"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.