The totalitarian state was to be the political reflection of the technology which dominates modern society. Run like a machine, it would be suited better to the machine age. The Nazi way of governing (or rather the idealized picture of how it was supposed to govern) was to have overcome metaphysics by, as I said earlier, understanding the essence of Being as existence, rather relying on abstract concepts such as democracy. In understanding technology as not some neutral, ‘objective,’ metaphysical force, but “Being itself as the ‘essence of technology,’ in other words…inscrib[ing] the advent of technology in the destiny of Being, it is thus a ‘political system’ based on the Fuhrerprinzip that is fitted into the destiny where it achieves better than democracy what is required by ‘completed metaphysics.’” (ibid, p. 65)
The abandonment of metaphysics can however also be used to justify Heidegger’s words of November 1933, “Let not principles and ideas rule your being. Today, and in the future, only the Fuhrer is German reality and its law.” Marcuse called this statement (although Heidegger later acknowledged it as an ‘error’) “actually the betrayal of philosophy as such, and everything philosophy stands for.” (H. Marcuse, Critical Theory and the promise of Utopia, Macmillan, 1988, p. 100)
Heidegger’s ‘neutralisation’, as referred to by Marcuse illustrates his naivet? in the field of politics. “Authenticity would then mean the return to oneself, to one’s innermost freedom, and, out of this inwardness, to decide, to determine every phase, every situation, every moment of one’s existence. And what of the very real obstacles to this autonomy?…Here too the methodical ‘neutralization’: the social, empirical context of the decision and of its consequences is ‘bracketed’.” (Marcuse, p. 101)
Heidegger made clear his view that the liberal democracies maintained an inauthentic relationship with technicity (as he was fond of labeling it) in the famous 1966 interview with Der Speigel magazine:
“Do the Americans today have this explicit relationship [with technicity] ?”
“They do not have it either. They are still caught up in a thought that, under the guise of pragmatism, facilitates the technical operation and manipulation [of things] , but at the same time blocks the way to reflection upon the genuine nature of modern technology. At the same time, here and there in the USA attempts are being made to become free from pragmatic – positivist thinking. And who of us would be in a position to decide whether or not one day in Russia or China very old traditions of ‘thought’ may awaken that will help make possible for man a free relationship to the technical world?” (from interview with Speigel magazine, 1966 in T. Sheehan (ed) Heidegger: the man and the thinker, Precedent publishing Inc, Chicago, p. 61)
Heidegger considered his philosophy as utterly consistent with the ideals of Nazism. His interpretation of the time, which links to his notion of the inherent ‘historicity’ of Dasein, that each particularly person finds themselves existing with a particular legacy behind them and must react to that, formed much of the basis of his support for the regime, as did his criticism of modernity which I have concentrated on. His observations are astute and valuable, and may link to the picture of Nazism which was perceived by its supporters at the time. Heidegger’s failing, which to a degree I think relieves him of an element of blame for the actions of the Nazis, was that he did not see Nazism for what it really was. It was not the re – birth of culture or Germany as a nation – their actions in fact destroyed Germany economically, politically an physically wreaked much of its cultural heritage. Nor could Nazism as it was practiced be seen as ‘authentic’ in any way concurrent with the philosophy of Being and Time.
“Political work was thus ultimately built on philosophical ground. Political structures were to be legitimized by the philosophical search for origins. That is why we have related the question of being to the destiny of Europe, where the destiny of the earth is being decided – since our historical existence proves to be the center of Europe itself.” (Heidegger in his rectoral address from Sluga, p. 27)
Was it not true however that the destiny of Europe and the earth was really being decided by guns and military strategy? The Nazis’ apparent authentic relationship to technicity did not help them win a war – a fact which epitomizes Heidegger’s misunderstandings and why his relationship to Nazism, on a philosophical level, was a mistaken one.