Frank H. W. Edler
Metropolitan Community College

          Time and again I have read the criticism: Heidegger had a "deep and long-lasting commitment to National Socialism" (NN,30). Thomas Sheehan in his 1993 review ("A Normal Nazi") of The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader edited by Richard Wolin and Ernst Nolte's Martin Heidegger: Politik und Geschichte im Leben und Denken states that Victor Farias' book Heidegger et la nazisme (1987) dropped like a bomb on the quiet chapel where Heidegger's disciples were gathered and blew the place to bits" (NN, 30). Shortly after this carnage, a second bomb fell which turned out to be Hugo Ott's Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie (1988). According to Sheehan,  "the Heidegger faithful" now resorted to triage: " ‘Admit the Nazism, but save philosophy!’"(NN,30).

          Sheehan's use of the metaphor of obliteration by bombing is revealing and perhaps betrays not only Sheehan's desire to obliterate " the myth Heidegger had concocted after the war"(NN,30), but also his desire to obliterate the philosophical importance of Heidegger as a way of getting back at him for Sheehan's own sense of disillusion.

          No longer does Sheehan carry his note-filled copy of Sein und Zeit with him like a bible as he once did in Italy. Apparently, that Thomas Sheehan is no more. He was betrayed, it seems, by Papa Heidegger who turned out to have feet of clay after all. Tom's school days are over. Since his review of Farias' book in 1988 entitled " Heidegger and the Nazis," Sheehan has graduated to the School of Lapsed Heideggerians who, like betrayed lovers unable to return to traditional Catholicism, delight in watching bombs fall on the "Heidegger Church."

          The above myth that Sheehan says Farias blew to smithereens is the argument maintained after the war that Heidegger supported the Nazis briefly because he wanted to protect the university (NN,30 ). This argument is clearly false and has been so since the publication of Guido Schneeberger's Nachlese zu Heidegger (1962). The argument portrays Heidegger almost as a reluctant liberal joining the National Socialist Party to defend the freedom of the university. Heidegger was not a liberal who defended the parliamentary democracy of the Weimar government nor did he join the Party to defend the academic freedom of the university as it existed. Nor did he join the Party to hand the university over to existing Party doctrine.

          In his 1988 review of Farias, Sheehan quotes from Josef Sauer's diary (Sauer was pro-rector during Heidegger's tenure as rector) on August 22,1933: "‘Finis universitatum! And that idiot Heidegger has gotten us into this mess, after we elected him rector to bring us a new spiritual vision [neue Geistigkeit) for the universities. What irony!’" (HN,39). Sheehan goes on to quote from Sauer's letter of December 20, 1933, to a colleague in which he states that from the moment he [Sauer] took office, he knew Heidegger's goal had been "‘the fundamental change of science education in accordance with the strengths and demands of the National Socialist State’" (HN,39).

          In that review, Sheehan presents Sauer's quotations without comment as though they were clearly self-evident. Yet there is a disparity between the diary entry of August 22, 1933, and the letter of December 20, 1933. In the diary entry, there is a strong sense of disillusionment on Sauer's part. The university had elected Heidegger " to bring us a new spiritual vision of the universities." Whether Sauer himself believed in this new spiritual vision is unclear, but the fact that Sauer perceived this as the purpose of Heidegger's election as rector is quite clear, not just for the University of Freiburg but for universities as a whole.

          In the beginning of his 1993 review, Sheehan says that Farias' evidence shows that Heidegger had a " deep and long-lasting commitment to National Socialism" (NN,30). I assume here that Sheehan is referring to Hitler and the National Socialist Party. At the end of Sheehan's review, however, he commends Ernst Nolte for performing " a great service for Heidegger scholarship by showing how closely wed was Heidegger's philosophy with his political engagement, and how deep and long-lasting was his commitment to 'the inner truth and greatness' of the Nazi movement" (NN,35).

          The ambiguity Sheehan plays on is the different meanings of ‘National Socialism.’ He conflates official National Socialism in the beginning of his review with Heidegger's notion of the inner truth and greatness of National Socialism at the end of his review. A deep and long-lasting commitment to official National Socialism is not the same as a deep and long-lasting commitment to what Heidegger saw as the essence or inner truth and greatness of National Socialism. Michael Zimmerman makes a similar claim, but at least he is honest enough to make the distinction between official National Socialism and Heidegger's vision of it: " So far as I can tell, however, he [Heidegger] never completely renounced the principles underlying his conception of National Socialism, which he defined as the dangerous but courageous openness to a new encounter with the being of entities" (THC, 82). Zimmerman goes on to say that "despite engaging in increasingly daring criticism of the reality of National Socialism, Heidegger retained his faith in its inner truth"(THC, 58)

          This brings me to the question of what Heidegger perceived as the " inner truth and greatness" of the National Socialist movement. Sheehan mentions Nolte's view that "‘Hitler certainly was what Heidegger a few years later would call the ‘event’ [Ereignis], the arrival of the truth of Being’" (NN,34). This is nonsense, of course. The Ereignis is an event of being, strictly speaking, and not a human event. There is no way a human being can be the Ereignis. Nevertheless, after discrediting most of Nolte's book on Heidegger [it " reads like a company biography of Henry Ford … Virtually everything about Heidegger's Nazi period is excused, passed over, dismissed, or as a last resort ‘explained’ ... Nolte makes very selective use of historical data..." (NN, 32)], Sheehan suddenly finds Nolte's claim creditable that Heidegger thought Hitler was the Ereignis. Being the good Heidegger scholar that he is (was), Sheehan knows better, but he lets it pass in silence. Rather than saying Hitler could not actually be the Ereignis, Sheehan makes the correction in his gloss of Nolte: "For Heidegger the ‘inner truth and greatness’ and ‘historical singularity’ of National Socialism ... lay In the unique opportunity Hitler supposedly had to reshape Nazi Germany on the model of the ancient Greek polis and to guide Western civilization towards a ‘new appropriation of Being’"(NN,34). So now Hitler is not the Ereignis itself, but someone who could guide Western civilization towards it.

          As evidence that Heidegger saw Hitler as a modern philosopher-king who could lead the Germans toward the Ereignis, Sheehan refers the reader in footnote 31 to " Heidegger's positive assessment in 1936 of Hitler's opposition to nihilism" in Gesamtausgabe 42, page 40 (NN,34). The quotation Sheehan refers to is from Heidegger's 1936 course on Schelling and runs as follows: " ‘The two men who, each in his own way, have introduced a countermovement to nihilism - Mussolini and Hitler – have learned from Nietzsche each in an essentially different way. But even with that, Nietzsche's authentic metaphysical domain has not yet come into its own’" (THC, 132). In no way does this reference prove that Heidegger saw Hitler as a philosopher-king. To say that Hitler learned from Nietzsche doesn't make Hitler into a philosopher-king any more than it does Mussolini. Nor does it prove that Hitler is connected in any way with a new appropriation of being. The most that Sheehan can claim is that Heidegger thought Hitler introduced a countermovement to nihilism. Otto Poeggeler's gloss of the quotation is closer to the mark: "Heidegger affirmed that Mussolini and Hitler appeared to rely on Nietzsche, yet they did not understand Nietzsche's confrontation with the metaphysical tradition" (THC, 132). Hitler – a philosopher-king? Hardly.

          In another note (footnote 28), Sheehan refers to Gesamtausgabe 39 (Hoelderlins Hymnen ‘Germanien’ und ‘Der Rhein’, page 136) to prove " Heidegger's claim that National Socialism constituted ‘the great turning point of [German) existence’" (NN,34). On page 136 of Heidegger’s text, however, there is no mention at all of National Socialism. Most of the page is taken up with a long excerpt from Hoelderlin's letter to Boehlendorff written on December 4, 1801. After the excerpt, Heidegger repeats a line from it [" But they cannot make use of me"] and goes on to say the following:

How long will the Germans continue to ignore this

    horrifying sentence? If the great turn [grosse Wende]

   of their existence does not awaken them to it, then

                                        what will it take for them to hear it? (GA 39, 136)

How in the world does this quotation prove Heidegger is claiming that National Socialism constitutes the " great turn"? Sheehan is begging the question. Heidegger does not say what the great turn is nor does he identify it with National Socialism. It is safe to assume that by "grosse Wende" Heidegger is referring to what he calls the Aufbruch or revolutionary awakening in his rectoral address which certainly included National Socialism's seizure of power. In his address, however, Heidegger never once refers to Hitler or to National Socialism and does not connect the Aufbruch either to Hitler or to National Socialism. Heidegger's letter to Elisabeth Blochmann (March 30, 1933) provides some insight into how Heidegger is reading the events of 1933:

  ...what must be tolerated in all calmness is that

                                           rash, headlong jumping on the bandwagon for

   what is new which is mushrooming everywhere:

 that way of gluing oneself to the immediacy of

   the foreground which now suddenly takes every-

thing "politically" without bearing in mind that

                                           such a foregrounding can only remain one path of the

    first revolution [ein Weg der ersten Revolution].

Admittedly, it has become and can be for many

  one path of first awakening [ersten Erweckung],

       provided that we are resolved to prepare ourselves

                                          for a second, deeper one (H/B, 60; Journal, 571 ).

Clearly, Heidegger saw the first revolution justified only on the basis of a second, deeper one.

          The importance of this is to show that the "great turn" is not simply one turning point as Sheehan claims. To translate "grosse Wende" as "the great turning point" is to reduce the turn to a specific political event which does not reflect Heidegger's meaning. The "great turn" is long and complex as the letter to Blochmann shows.

          More importantly, to go back to the above quotation from Gesamtausgabe 39 (p. 136), Sheehan's rush to identify the "great turn" with official National Socialism obliterates the contextual meaning of the quotation: Heidegger mentions the "great turn" for a purpose which is not connected with Hitler but with Hoelderlin. Clearly, what Heidegger was hoping for was that the "great turn" would enable the Germans to awaken to the significance of what Hoelderlin was saying. Heidegger in frustration is saying the following: what will it take for the Germans to understand the historical significance of Hoelderlin's poetry? The "great turn" or revolutionary awakening was supposed to lead to a greater awareness of the significance of Hoelderlin; however, this has not happened. If the "great turn" will not do it, then what will?

          Sheehan attempts to obliterate the directionality in the quotation, that is, the directionality from the great turn to Hoelderlin by identifying the great turn with official National Socialism and leaving Hoelderlin out altogether. Either this is sloppy scholarship on Sheehan's part or a deliberate distortion.

          What Sheehan neglects to mention is that Heidegger is reading the revolution from the future. This comes up time and again in Heidegger's political speeches as well as his lecture courses. In his rectoral address, for example, Heidegger states that

     The beginning [the Greek Aufbruch] still is.

    It does not lie behind us as something that

     was long ago, but stands before us. As what

                                               is greatest, the beginning has passed in advance

over all that is to come and thus already

   over us as well. The beginning has invaded

              our future. There it stands as the distant command

                                               [ferne Verfuegung] to catch up to its greatness (Neske,8).

In his summer course of 1933 entitled " The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy," Heidegger says that " The knowledge relating to the political and spiritual mission of the German people is a knowledge tied to its future" (Farias, 132). Then again in his speech of November 30, 1933, at the University of Tuebingen, Heidegger says "To be historical is to know that as a whole people history is neither past nor present, but is the act of questioning that is born from the movement of the future that erupts into the present" (Farias, 143).

          This "future" from which Heidegger is reading the revolution is the " inner truth and greatness" of the movement and is not to be identified with Hitler or official National Socialism. Sheehan quotes from Heidegger's first Hoelderlin course when it suits his purpose, but he leaves out quotations when they do not. For example in his introduction, Heidegger states that " The massive, gross divergence [Verschaltung] of the hoi polloi into a so-called organization [Nazism] is only a temporary front [Vorkehrung], but not the essence" (GA 39, 8). In other words, Hitler and official National Socialism are not the essence (the inner truth and greatness) of National Socialism - indeed, the essence of National Socialism is not itself something political in the usual sense of the word. Just as the essence of technology " is by no means anything technological" (QT, 4), just as " the condition of being a thing, which conditions the thing as a thing, cannot itself again be a thing" (Thing, 8-9), just as " The being of beings ‘is’ itself not a being" (BT, 5); so too, the essence of National Socialism is not itself some political party or ideology.

          It is not Hitler who points toward a new appropriation of being but Hoelderlin. For Heidegger, Hitler is a transitional figure, a necessary tyrant who would navigate the nation through a period of nihilism. Hitler was supposed to provide an ordered space long enough so that the German people could engage in a revolution that would completely transform German dasein in the direction of Hoelderlin's vision. In his first Hoelderlin course in 1934, Heidegger says that " There is, thus, a singular necessity [einzigartige Notwendigkeit] to allow this poet and his poetry to become the power of our historical existence" (GA 39, 221). Below that, he then states " But we are still without poetry" (GA 39, 221).

          After getting burned politically, Heidegger's move towards Hoelderlin appears to be an escape from politics into poetry. I do not think that that is the case, at least not for Heidegger. Heidegger's lecture courses on Hoelderlin present his justification for his engagement with official National Socialism and also the conditions for continuing toward a second, deeper revolution. In other words, Hoelderlin's poetry is the essence of National Socialism, its inner truth and greatness. For Heidegger, the " historical singularity" of National Socialism consists in the real possibility of engaging Hoelderlin's non-metaphysical vision of German identity and actualizing the new appropriation of being at the heart of his poetry as a radical transformation of German existence.

          Sheehan minimizes Heidegger's resistance to Nazism to the point of insignificance: "But his ‘resistance’ to Nazism, if it can be called that, consisted at best in suggesting to his students - from the safety of the classroom podium and always in cryptic terms - that they begin thinking about how the real conservative revolution might overcome nihilism" (NN, 14). What safety? Since when did a classroom podium provide any measure of safety for a professor in Nazi Germany? According to Sheehan, Heidegger's lecture courses from 1934-1945 " in no way look like a sharply focused attack on National Socialism" (NN, 14). Sheehan seems to be assuming that Heidegger had the freedom - from the safety of his classroom podium - to issue a sharply focused attack on National Socialism. This is absurd and Sheehan knows it. Any direct, overt criticism of or resistance to National Socialism could have had disastrous consequences. Heidegger's criticism of Alfred Rosenberg's racism and biologism in his first course on Hoelderlin is not merely a criticism of Rosenberg; it is a criticism of National Socialist racial ideology. The whole notion of culture as an expression of experience whether it is Spengler's notion of the expressions of experience as a culture-soul or Rosenberg's racial soul or folk-soul, this whole way of thinking " is deeply untrue and lacks any essence" (GA 39, 26-27). What Heidegger saw in the beginning as the revolutionary spirit of National Socialism - a spirit that had the potential to develop as a movement beyond metaphysical foundations - he now recognized had congealed into another form of metaphysics, the metaphysics of biological racism. I see Heidegger's criticism of official National Socialism as a courageous statement, even though it is the criticism that official National Socialism had hardened into another form of metaphysics. Nevertheless, Heidegger had the courage to say that it was deeply untrue and lacked any essence.

          As for Sheehan's claim that Heidegger's resistance at best consisted in "suggesting to his students. ..that they begin thinking about how the real conservative revolution might overcome nihilism" (NN,14), I don't think Heidegger was a conservative revolutionary - at least not in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's sense. Hofmannsthal’s conservative revolution is much closer to Werner Jaeger’s Third Humanism than it is to Heidegger’s radical sense of revolution. They ( Heidegger and Hofmannsthal) do share certain characteristics, but there is a fundamental difference. In his lecture course Grundfragen der Philosophie (Fundamental Questions of Philosophy) given in the winter semester of 1937-38, Heidegger clearly stated the difference: " The original and genuine relation to the beginning [Anfang], therefore, is the Revolutionary [das Revolutionaere], which, by overturning the ordinary, liberates once again the hidden law of the beginning. The beginning is precisely what is not preserved - because it is not even reached - by the Conservative [das Konservative]" (GA 45, 37).

          After chiding Heidegger for his ineffectual resistance from the "safety" of the classroom podium, Sheehan goes on to enumerate three reasons that count against taking Heidegger's resistance seriously. The first is that " the Nazis, who had spies in almost every professor's classroom, never felt threatened enough by what he said to remove him from his job" (NN, 14). The so-called safety of the classroom podium has now suddenly vanished. Using Sheehan's criterion, Heidegger's resistance could only be taken seriously, if Heidegger lost his job. Heidegger did not lose his job; therefore, Heidegger's resistance cannot be taken seriously. So much for all those who resisted and managed to hang on to their positions.

       After the resignation of the rectorate, it was clear to me

          that the continuation of my teaching activity would have to

        worldview. Special attacks on my part were not necessary

       for that; it sufficed to bring my fundamental philosophical

           position to language in opposition to the dogmatic hardening

      and crudeness of the biologism promulgated by Rosenberg

                                     (Journal, 539).

And here is the way Sheehan uses the above quotation: " Rather [than tough attacks on Nazism], he decided in the Thirties that intellectual resistance to the Nazi worldview ‘did not require any special attacks on my part; it was enough to articulate my basic philosophical position’ as distinct from Alfred Rosenberg's" (NN, 35).

          The essence or "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism Heidegger never gave up was Hoelderlin. In Hoelderlin's poetry, Heidegger sees a movement of thinking embedded in a poetic language that went beyond the hegemonies of metaphysical foundations. That problem - the problem of how to think beyond those hegemonies - is still with us today. When Heidegger in Facts and Thoughts says that "the rectorate was an attempt to see something in the movement that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudeness, that was much more far-reaching and that could perhaps one day bring a concentration in the Germans’ Western historical essence," the something that was much more far-reaching was the new appropriation of being that Heidegger saw embodied in Hoelderlin's poetry (Neske, 29). In the next paragraph, Heidegger goes on to say that " The surmounting of nihilism nevertheless announces itself in German poetic thinking and singing [i.e.Hoelderlin]" (Neske, 29).

          Sheehan in saying that Heidegger had a " deep and long-lasting commitment to National Socialism" is confusing means and ends. Heidegger saw official National Socialism as a means, a transition, towards a community that could establish its identity in a relationship to being – free of metaphysical foundations. Heidegger agreed with Hitler and official National Socialism only insofar as it embodied the will to provide a countermovement to nihilism. He may have clung to his belief that Hitler would do this even until 1936. He certainly gave up official National Socialism as a means toward a revolutionary community as early as 1934.

          Heidegger’s lecture course on logic in the summer of 1934, the first course he gave on the heels of his resignation as rector, was published in 1998, well after Sheehan’s 1993 review. This course presents Heidegger’s criticism of official National Socialism more clearly than any other lecture course published thus far. The main points of Heidegger’s criticism are as follows:

1. We have been working at shaking the foundations of logic for the last decade for a true revolution, not for some "coordination"-of-the-month (i.e., not for the purpose of coordination with the Nazi Party).

                 Rather we stand before the fundamental task of

                 shaking this logic from the ground up, not capriciously

                 or out of willfulness with the view of establishing another

                 logic. We stand before the upheaval of logic not as something

                 we are undertaking in 1934 for the sake of some

                 "coordination"-of-the-month [beliebigen "Gleichschaltung"],

                 but rather something at which we have been working for the

                 last ten years which is grounded in a transformation

                 [Wandlung] of our existence itself, a transformation which

                 informs the innermost necessity of our destiny [Geschickes](GA

                 38,11).

                                 in the German university. There is no reaction, because

                                 there is no transformation (revolution), and there is no                   

                                 revolution because no one understands where to start.

                                 Certain people do not even want a revolution; it could

                                 turn out to be the case that in such a revolution they

                                 would prove to be highly unnecessary (GA 38,76).

3. The Nazi slogan "Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz" ("common service before self-service") is a sham.

     With the outcry "We!" it is just as possible to

miss our self as it is in the valorization of

     the I. Conversely, we can find our way to our

self-being via the I just as well as via the

You or We, because it all comes down to

    self-being, to the determination of the self.

                That is to say, the We with which we are concerned

           in the question "Who are we ourselves?", the We

           also in the sense of genuine community, does not

            have immediate and unconditional preference and

              the same holds in relation to the community. There

      are things that are essential and decisive for a

           community and precisely these things do not grow

               Neither the We has immediate precedence over the

 I, nor the I over the We – so long as in this

4. The Nazi emphasis on a false "We" could certainly drive the Germans into criminality.

                                    Now it is we-time [the time of the communal "we" as

                                   opposed to the "I" of liberalism]. This may be correct,

                                   and yet it is vacuous, ambiguous, and superficial,

                                   since we could be of any sort; fall out for any doubtful

                                   reason. "We!" – so too speaks any nameless crowd. "We!"

                                  – so too shouts a protesting mass, so too brags the

                                   bowling club. "We!" – so too does a gang of thieves

                                   make a pact. The We alone doesn’t make it. Just as

                                   the I can narrow down and close off the real self-being,

                                   so too can a We with the same certainty disperse, amass,

                                   goad, and even drive self-being into criminality (GA 38, 51).

          I wonder what motivates a scholar like Sheehan to begin his 1993 review with the following epigraph from Heidegger (September 26, 1969): "People haven't been very nice to me" (NN, 30). No reference or context is given for the epigraph. It seems to me to serve no other purpose than to ridicule.

Frank Edler
copyright © 2002, Frank Edler

Notes:

1      Steven Galt Crowell in his translation of Otto Poeggeler's essay
"Heidegger's Political Self-Understanding" renders 'trieft' with 'sniveling' 
which does not capture the sense of the German word (Wolin, 203-204).]

Abbreviations:

BT         Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh             (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996).

Farias      Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, ed. with a Forward, J               Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore (Philadelphia: Temple               University Press,1989).

GA 38     Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol.38, Logik als die Frage               nach dem Wesen der Sprache (Frankfurt an Main: Klostermann,               1998).

GA 39     Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol.39, Hoelderlis Hymnen             ‘Germanien’ und ‘Der Rhein’ (Frankfurt am Main:              Klostermann,1980).

GA 45    Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 45, Grundfragen der             Philosophie: Ausgewaelte "Probleme" der "Logik" (Frankfurt am             Main: Klostermann, 1983).

H/B       Martin Heidegger-Elisabeth Blochmann, Briefwechsel 1918-1969,             J.W.Storck, ed. (Marbach: Deutsche Literaturarchiv, 1989).

HN         Thomas Sheehan, " Heidegger and the Nazis," The New York               Review of  Books (June 16, 1988), 38-47.

               Journal    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Heidegger and the Political,                              vol.14, no.2 – vol. 15, no.1(1991).

Neske     Martin Heidegger and National Socialism. Questions and                       Answers, ed. Guenther Neske and Emil Kettering (New York:                  Paragon, 1990) 6-7.

NN          Thomas Sheehan, "A Normal Nazi," The New York Review of                Books, XL, nos.1-2 (January 14, 1993) 30-35.

QT          Martin Heidegger, The Question of Technology and Other                  Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row,                 Harper Colophon Books, 1977).

THC        The Heidegger Case: On  Philosophy and Politics, Tom                Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (ed) (Philadelphia: Temple               University Press, 1992).

Thing       Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing?, trans. W.B.Barton and                    Vera Deutsch (Chicago: Henry Regnery, Gateway edition, 1970).

Wolin       The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, ed.                 Richard Wolin (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1993).