Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: May 5, 2001
Latest update: May 5, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

This essay is based on Heidegger, Art and Politics, by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,. Basil Blackwell Publisher, Oxford, UK, 1990. ISBN: 0-631-17155-X (pbk)

Musings after a first reading of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's Heidegger, Art and Politics. It was late on Friday night. I took no notes, but just read through the book. But I am left this morning with many impressions that I would like to share with you. Just bear in mind that inaccuracies and misrepresentations may need to be corrected later.

I actually chose to read this book because I was hunting for theoretical material on our use of art as an integral part of our teaching. But that theme was peripheral in the book. The treatise, or dissertation, as Lacoue-Labarthe calls it, is about coming to terms with the fact that Heidegger is revered by Lacoue-Labarthe as perhaps the greatest thinker of modern times, and yet never publicly denounced the Extermination, (the Holocaust), a fact which Lacoue-Labarthe finds unpardonable and "a wrong." (pp. 32-40) (At p.116.)

How can the greatest thinker of modern times have assented to and affiliated with the Nazi position? And in what ways does that affiliation permeate and affect the philosophical programme of Heidegger? Must we discard Heidegger's thinking as infected through and through by his Nazi commitment? This was the question posed by Adorno, who understood the End of Philosophy, Death of God idea to which Auschwitz led. But Adorno, as a victim of the Nazi power wielding, is harsh in his judgment, and sometimes in error, as Lacoue-Labarthe points out, while Lacoue-Labarthe is trying to read Heidegger's own words and context, without ascribing to him the opinions of others.

Lacoue-Labarthe asks for as clean a reading as possible. Cite page. This will permit us to see to what extent the Nazi thought entered into the very depths of Heidegger's thinking, and permit us to judge whether we can still rely on his thinking without the contamination of Nazism.

Heidegger was a product of his time and place, and anti-semitism was of his time and place. But Heidegger has clearly stated his opposition to anti-semitism. Cite Rektorstade. Lacoue-Labarthe considers the possibility that Heidegger was mistaken in joining the Nazis. But he discards that thesis. Heidegger knew of the Nazi anti-semitism. He joined the Nazis. He compromised his own beliefs. Heidegger did admit this. And in 1935? he parted ways with the Nazi party, though he did not resign, having a son at the Russian front.

Lacoue-Labarthe analyzes Heidegger's actual commitment to Nazism through the Rektorstade. Heidegger believed that Nazi Socialism offered a potential to open up a new form of thought. What democracy and capitalism were not able to accomplish, perhaps Nazi Socialism could. To that Heidegger was committed.

But here we encounter the end of philosophy, God is dead, and so on, which Adorno, too, understood as the danger that the programme would turn against itself. This is what so depressed Adorno in his renunciation of the Enlightenment. Lacoue-Labarthe describes this in the last few chapters.

The crux of the matter to which I want to get is that Auschwitz beomes the signifier for the end of modernity, of philosophy, of God. Pull out the quote on likeness of Auschwitz to food industry. The uniqueness of Auschwitz lay in the completely cold, technical apparatus and metaphor of production plant that reduced the humans at Auschwitz to waste. The waste products of production. That is the horror that took us to the end of modernity, to the end of philosophy, that our science, having been turned to pure technical appplication, turned on and dehumanized itself, in the most denigrating of ways.

Then I want to bring in the section in which Heidegger speaks of his horror of the university programme that would turn the universities into technical training grounds. For, if technical training and techniques are the result of our science, then the turning of humans into waste would seem to be end of that path.

Lacoue-Labarthe explains that the likeness to a technical factory for disposing of waste is what makes Auschwitz more symbolic of the end of philosophy, of the Death of God than any other mass murder in history.

Conclusion:

This is a far more intricate reading of Heidegger and the Holocaust than I have ever done. As I encounter this interpretation I want to present it to you, to share with you some of the insights it led to. And this reminds me of my need to share Spivak's work on Post-Colonialism with you. These are complex and heavy readings. Sometimes I am encountering them at the same time you are. Often, because I've gone searching for answers to some of our questions.

Just as I disagree with Spivak's admonition that we must not consider "mere racism" as "colonialism," I am likely to misinterpret some Heidegger along the way. I think we need to recognize that the more we read, the more we will correct of previously held misconceptions. But that is how it should be. We cannot wait to make up our minds and use our new knowledge until we have perfected it. That could take a life time. But if we agree to listen in good faith, and to suppress our need to "know the right interpretation or answer, we are actually on the path to life time learning.

I have much more Heidegger and much more Spivak to read. We'll do course corrections along the way. And I'll add discussion questions soon.

There is one small piece of the book that deals with my original interest: the importance of visual communication. Lacoue-Labarthe describes Hitler as an avid cinematographer. The planning of the autobahns, the planning of the cities, and the network of roads connecting them all fit with Hitler's grandiose plans for building the perfect city. And as a cinematographer, Hitler directed the changes he envisioned first, for Germany, then for the European West. In these pages, Hitler, is called the greatest cinematographer of all time. It is as though the newsreels of the war were his film of the rebirth of the European West.