The Dark Side of ChurchState Separation: The French Revolution, Nazi Germany, and International Communism by Stephen Strehle

Author:Stephen Strehle [Strehle, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Political Science, American Government, History, General
ISBN: 9781412852715
Google: GSdbAQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17845922
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

For Nietzsche (and Heidegger) “the struggle for world domination” is conducted in the “name of fundamental philosophical doctrines.”155 In the Introduction of Metaphysics, Heidegger follows the same general understanding of the Kampf or struggle—this time speaking of the Spirit as a principle of domination, which spurns all appeals to world-reason and mobilizes the power of Being through its resoluteness and decisiveness. Here he disparages the egalitarian principles of American and Russian culture for producing a dreary sameness among the people and destroying “all rank and world-creating impulse of the Spirit.”156 As rector he would go on and use his authority to persecute Americanized professors, such as Adolf Lampe and Eduard Baumgarten, declaring his contempt for the mediocrity of democratic ideals and those who follow its teachings, while expressing loyalty to National Socialism and the decisive measures of the Nazi regime during times of economic hardship.157 Just before the war, he represents the imminent conflict as a struggle to reach beyond the present course of Western culture and its history, or remain mired within the status quo of its mediocre policies, decadent tastes, and bourgeois economics.158 Of course, after hostilities ended, Heidegger’s elitist and authoritarian attitudes draw intense criticism during the denazification process; even Karl Jaspars feels compelled to testify that the “mode of thinking” in his longtime friend is “fundamentally unfree, dictatorial,” and unfit for educating a new generation of students, who are still vulnerable and impressionable in post-Nazi Germany.159

Heidegger extends the will to power beyond the authentic existence of isolated individuals and judges the “rank and law” of an entire people and nation by “their power to command” and secure “absolute dominion.”160 This focus develops a foothold during the zenith of his Nazi involvement in the 1930s and tends to replace the earlier emphasis of Being and Time upon the individual failing to be “one-self” and losing its unique identity in the “they-self.”161 Now the accent falls upon “we-ourselves” finding an authentic existence within the spirit and unity of a nation.162 This new emphasis is found in his rectoral address and continues in his writings and lectures during the period, which speak about the current upsurge of German nationalism with great enthusiasm.163 He speaks of the “new will,” the “new spiritual energies” arising from the Germanic community. He speaks of the historic gathering together of the German people as the “most metaphysical of nations” and finding a total realization of their authentic self through the state.164 He wants this gathering to develop a new type of humanity for world domination,165 although his emphasis lies upon the spirit or metaphysical will of the nation to power, not a special biological breeding program. He can question the official version of Nietzsche, which reads Nazi “biologism” or racial theories into the text, but still remains committed to Germanism in a deeper, spiritual sense. He remains a “metaphysical racist,” as Derrida puts it, ever committed to the ontological elevation of his own people and their tradition.166

He hopes the struggle for National Socialism “will not be drowned by Christian and humanist notions.

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