2
The Nazi Turning and the Rectoral Address

The preceding chapter, which was prolegomenal, identified obstacles tending to impede a comprehension of Heidegger's Nazism, above all the smoke screens propagated by Heidegger and his closest followers. This chapter will provide the difficult transition to study of the relevant textual material. It is relatively easy to identify impediments to an understanding of Heidegger's Nazism. It is much more difficult to analyze Heidegger's Nazism and its relation to his philosophical thought. It is an indisputable fact that in the period after the publication of Being and Time , the magisterial statement of his fundamental ontology, Heidegger turned to Nazism. The problem that arises can be stated in question form: How are we to understand Heidegger's turn to Nazism? In asking this question, my aim is not to determine the role that Heidegger could conceivably have played in the difficult situation in the later 1920s in Germany in Hitler's rise to power.^[1] On the contrary, I am interested in the opposite question: how is Heidegger's Nazi turning related to his philosophical position? It is not sufficient merely to aim at a total explanation of human behavior, at a total grasp of human being.^[2] If we are to understand the nature and significance of Heidegger's political turning for his philosophy, then we must study the importance of his philosophy of Being for his Nazism, for his political practice. The difficulty, which is real, is that we do not understand in general how thought relates to practice. In order, then, to understand the link between Heidegger's philosophy and politics, between his fundamental ontology and his Nazism, it will be necessary to devise an explanatory framework.

What I am calling Heidegger's Nazi turning is a complex process that

is not reducible to any single event nor even to the endorsement of a single doctrine. Heidegger's private embrace of National Socialism apparently occurred as early as 1931, well before the electoral victory of the NSDAP. His public turn toward Nazism obviously occurred when he joined the Nazi party on 1 May 1933. On a philosophical plane, his Nazi turning took place in the rectoral speech delivered on the occasion of Heidegger's formal assumption of the rectorate of the University of Freiburg. It is important to distinguish between the turn to Nazism and the basis for its occurrence. I believe that Heidegger's Nazi turning can be understood as the result of factors external and internal to his thought, that is, factors that impinged upon him and others in the period toward the end of the Weimar Republic, as well as his philosophical position that arose in this political, social, and historical setting. This chapter will study factors within and outside of Heidegger's fundamental ontology leading to Heidegger's turn toward National Socialism; it will further examine a crucial exoteric document: the rectoral address.

Extraphilosophic Factors in Heidegger's Nazi Turning

Heidegger's turning to Nazism is not explicable through any single factor or type of factor. It has been held that his Nazi turn is due merely to his philosophy or merely to nonphilosophical reasons.^[3] In fact, it is the result of both philosophical and extraphilosophical—or, for want of a better term, "existential"—factors. Among the many factors that are cited as influencing the rise of Nazism, beyond Adolf Hitler, are "German philosophy, romantic mysticism, anti-Semitism, the 'stab in the back' argument aimed at the Weimar Republic, German big business, the German economy in the wake of the Versailles treaty, the Prussian tradition, insidious occultism associated with 'ariosophy,' and the threat of Stalinist communism."^[4] Factors that led to National Socialism were part of the social, political, and historical background when Heidegger turned to Nazism. Among the many factors ingredient in the wider background in which Heidegger's philosophical position emerged and in which he turned to Nazism, three are particularly important for his own political evolution: the decline of the Weimar Republic, the prevailing conservative political thought, and the Volk ideology it expressed.

Historical Background: the Weimar Republic

Since a political engagement does not occur in a social, political, and conceptual vacuum, it is useful to indicate, at least in outline, some of

the main features of the social context when Heidegger became rector.^[5] The Nazi accession to power occurred against the background of German history. Under Bismarck, the minister of war for Wilhelm I, Germany was unified, Schleswig-Holstein was wrested from Denmark, and Prussia took the place previously occupied by Austria. Germany successfully waged war against France, increased its imperial power, and acquired foreign colonies. The expansion and consolidation of German power came to an abrupt halt with the end of the First World War, culminating in the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, which was widely perceived as a humiliation by the defeated German population.

The Weimar Republic arose and can be understood against the background of more than a half century of imperialist expansion through war.^[6] It was proclaimed on 9 November 1918 in Weimar—the site of the intellectual circle centered around Goethe, one of the greatest humanists in the history of European culture—by the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann. The Weimar Republic prospered during the golden twenties, which culminated in the world economic crisis in 1929.^[7] The history of the Weimar Republic describes a short period of hope symbolized by the introduction of a republican form of government, in an obvious reaction against the consequences of German imperialism, which then quickly degenerated into one of the worst tyrannies the world has ever known. Whether the hope was ever justified, whether the period of the Weimar Republic was more than a failed effort at the introduction of a liberal democratic form of goverment in the interregnum between two world wars, is a topic of scholarly debate.

Even before the outbreak of economic depression, the Weimar Republic suffered from a series of deep ideological, social, political, and economic problems. The world economic crisis that arose in 1929 led to enormous inflation and staggering unemployment, among other social problems. It was accompanied by an almost palpable sense of decay in the university and many other areas of German life.^[8] In Heidegger's philosophy, the influence of this particular problem is visible in Heidegger's analysis, in a lecture course, of the prevailing mood as one of boredom and in the rectoral talk in his concern to defend what he refers to as the essence of the German university. There was further a clear sense of instability, a belief that things could not just continue on the same course, a conviction that something needed to be done, a longing for a solution, even a radical measure to transform the situation in steady deterioration. The final part of the Weimar period has been aptly described, immediately before Hitler took office, as follows: "This, then, was the Weimar Republic in 1932: clear vision and political impotence, fear, suspicion, and moments of irrational hope, among the politi-

cians of the middle, politics as usual, but with everyone else, a sense of emergency."^[9]

The reasons for the demise of the Weimar Republic are still not clear. One possibility is the failure to comprehend the growing threat of the imperialism of German monopoly capital.^[10] Another is the concern with political freedom as the means to an end rather than an end in itself.^[11] Yet another is the perpetration of a conservative revolution from the right.^[12] Still others include the polarization between various right- and left-wing extremes, the idea of a democracy not itself democratic—both of which suggest that "the people" in a collective sense was in some sense responsible for the Republic's end—the fascist seizure of power, the interplay of certain forces, and so on.^[13] What is known is that the outbreak of a world economic crisis destabilized a weak government, exacerbating social and political tensions, which in turn contributed to an unexpected Nazi electoral victory in July 1932. The end of the Republic less than a decade and a half after it began was hastened when von Papen persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor. It finally ended with the resignation of Kurt von Schleicher on 28 January 1933 and the assumption of power by Adolf Hitler on 30 January of that year, which led straight into Nazi tyranny.^[14]

The complex series of events that led to the Nazi assumption of power is different from its significance.^[15] The German revolution that began in 1933 and led to a second defeat of Germany was only the continuation of the historical process begun under Bismarck, which came to a temporary halt, during the Weimar period, at the end of the First World War. If this is true, then the rise of National Socialism can be regarded as an effort to win a war that had already been lost, to renew with a political approach the momentum temporarily suspended during the Weimar Republic, which unsuccessfully sought to lead Germany in another direction, to restore German self-esteem and confidence—in short, to bring about the historical realization of the German people.^[16]

Conservative Political Thought

Heidegger's concern with the contemporary situation can be understood in the context of the interest of German intellectuals in general with modern life. He was one of a large group of German intellectuals who found change unsettling and who in various ways longed for a return to an earlier, more stable social structure.^[17] He shared the widespread conservative worldview that emerged after the loss of the First World War, including conservative revolutionary tendencies, visible in his Nazi turning, and the rejection of the liberal democratic conception

embodied by the Weimar Republic. He further shared the anticapitalist romanticism that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century and that can be symbolized by the opposition between Kultur and Zivilisation , according to which culture in the deep sense required a rejection of modernity.^[18] This view is evident in Heidegger's writings in his cult of Greek thought as the true form of philosophy. Yet it is important not to confuse the widespread conservativism of this period with support for National Socialism, which at the peak of its electoral success in the elections of April and July 1932 garnered no more than 37 percent of the popular vote.^[19]

Heidegger shared the growing sense of unease widely felt by German intellectuals in the waning days of the Weimar Republic.^[20] This intellectual sense of dismay found expression among German intellectuals in a concern to "locate" human being with respect to the present. Two extremes can be represented by Max Scheler, the phenomenologist and Jewish convert to Catholicism, whose thought influenced Heidegger's, and Karl Mannheim, a prominent sociologist who studied with the Marxist Lukács and with Heidegger. In 1928 in the "Author's Preface" to his last uncompleted book, significantly entitled Man's Place in Nature , Scheler writes in reference to contemporary work in philosophical anthropology: "In spite of this, however, man is more of a problem to himself at the present time than ever before in all recorded history."^[21] Only one year later, from a radically different angle of vision, Mannheim observes that it is "imperative in the present transitional epoch to make use of the intellectual twilight which dominates our epoch and in which all values and points of view appear in their genuine relativity. We must realize once and for all that the meanings which make up our world are simply an historically determined and continuously developing structure in which man develops, and are in no sense absolute."^[22]

Heidegger further shared the rejection, following from the concern to seek a third way between liberal democracy and Bolshevism, of modernity as such. Heidegger is already opposed to Cartesianism, a central form of modern philosophy, as early as 1919. Yet modernity is not a problem in Heidegger's fundamental ontology, either in Being and Time or in his other early writings. So far as I know, the word "modernity" does not even occur in the book. The question, however, of what Blumenberg has felicitously called the "legitimacy of the modern age" is in retrospect an obvious issue for Heidegger's philosophy.^[23] As became clear in the later evolution of his thought—in his rejection of both metaphysics or modern theory and technology or modern practice—his conception of ontology brought him into conflict with anything modern as such. A typical instance is his later comment in a lecture course that

the danger we face lies not in the decline of the West but in the acceptance and development of the idea of modernity.^[24]

Heidegger's embrace of National Socialism is exceptional only for the importance of his thought and the depth of his commitment. But his failure to oppose Nazism is typical of the behavior of German philosophers in general. It is not well known, in part because German philosophy during the Nazi period has not often been studied, that German philosophy played an equivocal role at this time.^[25] It has been said that German philosophy failed in three different ways: in removing or even weakening the barriers against National Socialism, in creating an intellectual atmosphere propitious to it, and in apologizing for it.^[26] Certainly, German philosophers both collectively and individually did little to prevent the rise of Nazism.

When one reads the texts from this period, the widespread insensitivity among philosophers to the specific currents, such as anti-Semitism, that shortly led to National Socialism is striking. An example among many is Heidegger's remark in a letter of 1926 to Jaspers, who was married to a Jewish woman, about the concern in the University of Marburg to appoint a non-Jew and if at all possible a German nationalist, a remark that typically evoked no protest from Jaspers.^[27] It has been pointed out that many Germans unsympathetic to Hitler's anti-Semitism were willing to cooperate with him to revise the Versailles treaty and in general to strengthen Germany's position in Europe.^[28] Indeed, it is a mistake to consider anti-Semitism as the single crucial problem, or maybe even as crucial at all, since it was not one of the central themes in Hitler's rise to power.^[29]

Once Nazism had taken power, German philosophers typically either rushed to ingratiate themselves with the National Socialist movement, or at least failed to reject it. When they did reject it, they mainly did so in an ineffectual manner, for instance in Husserl's noble but pathetic call to defend the ancient Greek distinction between knowledge and opinion in order to resist the rise of Nazi barbarism.^[30] In retrospect, however, Husserl's rejection of National Socialism, weak as it unfortunately was, shines like a beacon in comparison with the more typical philosophical effort to embrace, or at least to cooperate with, Hitler's movement, above all by Martin Heidegger. It is a matter of record that there is no important protest against Nazism by the German philosophical community.^[31] Although this has been explained through the unpolitical nature of German philosophers, in fact many German philosophers who represented themselves as unpolitical were intensely political beings, including Heidegger. In 1933, when Heidegger issued his claim as the rector of the University of Freiburg to be the philosophical Führer of National

Socialism, he was only one of numerous philosophers each of whom claimed to provide the only correct idea of the new Nazi state through his own philosophy, including Krieck, Bauemler, Rothacker, Gehlen, and others.^[32]

Although Hitler only came to power in 1933, as early as the presidential elections in early 1932 a manifesto of personal support for Hitler was issued by six professors, including a philosopher, Carl August Enge, professor of law (Rechtsphilosophie ) in Jena and scientific director of the Nietzsche Archives in Jena.^[33] Between this initial manifesto and the election of the Reichstag in November 1933, there were no fewer than four other manifestos in which a progressively greater number of philosophers participated.^[34] On the occasion of the vote for the Reichstag in November 1933, no fewer than a thousand professors, after an address by Heidegger, publicly acknowledged their support for Hitler and the National Socialist state, including Heidegger, N. Ach, O. F. Bollnow, O. Dittrich, K. Graf Dürckheim, H. Freyer, H.-G. Gadamer, A. Gehlen, J. E. Heyde, E. Jaensch, G. Krüger, F. Krueger, K. Leese, P. Lersch, H. Lipps, F. Lipsius, T. Litt, D. Mahnke, H. Noack, K. J. Obenauer, J. Ritter, H. Sauer, W. Schingnitz, H. Schneider, H. Schwarz, and W. Wirth.^[35]

In fact, philosophical support for Hitler began even earlier. For instance, Ernst Krieck, professor of pedagogy, with whom Heidegger later collaborated on the National Socialist reform of German higher education, was disciplined for a pro-Nazi speech in 1931; and when he joined the NSDAP on 1 January 1932, he was suspended. Until the end of 1932, slightly more than 1 percent of the German academic establishment had publicly taken a position for Hitler, including eight philosophers: Enge, Schwarz, Krueger, Krieck, Baeumler, Rothacker, Bornhausen, and Jaensch.^[36] Apparently the numbers would have been even larger had other philosophical colleagues, like German academics in general, not held back for tactical considerations.^[37] The awareness of political consequences was not misplaced, since a number of academics, including more than thirty philosophers, quickly lost their positions in 1933.^[38] Among the philosophers, in April, Max Horkheimer, Karl Mannheim, Paul Tillich, and Siegfried Marck; then in July Ernst von Aster was fired and August Messer and Hans Driesch were forcibly retired; and Bernhard Groethuysen was chased out of the university.^[39] Other philosophers who were let go in 1933 include Richard Hönigswald, Ernst Cassirer, Jonas Cohn, Arthur Liebert, Dietrich yon Hildebrandt, Helmuth Plessner, Martin Buber, and Theodor Adorno.^[40]

From a political perspective, Heidegger largely shared the conservative tendencies prevalent after the First World War, including the basic acceptance, or at least tolerance, of National Socialism with the exception

of its biological anti-Semitism, which was declined by most academics, and his participation, surprising for Heidegger, who seems to have had few or no personal heroes, in the Hitler cult. Heidegger followed other conservative intellectuals in rejecting both Bolshevism and liberalism of all kinds. But he carried his cooperation with Nazism further than most other academics, certainly further than any philosopher with the exception of Ernst Krieck. The main difference between Heidegger and all other philosophers, including Krieck, was his impressive ability to express his conservative worldview, itself typical of the conservative mood of the times among intellectuals, in a series of philosophical doctrines. These doctrines, all of which are deeply rooted in his philosophy of Being, include: the rejection of a democratic form of government as antithetical to modern life, particularly evident in the Spiegel interview; the philosophical reworking of Schmitt's conception of decisionism, the basis of the Führer principle, in his own conception of resoluteness;^[41] the rejection of modernity itself in his espousal of Nietzsche's diagnosis of nihilism and European nihilism; and his own later rejection of technology.

The Volk and German Romanticism

The concern of conservative German intellectuals, including a large proportion of German academics, to seek a third way between the failed liberalism incarnated by the Weimar Republic and the Bolshevism which they unanimously feared was motivated by both historical and conceptual factors. On the one hand, it was motivated by such historical circumstances as the concern to redeem the German defeat in the First World War, to restore German honor and pride. But it was also spurred on by the reactionary tradition of German Volk -thought, with its stress on the historical realization and exaltation of the Germans as German, which impelled both the imperialist movement stemming from Bismarck and the National Socialist conception of the German nation. In Mein Kampf , Hitler clearly stressed the fact of belonging to the German Volk , namely the conception of nationality (Volkstum , from Volk ), as more important than the state, which was merely a means to the achievement and preservation of the higher form of human being.^[42]

The Volk perspective, which is older than Nazism, was already an important current in nineteenth-century German thought. It emerged as a romantic response to the general problem of human being in modern society, the so-called condition humaine , with important ties to German romanticism and conservative thinking. The völkisch perspective, like romanticism with which it is allied, represents an approach to the problems of modern life which eschews rational solutions of any kind, includ-

ing economic analysis, social reform, and so on, in favor of an emphasis on human being in an often mystical sense. It differs from romanticism, which places primary emphasis on the individual, in the appeal to supraindividual, mystical forces and the stress on the people writ large. The importance of the individual is limited to the belonging to the group, typically the nation or the race, or both. Unlike romanticism, which is often apolitical, völkisch thought is typically related to extreme forms of political conservatism and the most virulent types of nationalism.

Völkisch ideas were typically advanced in order to counter widespread alienation held to be characteristic of modern society. The conception of alienation, understood as separation, say the separation of human being from its essence, or essential nature, is older than modernity. It has a long theological lineage, for instance in the idea that Adam and Eve, and human beings in general, were separated from God. In this view, which dominates Christianity, the purpose of human life is to overcome one's separation from the divine by finding the way back to God. This view receives a secularized development in the effort of modern thinkers to "think" the problem of the modern human being. It can be illustrated in a passage about labor that Hegel cites from Adam Smith:

But the value of labor decreases in the same proportion as the productivity of labor increases. Work becomes thus absolutely more and more dead, it becomes machine-labor, the individual's own skill becomes infinitely limited, and the consciousness of the factory worker is degraded to the utmost level of dullness. The connection between the particular sort of labor and the infinite mass of needs becomes wholly imperceptible, turns into a blind dependence. It thus happens that a far-away operation often affects a whole class of people who have hitherto satisfied their needs through it; all of a sudden it limits [their work]. makes it redundant and useless.^[43]

The concern with alienation as the condition of human being in modern society is a frequent theme in modern thought in an almost bewildering variety of ways, in literature, art, and philosophy, but also in psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and other disciplines. All of these disciplines are concerned with the recognition and analysis of the phenomenon of alienation and the diagnosis of ways to achieve reconciliation, to heal the perceived dichotomy. This concern is widely present in modern political philosophy, for instance in Hobbes's view of the social contract as a necesssary evil, and in Rousseau's espousal of a political reformulation of society to reach a simple human community that is neither the state of nature nor civilization as we know it. In the period after the French Revolution, the diagnosis and supersession of alienation becomes a main theme in the thought of Hegel.^[44] The dual concepts of alienation

and reconciliation are important to the views of his main successors: Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.^[45] Alienation is further a main theme in Heidegger's early position and, under the guise of a concern for the historical realization of the German people, a persistent aspect of all his later thought.

The philosophical concern with the diagnosis and supersession of alienation runs parallel to a similar concern in the romantic movement, including literature, art,^[46] and politics. Political romanticism found expression in such diverse tendencies as romantic traditionalism, romantic humanitarianism, and romantic nationalism. In reaction to the French Revolution, a specific form of political romanticism was created in Europe by the fear of revolutionary ideology in the writings of Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, and L. G. A. de Bonald. Philosophically, romanticism has been described as a loosely related set of views consisting in the rejection of rationalism, of the Locke-Hume philosophical axis.^[47] Romanticism is said to be typified by a cluster of beliefs including idealization of social relations in contrast with the Enlightenment view, the idea of the state as a social organism, opposition to the thought of the French Revolution, sympathy for Roman Catholicism, and nationalism.^[48] It has further been observed that in all its varieties, romanticism celebrates the self.^[49]

The idea of the Volk features a characteristic romantic response to the problem of the separation, or alienation, supposedly typical of life in modern society. The general idea of Volksgeist , or spirit of a people, which cannot be equated with Volk ideology, its degenerate, reactionary form, appears in historical investigations, in the writings of such diverse thinkers as Burke, Montesquieu, Hume, and Voltaire. The intellectual genesis of this concept has been traced to three writers.^[50] Herder, who refers to the Geist des Volkes, Geist der Nation , and Nationalgeist ; Hegel's coinage of the term "Volksgeist, " in the course of early meditations on popular religion and Christianity;^[51] and the controversy involving E K. Savigny and G. F. Puchta, in the historical school of law, about the relation between the national spirit and the legal system. Rotenstreich points out that the idea of a Volksgeist provided "a descriptive concept as well as a normarive demand of faithfulness"^[52] influential in politics, literature, law, and philosophy, as well as the distinction between peoples and their traditions.

The idea of a Volksgeist need not, but can, be used for specifically conservative purposes, as witness the later Nazi confusion of the distinctions between Volksgeist and race. The concept of the Volk is difficult to define, but important to grasp as a central factor in Heidegger's turn toward Nazism. According to Bourdieu, who mainly bases himself on Mosse, the völkisch perspective is an attitude toward the world, which

resists any objectification, englobing literary, historical, and philosophical sources, as well as biological and philological forms of racism, including a series of confused views regarding phantasms, technology, workers, the elite, the people, and concerning history and country.^[53] Mosse stresses the filiation leading from romanticism to the idea of the Volk , which he regards as similarly irrational and emotional. He adduces a series of traits as characteristic of right-wing, völkisch thought, including the Volk as a desired unity beyond contemporary reality, "a more tangible vessel for the life force that flowed from the cosmos," a romantic pantheistic concept of nature, a view of the spirit as limited to a national entity, and a concept of man as not vanquishing or overcoming nature but as living in harmony with it.^[54] Heidegger's later exaltation of allegedly misunderstood nature as physis through his conception of Gelassenheit is, with the exception of the philosophical formulation, typical of the Volk perspective. From a quasi-philosophical perspective, the Volk point of view reached its dubious high point in the insistence of Alfred Rosenberg, the chief Nazi ideologist, in his analysis of the alleged myth of the twentieth century, on soul as the interior form of race and the racial soul as the effective motor of history.^[55]

Romantic thought is essentially antirationalist, directed against the Enlightenment and its legitimate achievements in the defense of reason. Whereas the Enlightenment thinker seeks a rational solution to the problems of society, founded on faith in reason, the disillusioned romantic^[56] typically eschews reason in an effort to return into oneself to seek the proper attitude to life and reality. There is a clear connection between the intrinsically romantic effort to resolve the great social and political problems of the day through essentially magical solutions and the essential antirationalism common to all forms of totalitarian thought. Berlin's account of the antirationalistic, romantic approach to human life and action, including the problem of alienation, in the writings of Joseph de Maistre, an early forerunner of fascism, is an accurate description of the Volk -ideological approach to modern life which influenced Heidegger's own Nazi turning:

Human action in his [i.e., Maistre's] sense is justified only when it derives from that tendency in human beings which is directed neither to happiness nor to comfort, nor to neat, logically coherent patterns of life, nor to self-assertion and self-aggrandizement, but to the fulfillment of an unfathomable divine purpose which men cannot, and should not try to, fathom— and which they deny at their peril.^[57]

In his own way, Heidegger echoes this concern in his steadfast insistence throughout his entire career on the importance of Being. It is literally

through uncognizable Being, which in his view towers over beings, or mere entities, and human being alike, that he sought to comprehend all questions concerning human being now and in the future.

Intraphilosophic Factors in Heidegger's Nazi Turning

Fundamental Ontology, Nazism, and Political Philosophy

The account of external factors in the background has identified factors that impinge on, form the background of, and are reflected in Heidegger's fundamental ontology. There can be no doubt that Heidegger's personal and philosophical position reflect the decline of the Weimar Republic and the intensely conservative tendencies of the period. Both of these factors impelled many other German intellectuals of this period, including numerous German philosophers, toward National Socialism. Yet Heidegger was neither an ordinary German nor even an ordinary German philosopher. Since he differed from all other Germans, including all other German philosophers, in the possession of a philosophical position of unusual importance, we must inquire whether there are still other factors, factors internal to Heidegger's thought, that led him in the direction of Nazism.

As a first step, it is helpful to recall the traditional philosophical view of the relation between philosophy and politics. We owe to Plato the idea that philosophy is a necessary condition for the good life. Philosophy, on this view, differs from other disciplines such as shoemaking or chemistry, in that while the other disciplines contribute to a good life and are useful to that end, philosophy is not only useful but moreover indispensable, for philosophers and only philosophers possess unique insight into reality. To put the point more strongly, the good life may well be possible without shoemakers or chemists; but, according to the traditional view, it is not possible without philosophers. It is, then, different if a businessman or a philosopher turns to Nazism. One cannot demand that a businessman possess knowledge that leads beyond the business world. But a philosopher can be held responsible for his political actions since philosophy is intended to afford insight into the political realm.

It is difficult to square the claim for the specific insight of philosophy into reality, including politics, with the actions of philosophers. The actions of philosophers in times of crisis provide no comfort to those who hold that knowing and doing are intimately related. If Nazism is evil, then it is troubling that German philosophers lined up to become members of the NSDAP. Either philosophy was insufficient to discern

the truth in such political circumstances, for instance through a misidentification of Nazism as the good, or knowledge of the truth was insufficient to influence actions as German philosophers flocked to enlist in this cause. Despite philosophical claims for the political utility of their discipline, philosophers have at best an indifferent political record. There is no reason to believe that philosophy as such is either politically indispensable or the source of political insight. Philosophers have certainly not been the model citizens that their superior insight would suggest, although the link between their thought and their actions is often rather tenuous. For instance, Frege's well-known, vicious anti-Semitism seems unrelated to his fundamental contributions to modern logic.^[58] On the contrary, the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics is by no means merely contingent, or limited to the impact of external factors, since it follows as well from factors internal to his thought.

The link between Heidegger's thought and his politics is a form of the wider problem of the relation between theory and practice. It is no accident that Heidegger turned to politics, since his philosophy is intrinsically political. Now the claim that fundamental ontology is not only a theory of Being but also political is obviously controversial. The way to understand the relation of Being and Time to Heidegger's politics has sharply divided students of his thought. Aubenque has argued that Heidegger's turn to National Socialism is not a political act since it cannot be deduced from his philosophy.^[59] Janicaud, following Aubenque, does not deny that fundamental ontology is implicated in Heidegger's politics but insists on the necessarily apolitical status of his thought.^[60] On the contrary, Wolin has described Heidegger's political philosophy in detail.^[61]

If fundamental ontology is basically political, then there is an intrinsic connection between ontology, as Heidegger understands it, and politics. Since Heidegger never tired of praising the virtues of ancient Greek thought, not surprisingly it provides obvious antecedents of the political dimension of Heidegger's position. Plato's Republic describes an ideal state based on the self-realization of the individual through what he or she does best.^[62] Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics treats of the good for its own sake, that for the sake of which all actions are taken, which belongs to the science of politics. According to Aristotle, the end of politics is the good for man.^[63]

Being and Time is an intensely political book in an Aristotelian sense of the term "politics." It is a book concerned with the good in itself, understood as the concern with fundamental ontology. Heidegger rejects the Aristotelian view of human being, although he accepts the general Aristotelian understanding of practical philosophy.^[64] According to Heidegger, concern with the problem of Being is indispensable for the good for human being. For both Aristotle the author of the Ni-

comachean Ethics and Heidegger the author of Being and Time , the aim is not merely a theoretical treatise but a work with practical intent. Just as ethics belongs to politics, so Aristotle's account of human affairs points beyond itself to the state that completes it.^[65] Similarly, fundamental ontology demands a response to the question of the meaning of Being which cannot leave human being indifferent. Being and Time , which does not offer a series of political injunctions, is not political in the sense of, say, Machiavelli's The Prince or Hobbes's Leviathan , or even Kant's "To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." But it is political in another, more basic sense, concerning the realization of human being in the human context. It is, then, no accident that the entire discussion of "Being" in this work culminates in an analysis of historicality (Geschichtlichkeit ), Heidegger's term for the authentic conception of history, since fundamental ontology and political life are intimately related.^[66] Even some thirty years later, after his period as rector, the turning in his thought, and the loss of the Second World War, Heidegger held the same view of the political consequences of the concern with Being. He ends his lectures on the law of sufficient reason with the statement:

Does the specified criterion, that man is a rational animal, exhaust the essence of man? Is it the last word concerning Being, that Being means ground? Does not the essence of man, does not his belonging to Being, does not the essence of Being itself remain still and ever more urgently worthy of thought? . . . That is the question. That is the world question [Weltfrage] of thought. Its answer will decide what becomes of the earth and of the existence of man on this earth.^[67]

The turn to politics in general, including real and ideal forms of Nazism, is obviously rooted in Heidegger's philosophical thought. It is not necessary, nor is it my intention, to demonstrate that fundamental ontology necessarily led to National Socialism as its only possibility. This kind of argument, which is sometimes made in political theory, say to explain the relation between Marx, or Marxism, and Stalinism, is difficult at best.^[68] My point is rather that fundamental ontology necessarily leads beyond itself to political practice, and that National Socialism represents one of the types of politics acceptable to Heidegger's philosophical perspective. To put the same point differently, I hold that the link between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics is not necessary, but I also hold that it is not contingent.

It is a matter of record that Heidegger, the philosopher of Being, did turn to Nazi politics. This political turning is not contingent since it was inscribed in the essence of his theory, which called for, even demanded, political practice. The fact that his political turn took the form of Nazism

is neither contingent nor necessary, but hardly surprising. It was not necessary in any strict sense and could not therefore be "deduced" since he could possibly have accepted another form of politics. But what in practice took the form of a turning to Nazism was also not contingent, a mere accident as it were, an unfortunate incident, even essentially meaningless as Heidegger later claimed, since the political practice called for by his philosophy in fact suggested either National Socialism or something like it. It is not surprising that Heidegger's philosophy in practice led him toward a Nazi form of political practice. For his position reflected in philosophical dress the same political and social influences of his time which themselves led to Nazism. In short, Heidegger's Nazi turning represents a rather obvious historical confluence, something that comes about at a particular historical moment, a coming together as it were between the external influences on his thought, which also led to Nazism, and his own turning in that direction because of his thought.

Fundamental Ontology and Politics

This general account of factors influencing Heidegger's turn to politics is insufficient without specific textual analysis. As an aid in grasping the specific connection between Heidegger's philosophy and Nazism, we can differentiate three aspects of his thought: his initial philosophical position as described in Being and Time , its evolution in the period between Being and Time and the Nazi turning, and the political application of his philosophical thought in the rectoral address.

Now it is difficult to describe a philosophical position adequately. In virtue of its original character, no simple description is adequate to the complex nature of Heidegger's thought. It is also not possible to attempt anything like a full description of Heidegger's position.^[69] Fortunately, that is not necessary for our purposes here. Since the present discussion is concerned with the relation of Heidegger's thought to Nazism, we can restrict our account of fundamental ontology merely to those concepts which form the background of his turn to practical politics, including the question of Being, or Seinsfrage ; Dasein, the distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity; and historicity.

Fundamental ontology is intended as a new theory of ontology which takes up the unanswered question of the meaning of Being through a demonstration of "the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being."^[70] Heidegger's investigation is based on the ontological difference between Being in general and beings, or entities. The question of the meaning of Being concerns the Being of beings, or entities. "Dasein" is Heidegger's name for human being.^[71] According to Heidegger, as a being human being, or Dasein,

differs from other entities, either animate or inanimate, since its understanding of Being is characteristic of it.^[72]

In rapid succession, Heidegger sketches the outlines of a view of Dasein. Dasein's way of "Being-ontological" is not tantamount to possessing an ontology, since it is "pre-ontological," that is, a "way that one has an understanding of Being."^[73] Dasein always comports itself in terms of its existence, defined as "a possibility of itself; to be itself or not itself."^[74] There is, accordingly, a close, in fact a reciprocal, link between Dasein and the Seinsfrage . Since existence is the defining trait of Dasein, the analysis of Dasein requires that existence be considered initially. But since Dasein's existence concerns its Being, an analysis of Dasein requires a prior analysis of the question of the meaning of Being.^[75] Hence, an understanding of human being rests on a conceptually prior grasp of Being. On the contrary, the Seinsfrage requires as its condition the analysis of human being. Since Dasein belongs essentially to a world, it possesses an equally primordial understanding of "world" as well as of the entities within it.^[76] It follows that the way to respond to the question of the meaning of Being is through an analysis of Dasein: "Therefore, fundamental ontology , from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein. "^[77]

So far we have uncovered the reciprocal relationship, the hermeneutical circle so to speak, in the connection between Dasein and Being. Heidegger's thought here and in succeeding works is resolutely centered on Being, not on human being. He does not intend to provide a philosophical anthropology, much less a complete ontology, of Dasein.^[78] In fact, Heidegger's interest in human being is confined solely and wholly to its role in providing access to Being. That this is so is shown in two ways in Heidegger's thought. On the one hand, it is visible in the fact that, following the so-called turning in his thought, he later gives up the idea that we can accede to Being through Dasein in his turn away from human being. In the later phase of his thought, he resolutely attempts to think Being without human being. On the other hand, philosophically speaking, his political turn is not motivated, as might be thought, by a basic concern with human being, since this is never Heidegger's fundamental philosophical interest. From a philosophical perspective, it is rather motivated by the underlying concern with Being, which itself leads to politics.

In Being and Time Heidegger has not yet arrived at the idea that Being can be thought without human being. Here, he insists strongly that Dasein is the clue to Being. Since at this stage of his thought the way to Being necessarily runs through human being, fundamental ontology cannot wholly free itself from "philosophical anthropology," which it needs to address. For that reason, Heidegger inquires into the essential

structures of Dasein, which he describes in a preliminary way.^[79] Among these essential structures, none is more fundamental than Dasein's understanding of itself in terms of its existence.

According to Heidegger, existence, or the way in which Dasein always understands itself, concerns the possibility to be or not be to itself. He develops this idea in his analysis of the difference between authenticity and inauthenticity. This facet of his view provides a rigorous philosophical statement of the concern with alienation expressed in the traditional German concern with traditional Volksideologie . It further offers an alternative to the Marxist conception of alienation.^[80] Heidegger's main predecessor in his understanding of authenticity is Kierkegaard.^[81]

"Authenticity" can mean "what is really intended."^[82] As applied to human being, authenticity concerns a conception of self-realization through a choice of oneself. Heidegger identifies two basic characteristics of Dasein: "the priority of existentia over essentia and the fact that Dasein is in each case mine."^[83] Unlike entities, or mere things, Dasein is intrinsically directed toward the future. It is essentially characterized by the fact that its" 'essence' lies in its 'to be' [Zu-sein]."^[84] The Being of Dasein which is in question is in every case its own. On this basis, Heidegger infers that for Dasein the Being that is at issue is its ownmost possibility, namely its possibility either to be or not to be what it essentially is. In an important passage, he asserts that whether Dasein will be or not be its possibility is a matter of choice.

And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can , in its very Being, 'choose' itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or only 'seem' to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic—that is, something of its own—can it have lost itself and not yet won itself.^[85]

Authenticity and inauthenticity are correlative concepts. Both are grounded in the notion of mineness. Heidegger is at pains to stress that the difference between authenticity and inauthenticity does not concern the degree of Being. It follows, although he does not say so explicitly, that the difference concerns the type of Being, in other words the way that Dasein is itself. Since in principle Dasein always in a sense understands its own possibility, the way in which one is oneself is a matter of choice.^[86] Although surrounded with numerous precautions to distinguish the analytic of Dasein from other endeavors, Heidegger's analysis of Dasein is similar to other theories of human self-realization.^[87] For Heidegger, human being cannot be understood as a rational animal on the ancient Greek model or in terms of Christian theology; it must be

grasped through its own existence, or innermost possibility, which it necessarily understands and either chooses or fails to choose.

Now for Heidegger, a precondition of the thought of Being in an authentic manner is a break with the established tradition of metaphysical thought. For to follow the tradition on the well-known path of ontology is to accept precisely the view that must be "destroyed" in order to recover the original, correct alternative later covered up. Authentic thought of Being, like authenticity in all its forms, requires a withdrawal from the ordinary, in fact from the public in all its forms, where one mainly follows others, into the private sphere where one follows only oneself. On the conceptual level, this requires that one in effect think for oneself as opposed to remaining on paths already marked out.^[88] Hence, if for no other reason, Heidegger's conception of the problem of Being in this work demands that he bring about human authenticity as a condition of the working out of the problem itself.^[89]

Authenticity is obviously a key conception in Being and Time . There is a clear difference between an idea of authenticity, such as Heidegger's conception, and its practical realization. Special interest attaches to the transition from an understanding of the nature of an authentic person, namely the abstract, or philosophical, theory of authenticity, to actually being authentic in a concrete manner. Heidegger articulates his claim for the transition from a theoretical understanding of human being or Dasein as possibly authentic to authenticity in practice through a number of concepts, above all the notion of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit ).

Heidegger's argument depends on his basic understanding of human being. He summarizes his view of human being through the enumeration of four basic traits.^[90] Disclosedness (Erschlossenheit ), which belongs to the Being of human being, primarily concerns care (Sorge ), that is, being in a context at all, and being with whatever is in the context, in Heidegger's language Being-in-the-world and Being alongside entities within-the-world. "Thrownness" is Heidegger's way of indicating that we are dealing with people in concrete situations, not ideal or idealized concepts that function as the subjective pole in a theory of knowledge. "Projection," which also belongs to the Being of human being, is defined as "disclosive Being towards its potentiality for Being."^[91] This is Heidegger's designation for the capacity, ingredient in his basic conception of a person, to be aware of one's own capacities, capacities which every individual possesses. "Falling" is the term chosen to indicate that for the most part individuals are not authentic but inauthentic since, although aware of their own possibilities, they fail to choose them.

An awareness of one's capacities, which Heidegger insists we all possess, is merely a precondition to their manifestation. One has to be

aware of possibilities in order to bring them about, but the awareness itself is not the same as their manifestation. If a capacity, such as writing music, can only be realized because the person who possesses it is also aware of the fact, then this awareness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for its realization. If Bach is unaware that he has the ability to write cantatas, he is exceedingly unlikely to do so. Heidegger addresses the problem of the transition to authenticity, given the imputation of a conception of self-awareness, in a notion of resoluteness.

Resoluteness is the key transitional notion, the way in which Heidegger means to mediate between authenticity as a theoretical concept, an ideal for human being as it were, and its practical realization. According to Heidegger, to be resolute is already to be authentic.^[92] There is a faint echo here of Kant's idea of pure practical reason. For Kant, to determine oneself to act according to a principle applicable to every possible rational being is already in a sense to be moral; so for Heidegger, merely to be resolute is already to be authentic. The difference, on which Heidegger insists, is that unlike Kant's view of the subject as necessarily separate from the world, for Heidegger a person is already and necessarily in the concrete context. Resoluteness occurs in the life of a particular person, in a particular situation, at a particular time.

As elsewhere in Heidegger's theory, there are authentic and inauthentic forms of resoluteness. To be resolute is to anticipate a possibility, something a person can choose to be, rather like picking out a lifestyle. Now some possibilities are, in Heidegger's view, inessential because not specifically rooted in the essence of the person as such. Although they affect the person's Being, they do not do so in a way that belongs to that person as distinguished from others. Like Plato, Heidegger seems to hold that there are identifiable characteristics which individuals possess and that they ought to realize these characteristics in their actions, to concentrate on what is specific to them. Resoluteness is authentic, then, when it picks out what is uniquely characteristic of that person-in Heidegger's sibylline language, one's "ownmost authentic possibility."^[93] Heidegger's conception seems to contain something like a sense of resistance against other temptations or possibilities, almost like Ulysses resisting the blandishments of the sirens.

The conception of resoluteness invoked in order to account for the practical realization of authenticity is at least as abstract as the abstract concept it is intended to mediate. To point out that a person grasps his or her specific potentials is not the same as showing how this is in practice carried out. We don't have any criteria that allow us to identify what is intrinsic to the individual. Unless one holds that an individual who is resolute about being authentic cannot go wrong, or unless resoluteness is itself the authenticity one seeks, then more needs to be said to rule out

possible incorrect choices of oneself. Heidegger moves closer to the practical level in his account of historicality, or the authentic conception of history.^[94]

Heidegger's convoluted discussion of historicality carries special importance within the book for at least two reasons. First, it is plausible to hold that the work as a whole culminates in this passage, in the account of the transition from a manifold account of forms of human authenticity and inauthenticity to the concretely authentic person or group.^[95] Second, Heidegger understands time as the indispensable horizon of Being and Dasein as existence. At this point in the analysis existence and time, human being, and Being come together in a supposedly authentic conception of history.

Heidegger provides additional information about his view of resoluteness in the context of his discussion of historicality (Geschichtlichkeit ). The idea of authenticity is initially futural in that the possibility to be realized obviously lies in the future as something that can still come about. Heidegger now renders this conception more concrete by insisting that the possibility to be realized in the future is part of the heritage and, hence, lies in the past. Clearly, a heritage is what is transmitted from the past to later generations. For Heidegger, who here anticipates Gadamer's notion of the tradition as itself valuable, what is "good" is a heritage, since goodness makes authenticity possible, and goodness is transmitted in resoluteness.^[96] It follows, since authenticity is understood as the realization of the possibility that most intimately belongs to the individual person, that such possibilities are by their nature traditional in character. There is, then, a fiercely conservative strain in Heidegger's view of self-realization as the free choice of oneself, since to realize oneself, to resolutely seize the most intimate possibility available to one in choosing oneself, is finally to extend past tradition; for tradition itself is the vehicle of the "good." In a fundamental sense, the authenticity made possible by resoluteness is not innovative but repetitive in character; it is not the realization of what is new and unprecedented, but rather the repetition of a prior tradition which as such embodies "goodness." In a deep sense, for Heidegger to be authentic is to embrace or to repeat the past in one's own life through a reinstantiation of the tradition. Since Nazism claimed to embody the values of the authentic German, of the German Volk as German, there is, then, a profound parallel, providing for an easy transition without any compromise of basic philosophical principles, between Heidegger's conception of authenticity through resoluteness and National Socialism.

Heidegger expands on his conception of the transmission of the tradition as intrinsically good by introducing a series of distinctions concerning heritage and resoluteness. The two basic forms of tradition are fate

(Schicksal ), which concerns the individual, and destiny (Geschick ), which affects a group, such as a community or people.^[97] Heidegger here notes, as he has done before, that authenticity can be either individual or on the level of the group. What, for lack of a better term, we can call "plural authenticity" can come about if the group authentically shares its heritage and realizes it.^[98] When the group shares in an authentic manner that which represents its authentic heritage, then it obviously can be authentic in a plural sense. It is in this sense that he introduces the German idea of the people (Volk ), namely a community (Gemeinschaft ), as distinguished presumably from a society, which shares a common heritage, or destiny.^[99]

Heidegger further mentions conceptions of the hero, the moment of vision, and loyalty. The conception of the hero (Held ) is evoked in relation to the authentic repetition of a possibility.^[100] We can speculate that the hero is one willing to sacrifice or even die for this cause, that is, the destiny of the Volk . Here, Heidegger stresses the notion of struggle in which the hero acts as a model for others, who can follow in his footsteps as it were. It is this notion which he later applied, during his period as rector, in praise of Albert Leo Schlageter, a young man who was earlier hanged for terrorist acts against French and Belgian troops in the Rhineland and whom Heidegger eulogized as a hero.^[101] Heidegger further links resoluteness with the moment of vision (Augenblick ).^[102] Like the theological conception of kairos , there is a right time, a propitious instant when things come together, so to speak—a moment when an important action is possible, such as the transition to authenticity in practice through the grasp and reenactment of one's heritage on both the levels of the individual and the group. An important aspect of Heidegger's Nazi turning was his conviction that National Socialism offered the historical moment for the realization of the authenticity of the German Volk .

This account of the basic structure of Being and Time shows that Heidegger's conception of ontology commits him, as a condition of thinking through the problem of the meaning of "Being," to a political understanding of human being, that is, to an idea of the person as mainly inauthentic but as possibly authentic in a concrete fashion. The very concern with fundamental ontology requires a political turn since an authentic thought of Being can only arise on the basis of concrete authenticity. Heidegger's concern with the problem of the meaning of Being is not apolitical; nor is it indifferent to theory and practice in virtue of its concern with the Seinsfrage . Rather, the concern with "Being" is itself intrinsically political.

My argument to this point can be summarized as follows. Heidegger's turn to National Socialism, which cannot be denied, was motivated by factors intrinsic and extrinsic to his philosophical position. Extrinsic

factors include the general sense of despair in the waning days of the Weimar Republic, the concern with Volk ideology, the desire to recover self-respect in the wake of the disastrous defeat in the First World War, and so on. These influences, which were in the air, so to speak, at the time he was working out his fundamental ontology, constitute the wider contemporary context in which his philosophical theory emerged. These extrinsic factors are not merely part of the background but are in fact incorporated into Heidegger's thought in various ways—for instance, in his extensive reflection on the theme of authenticity. The intrinsic factors are those aspects of his philosophical theory which led him toward politics and which further made it possible for him to accept National Socialism. Heidegger's understanding of ontology commits him to a turn to politics, centered on the conception of human authenticity, which demands realization in a political context, as a condition of the authentic thought of Being. Heidegger's turn to Nazism was an obvious attempt to seize a supposedly propitious historical moment. The mere fact that Heidegger's attempt to seize the day was a decision for the darkest night of the human soul should not be invoked to explain his adherence to National Socialism as a mere error of judgment, as a simple mistake, as the kind of mistake anyone, so to speak, could make. The reason is obvious: unlike everyone, or his academic colleagues, or even other philosophers, Heidegger possessed an important philosophical theory, and it is this theory itself which led him from the ivory tower inhabited by German intellectuals toward the political arena.

Ontology and Existence: On the Way to Practice

The turn from the theory of Being in Being and Time to political practice did not occur immediately, although it was also not long in coming. Since important thinkers do not always realize the implications of their ideas, and Heidegger was an important thinker, it is possible that he was not immediately aware of the political implications of his study of ontology. Nevertheless, he quickly turned to practice and to politics on the basis of his thought. The initial step out of the ivory tower and into the real world occurred in his discussion of the crisis faced within Germany in the latter part of the Weimar Republic. Since Heidegger was officially concerned only with the problem of Being, he has often been portrayed as an unpolitical person, as uninterested in or unaware of the surrounding world, as the fictional absentminded professor.^[103] On the contrary, Heidegger was deeply aware of and interested in contemporary events, as witness numerous references in his lecture courses to happenings of the day. He was specifically disturbed by the general

cultural mood prevalent in the later period of the Weimar Republic. His analysis of this existential situation is doubly interesting: as a phase in the transition from fundamental ontology to National Socialism through an initial political turning, and as an effort to confront the contemporary political malaise through his theory of Being.

The significance of Heidegger's remarks on cultural criticism, besides their intrinsic interest, lies in his concern to apply his theory of Being to the analysis of the current existential malaise at a point late in the Weimar Republic, as the incipient economic depression is spreading throughout the world, when all concerned are aware that the experiment in democratic liberalism in the Weimar Republic is in deep trouble, when powerful forces are emerging to challenge both liberalism and communism through a conservative revolution from the right.

Heidegger turns to contemporary society in his lecture course of 1929/ 30, at a point located between the publication of Being and Time and prior to the rectoral speech, shortly before his private turning to National Socialism in 1931.^[104] The analysis of Being in Being and Time offers a theoretical reason for the link of fundamental ontology to politics, which is only mandated theoretically but is not yet carried out. It is in abeyance, waiting to happen so to speak. A transition from theory to practice, but not yet to politics, in effect a practical intermezzo, occurs in Heidegger's analysis of the contemporary political situation in his lecture course. Here, we see Heidegger's effort to come to grips with the really existing social world, in this case the current social situation, from the perspective of his philosophical theory.

Heidegger's attempt to confront the existential situation through an analysis of mood is an application of his fundamental ontology. For Heidegger, everyone always has a mood of some kind, and he understands mood as the actually existing manifestation of the potential for state-of-mind.^[105] Heidegger insists that one's state-of-mind, or potential for a given mood, is significant not only to disclose a person as what he or she is but also as an indication of how an individual comes into contact with its world.^[106] For this reason, he regards the state-of-mind in general as providing an important clue for existential analysis. In Being and Time , Heidegger employs his conception of state-of-mind as a basic clue to elucidate fear and anxiety. In his lecture course, Heidegger switches his attention from fear and anxiety to boredom. In his analysis of the present situation, Heidegger insists that the basic mood of the present is boredom induced by the failure to be an authentic person, which he interprets as a clue to a deeper problem: the problem of Being. In his reading of the contemporary situation, in his diagnosis of the contemporary dependence on slogans, Heidegger maintains that no one is really the master of "the inner greatness" (der inneren Grösse ) of Dasein.^[107]

Heidegger maintains that the deep boredom characteristic of current social life is ontologically significant. The discussion comes to a head in the final paragraph of the first part (§ 38), which bears the significant, but rather clumsy title: "Essential need in general, the missing (self-denial) of the essential distress of our contemporary Dasein as the left-emptiness of the particularly deep boredom." Heidegger leaves no doubt about his bleak view of the contemporary situation, including the decline of the Weimar Republic and worldwide economic depression:

Everywhere there are deep shakings [Erschütterungen], crises, catastrophes, needs [Nöte]: contemporary social misery, political confusion, the powerlessness of science, the emptiness [Aushöhlung] of art, the ungroundedness of philosophy, the incapacity of religion. Certainly, there are needs everywhere.^[108]

In this connection, Heidegger makes five points, each of which contributes to an analysis of the contemporary social crisis and an identification of the role for philosophy in the practical social sphere.

1. The hidden basic mood of the current situation is deep boredom (tiefe Langeweile ).^[109] This is his basic diagnosis of the contemporary social crisis through the application of the conceptions of mood and state-of-mind developed in his fundamental ontology.

2. Everyone is aware of the situation. But others have so far failed to grasp the real nature of the problem since they invariably tend to focus on types of need to the neglect of need as such.^[110] Examples of this failure are provided by psychology, including depth psychology and psychoanalysis. Heidegger here offers a methodological critique of other approaches to the understanding of contemporary society through an application of his canonical ontological difference, roughly the difference between the ontological and ontical dimensions.

3. Merely to ask the proper question—more precisely, to raise the question of the basic mood (Grundstimmung )—is to perform a crucial service. This questioning does not justify or deal with contemporary human being as human, but rather frees human being's specifically human capacity as Dasein.

To question concerning this basic mood does not mean to justify and to carry on with the present humanness of human beings [Menschheit des Menschen], but to free the humanness in human being, the humanness of human being, that is, to free the essence of human being, to permit Dasein in him essentially to become.^[111]

4. Heidegger specifies what Dasein can become by drawing attention to the link between his concern with the present time of need and the

question of the meaning of Being raised in his fundamental ontology. To free human being by enabling it to become Dasein is not to place it in an arbitrary situation. It is rather to divest it of its specific burden and, accordingly, to free it. "The freeing of Dasein in human being does not mean to put him into an arbitrary situation [Willkür], but to remove from him his ownmost [eigenste] burden. Only one who can truly give oneself a burden is free."^[112]

5. Heidegger understands the proposed questioning as practically important. The proper questioning, which is parenthetically only possible from the perspective of fundamental ontology, is intended to lead us in two directions: to action and to being (zum Handeln und zum Sein ).^[113]

Heidegger's conception of how to minister to the malady of the present day provides insight into his view of human being, including its role in his philosopical theory. His concern is manifest here on two levels, in respect to (1) the dreadful disintegration of contemporary Germany, and (2) his reading of the deeper significance of the present mood. It is, then, significant that, despite his linguistic tip of the hat to the gravity of the momentary situation, his concern is finally not with human being but with Being. Others are obviously shocked by the grave social situation present in the declining phase of the Weimar Republic because of an abiding interest in human being. But here and elsewhere, this more usual humane concern is wholly absent in Heidegger's personal and philosophical perspectives. From a strictly philosophical point of view, it is fair to say that he fastens on the practical situation in order to further fundamental ontology.

Since Dasein is that being concerned with Being, in a word the Seinsfrage , to bring about the fulfillment of Dasein is to create the real possibility to grasp Being. For human being to realize itself has nothing to do with its present distress, but everything to do with being an authentic human being, namely that being essentially concerned with Being. It follows that the problem of Being, the center of theoretical concern in his fundamental ontology, is also doubly implicated in his analysis of the present-day situation of Germany: as the conceptual framework of the analysis, and as the problem toward which the contemporary situation points. In short, in rather transparent fashion Heidegger here substitutes his own philosophical concerns for the existential concerns created by the world economic collapse and the decline of the Weimar Republic.

The result of this discussion is to point to a clear dualism in Heidegger's analysis of Being. His fundamental ontology is clearly circular, since the analysis of Being leads to a conception of human being, which is either inauthentic or authentic. An authentic grasp of Being depends on an authentic human being. The interest in human being is, then, twofold: perhaps or at least possibly for the sake of human beings, but

finally and most basically for the sake of the understanding of Being. To put the same point in other words, Heidegger's main concern is with Being, not human being; he turns to human being as the way into the problem of Being. Even in his most concrete moments, such as in his application of his theoretical framework to the analysis of contemporary society, his main interest lies in the understanding of Being. This same overriding concern is the main thread of his turn in the rectoral address to Nazism.

From Practice to Politics

Heidegger insists on the importance of mood. We can summarize Heidegger's own mood in the waning period of the Weimar Republic, as revealed in this text, as follows: Obviously, human being is in trouble and the ordinary solutions seem not to have taken hold. Yet the problematic nature of contemporary life is finally due to the turn of human being away from its ownmost possibilities of being, which can only be understood in terms of the problem of Being. For this reason, Dasein must be forced to listen to that which it has refused to hear, to be forced to take up a burden in order to be free. For only in this way can Dasein reach its so-called inner greatness.

The problem of Dasein's inner greatness as an authentic possibility in its moment of need is a precipitating factor in Heidegger's Nazi turning. Everything points to a convergence at this point in Heidegger's development of his concern with the problem of Being as supposedly manifest in the contemporary German social context, the various influences arising through the decline of the Weimar Republic and the strengthened appeal of Volk ideology, the reflection of these themes in Heidegger's own philosophical theory, which necessarily provokes a turn to practice, and the practical instantiation of similar themes in National Socialist politics. There is an obvious, profound link between Heidegger's interest in authenticity, the romantic Volk idea of the realization of the individual in the state as the true reconciliation of the spirit of the people, and the Nazi idea of the identity or essential unity of the German state and the so-called Aryan race. The idea of the Volk , which is not precisely translated as "people," is difficult to define but is important to an understanding of German ideology and Heidegger's attraction to Nazism. One of its main characteristics, which connects it to the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment as an alternative solution to the problems of alienation and reconciliation, is the union, or making whole, of the individual or group with its transcendent spirit, or essence.^[114]

This view of the overcoming of alienation through effective historical realization of the spirit of the Volk provides a clue to Heidegger's turn to

Nazism. It is not necessary to claim that Heidegger subscribed to a biological theory of race to perceive that for reasons internal to his philosophy, his analysis of the contemporary situation was conducive to acceptance of the conservative Volk perspective and the much more extreme National Socialist program. It is, then, no accident that in the rectoral speech Heidegger strongly stresses the concept of spirit. For the concept of the spirit of the people, or Volksgeist , of the essence of the German people, provides the link between Heidegger's view of Dasein in the light of his comprehension of Being, the conservative völkisch response to the situation of human being in modern society, and the Nazi program.

Fundamental Ontology and National Socialism: the Rectoral Address

The discussion in this chapter to this point has been prolegomenal. I have argued that Heidegger's philosophy of Being is intrinsically political. I have further shown that he turned to practice which he analyzed through the lens of his philosophy. And I have issued a promissory note in the form of the as yet unsupported claim that his turn to Nazism was based in his philosophy. I now want to redeem that promissory note, which is so far no more than that, through a reading of the rectoral address,^[115] the main exoteric document of Heidegger's public identification with National Socialism. Now the idea that philosophy is the ground of politics is as old as Plato's Republic . I am convinced that Heidegger's approach to politics in his speech is quasi-Platonic, in fact a form of right-wing Platonism. My aim in reading this text is to show not only that Heidegger's turning to National Socialism is based on his philosophical position, but further that his speech can be read in a rather straightforward manner as an effort to found National Socialism in fundamental ontology.

The rectoral address is the text in which Heidegger for the first time publicly associated his own philosophy with National Socialism. The so-called Rektoratsrede was a public speech given by Heidegger, the newly elected rector of the University of Freiburg, on 27 May 1933 on the occasion of the ceremonial transfer of the rector's office. Heidegger's inauguration as rector of the University of Freiburg in April 1933 took place immediately after the end of the Weimar Republic when Hitler had already taken power, at the beginning of the new postrepublican period, symbolizing a return to the imperialistic form of German politics. Almost immediately thereafter, there was a suspension of the formal rule of law, of freedom of expression, and of habeas corpus. Civil

rights were abrogated and a legal basis was established for a Nazi dictatorship. Dictatorial powers were voted to Hitler for a period of four years. Most Jews were deprived of civil service jobs, including those in the university. In March, the first concentration camps were established and publicly announced. On 1 April a boycott of all Jewish establishments was instituted. In May, there was a burning of "decadent" works by Jews and non-Jews. In the same month, labor unions and then, in July, political parties were banned. In the early summer, the Vatican entered into a treaty, or Konkordat , with Hitler, negotiated for the National Socialist government by von Papen, which provided the first official recognition of Hitler's regime.^[116]

Heidegger's speech has already attracted extensive attention.^[117] Analysis of this speech from various perspectives has shown an indebtedness, surprising in this thinker of Being, to some less than lofty sources, such as H. S. Sommerfeldt's study, Hermann Göring: Ein Lebensbild .^[118] Heidegger evidently took Göring, the Reichsminister, Innenminister for Prussia, and a leading Hitler associate, as a model for the new German man.^[119] Here, it will be useful to consider the specifically philosophical context of Heidegger's speech in order to bring out the relation between his fundamental ontology and his turn to politics.

Heidegger's talk represents his further effort, after his analysis of the social situation in the latter days of the Weimar Republic, to apply his philosophical theory in and to political practice. The rectoral address is a short text, about ten pages in length, elicited by a specific occasion. It is not, however, a merely occasional text, a few well-chosen words with no intrinsic significance, unworthy of further consideration. Rather, it is a philosophical discussion of surprising depth, which largely surpasses the occasion for which it was written, and would be worth studying with care even were it not a main document in Heidegger's turn to National Socialism. Since the text does not interpret itself, we will need to provide an interpretation.

The significance of Heidegger's speech is suggested by the various ways in which it has been interpreted. It has been read from different, even incompatible, perspectives: as a strategic effort to lead the German university, even to lead the leaders of the Nazi state; as a defense of the German university; as a defense of the Greek concept of science; and in other ways. One should not deny that Heidegger's talk is in part intended to perform these tasks, and can hence be described as performing them; but it is more than that. While recognizing that there are grounds for legitimate disagreement with the reading to be advanced here, I will interpret the rectoral speech as a coherent philosophical text in the service of Nazism. I am convinced that Heidegger's talk represents a well-thought-out philosophical effort to put philosophy as he under-

stood it in the service of National Socialism in the first place for what he portrayed as the good of the German people, but ultimately for his own view of Being. In my view, this speech is primarily, and should be regarded as, an effort to apply a philosophical theory, conceived in independence of Nazism and before that movement came to power, within a political context for which Heidegger believed his thought was relevant, indeed essential, in order to bring about a goal Heidegger shared with National Socialism and Volk ideology—the historical gathering of the Germans—as well as a goal of his own: the comprehension of Being.

It is, then, reasonable to assume that Heidegger's words on this occasion are not merely strategic, nor merely limited to the immediate situation, but express his own deepest view of the matter, drawing on the entire range of intellectual resources at his command. Although concerned with the alienation of the German Volk , with the opportunity supposedly presented for the coming to being of what is specifically German, this is only an intermediate end, that is a means to a further, more important goal, for Heidegger is finally more concerned with Being. It is his ultimate concern with his ontological preoccupation which made it possible for Heidegger, after the decline of real Nazism, to remain faithful to a kind of ideal Nazism. He may, as Löwith suggests, have been fascinated by Hitler.^[120] But his abiding fascination was undoubtedly with Being itself, which called forth his commitment to National Socialism as a way station on the road to ontology.

The later thrust of Heidegger's philosophy is decidedly anti-Platonic. Yet in the rectoral address, Heidegger's understanding of philosophy as essential to National Socialism is basically Platonic. There are divergent ways to interpret the Platonic view of philosophy as the final arbiter of knowlege and as the foundation of politics. The Platonic view has from time to time animated philosophers in the history of the tradition, who regarded themselves as responsible for others, even all others, in virtue of their special claim to knowledge. It animated, for example, Fichte, who claimed a responsibility for all Germans:

And act thou shalt as though
The destiny of all things German
Depended on you and your lonely acting,
And the responsibility were yours.^[121]

This Platonic idea of the peculiar responsibilty of philosophers as philosophers can lead in two directions. It is worth recalling that Fichte's words were cited by Kurt Huber, the only philosopher executed by the Nazis, whose participation in the White Rose conspiracy against Hitler cost him his life.^[122] Heidegger used the same idea of the cognitive privi-

lege of philosophy to argue for philosophy as the foundation of Nazism. For Heidegger, the philosopher is the necessary component, the conceptual linchpin as it were, for the realization of the National Socialist program. As for Plato, so in this text for Heidegger as well, the necessary condition of the ideal or just state is that it be led by a philosopher.^[123] It is, then, consistent to regard his later effort to reject philosophy in favor of a so-called new thinking beyond "philosophy" as doubly determined by the internal evolution of his position as well as by his evident inability to lead the leaders, by his unsuccessful effort to apply philosophy to politics.

Heidegger is not the only philosopher who turned to politics. Perhaps the closest analogy in our time is with the Hungarian Marxist philosopher Lukács.^[124] Both the Bolshevist Lukács and the National Socialist Heidegger take a quasi-Platonic stance on the need for philosophy to found politics, and both place their considerable intellectual resources in the service of totalitarian political practice. Heidegger's relation to Nazism resembles Lukács's relation to Marxism-Leninism. It has been said that Lukács provided the philosophical grounding for Leninist politics.^[125] It is plausible to regard Heidegger's speech as an effort, based in the extension and interpretation of his own thought, to provide the philosophical grounding for Nazism. In the same way as Lukács turned to politics, from which he later withdrew after the failure of his attempt to translate his thought into practice, so Heidegger also was later marked by his unfortunate effort to descend from the philosophical perch into the political arena. Also like Lukács, Heidegger later abjured the desire to actualize his thought through political action, although he remained faithful to his original political view.

The title of the speech, "The Self-Assertion [Selbstbehauptung] of the German University," records a quadruple commitment: a self-justification; a self-defense, in this case the defense of oneself against the presumed efforts by others to usurp one's place; the self-assertion of the university for a special role to be played by the university in general and the philosophers in particular; and, finally, the self-assertion of the German people through the university.^[126] The text begins with the following, crucial statement:

The assumption of the rectorate is the commitment to the spiritual leadership of this institution of higher learning. The following of teachers and students awakens and grows strong only from a true and joint rootedness in the essence of the German university. 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.^[127]

As early as the first sentence, Heidegger lays claim to the traditional role of philosophy in the statement that in assuming the rectorate he commits himself to the spiritual, or intellectual, leadership of the institution of higher learning. A view of spiritual leadership presupposes a conception of spirit. In German philosophy, where the idea of spirit is a leading theme, it refers roughly to a conception of reason as mediated through the social and historical context as the highest point of culture. Spirit is a leading theme in modern German philosophy, for instance in the views of Fichte, Hegel, and Dilthey. For Fichte, the end of life is the development of the spiritual order. In Hegelian idealism, human being differs from nonhuman being through the spiritual dimension, which is manifested in culture. He analyzes the spiritual dimension of existence in magisterial fashion in the Phenomenology of Spirit . In part following Droysen, Dilthey insisted on the difference in kind between natural and social sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften , literally the sciences of the spirit.

Heidegger develops his claim about the university in the next two sentences by applying his conceptions of the ontological difference, fate, history, the Volk^[128] or people, truth as disclosure, and so on, all drawn from his fundamental ontology. For Heidegger, the university is an institution composed of teachers and students who are rooted in the so-called essence of the German university. Heidegger names the background for his speech in his reference to the historical fate of the German people. The image he describes is that of an unbroken chain whose links are constituted by the supposed spiritual mission of the Germans within history, the leaders who are led by that mission, their followers composed of other teachers and students, and presumably all other members of the nation.

In invoking the idea of the essence of the university, Heidegger applies his idea of truth as disclosure in a Platonic manner. We recall that Plato insisted on a distinction in kind between reality and appearance and that he further insisted that only philosophers who possessed the inherent mental capabilities honed by appropriate training were able to perceive reality. In quasi-Platonic fashion, Heidegger suggests that the university possesses an essence, as distinguished from its appearance, which he, as a philosopher, is uniquely able to perceive. Others, nonphilosophers, are unable to see the university's essence and hence unable to lead either it or Nazism. Since from his quasi-Platonic angle of vision, the philosopher, incarnating the spirit of the university and the German people, is alone capable of discerning what should be done, Heidegger's demand to lead the university as its spiritual leader, or spiritual Führer ,^[129] is also a claim that only the spiritual, but not the political, leader can lead the state to realize the destiny of the German people.

The Marxist view of the leading role of the party, led by the leader, rests on Marx's conception of the philosopher as the head of the revolution, so to speak—as one whose intellectual qualities provide him with a unique task.^[130] Similarly, Heidegger now asserts that the philosopher and only the philosopher is qualified to lead the German revolution initiated by Nazism.

The idea of the historical fate of the German people rests on the concept of fate introduced by Heidegger in Being and Time . His appeal to fate and destiny represents a qualified return to the Greek concept of moira , to an analysis of history in mythical rather than causal terms,^[131] as in the well-known myth of the three fates reported by Plato.^[132] There is a clear continuity between the analysis of historicality in Being and Time and the initial paragraph of the Rektoratsrede . Heidegger here adopts a nonbiological but metaphysical theory of racism—an exaltation of the Germans specifically in virtue of their belonging to the German people, deeply informed by conservative political thought, including Volk ideology—as concerns the realization of the German people, at the expense of other peoples if necessary. To this end, he links together two views: his own view of fate and its realization through the decisive action of a people spurred on to achieve its destiny in the choice of itself, in effect to be its ownmost possibilities for being as specified through its heritage, on the one hand; and the Nazi view of the intrinsic destiny of the German people as distinguished from other peoples on the other. In his choice of the title "The Self-Assertion of the German University" for this public talk, Heidegger affirms his intention to bend the philosophical resources of his position to a specific political task in a fourth form of self-assertion: the self-assertion of the German people in the conscious decision, as voiced by the newly elected rector of the University of Freiburg, to seize their own destiny. This destiny will be realized through the leadership of the university, particularly through the central role of philosophy, above all through Heidegger's philosophy within the university. True Nazism, Nazism in the authentic sense, cannot be left to the National Socialists, the exponents of "political science"; it requires a philosopher.

The interpretation of the passage "forces the fate of the German people to bear the stamp of its history" ("Schicksal des deutschen Volkes in das Gepräge seiner Geschichte zwingt") is delicate. In Being and Time , Heidegger distinguishes between fate, which refers to the individual, and destiny, which refers to the group, more precisely to the manner in which one relates to others. Heidegger's application of the term "fate" here to the German people, a plural noun, indicates that he regards the Germans as a unity, as a group whose members are intrinsically linked together in a particular manner. What they share is not

something like belonging to the same club or living in the same neighborhood. For Heidegger, this linkage is historical; it lies in the common heritage shared by the Germans as German. According to Heidegger, in virtue of their German origins, the Germans partake of a deep relationship that is already determined for them by history. He stresses this point in Being and Time with the strong expression "fateful destiny of Dasein" (das schicksalhafte Geschick des Daseins ), which violates his distinction between fate and destiny, to designate the way in which a person is related to his or her generation.^[133] What Heidegger in the rectoral address, in reference to the destiny of the Germans, calls "the stamp of its history" (Gepräge seiner Geschichte ) is a metaphysical claim about what the Germans are as Germans. For Heidegger, then, the role of the philosopher, what he further designates here as "the unyielding spiritual mission" entrusted to him as the Führer of the University of Freiburg, is nothing other than calling the German people back from its lack of awareness into what it, as German, inherently is, that is, Germans with a potential to exhibit their Germanity, to realize their past in their future actions. What I am calling the realization of the Germans as German is Heidegger's metaphysical understanding of the conception of the destiny of the German people to realize themselves in history.

As I read this text, its initial paragraph records Heidegger's clear and forceful public declaration of his intent to provide vital philosophical help and sustenance to the Nazi political program, support which in his eyes is a necessary condition for its realization. It is possible to read this passage in the rectoral address differently. There is a linguistic defense available amounting to a denial of Heidegger's turn toward Nazism in the observation that the word "Führer " appears here in the plural. In response, we can note that in the context of his rise to the position of rector shortly after Hitler came to power, Heidegger is proposing to lead the leaders of National Socialism and, finally but unmistakably, Hitler himself. As Pöggeler, following Jaspers, has seen, Heidegger understood the concept of the self-assertion of the German university to mean that he would lead the Nazi revolution.^[134] Paradoxically, in his public statement of his desire to bend philosophy to the task of Nazi politics, in his own peculiar expression of philosophical loyalty to the National Socialist revolution, he at the same time sows the seeds of discord between himself and official Nazism in his attempted philosophical usurpation of political hegemony.^[135] For Heidegger characteristically depicts himself not in the role of the vassal who pledges fealty but in the role of the feudal lord.

The initial paragraph of the talk provides a clear, forceful, unsettling, in fact frightening statement of Heidegger's intention to ground politics in philosophy by basing Nazism on fundamental ontology. The initial

paragraph does not stand alone; it is merely the preamble for the text to follow, which amplifies and completes the main lines set out in the beginning of the document. In the remainder of his speech, Heidegger develops the implications of the supposed need to marry philosophy and politics at this particular moment in German history. He immediately considers the implications of the traditional claim of the university to self-governance, which, he asserts, requires interpretation in terms of who one is, namely the essence of the university, which can be revealed through self-examination only. The university's self-assertion, he states, in a reference to the title of the essay, consists in a common will to the shared will to realize its essence.

In defense of his claim, Heidegger now forges a link between the acknowledged task of the university to defend science, the fate of the German people, and the present historical moment. In the Republic , Plato insists on the task of the philosopher to educate and to discipline the other philosophers, the guardians and the tradesmen. Like Plato, Heidegger points successively to the role of the university to ground science as well as to educate and to discipline the leaders and guardians of the German people, in the present historical moment the German Nazi party. "We understand the Germany university as the 'high' school that, grounded in science, by means of science educates and disciplines the leaders and guardians of the fate of the German people.^[136]

Heidegger's analysis presupposes a concept of the right time for decisive action, or kairos , described under the heading of the moment of vision (Augenblick ) in Being and Time . He insists that both science— whose contemporary source lies in the German university—and the fate of Germany must come together in order to respond to the problem of the present moment. Presumably he has in mind the series of difficulties due to the loss of the First World War, later accentuated by the decline and fall of the Weimar Republic, the same general situation discussed under the heading of boredom in the lecture course of 1929/30.

The idea of a historical turning point has ample philosophical precedent. At the time he composed the Phenomenology , Hegel believed that society was at a turning of world history, a period in which fundamental social change was possible, a moment in which the old order was coming to an end and in which it was opportune to seize the day, as it were.^[137] Like Hegel, Heidegger thought that history had arrived at a propitious moment in which philosophy can play an important social role. Also like Hegel, Heidegger believes that a people ultimately knows itself in the form of the self-conscious state—according to Heidegger, in the Nazi state. Like Husserl, Heidegger holds that the university can respond to the extreme need of the German people at this supposedly historic moment. But Husserl and Heidegger take diametrically opposed atti-

tudes to National Socialism. Husserl opposed Nazism and desired to utilize the resources of philosophy as science to defeat it; but Heidegger saw philosophical science as a necessary condition to realize the fate of the Germans through National Socialism:

The will to the essence of the German university is the will to science as will to the historical mission of the German people as a people that knows itself in its state. Together , science and German fate must come to power in this will to essence. And they will do so if, and only if, we—this body of teachers and students—on the one hand expose science to its innermost necessity and, on the other hand , are equal to the German fate in its most extreme distress.^[138]

Heidegger next turns to a meditation on the nature of science (Wissenschaft ). Contemporary science is a mere semblance (Schein ). Science must be understood through its beginnings in Greek philosophy since all science is philosophy. We need to recapture two fundamental traits of the essence of the Greek view of science. Since, as Aeschylus represents Prometheus as saying, "knowledge, however, is far weaker than necessity,"^[139] knowledge must be defiant. Heidegger reinforces this view through a series of remarks on the Greek view of theory (theoria ) as the highest form of activity (energeia ). His insistence here that theory in the authentic sense is in fact the highest form of activity, as described in the Aristotelian conception, highlights his later claim that the translation of the Greek "energeia " as the Latin "actualitas " results in the loss of the original insight.^[140] Heidegger's point is consistent with his insistence that after the early Greeks metaphysics is on the wrong track, since science in the Greek sense of the term no longer exists in later thought. Speaking in his own voice, he declares that "this active perseverance [that is, science] knows, as it perseveres, about its impotence before fate [Schicksal]."^[141]

The passage cited from Aeschylus and its restatement in Heidegger's own words call for three remarks: To begin with, Heidegger's translation is suspect. According to standard sources "techne " does not mean "knowledge."^[142] At best, it refers to a kind of knowledge, roughly that kind required for "knowing how" as opposed to "knowing that." Second, there is an interesting relation between the view that theory is in itself the highest form of practice and Heidegger's effort to place his philosophy in the service of Nazism. Heidegger is not now arguing, as he later will, that his thought is impractical, of no use.^[143] He is arguing that pure theory is practically relevant, in fact indispensable for the good life, in the sense that this view is formulated by Plato and restated by numerous later writers.^[144] Further, in retrospect there is a strategic value to Heidegger's insistence that necessity is stronger than knowledge. On this

basis, Heidegger later insisted that the failure of his turn to National Socialism did not lie in National Socialism itself, and perhaps not even in his perception of it, but in Being. The idea that Being, not human being, controls human destiny forms the basis of his later nonanthropological view of technology. We perceive, then, in the quotation, and in its restatement by Heidegger, the nascent possibilty of a strategic retreat which Heidegger later undertook.

The meditation on the essence of Greek science is intrinsic to Heidegger's allegiance to Nazism, as he proceeds to demonstrate. We need to recover the original Greek view on the premise that if science is important, its beginning is most important. The original idea of science is significant since its recovery enables us to bend science to the innermost necessity of our being. Heidegger now emphasizes the political force of his view of the preeminence of Greek thought in two ways, through a single sentence that stands apart as a paragraph of its own, and through the appropriate combination of his concept of Dasein with the traditional philosophical concept of spirit and the Nazi concept of the people (Volk ): "But if we submit to the distant command of the beginning, science must become the fundamental happening of our spiritual being as part of a people [dann muss die Wissenschaft zum Grundgeschehnis unseres geistig-völklichen Daseins werden]."^[145] In less sibylline language, Heidegger's statement means that we need to return to the original Greek sense of science within the university, particularly within philosophy, in order to realize the fate of the German nation. If we do so, then, unavoidably, science will become the fundamental happening, which will bring this destiny about. The means for science to bring about German destiny is obviously through the realization of Nazism to which Heidegger has pledged the resources of his thought.

It is striking that Heidegger seems to believe that science in the true sense somehow realizes or could realize itself in Nazism. Heidegger seems literally to believe that science in the ancient Greek sense will realize the Nazi goal, which he also shares, of the gathering of what is authentically German. From this conception it follows loosely that the Greeks would be the authentic forerunners of the German National Socialists. Heidegger was aware of this inference, which he is at pains to refute, perhaps because he later changed his mind about the link between the Greeks and the Nazis. In a lecture course given in the middle of the Second World War, he twice denies that the Greeks are the original Nazis on the grounds that this kind of identification fails to grasp the specificity of National Socialism.^[146] Since Heidegger may then have been under political surveillance, it is also possible that he did not change his mind but that in drawing this distinction he merely meant to be prudent in his own way.

What is it precisely that true, or Greek, science is meant to bring about? Heidegger answers this question in a meditation on spirit, which dramatically deepens the link between his own philosophical position and Nazism. According to Heidegger, what he calls the will to the essence of science in the original sense creates for the people the danger of the spiritual world. Heidegger relies on his fundamental ontology when he states that spirit is the resoluteness (Entschlossenheit ) to the essence of Being. Yet he utilizes the Blut und Boden rhetoric of National Socialism^[147] when he writes that the "spiritual world of a people" is "the power that most deeply preserves the people's strengths, which are tied to earth and blood powers [seiner erd- und bluthaften Kräfte] as the power of the innermost and widest shaking of its Dasein."^[148] Now playing on the relation between the German terms "Marchschritt " and "Schrittgesetz ," roughly "march step" and "law of the step," he emphasizes that the defense of the spiritual world, to be undertaken by the university, will preside over the march already begun by the people into its future history. In sum, the authentic way of Being with respect to German destiny depends on the defense of the ancient Greek concept of science, which alone can and will make possible the desired future of the German people.

Heidegger's view of theory as itself the highest form of practice is merely a restatement of the traditional Greek view of philosophy as the highest form of life. Unlike some thinkers, Heidegger does not maintain that theory is self-realizing, that ideas in some sense literally put themselves into practice.^[149] Heidegger finds the means for the realization of his theory in an analysis of the German student movement. His view here anticipates by several decades Herbert Marcuse's theory of the student movement as a radically destabilizing social element.^[150] Further extending his military metaphor, Heidegger says that the German students are already on the march in the search for the leaders (Führer ) through whom to realize their own vocation (Bestimmung ).

This statement is both self-serving and explosive. Obviously, Heidegger is pointing toward philosophers as the custodians of the ancient conception of science and himself as their titular head. But he is also pointing away from the National Socialist government, above all Hitler, whose leadership he by inference rejects. For Heidegger, in the final analysis only the German university can defend the original Greek concept of science in order to realize the fate of the German people. The crucial role of the students is to bring this goal about. "Out of the resoluteness of the German student body to be equal to the German fate in its most extreme distress, comes a will to the essence of the university."^[151] Again like the early Marx, who thought of the philosophers as the head and the proletariat as the heart of the coming communist

revolution,^[152] Heidegger obviously thinks of the philosophers as the leaders and the students as the followers of the true, philosophically grounded form of the National Socialist revolution.

Heidegger elaborates his view through two further remarks. First, he qualifies the will attributed to the students as the true will, which he now links to the newly promulgated student law (das neue Studentenrecht ). We are far from Kant's view of the good will as the only intrinsically good thing.^[153] For Kant, the good will must determine the principle of its action on a wholly a priori and universalizable basis. For Heidegger, the true will is neither independent, nor free, nor autonomous in Kant's sense, as unconcerned with empirical considerations. On the contrary, for Heidegger the true will is subservient to the Studentenrecht intended after 1 May 1933 to apply the so-called Führerprinzip in the university. Heidegger's understanding of this idea, which decisively linked all legitimacy to the desires of a single demented individual, is clear in his remarkable proclamation as rector to the German students, published in November 1933: "The Führer himself and alone is today and in the future German reality and its law."^[154]

Heidegger's acceptance of this principle is significant as an indication of the extent of his enthusiasm for National Socialism at this point, especially as propagated in fact by Hitler and his party colleagues. It further indicates Heidegger's deplorable inability, on the basis of his conception of resoluteness, to distinguish one of its forms from another. In his conception, the important thing is resoluteness as such. Although in theory resoluteness is the call of conscience, in practice there are absolutely no criteria that enable one to recognize where conscience lies, to make a rational choice. The words and deeds of the Nazi dictator are as good as any other form of resoluteness. For a theory that insists on resoluteness at all costs, resoluteness about pushpin is as good as that about poetry, and Nazism is as good as altruism. Heidegger's notion of resoluteness is, then, the ultimate parody of the Kantian idea of moral responsibility based on intellectual maturity and a wholly rational choice of moral principles.

Heidegger's acceptance of the Führer principle stands as a clear, unassailable demand to abandon any velleity of critical thought in favor of political orthodoxy. His later attempt to portray his public adherence to this principle as one of a series of compromises he knew he would need to make as rector is unconvincing because it contradicts the idea of free thought, which is a necessary condition of philosophy.^[155] His later claim that during his period as rector he believed in the possibility of National Socialism and, for this reason, abandoned the thinker's essential vocation in favor of his work in an official capacity^[156] is at best a half truth. For when he pledged his thought to the service of Nazism, he not only

abandoned his philosophical research and teaching; he also renounced free thought, which is its proudest possession. If philosophy consists in critical thought, in the demand for the demonstration of proposed claims, in accepting the Führer principle Heidegger abjures purely and simply his philosophic calling. There is finally no significant distinction between Heidegger's call for submission to the whim of the Führer and Lukács's similar betrayal of reason in the service of Stalinism.^[157] As concerns their voluntary subordination of philosophical criticism to political totalitarianism, both thinkers are outstanding examples of the betrayal of reason in our time.

Heidegger's renunciation of the critical role of thought is apparent in his peremptory dismissal of academic freedom. He refers to academic freedom in quotation marks, as inauthentic, in favor of the highest freedom consisting in the giving of the law to oneself. The obvious echo of Kant's categorical imperative is misleading here, since for Heidegger "authentic academic freedom" means that "the German students must give to themselves the new law promulgated by the National Socialist movement." It is difficult to view this statement otherwise than as an injunction to forgo freedom of thought in the ordinary sense by voluntarily submitting to the necessity imposed by a new political reality. In this respect, despite the stress on the call of conscience, there is a less obvious echo of Spinoza's view of freedom as insight into necessity, where "necessity" means "the law of National Socialism."

If Heidegger's new concept of the freedom of the German students is the true view, then the familiar view of academic freedom as the possibility to think and write without constraints is untrue. Heidegger maintains that his new concept creates a specific obligation for German students. "The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. Henceforth the bond [Bindung] and service [Dienst] of the German student will unfold from this truth."^[158] In a clear echo of the triadic structure of the Platonic state, Heidegger now dogmatically asserts the existence of three bonds, which he interprets as services owed by the German students.^[159]

First, there is the bond to the community of the people (Volksgemeinschaft ), presumably to those who share the common German heritage, a bond that is rooted in labor service (Arbeitsdienst ). The use of the term "Volksgemeinschaft " combines a commitment to the Volk and to the Gemeinschaft , to those who share something in common, by opposition to the Gesellschaft , or society. It is overly charitable to think that Heidegger is concerned with all Germans, for instance those who fail to share his view of the importance of the German people. A community in this sense is a mere subset of society composed of those bound together through a common purpose, end, or goal. It follows that the

commitment Heidegger exacts from the students is not to society as a whole, not, for instance, to all Germans, but only to those who share the common project. Even if we suppose that Heidegger is interested in people and not only in Being, clearly his interest in the German people is limited only to those ready and willing to accept a particular view of the situation, namely the one he happens to share with National Socialism. His idea of the realization of the German people through philosophy as the ground of National Socialism, hence, includes the familiar National Socialist exclusion of those who happen to reject this program or, by implication, are rejected by it. Although he doesn't spell out his exclusion from the destiny of the Germans of those who might be unhappy with this goal, it obviously is reflected in his peculiar choice of terminology.

Second, there is the bond to the honor and destiny (Geschick ) of the nation. This is a plural form of resoluteness that concerns a common future as distinguished from the individual. Heidegger grounds this possibility in a brief, undeveloped reference to the possibility of authentic being with one another, evoked in Being and Time .^[160] This bond is now rendered explicit in the third, decisive bond to the spiritual mission of the German people. For Heidegger, this people influences its own destiny through its world-shaping powers. In this respect, there is an interesting tension, which perhaps reflects Heidegger's genuine ambivalence. On the one hand, he now insists on what a people can do to shape its own destiny, through its adherence to science, the presupposition of Heidegger's call for the members of the academic community to assume their prescribed role in the transformation of German reality. On the other hand, earlier in the same text he has insisted on the relative powerlessness of knowledge before destiny. It is inconsistent to analyze history in terms of destiny and to maintain that a people can be master of its future. At best, as Heidegger later realized after the turning in his thought, one can hold oneself open for a possibility which one cannot oneself realize if historical agency is lodged on some level beyond human being.

According to Heidegger, a people must risk everything in order to be a spiritual people. This idea recalls his insistence in Being and Time , in his analysis of death, on the recognition of human finitude as a condition of authenticity.^[161] To drive this point home, he now provides a series of metaphors expressing concepts of danger, hardest clarity, highest, widest, and richest knowledge, future destiny, and so on. The effect is to create a sense of struggle in which one's very existence is at stake, a struggle not necessarily for truth but for life itself in the genuine sense. Heidegger's commitment to an "existential" struggle for his view of the proper way to live is further evident during this period by his coopera-

tion in the institution of what can be described as camps for scientific reeducation (Wissenschaftslager ) more precisely for the reeducation of students and professors to his view of the true commitment to National Socialism.^[162] This incident, which recalls the worst excesses of political efforts at mind control, has many historical precedents. Here, it is specifically interesting as an indication of the extent to which Heidegger's philosophical conviction led in political practice. It is difficult to perceive the difference between Heidegger's active cooperation in setting up and running scientific concentration camps on the basis of his fundamental ontology and the use of such means in our time by dictators such as Stalin or Mao.

So far in his talk, Heidegger has stressed the preeminent role of the university for furthering science and, as a consequence, German destiny. He now reinforces this view in three ways:

First, he lists a number of professions. He then states that knowledge does not serve them but that they serve knowledge, although in doing so they carry out the will of the people concerning its very being. "Knowledge does not serve the professions, quite the reverse: the professions effect and administer that highest and essential knowledge of the people concerning its entire being (Dasein)."^[163] In the present context, this remark means that the various professions are necessarily subordinated to the home of philosophy in the university, precisely as in Plato's Republic .

Second, here and elsewhere in the speech Heidegger stresses the equal primordiality of the three bonds and the three services he has just assigned to the German students. "The three bonds—by the people, to the destiny of the state, in a spiritual mission—are equally primordial to the German essence. The three services that stem from it—Labor Service, Armed Service, and Knowledge Service—are equally necessary and of equal rank."^[164] The effect of this statement is to heighten the responsibility of the German students to carry out the duties assigned to them by the philosophers.

Third, Heidegger now draws an obvious inference following from his subordination of the students, members of the professions, and presumably everyone else, including the National Socialist regime, to philosophy. Once again he clearly insists on the central role of science in the full sense of the term—here through a self-interpretation of his own term "high school"—because the university alone is able to pursue the destiny of the German people. "This science is meant when the essence of the German university is delimited as the 'high' school that, grounded in science, by means of science educates and disciplines the leaders and guardians of the fate of the German people."^[165] Obviously, this is an activist view of philosophy. Clearly, Heidegger rejects the traditional idea of philosophy as disinterested science, as exemplified, say, in Aris-

totle's view of pure theory, in favor of something like the Leninist concept of partiinost '. According to Lenin, following Marx, philosophy is an important means to bring about the proletarian goal of abolishing the state. Heidegger, who also regards philosophy as a means to an end, understands its task as to realize German destiny by strengthening the Nazi state.

The stress on science as determined by philosophy presupposes that the university is organized to reflect that view. Heidegger underlines that need but realistically acknowledges that since it took the Greeks three centuries to arrive at an appropriate concept of science, it will not be possible to do so in the current academic year. The distinction of three bonds implicitly raises the question of their relation. Heidegger responds by stating that the type of university he has in mind depends upon the coalescence of the three bonds in a single formative force. He interprets this vision to mean that students and professors alike must necessarily strive toward the essence of science. Through another military metaphor, he insists that both wills confront each other in battle since battle is unavoidable. "The two wills [i.e., that of the student body and of the professors] must confront one another, ready for battle [Kampf].^[166] All capacities [Vermögen] of will and thought, must be unfolded through battle, heightened in battle, and preserved as battle."^[167] Heidegger further heightens his emphasis on battle with a quotation from Carl yon Clausewitz, the author of the well-known military treatise On War : "I take leave of the frivolous hope of salvation by the hand of accident."^[168]

Heidegger's reference to battle is doubly determined here, by his own philosophical position and the political reality of National Socialism. In Being and Time , he maintains that the realization of the German people, on which he insists here, requires a battle. "Only in communication and in struggle [Kampf] does the power of destiny become free. Dasein's fateful destiny in and with its 'generation' goes to make up the full authentic happening [Geschehen] of Dasein."^[169] His allusions to battle are, hence, consistent with his view that authenticity can come about in no other way.

The idea of battle obviously also refers to Hitler as well. Heidegger does not mention Hitler either here or elsewhere in his speech. But it would be an error to regard the failure to name the Nazi dictator as either decisive or even significant. A direct reference to Hitler would almost be superfluous since indirect references are scattered throughout. In the context of Heidegger's assumption of the rectorate as the spiritual F ührer of the University of Freiburg almost immediately after the Nazi rise to power, his multiple allusions to battle are also intended as a clear allusion to Hitler's notorious view of the struggle for the

realization of the destiny of the German people formulated in Mein Kampf

Heidegger has no doubt about what is correct, about what members of the German academic community should do at this period of German history, at a moment when the NSDAP has risen to power. He portrays this moment as a turning point in world history, as an occasion to seize the future, as it were. In a dramatic passage, fully equal to Spengler^[170] at his best, Heidegger shows why he believes that the moment has come to act. "But no one will even ask us whether we do or do not will, when the spiritual strength of the West fails and the joints of the world no longer hold, when this moribund semblance of a culture caves in and suffocates all that remains strong into confusion and lets it suffocate in madness."^[171]

Heidegger's conception of Nazism as the way to realize the destiny of the Germans presupposes an ideal of community that can be realized in practice only if each individual contributes to it. Heidegger underscores the need for each person to decide for or against the historical destiny of the German people. "Whether this will happen or no depends alone on whether or not we, as a historical-spiritual people, still and once again will ourselves. Every individual participates in this decision, even he, and indeed especially he, who evades it."^[172] Since the philosopher speaks for the people, its political leaders and the state, in short for everyone, it is the philosopher who takes the fateful decision for the authentic destiny of the German people. The rectoral address is, then, a solemn pledge before history in the name of the future of the German Volk . The result is a curious reciprocal relation between philosophy and National Socialism. On behalf of philosophy, Heidegger asserts the need to lead all others, including the Nazis, who in his view depend on philosophy for their justification. Having claimed the hegemony of the "movement" in virtue of his thought, from that standpoint Heidegger unhesitatingly makes a public commitment of his thought and all those dependent on it, by implication everyone, to National Socialism. Heidegger's speech exhibits a circular relation between philosophy and politics because philosophy grounds politics, to which it is unquestionably and unquestioningly committed.

Heidegger justifies his philosophical demand for the leadership of the Nazi movement through the relation he discerns between philosophy, science, the university, and the will of the people. He now invokes this relation in an enigmatic comment: "For the young and the youngest strength of the people [Denn die jung und jüngste Kraft des Volkes], which already reaches beyond us, has by now decided the matter."^[173] This statement is ambiguous. It is probable that Heidegger is here referring to the students since throughout he has spoken as if their choice had already been made, as if they had sought out the professors to lead them

and not conversely. He is also referring to the Nazi party. Heidegger became a member of the NSDAP on 1 May 1933, that is, before he became rector. With the exception of biologism, he evidently held all the views of the ordinary Nazi,^[174] presumably including its proclaimed legitimacy to decide for the German people.

In general, the entire speech can be regarded as a public affirmation that the philosopher has rallied to the politics of Nazism on his own terms, namely with respect to the concerns and categories developed in his fundamental ontology. Throughout the address, Heidegger repeatedly stressed his conviction, founded in his own view of science, that the Nazi political undertaking requires the leadership of philosophers who are not themselves to be led. He indirectly reemphasizes the preeminent role he attributes to philosophy at the end of the speech. "But we fully understand the splendor and the greatness of this setting [dieses Aufbruchs] only when we carry within ourselves that profound and far-reaching thoughtfulness that gave ancient Greek wisdom the word: 'All that is great stands in the storm.' "^[175]

His allusion to Plato here, in this crucial passage at the close of his talk, is significant for several reasons. Certainly, it calls attention to Heidegger's dependence throughout this speech on the quasi-Platonic view that philosophy founds politics. It also reinforces Heidegger's quasi-Platonic assertion that only a philosopher can lead the National Socialist revolution through the suggestion that only one who has understood the Platonic view can understand the present historical moment, with its possibility in the midst of extreme need to seize the occasion to realize the destiny of the German nation. Further, through an appropriate rendering of the passage cited, Heidegger now enlists Plato in support of his own view of the danger inherent in the present moment. It is, then, a matter of some concern that Heidegger, who was a competent Greek scholar, deliberately distorts the passage from Plato.^[176]

Analysis of the rectoral address shows that efforts to portray Heidegger's interest in Nazism as superficial or transitory are refuted by the text. Heidegger's concern with National Socialism at this point is deep and later remains constant since it follows from a permanent part of his thought. Like most philosophical theories, Heidegger's thought later evolved, but the initial commitment to the concept of authenticity, which, in its plural form, underlies his insistence on the realization of the historical destiny of the German people, never changed. As passages from his later writings show, he never altered his basic commitment, following from a part of his thought that did not change, to the goal that apparently led him to Nazism in the first place, the realization in history of the destiny of German being, as a means to the authentic thought of Being.

This chapter has sought to understand Heidegger's Nazi turning in terms of factors external and internal to his thought. It has studied the stages of Heidegger's Nazi turning on the basis of his fundamental ontology to practice and then to National Socialism. I have argued that Heidegger's philosophical position is intrinsically political and have shown how Heidegger was led to practice on the basis of his thought and later was led to Nazism. I have further shown the presence throughout the rectoral speech of numerous concepts borrowed from Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Now I want to examine an important possible objection. One could concede that fundamental ontology is political and that it called for a practical turn but deny that in practice the political nature of Heidegger's thought called for a turn to Nazism. The point of the objection is to concede that it is not accidental that Heidegger turned to politics, but it is merely contingent that he turned to Nazism. It follows that his philosophy is not itself in question in his acceptance of National Socialism since he could have accepted another form of politics.

In my view, this objection is mistaken. There are various reasons for which Heidegger could have turned to another kind of political practice, such as the possibility that Nazism might not have existed. Once it is conceded that fundamental ontology in its very nature calls for a turn to politics, then it must be noted that Heidegger's theory has no intrinsic resources to prevent him from accepting either National Socialism or another similar theory. Fundamental ontology calls for completion in a turn from theory to political practice to bring about authentic Dasein, and, hence, an authentic thought of Being.^[177] Authenticity depends on resoluteness on the part of one who sees beyond appearance into the essence of things, on one who is ready and able to choose for himself or herself and even for others. There is a kind of aristocratic authoritarian-ism built into Heidegger's theory of fundamental ontology which leads seamlessly to a politically antidemocratic political point of view. As in Plato's political theory, which is also antidemocratic, only the philosopher finally knows, and the philosopher's role is to decide for everyone.^[178] Nazism might not have existed. Heidegger could have accepted another political practice than Nazism. But it was neither an accident that Nazism existed nor that he turned to it. For the same external factors that influenced the rise of Nazism and the development of his own thought also limited the kind of political choice he could reasonably accept. In sum, Heidegger's pursuit of Being, as he understood it, led to Nazism, and could in fact only lead either to this or another form of antidemocratic, authoritarian political practice. It is, then, no accident that Heidegger the philosopher of Being became Heidegger the Nazi, since Heidegger the philosopher and Heidegger the political activist are one and the same person.