3
The "Official" View and "Facts and Thoughts"

The rectoral address is a central document for the understanding of Heidegger's Nazism. It is a detailed, public statement at a moment when Heidegger, the newly elected rector, identified freely and boldly with a political movement that had only recently come to power and which many people, including Heidegger, regarded as opening the way to a brighter future for all Germans. It is further a revolutionary text, the text of a conservative revolutionary concerned to break with the immediate past and to renew a tradition interrupted by the defeat suffered by Germany in the First World War.

To begin with, the interpretation of Heidegger's speech was not controversial. The nature of the talk initially appeared clear to all commentators. There were disagreements about the wisdom of the message, but not about its nature. It was widely received as an explicit declaration of faith in Nazism, indeed as an effort to realize National Socialist goals within the university by numerous observers.^[1] Heidegger's aim in his rectoral address only became controversial as a consequence of later events, in the course of which he resigned his position as rector, his relations to the Nazi party became strained, and Germany finally lost the Second World War. As a result of the German defeat, Heidegger was called to account for his actions as an activist member of the NSDAP. As part of his defense, he offered an account of his actions, including an interpretation of the rectoral address. As might be expected, Heidegger minimized the significance of his rectoral speech as well as other facets of his activity as a Nazi activist.

The "Official" View

I have interpreted Heidegger's turning from fundamental ontology to Nazism through the intrinsically political character of his thought. In my interpretation, Heidegger's political turn is squarely based on, and follows from, his philosophy. I discern an intrinsic link between his philosophical theory and his political practice. Heidegger also endorses an interpretation of his political action as deriving from his thought, for instance, in his acknowledgment that he was led to National Socialism by his conception of historicality,^[2] in his admission that he regarded the Nazi rise to power as an opportune moment to seize the destiny of the German people,^[3] and so on.

Now it is well known that theories are underdetermined by the facts on which they are based. The obvious consequence is that it is only rarely that factual material cannot be employed to support different, even incompatible, interpretations. It is, then, not surprising that the same material which I have adduced in support of my reading of the link between Heidegger's philosophical thought and political commitment is construed by others to provide a less damaging, more favorable reading of Heidegger's life and thought. Whereas I regard Heidegger's philosophy as ingredient in his politics, Heidegger's defenders are concerned to exonerate his thought from any significant role in his actions.

What I will call the "official" view is propagated not only by Heidegger but by some of his closest students. It is the view that, roughly speaking, there is no, or no important, link between Heidegger's philosophical position and National Socialism. It emerges in Heidegger's writings directly concerned with the rectoral period as well as in occasional hints scattered throughout his later corpus, and it is further developed and propagated by some of his closest followers in their own writings. This view was initially formulated by Heidegger himself at a time when he was threatened with loss of his relation to the university at the end of the war. Not surprisingly, it is intended to deny or at least to minimize a durable, profound, or even significant concern with National Socialism.

There is an interesting analogy between what I am calling the official view and Heidegger's later thought. His writing after Being and Time is largely a series of commentaries on that work, which is widely considered as his main philosophical contribution. There is an analogy between the efforts by Heidegger and certain of his followers after the fact to stress a peculiarly favorable interpretation of his life and thought and Heidegger's own effort to create a kind of Heideggerian orthodoxy. Like Marxism, which for more than a hundred years has subsisted on the claim of a privileged insight into the thought of the master thinker, so Heidegger's closest followers continue to dispute his "authentic" legacy

through differing interpretations of his works and days. When all is said and done, the official view is vitally important to the orthodox followers of the master thinker, whose careers are inextricably linked to his, and who are, hence, concerned like the master to deny what can reasonably be denied and to limit the effect of what must be admitted. The aim in view that motivates both the master thinker and his disciples is finally the same: to save the phenomena, so to speak, by showing that however deplorable Heidegger's political engagement and actions might be, they have nothing, or nothing essential, to do with the master thinker's thought. Depending on the interpretation, it is possible to hold the master at fault with respect to his politics but not his thought, which, dissociated from him in a conceptual realm of its own, remains entirely unsullied by either time or circumstance.

The official view is not confined to Heidegger scholars only. An example of someone influenced by Heidegger, but not in any sense a Heidegger scholar, who also accepted the official view is provided by Jean-Paul Sartre, in his response to Lukács's critique of Heidegger's Nazism. In a polemical work, Lukács criticized Heidegger's connection to fascism and described Heidegger as a pre-fascist.^[4] In response, Sartre objects to Lukács's supposed inability from an orthodox Marxist perspective to comprehend Heidegger because he simply will not read him; he will not make the effort to grasp the sentences one after the other. According to Sartre, who admits that he studied Heidegger's thought in Berlin in 1933 when Heidegger should have been at the summit of his "activism," "Heidegger has never been an 'activist'—at least not as he has expressed himself in his philosophical works."^[5]

Sartre's view that Heidegger is not an "activist" is due, not to his own research into the matter, but rather to his uncritical acceptance of the "official" view of Heidegger's Nazism, which was already in evidence in the second half of the 1940s, significantly just around the time when Heidegger published the "Letter on Humanism." It is present in the first important discussion of Heidegger's Nazism in the pages of Les Temps Modernes , edited by Sartre. The discussion began with an important article by Karl Löwith, Heidegger's former student and later colleague. In response, Alphonse De Waelhens, the Belgian scholar of existentialism and phenomenology, immediately invoked two aspects of the "official" view: the insistence on a distinction in kind between Heidegger the philosopher and Heidegger the man; and what we can call the "expert defense," which consists in invoking the critic's alleged lack of sufficient expertise in Heidegger's thought.

In part, what I am calling the "official" view derives from a clement interpretation of the rectoral address, the text which, except for occasional hints, remained the only published statement directly confronting

Heidegger's Nazism from 1933 when it was delivered until his passing in 1976. Further elements of the "official" view have continued to emerge from Heidegger's Nachlass , including the appearance of the Spiegel interview immediately after his death and the publication in 1983 of the article from 1945. Since the official view of Heidegger's Nazism is partly based on his posthumous writings, the record is incomplete and still subject to change as further texts from his Nachlass appear. Unquestionably, the view of his Nazism and even of his entire later thought in the period after Being and Time has been altered by the recent publication, more than fifty years after its composition, of his important Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis ).

Sartre's remark points to, but does not state, the "official" view. Oddly, there is no official presentation of the "official" view, which continues to inform the discussion. Although it has more than one version, it seems appropriate to illustrate it in the form favored by Hermann Heidegger, Heidegger's son and literary executor (Nachlass-Verwalter ). Although not a philosopher, even in an extended sense, he is clearly a close follower and defender of his father's life and work; and he provides an average form of the "official" view in a clear, even transparent fashion.

The version of the "official" view favored by Hermann Heidegger is stated in an extremely brief foreword to a small work containing the rectoral address and Heidegger's 1945 article on his period as rector. In his foreword, Hermann Heidegger's comments are limited to these two texts only; but they suggest a proper way to approach Heidegger's Nazism in general. According to the son, his father's relation to Nazism, which was at most unimportant, has been largely misunderstood because of the misrepresentations of his father's rectoral address.

Hermann Heidegger makes this argument in a text of less than a page and a half. The text is divided into five paragraphs in which Hermann Heidegger describes the circumstances of the republication of these two texts. The statement of the "official" view is confined to the third and fourth paragraphs, which I will simply reproduce:

Much has been said about the content of the speech that is false and untrue. From 1945 on down to the most recent past, even university professors have cited in their publications what were supposed to be statements from the Rectoral Address, which are not found there. The words "National Socialism" and "National Socialist" do not occur in this address; there is no mention of the "Führer," the "Chancellor of the Reich," or "Hitler."

At the time, the title of the address alone made people listen more attentively. No doubt, Martin Heidegger was caught up in the mood that

seemed to promise a fresh start for the nation, as were also many of those who later became resistance fighters. He never denied his entanglements in the movement of the time. And to be sure, he made mistakes while rector. He did not deny his own inadequacies. But he was neither an uncritical fellow traveller, nor an active party member. From the very beginning he kept a clear distance from the party leadership. This showed itself, for example, in his prohibition of book burnings and of the posting of the "Jew Notice" in the university; in his appointment of deans, not one of whom was a National Socialist; and in that as long as he remained rector, he was able to keep the Jewish professors von Hevesy and Thannhauser at the University.^[6]

Let us examine the son's narrative account of the supposed misrepresentations. In support of his interpretation, Hermann Heidegger offers two incompatible readings of his father's relation to Nazism. The first reading denies a link between Heidegger and Nazism. The second reading admits the link, which it then attempts to minimize.

Hermann Heidegger begins by denying Heidegger's Nazism. He asserts that even university professors have from 1945 until today cited passages in their writings which do not figure in this text. He then notes that in this text, we do not find any of the following words: National Socialism, der Führer, der Reichskanzler , or Hitler. The suggestion that Heidegger's view has been misrepresented by discussion of his rectoral address is strengthened by the further indication, in a passage preceding the one quoted, in which his son notes that the second edition of this speech was withdrawn from sale by the Nazi party, or NSDAP, after his father's resignation as rector.^[7]

What is the intention of this paragraph? I believe that Hermann Heidegger intends for the reader to infer that since Heidegger does not refer directly in his speech either to Hitler or to Nazism, his speech cannot reasonably be construed as evidence that his speech is about National Socialism or that his thought led to Nazism. If there is nothing in the rectoral speech that identifies it as a statement of support for National Socialism, then there is obviously no reason to hold that fundamental ontology in fact led to Heidegger's Nazi turn. It follows that Heidegger's turning to a totalitarian form of political practice is, then, merely a contingent matter, unrelated to his philosophical theory, just one of those things, so to speak, but certainly not explicable on the basis of his philosophy, to which it may not even be related.

The text, which is meant to engender these inferences exonerating Heidegger, is remarkably vague. Since there is no indication of who cited what passages from this speech incorrectly, we cannot evaluate Hermann Heidegger's claim. The son is correct that the words listed do

not occur in the text. We do not find the word "Führer " in the singular, but only in its plural form. But Hermann Heidegger's statement fails to consider a number of relevant issues, which we can put in the form of questions: How did the philosopher intend his speech to be understood? How was it understood? Was he misunderstood? There is no evidence that any of those who heard this talk, including Heidegger's followers or even representatives of official Nazism, ever doubted that his sibylline language referred to those items which, according to his son, he does not name, in fact precisely Hitler and the Nazi party.

The attempted linguistic defense, limited as it is, is inadequate to deny that Heidegger's thought was the conceptual basis of his political allegiance. Even Heidegger's son does not seem convinced by the suggestion that his father's speech has nothing directly to do with Nazism at all. In the next paragraph, he immediately supplements his implicit denial that the rectoral speech is evidence for Heidegger's turning to Nazism by admitting his father's implication in Nazi politics which he has just implicitly denied. His statement of Heidegger's involvement in National Socialist politics is interesting for several reasons, for instance in Hermann Heidegger's employment now of an indirect form of reference to Nazism—a form of reference whose significance he earlier disputes in the observation that neither Hitler nor National Socialism is directly named— through words which unmistakably refer to what he does not directly name.

He states that the title of the talk already caused one to prick up one's ears at that time. According to Hermann Heidegger, like many later resistance fighters his father was at that time caught up in the national mood of renewal (Aufbruchstimmung ), a word that suggests the possibility of basic change. The comparison to "those who later became resistance fighters" suggests that Heidegger, too, was later part of the resistance to Nazism. Now employing the word "movement" (Bewegung ), in line with frequent practice, to refer to Nazi party politics, which he does not directly name, he states that Heidegger never denied his temporary involvement (vorübergehende Verstrickung ) in the so-called movement of the time. The son further admits that his father also certainly made mistakes as rector, which Heidegger never denied. But for the son, his father was never an uncritical fellow traveler nor an active party member. Hermann Heidegger sees his father's clear distance from the party in Heidegger's prevention of the book burning and of the hanging up of the "Judenplakat ," in his refusal to appoint only National Socialists, and in his efforts to retain such Jewish professors as Hevesy and Thannhauser.

The time is now long past in which one could simply deny that Heidegger had ever been a Nazi, that he had joined the Nazi party, that he had

collaborated with it, that he had even believed in it. It is simply too late to deny rationally what is now part of the public record. At most, one can now only minimize or otherwise interpret what one can no longer deny as such. Perhaps for the reason that a simple denial cannot be maintained, in this paragraph Heidegger's son takes a more realistic line based on the admission of a minimal link between Heidegger and Nazism. Although still interested in reducing his father's involvement with National Socialism, he now admits a relation to Nazism which he seeks to minimize rather than to deny. In his grudging admission that his father did after all have a connection with Nazism, in fact that like everyone else he made mistakes during that period, something he did not deny, the son creates the impression of his father as a human being, with human frailties, who was for a short time only caught up with a dreadful situation and who accepted his errors.

This impression is misleading. Although Heidegger was caught up in Nazism, like numerous later resistance fighters, it does not follow that he was in fact a "resistance fighter" however conceived. Despite a number of hints in his writings that he later confronted Nazism, his own "resistance" to National Socialism is mainly limited to objections to its theoretical adequacy, particularly as a theory of Being. Although he collaborated with National Socialism, in part because he identified with its goals, in part no doubt also for opportunistic reasons, he never accepted it as a theory. There is, however, no evidence, nor does his son cite any, that Heidegger ever resisted such familiar Nazi excesses as the efforts to acquire world hegemony or to exterminate whole populations.

These remarks on Hermann Heidegger's account of Heidegger's Nazism can be summarized as follows: Hermann Heidegger illustrates two common forms of the "official" view of Heidegger's Nazism: on the one hand, an extreme form consisting in the denial of Heidegger's relation to National Socialism, for instance by denying that the rectoral speech in fact refers to this political movement; on the other hand, a more moderate form consisting in the denial of a more than minimal relation between Heidegger and Nazism. Common to these two variants of the "official" view is the claim that Heidegger's relation to Nazism was at most transitory and not centrally rooted in his thought. Heidegger's relation to Nazism is either denied or conceded, but a relation of Heidegger's thought to Nazism is denied.

This reading of Heidegger's relation to Nazism as merely contingent and, hence, unrelated to his thought draws support from two main sources. There is the understandable concern of those whose careers are based on Heidegger's thought to minimize or even to deny its role in his turn to National Socialism. This concern overlaps with Heidegger's own interest, which cannot be denied, in attempting to save his thought from

being discredited by his Nazi turning. It is a matter of record that he was able to escape responsibility for his actions. For the most part, at least until the recent publications by Farias and Ott, Heidegger and his followers were able to deny a link between his philosophical thought and his politics, to carry on philosophical business as usual with only occasional attention to the outside world. One must simply concede that the official view of Heidegger's Nazism has been largely successful up to this point in avoiding, or at least minimizing, damage to Heidegger and his thought. At this late date, if the effort at damage control has come undone as the issue has finally escaped from the arid domain of professional philosophy and reached the wider public, it is because a few courageous writers were unwilling to participate in the ongoing whitewash of the relation between Heidegger's Nazism and his philosophy.^[8]

"Facts and Thoughts"

The "official" view is rooted directly or indirectly in Heidegger's own efforts to help himself by presenting his own interpretation of the rector-ate. His defense of his actions was developed in two later texts, at a time when his first enthusiasm for Nazism had inevitably been tempered by an awareness of the historical consequences to which it led: an article written in 1945,^[9] but only published later, and the well-known Spiegel interview.

For historical reasons, there is no "natural" order in which to consider these two texts. Both the article and the interview were only published after Heidegger's death. The article appeared for the first time in 1983, some thirty-eight years after it was written, at the same time and in the same small volume as the republication of the rectoral address. The interview, which took place in 1966, was published only ten years later after Heidegger's death. It follows that the interview which took place more than twenty years after the article was written, in fact appeared in print considerably earlier. It contributed more than the article to shaping opinion about Heidegger. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that this was its intended task, that Heidegger intended his interview to shape the public view about his thought and himself after his passing, that he meant it to function as a kind of intellectual testament intended to "correct" the public record for generations to come. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why he withheld publication until after his death. The aim of the article is different. Since the article is more technical and hence less accessible than the interview, it was probably not meant to shape public opinion in general. It is likely that Heidegger wrote it to influence the immediate situation in which he found himself, at a time in

which he was obliged to answer for his actions before the military authorities immediately after the end of the Second World War.

It will be useful to concentrate on Heidegger's article since it is philosophically more substantive and less well known than the Spiegel interview. The rectoral speech has often been studied and the Spiegel interview is frequently mentioned, but to the best of my knowledge Heidegger's article on the rectorate has not yet been analyzed in detail. To begin with, it is helpful to place the article in historical context.^[10] The French occupation, which began in the region of Freiburg on 25 April 1945, led to a process of denazification. As early as the beginning of May 1945, Heidegger's house was "confiscated" in virtue of his Nazi activity, which in practice meant that he and his family were required to share it with another family. Measures were further taken to confiscate his personal library. On 23 July 1945, Heidegger was obliged to appear before a commission composed of five professors. In his time of need, Heidegger turned to two people, Archbishop Conrad Gröber, who had helped to launch his academic career, and Karl Jaspers, his distinguished philosophical colleague and personal friend.^[11] The commission, basing itself in part on a largely negative report submitted, in response to an invitation, by Jaspers, insisted on the incompatibility between Nazi doctrine and Heidegger's thought;^[12] but it proposed in September 1945 that Heidegger be retired on pension with the right to teach.^[13] The committee's report was submitted to the university senate, which took up the question on 17 October 1945. The verdict was that Heidegger was to be retired without the right to teach, and he was also forbidden to participate in any public way in the university. This decision was further made even more rigorous by the military authorities, who subsequently suppressed Heidegger's pension rights.

As could be expected, in order to defend himself Heidegger reacted against these measures as vigorously as possible. On 16 July he wrote to the Oberbürgermeister in order to protest the decisions to "confiscate" his house and his library. It has been pointed out that already in this letter we find the basic elements of the line of defense which Heidegger continued to maintain in numerous ways in a variety of later writings.^[14] Heidegger's defense included claims that the actions taken against him amounted to discrimination against himself and his work since he never held office in the Nazi party and never was active in its various instances; that his work has constantly brought attention to the University of Freiburg and that he has constantly declined offers of positions elsewhere to remain in Freiburg; and that the actions taken against him were based on accusations whose content and origins were not known to him, and are of a type which so far have only been brought against important

party functionaries, with whom he was neither in personal political contact either during or after his period as rector.

Unquestionably, Heidegger did bring attention to the University of Freiburg. He willingly chose to remain there when he received offers to go elsewhere.^[15] The actions taken against him were not, however, based on anonymous accusations since the key document was the report, to which he had access, written by Karl Jaspers. In his report, Jaspers noted that:

— For personal reasons, as a friend of Heidegger, he would have preferred not to intervene.

— Heidegger's actions with respect to individuals were inconsistent, since he denounced Baumgarten as unworthy to be a National Socialist and as one who consorted with Jews, but helped his student Brock—who was in fact Jewish—emigrate to England.

— It is important that Heidegger, as Germany's most important thinker, be able to continue to write.

— Heidegger was one of the few German professors who actively collaborated with the Nazis.

— Heidegger is finally not a political person, but his reported change of heart in 1941 is meaningless since it would only have been meaningful immediately after 30 June 1934.

Jaspers recommended that Heidegger be offered a pension to continue his work, that he be suspended from teaching for several years, and that he be reinstated only after an inspection of his publications during that period and consideration of new academic conditions. In its report, based on Jaspers's recommendations, the commission stated:

Before the upheaval in 1933, philosopher Martin Heidegger lived in a fully unpolitical intellectual [geistigen] world, had, however, friendly relations (also through his sons) with the student movement of that period and certain literary leaders of the German youth, such as Ernst Jünger, who foresaw the end of the bourgeois capitalist period and the coming of a new German socialism. He expected from the National Socialist revolution a spiritual renewal of German life on a völkisch basis, [and] simultaneously, like many educated Germans, a reduction of social contradictions and a salvation of Western culture from the dangers of communism. He had no clear idea of the political-parliamentary antecedents which preceded the coming to power of the NSDAP, and he believed in the historical mission of Hitler who would bring about a basic political change.^[16]

Both Jaspers and the commission, which acted on his report, dissociated Heidegger the thinker from Heidegger the man. Both described Heidegger as characterized by a lack of political insight and grave psychological and character flaws, in particular his effort to turn the Nazi rise to power to personal advantage, which he shared with Alfred Baeumler and Carl Schmitt. But both Jaspers and the commission sought to preserve Heidegger's philosophical achievement, which they regarded as untarnished by his turning to Nazism. Jaspers's own inability to perceive the extent of the link between Heidegger's acceptance of Nazism and his fundamental ontology is apparent in his congratulatory note to Heidegger after the talk, in which he praises Heidegger as someone who, unlike Nietzsche, will realize his philosophy in practice.^[17] He differed in that respect from Croce, a more perceptive observer, who immediately grasped the significance of the connection between fundamental ontology and Nazism in his remark that Heidegger's action dishonored philosophy.^[18]

It is in these difficult personal circumstances that Heidegger wrote his essay, "The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts." Our task now is to interpret Heidegger's text, intended to justify his actions as rector during a prior period at a moment when he has been called to account for that association. Heidegger undertakes to defend himself in an article slightly more than twenty pages long. In an obvious manner, more so than for the Rektoratsrede , the article from 1945 is indeed an occasional text, a document composed in the most extreme personal need, the kind of need which Heidegger in 1933 had previously attributed to the German people as a whole.

Like the rectoral address, this is more than an occasional text, although it is that as well. It offers the most important statement in Heidegger's corpus of his actions during the rectorate. Heidegger's analysis is embedded in a philosophical discussion that foreshadows the later evolution of his thought. Unlike the rectoral speech, which is mainly a philosophical argument elaborated on a significant occasion, his account of the rectorate is largely of a factual nature. The talk possesses a deliberately incantatory quality, which builds to a climax in the repeated invocation of history, fate, struggle, and the destiny of the German people in a time of need. In comparison, his account of the rectorate is more restrained, devoid of the "conceptual frenzy" that marked the speech. It is divided in an apparently arbitrary manner into three sections: an unnamed section that begins the article, followed by a long passage whose heading reads, "The aim and attitude of the rectorate are stated in the Rektoratsrede of May 1933," and ending in an account titled "The Time after the Rectorate."^[19]

Heidegger is usually a self-assured writer, who confidently states his

view in an economical, apodictic manner. Uncharacteristically, his account of his rectorate is confused and confusing, with multiple repetitions of the same or similar points within a single, short text.^[20] Because of the repetitious nature of the discussion, it is more than usually difficult to describe the relation among its various constituent parts. As a guess, one can understand the articulation of the article as follows: the first section, or introduction, provides a general orientation to the so-called facts and Heidegger's thoughts about them; the second section offers a more detailed consideration of specific points of the rectoral address and the rectorate; and the last section indicates Heidegger's view of the "discrimination" he suffered during the Nazi period, that is, after his period as rector.

Since this is not a historical work, it is not necessary to consider the historical accuracy of Heidegger's self-interpretation in detail. It is sufficient to indicate that the so-called factual material is controversial and need not be accepted without scrutiny. Here a single, significant instance will suffice to make this point. For instance, Heidegger claims that he was not a party member and he only became one, as a matter of form, after his first several weeks in office in order to respond to the perceived interest of the university, although it was understood that he would not be active in any way.^[21]

This statement is important in the context of Heidegger's interpretation of the meaning one can attribute to his period as rector. Heidegger does not deny that he was a member of the NSDAP; rather, he employs a slight shift in the date of his adherence to suggest that his membership was not voluntary, or not wholly voluntary, in order to minimize its significance. The effect is to deny any concern with National Socialism as such, although we have seen that the rectoral speech provides a wholly different picture. On the contrary, it is known that, prior to becoming rector, at a time when he was already actively involved in planning with the Prussian Kultusministerium , Heidegger held that it would give other colleagues a free hand to act against him were he to become a member of the NSDAP.^[22] And it is further known that he in fact became a party member prior to his inauguration as rector.^[23]

In defense of Heidegger, one could point out that he was not a professional historian or explain this divergence as due to his reliance on an untrustworthy memory. Yet in the context of his effort to justify his actions as rector, this and other such factual errors in this text, as well as in other writings, tend to present a better case for Heidegger's side of the story than is warranted by the facts. It is entirely plausible to infer that Heidegger, who evidently carefully planned his decision to adhere to the NSDAP, later exercised similar care to disguise the nature and depth of this adherence, with respect to the original date and the entire

period after the rectorate. This is merely one instance of Heidegger's two-track approach in which he insists on the inner necessity of his thought while presenting a systematically misleading account of the Nazi turning in his thought.^[24]

Heidegger begins his account, in the first section of his paper, by drawing a connection between four apparently disparate elements: his statement that he was unanimously elected rector despite his own hesitation to assume the job, his lack of relation to the Nazi party, his concern over whether the university would cooperate with him to discover and to shape its own essence, and the connection of the latter task with his inaugural address:

In April 1933 I was elected rector by the unanimous vote of the plenum of the university.... I had no contact with the relevant government and party agencies, was myself neither a member of the party, nor had I been active politically in any way. Thus it was uncertain whether those at the center of political power would listen to me with respect to what to me seemed to be the necessary task [als Notwendigkeit und Aufgabe vorschwebte]. But just as uncertain was the extent to which the university would actively join me to discover and to shape its own essence in a more primordial manner. Already in my Inaugural Address [Antrittsrede], delivered in the summer of 1929, I had presented this task to the public.^[25]

In his reference to the task of discovering and shaping the essence of the university, Heidegger in part names the central theme of the rectoral address. What he excludes is as significant as what he includes, because his defense of himself turns on this point. Heidegger's representation of his task as the defense of the essence of the university against all dangers is inaccurate in a deep, essential sense. His description of his task in the rectoral address differs from the main thrust of the talk, which is not the defense of the university as an end in itself but rather as a means to other ends of a political and philosophical nature. His aim in the speech is only incidentally the defense of the German university, or even the Greek idea of science, since his further goals include the coming to being of the German people as authentically German and, finally, the problem of Being that is the central theme in his position. Attention to the essence of the university differs fundamentally from attention to the essence of the university for a further purpose. In the first case, the defense of the university is an end in itself, whereas in the second case it is a means to another end or ends.^[26] In his statement that he was concerned with the university as such, Heidegger by implication transforms what in the rectoral speech he presented as his concern with the university in order to realize the destiny of the German people and, I believe, his overall philosophical goal, into a simple defense of the German university

against whatever threatened it from without. The result is a stunning, self-serving distortion of the main stated theme of the rectoral address: the affirmation that the German people wills itself to be itself—in a word, it assumes its own historical destiny—through the newly elected rector's assumption of the leadership of the "movement."

If this interpretation is accurate, we need to explain Heidegger's inaccurate depiction of his talk. A point made by Jaspers, the former psychiatrist, whose testimony proved most damaging in the deliberations of the committee, is relevant here. "He [i.e., Heidegger] does not perceive the depths of his earlier mistake, which is why there is no real change in him but rather a game of distortions and erasures."^[27] Heidegger's discussion of the rectorate is an example of the evasive self-justification which Jaspers reports, and which is on display elsewhere in Heidegger's later efforts to shift responsibilty and to minimize his involvement in Nazism. In Jaspers's terminology, there is a game of distortions and erasures in evidence in the slight shift in language, but enormous shift in meaning, from Heidegger's statement—in the opening sentences of the Rektoratsrede —that he undertook to defend the essence of the university in order to realize the destiny of the German people to the later claim—in his article about the rectorate—that in fact he only undertook to defend the essence of the university.

The contrast between the rectoral address and Heidegger's discussion of this period is further apparent on a variety of levels. Heidegger's earlier formulation, in the speech, of what he refers to as a necessary task contradicts his later effort, in the article, to portray his earlier concern as limited to the defense of the university. It is plausible to argue for the defense of the university as a necessary task. It is less plausible, indeed odd, to refer, as he does in his later discussion, to this task as a necessity. In German the term "necessity" ("Notwendigkeit ") derives from "necessary" ("notwendig "), which is roughly synonymous with such words as "erforderlich," "unentberhrlich," "unvermeidlich ," "zwangsläufig," "vorgeschrieben," "dringend," "unbedingt ." It refers not only to what is demanded, or not to be missed, but also to what is unavoidable, obligatory, foreordained, pressing, and unlimited. In German, a necessity is something that relates to fate or to destiny, precisely the task he described in his speech with respect to the German people, but which can scarcely be attributed to what he here describes as the defense of the university.

It is normal for Heidegger, in difficult circumstances, to take steps to save his philosophical work by dissociating it from his political activity. It would not be normal not to make this effort, not to use every means at his disposal to defend himself. Our role is to scrutinize the available historical and philosophical record with a view to determining whether

Heidegger's thought is compromised by his political actions. There is a distinction between the conclusion that his politics reflect on his thought and the determination of the accuracy of his interpretation of his thought and actions during the rectoral period. I have already argued that his thought is ingredient in his Nazi turning. His entire retrospective discussion of the rectorate is an effort to deny or to minimize the nature of his "political mistake" by subtly transforming what took place into something superficially similar, but in fact very different. A careful scrutiny of this text needs to determine whether it provides a faithful, or even an acceptable, reading of this situation and further to determine whether the interpretation provided is sufficient to refute the criticisms brought against his thought through the analysis of the rectoral talk.

Heidegger begins his defense by calling attention to his inaugural lecture, "What Is Metaphysics?"^[28] This lecture, which was delivered in 1929, was later supplemented by an afterword added to the fourth edition in 1943 and by an introduction added to the fifth edition in 1949. Just as the writings after Being and Time often serve to interpret and reinterpret that work as Heidegger's view (and accordingly his view of Being and Time ) changed, so the afterword and introduction Heidegger later added serve to interpret and reinterpret the inaugural lecture from a different, later perspective.

The lecture sketches Heidegger's understanding of metaphysics, his main theme, in a version close to the position of Being and Time .^[29] Heidegger mentions the unfolding of the metaphysical inquiry, the elaboration of the question, and an answer to it.^[30] In remarks on metaphysics, he develops a conception of nothing^[31] in response to Leibniz's famous question: why is there something rather than nothing? In a way that recalls Kant, Heidegger maintains that metaphysics is a basic occurrence of Dasein and Dasein itself.^[32] In the afterword, his view has progressed beyond philosophy toward thought in order to surpass metaphysics. He suggests that in thinking the ground of metaphysics, thought is no longer metaphysical.^[33] He closes with a comparison between the thinker (Denker ) and the poet (Dichter ). For Heidegger, in saying the thinker names Being, and in naming the poet names the holy.^[34] In the introduction, added still later, he provides a temporal framework for metaphysics, which he locates in a tradition running from Anaximander to Nietzsche, in which the nature of Being is hidden.^[35]

The differences in the successive versions of Heidegger's inaugural lecture reflect the evolution of his thought. In a move indicating the philosophical roots of his political turn, in the article Heidegger now draws attention to a link between the initial version of the lecture and his rectoral address by citing the "introductory sentences" of his inaugural lecture.

We question, here and now, for ourselves. Our being (Dasein)—as members of a community of scientists, teachers, and students—is determined by science. What essential thing is happening to us from the very bottom of our being (Dasein), when science has become our passion? The fields of science lie far apart. They approach their subject matter in fundamentally different ways. Today this fragmented multiplicity of disciplines is held together only by the technical organization of universities and faculties, and retains some importance only because of the practical aims pursued by the different specialties. But the roots of the sciences in their essential ground have withered.^[36]

He correctly states that his lecture was widely translated and that everyone knew that he then thought that the most pressing concern of the German university was to renew itself by withdrawing from its present concern with a pseudo-unity.

Everyone was in a position to know what I thought about the German university and what I considered its most pressing concern. It was to renew itself by returning to its essential ground, which is also the essential ground of the sciences; that is to say, by returning to the essence of truth itself instead of persisting in a technical organization-institutional pseudo-unity, it was to recover the primordial living unity that joins those who question and those who know.^[37]

Obviously, the point of citing the passage from the inaugural lecture is to suggest a continuity between that lecture and the rectoral address at the small cost of admitting the philosophical dimension of the address itself. The aim is to suggest that the address is not political, because it, like the lecture, is focused on the defense of the university. The argument is, however, misleading. To begin with, the passage cited is not from the opening sentences, but rather constitutes the fifth paragraph of the lecture, which occurs on the second page of the text. It occurs in the course of a transition from metaphysics in general as a problem to Dasein which raises the problem of the nothingness named in Leibniz's question. The cited passage is incidental to the main theme of the lecture. It was, hence, unlikely to be generally known as Heidegger's position, even if a sharp-eyed reader would have noticed it. It was hardly likely to be known to everyone, since few people, with the exception of professional philosophers, and certainly few of the scientists to whom the lecture was delivered, were in a position to understand it.

The argument is further misleading in a deeper sense, since it exaggerates the continuity in order to hide the change that has taken place in Heidegger's thought in the intervening period. At some point after the lecture, a turning (Kehre ) occurred in Heidegger's thought, including a

move away from Dasein as the access to Being, a withdrawal from the transcendental philosophical approach employed by fundamental ontology, and even a withdrawal from philosophy. There is no hint of politics in the inaugural lecture. But politics is a main theme in the rectoral address. The unity of the university is not the main theme in either the lecture or the speech, but Heidegger misleadingly represents it as the main theme in both the lecture and the speech in his effort to defend himself.

Heidegger states that he hesitated to assume the rectorate since he knew that he would run into a conflict with the "new" and the "old," namely "political science" (politische Wissenschaft ), based on a falsification of the essence of truth, and the tendency to advance a particular specialty in isolation from reflection on the essence of science.^[38] Both points are Platonic in inspiration. His objection to the idea of a special science proceeding without reflection on the essence of science in general is an application of Husserl's quasi-Platonic objection to the supposed objectivism of the nonphilosophical sciences.^[39] Heidegger earlier accepted this Husserlian point in Being and Time and in the speech. Husserl's view of objectivism follows Plato's well-known view that, as the science of sciences, philosophy grounds the other sciences and itself.^[40] Here, Heidegger rejects the idea that a university should consist of separate departments whose relation to each other and to the implicit concept of science, the essence of the university, remains unthought.

The remarks about "political science" are more difficult to construe. Heidegger mentions "political science" on four occasions in this short essay, initially, as we have noted, in connection with the "new." He qualifies this comment in three later passages: in an assertion that "lilt was never my intention to realize only party doctrines and to act in accord with the 'idea' of a 'political science,"'^[41] in an observation that the talk rejects the idea of political science "proclaimed by National Socialism as a cruder version of Nietzsche's understanding of the essence of truth and knowledge,"^[42] and again in a statement that "the ministry expressed ever more clearly the desire that the idea of 'political science' be taken far more seriously at the University of Freiburg than had so far happened."^[43] The translator suggests in a footnote that Heidegger has in mind the politicization of science, in which truth is based in the Volk .

This suggestion is only partly correct. If Heidegger is indicating his opposition to the politicization of science, then his opposition is qualified by his admission that he never intended to realize only party doctrines. In this way, he admits that as rector he was also concerned to attain the goals of the party. The identification of a dual intention during the rectoral period helps to explain the curious duality in the rectoral speech where he insists both on the defense of science in the original

sense and the link of the defense of science to the destiny of the German people.

On a deeper level, Heidegger supports "political science." The talk exhibits a form of Platonism in politics, according to which pure theory is practically relevant, indeed practically indispensable as the condition of the "just" state. Among other things, the rectoral speech is meant to recall that philosophy is the foundation of politics.^[44] But if philosophy founds politics in a quasi-Platonic sense, then Heidegger cannot object to the politicization of philosophical science in general, but only to the way in which the National Socialists have carried this out. For the "Platonist" that he still was at the time of the rectoral address, pure theory is intrinsically political because it is practically relevant. He can only object to the transformation, or rather degradation, of theory to merely political ends, as in the discredited effort of Lyssenko in Marxist-Leninist biology or in the equally discredited idea of a Nazi physics. Yet Heidegger participated in an analogous endeavor. Certainly, his public acceptance of the Führer principle seems to indicate that at the time, for him the final arbiter of truth was Hitler, the German dictator.

Heidegger clearly rejects a vulgar, inauthentic form of "political science" in favor of the authentic variety. His opposition to the politicians and political scientists involved in the Nazi revolution has three aspects that need to be distinguished: To begin with, he opposes the attempted usurpation of the legitimate role of philosophy in politics, the same view that subtends his expressed desire to lead the leaders of the Nazi state. He further criticizes the scientific pretensions of a "science" which, from his reading of Greek thought, is not worthy of the name of philosophy. Finally, he is reacting against the crude, or vulgar, reading of Nietzsche proposed by Nazism, to which he opposes his own supposedly authentic interpretation.^[45] On the contrary, a correct understanding of Nietzsche, adumbrated in Jünger, is invaluable for metaphysics and history.^[46] If official Nazism depends on a crude version of Nietzsche, whose thought requires a deeper reading, then the critique of "political science" points beyond itself in the anticipation of an authentic form of National Socialism based on a more secure grasp of Nietzsche's position.

Heidegger admits only to assuming the rectorate as part of his "plan of founding the essence of the university in a primordial manner."^[47] He offers three reasons for his decision:

(1) I saw in the movement [Bewegung] that had gained power the possibility of an inner recollection and renewal of the people and a path that would allow it to discover its historical vocation in the Western world. I believed that, renewing itself, the university might also be called to con-

tribute to this inner self-collection of the people, providing it with a measure [mass-gebend mitzuwirken].

(2) For this reason I saw in the rectorate an opportunity to lead all capable forces—regardless of party membership and party doctrine—back to this process of reflection and renewal and to strengthen and to secure the influence of these forces.

(3) In this manner I hoped to counter the advance of unsuited persons and the threatening hegemony of party apparatus and party doctrine.^[48]

Heidegger here links together his perception of a historical opportunity he sought to seize, the way in which it could be realized through the rectorate, and the advantage to be gained by assuming the office of rector. This explanation is coherent; but it conflicts with the view that he became rector to defend the German university, and it fails to mention an essential point. Obviously, if Heidegger had a further political aim in mind, as he admits here, then his defense of the university is at most a piece in the puzzle but not the whole puzzle. His statement of his intentions here undermines his effort to distance himself from any political intentions through his desire to save higher education from disintegration. This noble intention, which all academics presumably share, should not be allowed to obscure Heidegger's political interest in assuming the rector-ate. He fails, however, to mention his conviction, which he seems never to have abandoned, that the German people possesses a Western historical vocation that requires realization.^[49] Significantly, his failure to mention this idea conceals a main link between his own view and Nazism: the shared belief that the unrealized essence of the German people would be realized through National Socialism. In revealing his belief in a kairos associated with Nazism and the university's part in it, he covers up an essential element: his continued adherence to the underlying idea which, from his perspective, brought Nazism and philosophy together.

Heidegger's remark that in assuming the rectorate he hoped to counter unsuited people, the party apparatus, and party doctrine requires a comment. He cannot simply mean that he was in favor of maintaining a certain level of quality in the university, since that would imply that he was concerned to differentiate gifted from ungifted Nazis. He also cannot simply mean that he was opposed to party doctrine in general or to the party apparatus as such. For he cooperated at least in part with that apparatus and willingly propagated its doctrine. Perhaps he means that he desired to maintain the ability of the university to determine itself. A reading of this kind is doubly persuasive. It fits comfortably with the idea of self-assertion in the title of the talk, which points to a refusal of

any form of external direction of university affairs. It is further consistent with the broadly Platonic reading of the speech advanced here.

The more difficult question is why Heidegger believed that Germany was at a historical turning, why the time had come for philosophers to lead the state. The answer seems to lie in the evolution of his understanding of the Seinsfrage through his reading of Nietzsche and Jünger. Heidegger apparently not only believed with Plato that philosophy provided the ground of politics.^[50] He further believed that his metaphysical perspective could see into history and included a capacity to discern the shape of the future, almost like a seer or prophet of Being. This conviction helps to explain some of the stranger passages in his corpus. For instance, in a request to the dean of the University of Freiburg to be relieved of all duties for the winter semester 1943/44 in order to carry out his research, Heidegger wrote: "The request I am making does not arise from a personal interest in the promotion of my own work, but from a knowledge of the historical limits of German philosophical thinking with regard to the future of the West."^[51] Heidegger seems literally to have thought that the future of the West depended on the proper understanding of metaphysics, supposedly presented in his own thought. In other circumstances, someone who advanced such ideas would be a candidate for psychiatric treatment. It is a measure of the loss of perspective of contemporary philosophy that it accords such delusions serious consideration.

Heidegger hints at this understanding in his remarks on Nietzsche and Jünger. These remarks develop ideas barely sketched in the important lecture course, An Introduction to Metaphysics , delivered in 1935. Here, almost in passing, he suggests that, although misunderstood, Nietzsche is crucial to a grasp of the problem of Being. To grasp Nietzsche's view correctly, we need to unfold what is contained within it.^[52] In a crucial passage, he then asserts a basic connection between the forgetfulness of Being, to which he holds that Nietzsche offers an essential clue, and the decline of nations and traditions:

Is it the fault of Being that it is so involved? is it the fault of the word that it remains so empty? or are we to blame that with all our effort, with all our chasing after beings, we have fallen out of Being? And should we not say that the fault did not begin with us, or with our immediate or more remote ancestors, but lies in something that runs through Western history from the very beginning, a happening which the eyes of all the historians in the world will never perceive, but which nevertheless happens, which happened in the past and will happen in the future? What if it were possible that man, that nations in their greatest movements and traditions, are linked to Being and yet had long fallen out of Being. without knowing it, and that this was the most powerful and most central cause of their decline? (See Sein und Zeit , paragraph 38, in particular pp. 179f.).^[53]

The references here to the early approach to the Seinsfrage in Being and Time and to Nietzsche show how Heidegger transformed his original analysis of the meaning of Being into an explanation of world history. We recall that he proposed an authentic theory of historicality (Geschichtlichkeit ) in Being and Time in the context of his theory of Being.^[54] As strange as it seems, Heidegger here extends what was earlier a philosophical analysis of the idea of history to the interpretation of historical events now and in the future.

His remarks here on Nietzsche further develop ideas raised in the inaugural lecture. Even in the amended version of the lecture, Nietzsche figures merely as an end point, a terminus ad quem of the metaphysical tradition begun by Anaximander. Heidegger now makes two further points. First, recalling his earlier reference in the talk to Nietzsche's statement that God is dead, he comments that this has nothing to do with atheism; rather, it indicates the loss of historical efficacy of the supersensible world, particularly the Christian God.^[55]

Heidegger glosses this claim through further remarks, beginning with a reference to a lecture, delivered in 1943, concerning Nietzsche's statement.^[56] This lecture was intended as an introduction to the topic of nihilism.^[57] Heidegger now argues that the suggestion that God is dead and the reduction of value to will, or nihilism, can be understood only in terms of the will to power, in his view the central concept of Nietzsche's philosophy.^[58] Nietzsche's insight is now said to provide a reflection beyond metaphysical thinking, that is, beyond the whole of Western metaphysics.^[59] But Nietzsche deludes himself in thinking that this overturning of metaphysics is an overcoming of metaphysics, which merely recurs in his thought in a different fashion. "Nietzsche holds this overturning of metaphysics to be the overcoming of metaphysics. But every overturning of this kind remains only a self-deluding entanglement in the Same that has become unknowable."^[60]

Second, Heidegger expands his view of how metaphysics enables us to understand politics through remarks on Ernst Jünger.^[61] He states that he twice formed discussion groups (in 1932 and in 1939/40) to discuss Jünger's writings. He claims that these misunderstood writings offer a fundamental insight into Nietzsche's concept of metaphysics as a way to understand history, which is empirically confirmed, and which underlies the speech:

Together with my assistant Brock, I discussed these writings in a small circle and tried to show how they express a fundamental understanding of Nietzsche's metaphysics, in so far as the history and present of the Western world are seen and foreseen in the horizon of this metaphysics. Thinking from these writings and, still more essentially, from their foundations,

we thought what was coming, that is to say, we attempted to counter it, as we confronted it. At the time many others also read these writings but together with many other interesting things that one also read, one laid them aside without comprehending their far-reaching import. Later, in the winter 1939/40, I discussed part of Jünger's book The Worker once more with a circle of colleagues; I learned how even then these thoughts still seemed strange and put people off, until "the facts" bore them out. What Ernst Jünger thinks with the thought of the rule and shape of the worker and sees in the light of this thought, is the universal rule of the will to power within history, now understood to embrace the planet. Today everything stands in this historical reality, no matter whether it is called communism, or fascism, or world democracy.^[62]

The remarks on Jünger provide a crucial link between Heidegger's view of the rectorate and his interpretation of world history in terms of the Seinsfrage . We can reconstruct the chain of argument as follows. The problem of the meaning of Being yields a concept of authentic history (Geschichtlichkeit ), including the interpretation of present and future history which are confirmed by experience. The argument rests on claims to grasp the views of Nietzsche and Jünger in an authentic manner. Nietzsche, who is misunderstood, provides an analysis of history as ruled by the will to power. Jünger, who is also misunderstood, sheds important light on Nietzsche through his view of the worker, which is empirically verified. Heidegger claimed to possess this seerlike insight during the rectorate since, as he states, "From the vantage point of this reality of the will to power I saw even then what is ."^[63]

The link Heidegger now proposes between metaphysics and history raises a series of issues about what he believed during the rectorate. With respect to the rectorate, there is a less obvious, more significant end in view. It is insufficient to paint the descent into the political arena from a Platonic angle of vision. Since Heidegger is moving now to reject Platonism in all its forms, to invoke it as a motivating factor during the rectorate would also be to deny that there was anything positive to begin with in the turn to real Nazism. Now this line of defense is not open to him if for no other reason than that he now believes that Nazism did not fail him but that Hitler and the other Nazis failed Nazism. He seems never to have regretted his adherence to National Socialism for the purpose of realizing the essence of the German people, or to further the understanding of Being, ends that he still accepts as valid. On the contrary, he recognizes—how could he deny it?—that this adherence has failed to produce the intended result. The "solution" is to attribute the attraction to politics to another factor of permanent value. If his political turn was motivated by metaphysics, then he can attribute the failure of

his political insight, which is clear to him at the end of the war in the midst of the ruins of the Third Reich, to Being; and he can also defend the validity of his original concern with the destiny of the German nation as a valid concern.

The proposed shift from a concept of history, at the level of fundamental ontology, to the interpretation of history in terms of this concept raises the problem of the transition from theory to practice. Heidegger argues for this transition roughly as follows: Everything is now dominated by the will to power that holds sway in the space left through the withdrawal of Being, now present only in the mode of absence. Heidegger grounds his claim that everything stands in the historical reality of the will to power in the logically prior assertion that Being has somehow withdrawn. This is the deeper meaning of his reading of Nietzsche's proposition that God is dead. Beyond the claim about the loss of efficacy of the Christian God, Heidegger has in mind what he calls "the supersensible world," namely Being. For Heidegger, then, what has occurred and what will occur in the future is explicable on the basis of the withdrawal of Being, an "event" that in turn has in the past enabled and in the future will continue to enable the will to power to flourish unchecked. He expresses his reliance on this explanatory model in the form of two related questions about the past: "Had things been different [that is, if Being had not withdrawn so that everything is now subject to the will to power], would the First World War have been possible? And even more, had things been different, would the Second World War have been possible?^[64]

It is difficult to make a case for the relation Heidegger discerns between a withdrawal of Being, the will to power, and the occurrence of two world wars. Since we know no more about Being than about the thing-in-itself, claims for a link to its "withdrawal" cannot be based on direct knowledge, or experience, or anything other than an apparently "mystical insight" into what is. There is no reason to hold that the will to power flourishes because of the absence of Being since, apart from Heidegger's statement, there is no way to know the relation between Being and this Nietzschean concept. Even were it the case that Being had withdrawn, it is unclear how, otherwise than through the prophetic powers he now attributes to himself, Heidegger could possibly be aware of this occurrence. This assertion, then, appears to be nothing more than an ad hoc claim now made to explain such inconvenient "facts" as the evident failure of the rectorate and the turning to Nazism. It is important to note this rather obvious point since Heidegger's mystical insistence on the mythological event of the withdrawal of Being is a constant element in his later thought. And even if we grant Heidegger's claim, it is diffi-

cult to see how Heidegger can reasonably claim, other than in merely arbitrary fashion, that a withdrawal of Being is more significant for the Second than for the First World War.

Heidegger's proposed interpretation of movements as different as communism, fascism, and world democracy is vague in the extreme. These are obviously disparate political movements, each of which obeys a different intrinsic logic commanding its historical development. In theory, there is a clear interpretative advantage to be gained by considering the entire political spectrum in terms of a single explanatory factor. In practice, this approach is questionable since it is so general as to fail to explain the phenomena and fails to acknowledge what is different in the various political movements. It is intuitively obvious that an approach of such great generality—unable to recognize what separates communism, fascism, and democracy—cannot take the place of more concrete explanation.

Heidegger appeals to, but does not ground, the will to power as a central explanatory factor in the political domain. Even if this will exists and functions in the political arena, we need to know why it is more than one among a multitude of political determinants. It does not follow that if Nietzsche sheds light on metaphysics, he also sheds light on history. History and metaphysics are different since historical explanation, but not metaphysics, needs to respect pragmatic criteria. Theories of historical explanation should only be revised on pragmatic grounds to account, or to account better, for the observed phenomena. Now there are various traditional approaches to historical phenomena, including the appeal to demographic, economic, political, and social forms of explanation. Unless and until Heidegger can show that the will to power can usefully supersede such other explanatory models, the only reason to accept his favored view of the will to power is simple philosophical fiat. One can do so arbitrarily, but not on rational grounds.

Heidegger's substitution of a metaphysical problem for historical reality exemplifies the well-known philosophical tendency to substitute itself for the special sciences. This tendency follows from the old Platonic view that all the sciences derive their justification from philosophy, which further justifies itself. Without doubt, philosophy has an important secondary role to play in the clarification and critique of the basic concepts of the sciences. But it is a frequent error for philosophers to offer their "science" in place of the first-order disciplines. Heidegger's mistake lies in the dogmatic assertion that metaphysics, or his view of it, provides an adequate explanation of experience. It is possible that a philosophic concept is useful in a first-order discipline like history. It is also possible that such a concept is not relevant, or is weaker than the available explanatory frameworks. In any case, a determination of the signifi-

cance of a second-order concept for a first-order discipline needs to be made within the first-order discipline itself since it cannot be made from within philosophy. In sum, a transition from theory to practice cannot be consummated within theory alone, prior to and apart from practice.

The explanatory framework which Heidegger introduces here figures prominently in his later thought. His later discussion of technology (Technik ) presupposes the hegemony of the will to power in the void created by the withdrawal of Being.^[65] His discussion is a transparent effort to read this aspect of his view, which arose only after the rectorate, backward into that period.

Was there not enough reason and essential distress to think in primordial reflection towards a surpassing of the metaphysics of the will to power and that is to say, to begin a confrontation with Western thought by returning to its beginning? Was there not enough reason and essential distress, for the sake of such reflection on the spirit of the Western world, to awaken and to lead into battle [ins Feld zu führen] that place which was considered the seat of the cultivation of knowledge and insight—the German university?^[66]

The passage cited provides a misleading reading of the nature of the so-called "battle" which Heidegger then desired to wage.^[67] If we accept the rectoral speech as a faithful account of Heidegger's aims, then this comment provides an inaccurate account of Heidegger's intentions as rector. Further, the battle for science in the ancient Greek sense was not, as Heidegger earlier suggested, directed only to that end, nor, as he now adds, toward an overcoming of metaphysics, which was not then his goal. At the time, his effort was directed toward a renewal of metaphysics, since it is only later, with the deepening interest in Nietzsche, that he saw the need to overcome metaphysics. Finally, we have already noted that at the time Heidegger regarded the university as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

His effort to relate the rectorate as a whole to what might have happened is less controversial. Heidegger here imagines what might have been if those in a position to do so had brought Nazism under control. "What would have happened and what would have been prevented, had, around 1933, all capable forces aroused themselves and joined in secret in order gradually to purify and moderate the 'movement' that had come to power?"^[68] This transparent speculation about what might have been provides Heidegger with the opportunity to make several observations clearly intended to attenuate his personal responsibility.

To begin with, he admits that he failed to foresee what would later come to pass. This admission is significant since it is the basis of the effort later developed by Fédier, Heidegger's most orthodox French

supporter at present, to argue that at the time of the rectorate no one could have foreseen what would later occur.^[69] Heidegger's admission obviously contradicts his earlier assertion that he knew even then, namely during the rectorate, that everything can be interpreted as a function of the will to power. If he possessed a historical crystal ball during the rectorate, then he should have foreseen the future of Nazism. Since he admits that he did not foresee later developments, then either the will to power is insufficient to understand the entire range of political phenomena, despite Heidegger's explicit claim, or he did not have it available to him in 1933/34. In fact, both alternatives seem likely.

The speculation on what might have been suggests that had Heidegger's efforts been followed by others, the outcome might have been different. This is an adumbration of the idea that, after all, and in his own way, Heidegger was a "resistance fighter" against Nazism, perhaps even from the very beginning, or that his own relation to National Socialism was merely contingent. Now in view of the brutal nature of Nazism, there is no reason to believe that an attitude of the kind Heidegger describes ever could have been successful. There is no evident reason to credit Heidegger's rectorate as part of an effort to resist Nazism in more than the barest sense. It is known that Heidegger did oppose certain excesses, such as the posting of the "Jew notice."^[70] But there is no indication, least of all in his talk, that he ever disagreed with the common end in view: the realization of the historical fate of the German people.

The suggestion that one could gradually moderate and purify Nazism is troubling. It implies that another, more moderate, even nicer form of National Socialism would be worthy of support, in fact an acceptable vehicle to realize political aims. This inference is suspect since Nazism in all its forms is at the very least unacceptable, certainly a paradigm of political evil. Through the implication that some form of National Socialism might be acceptable, Heidegger unwittingly opposes efforts by others to portray him as an unwilling participant, as later opposed to Nazism. He immediately undercuts this kind of reading when he writes that "first of all the positive possibilities that I then saw in the movement had to be underscored and affirmed in order to prepare for a gathering of all capable forces in a manner that would be grounded not only in the facts, but in what mattered."^[71] It is difficult to understand what could be meant by a purified, moderate form of Nazism other than a purified, moderate form of evil.

The "Official" View and "Facts and Thoughts"

The portion of the discussion of the rectorate discussed so far serves to introduce the middle portion of the article, officially devoted to the

rectoral talk. In the same way as Heidegger called for the "destruction" of the history of ontology in Being and Time in order to make out the claim for his interpretation of the meaning of Being, so Heidegger here undertakes to "destroy," to deconstruct, what otherwise appears evident in his speech. In the process, he sketches the main lines of what we have called the "official" view, intended to deny what can be denied, to reinterpret what cannot reasonably be denied in the most favorable light, and in general to preserve as much of his thought as possible from the taint arising from his Nazism.

Heidegger's deconstruction of his talk, his official reinterpretation of its stated purpose, has been largely successful in providing a more flattering reading of his life and work than they merit on the available evidence mainly because it has rarely been subjected to direct scrutiny. We need now to deconstruct Heidegger's deconstruction, his own effort to refute the rather obvious interpretation of the Rektoratsrede presented above. In this respect, my intention is to defend my interpretation of that text against Heidegger's own view of it, to defend a moderate reading of the talk as an effort to place philosophy in the service of Nazi politics against the rather more violent Heideggerian claim that this was not his intention at all.

Heidegger insists that "interpretation" means "to capture the Being of the entity despite its tendency to cover things up."^[72] He maintains that an existential analysis constantly does violence to the claims of a so-called everyday interpretation. It will be necessary to do violence, not to Heidegger's speech, but to Heidegger's interpretation of it in order to bring out what is covered up in his text. The effort to do violence to Heidegger's auto-interpretation is designed to show that his reading provides a false appearance obscuring the essence of the text, which remains hidden.

Heidegger's reading of his talk is based on his view of interpretation. He remarks that for this text as with the spoken word, everything depends on something like interpretative goodwill as a precondition to the grasp of what is essential. "To be sure, in this case, as is the case with every spoken word, everything depends on the interpretation [Auslegung] and on the readiness to enter into what is essential and to get it into view."^[73] This passage recalls Heidegger's well-known view that understanding projects possibilities, whose development Heidegger calls interpretation. For Heidegger, interpretation is never presuppositionless, but is always grounded in advance in a prior conception located in the fore-structure of the understanding, what Gadamer usefully calls a Vorverständnis .^[74] According to Heidegger, the process of the development of an understanding is always the working out of a prior, incomplete grasp of the whole phenomenon in view.

Here, the reference to interpretation has a strategic value. In calling

attention to his theory of interpretation at the beginning of the crucial section of the discussion, whose announced purpose is to show that the aims of the rectorate are expressed in the rectoral address, Heidegger is careful to present a favorable view of the matter. Since he holds that all interpretation consists in the development of an initial preconception, Heidegger is concerned to supply a global statement of his purpose to serve as a guide, as the conceptual horizon, of the discussion to follow. As he wants the reader to accept his interpretation, everything depends on the formulation of an acceptable prior conception as the basis for the further development of the initial, incomplete understanding.

Obviously, we need not uncritically accept Heidegger's proposed prior understanding of the rectorate. We need only accept it if it provides what one can roughly describe as a faithful account of the rectoral address. On a reasonable reading of this portion of the text, his argument consists of ten elements, including:

1. a statement of the aim of the Rektoratsrede ;

2. a reinterpretation of the idea of battle in a supposedly authentically Greek sense;

3. a rejection of the obvious interpretation of the talk as inauthentic;

4. the assertion that official Nazism was displeased by the talk;

5. a statement of the tenuous nature of his relation to official Nazism;

6. a claim for the incompatibility between his view of the university and that of National Socialism;

7. a description of his decision to resign to protect the university;

8. an attribution of what occurred to metaphysics, which has become technology in the age of nihilism;

9. an acknowledgment of his conviction in the possibility represented by National Socialism;

10. an affirmation of the possibility to overcome nihilism through poetry.

These themes are main elements in Heidegger's defense through the simultaneous "destruction" of the obvious interpretation of his Nazism and the redescription of its main elements in order to conceal them within the "official" view of his relation to National Socialism. The fourth point is a purely factual matter, which falls to a historian. Point 5 has already been broached several times in the preceding discussion. Finally, the sixth point is a conclusion that either follows or fails to

follow from the other points, and hence need not be addressed directly apart from the elements that compose the remainder of the argument. I turn now to the other points of Heidegger's defense.

A beginning can be made through scrutiny of Heidegger's view of the purpose of the talk, which he states on no less than three occasions. In successive paragraphs, he twice maintains, using the same term, that "the heart [Kernstück]" of the address is "the exposition [Darlegung] of the essence of knowing and science; the university is to be grounded on that essence; and on that ground it is to assert itself as German university"^[75] and that it serves "the interpretation of the essence of knowing, science, and profession that is based on training in science."^[76] In a third, later passage, he remarks, in a somewhat different description of his intent, that "the atmosphere of confusion" prevented him from carrying out "those efforts that were my sole concern and that had moved me to assume the office: reflection on the ethos that should govern the pursuit of knowledge and on the essence of teaching [die Besinnung auf die Wissenshaltung und auf das Wesen des Lehrens]."^[77]

Heidegger's characterization of his intent in the speech requires scrutiny. A closer look reveals that instead of a single, univocal description, he proposes in fact three descriptions related through a kind of family resemblance. These three ways of depicting the essence of the speech are similar, but not identical. It is one thing to provide an exposition of the essence of science and learning in order to further the German university, for instance through its "self-assertion." It is something else to interpret the essence of knowing, science, and the profession to which it leads.

Since Heidegger claims to capture the essence in the initial description, then he can desire to ground (gründen ) the university upon it. A description of the essence is apparently sufficient only for an explanation (Erläuterung ). Presumably a statement of the essence captures, in Aristotelian language, what it is to be that thing, whereas an interpretation provides a description of that thing. By implication the essence is unique and admits of one exposition only, although there is presumably more than one possible interpretation of something. An exposition and a description of the essence coincide only if a description is univocal. But since different descriptions are possible, which do not coincide, obviously they do not describe the same essence in the same way. In short, different descriptions from different perspectives provide different views of what, in terms of the description, appears to be different.

The two descriptions of the heart of the matter as the essence that grounds and as an explanation present similar but subtly different views. The difference is greater with respect to the third description of the rectoral address as a meditation on the ethos of knowledge and the

essence of teaching. The word translated here as the "ethos of knowledge" (Wissenshaltung ) combines two terms that literally mean "the pose, posture, or attitude" and "knowledge," and that together signify "the attitude of knowledge." In his third description, Heidegger is primarily concerned with getting clear about the attitude one should take toward knowledge and the essence of teaching. What these three characterizations have in common is a certain average assertion that the talk is about the essence of science and knowledge as it concerns the university, which should be understood from this angle of vision.

Now "Kernstück, " the word translated as "heart," is composed of two terms "Stück " and "Kern " meaning respectively "piece," "lot," "stretch," "distance," and so on, and "kernel," "core," and so on. The single, composite term can be rendered as the "central part" or "central portion" of the talk. Heidegger's claim, then, can be paraphrased as the assertion that the central portion of the speech is a meditation on the essence of knowing and science, and its relation to the university. Here we need to distinguish between an interpretation according to the letter and one according to the spirit.^[78] As Kant complained, an interpretation can be literally correct with respect to the letter but fail to capture the spirit.

Heidegger's claim about the heart of his rectoral address is false with respect to its spirit but literally true. Heidegger is literally correct that the central portion of his talk concerns the essence of science and the German university. A passage on this topic occurs toward the middle of the talk. But his literal description of the Rektoratsrede does not describe it adequately; it fails to capture the spirit of a speech which it describes without regard to the context. The hidden motivation of this misdescription is not deeply buried. Since the rectoral speech was on the public record, it could not simply be denied. Heidegger's obvious intent, in a period when he is being called to account for his connection to Nazism, is to place it in a more favorable light than would otherwise be the case. For in calling attention to the meditation on knowing, science, and the university, he focuses on these topics to the exclusion of the surrounding remarks on the need to realize the destiny of the German nation through the Nazi state.^[79]

It is important to be clear about the present claim. The main point is that in calling attention to the central part of the talk in a way that is literally true, Heidegger distorts its spirit. In effect, he takes the part for the whole by concentrating on the portion that occurs in the center of the talk, but which is eccentric to its main purpose. Hence, at the beginning of his defense, and despite his assertion of the importance of entering into the essential, of first getting the whole into view, Heidegger

misleadingly substitutes the part for the whole in a way that covers up the whole by focusing on the part.

Heidegger's reading of his speech is an instance of inauthentic hermeneutics, of an interpretation in bad faith whose aim is to conceal what he knows. As soon as we see that, despite his statement in the first sentence of this section, Heidegger's strategy is not to enter into what is essential and to avoid getting it into view, it becomes easy to see that what he says about the so-called heart of his talk is literally true but false to the spirit of the speech. One must be less sanguine about his qualifying remarks concerning the two descriptions of the heart of the talk, which are untrue to the spirit of the speech and even literally untrue, at the very least a clear misreading intended to change the sense of the talk.

A prominent aspect of the Rektoratsrede was Heidegger's insistence on the three forms of service: labor, defense, and knowledge in relation to the community of the people, the honor and destiny of the nation among other peoples, and the spiritual mission of the German people.^[80] In the talk, he further described them as equiprimordial.^[81] Now the insistence on the equiprimordiality of the three forms of service obviously strains Heidegger's claim to have concerned himself merely with knowing, science, and the university. Perhaps for that reason, Heidegger now maintains, despite his explicit statements in the speech, that knowledge is prior to the other forms of service. For the future university is to be grounded on the essence of knowing and science which allows it to assert itself as a German university.^[82] Here, Heidegger's chauvinism is apparent in the implied limitation of an authentic relation of the essence of knowing and science to the German university only. He seems to believe that at best this relation is intrinsically inauthentic elsewhere. Here and in other writings, Heidegger's chauvinism is evident in his repeated insistence on German philosophy as the sole legitimate heir of Greek thought. Every other form of philosophy is, then, inauthentic, by implication not worthy of the name.

After his remark on the future university, Heidegger immediately presents a revisionary interpetation obviously meant to qualify his claim in the rectoral address about the equiprimordiality of the three forms of service:

Knowledge Service is named in third place, after Labor Service and Armed Service, not because it is subordinated to the former, but because knowing is what is authentic and highest, that unto which the essence of the university and therefore reflection gathers itself. As far as Labor Service, named in second place, is concerned, it may be permitted to remind the reader that long before 1933 this "service" grew out of the distress of the time and the will of the young, which gave it its shape. "Armed

Service," however, I mentioned neither in a militaristic, nor in an aggressive sense, but understood it as defense in time of need [als Wehr in der Notwehr gedacht].^[83]

This statement betrays a visible unease. Heidegger's initial assertion that knowing is not subordinated to labor and defense is literally correct since they are equiprimordial, hence on the same level; but it is also false, since what is highest cannot be on the same level as anything else. In other words: either there was never an equiprimordiality, in which case knowing can be highest; or there was an equiprimordiality and knowing as a form of service is not higher than labor or defense. One should further be careful about the description of knowing as the highest since that emphasis runs counter to the effort, basic to Heidegger's fundamental ontology, to deconstruct the rationalistic emphasis in philosophy represented prominently by Descartes.^[84] One should finally be hesitant about the description of knowing alone as authentic, since, then, nothing else, such as defense or work, can be authentic. In other words, and in Heidegger's terminology, it appears that only those engaged in knowing, by extension only members of the academy, are or possibly can be authentic. It is as if, in a strange version of the Platonic view that only philosophers can finally claim to know, Heidegger were to depict representatives of German philosophy as the only possible form of authentic human being.

Heidegger's reference to the historical origins of work service does not dispel the asymmetry between his depiction of the three pillars here and in the speech. For the explicit approval in the Rektoratsrede of the bond that binds into "the community of the people,"^[85] he now substitutes a note as to how this form of service came about. But the most significant change is the effort to reinterpret, to deconstruct—in a word, to interpret away—his earlier understanding of defense. Unquestionably, Heidegger's present, literal comprehension of defense as defense in need-defense, perhaps more accurately defense in time of need, is meant to provide a reading of his intentions basically distinct from the Nazi military machine.

We recall that in his talk, Heidegger discussed armed service as a bond binding the student to "the honor and destiny of the nation" as a "readiness ... to give all."^[86] Heidegger's present effort to provide a different view of his understanding of defense occurs in two stages, including a description of the content of the talk and a reading of the term "battle." In the first stage, he proposes an elaborate, fourfold characterization of the content of the talk as:

(1) The grounding of the sciences in the experience of the essential region of their subject matter.

(2) The essence of truth as the letting be of what is, as it is.

(3) Preservation of the tradition that has handed down to us the beginning of our Western way of knowing in the Greek world. (Compare my two hour lecture course of the summer semester 1932: The Beginning of Western Philosophy.)

(4) In keeping with this, our responsibility as part of the Western world.^[87]

Even a cursory glance at this list shows that its items are not equally relevant to the rectoral address. The first item is neither stressed in, nor consistent with, the quasi-Platonic thrust of the talk. At the time, Heidegger underscored the manner in which the various forms of knowledge are finally grounded in philosophy, for instance in his claim that all science is philosophy, from which it draws its strength and essence.^[88] On the contrary, in his present post-Platonic phase he now insists that science grounds itself in its subject matter. The second item, the essence of truth as letting be, refers to a view of truth as disclosure already prominent in Heidegger's early work, but not central to the rectoral address.^[89] The theme of the preservation of the Western view of science originating in ancient Greece, which Heidegger names in third place, is certainly a main current of the speech. This is also the case for the so-called responsibility as part of the Western world.

Heidegger offers the second stage of his reading of the concept of defense service in a detailed series of remarks on the term "battle" (Kampf ). The relation of this term to Hitler's Mein Kampf in the immediate period leading up to the Second World War is difficult to overlook even now, and was even more obvious at the time. Heidegger's analysis develops a line of argument already broached in 1935, a mere two years after the rectoral address, in the lecture course published as An Introduction to Metaphysics . Here, Heidegger sketches the analysis of Heraclitus's fragment 53, which is the basis of his later attempt to "deconstruct" the word "battle." Already Heidegger argues that the word "polemos " means "conflict" in the sense of "Aus-einander-setzung, " literally "setting apart."^[90]

Heidegger now makes use of his earlier analysis of "polemos " to draw attention from the clear link between "Kampf" and Mein Kampf . ^[91] Heidegger's remarks are obviously meant to deflect attention from the clear, but implicit, reference to Hitler—consistent with his overall effort in this text to minimize attention to his interest in National Socialism—through the simple expedient of reinterpreting the term "battle" to substitute another referent. This phase of the argument depends on an attempt to invoke an author's privileged access to his intentions. He insists that when he used the German term, he meant "battle" in a

specifically Greek sense associated with Heraclitus's thought, in which the word "polemos " does not mean "battle." We can paraphrase the intent of the argument as an effort to show that despite the apparently ordinary manner in which he used "battle" in the rectoral address, in fact he meant by this word something other than "battle." The claim, then, is that on the testimony of the author we learn that on occasion he uses ordinary words in extraordinary ways that do not mean what they say. The presupposition of this kind of interpretation is that sense and reference can just be separated at will, since in any given instance a new sense and/or reference can be substituted without regard to the usual way of using the term. Carried to the extreme, the practice to which this argument refers would obviously render not only textual interpretation, but even communication, impossible.

Heidegger begins by saying that he understands "episteme " and "aletheia " in their Greek senses; and similarly "battle," too, is understood here in not just any way. "Battle" is thought in the sense of Heraclitus, fragment 53.^[92] He then goes on to make two points, based on his revised reading of the word "polemos, " or battle. To begin with he remarks that "polemos " should not be understood as "war" ("Krieg ") but rather as "eris, " or "strife" ("Streit "), in the sense of "confrontation" ("Aus-einander-setzung, " Heidegger's emphasis). For Heidegger, one can also render "battle" ("Kampf ") as "mutual recognition" ("sich annerkennende Sichaussetzen ") and as "being-exposed" ("Ausgesetztheit ").

This point is doubly difficult to accept. On the one hand, if Heidegger had had a specific Greek meaning in mind, it is at least odd that he did not specify his reference unless he meant intentionally to mislead. On the other hand, if he was thinking of Heraclitus's view of strife, then it is further odd to preserve the second, or alternative, meaning of "battle" as "mutual recognition." The presence of this second meaning of "struggle" undermines Heidegger's claim. It immediately calls to mind the well-known struggle for mutual recognition in the master-slave analysis which Hegel employs to understand the rise of self-consciousness within modern society.^[93] The unexpected use of a Hegelian concept in this context, where Heidegger is pleading to be understood in terms of the hidden Greek roots of his thought, points to a different interpretation. For Heidegger's emphasis in the Rektoratsrede on the need for the German nation to struggle for the realization of its destiny is obviously more closely related to the struggle for mutual recognition, as Hegel depicts it, than to Heraclitus's supposed doctrine of polemos as eris .

Heidegger is, of course, aware that his interpretation is nonstandard. In the second stage of his argument, he protects himself against the more obvious reading of Heraclitus's concept of polemos , which he

regards as a misinterpretation. "Not only should we not think polemos as war and, furthermore, appeal to the supposedly Heraclitean proposition 'War is the father of all things' to proclaim war and battle as the highest principle of all being and thus to offer a philosophical justification of the warlike."^[94] The expression "war is the father of all things" is contained in the usual—for Heidegger, incorrect—rendering of Heraclitus's fragment 53. Heidegger insists that it would be a further error to provide a philosophical interpretation of the warlike (das Kriegerische ). Not surprisingly, he says nothing about a philosophical justification of war, which he earlier offered in the rectoral address in his reference to Clausewitz.^[95] He maintains that the essential meaning of "polemos " combines the terms "to show" and "to produce." "The essence of polemos lies in deiknumai , to show, and in poiein , to produce, as the Greeks say, to make-it-stand-out in open view. This is the sense of 'battle' thought philosophically, and what is said in the address is only thought philosophically."^[96]

This argument is strained with respect to Heraclitus; it is even more strained in the context of an effort by Heidegger to minimize his association with National Socialism. Heidegger's revisionary interpretation of "polemos " turns on his claim of superior insight into the authentic meaning of the word. A standard reading of the Heraclitean passage in question renders this word as a so-called "metaphor for the dominance of change in the world."^[97] Heidegger is entitled to read the term as he would like. But there is no reason to accept his reading as better than or even equal to the standard view. There is even less reason to accept Heidegger's present claim that he in fact was thinking of a specific interpretation of Heraclitus's doctrine of polemos when he employed the word "battle" in his speech. For all signs point to the more obvious association of "battle" with the struggle for German destiny, which on Heidegger's view of fate in Being and Time requires a battle, through Nazism—apparent in the unexpected use of the concept of "mutual recognition"—which is the main theme of the rectoral speech.

Heidegger's ineffective effort to "destroy" the obvious understanding of the term "battle" as meaning "battle" fails to convince. Heidegger's line of argument is intrinsically flawed since the assertion about the rectoral speech is independent of his view of Heraclitus. On grounds of interpretative indeterminacy, we must reject the presupposition underlying Heidegger's remarks on Heraclitus, that is, that we can determine the correct interpretation of his or indeed any other position. What is the correct interpretation of Plato's Republic? We need only to formulate the question to see that it cannot be answered. In the present case, the attempt to interpret Heraclitus's position is further complicated by the enormous temporal distance, the uncertainty of the texts, and so on.

Even if Heidegger were correct about Heraclitus, he would not be entitled to draw the conclusion he does. It cannot be denied that Heidegger is the author of his own speech. But this fact does not give him interpretative privilege with respect to the reading of this text. He still needs to show the plausibility of his reading by comparison with other possible readings in situ . His ingenious reading of the word "Kampf " as "to show" and "to produce" is simply unconvincing alternatives for the passages in the Rektoratsrede , in which this word is more easily rendered in standard fashion as "battle" or "struggle."

Here, Heidegger's awareness that it is plausible to understand the speech as a proclamation of his faith in National Socialism and not as the defense of the university is a motivating factor in his effort to present a different interpretation. In the same way as he has argued with respect to a single word that "Kampf " in fact did not mean what it says, he now maintains that his address in general was not what it seemed to be, and that it was what it was not. His argument is based on the concept of reflection, which he sees as central to philosophy in the full sense of the term. The argument begins with a claim for philosophical reflection as the sole determinant of truth in the full sense. For Heidegger, the essence of the university cannot be determined on political or other grounds, distinct from reflection itself.

From out of such reflection on the totality of the sciences, the university carries itself, by its own strength, unto its essential ground, a ground accessible only to the knowing that it cultivates. Its essence can therefore not be determined from some other place, from the standpoint of "politics" or of some other established goals [aus der "Politik" oder irgendeiner anderen Zwecksetzung].^[98]

This is a version of the well-known Platonic doctrine that philosophy justifies the truth claims of all the sciences, including itself. But even in the rectoral address, Heidegger's quasi-Platonic insistence that philosophy founds politics was mitigated by other non-Platonic, even extraphilosophic concerns, in particular his basic commitment to German destiny in a time of need. For instance, in the initial paragraph of the speech, in a comment on the essence of the German university, he writes: "This essence, however, gains clarity, rank, and power only when first of all and at all times the leaders are themselves led—led by that unyielding spiritual mission that forces the fate of the German people to bear the stamp of its history."^[99]

Heidegger applies his understanding of philosophy as determined by philosophical reflection only to the interpretation of the speech. For Hei-

degger. the very title of the address already indicates the role within it of genuine philosophical reflection. "In keeping with this fundamental conception and attitude [i.e., philosophical reflection] the address bears the title: 'The Self-Assertion [Selbstbehauptung] of the German University.'"^[100] But this name was mainly misunderstood and covered up by the widespread failure to exercise genuine reflection in order to go beyond mere idle talk (Gerede ). "Only a very few understood clearly what this title alone, taken by itself, meant in the year 1933, because only a few of those whom it concerned took the trouble to think through what is said, to do so clearly and without mystification, cutting through idle talk."^[101]

This statement requires qualification. To begin with, the statement is unclear, since, as we have already noted, "self-assertion" can be understood in different ways. The claim is further doubtful since the "German university" obviously does not, did not, and could not assert itself, whatever the locution means in this context. Obviously. there is no German university as such, although there are German universities. The concept of the German university is an abstract designation for its constituent elements. Moreover, universities do not assert themselves nor can they do so, although individuals acting on their behalf can claim to act in this way. In the talk, Heidegger, newly elected as the rector of the University of Freiburg, acted on behalf of his own university as well as all other German institutions of higher learning. It is important to make these points, although they may seem obvious, since Heidegger complains that in the main he has been misunderstood.

As concerns his speech, Heidegger asserts that few have gone beyond idle talk. In Being and Time , this locution designates an inauthentic form of speech, as a form of the everyday being, or fallenness, of Dasein.^[102] On this basis, Heidegger now claims that the most obvious way of understanding his speech is the product of an ordinary failure to think through the situation, due even to malevolence, in short the result of a lack of reflection which fails to penetrate to the essence of the phenomenon:

One can excuse oneself from reflection and hold onto the seemingly obvious thought that here, a short time after National Socialism had seized power, a newly elected rector gives an address on the university. an address that "represents" ["vertritt"] "the" National Socialism ["den" Nationalsozialismus] and that is to say proclaims the idea of "political science," which, crudely, means: "True is what is good for the people." From this one concludes, and indeed rightly, that this betrays the essence of the German university in its very core and actively contributes to its destruction; for this reason the title should rather be: "The Self-Decapitation [Selbstenthauptung] of the German University."^[103]

In this passage, Heidegger directly confronts the particular reading of his speech which is most dangerous for him. The comment on the view of truth as utility calls attention to a pragmatic approach, which Heidegger here attributes to a Nazi form of political science. Now in his fundamental ontology, he argued that the objects of experience are understood as they are in terms of the use to which they can be put. This is the point of his basic distinction between the readiness-to-hand and presence-to-hand.^[104] In that sense, his early theory in Being and Time can fairly be understood as a transcendental form of pragmatism.^[105] It is possible to read this objection as directed against his own earlier transcendental pragmatism as well as against an allegedly Nazi form of political science.

In retrospect, Heidegger's statement offers a remarkable anticipation of his persistent identification, present throughout his later writings, with a kind of ideal Nazism, distinguished from its real, Hitlerian form. By enclosing the words "represents" and "the" (as in "the" National Socialism) in quotation marks, Heidegger distances himself from a type of Nazism, namely that type which in fact existed and waged and lost the war, leading to his present predicament. In putting distance between himself and a variety of the genus, he is careful not to reject all types of Nazism. The extraordinary manner in which Heidegger here leaves open the door to further forms of National Socialism in the most obvious way only further undermines his effort to portray his rectoral talk as merely concerned with a defense of the German university.

Heidegger's attempt to refute the obvious, but supposedly superficial, reading of the rectoral address is unconvincing. He puts the problem as one of the representation of National Socialism. When formulated in this way, the claim is obviously ambiguous. As the rector of the university, Heidegger in fact represented National Socialism although he did not represent it as he thought he ought to, that is, as the leader entitled to lead the leaders, as the leader of the wider "movement." In sum, Heidegger simply fails to refute the obvious way of reading his speech as a claim to represent Nazism, and the failure of his effort inadvertently, but clearly, reveals his continued interest in a form of' Nazism "better" than the Hitlerian variety.

Heidegger goes on to observe that his address was understood neither by those to whom it was addressed nor by the Nazi party. He reports that Otto Wacker, the Staatsminister für Unterricht und Kultus in Baden, complained that the talk advanced a form of private National Socialism, not based on a concept of race, and that the rejection of "political science" was unacceptable. Wacker's reported reaction is certainly close to the mark. Heidegger did not explicitly base his talk on the concept of race, and he further mentioned neither Hitler nor the Nazi party.^[106] But

this is not in itself unusual. The decision to join a political party or to practice a religion is only rarely based on a total acceptance of the views in question. Moreover, there never was a Nazi credo, a set of minimal beliefs to which one needed to subscribe in order to be considered a Nazi in good standing. Like many other academics, Heidegger was unenthusiastic about the Nazi program of racial hatred. Since Heidegger never accepted, and presumably rejected, elements of the party program, such as its biologically based form of race hatred, it is correct to describe even the view in the rectoral address as a private form of National Socialism. ^[107] Heidegger further objects to the failure to consider what he had in mind for "the sake of the inner renewal of the university."^[108] But this "failure" is to be expected if, as in the present case, attention was directed toward the realization of the Nazi program and toward the university only as it contributed to that end.

Heidegger devotes a paragraph to removing any suggestion of anti-Semitism. This issue is significant since it has often been argued that Heidegger not only was not a racist but was especially well disposed to his Jewish students.^[109] Heidegger has been accused of^[110] and defended against the charge of anti-Semitism. ^[111] He responds to this accusation by twice pointing out that he refused to post the so-called "Jew Notice" in the university. ^[112] Among Heidegger's defenders, the question of Heidegger's anti-Semitism is confused by related issues, such as the concern to differentiate anti-Semitism from anti-Judaism.^[113] Recently, the efforts undertaken to protect Heidegger against this charge have been refuted through the publication of a previously unknown letter, written by Heidegger in 1929, that is, before the Nazis came to power, which clearly shows his anti-Semitism in his pointed rejection of the" 'Jewification' of the German spirit [Verjudung des deutschen Geistes]."^[114] In the context of Heidegger's Nazism, the definitive refutation of the effort to protect Heidegger against the charge of anti-Semitism is important for what it tells us about Heidegger, who can no longer be protected against this accusation. It is further important since it effectively undermines the continued efforts of Heidegger's closest supporters to defend his life and thought through a supposedly deeper understanding of his position.

Heidegger's opposition to biologism is sometimes invoked to distance him from Nazism.^[115] Yet the antibiologism which Heidegger shared with many other intellectuals is compatible with anti-Semitism and Nazism. Biologism was not as important to Nazism, at least until well after National Socialism came to power, as the traditional anti-Semitism strikingly present in, for instance, Luther's works^[116] and even in speeches before the German Reichstag, or parliament.^[117] There is a distinction between biologism and anti-Semitism. The Nazi view that only a member of the community (Volksgenosse ), or someone with German blood,

can be a citizen, promulgated as early as 1920, was made explicit in 1933 in the so-called "Aryan paragraph" (Arierparagraph ). This defined "Aryans" as people with no Jewish ancestors and "non-Aryans" as those with at least one Jewish parent or grandparent.^[118] Since the sole criterion for categorization as Aryan or non-Aryan was religion, not race, the anti-Semitism common among German academics, and espoused by Heidegger, is not antithetical to, but compatible with, Nazism.

Heidegger accords special attention to when and how he joined the Nazi party.^[119] His aim is to show that he was only minimally interested in official Nazism. In this respect, he makes three points. First, he states that when he was already in office, it was called to his attention that the minister thought it important for rectors to belong to the party. Second, he accepted this invitation only on the explicit condition not to undertake any political activity. Third, as rector his membership remained pro forma only and he did not play any substantive role in the party.

This portion of the discussion represents at best a series of half-truths. It is false that Heidegger became a Nazi party member after he took office since it is known that he already belonged to the party at that time.^[120] In fact, his sympathies for National Socialism go back at least to 1931, that is, before the Nazi party came to power.^[121] It is also known that Heidegger voted for Hitler. Even sympathetic observers agree that he placed his hopes in Hitler in 1933.^[122] It is further known that, even after his decision to resign as rector, Heidegger remained a party member until the end of the Second World War. It is fair to say that although Heidegger gave up his post as rector, there was never a break with official Nazism during this period.^[123] In sum, despite his effort to minimize the relation to National Socialism, it is clear that Heidegger's interest in Nazism clearly antedated and survived his period as rector.^[124]

Heidegger now turns to a description of the end of his rectorate. He describes his resignation as forced by an increasing pressure exerted on him to compromise his professional principles. He lists two instances, which he presents as threats to the university that arose in the second, or summer, semester of 1933. First, he says that it was made clear to him that the faculties required a National Socialist leadership, which entailed appointing deans based on political reliability as opposed to scholarship or teaching ability.^[125] Second, he reports an effort, in accordance with the views of the medical, legal, and teaching professions, to divide the university into professional schools, which he viewed as threatening the unity and mode of academic training he favored.^[126]

It is not clear why Heidegger resigned his position as rector. His description of his reaction to the twin dangers threatening the university is difficult to reconcile with his own claim to have assumed the rectorate only to protect the university. If he really desired to protect the univer-

sity, then he had even more reason to remain as rector when the threat increased. Although we cannot discount Heidegger's genuine desire to bring about a form of university grounded in his understanding of Greek science, this factor alone is insufficient to explain his decision to resign. It has been suggested, in reference to Heidegger's determination to achieve power in the university, that the resignation was provoked by the violent elimination of Röhm and the SA leadership, Heidegger's supposed allies.^[127] Heidegger's desire to achieve hegemony in the academy, illustrated in the rectoral talk by the quasi-Platonic claim to lead the leaders, is evident in the present text in two ways: the repeated rejection of "political science" and a comment in passing on Krieck's spreading influence in connection with the need to install a National Socialist leadership in the different faculties of the university.^[128] It would be odd for Heidegger to object to the promotion of a National Socialist leadership in the university since as rector he ran the university, as its leader (Führer ), according to the Nazi Führerprinzip . The objection to Krieck's spreading influence is plausible when we remember Heidegger's increasing dismay at Krieck's criticism of him.^[129] But despite that dismay, Heidegger continued to collaborate with Krieck until September 1934, that is, even after he resigned as rector. ^[130] Still another reason is the evident indifference of official Nazism to philosophy in whole or in part. Although a number of philosophers, including Heidegger, made impressive efforts to achieve philosophical hegemony within National Socialism, the Nazis seemed rather unconcerned with philosophy in general. ^[131] The Nazi indifference to philosophy, of which Heidegger may only later have become aware, would have been difficult for him to accept since he took his own philosophical contribution with utmost seriousness, even to the point of insisting that without it Nazism could not be justified.

Heidegger presents his resignation as due to an incompatibility between his own and the Nazi view of the university and science, as well as between the National Socialist Weltanschauung and his own philosophy:

In my meeting with the minister, who immediately accepted my resignation, it became clear that a discrepancy [Zwiespalt] separated the National Socialist conception of the university and science from my own, which could not be bridged. The minister declared that he did not want this opposition, which to be sure [wohl] rested on the incompatibility of my philosophy with the National Socialist Weltanschauung . to reach the public as a conflict between the University of Freiburg and the ministry. ^[132]

This description has an air of unreality. It is difficult to imagine a Nazi minister telling an important official about to tender his resignation that to do so would enable him to recover his freedom of action. Heidegger is

correct to point to differences, or points of disagreement, between his and the Nazi views of the university and science. Such differences include the respective views of race, "political science," the quality of appointments, and perhaps the professionalization of the university. But these points of disagreement, some of which were already described in the rectoral address, were not new, and certainly did not come into being during Heidegger's short period as rector. Since these differences were in part already known to Heidegger and neither prevented his adherence to Nazism or his assumption of the rectorate, it is difficult to regard them as later motivating his resignation from the rectorate.

Heidegger traces the suggested incompatibility between his and the Nazi views of the university and science to the supposed incompatibility between his philosophy and the National Socialist "Weltanschauung. "^[133] Heidegger's use of the term to characterize National Socialist thought recalls Husserl's attack on Weltanschauungsphilosophie , associated with Dilthey, and historicism as two forms of relativism, which leads to skepticism.^[134] It points as well to Heidegger's rejection of the Nazi effort to develop a National Socialist Weltanschauung and even to reject philosophy in favor of a Weltanschauung . ^[135] In his application of this locution to the National Socialist view, Heidegger implies its inadequacy as a philosophy, the same point he made in the speech in his suggestion that it required genuine philosophical grounding;^[136] and he further implies that it leads to skepticism and nihilism. Yet Heidegger overstates the degree of incompatibility between National Socialism and his own thought, since it was the area of agreement and not the disagreements which enabled Heidegger to turn to Nazism.

In the final part of this section, Heidegger reflects on the significance of his rectorate through a comment on its connection to modern science. This passage is important as a summary of his defense of his actions as rector and as an indication of the later evolution of his thought. "Unimportant as it is in itself, the case of the rectorate 1933-34 would seem to be a sign of the metaphysical state of the essence of science, a science that can no longer be influenced by attempts at its renewal, nor delayed in its essential transformation into technology [Technik]."^[137] After noting that he only came to realize this afterwards, Heidegger refers to his 1938 lecture "The Age of the World Picture."^[138] He then writes, in language that for the first time in this text directly recalls that of the rectoral address:

The rectorate was an attempt to see in the "movement" that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudities, something that reached much farther and that might some day bring about a gathering of what is German unto the historical essence of the West. In no way shall it be denied

that at the time I believed in such possibilities and for this reason renounced the thinker's most proper vocation in order to help realize them in an official capacity. ^[139]

This reflection is obviously intended to place the rectorate within the context of Heidegger's single-minded concern with ontology. For Heidegger, science is being ineluctably transformed into technology. This view implies that Heidegger's failure can be imputed to the ontological process itself, to Being, and not to his own failings, such as his failure to perceive the nature of National Socialism, his mistaken evaluation of its chances for success, his misunderstanding of the real possibility of leading the movement or reforming the university, and so on. Now the implied shift in responsibility is plausible only if in fact there is a fated transformation under way of science into technology. But it does not follow that the ontological process, or metaphysics, or history is ineluctable because Heidegger "failed." It is plausible to consider his "failure" as deriving from some rather more ordinary factors, such as a difference of opinion between Heidegger, who represented Nazism in the university, and other Nazi officials about the nature of the university and science, the increasing influence of Krieck, and so on. These are factors unrelated to the supposed transformation of science into technology.

Heidegger's effort to attenuate his own responsibility rests on a doubtful thesis about the link between technology and science. Obviously. there are different ways of understanding technology and its relation to science. In Heidegger's model, what once was science in the Greek sense gave birth to technology, which is in the process of devouring its father. But this reduction of modern science to technology is an inaccurate description. Many forms of modern science are unimaginable without technology; but this is not true of modern science as such, which cannot simply be reduced to technology. It is more accurate to say that modern science and modern technology interact, although neither can be reduced to, nor explained in terms of, the other.^[140]

Heidegger's statement that in 1933 he believed that German destiny could be realized through a turn to National Socialism is an accurate account. It is entirely consistent with the spirit and letter of the rectoral address and with the first element of his threefold consideration in assuming the rectorate.^[141] But it is inconsistent with his repeated claim elsewhere in this text that the heart of the rectoral speech is a concern with the essence of science and knowing. ^[142] The result is to call attention to a deep ambiguity in his overall aim in turning to Nazism. Here, Heidegger stresses his concern with the university as an end in itself; yet study of the rectoral address clearly shows that in his speech his concern with the university was subordinated to the destiny of the German Volk ;

and he never tires of proclaiming that his single concern is finally the problem of Being.

Heidegger's remark on the rectorate suggests that science is metaphysical. His observation presupposes a standpoint "beyond" metaphysics. Heidegger ends his reflection on the rectorate with a comment on how to surpass metaphysics linked to the so-called turning (Kehre ) of his later thought, including his transition from philosophy to thought, and indicating his growing attention to the importance of poetry.

What is essential is that we are caught up in the consummation of nihilism, that God is "dead," and every time-space for the godhead covered up. The surmounting of nihilism nevertheless announces itself in German poetic thinking and singing. ^[143]

Heidegger's point is that, like science, all of modern life is caught up in the nihilism following from metaphysics—precisely the theme of his Nietzsche lectures—although a way beyond nihilism and, hence, metaphysics can be glimpsed in poetry.^[144]

After the Rectorate

The shorter third, and final, section of the text bears the German title: "The Time after the Rectorate." It mainly concerns Heidegger's complaints about perceived professional slights after his resignation. He objects in passing to criticism voiced by Ernst Krieck, the Nazi pedagogue, and Alfred Baeumler, apart from Heidegger the most prominent German philosopher to identify publicly with Nazism. Heidegger complains as well that he was under surveillance and that his best students (Gadamer, Krüger, Bröcker) were kept back in their academic careers. He finally indicates unhappiness about the difficulty in publishing his writings and his exclusion from official German delegations to international philosophical congresses.

From a strictly philosophical perspective, this section is more historical and thus less interesting than the preceding ones. Four passages require comment. The first one is a remark Heidegger makes in passing about a philosophical meeting in Berlin to which neither he nor Jaspers was invited, but which apparently resulted in an attack on "existential philosophy." "In this case, too, as already during the rectorate, and notwithstanding the oppositions that divided them, my opponents demonstrated a strange willingness to ally themselves against everything by which they felt spiritually threatened and put into question."^[145] This remark illustrates Heidegger's almost petulant view that he received insufficient attention, that he wasn't taken seriously enough.

Second, there is Heidegger's comment, also in passing, that he had no illusions about the possible consequences of his actions after he resigned from office.

I had no illusions about the possible consequences of my resignation from office in the spring of 1934; after June 30 of the same year, these consequences became completely clear. Anyone who after that still assumed an administrative office in the university was in a position to know beyond the shadow of a doubt with whom he was bargaining. ^[146]

This passage is ambiguous. It might mean that after he resigned, for that reason Heidegger felt that he ran a personal risk, as was made clear with the physical elimination of Röhm and the S.A. leadership. Or it might conceivably mean that the realization of the kind of people with whom he was dealing led Heidegger to reassess his support for their common ends.

It is, however, unlikely that until 30 June 1934 Hitler's intentions were not clear. According to Fédier, the most unrelenting of Heidegger's defenders, the essence of Nazism was not clear until 1938. ^[147] Jaspers accepts the view that the Nazi intentions became clear only gradually, since he remarks in his report on Heidegger, where he doubts the extent of Heidegger's change of heart, that anything less than a radical turn away from Nazism after 30 June 1934 is of lesser worth.^[148] But he remarks pertinently elsewhere that despite the lack of precise information, the general lines of Nazism, its lies, its criminality, were known to any one who desired to know.^[149] In a letter to Jaspers, Heidegger admits that in 1933 and even earlier the "Jews and the left-wing politicians" already knew.^[150] Indeed, somebody must have known since at the time Heidegger became rector in the spring of 1933, concentration camps were already being built in the region of Freiburg. It is absurd to maintain that Heidegger had not understood the main thrust of Nazism since Hitler had repeatedly made it perfectly clear in Mein Kampf and elsewhere. And Heidegger relied in part on this work, which he cited in his public praise of Schlageter as a kind of Nazi saint, as a hero in the sense identified in Being and Time .^[151]

Third, there is a further remark on the significance of the rectorate, which Heidegger now describes in Nietzschean terms in a final effort to free himself from any responsibility. Whereas in the talk, he exalted the importance of the rectorate, he now demeans it as essentially meaningless. "Taken by itself, it [i.e., the rectorate] is as unimportant as the barren rooting in past attempts and measures taken, which in the context of the entire movement of the planetary will to power are so insignificant that they may not even be called tiny."^[152] This description of the

rectorate's significance is only apparently inconsistent with its earlier description through the supposed metaphysical transformation of science into technology. Common to both is Heidegger's conviction that the reign of metaphysics can be understood as ongoing development of the will to power whose most advanced form is the increasing encroachment of technology. Once again, it is difficult to overlook Heidegger's implicit self-exculpation in the face of the domination of what he now calls the planetary will to power.

Fourth, we can note the dark statement which ends the essay. "But these events, too, are only a fleeting appearance on waves of a movement of our history, of whose dimensions the Germans have as yet no inkling, even now that catastrophe has engulfed them."^[153] Once again Heidegger makes the familiar, but unverifiable claim of superior insight into history, including the future, following from his basic distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity. This statement is further interesting for the obvious transformation of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the rectoral speech, where Heidegger thought he stood at a turning point in German history, into a kind of conceptual dark night of the soul where the real possibility for a radiant future has disappeared.

This chapter has been devoted to an examination of Heidegger's selfjustificatory, indulgent interpretation of the Rektoratsrede in a time of personal need. Heidegger's defense consists in an effort to demonstrate that his rectoral address was directed toward the defense of the university with respect to knowing and science. Although this is literally true in part, it is insufficient as a description of the text as a whole, and false as an account of its spirit. For Heidegger's concerns with the university and with science as the rector, or educational Führer , of the University of Freiburg were means to other ends, including the grounding of Nazism in fundamental ontology; the realization of the Germans as German, the goal he shared with National Socialism; and further insight into Being.

The central insight that emerges from this inspection of Heidegger's self-interpretation of the rectoral address is the tension between his claim to be concerned only with the defense of the university and his continued stress on the destiny of the Germans and on Being. The latter concerns, which derive from Being and Time , remained constant throughout his later thought. We have already noted that Heidegger's remark that he did not renounce his thought in his effort, in an official capacity, to realize the essence of what is German, is significant. ^[154] This statement should be recognized as what it is, as a clear admission of a seamless web, a direct link, between his own thought, as he understood it, of the concept of authenticity applied to the Germans as a whole and his turn to Nazism as presenting a propitious moment, a kairos , to realize this goal.

"Ways to Discussion"

Heidegger's position later evolved, but it remained unchanged in important ways, including the concern with Being, the central theme in his thought early and late, and as concerns the authentic realization of the German people, based on his original concept of authenticity. An important statement of that point is available in a little-known, as yet untranslated text, published in 1937, that is, after the Rektoratsrede but before the essay about it. In his text, titled "Ways to Discussion," Heidegger ostensibly reexamines the Hegelian theme of the conditions of agreement between the French and the Germans.^[155] He maintains that any agreement must be based on mutual respect, which he suggests can only come about through listening to each other and the courage for their "proper self-limitation [eigenen Bestimmung]."^[156] In the second paragraph of this essay, he states his view of understanding among peoples in a description of the authenticity of a people, in a startling passage that requires full quotation:

Authentic [Echtes] understanding among peoples [Völker] begins and fulfills itself on one condition: this is in a creative reciprocal discussion leading to awareness concerning the historically shared past and present conditions. Through such awareness each of the peoples is brought back to what is ownmost to it [je Eigene] and grasps it with increased clarity and resoluteness [Entschiedenheit]. The ownmost in a people is its creativity [Schaffen], through which it grows into its historical mission [in seine geschichtliche Sendung hineinwächst] and so first comes to itself. The main feature [Grundzug] of its mission has been indicated for the historically cultured peoples in the present world situation [Weltstunde] as the rescue of the West [Rettung des Abendlandes]. Rescue here does not mean the simple maintenance of what is already present to hand [Vorhandenen], but rather signifies the originary. newly creating justification [Rechtfertigung] of its past and future history. Reciprocal understanding of neighbor peoples in their most ownmost means rather: for each the ownmost task [je eigene Aufgabe] is to know how to give oneself the necessity of this rescue. The knowledge concerning this necessity springs all the more from the experience of need, which arises with the innermost menace of the West, and from the power for an enlightening plan [Kraft zum verklärenden Entwurf] of the highest possibilities of Western man [abendländischen Daseins]. Just as the menace of the West drives toward a full uprooting and general disorder [Wirrnis]. so, on the contrary, the will to the renewal from the ground up must be led through the final resolutions [Entscheidungen].^[157]

This passage, composed after the rectorate, when Heidegger has returned to teaching, contradicts his description of the implicitly apolitical

character of "a conversation of essential thinking with itself [Selbstgesprách des wesentlichen Denkens mit sich selbst]."^[158] Although Heidegger gave up his rectorate, he continued to share the aim common to Nazism and his own thought—expressed here in Spenglerian terms, on the basis of his own view of authenticity—for the German people to realize itself in the future historical context. The mere fact that he here calls upon the French to do likewise in no sense alters the fact that he continues to mobilize the resources of his philosophy for an end in view which has not changed.

Heidegger clearly describes his view of the practical, hence political, role of so-called authentic philosophy. Unlike Hegel, who held a retrospective view of philosophy which looked back on what had already taken place, for Heidegger authentic philosophical knowledge is prospective, a form of anticipation for which the problem of theory and practice does not arise.

By itself authentic philosophical knowledge [Wissen] is never the backward-looking addition to the most general representations on already known things, but rather the anticipatory opening through knowledge of the consistently hidden essence of things. And precisely in this way it is never necessary to make this knowledge immediately useful. It is effective only mediately in that philosophical awarenesss prepares new points of view and standards for all attitudes and resolutions [Entscheiden].^[159]

Heidegger leaves no doubt here of the intrinsic purpose of authentic philosophy. In the midst of the social, political, and historical circumstances that were shortly to lead to the Second World War, he takes an aggressive view of the role of philosophy, strongly reminiscent of the early Marx's insistence on philosophy as tranforming the masses, as transforming the consciousness of the people.^[160]

If an authentic self-understanding is achieved in the basic philosophical position [in den philosophischen Grundstellung], if the power and the will for it can be correspondingly awakened, then the dominating knowledge [das herrschaftliche Wissen] rises to a new height and clarity. It prepares the way for the first time for a transformation of the peoples which is often invisible.^[161]

This passage provides an important insight into Heidegger's adherence to Nazism as an ideal even after his resignation from the rectorate. Heidegger here relies on his conception of authenticity which he applies to philosophy and to the German Volk . He clearly insists on the revolutionary role of authentic philosophy in bringing about the realization of the true destiny of the German people.^[162] If we accept Heidegger's asser-

tion that his turn toward Nazism was motivated by the desire to realize German authenticity which he believed was made possible through National Socialism, then we can infer that his withdrawal from his official capacity does not represent an abandonment of his view of the revolutionary role of true philosophy or of the end in view; at most it represents an awareness that Nazism as it exists is ill adapted, in fact has failed, to achieve this goal.

We see the full significance of this point when we recall that in 1947, in the "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger suggested that in virtue of its inconsequential nature, after the so-called turning in his thought his view surpasses practice. "[T]hinking is a deed. But a deed that also surpasses all praxis. Thinking towers above action and production, not through the grandeur of its achievement and not as a consequence of its effect, but through the humbleness of its inconsequential accomplishment."^[163] Is he saying that thinking is deeper than thought concerned with action and production? Is thinking inconsequential because, looking backward to the rectorate, it failed in its task? This is unclear. What is, however, clear is that this self-description of his thought is misleading since Heidegger never abandoned his attachment to Being, his concern with the realization of the destiny of the German people, and his stubborn conviction that his own thought has a key role in bringing about these ends. Heidegger's thought, even after his supposed turning beyond philosophy, was and remained political in this specific sense. Heidegger claimed to have assumed the rectorate in order to defend the university; but this was in fact merely a secondary end. For his deeper intention, as a close reading of the texts shows, was and remained the realization of the authentic essence of the German people and the furtherance of the thought of Being.