A Correspondence

"A philosopher can be deceived regarding political matters; in which case he will openly acknowledge his error. But he cannot he deceived about a regime that has killed millions of Jews - merely because they were Jews - that made terror into an everyday phenomenon, and that turned everything that pertains to the ideas of spirit, freedom and truth into its bloody opposite. A regime that in every respect imaginable was the deadly caricature of the western tradition that you yourself so forcefully explicated and justified. And if that regime was not the caricature of that tradition but its actual culmination - in this case, too, there could be no deception, for then you would have to indict and disavow this entire tradition. " Marcuse writing to Heidegger about his silence regarding National Socialism

Heidegger to Marcuse

Freiburg, January 20, 1948

The package that you mentioned in your letter of 28 August has arrived. I thank you for it. I think that it accords with your and your friends' wishes that I have had the entire contents distributed to former students who were neither in the Party nor had any other connections to National Socialism. In their names, too, I thank you for your help.

If I may infer from your letter that you are seriously concerned with [reaching] a correct judgment about my work and person, then your letter shows me precisely how difficult it is to converse with persons who have not been in Germany since 1933 and who judge the beginning of the National Socialist movement from its end. Regarding the main points of your letter, I would like to say the following.

1. Concerning 1933: I expected from National Socialism a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety, a reconciliation of social antagonisms and a deliverance of western Dasein from the dangers of communism. These convictions were expressed in my Rectoral Address (have you read this in its entirety?), in a lecture on "The Essence of Science" and in two speeches to students of [Freiburg] University. There was also an election appeal of approximately 25-30 lines, published in the [Freiburg] student newspaper. Today I regard a few of the sentences as misleading [Entgleisung].
2. In 1934 I recognized my political error and resigned my rectorship in protest against the state and party. That no. 1 [i.e., Heidegger's Party activities] was exploited for propaganda purposes both here and abroad, and that no. 2 [his resignation] hushed up for equally propagandistic reasons, failed to come to my attention and cannot be held against me.
3. You are entirely correct that I failed to provide a public, readily comprehensible counter-declaration; it would have been the end of both me and my family. On this point, Jaspers said: that we remain alive is our guilt.
4. In my lectures and courses from 1933-44 I incorporated a standpoint that was so unequivocal that among those who were my students, none fell victim to Nazi ideology. My works from this period, if they ever appear, will testify to this fact.
5. An avowal after 1945 was for me impossible: the Nazi supporters announced their change of allegiance in the most loathsome way; I, however, had nothing in common with them.
6. To the charges of dubious validity that you express "about a regime that murdered millions of Jews, that made terror into an everyday phenomenon, and that turned everything that pertains to the ideas of spirit, freedom and truth into its bloody opposite," I can merely add that if instead of "Jews" you had written "East Germans" [i.e., Germans of the eastern territories], then the same holds true for one of the allies, with the difference that everything that has occurred since 1945 has become public knowledge, while the bloody terror of the Nazis in point of fact had been kept a secret from the German people.

In conclusion I would like to ask you to consider that today, too, there is false propaganda, for example that rumors are spread that contradict the truth. I have learned about positively nonsensical defamations about me and my work.

I thank you for the open expression of your misgivings about me; I can only hope that you will someday find again in my works the philosopher with whom you studied and worked.

With my best greeting,
M. Heidegger

Marcuse to Heidegger

May 12, 1948
4609 Chevy Chase Blvd.
Washington 15, D.C.

Dear Mr. Heidegger,
For a long time I wasn't sure as to whether I should answer your letter of January 20. You are right: a conversation with persons who have not been in Germany since 1933 is obviously very difficult. But I believe that the reason for this is not to be found in our lack of familiarity with the German situation under Nazism. We were very well aware of this situation - perhaps even better aware than people who were in Germany. The direct contact that I had with many of these people in 1947 convinced me of this. Nor can it be explained by the fact that we "judge the beginning of the National Socialist movement from its end." We knew, and I myself saw it too, that the beginning already contained the end. The difficulty of the conversation seems to me rather to be explained by the fact that people in Germany were exposed to a total perversion of all concepts and feelings, something which very many accepted only too readily. Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain the fact that a man like yourself, who was capable of understanding western philosophy like no other, were able to see in Nazism "a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety," a "redemption of occidental Dasein from the dangers of communism" (which however is itself an essential component of that Dasein!). This is not a political but instead an intellectual problem - I am tempted to say: a problem of cognition, of truth. You, the philosopher, have confused the liquidation of occidental Dasein with its renewal? Was this liquidation not already evident in every word of its "leaders," in every gesture and deed of the SA, long before 1933?

However, I would like to treat only one portion of your letter, otherwise my silence could be interpreted as complicity.

You write that everything that I say about the extermination of the Jews applies just as much to the allies, if instead of "Jews" one were to insert "East Germans." With this sentence don't you stand outside of the dimension in which a conversation between men is even possible - outside of Logos? For only outside of the dimension of logic is it possible to explain, to relativize [auszugleichen], to "comprehend" a crime by saying that others would have done the same thing. Even further: how is it possible to equate the torture, the maiming and the annihilation of millions of men with the forcible relocation of population groups who suffered none of these outrages (apart perhaps from several exceptional instances)? From a contemporary perspective, there seems already to be a night and day difference in humanity and inhumanity in the difference between Nazi concentration camps and the deportations and internments of the post-war years. On the basis of your argument, if the allies had reserved Auschwitz and Buchenwald - and everything that transpired there - for the "East Germans" and the Nazis, then the account would be in order! If however the difference between inhumanity and humanity is reduced to this erroneous calculus, then this becomes the world historical guilt of the Nazi system, which has demonstrated to the world what, after more than 2000 years of western Dasein, men can do to their fellow men. It looks as though the seed has fallen upon fertile ground: perhaps we are still experiencing the continuation of what began in 1933. Whether you would still consider it to be a "renewal" I am not sure.
With my best greeting

Upon reading these comments one is immediately struck by Heidegger’s complete lack of empathy for the victims. The East Germans have also suffered and their assailants are equally guilty. As Hannah Arendt indicated during the Eichmann trial, if everyone is equally guilty than no one is.

But the key question Marcuse raises is whether Heidegger stands outside the space in which conversation can take place at all. Without empathy, and acceptance of responsibility, how is it ever possible to communicate?

Comments

[Alain]

To everyone

I really appreciate all the feedback (well almost all). My intent in posting the exchange wasn't to bring up the whole "Heidegger was a scum bag" issue. I was simply struck by Marcuse's honest shock at how Heidegger was either unable or unwilling to respond to the Shoah as a human being. His personal failings may be relevant, but I am more curious to look at Heidegger's response as a case study: how can we talk to someone who has no feeling for someone else's suffering? Certainly we all have met people who are so self-involved that they don't even know who else is in the room. But beyond that, my question is: how can we really talk to someone who does not share a basic sense of human solidarity, who can at least understand the suffering of others, and can acknowledge mistakes? The fact that Heidegger is the person in question doesn't seem as important to me as the fact that today we encounter this attitude on a regular basis - particularly in our public discourse, among our leaders, and even among our friends. Can we communicate with people who do not seem to have what I would call "common human decency?" I don't know.

[hum]

i don't want to start another polemos, but i somehow feel it necessary to note that thomas sheehan is perhaps not the one to trust on historical facts ( or anything else for that matter ). his part in the NYRB wolin exchange with derrida was pretty much sans common human decency.

[Alain]

Hum

I am familiar with the incident but I am sketchy on the details. I did read one account published in the Times in which Sheehan accused Derrida of bullying the publishers into removing an interview from Wolin's book. But I understand what you are getting at. He seems ever vigilant against anyone who he thinks is not "tough enough" regarding Heidegger.

[John Emerson]

Circling back to The State and Schmitt -- in fact violence is at the core of the state (monopoly of violence, sovereignty). So being a citizen or subject(which is not voluntary) sometimes involves acquiescing or participating in violence (war), which inevitably includes some violence against innocents. Revolution is much the same.

Nietzsche's "make yourself hard", regardless of what he himself meant by it, is in a sense required for citizens. A lot of the big heroes of history were ruthless.

Anyway, once you make the committment to hardness, having gone over one line (as Heidegger had) it's hard to mark another line which you won't cross, especially because sentimental, purely humanitarian considerations have been ruled out on principle already.

When I speak against German "seriousness", it's because I think that it includes that kind of hardness. I've read (Mayer "They Thought They Were Free"??) that the active anti-Nazis who were not members of target groups (not Jews, Communists, etc.) were usually rather naive and unphilosophical people.

The Heidegger translator J. Glenn Gray, oddly enough, has reflected about these things in his book "The Warriors". In WWII Gray was in the military and saw some unnecessary cruelty (including on the French side as they mopped up resistance and settled scores).

[hum]

alain,
the article in question by derrida,"the philosopher's hell", appreared in Le Nouvelle Observateur in 1987. the unauthorized translation by wolin appeared in a book that wolin edited, The Heidegger Controversy ( 1991). among the many problems with this translation/publication was that it took place without derrida anything about it. which would not have been so bad if (1) it was not an amazingly bad translation (2) used to advance arguments against certain readings of heidegger ( i.e. derrida et al ), arguments which fully use the mistranslations.
when derrida learnt of it, he requested that his text -- or rather its mistranslation -- be left out of further editions of the book. this led to wolin and sheehan using the pulpit of the NYRB to go at derrida.
derrida's response can be found in "the work of intellectuals and the press" ( Points...).
incidentally, the second edition of the Heidegger Contro was published without the derrida text, something loudly proclaimed on the book's back cover, as if the real interest of the book was that it did NOT contain a text by derrida!
i remember derrida remarking wryly that if he could get royalties for all the books in which his texts did not appear, then he'd have it made!
( when "intellectuals" like wolin and sheehan get all "tough" on heidegger, it is worth wondering who or what is really aimed at...)

[something more]

I wouldn't rely on "l'affaire Derrida" Sheehan for facts or much else, either. But, due to both his relationship to (the later) Heidegger and his personal (rather visceral) reaction to what gave rise to this affair-- which are closely related--Sheehan's later scholarship might be considered the most fruitful attempt to read early Heiddeger as mediated by an historical, hermeneutic attempt to place in context the National Socialist moment. Read with an allowance for the moral revulsion to and apprehension towards the prospect of maintaining a faithful reading of Heidegger that does not paper over or dismiss the nature of his relation to the Nazi regime, Sheehan might provide something near an Archimedian point in the post-'87 climate, which one could locate in the center of his emotional and scholarly swings a decade and more ago.

Moreover, as opposed to Derrida or anyone else working within a loosely defined "Continental," or an appropriative and intercommunicative tradition of conceptual heritage, Sheehan seems to strive for an (impossible?) hermeneutic faithfulness as regards initial and immanent intent within his readings of an historicized Heidegger.

I'm not especially partisan towards Sheehan or his scholarship either way, I just feel that he offers an interesting entrance into this particular question: that of a faithfully historicized and ethically conscious reading of early Heidegger.

Mot that such a reading is complete in itself, or even necessarily possible to pull off, especially in light of Sheehan's personal investments; nevertheless, it is, above all, unique.

[hum]

something more,
there should be nothing more from me, particularly since the damn infection/fever i presently have is leading me to write things like "le nouvelle ob"( not the correct "le nouvel ob" ) in my previous post.
but it's hard to let the following go unquestioned:

"Moreover, as opposed to Derrida or anyone else working within a loosely defined "Continental," or an appropriative and intercommunicative tradition of conceptual heritage, Sheehan seems to strive for an (impossible?) hermeneutic faithfulness as regards initial and immanent intent within his readings of an historicized Heidegger."

um, the definition of 'continental' is a bit strained no? particularly when you oppose it to sheehan's 'faithfulness'?
did you find sheehan's hermeneutic approach faithful and ethical in "l'affaire derrida" which -- supposedly -- concerned heidegger?
I also find it rather difficult to accept the statement that sheehan ( in contrast to 'continentals' ) is "uniquely" the one to attempt a "historical" reading of heidegger? really...

[Something transcending merely more]

In regard to the heuristic oppostitions that I too lazily cast, the first was only meant to highlight one particular aspect of what may distinguish the practice of "continental" philosophy (and one that I am partisan positively toward) from "other" practices, while both the first and second are activated only through the particularities of Sheehan's subject position and (concommitantly) his personal trek through the study of Heidegger.

If you construed the former as anything other or reaching farther than the self-admitted (by Hippolyte, Sartre, Derrida, et al) tendency to self-consciously borrow, (re-, intentionally mis-)appropriate, or refashion concepts from within a specific, ongoing, and intercommunicative conversation taking place in the history of philosophy, as opposed to Sheehan's stated (can't find a link) project of reading Heidegger intentionally through the "concrete" fact of co-terminous party activity and, later, what was to follow, I didnt intend for you to do so. These two categories may not even be immediately comparable, not only because we are dealing with a generality on one hand and a specific instance on the other, but it also, on less than close scrutiny, betrays oversimplification at both ends.

However, as it appears that you are either not entirely (and I do not hold you responsible to be) versed in the "Heidegger Wars" of that time, or were just making an irreverent comment, I must further explain that just as Sheehan (over) reacted immediately and forcefully to the events and fallout of '87, it was from a more personalized position, given his relationship with/to Heidegger, and one that can be privileged in some ways specific to his experience.

I thought that I had been fairly clear (I wasn't) in situating Sheehan's current work within the swing of his reactions and engagements following Farias, and then the Derrida affair, as approxomating a unique and privileged, albeit uniquely biased, position, and thus meant that his work should (must) be read through that bias inherent to his attempt.

It was a very sloppy post, and this one is not much better, but please dont make an issue of the opposition b/w the first and second heuristics, or even that which the first is built upon, for all I was attempting to do was "hermeneutically" place Sheehan within the space where I would see, through "his" eyes, his attempt to locate his work.

In short, these two posts were not the instantiation of MY understanding of, but perhaps how Sheehan understands his current work.

And I provided this specifically because I myself dont buy some of what is in the two pdf's that I posted, and also the direction Sheehan came from and has taken: a mild warning, in effect.

(even shorter: I was not disparaging "Continental" or other readings of Heiddeger through the means of an intentionally inadequate categorization, nor was I merely valorizing Sheehan, his scholarship, and most importantly, definitely not his role in the Derrida affair, which was altogether simply nauseating)

[Pajari]

Hello,

I did not bother to read the whole chain of posts, for which I must apologize, but I must make this comment:

In the letter of 20th January from Heidegger to Herbert Marcuse there is the paragraph (#6) that begins in the following way:

Zu den schweren berechtigten Vorwürfen, die Sie aussprechen "über ein Regime, das Millionen von Juden umgebracht hat, [...]"

This has been "translated", also here on this site, into English by the following sentence:

To the charges of dubious validity that you express "about a regime that murdered millions of Jews, [...]"

Even though my native language is neither German nor English, I can assure you that this translation is simply wrong. Here is how I would render the beginning of Heidegger's sentence:

To the grave [and] justified accusations that you express "about a regime that murdered millions of Jews, [...]"

Or like this:

To the grave, justified accusations that you express [...]

And even if you leave off the "and" or the comma, the sentence remains quite unambiguous:

To the grave justified accusations that you express [...]

The German expression that would correspond to the English "of dubious validity" would be, I think, "schwerlich berechtigten".

If you have doubts about my competence, you may always ask someone who really knows his or her German. That's easy, we have the internet and the e-mail, you could even have a poll among all the German-speakers you can find.

But insofar as the correction is not made (I am pretty confident in this), anyone who cites that English mistranslation, is just spreading disinformation.

I don't consider myself as an apologist for Heidegger, but this is a question of justice.

Sincerely,

Pajari, from Finland

[Pajari]

Hello again,

I just discovered that Richard Wolin seems to be the source of the mistranslation...

And oh yes, it's a "thread" of posts and not a "chain".

Pajari

[Nate]

Alain,
Thanks for posting these. Interesting stuff. Personally I think Marcuse's far too kind on the dirty nazi scumbag, what he should have said is that it's too bad an allied machine gun didn't get him. As for how to talk or deal with someone without empathy, I think that's a variant of a classic problem. If one is opposed to treating of humans as means, how does one deal with someone else who refuses to treat humans as anything other than means? To my mind the answer has to be "as means, but not gratuitously." That isn't very satisfying but I don't know what other answers there are. The creation of freedom and empathy most likely can not occur in some circumstances without methods which one would otherwise not use in a condition of generalized freedom and empathy. The question of historical transition in marxism is another variant on this I think.
take care,
Nate

[Kenneth Rufo]

Nate, you're not serious, are you? That was meant as an odd and unsuccessful attempt at irony, yes? It must be, as I can't imagine a worse intro to a comment on a non-gratuitous style of reading...

[Nate]

hi Ken,

No, I meant it. It was stated a bit stronger in wording maybe than I would have normally put it cuz I had just finished watching that movies The Pianist, about life in Warsaw in WWII. Nonetheless had Heidegger been killed I'd not be fussed. I'd say the same for Schmitt. Fair point that this may be a contradiction on my part and an expression of a rather crude analysis-less antifascism. I'd accept both charges without without rejoinder.

For what it's worth, my point about non-gratuity wasn't intended as a point about reading but a restatement of Rorty's main ethical maxim, "don't be cruel." As with everything Rorty it doesn't really satisfy but I don't think there's much more to be said on the issue of how to deal with those who are cruel. One responds to the violent with violence, but not in such a way that the violent response is an end in itself or is enjoyed. Beyond that I don't see that Alain's question of how do the empathetic treat the empathy-less is a soluble problem at the level of theory.

cheers,
Nate

[Kenneth Rufo]

Oh.

Well I guess it goes without saying that I find the claim incorrect in its assumptions and appalling in its conclusions.

No doubt you're aware of my concerns, so we'll just leave it as is.

But I should ask, as we're dealing with those without empathy, at least those who are without empathy at some point in space and time and on some subject or in some conversation (I doubt there can exist someone who lacks empathy entirely and forever), and given your stance here, which is, I think we can say fairly clearly, without empathy: how would you like us to deal with you? Non-theoretically?

[Matt]

Thank you for the valuable comments, Pajari.

[Nate]

hi Kenneth,
If we disagree on wishing a death sentence for fascists then yes, let's agree to disagree and leave it at that. On the other hand, I'm ignorant of Heidegger's biography. If you were to say that there's historical evidence that Heidegger was a special sort of nazi, having been forced into his role or having had some other extenuating circumstances such that he's exempted, then I'd take your word on that and please consider the comment retracted and apologize for as having been made in ignorance. It's just one of my default moral and psychological reactions is to respond with the impotent and perhaps juvenile "too bad they didn't die sooner" when hearing about any fascist.

As for dealing with, two things. I don't see my views on Heidegger as lacking empathy. I think we're using the term differently. I see empathy as compatible with a sort of lesser-evilism, in the sense of doing things which in a perfect world would not have to be done. As I meant the term, lacking empathy would be to be gratuituous (wishing suffering), to not recognize either lesser or greater evil as any type of evil. Alain may have meant the term differently.

Second, there isn't any "dealing with" as such but only in relation to other things. One can deal with Heidegger theoretically and I trust the reports of those who say there's much to be gained in certain contexts from doing so. Marcuse's letter, however, didn't strike me as engaging on the register of philosophical argument, certainly solely at that level, but on other registers.

To put it another way, one could say that everyone is infinite in the sense of not being self-identical (Badiou and Adorno make something like this point), which means there's a great many uses to be made or relationships to be built with someone and their work. I'm not suggesting absolute avoidance of all things Heidegger, erasure of the entire infinity called Heidegger. My phrasing was overstated in my initial comment, as I already said. I still don't see however why it should be a big deal to say that a german jewish marxist refugee might understandably wish the death of a nazi professor. Like I said at first, I'm surprised that Marcuse _didn't_ have that response. That he didn't perhaps demonstrates he had a higher moral character than I do - certainly a different one.
take care,
Nate