Heidegger and Nazism

The adhesion of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger with the Nazi party in 1933 is the object of passionate debates. This article proposes a talk of the facts and interpretations on these questions.

Facts and questions

Heidegger is regarded as having belonged to the mobility of the “preserving revolution” anti-liberal near to the Nazism.
Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party.
the writings of Heidegger have a radicality which seems to prohibit any direct political commitment. This same radicality generated at its listeners and readers of multiple innovative thoughts distant from any ideology Nazi.
However, certain results of its thought however authorized it to be registered with the Nazi party. It is important to know which.
Appointed vice-chancellor in 1933, Heidegger mistook on its capacity to inflect the Nazism and was withdrawn at the end of a few months of any political action.
the Nazi party did not regard Heidegger as a reliable militant, it suspectait its work and its courses which it did not include/understand.
Heidegger testified forever to anti-semitism in its writings and its action. Hannah Arendt, philosophical American to origin Jewish, with which it had a connection whereas it was its coed, always testified its admiration and its affection for him.
Heidegger affirmed that the Nazism was " a principle barbare" , that it had made the heaviest error of its life while being registered with the Nazi party, while calling in question the idea that the democracy was " the best system politique". Which direction to find with its course?

Position and Engagement Nazis

In 1933 Heidegger rejoins the Nazi party (NSDAP) for which it votes as of 1932. Not to lose sight of the fact the climate of this period in Germany, which saw the Nazis carried to the capacity, and to inform of the philosophical and political path of Heidegger during this turbid time of the beginnings, followed catastrophe, unimaginable and inanticipable in 1933, one will refer to the remarkable intellectual biography of the philosopher by Rüdiger Safranski. The biography of reference, which makes authority since its publication in 1994 in Germany. Best documented, and rich person of a restitution of the thought heideggerienne, such as it was woven with the wire of the history.

Safranski is based on work of investigation achieved to write the intellectual biography of Heidegger, including/understanding his report/ratio with the Nazism, and which precedes its work. Mainly those of Guido Schneeberger, 1962, max Müller, 1988, Hugo Ott, 1988 and 1998, Victor Farias, 1987, and Elisabeth Ettinger who wrote the cross history of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, 1994, as well as the autobiography of Karl Jaspers, more other work still such as " Heidegger und das "Dritte Reich" by B. Martin, 1989… What indicates that the work of investigation is, in Germany, largely advanced and goes back to a certain time, the biography of Schneeberger, for example, being recognized like completely lighting. All that which made say to Peter Sloterdijk in the recent international symposium on Heidegger in Strasbourg (December 2004) that whatever the new documents who can be exhumed concerning the report/ratio of Heidegger to the Nazism " The historians finished some today with the case Heidegger" with the direction where " today 70 years after the facts one cannot expect any more to see emerging from the unknown witnesses who would suggest reinterpretations as for the implication of Heidegger in the N.S. with the Vice-chancellorship, as well for the indicters as the défenseurs". And, at all events " The files will not reveal interpretation to give this engagement".

The preserving Revolution

In 1933, Heidegger will take the load of Vice-chancellor of the University of Freiburg, to which one calls it. The first thing to be made is of reading the texts of before 1933 to try to locate it politically.

It appears whereas its vocabulary and several topics which are there, in particular that of the ground, the rooting in the native ground, the national, as well as a certain poetry of the soil, making farming community and of the peasant a model, doubled of a pessimistic speech which is easily let include/understand in terms of decline of civilization and decline of the Occident, attach it to the most preserving thought and the movement of the “preserving Révolution” which will contribute to prepare the place with the Nazism (this one national, socialist - to hear populist - and racist, to give the principal features of them) without him to be assimilable however, in particular for dimension racist and the desire of elimination real, physical, of the Jews, which in is perfectly absent.

During the winter 1932-1933, Heidegger is on leave of teaching, withdrawn in the countryside where he studies the Présocratiques when he is called upon him, because the conflicts make rage with the University between the old ones and the new ones which want to seize the power, the Nazis. The Vice-chancellor, a social democrat, is obliged to resign. Heidegger replaces it, at the moment, in short, where it will believe in the future of this movement

The period of the Vice-chancellorship

The assumption of responsibility of its functions is explained by the heideggerien project to renovate the German Université , supposed to be the lever of the restoration of the country and across the Civilization declining Européenne, in reorganizing the field of the To know and the Science.

It is called by the former vice-chancellor Social-démocrate Möllendorf. Heidegger works with the broadest possible introduction of Führerprinzip into the German university (what the telegram attests that it sends to Hitler on May 20th, 1933: " I respectfully request the adjournment of the reception envisaged of the office of the Association of the German universities, until the moment when the direction of the Association of the universities will be assumed in the spirit of the setting to the step particularly necessary in its sein"). It forms, with others, like Bäumler or Krieck, the avant-garde of this reform. Heidegger works for example, with Krieck, with the reform of the statutes of the university in the Land of Bade, which makes university of Freiburg the most advanced stage, in all Germany, of this setting to the step (Hugo Ott, COp cit., p. 204-205).

Heidegger believes that a radical defense of the Science, such as it hears it and redefines it, like opening on the being and not in catch on being, is likely to be the spearhead of this effort to save the Germany. It represents the University and the circle of the knowledge, like the avant-garde of the Révolution, carrying a rectification of the Civilization, thanks to a right comprehension of science. The Greek conceived and showed that the Théorie is the highest realization of the authentic Pratique. the size of this Greek beginning is to be found, by rebuilding a spiritual world for each people .

Heidegger imagines to be able to spiritualize movement Nazi which starts - to insufflate the spirit to him which it misses - and to reorientate it, to make a work of the spirit of it: what is read in the Discours of the Vice-chancellorship - also on this subject to see the study of Jacques Derrida " Spirit. Heidegger and the question" . The construction of a new intellectual order was, according to him, the mission of the German University. In the " Speech of the Vice-chancellorship " he proclaims that " the gasoline of the University is the science". It is not a question for the University to provide a professional training, but to record the level of spirituality of Germany. This gasoline of science appeared among Greeks and was lost sight of the fact under the effect of obscuration to be it by the reign being to it . His/her friend Karl Jaspers, whom one cannot suspect of having been Nazi, approves this Speech and agrees with Heidegger on the presumedly positive character of the reform National-Socialist of the University at that time.

What is read in its Discours of the Vice-chancellorship pronounced into 1933 which doubles of a “call to the students” whom them enjoint with the mobilization while taking part in the service of work and the service of the knowledge, combined with the military service; that is to say a mobilization with the service of the nation which will be work of the spirit, of its intellectual avant-garde. For Heidegger, the University must give the guiding line of this spiritual rebirth. It thus gives its guarantee to the mode hitlérien.

He in addition speaks about

“to exploit thoroughly the fundamental possibilities of the gasoline of the originally Germanic stock and to lead them until the domination”.

Karl Löwith reports that Heidegger did not make mystery of its faith in Hitler.

In 1946 Jaspers takes again its theses on the reform of the University to cure the evil previously diagnosed: parcelling out in specialized disciplines, the secondary education and the requirement of professionalism, the development of the administrative bureaucracy and the fall of the level of the lesson, it on what it agrees with Heidegger. Jaspers by doing this, wants to defend the aristocracy of the spirit, while Heidegger would like to eliminate it, because, on a revolutionary position, this last combat the Idéalisme middle-class and the Positivisme Scientiste. Jaspers wants to also preserve the philosophy of the intrusions of the Politique which carry to him reached and thus it is in complete dissension with Heidegger on this point of engagement - in the movement Nazi.

R. Safranski compares this revolutionary combat via the University with the movement of 67-68. A kind of " revolution culturelle" all in all.

For Heidegger, the University must give the guiding line of this spiritual rebirth. And the revolutionary ideal is the going beyond of the division between manual work and the professional work (objective revolutionist which that of is not exactly supposed the Révolution national-Socialist, as one knows). Heidegger never leaves the philosophical plan, whatever its engagement and whatever its illusions. He wants to make occur a revolution which is the fact of the spirit, against the current Idéologie S Politique S, established under the effect of the world influence of logic Technique. A revolution which is that of science, within the meaning of an authentic report/ratio with knowledge and the truth: open revealing leaving the field of the possible registered voters in the being, and being opposed to the domination of a design positivist of the science, accompanied by the boarding by the technique. Heidegger sees with national-socialisme, at the beginning, the occasion to escape a logic historiale: that of the nihilism carried by the planetary technique, effect of metaphysics. in the sense that it is necessary to include/understand its criticism of metaphysics. It will very quickly be disappointed in its waiting and its attempt to be active in policy.

It shares thus certain aspects of the ideology Nazi, but not the anti-semitism, neither the racial aspect, neither its biologism, neither its scientistic mystic, neither his simplistic ideology and technicist, whom it considers coarse, and whom it precisely imagines for that, capacity to transform philosophically, nor its conquering warmongering that it sees, whereas everyone is with the current. It looks at elsewhere, towards the old Greece, to make reappear another idea of science and the truth. Heidegger would have thus been mistaken by pride, over-estimating to the caricature the interest of the Philosophie (of its philosophy) for the movement Politique which seizes the Germany and which does not have anything philosophical nor nothing which allows a rebirth of the life of the Esprit and Civilization. He does not see the danger that others already denounced, but once again, the Communistes (and Sociaux-démocrates) and the Juifs only, enemy, are persecuted. Rüdiger Safranski. Heidegger and its time, chapters 13,14 and 15

At the time of its catch of responsibility, Heidegger pronounces a " call to the students allemands" who is completed " thus; Only the Führer itself is the reality and the law of the Germany of today and demain". He will explain then in a letter with Hans-Peter Hempel who questioned it on this fateful sentence " that at the origin and in all times, Führer themselves are directed - directed by the destiny and the law of the histoire". Whereas this idea of Hitler which incarnates is worth a destiny? It is what Hitler thought itself. Heidegger too. Heidegger discovered in the Révolution national-Socialist an event fundamental Métaphysique, a " inversion of our Dasein allemand" he in a speech says (speech of Tübingen, Nov. 30, 1933 (cf R. Safranski, p 332-333). However on the whole its political enthusiasm of a time further did not carry it that the organization from a " camp of the science" with students and professors taken along in excursion in the mountain in a kind of camp scout supposed to invent a new spiritual community, company considered to be more romantic - and ridiculous that dangereous because of the observers.

In addition, it should be noted that Ernst Krieck, founder and leader of the official organization (Nazi) of the German professors, which claimed to become the philosophical leader of the movement Nazi and to supplant Rosengerg and Baümler, the large ideologists philosophical poor Nazis for the blow preached a recourse to the values Blut und Boden, that is to say a metaphysics of the ground and blood to replace the metaphysics of the spirit, intelligence, by the values of the race: program of cultural policy that krieck wanted to impose and to what Heidegger was opposed. Heidegger did not share the ideology of the ground and blood. The portrait that Heidegger traces of Krieck, (a man of convictions subordinates) mark its distance with this last. Heidegger is in search of a new ground (philosophical) which is not that of blood and the race as at Krieck. On the other hand, it shares with Baümler a thought of the pure decision. (R. Safranski chap. 13)

Krieck for its part qualifies the thought of Heidegger like a " nihilism métaphysique". He writes to denounce it, at the same time showing the Jewish writers, animated of this same metaphysical nihilism, says he. Serious charge since meaning that it " contain a leaven of decomposition and dissolution of the peuple". the princeps topic of the anti-semitism Nazi recognizes there, that is to say the Jew introduced like danger of dissolution of the national unit On its Krieck impetus reproaches moreover Heidegger never for having had recourse to the words of people and race in To be and Time . (R. Safranski chap. 15).

The Nazis reports/ratios on Heidegger

Indeed, on the one hand, it defended and helped its own Jewish students (see testimonys of Jaspers, as mentioned below) who asked him of the assistance to leave Germany, as well as Jewish colleagues, of which it took defense when they were threatened with redundancy. We have on these points testimonys of Jaspers. In addition, it prohibits to the students Nazis to affix on the walls of the university the poster anti-semite " Against the antiallemand" spirit; Safranski chap 14 It tries despite everything, to organize its spiritual revolution. Still should it be specified to raise recent calumnies, that this spiritual universe that Heidegger wants to build does not exclude anybody and certainly not the Jews. One finds at his place no trace of anti-semitism, neither racial, nor spiritual, contrary to Krieck and Baümler precisely. Jaspers will attest, in his ratio of 1945, this absence of anti-semitism at Heidegger in the years of before 33.

It does not prohibit the auto-da-fe of the Jewish and Marxist books out the walls of its University, by not having the capacity (as the account of Ernesto Grassi in " attests it; Macht of Bildes: Ohnmacht DER rationalen Sprache" , " Fire crépitait in front of the library universitaire" , as well as the direct testimonys collected by Hugo Ott in " Martin Heidegger. Elements for a biographie" , p. 195), he will recall to have prohibited posting against the Jews, claimed by the authorities in his ratio of 1945 (see the biography of Rüdiger Safranski chap 14). Whereas the senior of the Faculty of Law named by Heidegger, Erik Wolf, is put in difficulty by the ministry, Heidegger resigns. It is only the result of what it names " itself; the failure of the rectorat". He does not write any more. He devotes himself from now on to teaching. Its courses are supervised, its withdrawn works of the trade. Only " To be and temps" is reprinted, without the dedication of first page to its Husserl Master, suspended university since April 6th, 1933 (before Heidegger did not take its functions with the Vice-chancellorship, it is one of the reasons for which its predecessor had resigned). And if it undergoes the attack of the persons in charge Nazis having charges the monitoring with it with philosophy, it will see one of its texts published via the agreement given by Mussolini, convinced by the philosopher Ernesto Grassi to let publish its conference on Plato ( " Doctrines of the truth at Platon" ) in a collective work directed by Grassi itself (in 1942), while at the same time Rosenberg is opposed to it. It is Goebbels which finds a position median: the conference appears but must be mentioned in no report. It is prevented from going abroad for conferences and in particular to Paris for the tercentenary one of Descartes. It does not have however a problem to travel to Zurich in 1935, then in Rome 1936 when it meets Löwith with which it repeats its faith in Hitler (cf " My life in Germany before and after 1933").

Some want to see in the Nazis reports/ratios in the files of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs a point of view favorable to Heidegger. Because Heidegger, not giving any sign of open political resistance, is not considered to be dangerous.

However of many Nazis reports/ratios on Heidegger show the distrust towards him on behalf of the authorities Nazis and the little of regard from which it profited in these circles. Hardly a few months after having taken its functions of Vice-chancellor, he discovers the contempt in which the Nazis held who ridiculed it at meetings that he had organized according to his design of the restoration of the professional work. The professors of Freiburg held it for one illuminated (biography of Rüdiger Safranski p. 380) Cependant it does not resign at once, believing still a little in the utility of its mission.

It quickly acquired an bad image near the Nazis, who did not include/understand his philosophy with which they did not see any utility practices (see report/ratio of Walter Gross quoted by Rüdiger Safranski p. 382-383) and who appeared to them, moreover, marked by the Judaism - to see the report/ratio of Krieck in 1934 showing Heidegger of nihilism: " The direction of this philosophy is declared atheism and the metaphysical nihilism generally repésenté on our premises by the Jewish writers, and thus a leaven of decomposition and dissolution for the people allemand" ref.: to see the philosophical biography of reference of Rüdiger Safranski, p. 428 also. The Nazis saw in Heidegger, a heir to the Judaism, because his thought escaped to them, as in talmudic readings thus announcing Heidegger as a reader of Talmud, irony of the history (see the report/ratio of Jaensch, quoted in the biography of Rüdiger Safranski, p. 381). In policy its idealism prevented it from being taken with the serious one; to see the report/ratio of Large Walter previously quoted.

The reports/ratios of the Nazis who overpower it are to measure there the shift. In addition to the attacks of Krieck, a report/ratio of Jaensch, a psychologist Nazi and former colleague qualify it the insane one and at the same time shows it all to attract the Jewish students because of the character talmudic of its thought, when another report/ratio shows it not to be not reliable and to be likely of " to turn over its veste". Stations are proposed in Heidegger, because of its international repute. Other negative reports/ratios still are produced. Large Walter, chief of the Office of racial policy of the NSDAP, includes Heidegger in these professors with the " efforts pitoyables" for " to play the nationals-socialistes". Large insisted even at Rosenberg to underline the danger which Heidegger represented, referring to other internal reports submitted by the Nazis.

Also the report/ratio of Doctor Erich Jaensch, psychologist national-Socialist, in connection with Heidegger for submission to the office Rosenberg (February 16th, 1934): “Its manner of thinking (…) is exactly the same one as that of the talmudic quibbling, of disaster reputation, which was always felt by the German spirit (…) like being particularly foreign to him. (…) The philosophy of Heidegger even goes still much further in the direction of vacuity, confusion, the talmudic darkness, than the productions of the same kind of origin authentically Jewish. (…) This mode to think talmudic, clean with the Jewish spirit, is also the reason for which Heidegger always exerted and continuous to exert the greatest attraction force on the Jews and the half-Jews. (…) It always had upon the departure on its side the propaganda which made him the Jewish groups, because it was perceived as of the beginning, inside the “phenomenologic school “- which was rested by a Jew (E. Husserl) and counts a very great number of Jews and half-Jews among his members -, like the future chief of this school, and greeted like the heir apparent to Husserl. ” translation of Gerard Guest quoted in the work of Marcel Conche, " Heidegger by large temps" , 2004.

It thus will resign less than one year after having taken its functions, incompetent into practice to put his ideas (see the biography of Rüdiger Safranski chap 14). He lives then in a quasi-reclusion, he does not write more, he devotes himself from now on to teaching, and its courses are supervised, its withdrawn works of the trade. It is, in fact, interdict of publication.

From 1934, the hostility of the Nazi S in his connection is established. biography of Rüdiger Safranski chap 14En testify, among other traces, the reports/ratios which on him the civils servant Nazis charged submitted to inform the authorities - which were aware of its importance as philosopher but wondered whether it were to be prohibited of teaching, if it would be likely to inspire an opposition while holding in his courses of the subversive speeches. The reports/ratios in question establish in their account-returned that Heidegger must be regarded as inoffensive finally, and left with his teaching considering the character esoteric, smoky and almost incomprehensible of known as teaching. The rapporteurs Nazis allotted this fact to the definitely visible talmudic influences on its thought.

What professed Heidegger did not correspond to the ideology Nazi and was not of any utility (report/ratio of Walter Gross previously quoted): it had been mistaken while believing in the revolution (the topic of the revolution, as it is known, disappears rather quickly from the speech Nazi, precisely after the elimination of SA.). As from the moment when Heidegger did not spread subversion openly, as they were extremely made check it, it could be left with its teaching esoteric.

As for the resignation of the post of Vice-chancellor, it exlic initially by the little of echo met in the professors, by his idea of spiritual revolution. Heidegger resigned because of the conservatism of the teaching staff, which did not want to follow it in the revolution of the work and the formation of the thought, that it wanted to organize, and also, because of the disavowal of the Ministry, which did not intend to achieve a revolution having for avant-garde the University.

What he thinks of the Nazism since 1934, is under its feather: “National-socialisme is a barbarian principle”.

In 1944, the doctor Eugen Fischer, promoter of racial hygiene, written in connection with Heidegger with the Gauleiter of Salzburg that it is a “exceptional and irreplaceable thinker for the party”, adding: “We do not have so much large philosophers national-Socialists.” .

Which are the policy issues of its philosophy?

The often obscure or perhaps allusive style of its courses during the period Nazi holds, partly, so that those were supervised. It was located in the heights of the thought from which it never went down - what was precisely reproached to him. Heidegger always employed indirect means to work with an analysis of the Nazism. It produced a political analysis by no means, but thought as a philosopher, through the study of other philosophical texts, Nietzsche in particular, without never indicating a party, nor a situation policies. Its method consists in going to seek in the history of Western metaphysics, which made pack the reason carrying in it a blind will for power, to come to this present. To some extent, of what consists the deviation and the acceleration of the movement compared to the Greek beginning. Its study is that of the one period history of the Modern times, as Nietzsche did it before him. It is not question of call to disobedience to a capacity. Heidegger starts, hardly after the failure of the Vice-chancellorship, the meditation of this failure, by diagnosing the features of a movement historial, the nihilism, starting from the turning taken by science in its will of influence on nature. Study which will lead to the later texts concerning the technique.

The difficult style that its Courses cover at that time would be appropriate for the clandestine character of the critic of the Nazism which he undertakes. It will continue however, cultivating its obscure and indecipherable style by the uninitiated persons, after the war, in “fine fox” (the term of “fox” is H. Arendt), knowing to dissimulate its political options behind its incursions erudite into the history of metaphysics. Because, after its resignation of the Vice-chancellorship, Heidegger launches out at once in its Seminars on Nietzsche and Hölderlin, in a critical study of the time which produced the Nazisme through the study of the nihilism that it works out. What it called then its “explanation with the Nazism”, in so far as this one has its " truth intern" , like he writes it in his course of the six-month period of summer 1935, namely the revealing of the gasoline of Modern time like the nihilism with his roof of the planetary technique. In fact there the Seminars bring the analyzes and concepts likely to advance in the comprehension of the Nazism. What confirms, among many other readers of Heidegger, the philosopher materialist and specialist in Epicure, Marcel Conche. Resisting, contemporary of the Nazism and also clearly anti-nazi at the time it is today, known to be a grateful reader with Heidegger for his contribution, Conche recognizes his debt with regard to Heidegger, without anything to be unaware of, neither of the year of Vice-chancellorship, nor of the critic of the contemporary nihilism which is addressed to the Nazism.

Its style, obscure and more and more sophisticated, also enables him not to be let locate easily, neither politically, nor philosophically, and thus to play about it not without skill until being imperceptible, insituable.

The engagement of 1933 remains a spot compromising in the life of this thinker.

However its work, after the resignation of the post of vice-chancellor, initially consists in trying to elucidate the phenomenon historial which brought the Nazism, itself additional degree of the nihilism. Heidegger tries, after the failure of the vice-chancellorship, to contemplate the gasoline of the European nihilism, first of all in its courses, starting from an interpretation of Nietzsche (" the desert croît") and of Hölderlin (the " time of detresse"), that it tears off with their appropriation by the Nazis, and then in its treaties not-published to which belonged Die Geschichte of Seyns (written during the péridoe 1938-1940) ( Ga 69).

See precisely paragraph 61 (pp. 77-78), entitled " Macht und Verbrechen " (Power and crime), which denounces openly the planetarischen Hauptverbrecher : " The planetary criminals as a chief, for what is the aître ( Wesen ), following the unconditional control which is theirs with regard to the effort made to seize the power unconditionally, are all with equality between them. The historically conditioned differences which gives each other some importance when one makes them pass in the foreground, are never used but to disguise of it criminality under the aspect of inoffensive, while presenting some the achievement like " morally " necessary in l'" intérêt" even of humanity. /The planetary criminals of the very last modernity in whom only they become possible, then necessary, can be counted on the fingers of only one hand. " Also is there no punishment which can be enough large to overcome such criminals the Hell itself is too small near what these criminals that nothing retains thus carry to the ruine". (transl. G. Guest)

During these courses, Heidegger gathers many students who will testify some then. Among these testimonys we have that of Walter Biemel, raises of Heidegger of 1942 to 1944, and specialist in its work, and which in particular wrote “the concept of world at Heidegger” (Vrin, Paris, 1950) which always makes authority.

Here the testimony of the listener who was Biemel, of the courses held in the middle of the period Nazi: “For the first time, it was given to me to hear stop of a professor of university, a violent criticism against the mode which it described as criminal. ”

“There is not a course, a seminar where I heard a as clear criticism of the Nazism as at Heidegger. He was besides the only professor who did not begin his course with Heil' Hitler lawful. With stronger reason, in the private conversations, it made a so hard criticism of the Nazis that I realized at which point it was lucid on its error of 1933”

According to Bourdieu

In what its ontology could it be appropriate with the event and the nature of the Nazism? Bourdieu tried explanation sociological (elitism, contempt of world town and life which to it corresponds) which is based on the conviction that any philosophy can be reduced to its sociological determinations, even if Bourdieu saw that Heidegger reduces alienation to ontological alienation, eclipsing of this fact any form of economic alienation, policy etc

According to Lévinas

Lévinas, more philosophically, pled in favor of the assumption that the thought to be it is violence and that it is necessary to leave the place to the other, under penalty of renewing the same one (with this violence, precisely). But by “differently than to be” (title of one of its works) he understands to reintroduce the transcendence, the good, beyond the being, which would be, according to him, the condition of ethics, dangerously absent from the thought of Heidegger. True question. But Derrida could show in what Lévinas forces the thought of Heidegger there (see Derrida: “Violence and metaphysics” in the writing and the difference , 1967.

What was there in the Nazism of so extremely, of if involving, to make believe, even with an admiror of the Greeks, that there was on this side some solution with the extremely serious crisis which affected the world at this time? How the Nazism it could, at its beginnings, to generate hope, to present themselves as credible - to those at least which joined a time, to distinguish from the active Nazis. How the Nazism could have taken on those which knew as a dazzling, or which underwent a fascination, intellectually surprising so much they were erroneous? They were not equipped with a political idea which had preserved them, the such communist idea, either which they did not belong to a group persecuted which could not be involved, by definition. Indeed, if there is nothing to see between a true thinker such Heidegger and simple ideologists such Baümler or Rosenberg, which served the system submissively and reflect their feather with the service of the mode in a police spirit, how to understand that similar movement could mislead in so large thinkers? This question indicates that the knowledge of what was the Nazism is still in front of us, as a task likely to clarify the present always carrying the mark of what is occurred with the Nazism.

In other words, as long as one will not have clarified this question which remains still obscure concerning the major nature of the Nazism, and will have included/understood what it reveals of our time there so that it could be engulfed in the same blindness where all Europe was which agree to let make Hitler, it is useless to give itself the narcissistic facility to condemn the men who, unanimously or almost, i.e. like only one man or almost, followed Hitler, like points out it with acuity Jacob Taubes. Because they transfer in him, initially, a saver of Germany after the crisis of 1929. All, except those which Hitler had designated as its enemies, of course, i.e. Jews and Communists. Because in the first years of the mode, of 1933 at the years preceding the war, it should not be forgotten that Hitler rectified Germany economically, and politically left it the dictat of Versailles, reconstituted the unit of the country, etc not to forget either which it had the downstream, at its beginnings, not only of the German Parliament (Weimar Republic) which gave the capacity to him to one crushing majority, but majority of the powers and political leaders of Europe to the Catholic church included/understood with which he made good impression, in its fight against Communism. Rüdiger Safranski, bibliography

But still, considering the place which Heidegger in the history of the philosophy occupies, that is to say the importance which was granted to him by certain, its engagement Nazi requires that one go to see in his philosophy even what allows similar agreement with this one: which philosophy, which ideas and positions seeks to challenge Heidegger when it engages its own philosophy with the service of this destroying and barbarian movement in which it sees the rebirth of civilization? Dominique Janicaud, quoted in bibliography

Jacob Taubes recalls that, in their political commitment, Heidegger like Schmitt, resulting from catholicity, were animated by a resentment carrying them to want to break what they regarded as “the liberal consensus judeo-Protestant”, that is to say the liberal culture included/understood like the fruit of the traditions Protestant woman and Jewish (cf Taubes: In divergent agreement). It is false consequently to accuse “lowness or the filth” specifies Taubes. In light, there was in Germany of the fights, including between ideas, recovering currents with ideological anchorings which were going to be opposed, and which it would be stupid to be unaware of. The traditional rationalism, represented by the Neo-kantian and Cassirer, its most brilliant figure, was attacked by ontology heidegerrienne, blaming the reason and its categories, in an inversion presented like radical. But the conflicts of influence were also of theological and political content. The " revolution conservatrice" against the liberal culture, all in all. Rüdiger Safranski, bibliography

According to Lacoue-Labarthe

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, in the fiction of policy (Christian Bourgois, 1987), analyzes the philosophy of Heidegger like a “archi-Fascism”. Heidegger would have been implied in policy for different reasons that the leaders Nazis. Its engagement, although temporary, would be at the same time foreign with the ideology common Nazi, of which he denounced the mediocrity and cruelty, but would be in fact better founded than very other, because he would have presented in his thought the ultimate base of the Nazism, its " archéologie". This radical analysis raises questions. Up to which point can one dissociate the form concretes taken by a revolution, of what is supposed to be its dash first, its spirit? In other words, how Heidegger does he imagine a revolution, high and noble this one, which would leave the same dash as the Nazism? But can one simply reduce all the work of Heidegger to only one major assertion thought in various forms?

Some see in its remarks the traces of a nationalism (undeniable) blaming consequently, philosophically, universalism. Nothing however in the analytical one Dasein To be and Time exists, which would make it possible to say that these existentiaux released by Heidegger is not universal. But if the question arises as from the moment of engagement in favor of the Nazism and all that will be formulated on the “destiny historial of the people”, and the “Dasein of people”, there, the political discourses that Heidegger pronounces write in the language of its philosophy. And there is the greatest reproach which can be to him made: to have put its philosophy, its thought, its vocabulary, with the service of this movement on the track of the barbarian destruction. It compromised its philosophy, before being included and taking refuge in the silence (of which it made the theory). It, by doing this, compromised philosophy by engaging it on the bad side of the history, incontestably.

Lévinas will consider that ontology heideggerienne is built on the repression of the universalism bequeathed by the Judaism: the thought to be it, is the Greek heritage to find, to erase the judaïque heritage.

On the other hand Marlène Zarader establishes in a completely opposite way, the existence of a filiation underground, not recognized, of one debt with regard to the Judaism in the impensée debt, Heidegger and the Hebraic heritage . As Derrida had done it before it, and being inspired some, Zarader makes it possible to affirm that it is more interesting to work to flush out impensé of Heidegger, its gaps, its lapses of memory, which it did not see, and thus, its membership of one of the traditions, and this in spite of him and what he believes to have challenged, (metaphysics), which to condemn the man for an engagement obviously condemnable without discussion and thus to believe to be able to get rid of its philosophy and its questions. In short, it is more useful and necessary to read Heidegger, as a philosopher, to thwart his traps, or to be played of its masks, and not to let themselves mislay in its short cuts which do not carry out nowhere, while turning over against its texts its project of destruction - metaphysics -, which becomes with Derrida, déconstruction, to show that one does not leave there, of this tradition, either that of this metaphysics that Heidegger claims to exceed and other traditions even more ignored and never even evoked. Here are which is more interesting, and more useful especially, that to reduce Heidegger to its only biography where the man was not with the height of his thought. What is the case, very often because only human, too human.

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