Heidegger and Modernity, by Luc Ferry and Allain Renaut, and The Politics of Being, Richard Wolin

...But despite lumping Hitler's Germany into this group, Heidegger remained ambivalent about the promise of Nazism...

...According to the first explanation, the decline of the West can be attributed to the fact that people tend to conceal a very unpleasant truth about themselves: namely, that they are mortal and finite...

...As Wolin explains, what seemed necessary to Heidegger in the early 1930s was Nazism...

...Democracy is possible only if those participating in it are in some measure autonomous...

...Heidegger never relinquished the view that the Germans were a special people, whose destiny was to save the world from degeneration and decline...

...Heidegger and Modernity views the Heidegger affair specifically in terms of its relation to the contemporary French intellectual scene...

...Instead, Western humanity was destined to end up with the one-dimensional understanding of being responsible for the technological age...

...Many French intellectuals have read the Enlightenment through the distorted optic of such German intellectuals...

...Postwar French leftists—convinced that Nazism was a neocapitalist phenomenon—at first turned to Marxism as the only uncontaminated political theory...

...Heidegger's claim that Western metaphysics culminated in modernity, with its totalitarian regimes and consumption-oriented societies, enabled French intellectuals, including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, to offer a sweeping critique of modernity's philosophical presuppositions and its social and political legacy...

...The machine view of animals does not "let them be" appropriately but instead forces them to reveal themselves in a constricted way...

...Unlike the heirs of the Enlightenment, liberals and Marxists alike, who describe Western history in progressive terms, Heidegger portrayed it as a long decline from its ancient Greek origins...

...Second, ontological awareness brings with it the obligation to be aware of things, or to "let things be," in ways that are true to the things themselves...

...Columbia University Press, 1990...

...Although resisting the temptation either to belittle Heidegger's considerable philosophical achievements or to reduce them to the status of apologetics for fascism, Wolin nevertheless makes clear that, henceforth, we must read Heidegger's writings with an awareness of their political implications...

...By arguing that human agency is impotent in the face of a mysterious historical destiny, antihumanists pave the way for passivity in the face of social forces that—despite their enormous scale—are in fact capable of being criticized and redirected by collective action...

...Heidegger's first explanation for the decline of the West emphasized that Western people had become increasingly unwilling to take upon themselves the opportunity and the burden of human existence...

...Understood rightly, the Enlightenment rejects all attempts to define human beings according to race, class, gender, or ethnicity, despite the fact that Enlightenment thinkers often revealed racial and gender biases...

...First, to be ontologically aware always means being aware of one's mortality...

...In traditional metaphysics, "being" was defined as the eternal foundation of temporal things (for example, Plato's forms and the biblical God...

...The Volk must now resolve collectively to be authentic, to initiate a new beginning that would be as great as the beginning made by the ancient Greeks...

...But many of Heidegger's influential French followers conveniently overlooked his scorn for democratic principles...

...Insofar as Heidegger defined human existence as transcendence, openness, and freedom, he apparently shared the Enlightenment vision...

...Enthused by Hitler's promise to find a "third way" between those twin evils of modernity, capitalism and communism, Heidegger believed that he himself had been ordained to provide spiritual guidance for the German "revolution...

...Such was the case, he concluded, with Western civilization...

...If his thought is tainted by Nazism, then much of contemporary French theory is called into question, as are some of the pronouncements of those American academics influenced by French theory...

...Nazis, including Heidegger, celebrated the uniqueness of the German Volk and the importance of its task...

...Members of the Frankfurt School, such as Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, despite their great political differences with Heidegger, also fostered similar interpretations of the Enlightenment and its link to Nazism...

...In complementary ways, Wolin and Ferry-Renaut reveal the confusion in this outlook...

...Here is the source of the glory and wonder of human existence: we are active witnesses to the beauty and complexity of the world...

...Acknowledging that this idea of authenticity contains nothing that overtly favors Nazism, Wolin also correctly observes that it contains nothing to oppose it...

...As Wolin points out, however, one of the tactics used by the postwar Heidegger to explain the evils of National Socialism was to portray it not as a uniquely German phenomenon but instead as a symptom of the "humanistic" movements infecting the whole of modern Western civilization...

...Ferry and Renaut explain how this curious and selective appropriation of Heidegger's thought took place in France...

...Abandoning his earlier belief that human resolve could change the course of history, he now argued that the decline of the West did not occur because of any human failing, nor could it be altered by any human decision or action...

...Still unwilling to embrace liberalism, however, they turned to Heidegger as the only remaining thinker who provided a comprehensive criticism both of bureaucratic Stalinism and of the consumerist West...

...The call by antihumanists for "deconstruction" of the subject supposedly aims to reveal the inadequacies of the radically autonomous "selfhood" envisaged by humanism...

...He blackballed professors for pacifist leanings or for their association with Jewish circles...

...The two books discussed here remind us, however, that the ideals of the Enlightenment— including the ideal of individual autonomy and the efficacy of human action in shaping events—cannot be discarded without serious political consequences...

...Wolin and Ferry-Renaut remain committed to the democratic project of freeing people from unnecessary social control...

...In his famous book Being and Time (1927), Heidegger used the term "inauthenticity" to describe this flight from the truth about human mortality...

...In fact, Heidegger's thought was inextricably combined with his decision to support the Nazis...

...As Ferry and Renaut observe, 440 • DISSENT Books supposedly only Heidegger's thought could prevent "the general collapse of humanity into American style businessism...

...The debate about Martin Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism has been particularly fierce in France because—especially since the decline of Marxism in the late 1970s—Heidegger, the most influential German philosopher of the twentieth century, has played a crucial role for the French intellectual left...

...Only the appearance of a new god, indicative of the beginning of a new destiny for the West, could save humanity from the fate of total technological nihilism...

...By the mid-1970s, French leftists were no longer able to deny the totalitarian face of Soviet communism...

...It is possible that Heidegger's frustration regarding his political failure helped lead him to the conclusion that voluntarism—the doctrine that human will can alter the direction of history — wwaass a central factor in the decline of the West...

...By 1936, however, for reasons not entirely clear, Heidegger began to offer a second explanation for the decline of the West, one that allowed him to depict the "historical reality" (that is, Hitlerism) as a form of "humanism...

...While acknowledging that modernity does promote a cultural homogeneity, neither Wolin nor Ferry-Renaut is prepared to ignore the vast differences between the homogeneity promoted by consumerist society and the homogeneity promoted by the Nazis...

...As rector of Freiburg University (1933-34), Heidegger followed his own advice...

...Hence, he rejected biblical claims about sin and redemption...

...Instead, Rousseau, Kant, and others maintained that humanity's distinguishing feature was its freedom, its capacity to escape the limits of any cultural code...

...By 1936, Heidegger seems to have concluded that the leaders of the National Socialist "movement" had forgotten its authentic potential and had thus turned it into nothing but a powerhungry nationalism...

...I might add that the fashionable call to "celebrate difference," a call promoted by many academics influenced by French theorists, is an expression of an Enlightenment theme...

...Heidegger's attempts in the early 1930s to shape the course of the movement had been doomed to failure...

...Human existence is crucial to the ontological process by which things are revealed...

...Instead of "living dangerously" so as to disclose things in ever more authentic ways, Western humanity had chosen the route of comfort and security as promised by democracy, liberalism, socialism, and communism...

...The danger is that such deconstruction will promote authoritarian movements purporting to free people from the burden imposed by "bourgeois individualism...

...Yet he was also profoundly shaped by romantics such as Herder, who claimed that humans are defined by the language and customs of their unique historical peoples...

...Instead, for something "to be" simply means for it to be manifest, to be revealed...

...Until recently, his defendSUMMER • 1991 • 439 Books ers could explain away the anti-Semitic remarks he occasionally made in letters during his rectorship as politically opportunistic, because they were made after Hitler came to power...

...For Heidegger, "being" does not name any sort of foundation or origin for things...

...The Politics of Being focuses both on the facts concerning Heidegger's relation to Nazism and on the philosophical beliefs that led him to justify that relation...

...Such self-deceiving and irresponsible existence is what Heidegger meant by "inauthenticity...

...Without acknowledging that the "other" is human, despite different cultural codes or skin color, what generally occurs is not the celebration of difference but the absolutization of difference...

...Heidegger argued that things can be manifest only so long as humans exist...

...Fleeing from the truth about what it means to be human, and thus running away from the possibility of existing in a noble and courageous manner, Western people had sold out to materialistic doctrines, such as liberal capitalism and Marxism...

...Ignoring his supposedly "brief" Nazi phase and his frequent condemnations of democracy, French intellectuals enlisted his thinking on behalf of their ostensibly democratic struggle to free humanity from the consequences of onedimensional Enlightenment universalism...

...To understand his strange claim that "Nazism is a humanism," we must distinguish between these two explanations, one to which he adhered until around 1936, the other to which he adhered subsequently...

...Affirming a common "humanity," and thus being SUMMER • 1991 • 441 Books a "liberal humanist," does not have to be read as an attempt to achieve cultural hegemony but may instead be read as an affirmation that humans are capable precisely of inventing different cultures...

...By virtue of this interpretation, Heidegger could relieve himself and Germany of responsibility for the terror perpetrated by Hitlerism...

...The Volk would have to transgress old values and beliefs in order to confront the challenges imposed by the age of modern technology...

...Whereas ordinarily we might conceive of inauthenticity as a personal problem, Heidegger maintained that the attitudes and practices of an entire civilization can become inauthentic...

...For Heidegger, communism, capitalism, democracy, liberalism, and the "historical reality" of National Socialism were all symptomatic of Western degeneration: they were different kinds of humanism...

...One can readily discern this process at work in the current struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as that between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland...

...The burden it imposes on us is twofold...

...Heidegger defined "being" in a radically different way, which is how he achieved his reputation as a philosophical genius...

...Heidegger urged the German people to be ruthless in their revolutionary struggle...

...In recognizing that this capacity for cultural invention belongs to all, we become more willing to tolerate cultural differences that might otherwise become wholly divisive...

...Even in 1966 he could still claim that only Nazism had taken positive steps to confront modern technology...

...Human awareness does not create the things it encounters—stars, trees, numbers, other people...

...One can acknowledge the shortcomings of the Enlightenment while also acknowledging the importance of its emancipatory political vision...

...221 pp...

...In Heidegger's view, Western humanity's inauthenticity was discernible in titanic industrial projects, the aim of which was to give humanity total control over nature—control that promised immortality...

...This restless striving for godlike power and security led humanity to see nature in one-dimensional terms: simply as raw material, valuable only insofar as it served human purposes...

...Because the twofold burden of ontological awareness is so heavy, most people attempt to flee from their own humanity: they deny their own mortality, and they avoid disclosing things appropriately...

...The opportunity it affords us is to be self-conscious agents capable not only of understanding things but also of altering them in accordance with our own ideas and vision...

...When Enlightenment thinkers spoke of the "universal" dimension of humanity, they did not have in mind some feature belonging only to Europeans, a feature that would justify racist attitudes...

...Heidegger's distinction between inauthenticity and authenticity is closely related to his primary philosophical concern: ontology, the study of being...

...For example, if I accept the contemporary commonsense view that animals are simply organic "machines" whose only value lies in serving human purposes, then I will tolerate methods of animal husbandry and types of scientific experimentation on animals that I would condemn were I to understand that animals are more than machines, more than raw material for human ends...

...The decline of the West was the result of an increasing unwillingness on the part of Western people to shoulder the burden of mortal existence and to disclose the truth about things...

...The in-group asserts that its own peculiar cultural traits define true humanity...

...Without human awareness, the stars would continue to burn and the planets would orbit, but everything would be shrouded in a mute ontological darkness...

...Responding in part to Spengler's writings, Heidegger offered two somewhat different explanations for the alleged decline of the West...

...To depict Nazism as a kind of humanism, then, is to read Enlightenment humanism through the eyes of a brilliant but reactionary German philosopher for whom the Enlightenment meant the infection of the German Volk by the "alien" ideas of the French and English...

...Hence, French leftists not only supported Soviet efforts to foment Third World revolutions aimed at overthrowing colonial regimes, but they also condemned Euro-American cultural imperialism, which, masked by Enlightenment doctrines of the universal "rights of man," was merely the latest version of the racism earlier expressed in the idea of "the white man's burden...

...lacking those traits, the out-group is subhuman...

...Ignoring the emancipatory political dimension of the Enlightenment, he depicted it solely as the triumph of abstract rationalism, commercialism, industrialism, and mass culture, all threatening the German Volk...

...Wolin observes that, seen through Heidegger's "leveling gaze," Roosevelt's America, Stalin's Russia, and Hitler's Germany were all "metaphysically" the same: expressions of this voluntaristic and anthropocentric humanism...

...Levi-Strauss's denunciation of Eurocentrism in the 1950s strengthened the hand of those who condemned liberal capitalism as racist, imperialist, and colonialist...

...Heidegger regarded this ontological awareness both as a tremendous opportunity and as a tremendous burden for humanity...

...Hence, there occurred the strange spectacle of French theorists calling on Heidegger's thought, which he had used to support the Nazis, in order to help "liberate" people from such repressive "humanistic" regimes as liberal capitalism...

...Yet in noticing and naming things, human awareness lets things stand out as things...

...Failing to live up to this obligation leads us to behave inappropriately...

...likewise, he scorned modern claims about political and economic freedoms...

...Hitler's "revolution," Heidegger regretfully concluded, was not the longed-for alternative to a degenerate modernity but was instead a manifestation of the same voluntarism and anthropocentrism inherent in all "humanism...

...With the publication of these important books by Wolin and by Ferry and Renaut, readers will be able to understand more clearly the role played by Heidegger's thought in promoting the astonishing and repellent idea, currently popular among some of Heidegger's French and American followers, that Nazism was a kind of "humanism...

...Ferry and Renaut's book, which shows how Heidegger's critique of humanism shaped the anti-humanism of contemporary French intellectuals, was greeted in Paris with dismay and scorn by those who continued to deny that Heidegger's reactionary political views colored his interpretation of Western history...

...Viewing Enlightenment ideals as merely masked power motives, many academics have become openly skeptical about "progressive" political concepts...

...Heidegger called for a "higher humanism" that would displace the degenerate humanism responsible for the ills of modernity...

...Like Nietzsche, Heidegger has abandoned the idea of "essential" or "eternal" truths about human life...

...In the 1920s and 1930s, Heidegger called for Germans to affirm their mortality and to take responsibility for establishing a new world order in which humanity and nature could be revealed in more appropriate ways...

...Insofar as Nazism manifested such voluntarism, that is, insofar as it resembled in its own way the capitalist and communist doctrines that humanity could use industrial technology to become master of its own destiny, it itself was a kind of humanism...

...Wolin destroys this defense, however, by citing a letter written by Heidegger in 1929 that warned against the "Jewification" of Germany...

...Heidegger called on Germans to be courageous, to affirm their mortality and finitude, and to open themselves to the new 438 • DISSENT Books historical possibilities that authenticity would disclose...

...Only humans know that they will die, for only humans understand their own finitude, their "being toward death...

...Democracy, he asserted, was helpless in the face of this historical phenomenon, which was the dark fruit of humanism...

...Instead, he maintained that each Volk gained meaning only by virtue of a sheer decision in favor of what seemed possible and even "necessary" at a given historical moment...

...This capacity for "letting things be," for disclosing things, is what distinguishes human existence from that of animals...

...The toleration necessary to celebrate difference requires the prior concession that there is a universal dimension to humankind, even if this is defined only in a limited way, as freedom or transcendence...

...All humanity could do was to prepare itself for the possible advent of this god...

...In his political speeches, he proclaimed that the individual "counted for nothing" in the new Germany...

...According to this critique, the Enlightenment's concept of autonomous subjectivity, its search for rational foundations for knowledge and norms, and its celebration of the universally valid "rights of man" were an ideological smokescreen for power motives revealing themselves in the European ethnocentrism that led to colonialism, racism, and Nazism...

...In what may be the best available study of Heidegger's relation to Nazism, Wolin demonstrates that Heidegger's followers fail in their effort to distinguish between his philosophical thought and his political views and deeds...

...While agreeing that, after Marx, Freud, Darwin, and Nietzsche, there is no returning to a naive concept of total autonomy, Ferry and Renaut nevertheless argue that it is reasonable to see human beings as subjects who have a measure of will and efficacy...