Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek, Heidegger, and hermeneutic communism

Santiago Zabala

In Europe, in the year 2000, Jürgen Habermas and Ulrich Beck en- thused about the European Union and its common currency, prophe- sying that it would become the model for the future of humanity. How different the reality is today! The Union is no longer a model but a dysfunctional organization of fanatical right-wing governments and supine social democrats imposing unprecedented austerity measures, unemployment and poverty on working people in order to return to “fiscal discipline.” (Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek, The idea of communism, 2010.) One of the many merits of Slavoj Žižek has been his leadership of the philosophical community toward a return to Marxism and communism, which only continental phi- losophers have responded to. Most analytic philosophers in both the Unites States and Europe have become deaf to this sort of sociopolitical venture. Most continental (, deconstruction, and post-structuralism) an-

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swer this existential call;1 however, in the United States, too, there is a growing number of intellectuals responding to this Marxist revival as the original work of Jodi Dean, Michael Hardt, and Bruno Bosteels demonstrates.2 These, together with some European philosophers,3 represent not only a return to communism as an alternative and resis- tance to current neoliberal impositions but also a herme- neutic effort to interpret through Marx such classic think- ers as G. W. Hegel, J. Lacan, and M. Heidegger. Although Žižek does not consider Heidegger the best candidate for a resuscitation of communism, in his mag- num opus, Less than nothing, he refers to him as “a fu- ture communist” and also advocates “a communist radical- 384 ization of Heidegger’s politics” since his Nazi involvement should not be interpreted as a mistake, but rather a “right step in the wrong direction.”4 While it is obvious what the “direction” was, what does the “right step” refer to? Ac-

1 On the difference between analytic and existen- tial nature, see S. Zabala, “Being in the university: philosophical educa- tion or legitimations of analytic philosophy?,” Purlieu, v. 1, n. 3, p. 6–19, Fall 2011, Special Edition, also available online at http://purlieujournal. com/3/3_zabala.html. 2 J. Dean, The communist horizon, London, Verso, 2012; M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 2011; B. Bosteels, The actuality of communism, London, Verso, 2011. 3 See the contributions of Terry Eagleton, Frank Ruda, and other European thinkers in C. Douzinas and S. Žižek, eds., The idea of communism, London, Verso, 2010, and Slavoj Žižek, ed., The idea of communism 2, London, Verso, 2013. 4 S. Žižek, Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism, London, Verso, 2012, p. 879, 902. Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek… cording to the Slovenian philosopher, what Heidegger was looking for in Nazism “was a revolutionary Event” and a “cultural revolution,” but he failed to find them because he “overlooked a non-metaphysical core of modern subjectivi- ty itself” and, most of all, does “not follow his own logic to the end when he endorses the fascist compromise.”5 As an alternative to the metaphysical political powers of Ameri- can liberalism and Soviet communism, which Heidegger was trapped between, Nazism seemed to him “a spiritu- al renewal of life in its entirety, a reconciliation of social antagonism and a deliverance of Western Dasein from the dangers of communism.”6 In his analysis Žižek gives par- ticular attention to Heidegger’s 1933-34 seminars, “Na- ture, History, State,” where an extreme ontologization of 385 the state is enacted (“the highest actualization of human being occurs in the state”)7 in order to define the relation- ship between the people and the state in terms of ontologi-

5 S. Žižek, In defense of lost causes, London, Verso, 2012, p. 142, 144; Žižek, Less than nothing, p. 903. This position is a development of B. W. Davis’s thesis in Heidegger and the will, Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University Press, 2007, on the insufficient deconstruction of the will of subjectivity in the German master. Žižek also relies upon the analysis of Miguel de Beistegui in Heidegger and the political, London, Routledge, 1998, and G. Fried, Heidegger’s polemos: from Being to politics, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 2000. 6 M. Heidegger, in “An exchange of letters: Herbert Marcuse and ,” in The Heidegger controversy: a critical reader, ed. Richard Wolin, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1993, p. 163 7 M. Heidegger, Nature, history, state: Heidegger’s Seminar of 1933- 1934, with essays by Robert Bernasconi, Peter Eli Gordon, Marion Heinz, Theodore Kisiel, and Slavoj Žižek, trans. and ed., and intro., Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, London, Bloomsbury, forthcoming. Santiago Zabala

cal difference. Even though Heidegger failed to find an ad- equate political response for his time, it must be acknowl- edged that he “risked and took a position,”8 something that too many philosophers avoid today. “The paradox,” Žižek concludes, “is thus that, in order to save Heidegger from Nazism, we need more will and struggle and less Gelas- senheit,” in other words, less release, abandonment, and in- terpretation.9 As we can see, Žižek seems to imply that Heidegger did not proceed within the Nazi party for the same reasons he never endorsed democracy or communism: his own inabil- ity to overcome metaphysics. While this interpretation is in part correct, as Heidegger’s political declarations in the 386 Spiegel interview demonstrate, it must be stressed that his enthusiasm for Nazism ended as soon as the party’s meta- physical “will” and “struggle” became evident. In the uni- versity, where Heidegger carried out his political activity, this disillusionment become manifest when he began to op- pose the technical organization of the faculties, which has

8 As Žižek always says: “You must risk and have a position,” S. Žižek and G. Daly, Conversations with Žižek, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, p. 45. 9 Žižek, Less than nothing, p. 902. Žižek goes on to explain how “the problem with Hitler was that he was ‘not violent enough,’ his violence was not ‘essential enough.’ Hitler did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, for he acted so that nothing would really change, staging a gigantic spectacle of pseudo-Revolution so that the capitalist order would survive” (Žižek, Less than nothing, p. 902). A detailed analysis of this problem in relation to technology can be found in T. Brockelman, Žižek and Heidegger: the question concerning techno- capitalism, London, Continuum, 2008, p. 22. Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek… been completed today. As we can see, the problem for Hei- degger was the metaphysical consequences these political systems involved, that is, the existential subordination of Beings to beings. This is also why in the early 1930s he emphasized how it would not take long for “science to real- ize that its liberal essence and its ideal of objectivity are not only compatible with the political national orientation but also indispensable to it.”10 Žižek, in order to demonstrate Heidegger’s preoccupation with political subordination to science, refers to the German philosopher’s comments re- garding the Holocaust in a letter Herbert Marcuse of 1946 and in his essay “Das Gestell” of 1950: To the serious legitimate charges you express “about a regime that murdered millions of Jews, that made terror into an everyday phe- 387 nomenon, and that turned everything that pertains to the ideas of spir- it, freedom, and truth into its bloody opposite,” I can merely add that if instead of “Jews” you had written “East Germans” [i.e., Germans of the eastern territories], then the same holds true for one of the al- lies, with the difference that everything that has occurred since 1945 has become public knowledge, while the bloody terror of the Nazis in point of fact had been kept a secret from the German people.11

In the mean time, however, even the tending of the fields [die field- bestellung] has gone over to the same requisitioning [Be-Stellen] that imposes upon the air for nitrogen, the soil for coal and ore, the ore for uranium, the uranium for atomic energy, and the later for orderable destruction. Agriculture is now a mechanized food industry, in es- sence the same as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and

10 M. Heidegger, Contributions to philosophy (from enowning), trans. R. Emad and K. Maly (1989), Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1999, p. 103. 11 M. Heidegger, in “An exchange of letters: Herbert Marcuse and Martin Heidegger,” p. 163. Santiago Zabala

extermination camps, the same blockading and starving of countries, the same as the production of hydrogen bombs.12 The manufacture of corpses is a consequence of a polit- ical stance subordinated to science’s ideal of objectivity, and not the other way around. After all, “total subordination of reason to metaphysical reality,” as Herbert Marcuse point- ed out, always “prepares the way for racist ideology.”13 In sum, we can predict the only political position Heidegger would probably have endorsed is one that would not ac- commodate itself to the metaphysics of our technological age. While his political involvement in the thirties certain- ly represents an enthusiasm for a nonmetaphysical political project, his abandonment of National Socialism should not 388 be interpreted as an unwillingness to respond but rather as the only possible internal resistance. What I wish to suggest is how “a communist radical- ization of Heidegger’s politics,” as Žižek proposed, is nec- essary not only to save the German master from Nazism but also, and most of all, to save ourselves from the Euro- pean Union project. If the German master should be con- demned for engaging in a disastrous political project, so must all the European philosophers (Habermas, Beck, and many of the rest us) who believed in the project of the Euro- pean Union. Although the analogy between Nazi Germany

12 M. Heidegger, “Positionality,” in Bremen and Freiburg lectures: insight into that which is and basic principles of thinking, trans. Andrew Mitchell, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2012, p. 27. 13 H. Marcuse, Heideggerian Marxism, ed. R. Wolin and J. Abromeit, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2005, p. 158. Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek… and the European Union seems inappropriate (considering the latter did not exterminate millions of Jews and Gyp- sies), the fact the Union has been constructed as a historical correction of the former, that is, a “revolutionary event,” le- gitimizes the comparison. For many of us the Union repre- sented a revolutionary event, but today, as most Europeans express distrust for the Union’s metaphysical impositions, it, too, seems to have become a “right step in the wrong di- rection” or (as Husserl said about philosophy as a rigor- ous science) the “end of a dream.” But what were the “rev- olutionary Event” and “cultural revolution” of the Europe- an Union? If the Union, as a “project of political construction to- tally based on the willingness of citizens and states with 389 equal rights to join,” aroused great enthusiasm at first, it was partly because it was the first time in history a state formed without a violent conquest and partly because its initial “fidelity to a political tradition inspired by values like equality and solidarity that today more than ever ap- pears to be the only one capable of promising a future that will not be totalitarian, militarized, and unlivable.”14 The “unifying” step Europe took after the Second World War was not meant to prevent only further political conflicts but also cultural ones. Many of us have benefited considerably from the joint educational programs offered by the Union, which facilitated exchanges not only at a geographical lev-

14 G. Vattimo, Nihilism and emancipation, ed. S. Zabala, New York, Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 119. Santiago Zabala

el but also a linguistic one. Without imposing one language over the others, the Union managed to create a cultural net- work where different traditions, rather than competing, be- gan sustaining one another. Similarly, for many nations the European Union also represented the possibility to over- come social, legal, and economic restrictions that impeded a common progress toward greater possibilities and eco- nomic prosperity. As it turned out, this last feature was particularly attractive because of the inability of the Eu- ropean nations to compete against the dominant economic blocs Asia and North and South America. Unfortunately since the Euro began to circulate and austerity plans were imposed by the European Central 390 Bank, the European Commission, and the IMF (recently grouped together as the “Troika”), the metaphysical nature of the European project also began to disclose itself. De- spite the fact that these measures are not ideologically “rac- ist,” they are certainly metaphysically “violent” as the cur- rent reforms imposed on Greece, Spain, and other nations demonstrate. While some believe there is no alternative to these measures given the world financial crisis that started in 2008, others have begun to doubt seriously the Europe- an project because there are no signs of change of “direc- tion”; on the contrary, the recent policies, such as the im- position of a technical government in Italy, are an indica- tion of the EU’s continued metaphysical nature. The values of “equality” and “solidarity” that inspired the Union have Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek… not only been lost but also replaced by a greater and grow- ing inequality and indifference.15 As paradoxical as it might seem, today we find our- selves in a similar situation to Heidegger’s when he aban- doned the “revolutionary Event” and “cultural revolution” that Nazism had represented: the metaphysical nature of our European political project has become not only social- ly unbearable but also intellectually dangerous. The Union seems to prefer intellectuals who submit “reason to meta- physical reality” rather than guard Being, that is, existence. An indication of this can be seen in the European Research Council, which predominantly funds analytic philosophy projects that, as said, are “the last gasp of the onto-theological tradition.”16 Even the autonomy of phi- 391 losophy as a discipline is in danger, just as it was when Heidegger became rector, a position, many believe, that he accepted in order to save not only philosophy but also the university in general. But what can “a communist rad- icalization of Heidegger” and of European philosophers in general do to save this situation? The possibility of this radicalization arises from the po- litical meaning communism has acquired today and also its theoretical weakness. As Jacques Derrida explained in

15 The Spanish philosopher J. Ramoneda in Contra la indiferencia, Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2010, has brilliantly denounced such indifference, which is not only political but also cultural. 16 R. Rorty, in R. Rorty and G. Vattimo, The future of religion, ed. S. Zabala, New York, Columbia University Press, 2005, p. 68. See also my op-ed “How to be a European (Union) philosopher,” New York Times, February 23, 2012. Santiago Zabala

Specters of Marx, communism, together with Being, is a remnant of the past, the specter of a conquered fear over- come by Western capitalism and the artificial annihilation of philosophy. It is precisely in its great weakness as a po- litical force that communism can be recuperated as an au- thentic alternative to capitalism. But the fact that it has vir- tually disappeared from Western politics as an electoral program does not imply it is not valuable as a social alter- native. Being a communist today is not only a consequence of the existential threats posed by European capitalism but was actually made possible by the failure of Soviet commu- nism. The weakened communism we are left with in 2013 does not aspire to construct another Soviet Union but rath- 392 er proposes democratic models of social resistance outside the intellectual paradigms that dominated classical Marx- ism. Marxism has gone through a profound deconstruction that has contributed to dismantling its rigid, violent, and ideological claims in favor of democratic edification. Be- ing weakened from its own scientific pretexts for unfet- tered development allows communism to finally unite its supporters through its own theoretical weakness and po- litical marginality. Although communism’s contemporary weakness can be interpreted as a nonmetaphysical politi- cal stance for radicalization, how can it take place within a philosophical tradition that must answer demands to “stop interpreting the world, but rather to change it”? Heidegger responded to this question in his comment on Marx’s The- sis on Feuerbach: Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek…

(…) meanwhile, it has also been demanded of philosophy that it no longer be satisfied with interpreting the world and roving about in ab- stract speculations, but rather that what really matters is changing the world practically. But changing the world in the manner intended re- quires beforehand that thinking be changed, just as a change of think- ing already underlies the demand we have mentioned. [“The philoso- phers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.”] (…) But in what way is thinking supposed to change if it does not take the path into that which is worthy of thought? Now, the fact that Being presents itself as that which is worthy of thought is neither an option- al presupposition nor an arbitrary invention. It is the verdict of a tra- dition that still governs us today, and this far more decisively that one might care to admit.17 This passage should be read not only as a response to Žižek’s request to carry on the metaphysical “will” and “struggle” but most of all as a return to Being in order to change the direction of the world. As a practical act and 393 vital choice, hermeneutics strives to exist through inter- pretation, that is, in contrast to such metaphysical imposi- tions as financial truth and the end of history. This is why for hermeneutics Being does not refer to the factual ex- istence of things but rather to the existential force of the people, thinkers, and artists who generate history. We ex- ist first and foremost as beings who manage to question our own Being and in this way always project our lives beyond imposed religious, political, and scientific frames. With- out this interpretative distinctiveness we would not exist; that is, life would be a predetermined subordination to the dominant philosophical or political system. Being denotes

17 M. Heidegger, “Kant’s thesis about being,” in M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeill, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 337. Santiago Zabala

how our existence is hermeneutic, in other words, a dis- tinctive interpretative project in search of an autonomous life politics that facilitates rather than restricts. As we can see, hermeneutics in this radical version becomes an alter- ation of the imposed norms, a “virus”18 that infects the sys- tem and alters its functions. Perhaps this is why for Hei- degger “hermeneutics is not philosophy at all, but in fact something preliminary which runs in advance of it and has its own reasons for being.”19 As an “existential knowing” hermeneutics has always been politically motivated to create cultural revolutions (Martin Luther), subconscious revelations (Freud), and sci- entific paradigm shifts (Thomas Kuhn) in order to facili- 394 tate the event of Being, that is, existence. Being is not, but rather occurs, happens, and remains through our interpre- tative efforts. If, as Heidegger said, in our technological age “the only emergency is the lack of emergency,”20 then hermeneutics becomes an existential , that is, an alarm against Being’s reduction to beings. Heidegger has given an example of this in his winter lecture course of 1942-43:

18 G. Vattimo has suggested how “one cannot talk with impunity of interpretation; interpretation is like a virus or even a pharmakon that affects everything it comes into contact with” (G. Vattimo, “The age of interpretation,” in R. Rorty and G. Vattimo, The future of religion, ed. S. Zabala, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 45. 19 M. Heidegger, Ontology: hermeneutics of facticity, trans. J. van Buren, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1999, p. 14. 20 M. Heidegger, Contributions to philosophy, p. 87. Europe’s right step in the wrong direction: Žižek…

He who has ears to hear, i.e., to grasp the metaphysical foundations and abysses of history and to take them seriously as metaphysical, could already hear two decades ago the word of Lenin: Bolshevism is Soviet power + electrification. That means: Bolshevism is the “organ- ic,” i.e., organized, calculating (and as +) conclusion of the uncondi- tional power of the party along with complete technization… Insight into the “metaphysical” essence of technology is for us historical- ly necessary if the essence of Western historical man is to be saved. The bourgeois world has not seen and in part does not want to see to- day that in “Leninism,” as Stalin calls this metaphysics, a metaphys- ical projection has been performed, on the basis of which in a certain way the metaphysical passion of today’s Russians for technology first becomes intelligible, and out of which the technical world is brought into power. That the Russians, e.g., are always building more tractor factories is not primarily what is decisive, but, rather, it is this, that the complete technical organization of the world is already the meta- physical foundation for all plans and operations and that this founda- tion is experienced unconditionally and radically and is brought into working completeness.21 395 If hermeneutics manages to hear Being’s existential re- duction it is because it does not “überwunden,” overcome, but rather “verwindung,” “surpasses” or “incorporates” metaphysics in order to interpret its remains.22 Today we must learn to interpret or, as Heidegger says, “hear” the metaphysical foundations of the European Union’s techni- cal organization of its policies if we wish to save ourselves from existential annihilation. A new direction is still pos- sible within the Union as long as it’s willing to practice a philosophical position intended to conserve Being’s vitali-

21 M. Heidegger, Parmenides, trans. A. Schuwer and R. Rojcewicz, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992, p. 86. 22 An analysis of Being’s event in is available the second part of S. Zabala, The remains of being: hermeneutic ontology after metaphysics, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009. Santiago Zabala

ty within a political stance that refuses to accommodate it- self to our technological age, that is, a politics that is both hermeneutic and communist.

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