"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.