Rowan G.

Tepper
Prof. Axel Honneth
PL 838: Intersubjectivity: Hegel to Present
12/13/2005

The Dialectic of Authenticity:

Intersubjectivity, Care and Politics in Being and Time

§Preliminary Remarks§

The twin questions of politics and the social have veritably consumed

contemporary Heidegger scholarship since evidence of his remarkable complicity with

the Nazi regime emerged in the nineteen-eighties. Even before broaching the question in

earnest, we seem to be torn between a defense of the man and his thought or a wholesale

condemnation and rejection of him and his thought. In accordance with the former

option, it would seem to be the case that one must demonstrate the occasionally and

opportunism of his (temporary) alliance with National Socialism and concomitantly, the

lack of connection between his thought prior to his ascension as rector of Freiburg

University in May of 1933 and his political involvement. On the other hand, if we are to

condemn and reject Heidegger, it would seem to be the case that a link between his

thought and politics would constitute the most damning of evidence and justification. To

be glib: Must we burn Heidegger? The thesis that I am to advance here asserts that this is

a baldly false opposition; that, despite a deep structural analogy between his thought in

Being and Time and his political involvement, the political consequence is in fact

incidental, and moreover due to an erroneous transposition of the dialectic of authenticity

into the communal domain that is by no means necessary.

I will focus on key passages from Being and Time, notably sections 26-7, 39, 41

and 44 in the context of the politicization evident in an address given November 11th,

1933 by Heidegger in support of the upcoming plebiscite. I will show that because the
selfhood of Dasein is grounded in Mitdasein through Fürsorge, Heidegger illegitimately

transposed the structures of Dasein to Mitdasein leading to his conservative politics. Care

must be seen as the crucial structure for the relationships between theory and praxis, and

self and community. The reason for the illegitimate transposition is initially unclear until

we see the Hegelian dialectical deep structure in Being and Time, which only emerges in

the etymological examination of Heideggerian terms of art: This is to say that there is a

structural dialectic that is evident most clearly in the interrelation of the terms bearing the

prefixes ver-, ent- and er-, which in this sequence constitutes the structural dialectic of

which I write; particularly with regard to entscheiden and entschlossen, which mark the

passage from everydayness to authenticity or inauthenticity. Once all cards are on the

table it will become clear that the transposition of these structures, particularly that of

decision to the intersubjective, results in a political decision with regards to community

that is grounded solely in that mode of being that Heidegger so disparaged as das Man.

§Care as the Site of Intersubjectivity and the Theory-Praxis Relation§

Sections 26 and 41 indicate care as the locus of the relations of intersubjectivity

and theory/praxis, respectively. The fact that care constitutes the structural locus of

Dasein's relationship to others, in general, is telling: the constitution of intersubjectivity

in care seemingly overdetermines the underdeveloped relationship of theory to praxis, to

which Heidegger devotes a mere two paragraphs:

As a primordial structural totality, care lies “before” every factical “attitude” and “position” of Da-
sein, that is, it is always already in them as an existential a priori. Thus this phenomenon by no
means expresses a priority of “practical” over theoretical behavior. When we determine something
objectively present by merely looking at it, this has the characteristic of care just as much as a
“political action,” or resting and having a good time. “Theory” and “praxis” are possibilities of
being for a being whose being must be defined as care.

The phenomenon of care in its totality is essentially something that cannot be split up; thus any
 attempts to derive it from special acts or drives such as willing and wishing or urge and
predilection, or of constructing it out of them, will be unsuccessful. 1
This relation is underdeveloped here and not treated at all in the remainder of Being and

Time; we must not immediately and in hindsight see a lapse or deficiency but first,

insofar as we are primarily concerned with Being and Time, recall Dominique Janicaud's

claim that “since there is no politics in Being and Time, there is an 'apolitics'... Dasein is

apolites,”2 but also in the same breath his claim that apoliticism and politicization are, by

the logic of Heidegger's text, complementary. This claim is bolstered by the already cited

passages from Being and Time: insofar as theory and praxis are mutually founded in care,

the divergent practical attitudes of the political and the apolitical, too, are on the very

same ontological plane, i.e. derivative of the existentiale structure of care. The

indetermination with respect to the priority of theory and praxis has as its correlates the

indetermination with respect to the relative priorities of subjectivity and intersubjectivity,

everydayness and authenticity. The reason for this indeterminacy will be elucidated

shortly; however, at this moment we must turn to the text of sections 26 and 27 to see the

ambiguity and asymmetry of the intersubjective constitution of Dasein in care.

The problem is fundamentally rooted in Dasein's peculiar constitution as neither

vorhandene nor zuhandene. Whether one's own Dasein, the Dasein of an other, or

Mitdasein is considered either vorhandene or zuhandene, this regard reduces Dasein to

the objectivity of a thing. Furthermore:

The world of Da-sein thus frees beings which are not only completely
different from tools and things, but which themselves in accordance
with their kind of being as Da-sein are themselves “in” the world as be-
ing-in-the-world in which they are at the same time encountered. These
beings are neither objectively present nor at hand, but they are like the
1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), pg.
180, German pg. 193
2 Dominique Janicaud, The Shadow of That Thought, translated by Michal Gendre (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press. 1996), pg. 37
 very Da-sein which frees them – they are there, too, and there with it.
So, if one wanted to identify the world in general with innerworldly be-
ings, one would have to say that the “world” is also Da-sein.3

Thus Heidegger skirts the perennial question of analytical philosophy as to the existence

and experience of other minds, through an appeal to their being neither vorhanden nor

zuhandene, and just as importantly by their common being-in a world, the having of

which defines their mode of being as Dasein. By this token it is patently impossible to

doubt that others are of the same ontological nature as oneself – action and reference to

the same world in which Dasein dwells implies a common mode of being: Mitdasein, for:

The world of Da-sein is a with-world. Being-in is being-with others.

The innerworldly being-in-itself of others is Mitda-sein.4

This is due largely to the fact that other Dasein are not those over and against whom

Dasein differentiates itself, but rather those from whom Dasein eminently does not do so.

In this way Heidegger argues that intersubjectivity as Mitdasein is, in fact, closer

to hand than solitary subjectivity. Dasein is absorbed in Mitdasein by virtue of its

closeness, hence:

One's own Da-sein initially becomes “discoverable” by looking away

from its “experiences” and the “center of its actions” or by not yet “see-
ing” them all. Da-sein initially finds “itself” in what it does, needs, ex-
pects, has charge of, in the things at hand which it initially takes care
of in the surrounding world.5

Dasein thus initially finds itself in care for innerworldly beings. The modality of this self-

finding is, however, far from unconditioned. Insofar as Dasein finds itself in terms of

things as such, Dasein finds itself determined by the mode of being of things, whether

conceived as objective presence, vorhandensein, or as a useful object, zuhandensein. This

3 Heidegger Being and Time, pg 111, German pg 118

4 Ibid, pg 112, German pg 118
5 Ibid, pg 112, German pg 119
gives rise to a self-conception not as Dasein, but rather in terms of a metaphysics of

presence or in terms of utility, both of which constitute positions rejected by Heidegger.

Thus, Dasein must rather look toward and care for beings of the same ontological

nature as itself in order to find itself as Dasein. If Dasein must look to innerworldly

beings in order to find itself, Dasein must turn toward others in their Mitdasein if it is to

discover itself. Accordingly,

Being-with existentially determines Da-sein even when an other is not

factically present and perceived. The other can be lacking only in and
for a being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with, its pos-
sibility is a proof for the latter.6

The recognition of solitude always already implies Dasein's rootedness in Mitdasein for,

as has already been demonstrated, Dasein initially finds itself in that toward which care is

exercised in the world.

Because Dasein initially finds itself in a mode determined by that for which it

cares and is emphatically neither vorhandene nor zuhandene, in order for Dasein to be

what it is, it must find itself in the care for other Dasein. For caring for things in the mode

of Besorge is “a character of being which being-with cannot have as its own... [it] is a

being toward beings encountered in the world... taking care of things.”7 This means that

Dasein is not with things encountered in the world in the same manner as it is with other

Dasein as Mitdasein. This divides the world as such into two worlds that do not coincide

in their co-belonging: the world of present or useful things and the definitively social

world of Mitdasein. And while the world of things may be ontogenetically prior to the

with-world of Mitdasein, the latter is ontologically prior insofar as “Mitda-sein

characterizes the Da-sein of others in that it is freed for a being-with by the world of that

6 Ibid, pg 113, German 120

7 Ibid, pg 114, German pg 121
being-with. Only because it has the essential structure of being-with, is one's own Da-sein

Mitda-sein as encounterable by others.”8

The social world is thus that which imparts freedom and the capacity for decision

and authenticity to Dasein. This point is the necessary concomitant to Heidegger's

rejection of the metaphysical subject as objectively present; for as he writes, others are

not encountered as detached subjects but as being-in-the-world just as Dasein itself. The

questions follow: “What kind of sociality is indicated here?” and “What does the primacy

of the social imply with regard to selfhood and authenticity?”, both of which find their

answer in the analysis of the modes of Fürsorge and will lead us back to the political.

§Le Souci et le Soi§

This modification of the title of the third volume of Michel Foucault's History of

Sexuality is intended to be indicative of an important implication of Heidegger's emphasis

on the foundation of Dasein in Mitdasein. That is, it is by means of practical engagement

with the world and with oneself, in care, that selfhood arises. As we have seen, Dasein

inevitably confuses itself for an isolated, substantial subject as long as it merely takes

care of useful or present things (Besorge). It is in the structural relation of Fürsorge9 that

Dasein finds itself qua Dasein, which evinces the essentiality of alterity to selfhood – it is

essential, as a former professor put it, because alterity is “that without which Dasein

could not be what it is.”10

The passage from the insufficient mode of Besorge to Fürsorge is marked by the

fact that “the being to which Da-sein is related as being-with does not, however, have the

8 Ibid, pg 113, German pg 121

9 Alternately translated as either concern or solicitude. In the interest of clarity, I will leave Fürsorge
untranslated, as with other terminological elements whose interrelations and nuances would be obscured
in translation.
10 I borrow this phrasology from the professor with whom I first studied Heidegger, Dr. John Rose of
Goucher College. (Although his is a general definition of essence, unrelated to the specific issue at
hand)
kind of being of useful things at hand; it is itself Da-sein. This being is not taken care of

(Besorgte), but is a matter of Fürsorge.”11 Would that it were so easy to delimit the

differentia of the social as it is to distinguish between Besorge and Fürsorge; it is not at

all the case, and this is to the credit of Heidegger's thought. He initially delineates two

modes of Fürsorge: the deficient and indifferent mode of being-with characteristic of

“everyday and average being-with-one-another,”12 and a positive mode, appropriate to

Dasein as such. This latter mode is differentiated into two further modalities: one which

can “take the other's 'care' away from him and put itself in his place in taking care, it can

leap in for him,”13 and tends to dominate the other and determine his/her being as that of

a thing; whereas the second acts to rather “leap ahead of him... to give it [care] back to

him as such. This fürsorge which essentially pertains to authentic care; that is, the

existence of the other, and not to a what which it takes care of, helps the other to become

transparent to himself in his care and free for it.”14

We should pause here to consider more closely the meaning of Heidegger's

demarcation of these forms of care, especially in the context of his preceding analysis.

The modalities of indifference and leaping in foreclose the possibility of authenticity by

virtue of having either reduced the other - and thereby the self - to the status of present

objects, or by dominating the other and serving as a surrogate for his/her decisions. We

can infer from this that the ethical thought inherent in Being and Time consists in an

injunction to regard the other as another unique self in the world rather than as a merely

present being, and moreover neither to dominate the other nor to instrumentalize the other

in any way. In this injunction, it must be remarked in passing, Heidegger's implicit ethical

11 Ibid, pg 114, German pg 121

12 Ibid
13 Ibid, pg 114, German pg 122
14 Ibid, pg 114, German pg 122
thought is none too far removed from that of his nemeses Horkheimer and Adorno.

Be that as it may, the confluence of these differentia delimits the possibilities of

social being and the social world. The regions of being and world which are thereby

marked out by these possibilities of care are those of Mitdasein. Strikingly, it is the

deficient and indifferent modes which Heidegger privileges, both prima facie and on the

ontological level; the positive modes are exceptional occurrences between which,

“everyday being-with-one-another maintains itself and shows many mixed forms...”15

It becomes apparent then, that positive is not to be understood in a normative sense, but

rather in the sense of activity and productivity: both domination and liberation fulfill this

sense. Thus the positive modes of care can be broadly defined as those modes in which

Dasein breaks with the indifference of the everyday and regards the other as Dasein,

whether in the other's domination of liberation.

Continuing his analysis, Heidegger writes:

As being-with, Da-sein 'is' essentially for the sake of others... In being-

with as the existential for-the-sake-of-others, these others are already
disclosed in their Da-sein. This previously constituted disclosedness of
others together with being-with thus helps to constitute significance,
that is, worldliness.

The disclosedness of the Mitda-sein of others which belongs to be-

ing-with means that the understanding of others already lies in the un-
derstanding of being of Da-sein because its being is being with...
Knowing oneself is grounded in primordially understanding be-
ing-with.16

This prior disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) is thus constitutive of the world of Dasein.

Thus, in terms of world and significance Mitdasein must be accorded primacy over

15 Ibid
16 Ibid, pg 116, German pg 123-4
Dasein, in addition to its constitutive primacy: relevance and significance are conditioned

and determined by Mitdasein, thereby making communication possible. But we have

recently noted that the predominant mode of care is deficient and indifferent; this

indicates that, while this disclosure of other qua Dasein and its part in the constitution of

world permits Dasein to find itself in its own being-with-others-in-the-world, this

disclosure constitutes the merely everyday world and self: the they and the they-self.

This disclosure and the self it reveals is first and foremost Dasein in its fallenness

(verfallenheit) and entanglement (verfängnis) in the they, for “publicness initially

controls every way in which the world and Da-sein are interpreted... [it] obscures

everything, and then claims that what has been covered over is what is familiar and

accessible to everybody.” 17 As the determinant of the everyday world and the they-self

publicness introduces distantiality, averageness, and a “leveling down of all possibilities

of being;”18

all of which mark this disclosedness (erschlossenheit) as a dissimulation (verstellung)

that, in fact, confines Dasein to this disclosure and mode of being as its they-self. Thus in

everyday Mitdasein, Dasein is indeed discoverable as such by others, but only insofar as

it does not “rock the boat,” or more precisely, as long as it does not seek authenticity.

§On The Dialectic of Authenticity and Heidegger's Retreat §

At this point we must return to our leading questions, i.e. the nature of sociality in

its relation to authentic selfhood. In the preceding discussion we have seen that the social

world constituted in care is initially, and for the most part, the everyday world of the

anonymous they, in which all Dasein are reduced to their lowest common denominator.

Thus, the world-disclosure of the they is not a disclosure in the proper sense of

17 Ibid, pg 119, German pg 127

18 Ibid
erschlossenheit as openedness, but rather in the sense of a verschliessung that brings an

artificial closure to Dasein's interpretation of the world and itself. Moreover, this closing-

disclosure of the they-self is grounded in care every bit as much as is the disclosure of

possibilities of being in resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). This closure masquerades as

authentic disclosure inasmuch as it presents innumerable innocuous possibilities that

distract and disperse Dasein. These possibilities, however, remain within the purview of

the they; these possibilities are determined by the they and entrap Dasein in its pre-given

world-disclosure.

Dasein can however, break free from the they and find itself in its dispersion.

This, in turn, requires a turning away from the pre-given world and self-interpretation. To

accomplish this Dasein must again turn away from itself and that which is nearest to

itself. Subsequently (or concurrently) Dasein must, in care, free beings and itself from the

intersubjective pre-disclosure of the world. Heidegger writes:

If Da-sein explicitly discovers the world and brings it near, if it dis-

closes its authentic being to itself, this discovering of “world” and dis-
closing of Da-sein always comes about by clearing away coverings and
obscurities, by breaking up the disguises with which Da-sein cuts itself
off from itself.19

The fundamental asymmetry in the constitutive relation between the authentic self and

Mitdasein comes thus into full focus. Dasein is first constituted as a self qua Dasein in

caring for others, yet this self is primarily inauthentic, quotidian and overdetermined by

its constitution out of the they. Authentic becoming oneself cuts through the

overdetermination by the they and brings to Dasein a new disclosure of world and itself.

The authentic self thereby disclosed is according to Heidegger, “an existentiell

modification of the they as an essential existential.”20

19 Ibid, pg 121, German pg 129
20 Ibid, pg 122, German, pg 130
 This modification is performed by what I will call the cut of authenticity, a

neologism that refers to the root of Heidegger's term Entscheiden, which is alternately

translated as disclosure and as decision. I use cut, rather than the somewhat more

conventional translation of scheiden as separation, in order to emphasize the fact that

Entscheiden cuts both ways. By contrast to the constitutive asymmetry of Dasein,

Entscheiden is the mediating term in the dialectic of authenticity and inauthenticity. In

the passage to authenticity, the cut is at the heart of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) that

brings about authentic disclosure (Erschlossenheit) and also reveals the Erschlossenheit

of the they as a Verschlossung that locks Dasein out of its ownmost possibilities.

Inversely, Dasein as an authentic self may, at any time, be cut off from itself and fall back

into inauthenticity by means of deciding that its task is done, whereupon what was

hitherto an authentic disclosure of self, world and being becomes either vulgarized, or

comes to blind Dasein to its further possibilities.

In designating this modification as a cut, my intent is to shed some amount of

light upon the dialectical deep structures incipient in Being and Time where Hegel is

smuggled in through the back door of language, which is to say that the dialectical triad

consisting of Erschlossenheit, Entschlossenheit and Verschlosenheit is far from unique,

but is rather an extraordinary specimen in its terminological completeness.21 Additionally,

I am suggesting that this cut is operative in Fürsorge insofar as authentic Fürsorge

implies that Dasein must free an other Dasein in its unique existence by means of

21 Often a third term is missing in Being and Time. However, the structural dialectic that has been
sketched out may be completed with minimal violence to language and the text. In general terms, words
beginning with the prefix ent- tend to be mediating terms, words beginning with ver- tend to refer to an
initial, everyday position with generally negative connotation, and finally words beginning with the
prefix er- nearly always refer to the positive result of this mediation, an Aufhebung of sorts. Of course
this is not present in all terms beginning with these prefixes, however, it is found with amazing
consistency among pairs or triplets sharing the same root. Notable examples include Verstellung-
Entstellung-Erstellung, Verfallen-Entfallen, Verscheiden-Entscheiden-Erscheiden, etcetera. It is notable
that in all cases the mediating term does not specify a direction.
severing the bonds of its entanglement in the they. Thus for Heidegger, authentic being-

with implies an excluded quantity of others who still (and perhaps perpetually) exist in

the mode of everydayness.

It is here that the seeds of Heidegger's mistake were sown and took root. With

regard to its account of care and authenticity, Being and Time is shot through with a

tension that may now be made explicit. Put bluntly: the asymmetry inherent in the

constitution of the self of Dasein from out of Mitdasein is incompatible with the

eminently circular and/or reversible character of the dialectic of authenticity. In an early

attempt to resolve this tension in section 39 of Being and Time, Heidegger locates care

not as a particular aspect of Dasein, but as its very being: “Angst provides the

phenomenal basis for explicitly grasping the primordial totality of being of Da-sein. Its

being reveals itself as care.”22 Yet in identifying the being of Dasein with care,

Heidegger makes another Hegelian move insofar as care can (and should) be seen as the

internalization of alterity. This becomes evident in his analysis of care in section 41:

Being-together-with is taking care of things, because as a mode of be-

ing-in it is determined by its fundamental structure, care. Care not only
characterizes existentiality, abstracted from facticity and falling prey,
but encompasses the unity of these determinations of being. Nor does
care mean primarily and exclusively an isolated attitude of the ego to-
ward itself... Care cannot mean a special attitude toward the self, be-
cause the self is already characterized ontologically as being-a-
head-of-itself; but in this determination the other two moments of care,
already-being-in... and being-together-with, are also posited.23

Although internalization preserves the structural integrity of care, it seems to

short-circuit the question of whether authentic sociality is possible and relegates the

social to the status of being that against which Dasein struggles to attain authenticity.

22 Ibid, pg 171, German pg 182

23 Ibid, pg 180, German pg 193
Despite his protestations to the contrary, this is at least implicitly a degradation and

denigration of the social dimension as such. After this point in Being and Time, the place

in the structure of care that was occupied by concrete others in section 26 is replaced in

various ways by an internalized otherness such as the call of conscience and death itself.

In so doing he has made Dasein essentially self-constitutive, with the everyday disclosure

of the world constituting the sole external remnant of the intersubjective constitution of

Dasein's selfhood. Furthermore, this internalized otherness loses its character as other,

insofar as it becomes ownmost to Dasein. In so doing, Heidegger beat a hasty retreat

from the positions he stated some sixty pages earlier, and yet he could not extirpate this

tension completely. For if others still cannot be understood as a projection of Dasein, and

if Dasein preserves the social dimension within it, the constitutive asymmetry remains in

tension with dialectical reversibility. The following, further questions must thereby be

posed: “Why this retreat?” and “Why couldn't Heidegger resolve this tension?”

§Heidegger, Politics and Community§

At this juncture we may propose answers to the questions posed at the end of the

second section of this inquiry. To the question of the nature of sociality grounded in care

we may reply that it is society as a whole which is thereby constituted by Sorge as a

whole, a paternalistic and authoritarian society is constituted in the mode of Fürsorge

where Dasein leaps in for the other, whereas the mode of Fürsorge in which Dasein leaps

ahead would constitute, were it possible, an authentic community bound by friendship

which, according to Robert Dostal in his essay entitled “Friendship and Politics:

Heidegger's Failing,” “is not relevant to his question, the question of being.”24

Accordingly, the underdevelopment of the social and political thoughts in Being and

24 Robert Dostal, “Friendship and Politics: Heidegger's Failing” in Political Theory Vol 20, No 3 (August,
1992) 339-423, pg. 410
Time may be explained by virtue of their tangential connection to the question of Being.

We have already seen that there is a profound tension between the structure and

dynamics of the dialectic of authenticity and inauthenticity and the asymmetry and

univocity evident in the initial positing of the self of Dasein. It would thus seem that the

social dimension would be inhibitive of the achievement of authenticity on the level of an

individual Dasein. We may therefore read in Being and Time a profound mistrust of

socio-political existence insofar as “the ontological field defined by falling away from

authentic selfhood and falling prey to the 'world,' which according to Heidegger is all too

accessible, does correspond to the dimension where rationality, speech, and life become

articulated within a political community.” 25 It would seem that at this point Heidegger

attempts to resolve the tension through a strict segregation that necessitated the

transposition of care from a structure of being-with to a structure of Dasein as such: on

one side the they-self constituted intersubjectively, absorbed in the world; on the other,

Dasein, now solitary, achieving authenticity through a self-absention from the social.

With regard to the questions concerning Heidegger's half-retreat from the social

and the tension present in his thought, let us first recall in passing the paragraph from

section 41 in which Heidegger considers the relationship of theory and praxis in terms of

their mutual definition as “possibilities of being for a being whose being must be defined

as care.”26 This passage will prove to indicate the manner in which Heidegger's

politicization proceeded. Thus with this in mind, we can now turn toward Heidegger's

relatively brief period of politicization following his appointment as rector at Freiburg.

We may find untrammeled evidence of both Heidegger's politicization and the

structural transposition that I claim is illegitimate in an address given on November 11th,

25 Janicaud, pg 38
26 Op. Cit.
1933 in support of the National Socialist regime. Throughout we find pronouncements

that evidence the aptitude of Janicaud's thesis that the danger to which Heidegger

succumbed “may also be characterized as the will to constitute directly an authentic,

existential-ontological politics, as the will to found a politics anew on the ontological

difference alone. This amounts to a wager, because the... political space has literally been

deserted, emptied of all its positive determinations.”27 This is to say that in recoiling from

the socio-political domain, Heidegger was left with little, if any, theoretical armature with

which to think politics. He was thus forced by this lack to directly transpose structures

from his analytic of Dasein to political praxis, which he apparently thought was

legitimate, on the basis of the common foundation of theory and praxis in care.

In this address, Heidegger spoke words that send chills down my spine. These

words are not the “Heil Hitler!” one would expect,28 but rather words of utter political

naivete and idealism couched in the ontological conceptual apparatus of Being and Time.

One term which appears with great frequency in the address is, notably, Entscheiden. Of

Hitler, Heidegger said “He is giving the people the possibility of making, directly, the

highest free decision of all: whether the entire people wants its own Dasein or whether it

does not want it.”29 And Heidegger continued: “This ultimate decision reaches to the

outermost limit of our people's existence. And what is this limit? It consists in the most

basic demand of all Being (Sein), that it keep and save its own essence.”30 And toward the

end of the address, he continued:

...this revolution is bringing about the total transformation of our Ger-

man Dasein. From now, on each and every thing demands decision,

27 Janicaud, pg 40. Emphasis added

28 Which are, in fact, somewhat disconcerting to read, but are hardly the most disturbing.
29 Martin Heidegger, “Political Texts, 1933-1934” Translated by William S. Lewis in New German
Critique , No. 45 (Autumn, 1988), 96-114, pg 105
30 Ibid.
 and every deed demands responsibility. 31

How are we to understand statements such as these? It seems to me apparent that

the over-simplified conception of the social and the political, concomitantly with an

ostensible bridge between theory and praxis found in care, Heidegger had directly

transposed, without change, the structures of individual Dasein as individual to a

collectivist conception of Dasein that supplants the Mitdasein of Being and Time. In so

doing, did Heidegger not make an Entscheidung that cut toward the they and

inauthenticity? Did he not level down and close off his public thought for a time, so as to

participate in the political discourse that hitherto had been derided as Gerede?

Furthermore, did he not banish care from his lexicon at a time when a community

founded in authentic care could have furnished a political alternative to National

Socialism? These questions must be posed, even if they cannot be answered here. They

must resound in their exigency and be taken up once again.

31 Ibig, pg 107
 Bibliography

Robert Dostal, “Friendship and Politics: Heidegger's Failing” in Political Theory Vol 20,
No 3 (August, 1992) 339-423

Martin Heidegger Being and Time, Translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press,
1996)

“Political Texts, 1933-1934” Translated by William S. Lewis in New

German Critique , No. 45 (Autumn, 1988)

Dominique Janicaud, The Shadow of That Thought, translated by Michal Gendre

(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 1996)