Chris Doss wrote:
> Heidegger stated that 1) the essence of NS was good, but that 2) the
> Nazi leadership had perverted it. Whether that counts as a
> repudiation depends on what you think counts as a repudiation.
What Heidegger actually wrote in his 1935 lectures (the elaboration in parentheses was added, without indication, in 1953, and, according to Rainer Marten, "movement" was substituted for "National Socialism") was that:
"what is peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism, but which has not the least to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement [namely, the encounter between global technology and modern humanity], is fishing in these troubled waters of 'values' and 'totalities.'
"Yet we can see how stubbornly the thought of values entrenched itself in the nineteenth century when we see that even Nietzsche, and precisely he, thinks completely within the perspective of the representation of values. The subtitle of his projected main work, The Will to Power, is Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. Its third book is headed: Attempt at a New Pursuing of Values. Because Nietzsche was entangled in the confusion of the representation of values, because he did not understand its questionable provenance, he never reached the genuine center of philosophy. But even if some future thinker should reach the center again – we today can only pave the way – he will not avoid entanglement either; it will just be a different entanglement. No one can leap over his own shadow." (Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 213-4)
In 1945 Heidegger explicitly dissociated himself from what he identified as Nietzsche’s teaching “that ‘truth’ does not have any content or substance of its own, but is merely an instrument of the will to power, i.e. a mere ‘idea’, a totally subjective concept” and associated it instead with National Socialism and Marxism/Communism. Hugo Ott provides the context and reproduces the passage in the following extract from “Martin Heidegger: A Political Life.”
“In order to attain his political, indeed historic goals, Heidegger had to work, not to say fight, in a variety of different arenas. His own university was only ever a base, a point of departure, and an occasional refuge – at least to begin with. Even before his formal installation as rector he had already begun to stake out the territory that he planned to occupy. Some considerable stir, not to say indignation, was caused among the few people in the know in Freidburg when it emerged that Heidegger had sent the following to Adolf Hitler on 20 May 1933: ‘I respectfully request postponement of the planned reception for the Board of the Association of German Universities until such time as the much needed realignment of the Association in accordance with the aims of Gleichschaltung has been accomplished.’
“With this the new rector had unequivocally stepped up on to the national stage, which he no doubt saw as his proper field of action – though there is not a word about this in the apologia published in 1983. To sketch in the background briefly: the University Association in those days – in contrast to its post-1945 successor – was the corporate union of all German universities, whose principal purpose was to represent the interests of university teachers as a social and professional class. In effect it was an organ of the Conference of German University Rectors. Heidegger planned to replace this dual structure, not least because it had overtones of a parliamentary system, with a single, integrated Conference of Rectors, modelled on the principle of totalitarian leadership (Führerprinzip).
“The agitation in Freiburg was provoked principally by the reference to Gleichschaltung, whose meaning then, in the early summer of 1933, was clear enough: the realignment of all institutions, all areas of life; in conformity with the principles of the totalitarian state and the totalitarian society and the new power structures of the centralized National Socialist regime. This telegram weighed heavily against Heidegger in 1945, and in November of that year he submitted the following explanation to the chairman of the denazification commission – furnishing further evidence of the way he conducted his defence:
‘Although the telegram mentions “Gleichschaltung”, I was using the term in the same way that I used the term “National Socialism”. It was not, and never had been, my intention to impose Party doctrine on the University; on the contrary, I wanted to bring about a transformation in thinking both within National Socialism and with regard to it. It is untrue to claim that National Socialism and the Party had no intellectual plans for the universities or for science and learning: they had them only too clearly, citing Nietzsche as their authority, who taught that “truth” does not have any content or substance of its own, but is merely an instrument of the will to power, i.e. a mere “idea”, a totally subjective concept. What was and is so grotesque about it, of course, is that this “politicized” science and learning is essentially in line with the teachings of Marxism and Communism on the “idea” and “ideology”. It was against this that my rectorship address of 23 May, given three days after I had sent the telegram [Heidegger confuses the 23rd with the 27th of May], was clearly and explicitly directed.'” (Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, pp. 194-6)
Ted