DR Heidegger Experiment - Kronick

Review: Review Essay. Dr.
Heidegger's Experiment
Author(s): Joseph G. Kronick
Source: boundary 2, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 116-153
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303374
Accessed: 11/09/2010 15:07
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to boundary 2.
http://www.jstor.org
Review Essay
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
Joseph G. Kronick
... and is this the upshot of your experiment?

-NathanielHawthorne
Of this,
A few words, an and yet, and yet, and yet-
-WallaceStevens
It is strange that Heidegger's name should arrivein America by way

of Hawthorne;however, while the transmissionof which Ispeak is obviously
not historical,it concerns historybecause it is a question of temporalityand
reading. I borrow Hawthorne'stitle, but today I refer, as one may gather,
to Martin Heidegger's involvement with Nazism. Although the upshot of
Books Reviewed:Jacques Derrida,De I'esprit.Heidegger et la question (Paris:Gali-

lee, 1987); VictorFarias, Heidegger et le nazisme, trans. from Spanish and German
by MyriamBenarrochand Jean-BaptisteGrasset, pref. ChristianJambet (Paris: Ver-
dier, 1987); FranpoisF6dier,Heidegger,anatomied'unscandale (Paris:RobertLaffont,
1988); PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe, La fictiondu politique:Heidegger,I'artet la politique
(Paris:ChristianBourgois,1987);Jean-FranpoisLyotard,Heideggeret "lesjuifs" (Paris:
Galil6e,1988).
boundary2 17:3,1990.Copyright ? 1990byDukeUniversity Press.CCC0190-3659/90/$1.50.
Kronick/ Dr. Heidegger's Experiment 117
his "experiment" remainsunclear,one thingis certain:his commitmentto

Nazismwas of a naturethatwillno longerlet us dismissit as an erroror
a mere mistake.Yet, howevermuchdetailsof his supportfor Hitler,his
effortsto reorganizethe universityaccordingto the Fbhrerprinzip,
and his
denunciationsof colleaguesmaycall forourcondemnation, doing,we
in so
failto read himand therebyavoidthe questionof the relationof politicsto
Heidegger'sthoughtandto philosophy(as such).
Hawthorne'stale of "thatverysingularman,old Dr.Heidegger," in-
vites us to thinkthat even in America"wewillnot get aroundFreiburg."1
Butthe questionof Heidegger'spoliticscomes to us by wayof an ongoing
debate in Franceover VictorFarias'sHeideggeret le nazisme.2 The un-
fortunatedubbingof the polemicsas I'affaireHeideggersuggests thatthe
debate is merelyanother"typicallyFrench"scandal;and since the pub-
licationof Farias'sstudy,several books, numerousarticles,reviews,and
publicstatementshaveappearedbysuchfiguresas Hans-GeorgGadamer,
Jirgen Habermas,MauriceBlanchot,and EmmanuelLevinas.3Franqois
1. Jacques Derrida,ThePost Card:FromSocrates to Freudand Beyond (Chicago:Uni-
versityof Chicago Press, 1987), 63; hereaftercited in my text as PC. Furtherreferences
to Derrida'sworkswillbe cited as follows(alltranslationspublishedby Universityof Chi-
cago Press unless otherwisenoted):DE = De I'esprit.Heidegger et la question (Paris:
Galil6e,1987); Psyche = Psych6. Inventionsde I'autre(Paris:Galil6e,1987);M = Mar-
gins of Philosophy,trans.AlanBass (1982);P = Positions,trans.AlanBass (1981);SP =
Speech and Phenomena,trans.DavidB. Allison(Evanston,Ill.:NorthwesternUniversity
Press, 1973); LI = LimitedInc, trans. Samuel Weberand JeffreyMehlman(1977; rpt.
with a new afterword[Evanston,Ill.:NorthwesternUniversityPress, 1988]). I would like
to thankBainardCowanforcheckingmy translations.
2. VictorFarias,Heidegger et le nazisme, trans.fromSpanish and Germanby Myriam
Benarrochand Jean-BaptisteGrasset (Paris:Verdier,1987); hereaftercited in the text
as Farias.Englishtrans. PaulBurrelland GabrielR. Ricci,ed. Joseph Margolisand Tom
Rockmore(Philadelphia:TempleUniversityPress, 1989).The most carefullyresearched
and balanced appraisalof Farias'sbook is Thomas Sheehan's reviewin the New York
Review of Books, 16 June 1988, 38-47. A briefbut valuablereviewby Paul Gottfried,
"Heideggeron Trial,"appearedin Telos74 (Winter1987-88): 147-51. Gottfriedrefutes
Farias'sargumentthat Heidegger'sCatholicupbringingdestined him to be a Nazi. He
points out that the CatholicCenter was one of the two parliamentaryparties that re-
sisted Hitlerin 1933 and that the ultramontanistopponentsof the Catholicliberals,with
whom Fariasassociates Heidegger,wereforcedintooppositionagainstextremeGerman
nationalism.
3. Jorge Semprunrefersto the scandal as "typicallyFrench"in his sympatheticreview
of Luc Ferryand AlainRenaut'sHeidegger et les modernes (Paris:BernardGrasset,
1988);see "A-t-onbesoin de Heidegger?"Le nouvelobservateur,20-26 May1988, 64-
65. Ferryand Renaut attack Heideggeras the inspirationfor the "anti-humanism" of
118 boundary2 / Fall 1990
deconstruction.In his preface to Heidegger et /e nazisme, ChristianJambertsays that

Heidegger has become "a Frenchphilosopher"since the war (13); and in Heidegger
et "Ies juifs," Jean-Franpois Lyotardwrites: "L'affaireHeidegger est une affaire
'franpaise'"([Paris:Galil6e,1988], 16).
The debate in Franceover Heideggerand Nazismwas initiatedin Sartre'sLes temps
modernes withKarlL6with'sessay tyingHeidegger'spoliticsto the philosophyof Being
and Time,particularly withthe concept of finitude:"Lesimplicationspolitiquesde la phi-
losophie de I'existencechez Heidegger,"Les temps modernes 13 (Oct. 1946):343-60.
There followedin Les temps modernes a series of articlesthat establishedthe story of
Heidegger'sinvolvementas an errorthatended withhis resignationfromthe rectorship.
See also Les temps modernes 4 (Jan. 1946):713-16, for Mauricede Gandillac's"En-
tretien avec MartinHeidegger";and in the same issue, Alfredde Towarnicki,"Visitea
MartinHeidegger,"717-24. In his essay for the same journal,Alphonsede Waehlens
also dissociates Heidegger'sthoughtfromNazismin "Laphilosophiede Heideggeret le
nazisme,"22 (July1947): 115-27. EricWeilis morecriticalin his "Lecas Heidegger,"22
(July1947): 128-38.
The secondary literatureon Heidegger et le nazisme is alreadyquite extensive. A por-
tion of Le d6bat 48 (Jan.-Feb. 1988) is devoted to Farias.The contributorsare Pierre
Aubenque,"EncoreHeideggeret le nazisme";HenriCr6tella,"Heideggercontre le na-
zisme";FranpoisF6dier,"L'lIntention de nuire";GerardGranel,"Leguerrede S6cession";
Stephane Moses, "Radicalitephilosophiqueet engagementpolitique"; and AlainRenaut,
"La'd6viationheideggerienne'?"Also includedis a selectionof Heidegger'spoliticalwrit-
ings from1933 to 1934. Le d6bat49 (Mar.-Apr. 1988),publishedthreemoreessays on the
matter:a translationof HugoOtt'sreviewof Farias,"Heideggeret le nazisme:Chemins
et fourvoiements"-whose Germanoriginalappeared in Neue ZurcherZeitung 28/29
(Nov. 1987): 67; Jacques Le Rider's"Heideggeret le nazisme"-an account of the still
inaccessible dossier containingHeidegger'sanswers to questions putto him by French
authoritiesabout his politicalactivities;and Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt's"Heidegger
et le nazisme: D'une abjectionI'autre"-an intemperatereplyto Granel'sobjectionto
Goldschmidt'sidentifyingHeidegger'sthoughtwithAuschwitzand claimingthat Heideg-
ger's "obstinatesilence probablyresultedfroma profoundagreement... withthe Nazi
genocide"(Goldschmidt,in La Quinzainelitt6raire,1-15 Nov. 1987;cited by Granel,"Le
guerrede Secession," 146 n.2).
Le nouvel observateur, 22-28 Jan. 1988, includes the followingarticles: Catherine
David,"Heideggeret la pensee nazie";MauriceBlanchot,"PenserI'Apocalypse"; Philippe
Lacoue-Labarthe,"Ni un accident, ni une erreur"(a section from La fiction du poli-
tique);EmmanuelLevinas,"Commeunconsentementa I'horrible"; FranpoisF6dier,"Une
grosee betise";and Hans-GeorgGadamer,"CommePlatona Syracuse."Withthe ex-
ception of F6dier,who does not accept the fact that Heideggerwas a Nazi, the French
contributorsfocus on Heidegger'ssilence on the issue of genocide andthe problemof the
relationof his politicsto his thought.Gadamerexpresses surpriseover the belatedness
of the controversy,since the facts have long been knownin Germany.Englishtransla-
tions of Gadamer,Blanchot,Lacoue-Labarthe, and Levinas,along witha selection from
De I'espritand JurgenHabermas'sintroduction to the Germaneditionof Heideggeret le
nazisme can be foundin CriticalInquiry15 (Winter1989), editedwithan introductionby
Kronick/ Dr.Heidegger'sExperiment 119
Fedier, student of Jean Beaufret (the addressee of the "Letteron Human-

ism") and friend of Heidegger, has writtena book-length reply to Farias.4
Still, several of these books were writtenbefore the appearance of Farias's,
which, unfortunately,has received the greatest amount of attention. The
other books were writtenindependentlyof the "affair," withthe exception of
Jean-Franqois Lyotard'sHeidegger et "les juifs,"a study closely tied to the
concerns that culminate in Le differend.5PierreBourdieu'sL'ontologiepoli-
tique de MartinHeidegger is a revised and expanded version of his 1977
ArnoldI. Davidson,who focuses primarily on the "RectorshipAddress"and otherpolitical

writings.
In response to this controversy,Jean Baudrillard has argued that the fascinationwith
the past is the resultof our having"disappearedtoday politicallyand historically."See
"HuntingNazis and LosingReality,"New Statesman115 (Feb. 1988):16, a translationof
"Necrospectiveautourde MartinHeidegger,"firstpublishedin Liberation27 (Jan. 1988).
He attacks "boththose who deny and those who assert the realityof the gas chambers"
for participatingin a "collectivehallucination"
whereinhistoryhas been reconstructedas
myth by the media. Baudrillard combines nostalgiafor objectivehistorywith a celebra-
tion of "theway the media have substitutedthemselves for events, ideas and history."
He closes his essay by suggesting that we skip the 1990s, since the "fin-de-sieclehas
alreadyarrived"(173).
4. Francois F6dier,Heidegger, anatomied'un scandale (Paris:Robert Laffont,1988);
hereaftercited in my text as Fedier.This is not the firsttime Fedierhas defended Hei-
degger. See his reviewof Schneeberger'sNachlese zu Heidegger,Adorno'sJargonder
Eigentlichkeit,and Paul Huhnerfeld'sIn Sachen Heidegger, in "Troisattaques contre
Heidegger,"Critique22 (Nov.1966):883-904. Repliesto Fedierby RobertMinder("Lan-
gage et nazisme"),Jean-PierreFaye ("Lalectureet I'enonce"),andAimePatri("Serait-ce
une querelled'allemand?")appearedunderthe collectivetitle"Aproposde Heidegger,"
Critique23 (Feb. 1967): 284-97. Fedier's reply,"Une lecturedenonc6e," followed in
Critique24 (July 1967): 672-86. A finalresponse came in "Unelettrede Heideggera
FrancoisBondy,"Critique24 (Apr.1968):433-35. Bondydefends Heidegger'saccountof
his relationshipwith Husserland publisheshis correspondencewithHusserl'sdaughter,
ElisabethHusserl-Rosenberg.Yetanotherreplyby Fedierimmediatelyfollowson pages
435-37.
CatherineDavid reportsthat posthumouslypublishedletters reveal that Beaufret,Hei-
degger's foremostacademic expositorin Franceand, as a memberof the Resistance,
Heidegger's "guaranteeof morality," was a supporterof RobertFaurisson'seffortsto
deny the fact that millionsof Jews were murderedin Nazi exterminationcamps. See
"Heideggeret la pensee nazie,"Le nouvelobservateur,22 Jan. 1988, 42.
5. Worksby Jean-FrancoisLyotardwillbe cited in the textas follows:HJ = Heidegger et
"lesjuifs";JG = Jean-LoupThebaud,coauthor,Just Gaming,trans.WladGodzich(Min-
neapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1985);LD= TheDifferend:Phrases in Dispute,
trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1988).
120 boundary2 / Fall1990
article. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe'sLa fiction du politique: Heidegger, I'art

et la politique is a revised and expanded version of an essay submitted for
his doctorat d'etat and represents a portionof his extensive work done on
his own and in collaborationwith Jean-Luc Nancy on politics and philoso-
phy.6 Jacques Derrida'sDe I'esprit:Heidegger et la question reflects his
long engagement with Heidegger's thought.
Groundingthe intensity of the debate are the relationof Heidegger
to deconstruction, the currency of the discourse of the Jew as Other, and
events of a more conventionally politicalnature. We could begin with the
rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen to politicalprominenceas the leader of the xeno-
phobic National Frontand with the trialof Klaus Barbie and the shameful
conduct of his defense lawyer,Jacques Verges. Whatmay prove to be more
insidious than the nationalismof Le Pen is the workof revisionisthistorians
who marshal the apparatus of scholarly research to deny that the Nazis
carried out a policy aimed at the exterminationof EuropeanJewry.7Hardly
6. Worksby PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe willbe cited in the text as follows:FP = La fic-

tion du politique:Heidegger,I'artet la politique(Paris:ChristianBourgois,1987);LIM=
L'imitationdes modernes. TypograpiesII (Paris:Galil6e, 1986);for both texts I supply
my own translations.Inadditionto these works,Lacoue-Labarthe has coauthoredessays
with Jean-LucNancy that are also of great interest.See "Lemythe nazi,"a text deliv-
ered 7 May 1980 at the colloquiumat Schiltigheimon "Les mecanismes du fascisme,"
organized by the Comit6d'informationsur I'holocauste;Englishtrans. Brian Holmes,
CriticalInquiry16 (1990): 291-312. Also see "Ouverture" to Rejouerle politique, ed.
Lacoue-Labartheand Nancy (Paris:Galil6e,1981), 11-28; "Le'retrait'du politique,"in
Le retraitdu politique,ed. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy(Paris:Galil6e,1983), 183-205.
I am gratefulto EduardoCadavafor bringingLa fictiondu politiqueto my attentionand
for makingavailableto me "Lemythe nazi"and the interviewwithJacques Derridaby
Dedier Eribon,"Heidegger,I'enferdes philosophes,"Le nouvel observateur,6-12 Nov.
1987, 170-74.
7. The best accountof Faurissonis PierreVidal-Naquet's, "UnEichmannde papier,"first
publishedinEsprit(Sept. 1980)and reprintedinLes Juifs,la m6moireet le pr6sent (Paris:
Maspero, 1981), 193-289. An abridgedversionhas appearedin Englishtranslationby
MariaJolas, Democracy 1 (Apr.1981):70-95. Also see his "Theses on Revisionism,"
in UnansweredQuestions:Nazi Germanyand the Genocide of the Jews, ed. Franpois
Furet(New York:Schocken Books, 1989), 304-19. Lyotard'sdiscussion of Faurissonin
Le differendis also of great value. RichardJ. Evans has writtena study of West Ger-
man revisionistscalled In Hitler'sShadow: WestGermanHistoriansand the Attemptto
Escape fromthe Nazi Past (NewYork:PantheonBooks, 1989). Foran accountof Verges
and the Barbietrialsee Erna Paris, Unhealed Wounds:France and the Klaus Barbie
Affair(New York:Grove Press, 1985). Paris's book is mostlyconcerned with the pub-
lic posturingof Verges priorto the trial,and her politicalanalysis is ratherclumsy.One
can also consult AndreKoulberg,"L'affaire Barbie:Strategiede la memoireet justifica-
ever mentioned but certainly an influence on these issues is the ongoing

conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
A sociointellectual accounting for either Heidegger's politics or his
reception in France must perforce rely on a genetic model of representa-
tion. Inthis account, Heidegger's activities on behalf of Nazism follow as a
productof his philosophy.This argumentrests upon a claim that the thinker
is not separated from his thought and that textual abstractions are avoided,
but, I will argue, the opposite holds true. To the extent that a critical as-
sessment of Heidegger's politics proceeds from the vantage point of his
activities rather than his writings, it separates thinkingfrom action by in-
sisting that the objective, as opposed to the textual and abstract, status of
his thought inheres in its being anchored in the empiricalindividual.Under
the guise of avoiding the separation of thought from history,these critics
close historywithinthe schema of representationalthinking,wherein objec-
tive acts have their origins in the individualas subjective being. Moreover,
the errors of historicalacts such as Heidegger's-because Nazism is now
perceived as a deviation from truthratherthan as a politicaland historical
event-are thought so in accordance withthe notion of truthas adequation
or the agreement of mental concept with the thing. Once truthis thought in
terms of correctness between thought and thing, then thought is divorced
from reality,and historyand nature are thought to be one and the same.
Such a narrativecannot, however, account for the relation between
truthand errorin historybecause the two "existsimultaneously."Ina much-
maligned remark, Paul de Man suggested that "the bases for historical
knowledge are not empiricalfacts but writtentexts, even if these texts mas-
querade in the guise of wars or revolutions."8De Man's statement can
be taken as a disavowal of history only by the most careless of readers;
however provocative the statement may be, it makes the same basic point
Derrida has made: history "always appear[s] in an experience, hence in a
movement of interpretation"(LI, 137). The equation of interpretationwith
historyhas ontological ratherthan epistemological force, for,de Manwrites,
tion du mal dans les annees quatre-vingten France,"Les temps modernes 495 (Oct.
1987): 100-116. Koulbergprovidesa forcefulargumentagainst Verges's strategies of
relativization.
8. Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight,rev. ed. (Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota
Press, 1983), 165. The question of Heidegger'sinfluenceon de Man must be treated
elsewhere. But it is interestingto note that Henrikde Man'sTheSocialistIdea was pub-
lished in 1935 in a Frenchtranslationby HenriCorbin-a translatorof Heidegger-and
by AlexanderKojevnikov-betterknownby his Frenchname, AlexandreKojeve.
122 boundary2 / Fall 1990
"man himself, like literature,can be defined as an entity capable of putting

his own mode of being into question." I am suggesting that the temporal
model of questioning, Heideggerean in form, is far more appropriatethan
a genetic narrativefor an investigationof Heidegger and Nazism. Wars or
revolutions or Heidegger's politicalactivities are texts; as historicalevents
they reveal their truthonly in the questioning that resists reducing history
to a univocal narrativeline, a sens unique, but keeps it open to the move-
ment of thinking.For if Heidegger offers no ethical imperative,the temporal
movement of questioning is not a textual abstractionbut a praxis. It is only
in interpretiveexperience that history appears. (This is a mundane point,
but I will elaborate on it below.) If we fail to recognize this necessity, we
are left with meager arguments over the relationbetween Heidegger's life
and work and with such idiocies as not reading him because of his political
beliefs or saying he might have been a terribleperson, but he was a great
thinker.
Of greater danger than losing sight of Heidegger's texts in intellec-
tual history is the double lure of anecdotal tales of his activities on behalf
of the ThirdReich and the analogies drawnbetween his language and that
of Nazi ideologues. Criticsfrom Lukacs to Habermas have found in Being
and Time the avoidance of "realhistory"and the "underminingof Western
rationalism"that destined Heidegger to Nazism.9Along with Heidegger's
9. The firstphrase in quotationmarkscomes fromJurgenHabermas'sintroduction to the

Germaneditionof Heideggeret le nazisme,translatedby John McCumberas "Workand
Weltanschauung:The HeideggerControversyfroma GermanPerspective,"CriticalIn-
quiry 15 (Winter1989): 439. The second quotationis the title to Habermas'schapter
on Heideggerin The PhilosophicalDiscourse of Modernity,trans. FrederickLawrence
(Cambridge:MITPress, 1987), 131-60. Also see his "Martin Heidegger:On the Publica-
tion of Lecturesfromthe Year1935,"trans.Dale Ponikvar,GraduateFacultyPhilosophy
Journal6 (Fall1977): 155-80. Lukacs'santagonismto Heideggeris well known;a harsh
polemic can be found in his late workThe Destructionof Reason, trans. Peter Palmer
(London:Verso, 1980).
Muchof the criticismdirectedagainst Heideggeris in the name of rationalism.Tzvetan
Todorovshares Habermas'senlightenmentideals, but his warningagainst the appeal
totalitarianismhad for intellectualsof the 1930s and 1940s is marred by the anti-
intellectualbias of his polemic against Heidegger,Blanchot,and deconstruction(see
TimesLiterarySupplement,17-23 June 1988). Contraryto whatTodorovsays, Lacoue-
Labarthe'sassessment of Heidegger,like Derrida's,is not a "vindication."
Othercritical
appraisalsof HeideggerincludeThomas Pavel, "TheHeideggerAffair," MLN103 (Sept.
1988):887-901; a crudepolemicby RussellA. Bermanand PaulPiccone, "HiddenAgen-
das: The YoungHeideggerand the Post-ModernDebate,"Telos77 (Fall1988): 117-25.
Alongwiththe articleappears a 1919 letterfromHeideggerto Husserl'sdaughter,given
Kronick
/ Dr.Heidegger's
Experiment123
critiqueof reason, erroneouslyassumed to make his philosophyone of

referto his
the standardchargesagainstHeideggerinvariably
irrationalism,
language of destiny (Geschick), of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit), of the
authentic (eigentlich), the "they"(das Man), and the "call"(Ruf), and of
Being-towards-death (Seinzum Tode)as evidenceof his incipientfascism.
In a host of books on the WeimarRepublic,we typicallyfinda few pages
devoted to Heideggerin theiraccountsof the collapse of reason and of
the desire for wholeness in the modernera.10But I hesitateto call these
attackson Heidegger"readings" because theyinvariably
takehis keyterms
as affectiveor psychologicaldeterminationsratherthan as formalstruc-
tures for the temporalityof Dasein.Andyet Heidegger'slanguage,while
not analogous to the call for "ein Volk,ein Reich, ein Fuhrer,"shares more
thanjusta certainvocabularywithNazism.
the title"Heidegger'sLetterto the Boss' Daughter"[sic].

Marxistcritics also typicallyattackHeideggerfor being abstractand for rejectingcriti-
cal reason. The most importantMarxistcritiqueof Heideggerremainsthat of Theodor
Adorno.In additionto The Jargon of Authenticity,trans. KnutTarnowskiand Frederic
Will(Evanston,Ill.:NorthwesternUniversityPress, 1973), see his Negative Dialectics,
trans.E. B. Ashton(New York:SeaburyPress, 1979). Forthe views of a formerstudentof
Heidegger,see the trenchantremarksby HerbertMarcusein an interviewconductedby
FrederickOlafson,"Heidegger'sPolitics,"GraduateFacultyPhilosophyJournal6 (1977):
28-40. Stephen Eric Bronnerhas a rathervulgarMarxistcritique,"MartinHeidegger:
The Consequences of PoliticalMystification," Salmagundi(Summer-Fall1977): 153-
74. Bronnerargues that historicalcontext is crucialto an understandingof Heidegger,
an abstractthinkerunable or unwillingto confrontconcretehistory.An angryexchange
then took place between BronnerandThomasSheehan. See Sheehan, "Philosophyand
Propaganda:Response to ProfessorBronner," and Bronner,"ThePovertyof Scholasti-
cism/A Pedant'sDelight:A Response to ThomasSheehan,"Salmagundi(Winter1979):
173-99.
10. See, for example, WalterLaqueur,Weimar:A CulturalHistory1918-1933 (London:
Weidenfeldand Nicolson, 1974), 204-6; Peter Gay, WeimarCulture:The Outsideras
Insider(New York:Harperand Row, 1968), 81-84; and HenryPachter,WeimarEtudes
(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1982), 208-24. Laqueurfinds in Being and Time
the end of traditionalphilosophyand the "advocacyof heroic behaviorin a worldthat
was essentially withoutmeaningor purpose"(204). Peter Gay dismisses Heideggerfor
his "peasant-likeappearance,""nihilism," and his "disdainful
rejectionsof modernurban
rationalistcivilization"(82). Pachterdevotes morespace to Heidegger,but his findingin
Being-towards-deaththe fascistic exaltationof sacrifice(217) is a misreading;for sacri-
fice is dyingfor anotherand contradictswhat Heideggersays about the "mineness"of
death by overlookinghis carefuldelineationof the typologyof death that distinguishes
it frommere perishingand defines it in accordancewithhis interpretation of time as the
horizonof the understandingof Being (see division2, chapter1, of Being and Time).
Thedangerof the anecdotealso lies inits persuasiveness,foritem-

braces morethantales of Heidegger'sgivingthe Nazisaluteat the startof
his lecturesin the late 1930s; it includeshis effortsextendingwell beyond
his service as rectorto reorganizethe Germanuniversity,his anti-Semitic
statements,his denunciationsof colleagues,and his acknowledgmentto
KarlL6withthat his engagementwithNationalSocialismgrew out of his
conceptof historicity.11Thus,the desireto settlethe questionof Heidegger
and Nazismseems to leave us withtwo choices:eitherwe condemnhim
for his supportof Hitlerand for such publicationsas the "RectorshipAd-
dress,"or we defendhimon the basis of his refusalto allowthe displayof
anti-Semiticpostersat the universityand his critiqueof Naziideologuesin
his lectureson Nietzsche.Yetthese approachesfailto addressthe issue at
hand,as neitherasks us to readHeidegger.Whatdoes it meanto say that
Heideggerstood behindNationalSocialism?OrthatNazismstands before
11. L6with'saccount of his meetingwithHeideggerin Rome in April1936 can be found

in Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933 (Stuttgart:Metzler,1986), 57. This
episode has been translatedby RichardWolinfor a special section on Heideggerand
Nazism in New GermanCritique45 (1988): 115-16. This issue also contains L6with's
1946 articlefromLes temps modernes translatedby Wolinand MelissaJ. Cox from a
longer Germanversion and selections from Heidegger'spoliticalspeeches translated
by WilliamS. Lewis. Wolinalso contributesan essay, "TheFrenchDebate,"which is
largelypolemicaland often contradictory. He complainsthat Farias"is so brazenlyten-
dentious . . . he ends up undermininghis own case" (142); he then attacks the "base
Heidegger-apologists(Fedier,Aubenque,Cretella),who have seized on the purportedly
tendentiousnatureof Farias'sstudyto avoidconfrontingthe disturbingfacts of the case"
(151, my emphasis). Ina ratherclumsygesturetowardobjectivity,WolincriticizesFarias,
but his real objectionis that Fariasleaves himselfopen to rebuttal.He twists the works
of others to make it seem as if they share his views. He cites, for instance, Arendt's
"Heideggerat Eighty"to implythat Heideggercultivateda followingthat resultedin his
receivingthe supportof the Nazi youth groups (144). But in writingabout Heidegger's
fame as a teacher priorto the publicationof Being and Time,Arendtstates: "Latersome
cliques formedhere and there;butthere neverwas a circleand there was nothingeso-
tericabouthis following"(294). He adds in a note on ThomasSheehan's reviewof Farias
that "Sheehan'sconclusionsmay be read as a stridentindictmentof the Frenchapolo-
gists" (161), yet Sheehan's conclusionsare, in fact, quite in line withthe positiontaken
by nearlyall Frenchcriticswho continueto thinkthat Heideggeris of great importance
to twentieth-centuryphilosophy.He maintainsthat "one must rereadhis works ... with
strictattentionto the politicalmovementwithwhichHeideggerhimselfchose to linkhis
ideas. To do less than that is, I believe,finallynot to understandhimat all"(47). To sup-
porthis argument,he then cites Derrida'sDe resprit,53-73, and "Heidegger,I'enferdes
philosophes,"173. Finally,I willsimplypointout that Wolindoes not knowthe meaning
of techne in Heidegger'sworkand confuses it withtechnology,turningHeideggerintoa
neo-Luddite.
Kronick
/ Dr.Heidegger's
Experiment125
Heidegger?Andwas his turnfromfundamental ontologya turnfromNazi

politicsas well?
I do not propose to answerthese questions. In approachingthe
question of Heideggerand the political,it is less importantto have a
thesis-for this usuallyimpliesforeknowledge of Heidegger'sguiltor inno-
cence-than it is to have a question:Wheredoes one begin to ask the
questionof the politicalin philosophy?Itis a questionwe can nevercease
asking, but never can beginto ask, for we are preventedfromasking by
our presuppositions.I suggest we beginby reading,althoughourengage-
mentwithHeidegger'stexts cannotbe a formalistone. Foras muchas we
wouldliketo settlethe questionof the politicalbydocumentingHeidegger's
writingsand actionsand by passingfromhis fundamentalontologyto the
rhetoricof bloodand soil, we mustfollowHeidegger'squestioningof time
and Beingand his driftfromguiltto the flame.Ofthis,a few words.
2
The question of Heideggerand politicsis hardlywithoutits pre-
suppositionsand may well be a questionof the presuppositionitself.To
presupposeimpliesa knowingbothanteriorand posteriorto any question-
ing. The answer is given beforeall questioningand is subsequentlylaid
out (ausgelegt) throughthe questioning.Such questioninggives the her-
meneuticcircleits temporalcharacter.We are familiarwiththistemporality
fromsection 32 of Being and Time,whichsets out how circularityand
questioningbelong to the kindof Beingthat Dasein is. Dasein goes for-
wardfromin orderto come backto whatit is: "thequestionof existence
never gets straightenedout except throughexistingitself."12Heideggeris
12. Heideggerintroducesthe problemsof temporalityand historicalityin sections 5 and
6 of Being and Time,trans.John Macquarrieand EdwardRobinson(New York:Harper
and Row, 1962), H. 12; hereaftercited in my text as BT. In keepingwiththe translators'
practicewhen cross-referencingand indexing,Iwillgive the Germanpaginationprefaced
by "H."
All references to Heidegger'sworkswillbe cited as follows (all New York:Harperand
Row except where noted):BW = Basic Writings,ed. DavidFarrellKrell(1977); ER =
The Essence of Reason, trans.TerrenceMalick(Evanston,Ill.:NorthwesternUniversity
Press, 1969); NIV= Nietzsche: Nihilism,vol. 4, trans.FrankA. Capuzzi(1982);PLT=
Poetry, Language, Thought,trans.AlbertHofstadter(1971);QCT= The QuestionCon-
cerning Technology,trans.WilliamLovitt(1977);WCT= WhatIs CalledThinking?trans.
J. GlennGray(1968).
The essential politicaltexts by Heideggerare "TheSelf-Assertionof the GermanUni-
versity:Address, Deliveredon the Solemn Assumptionof the Rectorateof the Univer-
not proposingthatthe meaningof existenceis foundthroughthe immedi-

acy of experience;rather,Dasein'sinterpretation of its existenceis always
orientedtowardthe future.Althoughhe writes,"Daseinis its past,"thispast
does not merelystand behindDasein,butis alreadyahead of it and waits
to be disclosed in existing.
Circularitydoes not implythatinterpretation (ausgelegt)is the cast-
ingof some preconceivedmeaningoversome selectedobject,ratherit has
everythingto do withecstatictemporality, finitude,andmineness(Jemeinig-
keit). The relationof the questioner to the questionis one of proximity:
"ThatBeing which is an issue for this being in its very Being, is in each
case mine"(BT,H. 42). Presupposition, therefore,belongsto the structure
of Dasein.As Jean-LucNancyremarks,the presupposition is alreadygiven
to the questionerin its verymodeof Beingandformsits relationto Being.
But nothingprecedes the presupposition: "theonly Beingpresupposedis
the Beingof the presupposition."13 circlenevercloses because Dasein
The
is alwaystryingto straightenitselfout.Thus,interpretation belongsto tem-
as
porality beginning and sending(envoi, Geschick), rather thanto history,
as conceivedalwayswithinthe motifof closure.14
I willhave moreto say aboutthe hermeneuticcircle,buthere I wish
to pointout thatthe relationof temporality to historicityis one cruxof Hei-
degger and politics.We need also note howthe questionof Being,or the
ontologicalquestion,is a questionof origins,circles,and paths.The road
thattakes Heideggerfroma fundamental ontology,to the 1933 celebration
of spirit,and on to the ever earlydestinyof Being in his laterworksis a
circlethatnevergets completelystraightenedout;instead,it becomes two
roadsforminga chiasmusor a somewhatcrookedcross.
3
ButI anticipatemyself.Letme returnto the questionof presupposi-
tion.Inthe worksby Fariasand Fedier,Heidegger'spoliticalactivitycomes
sity Freiburg"(hereaftercited in my text as RA) and "The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts

and Thoughts,"trans. KarstenHarries,Reviewof Metaphysics38 (Mar.1985):467-80,
481-502; "'Onlya God Can Save Us': The Spiegel Interview(1966),"trans. WilliamJ.
Richardson,S.J., in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker,ed. Thomas Sheehan (Chi-
cago: Precedent,1981),45-67 (hereaftercitedinmytextas Spiegel).Inaddition,Farias's
book containsextensive quotationsfromminorspeeches and articles.
13. Jean-LucNancy,Le partage des voix(Paris:Galilee,1982), 28.
14. Nancy,Le partage des voix,37.
Kronick
/ Dr.Heidegger's
Experiment127
to us as the future,as a repetition,as having-been(BT,H. 385). Farias

goes to texts writtenpriorto 1933 to findthat Heideggermustbecome a
Nazi sympathizer;Fedierreads Being and Timeand discovers it excul-
pates Heideggerfromthose errorsof judgmenthe latercommits.The two
books are lessons in how not to read. But the furorover Farias'sbook
should not obscurethe fact that Heideggerwas muchmore enthusiastic
in his supportfor Hitlerthaneven his 1966 interviewin Der Spiegel (pub-
lished posthumouslyin 1976) suggests, an interviewin whichhe reveals
his findingin NationalSocialisman attemptto "achievea satisfactoryrela-
tionshipto the essence of technicity"(Spiegel,61). (These facts are now
easily availablein numerousarticlesand reviews.)Andthroughhis mem-
oirs and notes publishedafterHeidegger'sdeath, KarlJaspers gives his
own intimatepictureof Heidegger'santi-Semitism: "Ireferredto the Jew-
ish Question(Judenfrage)andthe maliciousnonsense aboutthe sages of
Zion.He [Heidegger]replied:'Therereallyis a dangerousinternational fra-
ternityof Jews.'"15 Jaspers'snotes fromthe 1960s confirmat least in part
Farias'sargumentthatHeideggerwentfurtherin his aimsforthe university
than even the Nazi partydesired,but Jaspers also says that Heidegger
was blindto the crimesof Hitler'sregimeandthatdespitehis participation
Heideggeralso kept his distance:"[H]eremaineda 'philosophic'national
socialist."16
Jaspers'smemoirsare, nevertheless,primarily of biographical
inter-
est only,except for a remarkthat has morethan anecdotalvalue. When
Jaspers asked, "Howshall a person as uneducatedas Hitlerrule Ger-
many?"Heideggerreplied,"Education does notmatter.Youshouldjustsee
his wonderfulhands!"17 This remarkmay well be a hiddensubtextin the
analysis of Heidegger'sdiscourseon the hand in Derrida's"Lemainde
Heidegger(GeschlechtII)."ForDerrida,the handin Heideggeris the prop-
15. KarlJaspers, PhilosophicalAutobiography,in PaulArthurSchlipp,ed., ThePhiloso-
phy of KarlJaspers, augmenteded. (La Salle, Ill.:Open Court,1981), 75/8 (translation
modified).
16. KarlJaspers, Notizenzu Heidegger, in Basic PhilosophicalWritings,trans.and ed.
EdithEhrlich,LeonardH. Ehrlich,and George B. Pepper(Athens:OhioUniversityPress,
1986): "Atthattime, H. wentfurtherin some of his demandsthanthe Party"(507).
17. Jaspers, PhilosophicalAutobiography,75/9. Cf. Peggy Noonanon RonaldReagan's
foot:"Ifirstsaw himas a foot. ... I spied itthroughthe door.Itwas a beautifulfoot, sleek,
perfectlyshaped. ... But not a big foot, not formidable,maybe even a little. . frail.I
imaginedcradlingit in my arms, protectingit fromunsmoothroads"(fromWhatI Saw at
the Revolution,excerptedin New YorkTimesMagazine, 15 Oct. 1989, 24; last ellipsis
foundin the text).
128 boundary 2 / Fall 1990
erty of man and, as such, belongs to the discourse of humanism that ties
together thought, speech, and the gift: "[T]hehand's gestures run every-
where through language" and lead Heidegger to designate thinkingas the
gift of the hand (WCT,16-17; Psych6, 126-29). The hand not only reflects
Heidegger's privilegingof handicraftand speech, but also determines the
question of humanity. In denying the hand to animals, Heidegger denies
them a world. Only man possesses a hand, always in the singular: "But
the man who speaks and the man who writes by hand [ecrit a la main], as
one says, isn't he the monster [monstre]of the single hand?"(Psyche, 438).
This monstrous singularitysignifies the hand that raised itself in the Nazi
salute; it is the hand that thinks humanityin the singular,a thinkingof the
hand that both gives and takes and belongs to a discourse of earliness that
includes alethbia, retrieval,destiny, and "the promise" that precedes the
question-the promise of the spiritthat is there (es gibt). But I am getting
ahead of myself.
Hans-Georg Gadamer and Derrida have insisted that the story of
Heidegger and Nazism is, by and large, a familiarone, thanks primarily
to Guido Schneeberger, Hugo Ott, Jean-Michael Palmier,and others.18But
18. GuidoSchneeberger,Nachlese zu Heidegger (Bern:Suhr,1962), is to be used with

caution as it does not always distinguishreportsabout Heideggerfromauthenticdocu-
ments. Jean-MichelPalmier,Les ecrits politiquesde Heidegger (Paris:Herne, 1968),
devotes much attentionto the influenceof ErnstJinger on Heidegger.The historical
research of Hugo Ott is of extreme importance:"MartinHeideggerals Rektorder Uni-
versitatFreiburgi. Br.1933/34,"Zeitschriftdes Breisgau-Geschichtsvereins102 (1983):
121-36 and 103 (1984): 107-30; "Martin Heideggerals Rektorder UniversitatFreiburg
1933/34," Zeitschriftfurdie Geschichte des Oberrheins132 [n.s. 93] (1984): 343-58;
"MartinHeideggerund die UniversitatFreiburgnach 1945,"HistorischesJahrbuch105
(1985): 95-128; and "Martin Heideggerunddie Nationalsozialismus," in Heidegger und
die praktischePhilosophie,ed. AnnemarieGethmann-Siefert and OttoP6ggeler (Frank-
furtam Main:Suhrkamp,1988), 64-77. Farias relies heavilyupon Ott'swork.Richard
Wolinsummarizes Ott's work in "Recherchesrecentes sur la relationde MartinHei-
degger au nationalsocialisme,"Les temps modernes 495 (Oct. 1987):56-85. A philo-
sophical commentaryon Ott, Farias,and others is availablein MichaelE. Zimmerman,
"TheThornin Heidegger'sSide: The Questionof NationalSocialism,"The Philosophi-
cal Forum20 (Summer1989):326-65; this is a valuablehistoricalessay on the relation
of Nazism to Heidegger'sthoughton Dasein and the confrontationwith moderntech-
nology. A more criticalassessment of the relationbetween technologyand politicsby
someone equally well versed in Heideggercan be found in KarstenHarries,"Heideg-
ger as PoliticalThinker,"Review of Metaphysics24 (June 1976);reprintedin Heidegger
and ModernPhilosophy,ed. MichaelMurray(New Haven,Conn.:YaleUniversityPress,
1978), 304-28.
untilthe publicationof Heidegger et le nazisme, Heidegger's own account

of his dismissal from the rectorshipand his fall into disfavor with the Nazi
regime was widely accepted in France and America. We now know that
Heidegger remained a supporter of Hitlerand a Nazism, for Heidegger's
Nazism was not Rosenberg's, untilthe end. And despite his statements to
the contrary,we know that he remainedactive in politics beyond his stint in
office, lending his authorityto public occasions by participatingin a cere-
mony honoringAlbertLeo Schlageter, a student who fought in the Freikorps
and was executed by the French. In addition, we know of his infamous
call to the students to serve by work and of his lesser-known participation
in plans for the indoctrinationof the workers and the unemployed (Farias,
138). Especially disturbingto us is his 1945 projectforthe organizingof the
Academy of the Reich (Dozentenakademie des Deutsche-Reiches) and
his rethinkingof "traditionalscience from the interrogationof the forces of
national socialism" as among his goals for the education of future leaders.
But contraryto Heidegger's claim that his dismissal was due to his unwill-
ingness to compromise the university,Farias informs us that a document
from the ministryindicates that the authoritiesexpected him to continue as
rector despite the battle over his appointmentof ErikWolfand Wilhelmvon
Mo1llendorff as deans (Farias, 209). Itnow seems that the opposition came
from the professors themselves, who resented deans being imposed upon
their respective departments by the rector.
What distinguishes this debate fromearlierones, both in France and
now in America, is not, in the finalanalysis, the new informationthat proves
beyond question that Heidegger actively supported the Nazi regime, but
the way in which the controversy has turned into an assault upon decon-
struction and what we could call postmodern antihumanism.I willtreat the
question of humanism below, but here I simply want to say that the proper
subject of debate, the relation between philosophy and politics, has been
lost in the attacks and apologetics produced by Heidegger's detractorsand
dissenters. Responsibility for the urgency of the polemic, as well as the
level to which it has sunk, may be placed upon Farias. For,despite its new
information,Heidegger et le nazisme is notable forthree things: (1) Farias's
inaccuracies and errors scattered throughout;(2) his shoddy argumenta-
tion that makes Heidegger a Nazi of the left who fell from grace because
of his adherence to the faction led by Ernst R6hm centered in the SA;
(3) the furorhe raises in Heidegger's staunchest defenders and the ready
reception his argument receives fromthose who have already decided that
Heidegger was a Nazi. An account of all its weaknesses would filla book,
and Fedier attempts to do just that. But then someone needs to write a
book detailing all of Fedier's evasions and misinterpretations.
Whereas Farias twists facts to prove that Heidegger's Catholic ori-
in
gins Messkirch destined him to be a Nazi, Fedier minimizes or reasons
around the damning evidence of Heidegger's activities. For instance, he
argues that Heidegger's assumption of the rectorate after thirteen Jewish
professors of a faculty of ninety-three were dismissed "can hardly be in-
terpreted without inappropriatenessas a sign of approbation"(F6dier, 98).
Perhaps it was not a sign of approval, but it is acquiescence of a grievous
sort. Fedier disputes those who criticize Heidegger for writinga letter de-
nouncing HermannStaudinger,who was laterto receive the Nobel Prize in
chemistry, as a pacifistduringthe FirstWorldWar(Farias, 131; F6dier,99).
Fedier rightlyquestions why Heidegger, if he was a Nazi sympathizer,would
denounce Staudinger and yet make von M1llendorff,a Social Democrat,
a dean. Fedier concludes that "itseems to me that one can interpretthe
letter of the rector Heidegger according to another probability.Summoned
to 'purify'his university,the rector ... designated as the single professor to
evict a colleague on the one hand won over to the new regime, and on the
other indispensable to the war effort"(F6dier, 101-2). Fedier's argument
is not only specious, but it also ignores the date of the letter:22 February
1934. In the letter, Heidegger accuses Staudingerof opportunism-that is
why Heidegger says he must be dismissed and not merely allowed to re-
tire. Moreover,the letter was writtennearly six years before the start of the
war-so much for the notion that Heidegger was attemptingto undermine
the German war effort.
As to the exterminationcamps, F6dier remarksthat the Nazis were
not unique in "the massacre of innocents":"New with Nazism is that the
rightof livinghas passed underthe controlof science" (F6dier,161). F6dier
locates the "caesure," wherein Germany no longer is comparable to other
nations, in the decree of 1 September 1939 instituting"euthanasia,"a policy
aimed at the disabled and handicapped, but generally recognized as paving
the way for the destruction of Jews and postponed in partdue to protests.
Althoughtechnology played a significantrole in the Nazi effortto annihilate
Jews (one that is still to be thought through), F6dier's argument shifts the
meaning of Nazism from its ideology and politics, not just to a more gener-
alized biologism, but to the mechanical means of destruction. He reduces
genocide to murder;the difference lies in the numberof victims. Fedier fails
to recognize that the uniqueness of the ThirdReich lies in an ideology that,
as Hannah Arendtexplains, could only be satisfied by the destruction of a
people. Anti-Semitismexplains the choice of the victims, she argues, but

not the crime itself, its "attackupon humandiversityas such, that is, upon a
characteristic of the 'humanstatus' withoutwhich the very words 'mankind'
or 'humanity'would be devoid of meaning."119Arendt'sconcept of humanity
begins not with some essence that makes us human, but withdiversityitself
and the priorityof politicalthought, that which resides, to use her phrase,
"between past and future."The appeal to humanity,or more properly to
such reified notions as the "rightsof man,"is an abdication of political re-
sponsibility. Principles that essentialize humanity are signs of either the
powerlessness of those who cannot protecttheir rightsor the efforts of the
powerful to exclude certain people from the politicalcommunityand to re-
duce the rights of freedom to the private sphere where, no longer subject
to thought and action, they become supposedly essential and inalienable.20
The misunderstandingof technology and racism is shared not only
by Heidegger's apologists but also by his attackers, who fail to see that
political responsibilityfor Nazism does not mean Heidegger was a rabid
anti-Semite; there is little to no evidence of this. Nevertheless, Fedier's
analysis of technology reflects Heidegger's wretched remarks about the
death camps. Ina conference on technology held in the Club at Bremen on
1 December 1949, Heidegger makes his single reference to the gas cham-
bers: "Agricultureis now a motorizedfood industry,in its essence the same
as the manufacture of corpses in the gas chambers and extermination
camps, the same thing as the blockade and the reduction of countries to
famine, the same thing as the manufactureof hydrogen bombs" (FP, 58).21
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,who has broughtthis obscure remarkto
19. HannahArendt,Eichmannin Jerusalem:A Reporton the Banalityof Evil,rev. ed.

(New York:PenguinBooks, 1965), 268-69.
20. See HannahArendt,TheOriginof Totalitarianism, rev.ed. (San Diego:HarcourtBrace
Jovanovich,1958), 290-302.
21. "Ackerbauist jetzt motorisierteErnahrungsindustrie, im Wesen das Selbe wie die
Fabrikationvon Leichen in Gaskammernund Vernichtungslagern, das Selbe wie die
Blockadeund Aushungerungvon Landern,das Selbe wie die Fabrikationvon Wasser-
stoffbomben."Heideggergave four lecturesunderthe title "InsightintoThatWhichIs."
The subtitleswere "TheThing"("DasDing"),"Enframing" ("DasGestell"),"TheDanger"
("DieGefahr"),and "TheTurning"("DieKehre").Allbut the thirdwere published(they
are available in Englishin Poetry, Language, Thoughtand The Question Concerning
Technology).The remarkitself was firstquoted by WolfgangSchirmacher,Technikund
Gelassenheit (Freiburg:Alber,1983), 25. This passage is frompage 25 of a typescriptof
the lecture.A portionof the statementappearsin "TheQuestionConcerningTechnology,"
an expandedversionof the second lecture(see QCT,15).
132 boundary 2 / Fall 1990
attention, notes that its injustice lies not in its relating"totechnology mass
extermination,"but in its failureto recognize a difference between the Nazi
efforts to exterminate Jews and the American manufacturingof nuclear
arms or the modern food industry.He concludes that Heidegger's failure
to speak of this difference is "extremelysimple: it is that the extermination
of the Jews (and its programmingin the frame [cadre] of a 'final solu-
tion') is a phenomenon which essentially is not any matter of logic (politi-
cal, economic, social, military,etc.) other than spiritual,however much it
be degraded [fft-elle degradee], and consequently historical [historiale].
In the apocalypse of Auschwitz it is neither more nor less than the West,
in its essence, that is revealed-and that never ceases, afterwards,to re-
veal itself. And it is the thought of that event that Heidegger has missed"
(FP, 59).
Perhaps the finalironyof these two books lies in theiragreement that
Heidegger's Nazism lay in his commitmentto socialism and the nation. In-
sofar as these commitments had real meaning for Heidegger, F6dierwrites,
"One can affirmwithout hesitation that Heidegger's engagement was not
criminal"(F6dier, 185). For Farias, it was precisely Heidegger's socialism
that made him a Nazi of the left. A survey of the existing literaturedoes
present a complex picture of contradictoryinterpretationsand information
on the part of commentators and contradictoryactions and writingson the
part of Heidegger. But even if the matterof Heidegger's engagement with
Nazism were resolved by either Farias or Fedier, we would still need to
read him. And readings of Heidegger are what we find in Derrida,Lacoue-
Labarthe, and Lyotard.
4
The lures of analogy and anecdote are powerful because they in-
vite us to situate the political in the easily recognizable realm of ethical
discourse. Nietzsche, of course, critiquedvalues for being granted validity
in themselves, whereas they are the "resultsof particularperspectives of
utilityfor the preservation and enhancement of human constructs of domi-
nation" (NIV,50), a problematicphrase to say the least.22For Heidegger,
the positing of values signifies the objectifying logic of representational
thinking and shares with historicismthe tendency to think the present as
a product of the past or the objectificationof beings as a standing reserve
22. Heideggeris quotingfromNietzsche'sTheWillto Power,section 12.

(Bestand), a resource to be ordered by mankind(NIV,242). Values, ac-

cording to the "Letteron Humanism,"subjectivize beings, turningthem into
mere objects (BW, 228). The power of ethical discourse lies in its common-
ality with the mechanism of representationthat finds its most potent form in
the age of technology where the objectificationof beings is determined by
the situating of man as the measure of truth.
The call for a politics or ethics of deconstruction signifies a passion
for values, the tenacity of subject/object dualism, and the division between
thinking and acting. That Heidegger should be cited in a consideration of
values should not be taken as a recuperationof his thought from his politi-
cal mistakes because his politics are inextricablefrom his philosophy.23On
the one hand, Derrida'scomments on history indicate that Heidegger sub-
sumes historywithinthe homogeneous space of the historyof metaphysics.
On the other hand, he turns Heidegger's characterizationof metaphysical
thinking as the oblivion of the ontico-ontological difference toward a re-
thinkingof the word "history,"which "inand of itself convey[s] the motif of
a final repression of difference." Derrida'srecovery of difference is a re-
covery of history: "one could say that only differences can be 'historical'
from the outset and in each of their aspects" (M, 11). The differences that
Derridarefers to are not anthropologicalor culturalbut are the products of
diff6rance, a quasitranscendental.24Diff6rance is a non-wordthat at once
indicates Derrida'sdistance from and his proximityto Heidegger.
In his insistence that such things as "history"or "politics"never are
as such, but are always inscribed in a text, a contextualized network of
differences, he attempts to think the structureof referralthat accounts for
history,politics, and philosophy.This structureis neitherempiricalnor tran-
scendental but marginalto the text.25We have to distinguish the taking of
politicalstands, which Derridahas not been afraidto do, fromthe findingin
deconstruction of a politicalprogram.The erroris to see in deconstruction
both a tool of analysis and a program,which would turn it into a theory.
What it can do is situate the politicalon some ground other than theory
and praxis, a situation resting upon the mystificationsof subjectivity,pres-
23. See GregoryS. Jay's fine essay, "Valuesand Deconstructions:Derrida,Saussure,

Marx,"CulturalCritique8 (Winter1987-88): 155-58 and 178-80 especially.
24. RodolpheGasche defines quasitranscendentalas "conditionsof possibilityand im-
possibilityconcerningthe very conceptualdifferencebetween subject and object and
even between Dasein and Being."See his The Tainof the Mirror: Derridaand the Phi-
losophy of Reflection(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1986), 317.
25. See the discussionof marginality
in Gasche, TheTainof the Mirror,
316-17.
ence, and dualism. Itwould-and here it can be seen to do what Heidegger

sought-place the politicalwithina region, a text, from which experience
situates itself in the traces or networkof referrals:
[T]he text is not the book, it is not confined in a volume itself con-
fined to the library.Itdoes not suspend reference-to history,to the
world, to reality,to being, and especially not to the other-since to
say of history,of the world,of reality,that they always appear in an
experience, hence in a movement of interpretationwhich contextual-
izes them according to a networkof differences and hence of referral
to the other, is surely to recall that alterity(difference)is irreducible.
Differance is a reference and vice versa. (LI,137)
To say that reality always appears in an interpretiveexperience hardly
means Derridais a relativistor a radicalhermeneutician,nor does it mean
that experience is directed towards understanding,as in Heidegger,26for
Derridadeconstructs history as "the productionand recollection of beings
in presence, as knowledge and mastery"(SP, 102). Context signifies that
something called "Being"or "history"or "presence"is not understood prior
to differance. "Being"does not come to us as a repetitionof what lies before
us, as the term "prior"may suggest; it desists, does not arrive, as retrait
because, Derrida writes, "the infinitedifferance is itself finite"(SP, 102).
The structures of referralmust be thought as the trace or differance, "the
structure of the trace being in general the very possibilityof an experience
of finitude"(Psyche, 561).
Again, I anticipate myself, for I need to distinguish Derrida'snotion
of the retraitfrom Heidegger's notion of repetition.Heidegger's concept of
identificationof Dasein with an authentic communitybelongs to represen-
tational thinking or to what Derridaand Lacoue-Labarthecall "mimetolo-
gism."27 We can say that it is precisely in this tireless investigation of the
ontological difference that Derrida'swork has its most positive meaning,
and it is the rejectionof the need to thinkthe meaning of this difference that
determines Lyotard'smimetologism.
26. Paulde Man,"HeideggerReconsidered,"in CriticalWritings,1953-1978, ed. Lindsay

Waters(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1989), 104.
27. Derridadiscusses mimetologismin "TheDoubleSession," in Dissemination,trans.
BarbaraJohnson (Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1981), 175-285. He describes
it as a discourse for decidingor determiningthe logos of the on (being-present)(191).
Lacoue-Labartheemploysthe termto describethe doubleand the contradictorylogic of
identification.Also of interestare theircontributionsto Mimesisdes articulations(Paris:
Flammarion,1975).
Lacoue-Labarthe'streatmentof Heidegger is more explicitlypolitical

than Derrida's, but one can say of the latter what he writes of Lacoue-
Labarthe: "1. One cannot nor should not read him without Heidegger; he
never writes withoutpursuingan interminablereading of Heidegger. 2. And
yet, what he does remains completely different"(Psyche, 624). Lacoue-
Labarthe's and Derrida'sreadings of Heidegger are caught in this double
bind of never ending their readings of Heidegger's texts and always read-
ing him otherwise. This hardlymeans their interpretationsare the same. In
fact, Lacoue-Labarthe'sis quite criticalof the "univocity"of Derrida'sread-
ing and his failureto comment on the politicalin Heidegger (LIM,233). An
account of the differences between them are too complex to deal with here,
but the ontico-ontologicaldistinctionthat governs Heidegger's thought even
beyond the Kehre is germane to Derrida'sexamination of the question, to
Lacoue-Labarthe's investigation of mimetology, and to Lyotard'sanalysis
of the sublime.
5
The ontological differencedistinguishes transcendence fromthe em-
pirical. Being does not "exist"above or beyond beings or existent things,
but rather has its locus in the being whose Being is a question for it-
Dasein. Being is a priori or anteriorto beings, but empiricallythere is no
Being without beings-Being is finite:"Being itself is essentially finite and
reveals itself only in the transcendence of Dasein which is held out into the
nothing"(BW, 110).
The transcendence of Dasein is found in its authentic temporality
as futural-in anticipatoryresoluteness, Dasein comes toward itself from
the future;that is, in existing, Dasein takes over its Being-guilty(we might
say, it straightens itself out, but not quite). "Guilt"is a formalstructurechar-
acterizing Dasein's thrownness or the fact that Dasein finds itself always
already in the world.To put it crudely, Dasein is not responsible for the fact
that it exists, nor does it lay the basis for its Being-in-the-worldin some
futuralpossibility; it is that basis itself in the very fact that it is, and it can
never come up behind that basis. "Inbeing a basis-that is, in existing as
thrown-Dasein lags behind its own possibilities"(BT, H. 284). Inresolutely
choosing one possibility, Dasein must tolerate that it only has one choice
and cannot choose others (BT, H. 285); this is not determinism,but simply
means that by choosing we exclude other possibilities. As thrown, Dasein
tries to catch up with its past; and as ahead-of-itself, it is already its own-
most possibility,death. "Deathis the possibilityof the absolute impossibility
of Dasein" (BT, H. 250), which is to say, Dasein is ontologically-existentially

characterized by-I hate to say it-not being dead. I don't wish to imply
that Heidegger is uttering banalities in an obscure jargon; instead, death
needs to be recognized as a formal term characterizingDasein's tempo-
rality.As the uttermostnot-yet,death signifies the differential,non-relational
character of Dasein. In Being-ahead-of-itself,Dasein is already its not-yet:
"Thatwhich makes up the 'lack of totality'in Dasein, the constant 'ahead-
of-itself,' is .. . a 'not-yet'which any Dasein as the entity which it is, has
to be" (BT, H. 244). Dasein does not fulfillitself in death, but is already
its end insofar as its end is a "not-yet."The path from birthto death is a
chiasmus-the not-yet of Dasein's potentiality"intersects"with the nullity
of its thrown basis. But not too neatly. Heidegger willcome to speak of this
differentialrelation of Being to being as Ereignis and will cross out Being.
This cross saves Heidegger fromgoing roundin circles. Being is sent from
an already-has-been to a not-yetthat is already. Ifthe question of existence
is to get straightened out by existing, it can do so only by erasing the traces
of difference.
And somehow this is connected to the political.Lyotard,for instance,
locates in Heidegger's determiningof freedom on the basis of Being the
very source for his politicalerror(HJ, 146). Nullityis the basis forfreedom-
in choosing, one excludes other choices. But this choosing is not arbitrary.
What one chooses is handed down, and this heritage is constituted by
resoluteness: "Only by the anticipationof death is every accidental and
'provisional'possibility driven out. Only Being-free for death gives Dasein
its goal outrightand pushes existence into its finitude."Once Dasein has
grasped the finitudeof its own existence, it is brought"intothe simplicityof
its fate [Schicksals]." Heidegger calls this Dasein's "primordialhistorizing."
But Dasein is not alone in the world; it "exists essentially as Being-with
Others," and, therefore, "itshistorizingis a co-historizingand is determina-
tive for it as destiny [Geschick]. This is how we designate the historizingof
the community, of a people" (BT, H. 384). Fate (Schicksal) individualizes
Dasein or can be said to applyto the individual,whereas destiny (Geschick)
applies to the community.The problem is, if death is always my own, and
Being-free for death is non-relational,how can Dasein be authenticallyitself
and Being-withOthers? The problemis solved by repetition(Wiederholen).
Dasein's fate is guided in advance, or handed down, but only be-
comes Dasein's own when Dasein hands this inheritanceover to itself. As
a being that is equiprimordially(gleichursprunglich)futuraland in the pro-
cess of having-been, Dasein can hand down to itself the possibility it has
inherited (see BT, H. 384-85). FollowingDerrida,we can say that Dasein

absolves itself of its debt/guilt(Schuld) by assuming a relationto the proper
(eigentlich) (PC, 358). Repetitiondoes not followfrom some originalevent
but repeats the differentialmovement of guilt/debt. In repetition, Dasein
legislates itself, hands itself its own lack, its not-yet-it affects itself with
death (PC, 352-57; BT, H. 240).
The arrivalof Dasein to itself is a sending toward an ever-deferred
destination: death. Derridahas remarkedhow destination is rivetedto iden-
tity (PC, 192). The jointureof eigentlich (ownness, the proper) and Ereig-
nis (event, occurrence) indicates how Dasein's identityand the differential
sense of guilt,the not-yet, and death are regulatedby a self-affection (P, 54;
M, 129).28 Repetition, or an explicit handing down to itself of what is still
outstanding, is identification.
In "La transcendance finie/t dans la politique,"Lacoue-Labarthe
writes that the determination of Dasein by the ontological concept of a
people was "programmed"in section 74 of Being and Time, where Hei-
degger employs the Nietzschean term "hero":"The authentic repetitionof
a possibility of existence that has been-the possibilitythat Dasein may
choose its hero-is grounded existentially in anticipatory resoluteness"
(BT, H. 385; LIM,152). A certain voluntarismand decisionism governs this
passage. Choosing a hero means that explicit handing down or repetition
conforms to a mimetologyor theory of imitatiothat makes the co-historizing
with others possible (LIM, 163). Since Plato, the political formation of a
people has been thought on the basis of the mimetic process (FP, 123):
"[T]hepolitical is a matterof techne in the highest sense of the term, that
is to say, in the sense where techne is thought as the accomplishment
and the revelation of physis itself. This is why the polis is equally 'natu-
ral':it is the 'beautifulformation'spontaneously spurtingforth [jaillie]from
the 'genius of a people' (the Greek genius), according to the modern-but
in truthvery ancient-interpretation of Aristotelianmimetology"(FP, 103).
Transcendence ends in politics because the "structureof transcendence is
the very structure of mimesis, of the relationbetween physis and techne"
(LIM,171).
Mimeticism is the institutionof the subject or the "becoming self
of the self," and "by definition,mimeticismforbidsthe presupposition of a
28. For a discussion of Derrida'scritiqueof eigentlichand Ereignisin Heidegger,see

Thomas Sheehan, "Derridaand Heidegger,"in Hermeneuticsand Deconstruction,ed.
HughJ. Silvermanand Don Ihde(Albany:SUNYPress, 1985), 205-12.
subject priorto the mimetic process, except to render it impossible." The

"politicalfiction"indicates that the subject of imitationis not already a sub-
ject; otherwise we would be in the dialecticaltraditionof the Platonic (eidos)
(FP, 125). The subject of imitationis never itself for it can never appropriate
an originalobject of imitation-"It is necessary that the 'subject of imitation'
is a 'being' ['etre'](in the sense of an entity [un etant]) originallyopen to, or
originally'outside itself'--ek-static. It is indeed what 'is' the Heideggerean
Da-sein." Therefore, "diff6ranceis originalto the subject" (FP, 126).
By introducingthe structureof the originarysupplement to mimeti-
cism, Lacoue-Labarthe displaces classical "imitatio"witha "rigorousmime-
tology" that locates in imitationan original diff6rance which prevents the
subject from having access to itself. Because there is no subject priorto
imitation,"the structureof the originalsupplementarityis the very structure
of the relationbetween techne and physis" (FP, 127). Iftechne brings forth
or brings to light,it supplements physis, the emerging into itself of all things.
Physis is an "original"concealing, the presencing of Being withinthe sphere
of that which is; but imitationrequires the human in the sense of techn&,
which, Lacoue-Labarthewrites, "is not a representation in the sense of a
second presentation, specular or reproductive,duplicative, but represen-
tation in the full sense of the word in French, that is to say in the sense
of to render present [rendrepr6sent]. The difficultyis, as always, to think
an original secondarity-or ratherthat the origin is second, initiallydivided
and deferred [differee], that is to say as diff6rance" (FP, 128).29Lacoue-
Labarthe concludes that insofar as the essence of techne is a mode of
unveiling (aletheia), then it is fundamentallylanguage (Dichtung, Sprache
Sage): "Thisis why it is in effect permittedto thinkthat mythos is the most
'archaic' of technai and that, secondarily, the mimetic is always linked to
the mythic"(FP, 130).
6
In disclosing the mimetic grounds of the political,Lacoue-Labarthe
reveals how Heidegger's projectfromthe foundingof the world as the site
of transcendence through the introductionof Gestell as the essence of
technology is determined by the thought of a people. Mimetologythema-
tizes history as imitationand repetition,that is, as myth. Mythis the most
29. Rendre conveys the notionof repetitionin its variousdefinitions:to give in return,as
in payingback a debt;to returnlikeforlike;to presentin translating.
powerful instrumentof identification;it alone permits "a people to accede

to its own language [langue propre] and situate itself there as such in His-
tory."(FP, 88).30 When in the "RectorshipAddress" Heidegger calls upon
students and faculty to catch up with the greatness of the Greek beginning,
he calls upon them to repeat that which is still to come (RA, 473-74). In
order to become itself, Germany must appropriatea model that, in its turn,
can accede to itself only in this repetition.
The destabilizationof mimesis is the destabilizationof the structure
of transcendence and representation upon which rests Heidegger's con-
cept of identification(LIM,171). Heidegger's thought remains within the
determination of Being by representation;in other words, the question of
Being discloses itself in Greek thought, and its site is the most metaphysi-
cal of nations, Germany, the Abendland. The annihilationof Jews would,
therefore, mean the destruction of the testimony of a totally other history.
As the revelation of the West, Auschwitz signifies the death of God: "God
is indeed dead at Auschwitz, in any case the God of the Greco-Christian
West" (FP, 62).
The death of God, I would add, is properlya Christianand pagan
theme and has nothing to do with Judaism. Moreover,to speak of Ausch-
witz as the revelation of the West is to invoke the Heideggerean concept
of destiny. And when the means of exterminationare said to be indus-
trial, then Auschwitz is the essence of the technological world picture. For
Lacoue-Labarthe, this identificationof Auschwitz with technology makes
Heidegger's single reference to gas chambers "absolutelyjust," however
inadequate it may ultimatelybe in accounting for the Nazi ideology of the
Jewish menace to German identityand the policyof extermination(FP, 61).
Lacoue-Labarthe'sanalysis remainswithinthe marginsof Heidegger's text,
not that he uses Heidegger to critiqueHeidegger, but that he subjects Hei-
degger's questions to a reading that distances itself from what makes it
possible.
Deconstruction, argues Lyotard,thinksthe Otheras Being and "has
nothing to say of a thought of which the Other is Law"(HJ, 145). It ap-
proaches the end of philosophy within the thought of Being itself. Thus,
according to Lyotard, Lacoue-LabartheinterpretsAuschwitz as the des-
30. See also note 6 on Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy,"Lemythenazi":"Mythis a fiction

(in the strongsense, active fashioning,or as Platosaid, of the 'plastic'),-myth is thus a
fictionnement,whosercle is to proposemodelsor types ... withwhichan individual-or
a city,or a people entirely-can seize himselfand identifyhimself"(108).
tiny of the West and the framingof the question of the destruction of the
Jews-even the "Jewishquestion"-as inevitablewithinthe Heideggerean
opposition of techne and physis. Yet, for Lyotard,it is the absolute distance
of Jewish thought from all ontology and its proximityto the Law (God's
commandment, "Be just")that makes Jews the victims of annihilation.For
ratherthan assign a place to one who enunciates the Law,the Jews listen
to the Law and to the Other (JG, 38-39). Unlikethe obligationto obey the
FOhrerbecause he is leader, the Jewish obligationis incurredby the Law,
not by any being, includingGod (JG, 52-53). And insofar as Jews listen to
the Law rather than Being, they are the custodians of the Forgotten, that
which is withoutplace, withoutname, a thoughtthat lacks all representation
and all efforts to forget it. In place of mimesis, Lyotardproposes "an aes-
thetic of shock, an anesth6tique," a writingthat resists forgettinginsofar as
it does not subordinate memory to the senses.
But also in opposition to this politics of forgetting, Lyotard then
crosses the Kantiansublime with the Freudianproblematicof memory to
produce a politics of anamnese, "whichdoes not forget that forgettingis not
an exhaustion of memory, but the immemorialalways 'present,'never here-
now, always torn to pieces in the time of conscience, chronic, between a
too early and a too late" (HJ, 41-42). A past that haunts the present sig-
nals an absence, an object of memory that affects us by its refusal to be
recalled (HJ, 27). And if the sublime does not present an image adequate
to an Idea of Reason, it "presents"by not representing. Such representing
is akin to the Freudian concept of Nachtraglichkeit(deferred action), an
aftering, a second blow or aftershock, that produces a before or firstshock.
As "deferred action" suggests, the representation is a (re)constitutionof
presence by deferral. In this process, the forgotten is always present as
the forgotten or the unrepresentable: not only the forgetting of the death
camps, but the forgetting of the Jews as "the people of the other" (HJ,
45). To emphasize this Otherness, Lyotardwrites "les juifs"to indicate he
is not referringto Jews as members of an organized religionor a political
movement (Zionism).
Representation is an active forgetting, but it cannot be avoided; it
is a preserving in/as repressing. In art after Auschwitz, "the sublime does
not express what is forgottenor repressed, but it says that it cannot say it"
(HJ, 81). It "attends (upon) the Forgottenso that it remains unforgettable"
(HJ, 128). Heidegger approaches this thought "ofthe Jews" in his reading
of H1olderlin as the poet of a "double lack and a double Not: the No-more
of the gods that have fled and the Not-yet of the god that is coming."31 The
withdrawalof the gods, however, is an anamnese that recalls the hidden in
Western thought, the Other as Being.
In presenting Jewish Law as a thought that attends to the Law, not
Being, Lyotardtransforms the Heideggerean problematic of withdrawal,
trace, and strife. The lack that constitutes Dasein is a lack that constitutes
the ethical, as contrasted with Heidegger's ontological description of con-
science as hearing the call "guilty."In tryingto destroy the Jews, Nazism
tried to destroy the witnesses to a lack constitutive of the spirit, the Law
that says, "Be just" (JG, 52-53). This Law is a debt that can never be dis-
charged; it is "the difference between good and evil" (JG, 135); whereas
guilt, grafted onto the concept of destiny, I would add, suggests that the
debt can be discharged in the explicithanding down of an inheritance.
Lacoue-Labarthe charges Lyotardwith remaining entrapped by a
mimetology: the concept of the sublime as inadequationis a direct appeal
to transcendence because this failureinvokes a displeasure/pleasure that
reveals to man his higher destination (LD, 165; LIM,283). The debate be-
tween Lacoue-Labartheand Lyotardturns upon the question of mimesis;
the formerfinds it far more determinativeof Western thought than the latter
will allow. Although both find in Auschwitz a break or disruptionin history,
Lyotardsees it as the end of speculative logic and the beautifuldeath (LD,
100-101). In invoking Hegel, Lyotardhere and in Heidegger et "les juifs"
locates in the horrorof Auschwitz the end of ontology, for ontology is no
longer possible withoutparticipatingin the silence that sought to forget "the
Jews." Their difference ultimatelylies in the question of Being and tempo-
rality,which is the question of the a priori. Lyotardargues that the call of
Being presupposes the idea of man, fromwhich flows Heidegger's concept
of temporalityas ek-stasis and the politics of the co-destining of a people
(LD, 116). In opposition to the Heideggerean community,Lyotardproposes
a sensus communis free from determinativeconcepts, but "appeal[ing]to
community carried out a priori and judged without a rule of direct pre-
sentation" (LD, 169). Lacoue-Labartheargues that Lyotard'snotion of the
sublime is overdeterminedby mimesis because he is too quick to pass be-
yond Heidegger; Lyotarddislocates Heideggerean epochal history with a
31. MartinHeidegger,"Hl1derlin and the Essence of Poetry,"trans.DavidScott, in Euro-
pean LiteraryTheoryand Practice:FromExistentialismto Structuralism, ed. VernonW.
Gras (New York:Dell, 1973), 40. Lyotarddoes not cite any specific passage but merely
refersto the motifof waiting(128).
generalized mimesis that "is precisely . .. what you [Lyotard]claim":"the

uncontrollableexchange of r6les and functions, the impossibilityof a fixed
and determined assignation" (LIM,276). It is what he calls elsewhere the
logic of paradox-in order to imitateor represent, "itis necessary not to be
anything by itself, have nothing of its own" (LIM,27). It is a "fundamental
typography"in place of fundamentalontology (Psyche, 624).
7
Lacoue-Labarthe and Lyotardshare a general tendency to regard
the question of Heidegger's politics as a question of representation and
temporality,the very question Heidegger addresses when he asks, what
is Being? His questioning of the ontological difference is as importantto
Lyotardas it is to Lacoue-Labarthe.For the latter,the ek-static character
of Dasein means that the subject accedes to itself only by means of an
identificationwith a past that is still to come. And whereas Heideggerean
equiprimordialitymaintainsthe opposition between fact and principleor ma-
terial and formaltranscendence, Lacoue-Labartheasserts the impossibility
of deciding the priority/proximity of Being to beings. The epochal history
of the sending of Being is disrupted by what Derridacalls d6sistance: "an
event, a law, a call, an other are already there, others are there-to whom
and before whom it is necessary to respond. If 'free' as it ought to be, the
response inaugurates nothing if it does not come after"(Psych6, 625). The
delay is "an other already there,"a desisting, renouncing,a withdrawing-
that is, simultaneously a stepping aside or stepping back and a waiting.
A delay or repression of the past governs Lyotard'scritique of Hei-
deggerean representation. The thematics of near and far are replaced by
a formal model of deferral inspired by Freud, and ontology is replaced by
the ethical. For Lyotard,"thethoughtof Heidegger remains enslaved to the
motifof the 'place' and of the 'beginning,'even afterthe turn"(HJ, 152). On-
tology ultimatelycloses off all questioning of Heidegger's silence because
it remains incapable of thinkingthe Other (HJ, 153).
Nevertheless, in his preference for regional discourses, ratherthan
a master language or "meta-narrative,"Lyotardparticipates with Lacoue-
Labartheand Derridain what might be called the postmodern discourse of
heterogeneity. But his projectdiffersfromdeconstructionin significantways
untraceable to his use of Kantand Wittgensteininstead of Hegel and Hei-
degger. Lyotard'sleaning toward a pragmatismdirectly reflects his belief
that Auschwitz signals a breakin historythat can very well be called the end
of philosophy. Derridais far less sanguine about what he calls the closure
of metaphysics: "We are still in metaphysics in the special sense that we
are in a determinate language. ... So when I referto the 'closure' (cl6ture)
of metaphysics, I insist that it is not a question of considering metaphysics
as a circle with a limitor simple boundary."32 Although Lyotard'spragma-
tism directs him to the judicatorypowers of discourse(s) withouta universal
principle,it also leads him to Jewish law as his model for a genre of ethics.
The Jew is the Other, according to Lyotard;Derridafinds heterogeneous
elements in Judaism and Christianitythat live on as a repressed subtext
in Western metaphysics (that is, in Greek thought), but is still less willing
to describe the oppositional relatedness of Heidegger to Judaism as abso-
lute: Otherness is situated neither inside nor outside metaphysics, but in
the fissure that characterizes Greek thought in its very beginnings.33
Finally, Derridadoes not characterize Auschwitz as an end, just as
he distinguishes the closure of metaphysics from an eschatological end
of onto-theology. When he speaks of the divisibilityof the limit-boundary,
however, he makes clear that we are not imprisoned in metaphysics. In
view of his setting aside the metaphors of the line and the circle to char-
acterize closure, we should not look to impose a spatial metaphor in their
place. The task of deconstruction is to discover "anothertopos of space
where our problematic rapportwith the boundaryof metaphysics can be
seen in a more radical light."34The notion of divisibilityentails a rethink-
ing of temporalityand questioning. In privilegingthe question, Heidegger
maintains beyond the Kehre the principleof an a priorithat unfolds in the
future. This "given"is why Derridacan say that the question in Heidegger
is always unthought. We might say the question has the form of a pre-
supposition withoutany content; it is what makes thinkingpossible. Derrida
writes: "Geist is perhaps the name that Heidegger gives, beyond any other
name, to this unquestioned possibility of the question" (DE, 26). Heideg-
ger's political error lies in his desire for a master name that would delimit
the site of transcendence, that would reinscribe Being withinthe finite as
Geist, spirit,flame.
We might say that the question of Derrida's relation to Heidegger
is the question of deconstruction and politics. De I'esprit:Heidegger et la
32. RichardKearney,"Deconstructionand the Other"(an interviewwith Jacques Der-

rida), in Dialogues with ContemporaryContinentalThinkers(Manchester:Manchester
UniversityPress, 1984), 111.
33. See Kearney,"Deconstruction and the Other,"117.
34. Kearney,"Deconstruction and the Other,"111-12.
question traces the appearance of Geist, geistig, Geistlichkeit,and Geistig-

keit in Heidegger's texts from 1927 to 1953. But Derrida'sreading of Hei-
degger is not merely a tracing of words, such as Geist or Geschlecht, in
order to determine how Heidegger's thought is contaminated by the meta-
physics he would avoid; it is an attempt to exhibit at once the necessity
of Heidegger's thought and how that same thought is tied to Nazism(s)-
Derridawill insist on this plurality.This passing through Heidegger's work
begins, not with the question of Being, but with the question that precedes
this originarygesture, the question of the question and all the threads (fils
conducteurs) bound in it-destiny and the beginning, die FrOhe, being
among the most prominent, but also the question of animals, the hand,
techne, destitution, and language. Finally,it is a question of the hermeneu-
tic circle-a question Derridaalways raises but rarelymentions.
Derrida asks why Heidegger avoids the word "spirit"in Being and
Time, only to write a hymn to it in 1933. He traces the "hidden teleol-
ogy or narrative order" in Heidegger's thought of epochality that leads
toward a notion of spirit between a Platonic-Christianconcept and an
onto-theological one (DE, 29). It will be a question of Geistlichkeit (a non-
Christianspirituality)as opposed to Geistigkeit (a spiritualityin an intellec-
tual sense) (DE, 51). In Being and Time, Heidegger takes as his point of
departure the power of questioning itself. The problemof Dasein's exem-
plarityis the uncertaintyof the pointof departurefor the question of Being.
This point is not univocal but equiprimordial,of multiplecharacteristics: "as
futural,[Dasein] is equiprimordiallyin the process of having-been" (BT,
H. 385). Dasein's exemplaritylies in the identicalstructureof the question
and temporality;both have the character of disclosing the past as some-
thing that lies ahead.
Derrida'sinverted title points to his preoccupationwith the question
of departure or the sending of the question. Spirit precedes the question
of-of Being, time, Heidegger's politics. Although Heidegger will say in
Being and Timethat "spirit"is a wordto be avoided, it is nothingother than
temporality,as his critiqueof Hegel's interpretationof time as Vorhandenes
makes clear: "'Spirit'does not first fall into time, but it exists as the pri-
mordialtemporalizing of temporality.Temporalitytemporalizes world-time,
withinthe horizon of which 'history'can 'appear' as historizingwithin-time.
'Spirit'does not fall into time; but factical existence 'falls' as falling from
primordial,authentic temporality"(BT, H. 436). Spirit, Derridacomments,
does not fall; it "is essentially temporalization"(DE, 51). The fall into inau-
thentic time is a fall into the Present. "The Present leaps away from its au-
thentic futureand fromits authentic havingbeen, so that it lets Dasein come
to its authentic existence only by takinga detourthroughthat Present" (BT,
H. 348). Derrida'sreading of the ecstatic characterof temporalitydiscloses
that the uncertaintyof the point of departure lies in spirit/time itself. Spirit
haunts Heidegger's text; as temporality,it makes questioning possible.
Heidegger's failure to ask "Whatis spirit?"does not just mean his
thought is haunted by metaphysics. When Heidegger no longer avoids the
word Geist, "spirititself,"Derridawrites, "willbe defined by this manifesta-
tion and by this force of the question" of how to avoid confirminga priori
the structureof the question that gives Dasein its privilegedcharacter (DE,
37). "Spirit"will be the signpost markingHeidegger's efforts to "breakthe
empty circle of reflection which menaces the question of Being" (DE, 70),
to free the question fromthe a priori,and to situate it in a more fundamental
primordialitythan the temporalizingof Dasein. When Heidegger drops the
quotation marks in the "RectorshipAddress,"the question manifests itself
as will: "Ifwe will the essence of science understood as the questioning,
unguarded holding of one's ground in the midst of the uncertainty of the
totality of what-is, this will to essence will create for our people its world,
a world of the innermost and most extreme danger, i.e., its trulyspiritual
[geistig] world. For ... spirit is primordiallyattuned, knowing resolute-
ness toward the essence of Being" (RA, 474). The "self-affirmation" of the
title will form the union between the people, the leader, the world, history,
the will, and "the existence of Dasein in the experience of the question"
(DE, 63). Self-affirmationis "of the order of spirit,the very order of spirit"
(DE, 55). Therefore, nothing precedes the question in its freedom, for in
the "essential opposition of leading and following,"the "FOhren[leading] is
already a questioning" (RA, 479; DE, 69).
Heidegger's hymn to spiritis governed by the motifs of leading and
following, before and after. It is, as Derrida describes it, a discourse of
"response and responsibility"(DE, 63). Derridafollows Heidegger's self-
defense, that he only wanted to save what was positive in the movement
and did not endorse nationalismor racism (see his Der Spiegel interview
and his 1945 reportto the Allies), but finds in this strategy the problem of
choosing between irreduciblechoices. "Because one cannot remove the
marks of biologism, naturalism,racism in its genetic form, one can con-
front it only in reinscribing[on ne peut s'y opposer qu'en r6inscrivant]the
spirit in an oppositional determination."But the discourses which today
oppose racism and totalitarianismthemselves act "in the name of spirit,

namely of libertyand spirit,in the name of an axiomatic-for example, that
of democracy and the 'rightsof man'-which, directlyor not, returnto this
metaphysics of subjectivity"(DE, 65). Derrida warns the reader against
thinking he is equating Nazism and democracy, but he is arguing that the
irreducibilityof their complicity in a discourse of spirit is a fact that de-
mands "responsibilitiesof 'thought'and of 'action'absolutely new [inedits]"
(DE, 66).
Derridacan hardlybe said to be straddlingthe fence, being no more
willing to exculpate Heidegger than to condemn him; he situates Heideg-
ger's politics in the most fundamentalaspect of his thought, the question,
and plots the trajectoryof his discourse withinthe European discourse of
humanism. Derrida's analysis of this "logic"aims at exhibiting the "terri-
fying mechanisms of this program, all the double constraints which they
structure,"but refrains from criticizingHeidegger's teleological humanism
because it is "the price to pay in the ethico-politicaldenunciation of biolo-
gism, racism, naturalism,etc." (DE, 87).
Derrida's analysis is neither Heideggerean nor anti-Heideggerean.
Although Heidegger is of undeniable importance to deconstruction, Der-
rida breaks with Heidegger's interpretationof metaphysics as the forgetting
of Being. And his translation of Being by text makes Heidegger's efforts
to leave behind the ontico-ontologicaldifference for the neutralityof Being
impossible. In his late works Heidegger sought to think Being apart from
beings, as the destining of Being, as an event withouta "why?"But as Der-
rida demonstrates in La carte postale, the thinkingof the destiny of Being
as epochality, a sending that holds itself back, still partakes of representa-
tional thinkingbecause the epochal transmutationsof Being are what allow
Being to show itself. Were Being to arrive, it would be the "worstof 'final
solutions,' " a final selection (Derridapuns on Triage, "selecting";trier, "to
sort";tuer, "to kill"[PC, 16]). Hence, Being, like postcards, can always not
arrive at its destination. Deferralis essential, or, to put it another way, dif-
ferance is older than Being; it is nothing itself, but it "rendersdeterminacy
both possible and necessary" (LI,149).
With such terms as differance, re-mark,and text, Derridasets out
what makes philosophical discourse possible and impossible. This is why
deconstruction is, as Derridasays, affirmative;it exhibitsthe ethico-political
in philosophical thought. And here is where he agrees with Heidegger; as
long as we are situated in a determinate language, we are in metaphysics.
The point is not to get out of metaphysics and even less to get in it the
rightway; we can only have recourse to an untranslatablepas, a step that

annuls and makes possible.35
Although Derrida's grammatology is decisively differentfrom Hei-
degger's fundamental ontology, he rhetoricallyasks: "But at the moment
where we explicate with Heidegger in a criticalor deconstructive fashion,
shouldn't we continue to recognize a certain necessity of his thought, its
character inaugural in so many respects and above all which remains to
come for us in its decoding?"36 If Heidegger's envoi of spirit is refused for
all the obvious reasons that De I'espritexplores, a possibilityremains that
it will not reach its destination.
I referto the "Envoi"of La carte postale and the determinationof the
sending of Being by the "postal principle."Heidegger's thought is haunted
by this possibility of not arriving,for spirit must leave itself in order to be
itself. The "figureof evil for Heidegger," Derridawrites, is "the certitude
of the cogito in the position of the subjectum and thus of the absence of
original questioning" (DE, 101). This absence means the spiritis reified as
subject, but the proximityof spirit to itself is not spatial but postal: "Man
having a privileged relation to being [I'6tant]as such, his opening to that
which is sent-dispensed, destined-him confers to him an essential Ge-
schichtlichkeit. This permits him to be and to have a history"(DE, 122).
Derridacharacterizes Heidegger's thoughton the envoi of spiritas a chias-
mus ratherthan a circle: "Itbelongs to the essence of spiritthat it may be
its own (eigentlich) only if it is close to itself" (DE, 127). But to be itself,
spirit must go outside itself to return,or else it is thought as being present-
at-hand. In 1953, Heidegger calls spirit"flame,"a gathering apartness.
Die Sprache im Gedicht, Eine Erorterungvon Georg TraklsGedicht
represents Heidegger's ultimateresponse to the question, "Whatis spirit?"
He seeks "to point out the properplace or site" of Trakl'spoetic statement,
which, he insists, is single or univocal. But as Derridaindicates, any such
univocalitymust issue fromflame, the self-dividinggathering;and gathered
in Heidegger's dialogue with the past are the paths of questioning that
find themselves intersecting where "a more originalthought of time opens
itself to a thought more appropriateto spirit"(DE, 144). This thought will
be of a singular Fruhe, an original earliness "before the first"(avant I'au-
35. For Derrida'sdiscussion of the pas, the step and the not or negative, see "Pas,"in
his Parages (Paris:Galilee,1986), 21-116. The pas is the doublemovementof an arrival
that does not arrivein MauriceBlanchot'sLe pas au-dela (see pp. 56-57).
36. Eribon,"Heidegger,"171.
paravant), that is, "a coming of the event, Ereignis or Geschehen, that is
necessary to think in order to approach the spiritual,of the Geistliche dis-
simulated under Christianor Platonic representation"(DE, 149-50). This
thought, more appropriateto spirit, is the promise because "man is man
only because he is granted the promise of language" (OWL,90).
Anteriorto all questions, anterioreven to the call of Being, the prom-
ise is "old enough to have never been present in an 'experience' or an
'act of language' " (DE, 147n). Ifwhat we speak is already ahead of us, as
Heidegger says, then questioning, the "pietyof thinking,"is listening:"ques-
tioning [Fragen] is not the proper gesture of thought but-the listening to
the Zusage (promise) of that which is to come in the question" (DE, 148n).
In "The Nature of Language,"Heidegger writes: "Everyquestion posed to
the matterof thinking,every inquiryfor its nature,is already borne up by the
grant of what is to come into question. Thereforethe properbearing of the
thinkingwhich is needed now is to listen to the grant, not to ask questions"
(OWL,75). The question is a listening to the promise that comes before,
but this before only arrives in the question.
Language must grant itself, for we must already be in language
in order to speak: "This promise sets nothing down, it does not promise
[pro-met], it does not put before, it speaks. This Sprache verspricht....
Language or speech [Ialangue ou la parole] promises, promises itself [se
promet] but also it disavows itself, it undoes itself or breaks down, it is
derailed [deraille] or raves [delire], deteriorates, corrupts everything im-
mediately and essentially [toutaussit6t et tout aussi essentiellement]" (DE,
145-46).37 What the promise promises is authentic temporality,a before
that grants to man a more originalquestioning more appropriateto spirit.
This will be, according to Heidegger, a "flamethat inflames, startles, hor-
rifies, and shatters us. . . . What flame is the ek-stasis which lightens and
calls forth radiance, but which may also go on consuming and reduce all to
white ashes" (OWL,179). Derridatraces a trajectoryin Heidegger's thought
from Being and Timeand the Schuldigsein that precedes moralconscience
to the spirit that is "both gentleness and destruction,"evil and pain, that
animates the soul (OWL,179-81).
Derrida'sengagement with Heidegger and the promise of spirit re-
37. Derridacites Paul de Man'sdiscussion of the promisein Rousseau, the discussion

where he introducesDie Sprache verspricht(sich). See Allegoriesof Reading: Figural
Language in Rilke,Proust,Nietzsche, and Rousseau (New Haven,Conn.:Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1979), 277. See also Derrida'sdiscussionof the promisein his Memoires:For
Paul de Man(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1986), 96-101.
veals that the promise promises what is alreadythere or was in place before
the Platonic-Christianbeginning; it is what Heidegger calls Geschehen.
The piety of questioning gives way to a listening that Derridacalls a "re-
sponsibility"or response to this primordialsending. "Thought,"he writes,
"is fidelity to this promise" (DE, 151). The word en-gage, which he em-
ploys throughout a lengthy note (DE, 147-54), is used in conjunction with
a call to militaryservice, thereby echoing Heidegger's exhortation to the
students in the "RectorshipAddress." The characterizationof thought as
listening and obeying is, consequently, more deeply rooted in Heidegger's
thought than any easy analogy between his terminologyand Nazi ideology
would indicate. Derrida'sdisturbingproposal concerning the "necessity" of
Heidegger's thought is that Nazism cannot be held at a distance; to think
otherwise "is in the best hypothesis a naivet6, in the worst, an obscuran-
tism and false politics."38His concern with Heidegger's elevation of spirit
rests, in part,upon its commonalitywiththe discourses of the spirit(political,
religious, humanist) opposed to Nazism. When Derridasays that "Nazism
could have developed itself only with the differentiatedbut decisive com-
plicityof other countries,"he is as much concerned with European thought
as he is with accommodation, collaboration,and avoidance. For in reading
Heidegger, he is proposing that Nazism was neither a historicalaberration
nor a perversion of a healthy tradition,but linkedto this traditionin a very
specific if highly mediated way. This linkdoes not justifyan easy move from
listening, to the promise of language, and to obedience to the Fuhrer,but
it suggests that Nazism belongs to Western thought as much as we may
wish to exclude it. Moreover,this charge of adherence is far from a simple
equation of Nazism with Western thought; it is a challenge to think and
not to fall back upon slogans, one of the most prominentbeing the call to
preserve humanism.39
The basic charge leveled against Derrida'sand Lacoue-Labarthe's
readings of Heidegger is that they attribute Heidegger's adherence to
Nazism to remnants of metaphysics and/or humanism in his thought, but
they do so only to argue that the late works on techne followingthe "Kehre"
are anti-Nazi. I hope that my account of their works indicates that this in-
terpretationis a distortion. Lacoue-Labarthe,for instance, insists that Hei-
degger's writings help us thinkthe truthof "nationalaestheticism," even if
39. The most vociferousdefenders of humanismare Luc Ferryand AlainRenaut.See
their Heidegger et les modernes for an attack on Heidegger,Derrida,and Lacoue-
Labarthe.
that truth would be unrecognizable to the Nazis (FP, 160), and that Hei-
degger "never renounced the possibilityof linkingthe possibilityof History
[I'historialit6]to the possibility of a people or the people" (FP, 168). Der-
rida's essay on Heidegger closes by examiningthe double road of Heideg-
ger's thought: one that leads to the spiritualityof the promise and the other
that is Other, an originalheterogeneity that makes the thought of the origin
possible (DE, 176-78). For Derrida,Heidegger's account of heterogeneity
as "contamination"of the essence opens questions that let us examine
Nazism and his response to it. In an interviewhe says: "Itry on the con-
traryto define deconstruction as a thoughtof affirmation.Because I believe
in the necessity of exhibiting, if possible withoutlimit,the profoundadher-
ence of the Heideggerean texts (writingsand acts) to the possibility and
the realityof all Nazisms."40
Just as Derridacritiques the notion of Nazism as monolithicideol-
ogy, he also argues that Heidegger's text is not homogeneous: it is "written
with two hands, at least" (Psyche, 447). And, we might add, it follows two
roads of thought, for the flame/promise/spiritthat Heidegger inscribes at
the origin is not singular but a Riss, a word signifyingthe "retraitby which
spirit relates to itself and divides itself in this kindof internaladversity that
gives place to evil in inscribingin it, as it were, flame"(DE, 171). Evilresides
in this primordialearliness, for it belongs with Geist to the metaphysics of
humanitas and animalitas (only man, Heidegger writes, can be evil) (DE,
169). And when Derrida looks at Heidegger's language of spirit, flame,
promise, arch6-originality,he finds analogies not only with Christianitybut
with Jewish messianism as well, although he does not reduce these echoes
to sameness.41 Therefore, if the path of Heidegger's thought of the "hetero-
41. Inthis context, Derridafootnotes FranzRosenzweig'sThe Starof Redemption(DE,
165), where we find underthe section heading "Bloodand Spirit":"Thereis only one
communityin whichsuch a linkedsequence of everlastinglifegoes fromgrandfatherto
grandson,only one which cannot utterthe 'we' of its unitywithouthearingdeep within
a voice that adds: 'are eternal.'Itmust be a blood-community, because only bloodgives
present warrant to the hope for a future"(1971; rpt.Notre Dame, Ind.:NotreDame Uni-
versityPress, 1985), 298-99. Derrida'sargumentthatsimilaritiesexist betweenwhatare
taken to be opposingdiscourses tends to obscurethe problemof the relationof philoso-
phy to politicalaction, but this should not lead us into thinkinghe is equating Nazism
withJudeo-Christianthought.KarlL6withfounda strongaffinitybetween Heideggerand
Rosenzweig. See "M.Heideggerand F. Rosenzweig:A Postscripton Being and Time,"
in Nature,History,and Existentialism. And OtherEssays in the Philosophyof History,ed.
ArnoldLevison(Evanston,Ill.:NorthwesternUniversityPress, 1966).
geneity at the origin"is the Otherof Christianity,it also intersects Christian

thought (DE, 176-82). Heidegger's two roads of thought trace a circle and
a cross, a circularpath to the spiritualityof a promise foreign to Christianity
and a crossing that grants "access to thought, thinkingaccess to the pos-
sibility of metaphysics or of pneumato-spiritualistreligions"(DE, 183). But
Heidegger's repetition is hardly simple; if the path to another site, a site
that is other than the Platonic-Christianone, gives access to spiritin all its
modes, both Christianand non-Christian,then this path is always double,
both same and Other, a vertiginoussite shared uneasily by Heidegger and
others.
Derridafinds nothingfortuitousin Heidegger's exchange with Chris-
tianity:"Nazism was not born in the desert [Le nazisme n'est pas ne dans
le desert]. ... And even if, far fromany desert, it had sprouted like a mush-
room in the silence of a European forest, it had done so in the shadow of
great trees, by the tree of their silence or of their indifference but in the
same soil. Of these trees which plant in Europe an immense black forest I
will not make a list; I will not count the species" (DE, 179).
8
What was the upshot of Heidegger's "experiment"?The question of
Heidegger's politics is the question of where do we stand when we think?
This is a question of temporalityand of reading ratherthan of history be-
cause withoutthe thinkingthat situates us in time, there can be no history.
When Hegel, in response to the remarkthat his theory didn'tfit the facts,
replied, "So much the worse for the facts," he was not suggesting that truth
does not matter. His remarkcan stand as philosophy, but not as political
thought, as long as we do not mistake facts, which are "always related to
other people," for truth,which "is foreignto the realmof human affairs."As
Arendt argues, facts, unlike truth,can be distorted by lies, but truthexists
in relation to error,not lies.42Politics and philosophy conflict because the
former is a matterof representation,the latterof truth.Hegel knew this dis-
tinction in writing"Theowl of Minervaspreads its wings only withthe falling
of the dusk." Philosophy comes on the scene too late to give instruction.
And Marx responded: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world
42. HannahArendt,Between Past and Future:EightExercisesin PoliticalThought,rev.

ed. (New York:PenguinBooks, 1968),238, 249; hereaftercited in mytext as BPF. Arendt
is followingHeidegger'stranslationof truthas aletheia,"unconcealment."
in various ways; the point is to change it."Marx,as Arendt points out, left
philosophy for politics, but carriedtheory intothe realmof action (BPF, 21).
For Heidegger, theory and action are united in thinking:"Thinking
does not become action only because some effect issues fromitor because
it is applied. Thinkingacts insofar as it thinks"(BW, 193). The critique of
Lacoue-Labarthe and Derridais that Heidegger's thinkingwas of a nature
that could not overcome the traditionalconflictbetween politicsand philoso-
phy. In other words, Heidegger's thought is still bound by representation-
in all its ramifications;and insofar as truth is linked to representation, his
thought allows for his adherence to Nazism. In Arendt'sterms, Heidegger
succumbed "tothe temptationto use his truthas a standardto be imposed
upon human affairs."When philosophical truth enters the political realm,
coercion replaces freedom: no one is free to reject the transcendent truth
of philosophers (BPF, 237, 239).
And yet Heidegger, inasmuch as he remains a thinker,helps us see
this. Arendt argues that the thinkerstands in non-time, the gap between
past and future, where time no longer conforms to the Roman concept of
traditionas linearitybut is broken. This gap, Arendtwrites, is "not even a
historicaldatum"but is "the path paved by thinking"(BPF, 13). This "think-
ing removes what is close by, withdrawingfrom the near and drawing the
distant into nearness-[it] is decisive if we wish to find an answer to the
question of where we are when we think."43It is this step back of thinking
that allows what is near to distance itself and allows the epochal principles,
which govern thinkingand acting, to show themselves.44
But insofaras Heidegger could maintainthat "questioningis the piety
of thought" (QCT, 35), then his thought belongs to the epochal principle
that Derrida calls the "metaphysics of humanitas."To find a way in which
43. HannahArendt,"Heideggerat Eighty,"in Heidegger and ModernPhilosophy,ed.

MichaelMurray(New Haven,Conn.:Yale UniversityPress, 1978),300. This essay origi-
nally appeared in New YorkReview of Books, Oct. 1971. Also see her discussion of
Heideggerin TheLifeof the Mind(NewYork:HarcourtBrace, 1978).
44. Epochs are revealed in the crises or reversalswhichseparate one epoch froman-
other. Arendt,as we have seen, calls these reversalsthe between or the gap where
thinkingtakes place, and the concept is not withoutaffinitiesto Derrida'sretrait.I am in-
debted to ReinerSchirmann'sanalysisof epochalprinciplesin Heideggeron Being and
Acting:FromPrinciplesto Anarchy,trans.Christine-Marie Grosand ReinerSchormann
(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1987),25-32. Althoughhe onlydeals brieflywith
the polemicalaspects of the debate, Schirmann'sbook is an invaluablecontributionto
the understandingof Heideggerand politics.It is not only a superbworkof Heidegger
scholarshipbutis also a powerfulworkon politicalphilosophyin its own right.
thinking participates in the realm of political action, we must "inventthe

other,"to use Derrida'sphrase, recognizing that inventiondoes not occur
without an inaugural act and, at the same time, must "be able to be re-
peated, exploited, reinscribed"(Psyche, 16). This "originary"repetition is
the invention of "the impossible,"that is, the inventionof what cannot be
invented but only comes in not coming, as Other: "Because the other is
always an other origin of the world and we are to be invented. And the
Being of the we, and Being itself. Beyond being" (Psych6, 60). Heidegger
tried to think the event of Being, an event, to put it crudely, that could not
thinkthe Other. His we was inherited,not invented;it was Greco-Germanic.
And at least for a moment, he felt the gap close and anticipated the dawn
of a beginning that, inauguratedby the Greeks, stood before the German
people. Unlike Heidegger, Derridaremains in the gap, in a writingopen to
the Other, where thinking,what he prefers to call "writing,"is of political
relevance precisely because it is bound to others: "Thiswritingis liable to
[passible de] the other, open to the other, and by it . . . like the future,
because it is the only care that it bears: to let come the adventure of the
event of the completely other. Of a completely other which can no longer
confuse itself with the God or Man of onto-theology nor with any of the
figures of this configuration"(Psyche, 61). The non-humanist thinking in-
augurated by writingis responsibilityto the Other. Thinkingis no longer a
matterfor the individualin the privatesphere but occurs with others; it has,
in other words, become a concern for us all since, as Arendt puts it, the
breaking of tradition,what we may call the linear or genealogical concept
of time, "became a tangible realityand perplexityfor all" (BPF, 14). This
critiqueis something more than debating the relevance of Heidegger's poli-
tics to his philosophy.When anecdotes and analogy are used to settle this
question, then philosophy is metamorphosed into opinion; and when this
metamorphosis occurs, we abandon readingand are left withthe nonsense
of "/'affaireHeidegger."

DR Heidegger Experiment - Kronick

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

DR Heidegger Experiment - Kronick

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Review: Review Essay. Dr.

... and is this the upshot of your experiment?

It is strange that Heidegger's name should arrivein America by way

Books Reviewed:Jacques Derrida,De I'esprit.Heidegger et la question (Paris:Gali-

his "experiment" remainsunclear,one thingis certain:his commitmentto

deconstruction.In his preface to Heidegger et /e nazisme, ChristianJambertsays that

Fedier, student of Jean Beaufret (the addressee of the "Letteron Human-

ArnoldI. Davidson,who focuses primarily on the "RectorshipAddress"and otherpolitical

article. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe'sLa fiction du politique: Heidegger, I'art

6. Worksby PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe willbe cited in the text as follows:FP = La fic-

ever mentioned but certainly an influence on these issues is the ongoing

"man himself, like literature,can be defined as an entity capable of putting

9. The firstphrase in quotationmarkscomes fromJurgenHabermas'sintroduction to the

critiqueof reason, erroneouslyassumed to make his philosophyone of

the title"Heidegger'sLetterto the Boss' Daughter"[sic].

Thedangerof the anecdotealso lies inits persuasiveness,foritem-

11. L6with'saccount of his meetingwithHeideggerin Rome in April1936 can be found

Heidegger?Andwas his turnfromfundamental ontologya turnfromNazi

not proposingthatthe meaningof existenceis foundthroughthe immedi-

sity Freiburg"(hereaftercited in my text as RA) and "The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts

to us as the future,as a repetition,as having-been(BT,H. 385). Farias

18. GuidoSchneeberger,Nachlese zu Heidegger (Bern:Suhr,1962), is to be used with

untilthe publicationof Heidegger et le nazisme, Heidegger's own account

people. Anti-Semitismexplains the choice of the victims, she argues, but

19. HannahArendt,Eichmannin Jerusalem:A Reporton the Banalityof Evil,rev. ed.

22. Heideggeris quotingfromNietzsche'sTheWillto Power,section 12.

(Bestand), a resource to be ordered by mankind(NIV,242). Values, ac-

23. See GregoryS. Jay's fine essay, "Valuesand Deconstructions:Derrida,Saussure,

ence, and dualism. Itwould-and here it can be seen to do what Heidegger

26. Paulde Man,"HeideggerReconsidered,"in CriticalWritings,1953-1978, ed. Lindsay

Lacoue-Labarthe'streatmentof Heidegger is more explicitlypolitical

of Dasein" (BT, H. 250), which is to say, Dasein is ontologically-existentially

inherited (see BT, H. 384-85). FollowingDerrida,we can say that Dasein

28. For a discussion of Derrida'scritiqueof eigentlichand Ereignisin Heidegger,see

subject priorto the mimetic process, except to render it impossible." The

powerful instrumentof identification;it alone permits "a people to accede

30. See also note 6 on Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy,"Lemythenazi":"Mythis a fiction

generalized mimesis that "is precisely . .. what you [Lyotard]claim":"the

32. RichardKearney,"Deconstructionand the Other"(an interviewwith Jacques Der-

question traces the appearance of Geist, geistig, Geistlichkeit,and Geistig-

oppose racism and totalitarianismthemselves act "in the name of spirit,

rightway; we can only have recourse to an untranslatablepas, a step that

37. Derridacites Paul de Man'sdiscussion of the promisein Rousseau, the discussion

geneity at the origin"is the Otherof Christianity,it also intersects Christian

42. HannahArendt,Between Past and Future:EightExercisesin PoliticalThought,rev.

43. HannahArendt,"Heideggerat Eighty,"in Heidegger and ModernPhilosophy,ed.

thinking participates in the realm of political action, we must "inventthe

You might also like