It is unusual for an author to influence his or her own reception abroad. This is, however, what happened with Heidegger’s long response to Jean Beaufret, a response that became famous under the title of La lettre sur l’humanisme.1
One is indebted to Jean Beaufret for having provided details on the circumstances at the origin of this text. It was November 1946. Jean Beaufret spontaneously drafted questions to the attention of the master, on the table of a café, intending to entrust a friend heading to Freiburg with them. He had already exchanged a letter once with Heidegger, which gave him hope for a reply, but he was still far from expecting him to take the trouble to reflect upon his questions thoroughly and to compose a powerful and well-wrought text that was destined to become famous. His wish was above all to give the dialogue he was weaving with the Master a philosophical content.
In his first question, Beaufret quoted a sentence by Paul Valéry about the “proponents of action,” clearly with Sartre’s theory of engagement in mind. This enables us to understand why the “Letter on Humanism” begins so abruptly: “We are still far from pondering the essence of action decisively enough.”2 The second question, which would give this text its title, appeared very early in the “Letter on Humanism”: “How can we restore meaning to the word ‘humanism’?”3 While categorically objecting to the project denoted by this question (since it employs a word ending in -ism, a source of contention and of what he dramatically called a “misfortune”4), it is to this question that Heidegger responded at length, but not without resituating it in terms of his own perspective, that is, his understanding of the forgetting of being. It is only in the last few pages of his long response that Heidegger addressed the third, and quite benign, question: “How can we preserve the element of adventure that all research contains without simply turning philosophy into an adventuress?”5
Two clear facts (which Beaufret admitted quite freely in later conversations) emerge with respect to these questions: first, they were not carefully elaborated, as they were only meant to start the dialogue; second—and this is even more remarkable—these questions did not reveal any particular expertise in Heidegger’s work. To this extent, they were less developed than the articles in Confluences.
What was Beaufret’s thinking at that time? The fact that Heidegger began to be his main focus (as the Plato of our time) and that he criticized Sartre’s “carelessness” or superficiality should not lead us to believe that Beaufret was already deeply Heideggerian at that time. As suggested by his questions, Sartrean existentialism was still for him the main reference, to the very extent that it directed philosophy toward the concrete by beginning from the facticity of situational freedom and by rethinking Husserl’s intentionality in terms of openness onto things. This reconsideration of Sartre’s project was nonetheless accompanied by an attempt to accommodate Marxism, a very significant approach in the intellectual and political atmosphere following Liberation. “Marxist clarifications”6 do not have to be opposed to existentialism, but can participate in the same emancipatory project, as a philosophy of freedom returning human beings back to the truth and dignity of their condition. Ultimately, Beaufret’s position proved “irenic,” that is to say, entirely (and undoubtedly excessively) conciliatory between four doctrines: phenomenology, existentialism, and Marxism, but also Platonism (dear to the philosophy teacher)! This desire for conciliation was so strong that—during a lecture on “Marxism and Existentialism” given on April 8, 19467—Jean Wahl confessed he was shocked, and was so bold as to reproach Beaufret for having given an academic synthesis worthy of Victor Cousin, and lectured him in this way: “The Cartesian cogito on which Beaufret insists has no place in Heidegger’s philosophy.”8 This critical remark made by Wahl isn’t unjustified; however, within a few years, as soon as Jean Beaufret seriously applied himself to Heidegger’s philosophy, the situation would be reversed: it was Beaufret himself who would lecture Wahl on Heideggerian matters. This reversal of roles makes Wahl’s account of May 1946 all the more interesting. Certainly, Beaufret did choose sides, but he was looking for an overly delicate balance—impossible to maintain for long—not only between existentialism and Marxism but also between phenomenology and Platonism.9
Heidegger’s answer disrupted this very personal, Parisian, circumstantial, and dated circle of four, although crafted by a talented and overly “conciliatory” professor. Seen from Freiburg, these nuances seemed irrelevant. What mattered for Heidegger was the opportunity (which he seized in a remarkable manner) to reply to Sartre and to differentiate himself from him. More than Jean Beaufret’s questions, it was the text itself (L’Existentialisme est un humanisme) that was at issue.
The differences with Sartre’s position were clearly delineated. In this respect, one cannot ascribe to Heidegger any opportunism (as for the content). His only concession (an important one, since it will remain an exception) was to enter into an explicit and public philosophical dialogue with a contemporary philosopher.
What were those main differences? Let us briefly mention them in order to gain some perspective, and mostly to appraise the stakes of the debate on humanism, in terms of the conditions of the time.
The first difference concerns the priority of the human being and humanism, replaced by the listening to the truth of being. The second one undermines activism and the concern for a thematic ethics: Heidegger insisted on the fruitfulness of a meditative thought without which there can be no “dwelling.” Finally, with respect to the status of Platonism and the question of metaphysics, Heidegger broke with what he believed constitutes the illusions of “eternal philosophy,” stating instead that one has to understand philosophy on the basis of metaphysics as a destinal “sending,” while preserving the possibility for a more original and authentic thought.
These themes, which have become familiar to us (even if they have not always been understood), seemed quite strange at the time. First and foremost, we have to take into account the fact that this response had been known, in France, only through a progressive wave of translations, in 1947, 1953, and 1956. If Heidegger was able to seize an opportunity, the effects of it appeared only later. Moreover, whereas Sartre addressed a wide audience and did not hesitate to proceed schematically, Heidegger, on the contrary, adopted the slow and meditative if not esoteric way of the untimely thinker (but in a style that is completely different from Nietzsche’s: less exuberant, less daring, as well as more heavy and more patient at the same time).
Clearly, if Heidegger succeeded to some extent in his goal to reply to Sartre, it was by speculating on the long term and by calling for a listening entirely different from the Sartrean notion of engagement. The response is profound (if we take his reinterpretation of the history of philosophy seriously) and extremely skillful (since as it deemphasized direct action, it tended to make people forget that, not long before, Heidegger himself did not embody the detached character of a “shepherd of being”).
This long reply to Jean Beaufret still needed to be understood. The addressee immediately set himself to this task, showing the way to all those who—along with great professors who had already become readers of Heidegger: Jean Wahl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, and soon Henri Birault—understood the unique and difficult task demanded of them by Heidegger’s thought.
With respect to the very question of humanism, there was truly an abyss, which was difficult to measure in the years 1946–47 and following, between Sartre’s position—shared by many at that time, including Merleau-Ponty—and Heidegger’s unusual way of questioning. Were they even speaking about the same “thing”? After the war and the Nazi horrors, under the sustained pressure of Stalinism and of the tension between the USSR and the free world, the debate on humanism reactivated the Kantian question of the priority of human dignity over any instrumentalization, but the existentialists agreed with the Marxists in their refusal of any formalism and in the recognition of power relations.
In this brutal debate, the very debate of Dirty Hands, the troublemaker Heidegger would introduce a prior question—that of metaphysics—and a suspicion: “You humanists, you have understood nothing of the true secret history! You blindly repeat the fundamental mistakes that have led the Western World to nihilism. Instead of being naïve humanists, we should eradicate metaphysical anthropocentrism.”
At that time, and until the 1950s and even 1960s, neither Sartre nor his peers seriously paid attention to this response, which, incidentally, did not appear in the concise pedagogical form we just gave it and whose public effects were not only postponed but also to a large extent displaced (insofar as anti-humanism was transposed to a more or less epistemological status). What preoccupied them were infinitely more direct and stirring ethical and political questions: Did you accept the Nazi monstrosities without saying a word? What about the practical means sometimes used by the Resistance and the allies to fight them? Do you prefer to remain a beautiful soul? Do you agree with the Soviet regime or do you stand by the so-called capitalist reactionary camp?
To have an idea of the immense distance that still separated the Parisian intelligentsia from the genuinely Heideggerian themes, one only needs to refer to the book Merleau-Ponty published in 1947, titled Humanism and Terror.10
How is the “communism problem” presented? In terms of a very acute tension, if not contradiction, between the violence done by the state or the party on behalf of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proclaimed goal: the restoration of man’s essence and dignity: “But for man, the root is man himself,” said Marx.11 By borrowing this account of humanism for his own use, Merleau-Ponty was then—without realizing it—very far from Heidegger. He referred to him only once, and in a way that makes one shiver today: with practically nothing in common with the content of Heidegger’s thought, this allusion imprudently refers to Moscow’s Trials: “One is not an ‘existentialist’ for no reason at all, and there is as much ‘existentialism’—in the sense of paradox, division, anxiety, and decision—in the Report of the Court Proceedings at Moscow as in the work of Heidegger.”12
This is not Merleau-Ponty at his best; but however severely one might judge such an excerpt, one has to recognize that it reveals the attitude of a great number of European intellectuals of that time. Those “fellow travelers” of the Communist Party preferred criticizing the vices and abuses of “abstract democracy” rather than condemning too harshly the terror and repression practiced by the USSR and its allies. They (including Merleau-Ponty) were obsessed by the fear of going over to the “reactionary camp” of anticommunism. This was a very delicate balance to achieve, since their aim was to maintain a critical distance from the communists while keeping their long-term humanist goals and being aware of the unquestionable cynicism of their methods.13
The contrast between Merleau-Ponty’s refined analysis and the violence he had to face is poignant. Is it the same situation with Heidegger’s “Letter”? The following lines reveal a tenuous “bridge” between both thoughts at a determined historical moment. Merleau-Ponty writes, “This sort of conclusion is upsetting. To speak of humanism without being on the side of ‘humanist socialism’ in the Anglo-American way, to ‘understand’ the Communists without being a Communist, is to set oneself very high—in any case, way above the crowd. Actually it represents nothing more than a refusal to commit oneself to confusion removed from truth. Is it our fault that Western humanism is warped because it is also a war machine?”14 Was this a confession or a premonition? Merleau-Ponty obviously came closest to Heidegger’s mode of questioning in the last sentence, without being aware of it. He also wanted at the same time to occupy a “higher” ground than he ultimately managed, remaining too close to political events. Heidegger himself indirectly echoed these events when, for the first time in his work, he contemplated the possibility of “a productive dialogue with Marxism.”15 Though quite fragile, this possible connection between the two thinkers can be discerned except for the fact that Heidegger (whence the peculiar interest of his new attempt) broadened the horizon to include the entirety of Western history: “Homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world.”16 One does not encounter such a thought in France at that time, neither any question on the meaning of technology (nor the stress put on the importance of language as a “house of being”).
The debate between the Sartreans and Heidegger about humanism did not occur. Literally, and even essentially, the positions were diametrically opposed. On the one hand, Sartre and his followers were for humanism and engagement, while on the other hand, Heidegger stood against any engaged humanism. However, Heidegger wanted to preserve the specificity and dignity of the Existent beyond humanism and the metaphysics that constituted it. Was his critique of Western humanism not more pronounced than Merleau-Ponty’s transformation of it into a “war machine”?
This question was not timely after Liberation (no more than a thinking of the sacred that would not simply be “atheistic”). The debate on humanism then gave way to immense misunderstandings, principally in politics. It is thus to this terrain that one must return if we are not to miss the actual course of the history of ideas.
The discussion concerning Heidegger’s political engagement, launched by Sartre under the pressure of the communist attacks, did not end with the publication, in January 1946, of the two accounts of his visits to the Master, which, as we have seen—despite their intrinsic interest—were exceedingly subjective, anecdotal, and overly partial or imprecise concerning the facts as well as the meaning to be given to them. With the publication in Les Temps modernes, in November of the same year, of a rich text by Karl Löwith,17 the scope of the debate widened and its philosophical level improved. This was the case for two reasons: Löwith, who was a powerful personality, was a close friend of Heidegger’s,18 and his testimony was firsthand; moreover, he set forth a thesis that was meant to reach the core of the question while confronting the Sartrean interpretation: there is indeed a real and even profound connection between Heidegger’s thought and his political failure.
This connection is striking, according to Löwith, when one compares the end of Being and Time (in particular section 74 on “The basic constitution of historicality”) and the political discourses of 1933: there is a consonance between them that is due to the fact that the former presents a “theory of historical existence” and of “resolute decision” in the face of “current events” while the latter accomplishes the application of this philosophy according to the historicist perspective of existentialism. According to Löwith, against academic and cultural intellectualism, Heidegger developed the pathos of a heroic radicalism that had religious connotations (partly inspired by Pascal and Dostoyevsky), but that opened onto a real nihilism: “The inner nihilism, the ‘national-socialism,’ of this pure Resolve in the face of nothingness, remained at first hidden beneath certain traits that suggested a religious devotion.”19 The point was absolutely not to claim that the end of Being and Time was automatically leading to Nazism; Löwith remarked, in fact, that “Heidegger’s disciples were surprised by his decision,” for “he had almost never expressed his opinion about political matters.”20 For Löwith, the correspondence between Heidegger’s philosophy and the national-socialist political adventure is at once deeper and more concealed: on the one hand, it is the significant (and possibly, alas, inspired) symptom of an evil that eats away at the German spirit, reflecting the crisis of that time (the “disastrous intellectual mind-set”);21 on the other hand, the fact that Heidegger’s involvement is not a common one and, in this sense, is more radical than any “ordinary Nazism.” Löwith praised, incidentally, the philosophical quality of the “Rectoral Address,” while noting its extreme ambiguity.22 One of Heidegger’s students had put this ambiguity in a nutshell, saying: “I am resolved, only toward what I don’t know” (people were in doubt as to whether one should start reading the pre-Socratics or enlist in the SA!23).
Hence this severe statement, which represents the core of the interpretation: “Given the significant attachment of the philosopher to the climate and intellectual habitus of National Socialism, it would be inappropriate to criticize or exonerate his political decision in isolation from the very principles of Heidegger’s philosophy itself.”24 Yet, where one could expect the verdict to be a complete condemnation and the rejection without appeal of this work, Löwith’s position, while implying a vivid critique of the historicism and nihilism imputed to Heidegger, was in the end more complex: Heidegger enjoyed a considerable and important reputation; his talent and the intensity of his inspiration nevertheless obviously produced a certain fascination. This oscillation between condemnation and admiration was in fact openly confessed by the author at the beginning of his study: “The reader of the essay at hand will find, at his own choosing, a significant defense of Heidegger’s philosophy or a condemnation of his political attitudes.”25
“M. Löwith is somewhat in the same situation as Balaam, a Moabite prophet . . . gone to curse Israël but whose lips only uttered blessings.” Éric Weil’s sarcastic judgment captures perfectly the impression of perplexity one feels when reading Karl Löwith’s fascinating yet equivocal testimony. For its part, Éric Weil’s brilliant formulation gives a foretaste of the style—remarkably intense and sharp—of the article that appeared in July 1947 in Les Temps modernes,26 along with a polemical response by Alphonse de Waelhens to Löwith’s text.
Let us note in passing the clearly stated intention of the editorial board of the journal to have a balanced debate and not to take sides at the outset. Granting Heidegger the benefit of the doubt, Sartre and his team remained faithful to their preliminary position. In the meantime, the careful reader will have learned much.
We will focus more here on Éric Weil’s contribution than on Alphonse de Waelhens’s interventions. Not that these were unimportant. We will cover their gist. But although Weil was more coherent and original, this does not mean that his position was unassailable.
Weil did not dwell on facts for very long; he assumed they were known. One cannot fault him entirely, although one does not read this statement without smiling, in a sense still valid fifty years later: “Heidegger’s file keeps growing even though it seems the essential pieces are missing.”27 Of course many things have been discovered since, but what is essential remains in the two facts on which Weil insisted: the allegiance to the Nazi party, and a low-profile defense.
One gathers that Weil judged Heidegger’s engagement of 1933 harshly, but he emphasized, with Löwith, the fact that it was made even worse by his public declarations (the call to faithfulness to the Führer, the homage to Schlageter, the approval of the break with the League of Nations) that were condemned in the following terms: “This is Nazi language, Nazi ethics, Nazi’s thought (sit venia verbo), Nazi feeling. This is not Nazi philosophy and that is why M. Heidegger believed his arguments would prevail.”28
It is necessary, then, to introduce distinctions according to which Heidegger’s “defense” (as summarized by Towarnicki) implies necessarily a philosophical reflection on the connection between existentialist thought and political commitment. Recognizing that Heidegger was not an “orthodox Nazi,” since he rejected biological materialism, Weil still did not consider that this should lead one to minimize the philosopher’s responsibility, especially since Heidegger tried to benefit from this by attempting to merge his personal case with the ranks of the German people. For Weil, this trivialization is unacceptable because by becoming “representative . . . of a large part of the German people,” Heidegger avoided his own responsibility, which is that of the philosopher as such: “What is unsettling in this story is not so much what M. Heidegger did first and did not do afterwards, but his very defense.”29
This defense would be much better, and even “excellent,” if Heidegger, “the philosopher of decision,” assumed this decision “with full liability” and explained why he has since “understood” the immensity of his error.30 But what Weil found intolerable is what we just called the “low-profile” defense that asks for forgetfulness, avoiding the very philosophical task that consists in posing clearly the problem of responsibility in regard to action.
Going to the core of the philosophical problem, Weil considered that Heideggerian existentialism was not capable of giving a political response. This is a most serious charge but with the unexpected implication that this philosophy can be distinguished from Nazism. Existentialism, by itself, has nothing to do with Nazism. It can lead to engagements of a completely different nature, and even politically opposite. In his positions in 1933, Heidegger “falsified” his philosophy; “he twisted it in order to extract a political response that it could not possibly give.”31
For Weil, existentialist philosophy is a transcendental philosophy, which, in Hegelian terms, remains at the level of reflection. It cannot be articulated with a satisfactory conception of concrete totality. In proposing this explanation, Weil succeeded in exonerating existentialism as such, while noting however its weakness, and making Heidegger personally responsible for the distortion and denial of his properly philosophical role. “These considerations are not made to support Heidegger’s defense; they exonerate Heideggerian existentialism. Perhaps his philosophy is insufficient but it should not be taken to be false simply because Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party.”32
One understands how Sartre could have agreed to publish this strong article without completely abandoning his own convictions. It is also possible that he might have found grounds therein for his reflections on engagement and its application to an actual historical context. Nevertheless, Weil’s article represented an important step in the critical reflection on “Heidegger’s case.” Though he excessively reduced the philosophy of Sein und Zeit to existentialism in general (a concession to the mood of the time), he was quite aware in his approach of the complexity of the connection between Heidegger’s doctrine and the error of 1933: the philosopher did not feel constrained by his error, and further, the way he defended himself, far from diminishing his personal responsibility, only increased it.
This article received no response. Was it refutable? Certainly not, but it undertook an impressive effort of clarification, which was not really the virtue of Löwith’s account. If Alphonse de Waelhens directed his counterattacks exclusively against the latter, it was first for a factual reason: his text33 appeared in the same issue as Weil’s and as a response to Löwith’s essay that had been published eight months earlier. De Waelhens may not have heard about Weil’s article when he was writing his own text. Furthermore, it is clear that Löwith exposed himself more easily to criticism and, correlatively, facilitated a certain defense of Heidegger’s position, at least from an exclusively philosophical perspective.
In fact, de Waelhens was careful not use Towarnicki’s somewhat hagiographic tone. First, he differentiated between the genuinely philosophical question and the personal aspects of the Heidegger case. He did not want to advocate for the man, and he seemed to rightly reproach Löwith for citing overly subjective testimonies and even excerpts from private correspondence. Even at the theoretical level, he did not want to shield Heidegger’s thought from criticism but wanted to address the only issue that mattered to him: was there a substantial link between Heidegger’s thinking and Nazism? The answer was clearly negative, although it was not reached without difficulties. On the basis of the perhaps overly general premise that one cannot expect a political thought to be derived “exclusively” from a “metaphysical” work,34 de Waelhens admitted that “the existential analytic, in its essential parts, is conceived in a purely static manner and [that] one doesn’t find any effort there to describe the dialectical future of authentic or everyday existence.”35
The acknowledgement of the relatively undetermined nature of the existential analytic seemed to be shared by de Waelhens, Löwith, and even Weil. The question is how de Waelhens managed to “make his case.” He did so precisely by relying on the indetermination that has just been granted: it enabled neither the demonstration of the absence of any intrinsic link between existentialism and Nazism nor the opposite demonstration by Löwith. There is consequently a clear and even considerable distance between Heidegger’s philosophy and Nazi politics. Heideggerian historicity is oriented toward the liberation of freedom of the other, whereas fascism undertakes a conditioning of masses (condemned by Heidegger through his phenomenological critique of the “They”). Furthermore, for de Waelhens the cynical pessimism of the Nazis had nothing in common with the radically ontological anxiety of existential thought. Thus, by deciding not to support Heidegger the man, and addressing only the distinction between existential philosophy and Nazi politics, de Waelhens adopted a fall-back position that clearly appealed to the editorial staff of Les Temps modernes, with whom he declared himself in agreement:36 existential philosophy was thus exonerated.
Despite its relative moderation, this clarification provoked a strong response from Karl Löwith,37 which one can easily understand since he found himself in the position of having to justify himself. His response was useful, to the extent that it enabled him to clarify his point of view, which had been ambiguous: he had not claimed that there was a necessary connection between existential philosophy and Nazism; he only postulated that the possibility of this essential connection came from its “intrinsic deficiency”; he perceived a homology between the key concepts of Sein und Zeit (Dasein, “existence,” “historicity,” etc.) and the political discourses given by Heidegger in 1933; these discourses represented one possible “practical application” of Heidegger’s philosophy, but not the only one. To conclude, Heidegger, just as Ernst Jünger, was not an ordinary Nazi. His philosophical stature cannot be denied. It is out of the question to reduce it to racist biologism (with which he never sympathized). Yet, his undeniable association to National Socialism is to be understood in relation to the dynamics of this movement: “The so-called Nazism was a revolutionary movement, exceeding the cultural and racial politics of the party.”38
I will only mention from memory the brief “Response to this response.” De Waelhens maintained his position: ignoring Heidegger’s personality, he focused his attention on maintaining the gap between his philosophy and fascism: “Löwith does not take into account the definition of Fascism”; he is wrong to associate it with “the actions of the former rector.”39
What should one retain from this heated exchange? The problem for us is less to take a position on that conflict than to resituate it in its proper context and to evaluate its importance. One should note that de Waelhens had the last word, without Sartre or his editorial staff drawing any conclusion or trying to settle the matter. From the beginning to the end of that debate, a perspective was chosen and maintained: a distinction was made between existential philosophy and Nazism. While insisting on Heidegger’s personal responsibilities, Weil did not really oppose this distinction: existentialism, although inadequate, was not directly suspect. Löwith alone, particularly in his response to de Waelhens, threatened this schema, for he attained a more sophisticated level of reflection concerning the connection between Heidegger’s thought and a certain National Socialism: at that level, it was not the “definition” of Nazism that mattered (as de Waelhens claimed), but a certain dynamic that momentarily caused Heidegger’s thought to merge with the political ideal he had constructed. However, in the face of this complexity (and in particular, the ambivalence of the “Rectoral Address”), Löwith acknowledged the correctness of Weil’s objection and accepted responsibility for the ambiguity of his own position: “I in fact hold Heidegger to be the ‘good’ (if not the best) philosopher of a bad historical ‘moment.’”40
This attitude was too subtle to attract the attention of a still poorly informed intellectual audience, which was in any case more interested in more definite positions. In fact, although the debate on Heidegger’s political involvement would greatly intensify in the years to come, it is not certain that it got any farther than Weil, de Waelhens, and Löwith already did in 1946–48. It would have been better to resume the discussion where they had left off rather than thinking that the discovery of isolated facts would be sufficient to really improve the philosophical understanding of the Heideggerian imbroglio. But the history of philosophical thoughts, as is the case for events, is enveloped in oblivion. Our anamnesis dares to struggle against the powerful and tumultuous current of the river Lethe . . .
One too often forgets that Jean Beaufret would not have achieved his fame if he had only been the passive recipient of the “Letter on Humanism.” On the one hand—as we saw—he received the letter because Heidegger had already read and appreciated the quality of two of his articles. On the other hand, since Liberation he had occupied a distinctive role on the Parisian scene, which was certainly quite different and infinitely more discreet than that of Sartre, but nonetheless strategic in intellectual life, including his presence at the École Normale Supérieure of rue d’Ulm (where he taught from 1946 to 1962), his khâgne class at Lycée Henry IV, Condorcet, and the friendship or companionship of influential intellectuals such as Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, Maurice de Gandillac, Ferdinand Alquié, Louis Althusser, Roger Stéphane, Jean-Paul Aron, Gilles Deleuze, Roger Kempf, Michel Foucault—among others.41 Haunting these places or institutions, associating with these characters: this would not have been enough by itself to ensure such a prominence unless he also had some talent. This is too often forgotten; it was as if he had been nothing else but Heidegger’s assistant. Far from it! Charming and witty in conversation, unpredictable and fascinating in his teaching, informed and scholarly, quick-witted and original in his articles and public interventions, Beaufret was not just anyone. Quite simply, he was someone. You would not forget him if you met him, even if only once. Not that he imposed himself forcefully, like a lawyer or a politician: he had a gentle and sweet style, relying on patient influence. Fundamentally kind, he enjoyed lingering with his interlocutor or his listener, no doubt to charm them, but above all to establish a special relationship with them as one does in a village or in a family (this only made the falling-outs with certain people more painful). Of course, for bourgeois convention, he was an “eccentric.” He could not have cared less about these kinds of judgments, as he chose to ignore convention. This carefree attitude explained both his friendship with Heidegger, which transcended the age difference and the academic status (for thirty years, he regularly went to Freiburg for short stays, two or three times a year) and his influence on the Parisian intellectual world, an influence that was disproportionate to his relatively modest status as professeur de khâgne.
Thus Heidegger did not have an ordinary “ambassador” in Paris. However, it is precisely because he did not have the solemn title or rank of an “official” representative that he was able to play a more discreet, more unusual, and probably more efficient role, at least at the beginning.
Let us return to the chronology. From 1946 (the beginning of their personal relationship42) to 1976 (Heidegger’s death), the Master and Jean Beaufret enjoyed a philosophical friendship without interruptions or difficulties; yet the effects of Beaufret’s “discipleship” were not always as continuous or as efficient as in the beginning.
Let us remain, for the moment, at the end of the forties. Beaufret was not yet “the best interpreter of Heidegger’s thought.”43 He patiently placed himself under Heidegger’s “schooling” as he would enjoy saying later. He felt he had to learn everything again: “It was a completely new language for me.”44 Yet, he asserted himself, as early as 1947, thanks to the publication of a brilliant text (published in the journal Fontaine at the same time as an excerpt from the “Letter on Humanism”45): “Martin Heidegger et le problème de la vérité,”46 a title that echoed the text “On the Essence of Truth,” which Heidegger gave Beaufret as a present some time earlier.47
This text deserves a close analysis of its main features. The polemical tone strikes one already in the first lines: Heidegger was misunderstood, as Kant was in his time; such is the fate of any great philosophy. This theme was repeated several times, as if one had to fight on all fronts at the same time: “To classify a philosopher who was constantly and genuinely concerned with the problem of truth as an apostle of the pathetic, a proponent of nihilism, or as an opponent to logic and science, is one of the strangest travesties for which the superficiality of the time was to blame.”48
This lecture given to his contemporaries would be repeated in the future, but it was new for Beaufret in 1947. Two years earlier, Heidegger was praised, primus inter pares; henceforth, he was alone, unique and misunderstood. The “Letter on Humanism” produced a dazzling impression. Heidegger distinguished himself from Sartre and existentialism, from Marxism, from Jaspers, and so on. Beaufret’s harsh tone can certainly be justified by a change in the climate, indicated by the political polemics. The personal attacks, which were the price of fame, did not come only from the Marxists. We are soon going to see convergent signs of it.
Far from being an academic text on the problem of truth, it was rather a quite peremptory first presentation—to an audience that was probably quite perplexed—of the singular greatness of Heidegger’s thought, characterized as a thought that was in direct dialogue with the great tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Descartes) and that posed, on a completely novel basis, the question of being. Being is no longer conceived of as a Supreme Being or God, but as “nothing that is” [rien d’étant],49 a first inapparent disclosure that any adequation presupposes: “Thus unconcealment means being revealing itself in its original dignity as the Un-concealed.”50 It is this alliance between being and meaning that Heideggerian ontology reinterprets on the basis of the understanding of Dasein. There is nothing subjective in the lightning event, here and now, of “the miracle of being,”51 and neither is there anything idealistic or realistic. Neither Sartre nor Merleau-Ponty situated themselves at the prior level discovered by Heidegger, that of the truth of being. Beneath the cogito, one must rediscover the richness of the “there is.” Heidegger did not ignore the cogito, as Sartre claimed, but rediscovered its condition. Similarly, the primacy of “ek-sistence” cannot be reduced to a sort of creative dynamism, but signifies that being never ceases to come to the encounter of human beings.52 And it is by experiencing and assuming a resolute anxiety—not pathological but with a Mallarmean intensity—that human beings can assume their freedom and most profound destiny, especially if they know how to listen to “Hölderlin’s prayer.”53
To summarize those pages is a real challenge, due to the early appearance of Beaufret’s dense and inimitable style, which would be fully evident ten years later in Le poème de Parménide.54 It was an incredible blend of lyricism and brilliant references to the history of philosophy, a sort of prolonged juxtaposition of polemics and doctoral lessons, between an almost religious enthusiasm and the cold shower of a warning: “You have not understood anything. Get to work!” One can imagine the impression such a text made on the khâgne students and on some intellectuals dazzled by the style and the Greek, Germanic, and poetic references. It also constituted Jean Beaufret’s unique position, as one who was henceforth authorized to decipher Heidegger’s enigmas55 and definitively breaking not only with Sartre and with Marxism, but above all with their political and contemporary social themes. Breaking as well with the majority of the audience that rushed barely a year earlier to his lecture on “Marxisme et existentialisme,” Beaufret even chose (even if the results of this choice were not immediately felt) to concentrate on his teaching and on the circle of his acquaintances, disciples, and friends.
What was the status of humanism in this context? It is remarkably absent from this text. One may object that this is the theme that Heidegger addressed from beginning to end in his “Letter,” which was published simultaneously in issue 63 of the journal Fontaine. It is nonetheless obvious that the question was asked in terms that were decidedly irrelevant to current events. From the perspective of a meditation on the fate of the Western world, Heidegger’s text was infinitely richer than the great majority of partisan positions of the time. We also have to recognize that the Master of Freiburg needed a certain boldness (or recklessness?) to shift the terms of the debate to a purely ontological—and thus dehumanized—ground, only two years after the discovery of the Nazi crimes and the other horrors of the Second World War. One easily conceives that he may have wanted to remain above the political or national divisions, and for good reason! However, now that fifty years have elapsed, should we not recognize the troubling nature of his obstinate refusal to utter even one word, or acknowledge the suffering and distress of human beings, whoever they were?
The debate, obviously, was only suspended for a time. It will come back later, with the return of the political polemics. As for the structuralist displacement of the Heideggerian antihumanism, it was still completely unforeseen in the years following Liberation and even at the beginning of the next decade. Althusser admitted having read the “Letter on Humanism” only quite late, and he clarified that it “influenced” his thesis concerning the “theoretical antihumanism in Marx.”56 This clarification is not surprising, but is refreshingly frank. The “Letter” is indeed the text by Heidegger that had the greatest influence in France, above all in the 1960s.57
We saw how Heidegger radically differentiated himself from Sartre. Logically, Sartre should also have differentiated himself from Heidegger. We now have the proof that Sartre read On the Essence of Truth a few months after the publication of its translation in 1948: he made numerous allusions to it in the fragments assembled and published after his death, in a volume entitled Truth and Existence.58 What he drew from Heidegger’s text is the idea that “the ground of Truth is freedom.” He immediately added: “Thus man can choose non-truth.”59 This interprets the relation between truth and nontruth—which Heidegger had situated within being itself—in a radically humanistic sense. Similarly, Sartre appreciated that this Heideggerian being historicizes itself, but not that it should do so by virtue of a “letting-be,” delivering the human to pure passivity. His most radical opposition bore on the “mystical position” that he attributed to Heidegger: he refused “to define man by mystery.”60 Even if this word badly translates the Heideggerian Geheimnis and reduces it excessively to the Christian tradition, there is no doubt that the incompatibility of Sartre’s conception of the human being with Heidegger’s will only become more radical. Sartre refused to conceive of being except as an in-itself against which (and not from which) the for-itself (the human being) must assume its absurd condition. The debate on humanism cannot be separated from that which concerns ontology. Examining the Heideggerian approach to the truth of being, Sartre found nothing of interest: “Being is a congealed hyperabundance that does not fill up.”61
A few years later, in December 1952,62 Sartre visited Heidegger63 for a lecture at which he was “coolly received by the students.” He only remained with the Master for a short while and confided his disappointment to Simone de Beauvoir: “He was dabbling in mysticism, Sartre told me.”64 This is of course a rather superficial way of measuring a gap that would only widen between the two philosophers and that remains incontestable. They did not relate well during their meeting: Sartre found that his interlocutor had “the air of a retired colonel.”65 Henceforth, each would follow his own way, ignoring the other; and Sartre had no interest in being present at Cerisy when Heidegger came to France for the first time in the mid-50s, when the fate of his French reception seemed uncertain.