Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Translation Pete Ferreira
No other thinker of the last century has irritated such a large number of diverse intellectuals in such a permanent and stimulating way as Martin Heidegger. Even half a century after his death, this passionate opposition still runs through every level of Heidegger's work, as well as the historical commentaries on his life.
Critics, for example, consider the ever-mentioned closeness to nature (it is from the "wild storm of snow" of his Black Forest hut that "the high point of Philosophy" departs) to be unbearable existential kitsch, while committed ecologists celebrate the anticipation of their own highest principles under the concept of a "dwelling", understood as a harmony with the landscape, which must precede the "building", and then also summarily appropriate Heidegger's complicated reflections on "technique" as mere hostility to it. Having been around all his life, the reflection on "care" — implicitly placed as a dimension of life that takes shape in women — as a substitute for (supposedly masculine) "action", earned him a certain prominence among feminist philosophers, above all for countering the controversial argument that thinking without the horizon of an action would be tantamount to renouncing any claim political. Finally, on a more general level, Heidegger's attempt to suspend the tradition of European philosophy since Plato under the suspicion of forgetting the real question of the "self-discovery of being" and to reformulate it as the history of a decadence became, for generations of readers, both a path of intellectual succession and a reason for radical rejection.
All these themes were controversially kept alive by a language shaped by the expressionist style of the 1920s. Since Heidegger never hesitated to invent new terms for situations whose philosophical relevance he believed only he could intuit, he relied less on clear definitions than on readers' readiness to follow his insinuations and word games. For example, no one knew precisely — and still does not know — what Heidegger meant by the formulation of the “self-unveiling of being,” so that fellow philosophers, such as Theodor W. Adorno, began to suspect that he was cultivating a “jargon of authenticity” permeated by fascist notions. Heidegger's devotees, on the contrary, understood this murmuring of his sentences as indicative of a prophetic call — and sometimes even went so far as to continue his thinking with significant steps in other directions.
The ambivalences are given in advance by Heidegger's work. An initial phase, in which familiarity with the world itself was supposed to take the place of an objectively scientifically based reference, was followed, after a drastic “turn,” by the hope of the later years of experiencing “events” of absolute revelation of the truth. Above all, however, Heidegger's membership in Adolf Hitler's party between May 1933 and May 1945 undermined the credibility of his thinking as a whole for many readers of philosophy—to such an extent that, to this day, his staunch supporters still try to minimize the resulting problems. Against all these disputes, Jacques Derrida made, more than thirty years ago, the disturbing observation that Heidegger's Nazism was indisputable, and that for this very reason this question should lead to another, completely different one, which is whether Heidegger "could have become the greatest philosopher of his time without this affinity." This remains, even today, the ultimate provocation in the sense of maintaining a strict contrast between ideological-political rejection and potential intellectual appreciation.
In fact, a look at history reveals a peculiar synchronism between Heidegger's movement of thought and the ideological movement of Nazism, which, it is true, does not cancel out the value of his philosophy, but perhaps explains why, in this case, inspiration is hardly obtained without irritation. Heidegger's intellectual identity emerged from two striking breaks with the state of affairs of post-1900 academic philosophy , which had his mentor from Freiburg, Edmund Husserl, as its major figure. Both steps are inscribed in Being and Time, from 1927, the most famous of the few texts that Heidegger published in book form. The debates between his colleagues had led to the certainty that the material reality of things as "objects" was no longer tangible to consciousness as the pure, intellectual "subject" of knowledge. In this context, he first exchanged the concept of consciousness for that of "being-there", a conception of the human being that should include its body and bring it closer again to things. In the second place, this meant that, in place of the growing distance between "subject" and "object" — which Heidegger called a relationship of "subsistence" — a relationship of familiarity was established between the bodily human being and the things that surround him, for which he proposed the term of "ready-to-hand". However, as the bodily being-there has itself become part of the world of things, this results not only in a relationship of familiarity, but also in a loss of independence of people from the world. In the final pages of Being and Time, Heidegger describes this consequence as the "call" of individual life, which would consist of "the happening of the community of the people". Here was his closeness to an early German fascism and the trust in "Blood and Soil" as the foundation of the community, a closeness that also explains his enthusiasm for Hitler's "seizure of power" as a "call of the people" and his readiness to contribute to the "national renewal of knowledge" as rector of the University of Freiburg.
However, in Heidegger's lectures in the early 1930s, the search for a more rigid conception of truth that would replace “ready-to-hand” as mere familiarity with the world becomes clear. This productive philosophical uncertainty was exacerbated, first of all, by the “failure of the rectorate” in the face of the Nazi authorities, who never really took Heidegger's extravagant ideas for the university seriously. Then, in July 1934, Hitler's “Night of the Long Knives” resulted in the suppression of the “Blood and Soil” mentality represented, above all, by the SA, in which Heidegger had placed his trust. In the lecture “Introduction to Metaphysics,” which followed that summer, he dared to observe that the national movement was "in danger of straying from its path" and, at the same time, began to develop the idea of a “self-unveiling of being” as an "event of truth," which differed radically from “ready-to-hand” as familiarity with the world. Now it was a matter of a showing of things for which people could still give the necessary space only through their “serenity,” and in this sense, it was a vertical-hierarchical representation of absolute truth that resembled the claims of the SS elites, who were turning politically and ideologically toward the center.
Those who, despite everything, are willing to engage with Heidegger's thinking will see how the intuition of the "self-unveiling of being" opened up an alternative to the philosophically exhausted pattern of “subject” and “object.” The more one knows about the origin of this thinking, the more evident its affinity with Nazi ideology becomes. It was precisely this tension between philosophical importance and ideological contamination that, after 1945, became linked to Heidegger's status at the University of Freiburg. As a former Nazi, he was unable to return to his chair, but his lectures were famous and, therefore, overcrowded.
In 1968, the emblematic year of the student revolution, my girlfriend in Freiburg invited me to the summer party of the Philosophy department. My girlfriend was too important for me to refuse, but as a proud member of the Student Socialist League, I negotiated the condition that I would not have to shake hands with Heidegger, whom I imagined to be a figure of terror in world history. At 79 years of age, he himself took a friendly stroll among the students at the ceremony, greeting them with a slightly shaky handshake — including me. I felt no sense of indignation, only a feeling of personal banality that returned a few years ago when I saw handwritten copies of a rhyming poem that Heidegger had given to those who congratulated him on his 80th birthday.
Back in 1968, I asked myself the question — which at the time was answered with a resounding “no” — whether reading Heidegger's writings was essential for a complete intellectual life. Today, the answer, quite different, is that after a long period of intellectual enthusiasm in my generation for the idea of reality as a “social construct,” and therefore after the height of “constructivism,” which shows convergences with the “ready-to-hand” of the early Heidegger, a new need for consistent concepts of truth has emerged; and that the writings of the second Heidegger — the Heidegger after the “turn” — are convergent with this need.
Of course, it cannot be a matter of simply adopting concepts such as “self-unconcealment of being,” because — as has been said — there is no consensus on what exactly Heidegger meant by them, and even extensive interpretations do not lead to a final clarification. Rather, what proved inspiring was an attitude that was probably at the root of the enthusiasm of Heidegger's colleagues in Freiburg in 1969 — and it has to do with his exalted language. He was admired for his ability to discover eccentric possibilities of thought in reading the classics, and even more for his attempt to articulate them in words that in no way satisfied the laws of elementary logic or the criteria for transparent definitions. Heidegger's deviation from tradition, which often points in new directions of reflection, can thus act for us — perhaps totally against his intention — as a first impulse toward independent thinking. This also applies, paradoxically and increasingly, to the much-criticized lack of conceptual conciseness, provided it is understood as an opportunity to transform it into intellectual openness and autonomous thinking. Heidegger's texts are, for these purposes and for those readers who can at least overlook the irritations of his biography, still good.
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht - Expressionism of Being