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Johannes Fritsche and Thomas Sheehan Texto ! Textes et cultures, vol. XXIV, n°3, 2019 Johannes Fritsche Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Turkey [email protected] On Heidegger’s Being and Time and National Socialism: Johannes Fritsche and Thomas Sheehan Abstract: In two papers published in 2015 and 2016 in Philosophy Today, Thomas Sheehan attacked books on Heidegger by Emmanuel Faye (Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 [2009; French original 2005]) and myself (Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time [1999]). Peg Bir- mingham and Ian Alexander Moore, the editors of Philosophy Today, refused to publish a rejoinder of mine to Sheehan’s paper on me. In two papers that I had uploaded on my account with aca- demia.edu in 2016 and 2017, I show that, misinterpreting crucial notions, such as the ones in §65 of Being and Time, and relying on an interpretation of §74 in Being and Time that is as banal as it is philologically and hermeneutically arbitrary, naïve, and false, Sheehan’s critique of my book lacks any merit. The current document contains these two papers, and a short comment that I had up- loaded in 2018. In addition, it contains an introduction summarizing the whole issue and referring also to five papers published in 2019 by William Blattner and four other authors. Furthermore, for reasons outlined in the introduction, I am working on a short book in which I discuss the issue at stake both more in detail and within a broader context. I include here a preliminary list of content of this book and drafts of a few of its sections. Key words: academic conduct, academic fraud, Being and Time, Johannes Fritsche, Martin Heidegger, hermeneutics, historicity, National Socialism, pre-judgment, Thomas Sheehan List of contents I. Introduction 1 II. The Affaire Sheehan / Birmingham: Fritsche’s Rülpser on Heidegger’s Being and Time 16 III. The Affaire Sheehan / Birmingham II: Fritsche’s Rülpser on Heidegger’s Being and Time 48 IV. Heidegger’s National Socialism: A note on Emmanuel Faye and Thomas Sheehan 58 V. National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time and thereafter: on Heidegger, Thomas Sheehan, and other Heideggerians 60 I. Introduction In the last twenty years, two major books have been published on an issue that has been on and off discussed in the literature on Heidegger, his relation to National Socialism. In 1999, Universi- ty of California Press published my book, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Be- 1 Texto ! Textes et cultures, vol. XXIV, n°3, 2019 ing and Time (Fritsche 1999; shortened and extended German edition Fritsche 2014; see the bib- liography at the end of this introduction, p. 14f.). In 2005, Emmanuel Faye published Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie: Autour des séminaires inédits de 1933-1935 (Faye 2005), trans- lated into English as, Heidegger: The introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (Faye 2009). Faye treats his topic, Heidegger’s seminars 1933-1935, in chapters 2-8 followed by a chap- ter on Heidegger after 1935. Chapter 1 contains a page on an occurrence of the word Boden- losigkeit (absence of soil, groundlessness) in §77 of Sein und Zeit (Faye 2009: 12) and three pages with generic and unsubstantiated claims about the National Socialist character of Heidegger’s theory of historicity in §74 of Sein und Zeit (2009: 15-18). In 2015, Peg Birmingham and Ian Alex- ander Moore, the editors of Philosophy Today, published a paper by Thomas Sheehan in which he has nothing to say on chapters 2-8 of Faye’s book other than that he “had learned some notable things from” (Sheehan 2015: 370) them. However, he claims that Faye’s comments on §74 and on the occurrence of Bodenlosigkeit are false, and that therefore, “much of his book collapses and, along with it, his recent edited collection Heidegger, le sol, la communauté, la race (2014)” (Sheehan 2015: 383; see 369, 385). In the next issue in 2015, Birmingham and Moore published a response to Sheehan’s paper, an Open Letter initiated by François Rastier and signed by 21 scholars (Rasti- er et al. 2015). In 2016, they published two further responses, by Pégny (Pégny 2016) and myself (Fritsche 2016a). Especially since I had only skimmed some of chapters 2-8, I had nothing to say on them either but just showed that Sheehan’s claims about §74 and Heidegger’s usage of Boden- losigkeit are false (see Fritsche 2016a). Notably, in the very same issue of Philosophy Today in which they published Pégny’s and my papers, in Philosophy Today 60:2, Birmingham and Moore published a text by Sheehan in which he already responded to these two papers and Rastier’s Open letter and, in the first place, at- tacked my book from 1999. As he puts it ironically alluding to Faye’s suggestion that Heidegger’s works should be relocated to the archives of Nazism and Hitlerism (Faye 2009: 319),1 with “Fritsche’s elaborate narrative [in Fritsche 1999] we are at last upstream at the pristine source of the rushing torrent that is sweeping Heidegger’s books off library shelves the world over” (Sheehan 2016: 504). Sheehan labels my book a “Rülpser” (Sheehan 2016: 503 n. 61), i.e., a belch, and a “Magic Theater (‘For Madmen Only. Price of Admission Your Mind’)” (Sheehan 2016: 504). Ac- cording to him, in my “utterly bizarre” (Sheehan 2016: 484) interpretation I “literally get[s] noth- ing right” (Sheehan 2016: 492). Birmingham and Moore refused to publish a response of mine to Sheehan’s paper on me (for the details, see below, p. 45f.). For that reason, I uploaded on my webpage with academia.edu in 2016 “The Affaire Sheehan / Birmingham: Fritsche’s Rülpser on Heidegger’s Being and Time” (Fritsche 2016b), in which I show that Sheehan misinterprets crucial notions, such as the ones in §65 of Sein und Zeit, turns all the relevant notions in §74 in Sein und Zeit upside down, and relies on an interpretation of §74 in Sein und Zeit that is, philosophically, utterly banal and, philologically and hermeneutically, equally clueless, naïve, and false. In brief, his critique of my book lacks any substance. In 2017, I uploaded a summary of this paper with some new points, especially regard- ing the passage on Geschick (destiny) in §74, “The Affaire Sheehan / Birmingham II: Fritsche’s Rülpser on Heidegger’s Being and Time” (Fritsche 2017). The current document contains, both pa- pers (pp. 16-47, 48-57; lists of content pp. 18f., 49), and a short comment that I had uploaded on 1 Provided that Sheehan has not misunderstood him, Faye was serious about his suggestion (see Sheehan 2015: 370). 2 Texto ! Textes et cultures, vol. XXIV, n°3, 2019 academia.edu in 2018, “Heidegger’s National Socialism: A note on Emmanuel Faye and Thomas Sheehan” (Fritsche 2018a) (pp. 58-59). In addition, I am working on a short book in which I dis- cuss the issue at stake both more in detail and within a broader context. I include here the prelim- inary list of content of this book (pp. 60f.) and drafts of a few of its sections (pp. 61-80). Sheehan and I agree in that §74, the center of the chapter on historicity, is, in his words, “the emphatic climax of Being and Time” (Sheehan 2015: 381). The way this section is read depends not only on one’s understanding of its wording and the concepts used therein but also on one’s un- derstanding of the structure and content of Sein und Zeit as a whole. In Fritsche (1999), I give very detailed analyses, with extensive philological comments, of several parts of §74, develop my own interpretation out of discussions of other readings, and pursue the issue in the later Heidegger. I also locate (though much more in later publications, in particular Fritsche 2012, 2014) §74 in the structure of the entire book of Sein und Zeit. In addition, it had been a shortcoming of the litera- ture on the political content of Sein und Zeit that both Heidegger’s defenders and his critics con- fined themselves to comments on this book and other texts of Heidegger’s. Thus, I compare Heidegger in detail with the relevant contemporaneous theories of history and politics. The three major political movements in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century were the liberals, the leftists, and the rightists. Liberals and leftists shared the idea of pro- gress according to which the development of the capitalist economy would liberate human beings from the confinements of pre-capitalist societies. They differed in that liberals claimed that capi- talism and parliamentary democracy were the telos of history while leftists did not think so. Social democrats agreed regarding parliamentary democracy and capitalism but demanded that the state provide social welfare and education. Communists, by contrast, anticipated a revolution through which capitalism would be replaced with a socialist or communist society. While for liberals and leftists universal reason or the forces of production ruled human history, for rightists God, Vorsehung (providence), Geschick (destiny) or Schicksal (fate) did so. Fur- thermore, many rightists saw an antagonism between society and community. They regarded uni- versal reason as a mere cover for egotism and as a leveling force that eradicated individual and regional differences and ‘positive’ emotions. Society was nothing but the contractual and artificial product of individuals as persons, concerned only about their egoistic interests and treating every- thing and everyone else as mere means (or “merely as ‘numerals’” [Heidegger 1996: 118 = 1972: 125]2).
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