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Martin Heidegger: Being and Nazism

Jacob Arnett
History 489
Dr. Don Curtis
30 April 2014

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Martin Heidegger was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century,
breaking from the field and every previous scholar. Born in Messkirch, Germany, on September
26, 1889, Heidegger studied philosophy at University of Freidburg, and eventually received a
position as a highly esteemed professor. Heidegger broke from teaching separate of a political
agenda when he joined the Nazi Party in 1933, where he was promoted to Rector of the
University of Freidburg by the Nazi regime.1 While Heideggers train of thought was not
dependent upon the Nazi regime, and is capable of being a valid system of ethics independent of
any state of political affairs, Heidegger believed that the Nazi regime had the potential to bring
about true human existence, and bring value back to human lives. While post-World War Two
reveals that the Nazi regime was in fact detrimental to human existence, an examination of
Heideggers philosophy reveals that Heidegger himself was incapable of following his own
system of thought. An analysis of his downfall reveals that Heidegger was caught in an interplay
of forces and larger structures that changed what he viewed to be correct. By critiquing these
structures and finding new routes of resistance, individuals today can find ways to authentically
exist without having the same fate as Heidegger.
One of the major influences on Heidegger was the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Born in
Moravia in 1859, Husserl studied Mathematics in Vienna in 1883, before eventually studying
philosophy under the wing of Franz Brentano from 1884 to 18862. Husserls main contribution to
philosophy is the idea that the sciences and all other fields that focus on gaining knowledge start
with a detrimental assumption. Generally speaking, when an individual attempts to gain
knowledge, they will remove themselves and ask what the objective truth is. For example, a
1

Wheeler, Michael, "Martin Heidegger", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/heidegger/>.
2
Beyer, Christian, "Edmund Husserl", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/husserl/

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scientist will perform an experiment via the scientific method to determine if a fruit is an apple
or a pear. Husserls critique is that human beings, by their very nature, are beings that will
perceive preconceptions that they have. If a scientist perceives something that looks and tastes
like an apple, the scientist may come to the conclusion that it is an apple. However, when the
apple is revealed to have come from a pear tree, the scientist has inaccurately imposed their
view upon their experiment. Husserl argues that human beings are not abstract spectators,
wearing white lab coats, unaffected by the experiments that they perform. By the very nature of
existing as perceivers of reality, mankind in whose consciousness the world is valid, being men,
belong ourselves to the world.3 Knowledge is always skewed by perception, so that an
individual cannot perceive the world as it actually is, but rather as the preconceptions they hold.
In order to solve this dilemma, Husserl undertakes the project of phenomenology, in
which philosophers bracket out the question of the objective and instead try to understand the
phenomenon of existence, so that they can understand how human beings existence affects their
perception of the outside world. When it comes to Husserls understanding of phenomenology,
Heidegger finds fault because it does not answer the true question. In some of Heideggers
earliest lectures, he is found arguing that Husserl's view (developed in the Logical
Investigations, Husserl 1900/1973), that philosophy should renounce theory and concentrate on
the things given directly in consciousness, is flawed because such givenness is itself a theoretical
construct.4 Heidegger argues that Husserls work is already falling into the theoretical trap that
Husserl criticizes, in that Husserls methodology questions how consciousness relates to things
and constitutes another form of abstract knowledge that does not really examine human
3

Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology. Encyclopedia Britannica article as published (1927). Pg. 7.

Wheeler, Michael, "Martin Heidegger", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/heidegger/>.

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existence. By questioning how consciousness relates to external objects, Husserl shifts away
from human existence and has a stronger focus on how we relate to the external world. However,
this already presupposes that the external world is set in some form or way, which is contrary to
the idea that everything can only be understood in terms of human existence. Heidegger believes
that we shouldnt try to derive how things are in any form, because it constitutes another form of
abstraction that we can never verify as being true or false.
For Heidegger, the question of how one exists is everything, and should not be asked in
terms of something external to oneself, like whether our knowledge about an apple is accurate,
because it distracts from the true issue of existence. Heidegger writes that:
Because metaphysics inquires about beings as beings, it remains concerned with beings
and does not devote itself to Being as Being. As the root of the tree, it sends all
nourishment and all strength into the trunk and its branches. The root branches out in the
soil to enable the tree to grow out of the ground and thus to leave it. The tree of
philosophy grows out of the soil in which metaphysics is rooted.5
In the same way that a tree is dependent upon its roots, all of philosophy is contaminated without
a focus of Being entirely in the terms of Being. Being is seeing human existence as
something that needs to be examined in itselfbecause our existence is where value emerges
rather than taking existence as something inherent and then subsequently examining outside
things, like knowledge or external objects.
In this pursuit of Being as the source of all value, Heidegger assumes a perspective that
differs from Husserl but shares the same origin. Heidegger wants to avoid framing the question
5

Martin Heidegger. Existence and Being. 1949. Existence and Being from Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre edited by Walter Kaufman
published in full.

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of existence in reference to something external from the self, such as if the knowledge
individuals hold is accurate. However, he does agree that human beings naturally have a problem
of perception. The problem is not concerning knowledge, such as whether a person can perceive
an apple (because that question, as previously mentioned, is an abstraction from the question of
existence since it concerns something external), but rather is a problem of how one perceives
oneself. Heidegger believes that there is a difference between how an individual perceives
themselves existing and how one actually exist. After reconciling this, Heidegger believes that
individuals can experience value and purpose, and that other concerns such as Husserls will fall
into place.
For Heidegger, an understanding of Being in this manner is uniquely key in allowing
individuals to have value in their existence. In order to achieve value in existence, people must
access their Being from their own experiences. They must actually embrace how they exist
rather than living in a false perception of how they exist. For instance, a homosexual individual
might be told that they must be heterosexual, but if they choose to follow a heterosexual lifestyle,
they could never find value in those relationships because those interactions wouldnt be
reflective of how they actually were. Individuals then would not access their Being because
they would not be able to look at their experiences and say that those experiences were true for
themselves; they would then only be beings that float along without accessing what their
existence actually is. Thus, Heideggers project of reconciling how people exist in comparison to
how people perceive themselves as existing becomes especially important because individuals
are incapable of having value in anything they do if they are inauthentic.
In order to determine exactly what Heidegger means when he says individuals need to be
authentic, it is important to draw the distinction between how one perceives oneself and how one

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actually is. According to Heidegger, society is a contaminant that causes individuals to believe
that they exist in a certain way and ignore what is true to themselves. Everything outside oneself,
the society that surrounds an individual, is referred to by Heidegger as the They. According to
him:
The "they" maintains itself factically in the averageness of that which belongs to it, of
that which it regards as valid and that which it does not, and of that to which it grants
success and that to which it denies it. In this averageness with which it prescribes what
can and may be ventured, it keeps watch over everything exceptional that thrusts itself to
the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed.6
The They is the average: norms within society that become partially internalized. Through this
process of internalization, individuals take their existence and construct it to fit the averageness
of the rest of society. The They is powerful enough that any form of abnormality is suppressed,
and that very suppression seems normal. Thus, existence within the They is controlled by the
norms of society. For instance, if an individual experiences for themselves a desire to donate to a
poor man on the street, society will tell them that they should not give money to the homeless
man because he will use it for drugs. However, Heidegger believes that existence is something
innate and dictated by society. In this scenario, the individual is inauthentic for not giving money
to the homeless man, because they ignore the obligation that they find in themselves.
Heidegger, from this notion of being and of how individuals should understand their
existence, believes that anxiety is necessary for individuals to access their being. In the modern
world, society provides answers for individuals that do not require them to realize their being,

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. 7th ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1962. 164-165.

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but rather give them a means to avoid asking questions about their existence. Individuals inherit
ideas from the past, the same way philosophers inherit the idea that being is calculable. While
these ideas are not necessarily wrong, they have been cemented by society so that individuals
naturally accept them as true. By the time individuals find themselves in a situation, they already
have a conception of what is or what to do provided by society. Anxiety, according to Heidegger,
allows for individuals to break through the screen created by society and forces individuals to
confront their being because anxiety is a moment of breaking from normal life wherein people
have no idea how to act, because the answers are not provided. Within anxiety, someone feels
lost because they dont have an answer. In that moment, they only have themselves to rely on,
and must act on how they experience their own being to make a decision7. People, when
experiencing this anxiety, do not act on information given to them by an outside state of affairs,
but rather act, without knowledge, so that the only thing in the decision was their choice to make.
Heidegger spent most of his career developing his career around this philosophy. It hit its
peak at the beginning of the 1930s, at the same time as the rise of the Nazis. During this time,
Heidegger began to make the mistake of believing that Nazism was consistent with his
philosophy. He believed that the anxiety his philosophy promoted could be experienced when
individuals confronted death, and realized that their lives were mortal. Heidegger states:
In anticipation, Dasein holds itself "in passionate, anxious, freedom toward death" (BT,
p. 173). (5) In being freed from the they, and individualized in death, Dasein is able to
understand "the potentialities of being of the others" and existing existentielly "as a
whole potentiality of being" (BT, p. 172). In other words, the recognition of individual

Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Blackwell, 1967. Pg. 164-165.

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death does not separate us from each other, but forms the basis for authentic human
interaction through mutual regard.8
Nazism, in its promotion of nationalism, said that individuals should not avoid death but rather
confront mortality and be willing to die for the glory of Germany. Heidegger believed that this
new revolution was the rise of Being that he wanted society to experience. As such, he became
an active participant in the party, and was an avid Nazi.
The evidence suggesting that Heidegger was a believer in the Nazi cause is hard to refute.
The most convincing evidence suggesting that Heidegger believed his philosophy was consistent
with Nazism was his willingness to endorse anti-Semitism. Heidegger, in his personal journals,
stated, "World Judaism is ungraspable everywhere and doesn't need to get involved in military
action while continuing to unfurl its influence, whereas we are left to sacrifice the best blood of
the best of our people.9 Heidegger made this statement because he believed that Jews were only
concerned with material things created by society. This may be the case because many Jewish
people were forced in jobs such as banking, which would create that image. However,
Heideggers categorization of a group of people for the actions of few is the racist mindset that
eventually leads to atrocities. Heidegger believed that his philosophy was consistent with
Nazism, but distorted it to make it fit Nazism. He didnt simply adopt anti-Semitic thoughts but
included it into his philosophical thinking.10
It is possible to try to justify that Heidegger made the correct decision when he joined the
Nazi party. If he was being authentic, then he was making a decision out of his anxiety to join

T. Birch, "Heidegger on Death," http://www.gis.net/~tbirch/heidweb.htm

Philip Oltermann. Heidegger's 'black notebooks' reveal antisemitism at core of his philosophy. The Guardian. 12 March 2014.

10

Margarita Erbach. The Black Books of Martin Heidegger. Israel Jewish Scene. 27 March 2014.

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the National Socialist movement. This attempt is founded on weak argumentation that does not
hold up against further review. Heidegger, from his own work, came to the conclusion that the
purpose of his existence was to teach his philosophy to help people seize their own existence. He
believed that one could always be a follower of a philosophy, but that to teach it was a higher
calling. Heidegger wanted to teach Nazism to other people because he thought it would allow
people to seize their existence. In his role as Fhrer-rector, Martin Heidegger initiated racial
laws against the Jews for the University of Freidburg, showing his desire to have people bring
out their Being11. His mistake was assuming that the Nazi ideology he was teaching helped
people make decisions out of anxiety. On the contrary, Nazism allowed an escape from the fear
of not knowing the future, and giving into a society that happened to promote evil. Heidegger
made a mistake, because even if out of his anxiety he made an authentic decision to teach his
philosophy, he was inauthentic in his method. He believed the method would help people seize
their own existence, when in actuality it helped people avoid it.
After examining Heideggers reasoning and motivation to join the Nazi Party, the
question arises as to what forces affected Heideggers thinking. Hitlers government integrated
Nazism into every aspect of culture in Germany. However, out of every branch of society,
education was the most vulnerable conforming to the Nazi culture. Freida Wunderlich writes
that during the time period:
The aim of National Socialist education is to "serve the nation in the spirit of National
Socialism,"3 that is, to awaken sound racial forces and to make youth ready for defense.
A new type of man must be educated with "a will of steel in a magnificent racial body/'2

11

Alex Steiner. The Case of Martin Heidegger, Philosopher and Nazi. Part 1: The Record. World socialist web site. 3 April 2000.

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Intellectualism with its scientific impartiality has to be obliterated. It poisons conviction,

weakens instinct and so undermines the will-to-power.12
Any strain of intellectualism previous to the Nazi era had to be eliminated unless it conformed to
Hitlers ideology. Their focus on education was based upon raising a future, stronger Germany,
and this attention was also directed to prominent, national universities. As a major professor at
the University of Freidburg, Heidegger was under major pressure by the Nazis to support the
party. Additionally, since Nazism was premised on heavy philosophical notions concerning the
state and race, Heideggers field was pushed to give its blessing to National Socialism.
The overarching force acting on Heidegger that caused him to associate his philosophy
with Nazism was drive by the identity of state. States search for ontological security because
states, by their very nature, have an identity with it that unifies all citizens. For instance, the
United States runs on the identity of being a place that value and protects liberty. Whenever
confronted with something that is not a part of that identity, society has a tendency of
autocorrecting itself, because the state cannot exist without shared characteristics between its
citizens. The state creates security for its own existence by making people become part of its
identity.13 Instead of creating distance from that identity, and reflecting upon its correctness,
Heidegger associated with it. Rather than becoming separated from society, Heidegger became
caught into the ontological security of the state, defying his own philosophy.
State identity is composed of several factors that have the ability to influence and shape
peoples thoughts. One major factor is that the identity of the German state shaped Heideggers
psychoanalytic desire to be directed towards the Nazi party. In order for an individual to accept
12
13

Frieda Wunderlich. Education in Nazi Germany. Social Research, Vol. 4, No. 3 (September 1937), pp.349-350

Jennifer Mitzen. Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. Ohio State University, USA. European
Journal of International Relations September 2006 vol. 12 no. 3 341-370.

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an argument, they must have an underlying desire to do so. For instance, a rational argument
could be provided as to why genocide is good, but choosing to accept that argument is still
limited by someones desire to do so. This desire is capable of being directed by outside forces.
Structures that individuals choose to invest themselves in cause individuals to believe that the
structure that they are in is also the basis by which they should act. When individuals are
confronted by reasons to act that oppose the structure, they choose to ignore them because their
desires are controlled.14 For instance, when Heidegger was determining what political party he
should be a part of, he already was using the Nazi Party as a metric for what was right because
he had his desires invested in the Nazi Party.
Another factor that shifted Heideggers perception of the Nazi party was power relations.
States are composed of power, and this power is imposed upon the citizens of the state. This
power can be divided into two parts: totalization and individualization.15 Totalizing power is the
power of the state to categorize and group people under a general cause or goal. The Nazi state is
often compared to being a totalitarian state, for people, and even Heidegger, realized that Nazism
promoted the sacrificing of lives for the German people. However, the second part of state power
is individualization. States are capable of deeming what is good for a person, in themselves, by
way of policy. The German state had the power to deem what was right for the individual in
themselves. For example, Nazism deemed for people that being Aryan made someone superior,
and this bestowment was done in the context of the individual, rather than for Germany as a

14

Gilles Delueze and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. 1980. Pg. 142.
Michel Foucault. The Subject and Power. In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow,
pg. 208-226. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2983.
15

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whole.16 Heidegger was told in two contexts to follow Nazism, not only through the power
imposed of being part of a greater whole, but also for his own individuality.
The ontological security of the state is a massive structure that will try to unite the citizen
with national identity. In this attempt to secure an identity, states will naturally use different
features to attempt to influence its citizens. The combination of power relations and
psychoanalytic manipulation pushed Heidegger to become a Nazi. Heidegger, as a philosopher,
underestimated the influence that society, especially the state, can overwhelm Being.
Unfortunately, he is guilty of the same problem that he criticizes. Rather than making a decision
separate from society out of anxiety, he fled from his anxiety and conformed to a norm that could
not give him meaning. Believing that a political system could bring about Being rather than
personal experiences caused him to invest his desires into an abstract system. Instead of placing
himself into a binding situation where he had to commit to a group regardless of if its change,
Heidegger, in order to be consistent with his philosophy, only acted on what he experienced to be
true in the moment. To escape structures, Heidegger needed to not place himself within any
hierarchal, fascist party from the time period.
Individuals that dedicate themselves to the attempt to determine what is right, regardless
of outside circumstances, are not immune to the surrounding world. The very way someones
mind thinks is not entirely up to oneself. Heideggers thinking was limited by the National
Socialist party, so much so that he didnt have complete free will to form ideas for himself. The
ideas about political life that he believed to be valid were none other than the product of a
machine larger than himself. His failure does not deny the validity of his philosophy, however,
but shows an example of how to implement it. People must never be caught up in their
16

Follmer, Moritz. Was Nazism Collectivistic? Redefining the Individual in Berlin, 19301945. The Journal of Modern History, The University
of Chicago Press. Vol. 82, No. 1 (March 2010), pp. 61-100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/650507

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surroundings, else they will be caught up in the They, but instead must always be on guard.
True anxiety requires not only viewing the world correctly, but relating to structures in such a
way so that things like the state wont ease someones anxiety without that person realizing it.
The aspects of the Nazi state that controlled Heidegger and other German citizens are not
unique to when National Socialism was in power. All states, and societal structures in general,
can manipulate a persons take of the world. Even in nations such as the United States, the
government will pursue ontological security through any means necessary, to normalize the
citizens identities. For example, the United States defined terrorists as enemies of freedom,
which solidifies the United States as defenders of freedom, even though the United States might
prevent freedoms to create that very identity.17 In order to fulfill the promise of Heideggers
philosophy and bring about Being, individuals must constantly critique the structures around
them and distance themselves from the solutions to anxiety that society provides.
Heidegger became a Nazi contrary to the partys blatant contradictions with his thoughts
on philosophy. While his main focus in his works was to bring about authentic existence that
allowed individuals to break from society, he fell victim to factors that made him ignore his own
ethical guidelines. Presupposing his own views in his interactions and investing his identity into
the structure of Nazism prevented him from actually acting as a free individual. These problems
persist in all individuals today, and by realizing that even individuals whose main work is to
avoid these problems can fall victim, a larger focus can be brought upon giving individuals
access to their own freedom.

17

Epstein, Noa. Explaining the War on Terrorism from an Ontological-Security Perspective from Development During Crisis. MIT International
Review. Spring 2007. Pg. 12.

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Works Cited
Primary
Delueze, Gilles. Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus. 1980. Pg. 142.
Foucault, Michel. The Subject and Power. In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, edited by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, pg. 208-226. 2nd ed. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2983.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Blackwell, 1967. Pg. 164-165.
Heidegger, Martin. Existence and Being. 1949. Existence and Being from Existentialism from
Dostoyevsky to Sartre edited by Walter Kaufman published in full.

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Husserl, Edmund. Phenomenology. Encyclopedia Britannica article as published (1927). Pg. 7.

Secondary
Beyer, Christian, "Edmund Husserl", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Birch, T. "Heidegger on Death," http://www.gis.net/~tbirch/heidweb.htm.
Erbach, Margarita. The Black Books of Martin Heidegger. Israel Jewish Scene. 27 March 2014.
Alex Steiner. The Case of Martin Heidegger, Philosopher and Nazi. Part 1: The Record. World
socialist web site. 3 April 2000.
Epstein, Noa. Explaining the War on Terrorism from an Ontological-Security Perspective from
Development During Crisis. MIT International Review. Spring 2007. Pg. 12.
Follmer, Moritz. Was Nazism Collectivistic? Redefining the Individual in Berlin, 19301945.
The Journal of Modern History, The University of Chicago Press. Vol. 82, No. 1 (March
2010), pp. 61-100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/650507.

Mitzen, Jennifer. Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security
Dilemma. Ohio State University, USA. European Journal of International
Relations September 2006 vol. 12 no. 3 341-370.
Oltermann, Philip. Heidegger's 'black notebooks' reveal antisemitism at core of his philosophy.
The Guardian. 12 March 2014.
Wunderlich, Frieda. Education in Nazi Germany. Social Research, Vol. 4, No. 3 (September
1937), pp.349-350
Wheeler, Michael, "Martin Heidegger", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013

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Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)