Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927–1961

CHAPTER 5 Jean Beaufret, the First Heidegger Affair, and the "Letter on Humanism" Sartre's popularity and the subsequent popularity of existentialism had myriad effects on the reading of Heidegger in France. The most significant are directly related to Sartre's domestication of Heidegger's philosophy, the "realization" of Heidegger's affiliation with the National Socialist Party in the 1930s, and the return of his philosophy to challenge the primacy of this first reading (already in question because of Heidegger's political activities). To untangle the relations among these events we must explore the two related phenomena of the first "Heidegger Mfair" and Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism," written to Jean Beaufret in 1946 and published in 1947. In the case of the first "Heidegger Affair," the news of the philosopher's association with National Socialism was spread largely through articles attacking existentialism. In the case of the "Letter on Humanism," it represented a movement of French intellectuals-who found Heidegger through the works of Sartre-away from Sartre and toward Heidegger. The two phenomena are structurally linked by the popularity of Sartre and by the activities of the French army in its investigation into Heidegger's political past. In a curious twist of fate, the officer in charge of cultural affairs for the region that included Freiburg was interested in existentialism, specifically in the work of Sartre, and thus took particular interest in the case of Martin Heidegger. He sent a young military attache named Frederic de Towarnicki to find the German philosopher. Towarnicki was acquainted with his philosophy through the works of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and through an article on existentialism by a lesser known philosopher named Jean Beaufret. On finding Heidegger, Towarnicki brought him texts from France, opening the first direct communication between Heidegger and the French intellectuals who had used his work since Henry Corbin's visits in 1936. In his official capacity as a soldier in the French army, Towarnicki 157 THE SECOND READING facilitated the first direct contact between Heidegger and Sartre as well as between Heidegger and Beaufret. Towarnicki's visits to Heidegger changed the French understanding of Heidegger in two ways. First, Towarnicki's article on Heidegger in the pages of Les temps modemes led directly to the first Heidegger Affair, placing Heidegger's philosophy in question and forcing many left-wing existentialists (the champions offreedom, individualism, and responsibility) to reconsider the first reading of Heidegger derived from the work of Sartre, Wahl, Kojeve, and others. Second, Towarnicki's visits led to a new understanding of Heidegger in France based on the "Letter on Humanism," distancing the German thinker from the subjectivist tendencies of French existentialism. Jean Beaufret The origins of this second reading of Heidegger in France and its relation to the first are the keys to understanding the recurring Heidegger Affairs. This second reading of Heidegger can be dated to the "Letter on Humanism" in 1947. Thus we must explore Jean Beaufret's role in the acquisition and dissemination of Heidegger's thought in France and its opposition to the existential understanding of the first reading presented by Kojeve, Wahl, Sartre, and to a lesser extent Merleau-Ponty, which was the dominant reading ofHeidegger at the time. Jean Beaufret is instructive both as an example of the second wave of scholars who came to Heidegger via Sartre-the reigning maitre apenser in France-but also as the porte-parole, the mouthpiece, through which Heidegger was able to communicate with the French intellectuals who were so fascinated with his work. Beaufret was born on May 22, 1907, in Auzances, Creuse. He was technically of the same generation as Sartre, Aron, and Merleau-Ponty and he did exhibit some of the characteristics of the generation of 1933, such as a lack of political engagement in the 1930s, followed by a period of active participation during the war and immediately following it. But unlike the other members of that generation we have discussed, Beaufret had no interest in challenging the established borders of French philosophy during his years at preparatory school, the ENS, or immediately thereafter. Beaufret's interest in Heidegger came after his turn to existentialism, which was inspired by the widespread popularity of Sartre. By all accounts, Beaufret was an excellent teacher and a good writer with an impressive ability to grasp and explain the most difficult philosophical constructs, but he was not an original thinker. He did not seek to create a new philosophy or push the limits of the old as Aron, Merleau-Ponty, 158 Jean Beaufret and Sartre were doing. Instead, Beaufret was content to follow in the footsteps of others and explore the philosophical fields cleared for him. Beaufret grew up in the small rural village of Auzances, the only son of two grade school teachers. He did not share the same experiences of World War I that affected Sartre, Aron, and Merleau-Ponty. World War I passed without directly affecting him, his family, or his immediate circumstances. He moved to Paris in 1925, where he enrolled in a preparatory class for the ENS at Louis-le-Grand. In 1928 he entered the Ecole Normale Superieure. While at the ENS, Beaufret worked under the direction of Leon Brunschvicg. His academic formation in Paris was very similar to that of Aron, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, but unlike the three elder normaliens, Beaufret remained entirely within the fold of Brunschvicg's neo-Kantian rationalism and centered his studies on Descartes. 1 While at the ENS, he met Merleau-Ponty, who was two years ahead of him, but they did not become close until much later. Beaufret spent a year at the Institut Franc;ais in Berlin in 1930-1931, but he was not interested in phenomenology or the work of Husser! or Heidegger. He spent his time working on the philosophy of Fichte in preparation for his thesis. On returning to France, Beaufret did his military service and after completing it took and passed the agregation. Beaufret's first teaching post was at the Lycee de Gueret in Creuse, not far from his parents' house. In 1937 he took a post in Auxerre, and from 1937 to 1939 taught at a French lycee in Alexandria. Beaufret was away from Paris throughout the 1930s and he did not produce any philosophical texts until well into the 1940s. He did not have the opportunity to attend any of Kojeve's seminars nor did he strike out on his own as Sartre did in Le Havre. Instead, Beaufret became a perfect product of the ENS: a teacher of traditional philosophy. "In 1937, when I was at the lycee in Alexandria, I taught philosophy in the most academic fashion, like all the other instructors at the time. There wasn't the slightest trace of phenomenology."2 Beaufret's tum to phenomenology, which led him to Heidegger, is bound up with the events of World War II. In 1939, when he was called to active duty, he ran into Merleau-Ponty at the military training center known as the Ecole d'Etat-Major in Vincennes. During their conversation, Merleau-Ponty told Beaufret about phenomenology and showed him a text by Husser!. By 1939, Beaufret had become bored with the abstract and purely theoretical nature of the neo-Kantian model and had 1. Jacques Havet, 'Jean Beaufret," Association Amicale des Anciens Eleves de !Ecole Normale Supirieure (1984): 82-94. 2. Roger Kempf, "En ecoutant Jean Beaufret," in Jean Beaufret, De l'existentialifme a Heidegger (Paris:]. Vrin, 1986), 9. 159 THE SECOND READING come to the conclusion that Brunschwicg's neo-Kantian rationalism was helpful for understanding "the work of Descartes, Leibnitz and Kant, but lacked the essential component of the investigation into the foundation of things." 3 Beaufret felt he had all the tools to teach philosophy satisfactorily, but he was not satisfied with philosophy. Merleau-Ponty sympathized with Beaufret's concerns and suggested Beaufrct read Sartre's L'imaginaire. Beaufret did not have the time to act on Merleau-Ponty's suggestion; soon after their meeting, his unit was sent into battle and he was captured by the Germans. In September 1940, Beaufret escaped from the transport train that was taking him to Germany. He fled to the unoccupied zone and in November of the same year he took a post teaching at the Lycee Champollion in Grenoble. There Beaufret came across Sartre's article "Une idee fondamentale de la phenomenologie de Husser!," which appeared in the Nouvelle revue franr;aise in 1940. Beaufret knew he wanted to study phenomenology after his meeting with Merleau-Ponty, but he had not decided whether he would turn to Husser! or Hegel. Mter reading Sartre's article, he made a clear choice: he would begin with Husserl. 4 Beaufret began serious work on Husser! and phenomenology in 1941. He started with Husser! but soon turned to Sartre's L'imaginaire, and this work in turn led Beaufret to Heidegger. While teaching in Grenoble, he began to read Heidegger's Being and Time and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. The work went slowly. Restricted by his limited knowledge of German, Beaufret focused on the sections translated by Corbin in 1938. He had only started his investigation when, in October 1942 he was offered a post in Lyons at the Lycee Ampere. Beaufret's project took a turn for the better when through mutual friends he met Joseph Rovan, who was also interested in studying Heidegger, and the two soon began work together on Heidegger's Being and Time. 5 Rovan was Jewish; hiding out in Lyons, he could not officially enroll at the university or take courses. Rovan's knowledge of German was excellent, but his philosophical background was not extensive. Beaufret, conversely, had a good philosophical background but struggled with Heidegger's German. The two met each night to translate and interpret passages from Being and Time; they had both heard rumors about Heidegger's political activities but at the time they were mesmerized by his philosophy. 6 3. Jean Beaufret, Entretiens avec Frederic de Tmvarnicki (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), 6. 4. Ibid., 4-5. 5. Joseph Rovan translated the "Letter on Humanism" into French for the review Fontaine. 6. Joseph Rovan, Mon temoit.,rnage sur Heidegger; Le Monde, December 8, 1987, 2. 160 Jean Beaufret Rovan and Beaufret's relationship went beyond the world of philosophy. Rovan was involved with the Resistance group Pericles; his knowledge of German made him a master forger of documents. Through Rovan, Beaufret came to join the Resistance. When the Nazis occupied Lyons and imposed a curfew, Rovan forged papers for himself so that he could continue his nightly visits to Beaufret's house. 7 Beaufret and Rovan worked together, on Heidegger and for the Resistance, until February 1944, when Rovan was arrested by the Gestapo. Beaufret escaped, thanks to a warning from Rovan, but Rovan was sent to Dachau, where he remained until the end of the war. Beaufret left Lyons soon after and returned to Paris, where he found a job at the Lycee Saint-Louis. Beaufret continued the philosophical work he had started with Rovan; according to his own testimony, it was on June 6, 1944-amidst all the intensity and excitement of the Allied invasion at Normandy-that "I finally had the sensation that I had begun to understand Heidegger." 8 This comment by Beaufret is strategic and manipulative. It is an anecdote that Beaufret told to Frederic de Towarnicki in the late 1970s and that he has repeated in multiple interviews. Beaufret's intention is to create a link between Heidegger, the liberation of France, and Beaufret's participation in the Resistance that will distance Heidegger from his affiliation with the Nazi Party. I will discuss the efficacy of this strategy later in the chapter. For now I will simply comment that by June 1944 Beaufret had come to have what he considered a fundamental grasp of Heidegger's philosophy as presented in Being and Time. In 1945 Beaufret took a post at the Lycee Decor in Paris and in 1946 he was given a position at the Lycee Henri IV. This was one of the main feeder schools for the ENS, and Beaufret's position as an instructor at this prestigious preparatory school became an important factor in disseminating Heidegger's philosophy to the students who would become the next generation of teachers and philosophers. Between March and September 1945, Beaufret composed an article on existentialism for the journal Confluences, which was published in serial format under the title "A propos de l'existentialisme." Towarnicki brought several sections of this article to Heidegger during his first visit to with him. Thus it was through Beaufret's article on existentialism that Heidegger became acquainted with the modern French philosophical scene, the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, and the French understanding of his own philosophical project. This article also shows the extent to which Beaufret, as of 1945, was still in Sartre's shadow and indebted to the translations of Henry Corbin in his understanding of Heidegger. 7. Ibid., 2. 8. Beaufret, Entretints avec Fredmc de Towarnicki, 4. 161 THE SECOND READING That year, just before the first Heidegger Mfair, Beaufret's position was heavily indebted to the first reading of Heidegger in France and mirrors the work of the scholars we have investigated so far. In this sense Beaufret is indicative of a larger trend among French intellectuals who came to Heidegger in the 1940s through the work of Sartre and the popularity of existentialism. It was not until after Beaufret's contact with Heidegger and after the "Letter on Humanism" that Beaufret came to understand the difference between Heidegger's own presentation of his philosophical project and the understanding of Heidegger in the work of Sartre and other French existentialists. 9 But before we begin our investigation of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism," let us first return to Frederic de Towarnicki to better understand how the phenomenon of the "Letter" is inextricably linked to the activities of the French army and the first Heidegger Mfair. Frederic de Towarnicki Towarnicki had not studied philosophy formally. His interests were literature and poetry, and he was acquainted with the philosophy of Heidegger through the works of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Queneau, Maurice Blanchot, and Jean Beaufret. Towarnicki had come to existentialism during its wave of popularity in France after World War II. His mission to visit Heidegger was like an invitation to visit a celebrity. Towarnicki was starstruck in Heidegger's presence, and it shows in his articles and in his reflections on his visits to the Black Forest. Towarnicki was still serving in the French army immediately following World War II when he was assigned to the service social for the Rhine and Danube area, which included Freiburg. The officer in charge was a lieutenant named Fleurquin, whom everyone in the company called "Captain." 10 Towarnicki was part of a detachment that included Marcel Marceau and Alain Resnais. Their mission was to set up a cultural center to get in touch with German writers, artists, and intellectuals and reestablish dialogue between France and Germany. Part of this entailed ascertaining the extent 9. I disagree with Anson Rabinbach's assertion in "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event," in In the Sluuiow of CatastrojJhe: German Intellectuals between AjJOcalypse and Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), that Beaufret's article was a challenge to Sartre. While I agree that Beaufret attempts to distinguish between Sartre and Heidegger in this article, I would argue he was still too indebted to the first reading to seriously challenge Sartre, who provides both the vocabulary and commentary that inform his reading of Heidegger at that time. For a full treatment of the 1945 article in Confluences, see Ethan Kleinberg, "The Reception of Martin Heidegger's Philosophy in France: 1927-1961 ," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1998, chap. 6. 10. Towarnicki does not explain the reason for this, but all references to Fleurquin in his memoirs and in letters are to "Captain Fleurquin." 162 Jean Beaufret to which any of these writers, artists, and intellectuals had been aligned with National Socialism and to report this information through the appropriate channels. 11 Fleurquin was especially interested in existentialism and wanted to stage an international debate at their cultural center. Towarnicki was given the mission of establishing contact with the necessary people: "Captain Fleurquin dreamed of organizing a great philosophical debate on existentialism. According to him this was also the desire of many officers in General Arnaud's press service ... but Sartre was impossible to find in Paris, I did not yet know Beaufret, and nobody knew the exact whereabouts of Heidegger." 12 While doing preliminary legwork for the debate, Towarnicki came across accusations that Heidegger had been a high-ranking Nazi. In the summer of 1945 he was officially ordered by Fleurquin to conduct an investigation into Heidegger's political past but only so as to make a recommendation concerning the debate on existentialism. Towarnicki read the army's dossier, but at that point there was no conclusive proof of participation other than his service as rector at the University ofFreiburg in 1933. At the end of summer 1945, Towarnicki made his first attempt to see Heidegger. It was only partially successful, since Heidegger was not at his home in Freiburg but at his cabin in Todtnauberg. Towarnicki did see Heidegger's wife, told her of the planned debate, and gave her two issues of Confluences. The two issues contained installments of Beaufret's article on existentialism, the first, on Kierkegaard and his relation to Heidegger, and the fifth, which included the discussion of Sartre, Descartes's cogito, and the relationship between Husser! and Heidegger via the concept of intentionality. In September 1945, Lieutenant Fleurquin, Alain Resnais, and Towarnicki went to see Heidegger and this time found him home. Given the precarious position of Heidegger's circumstances, both professional and personal, he was pleased to discover that these representatives of the French army were interested in his philosophical work and not his politics. Heidegger was also eager to discuss the state of philosophy in France. He had been invited by Emile Brehier and Jean Wahl to participate in a conference on Descartes in 1936, but according to Heidegger relations between the two countries broke down soon after and the conference never took place. 13 Based on that invitation and the visit of Henry Corbin that same year, 14 Heidegger knew there was some French interest in his work but he had no idea what had happened in the last decade. Heidegger was especially interested in the work ofJean-Paul Sartre. Beaufret's article 11. Frederic de Towarnicki, A la rencontre de Heidegger (Paris: Arcades Gallimard, 1993), 18-21. 12. Ibid., 20. 13. Ibid., 31-32. According to Brehier, Heidegger never wrote back. 14. Henry Corbin, Henry Carbin: Les Cahiers de l11erne (Paris: Editions de L'Herne, 1981), 17. 163 THE SECOND READING was the first time he had heard mention of this young philosopher/novelist/playwright. Towarnicki attempted to explain Sartre's philosophical program as best he could, but in the end he offered to bring Heidegger some samples of Sartre's work. Heidegger in turn gave Towarnicki a copy of his article on Descartes composed for the conference in 1936. Heidegger hoped it might clarity some of his positions that were presented in an "overly Cartesian fashion" in Beaufret's article. 15 Before they left, Resnais photographed Heidegger with Towarnicki and Fleurquin. Between September and December 1945, Towarnicki spent all his time traveling between Paris and Freiburg in his attempt to organize the conference on existentialism. In this capacity, Towarnicki opened a direct line of communication between Heidegger and the French philosophers who had been using his work. Through this line of communication, Heidegger's own philosophical texts made their way to France, as did his defense of his political choices and actions. After his first visit to Heidegger, Towarnicki returned to Paris in the hope of finding jean-Paul Sartre and enlisting him in the debate on existentialism. Sartre had recently departed for America, so Towarnicki could only leave him a note. Towarnicki went next to the Sorbonne to contact Emile Brehier to see if he still wanted Heidegger to come lecture on Descartes. Brehier was of the opinion that Heidegger had answered his letter eight years too late. He no longer wanted to deal with Heidegger, whose questionable political past was now known among intellectuals in Paris. 16 Brehier was also concerned about the negative effects of the influence of this "typically German philosophy" on the youth of France, especially as presented in Sartre's work. Towarnicki was no closer to organizing the debate than before. He picked up several texts that he felt marked the influence of Heidegger in France and prepared to return to Freiburg. During this second visit, Towarnicki brought Heidegger copies of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, and Raymond Queneau's Obstacle et valeur. 17 On returning to Paris, Towarnicki had given up all hope of finding Sartre, only to run into him on the rue Jacob, not far from the Cafe de Flore. Sartre was excited 10 finally see Towarnicki and, more important, to hear the news about Heidegger. Sartre invited Towarnicki to join him for a drink at the Cafe Deux Magots and began to fire question after question at him. Of the utmost importance to Sartre were two issues: the state ofHeidegger's work now and his account of his activities during the Nazi regime. While 15. Towamicki, Ala rencontrr de Ileidegger, 31-32. 16. Ibid., 36--37. 17. Two of these three texts were written by participants in Kojeve's seminar and we have seen the indirect influence of the seminar on the third. 164 Jean Beaufret Sartre was visiting the United States he heard a number of rumors about Heidegger and National Socialism, among them that he had ordered book burnings and that he had locked Husser! out of the school library. Sartre listened attentively as Towarnicki told him Heidegger's account of the events of the 1930s. Sartre told Towarnicki that he believed Heidegger's shortcoming was that he had not addressed the issue of ethics and that Heidegger's philosophy lacked a concrete moral synthesis of the historical and universal.18 Sartre's analysis was based on his concept of engagement as presented in "Existentialism Is a Humanism." While sitting at the Deux Magots, Sartre proposed that Towarnicki write an article on Heidegger for Les temps modernes in which Towarnicki could present Heidegger's side of the case as Towarnicki understood it. Towarnicki agreed; that decision would become the basis for the first Heidegger Affair in France. The topic of conversation then turned to Heidegger's current work in philosophy. Towarnicki told Sartre that Heidegger was in the process of reading Being and Nothingness; Sartre could not wait to hear Heidegger's comments. Towarnicki promised to report Heidegger's assessment of the work back to Sartre and tried to establish a specific date for the debate on existentialism. Sartre's time was in high demand, so in the end they decided to get together after Towarnicki returned from his next visit to the Black Forest. While Towarnicki was in Paris, Heidegger read Being and Nothingness. He was impressed with Sartre's use of phenomenological description, and in reading Sartre's philosophical opus Heidegger came to understand the association between his philosophical work and French existentialism. To Heidegger, Sartre's emphasis on the human actor and the conservation of the Cartesian ego cogito was a misreading of his work. As a result, he was impatient to meet Sartre and discuss the discrepancies between their philosophical programs. When Towarnicki returned from Paris, Heidegger set out to instruct him about the fundamental differences between his philosophical project and Sartre's existentialism. Heidegger explained to Towarnicki that, unlike Sartre in Being and Nothingness, he in Being and Time had been interested solely in the question of being. "And that question was not an anthropological interrogation of human experience or the foundations for an ethics, but the question into the truth of Being in itself." 19 During this visit, Heidegger also tried to explain what he saw as the problems with the French presentation of Dasein: 18. Towarnicki, A Ia rencontre de Heideggm; 57-59. 19. Ibid., 63. One must be suspicious of the revisionist nature ofHeidegger's presentation of his 1927 project. Both Anson Rabinbach and Tom Rockmore suggest that Heidegger's representation of his philosophy is a calculated attempt to both distance himself from his Nazi past and to reinvent himself for French consumption. See Rabinbach, "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event"; and Tom Rockmore, Heidegger and French Philosophy: Ilumanism, Antihumanism, and Being (New York: Routledge, 1995). 165 THE SECOND READING Heidegger smiled with a perplexed air, then he started to laugh: "You philosophize on the ground like the Greeks." No. Dasein is not the cogito, the world is not inside of consciousness. Dasein does not mean "There I am"; it is more like "there." Heidegger pointed to a grove of magnolias at the edge of the park. He explained to me that Dasein is (Being) in the world. 20 Heidegger's presentation of his philosophy was nothing like the first reading of his work in France; Heidegger's concerns were separate from those of Sartre's existentialism. Towarnicki returned to Paris ready to spread this information. In Paris, Towarnicki had become Sartre's ambassador to Heidegger. At his hotel, he received a letter from Sartre asking him to join Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Cafe de Flore the next morning so they could discuss a trip to Strasbourg and then to Freiburg to meet Heidegger. 21 At their meeting the next day, Towarnicki tried to explain to Sartre what Heidegger had told him, but Sartre was unclear on Heidegger's point and felt that a move of this nature would make it impossible to construct an ethics of engagement. Sartre told Towarnicki that Heidegger needed to look more closely into the works of Marx, and the three set about making travel arrangements so that Sartre could discuss this in person with Heidegger. In the time between Towarnicki's first visit to Heidegger and his meeting with Sartre, an article had appeared in the short-lived journal Terres des hommes. It was accompanied by the picture Resnais had taken of Heidegger, Fleurquin, and Towarnicki. It was through this article thatjean Beaufret learned Heidegger was still alive and could be reached. One day, while Beaufret was at his local cafe, the Coq d'Or, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens, he ran into Towarnicki, whom he recognized from the photo. The fact that Towarnicki was wearing the same military uniform as in the picture surely helped. Towarnicki told Beaufret about his meetings with Heidegger and that he had brought Heidegger Beaufret's article from Confluences. Beaufret did not come into contact with Heidegger directly through Towarnicki. As it turned out, a friend of Beaufret's named Jean-Michel Palmier was serving in the air force and was preparing to leave Paris on a mission to Freiburg. Beaufret ran into Palmier at the Coq d'Or on the day he was to leave and asked Palmier if he could deliver a letter to Heidegger for him. Palmier agreed and Beaufret scribbled a note by hand while sitting at the cafe. 22 Heidegger received this letter from Beaufret and wrote 20. Ibid., 70. 21. This letter is reproduced in its entirety in Towarnicki, A Ia rencontre de /leidegger; 79-80. 22. Palmier gives his account of the reception of Heidegger in France in "Wege und 166 Jean Beaufret back an epistle dated November 23, 1945. In this letter, which Beaufret would attach as an appendix to the published version of"Letter on Humanism," Heidegger began to engage the French reading of his work. Beaufret formulated a number of questions for Heidegger based on this letter and sent it to him. Heidegger's response to these questions was the "Letter on Humanism." 23 Towarnicki was far more interested in facilitating a meeting between Heidegger and Sartre than a meeting between Heidegger and Beaufret. Towarnicki spent most of his time in Paris trying to arrange the necessary paperwork and passes to coordinate the meeting, which he hoped would lead to the debate on existentialism. The paperwork did not go through, the passes were not acquired. Sartre and de Beauvoir were far too busy to waste time waiting for visas that might not come, and the meeting had to be postponed. When Towarnicki returned to Freiburg and told Heidegger that Sartre would not be coming, Heidegger was deeply disappointed. He immediately had Towarnicki help him draft a letter to Sartre. Towarnicki reproduced and kept a copy of this letter. 24 The letter sheds light both on Heidegger's interest in the phenomenological work being done in France and on his own precarious and desperate position in Germany. Heidegger had been forbidden to teach, and his work was impeached by his association with National Socialism. 25 He was a man of great pride and perhaps even greater ego. As a philosopher, he was in desperate need of an audience interested in the philosophy he had to offer. From what he had read ofSartre and Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger believed that the most interesting work in phenomenology was being done in France, but that this work was falling into the same errors as Husserl's phenomenology. The French variant of phenomenology was simply repeating the old strategies of Cartesianism and idealism and thus could not approach the essential problem of being, despite the originality of the philosophers attempting this inquiry. Heidegger saw it as imperative, both personally and professionally, to establish contact Wirken Heideggers in Frankreich," Die Heidegger Kontroverse, ed. Jiirg Altwegg (Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1988). For Palmier's investigations into the relation between politics and philosophy in the work of Heidegger, see Jean-Michel Palmier, Les iicriL5 politi1ues de lleidegger (Paris: L'Herne, 1968); and idem, "Heidegger et le national-socialisme," Cahiers de l'llerne: 1/eidegger, ed. Michel Haar (Paris: Editions de !'Herne, 1983). For his most current views on the subject, see Palmier's postface to Hugo Ott, Martin lleidegger: Eliiments pourunebiographie (Paris: Payot, 1990), 379-413. 23. Interview of Jean Beaufret by Frederic de Towarnicki, published in Towarnicki, A la rencontre de Heidegger, 264. 24. Towarnicki, A la rencontre de I feidegger, 83. 25. For a succinct presentation of the German context ofHeidegger's "Letter on Humanism," see Rabin bach, "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event," 104-18. 167 THE SECOND READING with France and present his work as he intended it so as to commence a truly fruitful and important philosophical dialogue. Heidegger and Sartre did not meet until1952, by which time they had both altered their projects and changed course considerably: Sartre had moved toward the political in his investigation of Marx, and Heidegger had turned toward poetry in his investigation of language and the critique of technology. By contrast with the fall of 1945, when they held similar but diverging theories about the investigation of being, in 1952 they had very little to talk about. By mid-December 1945, Lieutenant Fleurquin had been reassigned and the cultural center was being dismantled. The great debate on existentialism was never to occur, at least not in Rhote-Lache. Towarnicki paid one last official visit to Heidegger and then prepared to return to Paris permanently. In Paris, Towarnicki discovered that he was considered an authority on Heidegger. At a conference at the Hotel Port Royal, he was interrogated by Jean Wahl and Emmanuel Levinas, who wanted to hear Heidegger's story but were also eager to know the state of Heidegger's philosophical work since Being and Time. Levinas's reflection on Towarnicki is most perceptive, as it captures the tone of Towarnicki's writing and stalwart defense of Heidegger: "You arrived in Freiburg in uniform, a courageous young man, and you were spellbound. And with good reason: you had seen the pyramids." 26 Levinas's comment attests to the charismatic power of Heidegger and the seductive capacity of his ideas. As we will see, Towarnicki was not the only one to be "spellbound" by Heidegger. 27 On January 1, 1946, Towarnicki's article on Heidegger appeared in Les temps modernes and with it the first Heidegger Affair officially began. The Heidegger Affair The first Heidegger Affair began as a result of Sartre's popularity, which led to a series of attacks on existentialism from both the left and the center right. 28 The attacks on the left came from the Communist Party (the PC), who saw the popularity of existentialism as a direct threat to the party itself, especially in the seductive power it had on French youth. According to figures such as Henri Lefebvre, existentialism, with its 26. Ibid., 117. 27. Although not addressed in this work, the case of Hannah Arendt comes immediately to mind. See Richard Wolin, lleidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 28. See Annie Cohen-Sola!, Sartre, 1905-1980 (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 426--27. In the aftermath of Vichy, the extreme right had been discredited and temporarily silenced. See Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 168 Jean Beaufret emphasis on radical individualism, was just an extension of bourgeois capitalist values. 29 The attacks from the center right came largely from the Church, which felt that existentialism was an atheist doctrine corrupting the moral fiber of France. Other center right attacks came from conservative educators who felt that existentialism was "overly German" and thus a threat to traditional French philosophy. A common thread in all these attacks was the strategy to discredit existentialism by exploiting Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism. Thus the initial presentation of Heidegger's political activities in the French press and in various journals was not in the service of establishing the extent of Heidegger's culpability. The French reading public was confronted with Heidegger's National Socialist past in the form of attacks on existentialism, and the existentialists had to seek a defensive strategy to defend their philosophical, as well as political, positions. In certain academic circles, the "news" of Heidegger's relationship to National Socialism was not news at all. Alexandre Koyre visited Freiburg in 1934 and returned to tell Levinas and Kojeve that Heidegger had joined the Nazi Party and was serving as rector of the University of Freiburg. 30 Henry Corbin had visited Heidegger in 1936 to discuss his translations and thus must have known something about Heidegger's politics. Furthermore, if Sartre had had any interest in the political happenings in Germany while he was studying phenomenology in Berlin in 1933, he too could have found out. But the French attitudes toward National Socialism were different before the war. In 1936, Emile Brehier saw no problem with inviting Heidegger, by then a member of the Nazi Party for three years, to lecture at the Sorbonne. In 1945 this was absolutely unacceptable, Guilt about their lack of political activity in the 1930s, followed by defeat, led to a heightened sensitivity among French intellectuals regarding their role in World War II. Furthermore, attacks on German intellectuals such as Heidegger diverted attention away from the activities of the French during the war. To this end, the case of Heidegger was strategically perfect because it allowed for an attack on a rival French philosophyI political system through an attack on a German (read National Socialist) philosopher. The German was guilty; the other French philosophers were simply wrong. 29. Henri Lefebvre's critique of Sartre was placed within his chapter on Heidegger in L'existentialisme (Paris: Le Saggitaire, 1946). Henri Lefebvre, was ultimately expelled from the French Communist Party. Other attacks came from communists such as jean Kanapa in his L'existentialisme n 'est pas un humanisme (Paris: Editions sociales, 1947) and Armand Cuvillier in Les infiltrations germaniques dans la pensee frant;aise (Paris: Editions Universe lies, 1945). 30. Emmanuel Levinas, "Comme un consentment a !'horrible," [,e nouvel obsemateur, January 22-28, 1988. 169 THE SECONO READING Sartre found himself under attack and began to craft a defense, but in doing so he actually precipitated the Heidegger Affair. 31 In his defense of existentialism, "Existentialisme: Mise au point," for the review Action, Sartre attempted to distinguish between Heidegger the man and Heidegger the philosopher: Heidegger was a philosopher well before becoming a Nazi. His adherence to Hitlerism, caused by fear, perhaps opportunism, and surely conformism, is not pretty, I must agree. But is this sufficient to confirm the reasoning that "since Heidegger is a member of the National Socialist Party then his philosophy must be a Nazi philosophy?" This is not the case. Heidegger has no character and that is the simple tmth. Would one dare say that his philosophy is an apology for cowardice? Don't you know what happens to men who cannot live up to the level of their work? 32 In this article, written before Sartre had any contact with Heidegger the man, Sartre attempted to distance himself from Heidegger while at the same time keeping what is important in Heidegger's philosophy as Sartre understands it. 33 Sartre's strategy elicited responses that sought to defend Heidegger as "naive," as well as further attacks from the communists and the center right. In a certain sense, the Heidegger Affair had already begun, although only in the margins of a larger attack on existentialism. Thus part of the complexity of the Heidegger Affair is that it began as a component of a larger debate about existentialism but with much greater stakes. These attacks also led Sartre to assign Towarnicki and another French philosopher, Maurice de Gandillac, to write articles on Heidegger for Les temps modernes. These articles would "present the facts" as each author saw them and let the "reader decide for himself." Over the course of the next two years this first Heidegger Affair ran its course. The first articles by Towarnicki and Gandillac appeared on January 1, 1946. These were followed by an article in November 1946 that Karl Lowith, a German Jew and former student of Heidegger, had written while in exile in 1939 but had updated to respond to the articles by Towarnicki and Gandillac. Two more articles appeared inJuly 1947, both in response to Lowith's article, one by Eric Weil and the other by Alphonse de Waehlens. The debate concluded with an exchange of letters between Lowith and Waehlens in which each reiterated their points but neither yielded any ground. 31. For an account of the backlash against Sartre, see John Gerassi, jean-Paul Sartre: llated Consci£nce of !lis Century: Protestant or Protester? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 32. Sartre, "A propos de l'existentialisme: Mise au point," Action, December 29, 1944. 33. This foreshadows what will be developed as the "contingency theory" in the Heidegger debates, where either Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism is dismissed as an aberration or, as in the case of this article, his political activities are dismissed as inconsequential to his philosophy. 170 Jean Beaufret But to understand the nature of this first debate and its subsequent permutations, one must remember it took place before the publication of the "Letter on Humanism" and thus must be seen entirely in the light of the first reading of Heidegger in France. At stake is Heidegger's credibility as an existentialist thinker whose primary focus is ontology, but ontology as the investigation into human being with all the humanistic trappings that accompany this reading. The result is that the defense of Heidegger's philosophy in this first Heidegger Mfair is based on the subjectivist understanding of his philosophy that characterizes the first reading of Heidegger in France. The irony is that these defense strategies remain virtually unchanged to this day. The first Heidegger Affair can be divided into two components. The first is a "presentation of the facts" based entirely on the allegations against Heidegger in the Allied dossier and Heidegger's own version of the facts as told to Towarnicki and Gandillac. The second component focuses on the extent to which Heidegger's philosophy is National Socialist. In this first debate, the two components are related but this relation is not necessary, since it is possible (though not necessarily satisfactory) to reach a conclusion about one component without recourse to the other. The first articles by Gandillac and Towarnicki deal entirely with the first component, but their "presentation of the facts" as related to them by Heidegger lead to a conclusion on the second. A more complex strategy is demonstrated in a preface to the two articles by Towarnicki and Gandillac that was written by the editor of Les temps modernes, either Merleau-Ponty or, more likely, Sartre. In this preface, the editor introduces the two pieces on Heidegger as two distinct accounts: one written by a Heidegger enthusiast (Towarnicki) and the other by a "visitor with some reservations" (Gandillac). With implied objectivity as the mediator between these two positions, both substantially similar, the editor makes a plea for the careful study of Heidegger's philosophy in relation to his political actions. Mirroring the position Sartre took in his article for Action, the editor presents a comparison between Hegel and Heidegger in order to illustrate his point. The analogy between Hegel and Heidegger suggests that, as in the case of Hegel (and here the author claims that Hegel's later philosophy was related to his support of the Pmssian state), Heidegger "the philosopher showed his infidelity to his best philosophy when it came to his political decisions." 34 Furthermore, the editor concludes that on careful consideration of the "essentials of Hegelianism," the dialectic, one discovers that despite Hegel's later turn, the essentials of his philosophy are 34. Preface to "Deux documents sur Heidegger," Les temps modernes, no. 4 (January I, 1946): 713. 111 THE SECOND READING "above suspicion." The reader is to draw the conclusion that the same holds true for the work of Heidegger. The preface defuses the issue as to the actual relation of Heidegger to National Socialism by removing it from the equation. The point is conceded, and thus the extent of Heidegger's involvement is removed from investigation. This concession allows the editor to avoid the issue of Heidegger the man and to concentrate on Heidegger's philosophy. But here too a concession is made in the allusion to Hegel. The argument claims that a philosopher's betrayal of his own thought does not prove that that thought is discredited. Thus Heidegger's turn to National Socialism does not mean that the essence of his thought is invalid. In Les temps modernes, the editor presents an argument that allows him to distance himself from the Heidegger of National Socialism while retaining the essential component of Heidegger's philosophy, the pre-Nazi Being and Time. 35 The articles by Gandillac and Towarnicki are far less concerned with the implications of National Socialism on Heidegger's philosophy than they are with establishing the "facts" about his activities in the 1930s and 1940s. In an attempt to clarifY the situation, these articles ask Heidegger to respond to the general accusations against him. These accusations are based on Heidegger's position as rector at Freiburg, reports from the dossier collected by military intelligence, the rumors and innuendo presented in the French press in the attacks on existentialism, and the testimony of emigres and survivors. 36 At the time these articles were written, very little had been concretely established, there was no paper trail, and the French army was still soliciting testimony from Heidegger's colleagues. The official position of the French army in its evaluation of Heidegger's wartime activities would not be established until December 1947. Thus the first Heidegger Mfair is a case of sweeping accusations 35. It is interesting to note that this argument is the opposite of that presented in the 1960s and 1980s using the "Letter on Humanism." In these later strategies, Heidegger's defenders distance themselves from the Heidegger of National Socialism on the grounds that the problem lies with everything written bejCffe Heidegger's turn away from metaphysics in the "Letter on Humanism." They thus conserve what they consider to be the essential component in Heidegger's thought. In Of SfJirit: lleidegger and the Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), itself a critical reading of Heidegger's work and his relation to the metaphysical tradition, Jacques Derrida manages to take this strategy one step further. Using his inquiry into the term "spirit" [(;t'ist], he brackets a phase in Heidegger's work that corresponds to his association with National Socialism and thus opens the possibility of salvaging Heidegger's early and later work. One must note that Derrida puts Heidegger's entire project into question as well. For a discussion of these strategies in relation to the "Letter on Humanism," see Rockmore, lleidegger and French Philosophy, 157-58. 36. The issue is clouded by the fact that Heidegger was able to deny certain rumors that were untrue and thus falsely appeared to be denying his association with National Socialism generally. 172 Jean Beaufret and strategic denials, which in the end required a certain amount of "good faith" granted the testimony of one side or the other. For both Towarnicki and Gandillac, that "good faith" seems to have been placed in Heidegger. Maurice de Gandillac was the first French philosopher to establish contact with Heidegger after the war. He had attended the 1928 conference in Davos for the Cassirer-Heidegger debate and had learned about Heidegger from Emmanuel Levin as. 37 His article is certainly less supportive of Heidegger and significantly less enthusiastic than Towarnicki's, but it still paints a flattering picture of Heidegger. This picture is based largely on Gandillac's recollections of Heidegger at Davos, who "at that time did not hesitate to shake the hand of Cassirer, who was Jewish, after their long discussions on Kant." 38 Thus we come to Gandillac's narrative with a certain amount of sympathy for Heidegger. Gandillac presents two reasons for Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism. The first is Heidegger's own conclusion and the second is deduced from Heidegger's testimony. Heidegger claimed that "Hitlerism was, in a sense, the historical explosion of a structural malady that afflicts all mankind." 39 This is a succinct formulation of the argument Heidegger had been developing as early as 1936 in his lectures on Nietzsche and which is also a prevalent theme in his Introduction to Metaphysics ( 1935). This argument sees National Socialism in its historic manifestation as the logical conclusion of technology run amok. In this sense, National Socialism is the monstrous fruition of the Western metaphysical tradition. Gandillac points out that in making this argument, Heidegger in no way implicates himself or the German people in National Socialism. Gandillac then deduces the second argument for Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism from Heidegger's testimony. Gandillac's conclusion is that Heidegger was "seduced like a child by the most external aspects of the enthusiasm for Hitler." 40 Gandillac does not consider the problematic nature of one of Europe's foremost philosophers being "seduced like a child" by the "most external trappings" of National Socialism. The language shows Gandillac's desire to keep Heidegger's philosophy separate from his politics. Gandillac presents Heidegger as beguiled by the most peripheral 37. See chap. 1. 38. "Deux documents sur Heidegger," 714. Both Toni Cassirer and Hendrik Pos contest this report and claim that Heidegger in fact snubbed Cassirer by refusing to shake his hand. See Toni Cassirer Mein Leben mit n'rnst Cassirer (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981); and Hendrik Pos, "Recollections of Ernst Cassirer," in The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York: Tudor, 1949). 39. Ibid., 715. 40. Ibid., 716. 173 THE SECOND READING aspects of National Socialism, implying that he had never considered the phenomenon seriously. On the one hand, this frees Gandillac to maintain that Heidegger's philosophy is separate from National Socialism, but, on the other, it avoids the most essential question: What in National Socialism was so attractive to Heidegger and how does this manifest itself in his philosophy? I would argue that Gandillac could not approach this question because his understanding of Heidegger's philosophy-as fundamentally concerned with the human subject, freedom, and responsibility-led him to the conclusion that Heidegger's work was incompatible with the program of National Socialism. As an example of the first reading of Heidegger in France, Gandillac's assessment of Heidegger was necessarily limited. Towarnicki's article is a more strident defense ofHeidegger and represents the model that defenders of Heidegger would continue to employ through the subsequent Heidegger Affairs. This strategy is based on the faithful reproduction of Heidegger's own testimony regarding the series of events that befell him and how he reacted to them. Towarnicki's article is quite similar to Heidegger's interview in Der Spiegel (published posthumously in 1976) and also to the short piece "Facts and Thoughts." Towarnicki's article relies entirely on the "good faith" he has in the integrity of Heidegger's testimony and his uncritical acceptance of it. 41 Towarnicki's article is presented more or less as an interview based on the numerous visits he made to Heidegger between September and December 1945, which allows Heidegger to tell his side of the story. In Heidegger's account, he took the rectorship in Freiburg only at the specific request of the former rector, von Mollendorf, who hoped that "my personality as a professor would help to preserve the faculty from political slavery." 42 Even so, Heidegger claims that he only took the rectorship after much deliberation. Soon after he took the post, Heidegger continues, "A 41. In fact it is the "bad faith" that Heidegger showed in his equivocations, denials, and misrepresentations of events that led to the escalation in the intensity of the accusations and denials in the debates of the 1960s and 1980s. As more and more evidence relating to the extent of Heidq~gr's involvement became available, his testimony was shown to be faulty at best, and ma11y of the intellectuals who had believed Heidegger in the 1940s found that they had been duped. The embarrassing nature of this position caused some to reevaluate but others to dig deeper and search for alternative strategies to defend the position in which they had invested their time and energy. In a domino effect, this led others to heighten their attacks, drawing on the increasing amount of evidence against Heidegger, and so on. 42. These are Heidegger's actual words to Towarnicki, published in "Deux documents sur Heidegger," 717. Based on the investigation into Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism, presented in the work of Hugo Ott and others, HP-idegger's assertion cannot be considered truthful. 174 Jean Beaufret party official arrived at my office at the university; he insisted in the name of the minister that I enlist in the Nazi Party.... After a long deliberation I decided that I was ready to accept that formality in the interest of the university, but only on the condition that I would not, during my time as rector nor after, have to have personal relations with the National Socialist Party." 43 Heidegger attempted to separate his position from that of National Socialism by stating his opposition to biologism, especially the theories of Alfred Baumler and Alfred Rosenberg. How opposed to Nazi racial theory Heidegger actually was is open to debate. For us the essential point is that in Towarnicki's article Heidegger's claim is used to decode his rectorial address as well as his activities in the party, and to judge them fundamentally opposed to National Socialism. Heidegger presented himself as a reluctant Nazi who joined the party only to work against it in the interest of the university and through his opposition to racial ideologues such as Baumler and Rosenberg. 44 Furthermore, he implied that this opposition to biologism was also an opposition to the Nazi Party's antiSemitic policies. 45 Even if this were true, it would only be insofar as those policies were framed in biological terms. Finally, Heidegger claimed that he broke with National Socialism after the Rohm putsch of 1934, when he "realized what the Nazis were," but that he was unable to resign from the party because it could not be done without dire repercussions. Heidegger then cites a litany of attacks leveled against him by various Nazi officials as proof of his own anti-Nazi conduct. Heidegger mixes equivocations with outright lies. He presents us with statements (some true) that lead to faulty conclusions, such as that his antibiologism constituted anti-Nazism, or that attacks by other Nazis absolved him of being a Nazi himself. The effect of Towarnicki's article, at a time when very few facts were known and when Heidegger's thought was associated with such thinkers as Sartre, Aron, and Merleau-Ponty, was to render Heidegger's claims plausible. If in fact Heidegger had been asked to take the position as rector by his colleagues and was forced to join the party as a result, then it would make sense that his philosophy would not reflect any of the values of National Socialism. His purported opposition to biological racism and the attacks on his character and philosophy by other members of the Nazi Party seemed to corroborate his account. If one believed Heidegger's story as told to Towarnicki, then one believed that Heidegger was never really a Nazi but joined only because of the circumstances; therefore his philosophy is absolved of any 43. Ibid., 718. 44. See Rabin bach, "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event," 105-6. 45. "Deux documents sur Heidegger," 719. 175 THE SECOND READING contamination. This argument, of course, hinges on readers taking Heidegger at his word, as Towarnicki does. Heidegger's story was called into question in a response to Gandillac's and Towarnicki's articles written by Karl Lowith and published in the November 1946 issue of Les temps modernes. Lowith had been a pupil of Heidegger's but had been forced to leave Germany because he was a jew. He fled to Rome and then spent four years in Japan before taking up residence in the United States. The piece Lowith submitted to Les temps moderneswas written in 1939 in japan and then reworked to address the articles by Gandillac and Towarnicki. Lowith's article did not focus on Heidegger's activities in association with the Nazi Party (this it assumes), but on Heidegger's philosophy itself and the extent to which it is inherently National Socialist. Thus Lowith's article represents the second component of the Heidegger Affair. Lowith was convinced that Heidegger's turn to National Socialism was "the immediate political implication of the Heideggerian notion of Existence."46 Lowith's argument is based on a comment Heidegger made to him during their meeting in Rome in 1936. Lowith was living in Rome at the time, having fled Germany with his wife after losing his post in Marburg in 1933. Heidegger had come to Rome with his wife and two children to deliver a lecture on Holderlin. Since Lowith and Heidegger had been close in Freiburg, Lowith and his wife planned an excursion to Frascati and Tusculum for Heidegger and his family. The day started off on a disturbing note, as Lowith recalls, because "even on this occasion, Heidegger did not remove the party insignia from his lapel. He wore it during his entire stay in Rome, and it had obviously not occurred to him that the swastika was out of place while he was spending the day with me." 47 This not so subtle reminder of Heidegger's political allegiance prompted Lowith to ask Heidegger several questions about the situation in Germany. In the course of their conversation, Lowith told Heidegger that he believed that "his [Heidegger's] partisanship for National Socialism lay in the essence of his philosophy." Heidegger's response to this question forms the basis of Lowith's article and of his understanding of the links between Heidegger's philosophy and his political allegiance to National Socialism. "Heidegger agreed with me without reservation, and 46. Karl Lowith, "Les implications politiques de Ia philosophie de l'existence chez Heidegger," Les temps rnodernes, no. 14 (November 1946): 343. Lowith's thesis corresponds to what Tom Rockmore has labeled the "neccesitarian" argument, which concludes that Heidegger's political action is a direct result of his philosophy. In opposition to this stands the "contingent" reading, where Heidegger's National Socialist episode is seen as an aberration and thus is not directly related to his philosophy. 47. Karl Lowith, My Last Meeting with Heidegger in Rome, 1936, in The Ileidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 141. 176 Jean Beaufret added that his concept of 'historicality' [ Geschichtlichkeit] was the basis of his political 'engagement."' 48 The piece on Lowith's last meeting with Heidegger and the article that appeared in Les temps modernes were written at the same time and can be seen as reflections on the same questions. Lowith's article showed that, contrary to the article presented by Gandillac (which separated Heidegger's philosophy from his political actions), Heidegger's philosophy, specifically the project of Being and Time--is "a theory of historical existence" and that the practical application of this project to an actual historical situation is only possible insofar as Being and Time already contains a relation to contemporary reality. It is this practical-political application in terms of an actual commitment to a determinate decision that in truth justifies or condemns the philosophical theory that serves as the basis of this commitment. What is true or false in theory is also so in practice, above all when the theory itself originates in conscious fashion from a supreme fact, historical existence, and when its path leads it back to this. 19 Lowith's strategy was to use an analysis of Heidegger's political texts to show that his philosophy led directly to his affiliation with National Socialism. To make this correlation, Lowith quotes paragraph 74 of Being and Time: "Only a being which is essentially ... futural so that it is free for its death and can let itself be thrown back upon its factical 'there' by shattering itself against death, is able to take over its own thrownness and be in the moment of vision 'for its time."' 50 Lowith contends that Heidegger's language in Being and Time and the language of National Socialism are very close, and that it did not take much prodding for Heidegger to shift the focus of his project from the investigation of individual being to a more collective understanding of being that wants to "take over its own thrownness" by subscribing to National Socialism, which was "the moment of vision for its time." Whoever, on the basis of these remarks, reflects on Heidegger's later support in favor of Hitler, will find in this first formulation of the idea of historical "existence" the constituents that are the basis of his later political decision. One need only abandon the still quasi-religious isolation of authentic existence, "always particular to each individual" and apply the "duty" [Miisen] that follows therefrom to "specifically 48. Ibid., 142. 49. Karl Lowith, "Les implications politiques de Ia philosophie de !'existence chez Heidegger," Les ternps rnodernes, no. 14 (November 1946): 344. 50. Ibid., 344-45. I have translated the passage as Lowith presents it and not as it appears in Being and Tirne. 177 THE SECOND READING German existence" and its historical destiny in order thereby to introduce into the general movement of German existence the wave of energetic but ultimately vain categories of existence ("to decide for oneself'; "to found oneself in the face of nothing"; "to want one's ownmost destiny"; "to take responsibility for oneself') and to proceed from here to destruction on the terrain ofpolitics. 51 According to Lowith, the pieces were all in place for Heidegger's political decision; all that was needed was the shift in emphasis from the individual to the collective. The nature of this shift is perhaps not sufficiently explored by Lowith, but it allows him to draw a causal link between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics. But the shift in emphasis in Heidegger's philosophy that Lowith alluded to was unknown in France, and the understanding of Heidegger's work was profoundly different in the two countries. The philosophy of Heidegger understood by Gandillac and Towarnicki read Heidegger's paragraph 74 in terms of Raymond Aron's Introduction to the Philosophy of History, not in terms of radical conservatism. There is a passage in Lowith's article that is especially interesting when read in the light of the different understandings of Heidegger in Germany and France: "It is probable that none of Heidegger's students would have imagined in 1927, at the time of the appearance of Being and Time, that the concept of death ('always authentic and particular,' radically individual) which is a central category in the analysis of Dasein, would be travestied six years later to celebrate the glory of a National Socialist 'Hero."' 52 Lowith's reference is to Heidegger's speech on Albert Leo Schlageter,53 where Heidegger uses the language from his analysis of death in Being and Time to praise the resolute action of Schlageter when confronting his own death. Lowith employs this quotation to demonstrate the shift in Heidegger's work from the emphasis on the "particular and individual" to a general (read German) Dasein. But references to Schlageter and to Heidegger's political texts were lost on the French audience. 54 In this light, Lowith's comment that none of Heidegger's pupils would have imagined, based on his work in 1927, what was to come in 1933 51. Ibid., 348. 52. Ibid., 354. 53. Schlageter was a veteran of World War I and a member of a radical nationalist volunteer corps, which was attacking French and Belgian Occupation troops in the Rhineland. He was caught attempting to sabotage train tracks, tried, and sentenced to death in 1923. In 1933, Schlageter was declared the first National Socialist German soldier and became a symbol of National Socialism. See Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 87-95. 54. The first French work that examined Heidegger's political writings was Palmier's 1::criL1· politiqnes de 1/eidegger ( 1968). 178 Jean Beaufret is especially instructive. The French reading of Heidegger was based entirely on Being and Time and the texts that Henry Corbin had translated, and this reading was coded by what we have called the first reading of Heidegger in France. When we consider the lack of concrete evidence about Heidegger's activities in the 1930s and 1940s, not to mention an ignorance of Heidegger's current work, the parameters of the first Heidegger Affair begin to become clear. Lowith was arguing about the philosophy and politics of the Heidegger of 1936. The French were arguing about the philosophy of Heidegger in 1927, as understood in France through the lens of existentialism, and the politics of Heidegger based on Heidegger's testimony in 1947. Lowith's position as an outsider to French philosophical concerns was exacerbated by the particular French understanding of Heidegger's philosophy, which saw it as antithetical to National Socialism. In July 1947, two articles appeared in Les temps modernes in response to Lowith's piece. Both attempted to defend Heidegger's philosophy against Lowith's claim that it was inherently National Socialist; both demonstrated variations on the contingency argument. But what is specific to these two articles, as opposed to later variations of the contingency argument, is that in both cases the defense of Heidegger is more a defense of existentialism. For Waehlens and for Weil, as for Towarnicki and Gandillac, the defense of Heidegger is based on their particular understanding of his philosophy, but in these two articles the terms of the debate have shifted in response to Lowith's claim that Heidegger's philosophy was the basis for his political decisions. Alphonse de Waehlens, the author of the first response, was Belgian, but as a scholar of phenomenology and the author of a book on MerleauPonty he was much closer to the French reading of phenomenology than to the phenomenology of Husserl. His understanding of Heidegger is also heavily indebted to the work of Merleau-Ponty. Waehlens's argument has two parts. The first argument will be repeated throughout all the Heidegger debates. Waehlens contends that Heidegger as an individual actor is of no importance and that the only factor that should count is whether Heidegger's philosophy is tainted by National Socialism: "It is only important for us to know if Heidegger's philosophy is intrinsically National Socialist or if it was simply led to National Socialism by the abstract facts of the personal reactions (good or bad; just or unjust; coherent or incoherent; heroic, cowardly, or criminal) of a private person." 55 This opening statement relieves the author of the burden of determining Heidegger's guilt or innocence in relation to his political 55. Alphonse de Waehlens, "La philosophie de Heidegger et le Nazisme," Les temps modernes, no. 22 (July 1947): 115. 179 THE SECOND READING choices. For Waehlens, the entire burden of proof lies in demonstrating that Heidegger's philosophy is not National Socialist; only it matters. Over the next forty years, this strategy would take on greater significance as more and more information about the extent of Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism was revealed. But more pertinent is the means by which Waehlens sought to prove that Heidegger's philosophy was not National Socialist. Through his argument, Waehlens articulates the French understanding of Heidegger's philosophy in France as manifested in the first reading. Waehlens's basic claim is that Heidegger's "existential phenomenology"-a term Heidegger never used to describe his own work-is fundamentally opposed to fascism and antithetical to National Socialism. Therefore, Waehlens concludes the fault does not lie with Heidegger the philosopher but with Heidegger the man, who betrayed his philosophy. 56 Waehlens's argument privileges a reading of Heidegger as an existentialist in the French sense of the term and presents Heidegger as a fellow combatant against what the "French existentialists call the 'serious spirit' (pessimism)" as well as an opponent of "heroism and the will to power." In this light, "the lucidity of Heidegger condemns the 'seriousness' of the fascist masses and is equally severe in its condemnation of the will to power and 'activist' nihilism of their leaders."57 Waehlens's reading focuses on drawing the themes of individuality, responsibility, and freedom out of Being and Time, and specifically out of the section on historicality (paragraph 74). These themes were all central to the works of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Aron, and Waehlens uses them to present an existentialist interpretation of Being and Time that is fundamentally incompatible with fascism and by extension National Socialism. Waehlens's defense of Heidegger never departs from the French parameters in which it was set. He demonstrates the incompatibility of Heidegger's philosophy with fascism by means of Raymond Aron's definition of fascism and a discussion of Heidegger's historicality that relies heavily on Aron's Introduction to the Philosophy of History. The article ends with a blanket refutation of Lowith's piece based on a dismissal of Lowith's reading of Being and Time. This tactic is ultimately counterproductive. But to dismiss Waehlens's reading of Being and Time would also be counterproductive. Neither reading is wrong, but both are skewed. Lowith expands a specific connection, which is in need of 56. Ibid., 119. Attached to this claim is a more petty argument that any conclusion that leads to the connection between Heidegger's philosophy and National Socialism must be based on a misreading of Heidegger's work. Again this argument would be taken up by defenders of Heidegger in later debates, but it is particularly ironic in this case, given the misinformed nature of the first reading of Heidegger in France. 57. Ibid., 122. 180 Jean Beaufret detailed exploration, into a wholesale dismissal read backward into Being and Time. Waehlens's understanding of Heidegger relies on the first reading of Heidegger as an existentialist whose emphasis is the human subject, individualism, freedom, and responsibility. All these themes are present in Being and Time but none are the specific focus of the book. The unfortunate consequence of these two positions is that each interpretation structurally cut off the possibility of dialogue with the other. The final article in the first Heidegger Affair was written by Eric Weil. Weil, who was Jewish and originally from Germany, had been a student of Ernst Cassirer's but emigrated to Paris where he became an active participant in Kojeve's seminar. Weil's understanding of Heidegger was based on his work in France and not on his work in Germany. Weil's argument added a new twist to the contingency argument by condemning and defending Heidegger at the same time. The tone ofWeil's article is betrayal: Heidegger had somehow betrayed his own thought and thus betrayed those who had followed his thought. A more plausible scenario is that Heidegger's political activities betrayed Weil's (and the French) conception of Heidegger's thought. It is clear from the beginning ofWeil's article, "The Heidegger Case," that Weil has already passed sentence on Heidegger the man. He dismissed Heidegger's claim that he opposed the Nazis because he opposed biologism on the grounds that this does not make Heidegger antiNazism but simply antibiologism. Weil attacked Towarnicki's defense of Heidegger (a case of one variant of the Heidegger defense attacking another), contending that Towarnicki let Heidegger off the hook and did not force him to take responsibility for his actions. It would have been an excellent defense if he had stated that he (Hei- degger), the philosopher of decision, had decided in complete responsibility on that which he took to be destiny. And if after, he had come to understand that that destiny was nothing but a bloody farce, a betrayal of all authenticity, a contemptible subterfuge of the will to primitive power, and by the same token a negation of all "being-itself' [etre soi-meme]. 58 This critique is written in Heideggerian language but is imbued with Sartrean meaning. There is a normative sense to all the terms Weil uses that is very distant from the way Heidegger employs them but very close to Sartre's project in its ethical dimension. Despite Weil's Sartrean criticisms of Heidegger's lack of responsibility, Weil does not agree with Lowith that one can "deduce the German 'truth' from Being and Time." Instead, Weil asserts that "the existentialism of Heidegger (we will avoid the question as to the measure in which 58. Eric Wei!, "Le cas Heidegger," Les temps modernes, no. 22 (July 1947): 131-32. 181 THE SECOND READING this applies to all existentialism) is a philosophy of reflection which like all philosophies of reflection deals with the individual as it relates to Being." 59 Weil argued that as a philosopher of reflection whose concern was the relation of the individual to being, Heidegger was necessarily concerned with the individual and thus could not be a philosopher of the collective. This argument assumes that Heidegger is a philosopher of reflection like Husserl and Sartre. Again we see that in the French reading, Heidegger is assumed to be following Husserl's model of intentionality with its intellectual emphasis on reflection and thought. This was not the case. Heidegger is not a philosopher of reflection. Weil's argument is based on the alliance he establishes between Heidegger "the existentialist" and other existentialists such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Furthermore, Weil reads Heidegger's project as fundamentally compatible with these other "antifascist" existentialisms, which in France were associated with left-wing politics, thus concluding that Heidegger's philosophy was also antifascist. This conclusion is reached by examining Heidegger's philosophy understood through Sartrean definitions. Weil found Heidegger's fault not in his philosophy per se but in the fact that Heidegger does not go far enough in establishing a specific decision based on his philosophy. Here Sartre's philosophy is the model for worldly decision making based on philosophy. While Heidegger's investigation posed the question of being "with a vigor that philosophy has only at crncial times in history," his question did not lead him to any specific answer. For Weil, this fault would not have mattered if "the author had been an individual of political conviction. But this is inadmissible as he has shown us only the most revolting and grotesque attitudes which would prevent anyone from taking his philosophy seriously." 60 In other words, if Heidegger had been a man of "political conviction" in Weil's sense of the term, he would have reached a political decision worthy of his philosophy. But because his philosophy lacks the crncial component that would provide a specific political or historical decision and not just a decision about one's own being, his weak character led him into the fold of National Socialism. "The fault in Heidegger's existentialism is that if one asks his philosophy to lead one to a specific historical or political decision, it cannot, precisely because it is only concerned with thedecision." 61 For Weil it is inconceivable that Heidegger was a man of "political conviction" and that the decision he made could be the logical outcome of his philosophical work, as Lowith contended. Weil simply could not 59. Ibid., 133-34. 60. Ibid., 137. 61. Ibid., 135. 182 Jean Beaufret reconcile his understanding of Heidegger's philosophy with Heidegger's political acts. Indeed, ifWeil was looking for an existential philosophy of decision, the work of Sartre would have suited him much better, but, as we have seen, Weil, like many of his contemporaries, saw Sartre and Heidegger as fundamentally compatible. The final phase of the first Heidegger Affair was an exchange of letters between Lowith and Waehlens in August 1948, which centered on the second aspect of the affair, whether Heidegger's philosophy was inherently National Socialist. The positions were reiterated, but Lowith and Waehlens continued to argue past each other based on their different interpretations of the philosophy of Heidegger. The two sides made no ground in understanding Heidegger's relation to National Socialism, but that is because the debate centered on the question of whether Heidegger's philosophy is or is not National Socialist. With such narrow parameters there are only two sides to be taken: one is either for Heidegger or against him. This issue was further exacerbated by the impressionistic nature of the first aspect of the affair, which dealt exclusively with Heidegger the individual and his affiliation with National Socialism. At the time, there was no established truth about Heidegger's activities. As a result, the articles by Towarnicki, Gandillac, and Lowith all relied heavily on their own impressions of their meetings with Heidegger and their faith in his testimony, given their own understanding of what had occurred. 62 The deciding factor was whom you chose to believe, and this would lead one to a decision on the second component. For our purposes, the essential issue in this first debate is the emphasis that the French (I include Weiland Waehlens) placed on their understanding of Heidegger as an existential thinker, in the same way that Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Gabriel Marcel were considered existential thinkers. This implied a certain allegiance to humanism, individuality, freedom, and responsibility that owed more to the legacy of the Enlightenment project than to the work of Heidegger. In the "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger refuted the claim that he was an existentialist, which clouded the issue even further and created a divide between Heidegger and the strategy used to defend him in this first affair. What is surprising, given the way that the understanding of Heidegger would change in France over the next decade, is that the strategies adopted in the first Heidegger Affair, both for and against Heidegger, remained virtually the same in the following two affairs. 62. Traditionally, the articles from Les temps modernes have been viewed in the light of the historical evidence we now have of Heidegger's National Socialism, which often leads to anachronistic conclusions. What is lacking in the voluminous publications on the Heidegger Affair is a historiographical investigation that focuses on the release of that information and the immediate effects it had on both sides of the issue. 183 THE SECOND READING The "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger wrote the "Letter on Humanism" to Jean Beaufret in fall 1946 but it was not published in France until 1947. 63 By the time it was published, the battle lines for the first Heidegger Mfair had been drawn; but the "Letter on Humanism" led to a further development because it created a schism between the first reading of Heidegger in France popularized by the generation of 1933 and the second reading, based on the direct influence ofHeidegger through jean Beaufret, which was adopted by the younger postwar generation of intellectuals. The domesticated version of Heidegger's work had caught the interest of these younger intellectuals and led them to Heidegger himself and to a reading that was antithetical to the humanist existentialism with which Heidegger had been previously associated. In his letter to Beaufret, Heidegger destroys the entire interpretation of his work as it had come to be read in France. The cherished values of humanism, progress, and freedom (even the concept of values themselves), which had been assumed to be the basis of Heidegger's project in a fundamentally Cartesian sense, were now placed under scrutiny by Heidegger, who called for a more "essential" understanding of philosophy, which he said had been the basis of his project all along. In the "Letter on Humanism," it became clear that Heidegger was not what he had been assumed to be in France. Everything that is unsettling and unheimlich about Heidegger's work, and everything that led the generation of 1933 to Heidegger in the first place, returned to topple the domesticated reading of Heidegger in France. For younger French students, a Heidegger arrived that appeared more radical than even Sartre because he completely detached the ego cogito from philosophical investigation and thus severed philosophy from the Cartesian tradition. The ~enr­ ation of 1933 was forced to rethink its understanding of Heidegger in relation to this revelation. This second reading of Heidegger, in opposition to the first reading and immediately following the Heidegger Mfair, raised the stakes of the game in the subsequent affairs. In the 1960s, the issue was not only Heidegger's relation to National Socialism but also his "betrayal" of existentialism and the prominent place of his work in the newest incarnations of French philosophy. Heidegger's visits with Towarnicki had given him a fairly good understanding of the state of philosophy in France. He became acquainted with the works of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Beaufret and had intuited that they had not yet moved beyond the shadow of Descartes, despite 63. This partial translation was published in Fontaine, no. 63 (1947). A translation of a revised version was published in Cahier.s du sud, nos. 319-20 (1957). 184 Jean Beaufret his influence and the influence of phenomenology. It was apparent in their work that they were trying to address the issues of the primacy of the subject and the relationship to being, but in his view they had not departed from the metaphysical tradition sufficiently to address the most fundamental issues. Heidegger's interest in phenomenology in France occurred at a time when he was increasingly isolated in Germany. He found himself in a desperate situation; one can feel the sense of urgency in his attempts to get in touch with Sartre and his interviews with Towarnicki. Seen in this light there is something rather calculated about the "Letter on Humanism." Given that he was on the brink of banishment from the university and had lost credibility in Germany, the letter is especially suspicious, since it was written to Beaufret only after Heidegger's attempts to contact Sartre had fallen through. 64 But it is also true that in Beaufret Heidegger found a pupil who was enthralled to hear what Heidegger had to say and whose questions allowed him to address what he believed to be the most important philosophical issues and to again take center stage in the world of philosophy. At stake in the "Letter on Humanism" is in fact the entire reading of Heidegger in France, both in relation to the initial French interpretation and in relation to National Socialism. In terms of the former, we need only look at a comment made by Beaufret to Merleau-Ponty at a conference in November 1946. After discussing Merleau-Ponty's work with Heidegger, Beaufret reproached Merleau-Ponty (the very person who had led him to Heidegger) for not being radical enough-despite the fact that, at this same conference, Emile Brehier had said he was too radical "The phenomenological descriptions you propose right now use, in effect, the vocabulary of idealism. They are thus in the same category as a Husserlian description. But the problem is precisely to know if phenomenology pushed to its very base would not lead us to leave subjectivity and the vocabulary of subjective idealism and thus to depart from Husser! as in the work of Heidegger." 65 Here we see the fundamental difference between the first and second reading of Heidegger in France. Sartre, Wahl, Merleau-Ponty, Aron, and Marcel had started the work, but they had not gone far enough. Thus, the second reading of Heidegger was once again an attempt to push past the boundaries of contemporary French philosophy, but these boundaries had 64. Anson Rabinbach says that "the 'Letter' exemplifies Heidegger's characteristic ability to assume a position of the highest philosophical rigor while positioning himself in the most opportune political light." Rabinbach, "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event," 97. 65. Jean Beaufret's response to Merleau-Ponty in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le prirnat de la jJerception (Paris: Verdier, 1996), 103. 185 THE SECOND READING been expanded by the work of the generation of 1933 to include phenomenological existentialism. The letter itself was written to exploit precisely this issue, though one could not say it was written to cause a rift or schism between varying readings of Heidegger's work. Instead, Heidegger wrote the "Letter on Humanism" as a clarification of his work. He sought to set the record straight and to present his philosophy as he intended it to be read to those who were using it in France. Despite the boldness ofBeaufret's comments to Merleau-Ponty, he too was still indebted to both Merleau-Ponty and Sartre for his understanding of Heidegger, and the nature of the questions he posed to Heidegger show the extent of this debt. Beaufret wanted to know how Heidegger's philosophy related to humanism and whether it was compatible with an ethics. And how could one come to "restore meaning to the word humanism"? These questions all imply the first reading of Heidegger, especially in the work of Sartre. Heidegger's response severed the ties to that reading and removed the debt. In fact, in the case of such thinkers as Wahl, Merleau-Ponty, and Lacan, it inverted the relationship, since they turned to Beaufret as the porte-parole through which they would come to their later understanding of Heidegger. Heidegger's chief goal in the "Letter on Humanism" was to distance himself from the crude variant of existentialism that Sartre produced in his published lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism. It also reflected the extent to which his own work had shifted emphasis since the publication of Being and Time. This shift is generally discussed as Heidegger's "turn," and more specifically as his "turn toward language." 66 This is a shift in emphasis from the fundamental ontology of Being and Time to a meditation on the history of being; this shift coincides with Heidegger's attempt to break with the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger's work in Being and Time is cross-cultural and ahistorical (it is not apolitical, but it does not have a specific political allegiance). The basis of the suppositions he 66. On Heidegger's "turn," see Beda Allemann, Holderlin und I leidJ!gger (Zutich: Atlantis Verlag, 1954); Jean Grondin, Le t.ournant dans la pensee de Martin !MriJ!gger (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, l987);Jean-Franc;ois Mattei, "Le chiasme heideggerien ou Ia mise a l'ecart de Ia philosophie," in La rnitaphysiqu£ ala limite, ed. Dominique Janicaud andJeanFranc;ois Mattei (Paris: Presse Universitaires de France, 1983); Alberto Rosales, "Zum Problem der Kehre in Den ken Heideggers," ZeiL1·chrifl fiir philosajJhische Forschung, 38 (1984). See also Fred R. Dallmayr, "Ontology of Freedom: Heidegger and Political Philosophy," Political17temy, 12, no. 2 (May 1984): 204-34. Jacques Derrida and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe both place Heidegger's turn at the center of their investigations into his politics and philosophy: Derrida, Of Spirit: HeidJ!gger and the Questi.on; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Hei&gger, Ar·t, and Politics: 171£ Fiction of the Political (New York: Blackwell, 1990). For a critique of these works, see Wolin, "French Heidegger Wars," in '17te HeidefSbrer Controversy; and Rockmore, "Heidegger's Politics and French Philosophy," in lleidegger and French Philosophy. 186 Jean Beaufret presents, specifically about human beings in relation to being, is that understanding is not in people's minds but in their everyday lives. The categories Heidegger sets up in Being and Time are applicable to this relation regardless of time or place. In the later Heidegger, after the "turn," he becomes concerned with "historical Being." His suppositions become more temporal and more concerned with the phenomenon of the history of being. Incorporated into this more specific type of investigation is an inquiry into the relation of language to being. The two most important themes in the "Letter on Humanism" as it pertains to the reception of Heidegger in France are Heidegger's emphasis on language and his dismissal of the traditional understanding of humanism as derived from the ego cogito. Both these themes are drawn from his attempt to break with traditional metaphysics. The two themes were also intended as instructions as to where not to follow the work of Heidegger-toward Sartre-and where to follow Heidegger-the investigation into language. Heidegger begins his letter by emphasizing the relation of being to language, not in the sense that language serves a particular being but in that "thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man. It does not make or cause the relation. Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being" (LH, 217). Thus the relation between man and being is based on thinking as it comes to language. But this is not to say that the relationship between thinking, language, and being is important because it is quantifiable or produces a specific response or desired effect. "Thinking is not merely !'engagement dans !'action for and by beings in the sense of the actuality of the present situation" (LH, 218). The search for a specific response from language, from thinking, or from being is the domain of science, and Heidegger contends that philosophy's greatest error was in following the model of science and that "such an effort is the abandonment of the essence of thinking" (LH, 218-19). As we have seen in our investigation into Heidegger's Was ist Metaphysik? the desire to find a specific answer leads one to concentrate only on what one already knows. To ask a question that expects a specific answer is to ask the wrong question, because such a question does not allow being to present itself as what it is. Philosophy is perverted by this scientific model. In opposition to science, "thinking lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being" (LH, 218). Thus thinking is in its very essence opposed to science. Science interrogates with the expectation it will derive an answer; thinking lets being be. Having established this preliminary distinction between the realm of science (which is the realm of metaphysics) and the realm of thinking 187 THE SECOND READING (which should be the realm of philosophy), Heidegger approaches the questions put to him by Beaufret. The first and primary question Beaufret asks is, "How can we restore meaning to the word 'humanism'?" The nature of this question allows Heidegger to begin his critique of humanism, which is not an antihumanism, as is so often supposed, but a rethinking of humanism and the centrality of the human in our philosophical tradition. Here, Heidegger's postsubjectivist tendencies come to the fore and one can clearly see the difference between his earlier emphasis on the individual Dasein in Being and Time, that led to the first reading, and his later emphasis on being detached from the individual human that informs the second reading. Heidegger returns to his notion of thinking against the metaphysical tradition of philosophy, which is the basis for the term humanism. He does not believe that the metaphysical methodology is capable of investigating being because it necessarily disturbs whatever it observes or interrogates. Instead we must respect being because "Being is the enabling-favoring, the 'may-be' [ das Mog-liche]. As the element, Being is the 'quiet power' of the favoring-enabling, that is, of the possible" (LH, 220). The problem with metaphysics, and thus with humanism, at least as understood by Sartre, is that it wants to be practical and applicable and thus does not let things be in a way that allows them to reveal themselves; instead it forces answers from things. As a result of this misplaced emphasis, "philosophy becomes a technique for explaining from highest causes. One no longer thinks; one occupies himself with 'philosophy"' (LH, 221). So thinking is replaced by a proliferation of "-isms," which are based on subjectivity and which Heidegger attributes to the "peculiar dictatorship of the public realm." This is the realm of universal laws and rational principles that want to define being in the same rational manner that one defines a scientific equation. But Heidegger also attacks the flip side of this public realm, which is the emphasis on "private existence." The philosophy of private existence is especially deceptive because it pretends to offer an escape from the public realm but is actually dependent on it. Thus the philosophy of "private existence" is not really essential, that is to say free, human being. It remains an off-shoot that depends upon the public and nourishes itself by a mere withdrawal from it. Hence it testifies, against its own will, to its subservience to the public realm. But because it stems from the predominance of subjectivity the public realm is the metaphysically conditioned establishment and authorization of the openness of individual beings in their unconditional objectification. (LH, 221) This critique brings the work of Sartre (especially in Existentialism Is a Humanism) immediately to mind, not only because Sartre presents philosophy as prescriptive and immediately applicable but also because of 188 Jean Beaufret his inversion of Descartes's formula. This inversion of Descartes, the ultimate subjective philosopher, still relies on him. According to Heidegger, language loses its meaning in the service of the philosophy of the public realm or of private existence. When confined by the metaphysical tradition, language "falls into the service of expediting communication along routes where objectification-the uniform accessibility of everything to everyone-branches out and disregards all limits" (LH, 221). 67 In the service of metaphysics, the truth of being is lost to language. As a result, being is no longer accessible to man through language and instead is "concealed beneath the dominance of subjectivity that presents itself as the public realm" (LH, 222). Once language has been co-opted by metaphysics, it takes on the properties of science and becomes a technology for classification and representation. As a tool in the service of metaphysics, language is no longer the "house of the truth of Being." For philosophy to return to the realm of thinking from the world of science, we must rethink language outside the limits of comprehensibility in the subject-object meaning of the word: If man is to find his way once again to the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless. In the same way he must recognize the seductions of the public realm as well as the impotence of the private. Before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say. Only thus will the preciousness of its essence be once more bestowed upon the word, and upon man a home for dwelling in the truth of Being. (LH, 223) For Heidegger, it is imperative that we rethink our relationship to language. The metaphysical tradition has rendered language virtually meaningless and flat by virtue of representational categories that only serve to objectifY for a subject and do not let things express themselves. It is in silence, or in the possibility of silence, that these things can reveal themselves and that language can then regain its power in its relationship to being. But here Heidegger returns to the question of the relation of the human being to being through language and the place of humanism in this relation. According to Heidegger, this "letting be" should be the real concern of humanism: "For this is humanism: meditating and caring, that man must be human and not inhumane, 'inhuman,' that is, outside his essence" (LH, 224). Heidegger calls for a rethinking of humanism outside the realm of metaphysics. To make his point, he presents a number of "humanisms," from the humanism of Marx to the humanism of 67. There is definitely an antidemocratic sentiment to Heidegger's thought here, which can be traced to Kierkegaard's essay "The Present Age." 189 THE SECOND READING Christianity to Sartre's variant in Existentialism Is a Humanism. Heidegger concludes that however different these forms of humanism may be in purpose and in principle, in the mode and means of their respective realizations, and in the form of their teaching, they nonetheless all agree in this, that the humanitas of homo humanus is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole. Every humanism is either grounded in a metaphysics or is itself made to ground one. Every determination of the essence of man that already supposes an interpretation of being without asking the truth of Being, whether knowingly or not, is metaphysical. (LH, 225-26) According to Heidegger, all humanism as it is commonly defined is inherently metaphysical and as such concentrates only on the humanity of man the subject and not on the relation of humanity to being. In "defining the humanity of man humanism not only does not ask about the relation of being to the essence of man" but "because of its metaphysical origin humanism even impedes the question by neither recognizing nor understanding it" (LH, 226). According to Heidegger, the metaphysical tradition in general and humanism in particular divert all thinking from the vital question of being by focusing only on the subject as dictated by the scientific method, which has become the model for philosophy. Heidegger concedes that this attempt to rethink humanism must commence on the grounds of metaphysics and claims that this was in fact the project of Being and Time. In that book, Heidegger sought to place traditional metaphysics in question by approaching the question of being, the question metaphysics avoids, from within the traditional grounds and methodologies of metaphysics. In this investigation, there is an internal critique where "the essential provenance of metaphysics, and not just its limits, became questionable in Being and Time' (LH, 226). Seen in this light, Being and Time is an ambiguous work because its goal is an investigation of being but it proceeds from the metaphysical grounds where being is most obscured. Heidegger claims he was able to make this move because, despite the fact that metaphysics avoids the question of being, it is unable to avoid the issue of being. This is to say that "metaphysics does indeed represent beings in their Being, and so it thinks the Being of beings. But it does not think the difference of both" (LH, 226). Thus metaphysics approaches this most vital subject only to obscure it. Being and Time sought to reveal this fault through an internal critique of metaphysics that could disclose this most important question through an 190 Jean Beaufret investigation into the being of beings. This is the fundamental tension in the work that we explored in the introduction. According to Heidegger, the French understanding of his philosophy was based on a metaphysical understanding of Being and Time that seized on the desire to "represent beings in their Being" and posited being within the representable place of a human being. The first reading of Heidegger in France drafted an existentialism based on the Kierkegaardian subjectivist elements in Being and Time and compatible with their own Cartesian education. By contrast, the second reading followed Heidegger's current interrogation into the relation of being to beings ( etre to etant). This second reading is more compatible with the ontological antisubjectivist tendencies of Being and Time, but is based on Heidegger's presentation of these issues in his "Letter on Humanism." Heidegger goes on to present his understanding of what it is in metaphysics that keeps us from investigating the only question that he finds important. "Metaphysics closes itself to the simple essential fact that man essentially occurs only in his essence, where he is claimed by Being. Only from that claim 'has' he found that wherein his essence dwells. Only from this dwelling 'has' he 'language' as the home that preserves the ecstatic for his essence. Such standing in the clearing of Being I call the ek-sistence of man. This way of Being is proper only to man" (LH, 227-28) .68 This concept of ek-sistence is precisely what metaphysics closes itself off to and it is on the basis of this concept that Heidegger is able to expand his critique of metaphysics and distinguish himself from the "existential" definition that has been assigned to his work. What man is-or as it is called in the traditional language of metaphysics, the "essence" of man-lies in his ek-sistence. But ek-sistence thought in this way is not identical with the traditional concept of existentia, which means actuality in contrast to the meaning of essentia as possibility. In Being and Time (p. 42) this sentence is italicized: "The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence." However, here the opposition between existentia and essentia is not under consideration, because neither of these metaphysical determinations of Being, let alone their relationship, is yet in question. (LH, 229) 68. The translator's note states: "In Being and Time 'ecstatic' (from the Greek ekstasis) means the way Dasein 'stands out' in the various moments of the temporality of care, being 'thrown' out of a past and 'projecting' itself toward a future by way of the present. The word is closely related to another Heidegger introduces now to capture the unique sense of man's Being-ek-sistence. This too means the way man 'stands out' into the truth of Being and so is exceptional among beings that are on hand only as things of nature or human production." 191 THE SECOND READING Heidegger claims that his philosophy is not existentialist, and to make this point clear he takes the time to redefine Dasein so as to distinguish what he wants to say from the common French understanding based on the translation of Dasein as realite-humaine. Heidegger concludes that the translation is based on a metaphysical reading of Being and Time, which misses the real goal of the work, the internal critique of metaphysics through the investigation into being. The rift between the first and second reading of Heidegger in France turns entirely on whether Being and Time is seen as metaphysical or as a critique of metaphysics: "If we understand what Being and Time calls 'projection' as a representational positing, we take it to be an achievement of subjectivity and do not think it in the only way the 'understanding of Being' in the context of the 'existential analysis' of 'Being-in-the-world' can be thought-namely as the ecstatic relation to the clearing of Being" (LH, 231). While the existentialists of the first reading assumed Being and Time to be an "achievement of subjectivity," Heidegger claims that his philosophy cannot be understood as existentialist precisely because he is not interested in the relation of existence to essence (two metaphysical categories) but in the question of being. Heidegger further contends that the French interpretation occurred because Being and Time is an ontological investigation and as such still uses the vocabulary and categories of traditional metaphysics, and that it is necessarily limited by that language and those categories. The proponents of French existentialism were still metaphysical. It is in realizing the limits of metaphysics that Heidegger turns away from metaphysics and toward an investigation into the history of being. Heidegger's project, even at its most metaphysical, was always an attempt to move beyond metaphysics: By way of contrast, Sartre expresses the basic tenet of existentialism in this way: Existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which from Plato's time on has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement is still a metaphysical statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being. (LH, 232) According to Heidegger, Sartre missed the crucial issue in Being and Time and thus his understanding of Heidegger's work is fundamentally flawed because it remains entirely within the metaphysical tradition. The "basic tenet of 'existentialism' has nothing at all in common with Being and Time" (LH, 232). Heidegger locates part of Sartre's problem in his emphasis on the relation of the subject to the object, which is a fundamentally metaphysical 192 Jean Beaufret issue that always privileges the subject and places the emphasis of philosophy on the issue of representation. The consequence of such an approach is that being is passed over altogether: "Metaphysics recognizes the clearing of Being either solely as the view of what is present in 'outward appearance' (idea) or critically as what is seen as a result of categorical representation on the part of subjectivity" (LH, 235). The truth of being as that which "lights up" our world is concealed from metaphysics, which looks over or past it. The metaphysical tradition wants to understand being spatially so that it can be classified as something that "is present" or as something that can be "represented categorically." In both cases, the metaphysical investigation fails to recognize being because being cannot be understood within traditional categories of space and time: "But nearer than the nearest and at the same time for ordinary thinking farther than the farthest is nearness itself: the truth of Being" (LH, 235). According to Heidegger, traditional metaphysics (Sartre's existentialism and humanism included) attaches itself to what is perceived spatially as nearest and overlooks being, which is closest to us, because being eschews categorical representation and thus seems spatially farthest. The nearness of being occurs in language, which is itself always closest to us. The problem with metaphysics, and humanism in particular, is that it looks first to man as the measure by which to determine its own humanity and thus looks over what is most important to humanity: the relationship between being and man that occurs in language. The question for Heidegger is whether the understanding of man in this rethought investigation into humanity still falls under the rubric of "humanism." The answer is both yes and no. According to him, the answer is no insofar as "humanism thinks metaphysically," and "certainly not if humanism is existentialism and is represented by what Sartre expresses: We are precisely in a situation where there are only human beings." But the answer is yes if we rethink humanism as principally concerned with understanding humanity in its relation to being. The issue for Heidegger is that we need to escape from an outlook that concludes there are "only human beings" and shift to one where we understand humanity as "in a situation where principally there is Being" (LH, 237). This allows Heidegger to elaborate on his claim that being should not be thought of as a possession or as something that specifically "is" because "Being 'is' precisely not 'a being."' Here again Heidegger exposes the trap of representational thinking that seeks to give being spatial and quantifiable attributes so that it can be placed under subjective observation. According to him, this representational approach avoids the issue of being by pretending to engage it. 193 THE SECOND READING For Heidegger, humanism can only be a productive category if it is thought in terms of man's relationship to being, which is not spatial or representable. This, he claims, was the point of Being and Time: But does not Being and Time say on p. 212, where the "there is/it gives" comes to language, "Only so long as Dasein is, is there [gibt es] Being"? To be sure. It means that only so long as the clearing of Being propiates does Being convey itself to man .... But the sentence does not mean that the Dasein of man in the traditional sense of existentia, and thought in modern philosophy as the actuality of the ego cogito, is that being through which Being is first fashioned. The sentence does not say that Being is the product of man. (LH, 240) Being and Time set out to present being in relation to man, but in the French interpretation this became an investigation into being as the product of man. The first reading of Heidegger in France is a metaphysical reading of his work, which removes the problem of being by characterizing it as a product of man. According to Heidegger, this reading reveals the domineering nature of metaphysics and humanism, which attempt to define everything in relation to man as the primary subject, the measure of all things, even being. For Heidegger, the result of this domineering metaphysical tradition is that humanity has lost what is most essential to it, its relationship with being. Heidegger describes this condition in terms of a "homelessness" (Heimatlosigkeit) that he claims is the destiny of the modern world. 69 This homelessness can be seen in the light of Heidegger's understanding of language as the house where being dwells. Cut off from his relationship with language by the metaphysical tradition, man finds himself homeless. Heidegger claims that these categories should not be thought "patriotically or nationalistically but in terms of the history of Being" (LH, 241) .70 This is a particularly troubling claim given Heidegger's past but is not difficult to unpack in relation to the statement Heidegger made to Gandillac about National Socialism being the explosion of a structural malady in all men. For Heidegger, the result of the metaphysical tradition is precisely the kind of blind nationalism and patriotism that avoids the real issue of the homelessness of being by assigning a spatial and categorical realm to it. Thus his letter also serves a strategic purpose in establishing the foundation for his 69. This is also the move by which Heidegger shifts responsibility for National Socialism from Germany (and himself) in particular to the West in general. See Rabinbach, "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event"; Rockmore, "Heidegger's Politics and French Philosophy"; Wolin, "French Heidegger Wars." 70. For an in-depth investigation into the idea of lleimat, see Celia Applewhite, A Nation of Provincials (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 194 Jean Beaufret critique of National Socialism as well as presenting him as a critic of crude nationalisms to his French audience. 71 Homelessness, as understood by Heidegger, consists in the abandonment of being by beings. This is the product of metaphysics, but, as Heidegger establishes in Being and Time, being does not disappear but lies hidden. Even "the oblivion of Being makes itself known indirectly through the fact that man always observes and handles only beings" (LH, 242). Hidden within the metaphysical tradition, being still makes itself known, but indirectly. For Heidegger, homelessness is the destiny of the world precisely because man is so concerned with beings, which are to be observed and handled (represented categorically), that the question of being is concealed and remains unthought. But even as unthought, it remains a concern. Homelessness is itself a concern with being, but thought in such a way that it "is evoked from the destiny of being in the form of metaphysics and through metaphysics is simultaneously entrenched and covered up as such" (LH, 243). Heidegger sees this as the basis for Marx's understanding of the estrangement (Entfremdung) of modern man, which Marx derived from Hegel. Heidegger believes that Marx's understanding of history in terms of estrangement intuits the problem of homelessness and the concealment of being, and in this sense is far more productive than the work of phenomenology or existentialism. Heidegger contends that Marx is still limited by his metaphysical reading of estrangement and history but suggests that this is the issue Sartre should consider if a "productive dialogue" between existentialism and Marxism is to become possible. This comment would have important ramifications later in France, as it led to a variant of Heideggerian Marxism as embodied in the work of Kostas Axelos. Heidegger is apparently interested in a "productive dialogue" with Marxism, but only insofar as it leads to a departure from traditional metaphysics. 72 This returns Heidegger to the issue at hand, how one is to depart from the metaphysical tradition and return to the question of being in the face of man's essential homelessness. According to him, tl1is can only occur when man realizes that, contrary to the dominant claims of humanism as presented in the metaphysical tradition, "the essence of man 71. While the self-serving nature of this philosophical statement is obvious, it has been fruitfully employed in several legitimate critiques of modernity and thus cannot be completely discounted. 72. Heidegger's use of Marx smacks of opportunism because of the Soviet victory under Stalin, but also because Heidegger's sons were in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps and he feared that Georg Lukacs's criticisms of his work could affect them. (Rabinbach, "Heidegger's 'Letter of Humanism' as Text and Event," 112-13). Heidegger's use of Marx also had the unintended consequence of allying him with certain members of the French Communist Resistance (such as Jean Beaufret). 195 THE SECOND READING consists in his being more than merely human, if this is represented as 'being a rational creature."' Man can discover his true human nature only in the departure from his obsession with a rationality that desires to subjugate everything to a logical and productive order. Man must relinquish his position as "the measure of all things" and accept that, far from it, "man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being" (LH, 245). For Heidegger, man loses nothing in this equation despite appearing to give up his mastery, because in this move he regains the truth of being. Heidegger returns to Beaufret's question about humanism and responds that his refutation of humanism in the metaphysical sense is in fact an affirmation of humanism in the extreme sense: "It is a humanism that thinks the humanity of man from nearness to Being" (LH, 245). Heidegger's brand of humanism calls for an investigation in to being that disengages the ego cogito in a way far more radical than Sartre's inversion because it removes the ego cogito from the philosophical equation. Heidegger is calling for the removal of the subject as the primary means of philosophical investigation, and this is precisely what was so attractive to a later generation of French scholars looking at Heidegger through the lens of a structuralist program that also tried to decenter the self, but from the scientific perspective. The question for Heidegger, as presented by Beaufret, now becomes: "How do we give meaning back to humanism?" Heidegger points out that this question implies that humanism has in fact "lost" its meaning. But the subsequent question for Heidegger is whether we want to give humanism back its meaning. This is to ask whether it is valuable to retain the term "humanism." Here Heidegger presents a defense of his current philosophical program in response to several questions he asks of himself and that evoke the specter of his political activities, which remain central to his questions if not at the forefront of his thought: Because we are speaking against "humanism," people fear a defense of the inhuman and a glorification of barbaric brutality. For what is more "logical" than that for somebody who negates humanism nothing remains but the affim1ation of inhumanity? Because we are speaking against "logic," people believe we are demanding that the rigor of thinking be renounced and in its place the arbitrariness of drives and feelings be installed and thus that "irrationalism" be proclaimed true. For what is more "logical"' than that whoever speaks against the logical is defending the alogical? Because we are speaking against "values," people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity's best qualities. 196 Jean Beaufret For what is more "logical" than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? (LH, 249) 73 In the context of 1947, Heidegger was strategically distancing himself from these sorts of criticisms. His point is that the inability to critique such notions as "values," "logic," or even "humanism" is indicative of the manipulative and domineering nature of the metaphysical tradition. When "people hear talk about 'humanism,' 'logic,' 'values,' 'world,' and 'God,"' they "accept these things as positive" and anything that "disturbs the habitual somnolence of prevailing opinion is automatically registered as a despicable contradiction." Concealed in this procedure is "the refusal to subject to reflection this presupposed 'positive' in which one believes oneself saved .... By continually appealing to the logical one conjures up the illusion that one is entering straightforwardly into thinking when in fact one has disavowed it"(LH, 250). "Humanism,'' "values," "God," "logic"-all these terms are indebted to the metaphysical tradition for their meaning, thus do not address the fundamental question of being. Furthermore, because these terms have been rendered unquestionable, one cannot reclaim the truth of being on the basis of any of them. Heidegger is not calling for the refutation of any of these terms but rather the critical reappraisal of all of them to return them to the realm of thinking. The final issue Heidegger seeks to address is that of the relation of ethics to ontology. Once again he is answering a question posed by Beaufret, but the answer is closely related to Sartre's statement about Heidegger at the end of Being and Nothingness, that an authentic understanding of human being would be inextricably linked to an ethics. Heidegger sees this "need" for an ethics as indicative of the problem of metaphysics and not the solution to it: "The desire for an ethics presses ever more ardently for fulfillment as the obvious no less than the hidden perplexity of man soars to immeasurable heights" (LH, 255). The creation of an ethics based on the tenets of metaphysics does not provide a solution to man's perplexity but only adds to it. Furthermore, Heidegger sees it as a fundamental error to believe that one can construct an ethics based on a work such as Being and Time, because the investigation itself is within the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger concedes that Being and Time itself was "bound to lead immediately and inevitably into error. For the terms and the conceptual language corresponding to them were not rethought by readers from the matter particularly to be thought; rather, the matter was conceived according to the established terminology in its customary meaning" (LH, 259). 73. These questions must be taken seriously given Heidegger's past and especially since it is Heidegger who presents them. 197 THE SECOND READING In France, Being and Time was understood in terms of the unquestioned categories and vocabulary of traditional metaphysics; as a result, Heidegger's work was seen as original, but compatible with the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger points out that this is precisely how his philosophy was read by French philosophers such as Sartre and asserts that this kind of prescriptive philosophy has no place in the investigation of being. Instead, he says that to come to understand our relation to being is to understand thought as it is, in its capacity to let things be and thus let them reveal themselves as what they are. This is not the strategy of humanism as constructed in the metaphysical tradition, which seeks to produce, collect, and control. Insofar as he is against this sort of domineering subjectivity, Heidegger is against humanism. What Heidegger proposes is an alternative humanism whose primary concern is not the subject man but man as he relates to being. For him, the means for accessing this new concern is language: "Thus language is at once the house of Being and the home of human beings" (LH, 262). Heidegger concludes his letter by stating: "What is strange about the thinking of Being is its simplicity. Precisely this keeps us from it." According to him, our problem is that we are beings that like to represent things; thus we form complex models that allow us to present and represent the world around us. But in this process of ordering and naming, we have lost track of that which is the most simple in nature: being. For us, what is simplest also seems the most complex because it is not representable or quantifiable. Thus the issue of being is unheimlich because it tests the limits of what we consider to be true. For Heidegger, only a return to what is simply before us, and not some complex philosophical construction, will lead us to being. "For this reason essential thinkers always say the Same. But this does not mean identical." Evoking Nietzsche's eternal return, Heidegger attempt<> to reclaim the philosophy of the early Greeks and to approach the question of being, which is the only question (even in the concealed formula of metaphysics). This attempt stands in stark contrast to the mere repetition of formulas or laws based on the memorization of identical principles. "To flee into the identical is not dangerous. To risk discord in order to say the Same is the danger" (LH, 264). Heidegger's understanding and refutation of traditional humanism is based on this precept. For humanism to be a productive category, it would have to be understood in terms of man's relation to being (this is the same question raised by all philosophy). In pursuing the Same, Heidegger sows discord by refuting the definition of humanism as understood in the mt'Ltphysical sense (which is the identical). Thus if humanism and philosophy are only understood in metaphysical terms, then Heidegger's current project and "the thinking that 198 Jean Beaufret is to come is no longer philosophy, because it thinks more originally than metaphysics-a name identical to philosophy" (LH, 265). For Heidegger, if thinking identically on the basis of universal laws is philosophy, then his work is not philosophical. The "Letter on Humanism" is a complex text that combines Heidegger's philosophical project of 1946 with a refutation of Sartrean existentialism and a strategic self-rehabilitation. 74 The immediate ramifications of the "Letter on Humanism" was to move Heidegger away from Sartre and his brand of existentialism and toward the questions of language and the relation of being to beings. A subsequent consequence was that, because it had been written to Jean Beaufret, a member of the Resistance with impeccable credentials, it was seen as a sort of vote of confidence for Heidegger. Beaufret would repeatedly take advantage of his Resistance past to defend Heidegger. The Second Reading While the first reading of Heidegger in France developed slowly over the course of two decades, culminating in Sartre's existentialism, the second reading came like a bolt from the blue, in the form of the "Letter on Humanism." 75 But the first reading is precisely what created the opening for the second. There is something peculiar about popularity that leads to a backlash. Such was the case with Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism. In reaction to its popularity, there were a number of attacks that led Sartre to defend his position in Existentialism Is a Humanism, and this led to Heidegger's response in the "Letter on Humanism." This letter then opened the door to a new understanding of Heidegger in France that was opposed to Sartre's brand of existentialism. In the person of Jean Beaufret, many young French scholars found a direct line to Heidegger and an alternative to what they now saw as the trendy moralizing of existentialism. Beaufret's position was strengthened by his reputation as a member of the Resistance and his position as an instructor at the preparatory school Henri IV from 1946 to 1955, at the ENS after 1951, and at the preparatory school Condorcet from 1955 until his retirement in 1972. As an instructor at the ENS, but also at two of the most important feeder 74. There are those, such as Jean Henri Cousineau, who claim the text is intentionally ambiguous. See Cousineau, Humanism and Ethics: An Introduction to Ileidegger:5 Letter on Humanism with a Critical Bibliography (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1972), 65-66. 75. This has led to statements such as the one cited in Paul Ricoeur's Critique and Conviction that "Heidegger was introduced in France almost entirely through Beaufret, to whom Heidegger addressed the famous 'Letter on Humanism."' Paul Ricoeur, Critique arul Conuictian, trans. Kathleen Blarney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 188n. 16. 199 THE SECOND READING schools for the ENS, Beaufret was able to bring Heidegger's philosophy into the mainstream of French higher education. The generation of 1933 had to look outside the established grounds of French academics to find a philosophy as striking and different as Heidegger's, but from 1946 on it was possible to work on Heidegger at a major khagne in Paris or even at the ENS. Furthermore, Beaufret was in constant communication with Heidegger, who continued to produce original pieces of work that entranced and seduced the young students drawn to Heidegger through Beaufret's courses. 76 For six years at the Khagne Henri Nand then for seventeen years at Condorcet, not to mention my time at the ENS, I was charged with instructing my students in preparation for the agregation. The classes I taught led quite a number of them to a real interest in the work of Heidegger. This was so especially at Condorcet where after 1955 I dealt specifically with that subject. 77 After the "Letter on Humanism," Beaufret found himself at the center of the Parisian intellectual world. Figures who had influenced him in the 1930s, such as Jean Wahl, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, and Alexandre Koyre now came to him to discuss Heidegger's current work. Beaufret was riding a wave that continued to grow. Heidegger's popularity increased after 1947, and between 1947 and 1955 there was a proliferation of works on or about Heidegger, including the republication of Gurvitch 's Les tendences actuelles de la philosophie allemande (1953); a collection ofLevinas's articles from the 1930s and 1940s titled En decouvrant ['existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (1949); and an entire issue of the Revue de metaph_<ysique et de morale devoted to Heidegger's work (1953). In 1946 Jean Wahl gave a course at the Sorbonne on the philosophy of Heidegger. 78 More than this, by the 1950s students at the ENS were handing in theses on Heidegger, and there was even talk of Heidegger fanatics. 79 These young intellectuals were led to Heidegger by the popularity of Sartre, but moved from Sartre to Jean Beaufret in their desire to "get Heidegger right." In the wake of World War II and with the prospect of a rapidly industrializing world, Heidegger's critique of technology and traditional metaphysics spoke to the young intellectuals 76. This is not to say that Beaufret's allegiance to Heidegger did not have its drawbacks; Beaufret's work on Heidegger kept him from obtaining a university post. See Havet, "Jean Beaufret," 89. 77. Jean Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger: Le chemin de Ileidegger (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985), 81. 78. This course was later published as Jean Wahl, Introduction ala pensee de Heidegger (Paris: Librairie generale franpise, 1998). 79.Jean-Paul Aron, Les Modernes (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 104-5. 200 Jean Beaufret who were seeking an alternative to existentialism with its allegiance to Cartesianism and traditional metaphysics. The same concerns that led this younger generation to Heidegger also led them to structuralism and the work of Saussure, Barthes, and Levi-Strauss. In 1955, Heidegger made his first journey to France, which was facilitated by Jean Beaufret. Beaufret, along with Maurice de Gandillac and Kostas Axelos, had arranged to present a conference on and for Heidegger at the Cultural Center at Cerisy in August of that year. The participants in the conference included Kostas Axelos, Father Gaston Fessard, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice de Gandillac, Alphonse de Waehlens, LeonPierre Quint, Lucien Goldmann, Jean Starobinski, Alexis Philonenko, Paul Ricoeur, Gilles De leuze, and of course Jean Beaufret and Heidegger himself. The conference was also important because the translation of Heidegger's texts into French would enlist such young philosophers as Andre Preau, Fran<;:ois Fedier, Dominique Janicaud, and Michel Haar. In 1955, at a time when Heidegger was still forbidden to teach in Germany, he had found a home for his work in France and had in fact become the most important living philosopher in that country. The effect of the "Letter on Humanism" had been to provide an alternative to Sartre and progressive humanism, which seemed outmoded by newer forms of investigation. But Heidegger and the conference in Cerisy were not without critics. Most notably, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean Wahl refused to attend. Furthermore, an article Lucien Goldmann later published eventually led to the second Heidegger Affair in the 1960s. Thus the circumstances of the conference and ofHeidegger's first trip to France also bear the imprint of the Heidegger Affair and the split between the proponents of the first and second readings. Heidegger's visit to France and the conference in Cerisy seem to have been planned to minimize public awareness of his presence. The announcement for the conference was written in the vaguest terms, giving only the title, "Qu'est-ce que la philosophic?" with no mention of the directors or the participants. The reflections of Walter Biemel suggest that there was reason to fear protests from "students on the left," 80 whileJean Beaufret indicates a more general "academic hostility" toward Heidegger and his work. 81 Still, the scripted nature of Heidegger's visit also suggests that Beaufret wanted to control all access to the German philosopher during his stay in France. Thus the August date was not accidental and proved to be "the best guarantee for a successful operation," 80. "Oean] Hyppolite wanted to invite Heidegger to the Ecole normale but feared a negative reaction from students on the left." Interview with Walter Biemel in Dominiquejanicaud, 1/eidegger en France I/, entretiens (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), 42-43. 81. Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger; 86n. 9. 201 THE SECOND READING because when Heidegger arrived in Paris the "capital was deserted." 82 Beaufret and Axelos met Heidegger and his wife, Elfride, at the Gare de l'Est and secreted them away to Beaufret's apartment on the passage Stendahl in Menilmontant. 83 The rest of the Heideggers' stay in Paris also had a "cloak-and-dagger" feel; a clandestine visit to the Louvre, another to Versailles, and a trip to the Cafe de Flore "incognito" so that Beaufret could show Heidegger the "existentialist's lair." 84 While in Paris, Beaufret arranged a dinner on the terrace of his apartment where Heidegger could meet Rene Char. 85 Kostas Axelos also attended the dinner prepared by Elfride Heidegger. Here we see a protocol Beaufret would follow throughout Heidegger's stay in France. He would coordinate meetings between Heidegger and select French intellectuals but would surround him with the cordon sanitaire of Axe los and himself. Since Heidegger would not speak French and Char did not speak German, all conversation was mediated by Beaufret and Axelos, who served as translator. The Heideggers' visit with Georges Braque at his atelier in Varengeville was coordinated in a similar fashion. 86 On the way to Cerisy, Beaufret, Axelos, and the Heideggers stopped at the summer house of jacques Lacan. Beaufret was in analysis with Lacan at the time and Lacan had asked him to invite Heidegger to stay for a few days before the conference. Lacan had hoped to commence a dialogue with Heidegger based on what he perceived to be their mutual interests, but soon found that the two had little to discuss. Axelos, who served as translator, describes the five-day stay as "agreeable" but also notes the empty nature of the visit. "Heidegger did not know any of Lacan's works and had no interest in psychoanalysis. Lacan had an incomplete (lacunairement) knowledge of Heidegger. Thus there was no dialogue. There was no discussion at all. They spoke of banalities and everyday things. Lacan understood German but could not speak it and Heidegger refused to speak a single word in French."87 The issue of language is essential here but one can also point to a divergence in philosophical interests between Heidegger and one of his French interlocutors that would come to dominate the second phase of 82. Dominique Janicaud, Ileideggr;r en France I (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), 147. 83. See ibid., as well as the interview with Kostas Axe los in Janicaud. I Jeidegger en France If, enlretiens (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), 12. 84. Beau fret, DialoguR avec lleidegger, 86. 85. A brief discussion of this dinner can be found in Jean Beaufret, "En France" in Erinnerung an Martin HeidRgger (Pfullingen: Neske, 1977); a philosophical reflection based on this dinner is in jean Beaufret, "L'entretien sous le marronnier," L'Arc no. 22 (Summer 1963). 86. Beaufret, "En France," 10. 87. Interview with Kostas Axe los inJanicaud, Jfeidegger en France II, entretiens, 12. 202 Jean Beaufret the reception of Heidegger in France between 1961 and the present. The force of this disconnect and the frustration and disappointment of Lacan can be seen in an incident that occurred during the Heideggers' stay. While Axelos and Beaufret were translating Heidegger's "What Is Philosophy?" from German to French, Lacan and his wife, Sylvia BatailleLacan, took Heidegger and Elfride on a day trip to the cathedral in Chartres. Lacan was driving, Heidegger sat in the front seat, and the two women sat in the back. In the words of Elisabeth Roudinesco, "Lacan drove his car as fast as he ran his sessions" and the Heideggers grew increasingly uncomfortable. Heidegger did not flinch but Elfride voiced her discomfort, in response to which Lacan increased his speed. The ride home from Chartres was spent in silence except for the continued protests of Elfride, which provoked Lacan to press even harder on the gas pedal. 88 Having survived their visit chez Lacan, the Heideggers were taken by Beaufret and Axelos to the conference at Cerisy. There, under Beaufret's watchful eye, they were given the finest suite in the chateau and treated like guests of honor. Axelos referred to the conference as a "festival of Heidegger"89 but we must also keep in mind that despite the celebratory feel and the significance of Heidegger's philosophical presentations, the immediate impact of the conference itself was minimal. There had been no advance publicity, no press coverage, and only those who had been informed by Beaufret or Axelos knew of the event. Jean-Paul Aron placed the number of actual participants at fifty-six. 90 Thus Dominique Janicaud is correct in suggesting that the importance of this conference lay more in its symbolic nature than in its status as an actual event. Janicaud further suggests that this symbolic value lies in the memories of the participants and perhaps more important in the wave of translations of and essays on Heidegger that followed the conference in Cerisy. 91 Certainly, these observations are valuable and true, but I would suggest that the most important symbolic value lies in the way the actual events of this conference reveal the essence of the second reading of Heidegger in France. The nine-day conference (August 27 to September 4, 1955) was not a dialogue but a lecture. Kostas Axelos recalls that during the conference he and Beaufret were accused of restricting access to Heidegger. "In fact, we were the intermediaries between Heidegger and the other participants. Because everyone had something they wanted to say to Heidegger, 88. Elisabeth Roudinesco, J-Jistoire de Ia psychanalyse en France (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1986), 309-10. See also Roudinesco,jacques Lacan (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 301-302. 89. Interview with Kostas Axelos in Janicaud, Heidegger en France II, entretiens, 13. 90. Aron, Les Modernes, 122. 9l.Janicaud, IleideggerenFrancel, 151. 203 THE SECOND READING and because Heidegger was not one for rambling conversations it all went through jean Beaufret and me." 92 At the end of the first day, Gabriel Marcel and Lucien Goldmann suggested that they be allowed to move away from the prescribed topics of discussion (Kant and Hegel) and toward a more general discussion of Heidegger's philosophy as a whole. In the ensuing discussion, Beaufret conceded that the agenda was a guideline for discussion that did not need to be strictly followed. Nonetheless, Marcel, Goldmann, and Walter Biemel came away from the conference with the feeling that their questions had not been answered. 93 Paul Ricoeur went so far as to say that he "took away a bad memory" of his meeting with Heidegger at Cerisy because Heidegger "was literally guarded by Axelos and Beaufret, and he behaved like a school-master."94 Indeed, Axelos's greatest regret about the conference was that Heidegger had not been "more forward in the discussion."95 But as in the visits with Char and Lacan, there was no real dialogue. There was no discussion. Heidegger presented his lectures, Axelos translated, and Beaufret controlled the questions and answers. There is a discrepancy between Heidegger's repeated statement at Cerisy that there is no "Heideggerian philosophy" and Beaufret's attempts to determine the interpretation and discussion of Heidegger's work. 96 But this discrepancy captures precisely the nature of the second reading of Heidegger in France, marked by both the presence of Heidegger's new work and the Heideggerian orthodoxy of jean Beaufret. Heidegger's philosophy had returned to France in all its alterity and strangeness, only to find they were now accepted. The second reading of Heidegger's philosophy stunned the generation of 1933, who had read his work as "new" and "original" but also as fundamentally compatible with the notions of individualism, freedom, and progress that lay at the heart of their education. For the next generation, which came to Heidegger after World War II, the second reading was as "new" and "original" as the first. These younger students, who came to his philosophy through the works ofSartre, Aron, and Merleau-Ponty, were shocked and electrified to move beyond the first reading to a philosophy they saw as even more radical. But while Heidegger's philosophy had found a home 92. Interview with Kostas Axe los inJanicaud, Heidegger en France II, entretiens, 13. 93.Janicaud, Heidegger en France I, 150-62. This section also provides a substantive account of the topics of discussion for each day of the conference. Janicaud relies on a transcript of Alex Philonenko's tape recording of the conference. 94. Ricoeur, C>-itique and Conviction, 20. 95. Interview with Kostas Axelos in Janicaud, lleidegger en France II, entretiens, 19. 96. Heidegger's statement that there is no "philosophy of Heidegger" seems to be the single most consistent memory of those attending the conference at Cerisy. I have found this in my own research and throughout the interviews conducted by Janicaud. 204 Jean Beaufret in France, one could not say that it was at home in the world of French philosophy. Heidegger's work would not be canonized despite the efforts of a devoted following led by Jean Beaufret. In fact, Heidegger's work would have its most important influence on philosophers who saw it as a call to continue to rethink the established boundaries of philosophy and thought even as they pertained to Heidegger himself. 97 Afterword I must include a a few words here regarding jean Beaufret's pathological defense of Heidegger and his letters in support of the "negationist" historian Robert Faurisson. (I follow Henry Rousso in using the term "negationist" instead of"revisionist." I feel this term is better suited to define the nature of Faurisson's work, which does not seek to seriously "revise" the historical evidence of the Holocaust but in fact to deny it.) The issue to be addressed is whether Beaufret had a "hidden agenda" in his defense of Heidegger, which is later revealed in his "covert support" of Robert Faunsson, as Richard Wolin claims in his article "French HeideggerWars" (291): "As it turns out, Beaufret seems to have had a hidden agenda: he was a covert supporter of Robert Faurisson, the French historian who denies the existence of the gas chambers specifically and the Holocaust in general." Let me be clear that what is at stake is not whether Beaufret supported Faurisson or not. Beaufret did support Faurisson in two letters, dated November 22, 1978, and January 18, 1979, which were later published in Faurisson's journal Annates d'histoire revisioniste. What is at stake, however, is whether this implies that Beaufret's interest in and defense of Heidegger is part of the same agenda to deny the Holocaust and whether Beaufret's support of Faurisson necessarily impeaches his support of Heidegger. I would argue that Beaufret's support ofHeidegger is not indicative of his later support of Faurisson but precisely the reverse. Beaufret's decision to support Faurisson is a direct result of his desire to protect and rehabilitate Heidegger. Beaufret had invested everything in Heidegger and his work. His place in the French academic world was a direct result of his proximity to Heidegger. As Beaufret's relationship with Heidegger developed over the years, his defensive strategies became more and more extreme. In 1945, in his article for Confluences, Beaufret dismissed Heidegger's association with National Socialism as a result of his 97. I disagree with Tom Rockmore's characterization of Jacques Derrida as "often indistinguishably similar to the orthodox form ofHeideggerianism established by Beaufret" (Rockmore, lleidegger and French Philnsophy, 120) because I see the work of Derrida, and of many of the other late Heideggerians he discusses, as indebted to the third reading of Heidegger in France. See chaps. 6 and 7. 205 THE SECOND READING "naive-bourgeois character." Later, he became a proponent of the contingency theory, relying entirely on Heidegger's own testimony. As the facts came out and Heidegger's story was shown to be deficient, if not deceitful, Beaufret continued to take Heidegger's side, totally denying any commitment on Heidegger's part to National Socialism, or adopting Heidegger's own strategy, defined in the "Letter on Humanism," which showed him to be the proponent of an "internal critique" of National Socialism all along. Lacan commented on the pathological nature of Beaufret's defense of Heidegger soon after Beaufret had left analysis with him (Roudinesco,jacques Lacan, 297-98). As more information became accessible and the extent of Heidegger's involvement became less refutable, Beaufret's position became increasingly untenable. It is at this point that Beaufret turned to the possibility of a "negationist" argument as presented by Faurisson. By denying the existence of the Nazi death camps, "the link between Heidegger and National Socialism becomes unproblematic because, in a word, Nazism was not Nazism" (Rockmore, "Heidegger's French Connection," 379). In the face of overwhelming evidence, Beaufret could no longer extricate Heidegger from Nazism, so instead he had to exorcise what was most problematic about Nazism. I do not believe Beaufret's denial of the Holocaust is the "hidden agenda" in Beaufret's defense of Heidegger. Rather, Beaufret's agenda, which is quite "open" and obvious, is to protect and defend Heidegger by all means, no matter how extreme. This calls into question Beaufret's reading and presentation of Heidegger's thought. It attests not only to the bond between Heidegger and Beaufret but to the seductive nature of Heidegger's thought in general. 206