heidegger's being and time and national socialism - Philosophy ...

had advanced most. He also assumed that Plato
and Aristotle understood philosophy the way he
himself understood it, namely, as a transcendentalist
phenomenology of everydayness. However,
after Aristotle a decline set in. Thus “we”
must repeat the Greeks and, as he says in the famous
lecture course on Plato’s Sophist in winter
1924–25, liberate them “from the tradition . . .
that . . . distorts” them. 154 Hence Heidegger
praises Kant not, as Caputo would have it, because
Kant liberated us from ancient ideas but
precisely because he, as Heidegger said in a lecture
course in summer 1926, “became the first
Greek again, though only for a short time,” 155 for
he returned to transcendental philosophy though
not yet to an analysis of everydayness. Heidegger’s
lecture courses on the history of philosophy
up to the early 1930s are, implicitly or explicitly,
centered on Plato and Aristotle, whose status for
Heidegger is summarized by the following nine
aspects. 156 (1) Plato and Aristotle, as Heidegger
himself does, investigate existentials, phenomena,
and in particular they start with everyday
phenomena. (2) Plato and Aristotle, as Heidegger
himself tries to, investigate the phenomena without
being caught up in the split between subject
and object which is, according to Heidegger,
characteristic of modern philosophy. (3) Plato
and Aristotle, as Heidegger himself does, ground
different phenomena in, or try to reach for, a superstructure—in
Being and Time called care
(Sorge)—that is not caught up in the subject-object
split. (4) Plato and Aristotle, as Heidegger
himself does, approach the phenomena by breaking
through the prejudgments of other philosophers.
(5) Because of features 1–4, Plato and
Aristotle are the most advanced Greek philosophers,
and they are on the right track concerning
the proper interpretation of the phenomena. (6)
Despite features 1–5, however, Plato and Aristotle
don’t manage to fully break through, for
they share with the other Greeks some self-evident
orientations—notably, an interpretation of
speech as something present at hand and the conception
of the being of beings as presence—that
obscure the proper approach to the phenomena.
(7) Heidegger locates the flaw in Plato or Aristotle.
(8) Because of features 6 and 7, Heidegger
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has to go beyond Plato and Aristotle and develop
the proper account of the phenomenon. (9) Since
philosophy after Plato and Aristotle is a
downward plunge, we have to repeat the Greeks,
and this repetition is relevant not only to
philosophy but to the entire current world.
As one sees, in a way this looks like the drama
of historicality for here, too, we have to repeat
something. However, the difference is that destiny
and its call are absent. No one calls upon the
Greeks to discover the truth and no one calls upon
Heidegger to repeat the Greeks. The truth does
not reveal itself, and it does not conceal itself either;
it is simply indifferent toward Dasein’s efforts
to uncover it. Further advanced on this path
one could imagine that, in hindsight, the need of a
return to the Greeks would just be a minor bump
on the road to the full clarity of the sempiternal
existentials and that also the drama of
historicality would somehow have lost its significance.
Yet, Heidegger turned in the opposite direction.
On this path, neither Plato and Aristotle
nor Heidegger himself remained the phenomenological
fundamental ontologists that they had
been, and their ways parted dramatically.
One can well recognize this development with
regard to Heidegger’s three lecture courses on
Plato’s Theatetus and the simile of the cave in the
Republic. In the course in summer 1926, the
drama of historicality is completely absent. 157 In
the lecture course in winter 1931–32, Heidegger
interprets—and this part is probably Heidegger’s
best course on Plato or Aristotle ever—the
Theatetus in terms of existentials. However, this
reading already stands in the shadow of a presentation
of the simile of the cave as the drama of
historicality. 158 Also in the lecture course in winter
1933–34—one year after Hitler’s “seizure of
power”—Heidegger makes clear from the beginning
on that we have to repeat the Greeks. History
after the Greeks is a downward plunge resulting
in Enlightenment and liberalism in which
all the powers against which National Socialism
fights have their roots. Heidegger still talks about
existentials, but they have become marginal. The
simile of the cave shows that, with Plato, truth as
correct statement established itself as the dominant
truth. Authentic truth had been articulated in