Origins of the French Discussion of Heidegger's Politics
This incomplete account of the source and extent of Heidegger's influence in French philosophy is intended to make possible a closer look at the French discussion of Heidegger's Nazism. This complex discussion, which is still under way, has so far unfolded in three separate moments, or waves. These include a short, initial debate (1946-1948) shortly after the end of the Second World War, in which the topic was examined in a cursory manner; a rapid revival of the same debate in the mid-1960s after, indeed partly as a result of, the publication of certain documents calling attention to Heidegger's Nazism; and more recently in the direct, ongoing reaction to the publication in French translation of the Spanish manuscript of Farias's already classic study.
Even before we examine the debate on Heidegger and Nazism in France, we can note in passing three significant features that distinguish it from other portions of a discussion that has by now largely exceeded the limits of a single country or language. First, there is a certain well-known parochialism, long characteristic of French thought of all kinds, which traditionally proceeds as if it formed the entire conceptual universe whose center and nearly sole focus was Paris. Just as, with selected exceptions, French thinkers are mainly, even cheerfully, unaware of non-French forms of thought, so the debate on Heidegger's relation to
National Socialism has largely occurred without consideration of the discussion under way elsewhere. To be sure, there are occasional references to Hugo Ott, the Freiburg historian, or to Otto Pöggeler, the author of an influential study of Heidegger's thought; but for the most part, to a degree unusual in the ever-smaller cultural world, the French debate concerns mainly, often only, itself.[29]
Second, in contrast with the widespread French cultural and political xenophobia, we can note that a number of the most important participants in the French debate on Heidegger's relation to National Socialism are either foreign-born French, or not French at all, for example, Farias, Weil, Löwith, Tertulian, Lukács. This extra-French influence, which has throughout tended to calm and to refocus an often wildly passionate, occasionally irrational debate, was present even at the beginning.
Third, there is a particular philosophical focus due to the contingent fact that until several years ago, when a pirated translation of Being and Time was published, only the first half of the book was available in French. Even access to this part of the text was severely restricted by the dependence on a single, strategic Heideggerian essay as the way into fundamental ontology.[30] The French reception of Heidegger has for many years been focused through Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism." This text is Heidegger's response to a letter addressed to him on 10 November 1946 by Jean Beaufret, the French philosopher, who later became the main figure in the introduction of Heidegger's thought in France, a tireless proselytizer for the Heideggerian point of view. Heidegger replied to Beaufret's letter in December 1946 and then reworked his response for publication.
The resultant text is both philosophical and strategic in character. Although this text is a serious philosophical study, it is also a masterly effort by Heidegger to attract attention to his thought in a neighboring country at a time when he was seriously beleaguered in his native Germany. As an open letter to a figure on the French philosophical scene at a time when Heidegger was in eclipse because of his association with the Nazi regime, there was an obvious strategic value to the claim that there had been a turning (Kehre ) in his position, by implication a turning away from his earlier view which was also a turning away from Nazism. Understood in this way, the concept of the turning appears as a tacit, even graceful admission of an earlier complicity, combined with a suggestion of a fresh start, untainted by earlier transgressions, and a suggestion to provide a reasonable alternative to Sartre, a perhaps objectionable French guru. These are all characteristics that quickly raised Heidegger's stock in French intellectual thought and may even have been calculated to do so. Significantly, although at the time Heidegger had already moved far from his original position, his "Letter on Humanism" has
been described by a French commentator as the best introduction to Being and Time .[31]
In other texts from his later writings, Heidegger continues to insist on the uniqueness of the Germans; but not by accident in the "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger opposes nationalism of any kind as metaphysically anthropological and subjective.[32] His stated opposition here to biologism, a doctrine to which Heidegger seems never to have subscribed, limits the dimensions of Heidegger's admitted political error.[33] Heidegger's opposition here to Sartrean existentialism and humanism of all sorts as metaphysical[34] is balanced by his careful description of his alternative as the only one able to think "the humanity of man," as an attempt to "think the essence of man more primordially" in order to restore its original sense, and as a view that "in no way implies a defense of the inhuman but rather opens other vistas."[35] Heidegger's depiction of his form of nonmetaphysical humanism as more meaningful than its better-known alternative is clearly stated: "To think the truth of Being at the same time means to think the humanity of homo humanus . What counts is humanitas in the service of the truth of Being, but without humanism in the metaphysical sense."[36]
The fact that, for contingent reasons, the French reading of Heidegger has largely proceeded from an antimetaphysical humanist focus explains the relative ease with which Heidegger displaced not only Sartre but Hegel as well in French thought and the violent reaction to the appearance of Farias's book. Beyond his status as an important thinker, Heidegger's implicit claim to be a true humanist smoothed the way for the displacement of views frequently regarded as either antihumanistic or associated with antihumanism. The shocking revelation that what many had long regarded as essentially humanism in the deepest sense was possibly no more than a false appearance is basic to the French reaction to recent revelations about Heidegger's politics. It is, then, not by chance, that the French discussion of Heidegger's political thought has been so heated since the debate revolves around the essentially political question of whether, as Heidegger and his followers claim, Heidegger's position is a new antimetaphysical humanism or whether, on the contrary, as others have held, it is a metaphysical form of racism, based on a durable commitment to the superiority of the German people.
In France, the intellectual debate on Heidegger's Nazism began in the pages of Les Temps Modernes , one of the best-known French intellectual journals. This journal was founded by Sartre and his colleagues when France was liberated from the Nazis and later edited by him for many years. The early existentialist Sartre is well-known as the author of the view, which to some, including the later Sartre, appeared to ignore the constraints of real life, that we are always and essentially radically
free. The initial phase of the debate, which includes texts by Karl Löwith, Alfred de Towarnicki, Eric Weil, Alphonse De Waelhens, and Maurice de Gandillac, is preceded by an editorial note. Here, immediately prior to the publication of the famous "Letter on Humanism," an unnamed editor, in all probability Sartre, draws a comparison between Heidegger and Hegel. Just as the latter's later thought led him to compromise with Prussia, so Heidegger the man and Heidegger the political actor are one and the same; and his political choice follows from his existential thought. In the same way as an analysis of Hegel's position removes any suspicion with respect to dialectical thought, the writer suggests that a similar analysis will do the same for Heidegger, in fact will demonstrate that an existential view of politics is at the antipodes of Nazism.[37]