On Sat, 16 Sep 1995, Robert V. Scheetz wrote:
> Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 20:10:12 -0400
> From: Robert V. Scheetz <ay581@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Heidegger and Marx
>
>
>
> What was the source of Heidegger's animus toward Marx? Communism?
> Especially given his vaunted affinity for Earnst Junger's essential soldier/
> proletarianism, how is it he not only failed to find Spartacism the perfect ideological
> fit, but embraced the logically and aesthetically ersatz Nazism?
>
This could be answered on several levels. His animus towards Marx on a
philosophical level could be just the normal "Marx is part of the
technological sending of Being" animus Heidegger directed against
everyone who wasn't Holderlin or a pre-Socratic. Honestly, I don't see
all that much animus towards Marx; what little he wrote was relatively
neutral.
Some brands of Marxism, on the other hand, may have given Heidegger some
key ideas in understanding alienation and objectification. I'll take
Poeggeler's word that Heidegger had never actually read Lukacs, but he
did have contact with people who had; at any rate, the parallels
regarding reification of instrumental thinking are striking. Both Lukacs
and Heidegger were very influenced by the theories of Emil Lask, but I'm
not certain what form this influence took in Lukacs.
On a concrete political level, Heidegger's open hostility to communism
and the International has at least two components: communism's commitment
to equality and its international character. Even before joining the
Nazis, Heidegger expressed the conviction the the communist party was
committed to levelling social distinctions and making society homogenous;
that might have signalled eliminating (or radically changing) the
universities in Heidegger's mind. He claimed (afterwards) that he was
against the politicization of the universities, and resisted (he claimed)
the Nazis attempts to introduce this in Germany. At any rate, in his
Nazi period he was under the spell of Nietzsche, especially the rank
ordering part. Communism would have compatibility problems with this.
While Heidegger was a type of labour philosopher, he disliked Marx's
reduction, if it can be so called, of labour to the base of being. This
would be a philosophical repudiation of Marx. The practical rejection of
communism was its internationalism. Besides being a nationalist,
Heidegger joined a chorus of other nationalists who thought that
communisms emphasis on class war would destroy nations and the
cross-class bonds fostered by nationhood. A politics that bound
different sectors of a nation was preferable to one that would submerge
the nation into a classless internationalism.
When one combines these characterizations of communism, one arrives
exactly at Heidegger's words in 1935 and afterwards: that communism as
exemplified by the Soviet Union was the most advanced form of the
technological frenzy of modern nihilism.
On a personal note, some of his postwar emnity can possibly be traced to
the fact that his sons were prisoners of war in Soviet labour camps.
Chris
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
> Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 20:10:12 -0400
> From: Robert V. Scheetz <ay581@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Heidegger and Marx
>
>
>
> What was the source of Heidegger's animus toward Marx? Communism?
> Especially given his vaunted affinity for Earnst Junger's essential soldier/
> proletarianism, how is it he not only failed to find Spartacism the perfect ideological
> fit, but embraced the logically and aesthetically ersatz Nazism?
>
This could be answered on several levels. His animus towards Marx on a
philosophical level could be just the normal "Marx is part of the
technological sending of Being" animus Heidegger directed against
everyone who wasn't Holderlin or a pre-Socratic. Honestly, I don't see
all that much animus towards Marx; what little he wrote was relatively
neutral.
Some brands of Marxism, on the other hand, may have given Heidegger some
key ideas in understanding alienation and objectification. I'll take
Poeggeler's word that Heidegger had never actually read Lukacs, but he
did have contact with people who had; at any rate, the parallels
regarding reification of instrumental thinking are striking. Both Lukacs
and Heidegger were very influenced by the theories of Emil Lask, but I'm
not certain what form this influence took in Lukacs.
On a concrete political level, Heidegger's open hostility to communism
and the International has at least two components: communism's commitment
to equality and its international character. Even before joining the
Nazis, Heidegger expressed the conviction the the communist party was
committed to levelling social distinctions and making society homogenous;
that might have signalled eliminating (or radically changing) the
universities in Heidegger's mind. He claimed (afterwards) that he was
against the politicization of the universities, and resisted (he claimed)
the Nazis attempts to introduce this in Germany. At any rate, in his
Nazi period he was under the spell of Nietzsche, especially the rank
ordering part. Communism would have compatibility problems with this.
While Heidegger was a type of labour philosopher, he disliked Marx's
reduction, if it can be so called, of labour to the base of being. This
would be a philosophical repudiation of Marx. The practical rejection of
communism was its internationalism. Besides being a nationalist,
Heidegger joined a chorus of other nationalists who thought that
communisms emphasis on class war would destroy nations and the
cross-class bonds fostered by nationhood. A politics that bound
different sectors of a nation was preferable to one that would submerge
the nation into a classless internationalism.
When one combines these characterizations of communism, one arrives
exactly at Heidegger's words in 1935 and afterwards: that communism as
exemplified by the Soviet Union was the most advanced form of the
technological frenzy of modern nihilism.
On a personal note, some of his postwar emnity can possibly be traced to
the fact that his sons were prisoners of war in Soviet labour camps.
Chris
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------