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

those who are hired for the same affair often thrives
only on mistrust. 45
Here he uses the notion of “distance,” which he
will explain in §27. This sentence corresponds to
the part on the economy in §27, and deals either
with the transition from a pre-capitalist mode of
business to a capitalist business or only with the
latter. As I pointed out in my book, the statement
is in particular in times of high unemployment a
realistic account of the relations between the different
individuals and groups in a capitalist company.
46 In sum, “deficient mode” of solicitude is
Heidegger’s name for liberalism and the modern,
liberal life-world.
Hegel uses the term “negative” (or “exclusive”)
relation for the competitive relations in a
liberal capitalist economy and for all those in
which one treats the other as means. For all those
in which the other is an end for oneself he uses the
term “positive” relation. In guilds, unions, and
institutions of social welfare, in his terminology
corporations, one relates to the other positively
inasmuch as one makes the wellbeing of the other
and the whole corporation one’s own end. According
to Hegel, the need for social welfare
arises out of the shortcomings of the working of a
liberal capitalist economy. 47 Heidegger takes
over Hegel’s vocabulary and just replaces “negative”
with “deficient” because, in this way, he can
immediately indicate that, in his view, liberalism
is a downward plunge. Social welfare is a manifestation
of the first positive mode of solicitude
(“With regard to its positive modes, solicitude
has . . .”). 48 Like Hegel and any social democrat,
Heidegger assumes that a liberal economy creates
the need for social welfare (“For example,
‘welfare work,’as a factical social arrangement ...
Its factical urgency gets its motivation in that
Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the
most part in the deficient modes of solicitude”). 49
In contrast to Hegel and social democrats, however,
Heidegger disapproves of social welfare
(“It can . . . The other is thus thrown out of his
own position ...tobecome one who is dominated
and dependent, even if this domination is a tacit
one and remains hidden from him . . . and takes
away care”). 50 The second positive mode of solicitude
is the opposite of the first, it is practiced by
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authentic Dasein (“determined by the manner in
which their Dasein, each in its own way, has been
taken hold of”), 51 frees the other for his care and
freedom (“frees the Other in his freedom for himself”)
52 and is quite obviously the one through
which one gets out of the downward plunge of
liberalism and social democracy. Heidegger calls
it being “authentically bound together [eigentliche
Verbundenheit].” 53
The deficient mode is deficient in relation to
something else, to the fourth mode of solicitude,
a “Being with [that] understands primordially” 54
and in which the other is disclosed “in concernful
solicitude.” 55 Heidegger uses in this context for
the deficient mode the term “subject”; he evidently
thinks of Husserl’s theory of the Ego and
Theodor Lipps’ theory of empathy, and probably
also of other modern theories of the subject. 56
Since the individuals in the deficient mode of solicitude
cannot rely on the primordial understanding
of the other in the fourth mode of solicitude,
they develop the crutches of empathy to
reach the other. 57 According to Heidegger, the
primordial understanding of the other in the
fourth mode of solicitude is primary, and only on
its basis does empathy function. According to
Heidegger, however, the philosophers promoting
empathy and liberal individuals themselves pervert
this order and even ignore the primordial understanding
of the other in the fourth mode of solicitude.
Rather, they claim that empathy is
primary and makes possible the being to the other
Dasein. They also assume that reflection on oneself
is primary and grounds one’s relations to
other Dasein. By contrast, Heidegger claims that
the latter is primary and the former secondary, if
not superfluous 58 —an instance of Heidegger’s
usage of the first part of the structure of
temporalized metaphysics, the motif of double
forgetting. 59 A corresponding perversion—or the
same perversion—Heidegger obviously finds in
Kant’s ethics. According to the second formulation
of the categorical imperative, one should act
such that one treats humanity in one’s own person
and in the person of any other “always at the
same time as an end, never merely as a means.” 60
By contrast, Heidegger states—without any argument
and without any explanation of the pre-