Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work
January 15th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work :: Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work :: Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work :: Being and Time, Linked Directly to Nazi Racist Thinking.
So you agree with Zizek that Heidegger was right, for the wrong reasons?
http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/i…
Tudor Georgescu wrote:
Arguably, Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis was due to his intention to convert them to becoming a cultural-literary society without military ambitions. But, he was just too powerless in this game in order to be able to succeed at it. This was his tragic element.
Then, from the perspective of the 18th century, “The 19th century will be racist or not be at all”. The racism so characteristic to the 19th century is the fruit of the intellectual history of Europe. This racism is certainly not alien to the ambition of constructing a Europe of nations, instead of an Europe of empires.
On p. 57 “Heidegger declares that existence is not defined as destiny except through the community of people” and in the paragraphs which follow, what Faye says is: whoever is no individualist, he/she is a Nazi. Lenin was no individualist, and this would seemingly qualify him for being a Nazi.
On p. 60 “‘racial selection is metaphysically necessary’, that ‘racial thought springs from the experience of Being as subjectivity.’” See above about the 19th century being racist or not be at all. In fact, a similar argument has been advanced by Zygmunt Bauman, namely that Holocaust is the product of the modern way of life and of modern industrial production.
Same page, “‘the not-yet-purified German essence’” is ambiguous. As Heidegger declared in his Spiegel interview, the sycophants would understand from it the propagation of Nazi ideology, while the wisdom lovers would understand that there was at the moment something very rotten in Germany (by which he did not mean the Jews).
Same page: mobilization of Wehrmacht being “a metaphysical act”, makes sense if we see that Heidegger often used the term “metaphysics” as synonymous with the onto-theo-logical expression “the work of Satan”. He calls thus the mobilization of Wehrmacht a Satanic act. Its Satanism springs from the fall into Gestell of the primordial (philosophical) thinkers, who at the same time opened and closed the horizon for understanding Being.
I.e. from the errors inherent to the mightiest among the Greek philosophers, the metaphysics of subjectivity was born centuries later, and from it necessarily followed the affirmation of collective subjectivity as racism.
The comparison with the suppression of philosophy from the curriculum is significant, since Heidegger was a philosopher, and he certainly did not like the expurgation of philosophy from educational institutions.
Faye notices very well that it “radically compromises all modern philosophy starting with Descartes” (p. 62), but he makes the mistake of attributing this to Heidegger instead of attributing it to the Holocaust. This was the tragedy I was speaking about: the accomplishment of subjectivity produced the Holocaust; Heidegger understood that he was too weak to change the course of time. He failed in his attempt at converting the Nazis because the force of Gestell (the genie of techno-subjectivity which slipped out of the bottle) was far too mighty for being vanquished by a “mere philosopher”.
If metaphysics does not always have the meaning “work of the Devil” in Heidegger’s works, then we must at least agree that subjectivity has such a meaning, like in “racial selection as ’springing from the experience of being as subjectivity’” (p. 62).
About “Heidegger asks if those who perished in the concentration camps could even be said to be dead.” (p. 64), it can be said that he renders them the highest honor: “they were not mortal” (p. 65). I.e., they were godly.
About the remark on concentration camps and mobilized agriculture (p. 64), besides being a point of Bauman’s work on the Holocaust, this was perhaps the maximum allowed to be said about that in those times, without running the risk of having lead intoxication to one’s lungs.
Greetings,
Tudor
> —–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
> Van: heidegger-bounces at an-archos.com [mailto:heidegger-bounces@an-
>archos.com] Namens GEVANS613 at aol.com
> Verzonden: dinsdag 15 januari 2008 11:24
> Aan: heidegger at an-archos.com
> Onderwerp: Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work
>
> Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work
>
> Emmanuel Faye
>
>
> Paris XâNanterre
>
> Translated by Alexis Watson and Richard J. Golsan.
>
> A new piece by Heidegger (previously unpublished ) has been issued.
> I was able to access it through *Muse* via my university, which has an
> account with them.
>
> In this new material by the Philosopher of Nazism, he apparently
> refers to the Jews and others whom his pals murdered in the camps as -
> not being dead - because they were not really living beings in the
> first place.
>
> Faye reports that Heidegger: *…barely lingers on the conditions of
> the extermination of the victims. What he supports, in an extremely
> obscure and cloudy fashion, is that “man can die if and only if Being
> itself appropriates the essence of man into the essence of the Being
> beginning with the truth of his essence.”
>
> Queue the Apologists…
>
> Faye then introduces other recent revelations concerning Heidegger’
> hatred of the Jewish people.
>
> There is a lot more equally horrific racialist stuff in the article,
> but I do not want to risk abusing the copyright in any way. Those
> interested in reading this stuff, which rips away the mask of the
> dégagé academician from this evil man’s face to reveal the stunted
> anti-human bastard beneath also identifies proto-nazism and race in
> Being and Time.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Jud
–
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