in January 1946, of the two accounts of his visits to the Master, which, as we have seen—despite their intrinsic interest—were exceedingly subjective, anecdotal, and overly partial or imprecise concerning the facts as well as the meaning to be given to them. With the publication in Les Temps modernes, in November of the same year, of a rich text by Karl Löwith,17 the scope of the debate widened and its philosophical level improved. This was the case for two reasons: Löwith, who was a powerful personality, was a close friend of Heidegger’s,18 and his testimony was firsthand; moreover, he set forth a thesis that was meant to reach the core of the question while confronting the Sartrean interpretation: there is indeed a real and even profound connection between Heidegger’s thought and his political failure.
This connection is striking, according to Löwith, when one compares the end of Being and Time (in particular section 74 on “The basic constitution of historicality”) and the political discourses of 1933: there is a consonance between them that is due to the fact that the former presents a “theory of historical existence” and of “resolute decision” in the face of “current events” while the latter accomplishes the application of this philosophy according to the historicist perspective of existentialism. According to Löwith, against academic and cultural intellectualism, Heidegger developed the pathos of a heroic radicalism that had religious connotations (partly inspired by Pascal and Dostoyevsky), but that opened onto a real nihilism: “The inner nihilism, the ‘national-socialism,’ of this pure Resolve in the face of nothingness, remained at first hidden beneath certain traits that suggested a religious devotion.”19 The point was absolutely not to claim that the end of Being and Time was automatically leading to Nazism; Löwith remarked, in fact, that “Heidegger’s disciples were surprised by his decision,” for “he had almost never expressed his opinion about political matters.”20 For Löwith, the correspondence between Heidegger’s philosophy and the national-socialist political adventure is at once deeper and more concealed: on the one hand, it is the significant (and possibly, alas, inspired) symptom of an evil that eats away at the German spirit, reflecting the crisis of that time (the “disastrous intellectual mind-set”);21 on the other hand, the fact that Heidegger’s involvement is not a common one and, in this sense, is more radical than any “ordinary Nazism.” Löwith praised, incidentally, the philosophical quality of the “Rectoral Address,” while noting its extreme ambiguity.22 One of Heidegger’s students had put this ambiguity in a nutshell, saying: “I am resolved, only toward what I don’t know” (people were in doubt as to whether one should start reading the pre-Socratics or enlist in the SA!23).
Hence this severe statement, which represents the core of the interpretation: “Given the significant attachment of the philosopher to the climate and intellectual habitus of National Socialism, it would be inappropriate to criticize or exonerate his political decision in isolation from the very principles of Heidegger’s philosophy itself.”24 Yet, where one could expect the verdict to be a complete condemnation and the rejection without appeal of this work, Löwith’s position,
17. Löwith, “The Political Implications of Heidegger’s Existentialism,” 167–185. Many important passages of this account can be found in the same author’s book, My Life in Germany before and after 1933: A Report, trans. Elizabeth King (London: Athlone Press, 1994).
18. Löwith was a close friend of Heidegger and did his “Habilitation” with him. See My Life in Germany, 44–47. See also Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 168–175.
19. Löwith, “The Political Implications of Heidegger’s Existentialism,” 172.
20. Ibid., 175.
21. Ibid., 178.
22. Ibid., 176.
23. Ibid., 172, 176.
24. Ibid., 182.