1. Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 193.

2. Jim Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).

3. Victor Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , trans. P. Burrell and G. R. Ricci (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Heidegger et le nazisme (Lagrasse: Éditions Verdier, 1987); Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus , trans. K. Laermann (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1989); Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , trans. A. Blunden (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1988). For the literature up to the beginning of 1991 see Pierre Adler, "A Chronological Bibliography of Heidegger and the Political," in The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 14, no. 2-15 no. 1 (1991): 581-611. The issue is a special issue entitled "Heidegger and the Political," edited by Marcus Brainard with David Jacobs and Rick Lee.

4. A revised version (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1988) was translated into English: The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger , trans. P. Collier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); Alexander Schwan, Politische Philosophie im Denken Martin Heideggers (KÖln and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1965; exp. ed. 1989).

5. Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question , trans. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991). See also Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics , trans. Ch. Turner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) ( La fiction du politique [Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1987]); Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and "the Jews ," trans. A. Michael and M. Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990) ( Heidegger et "les juifs " [Paris:Éditions Galilée, 1988]). Tom Rockmore wrote a book on the history of Heidegger's presence in France: Heidegger and French Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1995).

6. David Wood edited a volume of papers on Derrida's book. Krell's is the first, and it begins as follows: «Will a more important book on Heidegger than Jacques Derrida's De l'esprit appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit. Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style, wholly in the spirit of Heidegger but also spiriting him across borders into strange territories» (David Farrell Krell, "Spiriting Heidegger," in D. Wood, ed., Of Derrida, Heidegger, and Spirit [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993], 11).

7. In his "Preface to the MIT Press Edition" of Richard Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1993), xvii.

8. Ibid., xii.

9. Tom Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 5.

10. John D. Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

11. See, for instance, James F. Ward, Heidegger's Political Thinking (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) and Dana R. Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

12. Fred R. Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 5.

13. Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy , 47. If not indicated otherwise, throughout the text, both «historicality» as well as «historicity» are translations of Heidegger's «Geschichtlichkeit» (SZ 372ff.; «Historicality,» BT 424ff.).

Up to now, the English secondary literature on Heidegger was based on Macquarrie and Robinson's translation Being and Time (BT). In 1996 Joan Stambaugh's translation was published under the title Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). I discuss her translation of the key passage in section 74 in chapter 5, n. 72.

As is known, Heidegger introduced a new term for individual human beings, namely «Dasein» (SZ 7ff., 11ff.; «Dasein,» BT 27ff., 32ff.). One of the reasons for his choice of the term is its polemical aspect. «Da» is a deictic particle always pointing to an individual in a specific site and situation (BT 171; SZ 132). As such it corresponds to Hegel's usage of the demonstrative pronoun «diese» («this») in "Die sinnliche Gewißheit" ("Sense-Certainty"), the first section of the Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phänomenologie des Geistes , ed. J. Hoffmeister [Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952], 79ff.; Phenomenology of Spirit , trans. A. V. Miller [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977], 58ff.) the difference being that Hegel applies «diese» also to beings other than humans. In the course of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit the «this» disappears, or is sublated, into the pointer of—as is said in the penultimate line of the book—«this realm 'of spirits» («dieses Geisterreiches») on «the Calvary of absolute Spirit» («die Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes») ( Phenomenology of Spirit , 493; German edition, 564). According to Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, and Neokantians subsume the individual human beings under general and universal notions that, so to speak, cheat the individuals out of their individualities. Thus, he uses the term «Dasein,» and he uses it throughout the book. Heidegger, too, elaborates structures that are supposed to hold true for each Dasein and to enable it to have, and to be in, a world. However, these structures are meant to account for Heidegger's assumption that, in the very Being of an individual Dasein, «that Being is an issue for» (BT 32; SZ 12) the individual Dasein. In light of Heidegger's emphasis on the individual Dasein, it might be surprising that he very often uses impersonal constructions where he could have easily used personal ones. English readers cannot recognize this, since Macquarrie and Robinson frequently made «Heidegger less Heideggerian» and used personal constructions «where Heidegger has avoided them» (BT 15). Heidegger's usage of impersonal constructions has several aspects two of which I mention here in passing. It contributes to what to my knowledge hasn't been examined yet; namely, that Heidegger executes in philosophy what Max Weber has analyzed as bureaucratization in modernity. The other strands in Heidegger's language are certainly the expressionistic gestures and the tone of the Youth Movement with their polemics against the routines as well as insecurities of modern life. In addition, there is a strong flavor of a wretched Protestantism. All these different languages and discourses are hard to combine, and it is part of Heidegger's ingenuity to have managed to do so. Probably, with any one of them missing Heidegger would have been much less fascinating than he was at his time. The second aspect concerns the topic of my book more directly. For, his usage of impersonal constructions is the grammatical equivalent to the motif he elaborates in section 74; namely, that individual Dasein hands its own individuality over to a community, the community of the people.

Individual human beings are either masculine or feminine, and also a hermaphrodite is not considered neuter. In English, nouns like «person,» etc., are all gendered. Grammatically, the German noun «Dasein» is neuter and thus requires the neuter article «das» and the neuter personal pronoun «es,» it. Heidegger uses «das Dasein» and «es» both in the context of his inquiries of Dasein «with regard to its Being» (BT 27; SZ 7) and when he refers to activities of individual Daseine.

In German, the latter use sounds as strange, as «it» in reference to an individual human being probably sounds in English for anyone who is not completely taken in by Heidegger. Several existentiales in Heidegger are grammatically feminine, most notably, Sorge ("Die Sorge als Sein des Daseins," SZ 180ff; "Care as the Being of Dasein," BT 225ff.). In addition, Heidegger is often said to be so concerned about the individual as individual. Furthermore, sometimes it is not quite clear whether he uses «Dasein» and «es» in reference to Dasein «with regard to its Being» or in reference to an individual as individual. In light of these facts, one can easily imagine that he could have introduced a convention allowing him to speak of individuals as individuals in terms of gendered expressions, or he could have used expressions such as «ein Individuum da/dort,» in the sense of «an individual over there (and not somewhere else) and thrown into the world.» The translators for the most part preserved Heidegger's use, and this is certainly a good choice. I have used «Dasein» and «it» whenever I talk about Heidegger's text and the problems discussed in it.

14. Since both groups on the political Right strive for the resurrection of a vanished past, Tillich uses the term «romantics» as the common denominator and distinguishes between «conservative romantics» (by and large my «conservative rightists») and «revolutionary romantics» (my «revolutionary rightists») (see chapter 4, section B). I will use both Tillich's and my own terms and may also refer to the former group occasionally as «nostalgic romantics.»

15. «Feldwege» are field-paths. The singular (der Feldweg) was used by Heidegger as the title of a short text published in a private edition in 1949 that appeared in the bookshops in 1953 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1953). On this, see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger" ( Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 18, no. 1 [1995]: 111-186, esp. 151—154).

16. As Foucault remarked, Derrida offers a pedagogy that «gives to the master's voice the limitless sovereignty which allows it to restate the text indefinitely» (quoted in Richard Wolin, "Afterword: Derrida on Marx, or the Perils of Left Heideggerian-ism," in his Labyrinths: Explorations in the Critical History of Ideas [Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995], 232) When Denrrida in Of Spirit compares Heidegger to Husserl, he gets most of it «wrong; in fact, terribly and horrendously wrong» (Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy , xvi).

17. Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger On Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 3.

18. «Holz» is wood. In 1950 Heidegger published a collection of essays entitled Holzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1950). As he explains in the beginning of that book, «Holz» is also an old word for a small forest or wood. «Holzwege» are paths in the wood that often end abruptly and do not seem to lead anywhere. As Heidegger points out, the foresters and woodcutters know those paths, and they know what it means to be «on a Holzweg» (ibid., n.p.).