Interpretations of Heidegger's Nazism
In this book we have examined the nature and significance of the relation between Heidegger's Nazism and philosophy. There is a maximally wide range of opinion encompassing virtually all possible views of this relation. While aware of the various views, I have attempted to steer an independent course through examination of the full range of Heidegger materials now available for scholarly study.
At present—leaving aside the widespread idea that the best way to deal with the problem is to ignore it—we can isolate six main lines of analysis[1] of Heidegger's philosophy and Nazism in the Heidegger literature: First, there is Adorno's extreme view that everything that Heidegger ever said and did was Nazi to the core.[2] Second, there is the conviction that Nazism is not Nazism, most prominently associated with Beaufret, through his acceptance of the French historian Faurisson's radical form of historical revisionism, in fact a denial of the historical reality of National Socialism.[3]
Third, there is the idea, now most prominently represented by Fédier, that Heidegger is not responsible for the political consequences of Nazism since they could not have been foreseen.[4] Fourth, there is the belief, following Heidegger's own view of the matter, that Heidegger's Nazism was merely an insignificant moment in his biography unrelated to his thought, developed by Aubenque[5] and Vietta,[6] and hinted at by Habermas[7] and Rorty,[8] based on a distinction in kind between Heidegger
the thinker and Heidegger the man. Fifth, there is the claim—rooted in Heidegger's conception of the turning in his thought—due mainly to Derrida[9] and Lacoue-Labarthe,[10] that Heidegger's early thought led to Nazism, but his later thought led away from it, a reading presupposing a break between the earlier and the later Heidegger. Sixth, there is the organic analysis, presented by Löwith,[11] and more recently by Bourdieu,[12] Janicaud,[13] Zimmerman,[14] Wolin,[15] Thomä,[16] and myself, according to which Heidegger's philosophical thought and his Nazism are inseparable.
With the exception of Beaufret's effort, quite mad at this late date, to deny the historical reality of Nazism, the various lines of analysis tending to exculpate Heidegger's Nazism were suggested by Heidegger as part of his effort after the Second World War to limit the damage to himself and to his thought, and then only later adopted by his followers. The views that Heidegger is not responsible for his adherence to Nazism, that his Nazism was meaningless, or that he later moved away from Nazism are all claims that he himself raises. The central point at issue, of course, on which all of these explanatory models divide, is how to understand the relation between Heidegger's Nazism and his philosophical thought. My basic response is to argue that any interpretation of Heidegger's Nazism which denies the intrinsic link between his theory of Being and his Nazi politics is unable to comprehend the origin of his Nazism, which becomes a merely inexplicable, contingent fact; and it is unable as well to comprehend the later development of Heidegger's thought, specifically including its turning beyond philosophy. In short, whatever their respective virtues, the other lines of analysis all fall short of accounting for central items required in any comprehensive interpretation of Heidegger's Nazism and philosophy.
It is important to be clear about what is being said, since one of the favorite strategies to defend Heidegger's thought consists in equating any criticism of it with a simple dismissal of its value in general in order then to dismiss the criticism of the position. This protective mechanism should be seen for what it is: an effort to remove Heidegger's position from critical evaluation, to prevent it from being addressed in the normal course of discussion as part of the process of reception of an important body of thought. There is no suggestion here that Heidegger's thought can merely be reduced to his Nazism or even to politics. What I am suggesting is that for Heidegger, ontology and politics are basically conjoined. For a denial of the historical reality of Nazism, which underlies the second approach, is simply not credible, no more so than assertions that the earth is flat. If the exculpation of Heidegger's Nazism depends on the demonstration of the unreality of Nazism, then it would seem that no such argument can reasonably be made.
The third and fourth approaches, which are variations on the theme
of the supposed difference in kind beween Heidegger the man and Heidegger the thinker, are refuted by examination of Heidegger's texts. Study of his thought, and what he says about it, shows that Heidegger was also led to Nazism on the basis of his philosophical position, as he himself admitted. His Nazi turning is, then, not merely due to external factors, such as the decline of the Weimar Republic, and the concern with reactionary German Volksideologie , nor to his inability to comprehend politics, nor even to his psychological need to achieve a powerful position in the German university. None of these factors should be omitted from a comprehensive analysis. Yet from the narrow philosophical perspective, the decisive point is the political nature of Heidegger's ontology which led him into the realm of practice, and toward Nazism as an authoritarian political conception compatible with, and made necessary by, his own view of Being. The effort to pry apart Heidegger the thinker and Heidegger the man should further be rejected on Heideggerian grounds as inconsistent with the theory it intends to defend. It is because there is an intrinsic link between Heidegger's philosophical position and his Nazism that from a philosophical perspective nothing, nothing at all would have been altered had Heidegger simply said it was all a mistake, that he was sorry about his acceptance of Nazism, that it was all a dreadful mistake in judgment, and so on. Heidegger's acceptance of Nazism is surely a contingent fact, since it might have been the case that Nazism had not existed. Yet his thought literally demands some type of antidemocratic, totalitarian politics in virtue of his own conception of Being. For Heidegger's ontology and politics are intrinsically and inseparably linked through his conception of authenticity, his lifelong quasi-Platonic understanding of the political vocation of the thinker of Being, and his commitment to the destiny of the German Volk , all aspects of his understanding of Being.
The fifth line of analysis, which is particularly prominent in the French discussion, depends on a supposed discontinuity in the evolution of Heidegger's position, based on the interpretation of the turning in his thought as a break. This approach, which is presently the most philosophically sophisticated alternative to the organic approach favored here, presents a subtle restatement of Heidegger's own effort to protect his thought by invoking the conception of the turning, understood as turning over a new conceptual leaf, so to speak. But the suggestion that the turning represents a break between Heidegger's early and later thought, between Heidegger I and II as it were, is clearly refuted through the obvious continuity of his intellectual development and through his own understanding of the turning as a deepening of his theory of Being beyond the original beginning through the introduction of a new beginning.
In arguing for a break in Heidegger's thought—similar to the supposed, but finally fictitious, break in Marx's development recently popular in French Marxism—Heidegger's French adherents take seriously Heidegger's suggestion in the "Letter on Humanism" that there has been a turning in his thought, in fact a reversal. There is an obvious analogy between the view that Heidegger's turning constitutes a fundamental break and Marxism's traditional view of Marx's supposed materialism as the reversal of Hegelian idealism, as a break between Marxism and philosophy. Yet Marx's thought does not reverse Hegel's, and Marx's later position develops further but does not break with his own earlier theory. Similarly, Heidegger's later theory of Being carries further, develops, modifies, transforms, but does not break with, his earlier thought. As study of Heidegger's texts show, above all the recently published Beiträge zur Philosophie , Heidegger understood the concept of the turning as a further development but not as a break in his thought.
Heidegger's thought exhibits a continuous development, but certain aspects of his position remain virtually unchanged. The idea of the Volk as an authentic community, which Heidegger takes over from German Volksideologie and grounds philosophically in Being and Time in his conception of plural authenticity, remains a permanent part of his position throughout its later development. Beginning with the rectoral address, Heidegger continues to hold one or more versions of the venerable Platonic view that philosophy can found politics as the necessary condition of the good life, as the real presupposition of the radiant future. Heidegger never abandoned the familiar philosophical conviction in the cognitive privilege of philosophy, what after the turning in his position became new thought, with its familiar link to antidemocratic, totalitarian politics.
I favor the sixth, organic line of analysis of Heidegger's philosophy and politics as integrally, in fact inseparably, connected. In my view, none of the other approaches to this theme can provide a satisfactory account of what is now known, above all the durable nature of Heidegger's concern with the destiny of the Germans, his tardy insistence when it was no longer even advantageous on the misunderstood essence of Nazism. In their own ways, each of the other approaches to this problem also overestimates the importance of Heidegger's connection to National Socialism, that is real Nazism. There is a widespread tendency in the debate about Heidegger's politics to analyze its relation to Nazism mainly or solely in terms of his link to real National Socialism. Yet this tendency is wrong on two counts. For it fails to consider the possibility that Heidegger's allegiance to Nazism was always to his own, idiosyncratic idea of Nazism. And it further ignores Heidegger's later, more consistent, and certainly deeper fidelity to an ideal form of Nazism.
It is important to understand the limits of Heidegger's initial, enthusiastic commitment to National Socialism. Although Heidegger became a member of the NSDAP and a Nazi in that sense, starting in 1933 he continued to insist on the cognitive privilege of his "philosophy," to found authentic politics. Even after his resignation as rector, he never abandoned, or even dampened, the enthusiasm about destiny of the Germans, which he initially shared with real National Socialism, and which he continued to seek in his ideal concept of National Socialism. Derrida is correct that Heidegger's thought is open to a whole variety of Nazisms,[17] both real and imaginary. Yet Derrida does not appear sufficiently aware of Heidegger's later writings, especially the important Beiträge zur Philosophie . This explains his failure to realize that Heidegger's Nazism did not disappear in Heidegger's later thought, in which it remained a central component in imaginary, ideal form.
Even real Nazism is more present in Heidegger's later thought than is often understood. Stress on the later development of Heidegger's theory is often employed to suggest a clean break with real Nazism. Yet Heidegger's later view of Being after the turning conserves important elements of continuity with some National Socialist views. Consider, for example, the following passage from an article by Ernst Krieck, a leading philosophical theoretician of the Nazi Weltanschauung :
The revolutionary upheaval made itself known in a dispacement of emphasis. Instead of the individual person, the völkische whole is central, as a result of which the basic reality of life comes into view.... The individual does not arrive at his worldview through reason according to his individual situation and inclination to arbitariness and choice. Rather, we are subject to the movement of forces over us and directed in common. We do not seize, but we are seized and driven.[18]
If we overlook the idea of a Weltanschauung , which Heidegger consistently rejected, common elements between this Nazi view and Heidegger's later thought, after the supposed turn away from his earlier thought and Nazism, include a displacement of emphasis from the individual to the group taken as a whole, the reliance on extrarational forces which we do not choose, but which choose us and operate through us, and so on.
Heidegger invokes and never abandons the destiny of the Germans in virtue of his theory of Being. His position, even in its later formulation, turns on the authentic thought of Being. According to Heidegger, metaphysics, his later name for an inauthentic form of ontology, tends to cover up, or to hide, an authentic understanding of Being. If the authentic thought of Being requires authenticity, if authenticity is defined as the
acceptance of one's being as defined by the concern with Being, and if the only metaphysical people is the German people which alone can know Being as the true heirs of the Greeks, then there is an easy, obvious transition from Heidegger's ontology to the concern with the German Volk . Heidegger's position, Nazism, German Volk ideology, and the interest throughout the Weimar Republic in the resurrection of a Germany still suffering from the effects of the First World War come together in the desire for a vibrant development of the German people. The problem is not due to Heidegger's political naïveté; nor can it merely be ascribed to a casual interest in a political phenomenon; nor is it due to a change from his initial view of Being to a view of Being as historical and destinal, to a change in the initial view; rather it is due to the initial view itself as Heidegger understood it. Perhaps Heidegger's theory of Being can be interpreted in different ways; perhaps one can argue, as he himself argued about others' theories, that Heidegger did not understand his own theory or that others failed to understand it; but this is the way in which Heidegger comprehended it, in my view correctly understood it.
The conception of the German Volk , which Heidegger stressed, means different things from different perspectives. What for the Nazis was a step to world domination was for the average German a way to restore self-esteem, a means to correct the perceived injustices of the First World War, even a way to win back what was lost in the war and perhaps finally to win the war. For Heidegger, it is mainly a means for the authentic thought of Being. Hence, the problem does not lie in Heidegger's Nazism but in his ontology, on whose soil his Nazism flourished. Specifically, the problem follows from his assumption that genuine ontology required a certain purity of mind, what he called authenticity, an effort to be oneself, not in order to overcome alienation, for that was never Heidegger's goal, but rather in order authentically to think Being. Heidegger's Nazism should not be excused as merely momentary or meaningless. For it was not momentary, a mere incident; and it is philosophically meaningful within the context of his ontology. Yet the basic problem does not lie in Heidegger's Nazism, which is an effect of a deeper cause, but in his theory of Being, which requires for its realization an authentic subject.
Heidegger is an important, perhaps even a great thinker. Yet if Nazism is significant, his thought is fundamentally flawed. The problem of Being has no necessary connection with Nazism, but Heidegger's view of the problem points directly to this or similar kinds of political practice. It is not a simple accident, a merely contingent fact that Heidegger's effort to reawaken the long-forgotten question of Being leads seamlessly to Nazism and his consistent but finally grotesque comprehension of Na-
zism as a necessary step to the authentic comprehension of Being. If human being is important, if at this late date human being is more important than Being, then the project of the authentic thought of Being is intrinsically compromised. It is time, then, to reaffirm human being, which Heidegger sacrificed in the name of the thought of Being. For we need to hold fast to humanism, if necessary even by renouncing an antihumanism intended to lead to Being through the way station of Nazi barbarism, hence to renounce a thought of Being which denies and necessarily denies human Being.
This problem is not ameliorated but only complicated by the character of the Heidegger reception, which has not always been worthy of the reputation of philosophy as the main form of the search for truth. While some have sought for truth in disinterested fashion, others have sought to protect themselves, their reputations, their investment in what must be true to uphold their views of Heidegger and of themselves. Still others have routinely reaffirmed the traditional philosophical claim that philosophical theories occur in time but are not of time, that if they are determined by anything at all, it is only by other theories in a form of epistemological behaviorism. It is held that philosophy, say Heidegger's philosophy, has nothing to do with the type of person one is. Heidegger, we are told, was a bad person, a terrible man, ein richtiges Schwein , but his thought is completely independent of who he was.[19]
This fashionable "liberal" approach is based more on a reaffirmation of the traditional dogma of philosophy as independent of the context in which it arises than on careful study of the Heideggerian texts. It avoids coming to grips with the harder issues that arise as soon as one realizes that thought in general belongs to time. For Heidegger contributes powerfully to the demise of the traditional philosophical dogma of the independence of thought and time, and the depths of Heidegger's own thought literally can only be plumbed against the background of the period in which it arose.
At this late date, at least two things should be clear to anyone who examines the relevant writings: Heidegger's theory, like that of most important thinkers, was never static, never fixed in final form, always under way. Yet as examination of Heidegger's writings has shown, Heidegger's Nazism is deeply seated in his thought, so profoundly rooted as to remain unchanged throughout evolution of his position over forty-two years from the end of his rectorate to the end of his life; and the philosophical discussion of his political engagement both during and after the rector-ate has often contrived to conceal rather than to reveal his Nazism. The remaining task is to build on this knowledge, to examine the philosophical significance of Heidegger's Nazism and the complex discussion to which it has given rise both for Heidegger's thought and for philosophy.