ROBERT JULIAN
431
vate the allegations made against him. [The political analysis of his
thought derives from
1
the conspiracy of mediocre minds working in
the name of mediocrity." This might be paraphrased: Heidegger is
not only innocent (of what he is accused of) but also above being in–
nocent. The disciple doth protest too much.
The French debate in its current form falls prey to the same dif–
ficulties. Even the pitched camps of apologists and critics fall into the
regular pattern of what Freud called "negation": their gestures to
resolve the question once and for all seem inevitably to open it again,
launching them into a vicious circle of negations, false triumphs,
and false defenses. Derrida, who is by temperament hardly given to
insults, has speculated as to whether Farias "has read Heidegger for
more than one hour." Unfortunately, one begins to wonder if the
remark should not apply to the entire (and very learned) company.
No one seems
to
have read Heidegger enough to make headway on
the issue (and what would making headway mean?). No one has
learned from the tireless repetition of charges and acquittals con–
cerning Heidegger how to move on such precarious ground. One
might ascribe this problem as well to the "Franco-French" limits of
the debate, except that the present difficulties have echoes else–
where. Without mentioning cases like Waldheim's, one has the
choice of revisionist movements afoot in Germany (to explain the
Holocaust in terms of German fear of the Russians or of a Jewish
uprising) and France (where some would deny that the Holocaust
occurred at all- and it has recently come out that Beaufret had sym–
pathy for this position). There are also the recent revelations of Nazi
involvement of the late Yale University Professor Paul de Man, one
of the leading theorists of deconstruction in America, to suggest that
the French debate is, in fact, a local skirmish in a much wider con–
f1
ict.
Farias's book represents years of patience. He has sifted
through public archives in Berlin and elsewhere, but it is not exactly
a history of Heidegger's activity during the Nazi period. Farias has a
theory.
Far from having taken leave of the Nazi movement when he
resigned from his position as Rector in 1934, Heidegger remained
active (and a member of the Party) until 1945. His distance from the
official line of the NSDAP did not make him an outcast (as he
claimed) but only a disappointed supporter: first the "revolution"
had not gone fast enough, and then it went astray. Farias interprets
this position as one of affinity with the S.A. faction led by Ernst
Roehm who was "eliminated" in favor of Rudolf Hess during the
