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a little too visibly the scandal which has clouded the intellectual
scene, using the occasion to remark that philosophers are no dif–
ferent from anyone else (Heidegger has been compared to Le Pen)
or that they are worse (he is a "little man"). Among the more profes–
sional critics, the most outspoken have that mixture of outrage and
satisfaction which Nietzsche associated with the rise of morals and
which he derided as a reflex of weakness. The flurry of conscience
against Heidegger seems designed in large part to gain ground
against Heideggerians, to profit from the confusion to advance a dif–
ferent model of philosophy. Here, too, this vehement good faith will
have to explain why only now the bandwagon has swung into view.
The defenders are not above the same kind of devotion and the
same temptation to take easy shelter. "The decisive question before
us is this: was there, yes or no, an essential dependence between
Heidegger's philosophy and his National-Socialist adhesion?" asks
one professor whose accusations that Farias's book reads like a
"speech for the prosecution" are compromised by that "yes or no."
Vacillating between the philosopher's thought and his acts in search
of the
one
decisive question, his defenders prove as embarrassed as
the critics. Invariably they seem dishonest in trying to balance out
the historical record, that is , to recall that in place of a candidate
whom, in 1933, he would denounce to a professors' group in the
Party at Gottingen as a "bad National-Socialist," he named aJew as
his teaching assistant in 1931. Invariably they lack the proper terms
to defend his thought. The most inflated (and uneasy) defense along
these lines comes from one "Heideggerean" who concludes, "In my
opinion, Heidegger amply justified his existence by his work" - as if
the standpoint of church eternity would solve everything.
Those who concentrate on the philosopher to the exclusion of
the political actor fare no better. Gadamer's position is seemlier than
the ones just cited, but no less problematic. The high point of his ar–
ticle is reached when he asks if Heidegger "felt responsible for the
terrible consequences of Hitler's coming to power, for the new bar–
barity, the Nuremberg laws, the terror, the bloodshed and, in the
end, the indelible shame of the death camps? There is only one
answer: No." But as the rhetorical buildup suggests, there is no
philosophical
reason to think that this is the right form for the (moral)
question, or that the answer pinpoints Heidegger's essential flaw. Or
should the word be shortcoming or blindness or error or failure or
misdeed? Arendt, in her essay of 1969 , is sensitive to this problem,
although she narrowly averts a stumbling block of the same kind:
