Heidegger and Nazism - Post-rectorate Period

Post-rectorate Period

After he resigned from the rectorship, Heidegger withdrew from political activity, but without canceling his membership in the Nazi party. References to National Socialism continued to appear in his work, always in ambiguous ways, suitably disguised for the benefit of the Gestapo spies, according to François Fédier and Julian Young, in order to hide his own version of Nazism for Emmanuel Faye. For instance, in a 1935 lecture, he publicly critizised National Socialism, but incidentally referred to the "inner truth and greatness of this movement". Here the sentence in its context:

What today is systematically touted as the philosophy of National Socialism, but which has nothing in the least to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the encounter of a globally determined technology with the man of the new age), darts about with fish-like movements in the murky waters of these 'values' and 'totalities'.

Heidegger explained later :

The whole lecture shows that I was at that time an adversary of the regime. The understanding ears knew therefore how to interprete the sentence. Only the spies of the party who - I knew it - sat in my courses, understood the sentence otherwise, as it must be. One had to throw them a crumb here and there in order to keep freedom of teaching and speaking.

This lecture was published in 1953 under the title An Introduction to Metaphysics. In the published version, Heidegger left the sentence, but added a parenthetical qualification: "(namely, the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity)". However, Heidegger did not mention that this qualification was added at the time of publication, and was not part of the original lecture. This raised concerns in post-Nazi Germany that Heidegger was distinguishing a "good Nazism" from a "bad Nazism", a contention supported by his philosophical opponents, including Bauemler. The controversial page of the 1935 manuscript is missing from the Heidegger Archives in Marbach. He explained again during the Spiegel interview : "The reason I did not read that passage aloud was because I was convinced my audience would understand me correctly. The stupid ones and the spies and the snoopers understood it differently – and might as well have, too." In this same course, Heidegger criticized both Russia and the United States: "Seen metaphysically, Russia and America are both the same: the same desolate frenzy of unbounded technology and of the unlimited organization of the average human being." Then he calls Germany "the most metaphysical of nations." This is a good example of Heidegger's ambiguous way of speaking, since his students would have known that "metaphysical" in this context is actually a synonym of "technological" and "nihilistic", and therefore a term of harsh criticism. In a 1938 lecture, he wrote down : "... the laborious fabrication of such absurd entities as National Socialist philosophies" - but didn't read it aloud.

Heidegger defended himself during the denazification period by claiming he had opposed the philosophical bases of Nazism, especially biologism and the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche's The Will to Power. However, in a 1936 lecture, Heidegger still sounded rather ambiguous as to whether Nietzsche's thought was compatible with Nazism, or at least with that hypothetical "good Nazism": "The two men who, each in his own way, have introduced a counter movement to nihilism — Mussolini and Hitler — have learned from Nietzsche, each in an essentially different way." However a subtle correction followed immediately: "But even with that, Nietzsche's authentic metaphysical domain has not yet come unto its own."

In private notes from 1939, published in 2006, Heidegger took stronger exception to Hitler: under the heading "Truth and Usefulness", he critiqued Hitler's statement, "There is no attitude, which could not be ultimately justified by the ensuing usefulness for the totality." Heidegger's notes record the following critical comments:

Who makes up this totality? (Eighty million-strong extant human mass? Does its extantness assign to this human mass the right to the claim on a continued existence?) How is this totality determined? What is its goal? Is it itself the goal of all goals? Why? Wherein lies the justification for this goal-setting? Why is usefulness the criterion for the legitmacy of a human attitude? On what is this principle grounded? From where does the appeal to usefulness as the measure of truth acquire its comprehensibility? Does comprehensibility justify legitimacy?

However, in a 1942 lecture (published posthumously), Heidegger was once again ambiguous on the subject of Nazism. During a discussion of recent German classics scholarship he said: "In the majority of 'research results', the Greeks appear as pure National Socialists. This overenthusiasm on the part of academics seems not even to notice that with such "results" it does National Socialism and its historical uniqueness no service at all, not that it needs this anyhow.

In the same lectures he commented on America's entry into World War II, in a way that seems to identify his philosophy with the Nazi cause:

"The entry of America into this planetary war is not an entry into history. No, it is already the last American act of America's history-lessness and self-destruction. This act is the renunciation of the Origin. It is a decision for lack-of-Origin."