From: pmccann@spam.maths.adelaide.edu.au (Paul McCann)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Heidegger and Nazism
Date: 21 Aug 92 07:16:00 GMT
	<1992Aug19.152410.14895@husc3.harvard.edu>
Followup-To: sci.philosophy.meta
Organization: Adelaide University.
In-reply-to: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu's message of 19 Aug 92 19:24:09 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.152410.14895@husc3.harvard.edu> 
zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>   In article <1992Aug19.161512.27386@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
>   feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:

>   >I take it that we all agree that Heidegger was a Nazi for a
>   >significant portion of his Professorial career?  So the challenge is
>   >to show either the compatibility of _Sein & Zeit_ with Nazism, or that
>   >the text is itself nazi-istic?  Failing that initial understanding,
>   >I've no inclination to play.

>   I agree with Michael's claim, and refer all interested parties to
>   Victor Farias' book _Heidegger et le Nazisme_.  I further state that
>   te facile response to Charles' challenge consists in observing that
>   the ethos of authenticity resolves into that of sincerity, recently
>   described by me at some length elsewhere.  Thus the least charge that
>   can be made with respect to Heidegger, is that his metaphysics
>   precludes a priori any principled opposition to Nazism.  Having said
>   that, I defer to Michael for more profound observations on the same
>   subject.

If retaining membership for a significant period of time is taken as
sufficient for being a Nazi then I have no difficulty with the claim
(as MZ points out, Farias' work establishes at least this much (not
that it wasn't known beforehand, but that's another issue)). If it's
taken to mean much more than this then the matter becomes more complex.
Certainly there's the infamously-retained portion from the 1953 version
of "An Introduction to Metaphysics" (quoting from Manheim's translation)

  "The works that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy
   of National Socialism but have nothing whatever to do with the 
   inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the encounter
   between global technology and modern man) - have all been written
   by men fishing in the troubled waters of `values' and `totalities'."

and the accompanying debate over the status of the bracketed portion
thereof (was it written on H's lecture notes or was it added after?
there's strong evidence of the latter), but it's necessary to ask
exactly what's being praised in the above: the "inner truth and 
greatness" as against ... ? perhaps the given manifestation, the
actualization of the historical possibility that Heidegger saw 
opened up in Germany in the early thirties? I suppose some will
continue to read it as nothing but a salute to the reality of the
Nazi Party of the time it was written (MZ certainly does), but I 
think that's stultifyingly simplistic; why would he wish such a 
thing to be printed, given his dissimulating replies to questions 
about his behaviour during the time of Hitler's rule?

In his excellent _Heidegger, Art and Politics_ Lacoue-Labarthe
writes; "In 1933 Heidegger is not mistaken. But he knows in 1934
that he has made a mistake. Not about the truth of Nazism but about 
its reality." His experience as rector and the "night of the
long knives" served to destroy both his faith in his own power as
philosopher to the Reich and his hope that the Hitlerian vision of
German greatness had any hope of leading the nation away from the
technological nihilism that he saw at work in both the United States 
and Russia. (cf the famous passage about Germany being held in the 
pincers of the US and Russia in _Intro to Metaphysics_)

Heidegger's own explanation (for what it's worth) of his retaining
membership for so long involved the fact that his son was fighting 
on the Russian front, and so a resignation and its attendant
publicity were not desirable. More likely it was a result of wanting
to maintain his position within the university system, and indeed
it appears that he continued to participate in moves to reshape the
German universities even after his resignation from the rectorship.
So why believe that there was any sort of break with Nazism? Centrally
because of his lectures through the late thirties. 

Anyway, this message was intended to be little more than a quick
guide to some of the more recent literature available on the subject 
of Heidegger and Nazism. Apart from Farias' _Heidegger and Nazism_,
the English version of which would seem to be preferable to the French
one cited by MZ (it works largely from the German version of Farias'
text and corrects many of the errors that were noticed in the 
French edition; the editors give a detailed explanation of the history
of their text in the introduction), there's the book of Lacoue-Labarthe
mentioned above, which seems to me both honest and eloquent. On the
subject of the relationship between Heidegger's political and 
philosophical thought he writes:

  "Contrary to what has been said in a number of places, Heidegger's
   commitment is entirely consistent with his thought and the 
   `political' and the `philosophical' were so interwoven that 
   practically all his teaching from the so-called `turn' (Kehre)
   up until 1944 was devoted to a `settling of accounts with'
   National Socialism, which in reality reveals *a contrario*
   the truth which Heidegger had perceived in it or believed in 
   all seriousness (...) that he had perceived in it."

Another recent translation that contributes to the debate is 
Ferry and Renaut's _Heidegger and Modernity_, which takes
Lacoue-Labarthe, Derrida and others to task for sacrificing
the "early Heidegger" in order to save a "late Heidegger" 
in whose work they are interested. I found this book remarkably
annoying for a number of reasons, but chiefly because of the 
lamentable tactic of making it seem that everything that was
written about Heidegger's involvement with the Nazi's was as a
reaction to the discoveries of Farias. Again however, it's a
much more readable volume than Farias' relentless crusade (which
also ignores its share of evidence when the contents don't suit
the desired conclusions; see, for example, L-L's appendix).

Somewhat further from the polemical centre of things is Michael 
Zimmerman's study _Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity_,
which traces the similarities between Heidegger's writings from
the period to those of "reactionary modernists" such as Ernst
J\"unger. The demonstrated overlap is substantial, and enough to
make any distinction between the political and philosophical 
work of Heidegger extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible,
to maintain. 

Lastly there's a collection of original documents edited by
Wolin (hazy memory here), called perhaps "The Heidegger Controversy",
containing the Rectoral Address, interviews with Derrida, Bourdieu
and others, an exchange of letters between Marcuse and Heidegger
and much more. 
--
Paul McCann  (pmccann@spam.ua.oz.au)
But where danger is, also
grows the saving power. (H\"olderlin)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta