Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 14:36:07 +0100
Subject: Re:  Heidegger in Germany


Cologne 27 January 1999

h.vantuijl-AT-kub.nl wrote:
> 
> Rafael,
> 
> You write:
> > But dear Bob, just read (!) what H. wrote 1942 on Hitler: "Der Fuehrer ist
> > der Aerger,..." all this (Parr. XXVI of the essays: _Ueberwindung der
> > Metaphysik_ published in Vortraege und Aufsaetze, Vol 1., pp. 63ff) This
> > are text which are never (!) cited by people who said H. did not put his
> > thinking back on the right track.
> 
> I cannot follow you here at all. Heidegger points out that
> Those who accuse leaders [!] of blind rage, self-interest
> and willfulness are mistaken. Leadership is necessary in
> times like these.
> Besides, he published this paragraph in 1951.

Henk, 

Once again I find you have a totally perverse, distortive way of reading 
and paraphrasing Heidegger, the same tack you took in our last altercation over 
"Power and Race" in GA69. 

The passage you are citing reads:

"Man meint, die Fuehrer haetten von sich aus, in der blinden Raserei einer 
selbtischen Eigensucht, alles sich angemasst und nach ihrem Eigenseinn sich 
eingerichtet. In Wahrheit sind sie [die Fuehrer] die notwendigen Folgen dessen, 
dass das Seiende in die Weise der Irrnis uebergegangen ist, in der sich die 
Leere ausbreitet, die eine einzige Ordnung und Sicherung des Seienden verlangt. 
Darin ist die Notwendigkeit der 'Fuehrung', d.h. der planenden Berechnung der 
Sicherung des Ganzen des Seienden gefordert." (Para. XXVI 'Ueberwindung der 
Metaphysik' in _Vortraege und Aufsaetze_ S.90)

English:
"People think that the leaders have of themselves, in the blind rage of 
self-serving greed, arrogated everything to themselves and set it up according 
to their own stubborn ideas. In truth, they [the leaders] are the necessary 
consequence of the fact that beings have passed over into the way of errancy in 
which emptiness disseminates which demands a unified order and securing of 
beings. Within this, the necessity of 'leadership', i.e. of planning calculation 
of the securing of beings as a whole."

Heidegger is not making a plea for leaders "in times like these", as you would 
have it. Just the contrary! He is pointing out that it is a mistake to merely 
attack the self-serving nature of leaders (just as Marx did, who pointed out 
that the capitalists are "character masks" -- an insight which would take away 
Marxists' favourite toy of the invective of class struggle, conniving 
capitalists, and the like). Rather leadership is itself a "character mask" 
demanded by the current seinsgeschichtliche configuration of the being of beings 
itself.

Michael
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