While the figure and influence of the thought of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) continues to grow, his role in the construction and defense of Nazism is clarified through the writings collected in The Black Notebooks, unpublished until 2014.
The French linguist François Rastier, director of research at the CNRS, offers us an exhaustive analysis of these texts that leads us to situate his work in the corpus of the ideologues of secret Germany. Rastier wonders how it is possible that a large part of French intellectuals could have overlooked the recurring and revealing signs of the role played by Heidegger in Nazism and in the future diffusion, which reaches to the present day, of the anti-Jewish intellectual corpus of he.
Rastier’s thesis starts from wondering if the work of the author of Being and Time can continue to be read once we observe the “radically Nazi and anti-Semitic” character of its author. He argues that said anti-Semitic thought is not a product of the historical moment in which he lived, but rather that it is one of the nerve centers of his thought, considering that his work aims to substantiate a National Socialist plan of action and reflection for the future. He observes that the first Black Notebooks published in 2014 and 2015, in four volumes, with some 1,800 pages, should have ended Heidegger’s prestige and that, nevertheless, mainly in France, a good number of philosophers and thinkers continue to deny his role as generator of Nazi ideas and illusions.
He argues that Heidegger “advances Hitlerism to its right thanks to a metaphysical radicalization of anti-Semitism.” Heidegger wrote: “One would have to ask what the particular predestination of the Jewish community for planetary criminality is founded on.” This phrase appears in a text from the years 1939-1940. Rastier assures that everything is there: “The global and even cosmic conspiracy, the metaphysical destiny, the designation of the criminal community whose total extermination Heidegger demanded… The phrase deserves attention and for various aspects justifies the book project.”
Rastier forces us to reconsider whether there is autonomy between aesthetics and ethics, between thought and ethics. How should one approach the films of Leni Riefenstahl, the theories of Carl Smith, the architecture of Albert Speer, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger if these authors were at the service of Nazism and were builders, to a greater or lesser degree of knowledge, of his machinery of extermination?
The question is increasingly present in society; however, these authors continue to have enormous cultural influence and their works continue to be programmed or republished in the context of the rise of national populism in Europe. The question on which Rastier wants to influence is that, in the case of Heidegger, his philosophical contributions are directly related to “exceeding the historical Reich to found it in the Reich of a thousand years, that of secret Germany”.
How is it possible that Heidegger’s philosophy maintains its influence in the academy, when he is a Nazi, as Emmanuel Faye tried to demonstrate at the time? Rastier establishes three reasons why the prestige of the prophet-teacher-philosopher remains unscathed. He considers: One, that Heidegger’s philosophy, his translations, have been sweetened by his political connotations; two, Heidegger, especially after the war, skilfully systematized a double language that takes shape, especially, in the use of covert words; and three, the main archives of Heidegger’s work remain closely guarded and the heirs largely maintain the program set by the author.
Rastier’s essay aims to challenge all those who continue to deny the Nazi character of Heidegger’s thought, investigating in his double language, the fascination aroused by the strategy of prophecy, unraveling the misunderstandings, clarifying his anti-Semitism and revealing the art of concealment of extermination. What Rastier seeks to point out throughout his essay-condemnation of Heidegger is that aesthetics is not dissociated from ethics and that every act of artistic creation and thought implies assuming responsibility. Reading Heidegger today does not allow us to do it as if nothing had happened, since everything happened; The worst happened, even the unthinkable. Rastier wants us not to forget this when reading Martin Heidegger.
