[lit-ideas] Martin Heidegger; Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (eds.) Nature, History, State: 1933-1934

  • From: palma <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: cazzoni@xxxxxxxx, testadekazzo@xxxxxxxxx, "palmaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <palmaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2014 10:35:53 +0200

​for the lovers of the turd in brownshirt, evidende is borne out on the
pure nazi thoughts of martin-the diarrohea of being- heidegger.
it would be better to adjust to the times. interesting suggestion by one of
the experts, the idiot after having "mis-estimated" his own impact on the
great minds of Rosenberg, Goebbels etc. was annoyed by other "sheperds of
being" being more appreciated. so he distanced himslef from the party
because he was liked enougu.
anyone who desires to defend this heidegger "thoughts" should look at his
writings..


On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 4:49 AM, Anastasia Friel Gutting <agutting@xxxxxx>
wrote:

>  Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
>
> 2014.06.09 View this Review Online
> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/48721-nature-history-state-1933-1934/>   View
> Other NDPR Reviews <http://ndpr.nd.edu>
>
> Martin Heidegger,* Nature, History, State: 1933-1934*, Gregory Fried and
> Richard Polt (trs., eds.), Bloomsbury, 2013, 203pp., $80.00 (hbk), ISBN:
> 9781441176387.
>
> Reviewed by Charles Bambach, University of Texas at Dallas
>
> Thanks to the publication and blitzkrieg reception of the *Black
> Notebooks*, the work of Heidegger is now once again the focus of a raging
> public controversy. In newspapers, blogs, magazines, television interviews,
> and public forums, the question of Heidegger's ties to National Socialism
> and its vicious anti-Semitic credo has again become a de rigueur topic of
> discussion. The fallout from this so-called "crisis" has rendered
> Heidegger's works ever more suspect and questionable. Even the renowned
> president of the Martin HeideggerGesellschaft, Günter Figal,
> has acknowledged that "the anti-Semitic comments in the *Black Notebooks* are
> disgusting and appalling. They have saddened me."[1]
> <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__edn1> In the wake of all this controversy, so many of
> Heidegger's manuscripts -- especially from the period 1933-1945 -- are now
> being vetted for their "political" implications and racist views. It is
> within this new context of reception (although for seasoned readers of
> Heidegger this registers as merely another episode of the crisis-fatigue
> that has been ongoing for the past quarter century) that another Heidegger
> manuscript,* Nature, History, State* from Winter Semester 1933-1934,
> comes into English translation. Against this background, I think it is fair
> to ask: how significant is this work? More particularly, does it offer any
> new insights into Heidegger's political thinking or his ties to National
> Socialism and his reflections on Jews and their role within Germany and the
> modern world? Finally, apart from these all too current themes about lurid
> political scandal, are there any other philosophically relevant
> contributions in this new publication? Before addressing these questions,
> let us consider the nature of the manuscript itself.
>
> The complete text of *Nature, History, State* comprises about 50 pages,
> but in no sense is this manuscript "complete." It consists, rather, of ten
> student protocols covering ten seminar sessions from November 3, 1933 to
> February 23, 1934, the period when Heidegger was serving as the National
> Socialist rector at the University of Freiburg. In other words, this text
> was not written by Heidegger himself, but constitutes a compilation of
> notes/summaries from ten different student authors. Although Heidegger did
> later review these protocols and make two interpolations, the hermeneutic
> integrity of this text is open to question. Hence, the two editors of the
> collection, Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, claim that "while we cannot
> rely on this text as a verbatim transcript of what Heidegger said, it is
> reasonable to take it as good evidence of the essential content of the
> views he developed during this seminar" (2). I would concur with this
> assessment, while also reminding readers that texts of this sort should be
> viewed as supplemental rather than primary. That is, such texts helps us to
> situate Heidegger's political commitments in terms of the specific
> philosophical issues that preoccupy him at this time. This fine collection
> does precisely that: it provides both an excellent translation of the
> seminar protocols themselves, as well as insightful scholarly essays that
> read them in and against Heidegger's other works from after* Being and
> Time*(1927) through the delivery of the "Introduction to Metaphysics"
> lectures of 1935.
>
> In their helpful "Introduction," Fried and Polt acknowledge that "the
> seminar in this volume is an essential piece of evidence for those who wish
> to assess the degree to which he [Heidegger] was intellectually committed
> to Nazi ideology" (1). Here the juridical metaphor is telling, since so
> much of the previous discussion of Heidegger's Nazism has been conducted as
> if it were a kind of legal prosecution. Yet to their credit, Fried
> and Polt offer a thoughtful, balanced, and penetrating assessment, one that
> is characterized by a rigorous professionalism in their work as translators
> and as editors. Here they have gathered together four distinguished
> Heidegger scholars whose uniformly excellent essays approach the seminar
> from four different, yet complementary, perspectives. To this they add a
> chapter by the philosopher Slavoj Žižek that diverges from the other essays
> by situating the seminar in a debate about the historical struggle between
> Nazism and communism. In putting together such a collection, Fried
> and Polt come to terms with some difficult and disturbing themes in
> Heidegger's work that reinforce their conviction that there can be no doubt
> about Heidegger's fundamental commitment to the National Socialist
> movement, nor to his "postwar attempts to minimize the extent of his
> support for Nazism" (1). Here, they show themselves as deeply critical of
> Heidegger's stance, yet not willing to embrace the extreme condemnation of
> Heidegger carried out by Emmanuel Faye in his controversial study* Heidegger:
> The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy.* In this book Faye identifies
> the*Nature, History, State* seminar as "the main text [for] . . . the
> total identification of Heidegger's teaching with the principle of
> Hitlerism itself," so much so that he can claim: "In the work of Martin
> Heidegger, the very principles of philosophy are abolished."[2]
> <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__edn2> Fried, Polt, and their co-contributors, on the
> other hand, acknowledge "the errors in Heidegger's view," while condemning
> in a strongly critical way what is "pernicious" about this, without
> dismissing Heidegger's whole corpus or, like Faye, advocating the total
> banishment of Heidegger's works from university libraries everywhere.
>
> We can find a model for this kind of approach in "Volk and Führer," by the
> German philosopher, Marion Heinz. Heinz shows in convincing fashion that
> the seminar functions as both the philosophical and propagandistic
> validation of "the Führer state, the ideology of blood and soil, and other
> core elements of the Nazi worldview" (68). By reading the seminar through
> key Heidegger concepts in *Being and Time *-- authentic temporality,
> historicity, resoluteness, decision, destiny, care -- she demonstrates how
> Heidegger's political language of 1933-34 emerges from the temporal concept
> of Dasein as a political being placed in a situation of deciding for a
> particular kind of community. She also stresses the educative function of
> the seminar as a way for Heidegger to prepare the Volk for entry into the
> state by "the creation of a new fundamental attitude of the will" (63).
> Peter Gordon's essay also draws important connections between the WS
> 1933-34 seminar and *Being and Time*, showing quite powerfully how
> Heidegger grants "the political" an* ontological*status that lends an
> aura of profundity to something that needs to be read as a mere
> "ideological *preference*" (93). Gordon reminds us that when reading
> Heidegger's political works as "philosophy" we would do well to remember
> their ideological function, especially when they bring in the blatant
> prejudice of Nazi propaganda about rooted, autochthonous Germans who belong
> to the state and "Semitic nomads" to whom, the seminar notes claim, "the
> nature of our German space . . . will perhaps never be revealed at all"
> (56).
>
> This issue of belonging to the Volk and to "our German space" is taken up
> in exemplary fashion by both Theodore Kisiel and Robert Bernasconi, who do
> an excellent job of placing the seminar within the Nazi debates about
> Volk-race-state-university education and within Heidegger's own work of the
> 1930s. Bernasconi especially demonstrates how Heidegger's most essential
> claims in the seminar -- "the highest actualization of human being happens
> in the state" (64), "the state is the preeminent being of the people
> (Volk)" (57), "The Führer state . . . [is] the actualization of the people
> in the leader" (64) -- belong to the contemporary debates in Germany among
> other committed thinkers/ideologues who are engaged in a battle about the
> "proper" form of National Socialism. Heidegger renounced most of the NS
> babble about the Volk, even as he adapted some of its contemporary lingo
> (e.g., "mandate," "mission," "service," "sacrifice," "will," "struggle,"
> "labor," et al.) in an effort to change and direct its meaning in new ways
> to fit *his* philosophy. The great irony here, however, is that
> Heidegger's "break" with the party and the Führer occurs as a reaction to
> the party's rejection of his thought and less in Heidegger's bold or
> courageous rejection of its tenets. It was Heidegger's inability to shift
> the direction of the party away from the crude practices of* Volkskunde,
> Rassenkunde, politische Wissenschaft, *and the AmtRosenberg's biological
> racism that led him to withdraw his enthusiastic public support for Nazism.
> Instead he retreated ever more deeply into a private form of his
> own Hölderlinianbrand of National Socialism, which emerged after his
> resignation as rector.
>
> As Bernasconi reminds us, it is Heidegger's "hubris" and "lack of
> understanding" that led him to imagine he could attain the mantle of
> philosophical leadership for the Nazi movement. In other words, Heidegger's
> later break with National Socialism was less the result of a courageous
> resoluteness than the human, all too human sense of disappointment at not
> being appreciated for his philosophical genius. It is within this context
> that, in his first semester after the failure of the rectorate, we need to
> understand his citation ofHölderlin's letter to Böhlendorff in 1804 that
> "they [the Germans] have no use for me."[3] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__edn3> But
> it is also his "petty jealousy" (123) at the success of other Nazi
> ideologues that leaves us with an even more chilling prospect: what if
> Heidegger had succeeded in his quest to guide the Nazi revolution? What
> direction might his thought have taken? As it was, Heidegger's own
> definition of the German Volk -- who belonged and who did not -- was marked
> by a "sinister logic" (125) of exclusion and demarcation spawned by an
> "anxiety" (124) about the alien elements *within* the Volk and those
> natives *without* who remained exiled by the calculative metaphysics of
> political space drawn up by the architects of the Versailles settlement. In
> this sense, Bernasconi maintains, Heidegger "succumbed to a logic every bit
> as dangerous" as those hard-core Nazi propagandists who sought to nullify
> his philosophical vision of the German Reich (125).
>
> Kisiel's judgments about Heidegger are less harshly drawn, for he tries to
> situate Heidegger's hoped-for NS revolution against the tradition of the
> German mandarins' pedagogical reform embodied by Johann Pestalozzi and
> Paul Natorp. Kisiel sees the Nazi revolution of 1933-1934 as opening a
> moment of crisis for Germany, one that Heidegger identifies as a*kairos* 
> moment
> of authentic identity and self-definition. Who "are" we?, Heidegger asks.
> For a generation that experienced the somber defeat of the Great War and
> the ensuing treaty burdens, unemployment, and economic collapse of the
> 1920s, the time appears ripe for a radical re-definition of the
> relationship between Volk and state. We stand before a decision concerning
> our proper mission and mandate, Heidegger declares, and only if we as a
> Volk expose ourselves (*Ausgesetztheit**) *to the danger of our
> historical task can we create the essential possibility of our
> destiny. Kisiel's accomplishment here is to show how Heidegger's whole
> political commitment is to philosophically educating the German people and
> "instilling a deep understanding and clear knowledge of the original and
> essential connection between the people and its state" (138). Such
> education "exposes Dasein to a situation of extreme questioning which
> dictates that it struggle mightily and even violently with the overwhelming
> power of being" (139). Nonetheless, Kisiel maintains that Heidegger's
> commitment to "*Bodenständigkeit* has little to do with Nazi
> *Bodenständigkeit* and a lot to do with getting at the roots of our
> native, indigenous, experiential languagephenomenologically" (149). Yes, I
> would argue, Heidegger's understanding of rootedness does connect to
> language, dwelling, and "getting back to the matters themselves" (149). Yet
> it can hardly be denied that his excurses into the political dimension of
> *Bodenständigkeit* are deeply embedded in the racial metaphysics of
> National Socialism itself.
>
> The last essay, by Žižek, is quite different from the other four, in that
> it attempts to find something viable in Heidegger's seminar that is not
> weighted down by Nazi doctrines and commitments. Žižek finds this in what
> he calls an "essential possibility" of communism that Heidegger himself
> ignored, but that Žižek seeks to unearth in the positive understanding of a
> "collective will", which he applied to the historical problem of class
> struggle. As provocative as this argument is, it ultimately tells us a good
> deal more about Žižek's own politics of engagement than it does about
> Heidegger's philosophy of the Volk, the Führer state, and the vision of a
> resolute and committed National Socialist future.
>
> Taken together, this translation and collection of essays serves to help
> us work through the details of Heidegger's undeniable commitments to, and
> enthusiasm for, the Nazi revolution of 1933 -- and it does so by showing
> that these commitments were fundamentally rooted in Heidegger's own
> philosophical language and way of thinking, and did not serve as a mere
> ideological veneer. Moreover, this publication offers some new insight into
> Heidegger's views about the relationship between Volk and state that were
> sketched out in the political speeches and hinted at in some of the lecture
> courses, but which here take center stage. As regards his commentary about
> "Semitic nomads," this merely serves as another deplorable example of a
> systematic kind of anti-Jewish thinking that we have already seen in his
> correspondence and notebooks.[4] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__edn4> What we are
> left with is quite simply another part of the puzzle regarding Heidegger's
> political views, views which I am convinced are not merely passing
> reactions to a historical happening, but comprise an important part of
> Heidegger's ongoing critique of modernity and its rootlessness. Here we see
> that Heidegger pinned his hopes for the coming revolution on
> the radicality of the Führer state to bring about a new kind of Dasein --
> one resolute and committed to a new inception of German destiny that would
> be guided by a renewed kind of philosophical thinking. But what emerges
> from these reflections is, sadly, a thinking bound by its own time and
> unable to twist itself free from its devastating political calculus.
>
> At the basis of Heidegger's embracing of National Socialism was his belief
> that its political energy might provide the needed hope for a more
> profound, originary leap (*Sprung*) out of the quotidian: an ontological
> revolution spurred on by a renewed commitment to primordial Greek thinking.
> In this context, we need to remember that the seminar of WS 1933-34
> attempts to root the NS revolution in an "understanding of Greek Being"
> (27) that will initiate a profound break with the everyday world of
> *Gerede* and the time-bound-concerns of *das Man*. In the *Introduction
> to Metaphysics *(1935) Heidegger emphasizes this point by insisting
> that "all essential questioning in philosophy necessarily remains untimely."
> [5] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__edn5> And yet here in* Nature, History, State* we
> see in the clearest manner possible how painfully "timely" Heidegger's work
> could sometimes be. The question that remains for us is whether we join
> critics like Faye in finding this work wholly "unphilosophical" or whether
> we recognize it indeed as philosophy, but as philosophy that offers what
> MauriceBlanchot terms "a wound to thinking itself."[6]
> <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__edn6> It is precisely in our *Verwindung* or recovery
> from such a wound that, I believe, the conversation needs to begin.
>  ------------------------------
>
> [1] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__ednref1> Interview with Günter Figal
> <http://www.lastampa.it/2014/03/18/cultura/gnter-figal-disgustose-e-terribili-quelle-frasi-del-mio-heidegger-6ZVZ67WSU2fXHamVgIigLI/pagina.html>
>  from
> Italian news journal, *La Stampa*, March 18, 2014.
>
> [2] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__ednref2> Emmanuel Faye, *Heidegger: The
> Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy*, trans. Michael B. Smith (New
> Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 113, 316.
>
> [3] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__ednref3> Martin Heidegger, *Hölderlin's** Hymnen 
> 'Germanien'
> und 'Der Rhein'*, Gesamtausgabe 39 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980), 136.
>
> [4] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__ednref4> See for example the anti-Jewish
> references in the letters to his wife, *Elfride**: "Mein liebes
> Seelchen!": Briefe Martin Heideggers an seine Frau Elfride, 1915-1970* 
> (Munich:
> Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005), 51, 112, 116, 137, 176, 180, 184 and
> Martin Heidegger/Kurt Bauch, *Briefwechsel**, 1932-1975* (Freiburg: Alber,
> 2010), 18. For some of the references in the *Black Notebooks*, Martin
> Heidegger, *Überlegungen* VII-XI
> (Schwarze Hefte 1938/39), Gesamtausgabe 95 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2014),
> 97; *Überlegungen*XII-XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939-1941), Gesamtausgabe 96
> (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2014), 46, 56, 243, 262.
>
> [5] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__ednref5> Martin Heidegger, *Introduction to
> Metaphysics* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); *Einführung** in
> die Metaphysik*, Gesamtausgabe 40 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980), 10.
>
> [6] <#1466f155d4ba8ca0__ednref6> Maurice Blanchot, *Political Writings,
> 1953-1993*, trans. by Zakir Paul (New York: Fordham University Press,
> 2010), 145.
>



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