and
French Humanism
Tom Rockmore
.The French loved Martin Heidegger. After the War, he quickly became the master thinker of French philosophy. Until, that is, the appearance of a controversial book, Heidegger and National Socialism, by Victor Farias, which led to a very sharp discussion concerning Heidegger's Nazi past. From then on, as Tom Rockmore explains, his views no longer constituted the horizon for French philosophical discussion. But for half a century, it had been difficult, if not impossible, to bypass Heidegger.
It is not surprising that a German philosopher rose to the status of a master thinker in France. Certainly a master thinker, someone around whom the debate turns like the planets around the sun, is a frequent phenomenon in French intellectual life. Descartes is only the best example of a master thinker. Others include Kojève and Sartre. Kojève's influence on an entire generation of leading French intellectuals is well known. Sartre's Being and Nothingness transformed its author into a total intellectual who, after the War, simultaneously exerted a decisive influence in French literature and philosophy.
French philosophers have long followed German models,
such as Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. The French Hegel is largely due to Kojève,
a Russian philosopher trained in Germany before his emigration to France.
What is most surprising is that Heidegger attained this status after the
War waged against the German Nazis and their allies at a time when his
Nazi past was already at least partly known.
Different factors, none of which provides a complete
explanation, can be invoked to explain Heidegger's rise to prominence in
French intellectual life. One is the fact that France lost the War and
was quickly occupied. Perhaps the most important reason is that Heidegger
was doubly misunderstood in France. In itself, this is not surprising,
since important thinkers, such as Heidegger, who displace the terms of
the debate, cannot be understood quickly.
Heidegger was misunderstood in a specific way in France, which depends on the specifically humanist nature of the French intellectual tradition. For hundreds of years, French philosophy and culture in general has always been broadly "humanist." This term can be taken in three main senses: as the studia humanitatis, as the theory of man, and as the theory of the new man. The term "studia humanitatis" refers to the revival of the study of languages and ancient culture, for instance, through Petrarch in Italy, and through Rabelais in France.
The second form of humanism concerning the concept of human being is central to the whole modern period, in philosophy particularly as concerns philosophical anthropology. This topic develops in British empiricism, which, since Bacon, has always been specifically concerned with human knowledge, as distinguished from knowledge, and, after the French Revolution, in the writings of Fichte, Hegel, Marx, and many others.
With certain exceptions, such as AIthusser, French philosophy has always been broadly concerned with the conception of human being. At the dawn of the French philosophical tradition, Montaigne already took the self as the subject of his philosophy. More than three and a half centuries after his death, Descartes still remains the central French philosopher. Descartes can be read in different, incompatible ways. He is often understood, particularly in anglo-saxon circles as an epistemologist; but in France he is mainly read as a humanist philosopher, as a thinker whose theories are centred on the concept of human being. This theme runs throughout his writings, from his treatise on The World and the Treatise on Man (1633), through his Discourse on Method (1637), where he based all knowledge on a concept of the subject, through his last text, The Passions of the Soul (1645-46).
Largely through Descartes's influence, French philosophy has since maintained a humanist dimension. For hundreds of years, Descartes has influenced a series of thinkers concerned with human beings, such as the Enlightenment figures Diderot and Condorcet. At the present time, French philosophy is still divided among partisans of secular and religious humanism, who respectively understand human being in terms of itself or in terms of God. In France, religious humanists sometimes prefer Pascal to Descartes on the grounds that the former clearly subordinates man to God.
Renaissance humanism, which is centered on human being, is simply incompatible with the so called third humanism developed by Werner Jaeger, the most important specialist of Greek philosophy, at the beginning of the Nazi period. Jaeger, who influenced many philosophers, including Gadamer, and perhaps even Heidegger, helped to develop what can be called a Nazi reading of Plato, not as a poet, metaphysician, or founder of the theory of ideas, but rather as a political thinker. Jaeger specifically understood this humanism of the new man in National Socialism as incompatible with the humanism of the Renaissance.
The reason for describing these different forms of humanism is to help us understand why and how Heidegger became so important in France after the War. My thesis is that it is not merely because he was an important philosopher, but rather because he was misunderstood as a humanist by his French disciples. It is not an accident that his influence in France rapidly diminished as soon as he was understood.
To demonstrate this, it will be necessary to provide a rapid sketch of the reception of the French reception to Heidegger. French interest in the German began at the end of the 1920s, perhaps initially through Levinas, who studied in Germany. Heidegger was initially translated by Henri Petit-Corbin in 1931 with the preface claiming the beginning of a new form of thought. Kojève, who is best known for his famous lecture course on Hegel during the 1930s, had a decisive role in calling attention to Heidegger's philosophy. It is highly relevant that Kojève's Hegel interpretation specifically depends on his reading of Marx and Heidegger.
Interest developed only slowly in France until the end of the war. Sartre only turned to Heidegger after extensive study of Husserl. Jean Beaufret, who was to become Heidegger"s most important French disciple, became interested in Heidegger's theory to understand the background of Sartre"s position. After 1945, interest in Heidegger was boosted when Sartre, in reaction to religious existentialists, proclaimed his agreement with Heidegger's atheistic form of existentialism in the widely-read text, Existentialism is a Humanism.
Sartre"s public identification with German existentialism is but one of a number of reasons that together explain the quick rise of French interest in Heidegger after the War. At least four other reasons, all of which concern Sartre, merit consideration.
First, the French Heideggerians wanted to correct Sartre"s superficial, faulty interpretation of Heidegger"s position on display in his semi-popular text and even in his more technical writings, such as Being and Nothingness. Second, in the specific context numerous French intellectuals appealed to Heidegger to contest Sartre"s hegemony in French culture. Third, Heidegger presented an alternative to French Marxism, including its Sartrean variety that only reached a peak in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). Fourth, French Catholics protested through Heidegger, a lapsed Catholic, against Sartre"s atheism. And, fifth, French philosophers rebelled, through Heidegger, who was critical of Descartes, against French Cartesianism, including Sartre, who is often called the last of the Cartesians.
Heidegger's rise to prominence in French philosophy provoked deep controversy. The first wave of the debate appropriately took place in the pages of Sartre"s journal, Les Temps Modernes, in 1946-7. Without going into the details, suffice it to say that although at least to begin with French Heideggerians were still able to explain away Heidegger"s political turning to save both the man and his philosophy, this has become increasingly difficult since the publication of Farias's book.
Heidegger's relation to French philosophy has another aspect. In Being and Time, he sharply criticised Descartes. In a small text from 1937, prior to the War, "Wege zur Aussprache," he suggested the importance of a dialogue between the French and the Germans. At the end of the War, when he was under pressure because of his avowed Nazism, Heidegger appealed to French intellectuals to help him. He wrote a flattering, even servile letter to Sartre praising the latter as the only thinker capable of understanding him. Since Sartre did not reply, the initiative was not fruitful. Several months later, in November 1945 Heidegger received a letter from Beaufret, then very young and almost entirely unknown. Heidegger, who recognised the opportunity, wrote an encouraging letter of reply and then quickly worked his response up into the Letter on Humanism. Letter to Jean Beaufret (1948).
It is probable that, in difficult circumstances, Heidegger's intention in responding to Beaufret was to create interest in France for his philosophy. The result, which he perhaps did not anticipate, was a fantastic rise in interest in his views as a result of which he quickly displaced Sartre as the main French master thinker. In France, where the "defence" of the French language is considered vitally important, until recently few philosophers were capable of reading Heidegger's writings in his unusually difficult German. Since the first partial translation of Being and Time only appeared in French in 1964, for almost two decades, in the absence of his most important text, in France Heidegger"s Letter, which was quickly translated, functioned as the main means of access to his thought.
Heidegger's Letter contains three main themes. Firstly, he used the occasion to distance himself from Sartre, his overly friendly French admirer, thereby endearing himself to Sartre"s many adversaries in the French cultural context. Secondly, he raised the question of humanism at a time when, in virtue of his Nazism, his own humanism was in question. Finally, he emphasised a supposed turning in his thought to indicate its supposedly humanist character. In introducing a distinction between philosophy, namely anything relating to traditional philosophy, and thought, Heidegger distinguished between his own thinking and all forms of philosophy. In the Letter, he presented thought, which designates his own position, as a new form of humanism.
Heidegger's Letter is not only philosophic but also clearly also opportunistic. It is, in fact, a letter, not only to Jean Beaufret, but to all French intellectuals. France is a largely Roman Catholic country. Heidegger, who was originally destined to the priesthood, but who left the Church before his marriage in 1919, nevertheless contrives to mention God no less than twenty nine times in this short text. He takes the occasion to calm Marxists in acknowledging the importance of Marxism. And he further distances himself from National Socialism by attacking "biologism".
It is to reinforce the message, that he has now distanced himself from anything objectionable, that Heidegger invokes the notion of a turning in his thought. This thought, which is no longer philosophy, is situated on a level deeper than either theory or practice, hence unrelated to politics. In particular, unrelated to National Socialism, including his membership in the German Nazi party, or to his own fervent support of Nazism in speeches or indeed, in general, in his dubious role as Rector of the university of Freiburg, and so on.
What does turning (die Kehre) mean for Heidegger? Over the years, with some exceptions, those interested in the German have resisted efforts to link his philosophy to his politics. Initially Being and Time was supposed to be followed by a reversal, or turning, in the portion of the text that never appeared. But efforts to understand this term in relation to the internal development of his position have not been fruitful. The unclarified idea of the turning, which Heidegger used to suggest a distinction between his earlier and later positions, was quickly utilised by his supporters to suggest the incompatibility of his later position with politics, hence with Nazism. Others, who do not deny but simply concede Heidegger's early interest in Nazism, link metaphysics with his early position in arguing that this phase, hence any link to Nazism, is surpassed in his later writings.
This "revisionary" effort fails for two reasons. First, it is simply inconsistent with the texts, since there is no way to demonstrate a break, or discontinuity, in the development of Heidegger"s philosophy. Second, it is mistaken to understand its evolution solely through immanent philosophical criteria unrelated to the surrounding context. Approaches which interpret Heidegger's position by isolating it from its surrounding context are not only simplistic; they further contradict Heidegger"s own theories. Heidegger is a philosophical contextualist, concerned to grasp thought in its context. Those who desire to "save" Heidegger by drawing a distinction between his theories and his surroundings in effect wish to save him in a way that contradicts his own position.
In fact, there is not one but rather a number of turnings in Heidegger's position. Politically, Heidegger turns toward real Nazism, then away from it but toward a kind of ideal type of Nazism. Philosophically, Heidegger progressively develops his position in his writings over time. It is then mistaken to hold that his early position, as metaphysical, was conducive to Nazism, whereas his later position, as anti-metaphysical, is incompatible with totalitarian politics. This way of "saving" Heidegger presupposes a break, or other discontinuity, in the development of his position, for instance prior to and after the so-called turning. But there is no discontinuity in Heidegger"s position; for his later writings, after the turning, only deepen, but do not break with, his earlier ideas.
In fact, the views of anyone who has anything to say and who does not simply repeat the earlier ideas in later writings undergo a certain evolution. However, changes in a position often require a certain price to be paid. In Heidegger"s case, there are a number of important changes in the original position that create difficulties in his later perspective which is arguably philosophically weaker, not stronger, than its predecessor.
One change is the disappearance of the concept of Dasein, which, as the indispensable link to being, simply disappears without being replaced by another such link. Heidegger fails to offer any argument to give up his early view of Dasein, arguably his single most important idea. Without it, his conception of technology, which only appears after the turning, is necessarily non-anthropological, and hence of doubtful value. And, without a conception of the human subject, Heidegger is simply unable to come to grips with the Holocaust, which affected human beings, not being: a lacuna which, hence, explains his famous, but dreadful silence on this.
And so, I draw now my conclusion. Heidegger became the master thinker in post-war France because of a profoundly mistaken reading of his position. In France, where there was a long humanist tradition, it appeared that he, better than Sartre, was able to prolong the traditional French intellectual concern with the theory of human being. This inference, which was suggested by Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, was revealed as no more than an illusion by the publication of Farias"s book, which claimed, I believe correctly, that Heidegger turned toward and later remained faithful to Nazism on the basis of his position.
Heidegger is not a humanist in any usual sense. Indeed,
the usual forms of humanism are, as he notes, incompatible with fundamental
ontology. As concerns humanism, only the word remains, since Heidegger
is only interested in "human being" to know "being". Like many other philosophers,
Heidegger consistently insists that his position is indispensable for all
human beings. But philosophy as such is not useful. It only becomes useful
when it emerges from human practice to achieve theoretical status useful
for what men and women do in their daily lives. In order for philosophy
to recover its practical role, I propose that it return beyond Heidegger
to an older, obviously more useful form of humanism.