Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 10:54:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Political Modernisms (was Nazi Modernism and Yeats)


On Thu, 15 Jun 2000 Everdell-AT-aol.com wrote:

> I figured that Nazis could have no opinion on Heidegger's works simply 
> because none of them had enough respect for reading to learn what was in 
> them.  Clearly one or two of them failed to reach for their revolvers on 
> hearing the word "culture."  Do you have a reference for Nazi criticism of 
> Heidegger?

Here is one, by a philsopher named E. Krieck, in an article in a 1934
issue of the Nazi newspaper Volk im Werden.  It is also cited in Guido
Schneeberger's Nachlese zu Heidegger and in an article by Pierre Aubenque
entitled "Noch einmal Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus." in an
edition of essays on Heidegger in Die Heidegger Kontroverse, ed. Juerg
Altwegg.  My rough Translation below comes from the Aubenque essay.

   Der weltanschauliche Grundton der Lehre Hedieggers ist bestimmt durch
   die Begriffe der Sorge und der Angst, die beide auf das Nichts
   hinzieln.  Der Sinn dieser Philosophie is ausgesprochener Atheismus und
   metaphysischer Nihilismus, wie er sonst vonrnehmelich von juedischen
   literaten bei uns vertreten worden ist, also ein Ferment der Zersetzung
   und Aufloesung fuer das deutsche Volk.  In Sein und Ziet philsophiert
   Heidegger bewusst und absichtlich um die >>Altaeglichkeit<<--nichts  
   darin von Volk und Staat, von Rasse und allen Werten unseres
   nationalsozialistischen Weltbildes.  Wenn in der Rektorats Rede _Die
   Selbstbehauptung der (deutschen) Universitaet ploetzlich das Heroische
   anklingt, so liegt darin eine Anpassung an das Jahr 1933, die im
   voelligen Widerspruch zur Grundhaltung von Sein und Ziet (1927) und Was
   ist MetaphysiK?(1931) mit ihrer Lehre von der Sorge, der Angst und dem
   Nichts steht. 

   The keynote of the worldview of Heidegger's teachings is determined by
   the concepts of Care and Angst, both of which are directed towards
   Nothingness.  The content of this philosophy is outspoken atheism and
   metaphysical nihilism, as that is represented amongst us above all by
   Jewish writers, [and is] therefore an encouragement to the undermining
   and  dissolution of the German people.  In Being and Time Heidegger
   consciously philosophizes over "Everydayness"--nothing therein about
   Volk and State and race and all the values of our Nationalsocialist
   worldpicture.  If in the Rektoraratsrede "The Self-affirmation of the
   German university" the clang of the heroic suddenly appears, so lies
   therein only an adaptation [in the sense of going along with everyone
   in hopes of personal gain rather than real conviction] to the year
   1933, which stands in complete contradiction to the fundamental
   orientation of Being and time (1827) and What is
   Metaphysics? (1931) with their message of Care, of Angst, and
   Nothingness. 


Aubenque's essay is mainly concerned with ponting out errors in the Farias
trashing of Heidegger.

One of those errors concerned Farias claim that it was only through
Himmler's intervention that Heidegger was able to publish "Plato's
Conception of Truth" in 1943.  In fact, the Nazi brass was quite against
Heidegger publishing anything, and it was the intervention of the Italian
Cultureminister Guiseppe Bottai who got it published in the German Italian
Yearbook. 

This has some relevance to the thread on nazism and romanticism on a
modernist list because similar arguments are used to link romanticism,
Heidegerrian phenomenology, and even more contemporary deconstruction to
fascism. The very things which disturb contemporary consesrvatives about
Heidegger are the very things which disturbed Nazis.

One might bring Freud usefully into a discussion of this
phenomenon via the concept of projection. 

.....................................................................