From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: "an erroneous calculus"
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:23:10 -0000


Henry,

>I am puzzled by the last three words of this from Marcuse:
>
>
>M treats only point 6 of H's letter in detail ("otherwise my silence
>could be interpreted as complicity"). He suggests H's response stands
>outside of conversation, outside of logos. There is a night and day
>difference between the concentration camps and deportations and
>internments of post 1945. This is an erroneous calculus.
>
>What do you suspect he means by calculus?  With regard to assessing the
>"value" of east German occupation by Russia over and agst the
>Holocaust?
>
>This is a most peculiar way to stay "within" conversation!
>
>I could understand Heidegger pointedly referencing Russia if he were
>somewhat knowledgeable of Marcuse's philosophical suasions, but it
>would be a rather petulant remark--which, then, Marcuse responds almost
>as petulantly with "erroneous calculus."  A child's squabble of
>brilliant thinkers who are way out of their league indeed, "outside of
>conversation," unless they were to enter the genre of confession.
>
>Thanks again,
>henry


To be fair to him, if we are going to discuss what he says, I ought to cite
what Marcuse says:-

"You write that everything that I say about the extermination of the Jews
applies just as much to the Allies, if instead of 'Jews' one were to insert
'East Germans'. With this sentence don't you stand outside of the dimension
in which a conversation between men is even possible - outside of Logos? For
only outside of the dimension of logic is it possible to explain, to
relativise [auszugleichen], to 'comprehend' a crime by saying that others
would have done the same thing. Even further: how is it possible to equate
the torture, the maiming, and the annihilation of millions of men with the
forcible relocation of population groups who suffered none of these outrages
(apart perhaps from several exceptional instances)? From a contemporary
perspective, there seems already to be a night and day difference in
humanity and inhumanity in the difference between Nazi concentration camps
and the deportations and internments of the postwar years. On the basis of
your argument, if the Allies had reserved Auschwitz and Buchenwald - and
everything that transpired there - for the 'East Germans' and the Nazis,
then the account would be in order! If, however, the difference between
inhumanity and humanity is reduced to this erroneous calculus, then this
becomes the world historical guilt of the Nazi system, which has
demonstrated to the world what, after more than 2,000 years of Western
Dasein, men can do to their fellow men. It looks as though the seed has
fallen upon fertile ground: perhaps we are still experiencing the
continuation of what began in 1933. Whether you would still consider it a
'renewal' I am not sure".

I confess I find this an inadequate response. To my knowledge, there was
never any other correspondence between the two men. Conversation clearly was
impossible. I don't think you can make a clear demarcation between humanity
and inhumanity (whatever they mean, but that's a different question). I
think that (and Foucault has shaped this in me as well as Heidegger, though
I guess F may have developed this from H) there is a sliding scale. Many of
the mechanisms of the 'liberal' state were found, in extreme form in Nazism.
Technology allowed the atom bomb, the fire-bombing of Dresden, the Red Army
to control Eastern Europe, mechanised agriculture, the gas chambers.
Bureaucracy also plays a part. Politically there are many issues at stake,
but I don't think these can be strictly demarcated. I think Heidegger's
point is that the excesses of Nazism are not historically unique, or
peculiar to Germany, but the continuation of tendencies in Western thought
more generally constrained.

Interestingly a similar argument is made in Adorno and Horkheimer's
Dialectic, but incredibly pertinent in this regard is Foucault's 'Il faut
defendre la societe'.

To suggest that 'then the account would be in order' is H's view, is
nonsense. H is not suggesting that the treatment of Jews legitimised the
treatment of East Germans, or that the latter excuses the former, rather
than war-crimes were committed on both sides. This does not justify them:
far from it. It condemns other crimes as well as accepting the crime of
genocide. Dresden was a war-crime, as were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [I
recently learnt that Truman (as Vice-President) was kept out of the circle
who knew about the atom bombs until only a few weeks before he authorised
their use (as President after Roosevelt's death). This is incredible - had
the implications been fully thought through?]. H is refusing to see Nazism's
crimes as unique, I'm not sure he is wrong to do this.

Of course, Heidegger should have made all this much clearer. That he needs
people on this list to explain his remarks, to cross-reference them, etc.
proves that he never did offer a clearly comprehensible counter-declaration.
I agree with Michael E that H's suggestion that he did not want to join the
chorus of anti-Nazism after the war is a poor excuse.

I guess the crucial point to be remembered in the wider picture is that when
H compares the gas chambers, atom bombs and famine to agriculture he says
they are the same thing in their essence, not that they are in essence the
same thing. A crucial point which is often overlooked.

Best wishes

Stuart



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