SUBJECTIVITY AND RACE IN HEIDEGGERS WRITINGS

Emmanuel Faye
This study concludes seven years of international discussion that followed the publication of
my book on Heidegger in France. The experience
of the controversy has taught me that a debate can
only be fruitful if the interlocutors share the same
concern for exactness and truth, and agree upon
the ways to achieve it. What is most needful today if the criticism of interpretations is to go forward on a solid basis is fundamental research
supported by the philological examination of
manuscript sources. That is why, for the last few
years, I have given my most significant lectures
in German universities. Indeed, for about the last
fifteen years, that country has recognized and accepted a field of research focusing on the relations between philosophers and National Socialism under the Third Reich.1 In France, on the
other hand, there is practically no in-depth, systematic research on that subject, with the exception of the work of two or three individuals:
Nicolas Tertulian comes to mind. Due to these
circumstances, the questioneven though a very
important oneof the relation between the
thought of Martin Heidegger and his National
Socialism is reduced at best to a matter of opinion, and at worst it is presented as something
scandalous. Everybody thinks they have a right
to decide, with a self-assurance in inverse ratio to
the time they have spent studying the question.
An example that is at once comic and regrettable
of that state of mind may be seen in the little work
published in 2010 by Alain Badiou and Barbara
Cassin titled Heidegger, le nazisme, les femmes,
la philosophie [Heidegger, Nazism, Women, and
Philosophy]. Both authors think that their respective positions in the philosophical field give
weight to the fact that, on this question (as formulated by the title of their work) they are of the
same opinion.2 In short, Badiou and Cassin

[our authors speak of themselves in the third person] share the same opinion on the Heidegger
affair,3 and that is all that matters. Now, what is
that opinion? Heidegger is certainly a great philosopher, who was, and at the same time, a very
ordinary Nazi. Thats the way it is. Let philosophy deal with it!4 These declarations are symptomatic. According to Badiou and his interlocutor, it is not so much Heidegger who has to bear
the responsibility and burden of his Nazism as it
is philosophy itself! This transfer of responsibility, as unjust as it is fatal, appears as the off-hand
effect of a whole strategy put in place by
Heidegger after the Nazi defeat and passed on
more or less consciously by his various students
and disciples. It is therefore one of the main
points I will come back to, but first let me finish
contextualizing my remarks.
Again, the present study concludes a series of
lectures that were first given in German universities (Bremen, Frankfurt, Siegen, Berlin), then in
universities of other countries, such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, the United States, Mexico, and
Brazil. I will speak only of the two main lectures.
In the first, given at the university of Bremen during a UNESCO World Day, in December 2007,
titled Being, History, Technology and Extermination (Vernichtung) in Heideggers works,5 I
symbolically took up the opposing position of
the famous lecture given by Heidegger at the Bremen Club on December 2, 1949 and divided by
him for publication into four different texts: Das
Ding, Das Ge-stell, Die Gefahr, Die Kehre [The
Thing, The Enframing, The Danger, The Turn]. I
particularly wanted to show that Heideggers rejection of global technology understood as a Gestell did not call into question his repeated
praiserepeated on two occasions after 1945,
namely, in 1953 (the publication of the Introduc-

Translated by Michael B. Smith

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FALL 2011

tion to Metaphysics with the addition of a parenthesis emphasizing his praise of the internal
truth and greatness of the National-Socialist
movement) and in 1976 (in the posthumous
publication of the Spiegel interview of 1966)
of the satisfying relation instituted by National
Socialism between man and the the essence of
technology. Now, what are the two main manifestations of the relationship of National Socialism to technology emphasized by Heidegger?
They are the motorization of the Wehrmacht at
the end of the course on Nietzsche in the
1940 summer semester and of the gas chambers
in the lecture titled The Enframing (Das Gestell). In this context, the Heideggerian apology
for the relation of National Socialism to technology has something insufferable about it. I cannot
say more, because it is impossible to summarize a
very dense lecture, but allow me to suppose that,
in principle, these analyses are known.6
The second lecture, given in Frankfurt in January 2009, published in Fritz Bauer Jahrbuch
2009, and titled Heidegger Against All Ethics,7
shows, using Nietzsche and Max Scheler as its
starting point, how, as early as in Sein und Zeit,
Heidegger destroyed all possibility of constituting a moral code or an ethics. I specifically challenge the discernment of the readings of Sein und
Zeit that wrongly interpret Heideggers Selbst
(self) as an individual existence, and I show how
Heidegger destroyed the moral dimension of the
Kantian imperative by reducing it to the pure affirmation of ipseity (Selbst). It is nothing more
than an affirmation of self (Selbstbehauptung),
which could just as easily be that of a community,
a nation, a people, or a race.
In the present study, first published here,8 I
would like to begin by clarifying a very important
point, namely the transformation in Heideggers
way of speaking about subjectivity before and after 1945, that is, before and after the defeat of the
Third Reich.
Heideggerians have frequently drawn their arguments from the reference by the author of
Holzwege to subjectivity. Their reasoning is
based on a simple syllogism: the metaphysical
necessity of racial selection is based, according
to Heidegger, on the interpretation of being as

subjectivity. Now, Heidegger appeals to an overcoming of the metaphysics of subjectivity. He is

therefore a critic of racial selection and by the
same token of Nazism. The major premise is undeniably consistent with Heidegger, since it is the
summary of a passage from his course (redacted,
though never actually taught) titled Nietzsches
Metaphysics, although, as we shall see, it is based
on a Nazi conception of subjectivity as being
something completely realized in the community of the people, a highly debatable conception that Heidegger explicitly adopts in the years
193840. The minor premise is inaccurate, since
it presents a thesis Heidegger did not express until a late date as having been his position all
along: this entails the falsity of the conclusion. It
is this point that I would now like to develop in
more detail.
Heideggers Opposition between Two Kinds
of Subjectivity: One Perfected, the Other
Degenerate
It is essential for us to see that, just as
Heidegger did not always speak the same way
about metaphysics and its overcoming, so his
way of speaking about subjectivity changed radically from 1938 to 1950. In the summer semester
course of 1940 titled Nietzsche, European Nihilism, and in the original version of the lecture of
June 9, 1938, titled The Foundation of the Image of the World of Modern Times by Metaphysics we see him not radically rejecting the metaphysics of the subject, as he will after 1945, but
contrasting two conceptions of the subject: one
degenerate (entartete) and the other brought to
perfection. This is the essential point to be borne
in mind from now on, for our entire interpretation
of Heideggers relationship with National
Socialism depends on it.
But let us take up our account from a bit earlier. In his lecture given in Amsterdam on March
22, 1930, titled Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger had clearly defined his program as the task of restoring the lost metaphysics to a people (in this case, the Germanic
people). Three years later, when the National Socialists came to power, he modified the statement

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of his program, at the end of summer semester

1933, in the following terms:
The German people is not one of those peoples
who have already lost their metaphysics. The German people have not yet lost their metaphysics because they cannot lose it. And they cannot lose it,
because they do not yet possess it. We are a people
who still must earn its metaphysics, and who will
earn it; that is, we are a people who still have a destiny. Let us see to it that we do not oppose this des9
tiny, but that in it, and with it, we test our route.

The most widespread view has it that

Heidegger renounced this vlkisch program
when, at the end of the 1930s, he supposedly developed his rejection of the metaphysics of subjectivity. On the basis of a testimony of the pedagogue Heribert Heinrich as related by Silvio
Vietta, this alleged turn is rather generally considered to have occurred in 1938, and the famous
lecture of 9 June 1938 is adduced, which was
later published in 1950 in Holzwege with the
modified title of Die Zeit des Weltbildes (The
Time of the World-Picture) as introducing one of
the most manifest textual proofs of the critical
distance shown by Heidegger with respect to National Socialism.10 On the basis of that interpretation people manage to draw the conclusion, following Heidegger himself, that his writings from
the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the
1940s concerning subjectivity during the modern
period bear witness to his spiritual resistance to
National Socialism. In short they endorse the
self-justification that the former rector of
Freiburg himself gave in 1945, and they conclude
not only that after a passing and circumstantial
involvement with National Socialism he took his
distance as he developed his rejection of the
metaphysics of subjectivity, but that reading
Heidegger (according to some) may help us in
our own time to find a way to surmount not just
National Socialism, but also the racial doctrines
that are presumed to make up Western metaphysics. This seems to be the line of thought taken up
by Robert Bernasconi, for example, in the conclusions of a recent article, when he says that
Heideggers developments on race were an attempt to move beyond the metaphysical concep-

PHILOSOPHY TODAY
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tion of race and in so doing move beyond not only

Nazi thinking on race, but also the racial doctrines of the Allied Powers that opposed the Nazis.11 By a succession of highly questionable interpretive moves, Heidegger (even though
Bernasconi admits that we should not expect an
adequate political response to racism from him)
thus becomes the thinker who, by his effort to
surmount the metaphysics of subjectivity and
the ideas of people and race that would, on this
hypothesis, follow from it, might help us overcome the racism of Western philosophy. In reality, Bernasconi, because he relies too exclusively
on a late course of winter 1942/43, contemporaneous with the battle of Stalingrad and titled
Parmenides, confuses subjectivity and ego, and
does not take into account Heideggers opposition between Subjektivitt and Ichheit (subjectivity and egoity) asserted in more than one earlier
text, and above all he does not see how arbitrary it
is to present Ren Descartes, following Heideggers example, as the one who gave the idea of a
people its metaphysical basis, 12 and how
unacceptable it is to assert that the philosophical
ideas of the thinker of individual free will and of
generosity somehow contributed to bring about
racial selective breeding.13
It is true that I do not agree with those who,
like Bernasconi, think that Western philosophy
en bloc is racist. There is, for example, a world of
difference between the thought of a Diderot and
that of a Fichte. True, there are racist statements
in Locke, in Voltaires philosophy of history, in
Kants anthropology, not to mention Nietzsche,
and along these same lines, a number of philosophers of the Enlightenment and even more in the
nineteenth century that conceal unenlightened
elements that cannot be passed over in silence,
and must become the object of rigorous critical
investigation. But there is nothing of this nature
in a philosopher of the Renaissance such as
Montaigne14 or of the Classical age such as Descartes. Montaignes essay Of Cannibals, and
many other texts in the Essays, such as his account of the situation of Jews under the kings of
Portugal, forbid our speaking in toto of the relation of the Western philosophical tradition to racism and to the genocides, breeding programs,

and simple hostility.15 And it is very important to

note, in the face of Heideggerian attacks against
all thought of egoity, that Montaignes Essays
contain the first great modern philosophy of the I.
I am of course in agreement with Bernasconi on
the fact that the critical study of thinkers who
have shown complacency toward slavery or colonialism should not be hampered by taboos, and
he has no legitimate grounds for suspecting me of
indifference in that regard, or in respect to the
problems raised by gender issues. But surely it is
not to Heidegger, whose Gesamtausgabe contains calls for extermination, coldly programmed
for publication after his death, that I would turn
for arguments to help in carrying out that critique
or in overcoming Western philosophy. And I do
not see how it is possible to put on the same plane
Heideggers doctrine and, say, Kants philosophy, which, however questionable the latter may
be on certain points, is certainly not based on an
exterminatory racism.
To return to subjectivity according to
Heidegger, the various commentators who take
the rejection of the metaphysics of subjectivity
as a constant in his thought have not seen that at
the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the
1940s, Heidegger is far from rejecting all the interpretations of subjectivity. Thus, I have shown,
in an analysis never mentioned by Heideggers
defenders who have reviewed my book, that in an
important passage of the 1940 course titled
Nietzsche, European Nihilism, a passage that was
not retained in the Nietzsche II of 1961, but published in volume 48 of the GA (Gesamtausgabe),
Heidegger sets up a radical opposition between
subjectivity and egoity (Subjektivitt and
Ichheit), the first term being understood quite
positively and the second negatively.16 Far from
rejecting all the forms of modern subjectivity, he
has a very positive view of the fulfillment
(Erfllung) of subjectivism in the affirmation of
historical humanity (geschichtliche Menschentum) in the people and the nation, with the accent placed on the community, as opposed to
the egotism of the individual. Heideggers intended meaning is unequivocal, and perfectly in
conformity with the Nazi doctrine of the
Volksgemeinschaft as opposed to all forms of in-

dividualism. Egoity as Self-being and egoity as

selfishness are therefore to be clearly distinguished. Egotism is degeneration of Self-being.
... Subjectivity can never be determined by egoity
nor grounded in it.17 And let us note in this connection the use of the word Entartung (degeneration), one of the key words of racial doctrine,
used by Heidegger here without taking any critical distance.18
The analysis of this page of the 1940 course
on Nietzsche had led me to have the greatest
doubts about the authenticity of the text, published in 1950, of the 1938 lecture always quoted
by Heidegger apologists to show that he developed a critique of National Socialism at the end
of the 1930s. Several years ago, I shared my misgivings with Sidonie Kellerer, suggesting that
she should go to Marbach to study the originals,
since the subject of her research concerned Descartes and Heidegger. What she found not only
entirely confirms what I suspected, but goes beyond it in scope.19 Sidonie Kellerer was good
enough to send me copies of the manuscript and
the typed version of the 1938 original, and I gave
a critical analysis of them in lectures delivered in
May-June 2010 at Siegen and Berlin. Those
analyses coincide partially with what she has remarkably demonstrated, and of course I leave her
the credit for being the first to bring the matter to
light, but I want to incorporate some of their content here, because they are decisive for the overall
interpretation of Heideggers itinerary.
In the original, unpublished text of 1938, toward the end of the lecture, on page 26 of the
manuscript (or page 22 of the typed copy), we
find the following three sentences:
And only since and insofar as man generally and
essentially has become a subject, must the question
as a result for him become explicit, as to whether
man as the arbitrarily shrunken and willfully released I or as the we of societyas individual
or as community, as a personality in the community or as a simple group member in the corporate
body, as state and nation or as a peoplewill and
must become the subject that he, as a modern being, already is. Only where man is essentially already a subject is there the possibility of his slip-

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ping into the un-being of subjectivity in the

sense of individualism. But it is also only there,
where man remains a subject, that the explicit
struggle against individuality and for the community as the target field of all accomplishment and
20
advantage has new meaning.

In 1950, this text underwent several modifications that are not without importance: the addition of an inserted clause toward the end of the
first sentence, or as the general humanity of
modern man (oder als die Allgemeine Menschheit des neuzeitlichen Menschen), as well as the
fact that the adverbs against (gegen) and for
(fr) of the third sentence are no longer underlined, but instead the verb remains (bleibt) is
underlined, the effect of which is to blur the
bipolarization of the original text.21
If we refer back to the text delivered in 1938,
we note that Heidegger does not develop one sole
conception of modern subjectivity, but that on the
contrary he sets up a radical opposition between
two conceptions of the subject that are in his
view antithetical, and sides clearly in favor of one
of them. Indeed, once the transformation of modern man as subject has taken place, he successively develops the opposition, in the form of a
crescendo, between two possible responses to the
question of what modern man will and must
be: either an I or a we, an individual or a
community. By a kind of vlkisch radicalisation,
he leads the listener from the we (Wir) to the
community, then from the latter to the people.
The entire end of the paragraph, which consists
in a veritable National-Socialist confession of
faith, confirms this reading. Heidegger opposes,
in the most explicit fashion, on the one hand the
possibility of his slipping into the un-being of
subjectivity in the sense of individualism (die
Mglichkeit des Ausgleitens in das Unwesen des
Subjektivismus im Sinne des Individualismus),
and on the other, when man is able to remain the
subject he already is, the explicit struggle
against individuality and for the community
( d e r a u s d r ck lich e Ka m p f g eg e n d e n
Individualismus und fr die Gemeinschaft). In
short, Descartess philosophy of the self (du moi)
and individualism are nothing but degener-

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ation (Entartung) of the affirmation of the selfhood of man as subject, whereas the struggle for
the community of the people constitutes the only
achievement that gives the Subject a new meaning.
Thus the 1938 lecture will take the same direction as the text of the course already cited,
Nietzsche, European Nihilism, delivered two
years later. In both cases, the positions taken up
are completely in keeping with the National-Socialist doctrine, which Heidegger was already expounding with utmost clarity in his course of the
summer semester 1933, on Die Grundfrage der
Philosophie (The Basic Questions of Philosophy), in which he contrasted the time of the I
(Ich-Zeit) with the time of the We (Wir-Zeit). In
short, the continuity between his intentions in
1933 and in 1939 is manifest, and there is therefore no turn to be observed in the radical way of
setting up an opposition between the individual
I and the we of the community. Thus it is
quite understandable that Heidegger, in the substantial note 4 of his 1938 lecture, chose to refer
to his rectorial discourse of 1933. Equally significant is the fact that he dropped that all too revealing note in the 1950 edition.22 But Sidonie
Kellerer has judiciously remarked in her study
that the last two sentences of the text published in
2000 do not appear in the original manuscript of
1938.
By contrast, in 1950 Heidegger added the
long note (9) that modifies the significance and
bearing of his entire message. The guiding opposition of 1938 (and still present in 1940) between
the Ich and the Wir (the I and the We), which had
led Heidegger to speak very positively of the
struggle against individualism and for the community, has now completely vanished. There is
no longer, on the one hand, the degeneracy of the
subject into individuality and the I, and, on the
other, his fulfillment in the community of the
people. On the contrary, the most antithetical
ways of conceiving modern man are posited as
equivalent, in that they are all reduced to the same
affirmation of man as subject. The rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment is put on a par with
the nationalism, racialism, and global imperialism of the Nazis. Heidegger does not hesitate to

write: Man as a rational being of the Enlightenment is no less subject than man who conceives
of himself as nation, wills himself as people,
breeds himself as race, and finally empowers
himself as lord of the globe.23
With the five sentences that follow, we recognize the terminology and thinking of the
Heidegger after the military collapse of the Third
Reich:
In all these basic positions of subjectivity, since
man always remained determined as I or thou, we
or ye, different sorts of I-ness and egoism are also
possible. Subjective egoism, for which the I (usually without knowing it) is predetermined as subject, can be repressed through the integration of the
I into the We. Thereby subjectivity becomes only
more powerful. In the global imperialism of technologically organized man, the subjectivism of
man reaches its highest point, from which it will
sink to a level, organized uniformity and there ensconce itself. This uniformity is becoming the surest instrument for the fullthat is, the technologi24
caldomination of the earth.

The opposition between I and we is now done

away with, and the capital letter of the two pronouns disappears. The I and the we, by the same
token as the thou and the ye, are now no more
than different possible forms of egoity or egotism, and if the I is repressed through the integration of the I into the Wea pejorative expression that is not at all in keeping with the spirit
of the 1938 lecturesubjectivity becomes only
more powerful. Moreover, with the accusation
of a sinking to the level of organized uniformity, what is stigmatized is less technology itselfwhich is always viewed positively when it
is associated, in 1953 as well as in 1966, with the
National Socialist movementthan the new
world order inaugurated by the Allies. Indeed,
this sinking to the level of organized uniformity is at least as much a barely veiled critique
of democracy as it is of the global imperialism
of the technologically organized man. In short,
the critique of the globalization of technology
serves as a vehicle for the rejection of democracy.
This global imperialism, this generalized leveling, are henceforth presented as the end result of

modernity, so that nationalism, vlkisch will, and

racial breeding appear, in this perspective, as
nothing more than moments among others preparing that advent, equal but opposite, of the
movement of thought most fundamentally opposed to that vlkisch essentialismnamely the
rationalism of the Enlightenment. And now we
are in a position to understand the reason behind
another addition in 1950 to the text of the lecture,
in which Heidegger mentions the subject interpreted as the general humanity of modern man:
that incise clause prepares the evocation, in note
9 , o f m a n a s a r a tio n a l b e in g o f th e
Enlightenment, and attenuates the obvious
opposition between the two versionsfrom
1938 and 1950.
Nevertheless, these strategic modifications do
not eliminate all the differences between the text
of the lecture, even in the modified, 1950 version, and that of note 9, added after 1945. This is
why it is astonishing to see that no one, to my
knowledge, prior to my own doubts and the research conducted by Sidonie Kellerer, enquired
into the obvious contradictions between the text
of the lecture and that of note 9. It is true that the
readings of Heideggers texts as currently practiced give little evidence of critical distance. Beneath the rubric of hermeneutics, paraphrase
and veneration are more current than philosophical accuracy. And the way Heidegger himself, in
the 1950 version of his lecture, derided the spirit
of research and the critical examination of
sources is quite representative of the nefarious
influence he has had on the study of literature and
philosophy.
In any case, with a modicum of philological
vigilance and philosophical patience, Heideggers strategy after 1945, in his publications from
1947 (the year of the publication of the Letter on
Humanism in Switzerland) until 1975 (the year
of the beginning of the publication of the
Gesamtausgabe), is not extremely difficult to reconstitute in its main traits, and, hence to counteract. It is true that the detailed philosophical
and philological critical examination of all
Heideggers published texts, compared with the
different manuscripts and variants, if they have
not been destroyed, would entail a long-term,

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open-ended project, given that Heideggers strategy is to disorient us and enshroud us in his myriad of labyrinthine posthumous publications. But
simple examples, taken from texts whose dates
are well known, are sufficiently eloquent. What
now should be made available are critical editions of the most representative texts, accompanied by variora and dates, whenever the latter can
be established. In this regard, the two Jahrbcher
that recently appeared on Heidegger und der
Nationalsozialismus seem to be largely a missed
opportunity, with the exception of the useful
publication of the seminar of winter 193334.
Let us draw the first general conclusions from
these initial elements of a comparison between
the original text of a lecture from 1938 and its rewriting for publication in 1950. First of all it
should be pointed out that the well-known and
oft-cited phrases on technology that are found at
the beginning of the lecture and in note 9 do not
appear in the original text of the lecture! Such is
th e c a s e o f th e s e n te n c e o f 2 : D ie
Maschinentechnik bleibt der bis jetzt sichtbarste
Auslufer des Wesens der neuzeitlichen Technik,
d as m it d em Wesen d er n eu zeitlich en
Metaphysik identisch ist. (Mechanical technology is still the most visible offshoot of the essence of modern technology, which is identical
with the essence of modern metaphysics.) This
absence of considerations in 1938 on the technology of the modern era confirms in a remarkable way the thesis of my book and of the present
study, namely that Heideggers condemnation of
the globalization of technology is, essentially, a
discourse taken up after the military defeat of the
Third Reich. The apologetic thesis taken up by
Silvio Vietta, and taken up in his wake by all the
Heideggerians, namely that Heidegger was, at
the end of the 1930s, a critic of both modern technology and National Socialism, is thereby refuted. In reality, Heideggers strategy is very
close to that of Friedrich-Georg Jnger, who in
1946 published (with Klostermann, the same
press Heidegger used) Die Perfektion der
Technik, claiming he was merely printing a text
he had written as early as 1938, though without
giving any proof of this.

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If the 1938 lecture is not a critique of global

technology, it is not a rejection of modern times,
either. What comes across as being most dominant is a critique that mocks the spirit of research
and the scholar or scientist, who no longer needs
a library, etc. The importance given to this rather
primitive satire is to be understood, as always in
Heidegger, according to the context. When he attacks colloquia and conferences in which scholars are involved, we cannot help thinking of the
great Descartes Conference that took place in
Paris in 1937, to which Heidegger had been invited and for which he had already obtained authorization from the German authorities to participate by 1935, but which he finally decided not
to attend after his former disciple, Hans Heyse,
was chosen rather than him to lead the delegation
of German professors.
In a more general sense, the 1938 lecture constitutes a rejection not of the modern era per se
and of metaphysics, but of Descartes. That is
discernable, for example, in note 5, which became note 4 in the 1950 edition. While in
1950 Descartes and his rationalism would be
presented as the beginning of the completion
(Vollendung) of occidental metaphysics, in the
text of 1938, he is attacked on three occasions as
the one who initiated by no means the completion, but on the contrary the destruction (die
Zerstrung) of Occidental metaphysics, which
changes the entire perspective. As for Cartesian
rationalism, it is stigmatized as the rationalism
of the West (der westliche rationalismus), the
word westlich being expunged from the
1950 text. In short, in 1938, just as in the text
Wege zur Aussprache (ways to discussion) published the previous year, the Cartesian moment of
modern metaphysics is the negative and destructive moment, which must be fought against as a
degeneration (Entartung) that is westlich, in
order to give way to the true accomplishment of
occidental metaphysics, which can only be the
feat of the Germans, following Nietzsche. This is
a far cry from a philosophical refutation of the
thought of Descartes, and also very far from the
later motif of the overcoming of metaphysics.
I will not give further details, in this study, on
the very numerous modifications made to the

1938 text, but it must be recognized that the references to Nietzsche are far more positive and
have a completely different tone in 1938 than
they do in 1950, because they are set in direct relation to the German destiny and what Heidegger
refers to at that time as the most German necessity of our history. That is why it is necessary to
continue, for the courses on Nietzsche of the
years 193641, the work of philological criticism
begun here on the 1938 lecture. It is only by going to these lengths that we will be able to see
clearly into Heideggers thought during the Third
Reicha thought that, with respect to metaphysics, subjectivity, technology and the relation to
Descartes conjointly, is quite different from what
Heidegger wanted us to believe in 1945 and
thereafter.
What is at stake in this clarification is considerable. It is not solely a question of knowing what
Heidegger in fact thought, and of reestablishing
the truth concerning his relationship with National Socialism. We must undertake a fundamental critique of that strategy of self-exculpation and of rejection of the philosophical thought
inherited from Descartes and the Enlightenment,
which consisted in relieving the National-Socialist thinkers of their responsibility and shifting the
burden of Nazi crimes to human reason. That
strategy lies at the origin of the theses on modernity and the subject, constantly taken up and
amplified among a large segment of the
postmodern galaxy, without critical distance or
serious personal reassessment.
An egregious example of this unfortunate tendency may be seen in a little book published in
1991 by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc
Nancy: Le mythe nazi. With no justification, fascism is defined by them as the ideology of the
subject, which itself goes back to rationality in
the metaphysics of the subject, and culminates
in the Aryan race which is, by this account,
the Subject with a capital S. Thus we see these
authors reproduce, but with some exaggeration,
the thesis proposed by Heidegger in 1950. So if
there is a critical analysis that needs to be carried
out today, it is that of the reproduction and uncritical propagation of Heidegger and Schmitts theses in the philosophical field and in the field of in-

ternational law and the right of war. Such an analysis is neither a deconstruction nor a hermeneutics, but a philosophical critique on a
philological and a historical basis. One of the elements that would come into play would be a new
look at the contributions of the humanist thinkers
of the Renaissance such as Montaigne, the philosophers of free will in the wake of Descartes,
and (without overlooking their unenlightened aspects) the theoreticians of the human emancipation issuing from the Enlightenment. It is by relying on these fundamental currents of modern
thought and their renewal that we may form the
critical arguments that may eventually enable us
to resist the powerful resurgence of selfidentifying and discriminatory essentialismsin
Europe and elsewhere.
This work presupposes the rehabilitation of
philology as a critical study of manuscript
sources, historical contextualizing and rational
analysis; in short, the revival of all that has been
countered by the manner of reading texts favored
by the most current versions of hermeneutics
and deconstruction. Theodore Kisiel was right
to protest against the fact that the Gesamtausgabe is not a critical edition, but there is no
reason why the philosophers who study
Heidegger should not themselves attempt to
work from now on in a critical waythat is, in a
manner that is at once philological, historical,
and philosophical. This presupposes free access
to archives and manuscriptsaccess that today
is not always certain. Accordingly, I have
launched an appeal, in an article published by Le
Monde, for the opening of the Heidegger archives to all scholars. In the meantime, it must be
recognized that the apologetic studies that continue to rely unflinchingly on the texts of
Heidegger in the form in which they were
published by him in the 1950s and 1960s do not
rest on serious foundations.
Subjectivity, Self-Affirmation, and Selection
of a New Race: Heidegger, Jnger, and the
Nazi-Soviet Pact
I would now like to indicate the directions in
which it would be fruitful to continue to study the

SUBJECTIVITY AND RACE

275

evolution of Heideggers way of speaking about

subjectivity between 1938 and 1945. Heideggers intentions change under the pressure of
events. And we see how frequently what he
writes is a commentary on the present [das
Heutige], a term through which, in his course of
the summer of 1933, he defines history.
In 19391940, what dominated international
news, besides the declaration of war, was the
Nazi-Soviet pact. Gadamers testimony, related
by Jean Grondin, on the way Heidegger received
the news of that pact, is crucial. Gadamer was at
Todtnauberg. There on August 23, 1939 he
[Gadamer] heard on the radio about the
nonaggression pact between Stalin and Hitler. . . .
Heidegger was enthusiastic. He pounded the table with his fist, celebrating the union of the spirit
of Goethe and Dostoyevsky. He considered it a
kind of climax of [Hitlers] uncanny mastery of
the political extortion game.25 We are far from
what Heidegger wanted us to believe after 1945,
namely, that he had long counted Hitler among
the chief world war criminals of modern times
(die planetarischen Hauptverbrecher der
neuesten Neuzeit).26 In August 1939, his estimation of Hitlers foreign policy is only justificatory. And his enthusiasm at the moment of the
pact between the regimes of Hitler and Stalin
finds a specific transposition in his writings.
One of the most explicit texts in this respect is
that of the seminar intended for a closed circle of
Freiburg colleagues organized by Heidegger in
January 1940. In 1945, Heidegger will claim that
this seminar had been interrupted by the order of
the SD, the Gestapos secret service, but we find
no mention of that prohibition in the 2004 volume in which the text of the seminar was published by Peter Trawny.27 In that seminar, we see
that Heidegger reinterprets communism on the
basis of the connection established by Lenin between world war and total mobilization. Communism, Heidegger says, is something essentially different than any sort of Marxism.28 It is
even less something Russian, nor is it determined on the basis of bolshevism. Heidegger
bases his view on Lenins definition of socialism
as meaning the power of the Soviets + electrification, and he comments: electricity, here, is no

PHILOSOPHY TODAY
276

more than the name designating the presently

most elevated form that has been achieved of the
technological mastery of forces. In this, communism is an essential configuration of the existent in its totality, in which the Western era of
metaphysics is accomplished. Rather curiously,
Heidegger presents Lenins thought as determined by its confrontation with the philosophy
of Richard Avenarius, and he refers us to his
work published in 1891: Der menschliche
Weltbegriff. A thorough analysis of these assertions remains to be conducted. What is interesting to see is Heidegger evoking Lenin rather than
Jnger apropos the emergence of the concept of
total mobilization, and suggesting an originally
German (Avenarius) origin of Lenins theses, as
if eager to show a certain convergence, at the
moment of the Nazi-Soviet pact, between
National Socialism and communism.
To go further in the analysis of Volume 90, we
are frustrated, as is often the case with the
Gesamtausgabea non-critical edition declaring itself to be definitiveby a philological
difficulty. The volume combines three rather different textual entities: Aufzeichnungen zu Ernst
Jnger (Notes on Ernst Jnger), which the editor,
Peter Trawny, presents as having been written between 1934 and 1940 (pp. 1202); Aussprache
ber Jnger (Discussion of Jnger), the seminar
of January 1940 accompanied by other texts
(pp. 20982); and a much later text, since it is
dated 1954, titled Gestalt (pp. 28399). It seems
unlikely that the main portion of the first set of
texts could have been written before 1940, given
that Heidegger refers at the beginning and several
times to the Marble Cliffs (Auf den Marmorklippern), the publication of which at Hamburg,
by the Nazi press Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt
coincides more or less with the declaration of
war in 1939.29 The fact is, Heidegger develops in
these pages a warlike interpretation of Modernity
as an absolute struggle for domination, an interpretation according to which the Modern Period
does not start with Descartes but with
Machiavelli, and the fulfillment of which is the
figure of Jngers Worker and total mobilization.30 It is in this context that we find long developments on the stamp (Schlag) of a new hu-

manity, the type, race and racial selection, all

of which should be considered together with
analogous developments to be found in the
(never actually given) course of winter 1941/
1942 on Nietzsches Metaphysics, and in the
notes published in Volume 69 of the Gesamtausgabe, grouped under the titles Die Geschichte
des Seyns and Koinon. They are Heideggers
commentary on statements taken from Nietzsche
and Jnger. I am thinking particularly of the terrible fragment from Nietzsche on the necessity of a
doctrine sufficiently callous to act in a selective
way (zchtend) on both the stron and the weak. It
is about the extermination of decadent races and
the domination of the earth, as a means to produce a loftier type.31 As for Jngers The Worker,
as paraphrased by Heidegger, it contains the program for a total war that will ensure the planetary
domination of Germany by the mastery of technology and the mobilization of a new human
type, the figure of a new race, freeing the elementary strength of the German people. Many Jnger
apologists maintain that his conception of race is
not Nazi, because not biological. In reality,
things are not that simple. Without returning here
to Jngers ties to Merkenschlager, the Nazi biologist and theoretician of the German race
whom I mention in my book32 (but this must be
done when access to Jngers letters has become
possiblebecause the Merkenschlager-Jnger
correspondence is currently in Marbach, and Peter Trawny quotes a short excerpt from it in which
Jnger explicitly approves Merkenschlagers
conception of race),33 I will simply recall that The
Worker ends with an emphatic evocation of the
Mother-earth of the people as carrier of a new
race (der Mutterboden des Volkes als der Trger
einer neuen Rasse, 80), and that from the very
first page what is at stake is to send roots very
deep down into the dried-out soil to reach the
wellspring in which resides the magic unity of
blood and spirit (die zauberische Einheit von Blut
und Geist), rendering the spoken word irresistible (1). Sketchy as it is, Jngers conception of
race is enrooted in the blood and mother-earth of
the people.
Heideggers position on race seems to me to
be very clear in the three groups of texts to which

I have just alluded. To express it synthetically, I

think the way Heidegger positions himself in
19391940 with respect to the conception of race
and racial selection inspired by Jnger is quite
comparable to the way he positioned himself in
19331934 with respect to Carl Schmitt and his
concept of the political. Just as he adopted
Schmitts conception of the enemy, he does not at
all reject Jngers conception of the mobilization
of a new human type and the production of a new
race through selection and training. But just as he
considered the peoples affirmation of self
(Selbstbehauptung) as being prior to Schmitts
distinction between the friend and the enemy and
making that distinction possible, if not necessary,
similarly he presents the principle of racial selection and the breeding of the race as becoming
possible and even necessary only on the basis of
the affirmation of self (Selbstbehauptung) of
modern man in the figure of subjectivity. Indeed, he writes in his notes on the history of being: the training-of-the-race is a pathway for the
affirmation of self in view of domination
(Rasse-zchtung ist ein Weg der Selbstbehauptung fr die Herrschaft) (GA 69, 70). But for all
that he is no more opposed to racial selection than
he was to Schmitts dichotomy between friend
and enemy. In both cases, he simply wants to
present himself as one who thinks the political, or
racialism, from a more fundamental position
than a Schmitt or a Jnger. To take this
fundamentalism on Heideggers part as a
rejection of Nazism would be extremely nave.
What tends to cause confusion for the reader
forgetful of the historical context is the fact that
in 19391940, with the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the
highest figure of self-affirmation and subjectivity was realized not only in National Socialism, as in the 1938 lecture, but in the two configurations, both linked and rival, of communism
and Nazism. And even more unsettling is the circumstance that, in the following year, Heideggers intent will shift once more, and in the course
written (though not taught) for the 1941/
1942 winter semester and titled Nietzsches
Metaphysics, the theme of Vernichtung, or
extermination, will reappear.

SUBJECTIVITY AND RACE

277

I will therefore distinguish, in summarizing

them, three loci or three moments in Heideggers
presentation of subjectivity, all three prior to the
way in which, after 1945, he developed his rejection of the metaphysics of subjectivity.
1. Manuscripts of the 1938 lecture (DLA,
Marbach) and the 1940 course on Nietzsche in its
complete version (GA 48): Ich oder Wir, Ichheit
oder Subjktivitt als Gemeinschaft: opposition
between the I and the We, egoity and subjectivity conceived as self-affirmation of a community, of a people.
2. Notes on Jnger from the years 1939/
1940 (GA 90) and developments On the History
of Being (GA 69): Rasse und Subjectivitt als
Selbstbehauptung: race is connected with subjectivity, which is itself understood as self-affirmation and as a struggle for world domination,
by the formulation of a new humanity or production of a new type and by racial selection
and selective breeding.
3. Course on Nietzsches metaphysics, written
for winter 1941/1942 but not taught (GA 50): affirmation of the metaphysical necessity of the
principle of racial selection in a development of a
completely positive tone and justification of annihilating or exterminatory thought, which bears
some similarities to the course of winter 1933/34,
but in a much more ominous historical context, as
the extermination of European Jewry had already
begun on the Eastern Front.
In short, the expression of thought or of the
path traced by Heidegger is radicalized in a disturbing way from 1938 to 1942. In order to discern these various moments, and this evolution,
we must begin by freeing ourselves from the reinterpretation of his thought that he himself gives
us in his publications of the years 19501961:
from Holzwege, Vortrge und Aufstze, and the
study ber die Linie in homage of Jnger, to
Nietzsche I & II. There is thus a considerable
philological task to carried out. It will no longer
do to compare certain texts from among these
publications with the sometimes different ones
included in the Gesamtausgabe . . . the course on
Nietzsche, for example. Henceforth we need to
study the manuscripts in minute detail, as

PHILOSOPHY TODAY
278

Sidonie Keller and I have undertaken in the case

of the original manuscripts of the 1938 lecture.
But that indispensible philological investigation is still not all that needs to be done. We must
each of us perceive for ourselves how monstrous
it is to consider the thought of race, racial
breeding, and selection as metaphysical necessities in the history of the West, even though there
is nothing racist in the philosophical writings of a
Montaigne or a Diderot, for example. Philology
and a sense of history are of course indispensible
here, but one must also possess human and philosophical bases that are sufficiently broad, deep
and solid to refuse to let us be waylaid in the
lower zones into which Heideggers Seinsgeschichte tends to draw us. And for a philosopher familiar with the nuances and richness of
human subjectivity34 such as it is described and
analyzed in the philosophical writings of a
Montaigne, a Maine de Biran, a Merleau-Ponty,35
or even of a Deleuze, that reader of Hume,36 it is
intolerable to see Heidegger make a brutal identification of subjectivity with the self-affirmation
of a community, a people or a race. This is especially the case once we discover that his distancing of himself from that view, supposedly accomplished in 1938, was in fact after 1945, and
therefore retrospective and strategic.37
In a broader sense, and by way of conclusion,
I will add that what I have just shown concerning
the modification of Heideggers way of speaking
about subjectivity before and after 1945 may be
generalized and transposed with respect to philosophy. During the 1930s, the supporting motif
is that of the Germanic people, whose destiny it
was to accomplish their metaphysics and thus realize the destiny of the modern era of which it
was the depositary. As late as in May-June 1940,
in the course titled Nietzsche, European Nihilism,
at the moment of the invasion of France by the
motorized divisions of the Third Reich, the interpretation of the military victory in metaphysical terms continues to move in this direction.
After 1945, on the contrary, an entire philosophy
is radically rejected, and with it what he calls
thereafter the metaphysics of subjectivity. In
1946, in the conclusion of the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger asserts that the thinking that is to

come is no longer philosophy. In August 1955,

at Cerisy where he was invited by his French epigones, he himself made it clear that there is no
philosophy of Heidegger. Finally, in The Experience of Thought, published the same year, he
presented philosophizing (das Philosophieren) as the bad danger, the confused danger. Thus, when I wanted to show, in the conclusions of my book, that the foundations of his
work are not philosophical, all I did was to endorse, although of course in a critical way, a reality that Heidegger claimed most explicitly. So it
is time to recognize to what one is committing

oneself in deciding to make Heideggers path

ones own: a radical rejection of all of philosophy. What does he propose in its place? Does he
work toward surpassing National-Socialist
thought, or toward its perpetuation under new
guises? The fact that in his Gesamtausgabe he
programmed the publication of his most radically violent courses, such as that of the winter
semester of 1933/34 in which he calls upon his
students for the total extermination of the
enemy within, proves to me that he continued to
the end to labor in the fields of Nazism.

NOTES
1.

2.
3.

4.
5.

6.

This should not be construed as meaning that the

German field of research does not present other
problems. Alongside such fundamental works as
Teresa Orozcos mongraph Platonische Gewalt:
Gadamers politische Hermeneutik der NS-Zeit, 2nd.
ed. (Hamburg: Argument Verlag, 2004), which is
worthy of tranlsation, we also find at the present time
some highly problematic revisionist works, such as
the compendium of the historian Christain Tilitske, a
disciple of Nolte: Die Deutsche Universittsphilosophie in der Weimarer republik und im Dritten
Reich, 2 vols. (Berlin: Akadamie Verlag, 2002).
A Badiou and B. Cassin, Heidegger, le nazisme, les
femmes, la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 2010), 26.
Ibid., 28. In reality, the two authors are far from being
in agreement about everything. Badiou considers
Heideggers Nazism to be circumstantial and
Cassin considers it essential, which is not the same
thing, and seems closer to the truth. A few comments
should be made on the way the authors insert
women between Heideggers Nazism and philosophy. The way they compare Simone de Beauvoir to
Elfride Heidegger seems to me unacceptable, whatever I may think of the Castor. (The Beaver was
Sartres nickname for de Beauvoir.)
Ibid., 58.
Der Nationalsozialismus in der Philosophie: Sein,
Geschichtlichkeit, Technik und Vernichtung in
H eideggers Werk, in Philosophie im
Nationalsozialismus, ed. Hans Jrg Sandkhler
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2009), 13355.
The updated and completed English version of that
study will appear in 2012.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.
13.
14.

Heidegger gegen alle Morale, in Moralitt des

Bsen, Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen,
Jahrbuch 2009, Fritz Bauer Institut, ed. Werner
Konitzer and Raphael Gross (Frankfurt, New York:
Campus Verlag, 2009), 21023.
A first version of it was presented in May-June
2010 at the universities of Siegen at the invitation of
Marion Heinz, and of Berlin (TU), and a second,
more complete version, during a colloquium organized by myself in May 2011 at the University of
Rouen, and a round table at the University of Torino
organized by Enrico Donaggio.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Wahrheit, Gesamtausgabe [GA] 36/37 (Frankfurt: Klostermann,
2001), 7980.
See for example the assertion of the technical editor
of the two Heidegger Jahrbcher devoted to
Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus (Holger
Zaborowski): sein Vortrag Die Zeit des Weltbildes
zeigt sehr deutlich die zunehmende Entfremdung
zwischen Heidegger und dem Nationalsozialismus
[his lecture Die Zeit des Weltbildes shows very
clearly the increasing alienation between Heidegger
and National Socialism]. Heidegger und der
Nationalsozialismus Interpretationen, ed. A.
Denker and H. Zaborowski, Heidegger Jahrbuch
5 (Freiburg: Karl Alber Verlag, 2010), 29.
Robert Bernasconi, Race and Earth in Heideggers
Thinking during the late 1930s, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 48 (March 2010): 65.
Ibid., 55.
Ibid., 5859.
Unfortunately this does not mean that there was no
racism during the Renaissance. Nicolas of Cusa,

SUBJECTIVITY AND RACE

279

15.
16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

whose philosophia de mente is quite remarkable,

played an active role in anti-Semitism with his
Judendekret which introduced the obligatory wearing of a distinct sign for Jews for more than two centuries in the German area (see E. Faye, Nicolas de
Cues: la lumire et les ombres, La Quinzaine
littraire [11 Dec. 2010]). But that anti-Semitism on
the part of Nicolas of Cusa cannot be generalized to
include all of the philosophy of the Renaissance,
nor even to the thinkers who were inspired by his
speculative philosophy. Nothing of the kind is to be
found, for example, in Charles de Bovelles, a great
reader of Cusa. That is why we should consider racist
thought, when it exists, author by author, without excessive generalization.
Ibid., 66.
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, European Nihilism,
GA 48 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1986), 21112, and
Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger. The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished
Seminars of 19331935, trans. Michael B. Smith,
Foreword by Tom Rockmore (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009), 26870.
Ichheit als Selbstsein und Ichheit als Eigensucht
sind daher wohl zu unterscheiden. Die Eigensucht ist
eine Entartung des Selbstsein. . . . Die Subjektivitt
kann niemals von der Ichheit her bestimmt und auf
diese gegrndet werden (GA 48, 212). Heidegger
will speak differently in 1943 in his course titled
Parmenides.
Rather than taking my analysis into account, several
Heideggerians have preferred to indict my intentions, reproaching me for not having provided the
full quote of the well-known sentence of 1940 on the
metaphysical necessity of racial selection, in order to
hide Heideggers reference to subjectivity! To cut to
the chase, let me say that I provided the full quotation
at the incipit of Chapter 9 in the Spanish, German,
and American editions. But in spite of this the criticism has continued, being repeated mechanically.
(On this point, see the postscript in my response to
Gregory Fried.)
See Sidonie Kellerer, Heideggers Maske: Die Zeit
des Weltbildes Metamorphose eines Textes,
Zeitschrift fr Ideengeschichte 5 (Summer 2011):
10920.
Und nur weil und insofern der Mensch berhaupt
und wesentlich zum Subjekt geworden ist, mu es in
der Folge fr ihn zu der ausdrcklichen Frage
kommen, ob der Mensch als das auf seine

PHILOSOPHY TODAY
280

21.
22.

23.

24.

25.

Beliebigkeit beschrnkte und in seine Willkr

losgelassene Ich oder als das Wir der Gesellschaft, ob der Mensch als Einzelner oder als
Gemeinschaft, ob der Mensch als Persnlichkeit in
der Gemeinschaft oder als bloes Gruppenglied in
der Krperschaft, ob er als Staat und Nation oder als
Volk das Subjekt sein will und mu, das er als
neuzeitliches Wesen schon ist. Nur wo der Mensch
wesenhaft schon Subjekt ist, besteht die Mglichkeit
des Ausgleitens in das Unwesen des Subjektivismus im Sinne des Individualismus. Aber auch
nur da, wo der Mensch Subjekt bleibt, hat der
ausdrckliche Kampf gegen den Individualismus
und fr die Gemeinschaft als das Zielfeld alles
Leistens und Nutzens neuen Sinn. DLA-Marbach.
Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1950), 85.
In 2000, Hermann Heidegger published in volume
16 of the GA, this compromising note entitled by him
Besinnung auf die Wissenschaft (Juni 1938): Rede
und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2000), 349.
Der Mensch als Vernunftwesen der Aufklrungszeit
ist nicht weniger Subjekt als der Mensch, der sich als
Nation begreift, als Volk will, als Rasse sich zchtet
und schlielich zum Herrn des Erdkreises sich
ermchtigt (Holzwege, 102).
In all diesen Grundstellungen der Subjektivitt ist
nun auch, weil der Mensch stets als ich und du, als
wir und ihr bestimmt bleibt, eine verschiedene Art
der Ichheit und des Egoismus mglich. Der
subjektive Egoismus, fr den, meist ohne sein
Wissen, das Ich zuvor als Subjekt bestimmt ist, kann
niedergeschlagen werden durch die Einreihung des
Ichhaften in das Wir. Dadurch gewinnt die Subjektivitt nur an Macht. Im planetarische Imperialismus
des technisch organisierten Menschen erreicht der
Subjektivismus des Menschen seine hchste Spitze,
von der er sich in die Ebene der organisierten Gleichfrmigkeit niederlassen und dort sich einrichten
wird. Diese Gleichfrmigkeit wird das sicherste Instrument der vollstndigen, nmlich technischen
Herrschaft ber die Erde (Holzwege, 10203).
Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography,
trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 209; translation modified. [The
original German, Heidegger soll begistert gewesen
sein (Hans-Georg Gadamer: Eine biographie, 237)
merely indicates that Grondin is relating Gadamers
account. It does not suggest, as Weinsheimers trans-

26.
27.
28.
29.

30.
31.

32.
33.

lation ("Heidegger was said to have waxed enthusiastic on the occasion) seems to imply, that Gadamer
was not an eye-witness to Heideggers reaction.
tr.].
See the paragraph on Macht und Verbrechen in Die
Geschichte des Seyns, GA 69, 7778.
Martin Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jnger, GA 90 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2004).
Aussprache ber Jnger, GA 90, 240.
Michel Vanoosthuyse, Fascisme et littrature pure:
La fabrique dErnst Jnger (Marseille: Agone,
2005), 178.
Il principe ist der Anfang der Neuzeit. Der Arbeiter
ist ihre Vollendung (GA 90, 80).
Es bedarf einer Lehre, stark genug, um zchtend zu
wirken: strkend fr die Starken, lhmend und
zerbrechend fr die Weltmden. Die Vernichtung
der verfallenden Rassen. Verfall Europas. Die
Vernichung der Sclavenhaften Wertschtzungen.
Die Herrschaft ber die Erde, als mittel zur
Erzeugung eines hheren Typus. (What is need is a
doctrine that is strong enough to work in a selective
way: strengthening for the strong, crippling and
crushing for the world-weary. The destruction of the
degenerate races. The decay of Europe. The destruction of slavish values. Domination of the earth, as a
means to the breeding of a new type.) Friedrich
Nietzsche, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe Ab. 7,
Bd. 2, Nachgelassene Fragmente: Frhjahr bis
Heebst Spring 1884 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1974), 65.
See 26, 179, 29798.
Your books are among the rare ones in which I can
still find even the word race. You know that I see in
the worker a new race; that is why I feel confirmed by
you, because I see that with you that word is used in
the same sense, in connection with original farmer
and the original hunter. For what have we to do with
race, if it does not appear to us above all in action and
realization? Jnger to Merkenschlager, 17 December 1933 (DLA Marbach, Nachlass E. Jnger);
quoted by Peter Trawny, Die Autoritt des Zeugen:
Ernst Jngers politisches Werk (Berlin: Matthes &
Seitz, 2009), 178.

34. On that topic, see Emmanuel Faye, Subjectivit,

Encyclopdie philosophique universelle, t. II, Les
notions philosophiques, vol. II, ed. Sylvain Auroux
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990),
247780.
35. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Dcouverte de la
subjectivit, in Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960),
19194.
36. Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Humes Theory of Human Nature (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1991).
37. It is necessary to recall here the principle of philological prudence formulated in my book and according
to which we should give preferred status to the lectures and courses that were in fact given, for which
we possess witnesses and listeners notes, as well as
one or more manuscripts and typed originals kept in
Marbach, rather than late compilations of unpublished texts, for which to this day there has been no
serious effort to establish the dates of original composition and those of retouching. When Heidegger
expurgated his 1936 course on Schelling by removing a sentence in which he praised Mussolini and
Hitler, and his 1949 Bremen lecture by eliminating a
passage qualifying motorized agriculture and the gas
chambers as the same (das Selbe), there was in
both cases an informed listener to point out and publish the omitted passage. Nothing of the sort is possible at this time for collections of texts such as the
Beitrge zur Philosophie, Besinnung, Geschichte
des Seins, Zu Ernst Jnger, etc., which were programmed by himself for posthumous publication,
and some of which had been much reworked by
Heidegger alone or in collaboration with his brother
Fritz. Hence we cannot avail ourselves of these texts
without the greatest precaution and reservations to
determine with certainty what Heideggers thought
was during the years 19361940. This is why, while
the first part of the present study presents definitive
results, the second part is intended to open avenues
of research and interpretation that must await confirmation by additional investigation.

University of Rouen, Rouen, France

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