The US Reception of Heidegger's Political Thought
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1991 Contextual misreadings : the US reception of Heidegger's political thought. George R. Leaman University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Leaman, George R., "Contextual misreadings : the US reception of Heidegger's political thought." (1991). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2077. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2077 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTEXTUAL MISREADINGS: THE US RECEPTION OF HEIDEGGER'S POLITICAL THOUGHT A Dissertation Presented By GEORGE R . LEAMAN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 1991 Department of Philosophy (^Copyright by George R. Leaman 1991 All Rights Reserved CONTEXTUAL MISREADINGS: THE US RECEPTION OF HEIDEGGER'S POLITICAL THOUGHT A Dissertation Presented By GEORGE R. LEAMAN Approved as to style and content by: ivw Robert Ackermann, Chairman of Committee G. Robison, Department Head /artment of Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As u/ith every project of this size, many people contributed to its successful completion. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) funded my first sixteen months of research and study u/ith Prof. Wolfgang F. Haug at the Free University in West Berlin. There I worked in his "Projekt Philosophie im deutschen Faschismus" at the Institute for Philosophy. It was Prof. Haug u/ho first shou/ed me the extent of the political editing in post-u/ar editions of German philosophical texts. Several participants in this research project u/ere particularly helpful, including Thomas Laugstien, Teresa Orozco, and Martha Zapata; they all helped in hundreds of u/ays and their u/ork should be better knoum in the United States. I u/ould also like to acknowledge the patient and irreplaceable assistance of Heinz Fehlauer and the overworked staff of the Berlin Document Center. Closer to home I'd like to thank my father, Charlotte, Janet, Libby, and all my friends in Amherst for making it possible for me to enjoy graduate school. Most importantly, I would like to acknowledge the special contributions of two people. I'd like to thank Bob, who taught me about objectivity; and Margaret, who showed me what love means. IV ABSTRACT CONTEXTUAL MISREADINGS: THE US RECEPTION OF HEIDEGGER'S POLITICAL THOUGHT MAY 1991 GEORGE R. LEAMAN, B.A., WILLIAMS COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Robert Ackermann The thesis of this dissertation is that the political dimension of Martin Heidegger's philosophical u/ork has been u/idely misinterpreted in the United States, and that this misinterpretation has been caused by censorship, historical and political ignorance, and poor scholarship. This study reveals the extent to which Heidegger engaged in politically motivated editing of his work after the war, and shows how such edited German editions were used as a basis for many English translations of his work. It also shows that Heidegger suppressed the publication of some politically sensitive texts while he was alive, and that archival materials in different parts of Germany have been manipulated so as to protect Heidegger from critical scrutiny. Such practices have also been employed by (or in the service of) other philosophers who worked in Germany at the time; the manipulation of post-war editions of V philosophical texts u/ritten in Germany between 1933-1945 seems to be a widespread phenomenon. To improve the US reader's understanding of the historical context of Heidegger's political thought, this study also relates Heidegger's professional and political actions to those of all of the other 213 professors of philosophy who taught at a German university between 1933 and 1945. Heidegger's political arguments are compared to those of the other philosophers who, as university Rectors, were in similar positions of political responsibility as Heidegger. The presentation of this new information allows the US reader to understand better the development of philosophy in Germany, and reveals the uniqueness of Heidegger's philosophical commitment to a particular version of National Socialist ideology. Finally, this study identifies the main sources of interpretive error in the US reception of Heidegger's political thought, and shows how philosophers can avoid such mistakes in the future. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT y LIST OF TABLES viii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. THE POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT 15 Who Taught Philosophy at German Universities 1933-1945? 30 3. UNDERSTANDING HEIDEGGER'S POLITICAL THOUGHT .... 131 4. HEIDEGGER'S POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE US 207 APPENDICES A. ARCHIVAL MATERIALS CONSULTED • 235 B. DOCUMENTS 245 BIBLIOGRAPHY • 257 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Philosophers at the German Universities 1933-45 35 2. Officials and Academics u/ho worked in Philosophy 107 3. Abbreviations of Organizations and Titles . 114 4. Academic Titles 116 5. German Universities 118 6 . Sources of Biographical Information 120 7. Legal References 121 8 . Pseudonyms, Cover Names, and Name Changes . 123 9. Philosophers in the NSDAP 124 10. Philosophers in the NSLB 126 11. Philosophers in the SA and the SS 128 12. Statistical Summary of Available Information 130 vii i CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this dissertation is to begin to correct a series of interpretive mistakes that have deformed the reception of the u/orks of Martin Heidegger in the United States. This project u/as motivated by the 1987 publication of Victor Farias' Heidegger et le nazisme , u/hich refocused the philosophical discussion of Heidegger's work all over the world. Farias has confronted his readers with an extensive documentary account of Heidegger's political commitments and the relationship of these commitments to his philosophy. Farias' book is flawed, in some passages deeply so. But to the extent that he has been able to shift the center of the philosophical discussion of the meaning of Heidegger's work, he has been successful. Heidegger's philosophical examination of the history of Being has itself been restored to its historical context; a close examination of this context has major implications not merely for our understanding of Heidegger, but for all philosophy produced in Germany during the twelve years of the Nazi dictatorship. What has come to be known as the 'Heidegger Controversy' has raised general methodological questions about our understanding of the history of recent German philosophy. 1 2 In the following pages I will argue that an accurate understanding of recent German philosophy cannot be had without an accurate understanding of recent German history. But to begin, let me say what I am not doing: I am not claiming that philosophical texts are mere products of their environments, with no lives of their own; nor am I arguing that a philosophical text exists independently of a context. I will argue, following Pierre Bourdieu, that to understand the history of philosophy one must also recognize that philosophy exists within history. ^ This is particularly important when reading texts that claim to address pre- social or "pre-historic " phenomena; the absence of context confirms the already implicit negation of history. And in twentieth-century Germany, the negation of history is equivalent to the acceptance of murder. Of course, it is true that assumptions have already been made about the historical context of Heidegger's philosophy; my claim is that for several reasons many of these assumptions are inaccurate. First among these reasons is what I will call the Myth; it has been the foundation of much of what has been assumed about the historical context 1 "Zuruck zur Geschichte," in Die Heidegger /M: Athenaum Controverse, edited by JOrg Altwegg, ( Frankfurt Verlag, 1988), pp. 155-162. See also Pierre Bourdieu, Die politische Qntologie Martin Heideggers ( Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 16-54. 2 2 4 3 of all of recent German philosophy . The Myth is that real philosophy in Germany died sometime after the Nazi accession to pou/er on January 30, 1933. Real philosophers either left the country or u/ent into something knou/n as " inner emigration," u/ithdrau/ing into the non—political security of philosophical scholarship. Philosophy became just another occupied territory, another victim, u/hich did its best to protect itself from the ravages of events in which it had no part. There u/ere a very few philosophers who became Nazis (or who had been philosophers before they became Nazis), but these people were not doing real philosophy; they were merely doing propaganda. Those other philosophers who joined Nazi organizations did so to protect themselves, their families, or their colleagues; they did so because they had to, not because they supported Hitler . Like all myths, this account is a useful fiction, a story whose value lies in its ability to relieve anxieties about unanswered questions. But unlike other myths, the questions it addresses are not unanswerable; they are unanswered because