Jargon of Authenticity

THE OF

Jargon Authenticity

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Jargon

THE OF

TRANSLATED BY

Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS Evanston

1973

@.I973)by

Copyri ght Northwes tern University Press Library of Congress C atalog C ard Number : vIS BN Prin ted in the United States of Ameri c a Al l ri gh ts reserved

72-96701 0-8101-0407-5

The

Jargon of Authenticity was ori gin ally published Jargon der Eigentlichkeit: Zur de u ts c hen Ideologie. © Suhrkamp Verl ag, Frank­ in German under the ti tle

furt am Main,

1964

Knut T arnowski is an instruc to r in comparative litera­ ture at the University of Massachusetts. Frederic Will is professor o f comparative literature at the University of M assachusetts .

CONTENTS

vii xix 3

Foreword, by Trent Schroyer Author's Note The Jargon of Authenticity

FOREWORD

PHILOSOPHY SEEMED ALIVE OF

BECAUSE

ITS

ONCE

WHICH

OUTMODED THE

REALIZATION

IS

NOW

MOMENT HAS

BEEN

MISSED.

Theodor

W. Adorno

Exis tentialism has be e n de­ scribed by Paul Tillich as "an over one hundred year old movement of rebellion against the dehumanization of man in in d u stri al society." 1 But this rebellion has been viewed as emergin g bec ause the solutions pro­ po s e d by Hegel and Marx proved ineffective for over­ coming the fact of alienation .2 Thus Kierke ga ard, in rej ecting Hegel's immanentism o t R e a s o n in his tor y simply tried to restore the irreducibility of human sub­ j e ctivity. For Kierkegaard the suffering of the individ­ u al is not justified in a panlogism of history. The Jargon of Authenticity is Theodor W. Adorno's 1. P aul Tillich, "Existentialist Philosophy," The Journal of the History of Ideas, V ( J an ., I 944) , 44 70. 2. F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Pre­ dicament (New York, I958), p. I 2 .

vi i

critique of the ideology of German existentialism. As a member of the Frankfurt s chool of critical theory,3 Adorno's critique is a Hegelian-Marxist response to the existentialist rejection of critical reason . Although this analysis focuses upon twentieth-century German ex­ istentialism, especially its post-World War II diffusion, the basic concern is its notion of subjectivity . That is , Adorno's critique is itself an attempt to transcend and include in the perspective of critical reason the truth of the existentialist concern for the fundamentalness of human subjectivity. In this sense Adorno's analysis p arallels that of Jean-P aul Sartre, who in the introduc­ tion to the Critique of Dialectical Reason argues that, correctly understood, existentialism is a moment of dialectical, or critical , reason.4 However, Adorno's intent goes beyond a counter­ critique of existentialism and aspires to be a critique of the ideology inherent in its German formulations . Adorno not only wants to salvage the n otion of sub­ jectivity from the idealistic tendency of existentialism, a concern he shares with Sartre, but he also wants to show that this theory has become a mystification of the actu al processes of domination . In this way Adorno's critique is within the tradition of critical theory's cri­ tique of ideology . The intent of critical theory is to re3 . The Frankfurt school is best known by its leading mem bers, among whom are Max Horkheimer, W al ter Benjamin , Herbert Marcuse, and Jiirgen Haberm as . However, the se are onl y the better-known members of a tradition of critical theory that has now spanned two genera tions . An excellent inte llec tu al his tor y of this highly important and lit tle understood com­ munity of rad ic a l scholars has jus t been publi shed by Martin Jay under the title of The Dialectical Imagination ( Boston, I 973 ) . 4. Jean Paul Sartre , Search for a Method ( New York, I963 ) ·

viii

construct the generation of historical forms of con­ sciousness in order to demons trate how they misrepre­ sent actual social relations and thereby justify histori­ cal forms of domination . In this way dialectical reason is actualized by critical theorists who , in their reflective critiques of the b asic categories of historical con­ s ciousness, seek to reconcile men and women to the actuality of their historical possibilities . So conceived, critic al theory is a theoretical moment of the "class struggle ." However, the later Frankfurt school no longer as­ sumed that the categories of M arx's critique of political economy were adequ ate for the critique of late in­ dustrial society (Le . , both "capitalisms" and "social­ isms"). It was precisely the failure of Marx's historical agent of change, the proletariat, to become a class-for­ itself that stimulated the Frankfurt school's an alyses of the ideol�gical reifications that blocked human lib­ eration . Their concern for the growth of false con­ s ciousness generated by the "culture indu stry" and the increased integration, and yet atomization , of persons in the industrial order resulted in a series of critical analyses of mass culture and ideological traditions , e . g., authoritarian social forms, the legacy of the En­ lightenment's notion of Re ason, etc ." In the absence of a decisive agent of social change, and in the midst of what M arcuse termed a "on e-dimensional society," the basic interest of the Frankfurt school was to restore the actu ality of critical ration ality . Indeed , their refusal to affirm "mech ani cal Marxism" or utopian hopes for 5. Some of these s tudies are now available in En glish, such as M. Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of En­ lightenment (New York, 1972); Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (New York , 1 972).

ix

liberation is perhaps evidence of their consistency in staying within the limits of negative critique. For them, only in the negation of pseudo-integrations and resolu­ tions was emancipatory action clearly possible . Hence, the Frankfurt school became a tradition of revolution­ ary theorists who, in the absence of the objective pos­ sibilities for the transcendence of industrial domina­ tion, attempted to uphold the ideals of critical reason that anticipated the emancipation of mankind from the unnecessary power constraints of nature and his­ tory . In this way their work is basically a critique of the reifications that conceal the truth of critical reason . Since "reification" is for them "a forgetting," 6 their work is essentially a remembrance, from the historical setting of the mid-twentieth century, of the notion of critical reason. Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity continues the of existentialism that had always been an issue for Frankfurt theorists.7 The continuity of this critique can be shown by Adorno 's 1939 essay "On Kierke­ gaard's Doctrine of Love," which anticipates and is assumed by this book.s Adorno shows that Kierke­ ga ard's notion of love transcended human differences, happiness, and even historical morality itself. The critique

6. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

7. Perhaps the earliest s tatement of this concern is Adorno's

Habilitationsarbeit ( I 933), which was published as Kierke gaard: Konstruktion des Aesthetischen ( Frankfurt, I965). But the essay by Herbert Marcuse, "Existentialism: Remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre's L'Etre et le neant," Philosophy and Phe­ nomonologica l Research VII, no. 3 ( M arch, I 948 ), is one of the most important critiques of exis tentialism in the Frank­ furt tradition. 8. Zeitsc hnft fur Sozialforschung, VIII ( I939), 4I3 29. x

most remote neighbor was to be affirmed as much as the most intimate friend; "preference" w as to be over­ come , and love as agape was to be experienced in a radical inwardness that transcended the natural incli­ nations of eros. Adorno argues that this love's extreme inwardness conceived of itself as its own ground . Hence , while Kierkegaard's doctrine of love aimed at overcoming the reifications of historical context, it actually became, Adorno claims, a reification that could not be actualized . In oppre ssing both natural drives and the right of the mind to question, radical in­ wardness loses love's power of reconciling the antag­ onism between natural instincts and socially formed selves . In abs tract inward love , both historical need and happiness are effectively denied. The real object of this love's "desire" is redemption-which becomes the ultimate reality sought. Adorno shows that this radical Christian inward­ ness evades the actuality of secular injustice and in­ equality. Nonetheles s, Kierkegaard is more deeply aware of the transformation of the person in the bour­ geois epoch than his contemporaries or his later Ger­ m an exis tentialist followers . That is, he recognized the mechanisms of industrialization that force men into alienated social patterns and reified communica­ tions. But this insight only confirmed Kierkegaard's sense that the progress of civilization was the his tory of advancin g decay and further inclined him to the hatred of "leveling" mech anisms and the rej ection of the m otives of the bourgeois epoch . Only in the r adical inwardness of Christian love, in the leap of faith that suspends the ethic al , is it possible to hope for eternality, for redemption . B u t Adorno's central point is th at Kierke gaard's xi

radical inwardness has lost the dialectical mediation of subj ect and obj ect-which was the achievement of Hegel's critical philosophy. That is, the constitutive presuppositions of human subj ectivity must themselves be dialectically related to the historical context in which determinate subj ects are formed. Failure to so relate the subj ect and object of histOrically situated knowledge results in the fallacy 9£ "o;bj ' the reduction of subjectiv Ity t o the in-it-selfness of facts (e . g . , positivism) or the innate principles of mind (the idealistic philosophy of the identity of reason and mind). Both forms of obj ectivism are the loss of criti­ cal (dialectical) reason. Only the tradition of reflec­ tive critique conceived of human subjectivity in a way that did not reduce it to the determinateness of natural facts or absorb it into the spiritual principles of abso­ lute idealism. Kierkegaard's radical inwardness be­ comes an idealistic objectivism by failing to compre­ hend subjectivity as a historical category. Dialecticaly conceived "subjectivity" is historically fonned and yet not reducible to historical determina­ tions; historical subjectivity is reconstructed from the framework of reflective critique in that the limits of constituti ve synthesis establish the range of possible experience. Only in such a reflective reconstruction of the genesis of subjectivity is it possible to distinguish between real possibilities an d those modes of ap pear­ ance that are but abstract i1Iusions, e . g . , existen­ tialism's transcendence of historical domination. -So conceived, the dialectical notion of subj ectivity is a fundamental category of critical reason. In reflective reconstructions of self-formation processes, it is pos­ sible to show the p!?eudo-necessity of socially unneces­ sary motives and to thereby promote a reversal of conxi i

s ciousness that can dissolve the causality of these objective illusions.9 In The Jargon at Authenticity. Adorno applies the method of immanent criticism to contemporary Ger­ man existentialists Buber, Jaspers, Heidegger, etc . ) . His basic thesis is that after World War II this philosophical perspective became an ideological mysti­ fication of human domination-while pretending to be a critique of alienation . Use of existentialistic terms became, Adorno argues , a j argon : a mode of magical expression which Walter Benj amin called an "aura ." In the aura of existentialism the historical need for meanin g and liberation was expressed, but in a way that mystified the actu al relation between lan guage and its objective content. Adorno's critique focuses on the j ar gon's incapacity to express the relation between language and truth, in that it breaks the dialectic of langua ge by making the intended obj ec t appear present by the idealization inherent in the word itself. The j argon , therefore, falls into an obj ectivism that con­ ceals the difference between philosophical reflection and the in-itselfness of the object of reflec tion . Such objectivism loses the intent of reflection to m aintain a self-consciousness of the mediation of fact through the thinking subject. Consequently, in the j argon objective consciousness is compressed in to self-experien ce, and an idealism results . 9. The methodologic al ideal of critical theory h a s been given a contemporary restatement in Jiirgen H abermas , Knowledge and Human Interests ( B oston, 197I), and Theory and Practice ( B oston, 1973). The continu ity of the tradition of critical the ory has been argue d by Trent Schroyer, The Criti ­ que of Domination (New York, 1973).

xi i i

But the societal result of this idealistic tendency is that the j argon shares with modern advertising the ideolo gical circularity of pretending to make present, in pure expressivity, an idealized form that is devoid of content; or, alternatively, j ust as the mass media can create a presence whose aura m akes the spectator seem to experience a nonexistent actuality, so the j argon pre­ sents a gesture of autonomy without content. Adorno's analysis here continues Marx's analysis of the fetish­ ism of commodities , in that the symbolisms of the j argon do not represent actual social relations but rather symbolize only the relations between abstract con cepts . Lost in the fetishisms of the j argon is the a ctuality of the historical development of human con­ s ciousness. That the subject itself is formed, and de­ formed, by the obj ective configuration of institutions is forgotten, and thu s reified, in the j argon's pathos of archaic primalness . Consequently, there is a los s of the objective context of human society and an idealistic compres sion of all historical consciousness into the sphere of self-experience . For example , Adorno cites Martin Buber's I and Thou and P aul Tillich's stress that religiosity is an end in itself, as instances of the shift to subjectivity as an in-it-selfness . In both cases the words are referred to the immediacy of life, to at­ titudinal and qualitative aspects of self-experience . One needs only to be a believer ; the objective content of belief h as, been eclipsed in the subjectivization of obj ective content. To be a Christian seems to be a personal question-independent from the historical divinity of Christ. Without necessarily intending to do so, this extreme subj ectivity transforms existentialistic language into a mystification of the objective con­ straints that block the autonomy and spontaneity of the historical subject. xiv

Hegel proclaimed philosophy a "homecoming" that critically reconciled obj ective discord and subj ective consciousness . His intent was to maintain a meaning­ ful totality by the reflective mediations of critical rea­ son. Reflection had as its aim the critique of abstrac­ tions, or in Marxian terms, of reification s . In this w ay Marx's work attempted to demonstrate the nonequiva­ lence of exchan ge in the capitalist economy-thereby restorin g to human consciousness a critical mediation of economic exploitation . Adorno implies that contemporary German ex­ istentialism began from a high�r level of capitalist development , in which the SOC1QGultural antagonisms ih ari e·c onomic �?'.El9Jtation and��­ ar�-.!_u c _ into Therefore , the h aste with which the existentialists and their j argon attempt to achieve a reconciliation, irregardless of the obj ective processes of alienation which block meanin g and autonomy, indicated only their awareness of the depth of the need. The re sulting movement to a radi cal in­ wardness and its expressions of authenticity, freedom , etc . , i s a n attempt t o actualize these ideals outside o f the obj ective social context : to fulfill heroic cultural models independent of the society . Behind these empty claims for freedom the socioeconomic processes of ad­ vanced capitalist integration continue , intenSifyin g the dependence of all persons upon large organizational units for employment and welfare . The j argon's "bless­ ings" conceal this objective context of unfreedom , and in the name of critical reflection the j ar gon j oins h ands with modern advertising in celebrating the meaningful­ ness of immediate experience . Hence for Adorno , German existentialism and re­ lated genres , such as neoromantic lyric poetry (e.g., Rilke) , come to a head in a mythic j argon that rexv

duces the dialectical relationship of reflective critique to the obj ective content and context of subjectivity The result is an ideology of the sim ple in which the primal sense of pure words is elevated in a futile at­ tempt to overcome the "alienation" that remains linked to the political-economic framework of society .

.

Adorno's reconstruction of Heide gger's philosophy attempts to show that it becomes an ontology that re­ treats behind, rather than overcomes, the tr adition of transcendental philosophy. In the universalization of transcendental subjectivity into Dasein, the empirical is totally lost and, as Adorno claims , an essence-mythol­ o gy of Being emerges. This is exemplifie d in the claim that the primacy of D asein is a realm beyond fact and essence and yet one which maintains itself as an identity. Whereas critical reason was able to show that maintenance of identity of consciousness presup­ posed a dialectic of subj ective and objective reciprocity which was unified only in the constitutive activity of concre te subj ectivity itself, Heidegger's notion of Dasein as both on tic and ontologi c al s tops the dialec­ ticity of conscious existence in an idealistic elevation of the abs olute subject. To quote Adorno : whatever praises itself for reaching behind the con­ cepts of reflection- subject and object-in order to gras p somethin g substantial , does nothin g but reify the irres olvability of the concepts of reflection . It reifies the impossibility of reducing one into the other; into the in-itself (italics added) .10

Adorno's thesis is that Heidegger's notion of self­ ness remains a reified tributary of Husserl's concept of 10. The mature statement of the notion of critical reason has been recently translated as Negative Dialectik ( New York, 1973).

xvi

subj ect Th i s concep t o f s ubj e c t , in attem pti ng to over­ come the pure po s sibi lity of the ontic , claim s to be it­ self c on cre te Hence , H eid egger d ogma tically pr o claims his concept of e xi s tence as s o me thing in op positi o n to iden tity-while at the s ame time he "continues the tradition of the doc trin e of i den ti ty with his im plici t definition of the self th r o ugh its own preserva tion ." Hence, Adorno ex am ine s the notions of D asei n , "au­ thenticity," d e ath "care ," etc ., and shows that their us e evades the issue of historical d e term inaten e s s by means of a primary and absolute creative subj ect­ which is, by definition supp ose dly untouched by reifi­ cation. Hence, the aura of authe n ti c ity in Hei de gger is tha t it n ames n othing ; the "1" re m ai n s formal a n d yet pretends th at the word contains c on ten t in-itself. For Adorno, Heid egger s existentialism is a new Platonism which imp lie s that authe ntic i ty comes in the com p lete dispo s al of the person over himself -as if there were no determin ation emerg ing from the obj ect ivity of his­ tory. .

.

"

"

"

,"

,

"

"

'

TRENT SCHROYER Graduate F a culty of the

New School for Social Re s e arch Febru ary , 1973

x vi i

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The author conceive d the J ar­ gon of Authenticity as part of the Negative Dialectic. However, he finally excluded that text from the latter work not only because its size grew disproportionate to the other p arts, but also because the elements of lin­ guistic physiognomy and s ociology no lon ger fitted properly with the rest of the plan . The resistance against intellectual division of labor requires th at this division of labor should be reflected on and not merely ignored . Certainly in intention and in theme the Jar­ gon is philosophical . As lon g as philosophy was in line with its own nature, it also had content. However, in retreatin g to the ideal of its pure nature, philosophy cancels itself out . This thought was only developed in the book which was then still unfinis hed, while x ix

the J arg on proceeds accord:in g to this insight without, however, grounding it fully . Thus it was published earlier, as a k:ind of propaedeutic . Insofar as the author has paid homage to the di­ vision of l abor, h e h as at the same time all the more rudely challenge d this division . He might be accused of philosophical , sociological, and aesthetic seduction without employin g the traditional manner of keepin g the categories separate-or maybe even of discussin g them distinct from each other . Yet he would have to answer that a demand of this kind proj ects onto ob­ jects the desire for order which marks a classifying science, and which then proclaims that it is elevated by objects . The author, however, feels more inclined to give himself over to objects than to schematize like a schoolmaster-for the sake of an external stand ard : a s tandard which , questionably, has been brou ght to bear on the subj ect matter from the outside. This atti­ tude determines itself by precisely the fact th at the subject-matter elements of philosophy are intertwined. The common methodological ideal would break up this intimate unity. By means of such a unity of the subject matter, the unity of the author's own attempts should become all the more visible-for example, the unity of the author's philosophical essays with the essay, "Criticism of the Musician" from the Disso­ nances. What is aesthetically perceived :in the b ad form of lan guage , and interpreted sociologically, is deduced from the untruth of the content which is posited with it : its implicit philosophy. This makes for bad blood . Passages from Jaspers and idea blocks from Heidegger are tre ated on the same levels , and with that s ame linguistic attitude , which schoolmasters would prob ably reject with indi g­ nation. The text of the J argon, however, contains xx

enough evidence, from a truly inexhaustible wealth , t o show that those m en write i n th e s ame manner which they despise in their lesser followers as a j u sti fication of their own supe riori t y . Th eir ph ilo s o phemes show on what the j argon feeds, as well as its indirect su ggestive fo rce The ambitious projects of German philosophy in th e second h alf of the twenties concre­ tized an d articulated the direction into which the ob­ j e c tiv e s pirit of th e time was dr a wn This sp iri t re­ mained what it was and thus speaks in the j ar gon even t o da y Only the criticism of these philosophical p r o j ec t s can obj ectively de termin e the mendacity which echoes in the vu l gar j argon . The physiognomy of the v u l g ar jargon leads into what discloses itself in ­

.

.

.

H eide g ger. It is n o thin g new to find that the sublime becomes the cover for s o m ethin g low . That is h ow p otenti a l victims are kept in line . But the ideology of the sub­ lime no longer a ckn o wled ges it self with o ut b ein g dis­

re garded. To show this fact might help to prevent criticism from sta gn atin g in a vague and noncom­ mittal suspic ion of ideolo gy , a suspicion which has itself fallen into ideology . Con temporary German ideology is careful not to pronounce definite doctrines, such as liberal or even eliti s t ones . Ideol o gy h as shifted into language . Social and anthropological chan ges have br o u ght about this shift, th o u gh without breaking the v eil The fact that such lan guage is actu ally ideol­ o gy, i e , s o cietally necess ary Schein, "appearance," can be shown from within it. This becomes obviou s in the contradiction between i ts "how" and its "what." In its obj e c tive imp o ssib ility the j ar gon reacts to war d the i m min ent imp o ssibility of language . Lan g u a ge giv e s itself over either to the m arket, to balderdash, or to the pred ominatin g vulgarity. On the other hand l a n .

.

.

-

xxi

guage shoves its way toward the judge's bench, en­ velopes itself in judicial garb, and in that way asserts its privilege. The j argon is the happy synthesis which m akes it explode. Showing this has practical consequences. As irre­ sistible as the j argon appears in present-day Germany, it is actually weak and Sickly. The fact that the j argon has become an ideology unto itself destroys this ideol­ ogy as soon as this fact is recognized . If the j argon were finally to become silent in Germany, part of that would have been accomplished for which skepticism, itself prejudiced, is praised-prematurely and without j ustification. The interested parties who use the j argon as a means of power, or depend on their public image for the j argon's social-psychological effect, will never wean themselves from it. There are others who will be embarrassed by the j argon. Even followers who believe in authority will shy away from ridiculousness, as soon as they feel the fragile nature of that authority to which they look for support. The j argon is the histori­ cally appropriate form of untruth in the Germany of the last years. For this reason one can discover a truth in the determinate negation of the j argon, a truth which refuses to be formulated in positive terms. Parts of the first sections were originally published in the third issue of the Neue Rundschau in 1963, and have been incorporated into the text. June, 1967

xxii

THE OF

Jargon Authenticity

In the early twenties a number of people active in philosophy, sociology, and theology , planned a gatherin g. Mos t of them h ad shifted from one creed to another . Their common ground was an emph asis on a newly acquired reli gion and not the religion itself. All of them were uns atisfied with th e idealism which at that time still dominated the univer­ sities . Philosophy swayed them to choose, throu gh free­ dom and autonomy, a positive theolo gy such as h ad already appeared in Kierkegaard. However, they were less interested in the specific doctrine, the truth con­ tent of revelation , than in conviction . To his slight annoyance , a friend, who was at that time attracted by this circle , was not invited . He was -they intimated­ not authentic enough . For he hesitated before Kierke­ gaard's leap. He suspected that religion which is con­ jured up out of au tonomous thinking would subordi,

3

nate itself to the latter, and would negate itself as the abs olute which, after all, in terms of its own conceptual nature , it wants to be. Those united toge th e r were anti­ intellectual intellectuals . They confirmed their mutual understanding on a higher level by excludin g one who did not pronounce the same credo they repeated to one another. What they fou ght for on a spiritu al and in­ tellectu al plane they marked down as their ethos, as if it elevated the inner rank of a person to follow the teachin g of higher ideals ; as if there were nothing written in the New Testament a gai ns t the Ph arisees . Even forty years later, a pen sioned bishop walked out on the conference of a Protestan t academy because a guest lecturer expressed doubt about the contemporary possibility of s acred music . He too had been warned against, and dispensed from, having de alings wi th people who do not toe the line; as thou gh critical thought had no obj ective foundation but was a sub­ j ective deviation . People of his nature combine the tendency that Borchardt called a putting-themselves­ in-the-right with the fear of reflecting their reflections -as if they didn't completely believe in themselves . Today, as then, they sense the dan ger of losing again what they call the concrete-of losing it to that ab­ straction of which they are suspicious , an abstraction which cannot be eradicated from concepts . They con­ sider concretion to be promised in sacrifice, and first of all in intellectual sacrifice. Heretics baptized this circle "The Authentic Ones ." This was long before the publication of Sein und Zeit. Throu ghout this work Heidegger employed "au­ thenticity," in the context of an existential ontology, 4

as a specifically philosophical term . Thus in philosophy he molded that which the authentics s triv e for less theore tically ; and in that way he won over to his side all those who had some vague reaction to th at philos­ ophy. Thro u gh him, denomin ational deman d s became dispensable . His book acquired its aura by d escribing the direction s of the dark drives of the intelligentsia before 1933-directions whi ch he described as full of insigh t, and whi ch he revealed to be s o lidly coercive . Of course in Heidegger, as in all those who followed his language, a diminLshed tbeo1.ocical resgn ance c an be heard to this very day . The theological addictions of these years h ave seeped into the language , far beyond the circle of those who at that time set themselves up as the elite. Nevertheless, the sacred quality of the authentics' talk belongs to the cult of authenticity rather than to the Christian cult, even where-for temporary lack of any other available au thority-its language resemble s the Christian . Prior to any con­ sideration of p articular content, this lan gu a ge molds thou ght. As a consequence, that thought accommo­ dates itself to the goal of subordination even where it aspires to resist that goal . The authority of the absolute is overthrown by absolutized authority. Fascism was not simply a conspiracy-althou gh it was that-but it was something that c ame to life in the course of a powerful social development. Language provides it with a refuge. Within this refu ge a smoldering evil ex­ presses itself as though it were s alvation . In Germany a jar gon of authenticity is spoken­ even more so, written . Its langu a ge i s a trademark of societalized chosenness, noble and homey at once5

sub-langu age as superior language . The j argon extends from philosophy and theology-not only of Protestant academies-to pedagogy, evening schools, and youth organizations, even to the elevated diction of the rep­ resentatives of business and administration . While the j argon overflows with the pretense of deep human emotion, it is just as standardized as the world that it officially negates; the reason for this lies partly in its mass success, partly in the fact that it posits its mes­ s age automatically, throu gh its mere nature . Thus the j ar gon bars the message from the experience which is to ensoul it. The j ar gon has at its dispos al a modest number of words which are received as promptly as Signals . "Authenticity" itself is not the most prominent of them . I t is more an illumination of the ether in which the j argon flourishes, and the way of thinking which latently feeds it. For a beginnin g, terms like "exis tenti al ," "in the decision ," "commission ," "appeal," "encounter ," "genuine dialo gue ," "statement," "con­ cern ," will do for examples . Not a few nontermino­ logical terms of similar cast could be added to this list . Some , like "concern ," a term still innocently used by Benj amin and verified in Grimm's dictionary, have only taken on such ch anged coloring since gettin g into this "field of tension" -a term that is also an appro­ priate example . Thus the important thing is not the plannin g of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but r ather the examination of their linguistic function in the j ar gon. Cert ainly not all its words are noble nouns . At times it even picks up banal ones, holds them high and bronzes them in the fascist m anner 6

which wisely mix e s plebeian with elitist elements. Neo­ ro m an tic poets who drank their fill of the p re ci ou s, like Geor ge H ofm annsthal, by no means wrote their prose in the j argon . However, many of their int erm edi arie s ­ like G un d olf - did s o . The words become terms of the j ar g on only th rou gh the con s tella ti on that th ey ne ga te , throu gh e ach one's gesture of uniquene's s . The ma gi c that the sin gular word has lost is proc ur ed for it by m a nipul ati ons - o f whatever kin d . The trans c ende nc e of th e single word is a s e c on d ary one, one th at is de­ livered ready from the factory, a tr an s c e n d en ce which is a ch an gelin g said to be the lost origin al. Elements of empiri cal langu age are manipulated in their ri gid ­ it y , as if they were elements of a tru e and r eve al e d language . The empirical usability of the sacred cere­ moni al words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corpore al presence . The ether is me­ cha nic ally sprayed, and atomistic words are dressed up without havin g been changed . Thus the y become more important th an the j ar gon's so -c alle d sys tem . The jargon-objectively s pe aki ng , a sys tem -us e s disor­ g aniza ti on as its principle of organization , the break­ down o f l an guage into words in themselves . M any of the m, in another li n guis tic con stella tion , can be used wi th out a glan ce at the j argon : "state men t," where it is used in i ts fulles t sense, in epi s temolo gy, to desig­ nate th e sense of predicative jud gmen ts ; "authentic" -already to be used with caution-even in an adj ec­ tival sense, where the e sse nti al is di sting ui s h ed from th e accidental; "inauthentic," where so me th in g broken is implied, an expression which is not immediately appropriate to what is e xp ress ed ; "radio bro adcasts of 7

traditionM music, music conceived in the categories of live performance, are grounded by the feeling of as if, of the inauthentic." 1 "Inauthentic" in that w ay be­ comes a "critical" term, in definite negation of some­ thing merely phenomenal. However, the j argon ex­ tracts authenticity, or its opposite , from every such transparent context. Of course one would never criti­ cize a firm for usin g the word Auftrag (commission), when it has been assigned a commission. But possi­ bilities of that sort remain n arrow and abstr act. Who­ ever o verstrains them is paying tribute to a blank nominalistic theory of language, in which words are interchangeable counters, untouched by history. Yet history does intrude on every word and with­ holds e ach word from the recovery of some alle ged original meanin g, that meaning which the j argon is always trying to track down . What is or is not the j argon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individ­ u al words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content. In that sense the character of the j argon would be quite for­ m al : it sees to it that what it w ants is on the whole felt and accepted throu gh its mere delivery, without regard to the content of the words used . It takes under its own control the preconceptual, mimetic element in l anguage-for the s ake of effect connotations . "State­ ment" thus w ants to m ake believe th at the existence of the speaker has communicate d itself simultaneously 1. Theodor W. Adorno, Der getreue Korrepitor (Frankfurt, 1963) p. 2 1 8 .

8

with his subj ect matter and has given the latter its dignity. The j argon makes it seem th at without this surplus of the speaker the speech would already be in­ authentic, that the pure attention of the expression to the subj ect matter would be a fall into sin . This formal element favors dem a go gic ends . Whoever is versed in the j argon doe s not h ave to s ay what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The j argon takes over this task and devalua tes thought. Th at the whole man should speak is authentic, comes from the core . Thus somethin g occurs which the j argon itself stylizes as "to occur." 2 Communication clicks and puts forth as truth what should instead be suspect by virtue of the prompt collective agreement . The tone of the j ar­ gon h as somethin g in it of the seriousne ss of the augurs , arbitrarily independent from their context or conc eptual content, conspiring with whatever i s s acred. The fact that the words of the j argon sound as if they s aid something higher th an wh at they mean sug­ gests the term "aura." I t is hardly an accident that Benj amin introduced the term at the same moment when , according to his own theory, wh at he under­ s tood by "aura" bec a me impossible to experience .3 As words that are s acred without sacred content, as frozen emanations, the terms of the j argon of authenticity 2. Later in the text Adorno refers to Heid e g g er's tenn Ereignis, which has been rendered as "event" in the s t a ndard translation of Being and Time. "To occur" ou r rend ering of sioh ereignen, has been ch osen for lack of an English verb corresponding to the noun "e vent." 3. Cf. Walter B enj amin, Schriften I ( Frankfurt, 1955), ''Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter sein er technischen Reproduzier­ barkeit," p. 374. [English translation by H a rry Zohn , in Il­ luminations (New Y ork, 1968).]

9

are products of the disinte gr ation of the aura. The latter pairs itself with an attitude of not being bound and thus becomes available in the midst of the de­ mythified world; or, as it might be put in p ar amilitary modern German, it becomes einsatzbereit, mobi­ lized. The perpetual charg e a gainst reification, a ch arge which the j argo n represents, is itself reified. It falls under Richard Wagner's definition of a theatrical effect as the result of an action without agent, a definition which was directed against bad art. Those who have run out of holy spirit speak with mechanical tongues . The secret which i s suggested, and from the beginning is not there, is a public one . First one can subtract the misused Dostoevski from the expres sionist formula "each m an is selected," which can be found in a play by P aul Kornfeld-who was murdered by the N azis . Then the formula is good only for the ideological self­ satisfaction of a lower middle class which is threatened and humbled by societal development. The j argon de­ rives its own bleSSin g that of primalness, from the fact that it has developed as little in ac tu ality as in spirit. Nietzsche did not live long enough to grow sick at his stomach over the j argon of authen tici t y : in the 'twentieth century he is the German resentment phe­ nomenon par excellence . Nietzsche's "something stinks" would find its first justification in the s trange b athing ceremony of the h ale life : ,

S unday really b e gins on S aturday evening. When the tradesman straightens his shop , when the hou sewife has put the whole house into cle an and shinin g condi­ tion , and h as even swept the stree t in front of the hou s e and freed it from all t h e dir t which i t h as collected dur-

1 0

ing the week; when , fin ally even the children are bathed; then the adults wash off the week's dust, s crub ,

th emse lves thoroughly; and go to the fresh clothes which are lying ready for them : when all of that i s ar­ ranged , with rural lengthines s and c are, then a d eep warm fe e lin g of restin g settles down over the p e ople:!

Expressions and situ ations, drawn from a no lon ger existent daily life , are forever being blown up as if they were empowered and gu aranteed by some abso­ lute which is kept silent out of reverence . While those who know better hesitate to appeal to revelation, they arrange, in their addiction to authority, fo r the ascen­ sion of the word beyond the realm of the actual , con­ ditioned, and contestable ; while these same people, even in private , express the word as thou gh a blessin g from above were directly composed into th a t word. That supreme state which has to be thought, but which also refuses being thou ght, is mutilated by the j ar gon The latter acts as if it had possessed this state from the beginning of time ," as it might run in the j argon . What philosoph y aims at, the peculiar character of philosophy which m akes representation essential to it, causes all its words to s ay m ore than each sin gle one . This characteristic is exploited by the j argon . The transcendence of truth beyond the meanin gs of in­ dividual words and pr oposi ti o n al statements is attrib­ uted to the words by the j ar gon, as their immutable possession , where as this "more" is formed onl y by the mediation of the constellation. Accordin g to its ide al, philosophical lan guage goe s beyond what it s ay s by .

"

4. Otto Friedrich 1956), p. 205.

B ollnow, Neue Geborgenheit (Stuttgart,

I I

means of what it says in the development of a train of thought. Philosophical lan guage transcends dialec­ tically in that the contradiction between truth and thou ght becomes self-conscious and thus overcomes itself. The j argon takes over this transcendence de­ s tructively and consigns it to its own chatter . What­ ever more of meaning there is in the words than what they say has been secured for them once and for al as expression . The dialectic is broken off : the dialectic between word and thin g as well as the dialectic , within language, between the individual words and their re­ lations . Without judgment, without havin g been thought, the word is to leave its meaning behind. This is to institute the reality of the "more ." It is to scoff, without reason, at that mystical language speculation which the j argon, proud of its simplicity, is careful not to remember. The j argon obliterates the difference between this "more" for which language gropes, and the in-itself of this more . Hypocrisy thu s becomes an a priori, and everyday lan guage is spoken here and now as if it were the sacred one . A profane language could only approach the sacred one by distancing itself from the sound of the holy, instead of by trying to imitate it. The jargon transgresses this rule blasphe­ mously. When it dresses empirical words with aura, it exaggerates general concepts and ideas of philosophy -as for inst ance the concept of being-so grossly that their conceptu al e ssence, the mediation throu gh the thinking subject, disappears completely under the var­ nish . Then these terms lure us on as if they were the most concrete terms . Transcendence and concretion s cintillate . Ambiguity is the medium of an attitude 12

toward lan gu a ge which is d amned by its favorite phi­ losophy . s B u t t h e untruth indicts itself by becomi n g bom­ b astic. After a lon g separation a certain person wrote that he was exis tentially secure ; it took some refle ction to re alize th a t he meant he h ad been sufficien tly taken c are of in regard to his finances . A cen ter intended for international discu ssion s - wh atever they m ay be good for-is c alled the House of Encoun ters ; the visible house, "firmly grounded in the e arth ," is turn e d into a s acred house throu gh those gath erings - which are meant to be superior to discu ssions because they occur amon g exis tin g and living individuals, al thou gh the s e individuals might j u s t as well be en gaged in dis cus sion , for as lon g as they do not commit suicide th ey could h ardly do anythin g o ther th an exis t . One's relation to his fellow m an should be important prior to all con­ tent ; for that purpose the j argon is s atisfied with the sh abby group-ethos of the you th movement , an indica­ tion that nothin g is reaching either beyond the nose of the speaker, or beyond the capacity of the person who h as only lately begun to be called his "partner." The j argon ch annels enga gement into firm ins titutions and, furthermore , stren gthen s the most subaltern speakers in their self-e steem ; they are alre ady some thin g be­ c ause someone spe aks from within them , even when th at someone is nothin g at all . The resonant directive

5. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 3d ed. ( H all e , 1 93 1 ) , p p . 2 1 7 ff . [English translation b y John Macquarrie an d Edw ard Robinson, B eing and Time (New York , 1 962 ) . Sub­ sequent page referen ces from Being and Time will be to this transl a tion . ]

1 3

of the j argon, that its thou ght should no t be too strenu­ ous, because otherwise it would offend the community, also becomes for the s e people the guarantee of a higher confirmation . This suppre sses the fact that the lan­ guage itself- through its generality and obj ectivity alre ady ne gates the whole man, the particular spe ak­ ing individual subject : the first pri ce exacted by lan­ guage is the essence of the individual. But throu gh the appe arance th at the whole man , and not thought, s p eak s , the j ar gon pretends that, as a close-at-h an d manner of communication , it is invulnerable to de­ humanized mass communication-which is precisely wh at recommends it to everyone's enthusiastic accept­ ance. Whoever stands behind his words, in the w ay in which these words pretend, is safe from any su spici o n about wha t he is at that very moment about to do : s pe ak for others in order to palm something off on them. The word "statemen t" finally secures its alibi when "true" is connected to it. By means of its prestige it wants to endow the "for others" with the solidity of the in-itself. For glorified man , who himself not too lon g ago invented the term "de ath and glory squad," is the ground of being for th e j ar gon as well as the ad­ dressee of the statement; and it has become impos sible to distinguish between the two . The attribute "valid" often s ticks to "statement." The reason for this ob­ viously lies in the fact that the emphatic experience, which the word claims insistently, is no longer experi­ enced by those who favor this word for the claim it m akes. A loudspeaker becomes nece s s ary � "Statement" wants to announce that something which was s aid has

come f ro m the depth of the s pe akin g s ubj e c t; i t is removed from the c urs e of surface communication. But at the same time communicative disorder disguises itself in the statement. Someone speaks and , th anks to the elevated term " s t a t e me n t , " what he s ays is to be the sign of truth-as if men could not become caught up in untruth, as if th ey could not suffer m artyrdom for plain nonsense . Prior to all content this shift in­ dicts statement as soon as it wants to b e such ; it charges statement with being a lie . The lis tener is su p­ po s ed to gain something fro m the statement because of its subjective rel iabili t y . This latter attrib u te , how­ ever, is borrowed from the world of ware s . I t is the claim of the con sumer that even the spiri tu a l should direct itself according to his will, a g ains t its own con­ ce ptu a l n a ture . This admonition t o the spirit silently dominates the whole clim ate of the j ar go n . The real and vain need for he l p is supposed to be satisfied by the pure spirit, merely by m e a ns of consolation and without action . The empty chatter about expression is th e ideology c o mple m en tary to th a t silencing which the s t atus quo imposes on thos e who have no power over it, a nd whose claim is therefore hollow in a dv anc e . But wh at e ver turns its back c riti call y on th e status quo has been dis­ counted, by Germans in solid positions, as "without ex­ pres sive value." Not le a s t of all, s tat e men t is u s e d as the club with which to assail the new art . That art's rec al citr an ce against traditional c omm unic ab l e sense has been reproa c he d - a s th ou gh from a higher view­ p oin t - by those whose aesthetic consciousness is not up to it. If one add s to a s tatem ent that i t is "valid," 1 5

then whatever at a given moment holds good, whatever is officially 's tamped, can be imputed to it as metaphysi­ ca!lly authorized . The formula spares people the trouble of thinkin g about the metaphysics which it has dragged with it, or about the content of what has been stated. The concept of statement appears in Heidegger as nothing less that the constituent of the Da, existence .s Behind this j ar gon is a determining doctrine of the I-thou relationship as the locale of truth- a doctrine that d efames the objectivity of truth as thin gly , and secretly w arms up irrationalism. As such a relation­ ship, communication turns into that transpsycho­ logical element which it can only be by virtue of the objectivity of what is communicated; in the end stu­ pidity becomes the founder of metaphysics . Ever since Martin Buber split off Kierkegaard's view of the existen­ tial from Kierke gaard's Chris tology , and dressed it up as a universal posture, there has been a dominant in­ clination to conceive of metaphysical content as bound to the so-called relation of I and thou . This content is referred to the immediacy of life . Theology is tied to the determinations of immanence, which in turn wan t t o claim a larger meaning , b y means o f their su gges­ tion of theology : they are already virtually like the words of the j ar gon . In this process, nothing less is whisked away than the threshold betw e en the natural and the supernatural . Lesser authentics raise their eyes reverently before death, but their spiritual atti­ tude, infatuated with the living, disregards death . The thorn in theology, without which s alvation is un think6. Ibid . , p. 196 .

16

able , is removed . Accordin g to the concept of theolo gy, nothin g n atural h as gone throu gh death without meta­ morphosis . In the m an-to-m an relationship ther e can be no eternity now and here , and certainly n o t

in

the

relationship of man to God , a relationship th at seems to pat Him on the shoulder . Buber's style of exis ten tial­ ism dr aws its transcenden ce , in a reversed analogia entis, out of the fact th at spontaneous relationships amon g persons cannot be reduced to obj ective pole s . This existentialism remains the Lebensphilosophie out of which it c ame , in philos ophical history, and which i t abne gated : it overelevates the dynamism of mor­ tality in to the sphere of immortali ty . Thus in the j ar gon trans cendence is fin ally brou ght closer t o men : it is the Wurlitzer organ of the spirit. The sermon in Huxle y 's Brave New World m u s t h ave been written in the j argon . It was taped in order to be played when needed : to brin g to reason the rebellious masses -by deep pro grammed emotion-in c a s e they should once more b and toge ther . For advertising pur­ poses the Wurlitzer organ hum anizes the vibr ato, once

a carrier of subjective expression , by mech anically superimpo sing it on the mech anic ally pro du c e d sound . The j ar gon likewise supplies men with p a t terns for being human , p atterns which h ave been driven out of them by unfree labor, if ever in fact traces of free l abor did exist. Heide gger instituted authenticity a gain s t the they and a gains t small tal k , without delu din g himself that there could be a complete leap between the two types o f existential s th at he deals with ; for h e knew th at they merge into each other pre cis ely becau s e of their own dynamism . But he did not fore see th at wh a t

I7

he n amed auth entic , once become word, would grow towar d the s ame exchan ge-society anonymity against which Sein und Zeit rebelled . The j argon , which in Heide g ger's phenomenology of small talk e arned an honored positio n , marks the adept, in th eir own opin­ ion , as un trivial and of higher sensibility ; while at the s am e time th at j ar gon calms the constan tly festering suspi cion of uprootedness . In profes sional groups which , as they s ay , carry on intellectual work, but which are a t the s ame tim e em­ ployed , dependent, or e conomically weak, the j argon is

a professional illness . Amon g such group s a spe cific function is added to a general social on e . Their cul­ ture and cons ciousness limp far behind th a t spirit which accordin g to society's division of labor is their real m of activity . Throu gh their j ar gon they a spire to remove this distance , to put themselves forward a s sharers in higher culture ( to them o l d h at s s till s ound modern ) as well as individu als with an ,essence of their own ; the more innocent among them m ay quite frankly s till c all all th at a personal n ote

-

u sin g an e xpres sion

from the era of h andicrafts, from which the j argon in question h as b orrowed a lot. The s tereotype s of the j ar­ gon support and reas sure subjective movemen t. They seem to guarantee th a t one is not doing wh at in fac t he is doin g -bleating with the crowd - simply by vir­ tue of his usin g those s tereo types to gu aran tee th at one has achieved it all himself, as an unmis takably fre e person . The form al ges ture of au tonomy replaces the content of autonomy . Bombastically , it is called com­ mitment, but it is h eteronomously borrowed. Th at which pseudo-individu alizin g attends to in the culture

18

indus try , th e j ar gon attends to among those w h o h ave contempt for the cul ture indus try . This is the Germ an symptom of pro gres sive half-culture . It seems t o be in­ ven ted for those who feel th at they h ave been judged by histor y , or a t le as t th at they are fallin g, but who s till s trut in front of their peers as if they were an interior elite . The importance of this j argon is n o t to be under­ e s timate d simply be cause a sm all group writes it. In­ numerable real-life people speak it, from the s tudent who in his exam lets himself go on about au thentic encounter, to the bish op's press secretary who asks :

Do yo u believe th a t God addres s e s only our reason ? Their unmediated langu age they receive from a dis­

tributor .

In

the

theological

conversations

of

Dr .

Fau stus' students , in Auerb ach's den of 1 94 5 , Thom as Mann intuited with precise irony most of the habits of modern German - though he no longer had much occasion Ito observe them . There c ertainly were appro­ priate models before 1 93 3 , but only after the war , when N ational Socialist lan gu a ge became unwanted , did the j ar gon gain omnipre sence . Since then the most intimate in terchan ge has taken place between the writ- , ten an d the s poken word. Thus one will be able to read printed

j argon which

unmistakably

imitates

radio

voices that h ave themselves drawn on written works of authenticity . Mediated and immediate elements are mediated throu gh e ach other in frigh tful way s . And since they are synthetic ally prepare d , th at which is mediate d h as become the caric ature of wh at is n atural . The j ar gon no lon ger knows primary and secondary communitie s , and by the s ame token it knows no par-

1 9

ties. Th is develop men t has a real basis . The institu­ tional and p s y chologic al superstructure , which in 1 9 3 0 Kr,a cauer di agnosed as a culture of employee s , del u de d the celluloid-colla;r proletari at, who were then thre at­ ened by the immediacy of losin g their j ob s . It de lu d ed them into believing that the y were something spe ci al .

Throu gh thi s

.

delusion the superstructur e m ade them

toe the bourgeois lin e , while in the meantime, th anks to a l a s ti n g m arke t boom , th at superstruc ture has become the u ni v ersal ideology of a so ci ety which m i s t a ke s itself for a unified middle clas s . They let thems elves be con­ firm e d in this a t ti t ud e by a uniform mode of speech , which e a ge rly welcomes the j argon fo;r p urposes of col­ lective narcissism . This applie s not o nly to those who sp e ak it but also to the obj e c tive spiri t . The j argon af­ firms the reliabili ty of the universal by means of the distinction of having a bour ge O is ori gin a distinction which is itself authorized b y the univers al. Its to ne o f a ppr o ved s ele ctivity seems to come from the person himself. The greater adv ant age in all this is that of good r e fer ence s . It m akes no difference what the voice that resonates in ,this way says; it is signing a social contract. Awe, in face of that existent which pretends to be more than it is, beats down all that is unruly. One is given to understand ,that that which occurs is so de ep that language could not unhallow what has been said by saying it. Pure clean h ands recoil from the thought of chan ging ,anythin g in the valid property-and­ authori ty relationships ; the very sound of it all makes that idea contemptible , as the merely ontic is to Heid e g ger. One can trus t anyone who b abbles this j argon; peo­ pl e wear. it in their buttonholes, in place of the ,

,

­

20

currently disreputable p arty b ad ge . The pure tone drips with 'p ositivi ty , with out needin g to stoop too far ple adin g for what i s all too compromised ; one es c ap e s even t h e long-since-s ocialized suspicion o f ideology . I n the j argon th at divi sion be tween the de s tru ctive a n d the con structive, with which fascism h ad cut

off criti c al

thought, comfortably hibern ates . Simply to be there becomes the merit of a thin g . It is gu aranteed in the protection of the double sen s e of the positive : as some­ thin g e xis ten t, given, and as s omething worthy of being affirmed . P ositive and negative are reified prior to liv­ ing experience, as thou gh they were v alid prior to all living experience of the m ; as tho u gh it w as not th ou ght that firs t of all determin e d wh at is positive or neg ative ; and as though the course of such determin ation were not itself th e course of negation . The j argon secularizes th e German r e a dine s s to view men's positive relation to reli gion as s omething immediately positive , even when the religion has dis­ integrated and been exposed a s something untru e . The undiminished irrationality of rational society encour­ age s people to elevate religion into an end in its elf, without regard to its con tent :

to view religion

as a

mere attitude, as a qu ality of subj ectivity . All thi s at the cost of religion itself. One needs only to be a be­ liever-no m a tter what he believes in. Such irrational­ ity has the s ame function as putty . The j ar gon of authenticity inherits it, in the childish manner of L a tin primers which praise the love of the fatherlan d in­ itself-which praise the viri patriae amantes, e ven when the fatherland in question covers up the most atrocious deeds . Sonnem ann h a s described this phe2 I

nomen on as not bein g able to get rid of a benevolent attitude which at all costs defends order, even an order in which all these things are not in order. What things ? According to the logic of the sentence they ought only to be accidentals , but ins tead they are s trikingly essen­ tial : "poisonous exh aust emissions, pressing t aboos, insincerity, resen tments , hidden hysteria on all sides." What remains then of the orderliness of the order? Obviously, it needs first to be created .1 Benevolence i s identical with being predecided . What is affirmative and wholesome doubles the curse of evil. Throu gh mar­ riage offers, the j argon guides the petit bourgeois to a positive attitude toward life . It fas tidiously prolongs the innumerable events which are to make attractive to men a life by which they otherwise would be dis­ gusted-and which they would soon come to consider unbe arable . That reli gion has shifted into the subj ect, has become religiosity, follows the trend of history. Dead cells of religiosity in the midst of the secular, h owever, become poisonous . The ancient force, which accordin g to Nietzsche's insight nourishes everything, should enter completely into the profane ; instead it preserves itself in an unreflected manner and elevates limitation , which abhors reflection, to the level of virtue. All experts in the j ar gon , from Jaspers on down, unite in praise of positivity. Only the careful Heidegger avoids a too open-he arted affirmation for its own s ake, and indirectly pays his dues . He is eager and genuine about it. But Jaspers writes, unashamedly : "Actually 7. Ulrich Sonn em ann, Das Land der unbegrenzten Zumut barkeiten ( Reinbek b ei H amburg, 1 963 ) , pp. Ig6 ff.

2 2

m an c an rem ain in the world who lives out which in every case he possesses only through co mmitmen t . " 8 To which h e adds : "Only the person who commits him self fr e e ly is proof a gain s t a disillusioned revolt a g a i nst himself." 9 It is true that his philosophy of existence has ch ose n , as its patron saint, Max Weber, who stood up proudly wi thou t illu­ sions. Neverthele s s , he is intere sted in r e l i gi o n , no m atter of wh at kind . H e is intere sted in it provided it is ready at h and, because it guarantees the r equ ire d com­ mitm en t ; or simply because it exists, wh e ther or not it fit s with the notion of in d e pen de nt philosophy, which J aspers res er ve s for himself a s if i t were a p er s o n al privil e ge :

only

that

from some th in g

Whoever is true to transcendence in the form of such a belief should never be attacked, so lo n g as he does not become intoleran t. For in the believin g p erson only des truction can take place ; he c an perhaps rem ain open to philosophizing, and risk the corre sponding burden of a doubtin g, which is inseparable from human exist­ ence ; yet he has the positivity of an his toric al exis tence as his reference and m eas ure , which bring him ire­ placeably b ack to himself. About the s e possibilities we do not spe ak.l0

When au t on om ou s thou gh t s till had confidence in its humane realization , it beh aved l e s s hum anely . In 8. Karl J aspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, 5th ed . ( B erlin, 1 947 ) , pp. 1 69 if. [English tran slation by Eden and Cedar Paul, Man in the Modern Age ( New York , 1 957 ) . All quotations from this work are translated from the original Germ an .} 9 . Ibid. 1 0 . Ibid., pp. 1 27 if.

23

the meantime , the less philosophers are infected with philosophy the more innocently do they let the cat out of the bag; a bag which prominent ones weave like Noms . Sentences from O. F. Bollnow sound like this : Therefore it seems especially me aningful that in p oetry,

above all in the lyric o f the last ye ars , after al the ex­ periences of dread , a new feeling, of affirmation of bein g, is beginnin g to m ake its appearance , a j oyful and thankful h armony with the very existence of man , as it is ; a h armony with the world as it confronts man . Two of these p o e t s i n p ar tic u l ar should receive special attention here : Rilke and Bergengruen . B er g en gru en s last volume of poetry Die Heile Welt (Munich , 1 950 ) , p. 2 7 2 , closes with the confes sion : "What came from p ain was o nl y transient. And my e ar heard no thin g but songs of prais e . " In o ther words, it is a feelin g of thank­ ful a greement with existence. And Bergen gruen cer­ tainly is n o t a poet who could be cri ticized for a che a p optimism . I n this feelin g of deep thankfulness he comes close to Rilke , who also, at the clo s e of his way, is able to state : "Everythin g bre athes and re turns th an ks . Oh you troubles of the night, how you sank without a trace . " U '

Bergengruen's volume is on�y a few years closer to us than the time when Jews who had not been completely killed by the gas were thrown living into the fire, where they regained consciousness and screamed . The poet, who can certainly not be criticized for cheap optimism , and the philosophically minded pedagogue who eval­ uates him, heard nothing but songs of praise . In a pre­ liminary definition we call this inner state of m an an attitude of trustful reliance . Thus the task is set : to I I . Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 26 if.

24

examine the nature of this state of the soul in order to find its possibilities.12 Bollnow found the bes t of all possible n ames for this task, which in the face of hor­ ror can no lon ger even appease us by virtue of its ridiculousness-he c alled it Seinsgliiubigkeit, faith unto Being.13 The fact that the term remind s us of Deuts chg liiubigkeit, faith unto German nation ality, is certainly accidental. Once faith unto Being is a chieved, there is no stopping before we reach a "positive relation to the world and life" 14 and "constructive work toward the overcoming of existentialism." 1 � What remains after the removal of existential bombast are religious customs cut off from their religious con tent. There is no recognition of the fact that cult forms, the subj ect matter of folklore, like empty shells, ou tlive their mys­ tery . This state of affairs is in fact defended with the aid of the j argon . All of this is an insult not only to thought but also to religion, which was on ce m an's promise of eternal bliss , while now authenticity con­ ten ts itself resignedly with an "ultimately h ale world ." 16 "In the following we c an distinguish these two forms­ for the s ake of a convenient terminology - as hope which has a determined content and hope which h as an unde termined content; or, briefly, as rela tive and absolu te hope ." 11 This pitiful concept-splittin g applies itself to the question of "existence welfare ." I t makes no difference to a follower to what he attaches him1 2.

13. 14. IS. 16. 17.

Ibid. , Ibid., Ibid. , Ibid. Ibid., Ibid. ,

p. 5 1 . p. 57· p. 61. p. 63 .

p. 1 0 0 .

25

self at a given momen t. He praises this as his capacity for enthusiasm . Whe ther such a man ranks himself as lowbrow, middlebrow, or highbrow, he can consider that "hale" refers to the haleness of the s oul, or right living, or social enclaves not yet taken over by indus­ trialism, or simply places where Nietzsche and the Enlightenment have not yet been heard of; or chaste conditions in which girls hold their m aidenhood intact until they get married. We should not oppose to the c atch-word of "shelteredness ," the equally worn-out idea of the dangerous life ; who wouldn't want to live with­ out anxiety in this world of terrors ? But shelterednes s , as a n existential value, turns from something longed for and denied into a presence which is now and here, and which is independent of what prevents it from being. It leaves its trace in the violation of the word : the reminiscence of wh at is hedged-in and safely bor­ dered remains j oined to that element of short-si ghted p articularity which out of itself renews the evil against which no one is sheltered . Home will only come to be when it has freed itself from such p articularity, when home has negated itself as universal. The feeling of shelteredness m akes itself at home with itself, and offers a holiday resort in place of life . A landscape be­ comes u glier when an admirer disrupts it with the words "how beautiful." The same happens to custom s , habits , institutions which barter themselves away by s tressin g their own n aivete ins te ad of by changing it. All talk of shelteredness is indicted by Kogon's report that the w orst atrocities in the concentration camps were committed by the younger s ons of farmers . The

general situation in the country , which is the model for the feelin g of shelteredness , pushes disinherited sons into barb arou sne s s . The logic of the j ar gon con­ stantly smu ggles in wh at is limited, finally even situ a­ tions of material want, under th e guise of positivity ; and pre sses for their being e ternally institu ted at j u s t th at moment when , th anks to t h e s t a t e of human achievements, such a limitation no lon ger needs in reality to exi s t .

A spirit which makes this limitation

its cause hires itself out as the l ackey of what is evil . In the hi gher ranks of the hierarchy of authen­ ticity , however, negativitie s are also served. Heide gger even requisition s the concept of destruc tion which is tabooed in the lower ranks, toge ther wi th the blackne s s o f fear, sorrow, and death . J aspers occ aSion ally blares out the opposite of B olln ow's Geborgenheit, sheltered­ ness : "Today philosophy is the only possibili ty for one who is cons ciously u n sheltered . "

18 But the p ositiv e , like

a tumbler doll , cannot be kept down . Dan ger, h azard , riskin g one's life , and the whole charac teris tic shudder, are no t taken all th at seriou sly . One of the Vr-authen tic ones in h er time rem arke d that in the innermo s t core of Dos toyevsky's hell the ligh t of s alvation shone a gain . She had to sw allow the reply th at hell w a s then an awfully short r ailroad tunnel . Some prominent authen­ tic ones

a little rel u c tantly - p u t it like the p arish

preacher ; th ey s ay they would rather h arvest on burned earth . They are n o less clever th an social p s y chology, which h a s observed th at negative j u dgments , of n o 1 8 . J a spers , Die geistige Situation, p . 1 2 8 .

27

matter what content, give a better chance of bein g -affirmed than do positive judgments .19 Nihilism turns into farce, into mere method, as has already happened to Cartesian doubt. The question- a fa.vorite prerequi site of the j argon-must sound all the more radical the more loyally it directs itself to the kind of answer which can be everything except radical. Here is an elementary example from Jaspers : ­

Existential philosophy would be lost immediately, if it once again believed that it knows what m an is. It would again give us sketches of how to investigate hu­ man and anim al life in its typical form s ; it would again become anthropology, psychology, sociology. Its mean­ ing is only pos sible when it rem ains groundless in its concretenes s . It awakens what it does n o t know ; it lightens and move s , but it does not fix and hold. For the man who is underway, this philosophy is the ex­ pression through which he maint ains himself in his direction ; the means toward preserving his highest moments -so that he c an make them real through his life . . . . Insight into existence , because it remains without an obj ect, leads to no conclusion .20

Exactly. A concerned tone is ominously s truck up : no answer would be serious enough ; every answer, no matter of what content, would be dismissed as a limit­ ing concretization. But the effect of this remorseless intransigence is friendly ; the man never pins himself 1 9 . Cf. Gruppenexperiment, Frankfurter Beitriige Sozio logie ( Frankfurt, 1 95 5 ), II , 482 if . 2 0 . Jaspers, D i e geistige Situation, p p . 1 46 4 7 .

zur

down : the world is all too dynamic. The old Prote stant theme of absurd belief, groundin g itself in the subj e ct, converted itself from Lessing to Kierkegaard into the pathos of existence . This p athos existed in opposition to its result, the reified world seen as coagulated and alien to the subj ect. That old theme allies itself stra­ tegically with the critique of positive science-science from which , as Kierkegaard's thesis ran , the subject has disappeared . At the cost of any possible answer, the r adical question becomes wha t is substantial unto itself. Risk without h azard . Know-how and ran ge of in ­ come are the only factors which determine whether one appears on the scene sheltered or has to start ou t without security. Even those who are not sheltered are s afe as long as they join the chorus. This is what makes possible passages like the one from Heinz Schwitzke's Three Fundamental Theses for Television : This is totally differen t in the sermon . Here a clerical speaker professed his credo for m ore than ten minut e s , out o f his own depth s , in t h e exis tential m anner ; a sin gl e , never-ch angin g close-up. Thanks to the noble hum ane power of convic tion that radiated out from him , not only did his words, which were tes tified to by his pictorial presence, become completely cre dible , b u t the listener totally forgo t the mediating app aratu s . In front of the television screen, as if in the hou s e of God , there formed itself a sort of parish among the acciden t al viewers , wh o fel t as if they were being confronted wi th the imme di ate presence of the spe aker , and throu gh him felt committed to the subj ect m atter of his serm o n , God's word . There is no o ther expl an ation for this sur­ prisin g occurrence than the supreme import ance of the spe aking person , the person who has enough courage and e thos to place himself in the breach , and to serve

nothin g but the subj ect m atter which he stands for and the listeners to whom he knows he c an relate . 21

This is authenticity's funky commercial. The "word" of the preacher, as if his and God's were one without ques­ tion, is testified to not by his "pictorial presence," but at best by behavior whose trustworthiness supports the credibility of his statements . If, thanks to the appearance of the preacher, one forgets the mediating equipment, then the j argon of authenticity, which takes pleasure in this situation, is committing itself to the philosophy of As If : through s tage-setting, the now and here of a cult action is simu­ lated, an action which throu gh its omnipresence is an­ nulled on television . But, by the existential m anner in which the preacher makes public profession of him­ self, from out of himself, "in a never changing close-up," we need only to understand the self-evident fact that the preacher, who after all h ad no other choice, was projected as an empirical person onto the screen and in this w ay, perhaps, had a sympathetic effect on many people. That he formed a community cannot be proven. The notion that he had to throw him­ self into the breach, with his whole substance and existence, is imported from the sphere of risk. Still, for that preacher who details on television why the church is too narrow for him there is no risk at all : neither of contradiction from outside nor of inner ne­ cessity. I f in fact, hemmed in between microphone and floodlight, he h ad to suffer throu gh moments of temp2 I . Heinz S chwitzke, "Drei Grundthesen zum Fernsehen," in Rundfunk und Fernsehen, II ( I 95 3 ) , I I ff.

30

tation , the j argon would h ave been right there waitin g with additional praise for his existenti ality. The b enefit of the negative is transferred to the positive, as thou gh by a single s troke of the pen : positive n e g a tiveness to warm the h e art. These dark words are numinous , j u s t like Bollnow's whitewashed Sunday word s - a s close to rej oicin g as the dre adful trumpet has alway s been . Just as the j argon u ses the double sense of the word "posi tive ," it uses the ambi guity of the term "meta­ physi c s , " a ccording to whether at a given moment one prefers nothin gn e s s or bein g. On the one h and meta­ physics m e ans involvement with metaphysical themes, even if the metaphysical content is conte s te d ; on the other h and it me ans the affirmative doc trine of the transcendent world , in the Platonic model .

In

this

shiftin g metaphysical need , th at state of th e spirit which lon g a go m ade itself known in Novalis' On

Christendom or Europe, or which the youn g Lukacs called trans cendental homelessness, h a s come down to culturally defined knowledge . The theolo gical freeing of the numinous from ossified do gm a h a s , ever since Kierke g a ard, involuntarily come to mean its p artial secularization .

In

mys tical h eresy , the unsatisfiable

purification of the divine from myth , which loves to tremble in the ges ture of deeply involved questionin g, h ands the divine over to whoever relates to

it in

any

way . Liberal the ology is suddenly reborn, since con­ tent is to be found only in a relation, the o ther pole of which removes i tself from all definition as the "ab­ solutely indifferent , " and marks all d efinition with the blemish

of reifi c ation .

C omplete

demytholo gization

totally reduces trans cenden ce to an abs traction , to a

3 1

eQ.Uc.f)p.,!. Enlightenment, which the viri obscuri 22 ac­ cus e , triumphs in their thought . In the s ame movemen t of the spirit, however, the positin g power of the sub­ je c t, veiled unto itself, again conjures up the myth inherent in all dialectical theology. Th at subj ective power's highest value, as absolutely different, is blind . Under compulsion the viri obscuri praise commitments inste ad of jumping into speculation which alone could justify their own commitments to their r adical ques­ tioners . Their relationship to speculation is confused . One needs i t because one wants to be deep, yet one shies away from it because of its intellectual natur e . One would prefer t o reserve i t f o r the gurus . The others still c onfess their groundlessness , in order to give ch ar­ acter to the path s of offered salvation, which are puted to be successful

re­ in extreme even if imagin ary

dan ger. However , they find nothing but groundles s thinking as soon as thinkin g refuses , through its atti­ tude, to support from the outset those commitments which are as unavoidable in authenticity as is the h appy ending in movie s . If the h appy endin g is lackin g, then amon g the existential authentics existentialism itself has nothing to laugh at. Only against this background does the whole gre atness

of the existential e thic reveal itself. It once again actualizes , on the ground of modern historical rela­ tivism , a decidedly moral stance. But in precisely that sense a d anger is given ; that danger which comes to expression in the possibility of an existential adven22. [ViTi obscuri : obscurantists , enemies of enlightenm ent. Historical reference to fictive hum anist ( fifteenth and six­ teenth c entury) authors of letters against late forms
32

turism . H avin g become fully unconditioned in re gard to c ontent, and without any of th at cons tancy which re­ sides in fidelity, the adventurer enjoys the risk of his engagement as a last and most sublime ple asure . Pre­

ci s ely in the unconditioned state of any given momen­ tary engagement, the exis tentialist is especially exposed to the temptation of incons t ancy and of faithlessnes s . 23

All of these words draw from lan gu a ge , from which they are s tolen, the aroma of the bodily, unmetaphorical; but in the j argon they become quietly spiritu alized . In that way they avoid the d an gers of which 'they are constantly p alavering. The more e ar­ nestly the j argon s anctifies its everyday world, as thou gh in a mockery of Kierkegaard's insis tence on the unity of the sublime and the pedestrian , the more s adly does the j argon mix up the literal with the fi gurative : Heidegger's

final remark

aims

at

this

fundamental

meaning of residin g for all human existen c e , and in this remark he focuses on the "need for residences" as one of the gre at difficulties of our time : "The true need for residence," he s ays here , "consists not first of all in the ab sence of residence s ," although this n e e d should by no means be taken lightly ; but behind this need a deeper one is hidden , th at m an h as lost his own nature and so cannot come to res t . "The true need for residence

consists in the fact that m ortals must firs t l e arn to re­ side ." But to learn to reside means : to grasp this neces­ sity, that, in the face of what is threa tenin g , m an should make for himself a shelterin g space and should settle into it with a tru stful reliance. But, then, invers ely, the possibility of this settlin g down is again connec ted in a menacing way with the availability of re sidence s . 24 23 . Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 3 7 f. 24. Ibid. , p . 1 7 0 .

33

The B eing of the sheltering space of shelteredness is simply derived from the necessity that man should "make for himself" such a space . The linguistic care­ lessness, in the unresisting mechanism of the j argon, admittedly lays shelteredness bare, as if out of com­ pulsion ; lays it b are as something that is merely posited. However, that which announces itself, in the game about the need for residences, is more serious than the pose of existential seriousness . It is the fear of unemployment, lurking in all citizens of countries of high capitalism . This is a fear which is administra­ tively fought off, and therefore nailed to the platonic firmament of stars, a fear that remains even in the glorious times of full employment. Everyone knows that he could become expend able as technology de­ velops , as long a s production is only carried on for production's sake ; so everyone senses that his j ob is a dis guised unemployment. It is a support that has ar­ bitrarily and revocably pinched off something from the total societal product , for the purpose of maintaining the status quO .25 He who has not been given a life ticket could in principle be sent away tomorrow. That migra­ tion of people could continue which the dictators al­ ready once before set in motion and channeled into Auschwitz. Angst, busily distinguished from inner­ worldly, empirical fear, need by no means be an ex­ istential value. Since it is historical, it appears in f act that those who are yoked into a SOCiety which is socie­ talized , but contradictory to the deepest core, con2 5 . Cf.

Theodor W.

Adorno , Eingriffe: p. 137.

Madelle ( Frankfurt, 1 963 ) , 34

Neun kritische

stantly feel threatened by what sustains them . They feel threatened without ever being able in specific in­ s tances to concretize this threat from the wh ole of sOciety. But in shelteredness the declassed person has his clumsy triumph-the declassed man who knows what he can get away with . On the one h and he has nothing to lose ; on the other h and, the overadminis­ trated world of today still respects th e compromise · structure of bourgeois soci�ty, to the extent that that society-in its o wn interest-stops short before the ultimate, the liquidation of its members , stops short because, in the massive plans of its indus try, it h as the means of delay at its disposal . So J aspers' "existence welfare" and social welfare-adminis tra ted grace­ come into contact. On the social ground of the j argon's reinterpretation of complete negativity into wh at is positive, we suspect the coercive self-confidence of the uneasy consciousness . Even our cheap suffering from the loss of meaning, a suffering lon g since automatized into a formula , is not simply that emptiness which h as grown up through the whole movement of the Enlight­ enment-as the more demanding viri obscuri willingly describe it. There are reports of tae dium vitae even durin g periods of unch allen ged s tate religion ; it was as common among the Fathers of the Church as amon g those who carry over into the j argon Nietzsche's judg­ ment about modern nihilism , and who imagine that in that way they h ave gone beyond both Nietzsche and nihilism-Nietzsche's concep t of which they have sim­ ply turned upside down . Socially, the feelin g of mean­ inglessness is a reaction to the wide-reaching freein g from work which takes place under conditions of con35

tinuing social unfreedom . The free time of the subjects withholds from them the freedom which they secretly hope for; their free time chains them to the ever-same, the apparatus of production-even when this appa­ ratus is giving them a vacation . With this situation they are forced to compare the obvious possibilities, and they grow the more confused the less the closed fa�ade of consciousness, which is modeled after that of so­ ciety, lets through the conception of a possible freedom . At the s ame time, in the feeling of meaninglessness which is the high-bourgeois expression of real need, the permanent threat of destruction is assimilated by consciousness. What this consciousness dreads it turns in such a way that the threat seems to be an innate part of it, and thus it weakens that element of the threat which can no longer be grasped in human terms . The fact that on all sides meaning of every kind seems to be impotent against evil, that the l atter yields no mean­ ing at all, and that the assertion of meaning may even promote evil, is registered as a lack of metaphysical content, especially in regard to religiOUS and social commitments . The falseness of this reinterpretation , using a mode of cultural criticism with which the s tingy pathos of the authentics j oins in , re gularly be­ comes visible in a p articular fact : the fact that past ages-whichever one prefers-ranging from Bieder­ meier to Pelasgic, appear as the ages of immanent meaning. Such reinterpretation follows an inclination to set back the clock politically and socially, to brin g to an end the dynamism inherent in a society which s till, through the administrative measures of the most pow­ erful cliques, appears to be all too open . As its present

form can expect nothing good from such a dyn amic, it stubbornly blinds itself to the recognition th at the cure which society offers is itself the evil that it fears . This is brought to a head in Heide gger . Cleverly, he couples the appeal of unromantic, incorruptible purity with the prophecy of a saving element which , in consequence, can present i tself as nothing other than this purity it­ self. The hero of Mahagonny j oined the wailing about a world in which there is nothing to hold on to. In Heidegger, as well as in the Brech t of the didactic plays, this is followed by the proclam ation of compulsory order as salvation . The lack of something to hold on to is the mirror reflection of its opposite, of unfreedom . Only because mankind failed to define itself did it grope for determination throu gh something els e : some­ thing that was safely out of the reach of the dialectical movement. The anthropolOgical condition of so-called human emptiness, which for the sake of contrast the au then tics are accustomed to daub out as an unha ppy, b ut inevitable , consequence of the demystified world, could be changed . The lon ging for some completing factor could be fulfilled, as soon as it was no lon ger denied-but not fulfilled, of course, through the in­ jection of a spiritual meaning or a merely verbal sub­ stitution . The social constitution essentially trains mankind for the reproduction of itself, and the com­ pulsion extends itself into society's psycholo gy , as soon as it lOos es its external power . Th anks to the f actor of self-preservation , which has blown itself up into a to­ tality, the followin g h appens : wh at m an is anyw ay once m ore becomes his goal . Perhaps with this nonsense the appearance of meanin glessness might als o dis ap37

pear, the eagerly assured nothingness of the subject, a shadow of the state in which e ach person is literally his own neighbor. If it is the c ase that no metaphysical thought was ever created which has not been a constel­ lation of elements of experience, then , in the present instance , the semin al experiences of metaphysics are simply diminished by a habit of thought which sub­ limates them into metaphysical pain and splits them off from the real pain which gave rise to them . The j argon's whole hatred is directed again s t this con­ sciousnes s . No dis tinction is made between Marx and the superstition of race : Marxism , psycho analysi s , and racial theory are today the most widespread decep tions of mankin d . The d i rectly bru tal i n hatred and praise , as it has come to dominance i n human existenc e , finds its expression in these sys tems of thou gh t ; in Marxism, in the manner in which the mass postulates community ; in p sycho­ analysis , in the w ay it seeks mere exi s tence s atisfac tion ; in racial t h eory , in the way it wants to be better than the o ther . . . . Without sociology no political strategy can be carried out. Without psychology no one becomes master of the reigning confusion , in his converse with himself and with the others . Without anthropology we would lose our consciousness of the dark causes of th at in which we possess ourselves . . . . No sociology c an tell what fate I want , no psycholo gy can clarify wh a t I am , authentic being of man c ann o t be bred as race . Everywhere is the boundary of that which can be planned and made . For Marxism, psychoanalysis , and theory of race have characteris ticaly des tructive attri­ butes . As Marxis m thinks that it uncovers all spiritual being as Superstructure , p s ychoanalysis does the s am e in exposing spiritual b e in g as sublimation of repressed drives . What, then , is still called culture is s tructu re d ­

like an obsessive neuro sis . Theory of r ac e c au s e s a con­ ception of his tory which i s withou t hope. N e gative selec tion of the best will s oon brin g abou t the ruin of authen tic hum anity ; or, it is the nature of m an to p roduc e durin g this proce s s the highest pos sibili tie s in a mixture of race s , in order to le ave behind ad infinitum the m arrowle ss average exis tence of his rem ain s , af ter the mixi n g has come to an end in t h e course of a few centurie s . All three ten dencies are apt to d e s t roy wh at has s e e me d to b e of v alue for men . Th e y are espe cially the ruin of any thin g ab solu te, for, as kn o w l ed g e , they m ake themselves a false absolute which reco gnizes every thi n g else as condi tioned . Not only has God to fall but also every form of philo sophical belief. B o th the highest and the lowe s t are l abeled with the s ame termi­ nology and , j u d ge d s tep into nothingne s s !6 ,

The practical usability of the enlightenin g diSciplines is condescendin gly granted in the beginning only to preven t more effectively any reflection on the truth conten t of criticism : by arousing our indign ation at the desire to destroy. Passionate grief about oblivious ness to being is given the appearance of the essential-to the point where one would rather like to forget all Be­ ing. All of that is more ominously attended to in Der Grilne Heinrich: There is an old sayin g which maintain s tha t one must not only tear down but must also know how to bui ld up ; a commonplace con s t antly employed by cheery and superficial people who are uncomfortably confron ted with an activity which demands a decision from them. This w ay of speaking is in pl ac e where so me thing is sup e rfi c ially s e t tled or is denied out of stupid inclina­ t io n ; o therwise , thou gh , it is unintelligible . For one is 26. J aspers,

Die geistige Situation, pp. 1 42 ff.

39

not always tearing down, in order to build again ; on the contrary, one te ars things down eagerly in order to win fre e space for light and air, which appear as it were by themselves, wherever some obs tructin g obj ect is removed. When one looks matters right in the face and tre ats them in an upright maner, then nothing is negative, but al is positive- to use this old saw.27

Then the old warriors had an easier time of it : they had no need of old s aws; they only needed to breathe sense into doubters with the cudgel of fate and Nordic manhood. But they already had the j argon at their dis­ posal : An extreme intensific ation of al activity, and a sharp­ ening of all cre ative powers , even the great political event

as such, m ark our time ;

and to the

eyes of

philosophy they have physically presented this phe­ nomenon in its authenticity and unvarnished origin al­ ity. Philosophy has grasped this phenomenon as a con­ dition of the highes t philosophical relevance , in order to let itself be led , through its con tent and problem atic s tructure , to a full and pure understanding of m an and the worl d . . . . Human exis tence is not me aningle s s : that is the categorical assertion with which this exis t­ ence itself confronts the philosophy of life , in order to as sert itself in opposition to and over again s t that phi­ losophy . . . . To s ay yes to fate and to ne gate it in spite of that, to suffer it and yet to domin ate it, i.e . , to face it and to take one's stand against it, that is the attitude of true humanity . This attitude corresponds to the ideal image of man because it represents nothing 2 7 . Gottfried Keller, Der Griine Heinrich, IV, 2, quoted in Friedrich Pollock, "Somharts Widerlegung d es Marxismus , " in B eihefte zum Archiv filr die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, ed Carl Grunberg ( Leipzig, I 926 ) , III, 63 . .

but the essence of m an, univers ally valid and removed from all ties to time . At the same time , and at one with it, thi s attitude defines the deep and genuine meaning of fate , that meanin g which has nothing to do with fatalism, a me anin g to which

e specially a

Germ an

opens hims elf. For the m an of Nordic blo o d , this mean­ ing takes on a deeply religious content and ground s what for him means his bond with fate a n d his belief i n fate. 28

Lan g ua ge uses the word "meaning" for the harm­ less epistemolo gical intentional object of Hus s erI, as well as for the purpose of saying th at something is justified as me aningful ; as one would speak, for in­ stance, of the me anin g of his tory. It rem ains true th at the factual p articular has meaning to the extent tha t the whole, above all the system of society, appears in it ; that the dispersed facts are always more th an what they immedia tely seem, even if such me aning is mad­ ness. The search for meaning as th at which somethi n g is authentic ally, and as th at which is hidden in it, pushes away , often unnoticed and therefore all the faster, th e question a s to th e ri ght of this somethin g. An alysi s of meaning becomes the norm in this de­ mand, n ot only for the signs but also for th at which they refer to. The si gn system of lan gu a g e by its m er e existence, takes everything, to begin with , into somethin g that is held in readiness by society ; and it defends this s ocie ty i n its own form prior to all content. This is what r efle c tion stands firm ag ain s t . However, the jargon drifts with th e current, and would b e glad ,

28. From Wilhelm Grebe, Der deutsche Mensch : Unterzur Philosophie des Handelns ( B erlin, I 9 3 7 ) .

suchungen

41

V

to increase it, in union with the regressive formations of consciousness. In its semantic directions positivism has constantly noted the historical break between language and that which it expresses . Linguistic forms, .as rei£ied- and only through reification do they become forms -have outlived what they once referred to, together with the context of that reference . The completely demytholo­ gized fact would withhold itself from language ; through the mere act of intending the fact becomes an o ther- at least measured in terms of its idol of pure accessibility. That without language there is no fact remains, even so, the thorn in the flesh and the theme of positivism , since it is here that the stub­ bornly mythical remainder of lan guage is revealed . Mathematics is, for good reason , the primal model of positivistic thought-even in its function as a lan­ gua geless system of sign s . Looked at in reverse, the tenacious residuum of what is archaic in langu age be­ comes fruitful only where language rubs itself critically a gainst it; the same archaic turns into a fatal mirage when language spontaneously confirms and stren gth­ ens it. The j argon sh ares with positivism a crude con­ ception of the archaic in lan gu age ; neither of them both ers about the dialectical moment in which lan­ guage , as if it were something else, wins itself away from its magical origins , lan gu age being entan gled in a progressing demythologization . That par ticular neg­ lect authorizes the social using of linguistic anachro­ nism . The j argon simply ennobles the an tiquity of l anguage, which the positivists just as simply long to

eradicate-along with all expres sion in langu age. The disproportion between lan gua ge a n d the rationalized so ciety drives the authentics to plunder lan gu age , rather than to drive it on, through gr e a ter sharpness, to its proper due . They don't fail to notice that one cannot speak absolutely without speakin g archaically; but what the p os itivists bewail as re tro gre s sive the a u thentic s eternalize as a blessing. For them that block which lan gu age piles up be­ fore the expression of undiminished experience be­ comes an altar. If it does not allow itself to be broken thr ou gh , then it offers us simply the omnipotence and indi s s olubility of what was precipitated into l a n gu a ge . But th e archaic takes vengeance on the j argon , whose greed for the ·archaic violates the proper distance . The archaic is obj ectified for a second time . In its e x a m ple is r ep e ated that which in any case h appened to lan­ guage h i s tori c ally. The ni mbu s in which the words are being wr appe d , like oran ges in tissue paper, t akes under its own direction th e mythology of l a n g u age , as if the radiant force of the words co uld not yet quite be trusted. Mixed with artificial colorin g the words them­ selves, released from the relation to wh at is th ou gh t , are to speak a relation which should chan ge them and so a l w ay s demythologizes them. Language mythology and reification become mixed with that element which id e n tifi e s l an gu a ge as antimythological an d ration al . The j argon be com es prac ti c able along the whole sc ale, reaching from sermon to advertisement. In the medium of the concept the j argo n b ecomes s ur pri singly similar to the habitual practices of a dver tis in g. The words of 43

the j argon and those like

]iigermeis ter, Alte Kloster­

frau, Schiinke,29 are all of a piece. They exploit the h ap­

piness promised by that which had to pass on to the shadows . Blood is drawn from that which h as its ap­ pear ance of concreteness only after the fact, by virtue of its downfall . At least in terms of their function, the words, nailed into fixity and covered with a luminous layer of insulation, remind us of the positivistic count­ ers . They are useful for arbitrary effect-connotations, without regard to the pathos of uniqueness which they usurp, and which itself has its orgin on the market, on that m arket for which what is rare h as exchan ge value. With the assertion of meanin g at all costs, the old antisophistic emotion seeps into the so-called mass sOciety . Ever since the victory of Plato and Aristotle over the Socratic left, that emotion h as dominated the official position of philosophy. Whatever refused sub­ j ection to it was pushed off into powerless undercur­ rents . Only the more recent positivism h as made so­ phistic motives reputable by its alliance with science. The j argon struggles a gainst this alliance . Without judgment it hands down the j udgment of tradition . The s h ame of the sophists, opposed by Plato, was the fact that they did not fight against falsity in order to change the slave society, but rather raised doubts about truth in order to arm thou ght for whatever was . Their kind of destruction was indeed similar to the totalitarian concept of ideolo gy . Plato could caricature the Gorgias sophists as clowns because thought, once it has been 2 9 . [Klosterfrau, jagermeister, Schank e : es tablished brand n ames of well known liqueurs and wines . ]

44

freed from concrete knowledge and the nature of the obj e ct, reduces to farce th at moment of pl ay which is essential to thou ght-turns such a moment into a ghost of th at mimesis which is combatted by every en ligh t enment .30 Nevertheless, the antisophistic movement misuses its insight into such miscons tructions of free­ wheeling thought-misu ses them in order to discredit thou ght, through thought. This was the w ay Nietzsche criticized Kant, rai sin g the charge of over-sub tle think­ ing in the same tone as that adopted magis terially by Hegel, when he spoke of "reasonin g." In the modish antisophistic movement there is a s ad confluence : of a necessary cri ti que of isolated instrumental reason with a grim defense of institutions a gainst thou ght. The j argon , a waste product of the modern that it at­ tacks, seeks to protect itself-along with literally de­ structive institutions- against the suspicion of bein g destructive : by Simultaneously accusing other, mostly anticonservative, groups of sinful intellectuality, of that sin which lies deep in the j argon's own unnaive , re fl e ctiv e princi ple of existence . Demagogically it uses the double character of the antisophistic. That con­ sciousness is f alse which , externally, a n d as Hegel says, without bein g in the thing, places itself above this thing and m anages it from above ; but criticism becomes equally ideological at the moment when it lets it be known , self-righteou sly, that thought mus t have a gro und He gel's dialectic went beyond the doc­ trine that thou ght, in order to be true, needs some absolute s t ar ti n g point, free of doubt. This doctrine be ­

,

.

-

3 0 . Cf. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W . Adorno, Dia­ Aufkliirung ( Amsterdam, I 947 ) , pp. 20 ff .

lektik der

45

comes all the more terroristic in the j argon of authen­ ticity, ·a s it more autocratically locates its starting point outside of the texture of thought. Antisophistic atti­ tudes, in the final stages of processed mythology, are hardened forms of causal thinking. The relapse of the risen metaphysics, behind dialectics , is chalked up by the j argon to a return to the mothers. When everything h a s been cut off, the root lies bared . The root is the origin out of which we grew and which we h ave forgotten in the creepers of opinions , habit s , and schemata of comprehension . 31

Even later in Vernunft und Existenz, Jaspers writes : Only in this way could the true strength of man be realized. The power of the absolute in him, proven in

every pOSSibility of struggle and questioning, would no longer need suggestion, hate , lust for cruelty in order to become active , no longer need the in toxic ation of big words and ununderstood dogmas in order to be­ lieve in itself. Only that way would it actually become severe , hard and sober. Only in this way can all the self-deceptions disappear without destroying man in the process of destroying his life-lies . Only in this w ay will th e true ground reveal itself unveiled from the depth .32

The authentic one s defame sophistry, but they dra g its arbitrariness alon g in their programs, inste ad of prov31 . Karl Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube ( Munich, 1948) , p. 125. [English translation by E. B . Ashton, Philosophi­ cal Faith and Revelation ( New Yo rk 1967 ) . The quotation is translated from the original German . ] 32 . Karl Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz ( Munich , 1 960 ) pp. 98 ff. [English translation by W. Earle, R e ason and Ex­ istenz: Five Lecture s ( London, 1 9 56 ) . The quo tation is trans­ lated from the original German.] ,

ing to be a match for it. But they agree with the Sophists in their favorite thesis , that man alone is im­ portant-that sententia of Homo mensura w armed over again with unexpected fulsomeness. As once be­ fore, the social model of their chosen scapegoat is ur­ ban freedom, which, in the past, helped thought to emancipate itself. The only diference is the fact that in the s trict rational order of bourgeois society the mo­ bility of person and spirit are less threatening to groups , which in effect no longer exist in highly indus­ trialized countries . But it constantly challenges the con­ tinuing irrationality of the total system, which would like to prune away what is still vegetating on from the social modes of behavior developed under liberalism . Therefore the j argon must defend, so as not to be lost, transitory social forms which are incompatible with the contemporary state of the forces of produc­ tion . If it wanted to mount the barricades itself , then it would have to engage itself not only for a position much scorned amon g its believers, but possibly also for that rationality which the exchange society both promises and denies, and through which tha t society could be transcended. The bourgeoiS form of rational­ ity has always needed irrational supplements , in order to maintain itself as what it is, continuing injustice through justice. Such irration ality in the midst of the ration al is the working atmosphere of authenticity . The latter can support itself on the fact that over a lon g period o f time literal as well as figurative mobility, a main element in bourgeois equ ality, always turned into injustice for those who could not entirely keep up. They experienced the pro gress of society as a verdict : 47

a pawned-off remembrance of their sufferin g, under that system, brings authenticity, along with its j argon, to a ferment. Its bubbles cause the true obj ect of the suffering, the particular constitution of society, to disappear . For the selected victims of the feeling against mobility have themselves been condemned, ever since the sphere of circulation was fused into the sphere of production . The j argon strives to turn the bitterness of the indigenous, of the mute , into some­ thin g like a metaphysical-moral verdict of annhilation against the man who can speak out ; and the j argon has had so much success only for this reason , because thi s verdict i n question has already i n effect been spoken, and has been carried out in Germ any against innumer­ able people-because the gesture of rooted genuine­ nes s is at one with that of the historical conqueror s . Th at is the substantial element i n authenticity, the holy fount of its stren gth . Taciturnity and silence are the best counterpoint to existential and existentialist babble . The order which this b abble aims at is itself one that reaches for speechlessnes s of sign and com­ mand. In h appy agreement with its consumers, the j ar gon fills the breach created by the societally neces­ sary disintegration of l an guage . Petit bourgeois have few acquaintances ; they feel uncomfortable as soon as the y come together with people they don't already know, and their duplicity turns this attitude into a vir­ tue . Not lastly, the j argon bears some resemblance to the rough m anners of a doorman, in ·an Alpine hotel, who hectors the guests as if they were intruders, and in this way wins their trust. In face of the social stasis that once again is darkenin g the horizon, a shimmer of

humanity is shed b ack onto the officiously persuasive word of the day before yesterday. If philosophy were to take back into society the experiences which were pre­ cipitated in the j argon in the false forms of its dis­ tilled essences-society being the place where they originated- and if the word "origin" had any meanin g at all, then philosophy would be able to go beyond th e opposition of mobility and fixity, of groundlessness and authenticity. It would then recognize these opposition s as elements of the same guilty whole, in which heroes and businessmen are of value to each o ther . Th e liberalism th at hatched the culture industr y produced forms of reflection that are encountered indignantly by the j argon of authenticity, al though it is itself one of them . This liberalism was the ancestor of the fascism which destroyed both it and its later potential cus­ tomers. But of course the blood guilt of that which echoes today, in the j argon, is incomparably greater th an the deceptive maneuvers of mobility , whose prin­ ciples are incomp atible with those of immedi ate power . Heidegger is not the mat ador of such political s trat­ egies, and in fact he protects himself against their blunt directness. I t is true that he does use the word "authenticity" centrally in Sein und Zeit,33 and most of the familiar shorth and is spread around over his bes t­ known text- spread with gestures, of incontestable authority , which the mass of the authentics then me­ chanically imitate ; there is unquestioned a greemen t about the undiscussed core of all this . In the s ame way Heidegger stru ggles to show reserve toward all the 3 3 . Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 3 04 if . ,

also

pp. 68 6 9 .

49

current phrases which he, with e ase, can put aside as vulgar misunderstanding. Nevertheless, as soon as he loosens his voluntary self-censorship, he falls into the j argon , with a provinciality which cannot be excused on the grounds that it becomes thematic of itself. He has published a little volume of gnomic thoughts en­ titled Out of the Experience of Thinking. Its form keeps to the middle ground between poetry and pre-Socratic fra gment. Yet the sibylline character of the pre-Socra­ tic fragments really results, at least in many of them, from the accident of a discontinuous tradition, and not from secretiveness . Heidegger has praise for the "splendor of the simple ." 34 He brin gs back the thread­ bare ideolo gy of pure materials , from the realm of handicrafts to that of the mind- as if words were pure, and, as it were, roughened m aterial. But textiles of that sort are mediated, today, throu gh their calcu­ lated opposition to mass production ; and in j us t that way Heidegger wants, synthetically, to create a primal sense for pure words. Another specifically social element plays into the category of the simple : the elevation of the cheap, in accordance with the wishes of the proudly declining elite- an elevation related to youth music , which gladly goes along with the j argon and lets itself be ac­ companied by it. Being behind the times historically is no less eagerly converted into the feeling of the fate­ fully tragic, than into that of something higher; that too goes along with the silent identification of the 34. Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens ( Pfullingen, 1 954 ) , p. 1 3 ·

50

arch aic with the genuine. But the triviality of the sim­ ple is not, as Heideg ger would like it to b e , attribu table to the value-blindness of thou ght th at h as lost being. Such triviality comes from thinking that is supposedly in tune with bein g and reveals itself as something supremely noble . Such triviality is the sign of that c1as­ sifying thought, even in the simplest word, from which Heidegger pretends tha t he has escaped : n amely, ab­ straction . Already in the firs t version of Geist der Utopie, Ernst Bloch s ays that symbol intentions, which are for him the traces of messianic light in the darkene d world, are i n fact not expressed b y the most simple basic relationships and basic words , like "the old m an , the mother, and death ." But Heidegger, in his fastidious Humanism letter, lets us hear these words : Man is not the lord of existence . M an is the shepherd of bein g . In this '1e ss" m an loses

n oth i n g ,

but rather

wins, by reaching the truth of Bein g He wins the e s sen­ .

tial poverty of the shepherd , whose wor th consists in bein g called , by Being i tself, into the truenes s of its truth. This call comes as the throwing from which the thrownness of existence stems In his b eing-his tori c al , [seinsgeschichtlich] essence, man is the existent wh ose .

being as ek-sistence consists in his livin g in the neigh­ borhood of B eing. M an is the neighbor of B eing.85

Philosophical b anality is generated when tha t magical participation in the absolute is ascribed to the general concept- a participation which puts the lie to that con­ cept's conceivability . 35.

Heidegger, tJber den Humanismus ( Frankfurt, I 949 )

P· 2 9 ·

5I

Philosophizing, according to Heide gger, is a d anger to thought.36 But the authentic thinker, harsh toward anything so modernistic as philosophy, writes : "When in early summer isolated narcissi bloom hidden in the meadow, and the mountain rose glistens under the m aple tree . . ." 37 or : "When from the slopes of the high valley, where the herds are slowly passing, the cow bells ring and ring . . ." 38 Or verses : The woods make camp the s treams rush on the cliffs remain the rain runs. The meadows wait the fountains spring the winds dwell blessing takes thought.39

The renewing of thinkin g through outmoded language can be judged by these instance s . The archaic is the expressive ideal of this language : "The oldes t element of the old comes up behind us in our thinking and yet meets u s head on." 40 But Jun gnickel knows how to put it : the revenge of the myth on the person who is curious about it, on the denouncer of thinkin g. "The poetic character of thinking is still concealed," 41 Heidegger adds, in order to forestall criticism at all costs : "where it shows itself, it for a lon g time re3 6 . Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung, p. I S . 3 7 . Ibid. , p . 1 2 . 3 8 . Ibid. , p. 22. 3 9. Ibid . , p . 2 7 · 40. Ibid . , p . 1 9 . 4 1 . Ibid. , p . 23 .

sembles the utopia of a half-poetic intellect." 42 Still the half-poetic intellect which babbles forth thos e pieces o f wisdom bears less resemblance t o thi s , o r t o any o ther unsuccessful utopia, th an t o t h e work of some trusty folk art, which after all is not used to speaking well about those things . During the Hitler period, and we c an feel with him, Heide gger turned down an academic appointment in Berlin . He j ustifie s that in an article , "Why Do We Remain in the Province ? " With wily s trategy he dis arms the charge that he is provincial ; he uses the term "provincialism" in a positive sense. His strategy takes this form : "When on a deep winter nigh t a wild snowstorm rages around the cabin, and covers and conceals everything, then the time is ripe for philosophy. Its question must then become simple and essential." 4 3 Whe ther ques­ tions are essential can in any case only be judged by the answers given ; there is no way of anticipating , and certainly not by the criterion of a simplicity based on meteorological events . That simplicity says as little about truth as about its opposite ; Kant, Hegel were as complicated and as simple as their content forced them to be . But Heidegger insinu ates a preestablished harmony between essential content and homey mur­ muring. Therefore , the echoes of Jungnickel here are not just loveable lapses . They are there to deafen any suspicion that the philosopher might be an intellectual : "And philosophical work does not take place a s the 42. Ibid. 4 3 . Quoted in Guido Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger, Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken (B ern , 1 962 ) , p . 2 1 6.

53

spare-time activity of a crank. It belongs right in the midst of the lab or of farmers ." 44 One would like at least to know the farmers' opinion , about that. Heideg­ ger does not need their opinion . For "durin g the time of the evening work-pause, he sits, on the stove bench along with the farmers . . . or at the table in the corner, under the crucifix , and then we usually don't talk at all. We smoke our pipes in silence ." 45 "One's own work's inner belon ging, to the Black Forest and its people , comes from a century-lon g Germanic­ Swabian rootedness, which is irreplaceable." 46 Mter all, Heidegger s ays it himself. Johann Peter Hebel, who comes from the same region, and to whom Heideg­ ger would like to give the place of honor on the mantel­ piece, hardly ever appealed to this rootedness ; instead he passed on his greetings to the peddlers Scheitele and Nausel, in one of the most beautiful pieces of prose in defense of the Jews that was ever written in German .47 Rootedness, however, puffs itself up : Recently I got a second invitation to the University of B erlin. On such an occasion I leave the city and go back to my cabin . I hear what the mountains and woods and farmyards s ay. On the way I drop in on my oId friend, a seventy-five-year-old farmer. He h as read in the news­ paper about the Berlin invitation. What will he say? He slowly presses the sure glance of his clear eyes against mine, holds his mouth tightly closed, lays his faithful and cautious hand on my shoulder-and almost im-

44. 45. 46. 47.

54

Ibid. Ibid . , p. 2 1 7· Ibid. Cf. Joh ann Peter Hebel, Werke ( B erlin , I 8 74 ) II, 254.

perceptibly shakes his head. That me ans :

No ! 48

absolutely

While the phil osopher complains to other Blubo-friends about their a dv er tising of the Blubo,'9 which would be detrimen tal to his mo n opoly his reflected unreflective­ ness degener at es into chummy chit-chat, for the s ake of the rural se t ting with which he wants to s tand on a confidential foo tin g The description of the old farmer reminds us of the most washed-out cliches in plough­ and fu r r o w novels , from the re gion of a Frenssen ; and it reminds us e q u a lly of the praise of being silent , wh i ch th e philosoph e r authorizes n o t only for his farmers but also for himself. Here we find an i gnor anc e of ev er yth i n g we have learned about ru r al people : for instance in French realism from B alzac's late work to Maupass ant; from a literature not attuned to the musty instincts of German petit-bourgeois ki tsch ; from a li terature which would be available in translation even to a pre-Socratic . The small farmer owe s his con­ tinuing existence entirely to gracious gifts from that exchange SOciety by which his very ground and foun­ dation , even in appearance, have been removed ; in the f ace of this exchange the farmers have nothing on the:ir horizon except something worse- the immedi ate exploitation of the family without which they would be bankrupt : this hollowed-out state, the perpetual crisis of the small farmer's business, has its echo in the hollowness of the j argon . The subsidies which are ,

.

-

48 . Schneeberger, Nachlese, p. 2 I 8 . 49. [B lubo: catchword o f the Nazi movement, emphasizing the interdependence of one's life with one's native soil . A provincial version of pro patria mori.]

55

paid to the small farmers are ,the very ground of that which the primal words of the j argon add to that which in fact they mean. Like less prominent porte­ paroles of authenticity, Heidegger is filled with the disdainful pride of inwardness, which he touches on philosophically, in his thou ght about He gel's critique of it.50 Whoever is forced by the n ature of his work to stay in one place , gladly makes a virtue out of ne­ cessity. He tries to convince himself and others that his bound-ness is of a higher order . The financially thre atened farmer's bad experiences with middlemen subs tantiate this opinion . The socially clumsy person who may be partially excluded from society hates those middlemen as j acks of all trades. This h atred j oins with resistance against all agents, from the cattle dealer to the journ alist. In 1 956 the stable professions, which are themselves a stage of social development, are still the norms for Heidegger . He praises them in the name of a false eternity of agrarian conditions : "Man tries in v ain to brin g the globe to order throu gh planning, when he is not in tune with the consoling voice of the country lane." 51 North America knows no country lanes, not even villages . Philosophy, which is ashamed of its name, needs the sixth-hand symbol of the farmer as a proof of its primalness, as a way of acquiring some otherwise unavailable distinctivenes s . However, Lessing's insight still applies , a s it did in his time : the insight that the aesthetic critic does not need to do better himself than what he criticizes . That which 5 0 . Cf. Heidegger, B eing and Time, pp . 248 fr . 5 1 . Heidegger, D e r Feldweg ( Frankfurt, I 956 ) p . 4 .

was right for the Hamburg Dramaturgy is also reason­ able for philosophical theory : the self-awareness of its limitations does not obligate it to authentic poetic creation. But it must h ave the power to prevent think­ ing people from producing mere aesthetic staples ; otherwise, these argue against a philosophy which pre­ tends to scorn arguments as confusing. Its noble philistinism grows into the j argon of authenticity. As in this j argon, and even in Heide gger, the evi­ dence of language reve als the falsity of rootedness­ at least as soon as rootedness descends to somethin g that has a concrete con tent. Heidegger works with an antithesis between bein g alone and loneliness : City people are o ften surprised by the farmers' lon g , mo­ notonous state of being alone among the m o u n t ain s . Ye t it is not b ein g alone , b u t rather loneline s s . In b i g cities man c an e asily be alone a s i t is hardly possible to be el sewhere . B u t he c an never b e lonely th e r e . For loneli­ ness h a s th at prim al power n o t of isol atin g u s , but of c as ting all exis tence free into the wide nearness of the e ssence of all thin gs . 52

However thin gs may stand with this dis tinction, in terms of content, language, to which H eideg ger is turnin g for testimony, does not know the present dis­ tinction in the present form . The Electra monolo gue of Hofm annsthal, who certainly understood such nu­ ances , begins : "Alone, all alone ." The human condition of the heroine is, if anything at all, that ultimate bein g­ thrown-back-on-oneself in which Heidegger trusts, somewh at optimistically. He relies on the way th at 5 2 . Quoted in Schneeberger, Nachlese, p. 2 1 7 .

57

state leads ''into the wide nearness of the essence of all things"; thou gh in fact such situations are no less likely to force people into obsessive narrowness and impoverishment. Looked at the other way around-in opposition to Heidegger-Ianguage will rather suggest that people are lonely in big cities or on public holi� days, but that they cannot be alone on such occasions . In any case present usage is indecisive on this matter. Heidegger's philosophy, which takes so much advan­ tage of its ability to listen, renders itself deaf to words . The emphatic nature of this philosophy arouses the belief that it fits itself into the words, while it is only a cover for arbitrariness. Heidegger's primal sounds ape- as such sounds usually do. Of course, even a more sensitive linguistic organ than his would hardly accomplish anything better in this matter in which he fails . Every such effort has its linguistically logical limit in the accidental elemen t of even the most pre­ cise word . Words' own meanings w eigh heavily in them . But these words do not use themselves up in their meanings : they themselves are cau ght up in their context. This fact is underestim ated in the high praise given to science by every pure analysis of meanin g, starting with HusserI's ; especially by that of Heidegger, which considers itself far above science . Only that person s atisfies the dem and of langu age who masters the relation of lan guage to individu al words in their configurations . Just as the fixing of the pure element of meaning threatens to pass over into the arbitrary, so the belief in the primacy of the configurative threatens to pass into the badly functional, the merely communicative-into scorn for the objective aspect of 58

words . In language that is worth something both of these elements are transmitted. Allegedly hale life is opposed to damaged life, on whose societalized consciousness, on whose "malaise," the j argon speculates. Through the ingrained language form of the j argon, that h ale life is equated with agrarian conditions, or at least with simple commodity economy, far from all social considerations . This life is in effect equated to something undivided, protec­ tingly closed, which runs its course in a firm rhythm and unbroken continuity . The field of association here is a left-over of romanticism and is transplanted with­ out second thought into the contemporary situation, to which it stands in h arsher contradiction th an ever before. In th at situ ation the categories of th e j argon are gladly brought forward, as though they were not abstracted from generated and transitory situ ations , but rather belonged to the essence of m an , a s inalien­ able possibility . Man is the ideology of dehumaniza­ tion. Conclusions are drawn from certain cate gories which remind us of somewh at primal social relation­ ships, where the institutions of exchange do not yet have complete power over the relationships of men . From those cate gories it is concluded that th eir core , man, is immediately present among con temporary men , th at he is there to realize his eido s . Past forms of societaliza tion, prior to the division of labor, are sur­ reptitiously adopted as if they were eternal. Their re­ flection falls upon later conditions which h ave already been victimized by pro gressive rationalization, and in contrast to those the earlier states seem the more human . That which authentics of lesser rank c all with 59

gusto the image of man, they locate in a zone in which it is no longer permitted to ask from where those con­ ditions emerged ; neither can one ask what was done to the subjugated at any particular time, with the tran­ sition from nomadic life to settledness-nor what was done to those who c an no longer move around ; nor whether the undivided condition itself, both uncon­ scious and compulsive, did not breed and e arn its own downfall. The talk about man makes itself popular in the old-fashioned, h alf-timbered, gable-roof way. But it also wins friends in a more contemporary way, in the gesture of a radicalism which wants to dismantle whatever merely conceals, and which concerns itself with the n aked essence that hides under all cultural dis guises. However, as it is a question of Man and not, for the s ake of men, of the conditions which are made by men and which h arden into opposition against them, we are released from criticizing them, as though, temporally bound like its object, such a critique were all too shallow. This pOSition fundamentally suppresses the motif of the Kantian "Idea toward a General His­ tory from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" : the ide a th at states of affairs worthy of Man can only be produced throu gh antagonism , from out of their own force , not from a pure idea . The talk abou t man is so worthless because it prepares for untruth that which is of high­ e s t truth . There is great stress on the existential elements of man , in which slack and s elf-surfei ted t ho ugh t thinks it holds, in its hands , that concretion which it has lost throu gh its transformation into method . Such maneuvers simply deflect us from seeing how little it is here a question of man, who has

60

been condemned to the status of an appendage. The expression of the word "m an" has itself modified its form historically . In the expressionistic literature since the period of the First World War, the word "man" has had a historical value-thanks to the pro test against that flagrant inhum anity which found human material for materiel slau ghter. The honorable old reification of bourgeois society, which comes into its own in the great periods, and is c alled individu al hu­ man effort, in that way becomes graspable ; and , in that way, antagonistically, also becomes its own counter-concept. The sentence "Man is good" was false, but at least it needed no metaphysical-anthropological sauce . It is already different with the expressionistic "0 Man," a m anifesto directed agains t that which, done only by men , is a usurpatory positing. The ex­ pressionistic "0 Man" was already inclined to leave men's violence out of consideration . The undisputed , childlike sense of universal humanity taints itself with that which it opposes - as could be shown in the writ­ in gs of Franz Werfel . The j argon's image of man, meanwhile , is still the selling-out of that uninhibited "0 Man," and the negative truth concerning it. To ch aracterize the change in function of the word "man," we need only consider two titles which resem­ ble one another . At the time of the German November Revolution, there appeared a book by the pacifist Lud­ wig Rubiner, Man in the Middle; in the fifties , a book called M an at the Center of the Business Operation . Thanks to its abstractness , the concept lets itself be squirted like grease into the s ame machinery it once wanted to assail . Its pathos , meanwhile ev aporated, 61

s till echoes in the ideology which holds that business, which must be operated by men, exists for their sake . This means that the organization h as to take care of its workers so that their productivity will climb . Like Elsie, the happy American advertisement-cow, that phrase about Man, whom the phrase enj oins us to care for, would not be so convincing if the phrase did not rely on a suspicion ; the suspicion that, after al, the overpowering conditions of society really were made by men and can be undone by them . The overpowering strength of those relationships, like that of myth, has in it an element of fetishism and mere appearance. Just as the in-itself of the institution is mere appear­ ance, a reflection of petrified human states of affairs, s o in reality this appearance dominates men to the s ame degree. This is what debases the appeal to an in­ alienable essence of Man which h as long been alie­ n ated. It was not Man who created the institutions but p articular men in a particular constellation with nature and with themselves . This constellation forced the in., stitutions on them in the same way that men erected those institutions , without consciousnes s . Al that was formulated. incisively during the Vormarz, particularly by Marx, against Feuerb ach's anthropology and the young Hegelians . Both appearance and necessity are elements of the world of wares. Cognition fails as soon as it isolates one of these elements . He who accepts the world of w ares as the in-itself, which it pretends to be, is deceived by the mech anisms which Marx an alyzed in the chapter on fetishes . He who neglects this in-itself, the v alue of exchan ge , as mere illusion , gives in to the ideology of univers al humanity. He

clings to forms of an imm edi ate to getherne ss, which are historically irretrievable if in fact they ever exis ted in any other form . Once capi tali sm has grown uneasy about th e ore ti c al self-assertion , its advocate s pr e fer to use the c at e gorie s of spontaneous life in order to present what is man-made . Th e y present those cate­ gories as if they were valid now and here. The j argon busily splashes beyond all this, perhaps even proud of its historical obliviousness-as if this obliviousness were alre ady the humanly immediate. The ang el s voices with which the j ar gon registers the word "Man," are derived by the j argon from the doctrine of man as the image of God. The word "Man" sounds all the more irrefutable and p e rsu a siv e the more it seals itself off against its th e ol o gi c al origin . Some element in it points back to a lin guis ti c phe­ nomenon drawn from the Jugendstil, an element which the j argon has prepared for mass c on sump tion The link in the history of philosophy between the ]ugendstil and the j argon is probably the youth move­ ment. For one of his plays Hauptmann chose the title Solitary Men. In a novel by Countess Reve n tlo w , a professor is ridiculed who belonged to the costume­ p arty boheme of Munich around I g l O . He s ays, about every person whom he considers fit to enter the Schwa­ bing circle, "What a wonderful man ." This is related to the man n eris m of actors, from the e arly Reinhardt era , who would place their hands on their hearts, would open their eyes as wide as they could, and would in general dr am atiz e themselves. On ce the original theo­ lo gical image has fallen, transcendence, which in the great reli gio ns is separated from the likeness by power'

.

ful taboos-thou shalt h ave no graven images of me­ is shifted to the likeness. This image is then s aid to be full of wonder, since wonders no longer exist. Here al the concretion of authenticity has its mystery : the concreteness of whatever is as its own im age. While there is nothing more to which wonderful m an has to bow down, man who is said to be wonderful because he i s nothing but m an , the j argon acts as m an should once h ave acted before the Godhead. The j argon aims at a humility which is unquestioned and without rela­ tion. Such humility is presented as human virtue-in­ itself. From the outset such humility has gone well with the :insolence of the self-positing subj ect. The hiddenness of that which humility aims at , is in itself an invitation to be celebrated. This element has long been present in the concept of reverence, even in Goethe's understanding of it. Jaspers expressly recom­ mends reverence, independent of its object. He con­ demns its absence and easily finds his way to the hero cult without being frightened by Carlyle's example . In the vision of historical figures of human greatnes s , the strength o f reverence holds fas t the measure of man's essence, and of his potential. Reverence does not alow the destruction of what it has seen . It remains true to what was effective as tradition in its own self­ becoming. Reverence grasps the origin of its substance in those individual men in whose shadow reverence be­

came conscious .

In the form of unyielding piety it stil

maintains its preserving function. What no longer has reality in the world remains present in reverence as an absolute claim, by me ans of memory.53

53 . Jasp ers, Die geistige Situation, p . 1 7 0 .

In the j argon, however, the word "Man" no longer re­ lies on human dignity as idealism , in spite of the cult of historical figures and of greatness in itself Instead, man is to h ave his powerles sness and no thingness as his substance; this becomes a theme in the philoso­ phers in question This powerlessne s s and n othin gnes s of man i s coming close to its realiza tion in present society Such a historical state of affairs is then tr ans­ posed into the pure essenc e of Man. It becom e s af­ firmed and eternalized at the same time . In this way the j ar gon plunders the concept of Man, who is to be sublime bec ause of his nothingness. It rob s him of pre­ cis ely those traits which have, as their content, the criticism of st a tes of affairs which preclude the divine rights of the soul . This criticism has been imm anent in all enlightenment as well as in early German idealism . The j ar gon goes h and in h and with a concept of Man from which all memory of natural law has been eradi­ cated. Yet as an invariable in the j argon m an himself becomes s ome thing like a supernatural nature-cate­ gory. Previously , the unbearable transience of a false and unsatisfied life was counteracted by theology, which gave hope of an eternal life. This h ope dis ap pears in the praise of the tr ansient as absolute, a praise which of course Hegel had already deigned to bestow. As it runs in the j argon : suffering, evil, and de ath are to be accepted, not to be changed. The public is being traine d in this tour de force of maintainin g a bal ance . They are learning to understand their nothingnes s as Being, to revere actual, avoidable, or at leas t corrigible need as the mos t humane element in the ima ge of M an . They are learning t o respect authority in itself because .

.

.

,

,

­

65

of their innate human insufficiency. Although such authority now rarely calls itself god-sent, it still h olds on to the regal insignia which once it borrowed from God the father. Insofar as this authority no longer has any legitimation, apart from merely being there, blind and obscure, it becomes r adically evil . This is the rea­ son why the universally human language-gesture is in good s tanding with the totalitarian state . In the view of absolute power subj ects are indifferent to this lan­ guage-gesture-in the double sense of indifferent. The Third Reich , which could present such considerable maj orities that it was h ardly necessary to forge the election returns, was once credited by Hj almar Schacht as the true democracy . H e is confirmed by the j argon's view of Man, which was at times more inno­ cent. According to the latter view, al men are equal in their powerlessness, in which they possess being. Hu­ manity b ecomes the most general and empty form of privilege . It is s trictly suited to a form of consciousness which no longer suffers any privileges yet which still finds itself under the spell of privilege . Such univers al humanity, however, is ideolo gy. It c aricatures the equal rights of everything which bears a human face, since it hides from men the unalleviated discrimina­ tions of societal power : the differences between hun­ ger and overabundance, between spirit and docile idiocy. Chastely moved, man lets himself be addressed through Man : it doesn't cost anyone anything . But whoever refuses this appeal gives himself over as non-human to the adminis trators of the j argon, and c an be sacrificed by them, if such a sacrifice is needed. For he, the non-human, and not the institution of 66

power, is the one whose pride tramples human dignity into the dirt. In the mask of the j argon any s elf-inter­ este d action can give itself the air of public interest, of service to Man . Thus, nothing is done in any serious fashion to alleviate men's suffering and need. Self­ righteous humanity, in the midst of a general inhu­ manity, only intensifies the inhuman state of affairs. This is a state of affairs which necess arily remains hid­ den to those who suffer here and now. The j argon only doubles the hiding cover . The compensation and con­ solation offered by the j argon and its world are stand­ ardized by their twisted desire for th at which they are refused. The empty phrase, Man , distorts man's relation to his society as well as the content of what is thought in the concept of Man . The phrase does not both er about the real division of the subject into separated functions that cannot be undone by the voice of mere spirit. The so-called Platonic psychology already expresses the internalization of the societal division of labor . Each function within the person, once firmly defined, ne­ gates the person's total principle . The person becomes simply the sum of his functions . In the face of this situation, however , the person becomes all the worse, since his own laboriously gained unity has remained fra gile. Each individual function, created under the law of self-preservation, becomes so firmly congealed that none can exist by itself, that no life can be con­ structed ou t of its functional pieces . The individual functions turn against the self which they are sup­ posed to serve . Life, insofar as it still exists, indicts such sep aration as false-for example in the verbal

separation among thinking, feeling, and desiring. No thought is a though t-or more than a tautology-that does not also desire s omething. Without an element of cognition , n o feeling and no will can be more than a fleeting motion . It is easy for the j argon to point its finger at the silliness of this division; for in the mean­ time it has swallowed the current term "alienation ." The j ar gon, for example, was only too willing to grant depth to the young M arx , in order to be able to escape the critic of political economy. In this process the real force of the splitting of the individual subj ect is lost from view. The thought that tes tifies to this split suddenly finds itself vituperated. The unsatisfi­ able triumph, won again over the mechanis tic psy­ chology of the nineteenth century, misuses the insight of Gestalt theory, which itself is no longer quite dewy fresh-misuses that insight as pretext for not h aving to touch on that which is felt to be the woun d . The pro gre s s of science, which otherwise is not much ad­ mired, and which did not take place in precisely this situation, is viewed as the reason not to consider the wound . The authentics shun Freud by exultin g in the fact that they are more m odern than Freud, but with­ out any reason . Meanwhile , in a timely fashion, the fulsome talk about the whole m an rooted in being is put into its place by psychoanalysis . No elevation of the concept of Man has any p ower in the face of his actu al degradation into a bundle of function s . The only help lies in changin g the condition s which brought the state of affairs to this p oint-conditions which un­ interruptedly reproduce themselves on a larger scale. By means of the magiC formula of existence , one dis68

regards society , and the psychology of re al individu als which is dependen t on that society. Thus one insists on the changin g of Man , who in He gel's sen se exists merely in the abstract. This results only in a tigh ten­ ing of the reins -not in elevation but in the continuing of the old suppressin g ideology. While the authentics attack psychoan alysis, they are really aimin g at in­ stinct. The degradation of instinct is taken over unre­ fiectedly into their ethics . Thus Jaspers s ays : The exclusiveness in the love of the sexes uncondi­ tionally binds two people for the entire future . Without being able to be grounded, this love rests in the de­ cision which tied the self to this loyalty , at the moment in which it c ame to itself au thentically throu gh the o ther. To renounce what is ne gative -polygamous ero tic activity-is the consequence of a positive element. This positive element is only tru e , in the form of a present love , when it includes the whole life . The n e ga­ tive element, the will not to throw oneself away, is the result of an abs olute willingne s s for thi s loyalty ; wilin gness exercised by means of the pos sibility of self-re alization. There is no self-realiz ation without s tric tness in eroticism. Eroticism becomes hum anly meaningful only in the exclusiveness of unconditioned c ommitmen t . 54

"Commitment" is the current word for the unrea­ sonable demand of discipline. The term "commitment" unites Heidegger and J aspers together with the lowest tractatus-writers . At first the term was de signed to n aturalize a loan word . Chewing their cuds, patriotic pedagogues would s ay that commitment was actu ally the name of religion . But it was not only the exaggera54.

Ibid . , p. I 7 1 .

69

tion of German ways th at allowed for the naturaliza­ tion of "commitments." The loan-word "religion" demanded subordination to something definite : Chris­ tian revelation or the divine l aw of the Jews. This ele­ ment is n o longer felt in the newly coined "commit­ ment." The expression gives the appearance of reviving that sensual concretion which h ad become effaced in the loan word But, in contrast to that sensuou s color, the element to which the concretion adhered h a s be­ come obscured. People now dress up the factu al state of commitment . The concept preserves the authority whose s ource of origin is cut off right from the begin­ ning. The thing that is understood under the term "commitment" is no better than the word. Commit­ ments are offered not for their o wn truth but as a medi­ cine agains t nihilism, in the same manner as the values which were current a generation before, and which surreptitiously circulate again today. Commitments are classed under mental hygiene and, for that reason, undermine the transcendence which they prescribe. The campaign that the j argon is launchin g records one Pyrrhic victory after another . The genuineness of need and belief, which is questionable anyway, has to turn itself into the criterion for what is desired and believe d ; and in this way it becomes no lon ger genuine . This is the reason why no one can s ay the word "gen­ uineness" without becoming ideological . Nietzsche still used the term in an anti-ideological way. In the j argon, however, it stands out in the unending mumble of the liturgy of inwardness . Like a ragpicker, the j argon usurps the final protesting movements of a subject which in its downfall is thrown b ack on itself and .

hucksters th ose movements off. The edge is removed

protest against b ein g con­ demned to play role s . The Am erican the ory o f r ole­ playing is so popul ar because it fl attens out this pro­ t e s t into the s tructure of s o ci e ty . An d the s ubje c t is told th a t t h e force from which he fl e e s back i n t o his cave has no po w er over him . Not l a stly , the j ar gon i s sacred as th e l an g u a g e o f a n invisible kin g dom , whi ch exi s t s on l y in the ob sessive folly of the silent m aj ority . So as not to scatter oneself- today, thr ou gh the con­ sumer m a rke t- it is remove d from its social context and i nte rpr e t e d as so m e th in g which is of e s s e n c e . But in that way it only ne gotiates something n e g a tive . Petits-bourgeois w atch over petits-bourgeois . Disper­ sion, which is the consequence of the consumer habit, is viewed as original evil. Consciousness, however, has already been disowned in the sphere of produc­ tion , which trains individuals to dis pers e th e m s elves . Heide g ger depic t s the authentic s tate in c on tr a st to the dispersed one :

from th e livin g subj e c t's

The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which

we distinguish from the authentic S e l f - th at i s , from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way. . . . As they-self, the p articular Dasein h as been dis­ persed into the "they," and m u s t firs t find itself. This dispersal characterizes the "subject" of th a t kind of

Being which we know as concernful absorpti o n in the world we encounter as closest to us. 5 5

He does not think of the connection between the lar ge urban cen ter, of high c a pi t ali sm an d th a t d isp er s i on which was n ote d by Georg S i m mel and already felt by 5 5 . Heidegger, B eing and Time, p . 1 67 .

7 1

B audelair e . Whatever rem ains solely by itself, as one's au thentic existence , becomes no less impoverished th an that which dissolves into situation s . Both He gel and Goethe experienced and criticized inwardness as a merely accidental elemen t . They s aw i t as the c ondi­ tion for ri gh t consciousn e s s , and as an elemen t which h ad to be negated because of its limitation . The mem­ ory of this criticism has b een sublim ated , since non­ mind has accomplished so much more thorou ghly what the mind once dem anded of the mind . The reconciliation between the inner and ou ter worlds , which H e geli an philos ophy s till hoped for , h a s been pos tponed ad infinitum . Thu s i t h as become un­ , ne c e s s ary to advoc ate alien ation , since the latter is in power anyway, as the law of those who are h appy ex­ troverts . At the same time the consciousness of the rupture becomes

more

and more unbe arable .

For

slowly this rupture ch anges self-consciou sness into s elf-deception . Ideology can grasp onto the fact th at the growin g p owerle s sness of the subj ect, its se culari­ zation, was at the s ame time a loss of world and con­ creten e s s . With good reason, the first origin al philos­ ophy after H e gel , th at of Kierkegaard, has been called a philosophy of ll. wardnes s . B u t this very Kierkegaardian philosophy has rid itself of the notion of a real inner­ worldly reconciliation. The reflection on inwardness, the positin g of it to gether with an element of its b e­ comin g, points to its re al abolition . The j argon brought in to circulation many of the categories of inwardness and thus contributed its p art to the destru ction of in­ wardnes s by means of such a contradiction . After the failure of the bourgeois revolution

in Germany, the

his tory of inwardness became, from its firs t day on,

72

the his to ry of its downfall . The less power ful the sub­ j ect becomes , the more the sphere , which once s elf­ cons cio u s ly confessed itself to be inw ardne s s , shrink s to a n abstract p oi n t ; the gre ater becomes the tempta­

tion for inwardness t o proc l ai m itself and thr ow itself onto th a t s ame m ar k et by which it i s terrified . Termi­ nol o gic a lly , inwardness becomes a valu e and a posses­ sion behind which it entrenches itself; s urrep ti ti ous l y overcome by reification .

an d i t is

I t become s

Kier k e g a a r d' s n i gh t mar e of the "aes the tic world" of the m ere onlooker, whose coun terpart is to be the exis ten­ tial inwardly man. \Vh atever wan t s to r em ai n abso­ lutely pure from the blemish of reifi c a tion i s p as t ed

onto the subj ect a s a firm a ttribu t e . Thus th e s u bj e c t becomei an obj ect in th e second d e gree , and fin ally the mass pr o du ct of

consolation :

from that f o un d in

Rilke's "B e gg ar s can c all you brother and s till you can be a king" to the n o toriou s poverty which is the great inw ard gleam of the spiri t .

Those philo sophers like H e g el and Kie r k e ga a rd , who tes tified to the unh appy state of con s ciousness for itself, understood inw ardness in line with

Protestant

tradition : essenti ally as negation of the subj ect , as repentance . The inheritors who , by slei gh t of han d , ch anged unh appy con sciousness into a h a p py n on­ dialectic one , preserve only the limited self-righteou s ­ ness which He gel sensed

a hundred years before

fascism . They cle anse inwardness of that element which contains its truth , by eliminating self-refle ction , in which the e go becomes tr ansparent to itself as a piece of the world. Instead, the e go posits itself as higher th an the world and becomes subjected to the world precisely because

of this . The h ardened inward73

ness of today idolizes its own purity, which has sup­ posedly been blemished by on tic elements . At least in this re gard the outset of contemporary ontology coin­ cides with the cult of inwardness . The retreat of ontology from the course of the world is also a retreat from the empirical content of subj ectivity. In a clas­ sic ally enlightened attitude , Kant took an antagonistic s tance toward the concept of the inward and sepa­ rated out the empirical subject, which was dealt with by psychology, as one thin g amon g others . 56 He dis­ tinguished it from the transcendental subject, and sub­ sumed it under the cate gory of caus ality. With a re­ verse s tress this is followed by the p athos of the inward ones . They take pleasure in their s corn for psychology without, in the manner of Kan t , sacrificing to trans­ cendent al univers ality its alle ged foo tin g within the individu al person . They c ash in on the profit of both , s o t o speak. Th e taboos o f the inward one s , which re­ sult from their animosity toward ins tinctual drives, become more rigid by virtue of the fact th at the subj ect becomes an element of extern ality-by virtue of its p sycholOgical determin ation . These taboos especi ally r age in Jaspers' books . 57 But in the suppression of r e al satisfaction , in the transposition of satisfac tion into a mere inner one, where the self satisfies the self, all of the authentics , even the e arly Heidegger, coincide . He too includes the 56. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Verunft, B 3 3 2 f. ( Die Amphibolie der Refl,exionsbegriffe ) . [English translation by N. K. Smith, Critique of Pure Reason ( New York, 1 965 ) .] 57. Cf. Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 3d ed. ( Berlin, 1 925 ) , pp. 132 if.

74

term "pleasure c ap acity" under the cate gories of in­ authenticity,5B and in Sein und Zeit he affirms Jaspers' statement that a psychology of world-views is by no means a psychology.59 The no-less-disgusting practice of psychoanalytic language, hammerin g "enjoyment capacity" into its patients without re gard for what is to be enj oyed , is simply turned upside down . But if inwardness is neither an existent thing nor an aspect -no matter how general-of the subj ect, then it turns into an imagin ary quantity . If every existent thing, even the psychic, is cut out from the subj ect , then the remainder is no less abstract than the transcendental subj ect in respect to which the individu al's inwardne s s , as existent, imagines itself so superior. I n t h e classic texts of exis tentialism, as in that of the Kierkegaard­ ian sickness unto death, existence becomes a relation­ ship to itself, under which heading nothin g further can be conceived . It becomes , as it were, an absolutized moment of mediation , withou t any regard for what is mediated ; and it pronounces a verdict, from the very beginning, against any philosophy of inwardnes s . In the j argon, finally, there remains from inwardness only the most external aspect, that thinkin g oneself superior which marks people who elect themselves : the claim of people who consider themselves blessed simply by virtue of being what they are . Without any effort, this claim can turn into an elitist claim, or into a readiness to attach itself to elites which then quickly gives the ax to inwardness. A symptom of the transfor58. Heidegger, Being and Time, p . 68 . 59. Ibid., p. 293 . and especially pp. 348 if .

75

mation of inwardness is the belief of innumerable peo­ pIe that they belong to an extraordinary family. The j argon of authenticity, which sells self-identity as something higher, projects the exchange formula onto that which imagines that it is not exch angeable ; for as a biological individual e ach man resembles himself. That is what is left over after the removal of soul and immortality from the immortal soul . The over-all appear ance of the immediate , which comes to a head in inwardness-now merely a speci­ men-makes it unusually h ard for those who are steadily exposed to the j argon to see throu gh it. In its second-hand primalness they actu ally find something like contact, comparable to the feeling in the fraudu­ lent National Socialist Yolk-community which led peo­ ple to believe that all kindred comrades are cared for and none is forgotten : permanent metaphysical sub­ vention . The social basis for this is cle ar. Many in­ stances of mediation in the m arket economy, which h ave strengthened the consciousness of alien ation , are put aside in the transition to a planned economy ; the routes between the whole and atomized individual subjects are shortened, as if the two extremes were near to one another . The technical progress of the means of communication runs parallel to this . These means-especially radio and television-reach the people at large in such a way that they notice none of the innumerable technical intermediations ; the voice of the announcer resounds in the home , as thou gh he were present and knew e ach individual . The an­ nouncers' technically and psycholOgically created arti­ ficial language-the model of which is the repel-

lently confidential " 'Til we meet a gain"-is of th e s ame s tripe as the j argon of authentici ty . The catch-word for all thi s is "encounter" : "The book lyin g before u s , which c oncerns itself with Jesu s , is o f a very unusual kind . It does n o t in tend to be a biography, a 'Life of Jesus,' in the usual s ense , but to lead us to an existen­ tial encounter with Jesus . . . " 60 Gottfried Keller , the lyricist, on wh om the apostles of h armony looked down

condescendingly ,

wrote

a

poem

called

"En­

counter ," a poem of wonderful clumsin e s s . 6 1 The poet unexpectedly meets, in the woods, h er whom alone my he art longs for, wrapped whitely in scarf and h a t , trans formed by a golden shin e . S h e was alone ; y e t I gre e ted her h ardly m ade shy in passing o n , because I h ad never seen her s o noble , still , and b e autiful .

The mis ty ligh t is th at of s adness , and from i t the word "encounter" receive s its power . B u t this s a dne ss gathers to i tself the feelin g of departure, which is powerful and incap able of unmediated expre ssion ; i t design ates nothing other th an , quite li terally , th e fact th at the two people met each other with ou t any i n ten­ tion . What the j argon has accomplished wi th the word "encounter," an d what can never a gain be rep aired , 6 0 . Archiv fur Literaturwis s e n s c haft, 1 96 0 , o n Ru dolf Bult­ Jesus . 6 1 . Cf. B ru n o Russ, D a s Problem des Todes in de r Lyrik Gottfried Kellers, Ph . D . diss. ( Fr ankfurt a. M . , r 95 9 ) , p p .

mann,

r 8 9 ff . , 2 0 0 ff.

77

does more harm to Keller's poem than a factory ever did to a landscape . "Encounter" is alienated from its literal content and is practically made u sable throu gh the idealizing of that conten t . There are scarcely en­ counters like Keller's any longer-at the most there are appointments made by telephone-in a society in which it is essentially accidental when men get to know one another ; and in which what one once simply called '1ife" constantly melts away more and more , and, where it maintains itself at all, is considered something to be merely tolerated . But for precisely this reason encounter is praised , language has smeared organized contacts with luminous paint , because the light has gone out. The accompanying speech-gesture is that of eye-to-eye, as is the way with dictators . Who­ ever looks deep into somebody's eye is hoping to hypnotize him, to win power over him , and alw ays with a threat : Are you really faithful to me? no be­ trayer? no Judas? P sychological interpretation of the j argon should discover in this -lan gu age-gesture an un­ conscious homosexual transference, and should in that way also be able to explain the patriarch's eager rejection of psychoanalysis . The manic eye-to-eye glance is related to racial insanity ; it wants a con­ spiratOrial community, the feeling that we are of the s ame kin d ; it strengthens endogamy. The very desire to purify the word "encounter," and to reinstate it throu gh strict us age, would become , through unavoid­ able tacit agreement, a basic element of the j argon , along with purity and prim alness-an element of th at j argon from which it would like to escape . What was done to "encounter" s atisfies a specific need. Those en-

counters which counteract themselves becau s e they are organized, tho s e encounters to which good will , busy-b ody beh avior and c anny desire for power tire ­ lessly exhort u s , are simply covers for spon tane o u s actions that h ave become impossible . P eople console them selves , or are bein g consoled, by thi nkin g that some thin g h a s already been done about what is op­ pressin g them when they talk about it. Convers ation , after h avin g been a means of becomin g clear abo u t something, becomes a n e n d i n itself and a substitu te for th at which , in terms of i ts sense , should follow from it . The surplu s in the word "encoun ter" - the s u g­ gestion th at s ome thin g e s sential is alre ady oc currin g when those ordered to gather converse together - th at surplus has the s am e deception at its center as the speculation on being helped in the word "con cern . " Once that word m e ant a sickn e s s . T h e j ar gon falls back on th at : as though the individual's i n tere s t were at the same time his trouble . I t be gs for caritas bu t at the s ame tim e , for the s ake of its hum an essence , i t exercises terror . Here one is expected t o unders t and a transcendent al power which require s th at one , again accordin g to the j ar gon , should "perceive" the concern . The archaic supersti tion , which is still exploited today by the epis tolary formula "h opin g not to have asked i n vain" is taken o n existential RPM's b y t h e j ar gon ; re adiness to help bein g , as it were , squeezed ou t of being. The counterpart to that-something over which the au then tic s h ave unques tionin gly gro wn indign a n t -would b e communicative u s a ge a s i t i s fqu nd i n Americ a . "Bein g cooperative" means , i n th at context,

79

to offer one's services to the other without remunera­ tion, or at least to put one's time at the o ther's disposal in the expectation-no m atter how v a gue-that all that will someday be repaid , since all men need all men . The German concern , however, evolved from the capitalist exchan ge principle at a stage in which this principle was still dominant, while the liberal norm of equivalence h ad been shattered . So dynamiC is the linguistic character of the j argon as a whole : in it that becomes dis gusting which was by no means always SO .62 In the encounters where the j argon prattles, and of which it prattles, it sides with that which it accuses by the word "encounter," namely, the over-adminis­ tered world. It accommodates itself to that world throu gh a ritual of non-accommodation . Even the Hitler dictatorship wooed for consensus; it was here that it checked its mass basis . Finally, the s elf-employed ad­ ministration wants at every moment, under the condi­ tions of formal democracy, to prove that it exists for the sake of the administrated whole. Therefore she makes eyes at the j argon, and it at her, the already irrational, self-sufficient authority . The j argon proves itself as a piece of the negative spirit of the time ; it institutes socially useful work within the tendency already observed by Max Weber ; the tendency for administration s to expand out over 62. The author's own work taught him about the change in function. Nothing in the Philosop hie der neuen Musik, which was written when he w as still in America, w arned him against "concern ." Only a German critique pointed out to him the bigotry of the word . Even he who detests the j argon canno t be s afe from its contagion. For this reason one should fear i t all the more .

80

wh at they consider as their cultural dom ain . There are countles s occasions on which administrators, special­ ists trained in l aw or in m an a gement, feel thems elves obliged to spe ak, as it were , about the con ten t of art, s cien c e , and philosophy. They are afraid of bein g bor­ in g, of b ein g dry, and they would like to show their alli ance with a kindred specialized spiri t , thou gh with­ out being involved too greatly with the other in their activity and experience. If an Oberstadtdirektor ad­ dresses

a congre ss of philos opher s , who s e own guiding

principle is alre ady as administration-oriented as the title Obers tadtdirektor, then he must u s e wh atever cultur al s tuffin g offers itself to him . And th a t is the j ar gon . This shelters him from the dis a gree able task of expre s sin g himself seriously on the m a tter at h and, about which h e knows nothin g . At the same time per­ h aps he can thu s feign general acqu ain tance with the subj ect. The j ar gon is so appropriate for th at because, by l ts very nature , it always unites the appearance of

an absent concreteness with the ennobling of th at concreteness . If there were n o function al need for the j argon, which is hostile to function , i t w ould h ardly h ave become a second langu age-that of the lan gu a ge­ less and those alien to lan gu a ge. The j argon , which is not respon sible to any reason, urges people hi gh er sim­ ply throu gh its simultaneou sly standardized t on e ; i t reproduces o n the level of mind the cur s e which bu­ reaucracy exercises in re ality . I t could be described as an ideolo gical replica of the par alyzing qu ality of official functions . Their h orror is m ade presen t to us by Kafka's dry lan gu a ge , which i s i tself a complete contrary to the j argon. Society's regula tory violence

8 1

becomes crassly tangible to the people when they are obliged to request something from the inaccessible mouthpieces of the administration . Like these mouth­ pieces, the j argon speaks directly to them without letting them respond . In addition it talks them into thinking that the man behind the counter is really the man whom his name plate, recently introduced, pre­ sents him as being. Latently, the salvation formulas of the j argon are those of power, borrowed from the ad­ ministrative and legal hierarchy of au thority . . The bureaucratic language, seasoned with - authen­ ticity, is therefore no merely decadent form of the appropriate philosophical language, but is already pre­ formed in the most notable texts of that philosophy. Heide gger's favorite "first of all," that has its roots as much in didactic procedure as in a C artesian first-and­ then, leads thou ghts alon g on a leash, in the spirit of philosophical systematization ; as if in a business agendum, one adjourns wh atever is out of order, by the throttling s chema, "but before we . . . further fundamental investigations have to be undertaken" : This chapter, in which we shall undertake the explica­ tion of Being-in as such ( that is to s ay of the Being of the "there" ) bre aks up into two parts : A. the exis ten­ tial Cons titution of the "there"; B . the everyday Being of the "there ," and the falling of D asein.63

Such pedantry still propagandizes for an allegedly radical philosophical reflection, which it presents as a solid science. The pedantry, in addition, is repaid by a 6 3 . Heidegger, B eing and Time, p. 1 7 1 .

82

side result : that it simply n ever arrives at what phi losophy promises . That all goes b ack to Husserl, in the course of whose extensive preliminary considerations one easily forgets the main thing thou gh critical re­ flection would firs t come to grips with the very phi­ losophemes that fastidiousness pushes alon g in front of it. But even the assertion that practical conse­ quences are contemptible, which h as its di s tin gu ished prehistory in German idealism, cannot do without the cleverness of strategy. The administrative offices, in Kafka's world, similarly shirk decisions, which then, ungrounded, suddenly catch up with their victim s . The reciprocity o f the personal an d aperson al i n the j argon ; the apparent humanization o f the thingly ; the actual turnin g of man into thing : all this is the lumi­ nous copy of th at administrative situation in which both abs tract justice and objective procedural orders appear under the guise of face-to-face decisions. It is impossible to forget the image of those SA-men from the early period of Hitler's rule. In them administra­ tion and terror found themselves visibly j oined ; the folder of documents above , and below the high boot s . The j argon o f authenticity preserves somethin g o f this image i n words like "commission ." I n s u ch words there is calc ula t ed uncertainty about the distinction between something admini stratively arranged justly or unjustly, and something absolutely comm anded­ between authority and sentiment. The incorporation of the word "commission" into the j argon might h ave been inspired by the first of the Duino Elegies of Rilke, who was one of the founder s of the jargon . For years every ambitious Privatdozent ­

,

viewed it as an obligatory exercise to an alyze that first elegy : "All th at was commis sion . "

64

The line expresses

the vague feelin g th at an uns ayable element of ex­ perien c e wants something from the subj ect. This is similarly the c ase with the arch aic torso of Apollo : 65 "

M any s t ars expected you to feel them . "

66 To that the

poem adds the uncommittedne s s and vainness of such

a feelin g of comm an d , especially when it expresses the poetic subj ect : "But did you m anage it ? "

67 Rilke ab­

solutizes the word "commission" under the shel ter of aesth e tic

appe arance

and,

as the poem

advances ,

limit s t h e claim that his p atho s already announces .

The j ar gon needs only t o cros s out this limitation, with a deft movement, and to take literally the word "commission ," which has been ab solutized by ques­ tion able

poetasterin g .

But

the fact

that

the

neo­

rom antic lyric sometimes behaves like the j ar gon , or a t least timidly readie s the way for it, should not le ad

us to look for the evil of th e poetry simply in its form . It is not simply groun d e d , as a much too inno cent view might m aintain , in the mixture of poe try and pro s e . B o th of them become unequ ally untrue from

the s ame c au s e . The evil, in the n e oromantic lyric , consists i n t h e fitting out o f t h e words with a theo­

lo gi cal overtone , which is belied by the condition of the lonely and secular subj ect who is speaking there : reli gion as ornament . Where words and turns of this 6 4 . Rainer Maria Rilke, Duineser E legien ( New York, n.d. ) , p . 8 . 65 . Cf. Rainer Maria Rilke , Der neuen Gedichte anderer TeiZ ('Leipzig, 1 9 1 9 ) p . I . �6. Rilke, Duineser E legien, p . 7 . 67. Ibid., p . 8 .

sort appear in H Olderlin-the secret model for all this -

they are n ot yet the tremulous expressions of the

j argon, however uninhibitedly the administrators of the j ar gon re ach out th eir hands tow ard that unpro­ tected geniu s . In lyric poetry , as in phil o s o ph y , the j ar gon acquires its defining ch ar ac ter by the w ay it imputes its truth . I t does this by m akin g an in tended obj ect present-as thou gh this obj ect were B eing with­ out any tension toward the subj ect. Th a t makes it, prior to all discursive judgment, into u n truth . The expression is sufficien t unto itself. I t disc ards as an annoy an ce the obli g a tion to express a thing

o ther than

itself. B ey on d its difference from that thing, which m ay already be nothin g , and out of thank s, this nothin g i s made into th at which i s supreme . Rilke's lan gu ag e s till s tands on the edge of all this, like m u ch th at i s irration al fro m the era prior to fascis m . I t n o t only darkens , but i t also t akes note of, subcons cious m a­ terial, which , slippin g away from thin gly r ation ality, pro tests a g ainst it. The feelin g of bein g touched , which the word "commis sion" is suppo sed to evoke in th at elegy , is of such a natur e . It at once becomes unbear­ able as soon as it obj ectifies itself , as soon as it fl aunts itself as something definite and unambi guou s pre­ cisely in its irr a tionali ty . It is unbear able in all its regis ters ; fro m Heideg ger's obedient and comprehend­ ing thou gh t to all tha t summonin g and invokin g , with whose details the sub altern self-importance of the j ar gon surrounds itself . Simply because Rilke , in this poem , ackn owled g es the multiple significance of c om­ mission, th at multiple si gnificance e x pects to be ab­ solved . On the other h and, though , commis sion with-

85

out committing agen t is alre ady used here, as in the j argon ; and a conception of B eing in general is evoked which fits this u s age. Th a t again accords with the h an dicr aftish religio sity of the e arly Rilke , especi ally of the Book of Hours , which with theological phr asin gs subj ects the psychological to a kind of refining proc e s s . Lyric poetry p ermits itself any metaphor, e v e n the ab solu tely unmet aphorical, as a parable . I t will not be disturbed by the ques tion of the obj ectivity of those thin gs th at are allegedly suggested to the subject by its emotions . Nor will the lyric be dis turbed by the question of whether the words , gathered from culture, at all cover the experiences whose obj ectification is the central idea of such lyric. Therefore , becau s e it blunts itself again s t the truth and exactitude of its words -even the vaguest would h ave to be smu ggled in a s somethin g vagu e , not as something definite­ this lyric, as lyri c , is already bad, despite its virtuos­ ity . The problem atic of th a t to which it claims to ele­ v ate itself, the problematic of its con tent, is also th at of its form , which m akes believe it could be capable of tr anscenden c e , and in that way becomes m ere ap­ pearance in a m ore fateful s ense th an th at of the aestheti c . T h e evil tru th behind that appearan c e , nonethe­ le ss , is precisely the bond between commission and the adminis tr ative structure , a bond which denies th at ap­ pear ance in the s ervice of th at structure . Its words are dos sier number s , or stamps, or th at In re of of­ fici al office langu a g e , which it rem ains the commis sion

of the j argon to gloss over . The fu ssy attention to in­ dividual words, as they were lexically h andled in the

86

days of the pre-Heideggerian idol-ph enomenology, w as alre ady th e harbinger of bure aucratic

stocktaki n g

.

Whoever prep ar ed meanings from all this , whoever acted as a midwife of today s pure word s , ac ted by '

for c e , without re gard for the san ctu aries of the philos­ ophy of Bein g . The method which prohibits a word fr o m bein g involved with its neighbors was, obj ectively

,

of the same character as the small bureaucrat, who sees to it th a t everythin g remains s trictly in its c a te­ gory, as he him self rem ains in his s al ary-class . Even death is h andled by the book, in S S-orders and in exis­ tential philo sophies ; red tape ridden as P e gasu s , ridden in e x tremis a s an apocalyptic steed . I n the j argon the sun, which the j argon h as in its h e art, brin gs the d ark secret of the m e thod to the light of d a y , as the method of a p rocedure which e agerly takes the place of th e intended obj e c t . In general, the j argon behaves in thi s

way i tself. Indifferent to the m atter at h and, it is to b e u sed f o r commanded purposes . Lan gu a ge, as o n c e i n maj or philosophy, no lon ger flows o u t of t h e necessity of the subj ect m atter . Such l an g u a ge-procedural indif­ ference h as b ecome a me taphysics of l anguage : that which in term s of its form seems to fly ab ove i ts c or­ relative , ther e by establishes itself as something higher . The less philosophical system atizi n g , which Nietzsche called dishonest, is theore tic ally p O S Sibl e , the more that which had its place only in the system transform s its elf into mere assertion . In effect, lin guistic non­ sense is the heir of the diSinte grated s trictn ess of the system . In fact, like a worth less con s truc tion , i t is for­ ever falling off its stilts and s tumblin g around in non­ sen s e .

The term "commission" sets itself up with unques­ tioned authority in the vulgar j argon of authenticity. The fallibility of the term is hushed up by the absolute use of the word . By le aving out of consideration the or ganizations and people which give commis sions , the term establishe s itself as a lin guis tic eyrie of tot alitar­ ian order s . It does this without rational examination of the ri gh t of those who u surp for themselv e s the ch arism a of the leader . Shy theology allies itself with s ecular brazenn e s s . Th ere exi s t cross-connections be­ tween the j ar gon of authenticity and old school-like phrases, like th at which was once observe d by Tuchol­ sky : "Th at's the way it's done her e . " The s ame h olds tru e for the trick of milit ary comman d , which dresses an imper ative in the guise of a predicative sentence . By elimin ating all linguistic trace s of the will of the superior, th at which is intended is given gre ater em­ phasis . Thu s the impression is cre ated th at it is neces­ s ary to obey, since wh at is demanded already occurs f ac tu ally . "The p articipants on this trip , in memory of our hero e s , ass emble in Liineburg." H eide gger , too , cr acks the whip when he italicizes the auxiliary verb in the sentence , "Death is ." 68 The grammatical transla­ tion of the imperative into a predication m akes the imperative c ate gorical . This imperative does not allow for refu s al , since it no lon ger at

al

obliges like the

K antian imper ative, but des cribes obedience as a com­ pleted fact .

P o s sible resistance is

then

elimin ated

simply in term s of logical form . The obj ection raised 68 . Heidegger, Being and Time, p . 303 .

88

by reason is b anned from th e range of what is at all conceivable in s oci ety

.

Such irr ation ality , in an ele­

ment which s till , in times of p awned-off myths , insists on c alling itself think in g was, of cour s e , the blemish ,

of the K antian enli gh tenmen t . The K an ti an enlighten­ ment asserts decep tively th at it is not necessary to know the c a te gor i c al imperative in order to act ri ghtly . Me anwhile , th e cate gori cal imper ative , if it is truly to be one with the princi ples of reason, tru s ts th at e ach one who acts has re ason , which if unimpaired would

be p hilosophi cal re ason . Christian Schlitze h a s publish ed a s a tire c alled the "Stenciled Speech for Festive Occasion s . " It throws light on the j argon with great comic force : Most honored Mr. President, minis ters , secretaries of state, m ayors , advisors, administra tors , and assi s t­ an t s , hi ghly esteemed men and women of our cultural life , representatives of s cienc e , of industry, and of the self-employed middle-cla s s , honored public

of this fe s­

tive gathering, ladies and gen tlemen ! It is n ot by chance th at we are gathere d here today for the purpose of celebrating this day. In a time like ours , in which the true human value s h ave more th an ever to be our innerm o s t concern , a s t a tement is ex­ p e c te d from us. I do not wish to present

you with a

p atented solution , but I would merely like to brin g u p for dis cussion a series of h o t potatoes which do after all face us. For we do not need re ady-m a d e opinion s , which anyway do n o t touch u s deeply , b u t wh at w e need is rather the genuine dialogue which moves u s in our humanity. Wh a t brought us to gether here is our knowl­ edge of the power of encounter in the forming of the intrahum an sphere . The thin gs which matter are s e t-

89

tled in this intrahuman sphere: I do not h ave to tell you what I mean by this . You will all understand me, for in a particular and extraordinary sense you all have to do with people . In a time like ours-I have m entioned it alre ady­

in which the perspective of things h as everywhere be gun to waver, everything depends more th an ever on the individu al who kno w s of th e essence of thin gs , of things as such, of things in their authenticity . We need openhe arted people who are capable of this . Who are th.ese people ? -you will ask m e - an d I will answer you : You are they ! By being gathered here you h ave proven m ore t h o r ou ghl y than by words th a t yo u are prepared to put emphasis on your concern . That is what I would like to thank you for. B u t I would also like to th a n k you

for e n er g e tic all y opposin g, by your commitment to this good cause, the flood of m a teriali sm which thre atens to drown ev ery thin g aro und us. To s ay i t in a nu t shel l from the st ar t : tions ; you h ave an in trahuman ree s t ablishment

you have come here to be given direc­ come to li s ten . Fro m this encounter, on level , you expect a contribution to the o f the interhuman clim ate . You expect

a res tora tion of that homey warmth which seems to b e l ackin g , in our modern industrial society, to such a terrifying degre e . . . . But what does this mean for our concrete situ ation ' here and now ? To pronounce the ques tion means to p o se it. B u t in fact it means much more th an th at. It m e an s th at we expose ourselves to it, tha t we surrender to it. That we must not forget. But in the rush and busy work of the day, modem man forgets it all too easily. But you who belong to the silent m aj ority , you know of it. For our problems stem from a region which it is our vocation to preserve. The wholesome perplexity which comes from this situation opens perspectives which we should not simply block out by turning away in bore­ dom. It is important to think with the he art and to tune in the human antenna to the same wave length. Today

go

no ones knows better than man that which i s of im­ portance in the end . 69

Now, everything is assembled here : the innermost concern , the true dialogue , things in their authenticity, with a vague reminiscence of Heide gger, the encounter on an intrahuman level, the question for its own s ake, even the slightly anachronistic reserve army of the silent maj ority . The long-winded address designates the p articipatin g notables in terms of their function and subordin ates the whole speech from the be ginning to an intangible administrative purpose . While wh at . the speaker is aimin g at remains unspecified, the j ar­ gon brings it to ligh t . The concern is the workin g climate . By calling the lis teners people "who in a p ar­ ticular and extraordin ary sense have to do with peo­ ple," it can be gathered th at the subj ect matter is that kind of human leadership in which men are merely the pretext for leadership-in-itself. To this is accurately fitted the indestructible phrase about the "flood of m a­ terialism" which full-blooded industrial leaders u su­ ally vituperate in those who are dependen t on them . That is the ground of being of the higher element in the j argon . In its slips of the tongue the j argon ac­ knowledges that administration is its essenc e . The intrahuman level, which is supposed to contribu te to the "reestablishment of the human climate," places the word '1evel" beside "intrahuman," together with the association of "I and thou ," which has a social­ s cientific as well as a h omey character. The levels , how69. Christian Schiitze, "Gestanzte Fes tansprache, " in Stuttgarter Zeitung, Dec. 2 , 1 962 , quoted in Der Monat, Jan . , 1 963 , p . 6 3 , n . 1 60.

91

ever-the level of counties , of the feder ation- desig­ n ate areas of j udicial and administrative re sponsibility . The exhortation to think with

the h e art-P as cal's

formula que les gran des pensees proviennent du coeur - h as been admired by business men ri ght from the b eginning ;

it is pronounced with the s ame bre ath as

"the human antenn a is tuned in to the s am e wave length . " The total content, h owever , is flowering non­ sense . This becomes obviou s

in phrases like "To pro­

nounce the question is to pose it," or, "No one knows better than man that which is of importance in the end . " Such nonsense also h as its reasonable b asis in the world. It hides the fact th at both it and the goal at which it aims are manipulated. For this reason all con tent is "bracketed ," as it goes in adminis trative Germ an . At the s ame time the appearance of con tent m u s t not be renounce d ; those who are addre ssed , again in th e s ame Germ an , must "toe the line." The purp ose , the intention , contracts itself into an in ten tionless underworldly language, tru thful to the obj ective de ter­ min ation

of the j argon itself , which h as no other con­

tent than its wrappin g . Mter the fact, the j argon adapts itself t o the need for a philosophy which was current in abou t 1 9 2 5 . This was a philosophy that strove for the concretiza­ tion of experience, thou gh t, and beh avior in th e midst of a total state of affairs which oriented itself accord­ in g to somethin g abstract- according to exch an ge. For this re ason the j ar gon is neither able nor willing to concretize the elements which condemn it to aJ. s tractnes s . The j ar gon turns in a circle . It wants to be

92

immediately concrete without sliding into mere fac­ ticity . I t is con sequently forced into secret ab s traction, which i s the s ame form alism a gain s t which H eide gger's own s chool, th at of phenomenology , once s trongly spoke out. This c an be grasped in exis ten ti al ontology's theoretical criticism, e specially in the p aired con cepts

of authenticity and inauthen ticity in Sein un d Zeit. Alre ady there the drive for concretion is coupled with

a h ands-off attitude . One spe aks from a depth which would be profaned if it were called conten t . Yet this depth wants to be this conten t , which in turn wan ts to expres s itself. H eide g ger's defensive techniq u e of with­ drawing into eternity takes place at this "pure and dis­ gustin g heigh t" of which Hegel spoke in his p olemic again s t Reinhold .70 Like Reinhold , H eidegger c annot get enough of the ritu al prelimin aries for the " s tep into the temple ,"

71 although hardly anyone now adays

d ares to tie a w arnin g bell around the cat's neck . Heide g ger is by no means incomprehen sibl e , a s one might g ather from the m ar gin alia of the positivists, but he lays around himself the taboo th a t any under­ s t andin g of him would simultaneously b e falsification. The impos sibility of s avin g what this thinking wants to save i s cleverly turned into its own life elem ent. Thi s thinkin g refu s e s all content which would h ave to be ar gued a gain s t . MetaphysicS is said to miss thi s ele­ m ent in the s am e m anner as it is missed

in tr an s la tion

into ontic statements , which , as parts of the individu al 7 0 . G. W. F. Hegel , Werke, ed. H. Glockner ( S tu ttgart, 1 958 ) Vol . I : "Differenz des Fichteschen und S chellingschen Systems," p . 43 . 7 1 . Ibid.

93

s cientific disciplines, are re garded with some favor .72 Even authenticity and inauthenticity are first of all treated cautiously . Heidegger shuns the reproach th at he paints in black and white . He claims that he does not give a directive for philo sophic al j udgment, but that he introduces descriptive and neutral terms in the m anner of th at which in e arlier phenomenolo gy was called investigation . In Weber's interpretation of soci­ ology, a discipline denounced by Heide gger, this was called neutrality of value s : As modes of B eing, authenticity

and inauthenticity

( these expressions have been chosen terminolo gi cally in a strict sense ) are both grounded in the fact th at any D asein whatsoever is characterized by mineness . But the in authenticity of D asein does not signify any "less" 72. Careless for one moment, Heidegger shows his hand in the tractatus on Identitiit und Differenz :

But let us assume for a moment tha t difference is an element added by our representatio n . Then the question rises : added to what? The answer is, to the existent. All right. But wh at does this mean- the existent? What else does it mean but such a thing as is? Thus we enter the supposed addition , the conception of difference under bein g. B u t "Being" s ays itself : bein g which is existent? Where we wanted to take difference as supposed addition we already always find what is exis tent and being in their difference. It is the s ame story as Grimm's fairy tale abou t the h are and the hedgehog : ''I'm here already." ( Heidegger, Identitiit und Differenz [Pfiillingen , 1 957] , p . 60. ) What is said here about so-called ontological difference by means of a rather primitive hypos t asis of the copula , is said in order to shift the ontological primacy of difference into being itself. This is actu ally Heidegger's method . This m e thod protects itself by conSidering pos sible contradictions as ele ments that h ave already been considered in the particular thesi s . These are false syllogisms which any logician could check. These false syllogisms are projected into, and thu s j ustified by, the obj ec tive s tructure of that at which the thought aims .

94

Being or any "lower" degree of Being. Rather it is the case that even in its fullest concre tion D asein c an be charac terized by in au thenticity-when busy, when ex­ cited , when intereste d , when ready for enj oyme n t . 13

In a much later passage of Sein und Zeit, the c ate gory of "the They" is subsumed under in authen tici ty . In this passage Heidegger says that interpretation is purely ontological in its aim s , and is far removed from any moralizing cri ti q u e o f every­ day D asein , and from the aspirations of a philosophy of culture . " . . . Even the expre ssion "idle talk" i s not to be used here in a "disparaging" signific ation . 74 "

The quotation m arks around "disp ar a ging" are the kid gloves of a prudish m etaphysic s . Considerable advan­

tages are connected with this kind of m e thodological perform ance . The affirmation s of s cientific purity in Husserl's texts provide the model for all thi s . The philosophy of au then ticity needs its provi s o clauses so th at it can on occasion make the excu s e th at it is not a philosophy. The repu tation of scientific obj ec­ tivity grows to ge ther with its authority and ,

at the s ame

time , l e aves the decision between authentic and in­ authentic being up to an arbitrarines s - one th at has been abs olve d from the j udgment of reason , in a f ash­ ion not much differen t from Max Web er's "v alu e . " Th e execu tion of the volte is so elegant becau s e "the terminolo gic ally chosen" expression s are not exh austed by the uses of them th at are chosen in subj e c tive free­ dom . Rather , and Heide gger the philosopher of l an­ gu a ge should be the firs t to concede this , they keep as 73 . Heidegger, B eing and Time, p. 68 . 7 4 . Ibid., p. 2 1 1 .

95

their obj ective content those standards from which Heide gger distinguishes them. The nominalists saw that better th an the latecomer of l anguage mysticism . Followin g B acon's doctrine of idol s , Hobbes already noted "that men usu ally expre ss their affects simul­ taneou sly with words so th at the latter already include a certain j udgment on the subj ect m atter . " 75 The triviality of this observation does not free u s from the responsibility of remindin g people of it when they merely i gnore it. As an impartial contemplative of essence, Heidegger allows for the fact th at inauthen­ ticity "can define exis tence in its fullest concretion . " Yet the accompanying words, which he attributes to this mode of being, are essentially vituperative . As officiousness and interestedne s s , they ch aracterize such qualities as h ave given themselves up to the world of exchange and wares and resemble this world. Some­ body is officiou s when he c arries on business activity for his own sake and confuses means with end s . If a person is "interested," it means that- all too openly according to the rules of the bour geois g ame -he sees to his own interest, or dis guises as his obj ective th at which only serves himself. Ple asure c apacity f alls in the s ame line . According to the h abit of the petit bour­

geois, the deformation s inflicted on men by the world of profit are explained by men's greed, as if it was their fault that they were cheated out of their sub­ j e c tivity . In the end, h owever , Heide gger's philosophy does not want to h ave anything to do with the cultural 75. Quoted in Rudolf Eucken, Geschichte der p hilosop hi­ schen Terminologie ( Leipzig, 1 879 ) , p . 86, in reference to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap s . 4 and 5 .

96

4

p hilo s ophy in which s u ch qu e s tion s appear. And in­ deed, the concept of cultural philo s op hy is j u s t as ridiculous as th at o f s o cial p hil o s o p hy. The limitation of phi lo s o ph y to one s p e cifi c ar ea i s i n c om p atibl e with the fact th at i t should reflect on institu tion al s epara­ tion. For ph il o s o ph y should itself derive this separa­ tion, and reco gnize th at which is n e c e s s ari l y s ep ar a t e d as something which then again is not s ep ar at e d . By virtue of its self-limi tation , cultural phil os o phy accept s t h e division of phenomena in to areas o f su b j e c t m a t t er a n d p o s s ib l y even in to those of hier archy wi t hin areas . In th e s truc ture of alle ged levels the plac e of culture i s almo s t un av o idably a d erived one . For this re ason a philo sophy which enj oys it self f asti di o u s ly in this spher e would be s a ti s fied with that which offici a l s patro nize as e s s ayi sm . By the same token it wo u ld avoid th a t which h a s been h anded down under th e name o f c ons titu tiv e pr oblems , which , of c o u r se , could only be s tubb orn ly i gn ored by such a phil o s oph y . Hei­ degger keeps that in mind . He is familiar , on th e one h and, with Husserl's schema of philosophical-eidetic diSCiplines, and, on the other, of disciplines which are directed toward obj e c t s -both of which dis cipl in es he melted to geth er with the idealistic criticism of reifica­ tion . But an overtone of the word "cultural-philosophi­ cal" cannot fail to be heard in He i d egger . He def ames that which sticks like a p ar asi te to what is secondary, to life which has already been produced . He a cts pe evi s h toward any form of mediation, even in the min d which is itself essentially mediation . The gr o w th climate of this h o s tility to cultural ph ilo s op h y is that a c ad e mi c clim a te in wh i ch they admonished the Jew 97

Georg Simmel, on the grounds that, at least in inten­ tion, he absorbed himself in that concretion which the systems were forever only promising. Thus he trans­ gressed a taboo of traditional philosophy which busies itself, if not with the fundamental themes of occidental metaphysics, at least with the question of their pos­ sibility. Criticism of the limitations of cultural phi­ losophy is vengefully limited . The chemically pure concept of philosophy, as the inquiry into an unruined essence, underneath that which has only been made and posited by men, is worth just as little as that limited cultural philosophy. The subj ect area of the pure has no advantage over culture, whether this pure essence be considered as a truthfully philosophical element, as something merely explanatory, or as a supporting element. It is, rather, like culture, a deter­ mination of reflection . While specialistic cultural phi­ losophy absolutizes the form of that which has be­ come, against that on which it feeds, fundamental ontology embezzles its own cultural mediation, insofar as it shies away from a spirit which is concretized in objectivity. Whatever the possibilities of natural phi­ losophy may be nowadays , primalness now has the s ame place in the philosophical atlas in which nature was once registered. This primalness is as much a part, as not, of that which fundamental ontology despises as culture. Culture includes even the material infrastructure of society, in which human work and thought are rooted, and the only means by which work becomes real societal work. This does not mean that the contrast to the suprastructure becomes any less sharp. Philosophical nature has to be regarded as his98

..

tory, and his tory as nature . The contrast between primal experiences and cultur al experience s

,

which

Gundolf invented ad hoc for George , was ideology in the midst of the suprastructur e , devised for the pur­ pose of obscuring the contrast between infr a stru cture and ideology. The c a te gories which he popularized , and amon g which even the l ater , m ore successful , c ate gory o f godlike bein g i s present, were m arketed as substantial ;76 while precisely in neorom anticism cultur al medi ation s t ands ou t blatantly, in the form of th e ]ugendstil. Bloch rightfully made fun of Gundolf for his belief in today's primal experien c e s . These primal experiences were a warmed-over piece of ex­ pressionism . They were later m ade into a permanen t ins titu tion by Heidegger, under the benediction of public opinion . Wh a t he di slikes in de alin g with cul­ ture, to which , incidentally, his own philolo gical di­ vagations belon g , is the bu sines s of star tin g with the experience of some thin g derive d . But this c annot b e avoided and has to b e taken i n t o consciousness . I n t h e univers ally mediated world every thing exp erienced in primary terms i s cul turally preformed . Whoever wants the other has to s t art with the imm anence of culture, in order to break out through it. But funda­ mental ontology gladly sp ares itself th a t , by pretend

­

in g it h as a starting point somewhere outsid e . In th at way such ontolo gy succumbs to cultur al mediations all the more ; they recur as social aspects o f that on­ tology'S own purity . Philosophy involves itself all the 76. Cf. Friedrich Gundolf, George, 3d ed. ( Berlin , 1 930 ) P · 269 .

99

more deeply in society as it more e a gerly-reflectin g upon itself-pushes .off from society and its obj ec tive s pirit. It claws itself firmly into its blindly social fate , which-in Heidegger's terminology-has thrown one into this and no other place . Th at was according to the t aste of fascism. With the downfall of m arket liberal­ ism, relation ships of domin ation s tepped n akedly into the foreground. The b aldness of their order, the au­ thentic law of the "needy time," e asily permits itself to be taken for somethin g prim al . That is how people could j aw ab out blood and soil, without a smile , durin g the excessively accumulatin g indus trial c apitalism of th e Third Reich . The j ar gon of authen ticity continues

al th at, less tan gibly-with impunity, because a t that time social differences
a

great extent that reality is, as Valery defined politics ,

1 00

only there to keep men away from wh at is of im­ portance to them. In agreement with Kr a u s , whom he does n o t mention , Heidegger s ays in Sein und Zeit: Hearing and understandin g h ave attach ed themselves beforehand to what is s aid-in-the-talk as such . " 77

So the business of communication and its formulas cut in b e tween the m atter and the subj e c t , and blind the sub j e c t a gainst precisely th at which all the chatter is about. "What is s aid-in-th e-talk as such spreads in wider circl e s and takes on an au thoritative ch aracter . Thin gs are s o because one s ays s o . " 7 8 B u t Heide gger imposes the critical di a gnosis of a negative ontological presence on the "everyd ay bein g of the Da, exis tence," which in tru th is his torical in n ature : the entan gling of the mind with the sphere of circulation, at a s t a ge in which the obj ective spirit is covere d by the e c onomic utilization process, as if by a fungus which s tifles the qu ality of thou gh t . This confusion h as arisen and c an be gotten rid of; we do n o t need to bemo an it and le ave it in peace as if it were the essence of D asein. Heidegger ri gh tly perceives the abstractness o f ch atter "as such ," which h as emptied itself of any rel ationship to its conten t ; but from the aberr an t abs tractness of ch atter he draws conclusions as to its met aphysical invari ance, h owever que s tionable th a t may b e . Ch atter would already be in decline if, in a reasonable econ­ omy, the expenditure of advertisements disappeared . Ch atter is forced on men by a s o ci al stru cture which 77. H eidegger, B eing and Time, p. 2 1 2 . 78.

Ibid.

1 0 1

negates them as subj ects lon g before this is done by the newsp aper companies . But Heide gger's critique becomes

ideolo gical by

graspin g

the

em ancip ated

spirit as that which becomes of it under supremely real en gagements , and by doin g so withou t making dis tinc­ tion s . H e condemns idle ch atter , but not bru tality , the alliance with which is the true guilt of chatter, which is in itself far more innocen t . As soon as Heidegger wants to silence chatter, his lan gu a ge clatters with we aponry : To be able to keep silent , Dasein must h ave something to s ay- tha t is , it must have at its disposal an au thentic and rich disclosedness of itself. In th at case one's ret­ icence . . . makes something manife s t , and does aw ay with "idle talk . " 79

His language itself speaks forth , as seldom elsewhere, from the word "to strike down" ; it is a langu age of power. But i t has already been seen in the Hitlerian re alm that the goal of this lan gu a ge is at one with the s tate of affairs which it indicts . Heidegger believes th at under the domination of the They nob ody needs to take responsibility for anythin g : The "they" is there alongside everywhere , . . . but in such a m anner that it has always stolen away when­ ever D asein presses for a decision. Ye t because the " they" presents every judgment and decision as its own , it d eprives the p articular Dasein of its an swerability. The "they" c a n , as it were , manage to h ave "them" con­ s tantly invoking it. It can be answerable for everything most e asily, because it is not someone who needs to vouch for anythin g. It "was" always the "they" who 79. Ibid . , p . 208.

102

did i t , and yet it c an be s aid that it h as been "no one . " In D asein's everydayn e s s t h e a gency

throu gh which mos t thin gs come about is one of which we m u s t say tha t "it was no one . " 80

Th at is precisely wh at came to pass under N a tional Socialism,

as

the univer s al Befehlsnotstand,81

that

state of emergency which torturers later u se as their excu s e . Heide gger's sketch of the They com e s closest to what i t is, the exchange relation ship, when he is

treatin g aver ageness : The

" they" has its

own

ways in which to b e .

That

tendency of Bein g-with which we have c alled "dis tan­ tiali ty" is grounded in the fact th a t Bein g-with-one­ another

concerns

itself

as

such

with

averagenes s ,

which is an existen tial ch arac teristic of t h e "they . " The " they ," in its B eing, essen tially makes an issue o f this. Thus the "they" maintains i tself factic ally in the aver­ age n e s s of that which belo n g s to i t , of that which it

re­

gard s as valid and th at which i t does n o t , and of th a t to which it grants success and th at to which it d enies i t . In this averageness with which i t prescribes wh at c an and may be venture d , it keeps watch over every thin g e xcep­ tional that thru sts its elf to the fore . Every kin d of pri­ ority gets noiselessly suppres s e d . Overnigh t , every thing tha t i s primordi al gets glo s s e d over as some thin g that h as long been w ell known . Everythin g gained by a s tru g­ gle b e comes j u s t some thin g to be m anipul a te d . Every s ecre t loses its force . This c are of avera geness rev e al s in turn a n essential tendency of Dasein which we c all the "levelling " down . . . of all possibilities of B e in g . " 82

80. Ibid. , p . I 65 . 8 I . [B efehlsno tstand: morally compelling situ a tion for a soldier, who mus t carry o u t an order with which he ca nnot square his cons cience . ] 82 . Heidegger, B eing and Time, pp. I 64 65 .

1 03

Th at levelin g is described as violence, in the manner of elites which claim that "prerogative" for th emselves . It is a levelin g which they themselves want to employ , and is no other th an the levelin g which o c casion ally befalls the exchanger, through his inevitable reduction to the equivalence form ; the critique of politic al econ­ omy grasping exch ange value in terms of the soci al work-time which on the aver age has to be spen t . In its hostility to the negatively ontologized They, the opposi­ tion to capitalist anonymity eagerly overlo oks the law of value which is assertin g i tself-a sufferin g which will n o t h ave it said wh at it is suffering from . When th at anonymity, whose social source is unmis tak able, is analyzed as a pos sibility of bein g, then th at society is exoner ated which simultaneously both disqu alifies and de termines the relationships of its members . The mobility of words unqu estionably continue d their degradation from t h e be ginnin g. In the functional word, deception is posited simultaneou sly with the exch an ge principle itself and grasps spirit ; because this latter cannot b e without the idea of tru th , it ex­ hibits flagrantly wh at has entrenched its elf in material praxis behind the free and upright exch an ge of goods . But without mobility lan gu age would never h ave be­ come c ap able of th at relation to the m atter at h and, by who s e criterion Heide gger j u d ges communic ative lan gu age. Language philosophy, in the question of communic ative lan gu age , would have to investigate the metamorphosis of qu antity into the qu ality of mere chatter , or , better, the interinvolvement of both as­ pects ; and would not proceed in an authoritarian spirit to sort o u t the whe at from the chaff of l an guage . No

1 04

thinking could unfold itself into the not-yet-tho u gh t without th at s h o t of irresponsibility over which Hei­ degger grows s o excited; in that, the spoken distin­ guishes its elf from the authen tic ally written wor d , and even in the la tter positivis ts c an easily criti cize a s ir­ respon sible th at which goes beyond wh at is th e c a s e . Imm aturity and timidi ty stand no higher th an chatter . Even th at lingui s ti c obj ectivity which presupposes the u tmost alertn e s s toward the phr ase also has as its condition

mobility

of expression ,

no

matter

pre­ how

broken : urb anity . N obody can write withou t phr a s e s , and who is tru e to th e m atter who is not also a literate p erson ? The defens e of th is kind of person seems to be

in pl ace after th e murder of th e Jew s . Kraus him­

s elf despised the illiter ate , if pos sible even more th an the liter ate. On the o ther hand the summary j u d gmen t

c on cernin g idle talk , which insinuates it thro u gh a negative on tology, constan tly permi ts the j u s tification of the phr ase as if it were fate . Once idle talk is a state of mind, one need n o t be gre atly emb arrass ed when au thenticity turns into idle talk . That i s h appening today to H ei de gger s own legend .

We might pull some out of a piece on The Idea of the Germ an '

sentences

University and the Reform of the German Universities by

Ernst Anrich : It is no encroachment [ that is, on academic autonomy] when from this Hippocratic oath we make a certain de­

mand , out of our cle ar knowledge that no specific phi­ losophy can today b e pl aced deciSively at the center of the university, a dem and that we shall keep alert our universality and our responsiveness in face of the whole

of reality ; it is no encroachment on this situation

when we ask each scholar in this b o dy to carry on his

105

scholarship under the sign of the fin al question about the ground of Being and the whole of Bein g ; and when

we ask him to discuss and exchange these problems within the whole body, the dignity of which resides

therein. If it is right to demand of the s tudent th at the essence of his study must be to drive forward , within his own specialty, to the view of Bein g, and to responsibility in face of the totality of Bein g ; if that is right, then we mus t require of the professor that it be made cle ar, through his courses, how his own rese arch is itself ultimately motivated by a struggle with these questions ; and it may be expected that e ach of his courses should be an invoking and awakening force , in this sense .S3

In an organizational, uncommonly ontic context such sentences use the j argon of authenticity in just the way in which Heidegger portrays it in Sein und Zeit: as a characteristic feature of idle talk. The authority to which in that way the j argon obliges itself is no other than the authority of the Heideggerian philoso­ phy itself. Th at in the relevant chapter the author constantly and rhetorically repeats , "It is no encroach­ ment," is meant to hide precisely such an encroach­ ment; namely, the oath-Anrich himself uses the mythical word-on the so-called question of Being. Yet in the s ame breath the author concedes that no definite philosophy could today be placed at the center of the university. It is as though the ominous question of Being were beyond criticism. Whoever justly spurns the question of Being together with the chatter about it had best be sent away entirely. Anrich skillfully 83 . Ernst Anrich, Die Idee der deutschen Universitiit und die Reform der deutschen Universitiiten, ( Darms tadt, 1 960 ) , l" 1 1 4·

1 06

latches onto the fact that, in formulas like that of the question concerning the ground of Being, the innocent still hear the sound of resistance against the dispirited atmosphere in which the humanities are today carried on. A human right of students, their need for the es­ sential, becomes blurred in the j argon, in the Hei­ de ggerian essence-mytholo gy of Being. The spirit which they miss in the universities is silently converted into the monopoly of an instructional system which, for its part, cried heresy against the spirit when it appeared in the form of reason . As in the concept of idle chatter, so in that of readi­ ness to hand, which is portrayed with symp athy , and which is the philosophical ancestress of shelteredness, suffering experience is interpreted into its opposite . At some historical stages of agriculture, and in simple wares-economy, production was not radically subordi­ nated to exchange and was ne arer to the workers and consumers; and their relationships to one another were not totally reified . The idea of something undis­ figured, undeformed , an idea which has yet to be actualized, could hardly have been created without a memory trace of such earlier conditions ; although over long periods they probably caused more immediate suffering to those exposed to such conditions than did capitalism . Nonetheless, identifying thought, schooled in exchange, brought the differentiated down to the identity of the concept, and chopped up this more in­ nocent identity . What Hegel and Marx in their youth condemned as alienation and reification, and against which all are spontaneously united today, is what Heidegger interprets ontologically as well as unhis1 07

torically, and, in its function as a being-form of Dasein, as something bodily. The ideology of readiness to hand, and its counterpart, strips itself bare in the practice of those devotees of the musical youth movement, who swear to it that a proper fiddle is one that a fiddler has rigged up for himself. Since the artis an forms of pro­ duction have been overtaken by technology, and are superfluous , the intimacy which adhered to them has become as worthless as the do-it-yourself movement. The unfunctional self-being of things , their freedom from the compulsion of identity, which the dominating mind imposes, would be u topia. It presupposes the alteration of the whole. Nonetheless, in the midst of our all-embracing function context every ontolo gical light on the remains of so-called readiness to hand gilds that context. For its sake the j argon of authen­ ticity speaks as thou gh it were the voice of men and things that are there for their own sake. Through this m anoeuver, the j argon becomes all the more a for­ others, something for planned and pedagogically deco­ rated effect-con texts . Indeed, the Wagnerian ''To be German means to do something for its own sake" accelerated, in slogan form, the export of the German spirit. That spirit competed successfully with the more advanced commodity-thinkin g of the West, through the slo gan's imprimatur, which declared that it was no commodity. That throws light on the artsy-craftsy element in the j argon . It provides a refu ge for the stale notion that art should be brought b ack into life, and that there should be more than art but also more than mere usage . The j argon pursues artis anship under the sh adow of industry, as c arefully chosen as it is cheap ; 108

it gathers reproductions of kitschy life-reformin g im­ pulses th at real life has buried under itself , and spares them the hopeless testin g ground of actu alization . Instead, langu age rolls up its sleeves and lets it b e understood that right action , i n the ri ght place , i s worth more th an reflection . I n that way a contempla­ tive attitude , without any perception of the praxis which brings about changes , sympathizes all the more s trikin gly with the h ere and now, the servicing of obligations presented within the given . Heidegger sees himself forced , i n the analysis of curiosity, to intimate something of the his torical dy­ n amic that necessarily dissolves static relationships . s4 On those relationships the theory of readiness to hand nourishes itself; he leaves it to the gan g to call these hale. He s anctions, as an ontological possibility, th at "dis-stancin g" which is h allowed by its hyphen ; th at possibility th at men might raise themselves above the mere immediacy of the reproduction of their own lives . Nevertheless, he slides into the defaming of consciousness, which has been released from im­ prisonment : Care becomes concern with the possibilitie s of the see­ ing the "world" merely as it looks while one tarrie s and t a ke s a rest. Dasein seeks wh at i s far aw ay simply in order to bri n g i t close to itself in the w a y it looks . Dasein lets itself be carried along . . s o l ely by the .

looks of the world ; i n this kind of Bein g , i t concerns its elf with becomin g rid of itself as Being-in-the-world and rid of its Being al ong S id e that which , in the closes t e veryd ay manner, is re ady-to-h and .

8 4 . Heide gger, B eing and Time, p . 2 1 6 .

l og

When curiosity has become free , however , it con­ cerns itself with seeing , n o t in order to understand what is seen ( that is , to come into a Being towards it ) but jus t in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to ano ther novelty.85

For Heidegger, the w ay to free

consciousness is pre­

e s t ablished, inevitable ; bu t it is a s little ch armin g to the m an who is freed as are those who are n arrowed by their circle

of dutie s , those who distrust, as artful is emancipated from praxis . He equ ates emancipated consciousness with curiosity.

and shifty, the mind th at

His h atred toward curio sity is allied to his hatred to­ ward mobility ; both are even h ammered into by the ripe old sayin g : stay in the

the mind country and earn

your living hones tly. Gene tic psycho an alysis knows the castration threat a gainst the child's sexual investi­ gation ; the allegedly suprapsychological stance of the ontologist fits with the bru tal "th at's none of your busines s ," invoked in the c a s tration threat . In the ques­ tion of curiosity the thinker abuses thinking ; without curiosity the subj ect would remain imprison e d in a dull repetition-compulsion and would never open him­ self up to experience .

Of course such an enli ghtenment that,

insight is not the whole s tory. It is equ ally untrue

through Heide gger's admonitions about "the They," th at soci al state of affairs who s e symptoms he reprim ands grows better . It is only th at his obj ection to curiosity stems from ye a-sayin g at any price : curiosity has nothing to do with observin g entities and with m arvelling at them- Oall,ua�ftJl. To be amazed to 8 5 . Ibid.

1 10

the p oin t of n o t understanding is something in which it has n o interes t . Rather it concerns itself with a kind of knowin g , b u t just in order to h ave known .S6

In his Di(ferenz essay Hegel criticized curiosity much more s e archin gly ; not as a state of mind but a s the position of the reified consciousness with regard to the dead obj ect : The living spirit which dwells in a philosophy require s , i n order to be release d , t h a t i t should be brought to birth by a related spirit. It p a s s e s by, as an alien phenomenon,

any his torical conduc t which from some kind of in­ tere st marches forth to an unders tandin g of opinions ; and it does not reveal its interior. To the living spirit it can seem indifferent that it must serve to enlar ge the re m a inin g collection of mummies and the general h e aps of acciden talia ; for it itself has flowed away through the hands c urious to c ollec t new pieces of knowledge .87

The disagreeable aspect of curiosity, as of greedy n a­ ture as a whole, cannot be glossed over. But it is not a probing a gitation ; rather it is somethin g th at re­ actively, under the pressure of early childhood denial, has emerged from th at denial ; and which distorts that which once wanted to get free from the always-same, the identical . Curious people are characters whose childish longing for the tru th about the s exu al was never satisfied ; their longing is a sh abby substitute . The person from whom that which concerns him was 8 6 . Ibid. 87. G. W . F. Hegel, Werke, ed. H . Glockner ( S tu ttgart, 1 95 8 ) , Vol. I : Aufs iitze aus dem Kritischen Journal der Philos op hie und andere Aufsiitze aus der Jenenser Zeit ( Dif­ ferenzschrift ) , p. 4 0 . I I I

withheld mixes himself evilly into what does not con­ cern him . He becomes enviously enraptured with in­ formation over matters in which he himself should not play any part. That is the relation of all greediness to free desire . To Heidegger's arrogance toward the merely ontic, the genesis of curiosity is indifferent. He chalks up mutilation to the fault of the mutilated, as a fault of existence in general . His existential security becomes a heteronomously conditioned activity th at is untried by curiosity-idle knowledge . This is prob ably the origin al philosophical his tory of the cliche of com­ mitment. By denouncing a purely ontolo gical possi­ bility according to his own teaching, Heide gger be­ comes the advocate of the unfullfilment of life . Like the empty phrase of idealism , authenticity , in proj ect­ ing its existentialism right from the beginning, sides with want, over and against satisfaction and abun­ dance . In spite of its eager neutrality and distance from society , authenticity thus stands on the side of the conditions of production, which, contrary to reason, perpetuate want. When Heidegger finally calls "home­ lessness" the "third essential characteristic of this phenomenon ," 88 he conjures up the Ahasuerian ele­ ment. He does this by means of the demago gically proven technique of allusion , which keeps quiet about that to which it expects secret consent. The pleasure of mobility becomes a curse for the homeles s . The op­ posite of "everyday D asein," which "is constantly up­ rooting itself," 89 is "observing entities and m arvelling 88 . Heidegger, B eing and Time, p. 2 1 7 . 8 g . Ibid . 1 1 2

at them ," 90 thou gh it is not yet, by any m e ans the contemplation of B ein g . In philos ophy 1 9 27 the root­ l e s s intellec tu al carries the yellow m ark of someone who undermine s th e established order. How deeply rooted are the socie tal elemen t s in Heidegger's an alysis of authenticity is involuntarily revealed by his u s e of langu age . As is well known , H eidegger suppl an ts th e tradition al cate gory of sub­ j e c tivity

by D asein , w hose e s s ence i s exi s tence. B ein g,

h o wever, which "is an issue for this e n ti ty in i ts very B e i n g , is in e a ch case mine . "

91

This

is m e an t to distin­

guish subj ectivity from all o ther e xis ten t bein g. It

i n t en ds, furthermore, to prohi b it exis ten ce from bein g " taken ontol o gically as an i n s tan ce or s p e ci al case of some gen u s of en ti tie s as things th at are pre sent-at­

h an d ." 9� This con s truction , which is inspired by Kierke­ g a ard's doctrin e of the "transparency" of the self ,93 would like to m ake possible a star ting out from som e element o f being. This l atter is valued as t h e immediate givenne s s of the facts of co ns cious ne s s in tr adi tional epis temolo gy ; yet , at the same tim e , this elem ent

of

b ein g is supp osed to be more than mere fact, in the s am e manner as the e go of specul ative ide alism once wa s . B ehind the aperson al "is c on c er ned ," n o thin g more is hidden th an the fact th at D asei n is consciou s­ ne s s . The en tr ance of this formul a i s Heidegger's s cene 90. Ibid . , p. 2 1 6 . 9 1 . Ibid. , p. 6 7 . 9 2 . Ibid. 93. Cf. Sl!iren Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode ( Du s­ seldorf, 1 954 ) p. 1 0 . [English translation by W. Lowrie, Fear and Trem bling, and The Sicknes s unto Death ( Garde n City, N . Y., 1 954 ) . ]

I I

3

a faire . From an abstract concept Being turns into

something absolute and primary, which is not merely posited. The reason for this lies in the fact that Hei­ degger reveals an element of Being and calls it Dasein, which would be not just some element of Bein g, but the pure condition of Being-all this without losing any of the characteris tics of individu ation, fullness, bodiliness . This is the scheme th at the j argon follows , intentionally o r unintentionally, t o the point o f nausea. The j argon cures Dasein from the wound of meaning­ lessness and summons s alvation from the world of ideas into Dasein. Heidegger lays this down once and for all in the title deed, which declares th at the person owns himself. The fact th at Dasein belongs to itself, th at it is "in e ach case mine," is picked out from in­ dividu ation as the only general definition that is left over after the dismantlin g of the transcendental sub­ j ect and its metaphysics . The principium individua­ tionis stands as a principle over and against any par­ ticular individual element. At the same time it is th at e ssence . In the case of the former element, the Hegelian dialectical unity of the general and the par­ ticular is turned into a relation of possession. Then it is given the rank and rights of the philosophical apriori. "Because Dasein h as in each case mineness . . one must always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it. " 94 The distinction between authen­ ticity and inauthenticity-the real Kierke gaardian one ' -depends on whether or not this element of being, D asein, chooses itself, its mineness .95 Until further .

94 . 95 .

Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 6 8 .

Cf. Ibid.

notice, authenticity and inauthenticity have as their criterion the decision

in which the individu al subject

chooses itself as its own possession . The subj ect, the concept of which was once cre ated in contr a s t to rei­ fication , thu s becomes reified . Yet at the s ame time reification is s c offed at obj ec tively in a form of lan­ gu age which simultan eou sly commits the s ame crime . The general concept o f mineness , in which this lan­ guage institutes subj e ctivity a s a pos session of i tself , sounds like a variant of me anness in Berlin slan g . Whatever formerly went under the name o f e xisten ti al and existentiell now insists on this new title deed of possession . By the f a c t th a t it is ontological , the alter­ n ative of authenticity and inauthenticity directs itself according to whe ther someone decides for himself or not. I t take s i ts dire ctive, beyond r e al s tates of affair s , from the h i ghly form al sense o f belon gin g to oneself. Yet its consequences in re ality are extremely grav e . Once such a n on tology o f wh at is mos t on tic h a s been achieved, philo sophy no longer has to bother abo u t the societal an d natural-his torical ori gin of this title deed, which de clares th at the individual own s himself . Such a philosophy need no lon ger be concerned wi th how far society and psychology allow a man to b e him­ self or become himself, or whether in the con c ept of such s elfness the old evil is concentr ated one more time . The societ al relation , which seals its elf off in the identity of the subj ect, is de-socie talized into an in-itself. The individual, who himself c an no longer rely on any firm pos ses sion, holds on to himself in his extreme abstractnes s as the last, the supposedly un­ los able posses sion . Metaphysics ends in

a miserable I I 5

consolation : after all, one still remains what one is. Since men do not remain what they are by any means, neither socially nor biologically, they gr a tify them­ selves with the stale remainder of self-identity as something which gives di s tin c tion, both in regard to being and me anin g . This unlosable element, which has no substratum but its own concep t, the tautolo gical selfness of the self, is to provide the ground, as Hei­ degger calls it, which the authentics possess and the in a� the n tics lack. The essence of Dasein, i . e . , what is more th an its mere existence, is nothing but its self­ ness : it is itself. The quarrel with Heidegger's lan­ guage is not the fact that it is perm e ated , like any philosophical language , with figures from an empirical re ality which it would like to tran sc en d , but th at it transforms a bad empirical re ali ty into transcendence . Heidegger is c areful to have alibis again s t the charge of epistemological s ub j e ctivism. Mineness, or the self-s ameness of the authentically existin g self, is to be s eparated from the identity of the s ub jec t .s6 Otherwise, these would break throu gh the ide alism of a thinking that claims to be a thinkin g of origi n s . B u t Heidegger's Being, t o which , after all , some con­ siderable cre ative acts are attributed, becomes the Fich­ tean absolute e go . It appears beheaded , as it were , in contrast to the tr aditional , m erely posited ego. B u t th e distinction from Fichte does not hold . If the distin­ gui shin g element, the fact that min en e s s bel ong s to r eal persons, was n o t their ab s tra ctly pr e or d ain e d pri n­ ci pl e , their ontol ogi c al prim acy would be done for . 96 . Ibid. , p. 1 68.

1 16

Me anwhile, even the old-fashioned idealist identity depended on elements of fact as conditions of its own possibility, insofar as it was precisely the unity of the representations of a consciousness. Almost unrecog­ nizably, all this rises again in Heidegger's thought, in a reinterpretation that turns it into the hinge of his whole argument . Heide gger's poin t of departure turns against possible criticism , in the same m anner as Hegel's once turned against the philosophy of reflec­ tion. Criticism is said to miss a newly discovered or rediscovered structure, beyond the dualism of fact and essence, which was still taught by HusserI in tradi­ tional fashion . Not only Heidegger's philosophy, but also the whole j argon of authenticity that follows , de­ pends on the staging of the elaboration of this struc­ ture . I t is pointed out at a very early stage in Sein und Zeit, where Heidegger deals with the primacy of Dasein . Heidegger interprets subjectivity as a concept of indifference : essence and f act in one . The primacy of Dasein is s aid to be twofold. On the one hand it is to be ontic, namely, de termined by existenc e . In other words, existence defines something in the n ature of fact, something existent. On the other hand "D asein is in itself 'ontological,' because exis tence is thus de terminative for it." 9 7 Thus somethin g contradic tory to subj ectivity is immediately attribu ted to subj ectivity : th a t it be itself fact and reality, and, in line with the demand of traditional philosophy, that as conscious­ ness it make facticity possible . As the latter it becomes pure concept, in contrast to facticity ; it becomes es97. Ibid . , p . 3 4 ·

1 1 7

sence and finally Husserrs eidos ego. Against the tradi­ tional doctrine of the subj ect this double character, which is also an absolute unity before the fall into dif­ ferentiation, claims the rank of an important discovery . For that reason Heidegger uses an archaizing, scho­ lastic method. Both these ch aracteristics of the sub­ ject he ascribes to Dasein, as attributes, without considering that they conflict with the principle of contradiction when they are attached in this way. Ac­ cording to Heidegger, Dasein "is" not merely on tic, which would b e tautological in regard to what is grasped under the concept of Dasein, but it is also ontological. In this predication of the ontic and the ontological, from the standpoint of Dasein, the falsity of the regressive element can be recognized. The con­ cept of the ontological cannot be attached to a sub­ stratum, as if ontological were its predicate. To be a fact is no predicate which can attach itself to a con­ cept; and, since Kant's criticism of the ontological proof of the existence of God, any philosophy should be careful not to affirm this . The same holds true for the nonfacticity of concepts, their essentiality. This essentiality is localized in the relation of the concept to the facticity that is synthesized in it-and never belongs to it, as Heidegger suggests, as a quality of it itself. To say that Dasein "is ontic or ontological," can , strictly speaking, not be judged at all, for what is meant by existence is a substratum . It is for this reason th at the meaning of Dasein is nonconceptual. In contrast to thiS, "on tic" and "ontological" are ex­ pressions for different forms of refle cti on , and are thus unable only in regard to the definition s of Dasein , or to 1 1 8

the position of such definitions in theory-not im­ mediately, however, in re gard to the meant subs tratum itself. Their place is that of conceptual mediation . Heidegger declares this to be immediacy sui generis . Dasein thus suddenly becomes a third element, with­ out regard to the fact that the dual character that Hei­ degger bends together into this third can by no means be regarded independently from that which h appens conceptually to the substratum . In Heide gger, the fact that there is nothing which maintains itself iden tically without the cate gorical unity, and the fact th at this categorical unity does not maintain itself without that which it synthesizes-such facts take the form of the elements which are to be distinguished . These elements in tum take the form of derivatives . There is nothing between heaven and earth that is in itself ontic or ontological ; rather, everything becomes what it is only by means of the constellation into which it is brought by philosophy. Language had a means for makin g this differentiation when it spoke of ontolo gical theories, judgments , and proofs instead of something ontologi­ cal sans fa{:on . By means of an obj ectification of this kind, such an element would of course already be turned into that ontic against which the literal mean­ in g of "ontological" sharpens itself : the logos of s ome­ thing antic. After Sein un d Zeit Heidegger tried to interpret the Critique of Pure Reason in terms of his project. Yet previously, he had done something very similar to what Kant criticized in the ration alistic form of ontology : an amphiboly of the concepts of reflec­ tion . Heide gger m ay have missed the mist ake, bu t it is to the advan tage of his proj ect. According to u su al I

I 9

terminology, it is obvious that the concept tha t s ays what essentially belongs to something that is, is onto­ logical . If, however, this becomes unnoticeably the ontological essence of the existent in itself, then the result is a concept of B eing that is prior to the concepts of reflection . At firs t this occurs in Sein und Zeit through the hypostasis of an ontological sphere that is the nourishment for all of Heidegger's philosophy . The amphiboly resides in the followin g : in the concept of the subj ect two elements flow together-the subject's own definition as somethin g existent, in which form it s till remains fixed in the Kantian interlockin g of the transcendental subject with the unity of consciousness per se , and , secondly, the definition of subj ect as con­ stituent of everything existent . This togetherness is unavoidable in the concept of subject. It is an expres­ sion of the dialectic between subject and object in the subject itself, and evidence of its own conceptuality . Without mediation subjectivity cannot be brou ght to either of its extremes , which belong to different genera . This aforemen tioned unavoidability becomes an imagi­ n ary thing by virtue of the deficiency of the concept : mediation toward the immediate identity of the medi­ ating and mediated elements . Certainly one element is not without the other, but the two are by no means one, as Heide gger's fundamental thesis alleges . In their identity, identity thinking would h ave swallowed up the nonidentical element, the existent, which the word D asein intends . Thus Heidegger secretly reinstates the creator quality of the absolute subj ect, which was supposedly avoided, as it were , by s tarting with mine­ ness in e ach case . The notion of the double character 1 20

of D asein , as ontic and ontological, exp el s D asein from itself. This is Heidegger's disguis ed idealism . For the dialectic in the sub j ect between the existent and the concept becomes being of a higher order ; and the dialectic is brou ght to a halt. Wh atever praises itself for reachi ng behind the concepts of reflec tion - sub­ ject and obj ect-in order to grasp something sub­ st an tial , does noth ing but r eify the irre solvabili ty of the concepts of reflection. It reifies the impo s sibility of reducing one into the other, into the in-itself. This is the standard philosophic al form of underh anded activity, which thereupon occurs constantly in the j ar gon . It vindicates without authority and without theology , main t ain ing that what is of essence is real, and, by the same token , that the exi stent is essential , meanin gful, and j ustified. In spite of H eidegger' s assertion , minenes s , and conseq u ently authenticity, r esult in pure identity. How true thi s is can be shown e contrario. W hatever is in­ authentic for him , all the categories of the The y are those in which a subj ect is not itself, is unidentical with itself. Thus for example the ca t e gory of Unver­ weilen, as a giving oneself over to the world ;98 the sub ­ jec t gives itself up to something other, instead of re­ mainip.g with itself and "being knowingly in th e truth ." 99 What was a necessary element in the ex­ perience of consciousnes s , in Hegelian phenomenology, becomes anathema for Heidegger, since he compresses the experience of consciousness into self-experience . However, i den tity , the hollow kernel of such selfness, 9 8 . Ibi d. , p . 2 1 6 . 9 9 . Ibi d. 1 2 1

thus takes the place of idea. Even the cult of selfness is reactionary. The concept of selfness is here being eternalized precisely at the moment in which it has already disintegrated. Late bourgeOiS thinkin g re-forms itself into naked self-preservation, into the early bour­ geois principle of Spinoza : sese conservare. But who­ ever stubbornly insists on his mere so-being, because everything else has been cut off from him, only turns his so-being into a fetish. Cut off and fixed selfnes s only becomes , a ll the more, something external. This is the ideological answer to the fact that the current state of affairs is everywhere producing an ego weak­ ness which eradicates the concept of subj ect as in­ diViduality. That weakness as well as its opposite march into Heide gger's philosophy. Authenticity is supposed to calm the consciousness of weakness, but it also resembles it. By it the living subj ect is robbed of all definition, in the same way as it loses its attributes in reality. However, what is done to men by the world becomes the ontological pOSSibility of the inauthentic­ ity of men . From that point it is only a step to the usual criticism of culture, which self-righteously picks on shallowness , superficiality, and the growth of mass culture . The preterminological use of "authentic" under­ lined what was essential to a thing, in contrast to what was accidental. Whoever is dissatisfied with silly ex­ amples from textbooks needs to deliberate by himself; this will help more than a developed theory to assure him of what is essential . What is essential in phenom­ ena, and what is accidental, hardly ever springs straightforwardly out of the phenomena. In order to 1 22

be determined in its obj ectivity, it has first to be re­ flected on subjectively. Certainly, at first glance, it seems more essential to a worker that he has to sell his working power, that the means of production do not be­ long to him, that he produces materi al goods , than that he is a member of a suburban gardenin g club ; al­ though the worker himself may think that the latter is more essential. However, as soon as the question di­ rects itself to so central a concept as capitalism, Marx and the verbal definitions of Max Weber s ay s omething extremely different from each other. In m any cases the distinction between essential and inessential, be­ tween authentic and inauthentic, lies with the arbi­ trariness of definition, without in the least implying the relativity of truth . The reason for this situ ation lies in lan guage. Langu a ge uses the term "authentic" in a floating m anner . The word als o wavers according to its weigh tiness, in the same way as occasional ex­ pressions . The interest in the authenticity of a concept enters into the j udgment about this concept. Whatever is authentic in this concept also becomes so only u nder the perspective of something that is different from it. It is never pure in the concept itself. Otherwise the de­ cision about it degenerates into hairsplittin g. But at the same time, the essen tial element of a thing h a s i ts fundamentum in re o Over and agains t naive usage, nominalism is in the wrong to the degree th at it re­ mains blind toward the objective element of me aning in words, which enters into the configurations of language and which changes there . This eleme n t of objectivity carries on an unresolved struggle with those acts th at merely subj ectively give meanin g. The con1 23

sciou sness of this objective element in what is authen­ tic was the impulse of Brentano's whole school, es­ pecially of Husserl, and also contribu ted to Heidegger's doctrine of authenticity . The essence of a thing is not anything that is arbitrarily made by subjective thou gh t, is not a dis tilled unity of characteristics . In Heidegger this becomes the aura of the authentic : an element of the concept becomes the absolute concept. The phe­ nomenologists pinpoint the fundamentum in re as the particularization of essence. This p articularization be­ comes in itself thingly like a res, and can be called upon without regard to the subjective mediation of the concept. In his own argument Heidegger would like to escape HusserI's dualism, as well as the whole dispute of nominalism . He remains a tributary of HusserI's, however, in the short-circuited conclusion that imputes the authentic immediately to things , and thus turns the authentic into a special domain . Hence the substanti­ vation of authenticity, its promotion to an existentiale, to a state of mind. B y means of an alleged independ­ ence from thinking, the objective moment of that which is essential r aises itself to something higher. Finally it becomes an absolute, the summum bonum over and against the relativity of the subject, while simultaneously it is presented as purely descriptive diagnosiS in the manner of Scheler. Language nerve s , which m ay be suspect to the authentics as something decadent revolt against that substantivation which thus befalls the authentics' favorite motto. "-Keit," "-ness," is the general concept for that which a thing is. I t is always the substantivization of a characteris­ tic . Thu s industriousness is the substantivization of 124

those characteristics th at apply to all ind u s trious peo­ ple , and which they h ave in common . By contr ast, h owever , "auth e n ticity" names no au thentic thi n g as a specific ch ar acteri sti c but remains formal , relative to a conten t which is by-passed in the word, if n o t in­ deed rej ected in it- even when the word is used ad­ j ec tivally . The word s ays nothing about what a thin g i s , but ques tions t h e extent to which t h e thing r e alize s what is posited by its concept . The thin g stan d s in implicit opposition to what it merely seems to b e . In any case the word would re ceive its me anin g from th e qu ality which it is a predicate of. B u t th e suffix "-keit," "-nes s , " tempts one to believe tha t the word mus t al­ re ady con tain that content i n i tself . The mere c a te gory

of relationship is fished out and in its turn exhibited as somethin g concrete . By this logic the supreme would be that which is alto gether wh at it i s . The newly created Plato is more Platonic than the authentic one , who at least in his middle period attach e d its proper idea to everythin g, even to the humble s t thing, and in n o way confused the Good with the pure agr e ement be­ tween the thin g and its ide a . But in the n ame of con­ tempor ary au then tici ty even a tor turer could pu t in all sorts of claims for compens ation , to the ex te n t that he was simply a true torturer . The prim acy of the concept over the thi n g is now, throu gh the alli ance of authenticity with mineness , p u shed into mere de tail . Th at detail is as ar tifici al a s w a s the haecceitas o f Duns S cotus' late ScholastiCism , which m ade a u niversal out of the indiss olubility of the

Diesda ( haecceitas ) , and out of its not-bein g-unive rsal -made it a p aradigm of an ontolo gizin g of the ontic .

125

The taboo concerning subj ective reflection is useful to subj ectivism : authenticity, in the traditional lan­ guage of philosophy, would be identic al with subj ec­ tivity as such . But in that w ay, unnoticed, subj ectivity also becomes the j udge of authenticity . Since it is denied any objective determination, authenticity is de­ termined by the arbitrariness of the subj ect, which is authentic to itself. The j urisdictional claim of reason , which Husserl still asserted, falls away . Traces of re­ flection on such arbitrariness could still be found in Sein und Zeit in the concept of projection . That concept subsequently allowed the growth of all sorts of other ontological projections, most of them pleasantly wa­ tered down. With clever s trategy the later Heidegger remodeled the concept. In the proj ection of the philoso­ phizing subject something of the freedom of thought was preserved . The provocative aspect of an openly m akeshift theory is no more embarrassing to Heide gger th an is the suspicion of hubris . The armored man was so conscious of his unprotected places that he pre­ ferred to grasp at the most violent arrangement of arguments, rather than to call subjectivity by its name. He plays tactically with the subjective aspect of authen­ ticity : for him, authenticity is no longer a logical ele­ ment mediated by subjectivity but is something in the subject, in Dasein itself, something obj ectively dis­ coverable . The observin g subj ect prescribes whatever is authentic to the subj ect as observed : it prescribes the attitude toward death . This displacement robs the subject of its moment of freedom and spontaneity : it completely freezes, like the Heideggerian states of

mind , into some thing like an attribute of the substance "existence . " Hatred tow ard reifyin g psychology re­ moves from the living that which would m ake them other than reified. Authenticity, which a c c or di n g to doctrine is absolutely unobj ective, is m ade into an ob­ j ect. The reason for this is th at authenticity is a m an­ ner of behavior th at is ascribed to the being-a-subj ect o f the subj ect, not to the subj ect as a relation al f actor. Thus it b ecomes a possibility that is prefixed to and foreordained for the subject, withou t the subj ect bein g able to do anything about it. Judgment is passed ac­ cordin g to the logic of that joke about the c oachm an who is asked to explain why he beats his horse un­ mercifully, and who answers that after all the animal has taken on itself to become a horse, and therefore has to run . The c ategory of authenticity, which was at first introduced for a descriptive purpose, and which flowed from the relatively innocent question about what is authentic in something, now turns into a mythically imposed fate . For all that dist ance from nature which marks an ontological structure that will rise again on the far side of the existent, this destiny functions as something merely naturelike . Jews are punished for being this destiny, both ontolo gically and naturalistically at the s ame time. The findings of Heidegger's existential analysis , accordin g to which the subject is authentic insofar as it pos s esses itself, grant special praise to the person who is sovereignly at his own disposal ; as though he were his own prop­ erty : he has to h ave bearing, which is at the same time an internalization, and an apotheosis , of the principle 127

of d omination over nature . "Man is he, who he is, pre cisely in testifying to his own Dasein . " 100 The testi­ mony of his being-human, which cons titutes "the ex­ istence of man," occurs "throu gh the cre ation of a world and its ascent, as much as through the destruc­ tion of it and its decline . The testifyin g to humanity, and thus its authentic completion , occurs through the freedom of decision . This grasps necessity and puts itself under the commitment of a supreme order." 101 That very statement is nobly meant, quite in the spirit of the j argon, as when a noncommis sioned officer b awls out the "weakness of the flesh ." Outside of the tautology all we can see here is the imperative : pull yourself together . It is not for nothing th a t in Kierke­ gaard, the grandfather of all existential philosophy, right livin g is defined entirely in terms of decision . All his c amp followers are in agreement on that, even the dialectical theologians and the French existentialists . Subjectivity, Dasein itself, is sough t in the absolute dispos al of the individual over himself, without regard to the fact that he is caught up in a determining ob­ j ectivity. In Germany these determinations of objec­ tivity are limited by the "sense of obligation to 'the command," as in the word-fetish "soldierly ." This obli­ gation is totally abs tract and thus concretizes itself ac­ cordin g to the power structure of the moment. In honor of all that, the existential ontologists and the philosophers of existence bury the h atchet of discord.

1 00 . Heidegger, Holderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung ( Munioh, 1 93 7 ) , p . 6. 1 01 . Ibid.

1 28

Action of the warrior. The stren gth to m ak e decisions under the most ex trem e conditions-life or d e a th ­ comes from firmne ss i n d e cis io n ; comes from such firm­ ness in unique situa tions which never recur in ab s o lutely i d enti c al form . The fund amental traits of thi s kind of a c tio n are readiness for risks , alon g with a sense for wh a t is pos sible ; as well as artfulness and p rese nce of min d . Rules can be formulated for this kind of a c tio n but in it s essence no rules will c over it com pl e t e ly ; nor can this a c ti o n bc deriv e d from rule s . In the m o s t ex­ treme situ a tions there appe ars b o th what I am au then­ ti c ally and m y potential. 102 ­

,

,

The sp e a k e r s for existence m ove t o w ard a m y thology, even when they don't notice it. Self-po ssession, un­ limited and n arrowed by no heter onomy e as il y con­ ver ges with fre e d o m Men would be reconciled wi th their essential definition if the time came when their defining li mi tati o n s were no lon ger im p o s e d on them. This would mean a h a pp y reversal of the domin ation over n atur e . However, nothing is more unwan ted by the philo s ophy and the j ar gon of authenticity . Apart fr o m the right to come into one's own , self-control is hypos­ tatized. No end to controls is sought; rather, the con­ trols are carried over into the B eing of Das e in This is done according to the hoary custom of German Ideal­ ism. By that custom one should not speak of fr eedom without adding that it is identical with duty . Once one extrapolates from the words of em pirical lan guage what auth e ntic ally is , as those words' authen tic me an ing, one sees that the merely existing world determines ,

.

.

­

I 02 . Karl J aspers, Von der Wahrheit, rev. e d . ( Munich, 1 9 58 ) , p. 3 40 . [Our tran slation. This work has been translated into English by J . T. Wilde , W . Klub ach , W . Kimmel, Truth and Symbol, from Von der Wahrheit ( New Y o rk 1 959 ) .] ,

1 29

what on any specific occasion applies to those words ; that world becomes the highest court of judgment over what should and should not b e . Today, nevertheless, a thing i s essentially only that which it is in the midst , of the dominant evil; essence is something negative. Paragraph 5 0 of Sein und Zeit, entitled : "Prelimi­ n ary Sketch of the Existential-onotological Structure of Death," -without the print even blushing-con­

tains the s entence : "However, there is much that can impend for Dasein as Being-in-the-world." 103 Once s omebody attributed to a local aphorist from Frank­ furt the s aying that ''Whoever looks out of the window becomes aware of many things ." Heidegger sketches his conception of authenticity itself, as Being toward death, on just this level. Such B eing should be more than mortality disvalued as something thingly-em­ pirical . But he also takes great c are , for the s ake of ontology , to separate this being from subj ective re­ flection on death. Being oneself does not reside in an exceptional situation of the subject, freed from the They; it is no form of the subj ect's consciousness . l04 Authentic being toward death is no "thinkin g abou t death," 105 an activity which is displeasing to the mo­ nopolistic philosopher : "Needed, in our present world­ crisis : less philosophy but more attention to thou ght; less literature, but more concern for the letter." 106 The attitude which he disapproves of Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 29 4 . 1 04 . Ibid., p. 1 6 8 .

1 03 .

1 05 . Ibid., p . 305 .

1 06. Heidegger, iJbeT den Humanismus (Frankfurt 1 94 9 ) , p . 4 7· 1 30

a.

M.,

"thinks about death, " pondering over when and how this possibility may perhaps be actualized. Of course such broodin g over death does not fully take away from

it its character as a possibility. Indeed, it always gets brooded over as something that is comin g ; b u t in such

brooding we weaken it by c alculating how we are to have it at our disposal. As something pOSSible , it is to

show as little as possible of its possibility. On the other hand , if Being-towards-de ath has to disclose understand­

ingly the possibility which we have characterized , and if it is to disclose it as a possibility, then in such Bein g­ towards-death this pos sibility must not be we akened : it must be understood as a pOSSibility, it must b e culti­ vated as a possibility, and we must put up with it as a pos sibility, in the w ay we comport ourselves towards it.lo7

Reflection abou t death is anti-intellectually disparaged in the name of something allegedly deeper , and is re­ placed by "endurance," likewise a gesture of internal silence. We should add that the officer le arns to die according to the tradition of the cadet corps ; and yet to that end it is better if he does not trouble him self about that which , in his profession, is the most im­ portant thin g-next to the killing of others . The fascist ideOlogy had altogether to remove from consciousnes s that sacrifice which was proclaimed for the s ake of German supremacy. The chance that such a s acrifice would reach the goal for which it was intended was from the outset too doubtful; it would never h ave been able to survive such a conscious inspection . In 1 93 8 a National Socialist functionary wrote, in a polemical 1 07 .

Heide gger, B eing and Time, pp. 3 05 6 .

1 3 1

variation on a Social Democratic phrase ; S acrifice will make us free ." 108 Heidegger is at one with that. In the eighth printing of What is Metaphysics ? , which appeared in 1 960, he still retains-without any op­ portunistic mitigation-the following sentence s : "

S acrifice is the expenditure of human nature for the purpose of preserving the truth of Being for the existent. It is free from necessity because it rises from the abyss of freedom. In Sacrifice there arises the hidden thanks, which alone validates that grace -;:in the form of which B eing has in thought turned itself over to the essence of man ; that in his relation to B eing he might take over 9 the guarding of B eing . 10

Nevertheles s , once authenticity can no longer be either th e empirical condition of mortality nor the subjec­ tive relating to it, then it turns into grace . It turns, as it were, into a r acial quality of inwardness, which m an, either has or does not have-a qu ality abou t which nothing further can be stated than that, tautologically, there is mere p articipation in it. Consequently, in his additional discussions of death H eidegger is irresis­ tably driven on to tautological m anners of speakin g : "It [ death] is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself toward anythin g of every way of existing," 110 thus, perfectly simply, the possibility of no longer existin g. One could well reply ,

1 08 . Cf. Herbert Marcuse's critique in Zeitschrift fur Sozialforsc hung, III ( 1 938 ) , 408 . 1 0 9 . Heidegger, Was ist Metap hysik? 8 th ed. ( Frankfurt a. M . , 1 9 6 0 ) , p . 49. [Our translation. This work has been trans­ lated into English by R. F. C . Hull and Alan C ri c k , What Is Metaphysics? in Existence and B eing, ed. Werner Brock ( Chi­ cago, 1 949 ) . ] l I O . Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 3 0 7 .

1 32

at once that thinkin g about the states of being, or of being, is always t au tolo gical, because these s t ates of being would be nothing other than themselves . Then , however, the mere recitation of words, with disregard for any thinkin g predicate, would have to liquidate thinkin g itself. The s trategist guarded himself against drawing that conclusion ; the philosopher drew it, however, in the matter at hand . For the sake of its own dignity, authenticity once more transforms theo­ retical lack, indeterminability, into the dictate of some­ thing th at must be accepted without question . But what ought to be more than mere Dasein sucks its blood out of the merely existent, out of just tha t weak­ ness which c annot be reduced to its pure concept, b u t which rather cleaves t o the nonconceptu al subs tratum . The pure tau tology, which propagates the concept while at the s ame time refusin g to define th at concept-and which instead mechanically repeats the concept-is intelligence in the form of violence. The concern of the j argon, which always insists on havin g a concern, is to equ ate essence-"authenticity" -with the most bru­ tal fact of all. Nevertheless this repeti tion compulsion betrays a f ailure : the violent mind's incapability of capturing what i t should think about if i t wanted to remain min d . Violence inheres i n the nucleus o f Heidegger's philosophy , as it does in the form of his l angu age . That violence lies in the constella tion into which his philosophy moves self-preservation and death. The self-preserving principle threatens its subjects with death , as an ultima ratio, a final reason ; and when this death is u sed as the very essence of that principle it 133

means the theodicy of death . By no means in a simply untrue way. As Hegel sees it, the e go of idealism, which posits itself absolutely, and insists entirely on itself, turns into its own negation and resembles death : Therefore the only work and task of general freedom is death . It is de ath which has no inner ambience and ful­ fillment since it negates the unfulfilled cen ter of

the

self, which is absolutely free. Thus it is the c oldest and most platitudinous death, which h as no more meaning than the c utting of a head of cabbage , or a drink of water.l11

Hegel, disillusioned by the French Revolution, brou ght up against it all these things, as well as what touched on the violent essence of absolute selfness . For Hei­ degger those themes become not a motive for criti­ cism of selfness but something unavoidable , therefore somethin g which is a commandment. Violence is com­ plicity with death, and not only superficially. There has always been a n atural alliance between the views that everything, even one's self, should come to an end , and that on the other hand one should continue to follow his own limited interest, with a derogatory "What the hell !" Just as particularity, as a law of the whole, fulfills itself in its annihilation , so that blind­ ness which is the subj ective accompa�ment of par­ ticularity has something nihilistic about it, for all its addiction to life . Ever since Spinoza , philosophy has been conscious, in various degrees of clarity, of the Hegel, Werke, Vol . II : Phiinomenologie des G e iste s , [Our translation . This work has been translated into English by J. B . B aillie , The Phenomenology o f Mind ( London and New York , 1 96 1 ) . J III. p . 454.

1 34

identity between self and self-preservation . What as­ serts itself in self-preservation, the ego, is at the s ame time constituted by self-preservation ; its identity c on­ stituted by its nonidentity. This still reverberates in the most extreme idealistic sublimation, the Kantian de­ duction of the categories . There the moments in which the identity of consciousness presents itself, and the unity of the consciousness which puts itself togeth er from those moments, reciprocally condition one an­ other, in opposition to the deductive intention-inso­ far as these and not other moments are absolutely given. The Kantian "I think" is the only abstract ref­ erence point in a process of holdin g out, and not some­ thing self-sufficient in relation to that proces s . To that extent it is already self as self-preservation . Of course Heidegger, in distinction from the abs tract trans cen­ dental unity of Kant, forms his conception of selfness alon g lines related to Husserl's subj ect- a subj ect that, though phenomenologically reduced, appears in the "bracketing",,-of its empirical existence as a full sub­ ject with all its experiences .1l2 But the concre te self­ ness mean t by Heidegger is not to be h ad withou t the empirical , actual subject ; it is no pure possibility of the ontic, but is itself always, at the same time , also ontic . Self is only intelligible in relation to this content, as it were . It is impossible to subtract the ontic and leave the ontolOgical self as a remainder, or to pre serve it as a s tructure of the ontic in general . It is senseless to assert , of somethin g so thinned down , th at it "exists authentically ." To do so, Heidegger dogmatically and I I 2 . Cf. H e idegger, B eing and Time, p p . 1 68, 3 07. Also see above, pp. I I 6 if.

I35

vainly prolongs his conception of existence as some­ thing in opposition to identity; while without a break he continues the tradition of the doctrine of identity, with his implicit definition of the self throu gh its own preservation . Against his intention , certainly, he falls back into the prehistory of subj ectivity, instead of on­ tologically disclosing existence as a primal phenome­ non ; for it is no such thing . But he applies the most in­ wardly tautolOgical relation of self to self-preservation as if it were, in Kantian terms , a synthetic judgment. It is as though self-preservation and selfhood defined themselves qualitatively through their antithesis, death, which i s intertwined with the meaning of self­ preservation. As soon as Heidegger speaks out openly , his cate� gory of Dasein, as in the early period of bourgeoi� thought, is determined by its self-preserving principle , and throu gh the existent's asserting of itself. In his own words : "The primary item in care is the 'ahead-of­ itself,' and this means that in every case Dasein exists for the s ake of itself." 113 He has no desire for this "for the s ake of itself" to be understood naturalistically ; yet the linguistic echo, as one aspect of the matter, can­ not be erased; it cannot be eradicated from Heidegger's category of c are, which according to him ''is that which forms the totality of Dasein's structural whole ." 114 Ac­ cording to his wish "the B eing of the wholeness itself must be conceived as an existential phenomenon of a Dasein which is in each case one's o wn , " 1 1 5 and exI I 3 . Heidegger, B eing and Tim e, p. 279. 1 1 4 . Ibid. I I S . Ibid . , p . 284 .

istential orientation must be won from the p articular Dasein in question . All that gives the ontolo gical key­ position, in the so-called analysis of existence, to self­ preservation . But thereby the same position is also accorded to death. As a limit it not only determines Heidegger's conception of Dasein, but it coincides, in the course of the proj ectin g of that conception , with the principle of abstract selfhood, which withdraws absolutely into itself, persevering in itself . "No one can take away another's dyin g," just as in Kantian idealism no e go can take away another's experiences, his "repre­ sentations ." The platitude gives mineness its exce ssive pathos. But death becomes the core of the self, as soon as it reduces itself completely to itself . Once self has emptied itself of all qu alities , on the grounds that they are accidental-actual, then nothin g is left but to pro­ nounce that doubly pitiful truth, that the self has to die ; for it is already dead . Hence the emphasis of th at sentence, "Death is ." For the ontology of Sein und Zeit, the irreplaceable quality of death turns into the essential character of subj ectivity itself : this fact de­ termines all the other determinations that lead up to the doctrine of au thenticity, which has not only its norm but its ideal in �eath . Death becomes the essen­ tial element in D asein .l16 Once thought recurs - as thou gh to its ground-to the absolutely isolated in­ dividuality, then there remains nothing tangible for it except mor t ality ; everythin g else derives only from the world, which for Heidegger, as for the idealists, is I I 6 . Ibid. Cf. also Adolf S ternberger's I 93 2 criticism of B eing and Tim e , in his dissertation Der Verstandene Tod ( Grafenhainich en, I 93 3 ) .

137

secondary. "With death , Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-Bein g." 111 Death be­ comes the representative of God, for whom the Hei­ degger of Sein und Zeit felt himself to be too modem . Furthermore , it would seem to him too blasphemous to consider even the possibility of doing away with de ath ; B eing-unto-death , as an exis tentiale, is explicitly cut off from the possibility of any mere [sic 1 on tic doing away with it. Since death , as the existential horizon of D asein, is considered absolute , it becomes the abs olute in the form of an icon. There is here a regression to the cult of death ; thus the j argon has from the beginnin g gotten along well with military matters . Now, as ear­ lier, that answer is valid which Horkheimer gave to an enthusiastic female devotee of Heide gger's . She said that Heidegger had finally, at least, once again placed men before death ; Horkheimer replied that Ludendorff had taken care of that much better. Death and D asein are identified; death becomes pure identity, as in an eix s tent which can absolutely not h appen to any per­ son other than oneself. The analysis of existence glides quickly over the most immediate and trivial aspect of the relation between death and Dasein, their simple nonidentity; the fact that death destroys Dasein truly negates it. Yet for all that, the analysis of existence does not disengage itself from triviality : "Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of D asein ." 118 Secondary school teachers speak thus in Wedekin d's Spring's Awakening. The characteristica universaHs of 1 I 7 . Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 294. I l B . Ibid., pp. 294 if.

Dasein, as in the Dasein of a mortal, takes the place of what must die . Thus death is manoeuvered into the position of the authentic; Dasein is "distinctive" 119 through the ontological, which it is anyway ; and the analytical judgment becomes the precipitous philo s­ opheme, the empty generality becomes the specific element in the concept-while to death, as "something distinctively impending," 120 a medal of honor is given . Formerly, the cultural-historical experience of the ab­ sence of ontological meanin g inspired the movement of Heidegger's philosophizin g; but now such absence, the blindness of the inescapable, becomes exactly th at which is lacking to Heidegger's theory of death . In that way his thought brings out the hollowness which re­ sounds from the j argon as soon as one knocks on it. Tautology and nihilism bind themselves into a holy alliance . Death is to be experienced only as somethin g meanin gles s . That is alle ged to be the meaning of the experience of death and, since death consti tutes the essence of Dasein, such is also the meaning of Dasein . Hegel's metaphysics , which cannot be brought b ack again, and which had its positive absolute in the totality of negations, is here interiorized to a dimen­ sionless point. In such a construction it is reduced to the Hegelian "fury of disappe arance," 121 to the un­ mediated theodicy of annihilati9'n . Throughout history, identity thinking h as been something deathly, something that devours everything. Identity is always virtually out for totality; the One as II9. 1 20 . 121.

Cf. p . 294.

Ibid., p .

295.

Hegel, Werke, II , 453 .

139

the indeterminate point, and the All-One -equally in­ determinate, because it h as no determination outside of itself-are themselves one . In Heide gger, as in ide alism, th at which tolerates nothing beyond itself is understood to be the whole . The least trace which went beyond such identity would be as unbearable as anyone who insists on his own individuality is to the fascist-no matter in what remote corner of the world . Therefore, not after all does Heidegger's ontology aspire to exclude every kind of facticity . Facticity would give the lie to the identity principle, would not be of the nature of the concept, which for the sake of its omnipo tence would like precisely to gloss over the fact that it is a concept; dictators imprison those who call them dictators . Nevertheless, that identity, which strictly would be identical with nothing more than with itself, annihilates itself. If it no longer goes forth to an other, and if it is no longer an identity of something, then, as Hegel s aw, it is nothing at al . Thus totality is also the moving principle of Heide gger's observa­ tions about death . They apply to wholeness, as that which is constitutively preestablished over its parts ;122 that wholeness which Heidegger's predecessor Scheler had already transplanted into metaphysics from a Gestalt psychology which was at first rather unpre­ tentious . In prefascist Germany, wholeness was the motto of all the zealots who were opposed to the nine­ teenth century, which they looked on summ arily as old­ fashioned and done away with . The attack was par1 22. Occasionally Heide gger refers condes cendingly to the concept of totality in o ther writers, but does so only to prove the superiority of his own concept.

ticularly directed against psychoanalysis ; it s tood for enlightenment in general. In those years , around the time of the firs t publication of Sein und Zeit, the doc­ trine of the precedence of the whole over its p arts was the delight of all apologetic thinking-just as today it delights the adepts of the j argon. Heide gger directly and openly repeated that view of the then current hab­ its of thought. That the task of philosophy is to sketch out the whole was for Heidegger as much an article of faith as the duty of system-making once was to the idealist : Thus arises the task of putting D asein as a whole into our fore-havin g . This signifies , however , that we

mus t firs t of all raise the question of this e nti ty s po­ '

tentiality-for-B eing-a-whole . As long as Dasein is , there

is in every case something still outstandin g, which D asein can be and will be. But to th at which is th us outs t an din g the "end" i tself belon gs. The "end" of ,

B ein g-in- the-world is death . This e n d , which belo n gs to the potentiality-for-Bein g-that is to s ay , to exis tence ­ limits and de termines in every case wha tever to t ality is po ssible for D asein . 123

The thought model for this was in particular the "good Gestalt" of Gestalt theory : a forerunner of th at under­ standin g agreement between inner and ou ter that is to be destroyed by "consciousness as fate ." In its turn the conception bears with it the marks of the same scientific division of labor against which its own anti­ mechanistic attitude polemicizes . In that attitude the inwardness of individuals remains intact, without re­ gard to society . Whether a rounded unity exists be1 2 3 . Heidegger, B eing and Time, p. 276.

tween subj ect and the surrounding world would be said to depend on the subj ect. It could only be whole­ ness insofar as it sets itself in opposition to reality, nonrefiectingly. Therefore, accommodation, social compliance is the goal even of a cate gory like th at of wholeness , which appears to be so anthropological or existenti al . An a priori partisanship toward the subject as such is exercised by the j argon in the name of man . Throu gh this partisanship, attention is re­ moved from the question of whether reality, with which men must be unmediately at one in order even to become wholes themselves, of whether this re ality deserves bein g at one with ; of whether in the end this reality, as heteronomous, does not deny them whole­ ness ; of whether the wholeness ideal does not in fact contribute to their oppression and to the progressive atomization of those who are without power. As an ex­ pression of the whole situation the atomization of man is also the truth ; the point would be to change the truth along with this situation, and not, within this situation, to wrest the truth away, and to charge i t up to the for­ getfulness of being, to the forgetfulness of those who recognize the truth . Heide gger felt a slight discomfort about an optimism th at was secretly proud of having proven God in the laboratory ; proud of h aving done so by the discovery of the Gestalt which is s tructured prior to all thinking preparation . But Heidegger's discom­ fort hid itself away in the rhetorical, and involuntarily comic, question of whether in view of death we can speak of wholeness. The thesis about immediately pre­ discovered , objective structuredness c ame just at the time when he needed it. With the help of a m akeshift ,

thought con s truction , he bro u gh t to gether the obli ga­ tion toward wh oleness- accep ted without question­ an d

th e experi e nc e of our literally discon tinuou s lif e . an experience n e e d e d by th e expression of in­ c orrup tible earnestness . This is precisely the broken­

T h i s was ness

of exis tence,

he

s ay s -following

a He gelian

schema which , alas , h e stuck together almo s t mechan­ ically . Presumably, death would make this brokennes s

into a whole . Fini tude, the infirmity o f exi s tence, would enclo se it as its very principle . Since negativity,

for all the brow-wrinkling, i s taboo , Heidegger thinks past his goal . If philosophy could define the s tructure of Dasein at al, i t would become for her two things at once : broken and whole , identical with itself and not identical-and th at would of cours e drive one on to a d iale c tic which broke thro u gh the pr oje ct ed o nt ol o gy of D a s ein But in Heidegger, thanks to th at d oc tri ne, it becomes mor e e vident than anywhere else that the negative, as the essence , simply and un di alec ti cally turns into the p o si ti ve He ch anneled in to philosophy the scientific ally and psycholo gically circumscribed d o c trine of wholeness ; the antithesis between the dis­ persed existent and Eleatically h armonic bein g i s si­ lently totted up to the debit of mechanis tic thin king the primal scapegoat here bein g Aristotle . That thi s thought should be "overcome"-as one of the most sus­ pect e xpres si on s tireles sly continues to proclaim -was not for a moment doub ted even by Hei de gger ; such an .

.

­

attitude created, for him , th e double halo of the m odern and the s upra t empor al .

The irrationalistic lackey­ of the twe nti e s pra t tle d on about b o dy s ou l unity." The connection of existent elements to their

language

"

-

143

whole is supposed to be the meaning of people in real life-as it is in art ; in the fashion of the jugendstil, con solation is spread aesthetically over the h arsh em­ piric al world . To be sure, Heidegger's analysis of death carefully contents itself with applyin g the wholeness cate gory to that of D asein , ins tead of to individuals . The borrowing from the psychological theory of whole­ ness pays off after all . Its grammatical character is the renunciation of any causal argumentation , a re­ nunciation which removes the alleged wholenesses from n ature, and transfers them to the transcendence of B eing. For this transcendence is re ally none at all ; it does not, in the Kanti an way, go beyond the pos­ sibility of experience, but rather behaves as though ex­ perience is itself unmediated, incontrovertible, aware of itself as if it were face to face with itself. A fictive bodily contact with phenomena aids this anti-in tel­ lectualism . The pride in controlling phenomena in their undisfigured state b ases itself inexplicitly on a certain judgmental claim : that the world is divided up into thingly pieces through an unraveling thought-process , not throu gh the structure of society. Still-in accord with the then reigning !ules of the trade of philosophy -there is some talk of analysis ; but this trade would already prefer to do no more analyzing. The central chapter of Sein und Zeit treats "Da­ sein's possibility of B eing-a-whole, and Being-towards­ Death ." 124 The question is raised-merely in a rhetor­ ical fashion, as we can see at once-"whether this entity, as something existfng, can ever become acces1 2 4 . Ibid . , p . 278.

1 44

sible in its B eing-a-whole ." 12 5 It is obvious that a "pos­ sibility of this entity's Being-a-whole" 126 could contr a­ dict the self-preservation which has been ontolo gi ze d into "care." H eide gger does not linger over the fact th at, in his on t ol o gical de termination of care as "that which forms the totali ty of Dasein's structural whole," 127 wholeness was already stipulated, throu gh the transposition of the individual existent into D a­ sein -a wholeness which he then fussily proceed s to uncover. We can anticip ate, as imm a nen t in Hei­ de gger, what he later announces with so m uch aplomb : th at the fact of mortality does not a priori exclude the possibility th at m an s life should round itself out to a whole, as in the Biblical and epic conception . Hei­ degger may have been forced to the effort to gr o und existential wholeness by the undeniable fact that the life of individuals today does without wholenes s . 128 Wholeness is supposed to survive despite historical experience . For this purpose the whole-bein g of the eixstent, toward which Heidegger's theory is headin g - and out of which "concern" emerges in the j argon­ the whole-being is distin guished , in the approved man­ ner, from the merely cumulatively existent, "for which anything is still outstandin g ." 129 The latter is s aid to have "the s ame kind of B eing as those which are ready­ to-hand" ; 130 to it is contrasted the totality raised into '

125. 126. 1 27 . 128. 1 29 . 1 30.

Ibid ., p . 279. Ibid. Ibid.

Cf. the introduction to Benj amin , Schriften I, p. xxii . Heidegger, B eing and Time, p. 2 8 6 . Ibid.

145

an existential wholeness apart from the empirically individual life.

The togetherness of an entity of the kind which D asein is "in running its course" until that "course" has been complete d , is not constituted by a "continuing" piec­ ing-on of entities which , somehow and somewhere , are ready-to-h and already in their own right. That Dasein should be together only when its "not-ye t" has been filled up i s so far from the case that it is precisely then

that D asein is no longer. Any D asein always exists in

j u s t such a manner that its "not-yet" belongs to it . l3l

That only applies to the extent that mortality is already thought toge ther with the concept of Dasein­ to the extent, that is, that Heide gger's philosophy is presupposed. For the ontologist, whole-being cannot be the unity of the whole content of real life but, qualita­ tively , mus t be a third thin g; and thus unity will not be sought in life as something h armonious , articulated, and continuous in itself, but will be s ou ght at th at point which delimits life and annihilates it, along with its wholeness . As a nonexisten t , or at least as an ex­ istent sui generis, outside life, this point is once again ontological. "But this lack-of-togetherness which be­ lon gs to such a mode of togetherness-this being­ missing as still-outstanding-cannot by any means de­ fine ontolo gically that 'not-yet' which belongs to Dasein as its possible death. Dasein does not have all the kind of Being of something ready-to-hand-within-the world." 132 Removed from facticity, death becomes the ontological foundation of totality. Thus it becomes a 1 3 1 . Ibid., p. 287 · I 3 2 . Ibid., p p . 2 8 6 ff.

meaning-gIVIng element in the midst of that frag­ mentation which, according to ontological topography, characterizes the atomized consciousness of the late industrial age. This is done according to a h abit of thinking, unquestioned by Heidegger, which imme­ diately equates a structural whole with its own mean­ ing-even if it were the negation of all meaning. Thu s death , the negation o f Dasein, i s decisively fitted out with the characteristics of Being.133 Insofar as death is the ontological constituent of Dasein, death alone can give existence the dignity of totality : "death as the end of Dasein, is Dasein's ownmost possibi lity-non-re la­ tional, certain and as such in de fini te not to be out­ stripped." 131 Th u s Heidegger gives a ne gative answer ,

to his own starting question ; the question which i s only posed i n order t o be refuted : So if one has given an on tologic ally inappropriate Inter­ pretation of Dasein's "no t-yet" as some thing s till out­ s tanding, any formal inference from this to D asein's lack of totality will not be correc t. The phenomenon of

the "not-yet" has been taken over from the "a h ead-of­ itself'; no more than the care-structure in general, can it serve as a higher court which would rule against the possibility of cm existent B eing-a-whole; indeed this "ahead-of-itself" is what first of all makes such a Being­ towards-the-end possible . The problem of the possible Being-a-whole of that entity which each of us is, is a

correct one if care , as Dasein's basic state , is "con­ nected" with de a th the u ttennost possibility for that -

en ti ty ." 135 I 3 3 . Cf. above pp. I 42 if. I 34. Heidegger, B eing and Time, p . 3 03 . I 3 5. Ibid.

1 47

Ontologically, existence becomes a totality by means of death, which disrupts Dasein ontically. Death, how­ ever, is authentic because it is removed from the They, which in turn is justified by the fact that there cannot be a proxy in death . Heidegger criticiz e s all thinkable real attitudes toward death as m anifestations of the They. For, according to his own verdict, only the They speak of "death as a regularly occurring state of af­ fairs." 136 Thus he singles out his authentic death as something that is extremely real and at the s ame time beyond all facticity. Since there cannot be a proxy in death it becomes as unconceptu al as the pure Diesda ( haecceitas ) . Its concept would precede it and would become its representative, as is the case in the relation of any concept to that which is its content . In the s ame breath, however, Heidegger slanders facticity, which alone allows him to speak of the impossibility of h av­ in g a proxy in death . The reason for this lies in the fact that death as a general concept designates the death of all and not of each individual one . Death as event, factu al death indeed, is not to be the authentic death . Thus ontological death is not all that terrible . In the publicness with which we are with one an­ o ther in our everyd ay m anner, de ath is "known" as a mishap which is constantly occurring-a "case of d e ath . " S omeone or o ther "dies ," be he neighbo u r or stranger [N iichste oder Fernerstehende l . People who are no acquaint ances of ours are "dying"

daily and

hourly. "De ath" is encountere d as a well-known event occurring within-the-world. As such it rem ains in the in­ conspicuousness characteristic of what is encountered 1 3 6 . Ibid.,

p. 297.

in an everyday fashion. The "they" has alre ady stowed

away .

.

.

an interpre tation for this event . It t alks of

. expressly or else in a way which is mos tly in­ hibited, as if to s ay, "One of these days one will die too, in the end ; b u t right now it has nothing to do with

it . .

u s ." 137

In his e a gerness to distinguish betw een de ath as an event and de ath as some thin g authentic,

Heide gger

does not turn his b ack on sophisms . The an alysis of the phrase "one dies" reve als un­ ambiguously the kind of Being which belongs to e very­ d ay B ein g-towards-death . In such a way of t alkin g, de ath is understood as an indefinite something which , above all , must duly arrive from somewhere or other, but which is proximally not yet present-at-hand for one­ self, and is therefore no thre at. The expression "one dies" s preads abroad the opinion tha t what gets re ached , as it were, by de ath , is the "they . " In D asein's p ublic way of in terpre ting , it is s aid th a t "one die s , " because everyone else an d oneself c an talk himself in to sayin g that "in no c ase is it I myself, " for this "one" is the

"nobody."

1 38

To s ay th at de ath affects the They alre ady pre sup­ pose s, a s

it were,

H eid egge r s hypostasis of the '

ex­

of which is always the They . interpretation neglects and falsifies the truth in that talk, thre adbare as it m ay b e . This tru th is the fact th at de ath is a general determin ation which com­ prehends the alter ego as w ell as one's own . If some­ istentiale s , the d ark side Such an

one say s , "one dies," he includes hims elf euphemis1 37. Ibid. , pp. 296-97 . I 3B . Ibid., p. 297 .

149

tically at best. However, the adjournment of death, criticized by Heidegger, takes place : the one who speaks is actually still allowed to live-otherwise he wouldn't speak. Besides , such argumen tation , set in motion by Heidegger, necessarily takes place in the sphere of nonsense ; and in turn gives the lie to authen­ ticity, which is to crystallize itself in this sphere as if it were the philosopher's stone. If anything fits the They, then it is such a pro and contra. The "occurrence" which "belongs to nobody in particular" 139 and which is not highly valued by Heidegger, definitely belongs to someone, according to the usage of lan guage. It be­ longs to him who dies. Only a solipstistic philosophy could acknowledge an ontological priority to "my" death over and a gainst any other. Even emotionally, someone else's death is easier to experience than one's own. The Schopenhauer of the fourth book of the World as Will and Idea did not miss this fact : In him , too , as in the unthinking anim al, there prevails a sense of security as a perm anent s t ate , a security which sprin gs from the innermost conscious-that man is nature , that he himself is the worl d . Because of this security no m an is notice ably bothered by the thought of a certain and n ever distant death ; but everyone con­ tinues to live as if he were to live etern ally. This goes so far, that one could s ay th at no one actu ally has a living conviction about the certainty of his de ath. Otherwise there could not be such a great difference between his mood and th at of the convicted criminal . E ach man, however, reco gnizes this certainty theoretically and in abs tracto but like any other truth , which is not u s able in

1 3 9 . Ibid.

1 50

practice , puts it aside without taking it into his living consciousness . 1 4 0

For Heidegger the They becomes a cloudy mixture of elements which are merely ideological produ cts of the exch an ge relationship . The mixture contains the idola

fori of condolence speeches and obitu aries , as well as th at humanity which does not identify the other, but identifies itself with the other , breaks through the circle of abstract selfness and reco gnizes the latter in its

mediation .

The

general

condemnation

of

that

sphere, which philosophy dubiou sly enough c alled in­ tersubj ectivity, hopes to overcome reified consciousness

of a primary subj ect that i s supposedly un­ touched by reification . Yet in truth such a s ubject

by means

is as little somethin g immediate and prim ary as is anything else . Heideg ger's key sentences run in the following maner : De ath is D asein's ownmost possibility. B ein g towards this possibility discloses

to D asein its ownmost po­

tentiality-for-Bein g , in which its very Bein g is the issue. Here it c an become m anifes t to D asein that, in this dis tinctive

possibility

of

its

own

self

it

h as

been

wrenched away from the "they . " This means th at in anticip ation any D asein c an have wrenched itself aw ay from the "they" alre ady . 14 1

Death becomes the es sence of the re alm of mortality . This occurs in opposition to the immediate , which is char acterized by the fact th at it is there . De a th thu s 1 40 . Arthur Schopenh auer, Siimtliche Werke i n Biin den, Gro ssherzog Wilhelm Ernst Aus gabe ( Leipzig, Vol . I : Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, p . 376. 1 4 1 . Heidegger, B eing a n d Time, p . 307.

funf

n.d. ) ,

1 5 1

becomes something that is artificially beyond the ex­ isten t . S aved from the They it becomes the l atter's sublime counterpart; it b ecomes the authentic. Au­ thenticity is death . The loneliness of the individu al

in

de ath , the fact th at his "non-relatedness sin gles out D asein unto itself," 1 42 becomes the substratum of self­ n es s . This attitude of total self-sufficiency becomes the extreme confirmation of the self ; it becomes an

Ur­

im age of defiance in s elf-abnegation .As a matter of fact, abstract s elfness in extremis is that grindin g of the tee th which says nothin g b u t

I, I , 1. Thu s it is

characterized by the s ame nothin gnes s th at the self becomes in death . But Heidegger's language blows up this negative element into that which is substantial . This , then, is the content from which was taken the s tenciled model for the formal procedure of the j argon . Involuntarily, Heidegger's doctrine becomes an exe ge­ sis of the futile j oke : Only death is free and th at costs your life . He is smitten with de ath as th at which i s supposed t o b e absolutely removed from the univers al exch ange rel ationship . Yet he does not realize th at h e rem ains cau gh t up i n the s ame fatal cycle as the ex­ change relationship which he sublimates into the They . Insofar as death is absolu tely alien to the s ubj ect, it i s the model o f all reification . Only ideology praises it a s a cure for exchange . This ideology deb ases exchange into the more despairin g form of eternity, ins tead of gettin g rid of proper exchange by lettin g it fulfil its elf properly . For Heideg ger , Dasein is not sufficiently able to j u s tify itself, becau s e of its sh ameful historical form . 1 42 . Ibid.

1 52

It redeems itself only in its destruction, which i t itself is to be. The highest m axim of such an attitude results in saying that "it is so," th at one has to obe y or, in positivistic terms, that one has to adapt oneself. This is the pathetic commandment that he must obey that which is . It is not even re ally obeying, for in any c ase D asein does not have a choice. Precisely for this rea­ son death is so ontological in regard to D asein . If one were to call nonideolo gical a kind of thinking which re­ duces ideology to the zero limit, then one would h ave to say that Heide gger's thinking is n on id eol ogical But his operation once again becomes ideology because of his claim that he recovers the m e ani n g of Dasein. This ha ppens after the fashion of today's talk about the loss of ideol o gy-talk which tr a m ple s down ide ol og y but would like to trample down the tr u th By sayin g "the 'they' does no t permit us the courage in the face of death," 143 Heidegger actually lays b are certain elements of ideolo gy, such as the a tte m p t to integrate death into just that societal immanence which has no power over death . A similar development c an be seen in Ev elyn Waugh's parody The Loved One . Some of Heide gger's formulas come very close to the mechanism of subl ima tin g de ath . "Bu t temptation , tranquillization , and alienation are distin guishing marks of the kind of Being called 'falling : As fa lli n g everyday B ein g-towards-de ath is a c on stan t fleeing in the face of death." 14l Alienation, however, d e S ign a t es a social relationship, even if it is the relationship t o death . Man and the institutions of piety r e pro d uce -

.

.

,

1 4 3 . Ibid . , p. 2 98 . 1 44 . Ibid.

1 53

commercially the unconscious will to forget what one

to fe ar. Fundamental ontolo gy and its nomencla­ ture are not necessary for insights like the following :

has

In this manner the "they" provides a constant tranquil­ lization about death . At bottom, however, this is a tran­

quilation not only for him who is "dying" but j u s t as much for those who "console" him .

And even in the c ase

of a demise , the public is still not to h ave its own tran­ quillity upset by such an event, or be disturbed in the c arefreeness with which it concerns itself. Indeed the dying of Others is seen often enough as a social in­ convenience,

if

not

even

a downright

tactlessness,

against which the public is to be guarded.145

In the same m anner Ibsen's assessor Brack alre ady

about Hedda G abler's suicide , "One doesn't do that sort of thin g." Heidegger, who doe s not want to h ave anything to do with psychology, h as seen concluded,

through the re actionary n ature of the integration of death . He h as himself done

this in a psycholO gical

f ashion . The message is coded in Sein und Zeit: But in thus faling and fleeing in the face of death, Dasein's everydayness attests that the very "they" itself already h as the definite character of B eing-towards­ death, even when it is not explicitly engaged in "think­ ing about death." Even in average everydayness, this ownmost potentiality-for-Being which is non-relational and not to be outstripped, is constantly an issue for Dasein . This is the c ase when its concern is merely in the mode of an untroubled indifference towards the uttermost possibility of existence.14S

145. Ibid. , pp. 298 1£. 1 46 . Ibid. , pp. 298 99 .

1 54

In spite of that, he does not go far enough . Heidegger cannot m ake us feel and respect the despair embodied in that cramped ''Enjoy life" and in th at s tupid com­ monplace, "One will die s ometime, but not quite yet" 147_ a commonplace which he rightly despise s . The commonplace represses our despair. The protesta­ tion against the sublimating of death would h ave its place in a criticism of liberal ideology. That criticism would proceed to remind us of the naturalness which is denied by culture . For in domination culture itself propagates this naturalness . It does it by means of th at which mistakes itself for the antithesis to n ature. Instead of this, Heidegger does the s ame thin g a s fascism ; he defends the more brutal form of Being, negative as it m ay b e . I t is possible to think of a social state in which men would no longer have to sublimate death and migh t be able to experience it in another form than fear. To experience death in fear is a mark of the crude natural state that Heidegger's doctrine has eternalized in supranaturalistic terms. Death is sub­ limated because of a blinded drive for self-preservation ; its terror is part of the sublimation . In a life that is no longer disfigured, that no longer prohibits, in a life that would no longer cheat men out of their dues-in such a life men would probably no longer h ave to hope, in vain, that this life would after all give them what it had so far refused. For the s ame reason they would not h ave to fear so greatly that they would lose this life, no matter how deeply this fear had been ingrained in them. From the fact that men sublimate de ath, one 1 47 .

Ibid" p . 299 ,

I SS

c annot conclude th at death is itself the au thentic .

in a position to do thi s , as he is careful not to attribu te au then ti ci ty to people who Heidegger is le ast of all do not sublimate death. By means of a kind of

philosophical Freudian slip

,

Heide gger himself defines the ontolo gizing of death insofar as de ath, in

its certainty, is qualitatively su­

perior to other phenomena. 'We h ave alre ady charac­ terize d the everyday state-of-mind

which consists in

an air of superiority with regard to the certain 'fact' of death-a

superiority which is 'anxiously' concerned In this state-of­

while seemin gly free from anx i ety

.

mind, everydaynes s acknowled ges a 'higher' certainty than one

which is only empiri c al . 148 The "higher ," in "

spite of the quotation marks , has the proving force of a confession : theory s anctions death. The

partisan of

authenticity commits the s ame sin of which he accuses the minores gentes, the le s ser people , of the They . By

authenticity of death as he flees from i t . th an mere em­ pirical certainty, in this at ti tude , falsely cle anses death

m e an s of the

Whatever announces itself a s "hi gher"

from its misery and s tench -from being an anim alistic

kicking of the bucket. This cl eansin g occurs in the s ame m anner as a Wagnerian love- or salvation-death . Al thi s i s similar t o the integration o f de ath into hy giene, of which Heidegger accuses the inauthenti c . By m e an s of th at

which is kept silent i n t h e high an accomplice

stylization of death , Heide gger becomes

of what is horrible in death . Even in the cynical m a­ terialism of the dissection room, this horriblenes s is 148. Ibid., p. 302.

recognized more hones tly and denounced m ore stron gly than in the tirades of on tolo gy . The latter's kern el is nothin g but the supraempiric al certain ty tha t d e a th is something th at h a s been existentially preord ained to D asein . Purity untouched by experien ce plays over into that which it once was unmetaphoric ally : puri ty untouched by dirt. B u t by no understanding c an de ath be s aid to be pure . Neither is it anythin g apodictic . Otherwise, all the s alvation promises of reli gion would simply be forgetful of Being . However, they are by no means needed. Some lower or ganism s do not die in the s ame sense as the higher , individu ated one s . Thus , in light of our p otential , and growing, control over organic processes, we c annot do away a for tiori with the thou ght that d e ath might be eliminate d . Su ch an elimination of death m ay be hi ghly improb able ; ye t it can be thought of, and accordin g to exis ten ti al ontol­ ogy that sh ould be impo ssible . The affirmation of the ontological di gnity of death , however , is alre ady re­ duced to nothin g b y the pos sibility th at somethin g c an ch ange it ontically- accordin g to

Heide g ger's lan­

gu age. Insofar as Heide gger cuts off the se hopes at wh at inqui sitors probably c all the root, the au then tic one spe aks for all -for all those who j oin , as soon as they hear

of this p o ssibility, in the refr ain that nothin g

would be worse th an the disappearance of death . I t seems legitim ate t o assume that those are th e adepts of the j ar gon . The e a gerness toward the eternity of death prolon gs the continuing u se of de ath as a threa t . On a political level death advertises the necessity of wars . Kant, who

subsumed immortality under th e

Ideas, did not let himself fall to those depths in which 1 57

nothing else flourishes but the affirmation of what is a ll too familiar . If Heide gger had made the transition from the inorganic to the org anic the existential hori­ zon of death would have been thorou ghly ch an ged . His philosophy, and everythin g that floats with it, down to the last sewers of German faith unto b ei ng could no­ where be more vulnerable than in this transition . That understanding with the existent which motivates the elevation of the existent to being thrives on the com­ plicity with death . In the metaphysics of death there comes to a head all that evil to which bourgeoi s society has physically condemned itself, by m e an s of its own process of development. The doctrine of anticipation, which is the authentic Being unto death, the "pOSSibility of taking the whole of Dasein, in advance . . . in an existentiell manner; that is to s ay, it includes the possibility of existing as a whole potentiality-for-Being," 149 underhandedly be­ comes a mode of behavior. Thus it becomes what Being-unto-death did not want to be and yet has to be if anything more than a tautology is thereby to be ut­ tered. Although nothing is said about the difference of this mode of behavior from the fact that one has to die, this behavior is expec te d to acquire dignity by ac­ cepting such a necessity speechlessly and without re­ flection. ,

,

Anticipation ,

however,

unlike

in authentic

B eing-to­

not to be outstripped ; instead , anticipation frees itself for

wards-de ath , does not evade the fact that de ath is

accepting this. When, by anticipation, one becomes free

149. Ibid., p. 309.

fOT one's own death , one is liberate d from one's lostne s s in those possibilities which m a y accidentally thru s t themselves upon one ; a n d one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentic ally understand and choose among the fac tic al possibilities lying ahead of that possibility which is not to be outstripped. Antici­ p a tion discloses to existence that its u ttermost possibil­ ity lies in giving itself up, and thus it shatters all one's tenaciousness to whatever existence one has reached. 150

Only rarely do Heidegger's words contain as much truth as these last ones . Man's thinking about himself as nature would simultaneously mean a critical re­ flection on the principle of self-preservation : the true life would be one that does not insist on "tenaciousness to whatever existence one has reached." In his doc­ trine of death , however, Heide gger extrapolates such a mode of behavior from Dasein, as the positive mean­ ing of Dasein. He affirms self-abnegation as an in­ stance of the self, and he spoils the insight he has gained. Resignation becomes an obstinacy which turns the dissolution of the self into an inflexibly stoic posit­ ing of the self. By means of relentless identification , of the dissolution of the self with the self, self become s the absolute positihg o f the negative principle . Al the categories that Heide gger then uses to explain Being unto death are linked with obstinacy : the pos sibility of death is supposed to be "put up with ." 151 That which should be different from domination and in­ flexibility raises domination to its extreme . The sub­ ject is never so authentic for Heide gger as in th at I SO. Ibid. 1 5 1 . Ibid . , p. 305 .

1 59

holding out in which it endures an extreme of pain, followin g the example of the ego . Even the elements with which he contrasts the stiffenin g of the self carry linguistic traces of the domination of the self : he calls it a "breaking." 152 In the same way th at Dasein-subject is actu ally identified with death , Being-unto-death be­ comes subj ect, pure will. Ontological decisiveness m u s t not ask what it dies for. The last word i s spoken b y a selfness that remains unmoved. "This dis tinctive and authentic disclosedness, which is attes ted in Dasein itself by its conscience-this reticent self-projection upon one's ownmost Being-guilty, in which one

is

we call 'resoluteness.' '' 153 The real ideological life would be this : the courage to be afraid only when this courage would no longer have to dis­ sipate into all that which has to be feared . The j argon o f authenticity is ideology a s lan guage, without any consideration of specific content. It asserts meaning with the gesture of that dignity by which Heidegger would like to dress up death . Dignity, too , is of an idealistic nature . There was a time when the subject thought itself a small divinity, as well as a lawgiving authority, sovereign in the consciousness of its own freedom. Such motifs have been extirpated from the dignity of the Heideggerian tone : ready for a n xi e ty

In

wh at

-

other way, how ev er

,

could a humanity ever

find the way to the primal form of thanking, if the favor of Being did not grant m an the no b ility of poverty by means of the open pOSSibility of re lati n g to Bein g? For

only that nobility of poverty conceals in it the freedom 1 52 . Ibid. , pp . 3 08-g. 1 5 3 . Ibid., p . 343 .

1 60

of s acrifice which is the treasure of its essence . S acrifice means farewell from the existent on the w ay to the preservation of the favor of B ein g. Nevertheless , s acri­ fice can be prepared in the w o rki n g and effe c tin g [Lei­ stenJ within the exis ten t , yet such action c an never ful­

fil the sacrifice . The fulfillment of sacrifice stems from

the urgency out of which the action of every his toric al man rises-es sential thinkin g , too, is an acti o n - b y means o f which he preserves the achieved D a s e i n for the preservation of the dignity of Being. This urgency is the equ animity which doe s n o t allow itself to be tempte d , in its hidden readiness for the farewell nature of any sacrifice . S acrifice is at home in the essence of the event . In the form of a n event being claims man for t h e truth of Bein g. For this reason s acrifice does not allow for any calculation . C alcul ation always reduces s acrific e to a purpose or purposelessne s s , whether such purpo s e s are set high or low. Such a calculation disfigures the n ature of s acrifice . The desire for purposes dis torts the clarity of the courage for s acrifice , which is m arked by an awe which re adily fears ; and which has taken upon itself to live in the neighborhood of that which is in d e s truc­ tible. 1 5 4

In these sentenc�s dignity certainly plays a role as the dignity of being, and not of men . Yet the solemnity of these sentences differs from the solemnity of secu­ larized burials only through its enthusiasm for irra­ tional s acrifice. Combat pilots may have spoken in exactly this way when they returned from a city just destroyed by bombs and drank champagne to the he alth of those who did not return. Dignity was never any­ thing more than the attitude of self-preservation aspir­ ing to be more than that. The cre ature mimes the cre154.

Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, p. 4 5 . 1 6 1

ator. In dignity a feudal category is mediated which bourgeois society presents posthumously for the legiti­ mation of its hierarchy. Bourgeois society always has had the tendency to swindle-as is clearly shown by delegated officials on festive occasions, when they ap­ pear in all the fastidiousness of prescribed demeanor . Heideg ger's dignity is once a gain the shadow of such a borrowed ideology. The subj ect who founds his dignity at least on the Pyth agorean claim- question able as it may be-th at he is a good citizen of a good country, is replaced . His dignity gives way to that respect which the subj ect can claim by the mere fact th at, like all others, he has to die . In this respect Heideg ger in­ voluntarily proves to be a democrat. Identification with that which is inevitable remains the only consolation of this philosophy of consolation : it is the last identity . The worn-out principle of the self-positing of the ego, which proudly holds out in preserving its life at the cost of the others, is given a higher value by means of the death which extinguishes it. What w as once the portal to eternal life has been closed for Heideggerian philosophy. Inste ad, this philosophy pays homage to the power and dimension of the portal . That which is empty becomes an arcanum: the mystery of being permanently in ecstasy over some numinous thing which is preserved in silence . In the case of taciturn people, it is too often impossible to tell whether-as they would like one to believe-the depth of their in­ wardness shudders at the sight of anything profane, or whether their coldness has as little to say to any­ thing as anything has to say to it. The rest is piety, and in the more humane instance this rest is the helplessly

surging feeling of people who h ave los t someone they love d . In the worst instance it is the convention th at sanctions death by means of the th ou gh t of divine will and divine grace- even after theolo gy h a s pined away .

That is what is being exploited by language, and wh at becomes the schem a of the j argon of au thenticity . It s dign ifie d m annerism is a r e ac tio nary response toward the secul arization of death . Lan gu a ge wants to grasp what is escapin g, withou t believing it or namin g it . Naked death becomes the me aning of such talk- a me a nin g th at otherwise it wo u ld h ave only in some­

thing tr anscenden t . The falseness of giving me anin g , noth in gne ss a s s o me thin g is what cre ate s the lin guisti c ,

mendacity . Thus the ]ugen dstil wan ted to give mean­

ing , out of itself, to a meanin glessly e x p e rie n c e d life , by means of ab str act ne gation . Its chimeri c al manifes to was e n grav ed into Nietzsche's new tablets . Nothing of the kind can any longer be v ol un t arily elicited from l ate b ou r ge o i s Das ein . Th a t i s wh y meanin g is thrown into death . The dramas of the later Ibsen closed with the fr eely committed self-destruction of life th at is c aught up

in the labyrinth of conventions . This self­

destruction was a necess arily violent consequence of the action, as if it were its fulfillment. Yet it was al­ ready close to the purifyin g death of a gnostic crema­ tion . But the dramatic form could not resolve the vain n ature of

such

action .

The

subj ectively consoling

me anin g of self-destruction remained obj ectively with­ out consol ation . The last word is spoken by tragic irony. The we aker the individu al becomes, from a so­ ciet al perspective , the less can h e become calmly aware of his own impotence . He has to puff himself up into

selfness ,

in

the way the futility of this selfness sets

itself up as what is authentic, as Being. There is an involuntary parody of Heidegger, by an author who brought forth, one after another, books with titles like

Encounter with Nothingness and Encounter with Being. But this author cannot be blamed for his parody. It has to be blamed on its model , which thinks itself superior to such depravities . Heidegger , too , only encounters nothingness with a higher propaedeutic of B eing. The Heideggerian tone of voice is indeed proph­ ecied in Schiller's discussion of dignity. Schiller sees it as something seclu ding oneself within oneself, or as a kind of securing . If we have many occ asions to observe the affected grace in the theatre and in the ballroom, there is also often occasion for studying the afected dignity in the cabinet of ministers and in the s tudy-rooms of men of science ( notably at universities ) . True dignity is content to prevent the domination of the affections , to keep the ins tinct within just limits , but there only where it pre­ tends to be master in the involuntary movements ; false dignity regulates with an iron sceptre even the voluntary movements , it oppresses the moral movements , which were s acred to true dignity, as well as the sensual move­ ments , and destroys all the mimic play of the features by which the soul gleams forth upon the face. It arm s itself not only against rebel nature , but against sub­ missive nature, and ridiculously seeks its greatness in subj ectin g nature to its yoke , or, if this does not suc­ ceed, in hiding it. As if it had vowed hatred to all that

is called nature , it swathes the body in long, heavy­ plaited garments , which hide the human structure ; it p aralyses the limbs in surchargin g them with vain orna­ ments , and goes even the length of cutting the hair to replace this gift of nature by an artificial

pro duction.

True dignity does not blush for n ature, but only for brute n ature ; it always h as an open and frank air ; feel­ ing gleams in its look ; calm and serenity of mind is legi­

ble upon the brow in eloquen t traits. F alse gravity, on the contrary, places its dignity in the line s of its visage ;

i t i s close, mysterious, and guards its fe atures with the care of an ac tor ; al the muscles of the face are tor­ mented, al n atural and true expression disappears , and the entire man is like a sealed letter. But false dignity is not always wrong to keep the

mimic play of its fe atures under sharp discipline , be­ c ause it might betray more than would be de sired , a precaution true dignity h as n o t to consider. True dignity wishes only to rule , not to conceal nature ; in false dignity , on the contrary, nature rules the m ore p ower­ fully within because it is con trolled outwardly. 1 55

The Kan tian, who believed in his m aster's dis j unction between price and dignity , could still see this a s s ome­ thing to be desired . B ecause of th at, howe ver , the gre a t writer fell short o f the full insigh t to which he came close . Thi s is the insight th a t dignity con t ain s the f orm of its decadence within itself . The fact c an be observed when intellectuals become accomplices of th a t p ower which they don't h ave

and which they should resist. The Kan ti an di gnity fin ally disintegrate s into th e j ar­ gon of authenticity. Wi th it goes that hum anity which has its b asic nature not in self-reflection but in its dif­ ference from a suppressed anim ality . 1 5 5 . Friedrich von S chiller, Siim tliche Werke ( Stuttgart, 1 8 1 8 ) , "tiber Anmut und Wiirde," Vo l VII I, pt. I, pp. 96 f. [English edition edited by N. H . Dole , The Works of Schiller ( B oston, 1 902 ) , "On Grace and Dignity," pp. 2 3 1 if . ] .