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.).

1. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge , in Science and Knowledge , ed. and trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970), 123. German: «Das Ich setzt sich, als bestimmt durch das Nicht-Ich» ( Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Fichtes Werke , vol. 1, ed. I. H. Fichte [Berlin, 1845; reprint Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971], 127).

2. Fichte, Foundations , 130 (« Thätigkeit,» Grundlage , 134).

3. Grundlage , 134.

4. «One could wish that the word suffering {Leiden} had fewer connotations. It scarcely needs saying that we are not to think of painful feelings here» ( Grundlage , 134f.). One might say that this sentence reads a little bit strangely, since «painful feeling» is not a connotation but one of the core meanings of «Leiden.» Obviously, Heath and Lachs had this sentence in mind when they chose to translate Fichte's «Leiden» with «passivity.» Thus, their translation reads: «One could wish that the word passivity had fewer associated meanings. It scarcely needs saying that we are not to think of painful feeling here» ( Foundations , 130). This sentence too, one might say, looks a little bit strange, but not for the same reason as Fichte's. «Passivity» (as the German abstract noun «Passivitäit») is much more general than «painful feeling.» Thus, «painful feeling» is not a meaning of «passivity» at all, but rather is related to «passivity» as species is to genus, or it would be a connotation of some species of «passivity.»

5. If «to anticipate» is used in connection with physical motion, as for instance, in the phrase «the basketball player anticipated the pass,» it refers less to the run itself and more to the preceding mental activity in the sense of «he anticipated the pass and thus ran forward and intercepted the ball.» Moreover, the broader connotations of the verb «to run» are preserved at both the level of mental and that of physical motion. Thus, I can say that I «ran into a strange sentence in a book,» or just as easily that I «ran into a friend on the street» and thus had a conversation.

In German, in a description as short as the English «He anticipated the pass,» one uses neither «(vor)laufen» nor «antizipieren» (or «vorwegnehmen, vorhersehen») but rather «abfangen» («He ting the pass ab»). In a longer narrative, one says, as in English, «He antizipierte the pass (or: sah the pass voraus), lief vor (or dazwischen), and ting the pass ab.» At a conference on Lacan at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris in June 1990, Derrida talked about the different occasions when he had met Lacan. One time, they were sitting on a plane to Baltimore. As Derrida told it, what came to their minds was la mort, death. If Heidegger had been sitting next to them or between them and had counted this as an instance of authentic «Vorlaufen,» he would have been the only one to apply «vorlaufen» to a mental activity.

6. On Heidegger's notions of «Bestand» and «Ge-stell» (enframing) and their relation to Auschwitz see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 130-142.

7. After World War I, the «Helden von Verdun» and their «Vorlaufen in den Tod» definitely were—to use the vocabulary of the late seventies when conservative philosophy professors and other intellectuals in Germany began what they called a «semantischen Kampf» (semantic battle) against Habermas and other leftists— «besetzt» (occupied, claimed, or possessed) by the political Right. Certainly, whatever Heidegger meant by «Vorlaufen zum Tod,» it would have indicated slightly more than «anticipate,» as employed in the phrase «I anticipate that it will rain tonight, therefore, I will bring my umbrella.» Furthermore, Heidegger's «anticipation of death» would have required him to minimalize the time interval between the anticipation and the situation anticipated, so as to make the ultimate possibility of death and its attendant threat strikingly present. For it is only inauthentic Dasein that, as it were, remains inside the walls and treats death as some remote future possibility that it needs not be concerned about for the present. Was it necessary to express the dramatic surplus value of «anticipation of death» over «anticipation of a rainfall» by means of «vorlaufen»? As mentioned, in contrast to the English «anticipate», the German «antizipieren» is used only for mental activities, each of which entails a time interval. Precisely for this reason, one might say, Heidegger was forced to use «vorlaufen.» To be sure, even without its association with the Helden von Langemarck, «vorlaufen» provides the required dramatic flavor.

However, a lot of other words would have done just as well. Heidegger could have used phrases such as «sich konfrontieren mit» (to confront oneself with), «konfrontiert werden mit» (to be confronted with), «sich einer Gefahr oder dem Tode aussetzen» (to expose oneself to a danger or to death), «einer Gefahr ausgesetzt werden» (to be exposed to a danger), or something like «dem Tode ins Angesicht schauen» (to look into the face of death). (In section 74, he in fact says «go right under the eyes of Death,» BT 434; «dem Tod unter die Augen geht,» SZ 382.) The corresponding nouns «Konfrontation mit dem Tode,» «das Sich dem Tode Aussetzen,» or «das dem Tode ins Angesicht Schauen» would have looked like most other Heideggerian nouns, neither better nor worse. All these expressions would have been fully sufficient for academic discourse. In fact, they would have been preferable since academic discourse usually requires both a degree of abstraction and emotional neutrality. Quite clearly, anyone who wanted to avoid any possible associations between his theory of death and World War I and its attendant politics would not have used the phrase «vorlaufen in den Tod.» Furthermore, as shown above, there would have been no difficulty finding other terms. Consequently, Heidegger's use of «vorlaufen» is itself an «Überset-zung,» a transgression—indeed, a transgression of the very limits of academic discourse itself.

Of course, this transgression is in line with Heidegger's criticism of the universities of his time from the beginning of his career on, namely, that they did not address the concerns of factical existence. Because of the several peculiarities concerning the «vorlaufen in den Tod» I have pointed out, from the beginning of Division Two on one should be aware of the possibility that Heidegger did not mean his theory of his-toricality and politics to be (a) a-political (that is, about the exclusively personal decisions of an individual), (b) politically neutral, or (c) a theory of antitotalitarian, that is, anti-National Socialist politics.

8. Parmenides, Fragments , trans. David Gallop (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 60 (fr. 6, 1. 5).

9. See «Die Zueignung des Verstandenen, aber noch Eingehüllten vollzieht die Enthüllung» (SZ 150); «When something is understood but is still veiled, it becomes unveiled by» (BT 191). See the translators' remark (BT 15).

10. In German, the adjective «entschlossen» is used far more often than the abstract noun «Entschlossenheit.» (One might say, «I admire his Entschlossenheit,» or one might say «Im Zustand der, i.e. in the state of, Entschlossenheit.») However, one never says «in der Entschlossenheit sein» (to be in the Entschlossenheit). In section 74, Heidegger writes «Schicksalhaft in der sich überiefernden Entschlossenheit existierend» (SZ 384; «Existing fatefully in the resoluteness which hands itself down,» BT 436). Especially in the thirties, the preposition «in» in Heidegger has often, so to speak, enthusiastic connotations (see chapter 6, section A). In the state of Entschlossenheit Dasein no longer vacillates and is no longer in the dark, so to speak. Rather, in the state of Entschlossenheit Dasein itself, other Daseine, and matters in general have become entschlossen, i.e., unlocked in the sense of «offenbar» (SZ 386; «manifest,» BT 438), or they have become ent-hüllt in the sense of «durchsichtig» (SZ 122; «transparent,» BT 159). Therefore, in the state of resoluteness, Dasein is «hellsichtig» (SZ 384; «to have a clear vision,» BT 436). Thus, the «enthusiasm» of the state of resoluteness reminded Heidegger of the potential of «enthusiasm» in the preposition «in,» and he formulated the unusual phrase «in der . . . Entschlossenheit existierend.» For a further aspect of the prefix «ent-» and its function in Heidegger see chapter 2, section A.

In a note, the translators give the German text of the entire sentence with «to have a clear vision» and comment on it: «It should perhaps be pointed out that 'Ohnmacht' can also mean a 'faint' or a 'swoon', and that 'Hellsichtigkeit' is the regular term for 'clairvoyance'. Thus the German reader might easily read into this passage a suggestion of the seer's mystical trance» (BT 436, n. 2). This explanation is somewhat misleading. I have never met anyone who thought of a faint when reading the sentence with « Übermacht » (« superior power ») and « Ohnmacht » (« powerlessness ») (SZ 384; BT 436). It might be the case that when going «right under the eyes of Death» (BT 434; SZ 382), some inauthentic Dasein faints. However, authentic Dasein most certainly does not do so, and in the sentence on Übermacht and Ohnmacht Heidegger is definitely talking about authentic Dasein. Furthermore, the adjective «hellsichtig» is used in the sense of «clear-sighted» or «keen-minded,» and less often in the sense of «clairvoyant.» The regular German adjective equivalent to the English «clairvoyant» is «hellseherisch.» The related abstract noun, «Hellsichtigkeit,» is used in the sense of «clear-sightedness» or «keen-mindedness,» and only secondarily in the sense of «clairvoyance.» Even the German noun and verb for «(to be) clairvoyant,» that is, «Hellseher» and «hellsehen,» mean not only «clairvoyant» and «to be clairvoyant,» but often «someone who sees clearly» or «to have a keen mind.» The abstract noun related to those two words when they refer to clairvoyance is «Hellsehen» (clairvoyance) or «Hellseherei» («During periods of what one calls Enlightenment it is not that easy to make one's living by Hellseherei»). I have never encountered any native speakers of German who read into this passage «a suggestion of the seer's mystical trance,» nor do I recall having come across such an interpretation in the German literature on Sein und Zeit .

11. «Running into» sentences such as «Only by the anticipation of death is every accidental and 'provisional' possibility driven out» (BT 435; SZ 384), or «What if it is only in the anticipation of death that all the factical ' anticipatoriness ' of resolving would be authentically understood—in other words, that it would be caught up with in an existentiell way» (BT 350; SZ 302), one should keep in mind that, as the translators note (BT 350, n. 1), with «'provisional' possibility» they have translated Heidegger's «''vofläufige'' MÖglichkeit» (SZ 384), and with « 'anticipatoriness '» Heidegger's «" Voràlufigkeit "» (SZ 302). «Läufig» is the adjective of «laufen» (to run). It is applied almost exclusively to animals: «die läufige Hündin» is «a bitch in heat.» When it is applied to human beings, it sounds as vulgar as the adjective to «heat» in similar phrases in English. (Heidegger's «vulgär» is translated by Macquarrie and Robinson not as «vulgar» but as «ordinary» [see, for instance, "of the Ordinary { vulgären} Conception of Time," BT 456; SZ 404].) «Vorläufig» (and its abstract noun «Vorläufigkeit»), however, is used only in the sense of «preliminary,» «provisional,» «temporary,» or «interim» and does not sound vulgar at all. The English word «street-walker» is obviously tailored as a non-discriminatory word for people of that profession of which the above mentioned English translation of «Hündin» is a discriminatory expression. Perhaps, it was coined because «to walk» is precisely what streetwalkers do not do. Either they «hang around,» or, in a case of danger, they run, rush, or hurry. «Streetwalker» has no direct German equivalent. One does not say «Straßengeherin» or «Straßengeher.» However, not the noun but rather the verb «gehen» (to walk, to go) is used that way in phrases like «Ich gehe zur Universität» (I go to a university = I am a student at a graduate school), or «Ich gehe täglich ins Museum» (I go to the museum every day). Thus, as others go to a university, street-walkers «gehen auf den Strich» (walk on[to] the line). As is evident from this, in sentences like these, «gehen» can be used with various prepositions followed by the dative or the accusative. As for the streetwalkers, it is used with «auf» in the accusative («auf den,» not «auf dem»). This might be surprising since «Strich» (line) probably refers to the edge of the sidewalk along which streetwalkers walk. Thus, one might expect the German language to say «sie gehen am Strich (entlang)» or «sie gehen auf dem Strich (hin und her or entlang).» However, one might think, they «gehen auf den Strich (zu)» is meant in the sense of «Sie gehen zum Strich» (they go to[ward] the line) as a shorthand for «Sie gehen auf den Strich zu und dann an ihm entlang» (they go toward the line, turn onto it, and walk along the line). Thus, most probably the expression «auf den Strich gehen» is syntactically similar to sentences such as «Ich gehe auf die Wiese» or «Ich gehe auf's Eis (des Flusses),» that is, I approach a certain area, a meadow or a frozen river, and then I move around in that area (see Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm , vol. 19 [Stob-Strollen] [Leipzig: Hirzel Verlag, 1957; reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1984], 1529f., 1561). From the viewpoint of ordinary Dasein, the streetwalkers have «zimmer schon» (always already) transgressed the edge. Thus, «gefallene Mädchen» (fallen girls) is another name for streetwalkers. Most of the time, «gefallene Mädchen» is somewhat derogatory though it can connote some sympathy or mercy. However, there is hardly any sympathy implied when «fallen» is combined with the prefix «ver-» (Heidegger's «verfallen,» «Verfallenheit» is translated with «fallen,» or «deteriorate,» «fallenness»; see «verfallen» in the glossary of BT, 519). One says, some person is « einer Droge, einem Menschen, einer sexuellen Perversion, einer Ideologie, etc. verfallen» (addicted to a drug, a person, a sexual perversion, an ideology, etc.) if one highly disapproves of this behavior, if one thinks the person will ruin his or her life, and if one sees no chance for that person to liberate himself or herself from the addiction. Probably for ordinary Dasein in the twenties in Germany, Prof. Unrat in Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrat (adapted for the screen as Der Blaue Engel [ The Blue Angel ] starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings) was the paradigm of a person who is «jemandem verfallen.» («Unrat» means «rubbish,» or «filth»; in his novel Heinrich Mann often has the word sound as though the character's name were «Professor Un-Rat,» that is, «Professor without-Counseb» or «without Way out» or «Professor With-the-Wrong-Advice.») As in these examples, the verb «verfallen» is used in the perfect participle form in the passive voice. Thus, an ordinary Dasein might have said or thought, «Die gefallenen Mädchéen sind dem Strich verfallen» (the fallen girls are addicted to the edge of the sidewalk) in the sense of «the fallen girls have fallen down the edge of the sidewalk,» that is, «sie liegen in der Gosse» (they are lying in the gutter) with no hope of reversing their fallenness. At that point another meaning of «ver-fallen» comes to mind. Their lives are verfallen (have expired). Thus, during fascism they were, along with others, put into concentration camps.

On a walk toward a brink and along the brink to the point, or area, of fall in Heidegger with further remarks on the use of prepositions such as «am,» «an den,» «zum,» «auf den» in connection with verbs like «gehen» see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 116-124.

12. Heidegger uses the notion of call in both the chapters on conscience (sections 54 through 60, BT 312-348; SZ 267-301) and on anticipatory resoluteness (sections 61 through 66, BT 349-382; SZ 301-333) but not in the section on historicality. However, in section 72 he says that in the chapter on historicality «we come back in our investigation to the problem which we touched upon immediately before exposing temporality to view—the question of the constancy of the Self, which we defined as the "who" of Dasein,» and in the accompanying note he refers to section 64 (BT 427; SZ 375; see also the reference to section 63, BT 428; SZ 375). As was already mentioned, at the beginning of section 74 Heidegger returns to the notion of anticipatory resoluteness and refers to sections 60 and 62 and a passage in section 58 (BT 434; SZ 382f.). In addition, in the same section he says that «only if death, guilt, conscience, freedom, and finitude reside together equiprimordially in the Being of an entity as they do in care, can that entity exist in the mode of fate» (BT 437; SZ 385). In the chapters on conscience and on anticipatory resoluteness, Heidegger shows how the call calls Dasein forth into anticipatory resoluteness, and he already characterizes the call as «one which calls us back in calling us forth» (BT 326; «vorrufenden Rück-ruf,» SZ 280). However, it is only in the chapter on historicality that Heidegger elaborates the «horizon» (BT 434; SZ 383) of possibilities from which Dasein, having run forward into death, can choose. In other words, in the chapters on conscience and anticipatory resoluteness Heidegger elaborates the notion of death. In the chapter on historicality, however, he complements this analysis with that of birth, heritage, destiny, and fate. The analysis of conscience and anticipatory resoluteness would, so to speak, stand only on one leg without the chapter on historicality, and the former finds its completion only in the latter.

In the course of this book, I will to some degree discuss the relation between Division One of Being and Time , the chapters on conscience and anticipatory resoluteness, and the chapter on historicality. For more on this issue, however, see my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin (in progress). In addition, it will become clear that the key terms in section 74 take up and echo the ones in the chapters on conscience and anticipatory resoluteness.

13. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures , trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 141.

14. As the beginning of her comment shows, she interprets Macquarrie and Robinson already according to the model of counterattack and regards Heidegger's «erwidert» to be an even stronger distancing than a counterattack would be. Since my main point is that any interpretation of «erwidert» as some sort of distancing is false, I can leave open what precisely she means by «resistance and displacement» (TP 31) and whether the translators would regard Birmingham's or my «Guignonian» account of them as more faithful to their intentions. Birmingham obviously doesn't distinguish between «erwidert» and «Widerruf» («disavowal»). As her quote from Being and Time and her comments show, Birmingham always adds «( Erwidert )» to « reciprocative rejoinder » and its equivalents, but she never adds Heidegger's German word «Widerruf» to the English «disavowal.» Since for Birmingham both sentences, the one with «erwidert» as well as the one with «Widerruf,» refer to the same gesture of displacement, she seems to assume that one can therefore regard the verb «erwidert» as, so to speak, the verbalization of the preposition and prefix «wider» in «Widerruf.» Grammatically, only the «wider» in «Widermf» is a preposition, or rather a prefix, whereas the «wider» in «erwidert» is the root of a verb that can be connected with several different prefixes, for instance, «er-» in «erwidern,» or «an-» in «anwidern.»

15. See Aristotle's summary: «For it is by proportionate requital ( ) that the city holds together. Men seek to return either evil for evil—and if they cannot do so, think their position mere slavery—or good for good—and if they cannot do so there is no exchange ( ), but it is by exchange that they hold together. This is why they give a prominent place to the temple of the Graces ( )—to promote the requital of services ( ); for this is characteristic of grace ( )—we should serve in return ( ) one who has shown grace to us ( ), and should another time take the initiative in showing it» ( Nicomachean Ethics , V, 8, 1132b: 33-1133a: 5)

In the classical book on the issue of gifts, Marcel Mauss writes, for instance: "Les dons échangés et l'obligation de les rendre" (M. Mauss, Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l'échange dans les socédtés archaïques , in Sociologie et anthropologie [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973], 154), and « L'obligation de rendre est tout le potlatch , dans la mesure où il ne consiste pas en pure destruction. . . . L'obligation de rendre dignement est impérative. On perd la "face" à jamais si on ne rend pas, ou si on ne détruit pas les valeurs équivalentes» (ibid., 212). Moldenhauer in her translation uses «Erwiderung,» «Erwidern,» and «erwidem» in the accusative: "Die Gaben und die Pflicht, sie zu erwidern" ( Die Gabe: Form und Funktion des Austauschs in archaischen Gesellschaften , trans. Eva Moldenhauer [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968], 27) and « Die Pflicht des Erwiderns . Soweit er nicht in reiner Zerstörung besteht, macht die Pflicht des Erwiderns das Wesen des Potlatsch aus. . . . Außerdem muß die Erwiderung in würdevoller Form geschehen. Man verliert für immer sein "Gesicht", wenn man ihn nicht erwidert oder die entsprechenden Werte nicht zerstört» (ibid., 100f.). Her translation comes to the mind of every translator immediately and without any thinking. Any other translation—even one with «(be)antworten» or «zurück-erstatten» —would require some time to come up with and would sound more or less awkward, if only in comparison to her translation. An English translation reads: "Gifts and the Obligation to return Gifts'' ( The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies , trans. Jan Cunnison [New York: Norton, 1967], 6) and « The Obligation to Repay . Outside of pure destruction the obligation to repay is the essence of potlatch. . . . The obligation of worthy return is imperative. Face is lost for ever if it is not made or if equivalent value is not destroyed» (ibid., 40f.). I might note in advance that, in my interpretation, Heidegger's use of « erwidert » does not coincide with an Erwiderung in the sense of the potlatch since it lacks the symmetrical reciprocity, the to and fro, of expectations and obligations of the potlatch. However, in contrast to the other forms of Erwiderung, Heidegger's concept of it has in common with the pot-latch that one meets an expectation, or fulfills a request, whereas in an Erwiderung in the dative («No, I won't leave the room!») as well as in an Erwiderung in the accusative in the sense of a successful defense or counterattack one does just the opposite of what one's opponent commands, hopes, or expects one to do. For in the latter cases one does not, so to speak, give in or obey, but rather resists.

16. See the «telephone receiver» (BT 141; SZ 107). For the «appeal» of a phone call that called upon one in one of these huge and quiet Berlin apartments of the haute bourgeoisie, see Walter Benjamin's "Das Telephon" in his Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert ( Gesammelte Schriften , vol. IV. 1 [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972], 242-243).

17. In Heidegger's text Volk is accompanied by the definite article and not, as in the English translation, by the indefinite one («das Geschehen der Gemeinschaft, des Volkes,» SZ 384). It might be hard to imagine for English readers, but the definite article makes a big difference. If Heidegger had used the indefinite one, he would have written—at that point, at least—in the attitude of Weberian Wertfreiheit, value neutrality; or he would have talked about different people the way Herder talked about them, namely, as so many different flowers in the huge garden of mankind. In other words, he would have used «Volk» as a descriptive category that doesn't exclude any empirical member of the respective Volk. However, at Heidegger's time «Volk» with the definite article was most of the time used as a polemical notion in Carl Schmitt's sense, that is, as an excluding category. By using «Volk» with the definite article in texts on history and politics an author most of the time polemicized against liberals and leftists and thus excluded some empirical members of the Volk from the Volk (see chapters 3 and 4), especially since, at Heidegger's time even the phrase with the indefinite article could serve polemical purposes. In the last years of his life, Hermann Cohen spent all his energy on a book on religion, Judaism, and reason without being able to complete it fully. In 1919, one year after his death, it was published under the title Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (The religion of reason from the sources of Judaism). It had to be edited in great haste. In its second, revised edition in 1929 the definite article before «religion» was left out since in two letters to the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums from July and December 1917 Cohen had said that he wanted the title without the definite article (see the afterword of the editor, Bruno Straulß, to the second edition, Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen der Judentums [Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann; photomechanical reprint Darmstadt: Joseph Melzer, 1966], 625). In his 1930 review of the second edition, Franz Rosenzweig describes the circumstances surrounding the first edition and comments on the change of the title as follows: «In the first nine years of its existence, the book even came along under a wrong title. It was entitled: "Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums." It's true title is: "Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums"—without the aggressive and intolerant definite—in this case really all too definite—article. Of course, the opposite is not meant either, namely, the indefinite article, which in this case would certainly be too indefinite. Rather, as far from haughty exclusiveness as from lazy "anything goes,'' Cohen focuses on that share in the one and universal religion of reason that is passed on to him by the sources of Judaism he has inherited» (Franz Rosenzweig, "Vertauschte Fronten," Der Morgen , 6. Jahrgang, April 1930, 1. Heft, 85f.). While Rosenzweig's comment in regard to the article is certainly always possible, and while from a narrow logical point of view one might even say that it is not necessarily cogent, it was certainly appropriate in, and facilitated by, the polemical usage in the twenties of the definite article on the Right («das Volk») and, for that matter, on the Left as well («das Proletariat,» «die Kapitalistenklasse»). In all my subsequent quotations of Heidegger's sentence with «der Gemeinschaft, des Volkes» I will quote the English translation in the following way: «the community, of {the} people» (BT 436; SZ 384).

One can witness the increase of the polemical politics of de-cision and exclusion by comparing the prefaces Hermann Cohen's widow, Martha Cohen, wrote for the two editions of the book. Especially the preface to the second edition is a very moving document. In addition, she points out a geographical fact that illuminates Cohen's effort. Having quoted a non-Jewish theologian's praise of the first edition, she continues: «How much consolation, how much hope is given by such a sincere and heartfelt understanding { of the Jew Cohen's book by a Christian theologian } in these times of great conflicts! How strongly does {the sincere and heartfelt understanding of the Jew Cohen's book by a Christian theologian } confirm the unifying influence of the great personality of Hermann Cohen! Indeed, it might seem not without deeper significance that his town of birth, Coswig, is situated between the town of Luther, Wittenberg, and the home of Moses Mendelssohn» ( Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen der Judentums , n.p.). It is the same politics of Ausgleich pursued by the late Scheler after his Kehre (see chapter 3, section F) and taken up by Tillich (see chapter 4, section B) in order to overcome the polemical politics of decision.

18. Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov," in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections , ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 83f. Benjamin says «Stellungskrieg.» Thus, one might replace «tactical warfare» with «trench warfare.»

19. Walter Benjamin, "Erfahrung und Armut," Gesammelte Schriften , vol. II.l (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 214.

20. Ibid., 218. Mickey Mouse shows up also, not in the second, but in the first version of Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 1.2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), 462.

21. See on this my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin (in progress).

>22. In Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm , vol. 23 (Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 1936; reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1984), cc. 396f., one finds for «überliefern» a first group of meanings with examples like «to deliver a letter» or «he handed over the flock of sheep to his master» and a second group summarized by the formula «to ausliefern/preisgeben (hand over/surrender) someone to the enemy, the court, the devil, etc.» with both German words belonging to the strongest ones available for such events. «Ausliefern/Auslieferung» is still today the official term for «to extradite, extradition.» It is also used with regard to private relationships. Person A is treated extremely badly by A's lover, B. However, for some reason A is not able to leave B, as much as A would like to, and A doesn't know why A cannot leave B. Thus, if asked why he or she doesn't leave B, A can give only that type of answer that, in a way, is no answer, and this answer is formulated with the perfect passive participle of «ausliefern» («I am ihr/ihm ausgeliefert») or of «ver-fallen» («I am ihm/ihr verfallen») (see above, n. 11). «To be completely (or, auf Gedeih und Verderben) ausgeliefert to someone» is used to convey that one is completely at someone else's mercy.

23. A literal translation would read: «for it is in resoluteness that first and foremost the choice is chosen which makes free for the fighting emulation and loyalty for what-can-be-repeated.» The phrase «emulation» («Nachfolge») might be an allusion to the Christian Imitation of Christ. As will become clear in the course of the book, however, Heidegger's notion of historicality is independent of the Christian theory of history. There are certainly similarities between some Christians and people on the Right, and some people on the Right used those similarities to make their position attractive for Christians. However, neither genetically nor systematically did extreme rightist politics at Heidegger's time derive from the Christian theory of history. In my book, Tillich and Scheler are two cases in point. Tillich strongly opposed the Christian notion of history as he understood it to any rightist one (see section B of chapter 4), and so did Scheler after for some time deriving from his understanding of Christian politics a notion of revolutionary rightist politics that was incompatible with National Socialist politics (see chapter 3). In addition, if one wants to see the Christian motif of original sin and recovery at work in rightist politics at the time, one should keep in mind that rightist politics has forgotten about the theological veto upon the realization of recovery here on earth as a human achievement. Much more important is the notion of «loyalty» (Treue). The «emulation» is fighting «kämpfende». If there is a fight («Kampf» as in «Only in communicating and in struggling {In der Mitteilung und im Kampf} does the power of destiny become free,» BT 436; SZ 384), there might be casualties. Off the top of my head, I would say that with the exception of Rockmore ( On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy , 48), critics have not considered the possibility that in choosing its hero, authentic Dasein might run the risk of getting killed in the fights consequent upon this choice (though on the lists of possible heroes to choose from several individuals are named who suffered a violent death: Socrates, Martin Luther King, and Sitting Bull, see above p. 8). (As I realized after finishing the chapters on Heidegger, it might well be the case that my book is just an elaboration of pp. 47 and 48 of Rockmore's book.) The reason for this omission in the American interpretations of Heidegger will become obvious in chapter 5, section C. As I have already shown with reference to Guignon, and as will become clearer in section C of chapter 5, there is a certain instrumentalization of the hero at work in the usual American understanding of the hero and his or her function for the authentic Dasein that has chosen the hero. For the hero is not chosen for his own sake. Rather, he is chosen for the sake of the utopian ideal of the choosing Dasein and thus for the sake of the choosing Dasein itself The self-understanding of the choosing Dasein, however, does not necessarily imply a reference to something, or someone, else which is, as it were, «higher» than the choosing Dasein itself. The same holds true if it is not one Dasein alone but rather a group of Daseine that chooses. If the chosen hero is not chosen for his own sake, but rather for the sake of the choosing Dasein, the latter might have second thoughts about its choice, if it turns out that in consequence of this choice the Dasein might get killed. It might abandon its hero, or it might, as Guignon says, «creatively reinterpret» (HC 138) the hero in order to avoid its own death. However, such an instrumentalization of the hero or of what can be repeated, that is, the past, is the opposite of what was understood by «Treue zum Wiederholbaren.» Conservatives and right-wingers of Heidegger's time would have felt insulted by such a Zumutung, imposition. To be sure, conservatives and right-wingers are also familiar with and prone to all the «kleinen Treuen und Untreuen,» fidelities and infidelities. But these are matters of everyday life or of a Dasein more or less close to the bottom of its downward plunge, or—if one is an authentic Dasein—they are the exceptions from the norms of the ethical life a true conservative or rightist in some way always maintains to have a right to. When conservatives or rightists speak of Treue in contexts where it matters, that is, in the context of historicality, destiny, fate, and Kampf, they mean the Treue for which «we Germans» are well-known, which has always waited behind the everyday Treue and Untreue for the call and its hour, and which some of the rightists—not all !—call «Nibelungentreue,» the Treue of the Nibelungs. Such a Treue designates a loyalty to the past, common cause, or good, that is willing to go «bis in den Tod,» into death; that is, people showing this Treue are willing to sacrifice their lives if that is required by the pursuit of the repetition of the past or the common good. Right at the beginning of Hitler's Mein Kampf — nay , even prior to its beginning, namely, in the dedication—Hitler has a sentence that sounds similar to Heidegger's sentence as quoted above. He lists the names of, and dedicates the first volume to, all those who died «on November 9, 1923, at 12.30 in the afternoon, in front of the Feldherrnhalle» (that is, during the unsuccessful putsch in which Hitler and his party wanted to take over the rule of Bavaria). They did so «with loyal faith in the resurrection of their people» (MKe n.p.; «im treuen Glauben an die Wiederauferstehung ihres Volkes,» MK n.p.). By quoting this sentence of Hitler's, I don't maintain that Heidegger' s sentence is National Socialist. Taken by itself, it might not even necessarily be conservative or rightist. As will become clear, however, its context, if nothing else, makes Heidegger's sentence an expression of right-wing politics.

Treue is the capacity to abandon, overcome, transcend one's egoistic concerns and to dedicate oneself wholeheartedly and continuously to the cause of something else, an individual, a group, or the Volksgemeinschaft. Right-wingers of Heidegger's time maintained that only right-wingers are capable of Treue whereas liberals and leftists indulge in their egoistic interests and are not capable nor willing to transcend them (see chapter 3). However, for the sake of the argument the right-wingers might allow Treue to be present also in liberals and leftists. Even in that case, however, they themselves as well as leftists and liberals would insist on the difference between the Right on one hand and all others. For, as I will show in chapters 3 and 4, right-wingers as well as leftists and liberals were aware of the fact that right-wingers are loyal to a repeatable past, whereas liberals and leftists are loyal to the present and the future as being different from the past and only secondarily, if at all, loyal to the past.

24. One might think that the expression «hands itself down» in the subordinate clause, «The resoluteness which comes back to itself and hands itself down» (BT 437; SZ 385), means an act in which resoluteness establishes a tradition for future generations. However, this is excluded by the main clause of the sentence, by the preceding passage on heritage, destiny, and fate (see chapter 2) as well as by the sentences, immediately following, on repetition and on the choice of the hero and Treue. Thus, one cannot read the expression as «hands itself down [to/for the future generations» but only as «hands itself down [to the possibility it has inherited].»

25. In German this passage reads as follows: «Das wiederholende Sichüberliefern einer gewesenen Möglichkeit erschließt jedoch das dagewesene Dasein nicht, um es abermals zu verwirklichen. Die Wiederholung des Möglichen ist weder ein Wiederbringen des "Vergangenen", noch ein Zurückbinden der "Gegenwart" an das ''Überholte". Die Wiederholung läßt sich, einem entschlossenen Sichentwerfen entspringend, nicht vom "Vergangenen" überreden, um es als das vormals Wirkliche nur wiederkehren zu lassen» (SZ 385f.). None of the thirteen sentences of the entire paragraph has as its grammatical subject a «Dasein,» but rather each of them has «resoluteness» « repetition » and the like. See the translators' remark (BT 15). To be sure, nouns ending in «-ung,» «-keit,» or «-heit» can shorten the text significantly. However, at the same time, in this case it is part of the strategy to reveal basic passivities as the purpose of Dasein's activities.

26. «If you are not willing, I use violence» (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Erlkönig").

27. Birmingham sets off the passage beginning with «The repeating of that which. . . » (BT 437; SZ 385) and ending with the sentence with «Widerruf» (BT 438; SZ 386), and she quotes the sentence with «Widerruf» as follows: «But when such a rejoinder is made to this possibility in a resolution, it is made in a moment of vision; and as such it is at the same time a disavowal of that which in the 'today' is working itself out as the "past" (SZ, 385-386/437-438)» (TP 31). Thus, readers familiar with Macquarrie and Robinson's usage of quotation marks will expect the same German text as above. For they will assume that the single quotation marks with «today» represent Heidegger's quotation marks, and that the double quotation marks with «past» are one of those added by the translators. Readers not familiar with the translators' usage of quotation marks will wonder about the single quotation marks with «today,» will consult Macquarrie and Robinson's translation, and will finally realize that Birmingham treated the quotation marks in Being and Time as though she had run in the quote and not set it off as a block quotation.

28. See above, n. 14.

29. As the title of a short text by Freud already indicates ("Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten," "Recollecting, Repeating, and Working Through"), the psychoanalytic notion of repetition refers to a person retrieving and repeating his or her past. However, the purpose of this repetition is to liberate oneself from this past by «dis-empowering» it. This notion of origins and one's relation to them is in line with the modem notion of Enlightenment and of reflection. Birmingham interprets «fate» as the moment in which tradition is displaced and disempowered, that is, destroyed (see above pp. 46ff.). She could have made her interpretation more dramatic if she had interpreted «Schicksal» as I do. Fate, destiny, or Volk raises its voice and demands our subjugation. However, in the sentences on Erwiderung and Widerruf, authentic Dasein disrupts continuity and refuses to subjugate itself. Alternately, one might say that in the sentence on Erwiderung authentic Dasein tentatively subjugates itself in order thereupon, however,—that is, in the sentence on Widerruf—to fight back and to distance itself from the past (see on this possibility section C of chapter 5). However, the fact that the objects of the Erwiderung and the Widerruf differ excludes both variants of this interpretation.

30. This is already shown by a passage in which Heidegger uses «Heute» with regard to inauthentic Dasein and thus puts it in quotation marks since inauthentic Dasein is not capable of seeing the Gegenwart (present) as «Heute» («today»): «In inauthentic historicality, on the other hand, the way in which fate has been primordially stretched along has been hidden. With the inconstancy of the they-self Dasein makes present its 'today' { sein "Heute" } » (BT; SZ 391). It is also supported by the sentence in question itself. For the Erwiderung «is made in a moment of vision » (BT 438; in the German text, the words in italics modify «Erwiderung» : «Die Erwiderung. . . als augenblickliche der Widerruf ,» SZ 386), and Heidegger explains « Augenblick » ( «moment of vision ») as the present that is present for authentic Dasein, i.e., as « eigentliche Gegenwart » (« Present. . . authentic ») in contradistinction to « Gegenw ä rtigen » (« making present ») as the present as it exists for inauthentic Daseine (SZ 338, BT 387f.). In the context of this passage as well as in section 74, Heidegger uses the concept of «Situation» («situation»). The best commentary on his usage seems to be his own comment in the so-called Natorp-Bericht: «In contrast to location [Lage], the situation [ Situation ] of factical life denotes life's taking-a-stance which is made transparent as falling and which is apprehended in the given concrete worry as in the possible counter-movement to falling care { verfallenden Sorge } » ("Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation," trans. Michael Baur, Man and World 25 [ 1992], 364; "Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation," Dilthey-Jahrbuch 6 [1989], 243).

31. As in English, quotation marks in German indicate that one is quoting, talking about a term and its meaning or that one is distancing oneself from what one refers to. Derrida wrote an entire book on the use of quotation marks with «Geist» in Being and Time and their absence with the same word in the Rectorate Address ( Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question ). So as not to have to comment on all quotation marks or the lack of them, I note here that, of course, not all quotation marks in Sein und Zeit are meant to indicate distance. The fact that many quotation marks are not distancing or disparaging makes those that are all the more disparaging.

32. See on this my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .

33. The mountains cannot but repeat what is called out to them. The only other possibility left to them is not to answer at all, that is, not to listen to the call. In English, one can say that a performance or a speech had a «good echo» or that it had a «bad echo.» Thus, in contrast to the mountains, those who produce the echo are in a position to contradict. In German, «Echo» in this sense is used only seldom and only as «good echo,» as a confirmation. One doesn't say a speech received a «schlechtes Echo» (bad echo). That is, in German an echo is almost by definition something that cannot contradict the original sound. The English «bad echo» is usually translated as «schlechten Anklang,» Anklang being somewhat similar to but not the same as Echo. However, in contrast to English, in German «Echo» is not used as a verb. In an article about the new conservatism among many young people in Spain, Alan Riding writes that the new leader of the People's Party, Mr. José Maria Aznar, «is still just 40 and, while anything but a charismatic campaigner, he has found himself being acclaimed in universities by young people for whom attacks on the Government echo their own growing frustration with the Spain spawned by a decade of Socialist rule» ("Spanish Students Rebelling against the Left," The New York Times , Friday, June 4, 1993, 59). Hannah Arendt would surely have liked sentences such as this one. For in situations like these some people «echo» others who in turn, so to speak, «re-echo» the former and so on. This is how power is generated that is then turned against the status quo and its inherent violence. As to Heidegger's notorious sentence on the German and Greek languages as «the most powerful and most spiritual of all languages» (IM 57; EM 43), in this case he is right at least with regard to the similarities between both languages. For, the Greek verb , or , seems to have been used in the sense of «to sound,» «to ring,» or «to peal,» but not in the sense of the quote. Even if, however, it was also used that way, most of the Greek philosophers didn't like motions as formless as power in Hannah Arendt's sense.

Note that, at least for the person who receives it, an echo is most of the time a wonderful or miraculous event. An echo always entails more than, so to speak, echo simple, more than just the physical process of literally repeating what was said. The surplus over echo simple is what makes an echo an echo, and this surplus is present in the sentence «Die Berge erwidern meinen Ruf.» One must not mix that sentence up with the German saying «Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus» (As you call into the forest, so does the sound return to you). One uses the latter in the sense of «you get as much as you give» and in cases of echo simple, if one is annoyed with, or angry about, someone who agrees to anything, and who doesn't show any initiative. Thus, Heidegger might say that it is said by someone who finds forests pretty boring, and who thus isn't a «real German.» A «real German» would use this sentence only ironically (to hide his anger) since the person lacking any initiative, or enthusiasm, would display the caricature of the relationship between a «real German» and the «deutsche Wald» (the German Forest). For the «deutsche Wald» animates and inspires a «real German.» The «German forest,» as it were, «echoes» the «real German,» or rather, the «real German» «echoes» the «German forest» As to suggestions or commands, the person receiving a command must not just respond by means of echo simple. For such a response always gives rise to the suspicion that the person has mental and emotional reservations about the command. Rather, he must display the proper surplus over echo simple that shows that he obeys and realizes the command wholeheartedly and enthusiastically (see, for instance, the fourth and fifth of the National Socialist «laws of life» of the German student, chapter 3, n. 17; see also «to stand in the storm» in section A of chapter 6). Note that, if one applies this to authentic Dasein, one no longer talks exclusively in terms of mere subjugation. The enthusiasm accompanying subjugation enables one to realize the call, that is, to cancel the world of inauthentic Dasein. See also chapters 2 and 3.

I have gathered the «German experience» of the «German forest» by listening to the call or whisper of the «German soul» or by just echoing—like the echo simple or «idle talk» —an old stereotype. However, here are some pieces of a speech by Heidegger on Albert Leo Schlageter. Schlageter was one of the top «Helden» of the Nazis. He belonged to the «Freikorps,» illegal armed groups that performed acts of sabotage in Poland, East Prussia, and in the «occupied» Rheinland and that attacked the Polish people, Communists, Social Democrats and other «enemies of the people.» Sabotaging a railroad track in the Rheinland, Schlageter was captured, sentenced to death, and executed according to martial law on the twenty-sixth of May 1923 (see Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 87ff.; Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus , 142ff.; Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990], 26ff.). In Baden, each year a ceremony commemorating Schlageter was held on the anniversary of his execution. On this occasion in 1933, that is, shortly after the Machtergreifung, in his speech on the front steps of the main entrance to the university Heidegger said: «Whence this hardness of will { Härte des Willens }, which allowed him to endure the most severe ordeal {das Schwerste durchzustehen } ? Whence this clarity of heart , which allowed him to envision what was greatest and most remote { Klarheit des Herzens , das Größte und Fernste sich vor die Seele zu stellen}? Student of Freiburg! German student! When on your hikes and marches you set foot in the mountains, forests, and valleys of this Black Forest, the home of this hero {die Heimat dieses Helden}, experience this and know: the mountains among which the young farmer's son grew up are of primitive stone, of granite! They have long been at work hardening the will {Sie schaffen seit langem an der Härte des Willens}. The autumn sun of the Black Forest bathes the mountain ranges and forests in the most glorious clear light. It has long nourished clarity of the heart {Sie nährt seit langem die Klarheit des Herzens } » (Farías, Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus , 146; this is my own translation; see Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 91; Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 41). Another passage reads: «With a hard will and a clear heart, Albert Leo Schlageter died his death, the most difficult and the greatest of all. Student of Freiburg, let the strength of this hero's native mountains flow into your will { in deinen Willen strömen } ! Student of Freiburg, let the strength of the autumn sun of this hero's native valley shine into your heart! Preserve both within you and carry them, hardness of will and clarity of heart, to your comrades at the German university» (Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 41; see Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 92; German edition, 147). I will also quote the next passage, for as I will discuss in chapters 2, 3, and 5, several scholars regard «fate» («Schicksal») in section 74 of Sein und Zeit to be a power with which authentic Dasein breaks. Or, alternatively, they maintain that fate is produced by the Dasein in the sense that once Dasein has become authentic, it can freely—no longer determined by the «they» or someone else—create its own fate. I will show that it is just the other way around, namely, that an individual's fate preexists and determines the individual, and that authenticity consists in complying with one's fate, whereas inauthentic Daseine try to avoid or to «shirk» it. At the same time, the passage shows also that Heidegger used «Held» in the sense prevalent at that time, namely, in line with the paradigmatic case of the «Helden von Langemarck»: «Schlageter walked these grounds as a student. But Freiburg could not hold him for long. He was compelled to go to the Baltic; he was compelled to go to Upper Silesia; he was compelled to go to the Ruhr. He was not permitted to escape his destiny so that he could die the most difficult and greatest of all deaths with a hard will and a clear heart { Er durfte seinem Schicksal nicht ausweichen, um den schwersten und größten Tod harten Willens und klaren Herzens zu sterben}. We honor the hero {den Helden} and raise our arms in silent greeting» (Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 42; see Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 93; German edition, 148). Since I began this part with the «Helden von Langemarck,» let me mention that—one feels tempted to say, of course—Heidegger began his speech on Leo Schlageter with a reference to the German soldiers in World War I (see Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 89f.; German edition, 144f.; Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 4o; instead of the sentence «He alone must convey to the soul of the people the image of their future awakening to honor and greatness, in order to die in faith» in Farías [ Heidegger and Nazism , 90] read with Wolin: «Alone, drawing on his own inner strength, he had to place before his soul an image of the future awakening of the Volk to honor and greatness so that he could die believing in this future» [The Heidegger Controversy , 40f.]; see Farías, Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus , 145).

Note that the second of the four quotes provides a good example of the double aspect of Entschlossenheit I mentioned in section A of this chapter. Heidegger calls upon the listeners to make an Entscheidung, that is, to no longer vacillate between several voices but rather to listen to the one voice, the voice of the people. In doing so, one ent-schließt sich, opens oneself and becomes a passive vessel so that «the power of the mountains of this hero's home» can «stream in your will.» Filled with «the power of the mountains of this hero's home,» one acquires « hardness of will » that enables one to be verschlossen für (closed against) the other voices and that empowers one to work for the realization of the task fate has ordained and to endure the consequences of this labor.

I will elaborate the «German» notion of fate in chapters 2 and 3. However, let me already here point out a passage in Hitler's Mein Kampf . The very first sentences of the book read as follows: «Als glückliche Bestimmung gilt es mir heute, daß das Schicksal mir zum Geburtsort gerade Braunau am Inn zuwies. Liegt doch dieses Städtchen an der Grenze jener zwei deutschen Staaten, deren Wiedervereinigung mindestens uns Jüngeren als eine mit allen Mitteln durchzuführende Lebensaufgabe erscheint» (MK 1). «Schicksal weist mir zu» means that fate allots something to me; that fate «gives,» «assigns,» something as its «gift» to me. Its gift is often a task I must perceive and carry out. «Aufgabe» is «task;» «Lebensaufgabe» is a task one has to pursue throughout one's entire life and which is one's main or only mission in life to which everything else has to be subordinated. Thus, the entire passage can be translated as follows: «Today it seems to me providential that Fate chose Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states the reunification of which seems at least to us of the younger generation as the mission of our life, which we have to pursue by every means at our disposal.» The expression «das scheint/erscheint mir gut (zu tun)» (this seems to me good [to do]) is often used in the sense of «I have decided to do this,» namely, as a shorthand of the longer sentence «this seems to me good to do and thus I have decided to do it.» However, one has to keep two things in mind. First, grammatically my «life work» or the thing to be done by me occurs as the subject of the sentence, and the verb «erscheinen» is sometimes used in a very emphatic sense. Christians speak of «Marienerscheinun-gen» (apparitions of Mary), «Wundererscheinungen» (apparitions of miracles = miracles). «Heute ist mir der Herr erschienen» (Today, the Lord appeared to me = I had a vision of the Lord)—this sentence might be used by someone who had such an experience. In fact, Heidegger uses «erscheinen» in his definition of the authentic experience of Being in the pre-Socratics: «But for the Greeks standing-in-itself {Insichstehen} was nothing other than standing-there, standing-in-the-light {Im-Licht-Stehen}. Being means appearing {Sein heißt Erscheinen}. Appearing is not something subsequent that sometimes happens to being. Appearing is the very essence of being { Sein west als Erscheinen } . . .. The essence of being is physis . Appearing is the power that emerges, unconcealment, aletheia» (IM 101-102; EM 77)- In a passage on historical man as the breach (see chapter 2, n. 32), Heidegger takes advantage of the possibility that a Erscheinung can be sudden and overpowering. In light of such uses of «erscheinen,» it is quite possible that the thing to be done, so to speak, appears to me, approaches me, and claims to be done by me, to be recognized as my «life work» I have to take over. (Note that grammatically in both cases the concerned subject—the one who has a vision of the Lord as well as the one who decides to do something— occurs as the dative object of the sentence.) This is important for the second point one has to keep in mind. For even if the expression «es/etwas erscheint mir» (it/something seems/appears to me) is used in the sense of «I decide/have decided to do,» it is most of the time not meant in the sense of «I have arbitrarily decided to do» but rather in the sense of «the issue itself—die Sache selbst, as Hegel would say—suggests that the best thing to do, or the only thing to do, is . . .. » Throughout his book, Hitler leaves no doubt that he hasn't come to his «life work» by his own arbitrary choice but rather that it was fate that assigned his «life work» to him, and he makes extensive use of the «German» notion of fate according to which fate exists prior to «us» and «gives» «us» our «life work» (see section A of chapter 3. With all this in mind, Heidegger might have even translated the relative clause, «the reunification of which seems . . . means at our disposal» with «the reunification of which has unconcealed itself at least to us of the younger generation as the task of our life, which we have to pursue by every means at our disposal.»

In light of these facts as well as in light of the politics and rhetorics of the National Socialists, German readers quite naturally and without hesitation would have connected «Lebensaufgabe» (life work) and «Schicksal» (fate). Listening to our fate, we realize that it gives us our «Lebensaufgabe.» Or our «Lebensaufgabe» as allotted to us by fate becomes clear, or reveals itself, to us if we are capable of listening to fate. That is, by no means do we come up with our «Lebensaufgabe» by ourselves. Instead, fate «gives» us our «Lebensaufgabe,» as Schlageter did not freely choose, or come up with, his «Lebensaufgabe»; rather, he «was compelled to go to the Baltic; he was compelled to go to Upper Silesia; he was compelled to go to the Ruhr. He was not permitted to escape his destiny so that he could die the most difficult and greatest of all deaths with a hard will and a clear heart» (Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 42; see Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 93; German edition, 148). Inauthentic Dasein wants to evade the task fate has in store for it. Authentic Dasein, however, obeys and tries to realize its «Lebensaufgabe.»

Manheim in his English translation has replaced the structure, «it seems to us» with one in which «we» is the active subject («Today it seems to me providential that Fate have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birth place. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal,» [MKe 3]). For readers not familiar with the «German» notion of fate Manheim's alteration might change the meaning of the passage. Fate has given us something, for instance, our place of birth. Our «life work,» however, we create by ourselves without fate giving it to us. Or each authentic Dasein has created its «life work» by itself without being subject to any command. Some authentic Daseine have «good luck» («good fate»), others have «bad luck» («bad fate») because for some, fate—that is, life in all the aspects that authentic Dasein cannot change—is such that authentic Dasein can carry through its life work. For others, however, life is not such that Dasein can succeed in its life work. In this sense, Manheim's translation is even prone to completely reverse the meaning of the sentence: «We» have made up our «life work» by ourselves; it is only at this point (i.e., after the decision) that fate—as being favorable to our life work—steps in to provide us with a place advantageous for the pursuit of our life work or, if it is unfavorable to our life work, prevents us from carrying it out successfully. In German, however, the sentence reads the other way around: Fate has assigned our «Lebensaufgabe» to us, and it has put us in a place where «we» can easily and early on recognize the «Lebensaufgabe» we have been given. The «glückliche Bestimmung» («Today, it seems to me providential») is not that fate provides us with useful means or a favorable environment to realize our life work created by ourselves independent of fate, but rather that fate has its «Lebensaufgabe» for us and that at the same time it has placed us in such a position that we do not need long and painful journeys to perceive our «Lebensaufgabe.» The «glückliche Bestimmung» —or «Gunst des Schicksals» (favor of fate)—consists in that, as Hitler acknowledges in 1925, he was put by fate in a position where he could recognize his «Lebensaufgabe» assigned to him by fate very early on in his life. This is in contrast to a bourgeois Bildungsroman, where the readers learn, or are confirmed in their belief, that it takes some time, and often diverse—as the title of one of Fontane's novels says— Irrungen und Wirrungen (or dialectical movements as in the Bildung of spirit in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit ), to recognize or accomplish one's life work or to realize that one has failed to do so. By the way, Heidegger might say that already the word «Lebensaufgabe» itself tells us all this. For, as was said above, «Lebensaufgabe» consists of «Leben» and «Aufgabe.» «Aufgabe» in turn consists of the noun «Gabe» and the prefix «auf-.» «Gabe» is «gift.» The prefix «auf» marks the gift as a task, and the addition of «Lebens-» emphasizes that the task is a very special task, namely, one that demands that one puts all of one's energies into its service. One doesn't produce a gift to oneself. Instead, one accepts a gift from someone else. This is certainly true of the relationship of Being and Daseine in the writings of the later Heidegger. For a given way of unconcealment is not produced by the Daseine or, as he often says, by «man» («der Mensch»). Rather, it is Being that gives it to the Daseine. As I will show, the same relation holds for destiny/fate and authentic Dasein in Being and Time . Of course, Hitler's listening to the call and his task—to reunite Germany and Austria as the precondition of conquests of other countries (MKe 3; MK 1(—entailed a lot of «disavowal[s]» (BT 438; SZ 386). In his book, he adduces as the first disavowal the «Vernichtung» (MK 14; «destruction,» MK 16) of the Austrian state. In Mein Kampf , the second proper name of a human being to occur is «Leo Schlageter.» The first name is «Johannes Palm.» During the Napoleonic War, as Hitler tells his readers, Palm practiced resistance against the French troops. However, he was betrayed by an Austrian official, but he didn't disclose anything or anyone to the French. After this, Hitler just says: «In this he resembled Leo Schlageter» (MKe 4; in German the sentence is shorter: «Also wie Leo Schlageter,» MK 2) in order, thereupon, to make a new point. He could take for granted that to all his readers Schlageter was very well known. It is only after Palm and Schlageter that Hitler's parents are mentioned; they are not referred to by their names but only as «der Vater» («the father») and «die Mutter» («the mother»). On page 6 of the German edition, Hitler refers to himself via the voice of his political enemies: «dieser 'Hitler'» (MK 6; «this 'Hitler',» MKe 8). Only after he has narrated the life of his father up to the latter's death does the fourth proper name occur: «Professor Dr. Leopold Pötsch,» his teacher of history in elementary school who taught him the understanding of history that would remain with him for life (MK 12; MKe 14). Only the «Helden» of National Socialism deserve a name. By saying just «der Vater» and «die Mutter,» he can kill two birds with one stone. (Such speaks the English language; the German language isn't better, or is even worse, on this issue; translated word-by-word, it says that you «beat {in the sense of «kill» } two flies with one stroke.») By saying «die Mutter,» he can present his beloved mother as the proper incarnation of and representative of the Sitte (custom) of the Heimat (homeland); by saying «der Vater,» he can maintain the same with regard to the powers represented by the male and at the same time hide his dislike for his father. In fact, Hitler really killed three birds with one stone. For by simply saying «der Vater» he need not tell the story of his father's name, that is, that his father was the illegitimate child of a Miss Schickelgruber and thus was named Alois Schickelgruber. Later on, Alois's mother married a Mr. Hitler. It was only several years after his mother's death and with the help of the testimony of three illiterate witnesses that Alois Schickelgruber claimed to be the legitimate child of Mr. Hitler and was registered in the parish register as Mr. Alois Hitler. For various reasons, as the last name of someone who propagates the purity and superiority of the Aryan race the name «Schickelgruber» sounded pretty ridiculous. (His political enemies would have referred to him as «der Schickelgruber.»)

For all that was said about the «German forest» in this note, «echo» is of course too nice and delicate an expression. For what is required from the listeners is just plain subjugation to the call of the Black Forest, Heidegger, Hitler, and Schlageter. At the same time, the experience of the «German Forest,» at least in it's Heideggerian version, excludes the experience of otherness that several interpreters consider to be Heidegger's central theme in section 74; the experience of otherness as in a passage in Henry David Thoreau's Walden : «There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.» This passage is quoted in a book on Heidegger, the title of which refers to what this note is about, namely, in John Sallis' Echoes: After Heidegger (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 4. Sallis has not echoed the different echoes on the story of Echo he tells in the first chapter, ''' " (ibid., 1-14) with an account of the possible echoes of Heidegger's sentences on erwidert and Widerruf in Heidegger's interpreters, and he doesn't refer to these sentences at a later point either.

34. In German, one would say, «in the following beiläufigen situation.» «Beiläufig» is another instance of a composite of a prefix («bei-») and »läufig,» «läufig» being the adjective to the verb «daufen» (to run, to walk) (see above, n. 11). In the case of «beiläufig,» «bei» is an abbreviation of «vorbei,» which means «past» primarily in the spatial sense. Thus, «can einem Kino vorbeilaufen» is «to walk past a movie theater» in the sense of «to pass by a movie theater.» «Beiläufig erwähnen» is «to mention in passing.»

35. The third stanza of Baudelaire's poem "A une passante" reads: « éclair. . . puis la nuit!—Fugitive beautß/Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,/Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'ßternitß?» What is the «éclair» ? Is it the look of the «femme» who «passa,» as introduced in the first stanza and whose eyes are mentioned in the second stanza? Is it the shock of the I (the «Moi, je» of the second stanza) when he sees the femme? Is it the shock of the I when he sees that the femme returns his gaze? Is it the passing of the femme? Or is it the passing femme ? Or all together? In any case, the «Dont» refers to the «Fugitive beauté.» However, the «Dont» might be either the genitivus subjectivus or the genitivus objectivus of «regard.» In the first case, the «regard» is that of the femme who looks at the I. In the second case, the «dont» would be the object of the look of the I who looks at the femme. In this case, it would be left open whether the femme looks back or not. In "On some Motifs in Baudelaire," Benjamin is certain that, as in contrast to the I in a poem by Stefan George, «Baudelaire leaves no doubt that he looked deep into the eyes of the passer-by» ( Illuminations: Essays and Reflections , 196, n. 3). However, he translates the third stanza and the entire poem in such a way that one is inclined to assume that the femme did not return the gaze of the I, and he uses a word, «leihen,» that can be used as an equivalent to «erwidern» in the accusative in the sense of «to return»; «Ein Blitz, dann Nacht! Die Flüchtige, nicht leiht / Sie sich dem Werdenden an ihrem Schimmer./Seh ich dich nur noch in der Ewigkeit?» ( Gesammelte Schrifien , IV. 1, 41). I mention this in order to point out that Benjamin comments on «Aura» in terms of, or even defines «Aura» as, the return of a gaze and that, in this context, he uses «erwidern» in the accusative: «Since the camera records our likeness without returning our gaze {ohne ihm dessen Blick zurüickzugeben }. But looking at someone carries the implicit expectation that our look will be returned {Dem Blick wohnt aber die Erwartung inne, von dem erwidert zu werden, dem er sich schenkt; the relative clause is left out in the English translation; it reads something like: «the look will be returned by the one to whom the look gives itself» }. Where this expectation is met {Wo diese Erwartung erwidert wird} . . .. there is an experience of the aura to the fullest extent . . .. The person we look at, or who feels he is being looked at, looks at us in turn. To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return» ("On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," 188; Gesammelte Schrifien , 1.2, 646f.; italics mine, J. F.). As in the case of the echo (see above n. 33), not every physical look in return is an Erwiderung in this sense. For this, see also Benjamin's remarks on eyes in Baudelaire's poems ( Illuminations , 189) and his comment on a sentence in Baudelaire on eyes «sad and translucent like blackish swamps,» or having «the oily inertness of tropical seas» : «When such eyes come alive, it is with the self-protective wariness of a wild animal hunting for prey. (Thus the eye of the prostitute scrutinizing the passers-by is at the same time on its guard against the police. . ..) That the eye of the city dweller is overburdened with protective functions is obvious» (ibid., 190f.). See also the subsequent quote from Georg Simmel on another aspect of hearing and seeing in the modem cities and in public conveyances (ibid., 191). Anyway, as one might gather from this note and from my examples of «erwidern,» in a theoretical text every instance of «erwidern» requires a careful, contextual, or explicit comment or calls for an «Erwiderung» in the accusative in which it is determined or explained or in which it can, so to speak, develop into this or that narrative. One might regret that Heidegger did not comment at all on his short sentence with «erwidert» aside from the sentence on «Widerruf» about which I will say more in chapters 2 and 3—in fact, one might even rebuke him for it. However, one must not forget that the grammatical structure and the semantics unambiguously allow only for my interpretation and not for Guignon's or Birmingham's.

As mentioned above, in the quote from "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," the relative clause «dem er sich schenkt» has been left untranslated. «Schenken» is «to give a gift»; «sich jemandem schenken» is «to give oneself (as a gift) to someone.» Quite literally, the entire sentence reads: «But inherent to the gaze is the expectation to be returned by the one to whom the gaze has given itself (as a gift).» One might say, the I in Baudelaire's poem «schenkt sich» to the femme, and hopes that the gaze of the femme «leiht sich ihm» in return. On the level of historicality in Being and Time , the gaze that schenkt sich to the femme (or the eye of the prostitute scrutinizing the passersby) is the command delivered by destiny, fate, and the community of the people (see chapters 2 and 3), and the gaze of the femme who, if she erwidert the gaze of the I, sich leiht to the I (or the passerby who erwidert the gaze of the prostitute) is Heidegger's «sich {einer überkommenen Existenzmöglichkeit} überliefernde Entschlossenheit» (SZ 385; «The resoluteness which . . . hands itself down {to the possibility of existence that has come down to us},» BT 437).

36. As one sees with regard to the last sentence, «erwidern» in the dative and «erwidern» in the accusative in the sense of «to fight back» amount to a Wider-rede, or Wider-spruch, both being expressions for «to contradict.» In contrast to «erwidern» and «Erwiderung,» both «Widerrede» and «Widerspruch» are used only as negations and cannot be used the way «erwidern» is used in the sense of «to comply with a request.» Thus, if Heidegger had wanted to say what Guignon and Birmingham assume he does, he could have written, for instance, «Die Wiederholung widerspricht vielmehr der (or, spricht/redet vielmehr gegen die) Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz. Die Widerrede/Der Widerspruch gegen die Möglichkeit im Entschluß ist aber/sogar zu-gleich. . .. »

The words «Widerrede» and «Widerspruch/widersprechen» show that there might be something about Birmingham's suggestion that the verb «erwidern» is, so to speak, the verbalization of the prefix «wider» in «Widerruf » (see above, n. 14). However, the reasons presented in this chapter and in the following ones show that Heidegger uses «erwidern» in the sense of «to comply with,» and not in the sense of a «Widerrede» or in the sense of «to fight back.» In addition, contrary to Birmingham (TP 31) the prefix «wider-» is by no means used exclusively in the sense of «contrary to or against» (see chapter 5, n. 70). On my interpretation, the prefix «wider-» in Widerruf in fact means «contrary to» or «against,» for a Widerruf is a disavowal or revocation. However, if one wants to regard Heidegger's use of «erwidern» as a verbalization of a prefix, it would not be the prefix «wider-» but rather the prefix «wieder-» (re-, back, again), or the prefix «wider» in the sense of «wieder» (see chapter 5, n. 70). This is appropriate, and perhaps even consciously intended by Heidegger, since his erwidern/Erwiderung is meant as a peculiar Wiederholung (repetition) whose features I will spell out in more detail in the following chapters.

Erwidern as Widerrede or Widerspruch shows that «erwidern» in the dative and «erwidern» in the sense of «to fight back» have, so to speak, one foot in the vocabulary of speaking and calling. However, the same holds true for «erwidern» in the sense of «to comply with a demand,» as my examples and «erwidern» in the sense of «to echo» show. In addition, the noun «Widerruf» (disavowal, revocation) contains the noun «Ruf,» call. Thus, erwidern, Erwiderung, and Widerruf all, so to speak, echo the language of the sections on the call of conscience. In section 58 Heidegger says of authentic Dasein: «When Dasein understandingly lets itself be called forth to this possibility, this includes its becoming free for the call—its readiness for the potentiality of getting appealed to. In understanding the call, Dasein is in thrall to [hörig] its own-most possibility of existence» (BT 334; SZ 287). The German adjective «hörig» contains the root «hören» (to hear, to listen). Readers should keep in mind that, at Heidegger's time as well as today, «hörig» is only used in one of two ways: either as a sociological term in the sense of «thrall» with regard to slaves or peasants in feudal societies (and in this sense in Germany at Heidegger's time no one was any longer hörig to anyone else), or as a synonym for «verfallen» (see above, n. 11). Instead of saying, «A ist verfallen (addicted to) B, a drug, or a sexual habit,» one might as well say that A «ist hörig B, etc.» The sentence with erwidern in section 74 echoes precisely the sentence with hörig in section 58. Quite certainly, Heidegger used the adjective «hörig» in order to have the strongest expression for «obligation» and «submission.» The sentence with hörig and the entire chapter on conscience show that neither the chapter on conscience nor, by inclusion, section 74 talks about a conversation with the past or the peculiar act of disavowal Birmingham finds in it.

The sentence with hörig at the same time testifies to the two aspects of Entschlossenheit mentioned in section A above, namely, an activity of Dasein that results in an act of submission to the call. (Though Dasein is passive from the beginning and becomes active only in order to comply with the call. The call, however, demands obedience. It is one's duty to comply with the call, and a duty is what cannot not be done.) In doing so, authentic Dasein opens itself for the voice of the Volk and locks up, or seals off, itself from the many other voices. Those Daseine that become inauthentic, however, are not capable of doing so since they are verfallen to the many voices of idle talk and curiosity.

In his 1935 lecture, An Introduction to Metaphysics , Heidegger finds his notion of Hörigkeit in Heraclitus's fragment 34: «Correspondingly, the hearing that is a following [Hörig-sein] is contrasted with mere hearing. Mere hearing scatters and diffuses itself in what is commonly believed and said, in hearsay, in doxa , appearance. True hearing has nothing to do with ear and mouth, but means: to follow the logos and what it is, namely the collectedness of the essent itself. We can hear truly { das echte Hörigsein} only if we are followers {Hörige}. But this {Hörigkeit aber} has nothing to do with the lobes of our ears. The man who is no follower {Wer kein H6riger ist} is removed and excluded from the logos from the start, regardless of whether he has heard with his ears or not yet heard» (IM 129; EM 99; see also the continuation of the quote). On the formula «the collectedness of the essent itself» see section B of chapter 5. The people who merely hear or who, so to speak, hear only with their ear lobes are the people engaged in idle talk, etc., or those who listen to the call such a way that «causes get pleaded» and the call «becomes perverted in its tendency to disclose» (BT 319; SZ 274); that is, people who don't listen to the call or who—what amounts to the same thing—answer to the call with an Erwiderung in the dative or an Erwiderung in the sense of «to fight back.» The distinction between one who «has heard with his ears» and one who has «not yet heard» corresponds to the distinction between inauthentic Daseine and ordinary Daseine. The distinction between authentic, or h6riges, Dasein and those who are «removed and excluded from the logos» corresponds to the distinction in section 74 of Being and Time between those Daseine that have fate—the authentic Daseine—and those that don't have fate—the inauthentic Daseine (see section C of chapter 2). After World War II and after his engagement with National Socialism, Heidegger felt that his language was somewhat rough. For, in ''The Question Concerning Technology," published in 1954, he writes: «Always the unconcealment of that which is goes upon a way of revealing. Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over men. But that destining is never a fate that compels { das Verhängnis eines Zwanges }. For man becomes truly free only insofar as he belongs to the realm of destining {des Geschickes} and so becomes one who listens, though not one who simply obeys {nicht aber ein Höriger}» (BW 306; VA 28). One might infer from this passage that his notion of hörig sein in Being and Time and, by inclusion, his notion of erwidern in section 74 indeed mean «to simply obey,» in contradistinction to inauthentic Dasein, which does not obey. On Geschick, Gemtit, Gebirg, Gestell, and Gewährendes in "The Question Concerning Technology" see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," esp. 130-135.

1. Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy , 47.

2. Ibid., 48.

3. This aspect as well as the sections at the beginning of Division Two require a more detailed treatment. See my book Society, Comrnunity, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .

4. Hildegard Feick, Index zu Heideggers "Sein und Zeit " (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1991), 94.

5. In this—according to the standards of Heideggerians, deeply metaphysical— sense Heidegger adduces the notion of Ursprung, origin, in one of his lectures on Hölderlin:

The pure origin {Der reine Ursprung} is not one that just simply releases something out of it {entläßt} and leaves it to itself {überlßt}; rather, it is that beginning whose power constantly leaps over {überspringt } that-which-has-arisen from it { das Entsprungene}; it is that beginning that leaps ahead of {vor-springend}, and outlasts, that-which-has-arisen { from it}; in this way, the pure origin is present in the foundation of what-endures {des Bleibenden}, present not as some aftereffect of former times but rather as what leaps ahead { das Vorausspringende }; thus, as the beginning { Anfang } the pure origin is in reality at the same time the determining end, that is, the goal {Ziel}. (HH 241; for «das rein Entsprungene» see, for instance, ibid., 254).

6. Probably the phrase «in dem betonten Sinne des Entlaufens» does not mean «in the sense of running away from it, as we have just emphasized» but rather «in the emphatic sense of running away from it.»

7. Or, consider «What is the motive for this 'fugitive' {"flüchtige"} way of saying "I"? It is motivated by Dasein's falling; for as falling, it fiees in the face of itself into the "they" {Durch das Verfallen des Daseins, als welches es vor sich selbst flieht in das Man}» (BT 368; SZ 322). Note that in everyday language one uses «flüchtig» in the sense of «on the run» as predicate adjective («The escaped prisoners are still flüchtig [on the run].») but only rarely as a modifying adjective. The meaning of the modifying adjective is most often «transitory» or «short-lived» («der flüchtige Augen-blick»). The insertion of «''flüchtige"» does not contribute anything to the passage with the exception that in this way Heidegger characterizes the «I,» and thus Kant and the Enlightenment, as short-lived. This is one of Heidegger's peculiar etymologies of which «vorläufig» is another (see above, chapter 1, note 11).

8. As in these quotes concerning all the «"entspringen",» in the quote I gave from BT 377 (see p. 32), Heidegger puts «"Zeit"» into quotation marks to indicate that «the 'time' which is accessible to Dasein's common sense,» the later so-called ordinary concept of time, pretends to be the «real» time but, according to Heidegger, is by no means the «real» time.

9. On the difference between this motif in Guignon's and in my interpretation, see below and chapters 3 and 4.

10. See his letter to Engelbert Krebs, 9 January 1919, as in Hugo Ott's biography of Heidegger, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 106f.; German edition, 106f.

11. For instance, look at the entries for «Eigentlichkeit» in Hildegard Feick's Index zu Heideggers "Sein und Zeit" (Index zu Heideggers "Sein und Zeit, " 16f.). One cannot but read them as pointing to a state, a habit, and only secondarily to the activities accompanying that state or leading to it. Heidegger approved this index and, obviously, had helped her to some degree (ibid., ix).

Among the suggestions of terms Heidegger might have used if he had wanted to focus on an activity I included «Tätigkeit,» which Fichte uses (see above, n. 2 of chapter 1). It is the abstract noun of the verb «tun,» or «tätig sein,» which itself designates an activity. All other possible nouns without the ending «-keit» or «-heit» would have been too weak. Thus, «Tätigkeit» is an exception that confirms the rule. In the case of the verb «leiden,» however, Fichte could employ the articular infinitive, «Leiden,» and thus avoid any possible association to a state. Though there is the word «Wehlei-digkeit,» probably no one has ever used «Leidheit» or «Leidigkeit» as the abstract noun to «leiden.»

12. On the indefinite article in the English translation instead of the definite one in Heidegger see chapter 1, n. 17. To use in both occurrences the definite article certainly contributes to a sense of urgency and weakens the attitude of a detached observer.

13. In German, it reads: «Meist sind sie durch die Zweideutigkeit unkenntlich gemacht, aber doch bekannt» (SZ 383). This is probably an allusion to the famous sentence in the preface of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit , namely, «Das Bekannte tiberhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht erkannt » ( Phänomenologie des Geistes , 28); English: «Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar , is not cognitively understood» (Phenomenology of Spirit , 18). Note that Heidegger says not «are unrecognized,» but rather «have been made unrecognizable.» To anticipate my conclusions, the origin is present even though ordinary Dasein has fallen away from or leapt out of it. However, by the work of ambiguity, ordinary Dasein makes the ways in which the origin is present unrecognizable. Authentic Dasein sees through ordinary Dasein's work. Thus, authentic Dasein recognizes that what is covered up by ordinary Dasein's work of ambiguity are in fact the authentic possibilities, which it thereupon tums against ordinary Dasein. Thus, authentic Dasein erkennt what, due to ordinary Dasein's work of ambiguity, has been up to that point only bekannt. «Unkenntlich» is an adjective to «Unkenntnis,» which in turn is the negation of «Erkenntnis.» Thus, ordinary Dasein, so to speak, strikes through the «Er-» in Erkenntnis ( Er kenntnis) and thus falls into Unkenntnis. However, even as stricken through, the origin remains present, and bekannt. This enables authentic Dasein to strike through the «Un-» in Unkenntnis ( Un kenntnis) and thus to restore the «Er-» in Erkenntnis that ordinary Dasein has unsuccessfully tried to strike out.

14. At the end of Division One, Heidegger gathers all these structures into that of care in order to reinterpret them in Division Two from the more «ursprünglich» level of temporality. In Division Two, chapter 5, he understands these structures «noch ursprünglicher» (SZ 372; «more primordial,» BT 424; it should read «still more primordial»), namely, from the vantage point of historicality. There is no level that is «noch ursprünglicher» than historicality, that is, historicality is the ultimate primordial level.

15. Botho Straufß, "Anschwellender Bocksgesang," in the weekly Der Spiegel , no. 6, 1993, 202ff. Botho Strauß has always had a high reputation for being especially delicate and subtle. In its editorial, Der Spiegel discreetly reminds its readers that the word der Dichter has chosen, Bocksgesang, is the literal translation of the Greek tragedy, namely, song of the he-goats (ibid., 203). Concerning the anschwellen, there is no need of explanation. Jubilation in a theater, or in a political meeting, if it increases, or an erecting penis, «schwillt an,» as does some strange buzzing in the air one cannot really locate. For a long time, Strauß had been regarded as a kind of leftist. Now he has realized: «How strange it is that one can call oneself 'leftist!' For from ancient times, left has been looked upon as synonym for what goes wrong {Fehlgehende}. Thus, one attaches to oneself a sign of what is bewitched and perverse {Verkehrten}. For full of enlightenment-haughtiness, one grounds one's politics on the alleged proof of the powerlessness of magical notions of order» (p. 203f.). His vocabulary and his motifs are quite obviously very close to the language of Heidegger, Spengler, and Scheler, though Strauß opts for some sort of elitarian arcane politics, or withdraws from politics, as did, for example, the George-Kreis. Has Botho Strauß undergone some transformation similar to St. Paul? Some people suspect that he always was a kind of conservative. In this latter case, it is the political situation in Germany that makes his fate «erst frei» (SZ 384; «free,» BT 436). One might also say that, so far, he was only bekannt. If one continued the last sentence along the lines suggested by Luther's German translation of the Holy Scripture, one would indeed «den Holzwegen der deutschen Sprache auf den Leim gegangen sein» (have fallen prey to the seductive force of the Holzwege of the German language) and one might have apologized: «Wann ich so schwerz bin, schuld ist nicht mein allein ..» Nonnetheless, some readers might have exclaimed, «Zu spat bekannt,» which might be translated as, « It is too late that you have confessed.» Quite surely, Heidegger generated the horizontal lines in his later texts by his fountain-pen guided by his hand, whereas most of the authors today will use the respective commands in the menu of their computer programs. What would he say if he had seen all the authors with their desk- and laptops? If the "real" Heidegger was the one criticized in Adorno's Jargon of Authenticity and Negative Dialectics , he certainly would have said: «Gott bewahre!» If Heidegger had been Derrida, he would have written a strong and eloquent «reciprocative rejoinder» (BT 438); or, he would have begun an Auseinandersetzung with Adorno. «Auseinandersetzung» is a word Heidegger might have used instead of «erwidert,» if he had wanted to say what Guignon and Birmingham think he said. However, Heidegger kept silent. But this was long ago. It was in the fifties and sixties when the paradigmatic German menu was still a fatty and thoroughly nourishing Eisbein mit Sauerkraut («Eine Kalorienbombe!») and not yet McDonald's with mousse au chocolat. Would Heidegger—who, after all, maintained that only a God can save us (MH 57)—have approved of the bio-technological revolutionary guerrilla war on the inter-net as advocated by Derrida: «Today, the general strike does not need to demobilize or mobilize a spectacular number of people: it is enough to cut the electricity in a few privileged places, for example the services, public and private, of postal service and telecommunications, or to introduce a few efficient viruses into a well-chosen computer network or, by analogy, to introduce the equivalent of AIDS into the organs of transmission, into the hermeneutic Gespräch» (Derrida, "The Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority'," in Drucilla Cornell et al., eds., Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice [New York: Routledge, 1992], 37f.)?

16. On «verfallen» see above, n. 11 of chapter 1. In ordinary language, mainly airplanes (of which all were military up to the twenties) «stürzen ab.» However, also other sorts of Abstürze, for instance the Abstürze of mountaineers, are often deadly. That Joseph Beuys survived his plane crash during World War II is the exception that confirms the rule. Some say, Beuys is a «very German artist,» and his art is his way of making good for his experiences in World War II. If that' s the case, it differs completely from the way in which Heidegger's Being and Time «makes good» for World War I. Beuys's art focuses on the resolute and tender gestures of rubbing the fragile human body, of wrapping it in fat and pelt to keep it alive. And it reaches out to the animals, the coyotes and the rabbits, he saw in the Russian steppe after the Kirghiz people helped him open his eyes anew after thirty days in a coma. It reaches out for all the creatures here on the ground without tying them up to a supposed Boden-ständigkeit (rootedness-in-the-soil) of each Dasein and being. Heidegger' s making up for World War I, however, consists in the appeal to enter the war plane again and, like the heroes of Verdun, to transgress the line to and in war again.

17. G.W.F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Zweiter Teil , ed. G. Lasson (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1969), 3. «The German language has preserved essence in the past participle [ gewesen ] of the verb to be ; for essence is past—but timelessly past—being» ( Hegel's Science of Logic , trans. A. V. Miller [Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993], 389).

18. Here and in all of what follows, I present ordinary Dasein as being involved in two different activities. It positively relies on and lives in certain possibilities provided by the «they,» the inauthentic possibilities. At the same time, like the «they,» it covers up certain other possibilities, the authentic ones. One might object that this misrepresents the passage beginning with «Proximally and for the most part» and ending with «in one's resolution» (BT 435; SZ 383). For Heidegger might say here that the «they» relates to all possibilities in the same way, namely, it has made each of them «unrecognizable by ambiguity» (BT 435; SZ 383). I see ordinary Dasein involved in two kinds of activities because of the passages on ordinary Dasein I discussed in the preceding section on the anschwellender Bocksgesang. In addition, Heidegger says «mostly» (BT 435; SZ 383) and not «always,» and other expressions in the passage seem to indicate that he thinks of the two activities I mentioned. However, for two reasons I need not elaborate this issue. First, even if one assumes that the «they» has made all possibilities unrecognizable, the result is the same. For once authentic Dasein has begun to undo the work of ambiguity with regard to some or all of the possibilities, ordinary Dasein sees that another Dasein, authentic Dasein, interprets a given possibility differently than ordinary Dasein itself does. From that moment on, a possibility, or even every possibility, is split up into two different ones. Ordinary Dasein sticks to its interpretation and is told by authentic Dasein that ordinary Dasein's interpretation is inauthentic and should be replaced with the authentic interpretation of the possibility. Thus, it might be the case that prior to the anschwellender Bocksgesang ordinary Dasein was engaged only in one type of activity. However, with the beginning of the anschwellender Bocksgesang, or at the latest with the beginning of the crisis, ordinary Dasein is engaged in two kinds of activities. Second, it will become clear in chapter 3 that the problem of whether prior to the beginning of the anschwellen-der Bocksgesang ordinary Dasein is engaged in only one activity or in two was indeed an interesting question for conservatives and right-wingers but that they didn't need to discuss it in detail. The brevity of Heidegger's passage on the issue in section 74 reflects this fact.

19. On destiny and fate see also chapter 3. In part, her misunderstanding of the passage might go back to the fact that the sentence on fateful Dasein that she quotes is falsely translated (see below, chapter 3, n. 3).

20. One can be sure that Guignon does not distinguish between «überkommene Ausgelegtheit» and «heritage» (or, rather, the only distinction he makes is that from the viewpoint of authentic Dasein what was labeled «überkommene Ausgelegtheit» becomes a source of choices and as such might be called «heritage»). For if he had made a distinction, he would have noted this in some way since it is the decisive point for the entire passage. Not distinguishing between the notions is a practice with a long history in English interpretations of Being and Time . In fact, I have not found any interpretations that distinguish between them.

21. Ordinary Dasein «understands itself in terms of» (BT 435; SZ 383) possibilities, but it doesn't «disclose» (BT 435; SZ 383) them. Rather, it lives quite as a matter of course in the possibilities its parents, peer group, etc. have instilled into it, and it has «made unrecognizable by ambiguity» (BT 435; SZ 383) the authentic possibilities by reducing them to something present at hand, that is, to something without any significance for Dasein. As to the authentic possibilities, ordinary Dasein, so to speak, «verschließt» (locks up) them. Authentic Dasein undoes this operation. The best expression for authentic Dasein's operation is indeed that it «erschließt» (SZ 383; «discloses,» BT 435) these possibilities, that is, unlocks them. Thus, authentic Dasein's operation is concerned only with a subset of all possibilities contained in the «way of interpreting Dasein which has come down to us» (BT 435; SZ 383). Heidegger introduces as the term for this subset the notion of heritage.

22. Heidegger can pun on «wieder» and «wider» (BT 438, n. 1) because he runs no risk of being misunderstood. For, as I have shown in chapter 1, his usage of erwidern is familiar to German speakers. In addition, because of the phrases, «But . . . at the same time» («aber zugleich») and «that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past'» («was im Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt») (BT 438; SZ 386) native speakers of German recognize immediately (or after some thought) that the objects of erwidern and Widerruf are not the same. It is similar in the case of Hei-degger's usage of the preposition «aus.» Those who know German are familiar with the different meanings of «aus» as for instance in «Ich renne aus dem brennenden Haus» (I run out of the burning house) versus «Er kommt/ist aus dem Hause Windsor» (He comes/is from the house Windsor = he is a member of the Windsor family) or «Das besteht/ist gemacht aus Stahl» (This consists/is made out of steel).

23. When a soccer player normally not known for outstanding skills performs a brilliant move, one says, «Das war (schlicht und einfach) Glück/Zufall» (That was [simply] a matter of luck/chance). However, if the same move is made by a famous player, one might exclaim, «Das ist Können/Genialität/Professionalität!» (That is skill/the genius/professionalism!). When faced with a sad or tragic event that happened to oneself or someone else, one might exclaim, «Das war Schicksal!» (That was fate.) In all these sentences one points out the «real» cause and thus rejects other factors that could be adduced as causes of the event to be explained. The soccer player shouldn't pretend that he is capable of producing such moves by himself. It was not your fault that your friend was hit by a car after you had invited him or her for dinner and several drinks. It was fate. For those who believe in fate the word «fate» denotes God or some other overall power guiding affairs in this world. Those who don't believe in fate use the sentence «das war Schicksal» as a shorthand way of saying that the event happened due to a combination of factors that one could not be expected to foresee. The fact that in such sentences in such situations one always implicitly rejects other possible causes is probably the reason why one doesn't use any article with «Schicksal.» The indefinite or definite article would, so to speak, be «the breach into which» (IM 163; EM 124) not, as Heidegger says there, «the preponderant power of being {Sein}» (IM 163; EM 124) but the «power» of questioning and dialectics «bursts» (IM 163; EM 124) to challenge one's claim and to require one to explain why God or that entity called «fate» wanted to kill your friend and how it made the car do so. Thus, to leave out any article as Heidegger does with regard to «Erbschaft» rhetorically immunizes the sentence against possible criticism. As these examples show, the absence of any article can be used to serve the polemical function of the definite article (see above chapter 1, n. 17). In the case of a surprising and pleasant event, one uses the indefinite article with «Wunder» : «Das ist/war ein Wunder!» (That is/was a miracle.). The reason for the difference is probably that «Schick-sal» always denotes an agent acting continuously and over time or a web of intertwined causes acting over time, while a miracle is by definition a sudden break with such webs. The definite article with «Erbe» («aus dem Erbe,» SZ 383; «in terms of the heritage,» BT 435) is as polemical as the definite article with «Volk» (SZ 384; «people,» BT 435) (see chapter 1. n. 17) since two paragraphs after the one with the Erbe, Heidegger explains the Erbe as «community, of {the} people» (see chapter 3), and authentic Dasein will finally cancel the world of the «they» (see already chapter 1).

24. See below, note 25.

25. The assumption that Heidegger uses «"Güte"» (SZ 383; «'goodness',» BT 435) in the sense of a universal criterion is incompatible with the sentence in which the expression occurs. For it doesn't follow logically from an idea of the good that everything good is a heritage. In addition, it should not follow if one wants to develop the goodness as a criterion for criticism of a given form of life. Even if one assumes for the sake of the argument that it might follow, one would be curious to see an argument for this and not just the statement. However, Heidegger doesn't refer to something like an idea of the good as a criterion for criticism. Rather, the sentence is an example of his method of listening to language. Within that framework, the entire sentence makes sense, doesn't refer to some universal idea of the good, and doesn't imply a long argument either. If within a philosophical text «'goodness'» in the first instance seems to be the abstract noun for «'good'» (BT 435) and seems to point into the direction of a universally applicable standard or criterion, «'goodness'» is not a fortunate translation of Heidegger's German word «"Güte".» In everyday language as well as in philosophical language the abstract noun for «gut» (good) is usually not «Güte» but «das Gute» or «das Gut» (see, for instance in the index of Scheler, FE 620f.; FEe 613). Heidegger regarded philosophy of values as trapped in the ontology of beings as present-at-hand (BT 132; SZ 99; see IM 196ff, EM I49ff.). The word «Güte» is used in two ways. It can mean «quality,» the quality of products, for instance. In cam-parson to «Qualität» («this product is of the highest quality») or simple expressions such as «sehr gut» («this product is very good»), «Güte» («this product is of the highest Güte») sounds slightly old-fashioned or hypocritical, at least for all those who have a rather sober attitude toward current techniques of advertisement. For those who use «Güte» in that way try to take advantage of the second use of «Güte» and its sociological and economic implications. In what follows, I use «Güte» only in the second meaning, according to which at Heidegger's time «Güte» was a polemical notion, which it still is even today though probably to a lesser degree and though it has become somewhat old-fashioned. «Güte» denotes an inner core that manifests itself in a kind of atmosphere—Benjamin might say aura—that some things have and others do not. For instance, a well-crafted piece of furniture, an old piece of jewelry inherited from one's ancestors, or fruits produced by the farmer in the proper traditional way have Güte. Pieces manufactured by a craftsman have Güte, whereas things from the assembly line or the results of modern farming techniques with all their chemicals don't have Güte. The word most often implies that products of Gate are based on tradition and are for that reason better than products from the assembly line. Therefore, conservatives like to use the word Gate whereas most others get a little bit nervous when they hear it since the use of this word most of the time implies an appreciation of tradition and a denigration of what is new (that is, of what is there and is developed without presenting a long history and tradition), or of «das Moderne» (SZ 391; «the modem,» BT 444). Thus, Heidegger listens to the conservative use of the word Güte according to which exclusively things incorporating a tradition or being an Erbschaft have Gate whereas no modern thing has Güte, and from this he infers the etymology of the German adjective gut and the abstract noun Gut. For a conservative and right-winger like Heidegger, «gut» and «Gut» do not go back to «das Gute» but rather to «Güte» for there is no highest value «das Gute.» For a conservative and right-winger like Scheler, «gut» and «Gut» go back to «das Gute» but «das Gute» in turn goes back to «Güte» for «das Gut» has been properly realized only in precapitalist times with their Güte, whereas capitalism represents an overturning of values and has no Güte (see below, chapter 3, sections B, C, and D). All those who live in stable traditions are «good» because they partake in the «good» that keeps this tradition alive. Being the core of tradition, «das Gute» is transmitted from one generation to the next as estate. Only something that partakes in «das Gute» is good. According to Heidegger, there is no such thing «das Gute.» However, there is «Güte.» Something can be «gut» and have «Güte» only if it partakes in an estate. For nothing can be good independent of an estate. Partaking in an estate, something good is (a part of the) inheritance, or it is someone who is the heir of (a part of) an estate. Thus, Heidegger says that «everything 'good' {alles ''Gute"} is a heritage {Erbschaft}» (BT 435; SZ 383) and that «the character of 'goodness' {"Güte"} lies in making authentic existence possible» (BT 435; SZ 383). Heidegger might add that estate and everything partaking in estate has Güte in the sense of «grace, generosity,» since the estate provides Daseine with their identity, gives it to them as a gift, whereas the moderns don't have such a source of identity; a source that is gütig, kind-hearted, benevolent, generous to them. In this sense, Heidegger would say the subordinate clause is justified. The «if» indicates that he cannot give any other reason for this equation of «good» and «heritage.»

Given this use of the word «Güte» and given the conclusions Heidegger draws from it, an association comes to one's mind he would probably not have objected to. Leave away the «e» in «Gute» («everything 'good'»), that is, take «Gut,» and add an «r» to «"Güte"» («'goodness'»), then we have «Gut» and «Güter,» the singular and the plural of «estate,» «farm,» that is, what aristocrats and, on a smaller scale, farmers have, namely, the land they cultivate. The farmers and aristocrats have a stable identity because the land they have inherited from their ancestors provides them with that identity. (Today, in German supermarkets one can find liverwurst, Sauerkraut, and other food advertised as having been produced «nach Gutsherrenart» [according to the way it was produced on the Güter of a gentleman farmer], which is supposed to convey that the respective product is much better than others of its kind.) The proletarians, however, by definition have nothing inherited and after their death they leave behind only their children without handing anything down to them. The farmers and aristocrats can lose their land; the proletarians, however, «have nothing to lose but their chains,» as Marx and Engels wrote at the end of the Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto , trans. S. Moore [London: Penguin Books, 1985], 121). Thus, the struggle between the Right and the Left over the proletarians. The Left offered the promise that by further developing the contradictions within Gesellschaft one can transform bourgeois Gesellschaft into a socialist Gesellschaft and thus get rid of Gemeinschaft (see chapter 4). The Right promised that by canceling Gesellschaft, that is, by ending the class struggle, canceling the realm of the public and political, and by identifying themselves with the Volksgemeinschaft, the proletarians would get something. Every proletarian would get his or her «fate,» that is, his or her share in «destiny» and Volk, that miraculous entity that has Güte for all of its members provided that they submit to its call (see chapter 3). Idle talk in Europe says that the United States is the country «without history and tradition,» and many U.S. citizens are proud of their «dynamism» and «creative attitude.» Still, sometimes some miss something. Thus, they like to go to Heidelberg, Rome, Tuscany, and all the other places with Güte. As is known, European companies try to cash in on this need for Güte. On the inner side of the back cover of The New Yorker , November 10, 1997, the Swiss watch company Patek Philippe placed an advertisement for its new watch, «Men's Neptune.» The advertisement shows a photo of a father and his son in winter coats playing chess in a park. The text reads: «You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation.» It also says that the men's Neptune is «self-winding» and «hand-crafted in 18-karat solid gold.» Since Americans don't have traditions and since the average reader of The New Yorker is not a proletarian, the line under the photo of the men's Neptune reads: «Begin your own tradition.» On page 3 of the same issue of The New Yorker , a company for electronic goods, Sony, advertises its new «VAIO Notebook.» The advertisement suggests connecting Sony's portable data projector, its digital handycam camcorder, etc., lists other advantages, and concludes: «Then take a break and sneak off to your favorite hideaway for some intel-powered video gaming. Hey, who says you can't mix business with pleasure?» Sony would never advertise its notebook the way Patek Phillipe advertises its men's Neptune. Everyone knows that notebooks after some time look unsightly or somewhat dirty, that technically they are outdated after two years or so, and that they stop working after a few years anyway. In contrast to the men's Neptune, the VAIO notebook has no Güte. Still, it is a product of high quality. In Germany as in all other countries in Europe, industrialization and capitalism emerged in a country with old traditions and many products of Güte, and this was often experienced as a brutal offense and threat to the traditional ways of life, not only because of the economic crises coming along with capitalism. For an example of a piece of Güte see the baptismal font in Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter [New York: Knopf, 1975], 30ff.). As was mentioned, a piece of Güte does not need to consist of gold. In his analysis of "The World-hood of the World" (BT 91ff; SZ 63ff), Heidegger refers to the world of a craftsman and the world in a village or small town. He points out that, in that world, Dasein «does not 'devour the kilometres'» (BT 140; «es "frißt nicht Kilometer",» SZ 106). Also, Dasein's suit is «cut to his figure {auf den Leib zugeschnitten}» in contrast to suits and other goods «produced by the dozen {Dutzendware}» (BT 100; SZ 70f.). Cars and other products from the assembly line have no Güte.

26. At that point, Heidegger uses the indefinite article with Erbe («the handing down of a heritage {eines Erbes} constitutes itself» [BT 435; SZ 435]). One might say that he should have said, «des Erbes» (of the heritage). However, the indefinite article is by no means a slip of the pen or imprecise. Rather, in this sentence he generalizes his model of the polemical aspect of the Erbe (see chapter 1, n. 17). In the German text, this is underscored by the word «je» (in each occurrence of such an happening or, as Staumbaugh has it, «always» [ Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 351]), which Macquarrie and Robinson have left untranslated.

27. On athletes in Heidegger see below, chapter 6, n. 24. Heidegger's phrase «kon-stituiert sich» is the Latin word for the German word «sich zusammensetzen,» which he uses in the negative two paragraphs later in regard to destiny («Destiny is not something that puts itself together {setzt sich nicht . . . zusammen} out of individual fates» [BT 436; SZ 384]). See also below, this chapter n. 32, chapter 3, n. 51, and chapter 6, n. 24.

28. Schürmann, Heidegger: On Being and Acting—From Principles to Anarchy , n. p.

29. Reiner Schürmann, Des hégémonies brisées (Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress, 1996). Readers of the book will hope that in a few years time it will be discussed as what it is, namely, by far the most powerful response (or «reciprocative rejoinder») [BT 438]) by Heideggerians to Hans Blumenberg's The Legitimacy of the Modern Age . An English translation with Indiana University Press is under way. Several messengers into the English language have already arrived: "Neoplatonic Henology as an Overcoming of Metaphysics: On a Strategy in the History of Philosophy," Research in Phenomenology 13 (1983), 25-41; "The Law of Nature and Pure Nature: A Thought-Experience in Meister Eckhart," Krisis 5-6 (1986-87), 148-169; ''Tragic Differing: The Law of the One and the Law of Contraries in Parmenides," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13:1 (1988), 3-20; "Ultimate Double Binds," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 14:2-15:1 (1991), 213-236; ''Riveted to A Monstrous Site," Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore, eds., The Heidegger Case: On Philosophy and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 313-330; "A Brutal Awakening to the Tragic Condition of Being: On Heidegger's Beiträge zur Philosophie, " Karsten Harries and Christopher Jamme, eds., Martin Heidegger: Art, Politics, and Technology (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1994), 89-105. A bibliography of Schürmann's writings can be found in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19:2-20:1 (1997), 73-78; the issue is a special issue "In Memoriam Reiner Schürmann." It should be noted that Schürmann regarded French as his native habitat.

30. On the different modes of solicitude in Heidegger see chapter 3, n. 25.

31. As Heidegger goes on, the «they» would of course not agree with his interpretation. However, it «would be a misunderstanding if we were to seek to have the explication of these phenomena confirmed by looking to the "they" for agreement» (BT 219; SZ 175).

32. It is the activity of the Erbe that constitutes the act in which it delivers itself into the present in order from now on to be active in the present. It demands of the Daseine to passively überliefern sich selbst, to hand themselves over, to the Erbe (see pp. 16ff. and what follows above in this section). In An Introduction to Metaphysics , Heidegger uses a military term for the same motif. Being breaks into the present like a group of soldiers breaking through the lines of the enemy: «The overpowering as such, in order to appear in its power, requires a place, a scene of disclosure. The essence of being-human opens up to us only when understood through this need compelled by being itself {das Sein selbst}. The being-there of historical man means: to be posited as the breach {Bresche} into which the preponderant power of being bursts in its appearing {in die die Übergewalt des Seins erscheinend hereinbricht} . . . . Thus the being-there of the historical man is the breach through which the being embodied in the essent can open. As such it is an incident [Zwischen-fall, a fall-between], the incident in which suddenly the unbound powers of being come forth and are accomplished as history» (IM 163f.).

The German text of the sentence with the second occurrence of «breach» reads as follows: «Als die Bresche für die Eröffnung des ins Werk gesetzten Seins im Seienden ist das Dasein des geschichtlichen Menschen ein Zwischen-fall , der Zwischenfall, in dem plötzlich die Gewalten der losgebundenen Übergewalt des Seins aufgehen und ins Werk als Geschichte eingehen» (EM 125). Literally translated, it reads: «Being the breach for the opening/manifestation/revelation of Being having been put to work in the realm of the essents, the Dasein of the historical man is an in-cident ; that incident in which suddenly the powers of the unbound superior power of Being come forth and enter into/become the work as history.» «Being» («Sein») corresponds to «heritage» («Erbe»). «To have been put to work (by itself),» «to become the work,» and «to be unbound (by itself)» correspond to «Überlieferung» («handing down»), and «opening/manifestation/revelation» corresponds to «constitutes itself» («konstituiert sich»). It might also be the case that «to have been put to work (by itself),» «to become the work,» and «to be unbound (by itself)» correspond to «constitutes itself» («konstituiert sich»), and «opening/manifestation/revelation» corresponds to «Überlieferung» («handing down»). Since this question is immaterial for my purposes, I don't discuss it. The entire happening is the coming forth of the powers of the unbound superior powers of Being for which the humans are just the site and incident. «Manifestation,» «to have been put to work (by itself)» and «to be unbound» (either by itself or by someone else) also correspond to «become free» (BT 436; SZ 384). In each of these cases, that which has been put to work, etc., exists prior to the moment in which it is put to work, etc., as for instance, in the explosion of a nuclear plant the atomic energy slumbering in the reactor is all of a sudden «unbound.» In Being and Time , the sentence on handing down of the Erbe constituting itself is the beginning of the crisis the resolution of which consists in authentic Dasein bringing the Daseine out of their diaspora back to their native habitat through the repetition of the Erbe, that is, the Volksgemeinschaft (see chapter 3). In An Introduction to Metaphysics , being breaks into the breach in order for the essence of being-human to be «carried back to its ground» (IM 163f; EM 124f.).

Macquarrie and Robinson did not change the grammatical structure of the sentence with the handing down of the heritage. Stambaugh seems to have overlooked the reflexive pronoun «sich» in «konstituiert sich» (SZ 383; «constitutes itself,» BT 435). By this failure, she turns the sentence upside down and presents the happening in which the Erbe takes over the Daseine as though the handing down of the Erbe were passively grounded in authentic Dasein, which in this way remains the basic entity: «If everything "good" is a matter of heritage and if the character of "goodness" lies in making authentic existence possible, then handing down a heritage is always constituted in resoluteness» ( Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 351). Probably it is also a matter of different philosophical and cultural traditions that make it difficult for Americans to understand such sentences in Heidegger. In Anglo-American philosophy, the empiricist and pragmatic strands are dominant, and American culture is about the self-invention of individuals (see section C of chapter 5), while in Germany entities like reason, Geist, tradition, and community have always been rather strong.

33. As I pointed out, in the sentence with «the way of interpreting Dasein which has come down to us» (BT 435; SZ 383) the preposition «aus» has several meanings. However, the same preposition in the sentence with « in terms of {aus} the heritage {Erbe} » has only one meaning, namely the same as in the sentences from Aristotle's Physics mentioned above. Heritage claims that each Dasein recognizes that Dasein can acquire identity and stability, that is, that Dasein can become «good» only if it gives up its ordinary way of life and submits itself to the Erbe and one of its slots. In the time of his engagement with National Socialism, Heidegger liked to use «aus» in the sense of the principle or origin to which one has to submit, because only in this way can one become «good.» I already mentioned Leo Schlageter, who was imprisoned and sentenced to death, and I already quoted some passages of Heidegger's speech on him in May 1933 (see chapter 1, n. 33). The first sentence of the speech was the following: «Wir wollen zu seiner Ehrung diesen Tod einen Augenblick bedenken, um aus diesem Tod unser Leben zu verstehen» (Farías, Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus , 144). In both Farías, Heidegger and Nazism (89) and Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy (40), the preposition «aus» is left out. To carry over its force one might translate: «We wish to honor him by reflecting, for a moment of vision, upon his death, in order to understand our own lives from out of {aus} this death.» At a later point in section 74 Heidegger talks about Dasein choosing its hero (BT 437; SZ 385). Schlageter was one of those possibilities covered up by ordinary Dasein. The preposition «aus» («from out of») designates one of the slots contained in the Erbe that, as the other quotes from Heidegger's speech show (see chapter 1, n. 33), «we» have to submit to as to «our» principle in order thereupon to cleanse ourselves of our ordinary way of life and to become authentic. As I already pointed out in chapter 1, the repetition of what-has-been-there does not mean that «we» repeat the past the way it has been present in the past. For the past recurs under changed circumstances. In addition, it is not necessary that we literally repeat the deeds of Schlageter. We need not go to Silesia. Rather, destiny and Schlageter himself, if properly understood, tell us that our place to repeat Schlageter is the Freiburg University. Authentic Dasein « übernimmt » (SZ 383; « takes over , » BT 435) the Erbe and its appropriate share in it. It realizes that the Erbe demands to take over the institutions of ordinary Dasein in order to drive out the spirit of the «they» and the bearers of that spirit and to reestablish the institutions in the right spirit of the Erbe. The first sentence of Heidegger's Rectorate Address reads: «The assumption of {Die Übemahme} the rectorate is the commitment to the spiritual {geistige } leadership of this institution of higher learning» (MH 5; see Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 29; SB 9). The commitment has its principle in the Erbe. Thus, in the second sentence Heidegger refers to the principle by means of the preposition «aus»: «The following of teachers and students only awakens and strengthens through a true and common rooted-ness in the essence of the German university {aus der wahrhaften und gemeinsamen Verwurzelung im Wesen der deutschen Universität} » (MH 5; see Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 29; SB 9). We have to re-submit to, and regain, the principle, the beginning of Greek philosophy. «All science remains bound to that beginning of philosophy and draws from it {Aus ihm schöpft sie} the strength of its essence» (Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 31; see MH 7; SB 11). Right at the end of the rectorate address, Heidegger says: «We can only fully understand the glory and greatness of this new beginning, however, if we carry within ourselves that deep and broad thoughtfulness upon which the ancient wisdom of the Greeks drew in uttering the words {aus der die alte griechische Weisheit das Wort gesprochen}: ta . . . megala panta episphale . . ."All that is great stands in the storm. . ." (Plato, Republic , 497d, 9)» (Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 39; see MH 13; SB 9). (See on the last quote section A of chapter 6.) As was mentioned, the beginning—community in Being and Time and the pre-Socratics in the later Heidegger—has disappeared; however, having disappeared it continues to exist; we have to regain and repeat it, and we can do so only because it hasn't disappeared after its disappearance. It is by no means my intention to ridicule such an assumption. To the contrary, with regard to community Tillich maintains that it was precisely the basic flaw of all the leftists to have neglected the presence of community after its disappearance, and he himself wanted to develop a politics that pays attention to that fact and that fulfills the needs embodied in communities (see section B of chapter 4). However, Heidegger refers to the assumed fact of the existence of the Greek beginning after its disappearance in an extremely reifying and violent way. See the long passage with the short sentence, «The beginning exists still» (Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 32; see MH 8; «Der Anfang ist noch,» SB 12). On a similar sentence with «ist» see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 148ff.

34. For Heidegger's «'provisional'» («"vorläufige"») see above, n. 11 of chapter 1. Heidegger puts his «"vorläufig"» into quotation marks because he wants us to hear in vorläiufig in the sense of «provisional» ordinary Dasein's running forward on the time-line (and the other way round). Ordinary Dasein is engaged in all its vulgar possibilities. The call calls it back from them. Thus, ordinary Dasein's vorlaufende possibilities are vorläufig, that is, provisional.

35. «So if it wants to come to itself {zu ihm selbst}, it must first pull itself {sich} together from {aus} the dispersion and disconnectedness of the very things that have 'come to pass'» (BT 441f.; SZ 390). In this sentence, too, Heidegger could have written «sich selbst» instead of «ihm selbst.» However, for him «sich selbst» would not have carried sufficiently the soteriological aspect, so to speak, of the happening he is talking about. For by becoming authentic, Dasein hands itself down to the Volksgemeinschaft and is relieved from the burden of autonomy of the bourgeois subject and from isolation from others in bourgeois society (see chapter 3 and section C of chapter 5). The fact that the English translators don't bring out the difference between «sich selbst» and «ihm selbst» (and probably cannot do so without commentary) contributes to the «American» understanding of the passage and the entire section 74 according to which the individual Dasein does not give up its individuality but remains the focal point of historicality (see section C of chapter 5).

As I show in this chapter at least to some degree, the motif of repetition in section 74—that in authenticity the Daseine are called upon to cancel the present world in order to repeat a world that has-been-there—doesn't break into Being and Time out of the blue. Rather, it is well prepared in the course of the book up to that section. In regard to this and sentences such as the one quoted at the beginning of this note, Heidegger's use of notions like «dispersion» and especially his use of the preposition «zurück» («back») require a detailed treatment. They contribute to the atmosphere of the Bocksgesang—that we must go back and repeat—especially when they don't contribute directly anything to the thought he presents in the respective paragraph. I mentioned Schürmann's acknowledgment in his book on Heidegger, where he presents an expansion of territory as the regaining of lost territory. Of course, in a framework of history as the repetition of a lost world the problem becomes urgent why ordinary Dasein left this world to begin with. It is interesting that this problem caused something like a Freudian slip of the tongue in Being and Time . In section 75 Heidegger says that the question concerning the connectedness of life asks «in which of its own kinds of Being Dasein loses itself in such a manner {verliert es sich so} that it must, as it were, only subsequently pull itself together out of its dispersal {sich. . . aus der Zerstreuung zusammenholen}, and think up for itself a unity in which that "together" is embraced» (BT 442; SZ 390). This is the question of why ordinary Dasein left the original world. However, as also the following sentences show, the question is raised just in passing and as instrumental to the main question, namely, how subsequently to pull oneself together out of dispersion. The translators remark that the older editions have «verliert es sich nicht so» instead of «verliert es sich so» (BT 442, n. 1). That is, in the older editions the question was «in which of its own kinds of Being Dasein does not lose itself in such a manner.» This question gives a sharper edge to the instrumental question of the later editions and even asks for the conditions rendering the main question of the later editions superfluous: Under which conditions would Dasein not have fallen into dispersion? It would have been better, if it hadn't done so. If it hadn't fallen into dispersion, we would not have to deal with the main question of the later editions, namely, how to pull oneself together out of dispersion. (To «pull itself together» is required of Dasein in the moment when the handing down of the heritage pulls itself together or «constitutes itself» [BT 435; SZ 383].) Right at the beginning of the sections on conscience, Heidegger talks about «Dasein's lostness in the "they"» (BT 312; SZ 268) and writes: «So Dasein makes no choices, gets carried along by the nobody, and thus ensnares itself in inauthenticity. This process can be reversed {rückgängig gemacht werden} only if Dasein specifically brings itself back to itself {zurückholt zu ihm selbst} 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 {Wählen dieser Wahl }—deciding for a potentiality-for-Being, and making this decision from one's own Self» (BT 312f.; SZ 268). Here, too, Heidegger could have said «zu sich selbst,» but for the reason mentioned above preferred to say «zu ihm selbst.» Contrary to Birmingham, to become authentic does not mean to break with each and every past. Contrary to Guignon, it does not mean either to screen the different possibilities offered by the past and choose the one that fits one's utopian ideal best. Rather, to become authentic means to repeat the possibility that Dasein has been before it lost that possibility by losing that possibility and itself in the «they.» To become authentic is a «Wieder-holung» (SZ 385; hyphen mine, J. F.; «repetition,» BT 437). Authentic Dasein brings (holen) back (wieder) Dasein's own past, which has disappeared since Dasein has lost itself in the «they.» Authentic Dasein does so by bringing (holen) up again for reconsideration, or re-decision, (nach) a choice that it failed to make. This choice (against the «they») would have prevented Dasein from loosing itself in the «they.» Since Dasein failed to make the choice, the past has disappeared and the «they» have taken over. Thus, authentic Dasein's «choosing to make this choice» (BT 313; SZ 268) chooses against the world of the «they» in order to repeat the past, which has disappeared since Dasein failed to choose against the «they» and to keep the past alive. In section 74 the past, which has been pushed aside by the «they,» raises its voice as heritage and «constitutes itself» (BT 435; SZ 383) by calling upon Dasein to choose to make the choice, that is, to cancel the «they,» society, in order to rerealize heritage, or community, which has been pushed aside by society. In this sense, one is entitled to read the phrase «ursprüngliche» («primordial») in «the whole of existence stretched along. . . in a way which is primordial and not lost» (BT 442; SZ 390) in a temporal sense, as this is, by the way, the sense in which «ursprünglich» is used in everyday language most of the time.

It is interesting that the change of the negation into an affirmation on page 390 of Sein und Zeit (BT 442) didn't require any changes in the following sentences. It is also interesting that the question of the older editions (as well as the instrumental question of the later editions) is raised just to disappear, and that Heidegger doesn't give any reason for his claim that authentic Dasein's choice is «choosing to make this choice [Wählen dieser Wahl]» (BT 313; SZ 268). For right-wingers didn't like to go into the issue. It is simply destiny or fate. The only more detailed answer was Hitler' s, which not everyone wanted to subscribe to, though Scheler did so for some time (see below, chapter 3, sections A and D). «Destiny» and «fate» were polemical notions gaining their strength and appeal from their denial of leftist theories (see chapter 3; see also this chapter, n. 23)

The edition of Sein und Zeit as volume 2 of the Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977) is a reprint of the seventh edition and contains Heidegger's notes in the margins of his «Hüttenexemplar,» that is, the copy he used in his hut. However, it doesn't contain the changes Heidegger made from the second edition onward. (Upon Heidegger's request, the editor, Friedrich-Wilhelm Herrmann, even made changes of the text of the seventh edition without indicating them as such; see ibid., 579.) Independent of the Gesamtausgabe and its publishing house, Rainer A. Bast and Heinrich P. Delfosse have produced the Handbuch zum Textstudium von Martin Heideggers ' Sein und Zeit, ' vol. 1: Stellenindizes: Philologisch-kritischer Apparat (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1979). It contains a word index based on the fourteenth edition, «examples» (ibid., 388) of the changes in the second edition, an index of the changes in the seventh edition, an index of the misprints, the list of misprints included in Sein und Zeit from the first to the sixth edition, and several other indices and material. In none of the indices is the change from the negative to the affirmative form on page 390 listed. Klaus Heinrich, chair of the Institut for Reli-gionswissenschaften (located in the Paul Tillich-Haus) at the Freie Universität Berlin, in one of his lectures in the mid-seventies talked about page 390 of Sein und Zeit . His occasional comments on Heidegger (for instance, tertium datur: Eine religionsphilosophische Einführung in die Logik [Frankfurt: Stroemfeld/Roter Stem, 1981], 65ff.; vol. 1 of Klaus Heinrich, Dahlemer Vorlesungen ) are invaluable, and so were all his lectures.

36. Note that, as in «Die . . . sich überliefemde Entschlossenheit» (SZ 385; BT 437; see above, pp. 16ff.), here too one has an instance of a missing dative object. The context, however, makes it unavoidable to add as the dative object «fate» and «heritage» of the preceding paragraph. Thus, this sentence confirms, or makes explicit, that «ihm selbst» in the preceding paragraph ultimately refers to «fate» and «heritage.»

37. I pointed out Schürmann's attitude toward the English translation of his French book on Heidegger and Heidegger's assumption that even after its disappearance the origin still exists (see n. 33 of this chapter). I also pointed out the Freudian slip of the tongue in Heidegger and the fact that the change of the negative into an affirmative expression didn't require any changes in the subsequent text (see n. 35 of this chapter). One can see all these problems also in regard to the passage I discussed in this section: «As thrown, it has been submitted to a 'world', and exists factically with Others. Proximally and for the most part the Self is lost in the "they." It understands itself in terms of {aus} those possibilities of existence which 'circulate' in the 'average' public way of interpreting Dasein today. These possibilities have mostly been made unrecognizable by ambiguity; yet they are well known to us. The authentic existentiell understanding is so far from extricating itself from the way of interpreting Dasein which has come down to us, that in each case it is in terms of this interpretation {aus ihr}, against it, and yet again for it, that any possibility one has chosen is seized upon in one's resolution» (BT 435; SZ 383). The passage allows for two interpretations. The phrase, «those possibilities of existence which 'circulate' in the 'average' public way of interpreting Dasein today» might refer to the possibilities of the original world w 1 ; in that case, the phrase, «These possibilities . . . known to us,» means that living in w 2 ordinary Dasein has, so to speak, perverted the possibilities of the original world w 1 . However, the phrase, «those possibilities of existence which 'circulate' in the 'average' public way of interpreting Dasein today» might also refer to the possibilities in w 2 . In that case, the phrase, «These possibilities . . . known to us,» means that living in w 2 ordinary Dasein covers up by ambiguity all those possibilities, or all those aspects of all of its possibilities, in which w 1 has always been present or in which it raises its voice once the Bocksgesang begins. (According to the second interpretation, both occurrences of «aus» have the ambiguity I pointed out; in the first interpretation, only the second one has it, while the first «aus» is used the way it is used in the sentences on the Erbe.) However, this doesn't mean that Heidegger speaks unclearly or imprecisely. For from the viewpoint of authentic Dasein both interpretations amount to the same. Or in the first interpretation the issue is formulated more from the perspective of the estate, w 1 , and in the second interpretation it is formulated from the perspective of the heirs of w 1 (see this chapter, n. 25). Both issues are the same problem, for the estate demands of its heirs to be rerealized. In addition, the problem and its aspects are familiar to conservatives and right-wingers (see in this chapter, nn. 25 and 35).

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).

1. In light of the passages on utopian ideals I quoted at length in section B of chapter 1, I take him to say: Christians, Marxists, liberals, and conservatives all live in the same tradition and present. Each group has specific utopian ideals. Due to the particular utopian ideal of each group, they each interpret the past differently. The Christians interpret it in terms of a lost state prior to original sin, communists discover a state prior to private ownership of the means of production, and so on. Thus, each of them «creatively reinterpret[s]» (HC 138) the past in the light of its particular utopian ideal. Similar to Macquarrie and Robinson's «conversation with the past,» guided by some utopian ideal, we can discover several possibilities inherent in the past, some of which we can reject and others adopt, depending on our utopian ideals. A Christian might either deny that there was a state prior to private ownership of the means of production or maintain that this state is identical with the state prior to original sin or not a relevant possibility to choose.

It might be possible that Guignon means that authentic Dasein's «projection onto future possibilities» (HC 141) and its encounter of a «future as a "destiny"» (HC 141) are identical with Dasein's «utopian ideals» (HC 138). For in his comments on the passage on destiny and fate in Being and Time (BT 436; SZ 384) he writes: «To say that our communal past is a "heritage" that points to a ''destiny" is to say that we can find insights in our past as to what we should accomplish as a community. . .. It is because we have the resources of our shared past available to us that we have a basis for selecting the life-defining possibilities that help us "simplify" and focus our lives» (HC 136). If he means that Dasein acquires its utopian ideal by choosing one of the possibilities offered by the past, my claim that, according to Guignon, Dasein selects the possibility relevant to it in light of its utopian ideal (see above, chapter 1, section B), would be wrong. On the other hand, from the beginning on («the pool of possibilities from which we draw our concrete identities as agents of particular types,» HC 130) Guignon presents the past authentic Dasein draws upon as containing several different possibilities. Thus, authentic Dasein needs some criterion to choose its possibility from the pool offered by the past. Presumably because of this problem, after the passage on destiny quoted in this note, Guignon continues: «In so far as the past gains its sense from its possible ways of making a contribution to the future, . . . the future has priority in authentic historicity. Our commitments towards the future "destiny" of our community first let the past become manifest as counting or mattering in some determinate way» (HC 136). According to this passage, Dasein's choice of its possibility seems to presuppose a commitment toward the future that is independent of the past and its offerings, even if Dasein becomes aware of this commitment only in the moment when it is confronted with the several possibilities offered by the past; a moment that in turn is made possible by Dasein's commitment to the future. Since Guignon introduces Dasein's «utopian ideals» (HC 138; see already HC 137) only after the passage on Dasein's commitment toward the future, it might be possible that Dasein's «utopian ideals» (HC 138) is just another name for Dasein's «commitments towards the future "destiny" of our community» (HC 136) that enable Dasein to choose its possibility from the pool of possibilities offered by the past.

Especially since Guignon uses Wolin's interpretation as the backdrop of his own interpretation (HC 130), he is certainly aware of the charge of circularity in Heidegger's reasoning with regard to this point (see below, chapter 5, section C). In the light of this, I assume that he means that Dasein's utopian ideal enables it to make its choice from the pool offered by the past. However, even if he assumes that Dasein's utopian ideal is identical with the possibility it chooses, my two main points with regard to Guignon remain valid, namely, that, according to him, Dasein finds a plurality of offers in the past and is in a free distance to all of them (see above, chapter 1, section B). and that all political parties at Heidegger's time work with a « mythos of pristine beginnings, a time of "falling," and a final recovery of origins» (HC 141) (see this chapter). Probably, Guignon isn't quite clear on the issue of Dasein's utopian ideals, because he is unwilling to distinguish between «the way of interpreting Dasein which has come down to us» (BT 435; SZ 383) and «heritage» (BT 435; SZ 383) (see above, chapter 2, section C) and he too assumes that Dasein chooses its fate (see below, chapter 5, section C).

2. Benjamin, Illuminations , 258. See Scheler's metaphor, chapter 3, n. 68.

3. Ibid., p. 260. On the Spartacists, the translator comments: «Leftist group, founded by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at the beginning of World War I in opposition to the pro-war policies of the German Socialist party, later absorbed by the Communist party» (ibid., 260, n.). Heidegger's notion of historicality is not identical with that of history in the Spartacist group or in Benjamin, if only for the reason that the many «generations of the downtrodden» or the «enslaved ancestors» lived in worlds in which they were enslaved and which thus should not be repeated. Also, there is a difference between the rightist and the leftist use of the word «Opfer.» See on both points my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .

4. See on this my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .

5. Even if all parties used Guignon's schema in the same way, Heidegger's concept would be rightist, since liberals and leftists simply don't interpret history in terms of Gemeinschaft and Schicksal but in terms of reason, class, and class-struggle. Guignon might object that Heidegger uses «heritage,» «community,» and «fate» as examples of possible choices. As Christians believe in a state prior to original sin, and as Marxists assume a state prior to private property, others select «heritage,» «community,» and «people» as the relevant categories to interpret history. One might easily replace this example with, say, the vocabulary of a communist choice. Thus, the logic of choice itself remains free of any specific political implications. However, in Heidegger's text there is no hint that «community, of {the} people» (BT 436; SZ 384) is meant just as an example. Rather, the development within section 74 suggests the opposite. Thus, if Heidegger had wanted to make this distinction between a general structure and the examples for it, he would have been an extremely poor writer. Furthermore, leftists and rightists negate society in different ways, for the leftists intend an Aufhebung of society whereas the rightists cancel society. First and foremost, however, liberals and leftists just simply opposed any return of a past. This is one of the few points concerning which Hitler, Scheler, Heidegger, Lukács, and Tillich agree, as I have already pointed out in chapter 3 and will make clearer in this chapter. There were some liberals or leftists of whom one might say that they used Guignon' s schema. (One of them was Ferdinand Tönnies, the author of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [1887], who later in his life joined the Social Democratic Party. He hoped that the future development of society would reintegrate to some extent the Gemeinschaften that had been pushed aside by liberal society. However, this is not the revitalization of Gemeinschaft by way of a cancellation of society but rather a dialectical sublation of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in which the main end is the establishment of a rational society. See my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .) However, in regard to the basic distinctions they were opposed to the Right. For that reason, Hitler, Scheler, Heidegger, Lukács, or Tillich could include them in their classifications.

Lukács quotes a passage from Marx: «"The present generation," says Marx, "resembles the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. It must not only conquer a new world, it must also perish in order to make room for people who will be equal to a new world"» (HI 315; GK 318). Rightist authors say that people must stop the march of mankind to Israel and go back to, or rerealize, Egypt. Romantic rightists say that people should leave behind in the desert society and all its luggage. Revolutionary rightists say that Egypt will really flourish only if it can take advantage of achievements, such as private property and modern technology, that happened to emerge in the desert. Liberals, social democrats, and communists say that mankind has to go to Israel. The Social Democrat Tönnies says that hopefully Israel has some features mankind knows from Egypt, and Tillich agrees with him in principle (see section B of this chapter). However, both Tönnies and Tillich agree with liberals, social democrats, and communists that mankind should not go back to Egypt; even if mankind wanted to do so, it could not, for the desert is about to take over Egypt or has already done so. For liberals, social democrats, and communists the emphasis is on the fact that in Israel the individuals can behave rationally and without the constraints of the Gemeinschaften in Egypt. For liberals, Israel is a fully developed liberal society. For social democrats and communists, it is a socialist society. Social democrats and communists disagree, however, as to what the last steps toward Israel will be like. For social democrats, they will be smooth or at least they consider the chances for this good. For communists, however, those steps entail violence. Lukács is familiar with the literature on community and society. He comments on Marx's sentence in a way any rightist author might do: «For the 'freedom' of the men who are alive now is the freedom of the individual isolated by the fact of property which both reifies and is itself reified. It is a freedom vis-à-vis the other (no less isolated) individuals. A freedom of the egoist, of the man who cuts himself off from others, a freedom for which solidarity and community {Zusammenhang} exist at best only as ineffectual 'regulative ideas'» (HI 315; GK 318). Some pages later, he writes, «Only when action within a community {Gemeinschaft} becomes the central personal concern of everyone involved will it be possible to abolish {aufgehoben} the split between rights and duties, the organisational form of man's separation from his own socialisation {Vergesellschaftung} and his fragmentation at the hands of the social forces {gesellschaftlichen Mächte} that control him» (HI 319; GK 322; note that also in this passage the basic theoretical term is not Gemeinschaft but rather Ver-Gesellschaftung [see above, chapter 3, n. 28], and that even in this passage Lukács uses aufheben, and not widerrufen or something similar). However, this is one of the very few times that he uses the word «Gemeinschaft,» which in his work never has theoretical status. For what is at stake is not the rerealization of a Gemeinschaft, but rather the Aufhebung of capitalist Gesellschaft into a socialist Gesellschaft.

Since Lukács uses the notion of form, and since I comment on Heidegger and Lukács in terms of that notion, some remarks on it might be useful. The notion of form ( ) was introduced by Aristotle in his theory of principles and of the becoming of natural (and technical) beings ( Physics I:7). Each being consists of matter and a form, and it comes into existence from them. A house consists of wood, bricks, etc. and the peculiar order, form, that makes them a house and not, say, a bridge. Clay is the matter of a statue, and the peculiar shape that makes it a statue of, say, Socrates, is its form. The matter of an animal, according to Aristotle, is most often female menstruation and, later on in its development and existence, its bones, flesh, etc., and its form is that entity within the animal itself that causes the bones and flesh to be ordered and to operate in such a way that we can identify the being as such-and-such an animal, say, a human being. Aristotle distinguishes between the coming into existence of a substance itself (an individual human being, cat, dog, etc.) and accidental changes—local motion, quantitative changes, and qualitative changes—of an existing substance ( Physics I:7; V:1). With the exception of the coming into existence of the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), at the beginning of the coming into existence of a substance there is only matter, which thereupon is informed by the form, which «enters» matter and «informs» it. (In other words, a human being comes into existence out of female menstruation and the male seed [the form], and not out of, say, a pig and the male seed.) In accidental changes, however, it often happens that an arriving form replaces its opposite form in the respective substance ( Physics V: 1f.). The latter also holds true for the elements. Each element consists of prime matter and a form. When air comes into existence, it does not come into existence exclusively out of prime matter and the form air. Rather, it comes into existence out of water; that is, out of prime matter informed by the form water; the form water is replaced in prime matter with the form air ( On Generation and Corruption ). Recently the notion that Aristotle assumes the existence of prime matter has been challenged (see, for instance, Charlton's appendix in his translation of Aristotle's Physics, Books I and II , trans. W. Charlton [Oxford: Clarendon, 1985], 129ff.). Different beings can be ordered according to their different degrees of complexity and the «dignity» of their forms. At the bottom are prime matter and the four elements (or only the latter), followed by entities like stones, etc., up to human beings (see Montgomery Furth, Substance, Form, and Psyche: An Aristotelian Metaphysics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 76ff.). Beings of a relatively «low» level can function as the matter of beings of a «higher» level, as for instance the four elements, if combined in a certain ratio, are the matter of flesh, which in turn is the matter of an animal. Thus, only prime matter is in itself devoid of any forms, while all other matters have certain forms though not the ones they acquire in the respective becomings. Since the most general definition of «matter» is «something that can be informed, determined, by a form,» a substance can be labeled «matter» in regard to its accidents. No form transforms itself into its opposite. The form water does not transform itself into the form air. Rather, the form water has to be expelled from a piece of prime matter (through heating) in order for the form air to «enter» that piece of prime matter. With regard to beings of «higher» levels, this means that a sentence such as «a pig came into existence out of a human being» can mean only the following: a human being has died; that is, the form human being has been expelled from some pieces of flesh and bones; these pieces disintegrate into beings of a «lower» level down to the level of the four elements (either under the influence of the weather or in the digestion system of, say, a pig); these pieces of beings of a lower level thereupon become parts of the process of the reproduction of pigs. That is, a matter has to be deformed to a higher or lesser degree in order for a new form to arrive in it and determine it (see Metaphysics VIII:5).

One might say that, except for the hypothesis of the existence of ideas, Aristotle simply worked out in detail Plato's outline of a theory of becoming in Phaedo . At least according to the traditional interpretation of Plato, which goes back to Aristotle ( Metaphysics I:9), if not to Plato himself, and which is shared by Heidegger (IM 180ff.; EM 137ff.), Plato's ontology contains three kinds of beings, namely—to quote Vlastos—«(1) Forms {or ideas, that is,} entities endowed with the following set of categorical properties: they are immutable, incorporeal, divine; they cannot be known by means of sense-experience, but only by "recollection." (2) The individual persons and objects of ordinary experience, designated by proper names and definite descriptions. (3) The immanent characters of these individuals, designated by adjectives, abstract nouns, and common nouns. The very same words also name Forms. This becomes strikingly clear on those rare occasions on which Plato explicitly juxtaposes the Form with the cognate character to bring out the fact that, though closely connected, they are ontologically distinct. He does so twice in our passage, contrasting "Greatness itself" with "greatness in us" (102 D), and again ''the Opposite itself . . . in the nature of things" ( ) with ''the opposite itself . . . in us" ( ), and both with "the opposite thing" ( ), i.e., the individual that has one of two opposite characters (103 B)» (G. Vlastos: "Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo," Platonic Studies [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], 83f.). Beings of the second kind—and space in Timaeus (48 elf.)— correspond to matter in Aristotle, and beings of the third kind to forms in Aristotle. An idea does not admit, and does not change into, its opposite. However, also an idea «in us» does not change into its opposite. Rather, if it can no longer resist its approaching opposite, it will leave those in whom, or in which, it is instead of transforming itself into its opposite ( Phaedo 102 a 10ff.).

In late medieval philosophy, Aristotle's conceptual framework was taken over by Christian philosophers. The eucharistic host involved several ontological problems. The official doctrine of the Catholic Church adopted a mythological notion of change. The accidents of the bread (its size, its taste, etc.) and of the wine remain after the consecration but their substances disappear, and the latter do so by their conversion, transubstantiation, into Jesus Christ. However, there were heretics who, in the name of the metaphysics of substance and form, replaced the miracle of transubstantiation with a different miracle. God annihilates the bread and wine, or he deforms their matters, cleansing them of forms down to the level of prime matter or the four elements (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962], 2262ff. [part 3, question 75, articles 3ff.]; Duns Scotus, Opera omnia 8, ed. Wadding [Lyon, 1639; reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1968], 657ff. [ In lib. IV Sententiarum , dist. 11, question 4]). The accidents of bread and wine remain through God's providence since it is terrible for human beings to eat and drink the flesh and the blood of a human being, since the pagans might mock people who quite openly eat the flesh of their lord, and since the sacrament in that form is more conducive to faith (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae , 2265 [article 5]).

A house and a bridge both made out of wood differ not qua being made out of wood but insofar as the wooden pieces of the house have an arrangement, a form, that differs from the one of the wooden pieces of the bridge. A clay statue of Socrates is refashioned into a statue of Plato. The latter differs from the former not qua consisting of clay but through the different arrangement, form, of the parts of the clay. Socrates being educated differs from the uneducated Socrates not qua being Socrates but through the form educatedness being present in the former and absent in the latter. In this sense, one might define a form as something that makes a difference in regard to something else. The form does so by organizing matter in a certain way. In this sense, a form is the cause of a certain structure or order imposed onto something. In cases such as the statue the form is indeed nothing but the spatial arrangement of the parts of the clay itself. In this sense, the notion of form can be used in regard to beings that are not individuals in the sense in which Socrates, Plato, this dog over there, etc., are individuals. A democratic constitution establishes structures, relationships between individuals, and habits of individuals that differ from those imposed by an aristocratic constitution. In general, Aristotle talks about a constitution in the same way as about a form and regards the constitution «as, in effect, the formal cause . . . of the polis» (Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], 79]. He does not, however, ever say so explicitly. He might have hesitated because in his ontology the form always exists as part of an individual. However, in light of his «political naturalism» (ibid., 27ff.) he might have taken for granted that everyone understood that he regarded the constitution as form, and he might have said so explicitly in his lectures, especially since, if the «realistic» reading of Aristotle is right, a form—say, the form human being—exists in each individual human being. Kant labels time a «form of sensible intuition» ( Critique of Pure Reason , trans. Norman K. Smith [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965], 75 [B 47]), since it imposes the order of succession and simultaneity onto the objects of intuition. He writes that the concepts matter and form «underlie all other reflection, so inseparably are they bound up with all employment of understanding. The one [matter] signifies the determinable {das Bestimmbare} in general, the other [form] its determination {dessen Bestimmung}—both in the transcendental sense, abstraction being made from all differences in that which is given and from the mode in which it is determined» (ibid., 280 [B 322]). For Marx, in human labor humans cannot but «work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter {die Formen der Stoffe ändern}» ( Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , revised and amplified according to the fourth German edition by Ernest Untermann [New York: Random House, n.d.], 50; Das Kapital: Erster Band [Berlin: Dietz, 1970], 57). Each product of human labor has a (possible) use value and a value. It has the latter insofar as it is an «expenditure of human labour-power» (ibid., 51; German edition, 58). However, only under a certain system of exchange and distribution of products—namely, one in which each labor is «carried on independently and for the account of private individuals» —do products of human labor acquire «the form of commodities» (ibid., 49; German edition, 57; note that the word «community» in phrases such as «in a community of commodity producers» reads in German «Gesellschaft»). Marx speaks of the «form of value {Wertform}» (ibid., 54; German edition, 62). This formulation indicates the similarities and differences between the use of the notion of form in Marx on one side and Aristotle and Plato on the other. In Aristotle and Plato, a form or an idea is a definite being that is different from other beings, and it is the cause of certain phenomena. In becoming, a form presences and manifests itself in the realm of phenomena. (A beautiful body is a manifestation of the idea of beauty in bodies, and it doesn't matter whether one labels this the « {presence of the idea in the body}» or the « {communion of the body and the idea through beauty in us}» [Plato, Phaedo 100 d 5f.]; a human being is the result of the presencing [« {through presence},» Aristotle, Physics 1:7, 191 a 7] of the form human being in female menstruation and flesh and bones.) (For Heidegger, this is the beginning of metaphysics. In the pre-Socratics, forms and shapes were the effects of physis as coming forth or emerging as a process without a definite actor or form. In metaphysics, however, coming forth is thought of as a means through which a preexisting form manifests or realizes itself. This is an upheaval in Scheler's sense: «But if the essential consequence {Wesens folge } is exalted to the level of the essence itself and takes the place of the essence, what then? Then we have a falling-off {Dann ist der Abfall da}, which must in turn produce strange consequences. And that is what happened. The crux of the matter is not that physis should have been characterized as idea but that the idea should have become the sole and decisive interpretation of being» [IM 182; EM 139].) Similarly, Marx uses the vocabulary of presencing or manifestation («human labour in the abstract has been embodied {vergegenständlicht} or materialised {materialisiert} in it» [ Capital , 45; German edition, 53]; «embodiment of human labour {Verwirklichungsform}» or «the form under which its opposite, abstract human labour, manifests itself {Erscheinungsform ihres Gegenteils, abstrakt menschlicher Arbeit}» [ibid., 67, German edition, 73]). However, what manifests itself is not a definite form but abstract human labor as the value of products. Abstract human labor is a sheer activity that can be quantified and is constantly quantified in the exchange of commodities. Though human labor as an activity never appears as such but always «in the form {in der Form} of tailoring,» «in the form of weaving» (ibid., 51; German edition, 58), etc., in commodity producing societies abstract human labor as quantifiable human labor manifests itself in a product of human labor—say, gold and whatever serves as money—that functions as the equivalent of all other commodities (ibid., 79ff.; German edition, 83ff.). In this sense, being informed by the form of commodity a product is «changed into something transcendent {sinnlich übersinnliches Ding}» (ibid., 83; German edition, 85). In German, it reads: «into something sensible and suprasensible» or «into something sensibly suprasensible.» A commodity is a sensible thing insofar as it is an extended thing with certain properties. It is a suprasensible thing insofar as, in exchanges, it counts as a manifestation of a quantity of abstract human labor, and this quantity of abstract human labor exists as another sensible thing that is socially accepted as the universally valid manifestation of abstract human labor and as the general equivalent of all other commodities. (For the same reason, it can also be called «a sensibly suprasensible thing,» since in exchanges of commodities its suprasensible aspect is experienced and practiced.) Since abstract human labor as such is sheer activity without definite form, Marx uses the notion of form not as designator of abstract human labor (as the principle or «substance» [ibid., 45; German edition, 53] of the products) but as designator of the ways, forms, in which and as which abstract human labor is manifested. (At least on these two accounts—being a no-thing, a process and being the cause of various forms as results of its activity—«Being» in Marx fulfills Heidegger's notion of Being in the pre-Socratics.) Since a commodity is a sensible thing that manifests something suprasensible, Marx uses the theological notion of «visible incarnation {sichtbare Inkarnation}» (ibid., 77; German edition, 81), or he says that a commodity is «abounding in metaphysical subtleties» (ibid., 81; German edition, 85). When saying that it is abounding in «theological niceties {theologischer Mucken}» (ibid., 81; German edition, 85) he thinks of Feuerbach's and his theory of religion (ibid., 83; German edition, 86) in regard of the phenomenon that the exchange of commodities makes up a system of «action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them» (ibid., 86; German edition, 89), and he probably thinks also of the phenomenon that this system produces ruptures, economical crises, comparable only to God's activities in regard of the eucharistic host and other miracles. Note that a capitalist economy is not simply a commodity producing society but one in which a large number of individuals don't own means of production and thus have to sell their labor power as commodity to the owners of the means of production, the labor power thus being the only source of surplus value. As Kant in his definition of the notion of form, in what follows above I will also use the notion of determination.

6. Plato, Sophist , 242 e 3. This is Benardete's translation (see The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman , translated and with commentary by Seth Benardete [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], II.35). For what follows above see the preceding note.

7. As was mentioned above, for both Hitler and Scheler a liberal society is just a step on the way toward socialism and communism; an assumption that was probably shared by many rightists. From this point of view, one can indeed not rely on any inner tendencies of development in society—be they dialectical or not—for one assumes that there are such inner tendencies but that they carry society precisely into the direction that one wants to avoid. If one cannot rely on society and its inner tendencies, it must be an entity outside of society (though it or its representatives can reside in the same world [see above, chapter 2, section C]) that initiates the political activities in order to «den Karren aus dem Dreck zu ziehen» (to pull the cart out of the muck), since, if left to itself, the car would just continue sinking into the mire. Thus, fate raises its voice and sends Hitler (MKe 510; MK 570) (see above, pp. 86f.), or God raises his voice and calls for a turning back (PPS 646) (see above, pp. 123f.). This is the political aspect of the background of Heidegger's theory of conscience and

8. The quote is from a letter of 1843. With the term «Auflösung» Marx referred to the material impoverishment of the workers in, so to speak, Manchester Capitalism as well as a certain dissolution of bourgeois ethics consequent upon it. One might wonder whether Lukács thought that his theory of proletarians becoming self-conscious worked, as it were, better under circumstances of increasing material impoverishment of the workers.

9. «Reine Wunder,» Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewu b tsein: Studien über marxistische Dialektik, Werke, vol. 2 (Berlin and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1968), 21.

10. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto , 121.

11. Ibid., 83.

12. To develop a notion of the totality of society and history and to relate one's experience to that totality is the capacity of the proletariat and is what dialectics is about (HI 1ff., 149 ff.; GK 13ff., 164 ff.). The supposed gap between the factical development of history and the empirical consciousness of the workers gives rise to Lukács's theory of class-consciousness and the party (HI 46ff.; GK 57ff.), which is often regarded as Lukács's entrée to Stalinism. Since I am concerned only with Heidegger's concept of historicality, I cannot go into this issue. For the same reason, I cannot discuss the problem of theory and praxis in regard to my bright picture of dialectics near the beginning of this section.

13. An English reader might perhaps think that Lukács says that history produces a crisis but leaves it to the proletariat how to solve it. However, Lukács uses «Entscheidung» («decision») and not «crisis.» History confronts the proletariat with an issue to decide or to solve. Lukács's «Entscheidung» is a shorthand for «to solve in the way history intends it to be solved.» For—to quote just one passage—«praxis cannot be divorced from knowledge. A praxis which envisages a genuine transformation {wahren Veränderns; not a Widerruf, disavowal} of these forms {= the forms of bourgeois society } can only start to be effective if it intends to think out the process immanent in these forms to its logical conclusion, to become conscious of it and to make it conscious» (HI 177; GK 194). Lukács quotes here section 81 of Hegel's Encyclopedia as one of the numerous passages in which Hegel reflects on the dialectical method and stresses that in dialectics a new state does not come about as a result of a Widerruf of the preceding state; the latter is not canceled by an entity that interferes from outside and replaces it with the former; instead the former transforms itself into the latter through an « immanent process of transcendence» (HI 177; GK 194).

14. Or, consider: «Thus the economic development of capitalism places the fate of society in the hands of the proletariat» (HI 312; «So legt die Entwicklung der ökonomischen Kräfte des Kapitalismus die Entscheidung über das Schicksal der Gesellschaft in die Hände des Proletariats,» GK 315). Such a statement, too, shows why Lukács never says that an individual or a group produces its own fate. The proletarians have not produced their power to be the fate of society. Rather, it was given to them by the economic development of capitalism or by history. History has given them the task to decide the fate of society in the way history intends it to be decided. The proletarians don't act for the sake of themselves. Rather, they realize a mission, given to them by someone else, for someone else, namely, society as a whole. Also Lukács's statements in which someone is the fate of someone or something else operate, so to speak, within a deontic logic of an assignment of tasks.

15. «Gesellschaftslehre,» «Sozialphilosophie,» Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewu b tsein, 18.

16. English readers might wonder what «the 'we' of the genesis» is. The relative clause reads in German: «jener Klasse vorbehalten geblieben, die das identische Subjekt-Objekt, das Subjekt der Tathandlung, das "Wir" der Genesis von ihrem Lebensgrund aus in sich selbst zu entdecken befähigt war: dem Proletariate» (GK 164). Probably, «der Genesis» is not genitive and does not go with «das "Wir"» but is dative. «Aus» goes with either «der Genesis» or «von ihrem Lebensgrund.» In both cases one can translate: «was reserved for the class that was able to discover within itself as emerging (or, in regard of/due to the emergence) from out of the ground of its own life the identical subject-object, the subject of action, the "we'': namely the proletariat.» Possibly, Lukács used «we» in quotation marks as an ironic reference to the abundance of the use of «we» in authors of the Right. Note that «vorbehalten geblieben» («was reserved for» or, literally, «remained to be reserved for») is the language of history—or, in Heidegger's terms Geschick, Being—that «gives» and «withholds.» History has «given» to German idealism the method, the formulation of the way; or it has given to German idealism the first part of the way, namely, the formulation of the method. However, it has «zurückbehal-ten,» withholds, from German idealism the continuation of the way. History «behält für sich,» keeps to itself—as «verborgen,» concealed, in itself—the continuation of the way because history has «vorbehalten,» reserved, the continuation of the way for the proletariat, to which it will give the continuation of the way at a later point.

17. The subsequent clause in the second sentence reads in German: «so da b sich gerade in ihrer menschenfernen, ja unmenschlichen Objektivität der gesellschaftliche Mensch als ihr Kern enthüllen kann» (GK 193). It should better be translated as: «so that it is precisely in the objectivity of the forms of society, remote from or even opposed to humanity, (or, precisely in that state of the development of the forms of society in which they have an objectivity that is remote, etc.) that socialized man can be revealed as at the core of the forms of society.»

18. Within the framework of the literature on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft the notorious class consciousness in Lukács is just another hypostasized superentity, which is to say that, in terms of rightist thinking, not Marxism but the peculiar thinking in terms of Gemeinschaft is to «blame» for it, even though its realization is not its rerealization. In Heideggerian terms, it is not something which has-been-there; it approaches us from out of the future without having followed us out of the past. In addition, as was already mentioned and as the textbooks have it, the proletarian revolution is the « self-annihilation» (HI 71; « Selbstaufhebung,» GK 84) of the class of the proletarians and, indeed, of all classes. Rightist revolutions of that time, on the other hand, don't take place for the sake of the Selbstaufhebung of the victorious party, and they rerealize a past with all its hierarchies and ranks, which have been leveled by the modem age. A socialist revolution is supposed to do away with all these differences. Thus, in contrast to the leftist revolution the rightist revolution is not the self-annihilation of the winners, but rather their, so to speak, self-reproduction by the annihilation of the other. Only once, namely in the sentence on distancing (HI 172; GK 188), does Lukács use the concept of human «essence.» The essence of human beings is to determine themselves by themselves. Prior to capitalism this was not yet a reality. Though in capitalism natural limits no longer exist for the self-determination of humans, the essence is not yet realized because of reification. It begins to be realized in the moment when the proletarians distance themselves from the commodity form, for in that moment all existing determinations, including the commodity form, have become, as Hegel used to say, fluid. Furthermore, in regard to Lukács's use of the motif of «socialism or new barbarism» (HI 306; GK 308), it is certainly the case that, according to him, the proletarians have to prevent society from the threat of the revitalization of the past.

19. See my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .

20. See my book Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .

21. In the famous chapter "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof" ( Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , 81ff.; German edition, 85ff.), Marx uses the metaphor of the umbilical cord in the same way as Lukács does. He maintains that Christianity is the most fitting form of religion for societies based upon the production of commodities, and that ancient Asiatic societies «are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent» (ibid., 91; German edition, 93). He continues:

But they {Asiatic societies} are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord {Nabelschnur} that unites him with his fellow men in a primitive tribal community {natürlichen Gattungszusammenhangs}, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not yet risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and between man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and nature.

The life-process of society {gesellschaftlichen Lebensprozesses}, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men {frei vergesellschafteter Menschen}, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society {Gesellschaft} a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous {naturwüchsige} product of a long and painful process of development. (ibid., 91f.; German edition, 93f.)

22. On «Gemächte» in Heidegger see chapter 5, section A.

23. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political , 27; German edition, 27.

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

25. « Der Feind ist unsere eigne Frage als Gestalt, » Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus (Kö1n: Greven, 1950), 90.

26. «Romantic reaction» and «political romanticism» (SD 27ff.; SE 34ff.) are Tillich's names for the political Right. He distinguishes between two forms, a conservative and a revolutionary form. See what follows. Incidentally, on the dedication tablet in the lobby of the Graduate Faculty Building of the New School for Social Research Paul Tillich is listed as one of the individuals, foundations, and business organizations whom the New School for Social Research thanks for their support and «devotion to higher education in a democratic society.»

27. Of course, I do not maintain that Tillich or Heidegger copied Hitler, Scheler, or someone else. Their agreement on the crucial differences between Left and Right and on the characteristics of the Right just shows that each of them had sufficient analytical skills in these matters.

28. Literally, «das Schicksal wenden» is «to turn fate around,» like Umkehrruf in Scheler and Heidegger; see above, p. 124; see also p. 174. According to rightists, fate demanded that Gesellschaft and «the other» have to be expelled to revitalize Gemeinschaft. The leftist notion of decision required that the various Gemeinschaften have to be expelled in order finally to expel the antagonistic relation to «the other.» As many others, Tillich and the late Scheler realized that in this mutual decision the extreme Right, the National Socialists, would win, and that their victory would lead to the death of the European nations. The course of rightist fate itself was the downward plunge that had to be canceled, «averted,» or «turned around.» In the «spirit» of the late Scheler, Tillich suggested to end the politics of de-cision, expulsion, on both sides and to forge an alliance between the proletarians and «these groups» (mainly, the peasants and the middle class); to form a Gemeinschaft «in gemeinsamer socialist decision» (SE 11; « common socialist decision», SD xxxii; italics mine, J. F) of the groups that, according to rightists and leftists, had to expel the other. From 1942 onward, the Christian Catholic Carl Schmitt referred to « { the one who restrains } » (2 Thessalonians 7) and the « {the lawless one}» (2 Thessalonians 8) (see Heinrich Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts: Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie [Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1994], 244, n. 106). In the small book Land und Meer (Land and sea) from 1942, he writes: «I believe in the Katechon; to me, he is the only possibility to understand history and find meaning in it as a Christian» (quoted according to Heinrich Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , 245; Meier's reference might be wrong; the quote cannot be found in Land und Meer [Kö1n-Lövenich: Hohenheim, 1981], and probably there was no reason for Schmitt to leave it out in editions after the war; however, he left out an anti-Semitic passage; compare Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , 237f., with Land und Meer , 16f.; when reading the passage one must keep in mind that Schmitt says of Land und Meer that it was «told to my daughter Anima» [ibid., 5], and that in fact it almost reads like a bedtime story for children). Since Luther translated «the one who restrains» with «der es jetzt aufhält,» Schmitt also uses the German noun «Aufhalter» (for instance, Land und Meer , 19) for «the one who restrains.» In the first edition of Land und Meer , he seems to have introduced as his translation of «the lawless one» (2 Thessalonians 8) the word «Beschleuniger,» the one who speeds up, and Schmitt seems to have characterized the Jews as «Beschleuniger» (see Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , 97; this passage has also been left out in the edition of 1981; compare Land und Meer , 16f. with Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , 97; in terms of the metaphor of falling, the Jews speed up the cart's drive into the muck). Sometimes, Schmitt seems to suggest that in the twenties and during his engagement with National Socialism after Hitler's Machtergreifung he himself acted as «the one who restrains.» However, in an entry in his diary from 10 October 1947 Schmitt considers that he was not the Aufhalter but the Beschleuniger («Die Freude an der Beschleunigung, Beschleuniger der Beschleuniger wider Willen; war es das, was mich trieb und trug?» [«The enjoyment of speeding things up; the one who speeds up, the one who speeds up against his will. Was it this that drove me and carried me?»]; deconstructionists might point out that Schmitt does not say «wider meinen Willen»; thus, he might also or even only mean, «against the will of liberals, Social Democrats, and communists.» Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951 [Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 199 1], 31; at a later point, he added in the margin: «Trog?», «And deceived me?», ibid., 31, n. 1). Deconstructionists might not be surprised that Schmitt was not the Aufhalter but the Beschleuniger of National Socialism. For the German word «Aufhalter» is indeed used in the sense of «the one who restrains,» the one who prevents something from emerging within or breaking into history or, say, into one's house. However. it is also used in the sense of «to keep open,» say, the door of one's house. In this sense, Heidegger and Schmitt—if his remark also refers to the time prior to the Machtübernahme—were Aufhalter of National Socialism. Both lived within the house of the Weimar Republic, both erwiderten the call of destiny (BT 438; SZ 386), and both went to the door, and opened it for National Socialism. In this way, they were «historical» men for they «posited {themselves } as the breach into which the preponderant power of being {Übergewalt des Seins} bursts in its appearing» (IM 163; EM 124). Keep in mind that the «historical man» regards going to the door of the house as his task not because he himself made up this task by himself but because he hears the command of Being: «The strangest {das Unheimlichste} (man) is what it is because, fundamentally, it cultivates and guards the familiar {das Einheimische}, only in order to break out of it {urn aus ihm auszubrechen} and to let what overpowers it break in {und das hereinbrechen zu lassen, was es überwältigt }. Being itself hurls man into this breaking-away» (IM 163; EM 125). (Note that Heidegger plays with the words «Unheimlich» and «Einheimisch.» Those are «einheimisch,» the familiar ones, who live in the same apartment, house, or city; in the same «Heim,» house. Historical man is «unheimlich,» that is, the negation of «heimlich,» of native, homelike, home, etc., because he opens the door of the Heim and lets someone, or something, into the Heim whom the «they,» the inauthentic inhabitants, want to keep outside the Heim; for the «breach» in Heidegger see this chapter, n. 7.) In colloquial German, the person who screens prospective guests at the entrance of a bar and opens the door for the ones he admits is called «Türsteher» or «Türaufhalter.» Since he is also in charge of discharging guests inside the bar who are considered troublemakers, he his also called «Rausschmei b er,» «the one who throws out.» The call of destiny calls for a reentrance of Volksgemeinschaft into the city and for a « disavowal { Widerruf }» (BT 438; SZ 386) of Gesellschaft and its bearers. The Erwiderung acts «for» the Volksgemeinschaft by a Widerruf of Gesellschaft or by acting «against» Gesellschaft. On 3 October 1936, Schmitt delivered the inaugural address of a conference on Jewry and the science of law ("Das Judentum in der Rechtswissenschaft"). Close to the beginning, he quoted a sentence from Hitler's Mein Kampf that—in the context of the concept of history of the revolutionary Right—presents the structure of Heidegger's sentence on Erwiderung and Widerruf (BT 438; SZ 386) in the shortest form possible. Schmitt said: «The most profound and ultimate meaning of this struggle { Kampf} and thus also of our task today is expressed in the sentence of the Führer: "by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord {MKe 65; indem ich mich des Juden erwehre, kämpfe ich für das Werk des Herrn, ME 70}"» (quoted according to Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , 235).

The politics of «the one who restrains» may be the only kind of politics allowed to a Christian as a Christian. In the kairos of the twenties and thirties, it was certainly the Jew and converted Christian Catholic Scheler and the Christian Protestant Tillich who displayed the faculty of judgment necessary to decide when and how to engage in the politics of «the one who restrains.»

29. See, for instance, SD 66ff., 127ff., SE 62ff, 104ff. On Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft see SD 75ff., 85ff., 137ff., 150ff.; SE 69ff., 76ff., 112ff., 122ff.

30. Derrida, "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," Writing and Difference , trans. A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 79-153. See, for instance, Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger , 61f.

31. Of course, it all depends on what one means by «the Greeks.» Today, probably only few interpret Anaximander like Tillich did. Maybe, none of the Greek philosophers was a «Greek» in Tillich's sense. However, in the presentation of his «Greeks» in An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger interpreted Heraclitus and Parmenides precisely along the lines of his notion of historicality and authentic Dasein in Being and Time and thus in the sense of Tillich's «Greeks» (see my book The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of National Socialism: Heidegger on Heraclitus and Parmenides [in preparation]).

1. Quoted according to H. Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 243. The passage reads in German:

Wir Heutigen stehen in der Erkämpfung der neuen Wirklichkeit. Wir sind nur ein Über-gang, nur ein Opfer. Als Kämpfer dieses Kampfes müssen wir ein hartes Geschlecht haben, das an nichts Eigenem mehr hängt, das sich festlegt auf den Grund des Volkes. Der Kampf geht nicht um Personen und Kollegen, auch nicht um leere Äu b erlichkeiten und allgemeine Ma b nahmen. Jeder echte Kampf trägt bleibende Züge des Bildes der Kämpfenden und ihres Werkes. Nur der Kampf entfaltet die wahren Gesetze zur Verwirklichung der Dinge, der Kampf, den wir wollen, ist: wir kämpfen Herz bei Herz, Mann bei Mann. ( Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie , 231).

As one sees, throughout the quote Heidegger uses «Kampf» and derivatives of «Kampf» («fighting» = «Erkämpfung»; «warriors in this struggle» = «Kämpfer dieses Kampfes»; all occurrences of «struggle» are in German «Kampf»; «of the combatants» = «der Kämpfenden»). In the place of the English phrase «shoulder to shoulder» the German text has a more intimate expression: «heart to heart.» (Soldiers of the same army are said in English as well as in German to fight «shoulder to shoulder,» while one is, as it were, only with one's «sweetheart» «heart to heart.») The English translation, «that cares for nothing of its own, that rests firmly on the foundation of the people and the nation,» lacks connotations and a certain dynamic aspect of the German text. «Hängen an» is often used in a spatial sense and means «to hang on,» as a hat hangs on a wall or a lamp hangs on the ceiling. One also «hängt an» or «krallt sich an» the edge of a reef or a plank in the sea in order not to fall down and be drowned. «Hängen an» is also used in the sense of «to cling to, to be emotionally attached to.» In the latter sense, it can also be used ironically or critically. Person A loves her cat or dog very much; so much so that A , to translate word-by-word a German saying, «has eyes and ears for hardly anything else.» Person B doesn't appreciate A 's attachment but thinks that A should «have eyes and ears» for other things or persons, say, B . Thus, B can ironically express his or her disappointment or disapproval by saying to person C : « A hängt wirklich sehr an ihrer/seiner Katze» ( A is really very attached to his/her cat). One can also use «hängen an» to indicate that A has no stable identity and uses the cat, an ideology, etc., as a surrogate without which A would fall into the abyss, or Ab-Grund (hyphens mine, J. F.), of loneliness, inner emptiness, etc. Heidegger uses the phrase in the latter sense. All what is our own, the traditional university and—in general—Gesellschaft, are surrogates. We should not «hängen an» them, for they are surrogates, and to «hängen an» is not a safe position to begin with, especially since what we hang on to is already falling apart (see also chapter 6, section A). Instead, we have to be a Dasein «das sich festlegt auf den Grund des Volkes,» that—quite literally—lays itself/attaches itself firmly on/to the ground of the people or on/to the ground that the people is. On a ground one has a safe stand (see chapter 3, n. 62; see also my paper ''On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 149ff.). Thus, one no longer hangs on something that will fall apart anyway. Having reached a safe ground to stand on, one can «stehen in der Erkämpfung der neuen Wirklichkeit,» that is, «stand in the struggle to bring about the new reality» (on the preposition «in» see chapter I, n. 10, and chapter 6, n. 24). Even linguistically, the entire passage testifies to what Paul Tillich named

the inner contradiction of the return to the myth of origin. The creation of a national tradition must, in the context of life in the metropolis and its influence throughout the country, pass over all special traditions, the very traditions so important to the myth of origin. Nothing is more untraditional, in the national sense, than this struggle for a national tradition. What really has been handed down in Germany, and what has remained unbroken down to the present time, is the struggle of the various religious, political, and regional traditions with one another. A struggle of traditions, however, so long as it still has real- ity and has not been reduced to literature, can only be handed down by the protagonists, i.e., not as a unified national tradition. (SD 34; SE 39; these sentences conclude the passage on tradition I quoted above, pp. 180f.)

Hitler takes an entire chapter ("Federalism as a Mask," MKe 554-579; "Föderalismus als Maske," MK 621-649) to explain at length that what Tillich calls «the struggle of the various religious, political, and regional traditions with one another,» is a means for the Jews to achieve domination over Germany. In the völkisch state, the individual provinces will have no political rights, but only some rights in the area of cultural policy (MKe 576; MK 645). However, at the same time «even here time will have a leveling effect. The ease of modem transportation so scatters people around that slowly and steadily the tribal boundaries are effaced and thus even the cultural picture gradually begins to even out» (MKe 576; MK 645f.). In January 1934 Heidegger gave up his efforts to go to Berlin and announced in the speech, "Why do We choose to stay in the Province?'' which was broadcast over the radio and printed in the local National Socialist newspaper, that he would not go to Berlin but stay in the provinces. It is not necessary to have read the above-mentioned chapter in Hitler's book to know that there was ((something fishy» about Heidegger's speech. See Victor Farías's brilliant analysis of it in Heidegger and Nazism , 170-177; German edition, 237-244.

2. Jacques Derrida, " Geschlecht , Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference," Research in Phenomenology 13 (1983): 65, note.

3. Jacques Derrida, " Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," John Sallis, ed., Deconstructing and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 162. Both texts are part of Jacques Derrida, Psyché: Inventions de l'autre (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1987).

4. Derrida, " Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," 162f.

5. On an occurrence of «Eigentum» (private property) in Heidegger see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 153, n. 59.

6. Heidegger uses the word «entfalten» («reveals»). «Entfalten» is not «to create» but to actualize a potential. The leaves of a flower entfalten sich, open, and they can do so only because they already exist prior to the moment in which they open. An entire plant or animal entfaltet sich, emerges and grows, only because this Entfaltung is the Entfaltung of the potential contained in the seed or the embryo. In this way, Heidegger's phrase on the true laws corresponds to the phrases with «constitutes itself» (BT 435; SZ 383) and with ((become free» (BT 436; SZ 384) (see above, chapter 2, section C).

7. As is known, the most prominent Opfer at the university of Freiburg was Edmund Husserl (see Ott, Martin Heidegger , 172ff.; German edition, 167ff.). Having become Rektor of the university of Freiburg, Heidegger «asked Stieler to draft a code of honour for the soon-to-be-established university lecturers' association, which he submitted to the authorities in Karlsruhe and Berlin with his recommendations. It was based on the military officers' code of honour» (ibid., 155; German edition, 151). The beginning of the document repeats in simple repetition exactly the sentences with erwidert and Widerruf in section 74 of Being and Time . In Being and Time authentic Dasein erwidert the call of the Volksgemeinschaft and brings the Volksgemeinschaft back—or «erwider bringe t» (see below, n. 70) it. In doing so authentic Dasein brings itself back, or it re-duces, leads back, itself to its true «selbst» (SZ 384; the second «itself» in « hands itself down to itself,» BT 435; see above, pp. 62ff.) that has been pushed aside and covered up by Gesellschaft. Since Gesellschaft is a downward plunge, in re-ducing itself to its «true» self it moves upward again. The first sentence of the document reads: «We lecturers seek to rise up {aufwärts } and come to ourselves again {wieder zu uns selbst kommen}» (Ott, Martin Heidegger , 155; German edition, 151). In Being and Time authentic Dasein can erwider bringe n the Volksgemeinschaft only by canceling, expelling «from {Europe's} blood like a foreign poison» (PPS 153), Gesellschaft. This requires that authentic Dasein expels the individuals who are, so to speak, the incarnations of Gesellschaft. The document continues: «We seek to cleanse our ranks of inferior elements {von minderwertigen Elementen reinigen } and thwart the forces of degeneracy in the future» (Ott, Martin Heidegger , 155; German edition, 151). Beginning to move upward authentic Dasein must take measures not to fall down again. The third sentence of the document reads: «By nurturing our sense of honour, we seek to teach and instruct each other, thereby ensuring that there is no possibility of falling back into the old ways {Rückfall in die früheren Zustände}» (ibid., 155; German edition, 151). Note that at that time «minderwertige Elemente» («inferior elements») was used in regard to human individuals and not that much, if at all, in regard to intellectual or spiritual influences, which, in Heidegger's text, occur as «the forces of degeneracy.» Even in summer 1935, in a public lecture, Heidegger uses the official National Socialist term—namely, «Säuberung» —and complains that the Säu-berung was not radical enough: «The state of science since the turn of the century—it has remained unchanged despite a certain amount of house cleaning {der heute trotz mancher Säuberung unverändert ist} —is easy to see» (IM 48; EM 36; for «complains» see the context of the quote).

8. See Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 242; German edition, 231.

9. See my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger."

10. As is already evident from the examples I have given, if «Geschlecht» is used in the sense of lineage, family, or generation, the accompanying verb is not «haben» (to have) but «sein» (to be), as in «ein altes Geschlecht sein,» «von altem Geschlechte sein,» or «We are the Geschlecht, generation, of World War I Fighters.» In the passage quoted from the speech "The University in the National Socialist State," the translator chose to render «Geschlecht» as «race,» a term that has no connotations of sex organs. He also replaced Heidegger's verb «haben» (to have) with «are.» For Heidegger does indeed not say, we must «be a hard Geschlecht,» but rather that we must «ein hartes Geschlecht haben { have }.» This makes the sentence pretty awkward since it invites associations that Heidegger certainly did not intend. For when one says, «someone hat a Geschlecht,» one refers to vagina or penis and not to family or lineage. Thus, as one can easily imagine, in everyday language, «ein hartes Geschlecht haben,» as Heidegger in fact says, means «to have an erection, an erected, hard, penis.» In light of the examples of heroes to choose from in English literature (see chapter 1, section B, and chapter 5, section C), in the remainder of the book I will promote my own hero, Erwin Szymanski, the prototype of a Berlin proletarian of the twenties. From his perspective, one might say that the phrase «I have a hartes Geschlecht» is, as it were, a bourgeois expression. It bashfully covers up through the work of ambiguity the fact to which Erwin Szymanski might refer with the phrase «I have 'ne Latte» (I have a woody). The phrase «'ne Latte» radically individualizes this event in the sense of Heidegger's «Da» (SZ 12, 132, 263; BT 92, 171, 308) of Division One and does not, as in Heidegger in Division Two, lead it back to the common nature, the universal. «Hartes Geschlecht,» on the other hand, deindividualizes this event from the outset, subsumes it under some nebulous generality, and forces it into the service of the Volk or the Gemeinschaft.

Due to Heidegger's tendency to use as the grammatical subject of a sentence not a particular Dasein but rather an abstract quality or essence of something (BT 15), things get even worse. Grammatically, the relative pronoun «das» («that») in both of its occurrences («we must be a hard race {ein hartes Geschlecht}, that {das} cares for nothing of its own { an nichts Eigenem mehr hängt}, that {das } rests firmly on the foundation of the people and the nation { auf den Grund des Volkes } ») refers unambiguously not to «we» but to «Geschlecht.» As was mentioned (n. I), «hängen an» often means «hang on.» If, as Heidegger claims (BT 134ff.; SZ 101ff.), spatiality is a fundamental existentiale, one might even say that «hang on» is the primary meaning of «hängen an.» Thus, eigentlich, in truth, the first relative clause («ein hartes Geschlecht haben, das an nichts Eigenem mehr hängt») says that the hard Geschlecht no longer hangs on its own, its body; that is, it has been cut off. In that case, the Geschlecht can no longer be hard. If it is still on the body, it «hängt runter» (droops). Erwin Szymanski would refer to this by saying «My Schwanz hängt runter, droops,» or «I have a Hanger,» that is, he has the opposite of an erection in a situation where he as well as the other have looked forward to the erection of his Geschlecht. (The opposite of «hängen» is «stehen, » to stand; thus «I have einen stehen,» «Mir steht einer,» or «I have a Ständer,» are synonymous with, and as colloquial as, «I have 'ne Latte.»)

No one would have these associations if Heidegger had used «sein» instead of «haben» and, instead of the two relative clauses, two paratactic main clauses with «we» as subjects («As fighters in this fight we must be a/of hard Geschlecht; we must no longer cling to our own; and we must attach ourselves firmly to the basis of the Volk»). This sentence, however, would then have lacked the staccato rhythm it has in its current form and thus would be rhetorically weaker. Also his sentence as it is but with «care» instead of his verb «have» would have made sense. One would have understood the «Geschlecht» as generation, and it would have been in line with National Socialistic language that the «Geschlecht» becomes the grammatical subject. It would have invited the association with the sex organ, if at all, to a significantly lesser degree than Heidegger's «haben.» Why did he say «haben?» It cannot have been an instance of common political rhetoric, namely, just to allude to something else in order to mobilize affective energies. For since the sentence in its current form invites all the associations I spelled out, the entire passage becomes just ridiculous, and laughter is the enemy of the sublime and the tyrants. Maybe it was just a—Freudian or not Freudian—slip of the tongue. Or perhaps Heidegger, consciously or not, thought of Geschlecht in terms of blood since one says «er ist (von)» (he is [of]) as well as «er hat» (he has) «good blood»; or perhaps he was thinking of fate in Being and Time , since one «has» a fate (not used with «sein» in either everyday language or Being and Time ; SZ 384; BT 4363, and in Being and Time «fate» is related to «Geschick» and «Volk» in the same way in which, in the speech, «Geschlecht» is related to «Volk.» Maybe what happened here was simply a collapse of his otherwise excellent ability to let a sentence or phrase work on different semantic levels at the same time (see Bourdieu, The Political Ontology, of Martin Heidegger )—a collapse of the sublime into the ridiculous that might have provided comic relief,. at least for short time, to some of those who were not Nazis to the degree that they ignored this moment. Some deconstructionists may claim that Heidegger's «haben» subverts the entire speech and thus shows that, also in this speech, Heidegger was a fighter against Nazism. However, this seems highly improbable. After all, even in 1936 Heidegger «hing an» (past tense of «hängen an»), clung to, National Socialism and Adolf Hitler (see Löwith, "My last Meeting with Heidegger," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader , 142; see also MH 158; see above, chapter 6, section A). Furthermore, Heidegger seemed not to be the person for that kind of joke.

Still, this quote is not taken from a text published by Heidegger, but rather from a report on his speech in a newspaper. Thus, maybe somewhere on its way from the journalist to the press the manuscript fell into the hands of a Kasper (see nn. 29 and 31) who changed Heidegger's «sein, be» into «haben, have.» It should be noted that in Latin the verb used in this context is not «have» but «be.» Deucalion and Pyrrha are the only survivors of the deluge. Upon the advice of Themis, they throw stones backward, which become human beings, among them Hellen, the originator of the Hellenes. Ovid summarizes the story by saying «inde genus durum sumus» ( Metamorphoses I, 1. 414; «Hence, we are a hard stock»). However, the sentence is similar in Greek: « » («I am of the stock from Ithaca, and my father is Ulysses,» Odyssee XV, 1. 267).

11 Hesiod, Sämtliche Gedichte , translation with commentary by W. Marg (Zurich: Artemis, 1971), 36, 37.

12. Martin Heidegger, "On the Being and Conception of in Aristotle's Physics B, I," Man and World 9 (1976), 230 (WM 320). «Gemächte» is an old word for the products of God, nature, or humans. Apparently from the eighteenth century on, it has been used in a derogatory way (see Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm , vol. 5 [Gefoppe-Getreibs] [Leipzig: Hirzel Verlag, 1887; reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984], 3144ff.). Probably, Heidegger's advice refers to this fact and not so much to the «male sex organ.»

13. As Heidegger says: «That which produces itself, i.e., places itself into the appearance, needs no fabrication { bedarf nicht erst einer Mache },» Martin Heidegger, "On the Being and Conception of in Aristotle's Physics B, 1," 261 (WM 360).

14. Note that «zusprechen» is different from the compound verb «sprechen zu (jemandem),» to talk to (someone). «Zuspruch» means speaking, admonition, consolation, exhortation, claim, and it is often used precisely to convey all these meanings at the same time. According to Heidegger, Plato «entspricht dem, was sich ihm zusprach.» «Ent-sprechen» consists of «sprechen,» to talk, and the prefix «cent-.» It can mean «to correspond, to be in accordance with, to be equivalent to» and also—as in Heidegger's sentence—«to meet, answer, fulfill, a request or expectation»; thus, the «entsprochen» in Heidegger's text entspricht the verb «erwidert» in Being and Time in my interpretation in chapter I; note that this verb, too, does not require an accusative object. There is a sentence in which Heidegger regards even a widersprechen in the sense of erwidern ihm etwas (to contradict someone) as entsprechen: «When man, in his way, from within unconcealment reveals that which presences, he merely responds { entspricht er nur} to the call { dem Zuspruch } of unconcealment even when he contradicts it {wo er ihm widerspricht}» (BW 300; VA 22).

15. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right , section 273; Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts , ed. B. Lakebrink (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1970), 428. Kant uses two other words. Parents must not regard their children as their «Gemächsel,» or as their «Mach- werk (res artificialis).» There are several products of nature that at the same time, however, have to be regarded as «Gemächsel (artefacta)» of the state ( Metaphysics of Morals, First Part , section 28, appendix, section 55). By the way, «Gemachte» is never used to refer to sex organs.

16. See above, chapter 2, n. 25. In contrast to a Gemachtes, the Gemächte has Güte. For while a Gemachtes is produced by human beings and is at their disposal, the Gemächte has priority over them, is in regard to its presencing and its possible disappearance independent of them, and determines their comportment toward beings. One might object that, in contrast to heritage, the Gemächte does not give anything «good.» However, even the Gestell, enframing, in "The Question Concerning Technology" contains «das Rettende» (VA 32; «the saving power,» BW 310). Enframing does so because it remains related to Greek producing and truth as unconcealment (VA 24; BW 302 and often). Thus, enframing contains «das Rettende» only because—despite of the differences between it and Greek producing—it has, so to speak, «come a long way,» as the christening basin in Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain has.

17. Martin Heidegger, "On the Being and Conception of in Aristotle's Physics B, 1," 266.

18. Ibid., 250 (WM 346).

19. Ibid., 234 (WM 325).

20. Ibid., 235 (WM 327).

21. Ibid., 235 (WM 327).

22. Ibid., 234 (WM 324).

23. The first occurrence reads: «But the unconcealment itself, within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork {menschliches Gemächte}, any more than is the realm man traverses every time he as a subject relates to an object» (BW 300; VA 22). The second reads: «Where and how does this revealing happen if it is no mere handiwork of man {wenn es kein blo b es Gemächte des Menschen ist}» (BW 300; VA 22). The third occurrence reads: «Meanwhile, man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct {ein Gemächte des Menschen}» (BW 308; VA 30f.).

24. On "The Question Concerning Technology" as a discourse on Auschwitz and how to forget about it see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger."

25. A Gespräch is often «serious,» or «deep.» In his interpretation of Hölderlin, Heidegger interprets it as the form of communication among authentic Daseine, while calling communication among ordinary or inauthentic Daseine «Verständigung,» that is, information, notification, agreement, or communication.

26. On «Begegnung» see above, chapter 3, n. 66.

27. As one sees, I have translated Heidegger's phrase «überhöhend» with the rather awkward phrase «in a superelevating manner.» In this context «überhöhend» belongs to the vocabulary of a logic of transformation (see below, this chapter, section c) and of enthusiasm (see below, chapter 6, section A). Community and «that which keeps bound and determines each individual» —which is either community itself or community and that which, so to speak, binds community, namely, death (see what follows above)—«erhöht,» elevates, the individual «fiber,» above, itself. In this way, the individual has become «überhöht,» that is, has become higher than it was before, so to speak. By being bound into the community the individual is able to step «fiber,» to transcend, and leave behind the confinements of its being a subject, an actor in society. In this sense, the community acts similar to the way grace acts, for grace, too, «erhöht» and «überhöht» the individual.

Both dialectical philosophy and Heideggerian phenomenology have reservations concerning the word «is,» as it invites reifying thinking. In light of this, there is no more reifying usage of the copula as in Heidegger's phrase «Gemeinschaft is» (see above, chapter 2, n. 33)- However, this use is not the breakdown or absence of thinking in Heidegger, but rather one of its points of fulfillment. In one way or another, Heidegger always tried to stipulate a sphere free of the mediation of the subject; a sphere of immediacy that, in turn, demands of the subject and the individuals to cancel themselves in a gesture for which the next quote above provides the proper term, namely, Opfer, sacrifice. Adorno has always criticized this stipulation as mythical and metaphysical thinking in terms of origin.

28. Note the occurrence of «entspringt»; see above pp. 32ff., and chapter 3, n. 25. As to the presence of the Hand (hand) in Heidegger's vocabulary, I have translated with «catch hold of» the German «angreifen.» «Greifen» is to seize, grasp, grab, grip (by hand and only later also by grab dredgers). «Angreifen» is to «touch,» «handle,» «tackle,» but more often «to attack» (and in some contexts «to weaken or impair one's health,» «corrode,» «bite,» etc.). In combination with «an» or «at» it means that, if one wants to conquer a town or, in court, refute an alibi, one has to, so to speak, launch one's Angriff by angreifen, attacking it/the defendant at its/his weakest point.

29. See pp. 21f. Erwin Szymanski might have asked: «Na, wat denn nu? Nu soll'r uns doch ooch sachen what det authentische Dasein, oder wie det hee b t, sacht zu de Vachangenheet? Oder sacht's janischt und haut's ihr eenfach eenen uff de Rübe? Emma, erinnerst'e dir? Letztes Wochenende in de Hasenheede? Det Kasperletheater da? Haha! Det war'n Ding!»

30. See above, chapter I, n. 36, and chapter 2, n. 15. Quite literally, an Auseinandersetzung is a spatial sorting out, a separating. Any sort of confrontation—a battle in war, a sports competition, a heated debate—-can be called an Auseinandersetzung. In a philosophical Auseinandersetzung, one makes clear the differences between one's own position and the one with which one takes up an Auseinandersetzung in order to show that one, so to speak, does not side with but is «miles away» from the standpoint of the other party or philosopher. The word is used in this sense by Heidegger in Being and Time once: «This is not the place [Ort] for coming to terms critically {für eine kritische Auseinandersetzung} with Bergson's conception of time or with other Present-day views of it» (BT 484, n. xxx; SZ 433, n. 1). Heidegger could have used this word, if he had wanted to convey what Guignon and Birmingham think he said. Heidegger used the word Auseinandersetzung ever since the early twenties. In fact, it is one of his pet terms. See Gregory Fried's paper on Heidegger's use of Auseinandersetzung and Kampf, "Heidegger's Polemos," Journal of Philosophical Research 16 (1990-91), 159-195. Since a philosopher might also say, «For twenty years I had an Auseinandersetzung with Hegel. Now, however, he has convinced me, and I have become a follower of his,» Heidegger might even have used this word, if he had wanted to leave open how authentic Dasein reacts to the call of what-has-been-there. In that case he could have used the word in the same way he might have used the word Begegnung, encounter (see chapter 3, n. 66). If he had wanted to say what Birmingham thinks he said, he could have used «Widerstreit,» for «Widerstreit»— like «Widerruf»—definitely indicates a gesture of separation. Thus, in principle, Birmingham is not wrong, when she quotes in support of her interpretation of section 74 of Being and Time a passage with «Widerstreit» from Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche (see below, n. 71).

31. Erwin Szymanski would have said: «Emma, wee b te wat det authentische Dasein macht? Det lä b t sich eenfach uffschluck'n von de Vachangenheit! Det also isset! Det authentische Dasein lä b t sich eenfach einsacken von de Vachangenheet! Und denn macht's den Kaspa for de Völkischen, de Nazis! Emma, det is too much! Gib' ma doch noch 'ne Pulle Bier rüber, ick kann den Schiet nich länga lesen! Diesa ganze Nazi-Schei b kommt mir nich noch mal ins Haus!» The reader will have noticed that in this note, the Kasper (Punch) acts differently from the way he acts in note 29. In the earlier note, he acts like inauthentic Dasein insofar as he either does not listen at all to the call of the Volksgemeinschaft or actively resists the call by keeping his distance and fighting against it. Here, however, he acts like authentic Dasein, that is, he subjugates himself to the call. However, we don't know whether this is, so to speak, authentically authentic or, as Erwin Szymanski and, to some extent, Wolin maintain (see section C of this chapter), sheer opportunism. Thus, the Kasper vacillates even more than ordinary and inauthentic Daseine. For the Kasper vacillates not only between different inauthentic possibilities but also between inauthentic and authentic possibilities, and regarding the latter he wavers between taking them authentically and taking them opportunistically. Or rather, he doesn't vacillate but demonstrates the sad truth that in hard times—that is, when authentic Daseine pressure those whom they regard as inauthentic Daseine—people sometimes use unusual means, such as cunning and conformism, to survive as an inauthentic Dasein. Kasper does so without bad conscience and with a good sense of wit. Thus, the Kasper is humane as well as inhumane. He is humane insofar as he is able to listen to all the different voices and would do whatever he can to save the life of this or that inauthentic Dasein. (He is like the chorus in Greek tragedies and the incorporation of Heraclitus's concept of soul as presented in Martha C. Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 23-85.) He is inhumane insofar as he is ready to betray each and everyone just to save his own life. And we can hardly ever be sure which path he will take. For an interpretation of a prominent German Kasper, Till Eulenspiegel, see Klaus Heinrich's Versuch über die Schwierigkeit nein zu sagen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1964), 87ff.

32. In these situations, one talks, so to speak, like the oracle at Delphi which «neither speaks nor conceals but indicates,» as Heraclitus says, fragment B 93. However, the three nouns Heidegger employs («Widerklang,» «Einklang,» and «Vorklang») might be used as well when it comes to direct speech, that is, to a declaration of love. A lover who feels that way, might say to his or her beloved: «I feel strongly the Widerklang of my soul in you; our hearts are in deep Einklang; this is a marvelous Vorklang of the wonderful life we will have if you marry me!» However, this direct use often takes its toll, which is that—and not only for listeners today—these as well as Heidegger's sentences sound somewhat narcissistic and kitschig. On «innigst» (in «im innigsten Einklang,» «intimately bound up») see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 164, n. 28.

33. "Warum bleiben wir in der Provinz?" (Why do we stay in the provinces) was broadcast in March t 934 and published in the National Socialistic newspaper Der Ale- manne: Kampfblatt der Nationalsozialisten Oberbadens . See Farías's brilliant analysis of this speech in Heidegger and Nazism , 170-177; German edition, 237-244.

34. On the entire sentence see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges," 152.

35. On «hörig» in Being and Time see above, chapter 1, n. 36. For Heidegger in 1935 the National Socialist revolution seems to have lost its momentum. However, in An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger interprets the pre-Socratics as paradigmatic National Socialists (see above, chapter 4, n. 31), and one aspect of this seems to be that he wanted to breathe new life into the National Socialism of his days. Thus, at a later point in An Introduction to Metaphysics — namely , in his interpretation of Heraclitus—he uses «hörig» again (IM 129; EM 99; see above, chapter 1, n. 36).

36. Heidegger says: «im Vollzug der Sammlung» (EM 133)- The English translator has left out the «Vollzug» («in collecting,» IM 174; thus, better: «in the execution of the collecting toward the collectedness of being»). The noun Vollzug is a strange word, which is rarely used in everyday language. It is used in political and theological contexts, in the professional language of judges, lawyers and business people, and it is also used in Husserl. However, it has its distinguished place in the vocabulary of authoritarian bureaucracies. Due to this and to his notion of gathering, «Vollzug» in Heidegger sounds more or less violent. As in the case of «Geist,» one is not well advised to use the occurrence of «Vollzug» in Heidegger, Husserl, and, say, Benjamin to «deconstruct» their differences.

As to the prisoners on the run (see above, chapter 2, section A), the bureaucratic term for Gefängnis (prison) is «Strafvollzugsanstalt»; that is, an «Anstalt» (institute) for the «Vollzug» (carrying out) of a «Strafe» (penalty). Thus, in thieves' cant an ironic expression for «to be imprisoned» is «to be im (= in dem = in the) Vollzug.» The Anstalt is, so to speak, the Kropf (see below, n. 38) into which the bad ones disappear.

There are two reasons for Heidegger saying «im Vollzug der Sammlung» and not just «in der Sammlung.» In general, he always carefully distinguishes between the actual taking place (the presencing, Anwesen, or , Advent, or ) of something (a form, Jesus Christ, an existentiale, Being, or Wesen) and the something itself. Thus, there is not just a gathering, but the Vollzug of the gathering. In particular, the usage of «Vollzug» allows him in the heat of the years after the Machtüber-nahme to take over the emotional force of the Christian expectation of the Advent of Jesus Christ and claim it for his peculiar project, while investing this project with the authority of the bureaucratic machinery. In this sense, Heidegger's «Vollzug» is the Heideggerian neopagan version of the , the Advent, of Jesus Christ. It is even literally the bureaucratic translation of «Advent.» «Advent» is in German Advent, or (Wieder-) Ankunft. Kunft (Nieder-, An-, Wieder-, Her-, Zu-Kunft, Ein-künfte = income) and Zug stem from verbs of motion. The prefix «voll-» corresponds to the prefix «can-» («ad-»). Both designate the fulfillment of a motion and the arrival of Christ, etc. In this sense, Heidegger's «Vollzug» is closely related to his term «Ereignis» («event»).

37. See chapter I, n. 36.

38. Actually, «Kröpfchen» is the diminutive of «Kropf» (crop). The entire sentence is Aschenputtel's request to the two white doves in the Brother Grimm's fairy tale "Aschenputtel" ("Cinderella," or "Ashputtel''). There we find the same expressions and the same three aspects as in Heidegger's notion of Logos as «Sammlung» and «auslesende "Lese".» (For what follows keep in mind that in later editions several fairy tales were changed; none of the English translations I have looked at give the fairy tale in the version of the first edition from 1812, a reprint of which I quote. All hyphens and italics mine, J. F.) When the stepsisters poured peas and lentils into the ash, Aschenputtel had to sit the entire day and had to «sie wieder aus-lesen » («sort them out again») ( Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm : Vollstäindige Ausgabe in der Urfassung, ed. F. Panzer [Wiesbaden: Emil Vollmer, n. d.], 112). On the night of the first ball, the stepsisters give Aschenputtel a basin of lentils and say that the bowl must be «ge- lesen seyn» («be sorted») (ibid., 113) by the time they come back. The doves offer to help Aschenputtel «Linsen lesen » («to sort the lentils») (ibid., 113). The next morning the stepsisters see that Aschenputtel has «die Linsen rein ge- lesen » («sorted the lentils cleanly») (ibid., 113). All these formulations assume a mixture that has to be segregated and purified. The first phrasing takes as the object of the Auslese the good elements of the mixture, and it says that the Auslese takes place such that the good ones leave the basin, the city, thereby leaving it to the bad ones. Also, all the other formulations focus on the good ones as the object of the Lese, but they leave open whether the good ones will leave the city (to the bad ones) or whether the bad ones will be forced to leave the city. Each Lese is an Aus-Lese, and in each Lese, explicitly or implicitly, the bad ones are also, if not mainly, the object of the Lese. On the second evening, the oldest of the stepsisters commands Aschenputtel: « lese die guten und bösen aus-einander! » («separate the good ones and the bad ones from each other!») (ibid., 114). Here, the bad ones are explicitly the objects of the Lese as Auslese. (The verb in the infinitive, «to lesen lentils,» gives rise to the noun «the Lese of the lentils.» This Lese is an Aus-einander-Lese, thus, an Aus-lese of the good ones and the bad ones. Readers familiar with Heidegger will notice that the Aus-einander-Lese, or the «auslesende "Lese",» are variations on one of Heidegger's pet words, namely, «Aus-einander-Setzung»; see above, n. 30.) However, the question is still open as to which ones will have to leave the city. The actual Auslese, however, unambiguously takes place in such a way that the bad ones are taken out of the mixture and annihilated: the doves began to peck and «fra b en die schlechten weg und lie b en die guten liegen» («ate away the bad ones and let the good ones lie [where they have always already been all the time, namely, in their city which, as the Lesenden claim, is theirs, and which they don't leave to the bad ones]») (ibid., 113; see also 114, 116). A quarter of an hour later, the lentils were «so rein» («that cleanly sorted») that not a single bad one was among them, and Aschenputtel could put them into the cooking pot, i.e., the purified city, which can then act (ibid., 113).

39. On «brink» and the move toward the brink and along the brink until the point of death see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger."

40. John D. Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 175.

41. Ibid., 175f.

42. Ibid., 176.

43. Ibid., 176.

44. Ibid., 177.

45. Ibid., 188.

46. Ibid., 179.

47. Ibid., 180.

48. Ibid., 180. The accompanying note 18 reads: «This is the remarkable argument of "Die Kehre" in Die Technik und die Kehre . In the recognition of the " Gestell " as Gestell , as the withdrawal of Being, there is already the "saving." In this recognition there is a flash of truth ( Blitzen ) in the midst of the dark night of technology. In the withdrawal, we see what is withdrawn. The difficulty with Thomas Aquinas, then, is that his times were not altogether dark enough, rather the way one cannot yet see the stars in the late afternoon because it is not yet dark enough! That is why Heidegger wrote of the "clear night of the Nothing" ( Weg , 2d ed., 114/115)» (ibid., 184, n. 18; on Auschwitz as the extremum in Heidegger's ''The Question Concerning Technology'' see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," esp. 167, n. 38). Note that Caputo here offers another metaphor conveying that the lost beginning remains constantly present (see above, for instance, chapter 2, n. 33, and chapter 3, n. 7)

49. Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas , 180f.

50. Ibid., 185.

51. Ibid., 187.

52. Ibid., 187.

53. Ibid., 190.

54. Equally, one might read the preceding passage on the «so-called "private existence",» which is by no means «essential, that is to say free, human being» (BW 197; WM 149) as Heidegger's veto against nonpolitical, individualistic interpretations of authentic Dasein and as a confirmation of my thesis that section 74 of Being and Time contains the twofold movement out of Gesellschaft and then back into it in order to cancel it. Having mentioned the passage in the English translation of Brief über den "Humanismus, " about which—regarding the notions that are important in my book, namely, Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft—deconstmctionists might say, a «trace» has been erased, I would like to point to another passage in the English translation of which the same has happened. In the lecture "Das Zeitalter des Weltbildes" ("The Age of the World Picture"), delivered on June 9, 1938, Heidegger raised a question whose English translation reads as follows: «Only because and insofar as man actually and essentially has become subject is it necessary for him, as a consequence, to confront the explicit question: Is it as an "I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing or as the "we" of society { Gesellschaft }; is it as an individual {Einzelner} or as a community {Gemeinschaft}; is it as a personality within the community or as a mere group member in the corporate body { Körperschaft }; is it as a state and nation and as a people {Volk} or as the common humanity of modem man, that man will and ought to be the subject that in his modem essence he already is?» ("The Age of the World Picture," The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays , trans. W. Lovitt [New York: Harper & Row, 1977], 132f.). Reading this passage one assumes that the opposition is between two groups; the first group comprises the «"I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing,» the «individual,» the «mere group member in the corporate body,» and «the common humanity of modem man»; the opposing group includes «the "we" of society,» «community,» «personality within the community,» and «state and nation and as a people»; that is, one supposes that both «community» as well as «society» belong to the same group, the «good» group. Indeed, the same seems to be said in the German text: «Nur weil und insofern der Mensch überhaupt und wesentlich zum Subjekt geworden ist, mu b es in der Folge für ihn zu der ausdrücklichen Frage kommen, ob der Mensch als das auf seine Beliebigkeit beschränkte und in seiner Willkür losgelassene Ich oder als das Wir der Gesellschaft, ob der Mensch als Einzelner oder als Gemeinschaft, ob der Mensch als Persönlichkeit in der Gemeinschaft oder als blo b es Gruppenglied in der Körperschaft, ob er als Staat und Nation und als Volk oder als die allgemeine Menschheit des neuzeitlichen Menschen das Subjekt sein will und mu b , das er als neuzeitliches Wesen schon ist» ("Das Zeitalter des Weltbildes," Holzwege [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1952], 85). However, as the evidence I adduced shows, Heidegger was aware of the basic opposition between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft at his time, and he could take for granted that his listeners were so too, if only because of the propaganda of the National Socialists. Those hearing the speech understood the passage differently from the way one has to read the English translation. For «an "I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing» and «the "we'' of society» belong not to different groups but to the same. They are the two modes of being «an individual.» (Or the «and» is explicative, and the phrase «the "we" of society» only explains the phrase «an 'T' confined to its own preferences .... ») Thus, the first group includes the «''I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing,» «the "we" of society,» «individual,» «mere group member in the corporate body,» and «the common humanity of modern man»; the «good» group comprises «community,» «personality within the community,» and «state and nation and as a people.» That is, «society» and «community» belong to different groups, «society» to the «bad» group and «community» to the «good» group. In 1938 Heidegger could be sure that every listener would understand the terms and the pertinent oppositions. In addition, by his intonation he could easily emphasize that «als Einzelner» («individual») is the common denominator of the «"I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing» and «the "we" of society.» When he printed the text, he did not take into consideration that anyone who had not heard him speaking and was not familiar with the usage of the notions at Heidegger's time would think that «the "we" of society» and «community» belong to the same group, the «good» one. After the passage quoted, Heidegger continues: «Only where man is essentially already subject does there exist the possibility of his slipping into the aberration of subjectivism in the sense of individualism. But also, only where man remains subject does the positive struggle against individualism and for the community {Gemeinschaft} as the sphere of those goals that govern all achievement and usefulness have any meaning» ("The Age of the World Picture," The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays , 133; Holzwege , 85). The last sentence is the only explicit statement about politics in the essay, and it is from the viewpoint of National Socialism «politically correct,» at least at first sight. It has been discussed whether in this essay and his other writings on technology Heidegger criticizes National Socialism or, as Rockmore argues, only the empirical National Socialists without abandoning his commitment to National Socialism itself (see Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy , 204ff.). In the context of that question, the quoted passages probably have additional aspects. However, I cannot discuss this issue here.

One might also point to a passage in the essay "Vom Wesen des Grundes," written in 1929, in which Heidegger interprets himself and points out that his notion of Dasein is tailored precisely so as to conceptualize the transition from Gesellschaft to Gemeinschaft: «The sentence: The Dasein exists for the sake of itself does not include any egoistic-ontic positing of an end for a blind self-love of the factical human being. Thus, it cannot be "refuted" by pointing out that many human beings sacrifice themselves for the others , and that, in general, the human beings don't exist for themselves but rather in Gemeinschaft. In the mentioned sentence is entailed neither a solipsistic isolation of Dasein nor an egoistic intensification of it. Rather, the sentence points out the condition of the possibility { Bedingung der Möglichkeit } that man can comport himself either in an "egoistic" or ''altruistic'' way» (WM 53f.). In 1929 Heidegger published the lecture "Was ist Metaphysik?" ("What is Metaphysics?," BW 91-112). When it was published in its fourth edition in 1943, Heidegger added an afterword that was revised in all the editions that appeared after World War II (WM 397). Still, even in its revised form the afterword sounds pretty rough. Heidegger again uses the fascist formula of sacrifice—it is only through sacrifice of oneself that one becomes free—and he writes about «wesentliches Denken» («essential thinking») or «anfängliches Denken» («original thinking»):

Instead of counting on what-is with what-is, it expends itself in Being for the truth of Being { verschwendet es sich im Sein für die Wahrheit des Seins }. This thinking answers to the demand of Being { antwortet dem Anspruch des Seins } in that man surrenders his historical being {überantwortet dem} to the simple, sole necessity whose constraints do not so much necessitate as create the need ( Not ) which is consummated in the freedom of sacrifice { die sich in der Freiheit des Opfers erfüllt }. The need is: to preserve the truth of Being no matter what may happen to man and everything that "is." Freed from all constraint, because born of the abyss of freedom, this sacrifice is the expense of our human being for { Verschwendung des Menschenwesens in } the preservation of the truth of Being in respect of what-is. In sacrifice there is expressed { ereignet sich } that hidden thanking which alone does homage to the grace { Huld } wherewith Being has endowed the nature of man, in order that he may take over in his relationship to Being the guardianship of Being { damit dieser in dem Bezug zum Sein die Wächterschaft des Seins übernehme}. Original thanking is the echo {Widerhall} of Being's favor wherein it clears a space for itself {Gunst des Seins in der sich das Einzige lichtet} and causes the unique occurrence: that what-is is. This echo {Widerhall} is man's answer {Antwort} to the Word of the soundless voice of Being .... But how else could humanity attain to original thanking {fände... in das ursprüngliche Danken} unless Being's favour preserved for man, through his open relationship to this favour, the splendid poverty in which the freedom of sacrifice hides its own treasure { in der die Freiheit des Opfers den Schatz ihres Wesens verbirgt} .... Sacrifice is rooted in the nature of the event through which Being claims man for the truth of Being. {Das Opfer ist heimisch im Wesen des Ereignisses, als welches das Sein den Menschen für die Wahrheit des Seins in den Anspruch nimmt. } Therefore it is that sacrifice brooks no calculation, for calculation always miscalculates sacrifice in terms of the expedient and the inexpedient, no matter whether the aims are set high or low. Such calculation distorts the nature of sacrifice. The search for a purpose dulls the clarity of the awe, the spirit of sacrifice ready prepared for dread, which takes upon itself kinship with the imperishable. ("What is Metaphysics?" in Existence and Being [Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery, 1949], 357f.; WM 105f.; all italics with the occurrences of «in» and «im» in the German text and the corresponding occurrences of «in,» «to,» «for,» and ((wherein)) mine, J. F.; on «in» in Heidegger see below, chapter 6, n. 24)

Note that sacrifice is «heimisch» («at home,» not «rooted») in the «Wesen» («essence» or «presencing,» not «nature») of the event. Heidegger understood the noun «Wesen» from the verb «anwesen» or «wesen»; that is, the «Wesen des Ereignisses» is the presencing, the advent, of the event (see this chapter, n. 36). Prior to the advent of the event man is not at home, and he can come home only through sacrifice. The afterword, as mentioned, was added in 1943, that is, shortly after the famous defeat and loss of a huge German army at Stalingrad, which in military history is regarded as the turning point in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. After the lost battle of Stalingrad thinking realizes that the death o]' the German soldiers is a sacrifice that Being demands in order to presence itself. Thinking thanks Being for its advent. It gives up its pretensions to autonomy and is transformed into thanking that «ereignet sich» («presences itself,» not «is expressed»). Only through sacrifice of the German soldiers and of thinking can man be brought back into the realm of Being so as to become the agent («guardianship of Being») of Being.

No matter whether this passage was supposed to be a consolation for the people at home or an advertisement for philosophy since the Denker stands im Sturm, in the storm, no less than the soldiers though much safer—it certainly marks the consummation of the effort of the rightists to redefine the vocabulary of Enlightenment for their own purposes (see above, chapter 3, n. 17). (On a similar passage from summer 1941 see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 147ff.) Note the play with «antwortet dem Anspruch» and «überantwortet dem.» Both phrases as well as «echo» correspond to the words «erwidert» and «überliefert sich» in section 74 of Being and Time , and the sacrifice of the German soldiers corresponds to the « disavowal » (BT 438; SZ 386). Again, it is the same story as in Being and Time , the only difference being that, as in the passage taken from an Introduction to Metaphysics , essential thinking no longer insists on immediate realization.

55. With the exception of a sentence near the end of section 74 (PB 61f.), Wolin's commentary on section 74 ends with his interpretation of the sentence on the «choice which makes one free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated» (BT 437; SZ 385) (see PB 53-66).

56. After the sentence on « Widerruf, » Heidegger goes on, «Die Wiederholung überlä b t sich weder dem Vergangenem, noch zielt sie auf einen Fortschritt. Beides ist der eigentlichen Existenz im Augenblick gleichgültig» (SZ 386; «Repetition does not abandon itself to that which is past, nor does it aim at progress. In the moment of vision authentic existence is indifferent to both these alternatives,» BT 438). Commentators who maintain that, in this or that way, Dasein distances itself from the past will interpret the sentences as a summary of authentic Dasein's capacity to distance itself from any specific content offered by the past and, by extension, any commitment for the future entailed in it, or as authentic Dasein's incapacity to identify with or to subjugate itself to some content. Especially Guignon would probably interpret «progress» as the expectations of ordinary or inauthentic Dasein. However, Heidegger said that repetition is not a simple reproduction of the past because it is an endangered past that calls upon Dasein to destroy the false present in order to rerealize the past. In the context of this idea and the possible charge of nostalgic romanticism against which he has to defend his concept, «sich überlassen» means a specific attitude of indulging in an alleged past without drawing any inferences for the present from this. «Ich überlasse mich einer Stimmung» is «I give myself over to a mood» without doing anything else besides indulging in that mood. The proverbial romantic and nostalgic person indulges in, or gives himself or herself over to, fairy tales of the Middle Ages or so, or he «geht auf in ihnen,» is absorbed in them, in his leisure time, or he leaves—or tries to leave—society in this or that way in order to keep himself free from its alienating impact. Thus, those who überlassen sich to the past do not follow the past's command to cancel and destroy the present (or they do so only in a private act without consequences for the community or society). Also, «nor does it aim at progress» may mean that authentic Dasein is not engaged in the Enlightenment project of progress, whether of the liberal or social democratic variety. In this way, the sentence summarizes precisely the move of authentic Dasein against liberals and leftists on one hand as well as against the romantic Right on the other. Because of the second sentence («In the moment . . . alternatives»), however, one might also read the two quoted sentences differently, namely, within the context of the distinction between the German notions of Tat and Handlung. Within Heidegger's framework, Handlung is the type of action that ordinary and inauthentic Daseine constantly perform, namely, simply to repeat what the «they» offer. A Tat, however, is an action that makes a difference and brings about a different state of affairs (see, for instance, «sei eines Tages wirklich in die Tat umgesetzt,» SZ 173; «should some day be actually translated into deeds,» BT 218; see, for instance, above pp. 91, 162). (See «Like the theological conception of kairos , there is a right time, a propitious instant when things come together, so to speak—a moment when an important action is possible, such as the transition to authenticity in practice through the grasp and reenactment of one' s heritage on both the levels of the individual and the group,» Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy , 48.) A Tat is different from, and superior to, a Handlung. The person performing a Handlung most of the time keeps a keen eye on the consequences, his benefits from this action, his reputation in the eyes of others, etc. The one carrying out a Tat, however, abstracts from all these egocentric concerns. Within a Tat, all the distinctions between subject and object, means and ends, step-by-step realization of intermediate ends, etc. disappear. (In Heidegger, the «true» Tat is sacrifice; one who is capable of sacrificing his or her Eigenstes no longer asks for the purpose and the benefit of his sacrifice; see above, pp. 189ff., and this chapter, n. 54.) Or, to put it differently, these sentences represent Heidegger's appropriation of the Kantian «good will» for which the consequences don't matter as long as the will is good. This passage too suggests the above-mentioned (see pp. 18f., 127ff.) interpretation of the sentences explaining that repetition is not just a simple bringing back of some past («But when one has . . . formerly actual, may recur,» BT 437f.; SZ 385f.). Ordinary and inauthentic Dasein just simply repeats the choices of the «they» or is «persuaded» («tiberrede{t}») (BT 437; SZ 386) by the choices of the «they.» Authentic Dasein, however, having gone «under the eyes of death» (BT 434; ST 382) and having been called upon by the call of the people, knows that there is something at stake, namely, the struggle.

57. See the quotes above and others, for instance, PB 63. Wolin mentions only in passing that for Heidegger «fate possesses a distinctly ennobling character for him or her it envelops» (PB 62). This vocabulary differs from the vocabulary of autonomy, nihilism, fatalism, and subjugation that Wolin applies to Heidegger in order then to distill what he regards to be the crucial contradiction between autonomy and fatalism. Maybe, with this remark Wolin wants to pay tribute to the fact that, with regard to the relationship between call and the Dasein called upon by the call, Heidegger exploits motifs developed in the context of Christian rapture and grace. For the relationship between will and grace is not the negation of autonomy by fatalism, neither is it the reconciliation between two opposites, nor a Hegelian Aufhebung of opposites. Rather, being informed by grace, the will becomes the free will it essentially is or it becomes transformed, transfigured, or—in Wolin's words—«ennobl {ed}» into love. What Heidegger employs is a logic not of reconciliation or of dialectical mediation but rather one of transfiguration. Hermeneutically, it is highly reasonable and shows Heidegger's sensitivity to the needs of the time that in contrast to Cassirer and other Neo-Kantians, he felt it necessary to develop such a logic of transfiguration to interpret the mood of the young people in the Youth movement or that of the conservatives of his time. It is this transfiguring power of the call, of the origin, the promise entailed in the passive aspect of Entschlossenheit I mentioned at the beginning (see chapter 1, section A) that would lead adherents of the Youth movement to answer a criticism such as Wolin's by saying either that Wolin's framework is completely alien to their own self-experience or that getting rid of autonomy was precisely what they had hoped for. One might say that Paul Tillich's The Socialist Decision presents a criticism of Heidegger and the rightists that takes the desire of the rightists for a logic of transfiguration seriously without abandoning the need for autonomy.

58. In light of the above-mentioned advertisement as well as of what follows, it is truly remarkable that one of the notes of the translators on the very first and programmatic page of Being and Time —Heidegger's comments on a sentence within the passage on the battle of giants in Plato's Sophist (BT 19; SZ 1) preceding the "Introduction" (BT 21; SZ 2)—reads as follows: «Throughout this work the word 'horizon' is used with a connotation somewhat different from that to which the English-speaking reader is likely to be accustomed. We tend to think of a horizon as something which we may widen or extend or go beyond; Heidegger, however, seems to think of it rather as something which we can neither widen nor go beyond, but which provides the limits for certain intellectual activities performed 'within' it» (BT 19, n. 4). It follows from the logic of the American dream that precisely by realizing it one renders oneself as well as one's heirs inauthentic. In his book Old Money , Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr. writes: «The old-money rich, the hereditary rich, are totally out of sync with the dominant theology or ideology of American life. They have no place in the American dream. The American dream is 'to make it.' The American dream is a dream of self-making—not just self-moneymaking. But the inheritor of wealth is already made. So the only thing he or she can do is to somehow make a virtue out of the syntax of his wealth. In other words, he or she is , everybody else is becoming» (quoted according to The New York Times Magazine , 19 November 1995, pp. 66f.).

59. See above, this chapter, n. 57.

60. See also «sacrifice» above, this chapter, n. 54. Heidegger does not comment on his usage of «Held.» Thus, he quite obviously uses it in line with the common usage of the word. The paradigmatic case of a German Held in the twenties, however, were the «Helden von Langemarck,» who subjugated themselves to and sacrificed themselves for what they regarded to be the common good, higher than themselves and an end in itself, the Volksgemeinschaft, which will reward them for their sacrifice. I noted above that Scheler—as probably everyone else—was obviously aware that, in the twenties, the core meaning and connotation of the word Held was the courageous soldier. For after his Kehre he replaced the notion of Held with the more general and neutral one of Vorbild and denied that the Held was the highest Vorbild (see above, chapter 3, n. 36). There was also, in the Kaiserreich as well as in the Weimar Republic, the «Heldengedenktag,» a festive day in memory of the fallen German soldiers, the Helden. The Left had its own festive day, the 1st of May (see above, chapter 3, n. 61). Others welcomed a Heldengedenktag as Memorial Day is appreciated by many here in the USA, namely, as just a day off. For conservatives and especially right-wingers, however, it was a very important day. As in the case of «Vorlaufen in den Tod» (see above, chapter 1, section A), instead of «Held» Heidegger could have used—like Scheler after his Kehre—neutral terms such as «Beispieb> or «Vorbild.» However, German readers probably intuitively feel that these notions just don't fit into the atmosphere or mood built up by Heidegger's strong right-wing vocabulary in section 74.

In his article "Held" in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (vol. 3 [Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1974], col. 1048), O. F. Best adduces three quotes from the second edition (1922) of Ernst Jünger's novel, In Stahlgewittern (In the thunderstorms of steel). Readers of the only edition that is easily available—the one in volume I of his Werke in zehn Bänden (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1960ff.)—should know that Jünger suffered, as he himself put it in a letter, a «mania of revisions and versions {Manie der Bearbeitungen und Fassungen}» (quoted according to U. Böhme, Fassungen bei Ernst Jünger [Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1972], 3). He never indicated that he made revisions, omitted long passages, revised others, and added new ones. The edition of In Stahlgewittern in Werke in zehn Bänden is identified on p. 10 simply as «First edition 1920.» According to Böhme, this was the fifth or sixth version (ibid., 3 and 7). The second of the three quotes in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie defines Held as «a man who achieves the almost divine stage of perfection, the unselfish devotion to an ideal, including sacrificial death {die selbstlose Hingabe an ein Ideal bis zum Opfertode}.» This passage as well as the first quote in Best's article has completely disappeared in the edition in Werke in zehn Bänden . On p. 235 of the latter edition, Jünger writes: «Of all the exciting moments in war none is as strong as the encounter {Begegnung, see above, chapter 3, n. 66} of two leaders of raiding parties {Stoßtruppführer} in between the narrow clay walls of the front lines {Kampfstellung}. There is no {move} back and no mercy {Erbarmen}. This much everyone knows who has seen them in their empire {Reich}; the sovereigns {Fürsten} of the trench with the hard, decided {entschlossenen} faces, daredevil {tollkühn}, lissomely jumping forth and back, with sharp, blood-thirsty eyes; men who were up to the task of the moment and of whom no report tells.» The phrase «men who were . . . and» replaces the phrase «Helden» of the second edition as quoted by Best. In the entire text of In Stahlgewittern as printed in Werke in zehn Bänden , the word «Held» occurs just twice. (I should note that I used the text in volume I of Ernst Jünger's Auswahl aus dem Werk in fünf Bänden [Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1994]; spot checks show that the text is identical with the one in Werke in zehn Bänden .) On p. 231 Jünger reports a deed of a private, saying that he kept in mind «this hero of the moment {diesen Helden des Augenblicks}.» It was not the greatest deed, and—at least for all those who no longer live in the Augenblick, the kairos, of the twenties—«Held des Augenblicks» doesn't sound that impressive. Combined with the demonstrative pronoun, it even looks slightly ironic. Right at the beginning, on p. 19, Jünger speaks of «heroism {Heldentum}.» Jünger begins with the enthusiasm he and his fellow soldiers felt on the way to the front. However, the days in the communications zone didn't bring the dangers they had hoped for, but just «mud, work, and sleepless nights . . . {and} boredom.» It was mastering of these facts that required «a kind of heroism that was not precisely our cup of tea {ein uns wenig liegendes Heldentum}.» Readers should also know that neither the Werke in zehn Bänden nor the Auswahl aus dem Werk in fünf Bänden (nor, for that matter, any other edition or book of Jünger's) contain any of the around 140 articles Jünger published in journals of the extreme Right between 1920 and 1933. For instance, a few weeks prior to Hitler's putsch in November 1923 Jünger wrote: «The true revolution has not yet taken place; it marches along irresistibly. It is not a reaction, but rather a real revolution with all its marks and expressions. Its idea is the völkische {idea} honed to a sharpness hitherto unknown. Its banner is the swastika. Its essence is the concentration of the will into one single point—the dictatorship! It will replace the word with the deed {Tat, see above, this chapter, n. 56}, ink with blood, the empty phrase with sacrifice {Opfer}, the pen with the sword» (quoted according to Renate Haßel and Bruno W. Reimann, Ein Ernst Jüinger-Brevier: Jüingers politische Publizistik 1920 bis 1933. Analyse und Dokumentation [Marburg: BdWi-Verlag, 1995], 199). (Due to copyright restrictions, they couldn't publish an edition of any of Jünger's articles; ibid., 13). The omission of Jünger's articles from the twenties in all later editions and the omission of the word «Held» combine to show that, indeed, in the twenties the Helden von Langemarck were the German Helden par excellence. Still, even without the occurrence of the word «Held» the novel In Stahlgewittern as it appeared in Werke in zehn Bänden as well as other (revised) texts in Werke in zehn Bänden provide good examples of the encounter of men «face to face» in Kampf, encounters in which the true character of a man becomes «free» (BT 436; SZ 384). They also show what I called the logic of transfiguration (see above, this chapter, n. 57). By fighting for the Volksgemeinschaft to the point of death, the brave soldiers leave behind their supposed isolation as bourgeois subjects, and their individuality is transformed, transfigured, into a beloved and loving member of the Volksgemeinschaft who, after his death, will be remembered as a Held.

Note that in German there is a difference between the Held and the Heros, which is not rendered in English. If one of them distances himself from a tradition and establishes something new without repeating a past, it is the Heros, and not the Held. Thus, in German Heracles or Prometheus are usually called Heroen and not Helden. However, according to the «German» understanding of tragedies also Heroen perform their actions, not for the sake of their glorious self-affirmation, but for the sake of a group. Like Heracles, the Heros Prometheus caused one of the major ruptures in history not in order to indulge in self-affirmation but to bring fire to human beings. A Held, and also a Heros, neglects his self-realization for the sake of a higher good. Or, rather, he finds his self-realization, which is his self-transfiguration, by complying with a higher order. After World War II, the word Held pretty much disappeared from public political speech. («The Helden of Bern!» was used for the members of the German soccer team that won the soccer world championship in Bern 1954 and thus made Germany respectable again.) It is used ironically in phrases such as, «Das sind/Ihr seid mir Helden!» (These/you are some kind of Helden!). Sometimes, mothers say this to or about their children—or adults say it to and about other adults—if the children haven't complied with orders but have done some nonsense instead; this use is ironic, and it can be so, because a Held is concerned not with self-realization but with compliance with an order. As to the «Held» in section 74 of Being and Time , Rockmore is right: «The conception of the hero ( Held ) is evoked in relation to the authentic rep- etition of a possibility. We can speculate that the hero is one willing to sacrifice or even die for this cause, that is, the destiny of the Volk» ( On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy , 48).

Within the, so to speak, nonpolitical interpretations of authenticity and historicality in Heidegger, Dreyfus pushed the aspect of distancing in authentic Dasein to the extreme. He writes: «In Chapter V, "Temporality and Historicality," Heidegger introduces a culture's history as source of superior possibilities» (Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I [Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1991], 328). The possibilities Heidegger is interested in, are « marginal practices that have resisted leveling» (ibid., 329). As examples, Dreyfus adduces «Christian caring in the early Christian communities and absolute commitment at the height of romantic chivalry, or Greek mentoring of adolescent boys» (ibid., 329), «John Muir» (ibid., 331), «Martin Luther King, Jr.,» «Jesus, Florence Nightingale, or Mentor himself» (ibid., 330), and—«for our generation»—«ecology . . . adapting past practices of preserving and respecting nature. (Such practices will, of course, subsequently be leveled to banality by the one {his translation of Heidegger's Man})» (ibid., 331). Even if one regards, as Dreyfus does (ibid., 361, n. 65), section 74, and Being and Time in general, as politically neutral, the very tone of Heidegger' s vocabulary in section 74 should have led one at the very least to look for some instance of rightist politics to add it to such a long list of possible choices. However, it is not by chance that Dreyfus does not do so, for people like the heroes of Verdun contradict his entire interpretation of section 74. According to him, the main interest of authentic Dasein is to make a choice that is too marginal and uninteresting for the «they» to level it. It is only a mild exaggeration to say that from Dreyfus's analysis one gets the impression that Heidegger was analyzing the strategies of an ironic Romantic or of a dandy who distances himself not only from the «they» but from the content of his own choice as well, since to identify oneself with the content of one's choice would already level it as well as oneself (see ibid., 330-333). For Dreyfus, under the gaze of authentic Dasein all traditional practices bleach out and lose their « intrinsic meaning» (ibid., 331). Thus, «no possibilities can have intrinsic or enduring meaning» with the effect that the heritage becomes «available as a source of meaningless differences. These nonbanal, nonleveled possibilities can still serve as a source of unique possibilities as long as Dasein does not take them up with the pseudoseriousness of everyday conscience or the unconditional seriousness of {Kierkegaard's} Religiousness B» (ibid., 331). Heidegger himself would surely have subsumed such behavior under « Absäindigkeit» (SZ 126; « distantiality ,» BT 164) as a mode of ordinary and inauthentic Dasein. In Dreyfus's picture of section 74, the only disturbing phenomenon is Heidegger's vocabulary, which, as it were, even Dreyfus cannot avoid quoting. Of the paragraph with the « Geschiclo» and the «Gemeinschaft, des Volkes» (SZ 384; BT 436) at its core, Dreyfus quotes only the last sentence in order to recommend, as already mentioned, ecology as the «issue for our generation,» and in order to place the following apodictic statement in a note: «One can perhaps see here Heidegger's philosophical justification of his political engagement in support of the National Socialists in 1933. It is important to realize, however, that even if one believed that the issue for Heidegger's generation was whether or not to support the Nazis, nothing in Being and Time suggests that the Situation demanded a positive response. Of course, nothing suggests that it required a negative response either» ( Being-in-the-World , 331, n. 65). If this sentence is not simply the result of indifference to the historical and political context of Being and Time , it is a nice example of that dandyism, mixed with the authoritarianism of elegant brevity, which Dreyfus sees in Heidegger.

Dreyfus works out the authentic Dasein as dandy in order to meet and partly agree with a possible criticism of Heidegger concerning an opposition between anxiety and authentic Dasein's choices, a criticism similar to Wolin's regarding autonomy versus fatalism (ibid., 331-333). Again, it seems to me he too misses the logic of transfiguration that is at work in these passages.

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

62. Christopher Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 40f.

63. Ibid., 24.

64. Ibid., 24f.

65. Ibid., 26.

66. Ibid., 28-54.

67. Ibid., 49.

68. Ibid., 47.

69. Ibid., 55.

70. I mentioned that Birmingham seems to assume that the root «wider» in « erwidert» is, so to speak, the verbalization of the prefix «wider-» in « Widerrttf» (see chapter 1, n. 14). In fact, she might be right in that there is a prefix in erwidern. However, it would be, not the prefix «wider-,» but rather «erwider.» The spacious house of German language, the Deutsches Wörterbuch , says: «ERWIDER in place of herwider , Old High German hëra widar , back here, back again; used in inauthentic {uneigentlichen} composites in cases where, today, one just uses again , or back» ( Deutsches Wöirterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimn , vol. 3 [E—Forsche] [Leipzig: S. Hirzel Verlag, 1862; reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984], 1062). The first example of these inauthentic composites is «ERWIDERBRINGEN (bring back again), referre, reportare, reducere» (ibid., 1062). Thus, in his sentence with « erwidert ,» Heidegger has just crossed out «BRINGE» in «ERWIDERBRINGEN» («ERWlDER BRINGE N») and by this has erwider gebracht, brought back again, the authentic verb «erwidern» from its fallen and inauthentic life as the prefix «erwider-» as in erwiderbringen. The first example of «ERWlDERBRINGEN» is Luther's translation of Baruch 5, 9: «denn gott wird Israel erwider bringen mit freuden» (ibid., 1062; «For, God will bring back again/restore Israel with joy»). Thus, Heidegger says that authentic Dasein will bring back or restore the Volksgemeinschaft, and at the same time he points implicitly to those whom he has declared to be its foe and against whom the Widerruf is directed. Thus, on this path among the Holzwege of the German language one gets the impression that Heidegger has expressed his anti-Semitism in this sentence.

In my interpretation, Heidegger's « erwidert» is tailored precisely along the lines of the general comment in the Deutsches Wörterbuch according to which the word «wider» in the sense of «toward» or «against» is not the opposite of «wieder» in the sense of «bringing back,» but rather is entailed in «wicder» as bringing back: «To distinguish in writing ERWlDERN and ERWIEDERN is a mistake since also the notions wider and wieder belong together. For, each which is brought back {das wieder gebrachte} is at the same time something which is brought toward {ein entgegen, dagegen gebrachtes}» (ibid., 1062). Thus, «erwidern» is «to bring back» to some person A what one owes A (a call, a gift, a visit in return, or help as the proper Erwiderung of A's call for help); this meaning of «wider» —namely, «wieder» in the sense of «back to» A—entails a «wider» in the sense of «entgegen/dagegen» (toward) A, insofar as in order to bring back (wieder) to A what I owe A I have to bring it toward (wider) A. In this sense, one might say, Heidegger's « erwidert» equals the verb «erwiderbringen.»

There are a lot of usages of the prefix or adverb «wider» in the sense of «toward» that have no hostile sense whatsoever. «I lean my head wider a wall» ( Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm , vol. 29 [Wenig—Wiking] [Leipzig: S. Hirzel Verlag, 1960; reprint Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984], 873) means «I lean my head against a wall» and thus provide my head, and myself, with a firm support, namely, the wall. There is also an old German translation of the Holy Scripture in which St. Paul's formula « » (1 Cor 13, 12; hyphens mine, J. F.; «face to face») is translated as «face wider face» (ibid., 873). Thus, having been called upon and having opened itself for the call, authentic Dasein turns around and toward (wider) the past, that is, the Volk; leaning toward (wider) the Volk authentic Dasein achieves a firm stand—or «Ständigkeit» (see above, chapter 3, n. 62)—against the vacillations of inauthenticity; turning toward (wider) and leaning toward (wider) the Volk are parts of the move within which authentic Dasein brings back (wieder) to (wider) the Volk what it owes to the Volk, namely itself as the gift in return, a gift that will never equal the gift received from the Volk; in the process, authentic Dasein brings back (wieder) the Volk, that is, it performs a «Wiederholung,» or an Erwiderbringung, of the Volk; however, in this process, authentic Dasein realizes that in the Wiederholung more is at stake. It is only at this point that a prefix «wider-» in Birmingham's sense occurs; for the task to bring back (wieder) itself to (wider) the Volk and to bring back, to rerealize, the Volk with joy entails a hostile stance against (wider) inauthenticity, against Gesellschaft, namely, the order to destroy it so as to make room for the proper realization of the Volk; this «wider,» however, is not the «wider» in Heidegger's verb « erwidert» but rather the prefix «wider-» in his word « Widerruf» Thus, also in language the «Wiederholung des Möglichen» (SZ 385; «repeating of that which is possible,» BT 437) is not a simple repetition, since Heidegger's «Wiederholung des Möglichen» includes several activities that are described by verbs with the adverb «wider» and by the verbs «erwidern» and «widerrufen.» Ordinary and inauthentic Daseine, however, perform a simple repetition. For they don't turn around and toward (wider) a vanished past; they don't lean toward (wider) the Volk; they don't bring back (wieder) to (wider) the Volk themselves as a gift; they don't erwidern the call of the Volk; they don't bring back (wieder) the Volk; and they don't widerrufen society. For they simply repeat what the «they» instill into them—a Wiederholung without the various activities wieder and wider a vanished past and society that authentic Dasein performs. In some way, the inauthentic Daseine and to some degree also the ordinary Daseine indeed perform an activity that might be described by a verb with the prefix «wider.» For during the Bocksgesang the ordinary Daseine cover up the authentic possibilities. After Being has constituted itself and has called the authentic Daseine into the «Kampf» (SZ 384; «in struggling,» BT 436), the inauthentic Daseine widersetzen sich, resist, oppose, the effort of the authentic Daseine to cancel Gesellschaft and to impose Gemeinschaft onto all Daseine. How- ever, these activities of the ordinary and the inauthentic Daseine are instrumental to their effort to go on with their simple repetition of Gesellschaft.

So far, I have silently corrected something that looks like a misprint but does not need to be one. All words and phrases that are in italics from the seventh edition of Sein und Zeit onward were set spaced in editions one through six. Only four pages prior to the passage with erwidern and Widerruf, the sixth edition has a misprint concerning one of these spaced phrases, for in the spaced word «zeitlich» (« temporally» in «because they exist temporally in so primordial a manner ,» BT 433) the last two letters are not spaced ( Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Max Niemeyer, 1949], 382). This misprint has been taken over in the seventh edition ( Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Max Niemeyer, 1953], 382) and is still in the twelfth edition («weil es so ursprünglich zeitli ch existiert,» SZ 382). Bast and Delfosse note this misprint and say that, as most other misprints, it has been corrected from the fifteenth edition ( Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Max Niemeyer, 1979], 382) on ( Handbuch zum Textstudium von Martin Heideggers ' Sein und Zeit ,' 400, 401). In the sixth edition the word «erwidert» on page 386 was correctly spaced ( Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Max Niemeyer, 1949], 386). However, in the seventh edition the letter «t» in «erwidert» has not been set in italics, for the seventh edition has « erwider t» ( Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Max Niemeyer, 1953], 386). The same mistake can be found in the twelfth edition (SZ 386) as well as in the seventeenth edition ( Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Max Niemeyer, 1993], 386) and thus probably occurs in all editions following the seventh. Bast and Delfosse don't list this misprint (see Handbuch zum Textstudium von Martin Heideggers ' Sein und Zeit, ' 401). It is of course possible that neither Heidegger nor Bast and Delfosse noticed this misprint. However, since Bast and Delfosse probably worked on the index for several years, it might be possible that they asked Heidegger, and that Heidegger either said that it was no misprint or that it was one of those rare misprints that improve the text and thus should not be corrected. Perhaps the typesetter of the seventh edition was a Kasper (see above, this chapter, nn. 10 and 31); in this case, not one who drags the sublime into the ridiculous but one who emphasizes the meaning of the word and of the entire phrase. For by setting in italics just «erwider» and not the entire word «erwidert» he highlighted a prefix that was old and outdated even at Heidegger's time, the prefix «erwider,» and in this way he also typographically emphasized that Heidegger's « erwidert» is meant in the sense of a response to a call for help and in the sense of a revitalization. Heidegger' s « erwidert» is indeed the verbalization of the prefix «erwider» in the sense of «erwiderbringen,» to bring back, to restore. In this way, Heidegger or the typesetter stressed the continuity between Being and Time and Heidegger's later writings (see above, this chapter, section B) and, in addition, gave a further example of Heidegger's alleged capacity to reveal the «true» meaning of a word by reducing it to its forgotten «primordial» meaning. In light of this, it is regrettable that the edition of Sein und Zeit as volume two of the Gesamtausgabe has erased the trace by italicizing the entire word (« erwidert,» Sein und Zeit [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976], 510).

Maybe Heidegger's formulation that authentic Dasein «dem Tod unter die Augen geht» (SZ 382; «goes right under the eyes of death,» BT 434), is an allusion to St. Paul's formula (1 Cor. 13, 12). In Christianity, the way from being «face wider face» with death leads to the hope of some day being «face wider face» with God. In Heidegger it leads to being «face wider face» with the Volk. Heidegger also wrote the notorious sentence: «For along with German the Greek language is (in regard to its possibilities for thought) at once the most powerful and most spiritual of all languages» (IM 57; EM 43). Perhaps he regarded wider and erwidern as good examples of this claim, since the different meanings of «wider» and «erwidem» parallel the different meanings of the Greek which in the genitive means primarily «that from which something comes» (Liddell & Scott, Greek English Lexicon , 1496) for which Heidegger uses «aus» ( ) («Der Ruf kommt aus mir und doch über mich,» SZ 275; «The call comes from me and yet from beyond me and over me ,» BT 320; see also his usage of «aus» in section 74; see above, chapter 2, section C with n. 33). In this way, Heidegger endows the entity , from which the call comes with the nobility of being the origin since in this sense and can be close to each other anyway. The call comes from somewhere. In contrast to inauthentic Dasein, authentic Dasein listens to the call and unites itself with it. in the dative and in the accusative expresses «proximity,» «close engagement,» «union,» and «motion or direction towards» (Liddell & Scott, Greek English Lexicon , 1497) as, in the case of the accusative, in St. Paul's formula and, in the case of the dative, for instance in Plato's Phaedrus : in recollection the soul turns upward toward that which truly is; through memory the soul is always near those things a god's nearness whereunto makes him truly god (« , » 249 C). One finds «4. in hostile sense, against» (Liddell & Scott, Greek English Lexicon , 1497) only as one among sixteen meanings of with accusative, which I see only in the « Wider» of the « Widerruf ,» whereas Birmingham seems to see it in both the « erwidert» as well as the « Widerruf .» However, maybe up to now St. Paul's formulation has been completely misunderstood since in a deconstructivist interpretation it might turn out that actually St. Paul's phrasing says that also and especially in this situation Dasein turns in hostility against God's face and leaps out of the regained paradise. From my point of view, this is what inauthentic Dasein, or the Dasein in the «dwarf»-like place (see below, this chapter, n. 71), does.

Even more pertinent than the Greek is . It covers all the different meanings of wider and wieder I have presented. Thus, in German-Greek lexica one finds as translations of German words with the prefixes «wieder-» or «wider-» in all their meanings words with the prefix , and in Greek-German lexica vice versa. Correspondingly, under the entries «erwidern» and «Erwiderung» one finds words like as well as words like as in Aristotle (see above, chapter 1, n. 15). Thus, in contrast to inauthentic Dasein, authentic Dasein erwidert the call, that is, brings back to the Volk what it owes the Volk, and what it owes the Volk is its own existence; that is, authentic Dasein itself (accusative) Volk (dative), that is, authentic Dasein is the « sich { der Vergangenheit} überliefernde Entschlossenheit» (SZ 385; «hands itself down { to the past},» BT 437, emphasis mine, J. F.; see above pp. 16ff.). In this act authentic Dasein realizes that it is called upon to enter into the «struggle» (BT 436; SZ 384)—into the or « » ( Sophist 246 a 4), as Plato says in the context of the quote right at the beginning of Being and Time (BT 19; SZ 1)—against inauthentic Dasein; a struggle in which there are two —namely, authentic Daseine and inauthentic Daseine—that cannot coexist in the same city, the latter being the matter of their struggle (see above, chapter 4, n. 5). Thus, in the vocabulary of Aristotle's Physics (I, ch. 7), the presence of inauthentic Dasein in the city as the , or absence, , of form, Being, or Volk in the city is replaced with the presence, the , of form, Being, or Volk in the city, which entails the destruction, or the expulsion, of the that inauthenticity is. The « Widerruff» (SZ 386; BT 438) anticipates this outcome of the struggle.

In my interpretation the first step in the sentence on Erwiderung and Widerruf is a strong identification, or subjugation, of Dasein; in Guignon and the translators' interpretation the first step is a distancing and only then is there a partial identification; in Birmingham's interpretation there is no identification at all. In contrast to Guignon, Dreyfus and others, Birmingham does not give examples of authentic historicality. Probably, the reason for this is that, strictly speaking, there is no worldly example of her «( Erwidert )» (TP 32). Perhaps each action by any worldly actor requires some identification, even the most radical rupture, individual or collective suicide or killing. Compare Dreyfus's list of examples of heroes to choose (see above, this chapter, n. 60) with Guignon' s list (see above, p. 8). After having read quite a few of American texts on Heidegger's historicality, in note 60 of this chapter I almost wrote: «As examples of heroes to choose Dreyfus adduces the usual crowd.» Would a sentence like that have revealed that language has already leveled these heroes? Language or me? «Wann ich so schwerz bin, Schuld ist nicht mein allein .» («Would I ever!?») Nonetheless, «round up the usual suspects!» Fortunately, Hollywood and TV have preserved for sempiternity some of the authentic heroes. One should wiederholen, repeat, the way, the run, the escape, which Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Victor Láslo, Peter Lorre, Benjamin and others did, or tried to do, and then one might recognize the heroes who were around at the time of Being and Time , namely, among others, all the Siegfrieds and Brunhildes of Wagner's operas, the Helden von Verdun, the Hitlers and Schlageters (see above, chapter 1, n. 33) on the one hand and, on the other, the workers of the Parisian Commune, the workers and sailors of the Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte in Munich and Kiel, Erwin Szymanski, and Rosa Luxemburg, among others. Rosa Luxemburg was tortured by the Schlageters, stabbed to death, and thrown into the Landwehrkanal, a canal running through downtown Berlin. Landwehr is «territorial army»; thus, listening to language a rightist might have rendered this event by, «Das Land (countryside, soil) wehrt sich, defends itself (against its foes).» Rick's famous sentence, «Here's looking at you, kid,» reads in the German version of Casablanca «Ich seh' Dir in die Augen, Kleines (I look into your eyes, little girl).» This is a slightly false, but precisely for that reason a very good translation. Anyway, in each version Ingrid Bergman does not turn away, but remains face wider face.

71. I have checked only her first two quotes from Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche. The first is: «Whoever stands in the moment ( Augenblick ) lets what runs counter to itself come to collision, though not to a standstill, by cultivating and sustaining the strife {Widerstreit} between what is assigned him as a task and what has been given him as his endowment. To see the moment means to stand in it. But the dwarf keeps to the outside, perches on the periphery» (TP 34; Eternal Recurrence of the Same , trans. D. Krell [New York: Harper & Row, 1984], 57; Nietzsche I , [Pfullingen: Neske, 1961], 311f.; on Widerstreit see above, this chapter, n. 30). She leaves something out in this quote und does not quote the immediately preceding sentences, namely: «Und dennoch ist da ein Zusammenstoß. Freilich nur für den, der nicht Zuschauer bleibt, sondem selbst der Augenblick ist , der in die Zukunft hineinhandelt und dabei das Vergangene nicht fallen läßt, es vielmehr zugleich übernimmt und bejaht. Wer im Augenblick steht, der ist zwiefach gewendet: für ihn laufen Vergangenheit und Zukunft gegeneinander . Er läßt das . . .» ( Nietzsche 1 , 311). Whatever these sentences mean and however one might relate them to Being and Time , no one should discuss the former passage without the latter. Subsequently, she presents claims concerning Heidegger's concept of the moment and underpins them with the following quote: «Here, then, it is a matter of decision—and of incision—in our lives, a matter of cutting away what has prevailed hitherto, what has by now run its course, from what still ''remains.'' Obviously, the cut is made by the thought of return, which transforms everything» (TP 34; Eternal Recurrence of the Same , 75; Nietzsche I , 331). This quote, too, cannot be discussed without its context, which Birmingham does not present. Furthermore, the context shows that Heidegger does not develop a theory of decision and incision but rather talks about the impact of the thought of eternal recurrence on Nietzsche's life. The first sentence in her quote is tendentiously, or falsely, translated. For in the German text Heidegger means unambiguously that the theory of eternal recurrence marks a crucial turn in Nietzsche's life.

72. If—to assume the impossible—Erwin Szymanski would have interpreted Heidegger like Birmingham, instead of saying that Heidegger «forgot the sublime moment which calls for Dasein's resolute judgment» (TP 44) he would have said, «Dem (Heidegger) iss da Film gerissen!» (his film is torn!) In such a case, one splices the two parts of the film back together and forgets about the Riß. There is, so to speak, a generation of scholars, for instance, Wolin and Lacoue-Labarthe, who under the impact of Heidegger's engagement in National Socialism ask whether this was related to Being and Time , and their answer is that it was. They don't deal with a certain passage, namely, the one on erwidert and Widerruf. Thus, the next generation erwidert them by referring to this passage. since at least in its English translation it seems to support the assumption that the main aspect of authentic Dasein is its capacity of distancing itself from tradition, etc. Though for very different reasons, for Wolin and Lacoue-Labarthe Being and Time is prone to National Socialism. For Guignon, Being and Time is politically neutral, and Heidegger's engagement in National Socialism is just a matter of his conservative habits. For Birmingham, Being and Time is antitotalitarian and thus anti-National Socialism; for her Heidegger's engagement in National Socialism is not a matter of some habit but rather a Riß, as she puts it, and thus an inexplicable miracle that has not changed the course of his anti-totalitarian thinking. Though deconstructionists—especially since a seeming move toward theology in recent deconstructionism—should welcome and strengthen the Riß that a miracle represents, in this case the notion of a miracle is used to confirm the supposed continuity of Heidegger's anti-totalitarian thinking. Once the miracle has done its job, one can forget about it and is left with Heidegger as the only philosopher who thought antitotalitarian politics. Even if one does not agree with Wolin that Derrida's «apologetic and relativizing treatment of Heidegger's ties to Nazism . . . raises the question of deconstruction's adequacy as a heuristic for guiding our judgments in the ethicopolitical realm» (PB xviii), one must acknowledge that Heidegger has come a long way.

Fynsk as well as Birmingham have as one of their major «Helden» Lacoue-Labarthe. Strangely enough, as in the case of Wolin as taken up by Guignon, so in Lacoue-Labarthe's interpretation there is something that makes it prone to be turned into Birmingham's interpretation, and that is due to his interpretation of the motif of the «Held,» of which he says in a note that he is «indebted to Christopher Fynsk for having drawn {his} attention» to ("Transcendence Ends in Politics," Social Research 49, no. 2 [Summer 1982]: 432, n. 32; Engl. translation of "La Transcendance finie/t dans la politique," L'imitation des modernes [Paris: Galilee, 1986], 135-175). However, it would lead too far to elaborate on this point, which also spoils Lacoue-Labarthe's book Heidegger, Art, and Politics .

In his book Daimon Life , Krell (who does not discuss the passage on Erwiderung and Widerruf) does not deny the strong nationalism at work in section 74. Thus, he asks: «By a heavy-handed sleight-of-hand, Dasein now inherits a possibility that allows it to pick itself up by its own bootstraps and leap over its own shadow. . . . What good is it if Heidegger reminds himself and us of the finitude of proper temporality once that sleight-of-the-hand has done for Dasein precisely what the relation to the Infinite has always done for human beings in the past, namely, granted them the license to perpetrate infinite violence?» (David F. Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992], 178). At first, he has no answer: «What such repeatability can mean in the face of a mortality that is insurmountable remains unclear. . . . This can only disturb and haunt us» (ibid., 178). However, a stale joke relieves him of his disturbance: «Dasein natal is Dasein fatal. Its nativity implies nationality, and its nationality, at least in Heidegger's case, although certainly not in his alone, entails a nationalism. Heidegger's nationalism, the inherited hellenized Deutschtum of the George-Kreis, the hard and heavy legacy of what Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy have called a "national aestheticism," will escape unscathed the rigors to which Heidegger almost everywhere else subjects his heritage» (ibid., 179). The only virtue of this passage is that it does not wiederholen the notion that one produces one's own fate. In, so to speak, Wiederholung and Erwiderung of Krell's own style (ibid., 157-170), I make the following remarks: (1) These sentences show that Krell has not understood anything of section 74. (2) In dissimilar similarity to Lacoue-Labarthe, Krell presents Heidegger as the great hero Heracles who cleaned up the stable of Augias and who did so many things for us. We cannot blame him for not completing his job. After all, despite all his achievements Heidegger too is finite. (3) Krell makes nationalism, as it were, into a fatality of Germans. One doesn't know whether or not one should hope that he is not aware that these sentences are a slap into the face of all those who back then fought against National Socialism. Besides, just the sentence in Jaspers in 1945 that Heidegger belonged to the few professors who «helped place National Socialism in the saddle» (M. Heidegger/K.Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1920-1963 , 271; see Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 149) and Heidegger's own assessment—that he was all alone in his engagement for National Socialism (see Karl Löwith, "My last Meeting with Heidegger," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader , 142; see also MH 158; see chapter 6, section A)—should keep anyone from writing such sentences. (4) Krell hasn't understood anything of the dramatics of Being and Time as a whole. Heidegger was very familiar with Augustine and with Luther. In both Augustine and Luther one finds a criticism of thinking in terms of substances. In both of them this effort to «soften,» to «weaken,» or to deconstruct the individual is closely related to their efforts to make room for the Infinite, for God, and to hand over the individual to God. It is also obvious that in Being and Time in his own peculiar way Heidegger adopts Hegel's stages of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit . Thus, one might surmise that Heidegger combines all these motifs to lead us to nationalism as the ultimate Stufe of Dasein. It is not, as Krell would have it, that Heidegger arrives at nationalism despite his criticism of substance and subject, but the other way around: he criticizes the substance and the subject to pave the way for nationalism. (5) In the face of the Nazism in Being and Time , one might listen to language and hear that only a subject and not an authentic Dasein, in Krell's words, «subjects his heritage» (ibid., 179) to a critical examination and deconstruction. In the light of this one should certainly insist on the subject against its deconstructors. Because of the outrageous pages on Habermas (ibid., 161-163) one feels tempted to redirect his recommendation to Habermas back to the author and suggest that he himself eventually begin—as he himself says nine times—«to read» (ibid., 162-163) Heidegger.

In my view, Birmingham and others, as it were, project the benevolent multiculturalism and individualism of the USA onto Heidegger's Being and Time , though especially Heideggerian hermeneutics requires breaking through, and freeing oneself from, one's «they»-like assumptions. Admittedly, however, for people in the USA this is not so easy when it comes to section 74. It is not just a matter of the mistranslation of the sentences with Erwiderung and « disavowal» (BT 438, n. 1). On page 10 E of the New York Times , Sunday, December 22, 1996, Karen de Witt published an article on the movie Evita , starting Madonna. Already the title of that review—"Once Villainous, Now Virtuous"—speaks to the point of my book. As is known, in December of that year Bloomingdale's opened an Evita boutique. Karen de Witt quotes Kalman Rutenstein, vice president for fashion at Bloomingdale's («"We've reordered three times."») and comments on the movie: «The reordering is not limited to Evita clothing. The woman herself has been retrofitted as a material girl with a penchant for charity, . . . The real Eva Perón . . . was as corrupt, vengeful and power hungry as her husband.» Neither Bloomingdale's nor Madonna are repeating any what-has-been-there in Heidegger's sense. Rather, the late Heidegger might have said they treat the past, its products, and its heroes as «standing-reserve [ Bestand ]» (BW 298). In the following occurrences of words with the prefix «re-» in de Witt's review the words designate not a Heideggerian revitalization but rather—as in Birmingham—a break with, or move away from, something past toward something new as the first social commandment of life in the USA. (Also Guignon's formula «to creatively reinterpret» [HI 138] the chosen hero does not imply that in this reinterpretation one has to come as close to the hero himself as possible.) «Sociologists, social critics, philosophers and movie makers» say that it is «all part of the American cult of individualism.» David Ruth is quoted: «"Americans have this tremendous faith in the ability to repackage themselves. . . . That's the great American gift to the 20th century. And one of the ways they convince themselves that they have this ability is to repackage historical figures."» Stanley Crouch adds a further note to this. He said «that Americans have problems with complex humans. The remaking of villains into heroes comes from an American confusion about rebels, he said. "There is a very substantial history in America of people who rebelled against the law and were right," he said. "It isn't something that's just romantic. That is what the 13 colonies were all about. But we get confused about the difference between heroic individuality, which makes possible a greater social freedom, and anarchic individuality, which is ruthless, narcissistic, amoral and dangerous.''» If one just looks at these occurrences, one might indeed get the impression that the English prefix «re-» is, as it were, the keynote address and flagship of American life and its cheered constant break with as many pasts as possi- ble and that the «origin» of the «re-» («repetition,» see above, chapter 3, n. 58) has been done away with as well. Its German counterpart, the prefix «wieder-» («Wieder-holung»), however, most of the time introduces an activity of bringing back. For romantics, «back again» has never lost its aura, and in Heidegger it has had one of its most devastating recurrences.

The note of the translators on the sentence with Erwiderung and « disavowal» (BT 438, n. 1) is one of the few in which they offer not just information about Heidegger's use of particular words but also an interpretation of the text. Concerning particularly difficult passages they probably asked the people they thank in the preface (BT 16) for help. Since Hannah Arendt was a native German speaker as well as probably the best expert on Heidegger among them, it is possible that she advised them. In that case, one would have an astounding solution to the problem of the mistranslation. Hannah Arendt read her own political theory—the political as the site of the manifestation of individuals as individuals, the emphasis on the new, which is not a repetition—into the passage. If this is the case, it would certainly be one of the most remarkable slips of the pen in the history of interpretation and translation of philosophical texts. Joan Stambaugh translated the passage differently. In her translation, it reads: «Arising from a resolute self-projection, retrieve is not convinced by "something past," in just letting it come back as what was once real. Rather, retrieve responds to the possibility of existence that has-been-there. But responding to the possibility in a resolution is at the same time, as in the Moment, the disavowal of what is working itself out today as the "past"» (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 352f.). This translation allows for all the different meanings of erwidern I have adduced: erwidern as counterattack, as response within a conversation, and as response to a call for help (see above, chapter 1, sections B and D). Thus, its only disadvantage is that it does not rule out the first and the second meaning, which one has to rule out for reasons of grammar and context. Unfortunately, however, American readers of her translation will also most likely think more of the first and the second meaning than of the third. For she has translated the phrase «läßt sich . . . nicht . . . überreden» (SZ 386) with «is not convinced.» Most likely, American readers will associate a Dasein that is autonomous and independent of the past and that thus might have a conversation with or launch a counterattack against, the past. As I pointed out, however, «überreden» is not «to convince,» but rather «to talk someone into»; thus, it stands in the middle between «überzeugen,» «to convince,» on one side and «to subjugate» on the other side. In the sentence on Erwiderung and disavowal, Heidegger definitely moves to the side of «to be subjugated» (see above, pp. 19ff.). Still, in her preface she writes: «The word Wiederholung , which I have translated as ''retrieval," could also be translated as "recapitulation" since that word is used in music to refer to what Heidegger seems to intend by Wiederholung . In music (specifically in the sonata form) recapitulation refers to the return of the initial theme after the whole development section. Because of its new place in the piece, that same theme is now heard differently» (xvf.). From the perspective of my interpretation, one can hardly imagine a comment on section 74 that is at the same time more true as well as more misleading. (In fact, by comparing it to a sonata she makes Heidegger follow the same notion of history he as well as people like Scheler prior to his Kehre oppose; see my Society, Community, Fate, and Decision: From Kant to Benjamin .) In the context of the American notion of hero and of the tendency to read Being and Time from the perspective of the work of the late Heidegger—ecology as «the issue for our generation»—one might meditate over the cover of the SUNY-edition a bit like Benjamin over frontispieces of baroque books: it shows a leaf of a tree and a manuscript, or letter, of the late Heidegger: «der Dank zu-gedacht» («the thanking thought-to»).

I am not the only one to read the two short sentences on Erwiderung and Widerruf (SZ 386; BT 438) the way I have explained. In summary, in the sentence on Erwiderung Heidegger calls upon us to listen to the call and to leave the city; in the sentence on Widerruf he calls upon us to realize the call, that is, to go back into the city and cancel Gesellschaft in order to rerealize Gemeinschaft. In 1955 one of the major existentialists in postwar West Germany and a student of Heidegger and Jaspers, Otto Friedrich Bollnow, published a systematic summary of existentialism in the early Heidegger and Jaspers. Because, as the author says, in the time after World War II humanity witnessed the «at this stage, total collapse of our entire spiritual world» (Bollnow, Existenzphilosophie , 6th ed. [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964], 126f.), Bollnow presents Heidegger's notion of historicality as a matter of inwardness. Listening to and complying with the call, the authentic Dasein withdraws from or leaves the city and retreats into his inwardness without going back out into the city to cancel it. Bollnow insists that authentic Dasein is not capable of producing by itself its ends and contents (ibid., 113). Rather, they are given by the Erbe, heritage, which is «the community {Gemeinschaft} within which the individual lives, and especially the decisive, historically autonomous unit of life, the people {entscheidenden, geschichtlich selbständigen Lebenseinheit, dem Volk}» (ibid., 113). In Lebensphilosophie the individual creatively transforms the heritage. However, existentialism does not allow for such hubristic enthusiasm and belief in progress (114f.). Summarizing these thoughts, Bollnow quotes the entire passage beginning with «The repeating of that which is possible does not bring again » (BT 437; SZ 385) and ending with «In the moment of vision authentic existence is indifferent to both these alternatives» (BT 438; SZ 386). However, he leaves out the sentence on Widerruf («But when . . . as the 'past',» BT 438; SZ 386): «Thus, repetition in the strict existential sense does not exclude a transformation of the outer appearance. However, repetition just has become unconcerned about such a transformation and cannot derive its own meaning from it. In this sense, Heidegger situates the notion of repetition within a broader understanding of history: "Die Wiederholung des Möglichen ist weder ein Wiederbringen des 'Vergangenen' noch ein Zurückbinden der 'Gegenwart' an das 'überholte'. Die Wiederholung läßt sich, einem entschlossenen Sichentwerfen entspringend, nicht vom 'Vergangenen' überreden, um es als das vormals Wirkliche nur wiederkehren zu lassen. Die Wiederholung erwidert vielmehr die Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz. . . . {Bollnow' s ellipses} Die Wiederholung überläßt sich weder dem Vergangenen noch zielt sie auf einen Fortschritt. Beides ist der eigentlichen Existenz im Augenblick gleichgültig" (SZ. 385f.)» (ibid., 117f.).

I owe the reader some translations. The children's verse in n. 70 of this chapter reads: «I am not the only one who is responsible {Schuld} for the fact that I am so dirty» (as in the German original strikethrough mine, J. F.). On the absence of Schuld in Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology" see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger" in general and in particular pp. 162f., n. 21. In the first quote in the epigraph to chapter I, a poet speaks about ladies in Gesellschaft. According to him, they are inauthentic, insofar as they either don't respond to the call at all or in such a way that the call becomes «pleaded, and . . . perverted» (BT 319; SZ 274): «With their waists laced in stays and their faces made up in rouge,/They haven't anything healthy to respond {erwidern},/Wherever you touch them—{they are} decayed in all their limbs.» Also in the second quote, an authentic Dasein speaks about and to an inauthentic Dasein, or rather one that has not yet resolved itself. It is a rhetorical question: «You really want to hamper {erwiedrigen} such love by being insubordinate!?» However, with the third quote we are «in» (see chapter 6, n. 24) the realm of decision, resoluteness, and authenticity: «In the moment of vision, I have become resolved/wild {erwilden}.» Thus, the fourth quote follows: «Each and every man is resolved/has determined {erwillen} his will for war.» Finally, Ernst Jünger does not regard it to be «tragic if a student is not able to differentiate clearly between wieder and wider , or between death and dead .»

1. See above, pp. 150f.

2. Karl Löwith, "My last Meeting with Heidegger," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader , 142; see also MH 158; K. Löwith, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht , 57.

3. Löwith, "My last Meeting with Heidegger," 142 (MH 158; German edition, 57). Löwith goes on:

He had underestimated only two things: the vitality of the Christian churches and the obstacles to the Anschluss with Austria. He was convinced now as before that National Socialism was the right course for Germany; one had only to "hold out" long enough. The only aspect that troubled him was the ceaseless "organization" at the expense of "vital forces." He failed to notice the destructive radicalism of the whole movement and the petty bourgeois character of all its ''power-through-Joy" institutions, because he himself was a radical petit bourgeois.

In response to my remark that there were many things about his attitude I could understand, with one exception, viz., how he could sit at the same table (at the Academy of German Law) with someone like J. Streicher, he remained silent at first. Then, somewhat uncomfortably followed the justification . . . that things would have been "much worse" if at least a few intelligent persons [ Wissenden ] hadn't become involved. And with bitter resentment against the intelligentsia {"Gebildeten"} he concluded his explanation: "If these gentlemen hadn't been too refined to get involved, then everything would be different; but, instead, now I'm entirely alone {aber ich stand ja ganz allein}." To my response that one didn't have to be especially "refined" in order to renounce working with someone like Streicher, he answered: one need not waste words over Streicher, Der Stürmer was nothing more than pornography. He couldn't understand why Hitler didn't get rid of this guy—he must be afraid of him.

These responses were typical, for nothing was easier for the Germans than to be radical when it came to ideas and indifferent in practical facts. They manage to ignore all individual Fakta , in order to be able to cling all the more decisively to their concept of the whole and to separate "matters of fact" from "persons." In truth, the program of "pornography" [e.g., embodied in anti-Semitic publications such as Der Stürmer ] was fulfilled and became a German reality in November 1938; and no one can deny that Streicher and Hitler were in agreement on this matter. (Karl Löwith, "My last meeting with Heidegger," 142f.; MH 158f.; German edition, 57f.)

The English translation («but, instead, now I'm entirely alone») sounds as though Heidegger said that initially he had allies among «these gentlemen.» However, in the German text he said that he was alone from the beginning on. In German, there is a strong difference between «die Intelligentsia» (or «die Intelligentzia») and «die Gebildeten.» The former word is a polemical term used by conservatives or right-wingers to denote left-wing—or just liberal—intellectuals and «wurzellose,» rootless, Asphalt-Literaten and artists; in 1936, all of them had already been exiled or silenced. The latter word, however, refers to bourgeois individuals educated in the humanities, most notably, in the culture of antiquity and that of Goethe and his time. (This distinction of course does not imply that an «Intelligenzler» cannot be educated in the humanities, or it implies that only for conservatives or right-wingers.) Heidegger is polemicizing against the members of the «humanistic culture,» or against humanism, as he did throughout his career. The word Hitler uses, «Intelligenz» (see above, p. 82), is neutral toward that distinction.

Both English translators point out that Julius Streicher (1885-1946) was a notorious National Socialist demagogue and politician, who was the founder and editor of the rabidly anti-Semitic periodical Der Stüirmer , and that Löwith's allusion to November 1938 must be a reference to the so-called «Kristallnacht,» the «Crystal night,» 9 November 1938, the night in which synagogues were burned, the windows of Jewish businesses were shattered (the broken glass giving that night its name), Jews were killed, and thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps.

In retrospect, Karl Löwith characterized Heidegger's clothing in the twenties as a picture-puzzle: «a kind of Black Forest farmers jacket with broad lapels and a semi-militaristic collar, and knee-length breeches, both made from dark-brown cloth—a "one's ownmost" style of dress, which was supposed to antagonize the 'they' and amused us then, but at that time we did not recognize it as a peculiar temporary compromise between the conventional suit and the uniform of the SA» ( My Life in Germany , 45; Mein Leben in Deutschland , 43).

4. See below, this chapter, n. 5.

5. The title of Gadamer's essay ("Superficiality and Ignorance: On Farías' Publication"; in German "Oberflächlichkeit und Ignoranz: über Victor Farías Buch") was chosen by the German editors, Kettering and Neske, of the German edition of MH in 1988 (MH 141). It is somewhat misleading insofar as it implies that the essay is dealing with Farías's book. However, the essay is not about Farías's book but about its reception in France and about Heidegger. According to Altwegg, it was originally published in Le Nouvel Observateur , 22 January 1988, as ''Comme Platon à Syracuse" (J. Altwegg, ed., Die Heidegger Kontroverse [Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1988], 246). Altwegg himself published Gadamer's essay under the title "Zurück von Syrakus?" (ibid., 176), that is, the famous «Back from Syracuse?» mentioned by Gadamer (MH 143) with which one colleague greeted Heidegger when he met the latter for the first time after Heidegger had resigned from the rectorate.

It doesn't come as a surprise that Birmingham doesn't quote Löwith at all. Guignon quotes from Löwith's entire account twice just the phrase «his concept of historicity was the basis for his political engagement» (HC 131, 141; see above, pp. 150 and 151), and doesn't comment on the notions. Wolin finds Heidegger's claim «far from unambiguous» (PB 75) in order thereupon to summarize his interpretation, and in order «once again» to find «a tantalizing contradiction» (PB 76), namely, the one between Being and Time's neutral formalism, conformism, and the presence of components of the conservative revolutionary worldview. However, Löwith as well as Hei- degger definitely meant something more simple than in Wolin's interpretation and less general than in Guignon's. For Löwith would not have used the formulations «im Wesen seiner Philosophie» («in the essence of his philosophy») and «stimmte mir ohne Vorbehalt zu» («agreed with me without reservation»), if Heidegger had answered something that amounted to Wolin's interpretation of historicality in Heidegger. Furthermore, someone who stumbled into all this just due to his strongly conservative attitudes, and who soon became disappointed, (or a disappointed opportunist, if this is not a contradiction in itself) would not have politicized the way Heidegger did in Rome, especially if he regarded himself to be the only one of his milieu (see this chapter, n. 3; he could have remained opportunistic in regard to his peer group). Löwith as well as Heidegger definitely meant more than Guignon reads out of their words, otherwise Löwith would not have spoken about «in seinem Wesen,» «stimmte mir ohne Vorbehalt zu,» and «Grundlage» («basis»). For if Being and Time just formulates the context of all possible decisions and is neutral toward each of them, none of these possible decisions lies in the «Wesen» («essence») of Being and Time . Rather, each of them would be accidental to Being and Time , precisely because the essence of Being and Time does not allow to prescribe or privilege any of them. Furthermore, most of the time—and definitely in an affirmative answer to a question framed in terms of the «essence»—the word «Grundlage» means more than a neutral basis on which one can built whatever one likes. A Grundlage is laid for a specific purpose. For instance, a foundation of a building is laid for building one particular house, and not any other. Or, conversely, on a given foundation one cannot erect just any kind of house. In a text published in 1934, in which he explicates the National Socialist understanding of state, people, and the National Socialist movement, and in which he rejects all efforts to interpret the so-called Ermäichtigungsgesetz, Enabling Act, of 23 March 1933 within the framework of the constitution of the Weimar Republic, Carl Schmitt argues that to interpret the Ermächtigungsgesetz in terms of the Weimar constitution means not to realize the fact «that the law of the present National Socialist state does not rest on a basis {Grundlage} that is alien and hostile toward its essence {wesensfremden und wesensfeindlichen}, but rather on its own basis {Grundlage}» ( Staat, Volk, Bewegung [Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934], 7). The fact that the preliminary constitution of 23 March 1933 was passed legally, namely, according to Article 76 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic, «does not mean that one is justified today in regarding the Weimar constitution as the basis {Grundlage} of the present state {Staatswesens}; rather it merely means that {the Ermächtigungsgesetz} represents a bridge from the old state to the new state, from the old basis {Grundlage} to the new basis {Grundlage}» (ibid., 7f.). Also, in 1925 Hitler said that «when not even memory will reveal the names of the entire present-day state conception and its advocates, the fundamentals {die Grundlagen} of the National Socialist program will be the foundations {Fundamente} of a coming state» (MKe 369; MK 404).

6. Maybe, there was not much of a need to conceal a general rightist tendency. After all, a «great philosopher» might enjoy some privileges, especially since many professors and students shared an indifference toward and ignorance of politics and opposition against liberalism and leftist ideas. (In his report on his life in Germany, written in 1940, Karl Löwith writes about the years prior to 1933: «I was indifferent to the political situation, and for years I did not even read a newspaper. It was only much later that I became aware of the growing threat from Hitler's movement. I was innocent {ahnungslos} about politics as were most of my colleagues» [Löwith, My Life in Germany , 69; German edition, 66].) However, concealment was probably required in the case of the more specific option for National Socialism. It could be significant in this context that Heidegger's English translators translated «erwidert» as though it were followed by a dative. After all, there is a sense of «erwidern» with the accusative which comes close to «erwidern» with the dative (see above, chapter I, sections B, C, and D); and, on a first reading, the context itself seems to suggest the dative. Heidegger never gave a seminar on Division Two of Being and Time ; section 74 is close to the end of the book; the attitude of many students was—as even Hans Jonas, by no means a minor figure in the philosophy of this century, put it in his recollection "Heidegger's Resoluteness and Resolve"—«I don't understand it, but that must be it» (MH 198; Jonas is asked: «But what is the connection between these two components, the magnificent thinker and teacher Heidegger and the chauvinist, who came out of his hiding place in 1933? Or were these components always connected subterraneously?» He answers: «Yes, one must say the latter. But it took a long time for me to realize it. In 1933, when he gave that infamous rectorial address, justifiably called treacherous in a philosophical sense and actually deeply shameful for philosophy, I was simply appalled and spoke with friends about it and said: "That from Heidegger, the most important thinker of our time." Whereupon I heard the reply: "Why are you so surprised? It was hidden in there. Somehow it could already be inferred from his way of thinking." That was when I realized, for the first time, certain traits in Heidegger' s thinking and I hit myself on the forehead and said: "Yes, I missed something there before"» [MH 200f.]). Perhaps Heidegger wrote section 74 intentionally in such a way that on a somewhat careless reading it could be read in as many ways as there are senses of «erwidern,» and that each could take out of it whatever he or she liked. As an expert on the history of categories, Heidegger, of course, was aware that the commentators in late antiquity wondered why, in Categories , Aristotle maintained that individual substances were primary substances whereas in some of his other writings Aristotle regarded the forms as common natures to be primary substances. The commentators' answer was that Categories was written for beginners and that for us the individual substances were first substances. Progressing in philosophy, talented students would recognize that, by nature, the common natures had priority over the individual substances (see, for instance, Philoponus, In Aristotelis Categoriae Commentarium , ed. A. Busse, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca , vol. 13.1 [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1897], 34.16ff.). In a similar way, Heidegger may have meant the passage on «erwidert» as a shibboleth. Arriving at the section on historicality, readers have finally reached the most «primordial» (BT 424; SZ 372) level of interpreting Dasein. For those who are able to read and listen, via the accusative «diese Möglichkeit» (SZ 386; «this possibility,» BT 438) behind the tortured, alienated, and often lonesome Daseine of the sections 1-71 there steps out of the «obscure» (BT 424: «Dunkel,» SZ 372) das Volk and das Völkische and presents itself as the one and only substance of the individual Daseine that will redeem them. Those who regard this suggestion as infamous should keep in mind that, given his love for the Greeks, Heidegger might have had reasons to adopt techniques of initiation from antiquity in his pedagogy; Löwith characterizes Heidegger's style in lectures in the following way: «His lecturing method consisted in constructing an edifice of ideas, which he himself then dismantled again so as to baffle fascinated listeners, only to leave them up in the air. This art of enchantment sometimes had the most disturbing effects in that it attracted more or less psychopathic personalities, and one female student committed suicide three years after such guessing games» ( My Life in Germany , 45; Mein Leben in Deutschland , 43; the English translation might sound as though the student committed suicide three years after she stopped taking courses with Heidegger; in the German, however, he says that she committed suicide at the end of the three years of courses with Heidegger). Furthermore, Heidegger himself interpreted his rectorate speech that way. For by saying, «I did not name Military Service {"Wehrdienst"} in either a militaristic or an aggressive sense but understood it as defense in self-defense {Wehr in der Notwehr}» ("The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts," MH 20; SB 27), he probably does not deny that several or even all of his listeners related this to the National Socialist «Aufbruch,» and did not understand it as a «Wehr in der Notwehr.» Heidegger wrote the text in 1945 and later gave it to his son, Hermann Heidegger, who published it in 1983 along with the Rectorate Address (see MH 4, SB 6).

The talented students join their master to form the invisible church of those Daseine that are « authentically { themselves } in the primordial individualization of the reticent resoluteness which exacts anxiety of itself» (BT 369; SZ 322), and whose «reticence» (BT 318; SZ 273) has been stressed throughout the section on conscience as a characteristic of authentic Dasein in contrast to the idle talk that passes among ordinary and inauthentic Dasein (BT 434; SZ 382). The talented students then wait for the situation to unconceal themselves and to turn the heads of the fallen Daseine. According to Caputo ( Demythologizing Heidegger , 52f.), it was in his lecture course of 1929-30, Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt — Endlichkeit — Einsamkeit that Heidegger became explicit, and it was in that same lecture that Heidegger quite clearly stated that the task of philosophy was to produce a «Grundstimmung» (GA 29/30 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1992], 89ff.), a basic, fundamental, or original mood. In this way, Being and Time might be a picture-puzzle: everything is already there and becomes visible when the situation is ripe.

7. "The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader , 38 (see MH 13; SB 19). Note the use of «Schein» («pseudo») (see above, pp. 200ff.). «Fuge» will become important for Heidegger. In his interpretation of Anaximander, he does not use «In den Fugen krachen» but rather «aus den Fugen sein»: «The word immediately suggests that is absent. We are accustomed to translate as "right." The translations even use "penalties" to translate "right." If we resist our own juridical-moral notions, if we restrict ourselves to what comes to language, then we hear that wherever rules all is not right with things {nicht mit rechten Dingen zugeht}. That means, something is out of joint {etwas ist aus den Fugen}. . . . How can what is present without jointure {ohne Fuge} be , out of joint? . . . That which lingers perseveres in its presencing. In this way it extricates itself from its transitory while. It strikes the willful pose of persistence {Es spreizt sich in den Eigensinn des Beharrens auf}, no longer concerning itself with whatever else is present. It stiffens—as if this were the way to linger—and aims solely for continuance and subsistence. . . . What is present then comes to presence without, and in opposition to, the jointure of the while {ohne und gegen die Fuge der Weile}» (Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Philosophy , trans. D. F. Krell and F. A. Capuzzi [San Francisco: Harper, 1984], 41-43; Holzwege , 326-328). As the Greek alpha-privativum, the German prefix «un-» is used to indicate the privation of something. As Heidegger notes ( Early Greek Thinking , 46; Holzwege , 332), the German word «Unfug» most of the time, if not always, is used in the sense of «nonsense.» Still, Heidegger uses it to translate in Anaximander's fragment: «they let order belong, and thereby also reck {Ruch}, to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder {Un-Fugs}» ( Early Greek Thinking , 47; Holzwege , 333).

8. See ''The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 38; see also MH 11.

9. On «sich überliefern» see above, pp. 16ff.

10. "The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 38 (see MH 13; SB 19).

11. See above, p. 66, and chapter 3, n. 25.

12. "The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy , 38 (see MH 13; SB 19).

13. Ibid., 38; see MH 13; SB 19.

14. Ibid., 39; see MH 13; SB 19.

15. «Wir waren alle verblendet» («We all have been deluded») is what many Germans of Heidegger's generation say when asked about their experiences concerning National Socialism. Of course, as to the German professors in the twenties there were—to continue the somewhat floppy way of speaking—in addition to the «absentminded professors» and those whom I labeled the «non-absentminded» professors also liberals and/or social democratic professors. As to philosophers (also) concerned with Plato, the liberals and/or social democrats were represented by the Neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. They focused on the theory of science and knowledge in Plato. The main representative of the non-absentminded professors was Werner Jaeger (before he left Germany in 1936). Unlike the Neo-Kantians, the non-absentminded professors focused on Plato's Republic as the countermodel to the Athenian democracy and to the Weimar Republic, and they paved the way for National Socialism. In his Platons Staat und Hitlers Kampf (Plato's State and Hitler's Kampf) (Berlin 1933), Joachim Bannes even explicitly parallels Plato and Hitler. Hitler is the repetition of the gewesene Plato, this time successfully. The basic motif is identical with Heidegger's. In liberalism and in the Weimar Republic, people have fallen away from Gemeinschaft. Living in Gesellschaft, the Neo-Kantians have distorted and covered up the «true» Plato. Looking through the work of ambiguity of the Neo-Kantians, the non-absentminded professors realize that Plato is not vergangen, but rather gewesen, and that Hitler will repeat the «true» Plato by destroying Gesellschaft and by rerealizing Gemeinschaft. In the last sentence of the Rectorate Address , Heidegger also caters to these non-absentminded professors and declares their victory in their and his Auseinandersetzung with the Neo-Kantians. On the German non-absentminded Platonists of that time see T. Orozco, Platonische Gewalt: Gadamers politische Hermeneutik der NS-Zeit (Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 1995), 32-90. In his short chapter on Plato in The Myth of the State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1946, reprint 1979), the Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer, who had to emigrate from Germany in 1933, mentions this contrast briefly (ibid., 62). His interpretation of Plato as «the founder and the first defender of the Idea of the Legal State» (ibid., 65) is also an implicit Erwiderung to the Plato of the non-absentminded professors.

16. See above, p. 12.

17. Aristotle, Categories , ch. 1, 1 a 14.

18. Metaphysics IV:2, 1003 a 33ff. Since Gwil E. L. Owen ("Logic and Metaphysics in some Earlier Works of Aristotle," I. Düring and G. E. L. Owen, editors, Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century [Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1960], 163-190; reprint in Owen's Logic, Science, and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986], 180-199) Aristotle's notion of is called «focal meaning.» Heidegger takes advantage of the rhetorical possibilities of the notion of focal meaning when he speaks of «us» «als Kämpfer dieses Kampfes» (see above, chapter 5, n.1), fighters in this fight, «as the warriors in this struggle» (see above, p. 189).

19. In marriage, wife and husband are united also im Fleische, in the flesh, as the ultimate subject in which we are here on earth. The flesh is ennobled by the Geist in it, as our human Geist is ennobled by the presence of the divine Spirit in it. Thus, divine Geist, human Geist, and Fleisch are related, so to speak, like Volk, Gemeinschaft, and Gesellschaft. Volk inspires Gemeinschaft. The result of their union, the Volksgemeinschaft, in turn inspires the Gesellschaft to liberate it from all its supposed foes and to transform it into a proper manifestation of the Volksgemeinschaft.

20. For these reasons, one says someone commits an extraordinary deed «in stür-mischer Leidenschaft,» in stormy passion, but one does not say, «in windhafter/windischer Leidenschaft» or «im Wind seiner Leidenschaft.» For the same reasons and also because «Wind» can be used in the sense of «Furz» (fart), it would have been ridiculous, a slip of the tongue, truly «deconstructionist,» or a subversive joke, if in the presence of the Sturm Abteilung (see what follows above) Heidegger had concluded his speech with saying, «All that is great stands in the wind.»

21. Aristotle, Categories , ch. 1, 1 a 20ff.

22. As is known, the sentence in Republic 497 d 8-10 comes toward the end of the sixth book. The ideal city has been developed. Socrates maintains that only this city as developed in the first books is the appropriate one for philosophers. He then points out that no city nor any constitution or individual will be good unless there arises a necessity for the philosophers to take care of the city and to impregnate it with true philosophy and that the realization of the ideal city is not impossible. This is followed by the theory of the idea of the good and the similes of the sun and the line and, in the seventh book, by the simile of the cave and the theory of education of the philosophers.

23. See the accounts and analyses of Heidegger's becoming Rektor and the Rectorate Address in Farías, Heidegger and Nazism , 72ff., German edition, 131ff.; and Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 133ff., German edition, 131ff.; for the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" see Ott, ibid., 152, German edition, 149.

24. Can Heidegger have been unaware of the fact that his choice of the quote and its peculiar translation not only invited the, so to speak, regular extreme National Socialists such as my relative, but also, and especially, had to be understood as the subjugation to the extremely extreme National Socialists, namely to the members of the SA and to their vanguard, the editors and readers of the widespread journal that, according to his statement in Rome 1936, he regarded to be pornography (see this chapter, n. 3)? Deconstructionists might say that Heidegger meant that the university is «im Sturm» of National Socialism as in a danger against which it had to defend itself, and/or that precisely by falsely translating Plato he was able to implicitly point toward the obscureness of National Socialism. In German, rather colloquially one might erwidern, «wer's glaubt, wird selig» (You can tell that to the marines). See also the «buoyant storm» (IM 113; EM 86, «beflügelnder Sturm,» literally: a storm that gives one wings [and thus enables one to fly, not against, but rather with the storm]) that a «truly sapient man» —that is, the poet, the thinker, and the statesman; Hölderlin, Heidegger, and Hitler—has experienced on the path of being (see also above, chapter 3, n. 14). In his interpretation of amor fati, love of fate, in Nietzsche, Heidegger has nicely pointed out the emotional benefit the Right promised to all those it called upon to submit to fate. It is the transformation of need and desperation into love and enjoyment. We move into fate, because we are forced to open ourselves to it, to be de-cided upon as «one who is ever resolute {als Entschiedener}» ( Eternal Recurrence of the Same , 207; Nietzsche I 471; for the passive see above, p. 5), such that fate enters us, is within us, and rewards us with love and joy. In this section I have pointed out the enthusiastic quality of many occurrences of the German preposition and prefix «in,» which led Heidegger to his peculiar translation of line 497 d 9 in Plato's Republic . In the course of the book, the enthusiasm of the preposition «in» has already occurred several times. Scheler alludes to it by placing «in» into quotation marks in his elaboration on the notion of the highest community, the love-community (see above, p. 98). Heidegger draws on it when, in the winter of 1934-35, he replaces the line «and are able to hear from (of) each other» in Hölderlin with «we are placed into and at the mercy of the being as it reveals itself» (see above, p. 195). In the speech "The University in the National Socialist State" on 30 November 1933, he says: «We of today are in the process of fighting to bring about the new reality» (see above, p. 189). The emphatic use of «in» is also present in Heidegger's formulas «in collecting» (see above, p. 200 with n. 36 of chapter 5, «Advent») and «active in Logos» (see above, p. 202). Its soteriological quality is extensively exploited in the passage on sacrifice in "What is Metaphysics?" (see above, chapter 5, n. 54). See also his obituary on Scheler above, p. 146. Indeed, in this perspective also the preposition «in» in Heidegger's formula of «Vorlaufen in den Tod» (running forward into death) has enthusiastic aspects. See also the frequent occurrences of «in» in section 74 (to quote just a few, «to take over in its thrownness that entity which,» «The situation is one which has been resolved upon {Entschluß in die Situation},» «Existing fatefully in the resoluteness which hands itself down,» see above, chapter 1, n. 10, «the handing down of a heritage constitutes itself in resoluteness,» «brings Dasein into the {in die} simplicity of its fate ,» «Only in communicating and in struggling does the power of destiny become free,» BT 434ff.; SZ 382ff.; though, of course the section also includes nonenthusiastic uses of «in»). It is always the same situation. Dasein has fallen away from, or out of, the origin. Thus, Dasein has to move back into the origin when the latter raises its voice to claim its proper rerealization. Through obeying the call of the origin, Dasein has become authentic and is already back in the origin even though the origin is not yet fully realized. (In the forties it is «essential thinking» that is already «in the indestructible» even though the latter will be fully realized only in a remote future; see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 150, «das schon vorausgesprungene Stehen im Unzerstörbaren,» «the standing in the indestructible»; this standing has achieved itself by already leaping ahead into the realm of the indestructible.) In summer 1931—that is, after his lecture course Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (see above, this chapter, n. 6)—Heidegger gave a lecture course on book IX, chapters 1-3, of Aristotle's Metaphysics . In German, there is the adjective «imstande.» It means «to be capable of, to be able to.» In some contexts it has a somewhat aggressive or threatening overtone («I am imstande to beat up this person, if he doesn't return the money within the next twenty-four hours.»). However, it can also convey enthusiasm («I am imstande to embrace the world—just out of sheer happiness!»). Heidegger resolves the adjective «imstande» into its components and thus has another formula of enthusiasm and inspiration, namely, «im Stand sein zu.» One who is im Stand is so because he is, or has, his Stehen im (the indestructible, authenticity, origin, etc.; see above in this note; see, however, also chapter 5, n. 10). Heidegger's interpretation artfully culminates in an interpretation of lines 1047 a 24-26. As he points out, normally these lines have been taken as the definition of the notion of the possible: possible is that whose realization doesn't entail something impossible; i.e., it does not entail a contradiction. Heidegger derides this interpretation as a typical example of the way philosophy professors read. He himself illustrates his own interpretation with reference to a runner waiting for the call at the starting line:

Let us consider a sprinter who, for example, has (as we say) taken his or her mark {angetreten ist} in a hundred-meter race just before the start. What do we see? . . . Face and glance do not fall dreamily to the ground, nor do they wander from one thing to another; rather they are tensely focused on the track ahead, so that it looks as though the entire stance is stretched out towards what lies before it {sind gespannt in die Bahn nach vorn gehalten, so daß es so aussieht, als sei diese ganze Haltung von dem her, was da vorne liegt, gestrafft}. No, it not only looks this way, it is so . . . he is poised for the start {Er ist im Stand loszulaufen}. The only thing needed is the call "go ? {des Rufes "los!"}. Just this call and he is already off running {im Lauf}, hitting his stride, that is, in enactment {d.h. im Vollzug }. . . . The one who enacts is just that one who leaves nothing undone in relation to his capability, for whom there is now in the running actually nothing more of which he is capable {für den es jetzt im Laufen wirklich nichts mehr gibt, was er nicht vermag}. This, of course, is then the case only if the one who is capable comes to the running in full readiness, if in this readiness he extends himself fully {in der vollen Bereitschaft zum Laufen antritt, sich in dieser Bereitschaft voll aushreitet}. But this implies that he is then genuinely in a position to run {im Stande zu laufen} only if he is in good condition, completely poised, in full readiness {gut im Stand, vollkommen im Stand ist, in voller Bereitschaft stehend}. In a position to { Im Stand sein zu } . . ., this means first: he is fit for it. Yet not simply this, but at the same time it also means: he ventures himself, has already become resolved. . . . The full preparedness of being in a position to, which lacks only the releasement into enactment {das bereitschaftserfüllte Im-Stand-sein-zu, dem nur noch die Enthemmung in den Vollzug fehlt} . . . 1047 a 24-26: . . . In this concise statement, every word is significant. With Aristotle {An diesem knappen Satz . . . . Mit ihm} the greatest philosophical knowledge of antiquity is expressed, a knowledge which even today remains unappreciated and misunderstood in philosophy. ( Aristotle's Metaphysics Q 1-3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force , trans. W. Brogan and P. Warnek [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995], 187-188; instead of «nothing more of which he is capable» one has to read «nothing left of which he is not capable»; instead of «Aristotle» in «is significant. With Aristotle» read «it» [= the concise statement]; instead of «stretched out towards» in «the entire stance is stretched out towards what lies before it» read «stretched out by and toward,» for in Heidegger's German text «stretched out» is passive, and «what lies before it» is at the same time that which stretches out the runner, and that toward which the runner is stretched out; for the German text see GA 33, 217-219)

Only a nostalgic Rightist, as it were, lets his «face and glance . . . fall dreamily to the ground,» while ordinary and inauthentic Daseine «wander from one thing to another» in curiosity, idle talk, etc. (BT 211ff.; SZ 167ff.). Authentic Dasein, however, cancels both sorts of behaviors and «has already become resolved.» On «im Vollzug» see above, chapter 3, n. 66, and chapter 5, n. 36. Heidegger's use of the phrase «im Stande sein» and his peculiar formulation «von . . . gestrafft» («stretched out by and toward») belong to the language of conservatives, right-wingers, soldiers, and adherents of the Turnvater Jahn, the authoritarian forerunner of gymnastics at the time. In the military the command for lining up was, and probably still is, «Antreten!» (or «Angetreten!»; in the quote from Heidegger occurring as «taken his or her mark») followed by «Stillgestanden!» and «Augen geradeaus!» Even in the fifties and early sixties in gymnastic clubs «Antreten!» was followed by «Brust raus!»; that is, already standing in line like in a military unit you had—like in the military through the commands «Stillgestanden!» and «Augen geradeaus !»—to stretch your chest out and forward. In following the command you could no longer «dreamily» look downward or «wander from one thing to another.» The command of the instructor «stretched out» your chest, and it stretched you «toward» the Sache the commander represented. Your chest «has already resolved {itself}» («hat sich bereits entschlossen»); that is, your chest has opened, unlocked, itself for the Sache the commander represents, which in this case means that your chest has been resolved upon (see above, p. 5). On Heidegger as the representative of the Sache of National Socialism toward whom, from summer 1933 onward, Dr. Georg Stieler—professor of philosophy and pedagogy and enthusiastic member of «Der Stahlhelm» (Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 151; German edition, 148; «The Steel Helmet,» an extreme right-wing organization of World War I soldiers) whom the rector Heidegger asked to draft the code of honor mentioned above (see chapter 5, n. 7)—stretched out the chests of the students and to whom Stieler «made his 'report' in the correct military manner, as if the rector {Heidegger} was the commander-in-chief of his military forces,» see Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 151f.; German edition, 148f.

To be sure, all the other words in the quote from Heidegger are also used, though by no means often, in everyday language («antreten,» «in Bereitschaft sein» was certainly used in the exercises of the SA, by Professor Dr. Georg Stieler, and by the young boys in the voluntary fire brigades, who were proud to have such an important job). In light of Heidegger's authoritarian language as well as of the abundance of the enthusiastic preposition «in,» however, the militaristic component is predominant. This was the end of the entire lecture course. It is remarkable that, in the very first example of his definition, Aristotle himself adduces just the opposite situation: «I mean, e.g., if [a thing] is capable of sitting and it's open to it to sit, there will be nothing impossible [in this]» ( Metaphysics: Books Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota ( VII-X ), trans. M. Furth [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984], 63 [1047 a 26-28]; «give me a break,» so to speak). Heidegger refers to this passage in a longer note ( Aristotle's Metaphysics Q 1-3 , 189-193; GA 33, 219-224) that was written either during the lecture course or later, but at any rate was not part of the lecture itself (see ibid., 195; read «bottom of p. 188» instead of «bottom of p. 189»; see GA 33, 225).

At the beginning of the race the runner has a vision of the goal, but he does not yet see it clearly. In order to be able to do the latter he must first «ins (= in das) Ziel kommen,» to come into the finish, to finish. In this usage of «in» its spatial and its enthusiastic use coincide. At the beginning of the race the runner sees the goal only in a fragmented way, so to speak, only as «Gemeinschaft, des Volkes» (SZ 384; «the community, of {the} people,» BT 436). When Heidegger gave his rectorate address, the origin had already «become free» (BT 436; SZ 384). Thus, the listeners of his address are forced to see the origin clearly; the « direction { the call } takes { Einschlagsrichtung }» (BT 318; SZ 274; see chapter 4, n. 7) can no longer be «overlooked» and «perverted» (BT 318f.; SZ 274) by them: «The first bond is the one that binds to the ethnic and national community [ Volksgemeinschaft ] {Die erste Bindung ist die in die Volksgemeinschaft}. It entails the obligation to share fully, both passively and actively, in {Sie verpflichtet zum mittragenden und mithandelnden Teilhaben am} the toil, the striving, and the abilities of all estates {Stände} and members {Glieder} of the Volk. This bond will henceforth be secured and rooted in student existence [ Dasein ] through labor service . The second bond is the one that binds to the honor and the destiny of the nation {Die zweite Bindung ist an die Ehre und das Geschick der Nation} . . . military service . The third bond is the one that binds the students to {Die dritte Bindung der Studentenschaft ist die an } the spiritual mission {geistigen Auftrag} of the German Volk» ("The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 35; see MH 10; SB 15; emphasis with the prepositions mine, J. F.). Heidegger could certainly assume that not all listeners to his address were already National Socialists. Heidegger's phrase in the first sentence, «Bindung . . . in» («first bond . . . to»), is unusual. Normally one says, as Heidegger does in the context of the second and the third bond, «Bindung an.» A Bindung an A—say, the Volksgemeinschaft is a state in which one is bound to and by the Volksgemeinschaft. The Volksgemeinschaft keeps one in its grip. The state of the Bindung an the Volksgemeinschaft has to be established, and the «Bindung in» is the activity of the Volksgemeinschaft and its representative, Heidegger, to bind one to it in order from now on to be in the state of the Bindung an it. For in this case Heidegger's «Bindung . . . in» is an abbreviation of «Einbindung.» «Einbindung in» and Heidegger's «Bindung in» is a variation of «jemanden in die Fügung/Verfügung fügen,» that is, to command someone to submit to (the command of) destiny. Like «ins Ziel kommen,» «Bindung in» combines the spatial and the enthusiastic use of «in.» In addition, «Bindung in» instead of «Einbindung in» allowed him to use the phrase three times and thus to strongly emphasize the «Bindung.»

«To share fully, both passively and actively» translates Heidegger's «mittragenden und mithandelnden Teilhaben;» that is, a «participation {Teilhaben} (in the toil, the striving, and the abilities of all estates and members of the Volk) that co-carries and co-acts (the toil, etc., of the Volk).» Normally, one has not produced what one co-carries. For instance, Mitleid, compassion, is a Leid, suffering, of someone else that one co-carries; a Mittäter is an accessory to the crime; a Mitläufer, co-runner, is a conformist (see also my remarks on Aristotle's notion of , per se accidents, "Genus and (Essence) in Aristotle and Socrates," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19:2-20:1 (1997), 186f., 198, n. 13). The sense that one has not produced what one is made to co-carry is confirmed by the word «Teilhaben.» «Teilhabe» or «Anteilhabe» are the usual German translations of Plato's term , participation. When Socrates participates in the idea of beauty, he has not produced the idea of beauty. The idea of beauty does not lose anything, if someone or something participates in it, and it exists, even if nothing participates in it. «Stände» («estates») is the conservative and right-wing term for «classes.» In the political language at Heidegger's time, a Glied is part of a Gemeinschaft as of an organism, and it is the latter's organ or instrument. The «spiritual mission of the German Volk» exists prior to the moment in which it «become{s} free» (BT 436; SZ 384). In the moment in which it «become{s} free» it calls upon the Daseine to co-carry it, and it claims them as its mere organs. Heidegger's «mittragenden und mithandelnden» corresponds to the proliferation of the preposition and prefix «mit» in the passage on destiny in section 74 of Being and Time («Mitsein mit Anderen» [«Being-with Others»], «Mitgeschehen» [«co-historizing»], twice «Miteinandersein» [«Being-with-one-another»], and «Mitteilung» [«communication»] [SZ 384; BT 436]). Already in Being and Time the actors and co-actors don't produce their fates. Rather it is destiny and the «community, of {the} people» (BT 436; SZ 384) that calls upon them, and destiny «is not something that puts itself together out of individual fates» (BT 436; SZ 384). Rather «our fates have already been guided in advance» (BT 436; SZ 384) by destiny and the Volksgemeinschaft. At some point in the downward plunge, destiny or Volksgemeinschaft raises its voice, puts itself together, steps out of the background onto the main stage, and becomes the main historical actor (see chapter 2, section C) that, as Heidegger develops in the passage ending with the sentences on Erwiderung and Widerruf, demands a rerealization of the Volksgemeinschaft (see chapter I, section C). The rerealization of the Volksgemeinschaft requires the disavowal of Gesellschaft and of the inauthentic Daseine, who want to go on living in Gesellschaft. Thus after the sentence on destiny guiding our fates in advance, Heidegger continues: «Only in communicating {In der Mitteilung} and in struggling {im Kampf} does the power of destiny become free» (BT 436; SZ 384).

This is already the second step in Heidegger's scenario. In the first step, authentic Dasein obeys the call and is brought «from the endless multiplicity of possibilities . . . of comfortableness, shirking, and taking things lightly . . . into {in} the simplicity of its fate » (BT 435; SZ 384). This is the moment in which «heritage constitutes itself» (BT 435; SZ 383f.) and becomes the main actor, for authentic Dasein «hands itself down» (BT 436; SZ 384) to heritage and its claims. The second step either follows immediately upon the first, or between the first and the second there is a time in which the authentic Daseine live «in reticence {in der Verschwiegenheit}» (BT 343; SZ 296). At any rate, in the first step destiny has communicated itself to the authentic Daseine, and in the second step the authentic Daseine communicate destiny to the inauthentic Daseine, that is, to those Daseine that «'have' no fate» (BT 434; SZ 384). Authentic Dasein «brings {inauthentic} Dasein into the simplicity of its fate » (BT 435; SZ 384). Since inauthentic Dasein covers up heritage and clings to Gesellschaft, this communication cannot but take place «in struggling {im Kampf}» (BT 436; SZ 384) for authentic Dasein cancels Gesellschaft and forces inauthentic Dasein to do so too. Close to the end of the chapter on conscience, Heidegger already gave the shortest possible formulation of this thought: Authentic Dasein «can become the 'conscience' of Others.» This is followed by the sentence: «Only by authentically Being-their-Selves in resoluteness can people authentically be with one another {das eigentliche Miteinander}—not by ambiguous and jealous stipulations and talkative fraternizing in the ''they" and in what "they" want to undertake» (BT 344f.; SZ 298; see chapter 3, n. 25). Having been brought into its fate by the «Mitteilung» inauthentic Dasein has become authentic and «hat Teil an,» partakes in, destiny and has been made a co-carrier of destiny. Destiny «teilt sich mit,» communicates itself to, the authentic Daseine, and the authentic Daseine «teilen mit,» communicate, destiny to the inauthentic Daseine. Thus, in the Rectorate Address Heidegger fully spells out the Platonic implications of the term «Mitteilung.» A successful Mitteilung results in that those who receive the Mitteilung partake in it and become its co-carders. Thus, in the Rectorate Address the Volksgemeinschaft commits the Daseine «zum mittragenden und mithandelnden Teilhaben am» («to share fully, both passively and actively, in») «the toil, the striving, and the abilities of all estates and members of the Volk.» In this way, the inauthentic Daseine «werden eingebunden in,» are bound to, the Volksgemeinschaft and are promoted to being its co-carriers.

The translation of «Mitteilung» with «communicating» (BT 436; SZ 384; Stambaugh has «communication,» Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, 352) is misleading, if «to communicate» is normally understood as a mutual process, as a back and forth between several individuals or groups, that is, as an Auseinandersetzung or Erwiderung in Guignon's and the translators' understanding of the sentence with « erwidert » in Being and Time (SZ 386; « reciprocative rejoinder, » BT 438). Heidegger did not say «Gespräch,» «Verständigung,» «wechselseitige Mitteilung,» «Unterhaltung,» or «Auseinandersetzung.» He chose «Mitteilung» because in that way he could use a further word with the—in this context—-emphatic prefix «mit-.» As I already indicated, however, the main reason for his choice was certainly a different one. «Gespräch,» «Verständigung,» «wechselseitige Mitteilung,» «Unterhaltung,» and «Auseinandersetzung» are all words for verbal exchanges, and none of them implies that the participants are unequal. A Mitteilung, however, is by definition not an exchange but a one-way-street-communication, as it were. In addition, often the one who issues a Mitteilung is in a superior position to the recipient of the Mitteilung. An «Amtliches Mitteilungsblatt» is a brochure in which a bureaucratic or administrative institution announces its «binding» decisions to the public. Or, «herewith, I teile Ihnen mit, inform you, that you are dismissed from your job,» «yesterday, I received the Mitteilung that my lease was not renewed.» A Mitteilung often amounts to a command or is one. In most other cases, the logic of a Mitteilung follows the logic of Platonic participation. I already have something, and when I teile es mit to someone else, I make him share, or I impose onto him, something that I already have. In the Mitteilung, I don't lose what I already have. That which I teile mit to someone is not diminished by the fact that I and later on the one to whom I mitteile it have it. On the contrary, by passing it on to others so they have it, I help it communicate, spread, itself and enlarge its dominion. (In regard to this aspect, the Mitteilung corresponds to the programmatic sentence 105 a 3-5 in Plato's Phaedo ; see my paper "Genus and (Essence) in Aristotle and Socrates," 192ff., n.7.) In sum, quite appropriately in dictionaries one finds as translations of «Mitteilung» «announcement,» «notification,» «(administrative) communication,» «memo,» and as translations of «mitteilen» «impart a thing to a person,» «communicate a thing to a person,» «inform someone of something,» «pass on something to someone,» «spread something.» All these expressions designate one-way communications. None of them implies that the recipient of a Mitteilung argues with its sender. To the contrary, often a Mitteilung implies that the recipient, as is said in bureaucratic and administrative language, «die Mitteilung zur Kenntnis nimmt und entsprechend danach handelt,» takes notice of the Mitteilung and acts accordingly, that is, obeys without arguing with the sender. Note also that Heidegger does not use the plural, and he does not add Daseine in the plural as those who conduct communications. Instead, he uses the singular with definite article («In der Mitteilung und im Kampf,» SZ 384; BT 436) (on the definite article see above, chapter 1, n. 17). This further emphasizes the Platonic structure of communicating something from «the haves» down to «the have-nots.» Some Mitteilungen are «fürchterlich,» dreadful, and others are «freudig,» joyful, «überraschend,» surprising. In any case, a Mitteilung is almost by definition «wichtig,» important. In section 74 of Being and Time , Heidegger responds to the kairos of the twenties in Germany. In that context, Heidegger's «Mitteilung» (SZ 384; BT 436) might be his pagan rendering of the Christian «Verkündigung,» Annunciation, «Frohe Botschaft,» gospel. As I showed, Scheler pursued a certain Christian platonism. In World War I, God breaks into the fallen world and reveals the true order of things that «we» have to realize at the expense of the Gesellschaft we have lived in up to that point. As the example of Hitler shows, the same motif can be used in conjunction with an ontology that was not acceptable according to usual philosophical standards. The motif itself was probably shared by many rightists. For if one assumes that Gesellschaft is a downward plunge, the salvation must come from something outside of Gesellschaft (see above, chapter 4, n. 7). Heidegger did not accept Scheler's ontology. Still, he shared the general motif present in Scheler and Hitler. Thus it is not coincidental that he finished his Rectorate Address with a quote from the metaphysician Plato, and that, in section 74 of Being and Time , he did not choose a word of the early Socrates but took advantage of a word that belongs to Plato's metaphysics of participation.

The Platonic structure of Heidegger's «Mitteilung» in section 74 is already present in Division One of Being and Time . For in sections 33 and 34 Heidegger interprets «assertion» as a « "communication " [ Mitteilung ]» and reads the word «Mitteilung» in the Platonic sense (BT 197; SZ 155). His main concern in both sections is whether those who receive an authentic Mitteilung hear it properly or not (BT 197f., 206f., 207f.; SZ 155, 163, 164f.). In section A of chapter 1 I pointed out that the English phrase «anticipation of death» reverts the meaning of Heidegger's «Vorlaufen in den Tod.» For anticipating something, I, so to speak, stay within the wall of the city and rely on a temporal interval between the moment of anticipation and the moment in which the anticipated event occurs. In running forward into death, however, I cancel both the spatial security zone and the temporal interval. In addition, I discussed Heidegger's notion of the second positive mode of solicitude according to which authentic Dasein « leap { s } ahead » (BT 158; « vorausspringt, » SZ 122) (see above, chapter 3, n. 25; see also chapter 2, n. 5), and I also quoted several times the passage with the call of conscience as a call that «calls us back in calling us forth» (BT 326; «vorrufenden Rückruf,» SZ 280). In the English translation one cannot see that all German phrases have the same prefix, namely, «vor-.» The prefix «vor-» functions like a focal meaning in Aristotle (see above, p. 222, with n. 18). Native German speakers are probably slightly amused about Heidegger's notion of «vorausspringen» as the only way of becoming « authentically bound together» (BT 159; SZ 122). However, the notion fits well into the extensive vocabulary of falling and leaping in Being and Time . In addition, in the light of the Rectorate Address the focal meaning of «vor-» in Being and Time amounts to the focal meaning of «Sturm-» in the Rectorate Address as the Sturmtrupp runs ahead of the other troops. Running vor one is «schon,» already, or «bereits,» already, at a site where the others are not yet or never want to be. In this sense, Heidegger says in the Rectorate Address : «But it is our will that our Volk fulfill its historical mission. We will ourselves. For the young and youngest elements of the Volk, which are already {schon} reaching beyond us, have already {bereits} decided this» ("The Self-Assertion of the German University," in Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy , 38 [see MH 13; SB 19]). Having already achieved the historical mission they mitteilen, communicate, it to the others. In this way, they become the conscience of the others and force them into their fate. Guignon remarks that it «is important to keep in mind that the term "Dasein" does not refer simply to individual human beings» (HC 131). Since the notion of fate was polemical against liberals and leftists, it might be possible that Heidegger's notions of «vorausspringen» and «vorlaufen» are his version of the notion of the proletariat as the vanguard of the proletarians in Lukács. Both the proletariat and the authentic Dasein run vor all the others. The major difference on which the other differences hinge is that the proletariat only moves forward while authentic Dasein runs vor in order to be called «back» (BT 326; SZ 280) since it «wants to be brought back» (BT 316; SZ 271) (see above, chapter 2, n. 35, and chapter 3, n. 25). For authentic Dasein wants to cancel Gesellschaft and to rerealize the «Gemeinschaft, des Volkes» (SZ 384; «the community, of {the} people,» BT 436; see above, chapter 1, n. 17).

As was mentioned above, «Mitteilung» can easily be regarded as the general notion for «participation,» «Frohe Botschaft» (gospel), and bureaucratic ways of communication. In the kairos of the twenties, each group wanted to establish its notions as the commonly accepted ones or to «fill» the general notions with its meaning. In other words, the art of political propaganda consists in offering phrases that many individuals and groups can recognize as their own. Heidegger' s gathering of Platonists, Christians, and bureaucrats under the umbrella of a National Socialist «Mitteilung» might serve as an example of Heidegger's capacity I mentioned in note 13 of the preface.

Note finally that in the passage from the Rectorate Address Heidegger says quite openly what, as I tried to show, is the «finish» of Being and Time : «The first bond is the one that binds to the ethnic and national community [ Volksgemeinschafi ] {and not a bond that binds to, say, Scheler's love-community}.» To carry out the " Task of Destroying the History of Ontology " (BT 41; SZ 19) Heidegger also destroyed one of the most prominent representatives of ontology at his time, namely, Scheler.

25. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain , 715. The song reads in German: «Und seine Zweige rauschten, als riefen sie mir zu.» Thus, a literal translation would be: «And its branches rustled, as if calling to me.»

26. Ibid., 145 (section 9 of chapter 4 ["Mounting Misgivings; of the Two Grandfathers and the Boat-ride in the Twilight"]; the German text has «durch Mark und Bein»).

27. Ibid., 716.

28. In the second sentence of the short text Der Feldweg , published in 1953, Heidegger mentions «the old lime-trees of the palace gardens» in Meßkirch ( Der Feldweg , 1). However, the moral of the text is conveyed, not through them, but rather through «the oak-tree by the path» (ibid., 2). On the moral of the text see my paper "On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger," 152ff.

29. St. Augustine, Confessions , trans. R. S. Pine-Coffine (London: Penguin, 1961), 177 (book 8, ch. 6).

30. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicaI Reproduction," Illuminations , 222f.

31. Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, Reflections , 68.

32. On the slight irony of the sentence with the «good ground» see Winfried Menninghaus, Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), 238; see, however, also Marleen Stoessel, Aura: Das Vergessene Menschliche. Zu Sprache und Erfahrung bei Walter Benjamin (Munich: Hanser, 1983), 49ff. I made no effort to translate the rhythm, the alliterations, and the onomatopoetic quality of these sentences. Thus, here is the original:

DER BAUM UND DIE SPRACHE

Ich stieg eine Böschung hinan und legte mich unter einen Baum. Der Baum war eine Pappel oder eine Ere. Warum ich seine Gattung nicht behalten habe? Weil, wáhrend ich ins Laubwerk sah und seiner Bewegung folgte, mit einmal in mir die Sprache dergestalt yon ihm ergriffen wurde, daß sie augenblicklich die uralte Vermählung mit dem Baum in meinem Beisein noch einmal vollzog. Die Äste und mit ihnen auch der Wipfel wogen sich erwägend oder bogen sich ablehnend; die Zweige zeigten sich zuneigend oder hochfahrend; das Laub straubte sich gegen einen rauhen Luftzug, erschauerte vor ihm oder kam ihm entgegen; der Stamm verfügte über seinen guten Grund, auf dem er fußte; und ein Blatt warf seinen Schatten auf das andre. Ein leiser Wind spielte zur Hochzeit auf und trug alsbald die schnell entsprossenen Kinder dieses Betts als Bilderrede unter alle Welt. (''Kurze Schatten," Gesammelte Schriften , IV. 1, 425f.)

In July 1911, in the journal Der Akademiker , a poem, "Auf stillen Pfaden" (On still paths) was published by someone who signed his name only as «-gg-.» Ott attributes it to Heidegger ( Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , 68; German edition, 71). Given Heidegger's strong love for the mountains of the Black Forest (for instance, ibid., 125; German edition, 123), one is almost inclined to assume that this poem could not have been written by Heidegger since it centers on the «weisse Birken in der Heide» («white birches on the heath») in the context of a nocturnal experience of relief from sorrows and complaints. Those who love the mountains in the Black Forest usually don't like birches on the heath that much, and vice versa. Birches often evoke (at least for city-dwellers) pretty much the opposite of that «Härte des Willens» that, according to Heidegger, the Black Forest calls forth (see above, chapter 1, n. 33). Perhaps, however, it was the special situation of the summer 1911, Heidegger's struggle with Catholicism, his insecure professional future, and his delicate health, that had «alienated» him somewhat even from the mountains of the Black Forest and made him refer to birches. In this case, this short poem would be, so to speak, the analogue to Goethe's journey to Italy.

33. Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, Reflections , 76.

34. Ibid., 92-94.

35. Ibid., 88-90.