Heidegger and Nazism

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The German philosopher Martin Heidegger joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP), generally known in English as the Nazi Party, on May 1, 1933, nearly three weeks after being appointed Rector of the University of Freiburg. He resigned the Rectorship about one year later, in April 1934, but remained a member of the NSDAP until the end of World War II. His first act as Rector was to eliminate all democratic structures, including those that had elected him Rector. There were three book burnings on his campus, also some student violence.

Although there is no truth to the oft-repeated story that during his time as Rector, the University denied Heidegger's former teacher Husserl, born a Jew and an adult Lutheran convert, access to the university library, he did invoke the Nazi racial cleansing laws in forcing several Jews, including his own assistant Werner Brock, to sever their connections with the university. Heidegger also removed the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time when it was reissued in 1941, later claiming he did so because of pressure from his publisher, Max Niemeyer. Additionally, when Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics (based on lectures given in 1935) was published in 1953, he declined to remove a reference to the "inner truth and greatness of this movement [die innere Wahrheit und Größe dieser Bewegung]," i.e. National Socialism. Instead of deleting or altering the text, he added the parenthetical gloss, "(namely, the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity) (nämlich [die] Begegnung der planetarisch bestimmten Technik und des neuzeitlichen Menschen)."

Husserl, who had considered himself a friend of Heidegger, wrote on May 4, 1933, "The future alone will judge which was the true Germany in 1933, and who were the true Germans--those who subscribe to the more or less materialistic-mythical racial prejudices of the day, or those Germans pure in heart and mind, heirs to the great Germans of the past whose tradition they revere and perpetuate." When Husserl died in 1938, Heidegger did not attend his funeral.

Critics further cite Heidegger's affair with Hannah Arendt, who was Jewish, while she was his doctoral student at the University of Marburg. This affair took place in the 1920s, some time before Heidegger's involvement in Nazism, but it did not end when she moved to Heidelberg to continue her studies under Karl Jaspers. She later spoke on his behalf at his denazification hearings. Jaspers spoke against him at these same hearings, suggesting he would have a detrimental influence on German students because of his powerful teaching presence. Arendt very cautiously resumed their friendship after the war, despite or even because of the widespread contempt for Heidegger and his political sympathies, and despite his being forbidden to teach for many years after the war.

[edit] Der Spiegel interview

Some years later, hoping to quiet controversy, Heidegger gave an interview to Der Spiegel magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. It should be noted that Heidegger extensively edited, at his insistence, the published version of the interview. In that interview, Heidegger's defense of his Nazi involvement runs in two tracks: first, he argued that there was no alternative, saying that he was trying to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and thus had to compromise with the Nazi administration. Second, he saw an "awakening" ("Aufbruch") which might help to find a "new national and social approach". After 1934, he said, he would (should?) have been more critical of the Nazi government. Heidegger's answers to some questions are evasive. For example, when he talks about a "national and social approach" of national socialism, he links this to Friedrich Naumann. But Naumann's "national-sozialer Verein" was not at all national socialist, but liberal. Heidegger seems to have deliberately created this confusion. Also, he alternates quickly between his two lines of arguments, overlooking any contradictions. Furthermore, his defense often tends to take the form of pointing to the greater extremism of other educators and thinkers, as to minimize his own Nazi sympathies by comparison.

The Der Spiegel interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation where he calls engineered food production and the Holocaust "essentially the same." While Heidegger's defenders have attempted to account for this "similarity of essence" by reference to his essay "On the Essence of Truth," this account of the technological 'frame' that now infects human nourishment and human mortality is not a conventional reaction to genocide. Moreover, many of those who align themselves with Heidegger philosophically have pointed out that in his own work on being-towards-death, we can recognize a much more salient criticism of what was wrong with the mass-produced murder of a people. Thinkers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler have made this point sympathetically. Commentators differ on whether this philosophical shorthand is evidence of a profound disregard for the Jews or simply the astygmatism of an old man concerned more with his own legacy than with that of the Holocaust.

In fact, the Der Spiegel interviewers were not in possession of most of the evidence now known for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies. For more on this interview and its aftermath, see "Only a God Can Save Us," Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger (1966) and Jürgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): 431-56.

The question of the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics has been debated in very many books. Conclusions have varied from those arguing that his philosophy has no connection to his politcs, to those who see a direct connection, with every shade of opinion in between.

[edit] Bibliography

Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, Temple University Press (1989) ISBN 0-87722-640-7
Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, l'introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, Albin Michel, 2005
Luc Ferry & Alain Renaut (1988). Heidegger et les Modernes, Gallimard, 1988
Luc Ferry & Alain Renaut, Système et critique, édition révisée, Ousia, 1992
François Fédier, Martin Heidegger Écrits politiques 1933-1966, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1995. ISBN 2-07-073277-0
François Fédier, Heidegger. Anatomie d'un scandale, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1988. ISBN 2-221-05658-2
Hugo Ott. Martin Heidegger. Éléments pour une biographie, Payot
Dominique Janicaud, L'ombre de cette pensée, Jerôme Millon, 1990
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, La fiction du politique, Bourgois, 1987 (translated as Heidegger, Art and Politics)
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe discusses Heidegger's Nazism at length in the film, The Ister, 2004
Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and the Jews, 1990
Günther Neske & Emil Kettering (eds.), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers, 1990
Jean-Michel Palmier, Les Écrits politiques de Heidegger, Éditions de l'Herne, Paris, 1968
Rüdiger Safranski, Heidegger et son temps, Livre de poche, 2000
Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany
Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, 1990 ISBN 0-262-73101-0.