Taminiaux - Platonic Roots of Heidegger

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European Journal of Political

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DOI: 10.1177/1474885107070827

2007 6: 11European Journal of Political TheoryJacques Taminiaux

The Platonic Roots of Heidegger's Political Thought

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EJPTEuropean Journal

The Platonic Roots of Heidegger’sPolitical Thought

One of the most notorious of Heidegger’s political writings is the famoAddress on ‘The Self-Assertion of the German University’ that he deliMay 1933 after his election as head of Freiburg University, a discousually considered to be an obvious sign of compromise with theSocialist revolution.1 There is no doubt that Heidegger became a memNazi party right after his election and that he was at that time full offor Hitler and full of hope in the political regime which was cominunder the Führer’s leadership in 1933. However, if readers compare Hspeech with the main documents of Nazi propaganda, for example HKampf, Rosenberg’s mythology or the proclamations of Goebbels,acknowledge their amazement. There is no trace in the Rectoral Adendorsement by the speaker of what lay at the very foundation of theregime then taking shape in Germany: its ideology.

In her first major book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Aren

Contact address: Jacques Taminiaux, Faculté des sciences philosophiques, CoMercier, Université Catholique, Louvain-la-Neuve, Place du Cardinal MerciB – 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Department of Philosophy, Carney Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

of Political Theory© SAGE Publications Ltd,

London, Thousand Oaksand New Delhi

issn 1474-8851, 6(1) 11–29[DOI


: 10.1177/1474885107070827]

Jacques Taminiaux Université Catholique, Louvain-la-Neuve and Boston College

abstract: Heidegger’s most notorious political text is the Rectoral Address on‘The Self-Assertion of the German University’, delivered in Freiburg in May 1933.This work is puzzling in that it manifests not ideology, but what Dominique Janicaudcalled an ‘exacerbated Platonism’. Accordingly, this article is an attempt to search forthe roots of Heidegger’s political views in his early work, and above all in the lecturecourses on Plato and Aristotle delivered before the publication of Being and Time(1927), a book that still underpins the Rectoral Address. The investigation is in threestages: 1) an analysis of the political elements in Heidegger’s thought before 1933; 2)a survey of the development of his political thought after 1933; 3) an examination ofthe prejudices involved in the Platonist approach to politics, with reference to thework of Hannah Arendt, who was a former student of Heidegger in Marburg.

key words: Arendt, Aristotle, Heidegger, Plato, politics, praxis, Rectoral Address

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the most striking features of the totalitarian forms of government and insists onthe central function of ideology, in addition to the transformation of classes intomasses, the transformation of the party system into a mass movement mobilized bya single leader, the domination of the army by the police and an open orientationtowards world domination.2 Arendt shows that the central role of totalitarian ide-ology is to abolish once and for all a difference that has been taken for granted inthe entire history of political thought since Plato, a difference between two levelsin the meaning of the word law: legality and legitimacy. In other words, ideologypretends to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, positive laws and their legal-ity, and, on the other hand, the validating authority from which they springwithout ever having been coincident with it; for example, the transcendent idea ofjustice, fits naturally the commandments of God, the general will of a nation, orthe idea of practical reason.

This persistent differentiation between two levels in traditional thought entailsseveral other differences such as the discrepancy between the abstract and generalcharacter of the standards of right and wrong and the concrete variety of un-predictable human events; between universal obligation and the freedom ofindividual action and will; between duty and right; between the stabilizing impactof positive laws and the ever-changing movement of human affairs. All these distinctions vanish in totalitarianism thanks to ideology. Arendt demonstratesquite clearly that the totalitarian ideology gets rid of them by claiming to be thecomplete fulfilment of an ultimate law which itself is no longer referred to as anideal realm to be searched for, again and again, but is simply the expression of ‘themovement of a supra-human force, Nature or History’, a force which has ‘its ownbeginning and end’, its own consistency or logicality. Ideology thus is simply thelogical deduction of ‘a premise taken to be self-evident’, such as the perfect racein the case of Nazism.3 Ideology therefore leads inevitably to the repression of allthe human forms of active life as well as to the destruction of the life of the mind. As faras active life is concerned, the only activity preserved by ideology is the activity oflabour, since it is necessary for the survival of the race. But ideology represses theactivity of work, the condition of which in Arendt’s view is a common world builtby humans beyond the cycle of nature. This condition is eliminated as soon as theonly work taken into consideration is the fabrication of a perfect race. And ideologyalso represses the activity that Arendt calls action properly speaking, whose con-dition, she says, is human plurality, the fact that human beings are all alike but alldifferent. Action thus understood as a sharing of words and deeds, as interactionand interlocution, is eliminated by totalitarian ideology because ideology destroysplurality by considering human beings as mere exemplars or tokens of a racialtype. As far as the life of the mind is concerned, ideology is no less destructive. Itdestroys the activity of knowing as a renewed intellectual experience of phe-nomena because the only knowledge it retains is rigid deduction from an apodicticpremise. For the same reason, it destroys the activity of thinking considered as acontinually renewed search for meaning. Similarly, it destroys the activity of will-

European Journal of Political Theory 6(1)

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ing because human beings are no longer allowed to take initiatives. The will is nolonger their will: it is the monopoly of the perfect race.

If we concede that the analysis outlined here provides a fair picture of Nazi ideology, then we must also concede that Heidegger’s Rectoral Address does notfit with it at all. On closer scrutiny, with the exception of a celebration of theFührerprinzip and a vague allusion to the slogan Blut und Boden, in its language andits principal themes the speech can be seen as a kind of repetition of the first majortext in the tradition of political philosophy, the very tradition Nazi ideologyintended to get rid of once and for all, namely, Plato’s Republic.

Indeed, Heidegger’s discourse is a celebration of the normative position of whatPlato called theoria, contemplation, defined by Heidegger in ontological terms as‘the passion to remain close to and hard pressed by what is as such’.4 In his attemptto characterize this passion which overcomes the ontic towards the ontological,and which is therefore the privilege of metaphysics as the queen of sciences,Heidegger insists that the theoria at stake is not a detached form of contemplationbut an extreme possibility of Dasein. Theoria is thus conceived in existential termsas a comportment, a way of life. Hence the normative position celebrated is thenormative position of what Plato called bios theorêtikos. As retrieved by Heidegger,this bios is both an ontological issue – it is focused on the Being of beings – and anexistential accomplishment of Dasein as being-in-the-world. Obviously inspiredby Plato’s teaching, Heidegger defines this accomplishment with the help ofGreek words. It is, he says, ‘the highest modality of energeia, of man’s “being-at-work”’, as well as ‘the highest realisation of genuine praxis’.5 In this contextHeidegger does not hesitate to quote and to take as a kind of motto a verse ofAeschylus’ Prometheus which in Greek runs Technê d’anangkês asthenestera makrô,and which is translated by Heidegger as ‘knowledge, however, is far weaker thannecessity’.6

The reference to the tragic verse is meant to point out that the ontological andexistential theoria is at once the highest praxis or highest action and the highesttechnê, i.e. the highest know how in the sense of a mode of disclosing adjusted to aspecific poiêsis, or production, defined as a putting-into-work of truth understoodas alêtheia, disclosedness. A similar encroachment of the tragic text upon the textof Plato had already occurred in Heidegger’s writings two years earlier in the longlecture course of 1931–2, The Essence of Truth, in which he undertook a detailedontological interpretation of the parable of the cave, the central motif of Plato’sRepublic.7 In order to show that what is at stake in the process of elevationdescribed by the parable is the transcendence and ecstatic disclosure that definesthe human Dasein in its intrinsic tension between everydayness and authenticity,Heidegger illustrates the uncanniness of the ownmost condition of Dasein byquoting his own translation of the beginning of the chorus polla ta deina inSophocle’s Antigone. His translation runs: ‘There are many uncanny things, butnothing is more so than man himself’.8

The Rectoral Address is consistent with the theme of elevation to the highest

Taminiaux: Platonic Roots

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ontological unconcealment. In the context of the Address, the verse of Aeschylus’Prometheus cited by Heidegger is supposed to mean:

. . . all knowing about things has always already been delivered up to overpowering fateand fails before it. Just because of this, knowing must develop its highest defiance; calledforth by such defiance, all the power of the hiddenness of what is must first arise forknowing really to fail. Just in this way, what is opens itself in its unfathomable inalterabilityand lends knowing its truth.9

The challenging knowledge at stake is of course philosophy itself. Consequentlythe words of Prometheus are supposed to characterize the very condition of thephilosopher; Prometheus turns out to be the one who dedicates his life to the biostheorètikos. And since there is an amalgamation between the highest theoria, thesupreme modality of poièsis, and the highest accomplishment of praxis, Heidegger,in agreement with Plato, describes the body politic as a huge workshop in whicheveryone has a specific function under the guidance of the philosopher. There isan obvious echo of Plato’s Republic in Heidegger’s picture of a corporatist statewherein each of the estates (Stände, a favourite word in Hegel’s political philo-sophy, which was itself inspired by Plato) provides a distinct service to a particularpeople, the German Volk: a service of work, a service of defence and, at the top, aservice of knowledge, above all a service of metaphysics, in order to prevent the dispersion of sciences into specialized disciplines. There is no allusion whatsoeverto the transformation of classes into masses. Rather, the movement to whichHeidegger alludes in the Rectoral Address is a conscious movement towardsBeing, not a mass mobilization. Likewise the world alluded to is not a universalLebensraum for the race of the Lords but the ontological site of Dasein.

This long introduction is sufficient to suggest that Heidegger’s politicalthought at the time of his most notorious compromise with Nazism was not thethought of an ordinary Nazi. To be sure, there is in it an emphasis put on theimportance of guidance, Führung, a key concept in Nazi ideology, but since inHeidegger’s use of the notion the guide is the one who is able to raise fundamentalquestions whereas the body of followers has its ‘own strength’ and ‘bears resist-ance within itself’, we are a very long way from the blind submission to asuprahuman force which, according to Arendt, characterizes ideology.10 AsDominique Janicaud observed, this self-affirmation of the German university is ‘acall to self-affirmation for the self and the people (for oneself in the people)’.11

This appeal explains why, on the one hand, a representative of official Nazi ideology such as the Minister for Education in Baden, Otto Wacker, could criti-cize the discourse as a document of ‘private national-socialism’ and why, on theother hand, Karl Jaspers, who never compromised with the regime, on receivinga copy of the speech, intended to send a letter of congratulation to the author.

If we acknowledge that the Rectoral Address, read as an expression ofHeidegger’s political thought in 1933, exhibits not ideology, but what Janicaudcalled ‘an exacerbated Platonism’, this introduction puts us in a position to searchfor the roots of his political thought in the long debate with the Greeks, particu-


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larly Plato, that he conducted before the publication of the book that still deter-mines the horizon of the Rectoral Address, that is, Being and Time.12

My investigation into these roots is divided into three stages:

1) An outline of the political elements in Heidegger’s thought before 1933.2) An examination of the development of the political thought outlined in the

Rectoral Address during the following years.3) A reflection on the prejudices involved in Heidegger’s Platonic view of politi-

cal matters. Here, I shall call on the help of Hannah Arendt, one of the majorpolitical thinkers of the 20th century, a former student of Heidegger and onewho never hesitated, after a short period of rejection, to acknowledge her intellectual debt to Heidegger’s teaching.

IAre there political elements in Heidegger’s thought before 1933, in the lecturecourses that paved the way to Being and Time, in the book itself (published in 1927)and in the writings and lecture courses that followed directly afterwards? And ifso, do these elements amount to an endorsement of Plato’s view of politics? Theanswer to both questions is: yes indeed.

As I have suggested, the Rectoral Address gravitates, so to speak, around a fewbasic concepts: poièsis enlightened by technè (or production, putting into a work thetruth disclosed by a knowhow), praxis (or action) and theoria (or contemplation).It is now quite clear that these basic concepts of Greek philosophy, by which Imean the dialogues of Plato as well as the treatises of Aristotle, designated centraltopics in Heidegger’s teaching in the Marburg years that saw the genesis of Beingand Time. Let me offer a brief reminder of Heidegger’s way of dealing with thesetopics during those Marburg years, when his lecture courses consisted almostexclusively of interpretations of works of Plato and Aristotle.

We might begin by noting that the framework of these interpretations is provided by the famous Natorpbericht of 1922, a text in which Heidegger wasattempting to describe how he conceived his investigations in Greek philosophy,particularly in the philosophy of Aristotle, in order to justify his application for ateaching position of the University of Marburg.13 What is immediately striking inHeidegger’s presentation of his task as an interpreter of philosophical texts of thepast is the emphasis he puts on an ontological vision, on an insight into the Being ofbeings. In terms of method, insight, vision, Anschauung, in Greek theoria, was ofcourse a leitmotiv in Husserl’s phenomenology, which was familiar to Heideggeras a former assistant of Husserl. In this respect, the title he gave to theNatorpbericht is significant: ‘Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect toAristotle’, with the subtitle ‘Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation’.Phenomenology is a matter of seeing. And I remember Heidegger, in the lastseminar he gave in Zähringen in 1974, which I attended, repeating forcefully: ‘If


15



you don’t see, you are not a phenomenologist’. In other words, throughout hisentire career, from the Natorpbericht until the last seminar, he continued to pro-claim the normative position of theoria as he did in the Rectoral Address.

What is the link between the two words which make up the subtitle of theNatorpbericht: phenomenology and interpretation? In each of them it is a matter of‘seeing’. Indeed, the task of the interpreter is to see what Heidegger calls aSachgehalt, the content of a state of affairs. It is a task that depends on a hermeneu-tical situation that Heidegger also describes in optical terms as determined by aBlickstand (an initial position of looking), a Blickrichtung (a direction of looking) and a Sichtweite (a scope of looking).14 And since Heidegger claims to be neither ascholar nor a historian of ideas, but to be interested exclusively in the deepest ques-tions of philosophy, which are ontological questions of course, his aim is not to pro-vide a neutral contribution to an objective knowledge of the past for its own sake.His aim is to achieve a philosophical reappropriation of the Greeks here and nowwith respect to the originary object of philosophical research in the present. Hewrites: ‘The object of philosophical research is human Dasein insofar as it is inter-rogated with respect to the character of its being [Seinscharakter]’.15 Philosophicalresearch started in Greece and the Greeks coined the basic categories for philo-sophical research, but under the influence of Christianity these categories slowlylost their genuine ontological impact. The purpose of Heidegger’s interpretationof Greek texts is to restore that ontological impact, reappropriating what theGreeks discovered in relation to the factical life of the human Dasein, and, throughthis reappropriation, to make visible, even transparent – durchsichtig – the humanDasein itself in its ontological character.

Clearly echoing Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditation, Heidegger writes:‘The past opens itself up only in accord with the degree of resoluteness[Entschlossenheit] and power of the capacity to disclose it [Aufschliessenkönnen] thatthe present has available to it’.16 Here, we can see one of the earliest expressionsof the strict correlation between the historical character of Dasein and the excel-lence of the bios theorètikos, i.e. the philosophical way of life, that will later be givensuch emphasis in the Rectoral Address. Indeed, Heidegger claims that philosophy,in its effort to see, is a commitment that adheres closely to the inner movement offactical life and brings it to its highest level. ‘Philosophical research’, he writes, ‘isthe explicit actualizing of a basic movement of factical life and constantly main-tains itself within it’.17 It is by being intimately concerned with the Being offactical life that philosophy becomes what in Being and Time he will simply callfundamental ontology.18 The main part of this fundamental ontology, the analyticof Dasein, is already anticipated in its basic themes here in 1922. The intentional-ity that pervades the movement of factical life is care (Sorge), a cura that is orientedtowards a surrounding world, a common world (Mit-Welt) and a self-world, anddiversified into various concerns according to which the world is encountered byfactical life as having such and such a meaning, and interpreted through a logos, insuch and such a discursive modality. A detached knowledge of objects results


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from an inhibition of the tendency to pursue goals or produce effects that initiallycharacterizes care in its specific movement. Along with, and within, this basicintentionality of care, factical life is inclined to lose itself in its world, to fall into it, thereby falling away from itself, alienating itself. As a result of this falling,‘factical life, which is in each case properly the factical life of an individual, is forthe most part not lived as such’.19 Instead, it is lived in a specific averageness, theaverage character of what is at each time public for everyone, for das Man, for theThey.

In addition to care and falling, a third major topic of fundamental ontology isalso anticipated in the Natorpbericht: being-towards-death. Once again, this is amatter of seeing. Heidegger writes:

When one has death before one as certain and lays hold of it as such, one’s life becomesvisible in itself. When death is in this manner, it gives to life a certain way of seeing itselfand constantly leads it before its ownmost present and past.20

Death, in other words, is ‘the key phenomenon in which the specific kind of “temporality” belonging to human Dasein is to be brought into relief and expli-cated’.21

The excellence of the bios theorètikos celebrated by the Rectoral Address obvi-ously has deep roots in Heidegger’s intellectual journey, beginning with theNatorpbericht. To be sure, that celebration ultimately goes back to Plato. How-ever, there is no allusion either to Plato or to politics in the indications of thehermeneutical situation in the Natorpbericht. These indications introduce an inter-pretation of Aristotle, not of Plato. Moreover their purpose is strictly ontological,and the ontology at stake in them is not the ontology of a people, but the ontologyof an individual Dasein. Nevertheless, it is perhaps not exaggerated to claim that,behind the overall tension between the inauthenticity of the They falling awayfrom the ownmost movement of factical life and the philosophical insight intoDasein’s authentic way of being, there lies a major topic of Plato’s politicalthought: the tension between the life of the sage and the life of the polloi.

This tension comes to the fore, often with explicit reference to Plato’s notionof politics, in the lecture courses delivered by Heidegger in Marburg in the following years, to which the Natorpbericht was a prelude. Let me comment brieflyon the reference to Plato’s notion of politics in the lecture course on Grundbegriffeder aristotelischen Philosophie that Heidegger delivered in the summer semester of1924, and also in the lecture course on Plato’s The Sophist delivered a few monthslater in the winter semester 1924–5.22

At the beginning of his lecture course on the basic concepts of Aristotelian philosophy, Heidegger in the wake of his Natorpbericht reminds his listeners thathe conceives of his task as belonging to the scientific purpose of philosophy, a taskin which ‘the possibility of human existence’ is at stake; by which he means that‘human life has the possibility to refer only to itself without faith or religion’.23

The only faith required is ‘the faith in history [Geschichte], for it is presupposed


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that history, and the historical past in so far as the way to it is liberated, can givea thrust, a push [Stoß ] to the present and to a better future’.24 Heidegger immedi-ately insists on the ontological perspective of the retrieval involved in hisinvestigation, where ontology is taken in the strict sense of a logos, a discourse,adjusted to the Being of beings. Once again, the privilege of theoria becomes clear.

Indeed, Heidegger claims that in Aristotle’s famous definition of the humanbeing as the zoon logon echon, the speaking animal, the point is to reach an accom-plishment that takes place in the delimitation (horismos) of ousia, a word hetranslates as ‘being in its Being’. Heidegger then adds:

The ultimate possibility in which Dasein is authentically, we call Existenz. Existence, in the radical sense, is for the Greeks precisely that way of being in the world, to dwell in it,from which is motivated the horismos as speaking with the world. Existence, the radicalpossibility of Dasein, it is for the Greeks, the bios theorètikos: life persisting in purecontemplation.25

For the Greeks! The phrase is significant if we consider that the only GreeksHeidegger addressed in his Marburg lecture courses were Plato and Aristotle.The phrase ‘the Greeks’ means that he didn’t distinguish between Plato andAristotle, and this is confirmed in the interpretation he gives of the secondAristotelian characterization of the human being: zóon politikon. Heideggeracknowledges that for Aristotle the zóon politikon is a speaking animal, but he isquick to project the teaching of Plato onto the speech of the zóon politikon. Thespeaking citizen does not overcome the inauthentic preoccupation that pervadesthe rule of the They in everydayness, and his deliberative speech in the publicspace of the polis is, Heidegger claims, trapped in ‘habits’, ‘fashion’, ‘immediatevogue’, ‘idle talk’.26 He doesn’t speak as a responsible individual, he is a mere sample of das Man. Without any consideration for Aristotle’s objections to Platoin matters of politics, Heidegger contends that, like Plato, Aristotle was ‘in themost extreme opposition to what was alive around him in the concrete world’.27

In other words Aristotle’s real concern was to celebrate, like Plato, the excellenceof the bios theorètikos, in full opposition to the inauthenticity of the bios politikos. Inthe first bios it is an ontological disclosure that prevails; in the second, it is the ruleof opinions, which adheres to the way things commonly appear to das Man. Atstake in the first bios is alêtheia (truth), whereas the second bios does not movebeyond persuasion.

In line with these considerations, the lecture course Plato’s Sophist delivered byHeidegger a few months later claims in a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethicsthat for Aristotle ‘politikè epistèmè is genuine sophia and the politikos is the truephilosophos; that is the conception of Plato’.28 This lecture course is particularlyinteresting with regard to the alleged continuity between Plato and Aristotle. It isin order to provide an existential introduction to Plato that Heidegger offers hisstudents a detailed interpretation of Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics. And hisexistential interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise is focused, once again, on the excellence of the bios theorètikos. In fact, on close inspection, it is through a very


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particular retrieval of the teaching of the Nicomachean Ethics that Heidegger dis-covered, with respect to the finite and mortal existence of Dasein, his own waytowards a reappropriation of the absolute precedence that Plato bestowed uponthe bios theorêtikos as capable of achieving an ultimate ontological insight.

In Nicomachean Ethics 6, Aristotle establishes a hierarchy among the intellectualvirtues or excellences and splits them up into two groups: the deliberative virtueson a lower level, the epistemic virtues on a higher one. Technè (art or know how),the virtue of poièsis (production), is lower than phronèsis (prudence or practicaljudgement), which is the virtue of praxis (action or conduct of life). Similarly, onthe upper level epistèmè, the virtue of contemplation directed towards particularobjects (for example, the contemplation of geometrical shapes), is lower thansophia, the virtue of higher contemplation directed towards the ultimate principlesof the movement of nature as a whole.

Heidegger claims that Aristotle’s description of these two levels is focused onthe possibilities of disclosure that characterize Dasein. The fabric of the lecturecourse is thus a comparative assessment of the active life and the contemplativelife governed by the pre-eminence of the bios theorètikos. Heidegger’s handling ofthe Aristotelian text is a complex intermingling of sophisticated scholarship and astructural reappropriation for his own ontological purpose, which is to discoverthe meaning of Being by way of an ontological analysis of human existencedefined in terms of a finite and mortal temporality. Against this backdrop, hisanalysis of the active life pays much attention to the Aristotelian distinctionbetween poièsis and praxis, work and action. Work, insists Heidegger, is illumi-nated by a specific mode of alèthèia, unconcealing, which is technè or knowhow.But this mode of disclosing has three flaws. First, it relates to entities that surround human beings and which do not have Dasein’s mode of Being. More-over, while the principle of that disclosive activity (e.g. the blueprint of theproduct to be shaped), is in the working Dasein, the telos, the goal, is a thing outthere in the world that is independent of the producer. Finally, the productbecomes instrumental for the aims and needs of many other individuals who areall trapped within an endless cycle of means and ends. By contrast, the Aristoteliannotion of praxis is interpreted by Heidegger as an activity in which there is nolonger any lack of balance between archê and telos, and with respect to whichmeans and ends are no longer relevant. According to Aristotle, praxis is hou heneka, for its own sake. As interpreted by Heidegger, this statement translates as:Dasein exists for the sake of itself (umwillen seiner).29 Thus Heidegger does not hesitate to translate the specific form of disclosure belonging to praxis, i.e.phronêsis, into conscience (Gewissen), understood in strictly ontological terms withno ethical connotation, as the intimate vision by an individual Dasein of its own-most possibility of Being. In other words it is easy to see that this interpretationof poièsis and technè anticipates the description of everydayness in Being and Time,and the interpretation of praxis–phronèsis anticipates the future description of careand of authenticity as a way of facing existence.


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There is a clear Platonic bias in the way Heidegger erases what in Aristotle’snotion of praxis is essentially linked to the right exercise of citizenship among aplurality of equals and in interaction with them. He also overlooks the fact that forAristotle phronêsis is a ‘doxastic virtue’ that is in no way intended to stand apartfrom what appears to other agents. All in all, Heidegger completely overlookswhat in Aristotle’s analysis of praxis and phronêsis indicates a link with the real biospolitikos of the democratic regime of Athens – for example when Aristotle says thatPericles is a good example of phronimos.

What of theoria? Here, too, there is evidence of a Platonic bias in Heidegger’sanalysis, since he argues as though Aristotle recognized in the bios theorètikos theonly possibility of attaining eudaimonia. It is revealing of his own ontological per-spective focused on Dasein that he translates eudaimonia into Eigentlichkeit,authenticity. Because of this focus, his analysis is a mixture of agreement andreservation: agreement in so far as the Aristotelian features of the highest theoria– solitude, silence, ultimate vision – are the very features that will define con-science in Being and Time; reservation because the Aristotelian theoria is focusedon the perpetual present of nature, rather than the ecstatic temporality of thehuman Dasein.

In relation to Being and Time, I will just highlight the Platonic bias in the following passage from the Introduction:

With regard to the awkwardness and ‘inelegance’ of expression in the analyses to come, we may remark that it is one thing to give a report in which we tell about entities, but anotherto grasp entities in their Being. For the latter task we lack not only the words, but, above all,the ‘grammar’. If we may allude to some earlier researches on the analysis of Being, incomparable on their own level, we may compare the ontological sections of Plato’sParmenides or the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics with a narrative section from Thucydides; we can then see the altogether unprecedented characterof those formulations which were imposed upon the Greeks by their philosophers.30

To illustrate the contrast between ontological discourse and ontic discourse bychoosing as an example of ontic discourse the work of Thucydides, which is oneof the rare documents in which the traces of the political discourse of real agentsof the Athenian bios politikos are preserved, is indicative once again of the point Iam making. If we recall that one of the most telling of those traces is the descrip-tion of the democratic regime of Athens in the famous funeral oration by Pericles,we might say that Heidegger’s choice displays a disdain for the real bios politikos ofthe real polis – a disdain which, of course, sits well with Plato’s negative viewsabout democracy.

But it is in the lecture course, The Essence of Truth, delivered by Heideggerafter the publication of Being and Time that his agreement with Plato’s notion ofthe best political regime becomes fully explicit. Indeed in this lecture course,Heidegger deals extensively with Plato’s Republic and presents a detailed reappro-priation of the parable of the cave in terms of his fundamental ontology. Here, we find the following statement: ‘In regard to the state (as we somewhat inappro-


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priately translate polis) and its inner possibility Plato maintains as his first princi-ple that the authentic guardians of human association in the unity of the polis mustbe those who philosophise.’31 Any student of Greek philosophy might easily agreewith this statement. But we already know that Heidegger is not interested in aneutral knowledge of past ideas for their own sake. On the contrary his purpose isa reappropriation of the past here and now. This is why he continues with a clearreference to Germany:

He does not mean that philosophy professors are to become chancellors of the Reich, butthat philosophers are to become phulakes, guardians. Control and organization of the stateis to be undertaken by philosophers, who set standards and rules in accordance with theirwidest and deepest freely inquiring knowledge, thus determining the general course whichsociety should follow. As philosophers they must be in a position to know clearly andrigorously, what man is, and how things stand with respect to his ability-to-be.32

This is already the language of the Rectoral Address.

IIWhat of the development of Heidegger’s political thought directly after theRectoral Address? Does it exhibit the continuation of Plato’s legacy? DominiqueJanicaud was right to claim that ‘the philosophical horizon’ of Being and Time isfor the most part maintained in the Rectoral Address.33 Since this philosophicalhorizon is fundamental ontology, the question we face is this: what becomes offundamental ontology in the wake of the Rectoral Address? We could say that thecontrast between falling everydayness and resolute authenticity remains at thecore of the lecture courses in which Heidegger’s celebration of the National-Socialist revolution is most starkly evident, starting with his first course onHölderlin in 1934–5.34 What is new, however, if we admit a continuity, is the expansion of fundamental ontology to the Dasein of a people. The question‘Who?’ is no longer exclusively concerned with an individual Dasein that is in eachcase mine, but with the Dasein of the German people. In connection with thisenlargement another modification is also introduced. In the restricted funda-mental ontology focused on the individual Dasein, each Dasein is capable ofmatching up to its ownmost ontological truth. This is not so in the enlarged fundamental ontology. Very rare, Heidegger says, are these human beings equalto the truth of the Dasein of a people. They are: the poet who founds (Stiftung)that truth; the thinker who articulates conceptually and makes understandablewhat the poet discloses when founding the Dasein of a people; and – last but notleast – the political founder of a state adjusted to the essence of that people. Thesethree creators and only these three are qualified to be in charge of the Promethean technè that was celebrated in the Rectoral Address.

In this context, the encroachment of the Greek past upon the present that hadbeen a constant leitmotiv since the Natorpbericht is maintained but it acquires anew physiognomy. Indeed, the role attributed to Hölderlin is supposed to corre-


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spond in Germany to the role played by Sophocles in Greece. Among Heidegger’snumerous references to the Greeks in his first lecture course on Hölderlin, thefollowing statement is decisive in this respect: ‘The poem of Sophocles calledAntigone is, as a poem [Dichtung], a foundation of the Greek Dasein as a whole.’35

A careful analysis of the Heideggerian interpretation of that poetic foundationreveals that it is conducted against the backdrop of the legacy of Plato. The lecture course delivered by Heidegger in the summer semester of 1935 on theIntroduction to Metaphysics is significant here. It is in the context of an ontologicalpolemos (conflict) between Being and Appearance that for the first time Heideggerdeals extensively with a Greek tragedy. On the face of it, Heidegger interprets thispolemos in the light of Heraclitus and Parmenides. But on close inspection his handling of the topic is governed by a Platonic schema. Heidegger insists that thepolemos between Being and Appearance (Schein) belongs to the inner conflict in thedisclosive process of aletheia, not only between concealment and unconcealment,but also in unconcealment itself between a genuine appearing and a mere appear-ance or semblance. The Greek word translated into Schein by Heidegger is doxa.Schein, he says, has basically three meanings: radiance, appearing and semblance.36

These three meanings designate interplaying possibilities in the ontologicalprocess of aletheia, in which there is a tension between the pure radiance of pres-ence and its concealment by semblance. Heidegger’s favourite example of thisradiance is the sun, which suggests once again that he is arguing against the back-drop of the simile of the cave. This is confirmed by the language he uses indefining doxa, which is said to be ‘the regard <Ansehen, looking-at, esteem> whichevery essent conceals and discloses in its appearance <Aussehen> (eidos, idea)’, aswell as by the hierarchy in which he ranks the meanings of doxa: glory at the top,followed by the vision that offers something, and finally, at the bottom of the ladder, a ‘view that a man forms, opinion’.37

If we accept the sense of doxa as opinion (the dokei moi was the very fabric of thedemocratic regime of the Athenian polis), Heidegger’s disdain for the bios politikosis obvious. And once again this disdain is motivated by the pre-eminence of thebios theorètikos. This is very clearly demonstrated by Heidegger’s interpretation ofSophocles’ Oedipus in the same lecture course. Mindful that Greek tragedy con-cerns the ontological polemos of unconcealment, Heidegger writes of Oedipusthat, beyond the downfall of a powerful individual, ‘we must see him as theembodiment of Greek being-there (Dasein), who most radically and wildly assertsits fundamental passion, the passion for the disclosure of being’.38 It is doubtfulthat in the century of Pericles the Greeks of the democratic regime were invitedto the Dionysian theatre in order to celebrate the bios theorêtikos. It is far more likely, given the coincidence between democracy in Athens and the blossoming of tragedy, that Athenians attended the tragic theatre in order to become bettercitizens by realizing that in human interaction those who claim to be confidantsof the gods are blinded by hybris, and that the best attitude towards human affairsis measure and prudence. In this regard, it is symptomatic of Heidegger’s con-


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tempt for interactive praxis and plurality that he doesn’t even pay attention to theoriginal title of Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus Tyranos, ‘Oedipus the Tyrant’. It is significant, too, that Heidegger doesn’t mention that Hölderlin was the first totranslate the title of Sophocles’ masterpiece correctly. Similarly, he doesn’t payattention to Hölderlin’s Remarks on the drama, which clearly deplore thatOedipus, motivated by a Promethean hybris, instead of acting as a prudent states-man, falsely claims to be a half-god.39 By contrast, Heidegger, who was highlyselective in his retrieval of Hölderlin for the purposes of his expanded funda-mental ontology, celebrates the Promethean character of Oedipus.40

In the same lecture course Heidegger’s interpretation of Antigone’s chorus pollata deina merits a similar observation. The context of the interpretation is onceagain significant: at stake is the conflictual relationship between Being and Think-ing, clearly not a key topic for the citizens practically interested in the bios politikos,but a central concern for the few, like Plato, who since Parmenides had dedicatedtheir lives to the bios theorètikos.41

Heidegger’s emphasis on the word deinon, and his specific translation of it, areindicative of his narrowly ontological perspective. Indeed, he deliberately over-looks the use of the word in the drama itself: for example, in describing the burialof her brother by Antigone or the stubbornness of Creon. When used in the dialogues of the drama the word deinon always designates some frightening excess;it can be seen in Antigone’s antilegalism as well as in Creon’s obsession with thelaw. This is something Hölderlin perceived quite clearly in his translation of thedrama as well as in his Remarks.42 But Heidegger neglects the drama and pays little attention to Hölderlin’s comments, precisely because they are focused onhuman interaction. By translating deinon as unheimlich – the word which in Beingand Time designated the ontological condition of Dasein – Heidegger implies thatwhat is at stake in the chorus is exclusively the ontological tension betweenDasein’s authentic view of Being and an inauthentic falling away from Being intothe mere appearances that make everydayness familiar and secure. Yet fundamen-tal ontology is no longer limited to the Dasein of an individual, and is nowconcerned with the Dasein of a people, so what is actually at stake is not just thehistoricity of an individual but the ownmost destiny of a people. In this context,Plato’s concept of the polis as a huge workshop ruled by those few who are dedi-cated to an authentic unconcealment reappears in a typically modern variation;namely, in the German tradition of philosophy of history, and above all in Hegel.Hegel claimed that great men were the agents of the historical process. Similarly,Heidegger claims that the truly efficacious agents of the setting-into-work of thealètheia of a people are creative ‘men of action’.43 Again, the contrast withHölderlin’s praxeological approach of the Greek text is striking. In Hölderlin’sinterpretation of the chorus it is no less deinon to be above the polis than it is to bewithout polis – cityless. Not so in Heidegger’s interpretation. Instead of express-ing a warning against hybris, the word deinon supposedly expresses a celebration ofthe creative statesmen. They must be high above the polis and even without polis:


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‘without statute and limit, without structure and order, because they themselvesas creators must first create all this’.44

A careful reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the key words in the choruspolla ta deina reveals many traces of Plato’s legacy, in spite of the modern empha-sis on the philosophy of history. For example, the word logos is given a strictlyontological meaning in terms of the recollection of entities upon their Being.Technè denotes the cognitive ability to look beyond what is present-at-hand. Dike is given a similar treatment and Plato’s influence is unmistakable whenHeidegger claims that dike ‘loses its fundamental metaphysical meaning’ when itis translated as justice.45 Like Plato in The Republic, Heidegger understands dike asanother name for an ontological realm, a name of Being; more precisely a namefor an injunction addressed by Being, an injunction to which technè has to corre-spond. Consequently, rather than warning against various acts that endangerpraxis and political interaction, as Hölderlin believed, the chorus polla ta deinasimply expresses a demand that there be an adjustment to ontological necessity,that human will-to-power corresponds to the overpower of Being. To be sure,Heidegger notices that the final verses of the chorus apparently suggest a reserva-tion:

May such a man never frequent my hearth;May my mind never share the presumptionOf him who does this.46

But it is significant that he does not detect in those words any call for moderationor prudence. He writes: ‘Insofar as the chorus turns against the strangest of all, itsays that this manner of being is not that of every day.’47 Translated into onto-logical terms, the final verses merely express the unavoidable blindness of every-dayness to the ontological spectacle that the bios theorètikos is able to see.

IIIIn this final stage of the article, I will present a critical reflection by Arendt onHeidegger’s Platonic view of politics. We are fortunate that there is an essay byArendt that sets out the main points of her criticism quite clearly. In a letter written on 8 May 1954 in reply to a question about her work from Heidegger, shestates that she had for some time been working on Heidegger’s interpretation ofthe relation between philosophy and politics.

‘Philosophy and Politics’ was in fact the title of the final part of a series of lectures Arendt gave at Notre Dame University in 1954. This part of the lectureseries subsequently underwent significant revision and its final version was pub-lished in 1990 in Social Research.48 Although Heidegger is not even mentioned inthe text, Arendt herself claims in her letter that her work on ‘Philosophy andPolitics’ had a great deal to do with his interpretation, which invites the historianof ideas to decipher Arendt’s lecture as an implicit debate with Heidegger.49 The


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lecture deals with what she calls the ‘gulf between philosophy and politics’, a gulfwhich marks, she says, the entire tradition of political thought, a tradition whichbegan ‘when the death of Socrates made Plato despair of polis life, and, at the sametime, doubt certain fundamentals of Socrates’ teaching’.50 Regarding Heidegger’searly teaching when he was her teacher at Marburg, Arendt herself wrote, in hertribute to Heidegger’s 80th birthday:

It was technically decisive that, for instance, Plato was not talked about and his theory ofIdeas expounded; rather for an entire semester a single dialogue was pursued and subjectedto question step by step, until the time-honored doctrine had disappeared to make roomfor a set of problems of immediate and urgent relevance.51

Arendt is referring here to the lecture course on The Sophist that Heideggeroffered in the winter semester 1924–5.52 The question is whether or not there isa link between Arendt’s treatment of Plato in her lecture of 1954 and Heidegger’sinterpretation of Plato in 1924–5.

There is indeed a link. From the very start, Arendt’s lecture focuses on the con-clusion that Plato drew from Socrates’ trial; i.e. that there is an oppositionbetween truth and opinion (doxa). Heidegger’s lecture course also focuses on thesame opposition from the start. But whereas Arendt insists that the opposition was‘the most anti-Socratic conclusion’ that Plato ever drew, Heidegger takes forgranted that, by insisting on the opposition, Plato was in full agreement withSocrates.53 Accordingly, Heidegger takes it for granted that Socrates, Plato andAristotle share in the ‘struggle against rhetoric and sophistry’.54 He himself claimsto make this struggle his own philosophical endeavour, his way of life. Thus, hetranslates the opposition between truth and opinion into the opposition betweenauthenticity and everydayness, between a disclosing logos and an idle talk,between a genuine Self and the They. In the course of this retrieval of Plato’sstruggle, Heidegger will argue in the lecture course of 1924–5 that only thephilosopher can be an authentic politician, a position that he will repeat again andagain, for instance, as I have already said, in his lecture course of 1931–2, Of theEssence of Truth.55 We have seen that a similar reappropriation of Plato is at thecore of the Rectoral Address of 1933, which is in the end a pale remake of Plato’sRepublic.

This is what Arendt dismantles in her lecture of 1954. Instead of claiming, asHeidegger does, that Plato continued Socrates’ struggle, she insists on a decisivedifference between Plato and Socrates. Far from being opposed to doxa, sheargues, Socrates took it as the basic assumption of political life: the world is common to all by opening up differently to everyone. In other words, Socratesrecognized that doxa is coupled with plurality. His celebrated maieutic was aimedat helping everyone, Arendt says, to express ‘his own opening to the world’.56 Forhim, ‘the role of the philosopher, then, is not to rule the city, but to be its “gadfly”, not to tell philosophical truths but to make citizens more truthful’.57 Notto overcome their doxai but to improve them. Accordingly whereas Heidegger


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claimed that Socrates was already committed to fighting rhetoric, Arendt claimsthat Socrates’ Apology is one of the greatest examples of rhetoric, ‘the art of persuasion, the highest, the truly political art’.58 Similarly, whereas Heideggerclaimed that Socrates was determined to oppose the sophists, Arendt writes:

If the quintessence of the sophists’ teaching consisted in the dyo logoi, in the insistence thateach matter can be talked about in two different ways, then Socrates was the greatestsophist of them all. For he thought that there are or should be as many different logoi asthere are men.59

Moreover instead of insisting on the points of agreement between Aristotle andPlato, as Heidegger does for ontological reasons, Arendt turns to Aristotle on several occasions in order to find a non-Platonic echo of Socrates, if only a weak-ened one; for example, in friendship as higher than justice, or measure (metron) asthe possible virtue of everyone.

Finally, instead of claiming with Heidegger that Plato’s doctrine of truth, as itis framed in the simile of the cave, justifies the political rule of philosophers,Arendt deconstructs the simile ‘in order to comprehend the enormity of Plato’sdemand that the philosopher should become the ruler of the City’.60 Although, intacit agreement with Heidegger, she regards the simile as a condensed biographyof the philosopher, in her view such a biography demonstrates that the philo-sopher, in Plato’s sense, is the least qualified for dealing with human affairs. Sheunderlines that the simile begins with the suspension of the two most politicallysignificant aspects of human life: talk and action. Indeed the only business of theinhabitants of the cave consists in a silent vision. Each turning point in the story,Arendt says, is meant to describe levels of seeing which define the stages in theformation of the philosopher. Each of these stages is accompanied by ‘a loss ofsense and orientation’, therefore a loss of the ability to reach a doxa.61 In Arendt’sview the whole story presupposes, in its emphasis on levels of seeing, that philo-sophy begins in wonder, a wonder that she defines without mentioningHeidegger, but in his language: it bears on everything that is as it is, and it is some-how ‘the experience of nothingness’, an experience which, by definition, escapesthe sharing of words and deeds essential to the bios politikos.62 But the story alsopresupposes that the end of philosophy similarly overcomes interaction and inter-locution, since, as Plato suggests in his Seventh Letter, it is a condition ofspeechlessness before a light which is like ‘a flying spark’.63 Hence the beginning,the stages and the end of the story all demonstrate that the philosophical way oflife, the bios theorêtikos, is lived entirely in the singular by a person who is alone inthe world. If such a person decides to endure the pathos of a speechless wonder, heis inclined to tyranny when he returns to the cave for the simple reason that, bybasing his whole existence on that pathos, ‘he destroys the plurality of the humancondition within himself’.64

I consider this analysis to be the most significant testimony of Arendt’s intel-lectual relation to Heidegger. In contrast to the angry rejection expressed by


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Arendt in 1946 in the Partisan Review, the 1954 lecture no longer attributes themain topics of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, such as its concern with whatis as it is, nothingness, singularity, the instant of vision (Augenblick), etc., to a formof irresponsible and arrogant romanticism. It claims instead that these topics,along with the compromise with tyranny, derive from the activity of thinking itselfwhen, instead of being a temporary withdrawal from the common world ofappearances in order to prepare a meaningful return to it, it becomes the exclu-sive pathos of a whole life (a point repeated by Arendt fifteen years later in herhomage for Heidegger’s 80th birthday).65

This deconstruction of Heidegger’s Platonism is of course carried out from theviewpoint of praxis as conditioned by plurality, and from the perspective of the biospolitikos as a renewed sharing of words and deeds among equal partners compelledto judge concrete situations. It is a perspective that enabled Arendt to adopttowards Heidegger the professional thinker the ironical stance of the ‘Thracianmaid’. This stance found expression in a text written one year before the lecturecourse of 1954 for her private use in which she offers a Kafkaesque picture of ‘Heidegger the fox’, a fox, she says, who ‘couldn’t even tell the differencebetween a trap and a non-trap’ but who ‘in his shocking ignorance of the differ-ence’ decided to build ‘a trap as his burrow’.66


Notes

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1. Martin Heidegger (1933) ‘The Self-Assertion of the German University’, tr. K. Harries,in (2003) Philosophical and Political Writings, ed. Manfred Stassen, pp. 2–11. London:Continuum Press.

2. Hannah Arendt (1973) The Origins of Totalitarianism, ch. 13, ‘Ideology and Terror: ANovel Form of Government’. New York: Harcourt.

3. Ibid. p. 465.4. Heidegger (n. 1), p. 4.5. Ibid.6. Ibid.7. Martin Heidegger (2002) The Essence of Truth, tr. Ted Sadler. London: Continuum.8. Ibid. p. 143. Sophocles, Antigone, 332–3.9. Heidegger (n. 1), p. 4.

10. Ibid. p. 10.11. Dominique Janicaud (1996) The Shadow of That Thought, tr. Michael Gendre, p. 46.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.12. Ibid. p. 47.13. Martin Heidegger, ‘Phenomenological Interpretations in Connection with Aristotle: An

Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation’, tr. John van Buren, in Heidegger (2002)Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, ed. John van Buren,pp. 111–45. Albany: SUNY Press. This essay first appeared in translation as (1992)‘Phenomenological Interpetations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of theHemeneutical Situation’, tr. Michael Baur, Man and World 25: 355–93.

14. Heidegger (2002, in n. 13), p. 112.15. Ibid. p. 113.




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16. Ibid. p. 112.17. Ibid. p. 114.18. The phrase Heidegger uses in 1922 is prinzipielle Ontologie, which is translated in

Supplements (p. 121) as ‘a fundamental ontology that deals with principles’.19. Ibid. p. 118.20. Ibid. p. 119.21. Ibid.22. Martin Heidegger (2002) Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe, 18.

Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann. The course title would translate as ‘BasicConcepts of Aristotelian Philosophy’. Heidegger (1997) Plato’s Sophist, tr. RichardRojcewicz and André Schuwer. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

23. Heidegger (2002, in n. 22), p. 6.24. Ibid.25. Ibid. p. 44.26. Ibid. p. 109.27. Ibid.28. Heidegger (1997, in n. 22), p. 93. The Greek text in the published edn has been

transliterated.29. This expression and the related ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ (Worumwillen) are used

frequently by Heidegger: cf. Martin Heidegger (1980) Being and Time, tr. JohnMacquarrie and Edward Robinson, p. 416. Oxford: Blackwell. Martin Heidegger (1984)The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, tr. Michael Heim, p. 189. Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press.

30. Heidegger (1980, in n. 29) p. 63.31. Heidegger (n. 7), p. 73.32. Ibid.33. Janicaud (n. 11), p. 47.34. Martin Heidegger (1989) Holderlins Hymnen ‘Germanien’ und ‘Der Rhein’, ed. Susanna

Ziegler, Gesamtausgabe, 39. Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann.35. Ibid. p. 216.36. Martin Heidegger (1961) Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Mannheim, p. 85. New

York: Anchor Books.37. Ibid. pp. 88, 89.38. Ibid. p. 90.39. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Remarks on “Oedipus”’, in Hölderlin (1988) Essays and Letters on

Theory, tr. and ed. Thomas Pfau, pp. 101–8. Albany: SUNY Press.40. Heidegger (n. 36), pp. 90–1.41. Ibid. pp. 123ff.42. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Remarks on “Antigone”’, in Hölderlin (n. 39), pp. 109–16.43. Heidegger (n. 36), p. 128.44. Ibid.45. Ibid. p. 135.46. Ibid. p. 124.47. Ibid. p. 138.48. Hannah Arendt (1990) ‘Philosophy and Politics’, Social Research 57(1): 73–103.49. It has often been pointed out that beneath Arendt’s discussion of Plato there is in fact a

simultaneous discussion of Heidegger, notably by Margaret Canovan (1990) ‘Socrates orHeidegger? Hannah Arendt’s Reflections on Philosophy and Politics’, Social Research57(1): 135–65.

50. Arendt (n. 48), p. 73.




51. Hannah Arendt (1977) ‘Martin Heidegger at Eighty’, in Michael Murray (ed.) Heideggerand Modern Philosophy, p. 295. New Haven: Yale University Press.

52. Heidegger (1997, in n. 22).53. Arendt (n. 48), p. 75.54. Heidegger (1997, in n. 22), p. 11.55. Heidegger (n. 7), p. 73.56. Arendt (n. 48), p. 81.57. Ibid.58. Ibid. p. 74.59. Ibid. p. 85.60. Ibid. p. 75.61. Ibid. p. 95.62. Ibid. p. 98.63. Ibid. p. 101.64. Ibid.65. Arendt (n. 51), pp. 293–303.66. Hannah Arendt (1994) Essays in Understanding (1930–1954), ed. J. Kohn, pp. 361–2. New

York: Harcourt Brace & Co.

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Taminiaux - Platonic Roots of Heidegger