Editing Martin Heidegger (section)

==Heidegger and the Nazi Party==
{{Main|Martin Heidegger and Nazism|l1 = Heidegger and Nazism}}

{{Conservatism in Germany|Intellectuals}}

===The rectorate===
[[File:Universität Freiburg Kollegiengebäude I (Altbau).jpg|thumb|left|The [[University of Freiburg]], where Heidegger was Rector from 21 April 1933 to 23 April 1934]]
[[Adolf Hitler]] was sworn in as [[Chancellor of Germany (German Reich)|Chancellor of Germany]] on 30 January 1933. Heidegger was elected [[Rector (academia)|rector]] of the [[University of Freiburg]] on 21 April 1933, and assumed the position the following day. On 1 May, he joined the [[Nazi Party]].

On 27 May 1933, Heidegger delivered his inaugural address, the ''Rektoratsrede'' (titled "The Self-assertion of the German University"), in a hall decorated with swastikas, with members of the [[Sturmabteilung]] (SA) and prominent Nazi Party officials present.{{sfn|Sharpe|2018}}

That summer he delivered a lecture on a fragment of [[Heraclitus]] (usually translated in English: "War is the father of all"). His notes on this lecture appear under the heading "Struggle as the essence of Beings."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |title=Being & Truth |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=1933 |isbn=978-0253355119 |publication-date=2010 |pages=124 |chapter=The Saying of Hearaclitus: Struggle as the essence of Beings}}</ref> In this lecture he suggests that if an enemy cannot be found for the people then one must be invented, and once conceptualized and identified, then the 'beings' who have discovered or invented this enemy must strive for the total annihilation of the enemy.<ref name=":0" />

His tenure as rector was fraught with difficulties from the outset. Some [[Nazi]] education officials viewed him as a rival, while others saw his efforts as comical. Some of Heidegger's fellow Nazis also ridiculed his philosophical writings as gibberish. He finally offered his resignation as rector on 23 April 1934, and it was accepted on 27 April. Heidegger remained a member of both the academic faculty and of the Nazi Party until the end of the war.{{sfn|Sheehan|1988}}

Philosophical historian [[Hans Sluga]] wrote, "Though as rector he prevented students from displaying an [[anti-Semitic]] poster at the entrance to the university and from holding a book burning, he kept in close contact with the Nazi student leaders and clearly signaled to them his sympathy with their activism."{{sfn|Sluga|2013|page=149}}

In 1945, Heidegger wrote of his term as rector, giving the writing to his son Hermann; it was published in 1983:

<blockquote>The rectorate was an attempt to see something in the movement that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudeness, that was much more far-reaching and that could perhaps one day bring a concentration on the Germans' Western historical essence. It will in no way be denied that at the time I believed in such possibilities and for that reason renounced the actual vocation of thinking in favor of being effective in an official capacity. In no way will what was caused by my own inadequacy in office be played down. But these points of view do not capture what is essential and what moved me to accept the rectorate.{{sfn|Neske|Kettering|1990|page=29}}</blockquote>

===Treatment of Husserl===
Beginning in 1917, German-Jewish philosopher [[Edmund Husserl]] championed Heidegger's work, and helped Heidegger become his successor for the chair in philosophy at the University of Freiburg in 1928.{{sfn|Benhabib|2003|page=120}}

On 6 April 1933, the Gauleiter of [[Baden]] Province, Robert Wagner, suspended all Jewish government employees, including present and retired faculty at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger's predecessor as rector formally notified Husserl of his "enforced leave of absence" on 14 April 1933.

Heidegger became Rector of the University of Freiburg on 22 April 1933. The following week the national Reich law of 28 April 1933 replaced Reichskommissar Wagner's decree. The Reich law required the firing of Jewish professors from German universities, including those, such as Husserl, who had converted to Christianity. The termination of the retired professor Husserl's academic privileges thus did not involve any specific action on Heidegger's part.

Heidegger had by then broken off contact with Husserl, other than through intermediaries. Heidegger later claimed that his relationship with Husserl had already become strained after Husserl publicly "settled accounts" with Heidegger and [[Max Scheler]] in the early 1930s.{{sfn|Heidegger|1990|page=48}}

Heidegger did not attend his former mentor's cremation in 1938, for which he later declared himself regretful: "That I failed to express again to Husserl my gratitude and respect for him upon the occasion of his final illness and death is a human failure that I apologized for in a letter to Mrs. Husserl."{{sfn|Augstein|Wolff|Heidegger|1976|pages=193–219}} In 1941, under pressure from publisher Max Niemeyer, Heidegger agreed to remove the dedication to Husserl from ''Being and Time'' (restored in post-war editions).{{sfn|Safranski|1998|pages=258–58}}

Heidegger's behavior towards Husserl has provoked controversy. Hannah Arendt initially suggested that Heidegger's behavior precipitated Husserl's death. She called Heidegger a "potential murderer". However, she later recanted her accusation.{{sfn|Ettinger|1997|page=37}}

===Post-rectorate period===
After the failure of Heidegger's rectorship, he withdrew from most political activity, but remained a member of the [[Nazi Party]]. In May 1934 he accepted a position on the Committee for the Philosophy of Law in the [[Academy for German Law]], where he remained active until at least 1936. The academy had official consultant status in preparing Nazi legislation such as the [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg racial laws]] that came into effect in 1935. In addition to Heidegger, such Nazi notables as [[Hans Frank]], [[Julius Streicher]], [[Carl Schmitt]], and [[Alfred Rosenberg]] belonged to the Academy and served on this committee.

In a 1935 lecture, later published in 1953 as part of the book ''[[Introduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger)|Introduction to Metaphysics]]'', Heidegger refers to the "inner truth and greatness" of the Nazi movement, but he then adds a qualifying statement in parentheses: "namely, the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity". However, it subsequently transpired that this qualification had not been made during the original lecture, although Heidegger claimed that it had been. This has led scholars to argue that Heidegger still supported the Nazi party in 1935 but that he did not want to admit this after the war, and so he attempted to silently correct his earlier statement.{{sfn|Habermas|1989|pages=452–54}}{{efn|See also [[J. Habermas]], "Martin Heidegger: on the publication of the lectures of 1935", in [[Richard Wolin]], ed., ''The Heidegger Controversy'' ([[MIT Press]], 1993). The controversial page of the 1935 manuscript is missing from the Heidegger Archives in [[Marbach am Neckar|Marbach]]; however, Habermas's scholarship leaves little doubt about the original wording.}}

In private notes written in 1939, Heidegger took a strongly critical view of Hitler's ideology;{{sfn|Heidegger|2016|loc=§47}} however, in public lectures, he seems to have continued to make ambiguous comments which, if they expressed criticism of the regime, did so only in the context of praising its ideals. For instance, in a 1942 lecture, published posthumously, Heidegger said of recent German classics scholarship, "In the majority of "research results," the Greeks appear as pure National Socialists. This overenthusiasm on the part of academics seems not even to notice that with such "results" it does National Socialism and its historical uniqueness no service at all, not that it needs this anyhow."{{sfn|Heidegger|1996b|pages=79–80}}

An important witness to Heidegger's continued allegiance to Nazism during the post-rectorship period is his former student [[Karl Löwith]], who met Heidegger in 1936 while Heidegger was visiting Rome. In an account set down in 1940 (though not intended for publication), Löwith recalled that Heidegger wore a swastika pin to their meeting, though Heidegger knew that Löwith was Jewish. Löwith also recalled that Heidegger "left no doubt about his faith in [[Hitler]]", and stated that his support for Nazism was in agreement with the essence of his philosophy.{{sfn|Wolin|1991}}

Heidegger rejected the "biologically grounded racism" of the Nazis, replacing it with linguistic-historical heritage.{{sfn|Wheeler|2020|loc=[https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/heidegger/#OnlGodSavUs §3.5]}}

===Post-war period===
After the end of World War II, Heidegger was summoned to appear at a [[denazification]] hearing. Heidegger's former student and lover [[Hannah Arendt]] spoke on his behalf at this hearing, while [[Karl Jaspers]] spoke against him.{{sfn|Maier-Katkin|2010|page=249}} He was charged on four counts, dismissed from the university and declared a "follower" (''[[Mitläufer]]'') of Nazism. Heidegger was forbidden to teach between 1945 and 1951. One consequence of this teaching ban was that Heidegger began to engage far more in the French philosophical scene.{{sfn|Janicaud|2015}}

In his postwar thinking, Heidegger distanced himself from Nazism, but his critical comments about Nazism seem scandalous to some since they tend to equate the Nazi war atrocities with other inhumane practices related to [[Rationalization (sociology)|rationalization]] and [[industrialisation]], including the treatment of animals by [[factory farming]]. For instance in a lecture delivered at Bremen in 1949, Heidegger said: "Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs."

In 1967 Heidegger met with the Jewish poet [[Paul Celan]], a concentration camp survivor. Having corresponded since 1956,{{sfn|Lyon|2006|page=66}} Celan visited Heidegger at his country retreat and wrote an enigmatic poem about the meeting, which some interpret as Celan's wish for Heidegger to apologize for his behavior during the Nazi era.{{sfn|Anderson|1991}}

Heidegger's defenders, notably Arendt, see his support for Nazism as arguably a personal " 'error' " (a word which Arendt placed in quotation marks when referring to Heidegger's Nazi-era politics).{{sfn|Murray|1978|pages=293–303}} Defenders think this error was irrelevant to Heidegger's philosophy. Critics such as Levinas, [[Karl Löwith]],{{sfn|Löwith|1989|page=57}} and Theodor Adorno claim that Heidegger's support for Nazism revealed flaws inherent in his thought.

====''Der Spiegel'' interview====
On 23 September 1966, Heidegger was interviewed by [[Georg Wolff (journalist)|Georg Wolff]], a former Nazi, and [[Rudolf Augstein]] for ''[[Der Spiegel]]'' magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. ("[[Only a God Can Save Us]]" was published five days after his death, on 31 May 1976.){{sfn|Augstein|Wolff|Heidegger|1976|pages=193–219}} In the interview, Heidegger defended his entanglement with Nazism in two ways. First, he claimed that there was no alternative, saying that with his acceptance of the position of rector of the [[University of Freiburg]] he was trying to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and thus had to compromise with the Nazi administration. Second, he admitted that he saw an "awakening" (''Aufbruch'') which might help to find a "new national and social approach," but said that he changed his mind about this in 1934, when he refused, under threat of dismissal, to remove from the position of dean of the faculty those who were not acceptable to the Nazi party, and he consequently decided to resign as rector.{{sfn|Augstein|Wolff|Heidegger|1976|pages=193–219}}

In his interview Heidegger defended as [[double-speak]] his 1935 lecture describing the "inner truth and greatness of this movement." He affirmed that Nazi informants who observed his lectures would understand that by "movement" he meant Nazism. However, Heidegger asserted that his dedicated students would know this statement wasn't praise for the [[Nazi Party]]. Rather, he meant it as he expressed it in the parenthetical clarification later added to ''Introduction to Metaphysics'' (1953), namely, "the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity."{{sfn|McGrath|2008|page=92}}

The eyewitness account of Löwith from 1940, contradicts the account given in the ''Der Spiegel'' interview in two ways: that he did not make any decisive break with Nazism in 1934, and that Heidegger was willing to entertain more profound relations between his philosophy and political involvement. The ''Der Spiegel'' interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation comparing the industrialization of agriculture to the extermination camps. In fact, the interviewers were not in possession of much of the evidence now known for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies.{{efn|The 1966 interview published in 1976 after Heidegger's death as {{cite magazine |title=Only a God Can Save Us |url=https://archive.org/stream/MartinHeidegger-DerSpiegelInterviewenglishTranslationonlyAGodCan/Heidegger-derSpiegelInterview1966 |magazine=[[Der Spiegel]] |date=1976-05-31 |pages=193–219 |translator=William J. Richardson}} For critical readings, see the {{Citation |title=Special Feature on Heidegger and Nazism |url=https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/issue/winter_1989_v15_n2/ |journal=Critical Inquiry |year=1989 |volume=15 |issue=2 |edition=Winter 1989 |doi=10.1086/ci.15.2.1343581}}, particularly the contributions by [[Jürgen Habermas]] and [[Maurice Blanchot|Blanchot]]. The issue includes partial translations of [[Jacques Derrida]]'s ''Of Spirit'' and [[Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe]]'s ''Heidegger, Art, and Politics: the Fiction of the Political''.}} Furthermore, ''Der Spiegel'' journalist Georg Wolff had been an [[Hauptsturmführer|SS-Hauptsturmführer]] with the [[Sicherheitsdienst]], stationed in Oslo during World War II, and had been writing articles with antisemitic and racist overtones in ''Der Spiegel'' since the end of the war.{{sfn|Janich|2013|page=178}}

====The Farías debate====
[[Jacques Derrida]], [[Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe]], and [[Jean-François Lyotard]], among others, all engaged in debate and disagreement about the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his Nazi politics. These debates included the question of whether it was possible to do without Heidegger's philosophy, a position which Derrida in particular rejected. Forums where these debates took place include the proceedings of the first conference dedicated to Derrida's work, published as "''Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980''", Derrida's "''Feu la cendre/cio' che resta del fuoco''", and the studies on [[Paul Celan]] by Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, which shortly preceded the detailed studies of Heidegger's politics published in and after 1987.

==== The Black Notebooks ====
In 2014, Heidegger's ''[[Black Notebooks]]'' were published although he had written in them between 1931 and the early 1970s. The notebooks contain several examples of [[anti-Semitic]] sentiments, which have led to reevaluation of [[Martin Heidegger and Nazism|Heidegger's relation to Nazism]].{{sfn|Inwood|2014}}{{sfn|Assheuer|2014}} An example of Heidegger using anti-Semitic language he once wrote "world [[Judaism]] is ungraspable everywhere and doesn't need to get involved in military action while continuing to unfurl its influence, whereas we are left to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people". The term and notion of "world Judaism" was first promoted by the anti-Semitic text [[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]] and later appeared in Hitler's infamous book ''[[Mein Kampf]]''.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Oltermann |first=Philip |authorlink=Philip Oltermann|date=2014-03-13 |title=Heidegger's 'black notebooks' reveal antisemitism at core of his philosophy |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/martin-heidegger-black-notebooks-reveal-nazi-ideology-antisemitism |access-date=2023-11-07 |issn=0261-3077 |archive-date=30 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231130063910/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/martin-heidegger-black-notebooks-reveal-nazi-ideology-antisemitism |url-status=live}}</ref> In another instance Heidegger wrote "by living according to the principle of race [Jews] had themselves promoted the very reasoning by which they were now being attacked and so they had no right to complain when it was being used against them by the Germans promoting their own racial purity".<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Mitchell|first1=Andrew J.|authorlink=Andrew J. Mitchell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aUUyDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT218&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false|title=Heidegger's Black Notebooks: Responses to Anti-Semitism|last2=Trawny|first2=Peter|authorlink2=Peter Trawny
|date=2017-09-05|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|isbn=978-0-231-54438-2 |language=en |access-date=26 November 2023 |archive-date=28 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231128001246/https://books.google.com/books?id=aUUyDwAAQBAJ&dq=by+living+according+to+the+principle+of+race+&#91;the+Jews&#93;+had+themselves+promoted+the+very+reasoning+by+which+they+were+now+being+attacked+and+so+they+had+no+right+to+complain+when+it+was+being+used+against+them+by+the+Germans+promoting+their+own+racial+purity.%E2%80%9D&pg=PT218 |url-status=live }}</ref> However, in the notebooks there are instances of Heidegger writing critically of [[Biological racism]] and biological oppression.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Escudero |first=Jesús Adrián |authorlink=:es:Jesús Adrián Escudero|date=2015 |title=Heidegger's Black Notebooks and the Question of Anti-Semitism |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/ESCHBN |access-date=2023-11-07 |journal=Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual |volume=5 |pages=21–49 |doi=10.5840/gatherings201552 |language=en |archive-date=13 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230513095146/https://philpapers.org/rec/ESCHBN |url-status=live }}</ref>{{sfn|Wheeler|2020}}

A notable entry in the notebooks are his writings about his mentor and former friend Edmund Husserl specifically relating to Husserl Jewish heritage. In 1939, only a year after Husserl's death, Heidegger wrote in his ''[[Black Notebooks]]'':

<blockquote>the occasional increase in the power of Judaism is grounded in the fact that Western metaphysics, especially in
its modern evolution, offered the point of attachment for the expansion of an otherwise empty rationality and calculative capacity, and these thereby created for themselves an abode in the "spirit" without ever being able, on their own, to grasp the concealed decisive domains. The more originary and inceptual the future decisions and questions become, all the more inaccessible will they remain to this 'race.' (Thus Husserl's step to the phenomenological attitude, taken in explicit opposition to psychological explanation and to the historiological calculation of opinions, will be of lasting importance—and yet this attitude never reaches into the domains of the essential decisions[....].){{sfn|Heidegger|2017|pages=67–68}}</blockquote>

This would seem to imply that Heidegger considered Husserl to be philosophically limited by his Jewishness.<ref>[[Donatella Di Cesare|Di Cesare, D. E.]], ''Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks'' ([[Cambridge]]: [[Polity (publisher)|Polity]], 2018), [https://books.google.com/books?id=kg1rDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT123&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=true pp. 123–125].</ref>{{rp|123–125}}