Concealing in Heidegger's Thought

The present effort to elucidate the hidden dimension and philosophical significance of Heidegger's Nazism need not be, but in fact is, consistent with Heidegger's own view of concealment. Now Heidegger's thought is not distinguished by the very need as such to reveal it, since the study of other positions, particularly original theories, often encounters obstacles, linguistic, conceptual, or other, that impede their comprehension. What distinguishes Heidegger's thought is its link to Nazism, which is unprecedented among thinkers of the first rank and even among important philosophers in this century.

In virtue of its novelty, Heidegger's thought in general, not just the link between his thought and his Nazism, is concealed in a variety of ways. In an obvious sense, a thinker who has something importantly new to say, a novel doctrine to propose, a theory that differs in some significant way from other views, cannot be understood quickly. The reason is simply that ideas are always comprehended against a conceptual hori-

zon, a background that acts as its frame of reference. As soon as a position breaks with the familiar conceptual frameworks, either through the introduction of a new form of thought, the denial of an essential element of what we thought we knew, or the reordering of accepted conceptions, then the usual background that serves to promote comprehension is lacking. If a novel view is quickly "understood," then invariably it is misunderstood. Certainly, one should not confuse the claim that a new idea has been grasped with the grasp itself.^[12] It is likely that anyone who can be understood immediately is not a novel thinker, although the converse claim does not hold. It is even more likely that a thinker who makes an original contribution is misunderstood in the short run and only understood, if at all, at a later date, at a temporal remove, when the work necessary to revise the established categories, to open the discussion to new ways of thinking, has had the time to occur. Since Heidegger is a genuinely novel thinker who breaks with established patterns of thought, he is difficult to understand. It is possible that Heidegger's particular philosophical contribution has not yet been understood, or rather has so far been largely misunderstood.^[13] Indeed, one of the aims of this discussion is to suggest that despite the immense literature concerning Heidegger's position, the intrinsic political dimension of his theory of Being has not so far been clearly seen.

The novelty of Heidegger's position is only one of the obstacles to its comprehension. The difficulty of Heidegger's language is legendary. Other philosophers, such as Whitehead, have devised novel terms to describe their basic insights, but Heidegger carries this practice to unusual, perhaps unprecedented, lengths. He frequently coins new words to express his ideas, or imparts technical meanings to available vocabulary—which he often uses in odd ways in accordance with the allegedly original meanings supposedly covered up by the later evolution of the language—or even employs a dash or other devices to highlight a part of the word. The result is a vocabulary that often has no usual equivalent in German and even more frequently has no easy rendition into English. An example among many is the term "Ent-fernung " for the ordinary German "Entfernung, " which Macquarrie and Robinson translate by the neologism "deseverance."^[14] The fact that many of Heidegger's formulations are at best unclear only heightens the difficulty of understanding.

Heidegger's thought is also difficult to comprehend in part because of the unfinished nature of Being and Time , his main treatise. It is well known that the published fragment is part of a much larger work, which never appeared. The extant fragment is difficult to interpret since Heidegger published his study before he had had a chance to give it a final form. A close reading of the text reveals ways in which he changed his

mind on fundamental points during the writing of the book. For instance, he insists on a concept of truth as veritas transcendentalis ,^[15] similar to the Husserlian version of the traditional philosophical view of truth, before introducing an obviously incompatible hermeneutical notion of truth.^[16] The incompatibility lies in the inability to make out a claim for the traditional philosophical notion of truth as absolute on the basis of the relativistic terrain of hermeneutics.^[17] After the book was published, and in particular after Heidegger resigned his post as rector of the University of Freiburg in 1934, he increasingly devoted himself— perhaps under the influence of the intervening political events—to re-interpreting his main text in a long series of later writings. The result is that an already difficult book, bristling with strange neologisms and novel ideas, is rendered even more difficult by Heidegger's repeated efforts to construe his thought from an increasingly greater remove.