IT WAS A scandal, and indeed a media-driven scandal, that occurred. But wherein lay the scandal? In the abomination and dishonor of a “great philosopher” suddenly put in the stocks? Or (secondarily), in the fact that the print and broadcast press carried out a media lynching of a famous person (postmortem, to be sure) without taking the trouble to verify the sources of the accusation, as if the pleasure of disparaging the man compensated for the frustration of not understanding the thinker. Finally, one will object that it is a scandal that I devoted an entire chapter to these stories and their distortions, instead of writing a genuine philosophical history.
It is the latter objection that needs to be addressed first, for if the historian of a “reception” overlooks all that seems unworthy of a great philosophy, is he still a historian? The only way of restoring a philosophical tenor to this history, to the greatest extent possible, is to include the journalistic or media frenzy (otherwise one would have to limit oneself to a work of meditation divorced from any social historical events), and to try to appreciate both the representative importance and the intrinsic pertinence of “effects,” which should not be dismissed as merely superficial.
Since there was a scandal, which is incontestable, it is first necessary to go to the heart of the matter; in other words, to clarify the nature and the meaning of the “revelations” that, rightly or wrongly, alerted uninformed minds, and then unsettled an initially incredulous audience.
What interests us here is not to return to the discussion—which had been already conducted ad nauseum—of the validity of the existing theses in the polemical debates concerning the scope of Heidegger’s political engagement: it is rather a matter of understanding what happened, that is, why Victor Farias’s book caused a sensation as soon as it appeared in the fall of 1987.1 How can this unexpected fact be explained? The author was unknown, the publisher from the provinces; in addition, the subject was not new: we already have established that the polemics concerning Heidegger’s “Nazism” never really stopped brewing since Liberation, simmering, and then erupting in successive waves. Instead of entertaining the phantasmagorical hypothesis of a media-driven plot, we should rather look for the origin of the scandal in the very contents of Farias’s book.
How was this book able to appear both new and disturbing? It is necessary, in a certain manner, to put ourselves in the position of a well-meaning nonspecialist, who suddenly discovers a new facet of Heidegger that is quite unworthy of a great thinker.
What caused the commotion was the radical and encompassing character of a thesis that presented itself as based upon numerous sources, which were supported by damning documents: Heidegger denounced people on two occasions!2 The facts usually cited in defense of the philosopher (his resignation from the rectorate in 1934, his marginalization and the attacks that he subsequently received from Nazis in high places) no longer worked in his favor, since they could be explained in terms of his radicalism and populism, similar to that of Roehm’s SA followers, who were eliminated by Hitler in 1934 during the “night of the long knives.” The thesis has thus a certain coherence: Heidegger, favorably disposed from an early age to a conservative nationalism, made a choice in 1933 that corresponded to his deepest convictions, the origins and echoes of which can be perceived in his work; not only did he pay his party membership dues until 1945, but more significantly, he never offered a word of sympathy or regret for the victims of the death camps, never renounced the “inner greatness” of the movement, and refused to make genuine honorable amends in his interview published immediately after his death in Der Spiegel. Heidegger a Nazi? That would be an understatement. He turned out to be more royalist than the king and wanted to be—through his Hölderlinian ideal of the spiritual homeland—more faithful to genuine Nazism than the men in power who were responsible for the catastrophic course of events.
In his preface, Christian Jambet insisted on this point by going even further than Farias: “Heidegger’s biography is nothing else than the story of someone choosing the death drive.”3 Further, Jambet did so in terms that are particularly interesting to us, as they reveal the French stakes in the new polemic that was thereby launched: “It is due to the indisputable importance of Heidegger’s ontology that the question of the crime merits being posed in its context. Heidegger has become, since the war, a French philosopher. It is in France that his thinking has had the most impact; it is here that it passes for being the philosophy that is most appropriate to the events of modernity. . . . For many scholars, his thinking has, more than any other philosophy in France, except for Marxism, become unavoidable. Ontology led to the methodical deconstruction of metaphysics as such.”4
This citation, which reveals certain excessively “Franco-French” agendas, already goes too far: it is certain that many were pleased to find the long-awaited occasion to liquidate the intellectual hegemony of Heideggerianism in France. We will return to this apropos Jacques Derrida’s delicate position in this matter. For now it is important not to be carried away by the maelstrom—or the confusion. How is one to proceed, faced with the impossibility of giving an exhaustive account of all the reactions provoked by Farias’s book? For the sake of clarity, I will attend to the first and most significant press articles in order to measure the immediate impact of the book in question.
In an article entitled “Was Heidegger a Nazi?” Roger-Pol Droit devoted a whole page to this question in Le Monde:5 “Implacably documented, this book is a bombshell. . . . In short, Farias’s dossier is overwhelming”; these judgments in the form of a verdict condemn the “accused” without appeal. We will not, however, neglect the arguments and nuances that accompanied them: first, a reference to the old debate concerning Heidegger and his political engagement, followed by a summary of the “official” position, and then a mention of the extent of Farias’s research in numerous archives, along with the admission of the fact that his conclusion (“Heidegger as an eminent and resolute member of the Nazi party”) is “simple, perhaps too simple.” What incontestably impressed Roger-Pol Droit is the cohesive and apparently documented solidity of Farias’s thesis: from the beginning to the end of his life, Heidegger was in complicity with a conservative, agrarian ideology with anti-Semitic tendencies (his homages at an early and later age to the monk Abraham a Sancta Clara proved it); in the middle, if one can put it that way, stands the allegiance to the Nazi party, an allegiance maintained until 1945. His disillusion of 1934 is not that of a Nazi adversary, and his suspicion of the regime was “quite limited.” Let us resist the temptation “to throw the complete works of the philosopher in the trash,” although one must no longer ignore the links that are difficult to identify between Heidegger/Dr. Jekyl and Heidegger/Mr. Hyde. “The remaining task will be to give thought to the obscure link that unites them. The merit of Farias’s inquest is that it constrains us to undertake this effort. It is a philosophical task—difficult and long.”
Each newspaper has its own style. That of Liberation was less restrained. The title “Heil Heidegger” testifies to this, especially since it is accompanied by two striking photos of the rector Heidegger (wearing the Nazi insignia and seated in the middle of the flags with the swastika) and combatively subtitled: “From 1933 to 1945, Martin Heidegger, often considered to be the greatest philosopher of the century, was a zealous militant of the Nazi party: Victor Farias’s book, published today, proves it overwhelmingly. The question is: how can anyone remain a Heideggerian?”6 It is true that Robert Maggiori’s article first gives Jean Beaufret the chance to speak, but it is in order to better refute Beaufret’s official position by contrasting it with the mass of documents that “undermined his entire discourse,” primarily, with the two letters of denunciation signed by Heidegger, but not without adding: “That is not, obviously, what is important in Farias’s book, even if these ‘anecdotes’—and many others—shed a disturbing light on Heidegger. What is crucial is that Farias’s detailed inquest reveals the consistency of Heidegger’s allegiance to Nazism.” As Droit had done two days earlier, Maggiori followed Farias’s argumentation, but by insisting on all that which weakened the justifications and excuses offered by Heidegger himself (he was not excluded from the conferences in Prague and Paris; he was not put “on the sidelines” after 1934; he was not forbidden to engage in scholarly activities). The invitation to consider all of that is addressed essentially to “Heideggerian posterity,” in the form of a genuine challenge.
As severe as they were with Heidegger, agreeing to recognize Farias’s serious documentation (a point on which their good faith had been somewhat deceived), neither Droit nor Maggiori failed to appreciate the stature of the thinker or the philosophical dignity of his oeuvre. The problem was exactly that: how to hold the two ends of the chain stretched to the breaking point, between a certain greatness of the thought and the compromises one makes in life. Is that connection even conceivable? The Heideggerians had their work cut out for them! How can one disagree with the well-grounded nature of this challenge, at least in principle? But the appeal for thoughtful reflection had little chance of being heard, considering the emotional climate that soon developed. The two articles we just considered signaled the beginning of a genuinely polemical explosion, whose most noteworthy moments must be recalled.
“Who will dare write that Martin Heidegger was a villain? That his work carried within it, better than hints, all the ingredients of a fascist thought?” It is in these unusually violent terms that Dominique Grisoni began an article entitled “M. Heidegger, Professor of Nazi philosophy” [professeur de philonazie].7 He did not content himself with unabashedly lauding Farias’s book. He went even further than Farias by presenting the philosopher as “the official—and recognized as such—thinker” of the Nazi regime. As we have begun to see, these formulations lack any sense of proportion, any nuance, and are rather more insults than philosophical judgments: “Being was Hitlerian,” and Heidegger’s writing “can be seen as the philosophical version of a breviary of hate.” Hence the conclusion was announced straightaway in the form of this brutal question: “Should one still read this German philosopher?” This is a question that is all the more violent since the simultaneous publication of Derrida’s book Of Spirit is referred to with the commentary, “Ironic title, Macabre Irony.” But nothing further is said of Derrida’s work, which deserved more attention, if not respect. It is as if Derrida himself was also guilty and should be thrown into the darkness.
The excellent Germanist and writer George-Arthur Goldschmidt, although not stylistically crude, was in the end no less extreme, since he went as far as writing this shocking sentence: “Heidegger’s thinking is nothing but the shadow of Auschwitz, for which it has prepared the ground, and which it will carry within itself for all time as a weight.”8 Taken literally, this verdict from which there is no appeal denies the very existence of an independent Heideggerian “thought” since—through a strangely precursory lugubrious work—it is reduced to being the preparation for the Holocaust of which it would be nothing but the “shadow.” An infinite and interminable malediction must accompany this pseudo-thinking, carried by the unspeakable mourning that it has itself engendered.
Christian Jambet was not far from this implacable accusation when he wrote in his preface to Farias’s book, “If the core of Hitlerism is the ‘final solution,’ if the extermination camps and their gas chambers are the substance of Nazism, what does the biography of a philosopher who gives his assent to that mean?”9 Even put as a question, the conclusion of this syllogism, not formulated but almost imposed on the reader, is as follows: “Heidegger gave his assent to the final solution.” One must admit that, as in the preceding case, this extreme passage, without any proof or textual reference, amounts to libelous slander pure and simple. Heidegger is demonized and no discussion is possible. In an interview with Art Press, Jambet repeated these same accusations in a somewhat more circumstantial manner, but by calling Heidegger’s political texts of 1933 “clearly obscene.”10
One guesses that these hyperbolic rejections could not go without a response. To draw a detailed list of these and to undertake a complete inventory would be tedious. It is more important to analyze the responses (will insult respond to slander?) and above all to determine whether solid, precise, and serious counterarguments would be opposed to Farias. Before that, in the midst of the polemical tempest, we will be concerned less with what arises from invective, and rather more with what contributes, in spite of everything, to enriching the debate with new information.
On the full page of letters and testimonies that Le Monde devoted to this dossier two weeks after the article by Roger-Pol Droit,11 partisans and adversaries were on equal footing. However, in addition to an “inept perfidy” imputed to Farias by a Heideggerian from the heart of France,12 we learn in passing that Heidegger was the “most difficult case”13 for the committee on denazification and—a more serious charge for Heidegger from a moral point of view—that his personal behavior toward his mentor Husserl had not always been honorable.14
The polemic unfolded in a paradoxical manner. As it developed, on the one hand, it revealed the weakness of Farias’s book (in terms of sources but especially in terms of their interpretation), and on the other hand, it caused new information to emerge, information that would contribute to accentuating the unease that thereafter surrounded the reputation of the great philosopher.
Before returning to Farias’s book, let us for the moment and for the sake of clarity consider the new elements that provided grist for the mill for Heidegger’s adversaries. A particularly compromising fact seemed confirmed by the deep, long, and lasting friendship between Heidegger and Eugen Fischer, a medical specialist in human heredity, and a partisan, theoretician, and practitioner of racial eugenics. Michel Tibon-Cornillot, who devoted a long and detailed article to this question in a February 1988 issue of Liberation,15 was careful not to present an excessive accusation: “We cannot infer from the deep and sustained relationship between Heidegger and Fischer a fraternity in horror similar to what linked Fischer and Mengele. No available document permits such a statement.”16 He maintained, however, that there must have been a “profoundly shared worldview” between the two men. This ideological proximity could explain Heidegger’s silence on the genocide.
Fifteen days later, another significant testimony confirmed the suspicions of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism: Ernesto Grassi, an Italian philosopher who had been living in Germany for a long time, known for his work on Renaissance humanism, while confessing his admiration for the thinker, judged indisputable the National Socialism of Heidegger the man. He cites as a tragic example of Heidegger’s personal anti-Semitism his brutal rupture as early as 1932 with his intimate friend and disciple Szilasi, a Jew from Hungary.17 In May, Le Monde reproduced the testimony of the doctor Léopoldine Weizmann, who confirmed these suspicions.18 Finally, a year later, and to top everything, Liberation and Le Monde published a translation of a letter from 1929, previously published in Die Zeit, where Heidegger recommended an assistant in these terms. “Either we endow anew our German intellectual life with authentic forces and educators, emanating from the soil, or we definitively deliver it to the Jewish influence that is growing, in the narrow and broad sense of the term.”19
The passing maelstrom did not take place without damaging the image of the great thinker. The shock produced by Farias’s book seemed to have permitted specific accusations to have an impact, at least concerning certain of Heidegger’s personal weaknesses, ambiguities, or failings. Did the initial shock of the scandal (an “incriminating dossier”) intensify during the winter of 1987–88? This at least was the impression that the most resolute anti-Heideggerians wanted to give: namely, that this was a dossier that would not cease growing, to the point that it would silence a defense of any kind. Were the remaining faithful, confined to bed with a hot-water bottle to get through this veritable nightmare,20 going to maintain an ontological silence in their offended dignity? Or, lacking arguments, were they limited to unleashing a barrage of invectives, and a series of insults?
After the first shock, the polemic did not in fact develop according to these extreme and caricatured hypotheses.21 A paradoxical reversal took place: it was the defenders of this sinister master—who was presented as the (almost) “official” philosopher of Nazism, as an irrationalist, and as a hateful denunciator who was heavily anti-Semitic—who called for reason and sangfroid, and for returning to the texts, so as to carefully analyze and correct Farias’s interpretive method, errors, and shortcomings. This took place in such a way that in a few months “credibility” would change camps, in view of the increasingly obvious weaknesses in Farias’s book.
The following scathing judgment by Jacques Derrida appeared first: “The reading proposed [by Farias], if there is one, remains insufficient or questionable, at times so shoddy that one wonders if the investigator began to read Heidegger more than an hour ago.”22 Emphasizing that for more than a half century, “no rigorous philosopher has been able to avoid a debate with [explication avec] Heidegger,” Derrida contrasted the seriousness of critical works by Lacoue-Labarthe, Blanchot, Levinas, and Nancy to the superficiality of Farias’s book. Certainly, he thought that he himself contributed to this effort of “explication” with his two works that appeared at the time almost simultaneously: Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question and Psyche. His position on the “question” implied a twofold reevaluation: with respect to Nazism, and without any complicity for these “regions . . . haunted by the diabolical,” one must understand that it was a continent “whose roots are still obscure”; with respect to Heidegger’s thought, one must recognize its “groundbreaking character,” and undertake an entire work of reading with critical distance: “I have indicated my reservations in all my references to Heidegger, as far back as they go”23 (especially with respect to the themes of the proper, the near, and the homeland). With respect to method, Derrida sought a displacement of the boundary between “external” and “internal” reading. He thought that he contributed to it, by initiating—apart from the condemnation of Nazism—a genuine “thinking” of what has happened. In the end, Heidegger was in no way to be protected; on the contrary; “by setting out from a certain deconstruction . . . one can pose, it seems to me, new questions to Heidegger.”24 Derrida finally stated that for authentic philosophical perspectives, “the debates are richer and more open abroad.”25
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and the participants in a substantial dossier published in the journal Le Débat would also return to the letter of the documents and to the gravity of the texts.
In a text written in Berkeley as early as November 1987,26 Lacoue-Labarthe took an extremely clear and firm position. For him, Farias had not presented anything new with respect to the basic facts of the case. That Heidegger believed in National Socialism is indisputable; that he “presented a particularly euphemistic version of his political compromise” cannot be denied. Farias’s work presented the appearance of a scrupulously historical work (although it ignored, among other things, the Heidegger–Kästner correspondence and the tribulations of the relationship with Arendt). However, “this book, profoundly, is not just and I even find it—I choose my words carefully—to be dishonest.”27 So that one does not mistake the scope of these critical remarks, which in no way intended to exonerate Heidegger for what was decidedly a “moral failing” (and not a simply error in judgment), Lacoue-Labarthe clarified that Nazism was for him, as for Farias, “an absolutely vile phenomenon.” However, concerning a complex case such as that of Heidegger, whose philosophical work is considerable, it is necessary to respect the texts and make an effort to read them honestly. Now, there are three reasons to suspect Farias’s work. The first pertains to its rhetoric, and the way it presents things: all of Heidegger’s acts from 1933 were supposed to be those of a “militant,” and no nuance was allowed as to the nature of the acts, even if they often consisted only in passing encounters with notorious Nazi colleagues (hence the effect of “accumulative list”). At the same time, Farias systematically minimized any testimony to the contrary (the hostility of the Rosenberg clan and Heidegger’s public criticism of biologism in his courses, etc.). The second reason is that in his use of texts, Farias always confused matters under the pretext of clarifying the citations through their context: thus, the brief homage of the young Heidegger to his compatriot Abraham a Sancta Clara was rendered suspect, not because of the text, which is itself harmless, but by lengthy considerations of the biography of the monk, the anti-Semitic tradition in Southern Germany, of Karl Lueger, his obituary, and so on, in a kind of strategy of “law of contamination” that “renders Heidegger responsible for what he has not said.” Shockingly the contents of Heidegger’s courses on Hölderlin were not seriously taken into account. Finally, and this is not surprising after what has just been established, Victor Farias has simply not read Heidegger’s philosophical work, summarizing in a few pages28 “the reflections that occupied Heidegger during the end of his life,” and remaining silent—which is still more serious—on Heidegger’s decisive work on Nietzsche, from 1936 on, which was designed to disengage his thought from Nazi ideology and to situate it metaphysically. Citing other significant silences, Lacoue-Labarthe concluded: where is Heidegger’s thinking if not in his texts? The effect of this disproportionate “scandal” would be catastrophic if it led to forbidding the reading (and the interrogation) of a great philosophical work.
The most solid dossier on the question was presented by Le Débat in its issue of January–February 1988. In keeping with the tradition of this journal, the intention stated by the editor was to organize a serious discussion, compensating for the ignorance “where French opinion has remained for a long time with respect to German historical work in the matter.”29 To support this intention to document matters, the various perspectives that were solicited were accompanied by the translation of certain political texts from 1933–34, translated by Nicole Parfait and presented by François Fédier (in a spirit obviously quite different from the one that had motivated Jean-Pierre Faye at the beginning of the 1960s).30 By all accounts, the editors of the journal (in this case Pierre Nora) had prepared the issue in close collaboration with François Fédier, avoiding any accusatory terms, any pandering to the hostile crowd, any sensational titles (the Heidegger dossier was situated next to a main section under the theme “To Save Libraries”). The choice of the contributors reflected the intent to reorient the polemic in favor of the defense: the most resolute accusers were sidelined; they invited someone who was unknown to present the excessively paradoxical thesis, “Heidegger against Nazism.”31 Only two of the seven contributions were clearly critical of the Master. Gallimard, the French publisher of Heidegger, took every precaution to avoid any conflict with the family and the philosopher’s heirs. Not that a compassionate tone was adopted or that the collection gave the impression of having been programmed: one hears dissonances. Michel Deguy, in particular, did not conceal the devastating effects that Farias’s book had on media coverage, but also perhaps on himself: “To hear again these harangues on the Führung and the Dienst is to hear the tone of Sein und Zeit imitated by its double [sosie], its Nazi double [sozi]. The merit of ‘Farias’ would be to remind us that each language, including that of Goethe, would be capable of confusing itself with the exaggerations provided by its caricature.”32 It is as a poet that Deguy conjured his own anxiety in the face of the ravages of the thinker’s obedience (however brief) to the Nazi order. How can a principle of disobedience be found? “Discerning poetry is freedom.”33 One sees that Deguy did not directly take a position; he did better, and undertook a soul searching, which was enlightened by poetic experience, and oriented toward a new reading of Heidegger.
Let us approach now the two contributions that were explicitly “critical.” They were brief and notably different from each other. Stéphane Mosès,34 without giving any indication of any sympathy for Heidegger himself, was also quite severe toward Farias: recalling the dated status of the polemic and the best work on the question in France and in Germany, and finding Farias weak and “too systematically biased,” he referred both to Derrida’s studies on the “erratic trajectory of some Heideggerian motifs” and to Minder on “the profoundly conservative element” in Heidegger’s thought, asking finally if it was not a fascination for radicality that would constitute the articulation between Heidegger’s philosophy and the Nazi ideology. The article ended in an interrogative mode on the difficulty of thinking this articulation in its very possibility.
In a less thoughtful, and even quite polemical, manner, Alain Renaut took on the “French Heideggerians” for “their surprising stupidity and their extravagant dogmatism.”35 Citations from Boutot, Derrida, and Crétella were singled out. What were they accused of? They were accused of denying the new facts revealed by Farias. Renaut saluted Farias’s “detailed research.” Without any doubts about the details, seeming to ignore the critiques that began to be raised against the facts, even overlooking “the properly interpretive dimension of Farias’s book,” Renaut enumerated the three principal contributions provided by the book: the revelations on the early years of Heidegger’s orientation, thanks to the study of the formative years; on his “extraordinary activism” “during and after his Rectorate” (but no date is given); and finally, the Master was the cynical and unscrupulous author of letters of denunciation. Renaut concluded the following: these “facts” render untenable the former line of defense of Jean Beaufret—who claimed that these unwelcome interrogations were mediocre—when in fact these interrogations revealed the inanity of the interpretations that played Heidegger against Heidegger by claiming that the great philosopher was misled because he was overly attached to the metaphysics of subjectivity and to humanism (it was then the author Of Spirit who found himself attacked once again). This hastily written text offered a strange disparity between, on the one hand, his appeal to the “facts” revealed by Farias (without any nuance, without any precise reference either to Heidegger’s texts or to previous works, whether French or German) and, on the other hand, his violent final charge against Derrida’s “anti-humanism.” For what do the facts “prove” (insofar as they were verified) against a philosophical interpretation (which, incidentally, was much more complex than the interpretation that Renaut gave of it in a few lines)? Is it because Heidegger had written a letter of denunciation that it was no longer possible to question either the status of humanism or that of metaphysics in the evolution of his texts?
Was it chance (or a simple matter of editing) that Alain Renaut’s and Gérard Granel’s texts, which were diametrically opposed in both form and spirit, were published together in the same issue of Le Débat?36 A joyously provocative writer with an agile pen, sparkling at times, Granel did not conceal that he wrote so as to “continue the combat” of the liberation of the possible and thus “enraging those who credited themselves with having buried the ‘French Philosophy of the Sixties.’”37 Renaut—coauthor of a book that bore that title—was identified by name, and one can assume that he, in particular, did not appreciate Granel’s prose. Let us concede that it was too developed (because as it progressed, it evolved into an actual course on the sociopolitical theories of Rousseau and of Hume). But enough of these overly academic criticisms! Granel’s text is immensely interesting by virtue of its twofold confrontation: first, by unmasking the genuine “spirit” of Farias’s work (which was not really a historical work, but an effort to disqualify Heidegger once and for all, because he had always been a Nazi38: “an unabashedly Stalinist court”39) in brilliant and original terms. Next and above all, by taking seriously and reposing a fundamental question (no doubt the most decisive) with respect to the 1933 involvement (whatever its duration, its episodes, and its consequences): must one judge this involvement without making an effort to understand the possibilities that Heidegger had been able to discern and that must be considered as such, without stifling them under the weight of what actually took place. This mode of questioning—without implying any complicity with the Nazi horror (associating Heidegger in any way with Auschwitz is “the depth of the abjection”40)—upsets “the blissful ignorance of our societies,” whose “moral exigencies”41 explain the attack against Heidegger. How can Heidegger’s hope for the people [das Volk] be put in perspective? It is a question of understanding “in what sense the involvement, the rupture, the ultimate loyalty to ‘something’ in National Socialism, all three of them result (in different ways) from the play of a ‘possible’ and of a ‘real’: the possible and the real of the movement, in other words, of what is in motion in the movement.”42 While Farias never defined “populism” and enclosed Heidegger’s thinking in a kind of ideological block where any comprehension of history is sterilized, one must understand that the “popular” could have been “the emergence in the people of an obscure consciousness of a ‘lack of being.’”43 Even if it is difficult to follow Granel in all the twists of a project that assumes its provocative character with panache, and does not fear embellishing his flaunting of a fabricated signature (“for general Karl-Martin-Ludwig-Geist,”44 namely the contemporary era determined by the three “markers,” Marx, Heidegger, Wittgenstein), one can appreciate his performance, while admitting that he succeeds best and reaches his goal best in the first section (where we find the high-quality polemic against Farias), while it is less convincing in the second section (where he tries to inscribe the political mirage of Heidegger’s thought in a “war of secession” of the popular-revolutionary potential).
Although quite critical of Farias’s project, and quite respectful toward Heidegger’s philosophical work (without for that matter exploring, like Granel, the “potential” of his political adventure), Aubenque, in the same issue of Débat, presented a very different text, in both its configuration and its more classical formulations (its title45 reflects an impatience shared by a number of professional philosophers faced with an “affair” that was nothing new to them). This text merits serious attention: it is without doubt the most precise, the most probing, and has the most balanced palette of the “defenses” and findings, whether passionate or more measured, all worthy of interest, that refuted or corrected the charges.
Aubenque cites Derrida’s recent intervention straightaway in order to completely agree, suggesting that Farias’s book is absolutely not a philosophy book (consisting in only “weak analyses”) any more than it is a history (too many errors or approximations). What is it then? An indictment. But is it sound? The pages devoted to the formation of the philosopher cause us to doubt it;46 the denunciation of the homages to monk Abraham a Sancta Clara was, frankly, the product of a “delirious interpretation.”47 Aubenque then gives two precise examples of insinuations that were nothing but “hoaxes.”48
Once the dust settles in this “mess,” we find what we already knew: during his rectorate, Heidegger “adhered to a certain idea of Nazism,” but it is absolutely false to claim that he was thereby a militant (trustworthy testimonies argue the opposite).49 It is hardly serious, and even “implausible,” to connect his “personal misgivings” from 1934 to the position of the SA.50 Conducting a properly philosophical analysis, Aubenque gives his interpretation of the way the question of the relation between Heidegger’s thought and the involvement in 1933 should be posed. One sentence in this regard is surprising. “Heidegger’s initial allegiance to the ‘movement’ was not a philosophical act.”51 Aubenque does not want to minimize the “fatal” character of this allegiance; he intends to understand it within its historical context, to the extent that it “looks like a million other cases” and in no way can be deduced from Sein und Zeit, which is in itself apolitical.52 Unlike Gérard Granel, who tried courageously to defend the Heidegger of 1933, Aubenque maintained that this date represents a rupture, but that “the rupture goes both ways”53 (between politics and philosophy): if politics overshadows philosophy in the “Rectoral Address,” philosophy will reestablish its rights on a new basis, after 1935, thanks to a critical analysis of National Socialism that would no longer be considered as an historical alternative. It will become, on the contrary, one of the avatars of the forgetting of being. Of course, Farias hardly mentioned these reflections, as important as they were for Heidegger after his “turn” of 1935–36. Many, as he was, are incapable of understanding the later Heidegger’s approach, which was “both lofty and cryptic,” and invites us to the exigency of the “task of thinking.”54
It would be erroneous to claim that the issue of Le Débat that we have read as closely as possible55 had such an effect that it overshadowed other contributions to this discussion. This publication in no way put an end to an “affair” whose developments would unfold for several months. However, it represented a turning in the polemic: not only did it calm “hostilities,” but above all it gave way to a phase of more reflective exchanges, in which philosophical arguments slowly replaced the gesticulations and invectives.
Winter 1987–88 was the scene of intense battles in which Heidegger was the direct or indirect target. At the same time that the polemic intensified (through a shift to another level, where the odd trial of a great philosopher organized by minds eager to appear earnest was challenged, in particular by Alain Finkielkraut56), it was also displaced onto Jacques Derrida, whose severe response to Farias had upset more than one person. Given the fact that one of the objectives of the Farias tract (particularly perceptible in Jambet’s preface) was to attack Heidegger’s privileged status in the French intellectual landscape (the “clichés” of the end of metaphysics and the necessity of its deconstruction), and given that Jacques Derrida was the most renowned and the most inventive representative of that thinking, which was considered, rightly or wrongly, as “dominant,” it is hardly surprising that an unanticipated event transformed, in his turn, Derrida into a target, on the occasion of the reviews of his books Of Spirit and Psyche.57 It was, in fact, on the first of these texts that critical attention was focused. Taking advantage of the moment, the critics reduced the subtle analyses concerning the status of Geist to the sole question of “adherences” or of “allegiances” to Nazism. But while Roger-Pol Droit conceded with reticence that Heidegger’s caution with respect to the Nazi regime was “philosophically ambiguous” (attempting to render Nazism “spiritual” and refusing “biologism”),58 Robert Maggiori launched a lively attack against Derrida’s “fussing” [les chichis]59: why was there still so much respect for the “letter” of Heidegger’s writings? It was necessary, for Maggiori, to take an ethical position, and, as the subtitle of the article suggested, “to denounce the allegiance to Nazism” and all that which, in Heidegger’s work, “has prevented us from thinking.”60 Fifteen days later, Libération published a long and sincere letter of protest that judged that Maggiori not only had been carried away by the anti-Heideggerianism of the time, but had misunderstood Derrida’s ever-questioning boldness in his explication of (and with) Heidegger.61
That winter, which was decidedly eventful, a new development took place with the publication of an essay by Pierre Bourdieu.62 Following an interview of his,63 in which he insinuated that the debate about Heidegger had put Derrida “in great difficulty,”64 Derrida had to respond forcefully, stating that Bourdieu’s conceptual approach was “pre-Heideggerian”: the two readings of Heidegger—external and internal—were juxtaposed and both deemed insufficient. Finally, Derrida regretted Bourdieu’s “electoral sociology,” which by aggressively “objectifying” the debate, had dispensed with a perhaps old-fashioned reflex that Derrida still practiced, that of “fidelity or decency in the wounded friendship.”65 Exercising his right of response in the same issue, Bourdieu briefly regretted the “unfortunate” phrase regarding “the great difficulty” in which Derrida would have found himself, but he also regretted that Derrida “was determined to remain silent concerning what is genuinely in question, while employing prophetic anathemas (‘pre-Heideggerian,’ etc.).” This new duel, this time between two former comrades of the École Normale Supérieure, attested to the depth of the fundamental disagreements provoked by Heidegger’s thought. Certainly the polemic did not fade away.
Would a patient clarification, carefully prepared during the winter, bring the discussion to a close? It was with the title, “La parole à la defense” [The defense has the floor], that Roger-Pol Droit took account in May 198866 of the book François Fédier had just published,67 which was offered with the aim of protecting “Heidegger’s reputation”68 against the slander propagated by Farias and his followers. From that point of view, his reply was no more philosophical than the attack. Assuming this limitation, he defended his position by maintaining that it was inconceivable to separate the life from the work. Is it conceivable that a great thinker be a villain? Before coming to this conclusion, and certainly before demonizing Heidegger’s person, it would be better to illuminate the life through the work, instead of reducing the one to the most external or anecdotal aspects of the other. Now Heidegger has always affirmed the absolute priority of thought, whether his own or that of great classical philosophers, over any purely biographical consideration. To ignore this standard is to refuse from the outset to listen to what is most proper in Heidegger’s thought.
Although not completely convinced by a highly detailed speech for the defense,69 Roger-Pol Droit recognized that Fédier has at least one quality: he comports himself like a good attorney who, far from answering invective with slander, reconsiders the pieces of the dossier in order to demonstrate that the “method” of the accusation turns out to be more of a witch hunt than a serious and scrupulous historical inquiry: false translations, truncated citations, hasty interpretations, amalgamations, insinuations tending (with unfortunate success) to spread a “rumor,” in order to draw an image of a monstrous Heidegger and to influence a gullible public unable to reference the sources. The book, in fact, only accomplished and furthered the first point that Fédier made “straightaway” in order to get it into the record, in the form of a letter to Pierre Nora dated November 4–5, 1987, and published as such in Le Débat.70 What were the principal arguments advanced to prepare the dossier for the defense? First, there was the excessive nature of Farias’s thesis (Heidegger was presented as more of a Nazi than the “official philosophers of Nazism”), and then the misunderstanding concerning the allusion to Sachsenhausen in Heidegger’s last homage to his compatriot Abraham a Sancta Clara, a discourse that itself had been grossly “over-interpreted.” Other errors or falsifications71 left no doubt concerning Farias’s constant malevolence, which was quite obvious when he used the adverb “scrupulously” with respect to Heidegger’s payment of dues (pretending to ignore that in a totalitarian regime one leaves the party only at the risk of one’s life). Between these first points and the spring of 1988 Fédier had himself benefited from the anti-Farias reactions that multiplied, including outside of France.72
Let us note, moreover, the change in the psychological climate within six months’ time. The effect of the scandal had quickly abated; the seriousness of Farias’s work no longer seemed at all unassailable, and consequently, the absolutely “overwhelming” character of the so-called revelations no longer imposed itself as easily. We have seen that before the publication of Fédier’s book there had been no lack of interventions (and how could their various qualities be denied?) to contest Farias’s factual errors and method.
Among all these responses, those that François Fédier gave in his book were, if not always the most convincing, at least very detailed73 and careful with respect to the facts themselves, the reliability of the documents, and Heidegger’s personality. After having read Fédier’s book, as well as other contributions, one can no longer doubt that Farias’s “method” turned out to be both unreliable and quite dangerous: certainly one is prepared to forgive some errors committed by a historian in good faith; but those of Farias were too numerous and above all betrayed such bias (along with an absence of rigor) that one is led to agree with the judgment of Pierre Aubenque: “In reality it is excessive and does not merit the attention we give it.”74 Undoubtedly some began to realize in spring 1988 that they had been too quick to lend credence to Farias’s historical claims. In his account of Fédier’s book, Roger-Pol Droit tried to stick to the facts. We certainly cannot expect him to unconditionally support Fédier, the most resolute defender of “the accused.” We have seen that this is not the case. But among the arguments that he gave to justify important reservations, the most decisive were not, in my view, the details that he cited (for example, the case of Abraham a Sancta Clara or that of the dedication to Eugen Fischer—points on which Fédier seemed, on the contrary, convincing): the most decisive were his reservations concerning what tended, paradoxically, to “weaken the very path of Heidegger.” Indeed, the excellent defense of Heidegger’s “reputation,” of his dignity, of his motivations, of the extenuating circumstances that one must recognize, led Fédier to accord less attention to the very core of the thought that constitutes the unique originality of the Master.
With respect to the heart of the matter, many questions remain about the link between the involvement of 1933 and Heidegger’s thought; about the recognition by Heidegger himself of the “the internal truth and greatness” of the National Socialist movement, and finally about his “silence” concerning the Holocaust. Other contributors would try to situate themselves at a more philosophical level, with varying degrees of success.
One book stands out from the rest and even opens a new philosophical horizon, a more interesting phase of the debate around the “affair”: Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s La Fiction du politique.75 This is the case for two reasons: not only would the book (conceived before the publication of Farias’s book and without any relation to it) be the first to propose a philosophical reading that permits an understanding of the “political” of Heidegger, but that reading would also turn out to be influential: it is with or against it that other notable publications would try to rethink the question of the link between Heidegger’s thought and his political involvement.
This book—which was preceded by a meditative volume on poetry, involving a probing dialogue with Heidegger76—was timely, which does not mean that it had always been well received or had not disconcerted some. Nor did it have the merit of offering a definitive or indisputable interpretation: it did not even claim to do so. But its virtue was that it assumed the responsibility appropriate to a philosopher: that of a rigorous thinking without complacency. Will it be said that I am giving him too much credit? It suffices, by way of justification, to circumscribe the limits that Lacoue-Labarthe himself assumed at the outset: setting forth the distinctly Heideggerian position on the closure of metaphysics and the nihilist errancy of our epoch;77 radically questioning the core of Heidegger’s “failing”: his silence (or quasi-silence) on the Holocaust.78
These two positions—which are difficult to reconcile (Lacoue-Labarthe recognizes it)—can obviously be disputed. But to his credit, Lacoue-Labarthe first affirmed them and then above all displaced the debate by elevating it to an infinitely more meaningful level than that of knowing whether and when the Master wrote a particular letter, or took a particular position, etc. Accordingly, we arrive at the heart of a question that transcends any isolated fact, any anecdote, any politics, any psychological or ideological bias. It is a question of knowing how Heidegger was able to (and how one can after him, with or against him) “think together” a destiny of being and a “certain idea” of National Socialism.
We must confront this (quasi) unthinkable possibility, which has, until this point, been negated or denied by most interpreters (and, above all, by the core of the “faithful”): “Contrary to what one has said in a number of places, Heidegger’s commitment is entirely consistent with his thought.”79 Must not this admission of a “complete consistency” absolutely condemn that thought? But this does not only trap that thought, since through it the crisis of our epoch is revealed, if it is necessary to admit that nihilism is its unintended truth, of which Auschwitz, that unthinkable event, was the revelatory caesura: “In the Auschwitz apocalypse, it was nothing less than the West, in its essence, that revealed itself—and that continues, ever since to reveal itself. And it is thinking that event that Heidegger failed to do.”80
The connection between the diagnosis regarding Western history and Heidegger’s thought becomes all the more inextricable as the one provides the means for reading the other, and because it turns out itself to be carried by the “failure” it denounces. Lacoue-Labarthe, in sum, claims nothing more than to be the one who reveals what Heideggerian thinking itself already revealed without admitting it.81
Does he have an excessive fascination for the paradox? Perhaps. One should not mistake two qualities in this interpretation that could remain hidden from a hasty or poorly informed reader: first, the fact that this logical paradox itself is not projected on Heidegger from outside but drawn from the source that is most intimate for him, that is, Hölderlin’s thinking with respect to tragedy; second, Lacoue-Labarthe’s elaboration of a theory of mimesis, based on Hölderlin’s aesthetics.
That which actualizes this meditation, apparently quite distant from the catastrophes of the twentieth century, is the application of the concept of tragic caesura82 to Auschwitz, and the attempt (begun by Heidegger himself) to think our modern distress (nihilist errancy) according to the exclusive reference to the Greek model. Lacoue-Labarthe names this process of idealization, which has roots in the entire German tradition since Winkelmann, “national aestheticism,” and locates therein the element of National Socialism that is foreign to any modern political rationality (even that of cynical despotism),83 an element that contaminates Heideggerian thinking of historicity (including its determination of the essence of modern technology).
There is no need to go further into the details of the analysis of this book to establish its finesse and its authenticity: an experience of thinking led to its most paradoxical and most difficult limits. It is precisely that sophistication, guided by a tragic sense (to which the theatrical work Sit Venia also testifies84), that exposed Lacoue-Labarthe’s work to lively critiques, and even sarcasm. It is, in fact, Lacoue-Labarthe who was the unnamed target at the beginning of Jean-Pierre Faye’s new intervention in a debate with which he was familiar.85 The guiding thread that he proposed on the subject of Heidegger’s identification of metaphysics with nihilism (a position that he obviously challenges completely) emerged paradoxically from the accusations of Rector Krieck against Heidegger in April 1934. Those are often cited in defense of Heidegger to show that he began to be criticized by the toughest Nazis. In that respect, Faye clarified that Krieck86 described Heidegger’s philosophy as a “metaphysical nihilism” in order to demonstrate that it had nothing to do with authentic National Socialism, adding in a way that is unusual with respect to this nihilism: “as it has been represented primarily by Jewish writers.” “This was a most dangerous accusation in 1934,” Faye remarked appropriately, only referring to facts that he was not the only one to have published. His originality was to seize on the “incident” as a point of departure for an interpretation of Heidegger’s “turn”: “Heidegger’s defense would consist in immediately accepting the Nazi equation: Western metaphysics = nihilism,” while diverting the accusation toward a “fundamental event” that took place at the beginning of the history of being in Greece, Heidegger’s great courses—especially those on Nietzsche—from 1935 to 1945 were nothing but the skillfully argued and disguised development of this defense, for “this obfuscation has been placed by Heidegger at the heart of European philosophy.” This is an ingenuous hypothesis that Faye would develop later in La raison narrative87 and to which I will return.88
We note in this polemic, the shifting of the debate toward the essential question of the meaning (or of the nonmeaning) of the interpretation of metaphysics as nihilism, such as Heidegger elaborated it, and as relayed by Lacoue-Labarthe. Are we then caught in the trap by our own proper destiny, led to give thought to a historical situation without precedent? Or rather, is the trap set by Heidegger’s own thinking, who in this case behaves like a pyromaniac fireman? What is positive, in any case, is that the debate avoids overly personal accusations as well as simple apologies, so as to raise important questions. This more philosophically specific development, begun by Lacoue-Labarthe (following Derrida), would further develop in the work of his friend Lyotard as well as in the work of his ideological adversaries (Ferry and Renaut).
With Heidegger and “the Jews,” Lyotard confronted, in fact, the question of the difficult, perhaps unbearable, memory of the Holocaust and that of its repression in Heidegger’s thought. Why “the Jews” since Heidegger did not speak of them? Clearly, it is not a question of Jewish people who are actual contemporary human beings, or not simply that; it is the question of the “non-people of survivors”89 that we are, trying to face the unthinkable event in our history. Now it is precisely on this incalculable debt, this lack of thought, that the thinker of the unthought of the Western metaphysical tradition, was silent. His “failure” transcends the errors in judgment or the transgressions rehearsed by Farias, and minutely discussed by partisans and adversaries alike: it intimately concerns the relation to the Other, and to the imprescriptible law of the duty of memory.90
Everything Lyotard writes is by design; this text is no exception. However, in the present case, more than just some problems of presentation,91 what makes it complex is that we are left on the edge of the abyss: what sense is there to impute a failure to Heidegger himself, if it is, in fact, the entire Western tradition of the thinking of being that is in question? The play of the quotation marks (that Derrida analyzed with such finesse in relation to the recourse to Geist in Heidegger’s work) had become a skillful but disconcerting way of evoking major concepts (being, freedom, the Other) without defining them sufficiently, a way of accusing Heidegger (and the West) of a “failing” so fundamental that its limits remain to be determined (as the specificity of the Jews—without quotation marks—seemed erased). These are so many “perspectives,” the virtues of which invite us to think beyond the ideological “settling of accounts.”
Conversely, the purpose of Heidegger and Modernity sought to be more detailed, perhaps less brilliant but more clear. It is because Ferry and Renaut did not seek to rival the depth of a great thinker: they intended to be fair and efficacious by targeting the “French Heideggerians” (strangely said to be “gathered around Jacques Derrida”92) as well as their Master. The objective having been delimited in this way, the problem is simpler: how could a French Heideggerianism that masked the basic antimodernism of the Master with a sophisticated rhetoric be dispensed with, and how would humanism be philosophically reevaluated by inscribing it within a democratic project that is reconceptualized? In truth, the negative section was still substantial—no doubt too much so—in this little book where the polemic itself had trouble fixing on its moving and heterogeneous target. The censorship of the criticisms addressed to Farias attempted to save him from being completely dismissed, but did not achieve as clear a position as was hoped: while conceding that his book contained “errors” and even revealed a “certain dishonesty,”93 they refused in principle to defend it94 but accepted in passing certain of its easily disputable theses (for example, Farias’s account of Heidegger’s “militancy” before 1933 and of Heidegger’s ideological affiliation with the SA wing is said to be “brilliant.”95)
What is much more interesting in this little book is the effort to understand the tensions, or even the contradictions, of this thought from within: in Being and Time, the ambiguity of the notion of Self [Selbst] that can appear after the fact as an insufficiently deconstructed subjectivity, but one that could have offered a support for the clarification of “resolute decision”; the ambivalence of the forgetting of being, which is the forgetting of a forgetting, and as such an ineluctable destiny, which is nonetheless conjured by meditative thinking; and finally, faced with modern technology, the oscillation between a “yes” (judging ineluctable the accomplishment of metaphysics in the will to power) and a “no” (managing a response, indeed a resistance in view of another future). The result was a scission with Nazism, which did not entirely “correspond” to what was expected of it (a scission that marked the difference between “correspondence” as inadequate and its meaning elaborated through a more authentic response): the acquiescence to a “correspondence” (in the first sense) between the essence of technology and modern man, coupled with the preparation of a freer relation to the very essence of technology (a response that Nazism could not give).96
These analyses allow us to recognize that Heidegger “developed a less than perfectly univocal interpretation of Nazism”97 and reveal “what, in its complexity, Heidegger’s assessment of Nazism”98 had been. But instead of building on this insight to form a positive dialogue with other French interpreters, whose critical works were not always that far from their positions, Ferry and Renaut preferred to accuse them of being involved in rescue operations of Heidegger through antimodernism. Thus, in a prominent way, Derrida (whose hypothesis presented in Of Spirit seemed attractive and even “brilliant”),99 was accused of practicing that rescue through antihumanism as if he had maintained that the involvement of 1933 was “a Nazi-humanistic deviation by Heidegger.”100 Now, not only did Derrida never use such an expression in Of Spirit but he never made such a schematic link between “spiritual” metaphysics, Nazism and humanism. It would be necessary here to return to the texts for a careful and precautionary reading. It would also be necessary to wonder whether one treats Lacoue-Labarthe fairly101 when one ridicules the formulation, “Nazism is a humanism,”102 while pretending to take it literally, although it supposes the understanding of the debate on the metaphysical character of a world such as Nazi racism. Clearly, the discussion of the direct nature of the link established by Heidegger between metaphysics and humanism is debatable, which should be carried out in a more serene and balanced way, thus sparing the authors the strangely distorted images they present of Heidegger (alleged to be led, on the one hand, by a “fanatical hatred of modernity,”103 and credited, on the other hand, with “a critical attitude”104 with respect to that same modern world). Although one notes the professed intent not to carry out a “rescue,” there is, nonetheless, a certain hesitation concerning the appraisal of the Heideggerian philosophical heritage: first riddled with sarcasms, some aspects of Heidegger’s work are said to offer certain resources, for example, its radical deconstruction of romantic vitalism, which “echoes the fundamental themes of criticism.”105 What finally complicates the problem—no one should doubt it—is that there is an antimodernism proper to modernity, to the extent that one of its essential traits was to constantly put itself in question. Is this regressive tension unique to Heidegger’s work? Can the critical margin that it performed be recognized without being accused of “salvaging”? Because of their philosophical scope, all these questions had to be posed and have been posed effectively.106
There are scandals that never end. Is this not the case with the “Heidegger Affair,” to the extent that its profound stakes are philosophical? With respect to the scandal provoked by Farias’s book, we can say that a few months were sufficient for an honest person to form a relatively measured opinion regarding the value of its revelations. On this first level, one finds that a case was being “built.”107 But then the debate shifted toward interpretation, precisely where Farias was at his weakest. In the end, Farias’s philosophical shortcomings were of little significance, since the effect he sought after had been achieved: the shock of a “Nazi Heidegger” had an impact; and even if, after the fact, one almost had to judge Farias philosophically worthless and historically unreliable, one simply had to undertake the interpretive work that was missing in his book. Whatever the degree of repulsion or attraction with respect to the figure of the great philosopher, or the severity or indulgence of the ethical judgment concerning his conduct, it was still necessary to understand the link or the absence of the link between his thought and what “remained” so embarrassing: that was the essential task. This is the critical point where one recognizes the contrast between the authentically philosophical texts (Derrida and Lacoue-Labarthe on one side, Ferry–Renaut on the other) that go beyond Farias’s limits, and the impressionistic nature of the half-defensive, half-apologetic “description” of François Fédier. However justified it may be in the context, insofar as it simply involves respect for intellectual and moral honesty, the defense of the “reputation” of Heidegger the man becomes a dated battle for an opinion that is “maturing” and that realizes that the “true question” is situated not beyond the facts (that would be too easy) but in the refining of interpretation that must accompany and shed light on more reliable historical documentation. While subsiding for the general public, the Heidegger affair would continue to produce salutary philosophical “exchanges.”
This is why the German historian Hugo Ott’s apparently bemused, and in reality irritated, judgment merits our attention, but will not satisfy us completely: “In France the sky has fallen: meaning, le ciel des philosophes [the sky of philosophers].108 In the dazzling presentation that the nouveaux philosophes [new philosophers]109 offered, along with a preface by Christian Jambet, Chilean philosopher Victor Farias’ book on Heidegger made its appearance on the market, shaking the French intellectual world. It was a major affair. The clocks, we know well, work differently in France than elsewhere. We should not be surprised by the delay with which research results which had been known for some time (and in great detail) in German speaking countries, only today have reached the French audience, with the effect, it is true, that the well-ordered world of dominant philosophical schools has been caught up in a storm that turns everything upside down.”110
In fact, the scope of this judgment is twofold: it concerned Farias and his effects in France.111 With respect to Farias’s book, Hugo Ott’s judgment anticipated and converged with the critical path that we have taken here by following the progress of the discussion during winter 1987–88. “The merit of Farias’s book lies in the compilation of new sources, and in their positive elaboration. There are many facts. His work reveals its limits, as soon as the interpretation begins, and, above all, at the point when it would be necessary to shed light on the relation between Heidegger’s practical politics and his thought. This is, however, what one would be entitled to expect from a philosopher.”112 Our agreement with Ott and our respect for his sagacity does not include wholesale endorsement of the second part of his judgment concerning the specifically French aspects of the affair: namely, that we German specialists had known all that and even more (since Farias was not even up to date113). Was the scandal due to the ignorance of the French? In fact, Ott maintained more precisely that the intensity of the scandal was proportional to the secrecy and to the embellishment of Heidegger’s behavior undertaken over the course of many years by Jean Beaufret and his disciples. Neither false nor absolutely true, Ott’s vision of things seemed to ignore the successive waves of polemical discussions on the question in France itself since Liberation. One did not make a transition from the “orthodox” version to the attack leveled by Farias overnight. It is not necessary to insist on it further here: our reader has been, it seems, sufficiently instructed on the different stages of the polemic. We propose, however, the following analysis: the supplementary revelation of the facts, as compromising as they are, is not sufficient to explain the scope of the scandal. Ott is on the right track when he questions the French apologies for Heidegger, but that’s as far as he goes. The situation has never been as simple as he depicts it. “And this dwelling, in which the French intelligentsia has made itself so comfortable, now appears to be uninhabitable.”114 But precisely: the French understanding (which was in no way homogeneous) was never really completely comfortable with the “orthodox” version concerning Heidegger. It is a question of a tense history, of rebounds, a history of a love-hate relation (an ambivalence that has existed ever since the early days of the reception and that has never stopped, perhaps even after Farias). The particularly French aspect of the Heidegger affair is far from being as sterile or as superficial as Hugo Ott thought (followed by Ferry and Renaut who, concentrating their attacks on French Heideggerians, almost seemed to envy Germany, where Heidegger “will probably long remain, along with Nietzsche, an accursed thinker”115). Lyotard seems to follow a more interesting path when, noting as well the French aspect of the Heidegger affair, he viewed it more favorably, inscribing it in terms of a French sensitivity to a writing “in charge of a thinking of the immemorial,”116 from Rimbaud and Mallarmé to Artaud and Beckett (and it would be necessary to include Nerval).
As legitimate as it is within the limits of its historical competencies, Hugo Ott’s judgment shows a misunderstanding that should be addressed: it involves the important question of the meaning of the quasi-fantasmatic fixation of the French intelligentsia on Heidegger.
Such a fixation is in no way limited to the admission of the defense from Jean Beaufret and his disciples, as Jeanne Hersch117 also believed: this explanation overstates the influence of a few “sycophants” and does not permit the full dimension of the fascination provoked by Heidegger to be understood. If a comparable affective investment is often intertwined with a person of flesh and blood, how can we claim to decipher it when it animates a complex cultural formation such as the “French intelligentsia,” which has a problematic identity (mythical? narrative? retrospective illusion of historians of ideas?)?
According to Freud, the return of the repressed operates through the formation of “a compromise between repressed elements and defense.”118 One can wonder whether all the images of Heidegger that circulated in France after 1933–34 were not “substitute formations,” until the critical explosion of 1987–88, when all the substitutions collapsed. Why? Because suddenly Farias presented the king with no clothes, a Nazi Heidegger, with the oneiric clarity of a “genuine” nightmare. The question here is not whether it was true in the sense of a historic authentication (we will see constantly, from the fall of 1987, an oscillation between fantasy and fact, sleep and wakefulness): it sufficed that it briefly seemed plausible.
A preliminary question can be posed: what was the source of such a repression [Verdrängung]? What was repressed, if not the very powerful intellectual (and erotic) drive that subtends any recognition of a Master of thought and of life? In the 1930s we saw this drive of immense admiration and passionate intellectual love show itself in the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Rachel Bespaloff in particular. As early as 1934, with discreet indications, the reservations and the censorship began to appear. The scene of the psychodrama was in place: the unbearable oxymoron of that love-hate would only intensify: “great thinker/Nazi.” In Being and Nothingness, the infernal question was censored and with cause (let us not forget the Nazi authority in Paris allowed the book to appear, where a form of self-censorship was, in a sense, already practiced). Did Sartre himself, who was in Berlin in 1933, not know more than he claimed? And were the essential matters not already known in 1933?
One saves the most violent repression for what one desires and knows all too well. But it would be necessary to conjure the repression through studied confession and through the play of corrections and denials. What complicated the affair further for the French was the infamy of the collaboration with the Nazis and the guilty conscience that followed it. France, sweet France, is there not in you one who is exhausted, excited, and defeated, who slept with a handsome German? Is your memory not inhabited by the haunting image that comes to you now and that you would like to forget? It took such a long time to get over this unavoidable past! Along with the Heidegger affair, there were the affairs of Bousquet, Papon, and Mitterrand himself . . .
But did the Heidegger affair not truly reach an intensely neurotic character when the love-hate toward the master was displaced and condensed onto Jacques Derrida, accusing him and holding him almost as guilty, simply because he had condemned Farias and had continued to take Heidegger seriously as a philosopher? Hence, Derrida became a sort of French double of Martin the Cursed [TN: A play on the French title of Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M, which in French was titled M le maudit (M the Cursed One)]. Attacked for not “denouncing” Heidegger’s thought, on the one hand, and for being overly subtle in understanding the ambiguities in the Master’s most formidable texts, on the other hand, he was especially unsettling and upsetting for people. Was he the heir or usurper of the despised Master, a thinking that was too difficult and decidedly dangerous? With Beaufret, one had a “representative” of Heidegger in France; with Derrida, one had something even more embarrassing: a magisterial Double to adore and to hate, but without being able to exorcize completely the archaic figure of the Original Master. Will the struggle for recognition be mortgaged indefinitely by this intellectual erotic investment where Mastery is involved?
There might be a less complex and less psychoanalytic explanation for this condemnation by the self-righteous: the quite prosaic and sadly classical one that Alain Finkielkraut proposed in Le Monde January 5, 1988: “Ah! How sweet it must be to be anti-fascist when that frees you from phenomenology and its impossible jargon! For if Heidegger’s meditation can be reduced, as Michel Polac claims, to ‘a few clichés from Le Pen,’ or if, as Patrick Gérard writes, ‘Le Pen would make a good Heideggerian,’ then there is no need to read: one has understood, ‘one gets the point.’ As needed, tomorrow we will organize a demonstration.”119
One should not give this nonsense more attention than it deserves. There is a standard phase of any sustained polemic when it has to deal with the fact that some people are tired of hearing about it. Even in the streets, with any brawl, there are those who prefer to distance themselves from the fight. An intellectual and “chic” version of this attitude of disillusionment was formulated by Jean Baudrillard at the end of January 1988 in the brilliant, sophisticated, and dogmatic terms that he is known for. Is everything today not caught up in the play of the simulacra? The Heidegger affair was no different. What was essential in Baudrillard’s thesis can be summed up in the first sentence: “The vain quarrel about Heidegger does not have proper philosophical meaning, it is only symptomatic of a weakness of modern thought that, failing to find new resources, returns obsessively to its origins, to the purity of its references, and painfully relives, at the end of the century, its primal scene from the beginning of the century.”120 Is this affair reduced, like the Klaus Barbie affair, to a “derisory convulsion” resulting from a “collective hallucination”?
Having agreed that the outbursts of this strange winter had an excessive, emotional, even hysterical dimension, one can understand that a strong reaction to the excessive treatment was to be expected. But Baudrillard’s position was more radical, even categorical as it regarded as meaningless, if not symptomatic and pathological, the entire uproar concerning Heidegger’s “Nazism.” Beyond the disturbance that Baudrillard himself was able to cause at the time, we have sufficient distance now to consider things more critically. One could agree with Baudrillard only if our reconstruction of the development of “the affair” revealed “noise,” furor, and vain gesticulation. By limiting ourselves to the media, or to the person on the street, we would only see a sterile “necrospective” aspect of the affair: Heidegger’s name, still more famous, would attract an intense fascination, raising it to an ambiguous quasi-taboo status of a victim who symbolically atones.121 But should we take this for granted and decide to ignore that apart from the facts (which Baudrillard seems to scorn) that what had taken place was terribly meaningful? Should one detect, with Daniel Sibony,122 a “self-hypnosis,” first with Heidegger, who was for a time captivated by his own thought taking political form, then with his disciples and adversaries who were also fascinated by the phantasm of the idol where the fetishized origin finally slips away and vanishes? If such is the case, this conjuration of a pure origin would oblige philosophers to accept this fortunately poisoned gift: a “weak and vulnerable” Master once again.
Whether or not one follows the psychoanalytic diagnosis of the “affair,” should we not admit that it has allowed us to pose crucial questions—some of which have heretofore been avoided—to (and about) a decidedly labyrinthine thought? Should we pretend to be unaware that, even if it was difficult and somewhat confusing, one was better able—with a minimum of intellectual honesty—to understand events and important issues. Let us admit that January 1988 was without a doubt the time when the polemic reached its peak of intensity (or saturation) in France123 and when one had the impression of finding oneself in a dead end. It has been established that the following months allowed a deepening of the debate.124 The question nevertheless remains open: had the return of the repressed really been a cathartic event? If it permitted the necessary reactivation, it also produced a considerably negative effect: the occultation of a thorough attention to these texts. Thus Nicole Parfait had defended a very thorough thesis at that time on the political question and the relation between theory and practice in Heidegger’s work.125 This thesis has still not been published.126 One can hope that it will not be too long before the thesis is published, so that the catharsis runs its course and reaches its end, provided that such an end can be conceived.
How could the effect produced by Farias’s book be denied, at least in the first days that followed its reception? I was stunned in two senses of the word: overwhelmed by the “revelations” and the sinister light cast on Heidegger the man, and also outraged by a public fracas that ignored nuances and degenerated into intellectual terrorism. I had not recognized, at the outset, all the “tricks” that allowed Farias to demonize Heidegger in such an extreme manner; at the same time, I was aware of the huge gap between this sudden unbelievably reductive turmoil and the great texts that had inspired me and that literally inhabited me. That dramatic disjunction had to be explained, and I did not doubt within myself that the passage of time would allow this critical task to be accomplished (on both fronts: with respect to both Heidegger and his accusers).
A revealing anecdote: some days after the publication of the book, I received a call from Michel Cazenave asking me to participate in a televised debate on this issue. I did not refuse but objected that it was difficult for me to give a definite answer without having read the book. I asked him if he could be so kind as to send me the book, because I lived in the countryside and there were no bookstores nearby. He promised to mail it to me immediately. What followed? I received neither the book nor another message. The very fact of having asked for a delay for reflection and the possibility of serious discussion seemed to have been a deal breaker . . . But I do not accuse anyone and I have no regrets (at any rate, the program Océaniques took place very well without me). In fact, this minor miscommunication allowed me to avoid taking a position too early. The polemic was launched. Everyone wanted to stir things up or calm things down.
Another important memory: I recall having discovered, with stupefaction, large pictures of Heidegger wearing a Nazi insignia on the kiosks of the newsstands in the good town of Nice. It was a poster announcing a special edition of Bernard Pivot’s literary journal, Lire. I would never have thought that Heidegger would ever receive this redoubtable “honor,” with or without insignia. And yet that actually happened.
What remains today of this turmoil?
It would be superficial and false to think that it has completely disappeared. The whole affair has left traces and stigmas. These are not exactly what one would have expected at the time. The demonization of Heidegger has subsided. Other publications (particularly Hugo Ott’s biography) have made it possible to take account of his psychological fragility, to better understand the accusation, while discriminating between insinuations and proven facts, and to put the Heidegger case in the context of the unbelievable complexity of exceptional historical circumstances during those dramatic years for Germany and for Europe. Once it subsided, the extreme agitation at the end of the ’80s left a residue that needs to be carefully examined, in the same way that one would approach a chemical solution in a test tube that has cooled. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the unconditional defense of Heidegger has been marginalized, as have been the unbelievable accusations that almost transformed the thinker into a war criminal, thanks to a series of insinuations and amalgamations. On the other hand, the philosophical work has “held its ground” more than one might have feared (or conversely more than anyone hoped), but at a level of specialization in the academic world that was lost on the general public. It will be necessary to return to the scope and contours of this disassociation and to a new situation that had nothing to do with the intellectual fashions of the postwar, or even the 1960s or 1970s.
I have been able to establish, moreover, the constant divide between the media-driven agitation and the reactions of students and colleagues. Unlike what happened in 1968 and immediately after, “most people” generally remained calm, and the mention of Heidegger’s name in a course rarely produced protest or emotion. It was also a generational matter with the elders: “We already knew all that.” Either more or less blasé in principle or actually well-informed about the previous debates on the question, most academics of a certain age—even among the non-Heideggerians—often preferred to stay on the sidelines of the debate, going as far as minimizing or neglecting genuinely new information presented by Farias’s book.
I myself hesitated for some time before writing on the affair. It was necessary to allow time for reflection in order to address the very difficult question of the secret connection that could exist between the involvement in 1933 and the very thought of the philosopher (at least some of its aspects). It was necessary to do this without taking sides, and by overcoming the overly psychological, anecdotal, or subjective aspects. But why a new intervention in the context of a “plethora” of books and articles? The weariness that overcame the public affected me as well. Nevertheless, I was unsatisfied and I felt the necessity to take up the debate again precisely where most had left it, namely, on the threshold of Heidegger’s most secret philosophical hearth. The principal justification of The Shadow of That Thought—published in 1990 thanks to Marc Richir and a courageous editor, Jérôme Millon—was less an account of the polemic than an effort to overcome its psychological and emotional aspects in order to advance a philosophical thesis: there was indeed a link between Heidegger’s thought and his involvement in 1933, but this link was much more complex (and more interesting) than a circumstantial allegiance to a complete ideology. It was the thinking of the finitude of man in history and the radical historicity of Dasein that exposed Heidegger to the danger of extremism: it was then a brilliant treatment of the history of metaphysics within a “historial-destinal” schema that led him to interpret Nazism as a form of the accomplishment of metaphysics as technology. The destinal dimension was not a minor appendix of historicality: the latter was explored in Being and Time. In fact, the thinking of the destinal character of the history of being was an achievement of the later Heidegger, the one who cast the entire history of metaphysics in terms of the Nietzschean genealogy of nihilism and reversal of Platonism.
While Heidegger distanced himself personally from his early allegiance to Hitlerism, and imagined an outcome other than the imperial domination of men and things, he also seemed to assign an inevitable, destinal role to Nazism, which was linked to the technological accomplishment of metaphysics, without providing an account in terms of a political rationality that would be clearly defined. Heidegger’s political “error” then revealed a “failure” of his thought, in the sense of a stumbling block, which was not accidental (because it pertained to the fact that the thinking of being moved away from the understanding of reality and rational possibilities). It would be necessary to draw the consequences from this by rethinking the status of the political in the era of technology in a way that was different from Heidegger’s. To this end, a thinking like that of Arendt (one understands better now the extent to which she was in dialogue with Heidegger) is a great help. And one can only appreciate that this knot of questions is better known now in France (in particular thanks to the energetic work of Jacques Taminiaux).
With hindsight, it seems that these years of crisis were not entirely in vain. As limited and as partisan as Farias’s book was, it had, indirectly, certain cathartic virtues. By its very excessive nature, it generated a liberation (at times hysterical, one must admit) of speech and of thought. One could be sarcastic concerning the French intellectuals, as Hugo Ott was, with the amused scorn of a scrupulous historian faced with his incorrigibly irresponsible students. First of all, why be upset about the Heidegger case as if it was so exceptional, as if the error of a philosopher was so surprising? One should stay informed about the research of the historians and classify them appropriately!
What such wisdom does not grasp is that the drama (in spite of its excess, its superficial analysis by the media, etc.) was sparked by fundamental questions caused by the effect of Nazism itself. How was the West able to arrive at such a monstrosity? This is not a problem that a historian can “resolve.” One cannot criticize him or her; but must we not pose this question? Now that question intersects with the Heideggerian questioning of the destiny of Western rationality. Are we going to give thought to the Nazi horror on the basis of Heidegger’s thought? Or quite the contrary, is it that thought, which was itself deluded, which impeded access to accuracy and justice? This too-brief recollection revives an anxiety and an expectation (an expectation diluted in the various revivals of the polemics since Liberation) that go well beyond the mere enumeration of facts, accurate or inaccurate, concerning the behavior of Heidegger the man. The basic question is as follows: Is this thinking a resource? Is this prodigiously intelligent and cunning little man with a disconcerting psychological profile the bearer of a message, of signs of a new thinking, of a decidedly illuminating path for our miserable lives, or is all that just rhetoric, window dressing, and language games? One could be as sarcastic as one would wish regarding the “superficiality” of others. To want to eliminate this worry, and this hope, would be to resign oneself to an incommensurable loss: the loss of the questioning of the very meaning (or the nonmeaning) of the distress of our century and of our epoch.