It is the destiny of any philosophical thought, when it exceeds a certain degree of vigor and rigor, to be misunderstood by the contemporaries that it challenges.
AT THE END of this study of a philosophical history that covers seven decades of our intellectual life, it is necessary to address the certainties, dissatisfactions, and perplexities, while remaining open to new developments.
With respect to the certainties, what has inspired us from the very beginning has been confirmed: the omnipresence in France of the influence, direct or indirect, of Heidegger’s thought and work. Apart from the mathematical sciences and life and earth sciences, there is hardly any sector of knowledge or intellectual activity that has not been positively or negatively affected by that thought, at times marginally, often rhetorically, to be sure, but in an identifiable and significant sense, at least ideologically or negatively.
Furthermore, this omnipresence took place and spread only by diversifying itself: between existentialism and deconstruction, the critique of humanism and the renewal of the interpretation of metaphysics, to cite only the principal themes, one encounters the many faces of the “French Heidegger”! The development of our narrative has revealed that these different faces, far from having been sketched all at once, like cards thrown on a table, have emerged like unexpected masks in a drama that was intellectual, passionate, and often politicized. Like a mischievous ghost, Proteus, or evil genius, Heidegger continuously returned to the philosophical and ideological scene in new ways.
Did this happen by virtue of his own devices or thanks to his French friends or “accomplices”? It was due to both, and often concurrently. On the one hand, glorified as the great author of the master work Being and Time, Heidegger had not been inactive; we have followed him: attentive to the French audience, welcoming (literally and figuratively), and grasping the opportunities and the invitations extended or proposed to him—gestures that would have been less effective if they had not been sustained by a consistent work and a surprising capacity (almost up to the end of his long life, like Veronese, Goethe, Picasso, or Jünger)—to add new touches to the tableau of his thought, always reformulating, reproposing, and questioning. As for the French, it is clear that the “reception” would have been infinitely less influential if it had not been sustained and stimulated by the brightest minds, from Koyré to Levinas, from Beaufret to Birault, and from Merleau-Ponty to Derrida. This intellectual quality was also accompanied by inventiveness, for, even if at times there have been somewhat repetitive imitations, the philosophical history that we have reconstructed in no way could be reduced to a series of docile receptions (even if we have of course included in our account the strictest “orthodoxy”). Although that complex play of exchanges was often brilliant, it was also noisy, since we have seen the so-called media intervene. A preliminary hypothesis has been more than confirmed: one of the unique features of the French reception of Heidegger has been its nonacademic aspect. Heidegger has benefited from two antithetical “tracks”: controversy and scholarship. Certainly, the basso continuo of the symphony of his reception, which at times was cacophonous, was indeed a sustained work of reading and commentary of texts, but not without a deep hostility and a stubborn resistance from influential members of the academic world (in a “climate of prohibition or intimidation that was somewhat hushed,” according to Jean Beaufret).2 And it was perhaps no accident that the patient and discreet efforts of some professors of preparatory classes3 compensated for the reticence of the university, at least at first, because during the last three decades we have seen “Heideggerians” of diverse orientations progressively obtain university positions and responsibilities.4 Whatever their titles or their positions, these great teachers were the mediators of Heidegger’s reception in France: we can never sufficiently emphasize their influence on awakening and maintaining interest in Heidegger’s thought. In the absence of the irreplaceable life of Socratic dialogue and pedagogy, that thought would have remained text-bound. In the first rank of these leading teacher-mediators were Beaufret, Birault, and Granel.5 Our interviews have confirmed the decisive importance of these mediations and pedagogical transmissions, although there are some rare exceptions.6
With respect to the dissatisfactions, there is no reason to insist on the one that we must accept from the outset: one can never be certain, when it concerns such a complex and intertwined history, of not having missed something. The imperfections with regard to the understanding of the stakes would be more serious; but in this decisive matter, we cannot be both judge and judged. We have had nevertheless to constantly undertake a work of triage or selection of works and commentaries that seemed to us the most worthy of attention. And clearly, one will always be right to contest such emphases, such interpretations, or even, for example, to find that we have overly emphasized the critiques and the attacks on Heidegger, to the detriment of less sensational, more serious, and more careful readings of the texts. If this is the case, we accept this insufficiency while clarifying that it was not intentional. However, this objection requires the reexamination of a methodological problem that was noted at the beginning of the work: the very notion of “reception” presents us with a perspective that differs from that of the exegesis of the work itself. It is certainly unavoidable that paying attention to public reactions, polemics, and even echoes or “background noise” risks overshadowing the serious study of the texts. In spite of our efforts to find the right equilibrium, it is possible that the boat has been loaded too heavily on one side and that those most faithful to Heidegger’s thinking would feel insufficiently recognized or praised. If such a situation turns out to be the case, it cannot be explained solely by the inevitable limitation of my personal point of view, but by some essential reasons: while the French reception has not lacked talent and creativity, nothing guarantees that a constant excellence in exegetical seriousness or careful listening will be the case. On the one hand, the proclaimed “faithfulness” cannot itself be a guarantee in the philosophical field where critical intelligence is no less important than the respect for the letter. On the other hand, the surprising developments that we have observed and described in the course of our study do not amount necessarily to a “deepening” of Heidegger’s thought. Françoise Dastur even wrote: “Contrary to a widely accepted opinion, it is still in Germany, and not in France, the United States or elsewhere, that Heidegger is better read and understood.”7 Whether we agree with her or not, it is certain that this warning is useful: the “fireworks” of the most heated moments of the French reception can be misleading. There is also, where thought is concerned, a slow and more secret history, and its murmur must be heard in the background of the torrent of the present.
One dissatisfaction that is very clear and specific must also be taken into consideration: if by definition the author (“transmitter”) is no longer present to censure the “receivers” (or the story of their misinterpretations, errors, or malevolence), at least we can place ourselves in his position by adopting the imperious posture of his highest ideals: to think the un-thought of metaphysics, to rise to the truth of being, to apprentice oneself to a new openness. These possibilities are always offered to us, so long as neither oppression nor inhumanity prevents us from having access to the best of that, though harbored in the folds of an immense work. The history that we have retraced is not intended as a substitute for the reading of and reflection on this corpus. Nor does it have to establish what should have been a better or ideal reception, and even less what it should be tomorrow. Were the mistakes or misunderstandings given too much attention at the expense of a more faithful listening? It would be no less illusory to believe that the intention of being faithful has always rendered one immune from mistakes and has not turned one against the author whom one wanted to understand or defend purely or unconditionally. It is important to move to another level: to appraise the path followed since the first readings of Being and Time and to determine the extent to which—in spite of so many tentative approaches or misunderstandings—the horizon of French thought has been modified so radically that any overly definitive “account” would be impossible.
The perplexities, finally, concern above all the judgments that will be numerous with respect to this history. In the face of innumerable difficulties, among which are so many misunderstandings, would one not be tempted to present a negative and disillusioned account, almost envying the happy few [TN: In English in the original] who, such as Régis Debray,8 have (or claimed to have) escaped any influence, or any reading of Heidegger? He was not the only one among known French philosophers to have stayed away from any reception of Heidegger’s thought: Clément Rosset and Michel Serres9 are other examples. It would be ridiculous or inappropriate to apply to such free spirits a Heideggerian version of the well-known adage: “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” Further, one should not support a statement such as Debray’s without examination, especially if it means the rejection of an entire oeuvre: it suggests an attitude that is uncompromising and too polemical (even oppositional) to be acceptable as such. Should one feel relieved as a result of never having read Marx, under the pretext that he was unduly exploited by Stalinism? Or as a result of never having been moved by the spirit of the biblical message under the pretext that its history also includes the Inquisition? That would be to forget that risk is inherent in any intellectual exploration and that one must not give an account of an important thinking in the same way that one lists the inventory of a general’s victories or of a politician’s successes. Politics precisely—obviously—was and remains the Achilles’ heel of Heidegger’s thinking. Why? Due to its radicalism in the quest for origins? Due to its latent Platonism? Due to its excessive reliance on a certain idea of the Proper and of appropriation? Although it is fortunate that all these questions have been posed and are posed again, they should not prevent access to other resources in a work with multiple entries.
We have still not concluded with respect to the perplexities, and in particular with the importance that must be given to the fact that—in spite of the flow already noted of fascinations and passions—Heidegger remains a more or less discreet, yet persisting issue within our intellectual world. Thus, Alain Finkielkraut and Philippe Sollers, aware of going against the grain, claimed, each in his own way, Heideggerian inspirations. The first10 has expressed it in a more discreet manner than the second, whose “new found allegiance” cannot completely erase the earlier incendiary declarations.11
Hence, Sollers, for example in Studio, referred to Heidegger as the only contemporary thinker to be in dialogue with Hölderlin and Rimbaud in the epoch of the devastation of the earth by technological nihilism. Certainly, it occurred to him to concede: “OK, fine, this kind of formulation is a bit solemn and heavy, nonetheless the (other) truth is there.”12 Later, he opened an issue of his journal L’Infini with an interview where he affirmed his debt with respect to Heidegger’s Nietzsche (“a fundamental book that I refer to constantly”) and deplored “the censorship to which Heidegger was subjected,” which he attributed less to the political question than to the Heideggerian questioning of nihilism (“Heidegger’s greatness was to have given thought to the exacerbation of European nihilism”) and condemned the “Pavlovian movement” of the nihilists who were obsessively set against any sense of destiny, deaf to the thought of Heidegger as they are to great poetry.13 It is precisely poetry that will now be addressed.
The last point evoked by Philippe Sollers indeed merits our full attention. The thinking of Heidegger II is distinguished by the decisive importance granted to poetic saying, but not to poetic saying understood simply as text or textual sequence. The poet, for Heidegger, is a partner of the thinker only insofar as he or she attains to the primordial by bringing it into language; this plunge into the “topology of being” is accomplished only by certain poets: Hölderlin,14 first and foremost, but also Trakl, Rilke, Rimbaud,15 and Char. It is by design that we just included two names of French poets in this prestigious list. First, in order to appreciate the full significance of a fact: although he has been reproached for the philosophical importance that he accords to his own language, Heidegger does not limit himself in this context to the German language: Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Valéry16 were often on his desk.17 Second, to address a difficulty that awaits us at the end of the present work: should we speak of a “reception” of Heidegger’s thought on the part of René Char? Was there even a genuine dialogue between the poet and the thinker who became friends? Was this friendship casual, or did it convey a greater significance, one that goes beyond the personal case of René Char? Nothing guarantees that we can respond to these delicate questions completely or in a satisfactory manner. At least we must confront them.
The two first questions are connected: to respond “no” to the first and “yes” to the second is in no way a contradiction. There was no “reception” of Heidegger’s thought by Char in the sense in which we spoke of “reception” in this work, that is to say, on the basis of philosophical analyses or commentaries. Char certainly read Heidegger, but he never wished to address him directly: rather than a “reception,” it would be better to speak here of a silent listening. On the other hand, the second question (“was there a genuine dialogue?”) calls for a positive response, at least at first. We have seen that Char, the “host” of the Thor Seminars, did not participate in the philosophical sessions.18 At the meeting in 1966, there was nonetheless a dialogue on poetry concerning a citation from Rimbaud: “Poetry will not lend its rhythm with action. It will be in advance.”19 With respect to this passage, it is the thinker who questioned the poet, whose text must be read carefully.
In his “Interrogative Responses to a Question from Martin Heidegger,”20 René Char proceeded in small strokes: by way of forty short paragraphs that he presented as “various narrow paths” on the way toward a point of absolute justification “ahead of the word God.” These are several ways of listening concerning the way poetry is in advance of action. Is a progression discernable between the first option, where poetry remains still in relation with action, guiding it, being its “mastermind,” its edge, its sharp eye, and this “pure movement” that caused Rimbaud “to no longer feel nor want to be an artist”? What becomes clear at the end of the text is rather the very dated and determined political context in which Rimbaud’s thought is inscribed. “From Rimbaud’s perspective and that of the Commune, poetry will no longer serve the bourgeoisie, nor will it be its rhythm. It will be ahead, with the bourgeoisie the object of conquest. Poetry will then be its proper master, as it is master of its revolution; the starting signal given, the action envisaged constantly transformed into a seeing action.”21 These lines express in the best possible way the spirit of the brief attempt that Char did not want to present as an interpretation or a definitive reading, but rather as a set of “interrogative responses.” It is important to note that he insisted, in concluding, on the political and revolutionary aspects of Rimbaud’s words by alluding to “recent political actions” (no doubt he was thinking of his own protest against the installation of atomic weapons in the Albion plateau).22
We are fortunate to have a short text by Heidegger, written some years after the one written by Char in 1972, which also commented upon the same passage from Rimbaud. Heidegger does not allude to Char’s “Interrogative Responses,” but only to Char’s introduction to Pour Nous, Rimbaud.23 It was another poet, Roger Munier, who translated and published Heidegger’s short text in the year of his death, entitled “Aujourd’hui Rimbaud.”24 Apart from these details, what matters is to characterize Heidegger’s questions, and to establish whether they are similar to Char’s. What is common to the two texts is obviously their interrogative character. However, after having praised what Char has said as groundbreaking [Wegweisendes],25 Heidegger did not address in any way the historical and political context of Rimbaud’s letter. He wondered, first, if “Action” simply means “acting” in the sense of Handeln or rather “reality in its totality,” and then if “in advance” is to be understood temporally or beyond any human temporal relation. Given the development of industrial society in the modern age, was the primacy granted to poetry by Rimbaud an “error”? Referring to the letter Rimbaud sent to Izambard (“It is a question of reaching the unknown”26), Heidegger suggested that poetic saying “names the region” where the Unknown is near. “We can perhaps, by meditating on Rimbaud’s word, say the following: the nearness of the inaccessible remains the region that is only reached by the few poets, and which they reveal in this way.”27 The poetic call would be “in advance” because it would already be an attuned belonging to the rhythm of the world, a rhythm that the Greeks had known. He cites two verses from Archilocus where rythmos is Ver-Hältnis, an attuned relation as well as a “reserve.” One can henceforth pose the following question: “Will the word of the poet to come become a foundation on the basis of the jointure of this Relation and thus prepare the human being’s new sojourn on earth?”28 He concluded that Rimbaud remains vivant because he enables us to pose questions in the face of which one must remain silent in the most essential sense.
With respect to Rimbaud’s saying, do the two responses—which are truly aporetic—allow us to speak of a genuine dialogue? By inquiring in this way, we do not intend to make a statement concerning the personal exchanges between Heidegger and Char: it is not for us to judge the quality or limits of a friendship whose authenticity has been confirmed, and we will not follow those who, adopting the point of view of the room servant of these great men, suspect Char and Heidegger of each having wished to profit from this mutual acquaintance (for the former, an exceptional recognition; for the latter an exoneration of his past politics). The question that on the contrary merits being examined, from the position where we intend to situate ourselves, concerns not the fact of a dialogue alone but its exemplary scope for any collaboration or confrontation between thought and poetry—and between two languages.
In fact, the relationship between Heidegger and Char was exemplary by virtue of a twofold difference: between the poet and the philosopher, and between French and German. It so happens that for Heidegger, there were two “models” in play, which far from contradicting one another, accommodate and reinforce each other: the model of mutual listening between French and Germans, outlined in the 1937 text, “Wege zur Ausprache,”29 and the model of the assumed difference between Poetry and Thought (a thematic that was constantly addressed throughout the work of the later Heidegger). It happens that, as early as the 1937 text, the dialogue between the two languages and cultural traditions was envisaged not as a simple exchange of scientific information, but primarily in terms of the loftiest of spiritual tasks: “The fundamental form of mutual explication is the actual dialogue of the creators themselves in neighborly encounter.”30 At that time, Heidegger contemplated a dialogue between philosophers (from two traditions: the mathematical mastery of nature with Descartes and the Cartesians, and the meditation on the essence of history in German idealism). Then, on two occasions, he felt there were conditions that were favorable to the task: first, just after the war, thanks to the visit from this remarkable French philosopher, Jean Beaufret, who was determined to pursue an enduring dialogue beyond occasional visits, and then in the ’50s, when he met René Char, thanks to Roger Munier and Jean Beaufret, a meeting that had already been suggested by Heidegger himself. Whatever the circumstances were, these meetings were not the result of pure chance, since we just established that Heidegger had arranged in advance a “welcoming context” that responded to an essential necessity of his meditation on the history of the West. In this light, the dialogue with French thought in its twofold philosophical and poetic dimension took on a striking significance that forces us to rethink the excessively unilateral theme of the “reception,” not only because it was infinitely more complex than a series of “reactions,” but also because it was conditioned and in a way defined by a preliminary listening and expectation of the author himself. The examples of two great Germans influenced by French culture and by the spirit of its language, namely, Leibniz and Nietzsche, were constantly on Heidegger’s mind. Thus it would be a complete error to depict Heidegger as enclosed and entrenched in the fortress of the German language, deaf to all that is not Germanic.
One would be right to object that, in spite of the nobility of such a conception of a mutual dialogue, its practice remained highly stylized, and that there was an emphatic sacralization that Daniel Payot brought out in the entirety of Heidegger’s thinking of art.31 Indeed, to return to its operation at the frontier of philosophical thinking and of poetry, particularly with Char, have we not begun to notice an undeniable difference in the approach to reading Rimbaud’s saying: “Poetry will not lend its rhythm with action. It will be in advance”? Whoever rereads the two celebrated letters of May 13 and 15, 1871, cannot fail to be struck by the insolent tone (“Now, I am degrading myself as much as possible”;32 “one has to be an academician—deader than a fossil”33), by the revolutionary and antibourgeois fire (“mad anger drives me toward the battle of Paris”34), and by the extremism of “the derangement of all the senses,”35 which was meant to lead to a poetic vision. Now, all these features, which were up to that point qualified as “context,” in a somewhat understated way, are absolutely ignored in Heidegger’s text, whose listening ennobles and purifies the poet to such an extent that Rimbaud joins Trakl (named at the end of the text) in a Region [Gegend] bordered by the most disincarnate silence. Char, on the contrary, restored to Rimbaud’s vision its revolutionary élan, and it is he who has written, without doubt, the most unforgettable pages on Rimbaud. “With Rimbaud, diction precedes contradiction with an adieu. Its discovery, its incendiary date is its rapidity.”36 Char, “absolutely modern” like Rimbaud, saw him as diametrically opposed to any return to an origin: “This hope of return is the worst perversion of Western culture, its most insane aberration. Seeking to return to the sources and to renew oneself there only worsens the paralysis, only precipitates the fall and absurdly punishes its blood.”37
To take note of the incontestable difference between the two readings of Rimbaud should not lead us to deny either the existence or the significance of a “dialogue” that one must never confuse with the conflation of the two positions. It remains that beyond the difference in the ways of listening to Rimbaud, beyond the exchange of poems or dedications,38 beyond any question of influence, we can still legitimately inquire about what intertwines and yet nevertheless profoundly separates the poet Char from the thinker Heidegger.
Once one admits that this type of inquiry entails risks and perils with respect to interpretation, and with the constant awareness of the radical differences of languages, styles, and methods (or their absence), on what terrain does one advance? If we focus prudently on the matter of “sensitivity” alone, we discern two quite different and even antithetical approaches of the question: one conciliatory and the other conflictual.
From “The Interview under the Chestnut Tree,”39 to his posthumous work, Jean Beaufret remained faithful to the first approach. Not that he wished to minimize the differences between the thinker and the poet. But they became definitively emblematic of a symbolic relation in which each plays his part, and expresses his signs on his own terms. Each followed his own path (we have seen the extent to which Char appreciated the fact that the philosopher did not give him any lessons). The citations of Char, the new Heraclitus, came to illustrate, emphasize, and inspire the texts of his friends the philosophers. This was not always reciprocated: Char responded only through poems, which were always addressed to Heidegger personally, and never dared to comment or even use a sentence from Heidegger, even when he dedicated the magnificent “old Impressions” to him, which he situated “at the intersection of an enduring reading, according to Jean Beaufret, of the great texts of Heidegger.”40 On the “fundamentals,” the agreement seemed perfect, apart from any philosophical analysis.
Paul Veyne proposed an approach that was radically antithetical to this relation. If it merits our attention, it is not only because of the force of its critique, but above all because it was nourished by Char’s texts. A few words from the poet set the tone: “I have nothing to say about Heidegger’s philosophy. I am a poet, not a philosopher writing poetry; Parmenides and Plato have no place here.”41 It is necessary to return to the texts with Paul Veyne to discover a poet of ecstasis, guided in the “talismanic night” by a merciless illumination, with no possibility of gathering or consolation of a religious kind: “Lightning and blood, I have discovered, are one.”42 In the confrontation with the great natural and cosmic forces, Char’s extraordinary sensitivity to the elements leads neither to God nor to being, but toward the “unknown” or to the “open void” [vide frais]: there is no Origin; there is, faced with the Void, our transcending without return.43 Char himself designated his grand “predecessors” (Isaiah, Heraclitus, Villon, Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Melville stand out in a sumptuous cortege that cannot be summarized here44), but we should not forget that in addition to Teresa of Avila, there is also Sade, because “flagellated beauty in turn tortures.”45
Faced with this direct confrontation, one is tempted to wonder: who is the “true” Char. The question is obviously badly posed. In the same way, with Heidegger, it would be futile to overly insist on stabilizing a complex relation that one would have to be able to analyze in all of its harmonics. (Paul Veyne himself recognized, in spite of his insistence on the radical divide that separates them, that points of convergence are apparent between the poet and the thinker with respect to the dangers of modern technology, the openness to and respect for nature, and the possibility of an “entirely other” future civilization).
But there is an even more important question in the domain that occupies us here: have the “summit meetings” between Char and Heidegger been instructive, or, in more appropriate terms, have they ploughed a furrow where other thinkers and poets can come to sow? One can only respond cautiously to such a question. But it certainly seems that the Char–Heidegger “dialogue” had an exceptional character. Prévert, Saint-John Perse, Ponge, Bonnefoy, Réda, Roubaud, and many others have worked apart from the Heideggerian path. Jacottet as well.46 Munier found a personal style of “poetic thinking” that bridges poetry and philosophy.47 For his part, Michel Deguy did not hide his skepticism: to the question as to whether he shared Heidegger’s conception of a dialogue between poetry and thought, illustrated by the relation between Char and Heidegger, he responded negatively and categorically: “I have never taken that seriously! Really, never! It is truly for show!”48
This, even if negatively, invites us to recognize and respect the absolute singularity of the encounter between Heidegger and Char—whether it inspires us or not. Is it not also finally in terms of singularity that it would be necessary to rethink the entirety of the tracks we have tried to retrace? Unless one adopts a theoretical position that frees philosophy from the “poeticizing suture” that was Heidegger’s “stroke of genius.” Let us turn now to the surprising thesis of Alain Badiou.49 It recognizes the power of Heidegger’s thought insofar as it combines a radical critique of objectivism (without falling into subjectivism) with an exceptional openness to the epochal significance of poetry: “The existence of the poets gave to Heidegger’s thinking, something without which it would have been aporetic and hopeless, a ground of historicity, actuality, apt to confer to it—once the mirage of a political historicity had been concretized and dissolved in the Nazi horror—what was to be its unique, real occurrence.”50 But the “age of the poets” has ended, and the disorientation of our epoch can be addressed. Henceforth, the philosophical renewal that Badiou proposes (a Platonism of the multiple) comes to contradict, word for word, and feature for feature, the Heideggerian “commonplace,”51 which was both praised as the pivot of contemporary thought and refuted (not without some moments of irritation or contempt).52
At a less theoretical level, our narrative, as any history, had to anchor itself in the proven facts, in the known tracks, in sum, in the archives worthy of attention. But there is also a secret history that risks frustrating the historian while encouraging more adventurous or inquisitive narrators, the allegedly perspicacious hermeneutists. We find this in a study entitled Heidegger’s Hidden Sources53—still untranslated in French—whose author shows convincingly that the relation of Heideggerian thought to Far Eastern inspirations is much more decisive than the few references in his work to the Tao would suggest.54 Although Heidegger was a disconcerting thinker with more than one secret garden, it cannot be denied that there is no mechanical imitation or simple reception among the most inventive French authors. It is as if they implicitly decided to take up the gauntlet and to be no less enigmatic than the Oracle of Freiburg. Was this an intellectual posturing or a thinker’s passion? It is in that very enigma that a “French exception”—which is perhaps in the process of extinguishing itself—resides.
The French exception, with respect to Heidegger, has often been perceived abroad as excessively generous toward the author and overly fascinated with the work. We find unexpected testimonies concerning this fascination. Catherine Clément, an agrégée de philosophie who became an essayist and novelist, found a source of inspiration in the love between Hannah Arendt, a student who was at the time eighteen years of age, and her professor Martin Heidegger, almost twenty years her senior. In fact, Martin et Hannah55 includes another key figure, Elfriede, the faithful and vigilant wife, who became, in spite of herself, the rival of Hannah. Arendt’s last visit to the ailing philosopher in 1975 inspired a novel woven from contrasting biographical retrospectives: fifty years of passion, misunderstandings, and friendship, between the great philosopher whose destiny was to be forever marred by his Nazi foray, the brilliant intellectual Jewish exile—and Elfriede, who would finally, although not without reticence, understand and forgive.
In other venues, inquisitive minds would hardly recognize the allure and the profile of the Master in the mechanical and machine-like form of Les Philosophes by Jean Tinguely,56 and would discover Heidegger’s name even more unexpectedly in the comic book section. The cover of the comic book Agrippine, by Claire Brétecher,57 shows the heroine, a post-68 intellectual, dressed in jeans with holes, comfortably seated between cushions, wearing a Walkman, reading (quite obviously proud of herself) Heidegger au Congo. This “intellectual” remake of Tintin au Congo (incidentally, Hergé’s most—naively?—colonialist and paternalistic comic book) was missed by most, whether Heideggerians or Tintin enthusiasts. In an African setting, one discerns on the cover of Heidegger au Congo a little man with glasses and a moustache, who is clearly much older that Tintin, and who—obviously—depicts the Master of Freiburg as those on the left bank would imagine him. There would be no further mention of Heidegger in Agrippine. Neither philosophers nor Brétecher’s readers (at times one and the same) complained about it. While one does not care to exaggerate this furtive appearance of Heidegger’s name in this context, at least one can note that it constituted a minuscule trace, among many other no doubt more interesting celebrity publications representing an intellectual snobbery that is difficult to find anywhere but in France—and is perhaps in the process of disappearing.
In what other country in the world could these intrusions of the name and personage of Heidegger on the public stage be possible? Abroad, one is especially surprised to observe that this infatuation—far from being fleeting—has persisted and has undergone unexpected developments during more than half a century. Among discerning minds, surprise has often given way to scandalized incomprehension. Thus, Raymond Klibansky has expressed this sentiment (widely shared abroad, but also previously by quite distinguished French intellectuals, from Éric Weil to Raymond Aron, from Gaston Fessard to Gabriel Marcel). Alluding to Heidegger’s statements in favor of Hitler in 1933, he indicated:
For a long time in France, where Heidegger had many fervent disciples, an effort was made to understand all these facts as a temporary aberration. It shows that nothing has been understood. . . . Future historians will no doubt need to explain how this philosophy could have exercised such a profound influence on the countries where Romance Languages were spoken. Will one not recognize, in the submission to a thinker for whom philosophy only speaks Greek and German, the abandonment of the great traditions of the past, and a sign of weakness among many authors after the war? One will note with satisfaction that, as for the young generation in Germany, in France or elsewhere, the sobriety of critical thinking has won the day in philosophical discussions.58
Although we do not agree with all these formulations (we will explain why), this citation deserves to be scrupulously examined, if only because of the justified summons it addresses to the “future historian.” Our work has been an effort to respond to such summons and to better understand the reasons for the fascination exercised by Heidegger on French thought. One of the lessons of our exploration of more than fifty years of intellectual life is now apparent: the French reception of Heidegger, in its meanderings and in its variety, can in no way be confused (except no doubt for a small group of the faithful) with a “submission” to a monolithic thought. With respect to the “transmitter” as well as the “receivers,” things have been much more fluid and subtle (it would also necessary to take account of the impact, a posteriori, of the French reception of the German reading of Heidegger).59 If there were several distinct “waves” of reception of this philosophy, was it not due to the very virtue of the capacity for evolution and renewal of that very thought? The existentialist enthusiasm (but also criticism and polemic) have followed the pioneering discoveries of the thirties. However, had there not been a “Heidegger II” (of the “Letter on Humanism,” of Holzwege, etc.), the intellectual curiosity engendered by the work would have dissipated. Let us consider also the Nietzsche volumes, which gave, rightly or wrongly at the time,60 the impression that Heidegger was the only one to have proposed a full interpretation of Nietzsche’s genius. These examples (which in no way claim to exhaustively recapitulate our own “narrative”) show clearly that one cannot maintain the superficial thesis of an “aberration” or of a quasi-pathological and extended “weakness” of the French mind. Has Heidegger written these great texts or not? Has he himself not provided the example of a renewal, at any rate of a sustained effort constantly encouraging thoughtfulness and critical thinking (and this to a greater extent than his censors recognized, who themselves, all too often, have not read him closely enough—or stopped reading him altogether—at a certain point of saturation or rejection)?
It is necessary, however, to concede an important point to Raymond Klibansky, and that point can enable a historian to better explain the very influence of “Heidegger II”: the tolerance (or leniency) first manifested with respect to the engagement of 1933 led to a favorable disposition toward new publications. The thesis of a “temporary aberration” quite obviously had taken on a strategic value whose positive effects (from the point of view of the reception of Heidegger’s thought) have lasted up to the death of the philosopher and perhaps even up to the publication of Farias’s book. Let us imagine, indeed, that all the texts, all the documents that confirm the depth of the involvement of 1933 (and then the continued idealization of the “movement”) had been known, translated, and distributed in their entirety after Liberation. Would the welcome given to the new translations in the 1950s and ’60s have been the same? Certainly Éric Weil wrote something crucial at that time; but few read that work . . .
Such an approach has obvious limits; it remains too external to the very quality of the work. And this implies (in relation to the opinion formulated by Raymond Klibansky, and with all due respect to this great figure of the history of ideas) a disagreement that is no longer a matter for a historian. Is one right or wrong to consider Heidegger as a great thinker or at least as an important philosopher? Only the critical reading of these texts can settle this question. And this is exactly what Éric Weil concluded, for his part, at least in 1947, recognizing Heidegger’s importance without approving his theses, but wary of ostracizing him.
Finally, even without sharing his philosophical judgment, one must be willing to concede another point to Klibansky—this one more factual—concerning the orientation of the young generation in and outside of France. Although it is always risky to pass judgment too quickly (and “without distance”) on a generation, it indeed seems that young students today are attached to values and methods that are safer and more traditional than those associated with Heidegger’s “hermeneutic violence.” Above all, what seems undeniable is that the French situation no longer seems fundamentally different from that of the leading developed countries: Heidegger has become (or tends to become) one thinker among others in a complex landscape where historiographical and critical tasks overshadow theoretical enthusiasms. In fact, the French exception was in large part due to an extreme “ideologization” of philosophy: Marxism played, in this respect, a provocative role, which was both positive and negative. What seems particularly outdated is “the very French conjunction of a more or less ideological Heideggerianism with a kind of Marxism, as well as with a kind of Freudianism.”61 As soon as there is no longer a dominant ideology, where even the interest in the debate of ideas erodes (because the overriding concern is to insert oneself in a market society), one finds oneself in a sort of American situation: tolerance allows for many opinions; the development of the society favors a myriad of specialized studies; but indifference becomes the fate of the great majority. No doubt France still publishes (but for how long?) large print runs for two or three philosophers, but provided they are sufficiently “popularized” by the media and that their discourses are concerned with the most current ethical and political problems. These conditions are functionally different from those that prevailed during the decades that we have studied (at least up to 1990); they are, in any case, less favorable (even without taking account of the political question) to the renewal of a fascination for an important, demanding, and somewhat esoteric thinker. Even Wittgenstein, in spite of the relative favor he enjoys, does not seem able to replace Heidegger on the French intellectual scene in a comparable way.
One thing is certain: the time of leniency is over; the tendency would rather be the opposite: there is a generalized mistrust that risks giving Heidegger the ambivalent and almost contradictory status of an author who is both canonical and “cursed.” While we are wary of formulating prognoses, which is always problematic, it seems now unlikely that there will be a shift in favor of a “leading thinker,” whoever he or she may be; and the brilliant or disconcerting pages from the years of fascination with Heidegger seem definitively to have been turned. One can find an objective confirmation of this in the print run of the principal translations of Heidegger published by Gallimard. On the one hand, this examination reveals that Heidegger is not an author who is as “popular” as Nietzsche, since the most widely distributed pocket edition of one of his works, Chemins qui ne mènent nulle part, has not achieved even a sixth of the sales of The Genealogy of Morals.62 The degree of difficulty of the two works is certainly not comparable, but the gap between the two authors is considerable.63 On the other hand, the sales figures of two translations, Écrits politiques and Correspondance avec Jaspers (less technical texts with titles that would have provoked enthusiasm in another time, or at least a certain public curiosity) are respectable, but no more than that, for such a famous author.64
By echoing a severe judgment on these decades, we have not wished to give in to the least complacency. Our right (and even our duty) is to assume a different position, a position that has continued to take form and consistency throughout this philosophical history: if the proliferation of different forms of “Heideggerianism” has led to inevitable excess (or waste, or remains, according to the case), it has also allowed or engendered, directly or indirectly, creative transplants, some of which have still not been completely assimilated or “digested.” From Sartre to Levinas, by way of Lacan and Derrida, “the French Heidegger” will have been a unique catalyst, and extraordinarily provocative: master of some, “overseer” [contremaître]65 of others. And what is necessary to emphasize is that French thought has been able to reverse the role that Heidegger, in a very classical manner, had assigned to it:66 namely, to be the inheritor and representative of the great rationalism of the seventeenth century. Not only did it no longer hold this position, but it had the audacity of asking Heidegger himself questions that made him appear retrospectively as still too metaphysical, rational, attached to the Proper (whether in the form of language, homeland, or authenticity) and closed to the call of the wholly Other. Welcomed as nowhere else, Heidegger’s thought has also been intensely interrogated, contested, and put into question. One could even apply a strictly critical grid to our narrative that would reveal the progress and even accumulation of resistances to Heidegger in French thought: Marxist objections as early as the ’30s, spiritualist reservations, Sartrean Cartesianism, merciless sociolinguistic critiques (from Faye to Bourdieu and Meschonnic), the denunciation of Heideggerian “antimodernism” (by Ferry and Renaut), numerous displacements undertaken by the deconstructive movement, and the ethical protest against the “neutrality” of ontology, and so on. It is impossible to lay out so briefly an exhaustive treatment of the salient points of French thought engaged with Heidegger! This singularly complicates the schema according to which contemporary French philosophy would be but a series of hasty misunderstandings of Heidegger’s true thinking,67 a judgment that coincides paradoxically with certain views of the master himself and his closest disciples. However, although it is true that from the “Letter on Humanism”68 to On Time and Being,69 Heidegger sought to correct some errors or misunderstandings that originated in France, he precisely did so for the benefit of the French because he appreciated their capacity for listening. Was it an eminently ambiguous, “self-serving” gesture, seeking recognition? No doubt. He may even have thought what François Vezin went so far as to write: Sartre would have been better off translating Sein und Zeit than publishing Being and Nothingness!70 My disagreement with this sort of judgment does not concern the fact that the French readings had often been imperfect, or wrong, but concerns the interpretation of these “deviations.” If Heidegger’s adversaries maintained that the misunderstandings have allowed the French to “save” the thinker on several occasions, the “orthodox,” for their part, boast of “saving” his reading from any misappropriations. But this would mean remaining in a game of “for” and “against.” Heidegger’s thought is caught in a tug of war. Our point of view is quite different: it is not a question of protecting Heidegger’s work or of restoring its cursed authenticity, but of appraising (and not judging definitively) its surprisingly catalytic power. Whether one laments it or not, without Heidegger, works as original as Being and Nothingness, Totality and Infinity, and Writing and Difference would not have been what they are. Should they only be conceived according to whether or not they are literally faithful to Heidegger? Are we forced to neglect their innovative contributions, including their “misunderstandings” (voluntary or involuntary) with respect to the Master of Freiburg? There is little doubt that he remained quite skeptical toward the free interpretations and “creative contestations” of his work in France. But skepticism does not mean indifference. Whether the attention accorded by Heidegger to the French was a tactical ruse or a sincere consideration (the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive), it would be more fruitful for the work of thinking to adopt a vision less connected with the very person of the thinker as a person, and more open to the questions and the promises of his work, at times in spite of its intentions. In this respect, one could almost apply to the French reception of Heidegger’s thought one of the conclusions of a similar research conducted by Jacques le Rider with respect to the French readings of Nietzsche: “In every case, French intellectuals have found the material for the definition of their own identity in Nietzsche, while the importation led to a transformation so profound that the French Nietzsche ended up appearing as a stranger in his own country.”71 Can one even go as far as to claim that, in both cases, “the history of interpretations henceforth belongs to the work itself?”72 Even if this is an assumption that is more Nietzschean than Heideggerian, it poses an essential question with respect to the “re-transference” in Germany, and to the entirety of the “transferences” effectuated in France on the basis of Heidegger’s work—a question that doubly exceeds (both geographically and chronologically) the present research.
Certainly, one has the right not to “agree” and to be negative about the truth or relevance of the creative grafts or contestations in the heyday of the French reception. But we will not confuse the salutary exercise of critical thinking with a sweeping censorship of the existentialist and/or “postmodern irrationalism.” Notwithstanding the proponents of a philosophical correctness [TN: In English in the original] who reject any recourse to Heidegger’s thought as irrational or aberrant (even attempting to censor the very mention of it), we believe that the French reception of this thought testifies, in its better moments, to the alliance of critical thinking and creativity.
Has this corrosive fecundity, so characteristic of what was the vitality of French intelligence, evaporated? Between the requirements of formal rigor and the openness to the most audacious intellectual provocations, it should still be possible to find a balance and thus to protect the potential of future thought and apply a reasoned judgment on the “Heidegger years” of French thought. Such were already the goals of a conference held in 1989 at the Collège International de Philosophie entitled “Thinking after Heidegger,” where the French were in the minority: to break with any devotion or complacency toward Heidegger, to rise to the challenge of his thought while renouncing the “splendid isolation”73 of French philosophy, for example to study the major French readers of Heidegger (from Sartre to Derrida) in solidarity with Adorno and other thinkers supposed to be “adversaries” of the Master—in short, to adopt a resolutely critical and open approach. Consequently, we were told at the beginning of the conference: “We do not have to be ashamed of the French Heidegger.”74
It is paradoxically at the very moment when one wants to bid adieu to this “French Heidegger”—so proteiform—that certain of his traits (and his qualities) impose themselves with the utmost clarity and brio: with Badiou, in order to recast the topology of relations between poetry and thinking;75 with Granel, to rethink the presuppositions of the formalism and of the “logical gesture”;76 with Schürmann, to subordinate the eventual singularization of being to the twofold normative constraint of tragic knowledge.77
Each of these areas opens a new project on the basis of Heidegger’s work, and no longer in the folds of the interpretation (or self-interpretation) of his work. Such fruitfulness is resisted both by the “orthodox” partisans and by the determined adversaries. We cannot, for now, do more than indicate its promises while also returning to a “fallback position” that is difficult to challenge. We have established, in fact, that in the context of the university it was certainly in the renewal of interest in the study of the history of philosophy that Heidegger’s influence could not be disputed. The question of the unity and structure of metaphysics as “onto-theology” has formed the core of more than one good thesis. In this respect, the incompatibility that Raymond Klibansky discerned between the passion for Heidegger and the patient exercise of critical thinking seems quite unlikely. Our research confirms the opposite: the “French Heidegger” is for the most part a “critical Heidegger” (with all the ambiguity contained in this expression). What has nourished the interest and the passion for this work, despite its difficulty, is its resources first, for contesting the essentialist and idealistic tradition, and second, for the deconstruction of metaphysics as such. Even today, the opposition to globalization can find resources in the Heideggerian questioning of a technological and productivist imperialism; and at the more classical level of the studies of the history of philosophy, one is correct to conclude that the Gesamtausgabe—far from being completely translated into French—contains immense critical resources.78
Other elements that are relatively marginal but not insignificant must also be taken into account. On the one hand, the translations of the Gesamtausgabe do not have the spectacular or radically new character offered by the most noteworthy publications over the last half-century (however, some volumes should be distinguished from others, such as the Sophist, and above all the formidable volume Contributions to Philosophy). On the other hand, the least that one can say is that the work has not made much progress: it is far from following the pace of the Gesamtausgabe itself (at times producing two or three volumes per year).79 Above all, François Fédier, who supervises the whole project at the publishing house Gallimard, clearly intends to impose his own conception of translation. Taking on the translation of the Beiträge himself, he does not hesitate to propose an esoteric approach, proclaiming at the outset, “One must not fear being misunderstood,”80 contesting the view that philosophy would be “translatable as such,”81 and defending Vezin’s translation of Being and Time in the strongest terms. Furthermore, Fédier has been true to his words by publishing a sample of his translation of some of the paragraphs of the Beiträge:82 no effort was made to render the text intelligible to the French reader; quite the opposite. This partial publication confirms the intransigence of the previous declaration: both have the merit of clarity with respect to the pursuit of a deliberate politics of esotericism,83 the principal effect of which has already been stated: the systematic marginalization of Heidegger’s thought. If one had wanted to achieve this goal, one could not have done any better.
One final word on this issue at the conclusion of this work, that is to say, on the crucial question of translations. Beyond personal preferences or unavoidable discussions on particular translation choices, we have seen the debate focusing explicitly or implicitly on the following alternative: readability or faithfulness. Let us be clear: the partisans of readability in no way mean to sacrifice faithfulness, but they maintain—conforming to the grand classical tradition of translation—that the result must be as intelligible as possible in the recipient language, whose spirit must be respected; the inverse conception openly sacrifices readability and intelligibility to an attitude that claims to be the most faithful, by seeking, thanks to some “inventions,” to follow Heidegger in his remarkable work on language. Faithfulness or fetishism? An outside observer, shall we say from Sirius, who would not have lost all common sense during his or her voyage in space, would no doubt wonder why a serene discussion is not possible in such a delicate domain where the interest in a great work should outweigh all other considerations. It is moreover in this direction that Heidegger himself seemed to tend shortly before his death, if one is to believe Roger Munier: Heidegger supported the idea of a working group open to all translators. Any dogmatism, any argument from authority, and any cliques were to be excluded. Nothing would be more absurd than to decree once and for all that one translation is better than the others because it was done by a friend, or to exclude even the mention of a translation simply because its author has been “excommunicated.” This nevertheless is what happened. Our observer from Sirius would note that Heidegger’s work seems to have encouraged the profusion of bizarre words, of overly stylized renderings and neologisms in French, whereas the majority of the key words in his work (Dasein, Sein, Zeit, Zeug, Grund, Abgrund, Ereignis, and even Machenschaft or Gestell) are not neologisms, but ordinary terms that he infused with new meaning. Logically, it would be necessary to translate them by terms that are as ordinary, even if accompanied by quotation marks. Is there no alternative to the esoteric approach? Indeed there is. Can it be avoided? Yes. The best example is the existence of André Préau’s translations, which are sober, readable, and were approved by Heidegger himself as well as by Jean Beaufret. Nevertheless, neither Essais et Conferences nor Le Principe de Raison is a work that is easier than others. Why would it not be possible to work in the same spirit rather than rendering Heidegger incomprehensible, indeed ridiculous, under the pretext of being unerringly faithful? “These champions of the indecipherable translation have nevertheless an incontestable advantage over my other disciples, my brilliant Parisian admirers! Because it is to them and them alone that belongs the honor of having rendered me incomprehensible.” It is in this way that Lacoue-Labarthe puts words in Heidegger’s mouth through his theatrical mask.84 No one will ever know if the “true” Master considered this.
To return to more prosaic observations, a survey of the French translations completed during the recent decades proves instructive.85 If one attends, for example, to the published volumes, while excluding the re-editions, one has the confirmation that the existentialist reception of Heidegger was done on a very thin textual basis (given that the greatest part of the public reads only translations and that the good Germanists constitute—even among the philosophers—what was quite a limited group); one then notes a blooming of important translations from 1950 to 1960, which indeed corresponds—at least in part—to the “bright spell” that we have noted. Was it a countereffect of the events of ’68 or rather of the structuralist wave?86 Or was it perhaps the countereffect of the relative saturation of the pool of texts? One witnesses a certain diminution in the number of translations in the ’70s. On the contrary, the renewal of work was impressive in the ’80s and continued more modestly in the ’90s. It is as if the “affair” had been a reply to the renewed interest in Heidegger studies and to a new passion for Heidegger. The number of publications during the 1990s in no way suggested a collapse, but the gap widened between the rhythm of the publication of the volumes of the Gesamtausgabe and the quite slow pace of translations in the series of the Œuvres Complètes published by Gallimard.87 If it is to be expected that such a gap exists, given the constraints and the specific translation difficulties when it comes to Heidegger’s texts, it is necessary to note that the gap is considerable, since today more than thirty volumes await publication in French.88
Before taking leave of the reader, it seems interesting to dwell a bit longer on the singularity of this intellectual adventure called “Heidegger in France” in order to assemble an interpretation that is closest to the thinker himself, who, as we indicated, expressed a “divine surprise” at his French success. Jean Beaufret, who replied thirty years later to the text that Heidegger devoted in 1937 to the French-German dialogue,89 looked back with satisfaction on the path and the recognition obtained from the Master himself: “The notion that the relation of your own thought with France and the French was something essential—probably more essential than with other European or wider encounters—seemed to have come to you slowly. What was remarkable here was that a few individuals from an apparently frivolous people worked to understand your discourse, which at the outset, appeared quite strange to them. Some are still surprised by that, not always among your friends.”90 Beaufret then alluded to the many years of apprenticeship that it took him to begin to understand Heidegger and the “enormity”91 of his work (as he himself said at times, half-joking about it).
To these touching and nostalgic memories, one may counter with the severe and even sarcastic predictions of a “progressive collapse of Heidegger’s heritage and its various epigones”92 by discerning one of the opportunities offered to future thought therein. There is, at times, in the proclamation of such “facts,” a great degree of wishful thinking [TN: In English in the original]. It goes without saying that the author of these lines is not above such wishful thinking in spite of his concern for balance and impartiality.
What is actually the case? What has appeared incontestable to us is that the ideological and personalized fascination that marked the first decades of Heidegger’s reception in France has faded. It would still be necessary to recognize the numerous “remnants” of this fascination, which turn into gestures of conjuration that are destined to exorcize the ghost: the fascination persists, but often in a negative form,93 cultivating fantasies of rejection, or even clichés demonizing Martin the Cursed One. I will cite an example of this drawn from a literary review. In Le Monde des Livres, October 29, 1999, although no article or book was devoted to Heidegger, we find two important allusions in two interviews. Incidentally, the first was both beautiful and touching and concerned the memoires of Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt:94 nothing there relates to the thought of Martin Heidegger, but the latter popped up suddenly like a jack-in-the-box with the reference to the “arrogant denigration of the French language” by certain French intellectuals, who “threw themselves into the arms of the Nazi militant par excellence: Martin Heidegger.”95 Some pages later in the same publication, Alain Renaut, questioned on the “Resources of Political Liberalism,” specified that one of the volumes of his Histoire de la Philosophie Politique96 is entirely devoted “to an analysis of the assaults that political rationality receives from thinkers like Heidegger, and from which, to a certain extent, political rationality has not recovered.”97 Was the “Heidegger shock” so powerful that “political rationality” still suffers from it and that at the slightest opportunity the polemic starts again? We will not discuss the pertinence of the judgments just cited, including among many others that it would have been tedious to list; they testify to the tenacious permanence of the figure of Heidegger in the French intellectual and philosophical landscape, even if negative comments seem henceforth to prevail.
Concerning “the heritage” itself, envisaged according to the different forms of a positive reappropriation, things are less clear, first for the simple reason that it is necessary at the outset to agree on the inventory, insofar as this project makes sense, which does not go without saying; second, because it is necessary to take account of the multiform penetration of Heideggerian themes into contemporary philosophy, such that the desire “to turn the page” does not itself guarantee a “total decontamination”; finally, and this is perhaps the most decisive argument for avoiding any triumphalism or doom-mongering, we are too close to “the topic”; the chronological distance is still not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion from a story that is still too recent98 and that remains profoundly contemporary: we are all, in different ways, both judge and judged in this affair, insofar as the debates of the twentieth century still concern us . . .
It cannot be excluded, in any case, that the intellectual and philosophical horizon changes even more radically with the progress of the new century. Globalization also bears on the reception of Heidegger. Thus there already exists an American translation of the Beiträge,99 and in July 2000 an intensive seminar, exclusively devoted to this work, was organized in English.100 The Far East should not be forgotten; even if our narcissism should suffer from it, let us be aware that there are more publications on Heidegger in Japan than in the rest of the world and that Sein und Zeit has been translated there in six different versions (the first appeared in 1939, almost fifty years before the first French translation).101
The interest in the singularity of the French reception does certainly not imply closure to other, at times neighboring, horizons,102 or that one must exclude the possibility that radical mutations could emerge elsewhere (Germany itself, since the death of Heidegger, no longer seems to be what it had been for two centuries, the country of great philosophy). If the intellectual landscape has changed completely, this transformation should not be limited to France. At least the awareness that an important page of philosophical history seemed to have been turned nourishes the hope that our historical research and analysis would not turn out to be fruitless. Each one will judge the result for him- or herself. The precious and fragile thread that connects us to the reader, and that we wish to share with him or her, is nothing other than philosophical thinking itself, in its always renewed capacity for free questioning within (and without) Heidegger’s work. We would not have undertaken this work, we would not have taken it to its conclusion, if this free inquiry and this conviction had not constantly accompanied and sustained us—along with their difficulties, but also with their participation in truth. As much as a thinker can be criticized, it is at least necessary to respect the fact that he or she makes us think. Reading him or her is the first respect that we owe him or her and that we owe ourselves, such that the sovereign exercise of free spiritual choice be made in complete lucidity.
In closing, let us consider a few hopeful signs. It would be risky to make too many predictions. After all, that was not our intention. One comment is at least necessary: with the publication of the Gesamtausgabe, the moment of erudition and specialization has arrived. Heidegger, who is now recognized, is also on bookshelves. Just as a grande dame who has aged and is less courted, this work no longer provokes in a comparable way mannerisms, passion, indeed aberrations, as did the most surprising years of the French reception. From conferences to historical studies, this work now pays the price of its fame: it has been, is, will be, emptied out, dissected, analyzed, objectified, archived: having become a cultural object, it no longer really seems a path that is as adventurous as it once was for many. The work is becoming the object of a specialization among others: this is an unavoidable development that would be a mistake to lament. This is a fact and a feature of our time. Should we whisper, ’Tis your own fault, Georges Dandin, in the shadow of the Master who has allowed his “tomb” to be erected (in the form of the Gesamtausgabe), which he himself recognized privately would become the “prey of many theses”?103 This ambiguity cannot be disassociated from the intricacies of the “projects” that can be discerned in this work: to have wanted to be innovative, all the while mocking academics; to have wanted to integrate esotericism and pedagogy, the concern for history and the contempt for it. Had that thought been simpler, it would not have been as fascinating. Its destiny sealed its complexity and even its contradictions (where Kostas Axelos discerned a “double meaning” without claiming that it was always deliberate).104
Finally, we formulate a hope, on the basis of a confession: the author learned much while developing this book and undertook frequent reconsiderations concerning earlier certainties and methods. The hope would be that this catharsis would not remain his privilege alone, and that the present study would play a critical and fruitful role for readers coming from diverse orientations. May historical inquiry and philosophical reflection facilitate a more lucid, more serene relation, both more detached and more welcoming to this work, thus finding within our language (after so many attempted translations) a balance between literality and interpretation! A profound enrichment should be the result of this inquiry, as the supreme depository of thoughts whose meditation would deserve the opportunity to pass the test of time and alter its course.
One must concede to the censors that Heidegger was able to practice the art of denial with a disconcerting audacity. The most flagrant—but not the most scandalous105—of these pertained to philosophy itself: in the second part of his career, Heidegger always separated himself from “philosophical activity” [das Philosophieren], which he belittled in relation to “thought.” Even if this distinction, maintained with tenacity, was not without coherence (since it was accompanied by an attempt to overcome metaphysics, itself assimilated to philosophy), under examination it revealed a paradoxical fragility. First, what rigorous philosopher has not established him- or herself by opposing him- or herself to what he or she considered to be the “commonplace” of philosophy? From this perspective, the critique of philosophizing [Philosophieren] seems banal. But above all, taking the ambiguity to the limit, Heidegger differentiated himself from philosophy (understood as metaphysics) only in order to return to it by meditating ceaselessly on its essence. Less of a poet than Nietzsche, incomparably less audacious in practical life than a Schopenhauer, a Marx, or a Wittgenstein, he remained in fact to a great extent—after the unfortunate exception of 1933—wisely billeted in the university and academic exercise of philosophical studies. It is not a matter of “reproaching” him, and even less so since he took teaching to a high level of mastery and was able to create a following. The point that we limit ourselves to examining here concerns the denial pertaining to “philosophy.” Was his persistence to differentiate himself from philosophical activity and his claim that there was no “Heideggerian philosophy” not a mere play on words? It would be futile to deny it except on the condition of recognizing that this game has been played masterfully and that it is indeed a denial that must be analyzed. After all, this type of denial (in varying degrees of irony and systematicity) has been one of the signatures of the twentieth century, from Magritte (“ceci n’est pas une pipe”) to the “non-music” of John Cage and all the forms of “non-art.” However, Heidegger did not exactly propose a “non-philosophy,” but rather considered “the un-thought” of philosophy itself. Although it is necessary to recognize that his main inspiration had an incontestable seminal richness that was sustained from one end of the work to the other (to unfold a thought more originary than traditional ontology), what is problematic is the provocative expression that he gave to his quest (the openly stated hermeneutic violence of the destruction of the tradition, and the overall identification of that tradition according the unified form of “metaphysics”). One can wonder (as Derrida did, at the risk of losing himself in the process) if the emphatic coherence of the “questioning” of philosophy (as metaphysics) did not mask the fullness of what remains philosophical (and thus metaphysical) in this thinking. But Heidegger’s singularity resides precisely in this subtle economy of questioning: to challenge you, while putting everything into question in the most brutal manner, in order to lead you home, and to make you see everything differently. Such is indeed, we could say, the “conservative-revolutionary” spirit whose harmful aspects and associates are now well-known. Justified from a political angle, this objection is less so (or not at all justified) since what is at stake is to question the perspective of the entirety of the Western tradition. Heidegger is certainly the only thinker of the twentieth century who was able to pose the question of the scope of metaphysics in the light of its history with an unequaled radicality.
Whatever the case may be, Heidegger will not have allowed us to rest, he who showed the way to the legacy of Gelassenheit. And we know that we are not done with him. Beyond our personal situation, there is the future of humanity and of thought. Whether this thinking is French or francophone is unimportant, and absolutely contingent. That would mean to consider that the style of the discourse and the flesh of the words no longer matter, that only those who will borrow the operative formalisms and elementary efficiency of basic English [TN: In English in the original] will prevail. Such are no doubt the stakes. The question of the rootedness that has attracted more than one good soul is only the external expression of a still more essential difficulty embedded in the relation to language itself: must meaning inscribe itself in finitude in order to trace a furrow there? This inscription is the sign of our condition: it corresponds to what Heidegger named “way,” which, if one avoids the fetishist trap, has, indeed, a universal scope.
Whatever the degree of interest accorded to Heidegger in France in the course of the century that is beginning, there will be (provided that the awaited publications take place) the enormous work of reading and interpretation of the numerous volumes of the Gesamtausgabe, still to appear in French.106 This work must be completed in a more philosophical manner, with an awareness of the tasks called for by Heidegger’s thought. We can indicate the principal axes in the following manner:
•to respond to philosophy in the context of its history;
•to rethink the being of humans;
•to confront the destiny of the power of science;107
•to expose the Westernization of the world to other languages and cultures;
•to pose again the question of the sacred.
These five orientations are obviously not the only possible outcomes of Heideggerian thought, which is itself given only as one “way,” and which, in order to be followed, extolled virtues that have never been antirational (but that are denied by his adversaries): “the rigor of meditation, carefulness in saying, frugality with words.”108 We do not know whether the thoughts offered by the Master of Freiburg will produce new germinations or whether they will be buried, despised, and indeed forgotten; all we can do is to hope for a future, in a henceforth globalized France, in which—whatever the fortune of “Heidegger studies,” great or small—the flame of thinking will not be extinguished completely, a thinking that will always be attentive, beyond any personal or scholarly interest, to the essential questions that were and remain posed to humanity.109