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(from Sh'ma 12/231, April 2, 1982)

Heidegger, The Limits of Philosophy

By Michael Wyschogrod

In the endless accumulation of evil that was Nazism, the case of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) probably does not loom very large. He was not one of the leaders of the Party, nor was he directly connected with the universe of the death camps. In another sense, however, the case of Martin Heidegger was one of the genuine horrors of Nazism. He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, and he was a Nazi. How does one come to terms with that?

That he or anyone else was a great philosopher cannot be easily proven. Philosophy is that discipline which prides itself on questioning all presuppositions, leaving nothing unexamined. Because even the most basic presuppositions are questioned, philosophers and philosophic schools tend to diverge. The fundamental presuppositions of one school are contested by the adherents of another and it is not uncommon for the greats of one school to be viewed as worthless by another. To some extent, this has happened to Heidegger also. But to a surprisingly limited extent. Someone as unlikely to respect a Nazi as Herbert Marcuse (the Marxist romantic) has said: "No one can 'defend' his propaganda for Hitler (in the guise of philosophy). No madman can destroy his epochal Being and Time." The number of entries by and about him in the Library of Congress Catalogue is one of the largest for any twentieth century philosopher, and just recently a concordance which indexes every word in Being and Time has appeared (such concordances appear only for the most respected classics). While all this does not constitute a philosophic argument for Heidegger's stature, it is some indication of his influence.

As to his Nazism, while much of it is in dispute, certain elementary facts are clear. In 1933 he joined the Nazi Party and was elected Rektor of the University of Freiburg, replacing a social democrat who had been dismissed by the Nazis. As I write, I have before me a photograph captioned "German scholars declare themselves united with the Fuehrer" which shows Heidegger and a number of other prominent academics attending a rally on Nov. 11, 1933 in support of Hitler's election campaign. They are surrounded by many swastika flags and SA stormtroopers in uniform. During that period, he promised "that much-sung 'academic freedom' will be thrust from the German University. It was inauthentic because it was simply negative." He added: "Precepts and ideas are not now the rules of your being: the Fuehrer is your one and only present and future German reality and law."

Heidegger's Anti-Semitism

Was Heidegger also an anti-Semite during this period? This has been contested, and in an interview he gave to Der Spiegel in 1966 dealing with his Nazi history (he would not permit publication until after his death) he specifically denies the charge of anti-Semitism and claims that as Rektor he resisted anti-Semitic measures and helped individual Jews. I personally know of one Jewish scholar who has told me that Heidegger went to some trouble to get him an academic post outside Germany when Jews could no longer aspire to a career in Germany. On the other hand, Karl Jaspers, another famous German existentialist philosopher whose wife was Jewish, reports that in 1933 Heidegger spoke to him of the dangerous Jewish international conspiracy. Furthermore, a curious letter has come to light which also sheds doubt on Heidegger's denials of anti-Semitism.

A certain Dr. Baumgarten (not Jewish) had applied for acceptance as a SA stormtrooper and had given Heidegger as a reference. Heidegger was not very enthusiastic about his candidacy and wrote: "Dr. Baumgarten stems both family-wise and intellectually from the liberal-democratic Heidelberg circle around Max Weber. During his stay here, he was anything but a national socialist....After Baumgarten failed with me, he kept up very lively relations with the Jew, Frankel, who had been active in Goettingen and has now been terminated here." When made aware of this charge, Dr. Baumgarten produced a sworn affidavit that he had never laid eyes on "the Jew Frankel" and thereby gained admission to the SA. It is thus quite clear that Heidegger was--to say the least--not entirely free of anti-Semitism. No one with fundamental objections to anti-Semitism could have joined the Nazi Party, even as early as 1933.

The question of Heidegger's anti-Semitism is connected with his relations with Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), the Jewish philosopher to whom Heidegger is most indebted intellectually and to whom he dedicated his most famous work, Being and Time, which first appeared in 1927 in a series edited by Husserl. Heidegger came to Freiburg to occupy Husserl's chair. When Husserl died in 1938, Heidegger did not attend his funeral. What role Husserl's Jewishness played in this is hard to say. The two had been drifting apart since the early thirties, mainly on intellectual grounds. During World War II, an edition of Being and Time appeared without the dedication to Husserl. After the war, Heidegger explained that the Nazi authorities had told him that the work could not be reprinted with the dedication to a Jew. He therefore agreed to omit the dedication as long as the numerous references to Husserl in the body of the work would be left intact. Since the authorities accepted this deal, Heidegger maintains that he thought it best to proceed.

Unforgivable Post-War Conduct

In 1934, Heidegger resigned the Rektorship and after that his enthusiasm for the Fuehrer and National Socialism clearly subsided. But now we come to the greatest horror of all. Even if one is inclined to be partly forgiving of a Nazi who joined in 1933 and left in 1934, his conduct after the war cannot be forgiven. The truth is that decent people should have seen what Hitlerism was in the late twenties and early thirties. Nevertheless, there were relatively decent people who were misled in the first few years and got out as soon as the uncompromisingly murderous nature of this movement became clear. Even if we are understanding enough--and I am not sure I am--to see things this way, there is absolutely no excuse for Heidegger's attitude after the war when the complete story of the death camps became known to all who wished to take cognizance of the facts. But Heidegger did not.

Not once did he utter a word of sorrow for what Germany had done to its victims. Instead, he tried to portray himself as an anti-Nazi who had joined the party only to protect the University of Freiburg. Even if this is true-personally, I do not believe it--the absence of a public condemnation of Nazi crimes makes Heidegger, in my view, a moral accomplice of those crimes. Once he had made his choice, Heidegger did not want to join what he considered the post-war cowards who reneged on their original loyalty. He was not going to besmirch a holy cause of his life. In that way, he remains fixed in history as a Nazi.

Heidegger: A Philosopher and Nazi

All this would be of very limited interest had Heidegger not been a truly great philosopher. The list of Nazi louts is a long one, and the addition of one more name would hardly make much difference. But Heidegger was a great philosopher. And he was a Nazi.

All this became clear to me in the early fifties when I first began studying him. I decided to separate the man from the philosopher. He was an evil man, but a great philosopher.

Is this so very surprising? Can one not be a great mathematician and an evil person? Or a great historian and an evil person? If so, why not a great philosopher and an evil person?

The apparent difficulty is caused by our confusing philosophy with religion. You cannot be a saint and an evil person. Religion is not only, or perhaps not mainly, a matter of knowledge. Religion is a way of being and living, and if you are an evil person you are not a saint. You may be a great scholar of religion, but not a saint.

Some people think of philosophy as a religion. If that is so, then a great philosopher cannot be an evil person for the same reasons that a saint cannot be an evil person. But philosophy is not religion. Philosophy is exclusively an intellectual discipline. In philosophy, all that matters is whether what you say is true and profound. And if it is, then you are a great philosopher. No matter what you do.

Had Martin Heidegger been one of the leaders of the anti-Nazi underground, we could have quoted hundreds of passages in his writings which would have explained why he was an anti-Nazi. Such passages as those dealing with conscience, freedom, the impersonality of the crowd, idle chatter, authenticity, etc., etc. Since he was a Nazi, we can quote some passages explaining why he was a Nazi, though I am convinced that there are fewer Nazi-supporting than anti-Nazi-supporting passages. Since he almost never wrote about politics and ethics as such, the work is essentially neutral (I am referring here to the philosophic work and not the political speeches which are, of course, explicitly Nazi).

Heidegger taught me the limitations of philosophy.