Research research in phenomenology 47 (2017) 297–330 in Phenomenology brill.com/rp Depopulation: On the Logic of Heidegger’s Volk Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen Aarhus University
[email protected] Abstract This article provides a detailed analysis of the function of the notion of Volk in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. At first glance, this term is an appeal to the revolutionary mass- es of the National Socialist revolution in a way that demarcates a distinction between the rootedness of the German People (capital “P”) and the rootlessness of the modern rabble (or people). But this distinction is not a sufficient explanation of Heidegger’s position, because Heidegger simultaneously seems to hold that even the Germans are characterized by a lack of identity. What is required is a further appropriation of the proper. My suggestion is that this logic of the Volk is not only useful for understanding Heidegger’s thought during the war, but also an indication of what happened after he lost faith in the National Socialist movement and thus had to make the lack of the People the basis of his thought. Keywords Heidegger – Nazism – Schwarze Hefte – Black Notebooks – Volk – people Introduction In § 74 of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger introduces the notorious term “the People” [das Volk]. For Heidegger, this term functions as the intersection between phi- losophy and politics and, consequently, it preoccupies him throughout the turbulent years from the National Socialist revolution in 1933 to the end of WWII in 1945. The shift from individual Dasein to the Dasein of the German People has often been noted as the very point at which Heidegger’s fundamen- tal ontology intersects with his disastrous political views.