Heidegger Made Kosher (Page 4)

The various rhythms of Heidegger's reception in France are the subject of Ethan Kleinberg's rich and informative book, Generation Existential. Regrettably, Kleinberg's narrative ends abruptly in 1961, with the publication of Levinas's Totality and Infinity. But Heidegger's dominance in French philosophical circles only occurs subsequently. Generation Existential's lead-up to these developments is edifying. Unfortunately, the payoff is missing.

And the payoff is this: Viewed politically, the reception of Heidegger's work among the French antihumanists ultimately regressed behind the terms of Sartrean existentialism. Sartre's philosophy remained wedded to the notion that human action in the world is meaningful. Unlike Heidegger, he sincerely believed that the problem of freedom still mattered. His oeuvre constituted a lifelong meditation on the significance and parameters of this fundamental moral and existential imperative. The turning point came during the 1950s, when Sartre realized the inadequacies of the Stoic-Cartesian conception of freedom presented in Being and Nothingness. Thereafter, in order to rethink the problem of freedom in light of the omnipresence of social injustice, he turned to history--and to Marx.

It has been said that all great philosophies can be summarized in one sentence. For Socrates: "Know thyself." For Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." For Hegel: the unity of substance and subject. For Kierkegaard: "Truth is subjectivity." For Levinas it would be: ethics as first philosophy.

In 1928 Levinas traveled to Freiburg to study with Husserl. But his enthusiasm for the author of Philosophy as a Rigorous Science waned quickly. In Levinas's view Husserl's philosophy, like that of Descartes, remained too beholden to the paradigm of the ego, or "consciousness." What interested Levinas was a series of existential concerns that transpired outside the parameters of consciousness. Soon he was introduced to Heidegger, and his allegiances shifted entirely. As Levinas put it: "I had the impression that I went [to Freiburg] thinking to visit Husserl and found Heidegger instead."

In Heidegger Levinas encountered a richness and philosophical daring that were otherwise wanting in contemporary thought. With Heidegger, philosophy transcended the self-referential confines of "consciousness" and acceded to the planes of "life" and "world." Levinas felt that Husserl's phenomenology remained wedded to the arid rationalism of the reigning neo-Kantianism. As such, it was narrowly focused on perception and cognition. With Heidegger's philosophy, conversely, there was talk of "everydayness," "authenticity," "historicity" and "Being-towards-death." Levinas found these topics highly stimulating--as did an entire generation of German youth who, upon hearing "the rumor of the hidden King," flocked to attend Heidegger's lectures. In order to keep the throngs of eager students at bay, Heidegger often had to hold his classes at 7 AM.

The young Levinas thought of himself as an orthodox Heideggerian. He attended the famous 1929 Davos debate between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, and enthusiastically applauded Heidegger's triumph. For many, it signaled the passing of the baton from a staid neo-Kantianism to Heidegger's invigorating brand of existentialism. During the early 1930s, Levinas wrote several pathbreaking articles on Heidegger's philosophy. In one of them he enthused: "No one who has ever done philosophy can keep himself from declaring, before the Heideggerian corpus, that the originality and power of his effort, born of genius, have allied themselves with a conscientious, meticulous, and solid elaboration." Having recently finished his dissertation on Husserl's theory of intuition, Levinas planned to write a book on Heidegger.

Heidegger's entry into the Nazi Party on May 1, 1933, changed all that. Heidegger had succumbed to the delusion that he could "lead the leader" (den Führer führen)--that he could play philosopher-king to Germany's resident tyrant, Adolf Hitler. In this respect, Heidegger showed himself to be plus royaliste que le roi. He went on the stump for Hitler, declaring, "Do not let doctrines and ideas be the rules of your Being. The Führer himself and he alone is the present and future German reality and its law." Soon he realized the error of his ways: The Nazi Revolution was not destined to make the world safe for "Being," as Heidegger had hoped. Still, there are political errors a philosopher can make that implore forgiveness; then there is another, unforgivable kind. Heidegger's enthusiasm for Germany's Brown Revolution--a loyalty he refused to renounce--was of the latter variety.

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