on I May 1933 was an act of, as one puts it in German, sich ins schon gemachte Bett zu legen; an act of lying down in a bed prepared by someone else, in Heidegger's case also by his major work Being and Time .

62. Another advantage of Heidegger's distinction is that it allows him to insert the entity designated by the term Geschick into the series of distinguished entities and modes the German language and Heidegger have the privilege to call by words with the prefix «ge-» such as «Gebirg,» «Gemtit,» «Gestell,» «Gewissen,» «Geschichte,» «Ge-schehen,» «Geschenk,» «Gelassenheit,» «Gewesenheit,» «Geviert,» «Geschlecht,» «Gemächte,» «Geworfenheit,» «Gemeinschaft,» and also its Zersetzungsprodukt, «Gesellschaft.» On Heidegger's use of «Gestell» see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges," 133ff.

Some commentators maintain that Geschick was attractive for Heidegger because it goes back to «geschickt» in the sense of «können,» «to be capable of.» However, the subject of «können» in Heidegger is not the individual but rather the Volk. The Dasein owes its Geschicklichkeiten, its capacities, not to itself but rather to the Volk (and, at least for Heidegger in 1933, this includes its soil, as Schlageter is capable of the hardness of the will because the Black Forest has worked on the Daseine living in it for a long time, see chapter 1, n. 33). The Volk as Geschick gives to the individuals their capacities. In this sense, Heidegger might have said that each Dasein is geschickt, «geschickt» meaning «skillful» and also «(has been) sent.» Prior to the crisis, ordinary Dasein is egocentric, selfish, and vacillates between equally insignificant possibilities. There is no real purpose in its life, and it does not respect its past. More or less consciously, Dasein realizes that there is no meaning in its life, no wholeness, and no «Ständigkeit» (SZ 375; «constancy,» BT 375). In brief, Dasein is geworfen, thrown into a naked facticity of inauthentic possibilities as it realizes upon becoming authentic. Once authentic Dasein has taken over its thrownness, it realizes that, now, it is no longer geworfen, thrown, but geschickt, sent. For Geschick has sent it to realize the Geschick, the mission, namely, to rerealize Gemeinschaft. In addition, Geschick has provided Dasein with the necessary Geschicklichkeiten, has made Dasein geschickt to fulfill its mission. However, in Sein und Zeit Heidegger does not use the adjective «geschickt» (see Bast and Delfosse, Handbuch zum Textstudium von Martin Heideggers ' Sein und Zeit, ' 128).

As to the above-mentioned «Ständigkeit,» it is worth noting that «Ständigkeit» is not just «constancy.» In section 64, Heidegger writes: «Selfhood {Selbstheit} is to be discerned existentially only in one's authentic potentiality-for-Being-one's-Self—that is to say, in the authenticity of Dasein's Being as care . In terms of care the constancy of the Self { Ständigkeit des Selbst }, as the supposed persistence {Beharrlichkeit} of the subjectum , gets clarified. But the phenomenon of this authentic potentiality-for-Being also opens our eyes for the constancy of the Self in the sense of its having achieved some sort of position {Standgewonnenhaben}. ¹ The constancy of the Self , in the double sense of steadiness and steadfastness, is the authentic counter-possibility to the non-Self-constancy which is characteristic of irresolute falling ² » (BT 369; SZ 322). In note 2, the translators comment on Heidegger's use of the root «sta.» The explanation in note 1 reads: «Here our usual translation of 'Ständigkeit' as 'constancy' seems inadequate; possibly 'stability' would be closer to what is meant» (BT 369, n. 1). Ständigkeit is associated with Güte (see above, chapter 2, n. 25). However, in the discourse of the rightists it also has, as in Heidegger's sentence in section 64, an aggressive component directed against Enlightenment and the supposed vacillations of the city-dwellers. In section 74, Heidegger shows that the subject of Enlightenment is inauthentic Dasein and that Dasein can have «Selbstständigkeit» (SZ 375; «Self-constancy,» BT 427, with the translators' note 3; see also BT 369 with the translators' note 2)—the key term of Enlightenment and liberalism—only if it strikes through its «Self» and gains «constancy» (BT 427; SZ 375) by accepting the gift of «some sort of position» («Standgewonnenhaben,» thus, better: «stable stand») that the Volk offers to Dasein, or forces upon Dasein, in order to free Dasein from Dasein's loneliness. The intensified stage of Ständigkeit is Bodenständigkeit (having a stable stand on or in the soil), as it was used by the rightists in their polemics against the «wurzellosen» (rootless) city-dwellers, liberals, and Jews. Heidegger roots Dasein in the Volk by striking through its Selbständigkeit. This paves the way to replace the «Selbst» in «Selbstständigkeit» with «Boden» in order openly to use the rightist term «Bodenstäindigkeit,» as he has done already in Being and Time : «Things are so because one says so. Idle talk is constituted by just such gossiping and passing the word along—a process by which its initial lack of grounds to stand on [Bodenständigkeit] becomes aggravated to complete groundlessness [Bodenlosigkeit]» (BT 212; SZ 168). In the Rectorate Address , the vocabulary of roots is present from the second sentence on: «The teachers and students who constitute the rector's following {Gefolgschaft der Lehrer und Schüler} will awaken and gain strength only through being truly and collectively rooted in the essence of the German university {aus der wahrhaften und gemeinsamen Verwurzelung im Wesen der deutschen Universität}» ("The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy , 29; see MH 5; SB 9). Or, «the first bond is the one that binds to the ethnic and national community [ Volksgemeinschaft ]. It entails the obligation to share fully, both passively and actively, in the toil, the striving, and the abilities of all estates and members of the Volk. This bond will henceforth be secured and rooted in student existence [ Dasein ] through labor service { Arbeitsdienst }» (ibid., 35; see MH 10; SB 15; see how—in analogy to the switch from «handing down to itself» to «handing itself down to,» above, p. 16ff.—the root nourishes the Dasein that has been forced to root itself in the Volk). Becoming rooted in the Volk, the German Daseine submit to «the power that comes from preserving at the most profound level the forces that are rooted in the soil and blood of a Volk {erd- und bluthaften Kräfte}, the power to arouse most inwardly and to shake most extensively the Volk's existence. A spiritual world alone will guarantee our Volk greatness» (ibid., 33f.; see MH 9; SB 14). In the Rectorate Address , Heidegger does not use the word «Bodenständigkeit.» He probably does not do so, because quite often the word smacks of immobility, which does not fit the ecstatics of struggle and danger prevalent in the Rectorate Address .

63. Or become master of fate; see above, pp. 85ff.

64. Why do Daseine run forward into death? At the beginning of section 74, Heidegger points out that the notion of « anticipatory resoluteness» (BT 434; « vorlaufende Entschlossenheit»; thus, literally «resoluteness running forward ,» SZ 382) in which resoluteness goes «right under the eyes of death» (BT 434; SZ 382) has already been developed in sections 60ff. (BT 434; SZ 382; see BT 341ff.; SZ 295ff.; « anticipation of death,» BT 350; « Vorlaufen zum Tode,» SZ 302). Section 60 is the last section in the chapter on conscience and its call. Daseine run forward into death because they are called upon to do so by the call of conscience. Does the call of conscience call upon all Daseine or only on some? At any rate, not each Dasein hearing the call listens and obeys to it. For the «they» redirects, so to speak, the « direction it { the call of conscience } takes » (BT 318; SZ 274; « Einschlagsrichtung ,» a military term, see below, chapter 4, n. 7) and transforms the call «into a soliloquy in which causes get pleaded {in ein verhandelndes Selbstgespräch gezogen}, and it {the call of conscience} becomes perverted in its tendency to disclose» (BT 319; SZ 274). Why do some Daseine listen to the call while others don't? Heidegger gives an answer in the chapter on conscience. In the context of that chapter as well as of the chapter on historicality, the metaphor in which he coins his answer can be taken literally. In the chapter on conscience, he argues against the universalism of Enlightenment. Liberals, social democrats, and communists don't listen to the call because they want to move forward on the road of society (see above, chapter 4) and don't want to be called back (the call of conscience as that «to which we are called back,» BT 326; «Zurückrufen,» SZ 280; on the preposition «zurück» in Heidegger see above, this chapter, n. 25, and chapter 2, n. 35). Only those Daseine listen that want to be brought back: «The call is from afar unto afar. It reaches him who wants to be brought back» (BT 316; SZ 271; «Vom Ruf getroffen wird, wer zurückgeholt sein will»; thus, literally: «[Only] one who wants to be brought back is hit by the call»; «getroffen» [«hits»] is also used in books on war: «Getroffen von der Kugel des Feindes, sank er dahin,» hit by the bullet of the enemy he sank down). In contrast to the «they,» in the Weimar Republic—liberals, social democrats, and communists—the authentic Daseine choose as their «hero» (BT 437; «Helden,» SZ 385) the «heroes of Langemarck» (see above, chapter 1, section A). The authentic Daseine want to be brought back to the battlefields of World War I, because already their heroes wanted to be brought back to and rerealize the communities that had existed prior to Enlightenment and society and were toppled by Enlightenment and society. The authentic Daseine want to be brought back to community in order to bring back (« erwidert » [SZ 386; BT 438] in the sense of «erwiderbringen,» «to bring back,» see below, chapter 5, n.70) community by canceling society (« Widerruf ,» SZ 386; « disavowal ,» BT 438). Being called upon by the Volksgemeinschaft to rerealize the Volksgemeinschaft by canceling society, the authentic Daseine repeat a decision that they failed to make earlier, namely, the decision to prevent society from emerging and from replacing community: «{The downward plunge into the "they"} can be reversed {rückgängig gemacht werden} only if Dasein specifically brings itself back {zurückholt} to itself from its lostness in the "they." But this bringing-back {Dieses Zurückholen} must have that kind of Being by the neglect of which Dasein has lost itself in inauthenticity. When Dasein thus brings itself back {Das Sichzurückholen} from the "they," the they-self is modified in an existentiell manner so that it becomes authentic Being-one' s-Self. This must be accomplished by making up for not choosing { Nachholen einer Wahl }. But "making up'' for not choosing signifies choosing to make this choice » (BT 312f.; SZ 268). Still, the decision to cancel society does not prevent the authentic Daseine from taking over modern technology and capitalism as an economic system.

65. See Karl Löwith, "Last Meeting with Heidegger," in Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy , 142 (see also MH 158; see above chapter 6, section A).

66. Karl Jaspers, Philosophische Autobiographie: Erweiterte Neuausgabe (Munich: Piper, 1977), 101f.; printed also in Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel , ed. W. Biemel and Hans Sauer (Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich: Klostermann, Piper, 1990), 257.

As was mentioned above, Scheler and Heidegger do not need to elaborate on the notion of fate, for they just make use of the meaning of the everyday usage of Schicksal in their explanation of history. Only those who wanted to redefine the notion of fate had to comment on it as, for instance, Benjamin in his essay "Fate and Character" (Walter Benjamin, Reflections , trans. Edmund Jephcott [New York: Schocken, 1986], 304-311). (Around 1916 Scheler wrote an unpublished essay in which he interpreted the notion of fate in the light of his philosophy, "Ordo Amoris," Schriften aus dem Nachlaß I , GW 10 [Bern: Francke, 1957], 347-376; translation in Selected Philosophical Essays , trans. D. R. Lachtermann [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973], 98-135.) A sentence such as that—in the «clash» of fates of different people—it was the «fate» of the Jews to be removed from the public and finally killed in Nazi Germany is in line with the everyday meaning of fate and, thus, with the usage of fate in Scheler and Heidegger. In an article in the weekly Die Zeit ("Das deutsche Volk war eingeweiht," Die Zeit , no. 22, 2 June 1995, overseas edition, p. 16), Siegfried Maruhn quotes an article of Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels on the front page of the weekly Das Reich , "Die Juden sind schuld!" (The Jews are to blame) ( Das Reich , no. 46, 16 November 1941; the usual print run was about 500,000 copies), of which Maruhn says that it is «a remarkably frank document, in which the mass murdering was announced to the German public without any pretense of secrecy.» Goebbels refers to Hitler's prediction in the speech of 30 January 1939 in the Reichstag that, «if the international finance Jewry {Finanzjudentum} should manage to throw the nations once again into a world war, the result will be not the bolshevikization of the earth and thus the victory of the Jewry, but rather the annihilation {Vernichtung} of the Jewish race in Europe.» Goebbels then goes on: «We witness the execution {Vollzug} of this prophecy, and by the execution a fate is fulfilled with regard to the Jewry, which, indeed, is hard but which is more than earned {und es erfüllt sich damit am Judentum ein Schicksal, das zwar hart, aber mehr als verdient ist}. Compassion {Mitleid}, not to mention regret {Bedauern}, is completely inappropriate in this case.» Only cowards try to evade their fate. Thus, Goebbels makes fun of Jews who try to evoke compassion or who try to hide their Judenstern by carrying a newspaper.

With regard to the (hopeless) effort to escape one's fate, Hitler uses a common expression when he says: «Man wollte dem Schicksal enteilen und wurde von ihm ereilt» (MK 156; «They wanted to run away from destiny, and it caught up with them,» MKe 142). «Ent-eilen» is a verb expressing motion, as in the discussion of the prisoners above who «ent-laufen» the prison (see above, pp. 33ff.). The police eilt ihnen nach, runs after them, and, if successful, er-eilt sie, that is, holt sie ein, overtakes them, catches up with them, and re-arrests them.

Only some of the Jews had left Germany early enough to evade their fate. However, several of them were eingeholt by their fate at a later point. Walter Benjamin left Germany on the 18 March 1933 for Ibiza, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea. In autumn 1933, he went to Paris where he would live for most of the coming years to work on the unfinished book on Paris in the nineteenth century, named «Pas-sagenarbeit» ( Gesammelte Schriften , V.1 and V.2, ed. R. Tiedemann [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982]). In June 1940, when German troops invaded Paris, Benjamin fled to Lourdes and Marseille. In Marseille he managed to get a transit visa to Spain. However, on 26 September 1940, when the group of people with whom he had made the escape wanted to cross the border in the small Spanish border town Port Bou, they were told that the day before the border had been closed and that their visas were no longer accepted. The Spanish customs officers told them that the next day Spanish police officers would take them back to France, which meant that they would be deported to German concentration camps. Benjamin killed himself that night. In the aftermath of his suicide, the Spanish customs officers let the rest of the group pass into Spain. In summer 1933 on Ibiza, Benjamin had fallen in love with a woman from the Netherlands. In a letter from that summer, one apparently never sent to her, he wrote «In Deinem Arm würde das Schicksal für immer aufhören, mir zu begegnen . Mit keinem Schrecken und mit keinem Glück könnte es mich mehr überraschen» ( Gesammelte Schriften , VI, [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985], 810; italics mine, J. F.; «In your arms, fate would for ever cease to mir begegnen . By no horror and by no luck could it any longer surprise me.» Benjamin probably did not intend that a deconstructionist might read the last sentence as «It could not surprise me with more horror and more luck.»). «Begegnen» means «to encounter» or «to approach.» I walk along Houston Street, and all of a sudden a friend whom I haven't met for a long time begegnet mir, encounters me, approaches me. «Begegnen» is symmetrical. Thus, by the same token as he begegnet (to) me I begegne (to) him. Often «Mein Schicksal begegnet mir» means «my fate holt mich ein» in the sense of that it catches hold of me and threatens to crush me. Benjamin's sentence was written in the awareness that, sooner or later, his fate will indeed einholen him. All that is left to him is the hope that the arms of the woman will give him the virtue of ataraxia such that even in the moment when fate holt ihn ein and crushes him, at the same time it does not einholen ihn. In the same summer of 1933 on Ibiza, Benjamin wrote a short autobiographical text, ''Agesilaus Santander," which begins as follows: «When I was born the thought came to my parents that I might perhaps become a writer. Then it would be good if not everybody noticed at once that I was a Jew. That is why besides the name I was called they added two further, exceptional ones, from which one could see neither that a Jew bore them nor that they belonged to him as first names. Forty years ago no parental couple could prove itself more far-seeing. What it held to be only a remote possibility has come true. {Was es nur entfernt für möglich hielt, ist eingetroffen.} {«eintreffen» is «to arrive at, to come to» and, therefore, also «to come true»; thus, eintreffen is similar to begegnen and einholen.} It is only that the precautions by which they meant to counter fate {die Vorkehrungen, mit denen es dem Schicksal hatte begegnen wollen} were set aside by the one most concerned. That is to say that instead of making it public by the writings he produced, he proceeded with regard to it as did the Jews with the additional name of their children, which remains secret» (quoted according to Gershom Scholem, "Walter Benjamin and His Angel," in G. Smith [ed.], On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and Recollections [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991], 58; Gesammelte Schriften , VI, 521f.). As mentioned above, a Begegnung itself is symmetrical. If two people sich begegnen, it is not yet determined what happens next. When one says «the creditor begegnet the debtor on the market (and vice versa),» nothing is said as yet about what followed upon this encounter. It is possible to continue with «the debtor paid back his debt» as well as with «the debtor ran away» or «the debtor beat up the creditor.» The phrase «fate begegnet me» may leave open whether it holt mich ein in the sense of «it beats me» or whether I am capable of resisting fate. Also, «I begegne fate» leaves open what happens. Thus, it allows for the possibility «I begegne fate by x » in the sense of «I counter fate and try to evade it by x ,» as Benjamin could have used the other two first names in order to counter the fate his parents vorhersahen (anticipated) and with regard to which they had provided him with precautions in order to «dem Schicksal . . . begegnen,» that is, in order to counter fate and try to evade it (on «vorhersehen,» «vorlaufen,» and «to anticipate» see above, chapter 1, section A).

In the way Hitler and Benjamin use the term, the encounter between me and my fate is hostile, insofar as my fate wants to crush me (and, thus, being the coward I am, I try to evade it or counteract it). As mentioned above, however, there are, so to speak, friendly Begegnungen as well (see chapter 1, nn. 34 and 35). The most distinguished use of «begegnen,» «Begegnung,» in Heidegger occurs probably in his lecture course on Hölderlin of 1934-35. Not two years after the Machtergreifung, Heidegger comments on a line in Hölderlin: «Now that we are a conversation, we are exposed to the being that reveals itself; it is only from that point on that the Being of the being as such can encounter {begegnen} and determine us.» («Seit ein Gespräch wir sind, sind wir ausgesetzt in das sich eröffnende Seiende, seitdem kann überhaupt erst das Sein des Seienden als solchen uns begegnen und bestimmen,» HH 72; see also chapter 5, section B.) Section 74 of Being and Time suggests, as it were, a friendly Begegnung between Gemeinschaft and authentic Dasein that includes a hostile Begegnung between authentic Dasein and Gesellschaft, insofar as authentic Dasein has to expel, to destroy, Gesellschaft. In the thirties, Heidegger labeled the same imperative of authentic politics logos (see chapter 5, section B). The Germans begegneten their fate and each other, that is, gathered themselves. This Begegnung demanded that they begegneten, that is, expelled and killed Jews and other «foes of the people.» In his Jargon der Eigentlichkeit ([Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969], 14f.), Adorno mentions that in Germany in the fifties many houses run by the state or the churches were named «Haus der Begegnung,» «house of encounters» ( Jargon of Authenticity , trans. K. Tarnowski and F. Wille [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973], 13; note that in the German phrase «Begegnung» is singular). In them you would have discussions, or rather Gespräche, Dialoge, dialogues, on and among people of different nations in order, as it was said, «die Hindernisse aus dem Weg zu räumen, die sich geschichtlich aufgetan haben,» or in order to «sich zu verständigen und zu versöh-nen.» In light of this history of the word «Begegnung,» it is as natural as disturbing that in 1955 a volume, including a contribution by Heidegger, in honor of the sixtieth birthday of the great hero and bard of hostile Begegnungen, the old warrior Ernst Jünger, was published under the title Freundschaftliche Begegnung (Friendly Encounter) (see WM 398; see also above, chapter 1, n. 35, below, chapter 5, n. 60). If Heidegger had wanted to say what Guignon and Birmingham assume he did, he could have used the word «Begegnung,» «begegnen.» In some way or other, he could have made clear whether he meant it as an encounter whose outcome is not yet determined, or as an encounter in which authentic Dasein resists the past. Obviously, when translating the sentence with « erwidert vielmehr» in Sein und Zeit (SZ 386; BT 436) the French translator of Division Two of Sein und Zeit , Emmanuel Martineau, had thought of the German verb «begegnen» and its various meanings as indicated above in connection with Benjamin. For the French noun and verb «rencontre» and «(se) rencontrer» have the same meanings as the German verb «begegnen.» Martineau translated as follows: «Bien plutôt la répétition ren-contre -t-elle la possibilité de l'existence ayant été Là. La ren-contre de la possibilité dans la décision est cependant en même temps, en tant qu 'instantanée , le rappel de ce qui se déploie dans l'aujourd'hui comme "passé"» ( Etre et Temps , trans. Emmanuel Martineau [Paris: Authentica, 1985], 266). By using «rencontre,» he can take up the general implication of the scenario in Being and Time , section 74, namely, that Dasein «meets» its fate, or fate «meets» Dasein. By adding the hyphen, Martineau obviously wants to suggest that this rencontre is a hostile encounter in which Dasein acts contre (against) fate and, thus, neither performs a repetition of the past nor complies with the call of the past but breaks with the past and the past's call for repetition. For by adding the hyphen Martineau reads Heidegger's verb « erwidert » (SZ 386) as the French verb «contrer» (to counter, to resist, to launch a counterattack). In this way, Martineau's translation can be regarded as a translation of Macquarrie and Robinson's phrase « reciprocative rejoinder » (BT 438) that reduces that phrase to Birmingham's interpretation of it, who treats Heidegger's phrase « erwidert » (SZ 386) in the same way as Martineau does (see chapter 1, n. 14). Thus, probably in the French literature on Heidegger one finds interpretations of the sentence similar to those of Guignon and Birmingham, especially since deconstructionism is strong in France.

67. Let me repeat a subtle observation of mine concerning the play of language: «Pain and suffering are the very Mitgifi , the dowry of Being. The Mitgifi makes the bride—so speaks the English language!—a person "of substance." The word Mitgifi is a composite of the prefix mit (with) and the noun Gift , which means "poison." The noun Gift , when read as an English word—such is the play of language in Überset-zungen! —is used to translate a term in the later Heidegger which finds its analogy in Being and Time as "Geschick" and ''Schicksal"» (''On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 150). For two instances of «Opfer» as the gift of Being in the later Heidegger see ibid., 150ff.

68. Scheler's phrasing, «Man is a being whose essence itself is the decision, still open, what this being wants to be and to become» (WA 150), is very precise in its opposition to the rightist notion of de-cision. As I have tried to show, the rightist concept of de-cision is not a decision. The call calls us out of our living in the mode of the «they.» It is only in this moment that we see an «either-or.» However, in the very same moment the call tells us that it is our duty to rerealize the possibility presented by the «either» (the rerealization of Gemeinschaft) and to cancel the possibility presented by the «or» (to continue living in society).

Close to the beginning of his lectures on the history of philosophy, Hegel says that the tradition, the history of philosophy, has preserved what the past has produced. However, the tradition has not just faithfully preserved; rather, it is «alive, swelling like a mighty river {Strom} which grows the further it has advanced from its source {Ursprunge}» ( Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy , trans. T. M. Knox and A. V. Miller [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985], 10; Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Werke in zwanzig Bänden , vol. 18 [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971 ], 21). He already used the metaphor of a Strom, river, on the first page. The time of the Napoleonic Wars was good for philosophy, and it was also not good for philosophy, «because the world spirit was so much busied with the objective world that it could not turn within and concentrate itself within itself. Now {i.e., after the end of the wars}, however, that flow of the objective world has been broken {dieser Strom der Wirklichkeit gebrochen ist}» (ibid., 1; German edition, 11). At the end of the river of world history, Hegel makes philosophy turn within and back to the past. However, philosophy is not supposed to turn back to the past in order to cancel the present and to rerealize the past. Rather, Hegel recognizes that the past is past beyond recall but is sublated in the «mighty river» that has emerged from it. I have pointed out the logic in Hitler and in Scheler prior to the latter's Kehre. There is something great—the Aryans—and there is something small—the Jews. History is decline, because what-is-small drags down what-is-great and is unable to elevate itself. The small remains small, and its «greatness» consists in dragging down what-is-great and by this producing the «great» monstrosities of modernity. The «greatness» of the small, society, has to be canceled in order to rerealize community. I have also shown the same general motif of history as decline, downward plunge, and rerealization in Heidegger whose metaphor of origin and that which entspringt the origin, jumps out of it, sets the tone for his concept of historicality (see above, chapter 2, section A; also chapter 2, n. 35). In an especially ugly passage of 1935 that may have intentional anti-Semitic allusions Heidegger says: «But what is great can only begin great. Its beginning is in fact the greatest thing of all. A small beginning belongs only to the small, whose dubious greatness it is to diminish all things; small are the beginnings of decay, though it may later become great in the sense of the enormity of total annihilation» (IM 15; EM 15). It is interesting to note how, after his Kehre, Scheler returns to Hegel's metaphors. Man is «a direction of the movement of the universe itself, nay, of its ground {Grundes}» (WA 151). World history is «a system of rivers. For centuries a large number of rivers [Flüssen} each followed its own course. However, nourished by numerous tributary rivers they strive towards uniting into one single great river {Strom}» (WA 154). This river, Strom, is «Ausgleich that produces an ever increasing flourishing and refinement of the spiritual individual man» (WA 152). However, the relation of the «great river» to the past is not as it is in Hegel. Rather, the «great river» is a «tendency» (WA 152) that has to be realized against those who want to stop it (WA 153 and passim ). (See Hitler's metaphor above, p. 82).

69. See in addition to his other books also his biography of Heidegger, Ernst Nolte, Martin Heidegger: Politik und Geschichte im Leben und Denken (Berlin: Propyläen, 1992).

70. A Menschenfresser is someone who eats human beings, that is, a cannibal. Thus, a Sozialistenfresser, in a political analogy to a Menschenfresser has an appetite for those on the Left.

71. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic , 51; Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz , 63.

72. Ibid., 50f. (German text, 62f.).

73. Ibid., 51 (German text, 63).

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid., 52 (German text, 64).