From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 13:33:41 EST
Subject: Nietzsche/Nazism




In a message dated 01/11/2003 15:11:48 GMT Standard Time, 
m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au writes:



Subj: Re: Nietzsche/Nazism - was Let's Pretend Date: 01/11/2003 15:11:48 GMT 
Standard Time From: m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au (Malcolm Riddoch) Sender: 
owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU Reply-to: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU 
To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU



On Saturday, November 1, 2003, at 08:06 PM, GEVANS613-AT-aol.com wrote:



Let's pretend, and in pretending show by our pretentiousness towards those 
that refuse to pretend, and who insist in being non-pretenders.'



Malcolm: 

Ok, I don't think you should have any trouble in that regard Jud. You pretend 
to be pretentious and I'll pretend to have some sort of meaningful discussion 
with you. So what do you think about Heidegger's internationalism and 
revolutionary philosophical goals as regards the German revolution of the early to 
mid 30's? What do you think about his 'optimism'?



Jud:

What must we think of anyone's optimism? If the optimistic feeling that all 
is going to turn out well is based of wishful thinking, then it is worthless. 
For optimism to have any worth [apart from providing the motivation to carry on 
regardless] it must be based upon a prudent assessment of the existing social 
and political circumstances and the pervading reality of the Zeitgeist and 
the likely developments which are likely to flow from and upon which the 
optimism is based. Heidegger, having certainly read Mein Kampf and Hitler's threats 
in print, film, radio and street hoardings to hang Jews from lampposts was 
obviously optimistic that these events would come to pass, and because in the 
event they did he must have been satisfied and his optimism confirmed. The fact 
that he went along with Hitler's monstrous threats and internationalist aims and 
spoke so disparagingly of the Americans is disgusting for a man of his 
sensibilities. The internationalist implications of supporting Hitler were quit 
plain, the Jews would be eliminated [either physically or made to leave Germany] 
and the Slav nations and others would be reduced to slave status. Anyone who 
maintains that the future menu was unknown to Heidegger and his Nazi ilk are 
living in a dream world.



Malcolm: 

To get a wider picture though of what's happening here I'd like to fast 
forward a few years to the late 30's early 40's so you can get an idea of his 
'pessimism' as regards the Nazi hierarchy and the path they took, a path that 
eschewed any form of internationalism whatsoever and which, for Heidegger, killed 
any possibility of a revolution in humanity's relation to the historical truth 
of its global ordering.



Jud: 

All that he said was lies - just lies. he cannot be trusted to tell the truth 
about anything - particularly when he was in excuse-making mode. Arendt said 
words to the effect that he was an inveterate liar - a natural liar of the 
type that believed his own lies. So as far as Heidegger is concerned I only go by 
recorded facts and what others [and NOT ass-lickers like Heinrich Wiegand 
Petzet wrote about him} He was pessimistic because he'd been kicked out of the 
Rectorship - even the Nazis eventually realised what a phoney he was. He must 
have realised that the game was up long before when he was Fuhrer Rector and was 
the butt of everyone's contempt in the Academic camps he mismanaged.



Malcolm: 

There was apparently little popular support for war in Germany, while the 
Czech adventure could be shrugged off as hopefully the last of the specifically 
German problems created by the carve up of Europe after WW1, the deal with 
Stalin and the invasion and collapse of Poland couldn't be anything other than 
conquest, although German public opinion was controlled by whipping up fears of 
Polish 'terrorism', an old propaganda ploy that goes back to the Romans. After 
Poland however no one could really doubt Hitler's intentions although he seems 
to have genuinely surprised the world in his all out attack on Russia just a 
couple of years later. 



Jud: 

We all know this what are you getting at?



Malcolm: 

By 1943, Germany stood on the edge of the abyss of total collapse, the 
British bomber command was targeting every major city with its dubious firestorm 
tactics on civilian centres, the eastern front was a slaughterhouse as the 
'mighty Russian bear' (cf. Heidegger's warning in Intro to Metaphysics) 



Jud: 

He hardly needed to be a political guru to be aware of the Russian Bear it 
had defeated Napoleon within the memory of some of the old folks he grew up with 
in Messkirk as a kid.?



Malcolm: 

was roused by the threat of annihilation and enslavement, and the dreadful 
momentum of the holocaust was underway, first in Lithuania and Latvia with SS 
organised gangs of local militias, then in the horror of the Einsatz Gruppen SS 
death squads behind the lines in the Ukraine and Byelorussia and with the 
industrialised 'work camps' being developed into mass extermination centres, the 
Warsaw Ghetto was a bloodbath of murder and starvation and nasty rumours of all 
this evil were circulating widely on the home front as the entire country was 
emptied of its Jewish citizenry. And let's not forget the poor Wends, 
although there's hardly anyone left to remember them.



Jud: 

This is all very interesting and I am enjoying reading it - but prefer to be 
focussed on the great pretender really



Malcolm: 

It's in this dangerous context that Heidegger's wartime 
political/philosophical interpretation of Nietzsche lurches towards an apocalyptic vision of the 
total obliteration of the historical truth of being, brought about by the 
unleashed energies of Europe locked in a "struggle for power" (Heidegger, 1973, 
'Overcoming metaphysics', in The End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh, 
Souvenir Press, London, p. 

102). 



Jud: 

He'd have been rather pathetic if he hadn't have reached that conclusion 
wouldn't he? Anyway it was 'his kind of evil 'Being' that was being overcome [you 
know I consider the notion of Being' juvenile - but I'm going along for the 
fun of it] It was Hitler with the help of heidegger's fanatical support that 
unleashed energies of Europe locked in a "struggle for power" so nobody should 
have known better than him what to expect.



Malcolm: 

What characterizes this struggle is that it is already "in the service of 
power and is willed by it. 



Jud: 

Power cannot 'will' anything at all - only those persons who are powerful can 
impose their fixed and persistent intent or purpose. You are up to your old 
tricks of reification again, conjuring up non-existent ghostie-woasties and 
things that don't go bang in the night.



Malcolm: 

Power has overpowered these struggles in advance. The will to will alone 
empowers these struggles" 

(ibid). The initial promise of Nietzsche/Nazism's 'will to power' and its 
German revolution has descended into the nightmarish chaos of the will to will, a 
form of subjectivity that is exemplified by a Nazi leadership that has been 
completely subjugated by the modern rule of global power.



Jud: 

The above is gobbledegook and meaningless. Talk sense — talk of the war the 
battles — talk of the Nazis getting the shit kicked out of them.



Malcolm: 

In this historical struggle for power, "man wills himself as the volunteer of 
the will to will" (p. 86), 



Jud: 

Heidegger speaks utter crap the capability of conscious choice is removed 
from the soldiery they obey orders with the Nazi fanatics the decision and 
intention to die for the Fuhrer is part of their mania, for the rest they go over 
the top unwillingly. Only armchair soldiers like Heidegger can talk of the will 
to will and that kind of bunkum

Malcolm:
where the essence of this modern man is to be found in the will to put 
himself at the disposal of the struggle for power. 

Jud: 
Rubbish, if this were true there would be no need for conscription. Heidegger 
didn't volunteer for the front did he and it was HE who had to be draughed to 
take up a shovel and 'fight' with the Home-Guard.

Malcolm: 
In that "this struggle is of necessity planetary" (p. 102) individual wills 
are called up into the national service of power and "the 'all-inclusive' 
guarantee of the planning of order" (p. 107). In the service of this ordering, 
where man wills order in order to will order, "man is willed by the will to will 
without experiencing the essence of this willing" (p. 101).

Jud: 
This is complete nonsense Malcolm - give us a break! It's just a bunch of 
silly wordplay for the sake of wordplay Is this supposed to impress me?
Sadly there are those which Nietzsche referred to as having the 'Herd 
Instinct,' who have a predisposition to unquestionably accept anything that is handed 
down to them, particularly if it comes from the pens of  academic timeservers 
like Heidegger in the educational establishment, and for whom thinking for 
themselves is uncomfortable and creates a problems of insecurity. 
Heideggerianism is the kind of silliness towards which certain moth-brains  [i.e, THOSE WHO 
END UP TOTALLY ACCEPTING THIS RUBBISH]  who basically just wish  [have a need] 
to be led, or perhaps be 'herded' is a better verb.] are drawn like moths to 
a flame. 
Now I know what the Nietzsche-lovers are getting at.



Malcolm: 
Or in other words, the essential ground of man is to be found in a constant 
willing of order, a constant business in which he is already constantly brought 
back to himself as a willing subject within the 'unconditional 
objectification of everything present'. 

Jud: 
All this can be said with a fifth of the words employed - furthermore it is 
just a string of COMMONPLACES -THINGS ALREADY KNOWN what's the point of 
repeating what every man and woman in the kingdom already knows? This is nothing new 
- just the regurgitation of commonplaces into Heideggerianese.
CAN'T YOU SEE THIS MALCOLM?

Malcolm: 
this global ordering of individual wills in the service of the struggle for 
power requires an organizing "'leadership', that is, the planning calculation 
of the guarantee of the whole of beings" (p. 105). 

Jud: 
OK a nation needs a parliament or a congress or a reichstag -but that doesn't 
mean we need a raving lunatic like Hitler whose main plank on the hustings 
was the destruction of millions of people just because they happen to be of the 
Jewish faith?

Malcolm: 
Where resistance to this leadership manifests itself in the "moral outrage of 
those who do not yet know what is going on" and criticises the "arbitrariness 
and the claim to dominance" of the leader or Fuhrer, and where "one believes 
that the leaders had presumed everything of their own accord in the blind rage 
of a selfish egotism" 
(p. 105), one misses an essential point. For these leaders are themselves 
merely the "necessary consequence of the fact that beings have entered the way of 
erring in which the vacuum expands which requires a single order and 
guarantee of beings" (p. 105). That is, the leaders themselves merely take up their 
part in a global ordering which is ordering itself.

Jud: 
Here he is just making excuses for the leadership and reading between the 
lines preparing for the plea he knows he will have to make before the committees 
of retribution. It is I must say a change from the usual excuse at Nuremberg: 
'I was only following orders,' for here he is laying the groundwork for a: 'I 
was only giving the orders that were [historically] necessary,'  EXCUSE - 
Surely you MUST see this Malcolm?

Malcolm: 
Heidegger's critique of the 'will to will' is here directed at a form of 
government or leadership whose ordering is grounded in a constant calculation of 
everything necessary for its continually expanding dominance. The telos of this 
ordering is thus the constant re-affirmation of its own will, a goal-less 
goal which drives this will to will, without the will needing to explicitly 
acknowledge this. Or perhaps it needs not to be acknowledged, and it is in the 
service of constantly making this directionless direction inexplicit that the will 
to will, "as the anarchy of catastrophes that it really is", must constantly 
distract itself with "talk about 'mission' ... as the goal which is assigned 
from the standpoint of 'fate', thus justifying the will to will" (p. 102). In 
this sense, the global ordering justifies itself in ordering, and as such, it 
is its own truth. And this truth is what is absolutely correct because the:

Jud: 
The 'will to will' is absolute bollocks! People either wish or want to do 
something or they do not wish or want to do something - 'I want to want to do 
something' or 'I wish to wish to do something' is a load of hogwash. One either 
has the will to do something or one does not have the will to do something. I 
Heidegger's case he had the want the wish and the will to become a raving loony 
headbanging Nazi and he achieved what he wanted. Trouble is he didn't appear 
before an allied military tribunal but was 'tried' by his peers who let him 
off almost scot free.

Malcolm: 
correctness of the will to will is the unconditional and complete 
guaranteeing of itself. What is in accordance with its will is correct and in order, 
because the will to will itself is the only order (p. 
100).

Jud: 
The will doesn't exist and neither does the 'will to will' only the willer. 
To think otherwise is to teeter on the edge of lunacy - no wonder he signed 
himself into a mental clinic.

Malcolm: 
There is no other order than in the will to constantly will one's self in the 
world, even in spite of the dominant order. 

Jud: 
God in heaven - more repetitive commonalties! The choice is simple - get on 
with it - or top yourself Oh what joy if he had done the latter!

Malcolm: 
Yet with the dominating will comes the danger of an ordering which exists 
only in order to continue ordering and appropriating all that is not under its 
dominating influence, in order to secure itself as ordering. 

Jud: 
Perhaps we are witnessing his guilt here over the complete ass he made of his 
job as rector? Because the above section is a vivid recap of his antics as 
Fuhrer Rector

Malcolm: 
This dominant ordering, a totalitarian will to will, obliterates difference 
in the constant re-affirmation of its own truths. And this constant immersion 
in ordering order, means that the openness to being within which the 
totalitarian will wills its order, remains abandoned and forgotten. For Heidegger, 
immersed within the mid-twentieth century apocalyptic self-destruction of German 
nationalism spearheaded by the Nazis:

Jud: 
Surely you mean 'implicated' rather than the more anodyne 'immersed' don't 
you? HE was a Nazi TOO remember.

Malcolm:
The signs of the ultimate abandonment of Being are the cries about "ideas" 
and "values", the indiscriminate back and forth of the proclamation of "deeds", 
and the indispensability of "spirit". All of this is already hitched into the 
armament mechanism of the plan (p. 
103).

Jud: 
Being can't be 'abandoned' because it doesn't exist. There is no 'ontological 
difference' between a Nazi smashing in the windows on Crystal Night and the 
same guy hurling himself into a Russian dugout. Its the Nazi that exists - not 
his 'Being' or 'existence' 'Being' doesn't fire a rifle.

Malcolm: 
This would be an armament mechanism and a total mobilization which reflects 
the willed creation of a certain world view, cut free from the old liberal 
humanist value system, and careering on its way towards mass suicide and murder. 

Jud: 
No, its not 'an armed mechanism' doing anything - it is human beings who wish 
to kill and eliminate other human beings with mechanisms. The Nazis were REAL 
PEOPLE not ideas - they were REAL PEOPLE driven by hate and greed and their 
own inadequacy, who wanted to TAKE THINGS from other people and kill people who 
they didn't like or who got in their way. To constantly distinguish things as 
'mechanisms - world views - value systems - is to distance the monsters from 
their acts and in doing so de-humanise the infamy - to extract the human 
dimension and to slot in ideas in their place. This is Heidegger's language of 
apology, in preparation for the day he will face the music. Die Zeit der 
Vorbereitung.


Malcolm: 
Given the oblivion accomplished by this will to will, "the 'world wars' and 
their character of 'totality' are already a consequence of the abandonment of 
Being" (

Jud: 
The 'oblivion' wasn't caused by this will to will, nor are they a consequence 
of the abandonment of Being" they are consequence of Hitler signing the paper 
authorising the holocaust and the transport trains and the brutal guards 
herding people into the gassing sheds. This mealy mouthed turd needed his bollocks 
ripping off and grilling in one of his own ovens.

Malcolm: p. 103). 
The failure of leadership has become the 'abandonment of Being', 

Jud: 
An abandonment of being what? An abandonment of the leadership-qualities they 
once had? The leadership quality which got them into the war-mess in the 
first place?

Malcolm: 
and Nazism is here implicated in the ultimate form of metaphysical nihilism. 
Yet as the critique of Nietszche's will to power develops into the problematic 
of the will to will, throughout the late thirties and on into the forties, 
Heidegger's growing pessimism concerning the leaders who project the 'planning 
calculation of the guarantee of the whole of beings', extends itself far beyond 
Nazism, beyond "all national differences" (p. 108). From the perspective of 
the critique of the 'will to will', Heidegger's notion of nihilism comes to 
include "all forms of government [which] are only one instrument of leadership 
among others" (p. 108). 

Jud: 
So he finally got cheesed off with government in general? Big deal! A bit 
slow on the uptake wasn't he? Anyone who had any belief in politicians even in 
the thirties needed his head feeling.

Malcolm:
Within the global ordering of the will to will, there is only a "uniformity 
of leadership" within which man himself "must enter monotonous uniformity in 
order to keep up with what is real" (p. 
108). Thus for Heidegger, Nazism, some time after 1936, collapses into the 
"same dreary technological frenzy" characteristic of the other dominant Western 
powers, "Russia and America" (Intro to Metaphysics p. 
37).

Jud: 
I reckon that had he not been such a failure at the rector's job [and I STILL 
believe he was kicked out over the Arendt relationship] and sent packing he 
would have remained as recklessly optimistic as he was from the first. IMO he 
lacked the basic skills of political perception - he was in short a complete 
dick-head. All this bullshit about the return to Hoelderlin and the quietude of 
the cloister[ when he was still prancing about flaunting his Nazi badge under 
everybody's noses. 

Malcolm: 
So what do you make of this 'pessimistic' Heidegger, Jud? Where does you 
non-pretentious yet profound ideological non-reading of Heidegger the rampant Nazi 
fit in here? 

Jud: 
He only behaved this way because he'd been slapped in the face of the 
rectorship dismissal [I don't believe his lie that he resigned] What else could he 
do? He was to shitless to volunteer for the front, though he was very good at 
encouraging others to go in his stead [see rectoral address]

Malcolm: 
Surely he would be the first to storm the barricades, Swastika flag in one 
hand, bayonet in the other cutting a swathe through the sub-human Soviet hordes, 
or herding his victims into the gas chambers, counting their gold teeth while 
extolling the great virtue of his glorious leader. 

Jud 
He was far to much of a coward to do that - better to dig the odd trench or 
take up a job in the local post-office
where he 'served' in WW1.

Malcolm: 
A leader who has apparently betrayed the 'great beginning' by succumbing to 
the will to will, a leader mastered by the extreme nihilism and meaninglessness 
of a global order that has become the complete and utter obliteration of what 
Heidegger understands as the truth of 'being'.

Jud: 
It was his own stupid fault

Malcolm: 
So excuse me if I find your rabid caricatures of Heidegger somewhat fatuous, 
no doubt you will still refuse to contemplate any of these issues and keep 
spamming my inbox with your incredibly vicious drivel. The problem of Heidegger's 
Nazism is a real problem, and it opens onto real philosophical problems, very 
interesting problems for anyone who chooses to read. Do you want to know more?

Jud: 
What 'issues?' I see no 'issues' I just see the Nazi defeat gobbledegooked 
into Heidegger-speak.  The 'issue' if you can call it an issue' was that this 
Nazi failed in his job as rector. As a rabid Nazi supporter  he should have 
immediately volunteered for the front to join his two boys.and to die if necessary 
for the Fuhrer who he said was alone the German reality, present and future, 
and its law." Why didn't the yellow bastard do that? 

Like most bullies he lacked the guts. So he goes and sulks and puts the scum 
of his sulkings into a clever form of proto-excuses for what he knows will 
inevitable follow. The rat was already preparing for disembarkation - and this 
'will to will shit' is all part of the script he is writing that he will deliver 
a few years later at Freiburg. The whole process is one of a polishing and 
re-polishing of the main plank of his later exculpation before the 
de-nazification committee: which was the one that follows

'For these leaders are themselves merely the "necessary consequence of the 
fact that beings have entered the way of erring in which the vacuum expands 
which requires a single order and guarantee of beings'

Why not try a little of your famous hermenuetical analysis on the above 
sentence? Why not tell our lawyer friend [on this list] about this one, he might be 
able to employ this ploy as a defence for just about anyone on a criminal 
charge? If you wish to continue - please exercise all the commonalities - I've 
plenty of history books if I need to brush up on the history of WW11. Stick to 
what the idiot actually believed, or what the liar conned us into believing he 
believed.
It seems you don't wish to play Let's Pretend Philosophy just now but rather 
: Let's Pretend Goes to War. ;-)

Cheers,

Jud.

<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A> 
Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY.
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>


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