Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Tere Vadn
Aalto University, Aalto, Finland
Why did Martin Heidegger, the giant of continental philosophy, believe in 1933 that Hitler
is the future of Europe? And why does Slavoj iek, the most dangerous philosopher in the
West, support Heideggers right wing militancy?
Heidegger and iek are not only erudite thinkers on human being but also incorrigible
revolutionaries who even after the catastrophic failures of their favourite revolutions
the October revolution for iek and the National Socialist revolution for Heidegger
want to overcome capitalism; undemocratically, if necessary. The two share a spirited and
sophisticated rejection of the liberalist worldview and the social order based on it. The
problem is not that liberalism is factually wrong, but rather that it is ethically bad. Both
argue for building and educating a new collective based on human finitude and communality.
In the tradition of the Enlightenment, iek advocates a universalist revolution, whereas
Heidegger sees the transformation rooted in particular historical existence, inviting a
bewildering array of mutually exclusive criticisms and apologies of his view. The crisis that
Heidegger and iek want to address is still here, but their unquestioned Europocentrism
sets a dark cloud over the whole idea of revolution.
ISBN 978-94-6209-681-3
PERS 1
Tere Vadn
SensePublishers
Spine
9.017 mm
Tere Vadn
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
vii
Chapter 1: Introduction
A Revolution, After All?
Radical Heidegger as the Starting Point
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Bibliography
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The origin of this text is a course on Heidegger and iek in the University of
Tampere; I want to thank all participants for lively discussions. The writing itself
was made possible through a grant by the Finnish Association of Non-Fiction
Writers. Warmest thanks also to Juha Suoranta and Mika Hannula who gave crucial
comments and criticism on the manuscript along the way.
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
If the last century was characterised by the widening scope and deeper penetration
of capitalism, modernism, economic growth, mass culture and representational
democracy in nation states, it was also a century of revolutions against these
developments. The October revolution in 1917 in Russia and the National Socialist
revolution in 1933 in Germany were the most impressive challengers to liberal
capitalism in Europe. In their distinct ways, both revolutions tried to reinstate ideals
absent from bourgeois materially oriented civilization and to tackle the problem
of economic and social inequality. Both failed and in the process took their crown
jewels, socialist man/woman and Aryan master-race, to their graves. But
inequality has not disappeared, and even if postmodernism has put a wet blanket
on utopias and ideals, most people are not happy with the vile harvest provided by
individualistic capitalismvile, it is often assumed, because of wrong values or a
lack of values altogether.
The responses that Slavoj iek (b. 1949) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
present in the face of the catastrophic failures of the revolutions they admire
the socialist and the National Socialistare similar. Both continue to insist that
revolutionary change is necessary, but at the same time emphasise the role of
careful and painstaking thought. The work of both thinkers is shot through with an
urgent awareness of crisis, propelling them to untiring and unyielding philosophical
resistance. In the 1950s and 1960s Heidegger speaks of the need to be prepared
for being prepared and hints that maybe we need to wait 300 years before a new
opening. Our contemporary iek is both more impatient and hesitant. At times
he predicts that capitalism will face a cliff very soon, at times he claims that the
20th century saw too much of the action urged by Marx (Philosophers have only
interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.) and too little
calm and unhurried thought. Despite having once burnt their fingers and despite
the genuine care they want to take in matters of philosophy, both thinkers are set
alight by the idea of total upheaval: If only we could think and enact a proper
revolution
Our proposal is that we spend some time attending to this hope for a genuine,
properly thought-out and enacted revolution. On one hand, we can agree about the
assessment of the situation. Really, things can not continue as they are. Heideggers
warnings about the dangers of technology and ieks reminders of how exploitation
and injustice are a part and parcel of all types of capitalism hold true. A genuine
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revolution? Why not! Why not a revolution, if it would stop the destruction of nature
and the subjugation of humans into resources for capitalism. On the other hand, there
is a nagging doubt, what if, a fear that the promised revolution turns sour. The
doubt is based not only on the expectation of the return of previous disappointments
and failures, of the revolution devouring its children. A dark cloud can be detected
inside the idea of revolution itself. To borrow an interrogatory structure often
employed by Heidegger: who (or what) is demanding a revolution from whom (or
what)? In the name of whom is the demand made? Could it be that the demand is
made in the name of someone or something to whom a revolution can not be an
answer? What if revolution is the wrong answer to the right question? These two
poleswhy not!, what if provide the tension through which we approach
Heideggers and ieks revolutions.
RADICAL HEIDEGGER AS THE STARTING POINT
However, the two theorists will not be handled equally. Heidegger takes the
foreground, for three reasons. First, Heidegger has become common background
for nearly all contemporary critical philosophy, not the least for iek. Heideggers
philosophy of Dasein1, his critique of technology, and his narrative of the history
of Being pop up time and again when liberalism, capitalism and consumerism are
thoughtfully opposed. The reliance on Heidegger also creates a potential minefield,
because for Heidegger himself his philosophy consistently meant a rejection of liberal
democracy. When theorists relying on Heidegger want to deepen democracy and
strengthen individual rights, the upshot is a performative contradiction: either they
have not understood their Heidegger right or Heidegger himself was inconsistent. A
synthesis between genuine democracy and the deepest roots of Heideggerian thought
is still missing,2 even though, for instance, Jacques Derrida has stated that for him
and many others the goal is to democratise Heideggers thought and to vaccinate it
against the worst.3
Second, in a rare manner Heidegger was both a philosopher and an active, militant
revolutionary, who in addition to his work at the university took part in politics.
It must be remembered that Heidegger was an active participant in a successful
and actual revolutionsuccessful in terms of overturning the previous government
and gaining power, if not in terms of all the goals of the revolutionary movement,
not to speak of Heideggers goals for it. After the Second World War, in public
Heidegger understandably tried to belittle his political activism. He was afraid that
the baby of his thought would go with the bathwater of Nazism. His attempts seem
to have worked relatively well, partly because many Heideggerian philosophers find
it easy to believe that philosophy is necessarily remote from day-to-day politics.
Heideggers critique of civilization is celebrated, his actions in politics not. One
of the almost unbearable ironies of the case is that many Heideggerian wannaberevolutionaries want to have their Heidegger without the dirty everyday struggle
of changing social structures, that is, without the revolutionary grassroots that they
2
INTRODUCTION
I will use the term Dasein without translation. However, if the word seems alien, one can always read
in its place life, as long as one remembers that life here does not mean a biological phenomenon
or the life of an individual but rather life as in the expressions German life, cabin life, military
life, academic life and so on (all of which, by the way, are Heideggers own expressions: deutsche
Dasein, Htte-Dasein, and so on).
Pauli Pylkks Aconceptual Mind. Heideggerian themes in holistic naturalism (1998) tries to cure the
anti-democracy of Dasein philosophy by a strong dose of non-classical natural science. The project
is promising, but very few philosophers steeped in so-called continental philosophy or critical theory
care enough about the natural sciences in order to follow. However, Arkady Plotnitsky (2002, 1994)
works along the same lines.
In the interview Eating Well or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida
published in Cadava et al. (1991).
Repeatedly iek tells that he looks down on leftists that do not want to get their hands dirty. For the
same reason he does not regret his involvement in Slovenian politics at the time when Slovenia was
gaining independence from Yugoslavia and turning towards capitalism: I despise abstract leftists who
dont want to touch power because it is corrupting. No, power is there to be grabbed. I dont have any
problem with that. Boynton (1998).
The connections can easily bee seen by comparing, for instance, Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes
(GA5, 48, 62-63) and ieks description of the act in Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism (2002a,
173-178).
The plot goes like this: the penultimate end will be a Heidegger corrected by iek, but the iek
used in the correction is first amended by a dose of Heidegger. Finally, we will have to leave also
Heideggers incorrigible Europocentrism behind.
CHAPTER 2
METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
Both Heidegger and iek want to burst the bubble of non-political philosophy.
Philosophy is action, doing, politics in its genuine sense, or it is not at all. Not
only is philosophy action, it is the most decisive kind of action. Heidegger and
iek claim that everything depends on thinking, and, moreover, right now.1
Philosophy as action is absolutely decisive, urgent and world-historical. Here we
find the most crucial connection between Heidegger and iek: for both, truth is
partisan. Truth is accessible only from a limited, engaged, and partial position that
has abandoned all safety nets. For instance, in his comments on Hlderlinone of
the most sensitive topics for HeideggerHeidegger insists that hearing the word
of the poet means risking a change, of being swept away so that all safety is lost.
Only from this vulnerable experience may truth grow. For Heidegger, experience
does not mean an accumulation of aesthetic and atmospheric snippets. Rather,
experience contains an overwhelming force that the experiencing subject may very
well feel as threatening:
To experience something, be it a thing, a person, a God, means that this
something happens to us, hits us, comes over us, turns us over and changes us.
(GA12, 149)2
The same goes, according to Heidegger, for the German revolution that should not
be treated as one fact or historical event amongst others. The revolution reveals its
truth and greatness only to human life that has been transformed by the revolutionary
experience.
iek often uses directly political terms in defining his notion of the non-neutrality
of truth. For instance, the truth of universal Christianity is not that we are Christians
and they are not, but rather that the gap between being a Christian and not being
a Christian is found inside all of us and them and that [] universal Truth is
accessible only from a partial engaged subjective position. (2006a, 35)that is,
from the point of the practising Christian. In this way, we are led to the political
nature of truth:
Yes, assuming the proletarian standpoint is exactly like making a leap of faith
and assuming a full subjective engagement for its Cause; yes, the truth of
Marxism is perceptible only to those who accomplish this leap, not to any
neutral observer. (iek 2004, no page numbers)
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METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
It is not hard to fathom that the liberalist notion of human being according to which
a person is (and should be!) a separate individual that rationally maximises her/his
benefit, by choosing both in the store and in the poll booth the alternative that she/
he likes most (or that maximizes her/his chances of survival, or economic position,
or social standing, or psychological well-being, or what have you), is distasteful to
Heidegger and iek. As a psychoanalyst, iek sees the rational individual as a
tip-of-the-iceberg manifestation of the deeper and more powerful forces that make
up a person, not as the true foundation or nucleus of personhood. We will return to
the differences between Heideggers and ieks notions of the subject. For now, it
is enough to note that, following Heidegger, iek bases his notion of the subject on
the idea that the subject is possible only because it is incomplete, finite, broken. At
the same time, Heideggers long career with all of its twists and turns can be seen as a
single extended campaign against the liberalist notion of human being. His ontology,
epistemology, anthropology, social philosophy and philosophy of language are all
thoroughly anti-liberal and anti-individualistic.
What is it about liberal individualism that grates the nerves of Heidegger and iek?
Let us give the word to Heidegger with a long quotation, so that the impetus can unfold.
The quotation has to do with the nature of poetry.5 The topic is close to Heideggers
heart, and he uses all of his considerable skills in showing that poetry is not the public
linguistic expression of something individually and internally experienced:
The writer Kolbenheyer says: Poetry is a necessary function of a people.
It does not take much understanding to realise that so is digestion, at least
for a healthy people. When Spengler defines poetry as the expression of the
prevailing cultural soul, the definition includes the manufacture of bicycles
and cars. [] All of this is so hopelessly lame that we speak of it against our
will. But we must mention it. First, because this way of thinking concerns
not only poetry, but all that happens in human existence in all of its kinds
[] Second, because the way of thinking does not arise from the fortuitous
lameness or incapacity of an individual thinker. Rather, it has its essential
ground in the mode of existence of humanity in the 19th century and of the
modern time, in general. If the much misused term liberalistic can and should
be used to name something, then this way of thinking. For this way of thinking
sets itself axiomatically and beforehand outside what it thinks about, makes it
a mere object of its opinions. In this way poetry, too, is just an immediately
encountered phenomenon, that can completely meaninglessly be categorised
together with other phenomena as expression of a soul bubbling somewhere
underneath. This way of thinking itself forms a completion of the precisely
definable liberal human existence. Up till today, it has gained prominence in
countless forms and versions, because it is easy to assume, does not concern
anyone and is conveniently applicable on anything. (GA39, 27-28)6
The liberalist view of human being is mistaken simply because its sees a human
being as a self-sufficient and free-floating entity, relating to things and other humans
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as it sees fit. Contrary to this, for Heidegger poetry, for instance, is a part of human
being. When poetry exists, it makes humans the way they are. To put it crudely:
poems tell us what it is to be human, what can be experienced, what can be expected,
what language is, how we can live together and so on. These experiences in turn are
what it is to be human. A human is human and the kind of human being that she or
he is, because poetry has opened a world to her or him (and the kind of world it has
opened). Only secondarily can a human being set herself or himself outside poetry
and to analyse it as if from a distance. This secondariness means also a certain kind of
thinness, flatness, thoughtlessness compared to the first-hand experience of poetry.
Heideggers descriptive term is noteworthy: liberalism does not concern (angehen)
anybody. Liberal views and opinions can be changed at will, without any deeper
consequences for ones humanity. The liberal view of human being is both too thin
and flat and too diluted and distant. A liberal view does not present a duty, it does not
put its holder into an emergency, unlike poetry that lives as a part of human being.
What goes for poetry, goes for community: Heidegger sees community, Mitsein and
shared language as fundamental experiential fields that precede the individual, and
therefore have a claim on human being before and after the individual. His most
famous work, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927) is one of the most erudite and
forceful expositions of the community-before-individuals view that the history of
philosophy has seen.
Even though Heideggers definition of liberalism is quite broad and unusual, it
functions as the basis for his own and for ieks criticism. For both Heidegger and
iek the fundamental error of liberalism is in its philosophical anthropology and,
consequently, in its philosophical politics. Liberal politics is only a servant of liberal
philosophy, incapable of real thought (Heidegger)7 or critique of ideology (iek).
For this reason, neither Heidegger nor iek think of revolution as merely involving
a change in political power relations. For both, revolution means a transformation
of what it is to be humana little bit like a religious rebirth, and not coincidentally,
since the partiality of truth is related to the Kierkegaardian leap of faith, done
without reason. For Heidegger, this transformation would mean the (re)birth of
some kind of new communal experience and life, maybe in terms of a new god or
at least something holy, which in time would make possible new meaning and new
livelihoods. For iek, the transformation would mean adulthood in a LacanianHegelian vein, the abandonment of ideological crutches and setting an autonomous
self-discipline in a communal project.
HEIDEGGER AND IEK IN EVERYDAY POLITICS
Even while most vigorously covering up his active involvement in the Nazi
revolution, Heidegger never denies that his intention was to revolutionise German
universities. This is no little goal, especially in the context of Heideggers bigger aim
of aiding the rebirth of European spiritual lifeEuropean, which Heidegger took to
mean Greek-German, because of the material and essential bloodline between the
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METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
two peoples (stamm- und wesensverwandten, GA16, 283). In this sense, Heideggers
overall project was intensely pedagogical. Like Heidegger himself puts it, the history
of German universities is the history of German Geist, which in turn contains the
history of Germany itself (GA16, 285). Heidegger never denies that his philosophy
was intended to bring about a total upheaval and rebirth of European man. Even in his
philosophical testament, the Spiegel-interview from 1966 titled Only a God can
save us, Heidegger insist that for him the decisive question is what kind of political
system our technological age needs.8 So the crucial question for Heidegger in the
1960s isaccording to himselfpolitical. If Heidegger already in the 1930s took
part in an actual honest-to-goodness political revolution, how much more weight
did the question of a political system carry in the 1960s! Of course the situation
had drastically changed, and Heidegger did not anymore pin his hopes on a political
mass movement, but rather on preserving and nurturing the hope for change in some
kind of cells of resistance.9 Accordingly, he changed his own pedagogical mode of
operation. He quite consciously stopped lecturing to large audiences, and started
working by giving meticulously prepared seminars to small groups in thoughtfully
selected non-academic settings.10 But in each of the phases of his work, Heidegger
was a revolutionary thinker who did not step back from real political work when
he saw an opportunity for it. It is a truism that there is a certain distance between
Heideggers thinking and the ideas of the Nazi leaders; such a distance always exists
between the thinking of the leaders and what actually transpires (think of Trotsky,
Lenin, Stalin and the October revolution). This distance does nothing to prove that
Heidegger was apolitical. Quite the contrary. That the distance existed and that
Heidegger was aware of it11 and still chose to enter into revolutionary political work
only highlights how committed Heidegger was to revolution, in general, and the
Nazi revolution, in particular.
In a rare way, Heidegger was prepared to interpret contemporary and past events
as messages of Being-historical relevance, revealing tectonic shifts in Being itself
and the thinking connected to it (Fgung). Sometimes Heidegger comes across
almost as a pagan priest, reading the details of events as oracular prophesies. He
strongly believed that thinking in general and his own thinking in particular had a
(albeit indirect; more of this later) task in transforming everyday life and politics. His
belief even took the forms of a kind of hubris.12 Such belief is also the background
to Heideggers almost only show of remorse, the sentence he who thinks great, errs
great.13 In a letter to his wife Elfride on March 4., 1946, Martin in simple prose
analyses the phenomenon of erring (the topic being Martins poem Tagwerk des
Denkens, GA81, 24). The letter explains that thinking means bringing into truth,
i.e., into unconcealment. In other words, the more true your thinking, the more you
are bringing the concealed into the open, and the bigger the possibilities of error.
Only thoughtlessness guarantees no errors, and, conversely, the possibility of erring
is a genuine part of thinking (2005, 243).
The quote also shows that in Heideggers case the distance between thinking and
everyday political action is not the familiar distance between theory and its practical
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METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
CHAPTER 2
foreigners (of course there are some critical cases). But the changes [sic] of a
genuine pluralist society are not yet lost. [] The question is: will we become
just another small, stupid, nationalistic state or maintain this elementary,
pluralistic opening? And all compromises are worth for this goal.
Pluralism and multiculturalism are in practice more important than collective
ownership of the means of production, and avoiding virulent nationalism more
important than state socialism. So far so good! This should be kept in mind when
assessing the militancy of iek as a theorist: in practice, he is very committed to the
ideals of anti-racism and anti-nationalism. Even if he provokes audiences with the
ideas of totalitarianism, when push comes to shove he opts for a Popperian open
society.
This might be something of a disappointment. When it comes to everyday
politics, a big part of ieks theoretical flair and flamboyance is lost and turns into
rather familiar progressivism: no decisive breaks, no once-and-for-all swipes, but
calculated choices for the lesser evil. This should be considered in combination with
the characteristic move iek makes at the decisive moments of his talks and texts. He
analyses, points out the antinomies and dead-ends, shows the hidden impossibilities,
but provides no answers. Rather, in the end, iek says: Im just pointing out that
we can not continue like this, but I dont know what we should do! Here, iek
is a much more traditional philosopher than Heidegger. iek is a gadfly, raising
questions and provoking problems, showing the limitations of our knowledge and
practicesbut leaving the rest open. Maybe more precisely a psychoanalytic gadfly,
luring us into the thick of the problem, clarifying some obstacles, showing some
structural guidelines, and then disappearing and leaving us staring into the mirror.
The task of taking up the collective discipline that saves the world from rapacious
global capitalism is left to the reader, the listener, to us.
HEIDEGGERIAN MARXISM AND IEK AS THE NEW MARCUSE?
METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
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CHAPTER 2
fundamental problem Sharpe sees in both Marcuse and iek is connected to the way
in which they proceed with a critique of ideology. By analysing ideology as a total
phenomenon that saturates modern life, they end up in a position of if I succeed, I
fail. Through offering robust explanations of how revolutionary action has failed
and how capitalism is able to neutralise all subversion, Western Marxism at the
same time succeeds in pointing out how all resistance is futile. In a sense, if Lacans
explicitly apolitical and structuralist psychoanalysis does give to ieks account
augmented powers of precision and sophistication, it at the same time threatens to
push the goalposts of actual political action even further away. As Sharpe (2004, 12,
see also 254) writes:
to the extent that one manages to map the totalistic systematicity of social
reproduction, one to the same extent flirts with explaining away the possibility
of any futural transformative political agency.
Correspondingly, there is the continuing problem of pinpointing the agent of
revolutionary struggle in a way that would be at the same time theoretically grounded
and politically viable. It has been hard, both for the Frankfurt School and for iek
to find social groups, not to speak of a class, that would at the same time be in
the position of revolutionaries, as designated by the theory, and actually willing to
embrace a revolutionary consciousness. iek has repeatedly named the excluded,
such as slum-dwellers, forced to lead a rootless existence, deprived of substantial
links (2000, 140, see also 2005b) as the contemporary proletariat. Likewise,
Marcuse identified the revolutionary potential in marginal groups not yet integrated
into the one-dimensional society. However, as Sharpe points out, the position of
these groups does by no means automatically lead to proletarisation; quite the
contrary: Abjection can lead to depoliticisation, or even the conservative desire just
to get one foot in the door (2004, 234). Consequently, Sharpe (2004, 12) sees both
Marcuse and iek in a vacillating position between resigned cynical determinism
and voluntarism. As we will see later, in iek this oscillation seems to be stabilising
towards an explicit embrace of voluntarism; also because he sees in Heideggers best
political philosophy a Lukcsian embrace of the need for decisive action that in itself
creates its own conditions of success.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE LIBERAL SUBJECT
Even the critics of Heidegger admit that one of his lasting contributions is the idea
that Being is historical. In other words, Being and time are connected in a way that
makes Being historical. Human being (Da-sein)20 is the place (Da) where Being is
unconcealed, unconcealed in general and unconcealed in a particular way as this or
that. It is unconcealed as humans bring about a world, not by doing or being busy
but by being in time, being in a way that is permeated with time. This is the only way
in which humans can be. Human being is always already historical, it is born and it
is mortal. Being has its history, unlike in traditional philosophy that saw the most
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METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
moves have been made long before we are anywhere near this kind of self-conscious
ego, pondering the idea of a perfect God. At the same time the ego, the subject, is
only a tiny speck in the sea of human experience. For Heidegger, the Cartesian ego
is punctual, ahistoric and spiritless. In 1933 (GA36/37, 42-43), Heidegger groups
the things overlooked by Descartes into four different sets: action, decisiveness,
historicity and being-with (Handeln, Entschiedenheit, Geschichtlichkeit, Mitdasein).
It is noteworthy that all four have to do with the social and embodied, i.e., nonindividual and non-intellectual, aspects of human being. All of this comes before
the ego and forms part of the stuff from which the ego is formed, and all of this is
overlooked by Cartesian modern philosophy, and therefore continues to fester inside
the supposedly sanitised notion of subjectivity. Consequently, unwittingly and often
to its own considerable surprise such Cartesian thinking ends up as an errand-boy
for individualism and nihilism26, in the same way that supposedly neutral natural
science unwittingly and to its sometimes great consternation ends up supporting the
technological domination and destruction of nature.
Because this issue is so crucial, let us attend to another long quote from Heidegger.
Here he explicates the circularity point by point, this time in terms of culture, or,
as iek would call it, ideology. The topic is racist thinkingand here we at the
same time encounter the clear fact that Heidegger was not and could not have been
a biological racist27:
Racial breeding is a measure undertaken by power. It can be instigated and
stopped by power. It bases its proclamations and ways of operating on the
prevailing conditions of power and domination. Its is not in any way an ideal
as such, because as an ideal it should lead to an abandonment of claims to
power and to a preservation of biological traits. So, strictly observed, in every
kind of racial thinking we see already an inbuilt thought of racial supremacy.
The supremacy is grounded in different ways, but always on something
that the Race has achieved, when the achievements are measured by the
yardsticks of culture or something similar. But how, when culturein the
narrow sense of racial thinking itselfis itself a product of the Race? (The
circle of subjectivity). Here the circle of subjectivity, that has forgotten itself,
comes clearly to the fore, not as something that contains only the metaphysical
determination of the I, but as the determination of all human being in relation
to beings and to itself. (GA69, 70-71)28
Racial thinking can not think race objectively, neither as biological nor as cultural.
In biology, it sees traits to be avoided or eradicated, even though it should see
biological traits, in culture it sees achievement and degeneration through the lenses
of the culture doing the study. This because the idea of race contains the circularity
of the metaphysics of subjectivity. Race does science on race and tries to hide this
circularity. The race doing the study is already presupposed, even given a privileged
position, and therefore it muddles up all the ostensibly neutral resultsin this case
impinging them with a will to power included in the idea of racial supremacy.
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Like Heidegger points out, this is not a problem peculiar to racial thinking, but
rather a problem characterising all thinking based on the subject-object distinction.
The same circularity can be found in contemporary natural science that often
flatters itself by imagining it has left crudities like racial thinking behind. Often,
for instance, natural science explains human behaviour by genes, without realising
that here, again, genes are studying genes and explaining genes by genes, and
thereby silently smuggling ideas about what genes (humans) are into the ostensibly
neutral results on genes (typically, the ideas include a valorisation of survival, even
a commitment to the idea that survival is somehow good, and ideas about the
causality in nature).
If these are Heideggers philosophical reasons for objecting to a metaphysics of
subjectivity, he also has a set of more direct and existential grounds for disliking
the subject. For the kind of subject that freely chooses amongst a set of alternatives
(according to some rational, economic, hedonistic or similar set of preferences) is,
according to Heidegger, shallow and incapable of commitment. From here springs
the criticism on liberalism. The crux is the idea of free choice. Something freely
chosen can also be freely unchosen, discarded, forgotten. Nothing makes the liberal
individual responsible. The liberal individual is always ready to change its choices,
including changing itself, in a chameleon-like manner reflecting the freely available
circumstances. Against this, Heidegger holds that a deeper and truer human being is
rooted in a layer of (partly non-human) meanings that bind without the conscious or
intellectual part of an individual having any final veto on what the meanings make
us responsible to or responsible for. The kind of subject incapable of commitment
Heidegger calls freischwebende, free-floating, and neither as a philosopher nor as a
private person (sic) does he have anything good to say about modern individualism.
To be free of the bounds of responsibility towards the world and God, to be free of
the bottomless danger and horror of being mortal and being a people were, according
to Heidegger, simply signs of degeneration. The name for this degeneration is freefloating and rationally choosing individual. In philosophy the degeneration takes
the form of a safe and disengaged (ungefhrliches und unverplichtetes) analysis of
any and all problems without any need or pressing emergency (Notwendigkeit und
Not, GA36/37, 6).29
What, then, do Heidegger and iek fear? They do not resist liberal capitalism and
individualism because they would be somehow illusory. On the contrary, liberalism is
a really existing phenomenon. When it comes to technology, Heidegger is not afraid
that technology would break down but rather that it works without a hitch. The same
goes for liberal capitalism: the problem is not that it wouldnt work but rather that it
functions very well. Like iek repeatedly notes citing Frederic Jameson, today it is
easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.30 Heideggers and
ieks enemy is precisely the self-evident ease with which liberalism reigns. That
is why we need a totally transformative experiencea revolution.
20
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NOTES
1 iek: One is tempted to risk a hyperbole and to affirm that, in a sense, everything, from the fate of
so-called Western civilization up to the survival of humanity in the ecological crisis, hangs on the
answer to this related question: is it possible today, apropos of the postmodern age of new sophists,
to repeat mutatis mutandis the Kantian gesture? (1993, 5). Heidegger: Nur wo das Sein sich im
Fragen erffnet, geschieht Geschichte und damit jenes Sein des Menschen [] (GA40, 152); Only
where Being opens up as a problem, does history happen as history and humans exist as humans []
Another, even more revealing quote from Heidegger in 1933 shows how he experienced the National
Socialist revolution. Heidegger has just explained how the philosophy grounded by Plato gives a
completely new way of seeing the world: We ourselves stand todaynot only after a year or so but
after a number of yearsin front of an even bigger decision in philosophy, a decision that is greater,
wider and deeper than the decision at Platos time. The question is expressed in my book Being and
Time. A change from the roots up. The question is whether our understanding of Being is transformed
from its ground up, or not. It will be a transformation that first gives the framework for the spiritual
history of our people. This can not be proven. It is a belief that must be shown to be true by history.
Wir selbst stehen heute, nicht etwa seit einem Jahr, sondern seit einer Reihe von Jahren, in einer
noch greren Entscheidung der Philosophie, die an Gre und Weite und Tiefe noch weit ber die
damalige Entscheidung hinausgeht. Sie ist in meinem Buch Sein und Zeit zum Ausdruck gebracht.
Eine Wandlung von Grund aus. Es handelt sich darum, ob das Verstndnis des Seins sich von Grund
aus wandelt. Es wird eine Wandlung sein, die allererst den Rahmen darbieten wird fr die Geistesgeschichte unseres Volkes. Dies kann nicht bewiesen werden, sondern ist ein Glaube, der durch die
Geschichte erwiesen werden mu. (GA36/37, 255). Translations here and below by the author, unless
otherwise indicated.
2 Heidegger is talking about experiencing language and tells, furthermore, that experience is not something controlled by humans but something that is sent to them: The purpose of [the three following
lectures] is to give us a possibility to have an experience of language. To experience something, be
it a thing, a person, a God, means that that something happens to us, hits us, comes over us, turns us
over and changes us. To talk about having an experience does not here mean that we in some way
produce the experience; having means here: to go through, to suffer, to grasp what hits us, to receive,
so that we join ourselves with what comes at us. It happens, it sends itself, it joins to itself.; [Die
folgenden drei Vortrage] mchten uns vor eine Mglichkeit bringen, mit der Sprache eine Erfahrung
zu machen. Mit etwas, sei es ein Ding, ein Mensch, em Gott, eine Erfahrung machen heit, da es uns
widerfahrt, da es uns trifft, ber uns kommt, uns umwirft und verwandelt. Die Rede vom machen
meint in dieser Wendung gerade nicht, da wir die Erfahrung durch uns bewerkstelligen; machen heit
hier: durchmachen, erleiden, das uns Treffende vernehmend empfangen, annehmen, insofem wir uns
ihm fgen. Es macht sich etwas, es schickt sich, es fgt sich. (GA12, 149).
It is interesting that Heidegger wants to talk about having or making an experience (eine Erfahrung
zu machen), even though, for instance, in Finnish it would be easier to talk directly about experiencing (tarkoituksena on antaa mahdollisuus kielen kokemiseen, kokemukseen kielest), without any
making or having. In the same way the surrogate subject Es in the German and the It in the
English passive voice add something unnecessary and unwanted: the it does not refer to an experience of language (not: the experience happens, the experience sends itself, etc.), rather Heidegger is
talking of subjectless happening without entities (that could be rendered in Finnish without surrogate
subjects: Tapahtuu, lhetetn, liitytn). At most, the subject could be Being (Sein) or happening
(Ereignis) itself. However, according to Heidegger, these two do not exist, and therefore they can not
be the subjects of an action: they are action, not actors.
3 Here is iek (2006b): We should have no illusions: liberal communists [iek means people like
George Soros and Bill Gates who advocate a combination of global capitalism and social and ecological responsibility] are the enemy of every true progressive struggle today. All other enemiesreligious fundamentalists, terrorists, corrupt and inefficient state bureaucraciesdepend on contingent
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local circumstances. Precisely because they want to resolve all these secondary malfunctions of the
global system, liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system. It may
be necessary to enter into tactical alliances with liberal communists in order to fight racism, sexism
and religious obscurantism, but its important to remember exactly what they are up to.
iek follows the leftist convention of using the term Fascism to denote all racist and totalitarian
systems, whether they are National Socialist or Fascists. However, Heideggers Nazism has very little
in common with Mussolinis Fascism, and the catch-all term Fascism in not appropriate in this
context.
It is typical that Heidegger comments on timely political issues in the midst of deep and abstract philosophical passages. For instance, while ruminating on how humans try to relate to their environment by
trying to form a picture of the world, Heidegger starts blaming publishers for too commercial concerns
and academic people for too much unnecessary travels to conferences (GA5, 98). The scandalous
claimwe will return to it belowthat extermination camps are part of the same phenomenon as
industrial agriculture is made in the middle of a meditation of the essence of technology, knee-deep
in the etymologies of Greek, Latin and German terms. After Being and Time, the Contributions to
Philosophy (Beitrge zur Philosophie) is sometimes counted as Heideggers second major opus. It is,
on the whole, a rather esoteric and fragmentary work, but it is peppered with surprising quips on the
true nature of Bolshevism and the essence of Americanism (GA65, 54, 149). In the 1943 afterword to
the tour-de-force Was ist Metaphysik?, in which Heidegger brilliantly explains the importance of nothingness for thinking of Being, he rather abruptly starts talking about readiness for and the importance
of sacrifice (this immediately after the battle of Stalingrad). Most purist and orthodox Heideggerians
may pass by these kinds of sentences as individual cases, but the truth is that Heidegger almost always carried two threads throughout his lectures and writings: a linguistic and philosophical one, and
an acutely political and contemporary one. The glue keeping these two together is the third element:
experientiality.
Der Schriftsteller Kolbenheyer sagt: Dichtung is eine biologisch notwendige Funktion des Volkes.
Es braucht nicht viel Verstand, um zu merken: das gilt auch von der Verdauung, auch sie ist eine biologisch notwendige Funktione eined Volkes, zumal eines gesunden. Wenn Spengler die Dichtung als
Ausdruck der jeweiligen Kulturseele fat, dann gilt dies auch von der Herstellung von Fahrrden und
Automobilen. Das gilt von allem, d.h. es gilt gar nicht. [] Das alles ist so trostlos flach, da wir nur
mit Widerwillen davon reden. Aber wir mssen darauf hinzeigen. Denn erstens betrifft diese Denkweise nicht nur die Dichtung, sondern alle Geschehnisse und Seinsweisen des menschlichen Daseins,
weshalb mit diesem Leitfaden leicht kulturphilosophische und Weltanschauungsgebude errichtet
werden. Zweitens beruht diese Denkweise nicht auf der zuflligen Flachheit und dem Unvermgen
des Denkens Einzelner, sondern sie hat ihre wesentlichen Grnde in der Seinsart des Menschen des
19. Jahrhunderts und der Neuzeit berhaupt. Wenn etwas mit dem viel mibrauchten Titel liberalistisch belegt werden kann und mu, dann ist es diese Denkweise. Denn sie stellt sich grundstzlich
und im vorhinein aus dem, was sie meint und denkt, heraus, macht es zum bloen Gegenstand ihres
Meinens. Dichtung ist so eine unmittelbar antreffbare Erscheinung, die es unter anderem gibt und
welche Erscheinung, wie jede andere, dann durch die ebenso gleichgltige Bestimmung als Ausdruckerscheinung der dahinter brodelden Seele aufgefat wird. Erscheinungen sind uns Ausdruck.
Ausdruck ist auch das Bellen des Hundes. Diese Denkweise ist in sich der Vollzug einer gar bestimmten Seinsweise des liberalen Menschen. Sie hat sich bis auf dem heutigen Tag in einer Unzahl
von Abwandlungen und Gestalten in der Vorherrschaft gehalten, zumal sie leicht eingeht, niemanden
angeht und bequem berall zu gebrauchen ist. (GA39, 27-28).
Heidegger writes on liberalism in philosophy: Hningswald comes from the neo-Kantian school,
which advocates a philosophy that is tailored for liberalism. Here the essence of humans is dissolved into a free-floating consciousness that, in turn, is in the end diluted to a common and logical
World-Reason. In this way, through supposedly strictly philosophical reasons the gaze is averted from
the historical rootedness of humans and from the transmission of their national provenance based
on blood and homeland. To this was connected a conscious withdrawal from all metaphysical ques-
METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
tioning, and humans were seen only as servants to a neutral, generic World-Culture.; Hnigswald
kommt aus der Schule des Neukantianismus, der eine Philosophie vertreten hat, die dem Liberalismus
auf dem Leib zugeschnitten ist. Das Wesen des Menschen wurde da abgelst in ein freischwebendes
Bewutsein berhaupt und dieses schlielich verdnnt zu einer allgemein logischen Weltvernunft.
Auf diesem Weg wurde unter scheinbar streng wissenschaftlicher philosophischer Begrndung der
Blick abgelenkt vom Menschen in seiner geschichtlichen Verwurzelung und seiner volkhaften berlieferung seiner Herkunft aus Boden und Blut. Damit Zusammen ging eine bewute Zurckdrngung
jedes metaphyschischen Fragens, und der Mensch galt nur doch als Diener einer indifferenten, allgemeinen Weltkultur. Heideggers letter to Einhuser, 25. June 1933, quoted in Faye (2009, 37).
Es ist fr mich heute eine entscheidende Frage, wie dem technischen Zeitalter berhaupt einund
welchenpolitisches System zugeordnet kann. (Interview Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten, Der
Spiegel, 1976, 206). Heidegger continues by noting that democracy does not seem to be the right kind
of system, because democracy sees technology as a human tool, [etwas], was der Mensch in der Hand
hat (ibid.). In contrast, Heidegger thinks that technologylike poetry!is something that constitutes
humans, and therefore something that humans alone can not overcome.
Against the unstoppable power of technology, cells of resistance will be built, cells, which inconspicuously guard thinking and prepare for the turn []; Gegen die unaufhaltsame Macht der Technik werden sich berall Zellen des Widerstands bilden, die unauffllig die Besinnung wachhalten
und die Umkehr vorbereiten [] (Zollikoner Seminare 1987, 352).
Petzet (1993, chapter 3 and 77ff), Heidegger (2005, 267).
Heidegger took part in the internal power struggles of the National Socialist movement. Certainly,
he wasnt one of the most adept tacticians or most hardened spin-doctors, but he knew the strategic
balance in its overall shape, tried to recognise right moments for action and knew also when he was
beaten. The descriptions of the details can be found in Ott (1993), Farias (1991) and Faye (2009).
Or what should we make of the fact that during the final months of the Second World War, Heidegger
planned a kind of time capsule, a bomb-proof metal container, filled with the best parts of Hlderlins
and his own writings, to be preserved in a castle tower along the banks of the Donau? (Heidegger
2005, 237) In his letters to Elfride in 1944-45 Heidegger returns several times to this theme: the only
meaningful task is to collect the most important of his writings so that future generations have at least
some seeds of thinking and plain language, so that the victory of mechanicalness and technology will
not be complete (2005, 225, 229, 233, 235-237). He fears that for one reason or another he will not be
able to work after the war and therefore the only hope lies in the texts that have already been written;
the texts that he together with his brother Fritz catalogues and edits on his mountain cabin and in
Mekirch.
Wer gro denkt, mu gro irren. (1954, 17).
All the members of Heideggers immediate family were National Socialists. Elfride Heidegger was
active in several local National Socialist organisations and on the national level belonged to the circle
of Erica Semmler, the leader of NS-Frauenschaft. (Heidegger 2005, 193)
Together with my friends I support the Liberal Democratic Party, which is more conservative than
I am myself. But it is the only center strength, and we want to prevent that here, as in the other countries of ex-Yugoslavia, there is only the one dangerous choice: old-style communism or nationalism.
Kunisch (1999).
ieks connection to radical performance art should not be forgotten. He is not just a fan and a
supporter, but commits practical jokes or mini-performances. He has, for instance, told that he has
faked official letters, documents and articles (iek & Daly 2004, 38). He has also been caught using
careless or made-up quotations (see, e.g., iek on Chomsky: Black, white, and red all over http://
harpers.org/archive/2009/01/hbc-90004183), and it is by no means clear how reliable his stories of his
own life are.
Famously, in the Letter on Humanism from 1946, Heidegger commends Marx for having reached
an essential understandingsuperior to that by Husserl or Sartreof history through the theme of
alienation (GA9, 339-340). Marcuse points out that Heidegger wrote the letter while Freiburg and
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19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
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the surroundings were occupied by the French, and adds: I dont give much weight to this remark
(2005, 167). Political calculations by both Beaufret and Heidegger certainly influenced the genesis of
the Letter. Still, there is little reason to doubt that Heidegger at least could have meant what he said.
Heideggers talks of Bismarck and the proletariat in a 1933-34 lecture series, cited in Faye (2009, 141,
370).
Indeed, as Mikko Niemel (2013, 217) has pointed out, Lukcs later self-criticism towards History
and Class Consciousness can also be read as signalling that not all reification is reducible to a capitalist mode of production, thus opening a door for a wider, Heideggerian account of alienation. My
account of Heideggerian Marxism here relies heavily on Niemels work.
Heideggers term Dasein does not mean an individual, a person, but a way of being shared and lived
by several humans. This has often been misunderstood, not the least because Heidegger in Being and
Time says that Dasein is always mine (je meines). However, he does not mean that for each individual there would be one Dasein (so that I, for instance, would own my Dasein which therefore would
be mine). Rather, the point is that Dasein exists only as engaged, as committed: a particular Dasein
is mine in the sense that a hero is my hero. Without this kind of commitment, without the fact that
someone lives/is a Dasein, that particular Dasein does not exits. Heidegger puts the same point also in
the following way: That such a way of being human is always mine does not meant that this Being
becomes subjectivised, limited to a detached individual and defined through the individual.: Da
solches Sein des Menschen je das meine ist, bedeutet nicht, dieses Sein werde subjektiviert, auf den
abgelsten Einzelnen beschrnkt und von ihnen aus bestimmt. cited in Faye (2009, 360)
Kaffirs (GA38, 81, 83), semitic nomads; Faye (2009, 144), Russians; Heidegger (1976).
Such as the Chinese Taoist tradition, see May (1996).
In the famous dialogue, Zur Errterung der Gelassenheit. Aus einem Feldweggesprch ber das
Denken, Heidegger puts the matter like this: The relationship between me and the object, the often
mentioned subject-object relationship, that I [the speaker is the researcher, Forscher] see as the most
universal, is then only a historical transformation of the relationship between humans and things,
insofar as things can become objects []. (GA13, 60): Die Beziehung zwischen dem Ich und dem
Gegenstand, die oft genannte Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung, die ich fr die allgemeinste hielt, ist offenbar nur eine geschichtliche Abwandlung des Verhltnisses des Menschen zum Ding, insofern die
Dinge zu Gegenstnden werden knnen []
Husserls short manifesto Philosophie als Strenge Wissenschaft (1911) is still unsurpassed in its concise criticism of the naivete and circularity in natural science and philosophical naturalism. With
regard to these themes Heidegger is always very close to Husserl. Even the quip science does not
think by the later Heidegger is well in line with the criticism presented several decades before by
Husserl.
But maybe non-classical natural science is possible: for instance, the thought based on complementarity that Niels Bohr advocated may be able to find ways of doing natural science without the nave
subject-object distinction, see Plotnitsky (2002, 1994), Pylkk (1998).
Nihilism, because finitude, mortality and historicality (features lacking in a Cartesian modern individual) are, according to Heidegger, necessary conditions for meaningwe will return to this below.
For Heidegger, biological racism or Darwinism is, naturally, a form of liberalism: This way of thinking [liberal biologism] is in no fundamental way different from the psychoanalysis by Freud and
others. And not different from Marxism that sees the spiritual as a function of economic production
[]: Grundstzlich underscheidet sich diese Denkart [liberal Biologismus] in nichts von der Psychoanalyse von Freud und Konsorten. Grundstzlich auch nicht von Marxismus, der das Geistige als
Funktion des wirtschaftlichen Produktionprozess nimmt [] (GA36/37, 211).
Rassen-pflege ist eine machtmige Manahme. Sie kann daher bald eingeschaltet bald zurckgesteltt
werden. Sie hngt in ihrer Handhabung und Verkndung ab von jeweiligen Herrschafts- und Machtlage. Sie ist keineswegs ein Ideal an sich, denn sie mte dann zum Verzicht auf Machtansprche
fhren und ein Geltenlassen jeder biologischen Veranlagung betreiben. Daher ist streng gesehen in
jeder Rassenlehre bereits der Gedanke eines Rassevorrangs eingeschlossen. Der Vorrang grndet sich
METAPHYSICS IS POLITICS
verschiedenartig, aber immer auch solches, was die Rasse geleistet hat welche Leistung den Mastben der Kultur und dgl. Untersteht. Wie aber, wenn diese und zwar aus dem engen Gesichtskreis
des Rassendenkens her gerechnet nur Rasseprodukt brhaupt ist? (Der Zirkel der Subjektivitt.) Hier
kommt der selbstvergessene Zirkel aller Subjektivitt zum Vorschein, der nicht eine metaphysische
Bestimmung des Ich, sondern des ganzen Menschenwesens in seiner Beziehung zum Seienden und zu
sich selbst enthlt. (GA69, 70-71)
29 Already in Being and Time (7), Heidegger defines his phenomenology as the opposite of all kinds of
freischwebende philosophical views and problems.
30 For instance in The Spectre of Ideology, the introduction to Mapping Ideology (1995), edited by
iek.
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