Heidegger

From National Socialism to Postmodernism: L with o on Heidegger
Johannes Fritsche
1. Being and Time and National Socialism: Three Interpretations

There are basically three different interpretations of the political content of the notion of historicity1 in Heideggers Being and Time. In my view, it is a matter of right-wing politics. According to the theory of history and politics of rightists at Heideggers time, the Gemeinschaft (community) as the agent of destiny, fate, providence, or God calls upon, with Heideggers notion, the authentic Dasein to give up its autonomy and to subjugate itself to the Gemeinschaft. Already for quite some time, the Gemeinschaft has been more and more pushed aside by Gesellschaft (modern society). But now, in the kairos of World War I and the Weimar Republic, it raises its voice and calls upon Dasein to destroy Gesellschaft and to re-realize the Gemeinschaft. In Sec. 74 of Being and Time, the pivotal section of the chapter on historicity, Heidegger presents as his concept of history a summary of one of the two major strands that sport this right-wing notion. In addition, he inserts into this summary his option for the type of Gemeinschaft that is the main actor in history and which should be repeated, namely, the community of the people (Volksgemeinschaft) as it was also claimed by the National Socialists.2 According to postmodern interpretations, however, authentic Dasein is the relevant actor on the scene; it dis-empowers the unity and continuity not only of the present but also of any past; it does not subjugate to fate but rather chooses, or produces, its fate by itself; and it does so in order to singularize itself. Thus, on the two decisive accounts, my interpretation and the postmodern one could hardly be more opposed to each other. For, first, according to both interpretations, the move leads away from the modern subject. For postmodern interpretations, however, the modern subject is just an instantiation of the inherent collectivism and conformism of the They, and authentic Dasein moves away from it to postmodern singularization while, in my view, it moves from the autonomy of the subject to the subjugation under a collectivity (or, politically speaking, from liberalism and Social Democracy to National Socialism). Second, in terms of temporality, postmodern interpretations assert that futurality is the dominant mode of the three dimensions of time, inasmuch as it is in the name of the future that Dasein breaks with the They in order to free singularity. In my view, however, at the end of the drama of historicity, the past or, in Heideggerian terms, Gewesenheit (having-been-there) prevails inasmuch as it claims its repetition against a fixation on the future and against a corresponding denial of Gewesenheit, as which Heidegger interprets Gesellschaft and its notion of progress. Postmodern interpretations normally respond, explicitly or implicitly, to an interpretation whose proponents Habermas, Richard Wolin, and, in Germany at least, many others see Heidegger as entangled in the decisionism of empty resoluteness3 : In the chapters on conscience and resoluteness in Being and Time (Secs. 5466), Heidegger leads Dasein out of the They and Daseins relations to others into the realm of resoluteness and authentic decision. In Sec. 74 of the chapter on historicity, he wants to offer to Dasein possible contents for its choice. However, on the way out of the They, Dasein has become world-less and does not find a way back. It opposes any subjugation and chooses its own fate, but Heidegger is
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incapable of offering any criteria for such choices. Therefore, Dasein is trapped in the no mans land of empty decisionism, which collapses into conformism as the only way out of it and back to a world. Thus, in 1933 Heidegger could not but become a National Socialist.4
2. L with as the Originator of the Postmodern Heidegger o

Two things are obvious about the empty-decisionism interpretation. First, for postmodernists it takes no effort to get from it to their interpretation. For from their vantage point, only those who are still entangled in modern or otherwise metaphysical thinking will take for granted that a theory of decision has to offer criteria for choices whereas Heideggers heroic greatness consists precisely in his effort to liberate Dasein from the dominance of universals and to open up the space of postmodern singularization. Second, the postmodern interpretation probably strongly recommends itself also to any observer at the sidelines. For, one just cannot imagine that Heidegger was as mindless as he looks according to the emptydecisionism interpretation: he wanted to develop, at the highpoints of his major philosophical work, a theory of authentic decision but failed, and he even did so in such a way that his theory collapsed into the opposite of his intention, namely, into conformism. As though this would not be enough, he obviously did not notice this failure not even when in 1936 in Rome almost ten years after the publication of Sein und Zeit he said to Karl L with that o of all the things that can be said about Being and Time was precisely that it was the basis of his decision for National Socialism, and not just Being and Time in general, but even its notion of historicity in particular.5 Notably, L with is the inventor of the empty-decisionism o interpretation.
3. Agenda and Structure of the Paper

Inasmuch as one can transform very smoothly L withs empty-decisionism interpretation o into the postmodern one and, as a matter of fact, should do so just to save Heidegger as a philosopher6 L with is also the originator of the postmodern Heidegger. Curiously o enough, he has commented upon his interpretation in ways that one would probably not expect. It is in 1940, in a Japanese essay on European nihilism, that he speaks for the first time in print of Heideggers substantial adherence to the National Socialist attunement and manner of thinking to claim to explain in the same essay Heideggers political decision for National Socialism on the basis of the principle of his philosophy,7 i.e., on the basis of the principle of Being and Time. At the end of this essay, he notes that a critique of ones teacher, such as his of Heidegger, is often also a critique of oneself since it signifies the pupils act of distinguishing and separating himself from his own past, which has been conditioned by his teacher.8 For the second time, he has published his interpretation, in a French translation, 1946 in Les temps modernes. In a private letter that has not been published so far, he labels this essay a defense of Heidegger.9 Also to elucidate these remarks and as an indirect defense of my own interpretation of Being and Time, I show five things in this paper, namely, a) how L with developed his emptyo decisionism interpretation; b) that, in the light of his peculiar philosophical and political premises and his assumptions about Heidegger up to 1933, this interpretation suggested itself and did indeed look, despite its objective lack of probability, wholly convincing to him; c) that, as far as all this can be done in one paper, L withs interpretation is wrong; d) that o L withs report about the conversation in Rome 1936 in no way rules out my interpretation; o
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and e) how already L with himself has turned his empty-decisionism interpretation into the o postmodern one. More in detail, I present, to the degree necessary, for my point a) (4) the parallels and differences between L with and Heidegger in the 1920s and later, (5) the constant factors o in L withs interpretations of Heidegger before and after 1933,10 (6) his interpretation of o Heidegger before 1933 and (7) the one after 1933 (i.e., the empty-decisionism interpretation) to show my point b), namely, that (8) the latter did indeed look evident and convincing to him. As to my point c), I give (9) a general assessment of L withs interpretation and (10) o refute his interpretation of the notions of conscience and resoluteness in Being and Time. For my point d) I take up (11) his conversation with Heidegger in Rome 1936. Finally, for my point e) I (12) return to an aspect of Sections 4 and 5 namely, the later L with and (13) o present L withs Heidegger essay from 1948 to finish with a summary of the entire paper in o light of L withs own comments on his interpretation. o
4. L with and Heidegger in the 1920s and Thereafter o

As Habermas and others have observed, the philosophical theory of the mature L with has, o in all his critique of Heidegger, the same structure as Heideggers theory of the history of Being. According to both L with and Heidegger, the occidental history since ancient Greece o is a downward plunge and decay; humans turn away from an objective presupposition of their lives that they had originally recognized as such; they turn away from it and ignore it. According to both L with and Heidegger, this objective presupposition is the nature (physis) o that was addressed by the pre-Socratic Greeks, or which articulated itself through them, and according to both of them this presupposition somehow continues to exist, in the background, after its disappearance. According to L with and Heidegger, in the 20th century mankind has o reached the extreme of the decay, and both of them hope, in a way, that, in this extreme, the original nature will, in one way or the other, resurface again. Sharing this frame of the history of the Occident, L with and Heidegger differ in their interpretations of the original nature. o For, according to Heidegger it is Being as nature and unconcealment while for L with it is o nature as cosmos.11 Comparable similarities and differences hold for the Heidegger of Being and Time and the student L with. In the 1920s, L with practiced phenomenology in Heideggers sense;12 he o o understood, like Heidegger himself, this phenomenology as a destruction of the philosophical tradition, in particular the modern philosophy of the subject;13 and he, too, regarded modern bourgeois society as a decay from which the humans would be cured through a repetition of a past.14 In other words, not only the young Heidegger, but the mature Heidegger, and the mature L with adhered to the notion of history that I have characterized as rightist, but the o young L with also used key elements of it.15 As to the differences between Heidegger and o L with, the young L with already appealed, against Being in Heidegger, to nature though o o to the nature of humans and not yet a cosmic one.16 The other similarities and differences will become clear when one considers the constant factors in L withs interpretations of o Heidegger.
5. The Constant Factors in L withs Interpretations of Heidegger o before 1933 and after 1933
When, in Being and Time, Heidegger discusses modern philosophy, the philosophy of the subject, his point is usually that it approaches philosophical problems from the vantage point
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of Vorhandenheit (being-present-at-hand-ness). In addition, as I have shown, he uses on a very general but, for his purposes, entirely sufficient level the theories, widespread at his time, of community and society. In a nutshell, according to conservatives and rightwingers, a community is a whole that unites all the respective individuals, and thus there is a common cause, whereas in society there is no whole and no common cause but only egoism, competition, and the conformity of the They.17 It is on this second point that the young L with focused on. In pre-modern Europe, there was something common a universal or o an ensemble of universals. But under the spread of egoism and the increasing isolation of the individuals from each other in modernity, this universal vanishes more and more, and along with it change the values related to it until, at the end, they all will have completely disappeared.18 Throughout his career, L with has also assumed that there is a development in philosophy o that corresponds to the gradual disappearance of the universal and of the values in real history;19 in the footsteps of Nietzsche he has always labeled these two movements as nihilism;20 and he has always regarded existential philosophy which begins with Schelling, the Left-Hegelians, and Kierkegaard, is continued by Nietzsche, and finds its culmination in Jaspers and Heidegger as the last phase of the philosophical nihilism.21 An individual is concerned about his or her existence, facticity, or self-preservation. In times of still efficient universals, this existence is embraced by these universals, and an individual human being understands himself or herself in terms of them.22 In existential philosophy, the individual turns back upon itself, relates itself to itself, and withdraws from the dominant universals in order to achieve a new ground for its existence, namely, a different universal or a particular or singular ground.23 Both nihilisms the one in real history and the one in philosophy move toward the vanishing point that all universals, common grounds, and particular grounds have disappeared, and no new ground offers itself or can be chosen. Thus, in the vanishing point the individual understands itself exclusively in terms of its facticity and existence and asserts this existence against other individuals, or against nothingness, without any positive reference to universal or particular reasons outside of this existence itself precisely because all such grounds have disappeared.24 Throughout his career, L with has regarded the notions of resoluteness and authenticity o as the centre of Being and Time.25 He has always interpreted them as the act in which Dasein relates to itself, withdraws from all the relations and contexts that it has shared with others up to that point, and also distances itself from the values that have been prevalent in these contexts in fact, Dasein catapults itself out of the world into worldlessness.26 This move takes place in the chapters on conscience and resoluteness (Secs. 5662). Since 1942, L with has also taken into account the chapter on historicity (Secs. 7277) and applied his o interpretation of Secs. 5662 to that chapter.27 Through its choice, Dasein is supposed to bring itself back into the world but, because of the lack of any criteria, it does not manage to do so.28 More specifically, L with distinguishes nine aspects in these sections on cono science, resoluteness, and historicity. 1) In the process of achieving and maintaining authenticity, Dasein is, from the beginning to the end, concerned exclusively about its own self.29 2) Authentic Dasein is, ultimately, isolated and without any relations to other Dasein,30 it is world-less, without a world.31 For, withdrawing from the They 3) it has to self-assert itself in the face of nothingness and against that nothingness32 since 4) death is the highest authority in the entire happening,33 and 5) death accords primacy to futurality.34 6) Dasein chooses its own fate all by itself.35 However, in the light of 7) the empty formalism, without any content, of Being and Time36 and 8) the absence of any criteria and concrete possibilities for the choice37 it cannot choose anything, and its futurality remains empty. Whence, 9) the
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question of Being is reduced to Daseins naked facticity, from which Dasein in Heidegger as in contrast to the existentialists and nihilists before him can no longer liberate itself.38 Of this concept of individuation L with has always assumed that it is a radicalization of o Kierkegaards notion of the individual,39 and that Heidegger has reached the vanishing point o of nihilism.40 Furthermore, L with has always talked of active nihilists,41 those nihilists who actively push forward the process of the disappearance of the grounds and values as in contrast to all those philosophers, or poets, who are irrelevant for this process or are, so to speak, just the site of its manifestation. According to L with, many of these active nihilists o in particular, Nietzsche wanted to overcome nihilism through their active nihilism and gain a new ground beyond the grounds that were operative in the course of nihilism to eventually disappear.42
6. L withs Interpretation of Heidegger before 1933 o

With all this in mind one can probably already imagine L withs interpretations of Heidegger o before 1933 and after 1933. Before 1933, he saw in himself as well as in his teacher active nihilists who wanted to achieve the new ground after the end of nihilism,43 and he had staked on the prospect that if and only if one would have pushed nihilism to its final conclusion, two things would become clear. First, one will as he himself has already managed, and as, in principle, one can also expect from Heidegger, since Heidegger, too, has already reached the vanishing point of nihilism recognize that the existentialist individual that is, the individual that refers to itself to gain authenticity represents in no way the eternal human essence, the conditio humana, but rather the extreme of the bourgeois, the nihilistic subject.44 Second, in the vanishing point of nihilism, the beyond of nihilism will open up, and man will reoccur again in the naturalness that had receded in the background behind the artificiality of civilization and bourgeois society.45
7. L withs Interpretation after 1933: Heidegger the Empty-Decisionist o and National Socialist
After 1933, however, L with believed to recognize four things. First, the authoritarian or dico tatorial regimes that some nihilists had predicted, and on which some of them had staked were not the overcoming of nihilism, and the modern democracies were not its vanishing point rather, National Socialism was that vanishing point.46 Second, it is in no way the case that, in the vanishing point of nihilism, the beyond of nihilism appears, at least not in a politically powerful way.47 Third, Heideggers engagement for National Socialism proves that, in the 1920s, L with was right to see in Being and Time the active nihilism that had reached the o vanishing point of nihilism but that he was wrong in taking for granted that Heidegger wanted to overcome nihilism or was capable of doing so.48 Fourth, since National Socialism is the vanishing point of nihilism in real history, and since Being and Time is the vanishing point of nihilism in philosophy, Being and Time and National Socialism belong essentially to each other, and Heideggers practical engagement for National Socialism follows from out of the essence of his philosophy.49
8. The Self-Evidence, for L with, of the Empty-Decisionism Interpretation o

As one can now see, as improbable as the combination of motifs in the empty-decisionism interpretation seems to be it follows naturally from L withs premises and recommends o
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itself as wholly convincing, and Heidegger is not mindless but rather the heroic avantguardian of history. Both bourgeois society and philosophy move toward the vanishing point in which all grounds and values have disappeared and resoluteness is just simply the decision for self-preservation, without any recourse to anything beyond that self-preservation itself. Thus, a kind of logic, consistency, or even historical necessity is at work in the development of bourgeois society as well as in philosophy, one can discern different stages on both lines, and one can class the stages on one line with those on the other. Irrespective of the questions of how these pairings may look in detail and in which way a prior step in philosophy can be regarded as a portent of the final stage of bourgeois society, it is definite that the two vanishing points (the theory in the extreme of the philosophical development and the extreme state of bourgeois society) essentially belong together. And the theory at the vanishing point of the development of philosophy, and no earlier one, essentially belongs to National Socialism. At the same time, at its vanishing point, existentialism or nihilism at least as long as, contrary to the hopes of the young L with, the prospect of its o beyond stays away unavoidably turns into its opposite, and the relation of a nihilistic theory to the ethical and political life within a given They becomes accidental and conformist. In other words, individualism turns into collectivism, and singularization into conformism. For, if in the development of individualism and egoism everything common and all particularities as well disappear, only sheer self-preservation remains, and regarding that self-preservation all individuals are the same. In addition, if in the vanishing point an existentialist theory can no longer offer any content to seize upon, or any criterion to use in ones decision, the choosing individual can no longer distance itself from that which prevails empirically. For, beyond the given empirical circumstances there is nothing that would offer itself to the self-preserving individual as an alternative to them. Thus, an existentialist in the vanishing point has to find self-preservation in what is empirically given, has to become a conformist, which meant in Germany after 1933 to become a National Socialist.50 In the vanishing point, individuals become conformists, and that into which they are pressed is the German Volk, which in turn relates to other peoples and individuals nihilistically, exclusively guided by its own self-preservation and by power. In sum, terminating in empty singularization the authenticity of Dasein in Being and Time collapses and leads, after 1933, directly into the collectivism of the Volk.51
9. L withs Interpretation in General o

One must certainly distinguish analytically between the relation of an individual to itself, the contents of life within a given They, and the possible contents of the choices of authentic Dasein. However, from this distinction it does not follow that bourgeois society and philosophy moved toward the disappearance of all contents. This assumption was the self-evident polar star for the young L with only because, in the spirit of the sort of thinking that pushes o 52 for catastrophes and its Nietzschean maxim, he saw bourgeois society falling just simply because he wanted to push it.53 To formulate his nihilism thesis L with has to ignore all o the self-interpretations of the respective authors and actors and regard their differences as, for instance, from his first text onward54 the ones between Marx and Kierkegaard as immaterial in the light of the supposed single commonality that he deems essential. As a student and active nihilist L with could easily perform those abstractions and negations as o these differences did not matter to him, and he wanted to dismantle them anyway. In this sense, L withs nihilism thesis rests on a cheque that is logically uncovered, and which was o suggested to him by his peculiar youthful radicalism. The same cheque made him also miss
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the mark regarding Carl Schmitt. In the 1935 essay in which he formulated the essential tie between empty decisionism and National Socialism as the vanishing points of the two o nihilisms for the first time,55 L with quotes Schmitts famous sentences: The political can draw its power from the most varied domains of human life, from religious, economic, moral, and other oppositions; it does not designate a subject area of its own, but instead simply designates the degree of intensity of an association of human beings, whose motives can be of a religious, national (in the ethnic or cultural sense), economic, or other kind. At different times these motives give rise to different commitments and divisions.56 From these sentences one can only infer that it is in no way necessary that it is always one and the same opposition say, the one between Catholicism and Protestantism that dominates politically. According to L with, however, for the analyzed actors and for the analyst as well o all oppositions and determinations beyond sheer existence become immaterial.57 Furthermore, L withs nihilism thesis and his interpretation of National Socialism is o definitely wrong regarding the public image promoted of Hitler and the National Socialist Party.58 Even if it were right regarding the esoteric understanding of any individual, or group, of the party, and even if it were right regarding the National Socialists from an external point of view, it would still not follow that nihilism was all what modern European history was about. In addition, even if the latter were the case, it would not follow either that Heidegger was in the vanishing point of philosophy. Apparently, just simply because L with regarded o himself as an individualist decisionist, he self-evidently ascribed Heidegger to that same tradition, as well. However, regarding the issue of politics and historicity Heidegger thought like the collectivist decisionists, so to speak, of which I have adduced the Scheler before his turn59 and Hitler.60 For, Heidegger certainly does not prescribe to any empirical Dasein its decision.61 However, he marks the realm out of which in general [. . .] the possibilities [can] be drawn upon which Dasein factically projects itself,62 namely, community or, rather, Volksgemeinschaft as in contrast to society, and he does so within his summary of one of the two basic strands of right-wing politics at the time. As a matter of fact, Heidegger takes up the motifs of the bourgeois-individualist tradition. However, he does so, as I show in the next section, from the beginning on within the framework of the bourgeois-collectivist tradition. As to the details of L withs interpretation, his nine points regarding Being and Time (see o above, Section 5), I have briefly laid out the script of the entire drama of historicity as it is part of the structure of the whole book of Being and Time,63 and I have analyzed in detail the course of action in its last act, in Sec. 74. L with misses that, in Sec. 74, the community of the o people raises its voice from out of the past and calls for its re-realization and the subjugation of Dasein.64 Thus, at least in the section on historicity Dasein does not circle round itself in empty arbitrariness. Rather, Heidegger prescribes a criterion. Therefore, of L withs nine o theses the last five the primacy of futurality, the notion that Dasein chooses its own fate all by itself, the content-less formalism of Being and Time, the absence of all criteria and possibilities for choice and decision, and the primacy of naked facticity are wrong. As I show in the next section, it is not different with the first four theses, namely, that Dasein itself is the centre of the entire drama of historicity, the worldlessness of authentic Dasein, the self-preservation against nothingness and death, and death as the highest authority.
10. The Call of Conscience and Resoluteness in Being and Time

The chapters on conscience and resoluteness in Division Two of Being and Time stand in between the chapter on historicity as the culmination of the entire book close to the end
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of Division Two and the chapter on the They in Division One, one of the chapters and sections in Division One that contribute to the sense of falling and downward plunge in that Division.65 Inasmuch as authentic Dasein steps out of the They, the sections on conscience and resoluteness are the turning point toward the recovery of Dasein, and as such they set the stage for the last act of the drama of historicity, for Sec. 74. As I have already shown, in the passage on care as concern66 in the section on the They, Heidegger conceives of liberal society as the deficient mode of concern, and this deficient mode leads into the first of the two positive modes of concern, namely, into social welfare, the welfare state, the telos of history for Social Democrats.67 This downward plunge of liberal society into a social democratic society is brought to a halt by the second positive mode of concern, obviously the communitarian one, which liberates Dasein from society.68 Correspondingly, at the beginning of Division Two of Being and Time in the section on conscience, Heidegger criticizes as the vulgar interpretation of conscience i.e., as the one from which authenticity liberates Dasein the business-model of conscience i.e. pay what you owe and be free (of guilt, obligations, etc.)! and the universalism of Enlightenment; politically speaking, liberalism.69 Whence, one knows already at that point that the journey leads, politically, out of society to the right. Thus, L with is of course right with his first assumption that, in its authenticity, Dasein is o concerned about itself. However, from this sentence it does not follow that as L with and o many postmodern interpretations assume authentic Dasein does nothing but singularize itself and distance itself from other Dasein, is the centre of the entire drama of historicity, and is, as L with says in his second assumption, outside of any world and isolated from o all contexts and relations to others. In the passage on concern, Heidegger says about its second positive mode the communitarian one, the one that leads out of society that the collective/joint practical engagement/work/devotion/dedication for the same cause70 of the Dasein is determined by their authenticity, and he speaks of an authentic alliance.71 Dasein is essentially being-with,72 and this essential being-with is covered up by society. This is exactly what Heidegger says in Sec. 74 itself:
But if fateful (schicksalhafte) Da-sein as being-in-the-world exists essentially in being-withothers, its occurrence is an occurrence-with and is determined as destiny (Geschick). With this term, we designate the occurrence of the community, of the people (der Gemeinschaft, des Volkes). Destiny is not composed of individual fates (Schicksalen), nor can beingwith-one-another be conceived of as the mutual occurrence of several subjects. These fates (Schicksale) are already guided beforehand in being-with-one-another in the same world and in the resoluteness for definite possibilities. In communicating and in battle the power of destiny (des Geschickes) first becomes free.73
As to L withs second assumption namely, Daseins worldlessness it is indeed the case o that, when raising its voice, the community of the people as the agent of destiny cancels the possibilities that had been sanctioned and offered by the ordinary world. However, as I have already shown,74 the authentic possibilities dont come out of the blue. Rather, destiny brings them in, and it brings them in as a repetition of the past. As Heidegger emphasizes in Sec. 74 itself, they have already been present in the ordinary world itself, present as suppressed possibilities, suppressed by this ordinary world, and he has developed already in the section on the They that a They can actively select possibilities and suppress other ones.75 Thus, in, and in between, society and the community of the people and moving from the spirit, values and norms of the former into those of the latter authentic Dasein does not nihilistically reject all possible possibilities but rather reevaluates existing ones. This reversal of evaluations is a move from one world into a different one or even just a kind of u-turn within one and the
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same world. In any case, it is definitely not a move out of the world into the no mans land of worldlessness, and authentic Dasein does not leave any of the structures that, for Heidegger, make up Daseins worldliness.76 Thus, in the section on the They, a common cause and an authentic alliance are promised, in the section on conscience an authentic Dasein calls upon Dasein which, as such, is essentially being-with and in Sec. 74 the Volksgemeinschaft the agent of destiny and the common cause that contains in itself the individual fates and gathers them into the One that it itself is raises its voice and calls for its re-realization and Daseins subjugation. Whence, at no point is Dasein catapulted into worldlessness. This is the case not only in the two sections that frame the sections on conscience and resoluteness but also in the latter themselves. Against the business-model of guilt, Heidegger interprets guilt as being the (null) ground of a nullity,77 as a guilt that cannot be repaid and as the obligation to take over ones ground over which one does not have power.78 Whatever else Heidegger means with these formulas, they include the necessity to acknowledge that Dasein is essentially not the autonomous person, or subject, modern society and Enlightenment philosophers have claimed. Heidegger emphasizes also in this context that, in gaining authenticity, Dasein does not leave the world and the other Dasein but changes its relations to the others.79 While, in society, the other is encountered as a means, as a competitor, in indifference, or in distrust,80 resoluteness pushes [Dasein] into that being-with the others in which it is concerned/caring about the others.81 That which calls Dasein forth is not death but rather Dasein itself,82 and Dasein runs forward into death only after the call of conscience.83 The call demands a move that follows quite a complicated choreography. For, ordinary Dasein is oriented toward an ordinary or inauthentic future, and the call calls Dasein back from this orientation by calling it backward, but it does the latter by calling Dasein first into the possibility that cannot be bypassed, into the authentic futurality, the one of Daseins death (and, after its move backward, Dasein has to move forward to cancel society).84 Heidegger maintains that Dasein displays resistance against the call, perverts it, and does not want to listen to it,85 and he talks of those who want to have conscience as in contrast to those who dont.86 The latter dont run forward into death, and only the former do. Thus, to run forward is a sign that Dasein does not resist the call (or no longer does so) but properly opens itself for it.87 Heidegger says:
But running forward does not evade the impossibility of bypassing death, as does inauthentic being-toward-death, but frees itself for it. Running forward and becoming free for ones own death frees one from ones lostness in chance possibilities which impose themselves, and it does this such that only now the factical possibilities that lie before the possibility not-to-be-bypassed can be authentically understood and chosen. Running forward discloses to existence as its extreme possibility to give up itself and thus shatters all ones clinging to whatever existence one has reached. . .As the nonrelational possibility, death individualizes, but only, as the possibility not-to-be-bypassed, in order to make Dasein as being-with understand the potentialities-of-being of the others. Because running forward into the possibility not-to-be-bypassed at the same time discloses all the possibilities lying before that possibility, this running forward includes the possibility of taking the whole of Dasein in advance in an existential way.88
Death does not lead into the vacuum of absence of any possibility. Rather it makes visible new possibilities, and it does so because it makes possible a reevaluation of the existing ones. Heidegger speaks in this context of a borderline-situation (Grenzsituation).89 In a borderline-situation, by definition, one has at least, in the German language90 not left the
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region that is enclosed by the border. Dasein has not left its world. Rather, it reconsiders its world from a standpoint within that world itself, and it has moved close to the border of that world because it has obeyed the call through which it itself has called itself from within itself and its world. Thus, death and nothingness are not, as L with has it, the highest authority o and the end, outside of any world, of a dead end street but rather the purgatory at the border of the world through which Dasein has to pass to cleanse itself of the spirit of society. Dasein moves toward the border of its world not spontaneously but in obedience to the call, and the fact that it passes through the purgatory shows that it properly obeys the call.91
11. L with and Heidegger in Rome 1936 o

During a conversation near Rome in 1936, L with told Heidegger that he was of the opinion o that Heideggers
partisanship for National Socialism lay in the essence of his philosophy. Heidegger agreed with me without reservation, and added that his concept of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) formed the basis (die Grundlage) of his political engagement. He also left no doubt about his belief in Hitler. He had underestimated only two things: the vitality of the Christian churches and the obstacles to the annexation of Austria. He was convinced now, as before, that National Socialism was the right course for Germany; one only had to hold out long enough. The only aspect that troubled him was the ceaseless organization at the expense of vital forces.92
This is followed by the longest part of L withs report about the entire conversation and the o only detailed one, namely, the part on their conversation about Streicher. Also in light of the variety of topics, the few words on the role of Being and Time most probably indicate that neither L with nor Heidegger did elaborate in which way, in their opinion, Being and o Time and the notion of historicity was the basis of Heideggers engagement. The word Grundlage may be used in the sense of a relatively neutral basis that can support several, more or less different things. However, at Heideggers time as well as today it is used also, if not in the majority of cases, in the sense of a very specific basis, designed for one single purpose, that excludes all other possible ones, and it is definitely used that way in a positive answer to a question regarding an essential tie.93 I dont know of any interpretation of Being and Time, other than mine, that fulfills this criterion of such an essential connection.94 Thus, Heidegger probably thought of something like my interpretation while L with had o his own one in mind. Since they didnt tell each other their respective interpretations, they didnt notice how divergent they were. Whence, the way was open for L with to apply his o interpretation of Schmitt from 1935 also onto Heideggers Being and Time as he did in 1940 and 1946 and, referring not only to the sections on conscience and resoluteness but also to the one on historicity, in 1942/3 and in 1953.95 One implication of L withs interpretation o concerns Heideggers self-interpretation after his Kehre (turn),96 the other one I develop in the remainder of my paper.
12. The Later L with o

In a private letter to L with, Cantimori calls L withs essay from 1946 wicked, but beauo o tiful. L with responds, in a letter of January 9, 1948: Why wicked? At bottom, it is a o defense of Heidegger.97 The wording of these sentences perhaps does not exclude that the thought was a whim of the moment. Still, the issue at stake is serious. In addition,
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the essay from 1946 is identical with the text in L withs autobiography from 1940. Thus, o in 1948 L with had had eight years time to assess his interpretation. Independent of such o considerations L withs response to Cantimori fits very precisely not only into his general o philosophical development after 1935 but even into his philosophical doings around 1948 in particular. In 1935, when L with, as was already mentioned, formulated for the first time the eso sential tie between empty decisionism and National Socialism, he had, philosophically and politically, many options. He could have reevaluated his dismissal of modern Western Enlightenment as mere decline and nihilism and could have made, like Scheler, a turn from the right to the centre.98 He could have also reconsidered his dismissal of the remedies that all those active nihilists who had not yet reached the vanishing point of nihilism had proposed.99 In other words, he could have modified, more or less substantially, or even given up, the nihilism of his youth. However, as was already indicated above, he did not do so but rather continued it. This is already shown by the empty-decisionism interpretation itself. For, Heideggers philosophy belongs essentially to National Socialism because both Heideggers philosophy and National Socialism are the most advanced positions within the development of nihilism, namely, its vanishing point, philosophically and in reality. In order to continue his nihilism L with had to cleanse it of its activism.100 This meant, in o general, that he turned into the skeptical wise man of which he would become famous.101 More in particular, it meant that he made a decision between the allies and heroes of his youth, a decision for Heidegger and against the other ones. For, besides Heidegger there had also been Feuerbach102 and the young Marx, or original Marxism.103 In a certain respect, Feuerbach, Marx, and L with himself even had had a lead over Heidegger since they had o already put the existentialist individual into perspective. However, National Socialism was not the beyond of nihilism, and, after 1945, it had come and gone without that bourgeois society, or nihilism, had disappeared. Thus, their lead over Heidegger turned out to have been their navet , and the realism of Heidegger was vindicated even though it had made e Heideggers theory and Heidegger himself collapse into National Socialism. L with sacked o his former allies in two ways. First, since the essay on Carl Schmitt104 he has always maintained that the Left-Hegelians did not represent philosophy and theory but rather its degeneration and destruction. Second, L with claimed that, philosophically, only Heideggers position was consistent. In the famous o book from 1949, Meaning in History, he intends to demonstrate the impossibility of an autonomous philosophy of history.105 For, modernity has no substance of its own to develop a universal. What is more, it unavoidably squanders the substance that is has taken over, and on which it is living. Modernity is already the second step away from the beginning, from the eternal cosmos of the pre-Socratic Greeks. The Judeo-Christian belief of a created world has rendered the cosmos contingent, and it has inflicted onto thinking futurality as the dominant dimension of time.106 Modern philosophy of history cannot but squander the substance it has taken over from the Judeo-Christian religion for it intends to realize within historical time what, within the original belief system, is promised, not as an event or state within historical time, but as the time of salvation of which there are, in historical time, at best signs, and which will be after all historical time.107 L with has two kinds of descriptions for the two-steps o plunge into time and history. One is borrowed from Platonic and Aristotelian theory of soul: the deeper one has fallen the stronger the lower parts of the soul are. Thus, for L with in o modernity the lowest parts have fully taken over, and he characterizes modernity exclusively through striving for gain and striving for power.108 The other one is about consistency. L with maintains that modern philosophy of history combines contradictory intentions and o
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aspects (the endless time of the Greek cosmos and the finite Judeo-Christian time, creation and non-creation, etc.),109 and that, therefore, after the pre-Socratic cosmos and the revealed Judeo-Christian religion of creation there is left for the universe only one aspect: the sheer contingency of its mere existence.110 In other words, only three philosophical positions are logically consistent, namely, the pre-Socratic cosmos, the revealed Judeo-Christian religion, and though he sometimes attributes the aforementioned contradictions or similar ones also to Heidegger Heideggers nihilism at the vanishing point (for, under the condition of sheer contingency there is no possibility of arguing about decisions and criteria). As he already says in an essay on Heidegger in 1948, I think it would be very difficult to refute the so-called nihilism of existential ontology, on theoretical as well as moral grounds, unless one believes in man and world as a creation of God or in the cosmos as a divine and eternal order in other words, unless one is not modern.111
13. L withs Interpretation in 1948: Heidegger the Postmodern o

Right at the beginning of this essay from 1948, L with says that he shall not enter the o discussion of Heideggers Nazism,112 and he insists that of the three existentialists it is neither Jaspers nor Sartre but rather Heidegger who has the priority.113 For, Heidegger is more modern and radical, he rejects the whole enterprise of metaphysics in the traditional sense,114 and his existentialism is uncompromisingly wordly.115 L with tells o again the story of existentialism,116 this time around with a part, referring to Gilsons book on Thomism, on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.117 His thesis is that existentialism is shaping, with ultimate logic, the basic mood of modern mans worldly existence. We are all existentialists for we are all modern.118 L with characterizes modernity as an epoch of dissolution of former beliefs and certaino ties, of contingency and finiteness.119 At the end, he points to a certain development in the later Heidegger120 and to the persuasiveness of a leap into the only alternatives to Heideggerian existentialism, namely, the Jewish and Christian faith and the immutable natural order of the pre-Socratic cosmos, for one cannot wish to remain forever nailed on the cross of contingency, absurdity, and total displacement.121 However, we cannot choose not to be modern.122 L with regards here as the marks of modernity characterizations that o post-modernists usually reserve for post-modernity, and it does not matter much whether one has reached a point zero, as L with maintains, through the gradual fading of a substance that o one has illegitimately appropriated or, as most post-modernists assume, through an epochal break. One just has as L with himself, in his way, already encourages us to do to recognize o behind the fear of the absence of any criteria for decision and action, the joy of no longer being bound by any universal. Besides, several postmodernists sustain, like Heidegger and L with themselves, their flirtations with the pre-Socs or theology anyway. o Meaning in History is evidently an elaboration and rationalization of the belief of the young L with the active nihilist L with that no position before the vanishing point of o o nihilism is worth to be upheld. As in contrast to the 1920s, however, in Meaning in History even most of his former allies fall under the verdict of that subjectivism, autonomism, and nihilism which he had wanted to overcome through his active nihilism, and Heidegger alone is left as a consistent philosopher. This is already part of L withs third interpretation of o Heidegger, the one of 1948, which is, like the first and the second one, predicated on the assumption that Heidegger is the most advanced philosopher and at the vanishing point of nihilism. For, after 1945 regular nihilism has returned, and Heideggers philosophy is the only one that lives up to this condition.
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The empty-decisionism interpretation is in three respects a defense of Heidegger. It shows that he is the most advanced philosopher, and it is a stepping-stone on the way to demonstrate that he is the only consistent modern philosopher. Having leveled the field that way, it finally makes us look through our prejudices and realize that he is the only one who is on a par with the world historical situation. When L with responded to Cantimori, he was finishing, o or had just finished, the texts in which he brought home the second and the third aspect, namely, Meaning in History and the 1948 essay. Thus, he will have thought of all three aspects when he used the word defense. In contrast to Habermas and Wolin, L with o himself has already transformed the empty-decisionism interpretation into the postmodern one, and he could do so because, again in contrast to Habermas and Wolin, throughout his career, he has entertained the very enmity against modernity and its universalism that enables postmodernists to transform the empty-decisionism interpretation into their interpretations. L with has withheld the wisdom of his third Heidegger interpretation from the audience in o Germany. For, the 1948 essay was published only in English, in an American journal123 a fresh start of the Heidegger for the New World.
NOTES 1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. J. Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 341369, Secs. 7277; historicality (Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], 424ff.); Geschichtlichkeit (Sein und Zeit, repr. of the 9th edition [T bingen: Max Niemeyer, 1972], 372ff.). In quotes, square brackets indicate u changes of position of verbs, etc. (e.g., [can]), German words in regular brackets are my insertions of the original German wording, English phrases with J.F. attached and in regular brackets my comments, and all italics are with the respective authors. I dont indicate my changes of the English translations that I quote and any flaws (in my view) in the translations that I just refer to. Not all of L withs texts that I use are o translated into English though there are three English translations of one of them (see below, n. 9). 2. See Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heideggers Being and Time (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999) and the summary Ibid, 124142 (136ff. for Heideggers option for the Volksgemeinschaft). Liberals and leftists assumed that not destiny but rather reason or the forces of production ruled history, and they opposed any repetition of a past community but staked on progress of society (see Ibid, 6871, 149173 [mainly on Luk cs], and passim). For a a contemporaneous leftist critique of the liberal and leftist notion of progress see Tillich (Ibid, 173187) and for other modifications of the leftist notion at that time Ibid, 150152, 296f., n. 5. Rightists had two problems. First, which of the assumed communities in the past should be repeated (one of the two Kaiserreich, the Vikings, etc.)? I discuss, besides Heidegger, Hitlers option for the Volksgemeinschaft (Ibid, 7187, and passim) and Schelers option for the European, or world-wide, Christian love-community, the Catholic church (Ibid, 87124, 127f., 136138, and passim) (for a rightist notion, at Heideggers time, that does not aim at the repetition of a past community see Ibid, 305307 n. 28). Second, how should the relevant past be repeated? According to conservative rightists (Ibid, xii), it should be repeated the way it had been real when it was real (no electricity, etc.!) while revolutionary rightists (Ibid, xii) maintained that its re-realization should incorporate achievements in the first place, modern technology and private property of the means of production on a large scale that, historically, have emerged in modernity but which are, in the eyes of these rightists, not essentially tied to society. Hitler (Ibid, 70, 127ff.), Scheler (Ibid, 70, 127ff.), and Heidegger (Ibid, 134136 with the references to Ibid, 767) were all revolutionary rightists. Sec. 74 of Being and Time does not summarize all rightists (revolutionary as well as conservative ones) but is as brilliant a summary of revolutionary rightist politics as one could wish for (Ibid, xii; see 136 and passim). Thus, in Sec. 74 Heidegger formulates what is common to positions as different as Schelers and Hitlers, and into this summary he builds his option for National Socialism (Ibid, 136ff. and passim). Scheler had sufficient conceptual means to distinguish his version of rightist politics from Hitlers and in 1927 he criticized Hitler vehemently, turned to the center, and defended the Weimar Republic; see Ibid, 142148. 3. J rgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge/MA: u MIT Press, 1987), 141.
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4. Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 46ff. (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 7, 207 213, and passim; see also below, n. 6). 5. See below, Section 11. 6. I discuss as the best and most detailed empty-decisionism interpretation Wolin and as representative of the postmodern interpretations in the USA Charles Guignon, Peg Birmingham and, in less detail, Christopher Fynsk, David F. Krell, and Hubert L. Dreyfus (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, viii), and I also show how, for a postmodern, all these postmodern interpretations can easily be derived from Wolin (Ibid, 207215). Wolin adduces as reason of Heideggers decision for National Socialism conformism but also Heideggers conservative attitudes (see Ibid, 207ff.). This motif, as well as Heideggers Kleinb rgerlichkeit (petty-bourgeoisie-ness), occurs also in L with. Since, in my view, Being and Time u o does not collapse into a void that needs to be filled from outside (with conformism, Kleinb rgerlichkeit, u or something else), I can leave aside this issue (for conservative attitudes and the way to a postmodern interpretation, see Ibid, 210ff.). Guignons (Charles Taylorian) interpretation differs relatively much from the other (Derridean) postmodern ones (see Ibid, 713, 207ff., and passim) but I need not discuss here internal differences between postmodern or empty-decisionism-interpretations. 7. Karl L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, trans. G. Steiner, ed. R. Wolin (New o York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 223; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen (S mtliche Schriften 2) a (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1983), 526; see The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, in ed. R. Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 1993), 167197, 182; My Life in Germany Before and After 1933: A Report, trans. E. King (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 42, 60; Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1986), 40, 57. 8. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 289, n. 23; L with, Weltgeschichte und Heilso o geschehen, 529 n. 6. 9. See below, Section 12. As L with (who, as a Jew, lived from 1934 on in Italy, Japan, and the o USA and returned to Germany in 1952) remarks in 1940, in the 1920s he would have never imagined that Heidegger would use Being and Time for the promotion of National Socialism (The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 179; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 220; My Life in Germany, 38; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 36). As a matter of fact, he has presented his thesis of an essential tie between empty decisionism and National Socialism for the first time, in print at least, in 1935, and not with regard to Heidegger but rather to Carl Schmitts theory of the political (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 137159; Heidegger Denker in d rftiger Zeit (S mtliche Schriften 8) (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, u a 1984), 3261). Regarding Being and Time he has developed that same thesis in two chapters (My Life in Germany, 2734, 3444; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 2732, 3242) of an autobiography that he wrote in 1940 but which was published only in 1986, thirteen years after his death. These two chapters, though, were published, with new introductions but otherwise hardly any changes, 1940 in Japanese as part of the essay on European nihilism (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 211225; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 514528) from which I have already quoted and 1946, in a French translation, in Les temps modernes 14 (1946): 343360 (see the English translation, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism) (the second of the two chapters was, shortened, added to editions of the essay on Carl Schmitt after 1940 [Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 159169; Heidegger, 6171]). Whence, there are three English translations of this text from 1940 (The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism; My Life in Germany, 2744; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 159169, 211225). L with deals in it only o with the sections on conscience and resoluteness. The one on historicity he takes on only in an essay on Heidegger and Rosenzweig from 1942/3 (Nature, History, and Existentialism, trans. S. Bartky, J. Daley, ed. A. Levison [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966], 7476; Heidegger, 9698) and in his Heidegger book from 1953 (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 7375; Heidegger, 167170), whose second part contains a different discussion with the same content and conclusion (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 75f.; Heidegger, 170f.) as the one in Mein Leben in Deutschland. Especially since there is not even a single reference to the section on historicity before the essay on Heidegger and Rosenzweig, it is (despite the conversation in Rome 1936) quite possible that he paid closer attention to that section only after 1940. Strangely enough, L with has never offered somewhat detailed interpretations of the sections at stake. o He just states his thesis and, before 1933, relates it to Marx, Kierkegaard, and Jaspers (Heidegger, 5ff.) and in his autobiography to Heideggers Rectorate Address, other propagandistic texts of Heideggers, and sweeping statements on National Socialism (The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 175ff., 179ff.; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 215ff., 219ff.; My Life in Germany, 31ff., 34ff.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 29ff., 32ff.; see below, n. 49). Only in the essay on Heidegger and Rosenzweig
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does he follow to some degree the course of the argument in the respective sections (Nature, History, and Existentialism, 6469, 7476; see also Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 7375; Heidegger, 8590, 9698, 167170). 10. Here and in what follows, after 1933 stands for the L with of the empty-decisionism intero pretation of Heidegger (no matter when he got the idea thereof and developed its details), and the later L with refers to that L with up to his Heidegger book of 1953, with only few references to writings after o o 1953. 11. See J rgen Habermas, Karl L withs stoischer R ckzug vom historischen Bewusstsein, in u o u Philosophisch-politische Profile (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 116140 (see 120ff.) or Roberto de Amorim Almeida, Natur und Geschichte: Zur Frage nach der urspr nglichen Dimension abendl ndischen u a Denkens vor dem Hintergrund der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Martin Heidegger und Karl L with o (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1976), 130ff. 12. L with, Mensch und Menschenwelt, 11ff., 43ff. o 13. Ibid, 17ff.; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 5, 30f. 14. L with, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 183; Martin Heidegger and o European Nihilism, 224; My Life in Germany, 43; Heidegger, 7, 16, 31; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 41f. 15. For the rightist notion see above, n. 2. It should be emphasized that, while Heidegger has always adhered to that notion and for some years even stood in its National Socialist corner, L with has never used o all of its elements and, as a student, even had a play leg outside of it. 16. L with, Heidegger, 17, 29f.; see Mensch und Menschenwelt, 12ff. o 17. See Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 68ff., 97ff., 124ff., 274279 n. 25, and passim. 18. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 69f.; Heidegger, 9, 164f. According to o L withs 1940 essay, in the European nihilism the spiritual unity of Europe disintegrates, and Europes o values disappear. At stake is the religious and moral unity of the Christian West (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 181; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 483) the core of whose unity is a kind of shared feeling, willing, and thinking that has developed in the course of Europes history, i.e., a specific way of conceiving and shaping itself and the world (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 174; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 476). This is all that L with tells his Japanese readers about this unity. o According to him, most Europeans or, the vast majority, who are much too busy to know what is ultimately happening (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 192; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 493) interpret Europes modern history as progress. However, at the latest since the beginning of the nineteenth century the knowledgeable among the Europeans (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 192; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 493) had realized that, in truth, it was a decline. In other words, L with follows the rightist concept of history, according to which the modern European o individualism is nothing but egoism (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 191; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 493), democracy leveling (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 208; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 511), and modern technology civilization but not true enlightenment and culture (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 194f., 208; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 496f., 511). A direct line leads from Wittenberg 1519 to Leningrad 1917 for the destruction of the religious and moral unity of the Christian West began with the German Reformation, the destruction of its political tradition with the French Revolution. Its continuation is the Russian Revolution, for Bolshevism is at home in Western Europe, in the Jacobins, and the events of 1789, 1848, and 1917 are part of one movement (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 181; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 483). National Socialism is the culmination of that development (see above what follows and n. 49). L with explains none of these statements, not even o with a single sentence does he refer to the self-interpretation of the respective actors for instance, the universalism of enlightenment philosophers, which he seems to regard as a mere cover-up of egoism and brushes aside the academic philosophy (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 211; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 514). Giorgio Agambens assessment of the political achievements of modern Enlightenment (Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. D. Heller-Roazen [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998], 119ff.) is not dissimilar to L withs, he credits L with for being the first to note the curious contiguity between o o democracy and totalitarianism (Ibid, 121), interprets Heidegger much like L with does (Ibid, 150ff.), and o the L with of the empty-decisionism interpretation would have probably acknowledged Agambens thesis o of The Camp as the Nomos of the Modern (Ibid, 166ff.) as a variant of his nihilism thesis or even as its most explicit and blunt articulation. 19. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 78ff.; Heidegger, 9, 173ff. o 20. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 78; My Life in Germany, 52; Heidegger, 6, o 173, Mein Leben in Deutschland, 50.
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21. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 70ff.; Heidegger, 6, 165ff. o 22. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 41ff.; Heidegger, 2ff., 113ff. o 23. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 71f.; Heidegger, 6f., 166. o 24. L with, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 173; Martin Heidegger and o European Nihilism, 215; My Life in Germany, 31f.; Heidegger, 5; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 30f. 25. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 58; Heidegger, 9, 152. o 26. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 65; Heidegger, 5ff., 86. o 27. See above, n. 9. 28. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 7476; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, o 7375; Heidegger, 9698, 167170. 29. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 62, 75; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, o 252 n. 45, 48, 57, 58, 73f.; Heidegger, 83, 97, 136 n. 7, 141, 150, 152, 168. 30. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 60ff.; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, o 105; Heidegger, 9, 15, 81f, 203. 31. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 49f.; Heidegger, 8, 15, 142f. o 32. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 252 n. 45; The Political Implications of o Heideggers Existentialism, 182ff.; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 223ff.; My Life in Germany, 42ff.; Heidegger, 6, 136 n. 7; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 40ff. o 33. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 57ff., 73, 100f.; Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 174; My Life in Germany, 32; Heidegger, 9, 150ff.; 168, 197; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 31. 34. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 73, 85; Heidegger, 168, 181. o 35. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 75; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, o 73f., 75, 221; The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 179; My Life in Germany, 39; Heidegger, 11, 97, 168, 170; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 37. 36. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 150, 158, 162f., 217; Nature, History, and o Existentialism, 66f.; The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 176; My Life in Germany, 35; Heidegger, 49f., 60, 64f., 88; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 33. 37. L with, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 171f.; My Life in Germany, o 30f.; Heidegger, 43f., 49, 60, 87, 167; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 29f. 38. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 146ff.; 149ff., 215, 219; The Political Implio cations of Heideggers Existentialism, 174, 178; My Life in Germany, 32, 36f.; Heidegger, 1, 5, 10, 44ff., 48ff., 62, 142f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 31, 35. 39. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 38; Heidegger, 5, 8f., 130. o 40. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 71f; Heidegger, 9, 166. o 41. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 146, 224f.; Nature, History, and Existeno tialism, 54; The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 183; My Life in Germany, 43f.; Heidegger, 6, 42f., 74; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 41. 42. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 126f.; My Life in Germany, 161; Heidegger, o 11, 226f., 243; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 150. 43. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 126f.; My Life in Germany, 158; Heidegger, o 1ff., 226f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 147. 44. L with, Heidegger, 15ff.; 27f. o 45. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 54; Heidegger, 16f., 28f., 98. o 46. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 158f., 160f., 165, 219; The Political Implio cations of Heideggers Existentialism, 178; My Life in Germany, 36f.; Nature, History, and Existentialism, 76; Heidegger, 60, 62, 67, 98. 47. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 158f., 160f.; The Political Implications of o Heideggers Existentialism, 178; My Life in Germany, 36f.; Heidegger, 60, 62, 67. 48. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 69f., 126f., 213f.; The Political Implications o of Heideggers Existentialism, 172; My Life in Germany, 30; Heidegger, 164, 226f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 29. 49. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 165, 214f., 219f., 223; The Political Imo plications of Heideggers Existentialism, 172, 173, 179, 181, 182; My Life in Germany, 30, 32, 36f., 41, 42; Heidegger, 67; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 29, 30f., 35, 39, 40. These are L withs formulations o for the essential tie between Being and Time and National Socialism: Heideggers initial attraction and impact on us was not to expect a new system but rather precisely the fact that his philosophical will was, content wise, undetermined and of merely appellative character; was his intellectual intensity and his focus on the one thing that mattered. Only later did it become clear to us that this one thing was in
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reality nothing, a pure resolve, without any determined end. One of the students invented the pertinent joke: I am resolved, only upon what I dont know. The inner nihilism even National Socialism of this naked resolve in the face of Nothing was initially covered up by traits that suggested a religious concern; indeed, at this time (the early 1920s, J.F.) Heidegger had not yet definitely broken with his theological origins (L with: The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 171f.; Martin Heidegger o and European Nihilism, 214; My Life in Germany, 30; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 29). One finds in the first formulation of the idea of historical existence (in a letter of Heidegger to L with o from 1921, J.F.) the seeds of its later tie to the political decision. One just has to step out of the still halfreligious singularization and apply ones ownmost Dasein and its need to decide and act to the ownmost German Dasein and its historical fate in order to convert the utter idle activism of the existential categories (to decide upon oneself, to ground oneself on oneself in the face of nothingness, to will ones fate, and to deliver oneself) into the common instigation of the German existence and to perform destruction now on the terrain of politics (after having already done so on the terrain of philosophy, J.F.). Thus, it is not by chance that, in Carl Schmitt, there is a political decisionism that corresponds to Heideggers existentialist philosophy, and which extends the capacity-for-being-a-whole of ones ownmost Dasein in Heidegger into the totality of the ownmost state. Corresponding to the preservation and affirmation of the ownmost Dasein in Heidegger is the preservation and affirmation of the political existence in Schmitt, to freedom for death in Heidegger the sacrifice of life in the politically paramount case of war in Schmitt. The principle is the same in both cases: the facticity, i.e., that which remains of life after one has done away with all contents of life (L with: The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 173; Martin Heidegger and o European Nihilism, 215; My Life in Germany, 31f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 30f.). Heideggers is a substantial belonging to National Socialism in its essence and doings. For, the spirit of National Socialism is less about the dimension of the national and social than about that radical resolve and dynamics which rejects all discussion and agreement as it counts exclusively on itself, on its ownmost (German) capacity-for-being. Expressions of violence. . . (L with: The Political Implications o of Heideggers Existentialism, 178; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 219; My Life in Germany, 36f.). Heideggers decision for Hitler went far beyond agreement with the ideology and program of the party. He was and remained similar to Ernst J nger a National Socialist at the margin and in isolation u but not, for that reason, without influence. He is a National Socialist just simply in virtue of the radicalism with which he based the freedom of ones ownmost, or also German, Dasein on the manifestness of the Nothingness (What is Metaphysics, p. 20). Even today (1940, J.F.), regarding, say, Hitlers daring decision to risk a war because of Danzig there is no better characterization of it than Heideggers philosophical formula of courage for Angst before nothingness a paradox in which the entire German situation is captured in a nutshell (L with, The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 182; Martin Heidegger o and European Nihilism, 223; My Life in Germany, 42; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 40). The first sentence is ambivalent. It may mean that Heidegger agreed with the ideology and program of the party and with something else as well, but it may also mean that he did not agree with the former but only with the latter. In his response to Waelhenss critique, L with says explicitly the latter and adds that Heidegger was more o ` than a Nazi in the usual sense of the word (R ponse a M. de Waelhens, Les temps modernes 15 [1947]: e 371). 50. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 141, 143f., 156f., 158, 162f., 74ff.; Heidegger, o 37, 40f., 44, 57, 59f., 64, 169ff. 51. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 140, 154, 158, 160f., 162f., 215, 220, 222; o The Political Implications of Heideggers Existentialism, 173, 179, 180; My Life in Germany, 31, 38, 40; Heidegger, 35f., 55, 60, 62, 64, 170; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 30, 36, 38. 52. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 220; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 523. o 53. As in contrast to the Left-Hegelians Nietzsche had a special and marked importance from the days of my youth because he had, like no one else, anticipated the origin and ascendancy of European nihilism and, at the end of the fin de si` cle, began anew, from the scratch. He had dared the bold experiment e to push the will for nothingness ahead so that it had to turn around into the effort to regain the world after the meta- and hyperphysical world had irrevocably become a fable for him (L with, My Life in Germany, o 161; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 150; see also My Life in Germany, 5ff.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 4ff.). Even in February 1936, my own stand on the development in Germany had not yet reached full clarity, and only my book on Burckhardt (1935/6) released me from Nietzsche and the consequences of the Germanic radicalism (My Life in Germany, 51f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 49f.). 54. L with, Heidegger, 1ff. o 55. See above. n. 9. 56. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 277 n. 50; Heidegger, 49 n. 53. o
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57. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 149ff.; Heidegger, 49ff. o 58. See, for instance, Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 7187. 59. Ibid, 87124, 127f., 136138. 60. Ibid, 7187, and passim. I use here the notions of individualist decisionism and collectivist decisionism in the sense in which they are exemplified by L withs Heidegger interpretation on one side o and my own one on the other. In brief, an individualist decisionist is a person who acknowledges no other authority than herself, her project, and her death while a collectivist decisionist knows from the start, or recognizes in the decisive hour, that there is such an authority (destiny, community, the state, etc.), and that it is the primary decision maker in history. Note that decisionism and nihilism are two different issues. Scheler and Hitler were, like other collectivist decisionists, not nihilists in L withs sense. For, the latter o push the will for nothingness ahead (My Life in Germany, 161; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 150) toward the point zero either to stay there or because it is only at that point (and at no point before it) that the past that has been pushed aside by the downward plunge of nihilism can reoccur again. For the collectivist decisionists, however, the point zero is the point of no return, so to speak; the point of chaos, anarchy, or socialism without any hope of a recovery. Fortunately, the hour of destiny strikes at a time prior to the point zero, at a time when the recovery is still possible (as Hitler says, at the eleventh (and precisely not twelfth, J.F.) hour [see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 82]) (see Ibid, 80ff., 87ff., 295ff. n. 5). Nothing in Sein und Zeit suggests that its author was a (collectivist or, as L with himself, individualist) o nihilist in L withs sense but everything fits into the frame of the collectivist decisionism of which Hitler o and Scheler (before his turn) represent two very different species. It is only after his turn that Heidegger can be said to have integrated into his notion of historicity aspects of L withs nihilism. For, the later o Heidegger seems to have assumed that the leap into the epoch of non-metaphysics is possible only after the completion and fulfillment of metaphysics, which has happened in National Socialism and Auschwitz (on some metaphors in this context see Johannes Fritsche, On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger, in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 18, no. 1 [1995]: 111186, where I also show that Heideggers effort was to silence Auschwitz silently [Ibid, 155]). At that point, for both L with and Heidegger the decisive turning o point was no longer just ahead of them, and both of them had given up the peculiar activism of their youth. 61. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 350; Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 383. 62. Ibid. 63. Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 29ff. 64. Ibid, 167; see the summary 124148. 65. Ibid, 29ff. 66. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 114f.; solicitude (Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 157f.); F rsorge (Sein und Zeit, 121f.). u 67. Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 274279 n. 25. 68. The first character of the They, distantiality, (Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 118ff.; Sein und Zeit, 126f.) does not denote, as Hubert L. Dreyfus claims (Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heideggers Being and Time, Division 1 (Cambridge, MA, etc.: MIT Press, 1991), 151f.), conformism or conformity but rather competition in a capitalist society (see Johannes Fritsche, Competition and Conformity: Heidegger on Distantiality and the They in Being and Time, in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 24, no. 2 (2003): 75107). Terminologically (deficient versus positive modes), Heidegger varies a terminology that has been established by Hegel (Ibid, 95 n. 7). 69. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 251, 252, 257, 259, 261, 267, 269ff.; Sein und Zeit, 271, 273, 278, 280, 283, 289, 292ff. 70. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 115; Sein und Zeit, 122. 71. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 115; Sein und Zeit, 122. 72. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 113, 115f.; Sein und Zeit, 120, 123. 73. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 352; Sein und Zeit, 384. In the last sentence, Heidegger summarizes that part of the drama of historicity in which destiny as the real agent in history steps out into the open and begins to be active after it had been present in history silently or covered up by society (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 5562, 349351 n. 24). In the other sentences, Heidegger summarizes the difference between society and community in a formula that had been widely used by conservative writers at his time, namely, that society is not more than the sum of the individuals, subjects, that constitute society and is nothing but the means of these subjects to pursue efficiently their egoistic ends while a community is a whole that precedes the individuals who conceive of themselves as organs of that whole (Ibid, 60ff., 132134, 140f., 268f. n. 3, and passim). Heidegger distinguishes between destiny as Volksgemeinschaft and fate: destiny as Volksgemeinschaft is the whole that contains in itself, or provides, many fates as slots for the different individuals (Ibid, 4367, 140f.). Both Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson (436) and Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh (352) replace the definite
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article with people with an indefinite one, which makes a huge difference (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 238f. n. 17). L withs comments on the usages of destiny and fate in Heidegger o (Nature, History, and Existentialism, 75; Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 57, 7479, 84, 164, 217, 221; My Life in Germany, 35, 39; Heidegger, 97, 151, 168174, 179; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 34, 37) show that he is not familiar with the usage of these notions in the collectivist decisionism and misses that, in Sec. 74, destiny or heritage as the community of the people constitutes itself (Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 435; Sein und Zeit, 383; see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 55ff.; Stambaugh [Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 351] mistranslates the sentence and turns it upside down, see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 263 n. 32) as the real actor in history. On a sentence such as, Dasein hands down its inheritance to itself (L with, Martin Heidegger and European o Nihilism, 73; Heidegger, 168), see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 60ff. 74. Ibid, 4367. 75. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 119; Sein und Zeit, 127. 76. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 61; Sein und Zeit, 65. Since, on its way to authenticity, Dasein does not disappear into worldlessness, Heidegger can also write sentences such as, Authentic being ones self is not based on an exceptional state of the subject, a state detached from the They, but is an existentiell modification of the They as an essential existential (Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 122; Sein und Zeit, 130), which does not contradict the thesis in Competition and Conformity (see above, n. 68) but shows that Heidegger assumes that, historically, the different They-s differ in terms of the instantiation and specific features of the six characters of a They (see Fritsche, Competition and Conformity, esp. 107 n. 18). 77. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 263; Sein und Zeit, 285. 78. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 261ff.; Sein und Zeit, 283ff. 79. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 243f., 252, 273ff.; Sein und Zeit, 263f., 273, 297ff. 80. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 114ff., 118f.; Sein und Zeit, 121ff., 126. 81. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 274; Sein und Zeit, 298. 82. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 253ff.; Sein und Zeit, 274ff. 83. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 282ff.; Sein und Zeit, 305ff. 84. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 258f., 264, 268, 273, 279ff.; Sein und Zeit, 280, 287, 291, 296, 302ff.; see the summary Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 124ff., also 327ff. n. 70. 85. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 241, 253ff., 269f., 273; Sein und Zeit, 261, 274ff., 292f., 296 86. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 251, 265, 272ff.; Sein und Zeit, 271, 288, 295ff. 87. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 265, 280, 286; Sein und Zeit, 287, 302, 310. 88. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 244; Sein und Zeit, 264. 89. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 285; Sein und Zeit, 308. 90. It is different in the English language; see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 323 n. 58. 91. In a lecture course in 1934/5, Heidegger obviously claims that his concept of death in Being and Time can also be applied to the German soldiers in World War I (see Ibid, 195ff.), in which he is right. When L with talks about death in Being and Time (Nature, History, and Existentialism, 6569; Martin o Heidegger and European Nihilism, 73; Heidegger, 8690, 168), he isolates the quotes from their contexts and projects his own (individualist-decisionist) notion of death onto Heidegger. As I cannot elaborate here, it is for several reasons not only possible but even likely that in between the chapter on the They and the one on historicity, there are passages on death that seem to support L withs interpretation. o 92. L with, My Life in Germany, 60; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 57. Clearly, with the concept of o historicity Heidegger can have meant only the respective section in Being and Time. For, in none of the publications and lectures between Being and Time and 1936 is the problem of historicity as explicitly, clearly identifiably, and succinctly discussed as in that section in which, in addition, the entire book culminates. Furthermore, Heidegger uses this notion of historicity throughout his career though, after 1937/8, with some internal modifications (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 194ff. and Johannes Fritsche, With Plato into the Kairos before the Kehre: On Heideggers Different Interpretations of Plato, in eds. C. Partenie and T. Rockmore, Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005], 142ff., 146ff., 151ff., 160ff.). 93. For two instances, from 1925 and 1934, for the usage of Grundlage in the narrow sense see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 339 n. 5. 94. It seems to me obvious that Heidegger would have rejected an interpretation that assumes conformism as a result of a failure of his theory; according to which the essential tie consists precisely in
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the essential arbitrariness of any content, so to speak; and which looks plausible only under premises that he does not share. For suggestions what Heidegger would have answered if L withs interpretation or a o postmodern one were right see Ibid, 216ff., 338f. n. 5. 95. See above, n. 9. As was mentioned, in 1935 the essay on Schmitt did not yet contain the part on Heidegger. Also, it was published under a pseudonym in a Czech journal (L with, Heidegger, 290). Even o if Heidegger had presented, more or less extensively, my interpretation, L with would have regarded this o explanation probably as a confirmation of his own interpretation anyway. For, he would have seen in it a confirmation of precisely that conformism in which, in his view, Being and Time results, and a rhetorical accommodation to the ideology and program of the National Socialists that Heidegger, according to L with, o did not subscribe to; or, he would have applied to it the hermeneutics that he applied also to the National Socialists, and which is just a further application of that type of hermeneutical deep-sea diving which feels free to ignore the surface, and which he has been practicing all along. 96. In his book from 1953, L with claims that, in Heideggers writings after the turn, Being is the o actor to whose sendings the humans have to submit while Being and Time is, as he has assumed it all the time, centered around the notion of a singularized human Dasein (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 33, 252 n. 45, 48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 5760, 62; see also 72, 73f., 78f.; Heidegger, 125, 136 n. 7, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148, 150154, 156; see also 167, 168, 173). He declares that Heidegger was wrong when he maintained that there was no radical reversal of the perspectives before and after the turn (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 252f. n. 45, 47; Heidegger, 136f. n. 7, 140). According to my interpretation of Being and Time, Heidegger is, in his way, not wrong. Because of his bias toward the individualist decisionism, as a student L with was obviously not o familiar with what I labeled the collectivist tradition of decisionism, and even later he refers only to the existentialists (Nature, History, and Existentialism, 46ff., Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 71f., 97, 270 n. 102; Heidegger, 119ff., 166, 194, 227 n. 34). As he himself says, until 1933 he was politically uninterested and ignorant and didnt even read any newspaper (My Life in Germany, XIX, 18, 69; Mein Leben in Deutschland, XVI, 18, 66). Someone who, in 1932, refers, as L with does, for the topic of repetition o (neither to Schelers Catholic love-community nor to the Kaiserreich or the Volksgemeinschaft, etc., but) exclusively to Goethes conversations with Eckermann from 11th and 12th of March, 1828 (Heidegger, 16 n. 20) is most probably either fully informed or close to nil. L with does not interpret in detail the passage on heritage, destiny, and fate in Sec. 74. Wolin finds here o a submission under destiny and fate of which, however, Heidegger recognizes that it contradicts Daseins autonomy. Thus, in the following part of Sec. 74 authentic Dasein chooses its fate by itself but lacks any criteria for such a choice. Thus, Heidegger is entangled in a contradiction between fatalism and empty decisionism that he cannot resolve but decides in favor of the latter (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 209ff.). In fact, in the respective passage Heidegger develops that the community of the people raises its voice and calls for submission (Ibid, 4367, 131ff.). However, this is for Dasein in no way fatalism but rather a transfiguration through submission (Ibid, 212f., 322f. n. 57). Probably, the postmodern interpretation is so popular in the USA also because it fits nicely into the US-American They, the legendary self-made man who does not submit but takes his fate into his own hands (see Ibid, 212215, 332337 n. 72). The decisive sentence in Sec. 74 of Sein und Zeit (Die Wiederholung erwidert vielmehr die M glichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz [Sein und Zeit, 386]) has been mistranslated in English, namely, as o an act of distancing (oneself from a command, request, norm, etc. issued by someone else toward oneself; i.e., as an act of not complying with a command, etc.) (on the repetition makes a reciprocative rejoinder to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there [Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie & Robinson, 438] see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 10ff. and passim; on Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh, 352f. see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 335f.). I point out, already in the preface (Ibid, ixf.), the importance of this passage and discuss erwidern in the dative (Ibid, 711) and in the sense of a counterattack or even, as not only Birmingham interprets it, complete rupture (as the most radical form of distancing) (Ibid, 1112). Immediately thereafter, I introduce, as a further sense, erwidern as compliance with a request or submission to a command (Ibid, 1213), and I argue at length that, in Sec. 74, erwidern is used in the sense of such a submission (Ibid, 1328). In addition, I come back again and again to this topic to substantiate and elaborate my claim (e.g., Ibid, 83f., 134f., 327ff.; see, approvingly, Dieter Thom , Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus. In der Dunkelkammer a der Seinsgeschichte, in ed. Dieter Thom , Heidegger-Handbuch. Leben - Werk - Wirkung [Stuttgart: J.B. a Metzler, 2003], 145f.). I do so because I was aware that erwidern as submission (to destiny and fate) is, so to speak, the admission ticket to much of the German right-wing ideology at Heideggers time, and that its mistranslation as an act of distancing as which it is interpreted in all postmodern interpretations and even by Guignon (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 9ff.) is just a sign of how alien to average readers in the USA (and to Hannah Arendts notion of politics; see Ibid, 335 n. 72) this ideology is
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so alien that even (another reviewer and) Elliot Nearman in Constellations for whom my book is the best analysis of Heideggers Being and Time to come along in a long time (Constellations 8, no. 1 [2001]: 155) has misunderstood me and makes me say what Birmingham says (ibid: 157). Robert C. Sharff insinuates that by revolutionary rightists I mean only National socialists (and not also people like Scheler) and makes me say other plainly stupid things (Journal of the History of Philosophy 38, no. 3 [2000]: 455f.; as to my knowledge, so far no one has challenged, let alone refuted, any detail of my interpretation). Obviously, American readers cannot imagine that to give up ones autonomy was a relief for rightists at Heideggers time as well as Heideggers politico-historical recommendation (even though everyone agrees that he criticizes the notion of modern subjectivity); that Heidegger works with a logic of submission as transfiguration (Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 212f., 322f. n. 57); and that, for rightists at Heideggers time, the paradigmatic heroes (Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, 352) were the German soldiers in World War I since a hero was a person who finds his or her self-fulfillment, not in singularization and difference from destiny, fate, and all other Dasein, but in the self-sacrifice for the German people (Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 212f., 323327 n. 60) (while the fire-fighters of September 11, 2001, are, as to my knowledge, named heroes because they were so courageous as not to mind their own lives in order to save other individuals [of whichever origin]). 97. Warum b se? Im Grunde ist es eine Apologie Heideggers (quoted according to Enrico Dono aggio, Zwischen Nietzsche und Heidegger: Karl L withs anthropologische Philosophie des faktischen o Lebens, in Deutsche Zeitschrift f r Philosophie Vol. 48, 1 [2000]: 39 n. 9). u 98. Scheler presented his turn to the center in a speech in Berlin in November 1927 (see Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism, 142148), less than a year before his death. In the essay on Schmitt from 1935, L with refers to this speech as to the opposite of Schmitts politics of empty decisionism o (L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 281 n. 79; Heidegger, 59 n. 80). o 99. At the time of his active nihilism, L with dismissed the possibilities that the active nihilists before o himself and Heidegger had offered (Heidegger, 9) since he wanted to push nihilism to its vanishing point. Though, after 1933, these possibilities became noteworthy as they might have served as a bulwark against National Socialism (see My Life in Germany, 17f., Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 141, 158; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 17; Heidegger, 37, 59), L with did not try to strengthen them philosophically. o For L with, these existentialists prepared the way to National Socialism without, however, already taking it o (e.g., Meaning in History [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950], 212; My Life in Germany, 25, 5, 83; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 227; Hegel und die Aufhebung der Philosophie im 19. Jahrhundert Max Weber [S mtliche Schriften 5] [Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1988], 413; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 24, 5, a 79). 100. L with, My Life in Germany, 51f.; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 49f. o 101. Dieter Henrich, Sceptico sereno, in eds. H. Braun, M. Riedel, Natur und Geschichte: Karl L with zum 70. Geburtstag (Stuttgart: 1967). o 102. L with, Mensch und Menschenwelt, 19ff. o o 103. L with, Heidegger, 17 n. 21. 104. L with, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 158; Heidegger, 59. o 105. L with orally in a discussion (eds. H. Kuhn, F. Wiedmann, Die Philosophie und die Frage nach o dem Fortschritt: Verhandlungen des Siebten Deutschen Kongresses f r Philosophie 1962 [M nchen, 1964], u u 336; see My Life in Germany, 164; Mein Leben in Deutschland, 153). 106. L with, Meaning in History, 6ff.; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 16ff. o 107. L with, Meaning in History, 182ff., 191ff.; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 196ff., 205ff. o 108. L with, Meaning in History, 202; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 217. o 109. L with, Meaning in History, 182ff., 192ff.; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 196ff., 205ff. o 110. L with, Meaning in History, 201; Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 216. o 111. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 38; Heidegger, 110. L with remarks that all of o o Heideggers disciples, including L with himself, have replaced philosophy entirely with interpretations of o the history of philosophy (Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, 99; Heidegger, 196). 112. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 30; Heidegger, 102 o 113. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 31; Heidegger, 103 o 114. Ibid. 115. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 33; Heidegger, 106 o o 116. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 3250; Heidegger, 105123. 117. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 4145; Heidegger, 113117. o 118. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 31; Heidegger, 103. o 119. Ibid. 120. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 50; Heidegger, 123. o
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121. L with, Nature, History, and Existentialism, 49; Heidegger, 122. o 122. Ibid. 123. L with, Heidegger: Problem and Background of Existentialism, in Social Research 15 (1948): o 345369. If my cursory readings of L withs later writings are correct, there is in his German writings only o one (very short) reference to the 1948 essay, namely, in the German translation of Meaning in History (254f. n. 14) (Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 216 n. 14), from which, however, one cannot gather anything specific about its content, and at that time it required quite some effort for readers in Germany to get a copy of Social Research. Also, during his lifetime L with apparently did not give the audience in Germany o any clue about the background and defensive character of his seemingly all-out critique of Heidegger. The L with quotes above in n. 49 and the entire two chapters in Mein Leben in Deutschland read as though it was o not a disillusioned active nihilist but a non-nihilist that was criticizing the nihilist Heidegger. In addition, only if one already knows of the peculiar radicalism in L withs youth can one fully recognize in the first o of these quotes the peculiar mechanism of projection. The young L with thought to find in his teacher o Heidegger a soul mate. Thus, as an active nihilist he did not expect from him a new system but something undetermined; still, as an active nihilist who wanted to overcome nihilism he took for granted that this something undetermined in Heidegger contained at the same time something more something positive, something that would overcome nihilism and it was only later that it became clear to us that it did not contain the overcoming of nihilism but was in reality nothing, a pure resolve, without any determined end. . .naked resolve. It is, of course, not necessary to assume that L with recognized already in 1940 that o his interpretation was a defense of Heidegger, let alone that he wrote it for this purpose.
Johannes Fritsche is Professor of Philosophy at Bo azici University, Istanbul. He is author g of a book on Aristotle and of Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heideggers Being and Time (1999).

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From National Socialism to Postmodernism: L with o on Heidegger

1. Being and Time and National Socialism: Three Interpretations

From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

2. L with as the Originator of the Postmodern Heidegger o

3. Agenda and Structure of the Paper

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Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

4. L with and Heidegger in the 1920s and Thereafter o

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From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

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Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

6. L withs Interpretation of Heidegger before 1933 o

8. The Self-Evidence, for L with, of the Empty-Decisionism Interpretation o

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From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

9. L withs Interpretation in General o

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Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

10. The Call of Conscience and Resoluteness in Being and Time

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From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

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Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

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From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

11. L with and Heidegger in Rome 1936 o

12. The Later L with o

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2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

13. L withs Interpretation in 1948: Heidegger the Postmodern o

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 16, Number 1, 2009

2009 The Author. Journal compilation

2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

From National Socialism to Postmodernism: Johannes Fritsche

2009 The Author. Journal compilation