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13. The Protection of
the Philosophical Form

A Response to Zuckert

TERESA OROZCO, translated by Paul Malone

Although I do not share all the premises of the Gadamerian conception of dialogue, I am convinced that an examination of some of Catherine H. Zuckert's objections to my article can contribute to a better understanding of Gadamer's philosophical interventions under National Socialism. Her commentary gives me the opportunity to clarify some misunderstandings.^[1] It is both striking and paradoxical that in Zuckert's polemic, the hermeneu-tic postulate of openness to the opinions of others and the paradigm of understanding summon up less tolerance and moderation whenever a critical examination of the stock of tradition leads to undesirable results. It should be borne in mind that between truth and method there are various branches of inquiry—and even other theories of interpretation—which, by means of methodical reflection, have rightfully won their place on the field of philosophy and science. These theories grant no validity to the logic: that cannot be, which may not be.^[2] It might seem plausible that Gadamerian herme-neutics can be applied to their own prehistory with only partial success. The dogmatic authority of tradition and the uncontested continuance of authority exclude any question of their legitimacy. Since the intersection of intellectual traditions with domination and power is fundamental to the act of transmission, we are well advised not to give up critical reflection.

In this short article I refer to my book Platonische Gewalt, in which my thesis is supported by considerable evidence and a sentence-by-sentence interpretation. Much of what I formulate here in outline is considered there in its complexity. Since I have concentrated on Gadamer's interpretation of Plato, and have only peripherally treated the details and information that contradict Gadamer's depiction of these years in his autobiographical writings,^[3] one should recall the following: in November 1933 Gadamer signed the Bekenntnis derProfessoren an den deutschen Universitaten und Hochschulen zu

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Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat (Declaration of the Faith of Professors in the German Universities and Colleges in Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State);^[4] he was a member of the National Socialist Teachers' Union (NSLB);^[5] he held lectures in the service of National Socialist foreign propaganda in countries belonging to or occupied by the Axis powers; and he received his chair at Leipzig by means of “high politics” (PL57) and with the assistance of the SS. Representative of Gadamer's interventions during the fascist war is his lecture “Volk and History in Herder's Thought,” which he delivered in occupied Paris in 1941 before an audience of officers taken as prisoners of war. Here Gadamer offers a volkisch interpretation of Herder that he represents as a “purely scientific study” (PL 118). This text reappears in 1967 without the volkisch passages and with some revisions.^[6] The direct and explicit connections to Nazism that Zuckert cannot find in my text are easily found and carry a good deal of weight in my book.^[7] The search for explicitly “voTkisch” thoughts, however, overlooks other forms—as a rule more effective forms, because they take into account the particular logic of philosophy—of philosophical articulation of Nazism.

My work nowhere brings moral charges, nor does it demand an absurd martyrdom or a hidden resistance. My criticism is directed at the one-sided picture Gadamer gives after 1945 of the relationships at the earlier time. The results of my investigation revise decisively Gadamer's self-image as a “internal emigrant,” who of course had to make outward concessions for career reasons, but who remained philosophically and academically at a distance. It is not concerned with exposing Gadamer as a disguised Nazi, but rather with investigating the positions of nationalist conservatism that he then maintained in his philosophical production as well. One of the questions posed by my research was: What does it mean to represent conservative and antidemocratic positions in peacetime under parliamentary democracies, and what does it mean under a dictatorship? What form does the difference take? The interest of my work lay in comprehending the specifics of such forms of intellectual accommodation and in exploring them—not morally, but on the basis of their structural conditions. It was essential to work out how they became possible in the normality of the academy and through the medium of interpretation of the classics, without declaring such interpretation irrelevant and void from the outset in view of the cruder and violent forms of the volkisch fascist movement.

The fact that Heidegger appeared as a representative of the volkisch movement in party uniform while Gadamer was not a party member is no argument for an opposition to Nazism in the character of the nationalist conservative wing. This is a widespread misreading of the history of fascism, and one that has far-reaching consequences for Zuckert's interpretation of

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my article. This misreading is based on the acceptance, contrary to fact, that actual existing Nazism consisted only of Hitler and the Nazi Party, in conjunction with a volkisch doctrine of crude eugenic and authoritarian concepts. The consequence of this misreading is that any elements that do not fit into this picture are seen as potential loci of resistance. In this view, the conservative elites—with representatives in the economy, the Bildungsburg-ertum, the churches, the universities, and the armed forces—who determinedly allied themselves with the Nazis are unaccounted for as a driving and supporting power. It is thus hardly astonishing that these positions lay claim to political correctness well into the postwar period.^[8] Both the classic and the newer research into fascism prove forcefully that the internal differences between both camps were the very conditions that preserved Nazism as a social formation.^[9] They were united in the fight against the Weimar Republic in favor of an authoritarian Fuhrer-state, as is still clearly expressed in the concepts of the conservative resistance.^[10] Without a doubt both factions played an active role in the destruction of the foundations of the Weimar Republic.^[11] Zuckert's understanding for the criticism of the Weimar Republic, expressed in the argument that it “proved to be weak and ineffective,” comes near to justifying its downfall. The fact that this republic was forsaken by large parts of the Wilhelmine middle class does not prove the inevitability of Nazism. Gadamer himself explains subsequently that “interest in the political aspects of Plato” had “nothing at all to do with the Nazis yet”; rather, it arose from “the need to imagine a state according to a model in which there was still a fundamental belief in the state. For there was no such belief in the Weimar Republic.”^[12] There are many reasons to think that this belief was by no means attached to democracy, but rather to the Wilhelmine authoritarian state. Given this background, it is hardly surprising that with the rise of fascism, the prevalent currents of Plato research participate in the consolidation of National Socialism.^[13] Symptomatic of the misreading I have described is the violence and single-mindedness of the debate around the volkisch Heidegger, which clearly has the effect of displacing the question of the different forms of collaboration practiced by the remainder of the philosopher's guild.

Zuckert pleads for the recovery of quotations in which Gadamer declares the separation of the political from the scientific. Although it openly contradicts postulates in Truth and Method, Gadamer tries to mitigate his teacher Heidegger's entanglement by appealing to the “political incompetence of philosophy.”^[14] In addition I refer to an interview of 1990, in which he unmistakably stands by his contention that there were also Nazis who pursued ‘Very good science.”^[15] Gadamer tells us there how it was possible to philosophize undisturbed and scientifically under National Socialism. In fact, the Platonic claim “to lead the leader” released a tremendous philosophical

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productivity, which had the result of benefiting the consolidation of National Socialism.^[16]

My reading does not assume Gadamer to be an opportunist; rather, it documents the astonishing coherence of his position. In the Plato interpretation of 1934, it becomes clear that Gadamer, through the medium of Plato's world of ideas and its hermeneutic renewal, collaborated in consummating the union into which the nationalist conservative middle class (which as “spirit of Potsdam” brought the Reichswehr into National Socialism) entered with the Nazis. I show that in his contribution to the Kriegsein-satz der Geisteswissenschaften (mobilization of the humanities) of 1942 the same Prussian group, with the debacle of Stalingrad at hand, loosened this union and strove toward an authoritarian reform of the state. This faction's method of movement is expressed in both texts.^[17]

The fact that Gadamer in his lecture “Plato and the Poets” (1934) positively articulates some of the most prominent topoi of the speeches in support of book burning and Gkichschaltung (accommodation to National Socialist doctrine), that is, the criticism of liberal humanist education, is by no means the only reason that this text can be read as a justification of Nazism in its incipient phase. The “historical context” is more complex and many-layered than Zuckert assumes. The venue in which this lecture was delivered, namely the Gesellschaft der Freunde des Humanistischen Gymnasiums (Society of Friends of the Classical High School), as well as the self-accommodation of classical philology and the transformation of the humanist canon of Platonic interpretation, stand in the context of fasciza-tion, which has left clear traces behind in Gadamer's text. The astonishing effect that the National Socialist present is not directly named, yet is tacitly present, rests on a hermeneutics of allusion: the text is laid out so that in the historical horizon of understanding of the classically educated milieu, it becomes charged with fascist meanings. As a result the perception of the fascist present in the text seems to be achieved by the listener. The records of this course of lectures, which were published regularly in the magazine Das Hwnanistische Gymnasium (The Classical High School),^[18] give an impression of this. In the closing commentary to Gadamer's lecture—in accordance with the fascist rhetoric of the new man—one reads: “The new man is created for the new state and from nothing. … It is the welfare of the entire state that matters…. Plato's mythic literature, as much as his dialogic literature, shows true poetic ability, which puts itself in the service of the new idea of man.” Zuckert's reproach of “guilt by association” is therefore already untenable, because Gadamer and his audience at the time manufactured these “associations” themselves. The further remarks of the secretary by no means arose by chance; rather, they were guided by connotational elements. The lecture is in its very text shot through with a network of interdiscursive

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resonances that are no longer accessible to the present-day reader.^[19]

I have not maintained, as Zuckert assumes, that Gadamer's interpretation of Plato consists of direct instructions for the persecution of intellectuals. His philosophical Anschluss was skillful and unconstrained. I wrote: “Gadamer constructed an interpretive framework for the contemporary situation in Germany that, at the same time, allowed Plato's critique of the poets to be understood in a manner that simultaneously articulated the self-understanding of the present.” This projection of the new backwards into the Platonic order showed itself capable of constructing a kind of deja-vu experience, bestowing a trace of heroic greatness upon the violent National Socialist circumstances through the medium of classical philosophy. What is remarkable here is that such processes as the suppression of enemies of the state, the driving of poets into exile, and the “cleansing” of poetry (i.e., censorship) are placed in charge of the power of the state and not of the hermeneutic dialogue. So it is evident that here the framework of state power forms the conditio sine qua non of the dialogue.

Zuckert's argument that in both essays Plato's Politeia “does not constitute a blueprint for political reform,” and that he backs the philosophical upbringing of the guardians of the state, is philologically a mere half-truth. The theme in the text of 1934 is the “foundation of the state” and “the radical rejection of the existing state,”^[20] as well as the philosophical upbringing of youth to become guardians of the state. The defense is directed at the sophistic spirit, which “attacked” and “dissolved” the substance of the state. In 1942 the main idea is that of the “decline of the state under tyranny” and the philosophical upbringing of the guardians with particular consideration given to the state-supporting leaders. Gadamer stresses the seduction of those who govern by their power (“tyrants have no friends”), and the injury to the corporative order of the Platonic state. Both interpretations are transposed into the words of philosophy and thus also into their normative function. The philosophical form is a protection from any crude topical relevance, for the Gadamerian art of allusion lies in the continual working out of the character of the Platonic state as a philosophical model, and to this end it is necessary that Plato's Politeia remain a state in thought alone. This exemplary quality is what first sets in motion the hermeneutic effect on the listeners and/or readers. Zuckert pays no heed to the sentence in which this inaccessible model, as “exclusive determination” (Plato und dieDichter 14), is assigned an ordering function for the subject of the state: “It is an ‘origi-nary image in heaven’ for whoever wishes to organize himself and his internal constitution” (ibid.). Contemplating this “originary image in heaven,” individuals recognize in themselves the “reality of the state.”^[21] The frequently appearing motif of “care for the internal state” (Plato und dieDichter 29) is addressed to the audience and/or readership. On this model the interior

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of the civil subject, where morality and religiosity usually have their seat, becomes the place occupied by the state itself. There is no discrepancy between the reality of the state (staatliches Sein)^[22] and moral duty (moralisches Sollen). It seems to me a grave matter that Gadamer explicitly refuses as “sophist” any foundation of the authority of the state right (Plato und die Dichter 15) and leaves no room for the acknowledgment of individual basic rights. The establishment of a state in words applies also in 1942: “the educational structure” should further “its citizens' correct belief in the state” (Plato and the Educational State 233). In any case this belief is reduced to the citizen's ‘joining in the totality of the organization of rule” (Plato and theEd-ucational State 327).

One must visualize how Nazism articulated itself as an “educational state” around 1933 in order to be able to estimate the resonance of the following sentence in the Platonic imaginary: “Although it appears to be a state resting completely on the power of an educational organization, an ahistorical new beginning from nothing through the force of a new habituation, it is in truth a picture, in whose delineation the soul should recognize justice” (Plato und dieDichter 17). The “true state of justice” (Plato und die Dichter 28) has nothing to do, however, with democratic ideas of participation and justice. Gadamer discreetly makes this clear in a footnote, according to which the Platonic state is a state of “masters and servants” and a state for war (Plato und die Dichter note 36; 0054).

Gadamer by no means stands alone in his interpretation of the Platonic paideia. The topos of the education of the guardians forms the kernel of most of the interpretations of Plato at the time. Here the National Socialist discourses of domination, beauty, health, and race found their ideal expression. The successful paideia stands not only for eugenic discourses but also for the development of the internal state that constitutes itself in the mirror of the state order.^[23] In opposition to an enlightened educational model, the contemporary elaborations of the Platonic education of the guardians emphasize the manly virtues of military fitness, heroic lifestyle, readiness for death, decisionistic choice, the struggle against the “sophistic” enemy, and the affirmation of the “unwritten law” of the state (Orozco, “Die Platon-Rezeption” 156 ff). Gadamer articulated these individual aspects in his interpretation. The “ethical” component, which Zuckert claims is bound in this text with the anchoring of state domination in the plane of elementary socialization, is the world of the customs and traditions of a community. The “upbringing into a state” (Plato und dieDichter 17) is a process that happens essentially inexpressibly and without a determining and planning subject. “The most important educational effect never reaches the explicit instruction, but rather the ‘laws of the state,’ particularly the unwritten, the ruling ethic in the state community, in which safe human formation happens in seclusion” (ibid., 14). In this view, those ethical forms that are not prevalent

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are delegitimated, as for instance those potential elements of solidarity that could support possible resistance against the state. Gadamer's renunciation of the authoritarian command means that he relies on the hidden (and therefore much more powerful) effect of the state. Thereby, however, he comes very near to volkisch educational theory, which by no means refers to pure authoritarianism.^[24] For instance, Ernst Krieck saw the task of volkisch educational theory in the “internal formation of humanity … and this upbringing [the volkisch} also takes place simply—completely unconsciously and unintentionally at first—in that the state accustoms its people to its legal and political paths, and in that it directs the attitude and consciousness of the new generation according to its norms.”^[25] One should not, however, be deceived by this proximity. Gadamer's achievement consisted rather of the creation of a sounding board in which volkisch educational theory also—but not exclusively—could articulate itself.

In Zuckert's representation of the Platonic paideia, its militarization is not in evidence. Gadamer declares the status of guardian to be the “real status of human being” (Plato und die Dichter ig).^[26] We have here no autonomous individuals who can distinguish the true from the false independently of the state will. The real human is reduced to readiness for war and to subjection under the state. The warrior's self-discipline is not an end in itself: it is necessary to prevent the force of the guardians from turning into power against the domination of the state. The knowledge of the guardian (in accordance with Carl Schmitt) consists of an elementary power of differentiation: “he must be able to distinguish friend from enemy” (ibid., 19). It is in the education of this decisionistic love—and-hate competence that Gadamer in 1934 locates the task of philosophy. In return, any power of differentiation that is based on elementary humanity and that can be mobilized against illegitimate demands of the state has no place, for the decisionistic principle remains in force: “to love the friend just because he is a friend—and not because and as far as he does one good but also, if he does one harm: and to hate the enemy, just because he is the enemy, even if he does one good” (Plato und die Dichter 20). That this explanation found resonance is demonstrated by an expert opinion in connection with Gadamer's summons to Leipzig. His text “Plato and the Poets,” it is said, provides “a thoroughly original explanation of the Platonic doctrine of the state and gains a completely new relevance through the knowledge that the status of the warrior and guardian in the Platonic state is the status of human being” (Gadamer's personal file in the Leipzig University archive, Doc. 41).

I do not contest the fact that the reception and history of the effect of Gadamer's texts under Nazism attest a plurality of interpretations. A reading, however, that is obligated to the historicity of the interpretation must continue the attempt at reconstruction provided here in its infancy, and

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make the structure and the interests of the hermeneutic application, in its polyphony, as transparent as possible. The logic of hermeneutic interpretation—and here one must agree with Gadamer—includes an abundance of possibilities. Today, a generation of thinkers, in dialogue with Gadamer not least, have come to some agreement on how to deal with this contingent and unavoidable situation. Philosophers like Paul Ricoeur, Charles Taylor, and Jurgen Habermas strive for theories of interpretation without going back beyond the founding claim of the Enlightenment. This claim was raised by Jurgen Habermas against the disputable postulates of Gadamer's conservative hermeneutics more than twenty years ago. Thereby he referred to Albrecht Wellmer. This criticism is clearly still relevant, given the results of this investigation:

The enlightenment knew what hermeneutics forgets: That the “dialogue” that we “are” according to Gadamer is also a forced connection and exactly for that reason is no conversation.… The universal claim of the hermeneutic attempt [can] only then [be maintained] if one proceeds on the assumption that the context of transmission, as the locus of possible truth and factual communication, is at the same time also the locus of factual untruth and continuing power.^[27]

Perhaps the uncomfortable aspect of my research lies in the disclosure of that which Isabelle Kalinowski calls “the decisive pledge,” which accrued to the Hitler regime from the combination of the conservative discourse with the National Socialist discourse: “The hatred for the Weimar constitutional state has no doubt found a deeper form of efficacy in Gadamer's commentaries on Plato than in the direct engagement of Heidegger, which perhaps paradoxically proves a greater political naivete.”^[28] Zuckert agrees with Gadamer's negative attitude toward the Weimar Republic, but does not want to acknowledge its consequences: the authorization of Nazism, whose astonishing stability was not least the result of a legitimation pursued by many voices in the eternal space of philosophy.

NOTES

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