[lit-ideas] Heidegger and the "Ideas of 1914"
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lawrenchelm1. post@blogger. com" <lawrencehelm1.post@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 11:13:59 -0800
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10315
The above is a review of Steffen Breundel?s Die ?Ideen von 1914? und die
Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg, 2003. Unfortunately it hasn?t
been translated into English.
The ?ideas of 1914? are important to understanding Heidegger?s brand of
National Socialism. Breundel?s book presents these ideas as embodying
Germany?s motivation for entering World War One.
Julian Young in Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism, 1997 sees these Ideas of 1914
as being to some extent an ongoing climate of opinion growing out of the
unification of 1870. German unification was still fresh in peoples?
thinking. It was still important to many to exalt the ?Volk.? The Volkisch
ideal still had to be defended and worked at. What Heidegger did was to
apply the ?ideas of 1914? almost intact to 1933. Young points out that
there is nothing original about Heidegger?s thinking in 1933. These ideas
were not accepted by all Germans, but they were very common at the time.
Heidegger?s brand of National Socialism isn?t what it became under Hitler,
but it was reprehensible enough according to Young. Heidegger was an
anti-modernist; which in practical terms meant a rejection of Capitalism
along with Capitalistic industrialism. What Heidegger advocated was a
return to a preindustrial condition. (Think Theodore Kaczynski) Heidegger
advocate a Volkisch Totalitarianism and would have forcibly removed Germans
from cities and installed them in the countryside.
Heidegger?s totalitarianism was very different from Hitler?s. One of the
important ideas of 1914 was that Germany was spiritual and the nations that
opposed Germany were not. The ideas of 1914 especially demonized Britain
and Russia. Heidegger in 1933 substituted the U.S. for Britain. He thought
the U.S. and Russia indistinguishable.
Heidegger?s ideas were naïve, but no more so, Young writes, than the British
belief that its empire was equivalent to Modern Rome or America?s belief in
Manifest Destiny.
Heidegger?s views in all these matters changed after the war. For example
the very matter Young finds most heinous, the relocating of Germans from
cities to the country, comes up in a disagreement Heidegger had with Herbert
Marcuse. Young on page 49 writes, ?Curiously, Herbert Marcuse seems not to
recognize the appalling nature of ?ethnic cleansing?. In reply to
Heidegger?s suggestion that, not just the Jews but, after the war, the
Germans expelled from Eastern Europe by Stalin had also been the victims of
criminal acts, Marcuse replies that conversation is impossible with a man
who fails to see the ?night and day? difference between the concentration
camps and the ?forcible relocation of population groups??
Young said there were two anti-modern ideas. The more naïve idea was the
one Heidegger subscribed to. The more practical anti-modern idea was that
Modernism had created all sorts of evils but it was now impossible to
reverse the process. They could not do away with cities and factories, but
they could work to ameliorate their negative effects. The Islamists have
come to a similar conclusion.
As to the question of whether the brand of National Socialism Heidegger
evinced in 1933-1935 (the period in which Heidegger, according to Young, was
an active member of the Nazi Party) informed (or was informed by) his
philosophy, I can?t at this point see a connection ? especially since his
magnum opus, Being and Time was completed in 1927.
Lawrence Helm
www.lawrencehelm.com
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