Quoted in Emmanuel Faye’s Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (Yale, 2009), p. 140, italics in the original.
“Only where leader and led together bind each other in one destiny, and fight for the realization of one idea, does true order grow. Then spiritual superiority and freedom respond in the form of deep dedication of all powers to the people, to the state, in the form of the most rigid training, as commitment, resistance, solitude, and love. Then the existence and the superiority of the Führer sink down into being, into the soul of the people and thus bind it authentically and passionately to the task. And when the people feel this dedication, they will let themselves be led into struggle, and they will want and love the struggle. They will develop and persist in their strength, be true and sacrifice themselves. With each new moment the Führer and the people will be bound more closely, in order to realize the essence of their state, that is their Being; growing together, they will oppose the two threatening forces, death and the devil, that is, impermanence and the falling away from one’s own essence, with their meaningful, historical Being and Will.”
Yikes. Relevant to the question of the depth of Heidegger’s Nazism. Related: Professor Heidegger’s inaugural lecture, in the Philosophers, Explained series.
It’s interesting that only crypto-fascist web sites repeat these aspects of Heidegger, as it’s not relevant to discussions of Heidegger’s way of thinking.
Hi Luther:
You think that pointing out Heidegger’s fascism is itself “crypto-fascist”?
And isn’t THE biggest Heidegger debate about how strong the connection is between his politics and philosophy?
Actually, it’s crypto-fascists who try to ignore what excerpts like the above indicate about Heidegger’s way of thinking.
Luther: the above quote is not relevant to discussions of Heidegger’s way of thinking? And that he remained an unapologetic Nazi after WW II…? Like to read your take on that.
I’d also be interested in why you insinuate that this is a cypto-fascist site when Professor Hicks has extensively dissected the roots of and trenchantly critiqued rightist collectivist ideologies e.g. Fascism and Nazism as well as leftist.
Seems a bit rhetorical to me. Obviously, this website is not crypto-anything. And it should be acknowledged that philosophers’ politics and metaphysics often vary. Do we discount Aristotle because he condoned slavery? It was a fact of life in his time. Germans felt shame and chagrin after “losing” WWI (who in fact won it?) and feared the advent of Bolshevism. Most German soldiers when interviewed often cite they fought Bolshevism, and believed in the dignity of the German Reich (Third Reich, don’t forget the previous two). The Fuhrer or “leader” principle is not unique to Hitlerism, it functions within kingship and a democratic presidency. The buck must stop somewhere. Moreover, people who are not Germans, or, who have never traveled there, don’t quite get the almost medieval quality of German “Treue”, or loyalty. The Teutonic flavor of philosophers like Kant, Nietzsche, or Heidegger is bitter on foreign tongues. They are not an easy-going people. They work hard, play hard. German is a strict tongue, with four cases and three sexes of nouns. England and France may be seen as extensions of Germanic influence, the Anglo-Saxons and Franks, to wit. Germany proper was instituted after the Franco-Prussian war. It had the same newbie enthusiasm as the young American republic. I would personally exclude a philosopher’s politics from his thinking unless he were nothing but a political philosopher.
Stephen Dahl wrote: “I would personally exclude a philosopher’s politics from his thinking unless he were nothing but a political philosopher.”
Are you saying that politics is not based on thinking? What then? Emotion? Flipping a coin? Are you also saying that there is no connection between a philosopher’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics and that it is okay if these contradict each other?
Yes, Aristotle supported slavery, but Heidegger lived over 2,000 years later and he had much less of an excuse for advocating tyranny.
What you conclude from what I have written is your affair. In short, the true philosopher, in my view, provides truths through reason that apply to everyone. The law of identity cares for no racial or political context. I think Plato’s views about the ultimate and his “creation” of Socrates overweight the Republic. Aristotle likewise, and his efforts in science and biology are noteworthy. Less so, his Politics. His definition of man was “an animal who lives in a city state”. Truly political philosophers (if “philosophers” they can be called) have plans for government and society. Hobbes, Paine, Locke, Mill, Bentham and Marx/Engels/Lenin are such. It is my view that these are secondary thinkers, by the nature of their enquiries. Government is very simple : it must enforce contracts, protect private property, defend the community, and be jurisprudential (although this can be done through religious courts, as in Islam and in the Middle Ages in Christendom). The lowest and perverse of all thinkers are the Marxist bunch. They debase human charity by making it by fiat. The best “political philosophers” are (often regrettably) politicians themselves, Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, Napoleon, or Burke. Politics is action, it is the affairs of the “city state”. It can only be based on pre-existing “common sense” (provided by thinkers like Aristotle). Or Ayn Rand, whose comment “there are no human rights without property rights.” But I would call her an exception, a topic left for the future.
I have found that people who grab the banner of anti-slavery or anti-Fascism or anti-racism, whatever, seek a cheap glory. “Look at what a fine person I am!” Slavery has many forms. Slaves in ancient Israel were mostly indentures, and all slaves were freed every 50 years under the “Jubilee” provision. Slaves were mainly taken in war, indeed, most Negro slaves were sold to the English and Dutch by their own African chieftains. Slavery implies ownership and by its nature can have no political scope. You may be freed by fulfilling your indenture, buying your freedom (quite common, as a slave is at basis an economic tool) or charitable manumission. People can be said to be “slaves to alcohol” or tobacco. Moreover, some people prefer slavery under a kind master than freedom in a cruel world. Americans are greatly prejudiced by the example of Negro slavery. Abolitionists continually brought up whippings, lynchings, mutilations and claimed a divine prerogative in freeing slaves. Yet there were many “white slaves” in colonial times, indentured servants. Negro slavery was easier to enforce because Negro ancestry was obvious but in previous times slaves wore collars, or worse, were branded (also done to criminals to warn the innocent). In Rome slaves were bought and sold, captured in war, or sentenced to same, and turned into gladiators, salt miners, household servants, and tutors. While not desirable, being a living slave is better than a dead soldier. Euripides pointed out that no one condoned slavery, but it was inevitable. Aristotle maintained it was “natural.” There is no question that it is unjust, but so is our government which gives welfare bums a “right to live”. Should, in fact, the productive members of society be “enslaved” to the ne’er-do-wells? Should citizens be conscripted (i.e. “enslaved”) into military service?
Political philosophies pretend to the exactitude of metaphysics, but politics has no such niceties. So, I argue, philosophers may be dissociated from their political theories, unless they have no metaphysics to speak of. It’s something in the vein of “Heidegger was a Nazi so I don’t like him as a philosopher.” They won’t play the music of Wagner in Israel because “Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer”, which isn’t true, it was Lehar. Try “Aristotle condoned slavery, so his philosophy must be wrong.” Then we get the hippie-dippie who is against slavery, and racism, and capitalism — who must be a good sort because he opposes “bad things.” And on to our knee-jerk media that uses half-truths and emotional slop to enforce an egalitarianism which is bogus — what they want is to establish the (still-fictional) “Proletariat”, but they don’t say so.
Philosophy is our wondrous instrument to see further, like a telescope, but if we reverse it in any sense, we have a poor microscope that cannot be focused on little but dust.
Stephen Dahl, January 15, 2014 at 12:38 pm, wrote : “Do we discount Aristotle because he condoned slavery? It was a fact of life in his time. Germans felt shame and chagrin after “losing” WWI”
And so it was in the era of the time to exterminate all the Jews of Europe? I have trouble understanding the parallel between Aristotle and Nazism… I don’t see what Aristotle is doing here.
Heidegger was a real anti-Semitic Nazi, and he even developed an exterminating anti-Semite from 1934. He clearly exhorted his students to “prepare the assault” and the “total annihilation” of the “enemy embedded in the most intimate root of the people”.
It is very clear.
When he was rector of the University of Fribourg, Heidegger placed himself at the forefront of the repression against Jewish colleagues and students, and even against Christians, whom he considered infected by Judaism Judaism.. (Judaism which by the way, according to Kant, should be euthanized, as a reminder. We will even have to deal with Christians wanting to de-Judaize the Bible. Fascinating stupidity).
Heidegger and Carl Schmitt are among the main inspirers of the constitution of the Reich.
It is publicly that Heidegger takes a position for a “thought of race.”
And it will continue…
But I will stop there.
Luther, January 13, 2014 at 8:51 pm, wrote : “It’s interesting that only crypto-fascist web sites repeat these aspects of Heidegger.”
So this would be an aspect?
It was not an aspect, it was in the depth of his being.
Like a huge failure in which by his great debility, he sank.
Then his lover, Hannah Arendt, did everything to hide this (this story is fascinating).
Then the Heideggerian sect showed its claws against anyone who had the idea of recalling what a trashy anti-Semitic messiah this guy was.
The publication of his first Black Notebooks specifies a double project:
to “philosophically” legitimize the historical extermination of the Jews and to destroy Judaism from the inside.
In “Antisémitisme et racisme dans la pensée de Heidegger : état de la recherche” – Sidonie Kellerer (“Anti-Semitism and Racism in Heidegger’s Thought: State of the Research”) – Des philosophes face à la Shoah – Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah (Philosophers facing the Shoah – Shoah History Review) – 2017/2 No. 207 – Pages 25 to 43
Excerpts from his Chronological Table (Google Translate translation):
— Winter 1933-1934 – Total Extermination: Winter Semester Seminar / He teaches the need to “spot the enemy as such, to lead him to deploy, to have no illusions about him, to maintain readiness for attack, to cultivate and increase a constant readiness and to fix the attack in the long term, with the goal of total extermination.”
— Around 1940: In his black notebooks – The elusive world Jewry / “World Jewry, excited by the emigrants allowed to leave Germany, is elusive everywhere and with all its power deployed has nowhere need to participate in acts of war, while all that remains for us is to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our own people.”
///////////////////////////////////////////
— 1916: Letter to his wife / “The Jewishization of our culture and our universities is indeed appalling and I think that the German race should gather enough inner strength to reach the top. Indeed, capital!”
— 1929: Letter to his wife / “Around here, we hear a lot about Jews emptying villages of all their livestock […]. The peasants are also more and more brazen and the country is invaded by Jews, traffickers and profiteers.”
— 1922: Letter to his mother / “These Jews, by dint of wanting to make money, no longer stop at anything. »
— 1929: Letter to Viktor Schwoerer / “What I could only indirectly indicate in my report, I can say here more clearly: it is nothing less than the urgent awareness that we are faced with the following alternative: either we once again equip our German spiritual life with authentic forces and educators, emanating from the soil, or we definitively deliver it to the growing Jewishness in the broad and narrow sense of the term. We will only find the way again if we are able to help fresh forces to blossom, without hassle and without fruitless disputes.”
— 1931: Letter to his brother / “It seems as if Germany is waking up, realizing its destiny and taking hold of it. I would very much like you to look into Hitler’s book, which, admittedly, is weak in the autobiographical chapters at the beginning. It is indisputable that this man has a sure and uncommon political instinct, and that he already had it at the time when all of us still did not know where to go. Every man of judgment must now agree with this.”
— 1932: Course of the summer semester 1932 / “The title “West” is a historical concept that refers to the history and culture of present-day Europe, which saw the light of day with the Greeks and especially the Romans, and is essentially determined and carried by Jewish Christianity […] Romanity, Judaism and Christianity have completely transformed and distorted the nascent philosophy, namely the Greek one.”
— 1932: Letter to his brother / “By the beginning of August, it was clear that the Jews had picked up their strength and were gradually recovering from the panic that had gripped them. The fact that they have succeeded in a coup like the van Papen episode shows how difficult it will be to fight against all that is big capital – and the like.”
— End of 1932: Letter to Hannah Arendt / “In academic matters, I am just as anti-Semitic today as I was ten years ago and in Marburg, where this anti-Semitism has nevertheless earned me the support of Jacobsthal and Friedländer. This has absolutely nothing to do with personal relations with Jews (e.g. Cassirer, Misch, Husserl, etc.).” (Letter to Hannah Arendt)
— May 1, 1933: Heidegger on April 21, 1933, becomes rector of the University of Freiburg and solemnly a member of the NSDAP. He succeeds Rector Wilhelm von Möllendorff, who had protested against the law for the reconstitution of the civil service.
— April 28, 1933: Non-Aryan professors lose their positions, including Edmund Husserl, one of whose sons had been killed in the war, and the other wounded, and who had therefore initially been exempted from the application of the April 7 law purging the civil service. Heidegger’s assistant is also dismissed. Heidegger takes responsibility for implementing this law in the University of Freiburg.
— April 29, 1933: Letter from Elfride Heidegger to Malvine Husserl (Elfride writes “also on behalf of [her] husband”) / “But to all this is added the deep gratitude for the willingness to sacrifice of your sons, and it is only in the spirit of this new law (harsh, but from a German point of view, reasonable) that we pledge allegiance – without restriction and with deep and sincere respect – to those who pledged allegiance to our German people in the hour of greatest need, including through their actions[19].”
— Concerning the help to Elisabeth Blochmann who was a professor in Halle and was at risk of losing her position because she was Jewish, in the biography of Blochmann, Wolfgang Klafki and Hans Georg.: “Heidegger did not ignore Elisabeth Blochmann’s calls for help; he promised her his support on several occasions. However, there is no indication in the way he responded to his calls that he had perceived the gravity of the situation. In his letters he expounds on his new activities, which sometimes seem to reach a pace close to frenzy. Several appointments that Blochmann had requested of him or that Heidegger had already arranged were cancelled before the date.
— May 4, 1933: Letter from Husserl to Alexander Pfänder / “Together with others [of my former students], I had to undergo the saddest experiences – the most recent, and the one that affected me the most severely, with Heidegger. It was the hardest because I had confidence not only in his talent but also (which I cannot quite explain to myself today) in his character. The beautiful conclusion to this supposedly profound philosophical understanding, made its official (and grand) entry into the National Socialist Party on May 1. Before that, there had been the complete break in all communication with me (completed without delay, shortly after his appointment to the chair [that of Husserl in 1928]), and, in the preceding years, the ever more obvious revelation of his anti-Semitism – including at the faculty, towards his most fervent Jewish students. »
— November 3, 1933: Directive of the rector / “Students who have recently served in the SA, the SS or who have fought for the national revolution in the defense militias will be granted priority financial aid (scholarships, tuition fees) upon presentation of a letter of recommendation from their superior. However, such aid will henceforth be refused to Jewish or Marxist students.”
— December 1933: Report on Eduard Baumgarten / Heidegger castigates Baumgarten’s “liberal-democratic attitude” and emphasizes that he “was anything but a National Socialist” when he lived in Freiburg. Furthermore, he “maintained lively relations with […] the Jew Fränkel who was dismissed from his post here.”
Heidegger was the Hegel of his time. Neither of them intended to support communist or fascist dictatorships. But when their ontological systems were flipped over, the potential for dictatorship was revealed.
Professor Hicks,
My longstanding Google Alert for mentions of ‘Heidegger’ recently twice pushed your 2014 posting which quotes from Faye’s book, because (I suppose) the posting got new response this month—and, I see, that posting now appears near the top of your Website because, I suppose, it got recent comment. Then also, you link to the posting in your sidebar as a “blast from the past.”
You don’t comment on the quote, other than to reply to the first comment, as if that quoted passage is evidence enough of “Heidegger’s fascism.” But it is not at all.
A keynote of Heidegger’s thinking is expressed by him near the end of his life at the end of the interview of him honoring his 80th birthday, indicating his engagement in having common words re-thought rather than introducing new words, i.e., thinking in new ways with the terms we already share, rather than instituting new vocabulary. That interest is also evident in Being and Time, e.g., wanting ‘Dasein’ to be rethought phenomenologically.
The quoted passage by Faye is from seminar notes for Heidegger’ 1933-34 course on state, history, and nature. That material is not only not part of his collected works, it’s not even a transcript from the seminar. It is notes for the seminar, which were put away in a drawer and never developed further. We have no idea what he actually said in the seminar.
But we can know that he was experimenting with ideas at a time when Hitler’s brutality was starkly evident.
It’s common for professors to have seminars with ideas which are experimental. One may do that prior to writing for publication. In Heidegger’s case, the overtly political interest went no further. He got engaged with lecturing on Hölderlin’s sense of being German. Prior to that, Heidegger was engaged with the logic of language (summer 1933 seminar); prior to that, the essence of truth applied especially to critique of Christianity (spring-summer 1933 lecture course). Such was also the spirit of his notebooks at the time..
The passage begins: “Only where leader and led together bind each other in one destiny…” That interest echoes the beginning of his “Self-Assertion…” address, which sought to understand faculty and rectorship in a shared calling, not teachers serving the rector, but teachers and rector serving a shared calling.
What is that destiny? Moreover, what is leadership? Questions of leadership are integral to any conscientious notion of administration. It is integral to a conception of politics, especially a democratic politics, where the question of leadership belongs to the dispositions of the voter.
“…in one destiny, and fight for the realization of one idea,…” The idea of democracy was outlawed, so the realization of an idea of democracy would have to be fought for. (One does not have to fight for an idea of dictatorship!) Only from that fight, in “our” times, “does true order grow.” True order, not false order.
November of that year, rector Heidegger had appealed to students and faculty to vote for authentic reasons, and courageously asserted that Hitler had done nothing for the people. So, Heidegger’s political sentiments outside of the seminar were clearly anti-Hitler (and, his notebooks during that time were clearly anti-national-socialist.)
“Then spiritual superiority and freedom respond…” Every Christian wants spiritual superiority, and Heidegger is directly associating that with freedom, which is the keynote of his 1931 lecture on “The Essence of Truth,” which became the basis for his first course as rector, which was on the essence of truth. Recall the keynote of Jesus: knowing truth will set us free…to “respond in the form of deep dedication of all powers to the people,…” The people first, then “to the state….”
Now look what composes “the form of the most rigid training”: “commitment, resistance, solitude, and love.” So, ‘rigid’ is meant in the manner of being devoted: engaged self (commitment) resisting heartfully (from solitude) with others (love).
“Then the existence and the superiority of the leader sink down into being,” which is a general theme about leadership as such yielding to the people. Again, this is a time when Heidegger appealed publicly for authentic motives in voting, as he says in the seminar notes now: “…into being, into the soul of the people and thus bind it authentically and passionately to the task. And when the people feel this dedication, they will let themselves be led into struggle, and they will want and love the struggle.” Opening oneself to the challenge of resistance is his appeal here. “They will develop and persist in their strength, be true and sacrifice themselves,” as any political activist knows: It’s a lot of work!
The work requires leadership, which (Heidegger emphasizes), should belong with the people. “With each new moment the leader and the people will be bound more closely,” in a context where leadership’s mandate comes from the people, not the converse, “in order to realize the essence of their state, that is their being; growing together.” And we know that being, for Heidegger, is a matter of caring for our potential together.
Thereby, “they,” the people and leadership bound together in a people-to-leadership bond, not the converse, “will oppose..impermanence and the falling away from one’s own essence, with their meaningful, historical being and will.”
That expresses a conception of leadership based in the authentic activity of the people. This is a democratic reconception of what it means to be a leader.
Cheers,
Gary
Berkeley, CA
Martin Shortz : “Neither of them intended to support communist or fascist dictatorships”
Heidegger was an active Nazi who directly participated in the constitution of the Third Reich, for the extermination of the Jews. Nazism caused the death of 60 million people.
The bloodiest conflict in the entire history of humanity.
The publication of his first Black Notebooks specifies a double project:
to “philosophically” legitimize the historical extermination of the Jews and to destroy Judaism from the inside.
I don’t see what more you need. This guy was what is commonly called a total piece of shit.
Heidegger devant la Shoah – Le volume 97 des Cahiers noirs / (Heidegger facing the Shoah – Volume 97 of the Black Notebooks) – Emmanuel Faye, Sidonie Kellerer, François Rastier
Translation: Google Translate
— “…
Now we discover, with volume 97 of the Complete Works, that in 1942, at the moment when the National Socialists had indeed crossed the “frontier of extermination”,
Heidegger designates “what is essentially ‘Jewish'” as the “peak of self-extermination in history”.
After defeat, in 1945, he portrays the German people as victims of a devastation worse than the ” ‘gas chambers’”.
Faced with the revelation of Nazi crimes, the author of the Black Notebooks persists and signs:
the problem, he writes, is that the “destiny” (Geschick) of the Germans is now “repressed” by the Allies, themselves,
no doubt, under the influence of the Jews.
Hiding behind a falsely rhetorical question, he sees in the liberation of Germany by the Allies an “even more essential ‘fault’”,
a fault “whose magnitude could not even be compared to the abominable character of the ‘gas chambers’”.
It is no coincidence that he uses the term greuelhaft here to describe the gas chambers: the Nazis used this word to describe the alleged ‘agitation’ (Greuelhetze) of foreigners, of Jews in particular, against the Third Reich.
The reversibility of executioners into victims is a commonplace of the Nazis after their military defeat of 1945: that it is found in Heidegger, stylized in a pseudo-philosophical language, does not take away from the cynicism and barbarity that it denotes.
…”
Heidegger et le nazisme – Richard Wolin / L’Homme et la société – Année 1990-97 – pp. 119-131 (
— “…
Maurice Blanchot* : “Whenever he was asked to acknowledge his ‘error,’ he either remained rigidly silent or expressed himself in such a way as to make his situation worse… It is in Heidegger’s silence on the subject of the Extermination that his irreparable error lies.”
(Blanchot quotes Heidegger’s arrogant remark: “Hitler would have let him down when he [Hitler] returned to the original radical potential of National Socialism. (8)”
In the same spirit, the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas says that (9): “But to keep this silence, even in the midst of peace, about the gas chambers and the death camps, is it not, beyond all the order of bad excuses, to attest to a depth of soul perfectly closed to sensitivity and like a consent to the horrible?”
Even Heidegger’s most talented and original disciple, Hans-Georg Gadamer, frankly admitted that in this political commitment “Heidegger was not a pure and simple opportunist” on the contrary, “he ‘believed’ in Hitler” (l0).
– 8 / Le Nouvel Observateur, 22-28 janvier 1988 : 43-45.
– 9 / Le Nouvel Observateur, 22-28 janvier 1988 : 49.
– 10 / Le Nouvel Observateur, 22-28 janvier 1988 : 45.
…”
*”Maurice Blanchot (1907 – 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy.” – Wikipédia