Charles Bambach. Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. xxvi + 350 pp. $45.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8014-4072-4.

Reviewed by Roderick Stackelberg

Published on H-German (October, 2004)

Charles Bambach has added an important Krieck, Nazi philosophers Hans Heyse, Kurt Hilde‐ contribution to the growing literature on Heideg‐ brandt, and Franz Boehm, as well as a host of mi‐ ger's involvement with and relationship to Na‐ nor fgures, such as Hans Haertle, a leading func‐ tional Socialism.[1] Following up on an earlier tionary of the Amt Rosenberg, or Richard and book that placed Heidegger's thought in the Ger‐ Max Oehler, Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche's ofcial man historicist tradition, Bambach ofers a close heirs as the administrators of the nazifed Niet‐ reading of Heidegger's texts both in the immedi‐ zsche Archive in Weimar. Despite their many dif‐ ate historical and political context of the years in ferences, Heidegger shared with his voelkisch which they were written and in the context of contemporaries the conviction that only a Volk Heidegger's overall project of deconstructing the rooted in its own earth "can summon the histori‐ Western metaphysical tradition of calculative cal energy necessary for embracing and trans‐ thinking that objectifes beings and transforms all forming its own destiny" (p. xx). Denying that Hei‐ forms of existence into resources to gain mastery degger's philosophy and politics can be easily sep‐ over the earth.[2] Avoiding both a prosecutorial arated (thereby contradicting not only Heideg‐ or an apologetic approach, Bambach suggests that ger's own eforts to portray his advocacy of Na‐ the question that needs to be answered is not, tional Socialism in 1933-1934 as the temporary "was Heidegger a Nazi?" but rather, "what kind of aberration of an apolitical thinker but also the ef‐ National Socialism did he aspire to establish?" (p. forts of others to portray him as an opportunist xv). As Hans Sluga had already done to a more who joined the party out of expediency, not con‐ limited extent in Heidegger's Crisis (1993), Bam‐ viction), Bambach identifes "an enduring struc‐ bach reads Heidegger in the context of his "dia‐ ture within Heidegger's work that can provide a logues" and "conversations" with many of his meaningful historical context within and against voelkisch contemporaries, including, most promi‐ which to read Heidegger's texts, a context provid‐ nently, the Nietzschean philosopher Alfred ed by 'roots' and 'autochthony'" (p. 333). Bambach Baeumler, the anti-Nietzschean educator Ernst makes a persuasive case that Heidegger's writings H-Net Reviews between 1933 and 1945 constituted "a philosophi‐ his "belief in rootedness as the indispensable cal attempt at geo-politics, a grand metaphysical source of our genuine relation to being" (p. 135). vision of German destiny based on the notion of a His political commitments to Bodenstaendigkeit, singularly German form of autochthony or root‐ Germany's spiritual Sonderweg, and National So‐ edness in the earth" (p. xix). To be sure, Heideg‐ cialism as he conceived it were always basic to ger's philosophical turn that eventually culminat‐ and part of his anti-Cartesian philosophy of being. ed in his idyllic and quiescent post-war philoso‐ Bambach begins by situating Heidegger's phy, his critique of the "will to will" and the seemingly apolitical philosophical work of the world-wide reign of techne, and his rethinking of 1920s and early 1930s, including Being and Time Seinsgeschichte was shaped by "deep and abiding (which he reads as Heidegger's challenge to the confrontations with National Socialism" as he be‐ ideological "worldview thinking" of both Soviet came increasingly critical of the Nazi Party, its re‐ communism and Western democratic liberalism, pressive and imperialistic policies, and its racial- "isms" allegedly unable to experience time in an biological doctrines (p. xxiv). But the underlying ontological context), in the climate of cultural cri‐ connection between the militantly geo-political vi‐ sis, national mourning, and ferce political confict sion of German nationalism and Heidegger's later that followed the Great War. The war and the eco-poetic, pastoral language of Heimat, Gelassen‐ post-war crisis provoked Heidegger's lifelong heit, and man as the "shepherd of being" was nev‐ project of rethinking and reevaluating the history er broken. of Western metaphysics as the history of being. As Although Heidegger changed his interpreta‐ so many German philosophers and poets before tion of the "ontological myth of autochthonic root‐ him, Heidegger believed that Germany's (and Eu‐ edness" (p. 302) over the years to conform to the rope's) spiritual and intellectual salvation lay in political realities of the day, he never abandoned recovering the special relationship that linked it. "There are not 'two' Heideggers (shepherd/ Germans to the ancient Greeks through language Fuehrer) that need to be reconciled," Bambach and the concept of autochthony, which Bambach concludes. "Rather ... both incarnations are roles describes not simply as rootedness in the soil, in that Heidegger plays upon the diferent stages of the past, or in tradition, but rather as signifying German history" (p. 333). As his disenchantment "something concealed, mysterious, and chthonic with Nazism grew (and as the war went bad), po‐ whose meaning lies hidden beneath the surface of litical autochthony increasingly receded in favor the earth, or rather whose meaning needs to be of ontological autochthony, and a self-serving in‐ worked out in confrontation (Aus-einander-set‐ ternationalism displaced the aggressive national‐ zung) with this concealment in order to grant one ism of 1933-34, a strategic and rhetorical shift that an authentic identity" (p. 19). But whereas the Heidegger continued in his post-war writings. But voelkisch intellectuals of the Conservative Revolu‐ his own understanding of the "essential truth and tion appropriated philosophy to carry out a politi‐ greatness" of the National Socialist movement as cal revolution, Heidegger saw a political revolu‐ the authentically German response to the histori‐ tion as merely the occasion for a far more radical cal crisis of Europe and modernity--his own sense philosophical revolution "to win back or recuper‐ of Germany's special world mission--never ate from the ingrained habits of centuries-long changed, even when his relationship to the actual philosophical practice the sense of original won‐ movement soured, and even after the Nazi state derment that pervaded early Greek theoria" (p. was destroyed by catastrophic defeat in the Sec‐ 23). Heidegger joined the Nazis not, as he and ond World War. Long after he had lost faith in the some apologists have claimed, because he saw no Nazis, he retained his faith in the "homeland" and other alternative to communism,[3] but because

2 H-Net Reviews he saw the Nazi Aufbruch as the historical mo‐ bulwark against the forces of nihilism and ment for a radical transformation to combat not reawaken the power of philosophy. But Heideg‐ only the rootlessness of Weimar culture but the ger's ambitious goal was not shared by Nazi of‐ rootlessness and "forgetfulness of being" inherent cialdom, with whom he frequently clashed after in the entire Western metaphysical tradition. "In 1934, not least in his capacity as a member of the this program of ontological politics, a politics that commission overseeing the Historisch-Kritische seeks its roots both in the geographical-cultural Ausgabe of Nietzsche's works. As Heidegger be‐ soil of the homeland and in the philosophical- came increasingly disenchanted with the Nazis in mythic arche of the Greek dawn, Heidegger will the mid-1930s, he again turned to Nietzsche for attempt his coup as the philosophical prince of a inspiration in his eforts to bring about the more conservative revolution" (p. 23). His embrace of profound spiritual and metaphysical revolution National Socialism was motivated by his convic‐ that he had hoped for and expected. Until 1938 tion that this revolutionary political transforma‐ Heidegger read Nietzsche as a comrade in arms tion would lead to the philosophical retrieval of against the Nazis for a more authentic form of Na‐ the Western beginnings in pre-Socratic thought tional Socialism; thereafter, he saw him as "mere‐ and awareness, a task for which Germany was ly a forerunner of the fallen and inessential ver‐ uniquely suited and the university was the ideal sions of National Socialism" put forward by the site. Despite the changing fortunes of the Third Party and its subservient intellectuals (p. 266). Ni‐ Reich and his changed attitude toward the Nazi etzsche's diagnosis of the modern crisis remained regime, Heidegger never gave up on this task. valid, but his prescribed cure no longer promised At the heart of this book is Heidegger's a way out. If Nietzschean will to power had previ‐ (mis)reading of Nietzsche in his Nietzsche lectures ously appeared to Heidegger as the appropriate from 1936 to 1943, later published in two massive formula to reverse the course of modern degener‐ volumes in 1961.[4] His encounter with Nietzsche ation, it now seemed hopelessly entangled in the had been decisive for Heidegger's philosophical very degeneration it was meant to combat. He turn toward rethinking the essence of truth in now came to see Nietzsche not as the herald of the 1929-30 (by recovering the originary pre-Socratic, future who had decisively broken with the Platon‐ pre-rational experience of truth as disclosure or ic tradition, but as the last metaphysician whose unconcealment of being, not as logical certainty doctrine of will to power had merely brought the or correspondence with reality) as well as for his Western tradition of nihilism (the metaphysical political commitment to National Socialism in legacy of Seinsvergessenheit) to a catastrophic 1933. Read against the background of the Great dead end. An ever more critical reading of Niet‐ War as a metaphysical struggle about the mean‐ zsche eventually turned into a polemic against Ni‐ ing of history, Nietzsche's critique of Platonic val‐ etzsche. Heidegger's rejection of Nietzsche mir‐ ues and their post-Christian "enlightened" of‐ rored his disappointment with the Nazis. As the shoots served as Heidegger's guide to what had fortunes of war turned against Germany, Heideg‐ gone wrong in the Western tradition. Heidegger ger came to see the Nazi movement not as the enthusiastically embraced National Socialism as counter-movement to modern nihilism, but as its the Nietzschean counter-movement to the ni‐ quintessential expression. Even more than com‐ hilism and vulgarization of modern life (liberal munism or Americanism it now embodied for democracy, technical-rational dominion, mass Heidegger the destructive will to technological consciousness, the rootlessness of urban life) that control and dominion that was the legacy of West‐ appeared to have triumphed in the Great War. ern metaphysics and the ultimate source of the Only a Volk committed to its roots could provide a modern crisis.

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In his 1966 Spiegel interview, Heidegger had back a sense of rootedness and autochthony for asked (in particular reference to his rectorial ad‐ historical Dasein'" (p. 298). Bambach turns the ta‐ dress), "Who among those who attack this dis‐ bles on Heidegger, invoking Nietzsche to critique course has read it carefully, thought it through, Heidegger's interpretation and pointing out the and interpreted it in terms of the situation at that "hermeneutic violence" in Heidegger's reading of time?"[5] Bambach has done precisely this, but his Nietzsche (whom he read through the eyes of the conclusions could hardly be more devastating. George Circle). Heidegger's "Hoelderlinian dream While Richard Wolin's The Politics of Being (1992) of establishing a new German future by returning brilliantly exposed the philosophical underpin‐ to the essence of the Volk" (p. 93) placed his work nings of Heidegger's National Socialism from an at radical odds with Nietzsche, who "never suc‐ unapologetic Enlightenment perspective quite at cumbed to Platonic desire for either a pure origin variance with Heidegger's own outlook, Bambach or an origin of purity" (p. 218). Bambach contrasts has sought to meet and contest Heidegger on his Nietzsche's individualistic self-overcoming and own philosophical ground. While Wolin viewed his rejection of the "petty politics" of the Euro‐ Heidegger's quietistic and fatalistic late philoso‐ pean state system to Heidegger's communal afr‐ phy as a disillusioned reaction to his misinterpre‐ mation and valorization of mythic Germans. In tation of Nazism (much in the same way as Paul embracing a messianic National Socialism, Hei‐ de Man's deconstructionist literary theory, which degger fell victim to the very presentism that Niet‐ denies the possibility of interpretive certainty, has zsche critiqued in the modern world. "To anyone been seen as a "burnt fngers" reaction to his own familiar with Nietzsche's work," Bambach con‐ error of judgment in collaborating with the Nazis cludes, "[Heidegger's] boldly conceived attempt to during the war),[6] Bambach goes a step further, wed Nietzsche and the thematic of homeland quite convincingly demonstrating that Heidegger seems wholly misguided" (pp. 303-304). By com‐ never relinquished the basic commitments that paring Heidegger's lecture notes to the sanitized led him to welcome the Nazi revolution in the versions published after the war, Bambach also frst place. Although Heidegger always rejected very efectively exposes Heidegger's post-war eva‐ the Nazis' biological racism, his philosophical de‐ sive strategies of elision and omission, "a wildly fense of the unique Greco-German afnity was successful 'cover-up' of his own political aflia‐ equally exclusionary, barring the rootless (a code tions and views" (p. 248). Yet Bambach remains word also for Jews up to 1945) and non-au‐ appreciative of Heidegger's innovative thought tochthonic, and thus constituting "a cultural form and method, which he explicates with exemplary of racism" (p. 212) that came to determine the meticulousness, even while challenging "the logic very structures of Heideggerian thinking. "What of exclusion, privilege, and autochthonic identity needs to be considered is the deep and abiding that pervades Heidegger's thought" (p. 324) and connection between Heidegger's political commit‐ calling on philosophers to "challenge at its roots ment to an autochthonous German Volk at the any authorial attempt to provide directives on center of Europe and his ontological decision to how to read what is 'there' for thinking" (p. 325). read the history of Western philosophy on the ba‐ This is a scintillating work of intellectual his‐ sis of another kind of autochthony--namely, the tory written with an understated eloquence, indigenous, rooted, subterranean origin of Greek philosophical depth and subtlety, and close atten‐ philosophy that ruled over the history of the tion to historical detail. No previous book to my West" (p. 146). Through his Nietzsche lectures, knowledge has provided such detailed contextual‐ Heidegger "sought to galvanize National Socialism ization of Heidegger's Denkweg during the Third into an awareness of its historical mission: to 'win Reich. This fascinating genealogy of Heidegger's

4 H-Net Reviews mythology of being also has a lot to teach us about degger Case: On Philosophy and Politics (Philadel‐ the appeal of National Socialism and the discon‐ phia: Temple University Press, 1992); Richard certing coincidence of high culture and destruc‐ Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical tivity that has puzzled historians of Germany for Reader (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1993); so long. The book ofers fascinating insights into and Thomas Sheehan, "A Normal Nazi," The New the right-wing intellectual culture of Weimar Ger‐ York Review, 14 January 1993. Other major contri‐ many, the extraordinary infuence of Nietzsche in butions to the debate in the late 1980s and 1990s Nazi Germany, the surprisingly sharp disagree‐ are Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit, trans. G. Benning‐ ments among Nazi intellectuals after 1933 (not ton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); least about how to read Nietzsche), as well as the Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu einer easy transition of German intellectuals from Nazis Biographie (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1988); Jurg to democrats and cold warriors after the war. Al‐ Altwegg, ed., Die Heidegger Kontroverse (Frank‐ though one of the great merits of Heidegger's furt: Athenaeum, 1988); Otto Poeggeler and An‐ Roots is to give the reader an appreciation for nemarie Gethmann-Siefert, eds., Heidegger und how very diferent the culture in which Heideg‐ die praktische Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ger's philosophy developed was from our own, 1988); Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The this book can also proftably be read with an eye Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York: on the present. That so high-minded, conscien‐ Columbia Universtiy Press, 1990); Philippe La‐ tious, and original a thinker could have been so coue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics, trans. convinced of the superiority of his own people's Chris Turner (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Pierre culture and of their mission to save the world, a Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Hei‐ judgment that turned out to be so terribly wrong, degger, trans. Peter Collier (Stanford: Stanford must give us all in twenty-frst-century America University Press, 1991); Tom Rockmore, On Hei‐ pause. degger's Nazism and Philosophy (Berkeley: Uni‐ Notes versity of California Press, 1992); Hans Sluga, Hei‐ degger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi [1]. Although the controversy about Heideg‐ Germany (Cambridge and London: Harvard Uni‐ ger's involvement with National Socialism began versity Press, 1993). See also Julian Young, Heideg‐ in France and Germany right after the Second ger, Philosophy, Nazism (Cambridge: Cambridge World War, it was rekindled by the publication of University Press, 1997), an argument for the apo‐ Victor Farias's incriminating (or, from the point of litical nature of Heidegger's philosophy after view of conservative Heideggerians, calumnious) 1935; and Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny Heidegger et le nazisme (Paris: Verdier, 1987) with and National Socialism in Heidegger's "Being and expanded versions in German, Heidegger und der Time" (Berkeley: University of California Press, Nationalsozialismus, foreword by Juergen Haber‐ 1999), which argues that Being and Time_ led di‐ mas (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1989), and in English, rectly into Nazism. Heidegger and National Socialism, trans. P. Bur‐ rell and G. Ricci (Philadelphia: Temple University [2]. Charles R. Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, Press, 1989). See also Juergen Habermas, "Work and the Crisis of Historicism (Ithaca and London: and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy Cornell University Press, 1995). from a German Perspective," trans. John McCum‐ [3]. Heidegger ofered this explanation in his ber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): pp. 431-456. 1966 Spiegel interview, "Only a God Can Save Us," Good overviews of the debate are provided by trans. William J. Richardson, S. J., in Heidegger: Tom Rockmore and Joseph Margolis, eds., The Hei‐ The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan

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(Chicago: Precedent Publishing, 1981), pp. 45-67; see also, Ernst Nolte, Martin Heidegger: Politik und Geschichte im Leben und Denken (Berlin: Propylaeen, 1992). [4]. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 vols. (Pfullingen: G. Neske, 1961); trans. David F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1982-1987), 4 vols. [5]. "Only a God Can Save Us," p. 48. [6]. A good review of the de Man case is Christopher Norris, "Paul de Man's Past," London Review of Books (4 February 1988): pp. 7-11.

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Citation: Roderick Stackelberg. Review of Bambach, Charles. Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks. H-German, H-Net Reviews. October, 2004.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9899

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