Prof.Dr. Mejame Ejede Charley

                THE HEIDEGGER POLEMIC: IN THE NAME OF WHICH PHILOSOPHY?

Recent research regarding Heidegger’s political engagement and thought has resulted to the shouting out of abusive words between two camps, especially among French researchers. On the one hand there are the champions of Heidegger who always consider that the choice of their master has been an “error”, that this is only political and has got nothing to do with his philosophy. On the other hand, the prosecutors of Heidegger evaluate that Heidegger’s adherence to Nazism is only plainly intelligible if it is seen in relation with his philosophical thought but that this thought itself is an “introduction of Nazism in Philosophy”. In a course of 1931, narrating the famous allegory of the cave by Plato, Heidegger asks whether the dead of a Philosopher in the cave is necessary or fortuitous. Heidegger’s rejoinder is that this is part of a Philosopher’s destiny. A true Philosopher is always put to death by the world. The very world that welcomed Heidegger is now seeking his death. In this day and age more than ever, this death, Heidegger explains, is perpetuated by ways more insidious than the Hemlock. Which is the most perfidious in this respect? Incontrovertibly: celebrity. Celebrity in this case kills the thinker because his thinking henceforth produces slogans: that can be understood only in reverence, look how he is being shown in newspapers, cartooned on internet websites and God knows not where. What in this case constitutes his incontrovertible neutralisation, for people believe they already know him, per contra he is not known. Conventionally Heidegger is termed Nazi, thus his celebrity obscuring or veiling the depth of his thinking. And the more journals, newspapers, internet sites take over him; the more his thinking is misrepresented. It is the honour of these media of communication to recognize that they are not the necessary place to talk about Heidegger. And it is a shame on their part to appoint themselves as a Shakespearean Daniel come to judgment; the supreme judge and believing themselves in doing a high scholarly work spread nothing but the same old story and malicious gossips.

As far as I am concerned, the media is a matter of people getting into muddles. This very media presents us a caricature of what can be a true discussion exceptionally in philosophy. The overbid for polemic being the order of the day. All that not only turns into riot and confusion, but presents a very infantile picture of human relations without serious questioning. When seriousness goes on holiday communication becomes impossible, hence constant confrontations and the settling of conflicts through the use of violence and we have even succeeded in making out of it a sort of Maxim. Machiavelli is not far from us. He whispers in our ears. What worries is the appearance of a world in the image of the vision of Leibniz’s monadology, but without neither the support of pre-established harmony nor the support of the principle of the best. In this world communication becomes a problem and this is why it is so much talked about. One wonders why the Greeks had no need of talking about communication. When we cast a look at communication today what do we see? Polemic bias, useless chattering, obsess ional discussion and indefinite analytical commentary without serious and profound examiniantion and as such, we do not communicate in order to understand one another, we are not able to understand clearly our ends, and if we arrive at doing so, it is only in a reduced circle, that of partisans of a doctrine, prejudice, a system. Discourse (Like that of Habermas) of theoreticians of communications exactly passes off in a vacuum of what ought to be, but which we do not see anywhere in action. Discussion today is maintained on condition that everyone safeguards his own point of view, before and after. It is believed that all questionings could be settled in right/wrong duality, and that reflection could be advanced in this way, truth being a matter of for/against. What is termed freedom of speech in our present society is the right to descend into the arena with a sword in hand to go and cut to pieces those on the other side, those who are wrong, giving preference to dispute than discussion. It is, as such, believed that everything can be decided in right/wrong duality. Heidegger Nazi or not Nazi? Right/wrong. It is obvious that this is the effect much sought after by the logic of the media. Thus the tendency to contaminate the exchange of ideas is evident. Everyone standing firm on his positions, fabricating a cordon sanitaire around truths on which he stands and in this case no serious discussion is possible. Even with eminent and cultured specialists the impersonal consciousness is only rarely maintained intact in a debate. Personal prejudices often disrupt discussions, conveyed by the sudden emotional eruptions in a discussion. Even in meetings where intelligent minds meet, the neutrality of exchange is only maintained with difficulty. Germnan Philosophy with the work of Jurgen Habermas and Karl Otto Apel attempted to resolve this problem in their attempt to formulate an ethics of discussion. Habermas’ idea is to precise as to what extent discussion can become ethics. But the difficulty in Habermas’s ethics is that of the exact meaning he gives to the word ‘ ‘norm’’.The problem is that when we remain in interminable polemics, we dwell in the circularity of argumentation, a vicious circle of taking sides for self-justification. One wonders whether this vicious circle could turn out to be a virtuous circle. The Heidegger problem or Heidegger’s philosophy has often opened the way to emotional confrontation and deviates from the examination of the profoundness of his ideas toward the confrontation of persons; resorting to endless debates, without, in the first place, having a precise knowledge of the topic under discussion, without seeking the necessary information. It is necessary that we learn how to teach new generations to reject before hand the trap of dispute by transcending it. It is necessary to launch a true reform of thinking which should begin from an awareness of unity. We could discuss soundly only on the basis of the recognition of unity. Disputes or polemics, whatever the domains they appear, have an infantile character and are hardly intelligent.

Heidegger is yet the axial point of the polemic prevailing among several thinkers today. He is suspected for having had an accommodating attitude in rapport with Nazi ideas; a new book mentions him by considering him as being guilty; polemic explodes between the detractors of Heidegger and his defenders today. It is interesting that the old quarrels of this nature still monopolises as much energy. It is as if all has not been said on this subject. Some scholars see in him a dubious author, for others, Heidegger is a victim of a plot having as an aim to tarnish his image whereas he should be seen as one of the greatest Philosophers of the 20th century. Since 1960, especially in France, the reception of Heidegger has become mysterious. The analysis of his thought has become delicate. The political polemic revived, with the publication by Jean-Pierre Faye, of texts during the rectorate period. But in the same way, Foucault, Althusser and Lacan read Heidegger in a sort of round about way, by appropriating, respectively, his critical delimitation of rationality, his antihumanism, his approach to language as disclosure. As to the events of 1968, there was no veritable effect on the reception of Heidegger. Certainly some scholars denounced him as a reactionary thinker; yet, in other respects, the left Heideggerians like Axelos or Palmier, detected in Heidegger the premises of a critique of a consumer society, and presented him as being close to his disciple Marcuse. Decidedly, Heidegger’s posterity has never ceased from being ambiguous, and his heritage disputed. The Farias affair has known an enormous repercussion in 1988-1989. What strikes the minds is Farias’ monolithic aspect of demonstration claiming that Heidegger had never ceased from being profoundly a Nazi. Provoking a general storm: accusations on one side, protestations on the other side. However, today no one claims that Farias’ book was worthy of confidence as a historical work. But today in the 21st the polemic around Heidegger continues. The Heidegger case is really a complex one.

In a recent work written by Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, the introduction of Nazism in Philosophy, published by Albin Michel,[1] written in French but not yet translated into English, has been the subject of hostile reaction on the part of Heidegger’s defenders. The work has as its kernel, according to the upholders of Heidegger’s thought against any defamation of it, Faye apprehends Heidegger as a political enemy, and that Faye even denies Heidegger being any Philosopher. As such, Heidegger’s philosophy is of no consequence since Faye takes away from Heidegger the title of Philosopher in order to treat him as a simple political enemy. Faye accuses Heidegger for taking part in the constitution of the Hitlerian doctrine. Faye is thus criticised for having accused Heidegger of directly inspiring some of Hitler’s speeches. Emmanuel Faye’s (Jean-Pierre Faye’s son) book is the most violent indictment that has ever been pronounced against the author of Being and Time, that Heidegger is not a “thinker”, but the “spiritual guide of Nazism”.Heidegger, according to Faye, is the greatest thinker of the century, but he was a Nazi, that his thought was fuelled by Nazism and his thought also fuelled Nazism, accordingly, Heidegger is not a philosopher. Faye’s book sounds serious, documented and seems to involve philosophical reflection and historical investigations, and based its demonstrations on conferences, courses, seminars not yet translated in the years 1933-1935, or some texts in the 40s. His work is based on accusations, citations, testimonies and attestations. Furthermore, in a transcription of an interview by Brice Coutourier with Emmanuel Faye and Alain Finkielkraut, published by France Culture in August 2005.[2]

Emmanuel Faye accuses Heidegger of voluntarily attempting to compromise the whole of western Philosophy under the terms of philosophical appearance such as the “truth of Being” or the “essence of man”. Faye wonders as to what will become of Heidegger’s works recently published in 66 volumes called Gesamtausgabe,[3]which neither Levinas nor Foucault knew about. Faye looks at the Future of Heidegger’s works that take pride in the total annihilation of the enemy. In 1934 Heidegger talks of the völlige Vernichtung that is to say, the total annihilation of the internal enemy. In the wake of the Nazi defeat from 1945, Heidegger was making as if the entire western metaphysics was responsible for the barbarism that took place in the 20th century. Now, the question for us, according to Emmanuel Faye, is to know whether Being and Time is a great work that has got nothing to do with politics. Really, as Emmanuel Faye would have us understand, when we read in Being and Time paragraphs about death and historicity with their praise of sacrifice of the choice of heroes , of the authentic destiny of Dasein in the Volksgemeinschaft-in the community of people, and when we know in this respect, as Emmanuel Faye has demonstrated in his work the relations struck up in the 20s by Heidegger with the pre-Nazi authors like Baeumler whom he wanted to make his successor in 1928 at the university of Marburg, or Rothacker or Becker we think that the existential analytic of Dasein revolves around a political struggle. Close to the rise to power of the Hitlerian movement within the German society, Heidegger’s courses of 1933, delivered to students had as its principal theme Sorge(concern), the central thesis in Being and Time. Concern is the condition in order for man to be of a political essence. Faye draws from these courses delivered by Martin Heidegger to students in 1933, the inference that Heidegger was a racist and Völkisch, a people’s racial conception.[4] Comparing these courses to Karl Schmitt’s first version of the concept of politics, published in 1933 in which the racial dimension of the connection of people in the state is explicit. Thus, as Faye stresses, Heidegger’s philosophical teaching where aimed at dealing with the fundamental possibilities of the essence of the originally Germanic race. Or when Heidegger takes over the Kantian question: “what is man” he transforms it into the question: “who are we?”.Heidegger’s express intention, affirms Faye, is to realise a complete mutation in man’s existence according to which the education or the world of National Socialism inculcated in the People by the Fuhrer’s speech. Faye wonders as to what is the actual content of the courses delivered by Heidegger from 1933-1934. Asking himself whether after 1934, in the wake of his resignation from his office as rector, Heidegger really did distance himself from the Nazis; Faye is convinced that really he didn’t. In the interview, Faye says we now have all the courses available from the years 1939-1942 and that he has notably discovered in all the texts on Junger which appeared last year (presumably in 2004) in Germany (that is on Ernst Junger, Vol 90 of the Gasamtausgabe) that Heidegger does not talk about Junger in connection with the problem of nihilism, it is rather something else that catches his interest. What as such interests him in the Junger era is nothing more than the determination of a new race and the planetary domination of this new race. In these texts on Junger, affirms Faye we find serious terms written in: “the force of the essence not yet purified by Germans is capable of preparing in its foundation a new truth of Being such is our belief”. On several occasions, stresses Faye, Heidegger talks about “Glaube”.It is a völkisch belief in the superiority of the essence of the German people. Faye maintains that these texts in which in the years 1940-1942, there preparations for the final solution (question) of the being of race or again the Rassegadanke put in italic Gedanke in order to say that it is a thought. Faye terms this as an ontologisation of racism in the context of the years 1940-1942. Further, in this interview, Faye projects an interpretation on Heidegger’s Brême conference which he qualifies as a terrible text based on the question “do they die?”, what Heidegger precisely wants to say in these texts is that the victims of the extermination camps could not die because they were not in their essence mortals. Behind that there is the Nazi conception of death as the sacrifice of the individual to the community. It is already announced in Being and Time, celebrated by Heidegger in May 1933 in his speech exalting Schlageter, hero of the Nazis, shot by the French in
1926 to , says Heidegger, “to die for the German people and its Reich”. For Heidegger is dying in a harder and greater way. But those who have perished in the extermination camps are grausig Ungestorben, “horribly not dead”. They are not dead. They could not die for they were not in the “guard of being” and those are not in the rightful conditions of the Nazi exterminations camps that Heidegger denounces. It is the fact that those victims were not dying of the death of heroes, they were not in essence in the “guard of being”. It is, in his jargon, he says, Faye quotes Heidegger, “man can only die if and only if being itself appropriates the essence of man in the essence of being from the truth of essence”. This what, stresses Faye, Heidegger says in his Brême conference. In this passage, Faye exclaims, he who is not on the guard of being, does not die a hero’s death, he does not really die. Faye sees in this a kind of an absolute frightful ontological negationism. Questioned by Alain Finkielkraut as to whether from his report regarding Heidegger’s engagement in Nazism and the direct relation between Heidegger’s thought to Nazism, Heidegger’s thought should be banished from being taught in the French academia. He says he is pursuing a seminar in order to critique Heidegger; however, he is by no means suggesting that Heidegger should not be taught and that the Heidegger texts should be taught critically.[5] He says he is ready to read and comment on them profoundly in any further interview with Alain Finkilkraut. Faye recalls the words of Levinas, so hard on Heidegger, where he talks about cruelty, about the separation between the natives and foreigners that came from the myth of Being. Faye is taken aback by the interview Alain Finkilkraut had with Sloterdijk that Alain Finkilkraut leaves Sloterdijk to substatantially say that we must from the paradigm of the other, which is that of Levinas, to that of the enemy, which is that of Karl Schmitt. Now, wonders, Faye, how can the enemy be treated according to Heidegger? He must be annihilated completely. Never, maintains Faye, has a Philosopher pronounced such murderous words? Faye also says that there are other authors like Reinhard Linde, who have recently published a book on Heidegger’s totalitarian thought, which also arrives at the same conclusions as his.[6] Faye’s book has been praised as being an extremely serious piece of research, documented; combining Philosophical reflection with historical investigation. And he bases his demonstration on conferences, courses, untranslated seminars of 1933-1935 or somes texts of the 1940s. His work comprises of an act of accusation, quotations, testimonies and attestations. His conclusions are clear and firm. Heidegger accommodated the principal components of Nazism and Hitlerism: the definition of the people as community of blood and race, the apology of the völkisch state and his legitimating the extension of vital space for the German people, he pronounced the apology the principle of hitlerism, contributing to forge it, notably that the community of the people is constituted in the living relation uniting it to its Fuhrer, he legitimated racial selection, and did not understand or negated the specificity of Shoah and opened the way to revisionism and negationism. We garther therefore that the basic nature of Faye’s thesis in his book “The introduction of Nazism in Philosophy”, is based on the total engagement of the Philosopher in favour of Nazism and Hitlerism. Founded on courses that have recently appeared in Germany in the integral work that have just been published entitled: Gesamtausgabe(yet to be translated into French or English and other languages) and two unpublished seminars. Emmanuel Faye defends that Heidegger actively participated in the elaboration of Nazism, and thought himself a spiritual leader of National socialism, contrary to what was believed, qualifying racial selection as “as metaphysically necessary”, admitting superiority of the German race. If these aspects of Heidegger’s thought passed more or less unperceived, it is because Heidegger rewrote after the war certain number of courses which he held in the years 1930 and 1940, whose passages he suppressed where his support for the regime was expressed without ambiguity by his direct relation between Nazism and the foundations of his thought. What is more, the winter semester of 1933-1934, in which he teaches on political education with a view to forming a new noblesse for the third Reich, reveals to us today that Heidegger defines the people and the “unity of blood and race” and that he relates the political the Fuhrer state to the ontological relation of the Being of beings. From these texts and facts (Which some people have acknowledged a long time ago), Emmanuel Faye maintains that the foundations of Heidegger’s work are essentially Nazi and that the rectorate speech was aimed at the introduction of Nazism in Philosophy, According to Emmanuel Faye it is necessary for us to be conscious of the peril that the Hitlerian and Nazis speeches represent and currently disseminated by his integral work or “Gesamtausgabe”. The apologists of Faye put forward the approach to Heidegger by Emmanuel Faye - even if judged correct, is being denounced as a political manipulation with a view to purifying French universities of elements considered as harmful. It is no longer a question of knowing which philosophical trend will be dominant in France(for example, analytic Philosophy), than wondering what can be done with Heidegger’s thought(which as it happens should be burnt).Faye has been equally reproached for wanting to forbid the dissemination of works such as “Sein und Zeit. But Faye is defended by certain intellectuals in France in affirming that Faye’s work is not a political essay, but a philosophical work, and in no circumstances does the author make mention of forbidding Heidegger’s work. On the contrary, Faye appeals for other researches, a more advanced work on “Sein und Zeit” than on his ulterior works. It is after having worked and analysed in 500 pages the integral work of Heidegger and two unpublished seminars, and shows that Nazism beats at the heart of the work itself, that he arrives at this conclusion:” this is why it is hoped that this globally translated and commented work be the object of advanced research, which will enable our seeing clearly what it means. To be conscious of its dangers, and to resist the destructive principles revolving around it and oppose to its dissemination in Philosophy and teaching. Added to this, Emmanuel Faye’s apologists put forward the claim that when his book about Heidegger is read it appears really difficult in considering it as a gross political manipulation as the Heidegger defenders sometimes maintain. Faye’s apologists as such claim that his work constitutes a profound analysis of a considerable number of Heidegger’s texts unknown, up to date, in France or even unpublished in Germany. That the author does in no way accuse any philosophical trend. He does not critique phenomenology as such.

It may be mentioned in passing that the Heidegger case, especially in France, among scholars, researchers and teachers, has become an omnium gatherum, a hotch potch between protesters and accusers of Heidegger. The position of the accusers (with Emmanuel Faye as a significant representative and those who think like him) of Heidegger having been mentioned, it is necessary to go to the protesters or the upholders of Heidegger’s thought against the accusers(i. e. Emmanuel Faye).The Heidegger protesters hold that Faye’s work against Heidegger is nothing more than a pure defamation claiming to be philosophy and as such will have no place in the history of philosophy. Faye’s work is not considered as a critique but a calumny and as dishonest undertaking.[7]As they will have us understand Levinas was very severe with Heidegger with whom he distinguished himself on some essential points. Notwithstanding, Levinas considered Heidegger as one of the most important thinkers of all times, and his work one that can’t be ignored. Certainly, Levinas was not a Nazi, but he always worked from Heidegger let alone Derrida, among others. Hence Faye’s work, considered by all Philosophers worthy of the name as a polemical and dishonest one. In his work instead of reading attentively Heidegger’s texts and understand them, prior to critiquing and going beyond, or even opposing them, he bases his work on documents of a militant kind and on political declarations from the beginning of the Nazi period, from where he extracts some succinct citations and interprets them arbitrarily. Faye declares from there that Heidegger’s Philosophy is impregnated with them and Heidegger’s philosophy as such, was all along profoundly Nazi (even before the 20s in consequence) up to the end, that is in 1976, and that a fortiori Heidegger’s work cannot be termed Philosophy. Faye makes a predisposition in Heidegger’s political engagement (Nazism) a postulate of his thought. Such is the only idea of his whole book. His premises and conclusions are only geared to completely discrediting and convincing people not to read Heidegger as a Philosopher but as pure ideologist, as an equal of Rosenberg or Baümler. Faye’s partisan position could be read in every chapter of his book, aim at indicting Heidegger; since he does not acknowledge any thought in him. Heidegger reread all philosophers and the entire history of philosophy including the Presocratics, Plato, Descartes, Hegel, or Nietzsche, readings that have incontrovertibly renewed our understanding of Philosophy, but Faye sees only Nazism. Inasmuch as Faye sees only Nazism in Heidegger work, Faye’s book shows his ignorance of Heidegger’s texts. In the final analysis, the logic of Faye’s point of view is that, since nothing of what Heidegger thought is acknowledged as being thought, nothing belongs to philosophy, he sometimes resorts to gross manipulations.

Mathieu Gallou wonders whether Hitler has ever read Sein und Zeit (Eng. Being and Time) or any of Heidegger’s texts. There is no where, as such, that such an affirmation holds. Mathieu Gallou maintains that Heidegger has never had any personal contact with the Führer and that on the contrary, the Nazi ideologist, Rosenberg has never had any affinity with Heidegger’s thought. Mathou fears that such rubbish as propagated by Farias and Emmanuel Faye concerning Heidegger should not continue in the years 2020 or 2040. Furthermore, regarding the polemic around “Heidegger and Nazism”, M. Droit lavished praises on Emmanuel Faye’s book incriminating Heidegger for introducing Nazism in Philosophy. Droit leaves us to understand that Heidegger was directly responsible for the extermination of Jews. Phillipe Arjakovsky is very impatient with what he qualifies as the crimes of ideas in which Heidegger is quoted out of context by D. Droit and some of the journalists of Le Monde des livres by falsely claiming to have read Heidegger’s works when in fact they have no knowledge about them .Arjakovsky seem to qualify this as a buffoonery, claiming that D. Droit has never read Sein und Zeit. Droit has been toiling for so many years to associate Heidegger to the “Nazi” epithet. And has used all the means available to prove that Heidegger was really a Nazi, using Karl Löwith as his testimony that Heidegger was as such a real Nazi. But the proof he seems to provide to convince the world that Heidegger was really a Nazi seems to be suspect as it is clear that Löwith left Germany between the years 1934 and 1952. Droit wilfully seems to be ignorant of the real people who testified in favour of Heidegger during the reign of the Nazi barbarism. Many testified that Heidegger had never given any Nazi salutations prior to beginning his courses. It has been related that a professor at the University of Freiburg once said that Heidegger made violent criticisms against the Nazi regime and that Heidegger’s criticisms against Nazism were very clear and in private conversations, he criticised the Nazis so hard and one would therefore wonder at what point Heidegger was lucid on his error of 1933. Such is the statement of Walter Biemel. Also, Heidegger’s lectures were attended by people of all walks of life involving students, retired people and people of other professions, but according to Sigfried Bröse, who was relieved of his functions as Sub prefect by the National socialists in 1933, said he had the occasion to speak to these people, what came back to him incessantly, was their admiration for the courage with which Heidegger, from the height of his philosophical position and in the rigour of his starting point, would attack the National Socialism. Equally, Hermine Rohner, a student of 1940 to 1943 bears testimony to the fact Heidegger openly attacked National Socialism and in this he distinguished himself. Now, the Nazis themselves often went down the level of their cesspools to know Heidegger. In the biography written by Hugo Ott we read some articles of an unspeakable violence. Ernst Kriek, close to Rosenberg and member of the Allgemeine SS since 1934, organised in his Nazi journal Volk im Werden a veritable conspiracy against Heidegger’s thought which considered as ferment of decomposition and of disintegration for the German people. The thinker’s works slowly disappeared from public sales under the 111 Reich. In the review of the Hitlerian youths Wille und Macht, Heidgger was equally the object of acid criticisms, particularly with regard to his ignorance as to the true “specificity of Hölderlin” that the German youth knew more than him. The Nazis even considered him as being less necessary to the Nazi regime, being in the top list of “the less indispensable professors”, despite his age and his two children drafted on the Russian front, being part of some professors constrained to interrupt their teaching. Dr. Erich Jaensch, the National Socialist psychologist (16 February 1934), said that Heidgger’s manner of teaching was precisely as that of the Talmudic quibbling. Heidegger had a glaring fault in the eyes of the Nazis. The Nazis could not understand him and believed he was impregnated in Judaism. The Nazis found his subtleties abstruse. He was regarded as a fool by the Nazi inasmuch as he could not be understood. It is clear that what Heidegger was professing; it in this case did not correspond to the Nazis and was of no use to them. The Nazis had nothing to do or nothing to fear from Philosophical subtleties. Why then is Heidegger accused for introducing Nazism in Philosophy if the Nazis could not understand his work? Why should Heidegger’s be banished from being taught in schools if not the academia? Why is Heidegger, who is considered in the world of Philosophy as one of the greatest thinkers of all times be brought down to the level of political enemy? Heidegger’s readers are far and wide including Sartre, Merleau Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Lyotard, Ricoeur, Lacan, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, Jean Greisch, Granel, etc. Where his readers themselves Nazis?

It is an incontrovertible fact that Heidegger’s work has left its mark on a number of Jewish thinkers, but also protestant thinkers. Many continue to base their development on his work. And many do so it goes without saying. Without mincing words, the books written by the Heidegger detractors have often left me in a state of perplexity. Today, I continue to read Heidegger with assuidity. It happens to me on several occasions in South Africa that reading Heidegger seems suspect and always find myself insulted. I often respond that it is very necessary to read and understand, and to understand in order to combat. But in the depth of my mind I have been perplexed, exceptionally with the appearance of Emmanuel Faye’s book presented on 14 May 2005, at 14h 30 – 17h at the Sorbonne, in Cavailles(Université de Paris 1, UFR de Philosophie, 17 Rue de la Sorbonne, 75005).My reading of Faye’s book made out of me a trembling poltroon and immediately resolved to read Heidegger’s texts written in German and compared them to those in French, if there where at all any translation errors in them , then read them also in English to see if there is an error some where concerning translation, then went back again and started reading the original German versions. I read them text after text, to my greatest bewilderment I have not found any trace of Nazism in them. Then, in his rectorate speech, I find that Heidegger rejected with vigour the theory of superior races.[8]Heidegger was not as I can see, an epitome of a Nazi kind. I think that there is a tendency for people to interpret others’ words and actions in the light of their own limited point of view and even in the light of their faults and failings. Such is what is done on Heidegger’s life and thought. If Heidegger was a vulgar Nazi ideologist, his thought would not have espoused the planetary exegetic destiny that is known today, unless it is supposed that every Heidegger reader is a Nazi. If Heidegger is both Nazi in his thinking then I tempted to think that the Heidegger readers including those who are influenced by his that made fools of themselves by going into raptures over a work that was plainly produced by a Nazi. Can you imagine anything more idiotic? The inconceivable richness of his philosophical work will always extend beyond the strictly biographical, historical and political context, admitting of a multiplicity of readings. Today, there are the left, right, moderate and anarchist Heideggerians. In my opinion, Heidegger’s thought possesses form, content and meaning, the form being for the common people, the content being for Heidegger followers and the hidden meaning for the wise scholars. If there is a thought in the 20th century where there jostle together the active and contemplative life, it is really in Heidegger. We think that it is not through biography that Heidegger’s work can be understood, but rather the contrary. Between apology and calumny, will it not be necessary to take the median way, that consists in leaving Heidegger have his say rather than seeking to understand the worst in him? .Thinking Heidegger, is also thinking the tragic monstrosity of the 20th century. In the Heidegger affaire, the positivistic frenzy, the simple historical compilation of facts, risk failing to grasp what it claims to zero in on or define: the point of Heidegger’s thought. Once more, we are witnessing the return of the scandal of the complicity of one of the thinkers of the 20th century with the National Socialism. After the storm brought about by Farias’ book, Heidegger et le nazisme(verdier, 1987), it is volume 16 of the integral edition of the Philosopher’s work, published last year in Germany, which seems to provide the matter, as articles published in Die Zeit or in Libération. In these
800 conference pages, letters, and administrative notes covering the period 1910-1976, they are the texts of the most dismal period, in which the master-thinker took up the functions of rector of the university of Freiburg(April 1933-April 1934) which disturbs. The majority of these writings where already clandestinely published in Berne by Guido Schneeberger and partially translated in French from 1961. This volume is interesting in rendering accessible documents which nourish philosophy since forty years polemic. As to thinking Heidegger’s relation to Nazism, it is another matter: precisely the matter of thought. Will be necessary to recall that historical facts do not speak in our place? Even when we must have assembled an exhaustive document on Heidegger’s National Socialism, it will be necessary to interpret it philosophically while recomposing the historico-political dimension of his thought, it will not be possible to achieve that for a day. Perhaps let us point out to those who would advise the process quickly that the corpus, already considerable, is in constant expansion. A collection of important texts has only been recently published, notably several unpublished treatises on onto-historial thought of the event (1936-1948), let alone the courses of the young Heidegger. While waiting for the completion of the Integral edition towards
2015-2020, it is not less than 25000pages that would need to be read.

The fact that Heidegger, rector of the University of Freiburg, was responsible for the attribution of a post or chair of “racial hygiene”, or that he mentioned in passing the saying “blood and soil” in a conference at the National Institute of pathological anatomy, it would be hasty to conclude that he was an ardent defender of eugenics and völkisch ideology. To detach textual blocs from their immediate context and from their Heideggerian massive vastness is in the first place to over look some philological integrity, as Nietzsche said. It follows that it should never be forgotten that Heidegger never stopped from reinterpreting his thought, and that his relation to the National Socialist loose conglomeration is of a difficult and insurmountable complexity, hence its periodical resurgence on the public place. In the maniac phase of 1933-1934, Heidegger derails and commits obnoxious texts, again disgusting, of course, if we examine in the light 1945. But if he deletes in all rigour, a good number of Nazified notions in 1933-1934 they were no longer useful at the end, some where transformed or deconstructed.

In the work we longer find any trace of the abject ideologist “blood and soil” after 1933-1934. Before crying against racism, it is note worthy that the nationalist-socialist party ideologue of race never had his philosophical favour, as it can be testified from 1934 the summer course on logic (volume 38), in which Heidegger shows that the word is never the expression of man’s biologico-racial essence, primary biologism pulled to pieces in his courses on Nietzsche from 1936-1943. In the treatise ‘History of Being”, written in 1938-1940 (volume 69), Heidegger explicitly critiques any form of racial doctrine and racial breeding as an instrument of domination and nihilistic symptom of the metaphysical circle of modern subjectivity. There we are. Things are hardly simple.

In Volume 16, it is not moreover the texts under attack that are most interesting in the understanding Heidegger’s engagement. The two conferences destined for foreign students of the university of Freiburg (15 and 16 August 1934) and the long conference of Constance on the current situation and the future task of German Philosophy (30 November 1934) conceptualising, what Heidegger also called “National-Socialist Revolution”. It is in the 40 pages and in the courses of 1934, already cited, that Heidegger explicates “onto-politics” concepts (historicity, people, State, work, National Socialism, mission, will, community….), thematised for the first time or drawn from the existential analytic of Sein und Zeit (1927).

Obviously, the resignation from his office of rectorship in 1934, did not put an end to his profound sympathy for the Nazi movement. But such sympathy favors some critical distance, after the illusion of being unable to gain an area of immediate intervention. It took him some years to come out of his blindness and to understand his mistakes without abandoning much the idée fixe of another beginning, German, vouching for the first beginning, Greek, what goes hand in hand with a constant Sorge of the German future of the German people. From which he never departed, it is here that a solid and problematic Philosophical germano-centrism transplanted itself, at the time of scandalous error, on the most mortal regime in history. It is here that Faye also draws his attack on Heidegger termed by the Heidegger defenders as calumny, but the reactions of the established Heideggerians is to cry against calumny on Heidegger, looking up his accusers, castigating them for not being as much knowledgeable as they on Heidegger, playing on the difficulty itself of Heidegger’s text in saying that such a concept does not signify what it signifies and they continue, haughty, to Heideggerianise in a circle. The accusers, in reverse, refuse to account for the interpretive corrections which specialists could contribute. They persevere in the idea that what Heidegger wrote in 1949 “thousands die en masse. Do they die? .They perish. They are killed. Do they die? They become the reserve parts of a stock for the fabrication of the dead”, meaning, as Faye believes, “according to Heidegger, no one died in the extermination camps”, that the victims of the camps where not men and that “one cannot go as far in the negation of the human being as Heidegger does”, where, we can on the contrary, read in it that the executioners did not only kill men but even took away their humanity. The “anti-Heideggerians” do not ask themselves why it was impossible for the great thinkers of our time not to think without Heidegger. Given, at least, that they limit their intention what does it mean intending to “stop” than Heidegger writings “continue to be disseminated in a planetary way”? and does not understand that, if Heidegger is “the continuator of Nazism”, Heidegger’s continuators could also be the continuators of Nazism. Perhaps we could also find some poison in the works of a Levinas, of Derrida, of a Ricoeur or of a Vatimo, of a Jean Luc-Nancy, of a Marlene Zarader, of a Jean François Lyotard, of a Gérard Granel or of a Henry Michel.

We are obliged to recognize that the genesis of the Nazi doctrine is yet, to historians, very difficult to understand. And it is not through unprolific or unproductive polemics as it is done today by the pros and antis of Heidegger that we are clearly going to see the source of national socialists. We should not judge Heidegger in the alder of the look at man in the 21st century. The climate of the years 1930s in Germany is a particularly difficult one to study and could be that all moral approach for or against Heidegger be not, in fact, only a contribution to the reinforcement of the taboo that weighs, for centuries, for millenniums, on man’s collective unconscious and which forestalls him to understand one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century.

The bona fide problem in this matter is that it appears blasphemous or irreverent to doubt Heidegger today, whereas philosophical authorities who were railing against the sawhorse in 2005 chanted the converse slogan half a century ago.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, what raises the problem all the more to committed intellectuals is that, in this crusade for Heidegger, we ask intellectuals to give an account as to their role within history. If such an approach were not raising as much passion, that would mean that it should be lawful to begin looking at the works of intellectuals for what they are, otherwise said sometimes as works which enable thought to progress and sometimes as works which make thought to regress, always in this second case in the name of great intellectual principles in most political eras. This should let intellectuals to come down from their pedestal, and ponder to which extent they have been able to contribute to the alienation of ideas and people instead of liberating them.

Behind this extreme defence of Heidegger, we could see a class of intellectuals the world over (especially the French) intending to fuel the taboo on their works in order for them not to be judged, that criticisms not be allowed, that their mind keeps its immaculate and sanctified side and that, exceptionally, the rapport between the work and man’s behaviour be forbidden. The intellectual must remain untouchable, dictates what the plebeian must think without ever rendering accounts to the latter.

We can pass comment with merriment that if the intellectuals of today shout from the house tops as much as Nietzsche, it is in order to have the right to think for themselves for the Zarathustra of thought. From then on, there is only a step with the fact of thinking themselves for a superman, above others and above criticisms.

Regarding the Heidegger case, there is a general tornado: accusations on one side and expostulations on the other. We do not have to admit both sides. The Heidegger problem is very paradoxical and complex. The perpetual question that crosses our mind is: How could a great thinker like Heidegger could err so heavily?

Perhaps rather than seeking involvement in both sides of the Heidegger debate we should begin to question academic philosophy today as it is taught in universities. The word philosophy is understood by cutting into two the Greek idea of sophia, in order to retain only the idea of knowledge, deliberately setting aside the meaning of wisdom. The privilege of western philosophy is that of pure theory, pure knowledge for itself. This is a commonly shared opinion in schools and universities. The interest that directs to philosophy must be strictly intellectual, theoretical and not certainly with the aim for wisdom. Instititutional instruction is not made to lead people to wisdom. It is made to question knowledge, on questions centred on theoretical knowledge. It debates on knowledge. It is completely enclosed in the mental constructions of systems. And their discussion, it as such has no relation to life but thinking, thinking is separated from life. In this case, we can without contradiction be a philosopher and quarrelsome, devout or fanatic, we can be vindictive, narrow-minded and socially unstable that has no relation. Philosophy is cut off from life. Philosophy is purely intellectual. It should be therefore absurd to judge a philosophy from its fruits in the philosopher’s life. Philosophy is one thing, life is another. The philosopher is not wiser than anyone and it should be out of place to reproach his inconsistencies and behaviour. He only has the highest level of intellectual level of interrogations. He is a man who is only interested in knowledge. In a nutshell an intellectual. What is highly cherished in the western culture after everything is the beauty of culture, the precious side of the mental constructions of the intellect, analytical subtlety of gloss and erudition, critical audacity, the insolence of ready-made thinking. Its relation with wisdom is very vague. The bridge between wisdom and knowledge got broken long ago. Anyone intending to go toward the direction of philosophical studies with an aim of having an intimate relation between knowledge and life is mistaken an address and as such will be poorly served. Wisdom has changed its address. You should not knock at the door of philosophy to find it. May I ask with all the utmost urgency as to in the name of which philosophy Heidegger is being defended or accused? Critique in the Greek original term means kritikein, essentially meaning discrimination. There is, as it were, bad interpretation of this term today to such an extent that it has been transformed into polemic, and, what is more, in polemic directed against a person. It is, so to speak, an unfortunate abuse. In Philosophy critique essentially revolves around ideas and not around individuals. We must never compromise with error, but we must give much respect to people. Transforming Philosophy into quarrel about people would mean distorting it. A Philosopher hands over his work with a glance on what it is. He opens his work to us for criticism and it is incumbent on us to see what is before us. Leibniz said that every Philosophy is true in what it affirms, and false in what denies. There is in every thought a power of affirmation which comes from the truth of Being. Some words of Yvan Amar concerning this subject: “we recognize a great thinker on the poetic quality of his thought”. It is a rigour. A poetic rigour. The thought of a great thinker is not out to imprison what it says, it is at the service of free conscience which it testifies. Even the heart of his testimony is this freedom. It is therefore this freedom we feel in thought and the rigour of his structured thought with the result that at the moment such a thinker does not transmit in his thought an object of thought, he rather transmit in a way, an art of thinking. Same as a great painter does not transmit a table, but the art of painting, the pure act, painting, in the same way, a great thinker, focused on this freedom does not transmit an object thought, a thought that could be learnt, but the art of infinite thought, the art of free thought.

Revenons à nos moutons, Heidegger took up the function of rector at the university of Freiburg, hoping that his project of renovating the German university, supposed to be the lever for the renovation of the country and beyond that the lever for the renovation of the country, above all, the lever for the renovation of the declining European civilisation, reorganising the arena of knowledge and science. Heidegger, as such, believed that a radical defence of science such as he understood and redefined it, is susceptible of being a spearhead for this effort to save Germany. He retakes the university and the circle of knowledge, as the vanguard of revolution, booster for the turnaround of civilisation, owing to a true understanding of science. The Greeks conceived and showed that theory is the highest realisation of authentic practice. The grandeur of this Greek beginning is to be retrieved, by reconstructing a spiritual world for every people. Indeed, Heidegger imagined he was able to spiritualise this beginning revolution by inspiring the spirit into it which it lacks and reorientate and make out of it a work of the spirit. We therefore see Heidegger’s inappropriate utopia from the Nazi point of view, which Heidegger was trying to pursue. He participated in this revolution because he imagined his ideas, as it were, are the possible solutions to this crisis, that is to say, as a third way between Sovietism and Americanism. Neither communism nor capitalism. This is what he imagined to be possible for the future Europe led by Germany, herself the vanguard of Europe, and supposed to be able to conquer communism and find an alternative to pragmatic capitalism and American technology, corresponding to the forgotten pragmatism of Being. What is read in his rectorship speech pronounced in 1933 coupled with an appeal to students, enjoining them for mobilisation by participating in work service and service of knowledge, that is, mobilisationn at the service of the nation which would be the work of the spirit, its intellectual vanguard. For Heidegger, the university must give a sense of direction to this spiritual rebirth or renaissance. But behind this mobilisation of the student Youth, Heidegger did not see the danger of this mobilisation of the people at the service of the nation which the Nazis intended to organize soon, neither its nature, above all class distinction and in the framework of excessive militarisation.

However, Heidegger did not fall in with the essential of Nazi ideology: neither the racial anti-Semitism of Nazism, nor its biologism, nor its mystical scientism, its simplistic and technical ideological nature, which he termed stupid, which thought he could transform philosophically. He did not see its warmongering. He looked elsewhere, toward ancient Greece. He did not see what was before him. Heidegger, as such, deceived himself by pride, in overestimating to caricature in the interest of Philosophy( of his own Philosophy) for the political movement that laid hold of Germany and that had nothing Philosophical in it and nothing giving room for a rebirth of the life the spirit and civilisation. He failed to learn from history how other Philosophers failed in their attempt to transform their ideas into politics. I have in mind Plato and Syracuse and Aristotle, Alexandra’s preceptor. Plato attempted to do something with his knowledge. He knew that knowledge was important, to be sure, but the thing that really mattered to him was the good use to which that knowledge is put. He was not a mere intellectual who read books and become extremely knowledgeable, but really wanted to do something with his knowledge, not merely passing it to others. By virtue of this he took part in the government in Syracuse: this was his complete failure. Called to advise the king of Syracuse, Denys. After a while, the latter politely asked him to return to his country. Aristotle also failed in his attempt in putting ideas into politics. So, Heidegger did not see the danger that others were already denouncing. Once again, the communists and Jews were alone, enemies and the persecuted. Recently, there has been a tendency to make out of Heidegger a veritable Nazi, a polemical and fallacious undertaking which only serves to deform the history to which he was alluding. If Heidegger is accused of engagement in a political movement that massacred human beings and his guilty of mistakes, and in the final analysis did not speak in the end, whose fault is this? Heidegger did not see any fault in politics, but rather the fault of human beings who do not know see that it is essential above all to study oneself (cf. Sein und Zeit, 1927) and seek the best methods of transforming oneself. This is why they disfigure everything they touch: not only Politics, but Philosophy, science and so on. These are only what human beings make of them. It was Heidegger understands that people must understand that what is most important is to carry work on themselves to improve their thoughts, feelings and their actions.

Secondly, further to my position, is to recognise the profound interest of Heidegger’s thought-the reinterpretation of western thought at other levels. Hannah Arendt remarks that Heidegger is the secret king of thought and we acknowledge the enormous task Heidegger has done in the renewal of thought. He was an absolute remarkable reader of philosophers coupled with an extraordinary professor according to witnesses, his students, whom his thought opened a new way as could be read in the collection of his texts from 1936-1946.

Heidegger gives a new understanding of time, as a means of access to Being, proposing, moreover, to understand Being from time and not the converse, thus reversing all philosophical tradition since the Greek origins. He also proposes to understand the essence of man starting from the truth of Being and not from the Being of Beings. A radical novelty breaking with the tradition since the Greek origins of Philosophy, what is added to his language sui generis, esoteric and said to be obscure, producing an effect of change of scenery and oddness in his hearers he would fascinate, then his readers situated him straightaway on his own, inventing a new way of writing the history of Philosophy beyond the classical understanding. He undertook to reread all philosophers and restarted in a new way the history of Philosophy, in the light of fundamental ontology designed in Sein und Zeit, which sheds a critical new light on metaphysics, he continued to think to ultimate consequences; hence contributing to its collapse-he affirms that, at least. Knowing that metaphysics is accomplished and must be henceforth ratified.

The history of philosophy, according to the new understanding it suggests, finds itself characterised by forgottenness of Being, by the fact of privileging the understanding of beings. Hence plunged into the forgottenness of its beginning (that is, the word of Being understood in the Presocratics), handed over to the study of beings it finds itself exposed to giving way to science if not reducing it. The science, the characteristic traits of which is that “does not think”.Heidegger never ceased from digging into the questions he poses to the whole of Philosophy, since the Greeks and the Presocratics, and under the aegis of the question of Being and from a new understanding of the question Being( no longer roman: understood as adequatio) between the real and the mind(spirit), (or in modern terms, subject and object), but Greek: the truth of Being, that is unconcealment, insisting on the idea of truth as concealment of Being, which holds itself in retreat, the infinite resource of possibles.

Thirdly, relating to my position, I propose a going toward Heidegger’s idea of meditation on the limits of techno-science. Heidegger, the comporary of the atomic age warns against the danger of science and technology which he deems as the real danger threatening man. He, however, does not condemn science as some researchers are wont, for that would mean a battle lost. But his main thesis is a plea for man not to give calculative thinking precedence over meditative thinking. The text about technology is a plea for thought, a plea for man to strike a balance between meditative thinking and calculative thinking. Heidegger perceives a gap in scientific knowledge, resulting from man not giving priority to thought. Heidegger foresees man calling science to account for not examining the question of thought. Heidegger enjoins humanity to combine meditative thinking and calculative thinking, the inner and the outer means, and this will according to Heidegger, humanity will get things done rapidly. But, according to Heidegger, humanity should start working with thought (meditative) before adding the calculative element that will hence facilitate the process. As things now stand, humanity does just the contrary: science makes all kinds of discoveries which technology and industry apply, and this makes the economic wheels of the country go round. In the interests of the economy, the human race is being poisoned and its health undermined. The human race is being sacrificed to the aggrandizement of calculative thinking. A great deal of work is being done for the progress of calculative thinking and not much for the progress of meditative thinking(human beings).Heidegger thus shakes humanity out of its spiritual lethargy and paralysis, the recourse to calculative thinking, that makes humanity’s inner forces weaker and weaker. We would, therefore, like to ask with Heidegger: does calculative thinking really contribute to the good of humanity?

Finally, rather than engaging in groundless polemics, Heidegger’s thought offers paving the grounds or paving the ways for an ethics of dwelling on earth. Some scholars have tended to see in Heidegger, in the wake of Nietzsche and his “Gott ist tot”,[10] “God is dead”, as one who has killed man. However when we read Brief Über den Humanismus, written in 1946, closer we realise Heidegger’s position is not reduced to antihumanism. What Heidegger actually attacks in his book is anthropocentrism and the levelling of metaphysics on the essence of man. Heidegger affirms that humanism is not an idea enough in providing the great possibilities of man, and he defends his work against human barbarism. The real danger, as he would have us understand, is barbarism, inhumanity, we must wake up, so that man is human. Furthermore, man must be, according to Heidegger, available, to the starry heavens above, but remain at the same time under the protection of the earth that takes and produces. Heidegger intends in his work to construct an ethics of dwelling of mortals on earth. However, it is said by some scholars that he does not go so far in his suggestions. But I differ from this view. Certainly Heidegger is for communion with each other, but against separation, division against each other as well as hostility. He is for all talents and possibilities given to man be used for the good of all humanity. Here again, Heidegger enjoins meditative thinking.

It is curious to see, thanks to Heidegger, what contemporary thought has highlighted(language, the exchange by dialogue, respect for the other, enrichment by difference) is immediately scoffed at when it is a question of discussing Heidegger. Everyone is in his certainties on one side and the other, in a sort of unshakeable “Freiburg wall”.

There is a tendency of defaming Heidegger and the urge to take his book out of libraries because he was a Nazi. It is certainly true that Heidegger perhaps thought during a short moment that the Nazi movement carried with it some prospects, going to the direction of a reform of modernity. He never hid it and all this remains to be argued.

But after everything his teaching is worthy of interest in so far as we do not very well see the rapport between what the Nazis did and his work. The concept of separation seems central to me in this. Nazi thinking is ultra-separation. But we are all Nazis when we act or think in the direction of separation. Agricultural industry is separation pushed to extreme. And indeed, the industrial houses furiously resemble Auschwitz. The concept of goulag is a Nazi concept. We separate the good communists from others. A Wall Street, they are all Nazis to the core, for the concept of money is also separation. It is the separation between the rich and the poor, between society and nature. Majority of churches are Nazis, by distinguishing who are saved and those who are damned. It is very important to note that the word Nazi is empty of meaning. It is an empty word often used when there are no longer any arguments to put forward. All those attacking and defending Heideger are but Nazis of thinking. It will do philosophy a great service if we stopped looking for Nazi thinking in Heidegger but rather the juice of his thinking. After all despite all the traps of separation in which Heidegger fell, he tried to trace a way of thinking accessible to western people. This is what is necessary to study. If Heidegger is carefully read, then one will discover his perceptions of openness here and there. What is farcical in the entire matter in the final analysis is the realisation that only a small number of people really understand him. Some people only capture his words and juggle or manipulate them and make out of them their circus act which have got nothing to do with what Heidegger intended to do. It is curious to notice that some commentators, analysts, researchers and professors of Heidegger are yet in Plato’s cave, the world of duality. This should be questioned, understood and surpassed.

Notes :

[1]Emmauel Faye, Heidegger, l’introduction du Nazisme dans la Philosophie, Albin Michel, 2005.

[2]Interview between Brice couturiers And Emmanuel Faye, conducted by Finkielkraut, France Culture, the month of August 2005; the unpublished texts of the Philosopher re-launched the polemic on his relations with the Nazi movement.

[3].Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910-1976(written and published): Frühe Schriften (1912-1916), éd. par F-W. Von Hermann, 1978, XII.; Sein und Zeit, éd. Par F. W. von Hermann, 1977, XIV; Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929, ed. F-W. von Hermann, 1991, XVIII; Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin Dichtung(1936-1968) ed. F-W. von. Hermann, 1981, 2 ed, 1996; Holzwege(1935-1939) ed. B. Schillbach, 1996; Nietzsche 1 (1936-1939),ed. B. Schillbach, 1997; Vorträge und Aufsätze(1936-1953) ed. F-W. von. Hermann, 2000; Was Heisst Denken?(1951-1952), ed. Coriando, 2002; Wegmarken(1919-1961), ed. F-W. von Hermann, 1976, 2 ed. 1996; Der SATZ Vom Grund(1955-1956), ed. P. Jaeger, 1997; Identität und Differenz (1955-1957);

Was ist das die Philosophie? (1955); Grundsätze des Denkens (1957); Der Satz der Identität (1957); Die ontotheologische Verfassung der Metaphysik (1957);; Zu Leibzeiten Heideggers veröffentlichte wichtige Briefe. Etc. etc.

It goes without saying that it is very difficult, for the moment, to mention an exhaustive bibliography. The publication of the Gesamtausgabe (102 volumes envisaged) will appear towards 2015-2020. And different unpublished texts will regularly appear.

[4] Faye’s interpretation of Heidegger’s use of language in his book, Heidegger, l’introduction du Nazisme dans la Philosophie. The words volk and völkisch are very polemical. For Faye, the word völkisch is a racist concept.

[5] Faye, p. 53 of his book; p. 513.

[6] I ordered this book, but I have not yet received it, in order to read it verify Faye’s hypothesis.

[7] See : Qu’appelle-t. on Calomnier Heidegger?, in which philosophers back against Emmanuel Faye’s book, communiqué à l’Agence France Presse, diffuse le 19 Mai
2005.

[8] Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität (speech of 27.5. 1933 in Freiburg], in GA 16, p. 107-117.; Arbeitsdienst und universität. 1933 in Freiburg, p. 125-126.

[9] The reading of some anti-Semitic philosophers such as Nietzsche has its ambiguous sides for Nietzsche was always anti-everything and sometimes also very critical towards the Jews.

[10] Heidegger: Nietzsche wort “Gott ist tot” 3, p. 271.

References:

Derrida: Marges de la philosophie, 1972. Ousia et Gramme. note sur une not de Sein und Zeit.

Derrida: Violence et Métaphysique. Essai sur la pensée d’Emmanuel Lévinas, 1964.

Derrida: De l’esprit, Heidegger et la question, Galilée, 1987

Dominique Janicaud: l’ombre de cette pensée, Jerôme Millon, Payot, 1990

Dominique Janicaud: Heidegger en France, Albin Michel, 2001

Farias Victor, Heidegger et le Nazisme, Verdier, 1987.

Marlène Zarader: La dette impensée. Heidegger, et l’héritage hébraïque, éd. du Cerf, 1990.

Bourdieu: L’ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger, éd. De Minuit, 1988.

Jean Beaufret: Dialogue avec Heidegger, vol. 111, 1974 et IV, 1985, Éd. de Minuit.

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: La fiction du politique, Bourgeois, 1987.