[lit-ideas] Heidegger's Spenglerism
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lawrenchelm1. post@blogger. com" <lawrencehelm1.post@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:29:06 -0800
enowning <http://www.blogger.com/profile/12287486840371546648> left the
following comment in regard to the post "Heidegger influenced by Spengler
<http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/11/heidegger-influenced-by-spengler.html> ":
Heidegger references Spengler in dozens of places. He was probably the most
popular German intellectual in the 20s.
RESPONSE:
Indeed, and one can’t help but wonder why Emmanuel Faye chooses to ignore that
fact. I am off to a rocky start in reading Faye’s book. Faye is calling
Heidegger a Nazi in the years before Hitler created the Nazi party. He doesn’t
see Heidegger embracing the sort of “National Socialism” (even if it can be
called that) in the early 20s. For Faye there is only one political enterprise
that Heidegger embraced and it is the Nazism of Hitler. Nuance of politics
doesn’t seem to be one of Faye’s concerns.
Bearing in mind that The Decline of the West was first published in 1920 and
was therefore being written by Spengler as World War One was concluded and in
its immediate aftermath, consider the conclusion to his 19th chapter, where he
discusses how Liberal Democracy must of necessity fail and be replaced by a
Caesar-like ruler:
“Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed
intellect. But . . . men have learned that in the realm of reality one
power-will can be overthrown only by another . . . there wakes at last a deep
yearning for all old and worthy traditions that still lingers alive. Men . . .
hope for salvation from somewhere or other, for some true ideal of honour and
chivalry, of inward nobility, of unselfishness and duty. And now dawns the
time when the form-filled powers of blood . . . reawaken in the depths.
Everything in the order of dynastic tradition and old nobility that has saved
itself up for the future, everything that there is of high money-disdaining
ethic, everything that is intrinsically sound enough to be, in Frederick the
Great’s words, the servant – the hard-working, self-sacrificing, caring servant
– of the State – all this becomes suddenly the focus of immense life forces.
Caesarism grows on the soil of Democracy, but its roots thread deeply into the
underground of blood tradition. The Classical Caesar derived his power from
the Tribunate, and his dignity and therewith his permanency from his being the
princeps. Here too the soul of old Gothic wakens anew. The spirit of the
knightly orders overpowers plunderous Vikingism. The mighty ones of the future
may possess the earth as their private property – for the great political form
of the Culture is irremediably in ruin – but it matters not, for, formless and
limitless as their power may be, it has a task. And this task is the
unwearying care for this world as it is, which is the very opposite of the
interestedness of the money-power age, and demands high honour and
conscientiousness. But for this very reason there now sets in the final battle
between Democracy and Caesarism, between the leading forces of dictatorial
money-economics and the purely political will-to-order of the Caesars.”
Is it more reasonable to imagine that Heidegger was influenced by Spenglerian
diatribes such as this one, or that he had launched himself and his philosophy,
solely from his on mind, on the path that led to Adolf Hitler and his holocaust?
This isn’t to say there was nothing wrong in Heidegger accepting Spengler’s
political philosophy, but it is to say that Faye (at least as far as I’ve read)
has gotten has glossed over way too much history. He forces us to take our
attention from the real problem (Spengler and the Ideas of 1914) and focus on
an unreality, Heidegger as the prototype of Nazism.
Faye’s arguments have a certain plausibility, but he goes too far in blaming
Heidegger for Hitler and the Holocaust. Heidegger was influenced by the ideas
of 1914 and as enowning says above, by Spengler, “who was probably the most
influential intellectual of the 20s.” That is where we should be looking, not
way out at the end of the argument that resulted in Hitler and his holocaust.
And not as though Heidegger sprang full-grown without antecedents.
But am I then saying that Heidegger should be excused because he wasn’t the
true creator of the political philosophy that led to Hitler? I hope I am not
saying that. I don’t intend to. Heidegger should be blamed, or at least
disagreed with, but let’s do it for the correct reasons. He embraced a
political philosophy that was as fully experimental as Marxism. Heidegger
should be faulted, just as we should fault the Russian Communists for believing
too long in their ideal. He and they were on the wrong track. Their
experiments failed and we should learn lessons from those failures.
Communism and National Socialism were begun by idealists. Not all were, but
some were, the most interesting intellectuals were, and Heidegger was one of
those. He believed in the ideal. What we should look for (rather than the
things Faye seems to be looking for) is the point when Heidegger should have
known that National Socialism was a failed experiment. Perhaps he realized
that during the war, but if so what must his thoughts have been and what
conclusions could he have drawn? He would still have believed that Capitalism
was a dead end (Spengler probably convinced him of that); so what were his
choices? He may have thought Communism (a political philosophy he opposed as
strongly as he opposed Liberal Democracy) was going to win out. Did this mean
he should have turned to Communism as so many in France did? He was an old and
tired 56 when the war ended and not about to turn against all he had written
and thought.
For, after all, did the Nazi-form of National Socialism (rather than the
Spengler form) inform his philosophy? Perhaps not. Faye tells us that it did,
but I don’t trust Faye’s grasp of logical argument. For Faye there is only the
one form of National Socialism and it isn’t the ideal that Thomas Carlyle and
Oswold Spengler wrote about. It was the form put into action by Adolf Hitler,
and Heidegger was associated with it. And therein lies the fault of Faye’s
argument as I see it. His form of argument is “Guilt by association,” which
is, as arguments go, fallacious. He can’t just say (to exaggerate only a
little) “look at the Swastika on Heidegger’s arm, therefore his philosophy is
shot through with Nazism. He needs to prove the connection in Heidegger’s
philosophy, and my impression from the sloppiness of argument I’ve seen thus
far is that Faye isn’t up to it.
Lawrence Helm
www.lawrencehelm.com
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