Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference Autor: Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Edited by Mireille Calle-Gruber, Translated by Jeff Fort, Foreword by Jean-Luc Nancy, Editorial: Fordham University Press, Fecha de Publicación: 2016, Formato: Hardback $85.00, Páginas: 116, Reviewed by: Facundo Bey (Universidad Nacional de General San Martín / CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Bey, Facundo

Phenomenological Reviews

English

On the evening of February 5, 1988, at the University of Heidelberg, three of the major and mostinfluential figures of the 20th-century philosophy met in Heidelberg before a large audience. Fifty fiveyears before, in the same lecture hall, Martin Heidegger, as Rector of the University of Freiburg, had givena speech that would be part of the firsts steps towards a running sore, “a wound in thought itself” [
c’est une blessure de la pensée
] in Maurice Blanchot’s words[i], a proper caesura, entitled “Das Universität imneue Reich” [The University in the New Reich]. Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg-Gadamer, and PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe, three unquestionable distinguished Heidegger’s interpreters, came together thatFebruary of 1988 for over two days to discuss the philosophical and political implications of MartinHeidegger’s thought and legacy, under a Gadamer’s sign of hospitality: the encounter took place in thecommon linguistic territory of the French language.
 Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference
, edited by Mireille Calle-Gruber, and translated into English by Jeff Effort, collects the fruitfuldialogues between these three thinkers and their exchanges with the audience during this unforgettabledebate officially entitled “Heidegger: Portée philosophique et politique de sa pensée” [Heidegger:Philosophical and Political Dimensions of his Thought]

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[Review] "Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference", Fordham University Press, 2016.

Facundo Bey

Crossref

Heidegger, philosophy and politics

Ningún intérprete antes que Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940-2007) hapenetrado un terreno tan esquivo y delicado como el del texto políticoque subyace en el texto filosófico heideggeriano. El camino que haabierto colaboró en gran medida en la dislocación de la pretendida. literalidad de “lo político” (o, al menos, de lo político en la obra deHeidegger) para desplegar filosóficamente la cuestión del arte y lapoesía de cara a una explicación con y de la política. Detrás de sutrabajo se halla una meditada argumentación (no privada de riesgos)que logró ponerse a salvo del diletantismo que alimenta cualquierreduccionismo proveniente de “tesis” histórico-sociológicas o delanálisis ideológico del discurso heideggeriano. En consonancia conla idea que estructura esta publicación, el presente capítulo dedicarásu atención al vínculo entre filosofía y política. Los términos desdelos que se acometerá esta tarea podrían ser los de la “revisión” y la“reapertura”, pero ninguna de estas palabras expresa del todo bienmi intención: puesto que
lo que será revisado y reabierto no ha sido ni visto ni cerrado de un solo golpe.
Me refiero a la relación entre filosofía,poesía y política en la obra de Martin Heidegger y su –siempre endisputa– actualidad.En este artículo se recuperarán los principales textos de laobra Lacoue-Labarthe sobre el tópico mencionado:  L’imitation desmodernes: Typographies 2  (1986),  La fiction du politique: Heidegger,l’art et la politique (1987),  Heidegger: la politique du poème (2002)y la recientemente publicada Conférence de Heidelberg. Portée philosophique et politique de sa pensée de 1988, en la que el autorcompartió un fructuoso debate con Jacques Derrida y Hans-GeorgGadamer (2014). Esta última revela un décalage, como ha dicho Jean-Luc Nancy (Derrida, Gadamer y Lacoue-Labarthe: 2014, 12), queproviene no solo desde el fondo del problema mismo que plantea larelación entre el pensamiento de Martin Heidegger y su compromisopolítico con el nazismo, sino del movimiento generado por la recienteaparición de los Schwartze Hefte , los Cuadernos negros

Spanish

In memoriam: Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (2007-2017). Filosofía, poesía y política en Martin Heidegger

PhilPapers

22/11/2017 Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Phenom…http://reviews.ophen.org/2017/11/22/jacques-derrida-hans-georg-gadamer-philippe-lacoue-labarthe-heidegger-philosophy-politics-heidelberg-conferenc… 1/6Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer,Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger,Philosophy, and Politics: The HeidelbergConferenceTítulo: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: TheHeidelberg Conference  Autor: Jacques Derrida, HansJacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Editedby Mireille Calle-Gruber, Translated by Jeff Fort,Foreword by Jean-Luc Nancy Georg Gadamer, andPhilippe Lacoue-Labarthe  Editorial: Fordham University Press  Fecha de Publicación: 2016  Formato: Hardback $85.00  Páginas: 116  Reviewed by: Facundo Bey (Universidad Nacional deGeneral San Martín / CONICET-Universidad deBuenos Aires)On the evening of February 5, 1988, at the University of Heidelberg, three of the major and mostinfluential figures of the 20th-century philosophy met in Heidelberg before a large audience. Fifty fiveyears before, in the same lecture hall, Martin Heidegger, as Rector of the University of Freiburg, had givena speech that would be part of the firsts steps towards a running sore, “a wound in thought itself” [c’estune blessure de la pensée] in Maurice Blanchot’s words[i], a proper caesura, entitled “Das Universität imneue Reich” [The University in the New Reich]. Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg-Gadamer, and PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe, three unquestionable distinguished Heidegger’s interpreters, came together thatFebruary of 1988 for over two days to discuss the philosophical and political implications of MartinHeidegger’s thought and legacy, under a Gadamer’s sign of hospitality: the encounter took place in thecommon linguistic territory of the French language. Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The HeidelbergConference, edited by Mireille Calle-Gruber, and translated into English by Jeff Effort, collects the fruitfuldialogues between these three thinkers and their exchanges with the audience during this unforgettabledebate officially entitled “Heidegger: Portée philosophique et politique de sa pensée” [Heidegger:Philosophical and Political Dimensions of his Thought].Days after the conference, once the text of the public debate was ready, Derrida, Gadamer, Lacoue-Labarthe, but also, Calle-Gruber—who was in charge of the presentation—and Reiner Wiehl—president22/11/2017 Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Phenom…http://reviews.ophen.org/2017/11/22/jacques-derrida-hans-georg-gadamer-philippe-lacoue-labarthe-heidegger-philosophy-politics-heidelberg-conferenc… 2/6of the session—, all of them, agreed to defer the publication[ii]. Those were unquiet days: only a yearbefore had been published the “spectacular” book by Víctor Farías, Heidegger et le nazisme[iii] (1987)and, by the time of the Heidelberg Conference—partially motivated by the whirlwind generated by theFarías’ book—the media focus was as never before concentrated on Heidegger’s documented Nazism(which was already known from the 1960s, provided by Guido Schneeberger[iv], as Gadamerremembers[v]). Both Lacoue-Labarthe[vi] and Gadamer[vii], as it is well known, had largely discussedFarías provocative book, and had considered that was written not without recourse to misrepresentationsand malicious omissions. Farías also devoted himself to denounce not only Heidegger Nazism but the so-called “heideggerianism”, especially what he understood as its French decline: Jean Beaufret and JacquesDerrida, both unfairly associated to Robert Faurisson and his revisionist-negationist theories regarding thenon existence of gas chambers in the nazi concentration camps. Thus, the gadamerian decision that theconference be delivered in French, besides representing an act of generosity, acquires a new meaning.Derrida, Gadamer and Lacoue-Labarthe faced in this conference the complexities of the discussion on ashared ground, each resorting to their own considerations while attempting to set up a dialogue (despitethe manifest intention, at least from Derrida and Lacoue-Labarthe, of not giving a full account of theirown most well-known published texts). To begin, Lacoue-Labarthe invoked his thesis on theconfrontation, “the inmense debate”, that Heidegger, after the rectorship at Freiburg, would have startedwith what National Socialism meant in the history of the West, through the calling of art into question andthe deconstruction of Western aesthetics, that is to say, the understanding of the essence of tékhne [viii].One of the central thesis of Lacoue-Labarthe, that is present in his participation in the conference, is thatthe question of art occupies a nodal place in Heidegger’s self-interpretation of the enigma of his ownpolitical commitment, since it would constitute his self-confrontation with National Socialism, hisown Auseinandersetzung subsequent to the experience of the Rectorship. After 1934, Heideggerintroduces poetry and the poet figure as the main references for the reflection on the German identity and,in this way, Nietzsche’s previous dominant influence begins its decline to give way to the new hero:Hölderlin. The terms in which the myth and the tragedy would be thus later understood will not be thoseof the great German mimetic dream of Greece proper to nazi Wagnero-Nietzscheanism, but thoseof Dichtung, Sprache and Sage, which, in turn, overflow the aesthetic determination of the poetic.Gadamer, contributed to the conference with both his irreplaceable reflections and testimonies, but alsoreopening the interrupted conversation started in April 1981 at the Paris Goethe Institute with JacquesDerrida. Therefore, Gadamer’s intervention was focused, on one hand, in its testimony value, maybebecause the questions of the audience had conducted him too much in this way. In this respect, “surprise”and “shock” are the recurrent adjectives he used for describing what was then in 1933 his reaction toHeidegger’s Rectorship chair acceptation, indissociable of the latter’s public nazi commitment, speciallywhen he had seemed to Gadamer politically much closer to National-Bolshevikism[ix] (which, in the eyesof Gadamer, as political Movement, had not a biologicist discourse). The main hypothesis of Gadamer isthat Heidegger really believed for a moment that the nazi revolution was the possibility of a true spiritualrenovation, but once he understood Nazism had become not more than a “decadent revolution”, it was forhim no more his revolution, he felt no responsible at all for anything. And that would explain his greatambiguities: first of all, his silence. But also the responsibility with respect to the great number ofcolleagues and students who followed him in his political decision together with the disturbingcontradiction of writing contemporary on the “forgetting of being”, the predominance of technics and thedevastating consequences of the industrial revolution.[x] On the other hand, Gadamer presented a criticalpoint of view of Heidegger’s path to the “fragmentation of metaphysical conceptualization by means ofthis force he exerted against words”[xi], that involved a similar consideration regarding to Derrida, andthat allowed Gadamer to understand himself closer to Paul Celan and his sense of fragmentation.Derrida, for its part, during the conference superbly questioned Heidegger’s own questionsand avoidances, as well as the meaning of legacy and responsibility. He asserted—by way of animprovised and risky hypothesis, later shared by Lacoue-Labarthe and Gadamer—that Martin Heidegger’ssilence, his unforgivable silence in the face of the barbaric horror of Nazi extermination, is the legacy thathas bequeathed us. In Derrida’s words:22/11/2017 Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Phenom…http://reviews.ophen.org/2017/11/22/jacques-derrida-hans-georg-gadamer-philippe-lacoue-labarthe-heidegger-philosophy-politics-heidelberg-conferenc… 3/6What I am saying here is very risky, and I risk it as a hypothesis, while asking you to accompany mein this risk. […] with a phrase spoken in the direction of an easy consensus, Heidegger woul haveclosed the matter. […] I believe that if he had let himself go for a statement, let’s say, of immediatemoral reaction, or of a declaration of horror, or of non- forgiveness—a declaration that would notitself be a work of thought at the level of all that he had already thought—, well, perhaps we wouldfeel more easily spared the work that we have to do today: because we have to do this work. That iswhat we have inherited.[xii]This hypothesis is, ultimately, the beginning of a response, an answer to the question of responsibility ofthought. On the one hand, improvisation would be a kind of responsibility by means of risking a disarmedspeech.[xiii] On the other hand, to be heir to a legacy supposes always a response, the act of respondingfor not only a call not chosen, but also one that comes before oneself[xiv]. This is the call that Farías bookwanted to mute, the path this book tried to close by doing a “case closed” out of the Heidegger nazicommitment. For this commitment was not in 1988 nor now something someone can put into question.Heidegger’s Nazism is indisputable. But to be heir to a legacy in the sense Derrida expressed it means aresponse to the dogmatic question where Faría’s book seem to lead: “is it posible yet to read Heidegger?”.Somehow, today the 1988 scenario recurs. The publication for the first time of the Heidelberg Conferencein 2014, in its French first edition[xv], concurrent with the beginning of the publication of the SchwartzeHefte in Germany, revealed a “dislocation” [décalage], as Jean-Luc Nancy has said[xvi], which comes notonly from the very root of the problem itself, the relationship between Martin Heidegger and his politicalcommitment with Nazism, but also from the mediatic racket generated by the very publication ofthe Schwartze Heftethemselves.The process, begun in 2014, of the gradual publication of the Schwartze Hefte, which are loaded withresounding anti-Semitic expressions (that occupy a new and important place in the philosophical work ofMartin Heidegger, although are not the only elements of these books), challenges us today to think,demands pronouncements and explanations, in a climate of opportunism, confusion, obscurantism andcontroversy as it was that of the late eighties. Once again, the mass media (but not only the media) raise afalse alternative that may be summarized as it follows: “If he was a great philosopher, then he was not aNazi; if he was a Nazi, then he has not been a great philosopher”[xvii]. Thus, the task would be enormousfor the heirs: none other than the terrifying and valuable mandate to think what Heidegger did not think, tosay what he was not able to say[xviii], namely, the affinities and common roots among his thought, theessence of the West and Nazism; the subject of Nazism by itself; the basis for his National-Socialistengagement.Nowadays, the publication of the Schwartze Hefte came to dispel the silence, but did not liquidate the task.In any case, today there is no way to avoid the inevitable. As Donatella Di Cesare said:Even the stereotype of the philosopher lying in an impolitic conformity seems totally unmotivated.Heidegger was by no means a “conformist” and in the Black Notebooks—as in other works of thethirties—appears a politically radical philosopher. It will therefore be necessary to rewrite the chapter“Heidegger and politics” which promises to be much more complex than what has been assumed sofar[xix].That chapter today is beginning to be rewritten, little by little. To be sure, Donatella Di Cesare and PeterTrawny[xx]—editor of the Schwarze Hefte, published by Klostermann—provide today the mostpenetrating and accurate analysis on Heidegger’s anti-Semitism (although each one from a different pointof view). In particular, in direct relation to one of the main reflections that the publication of theHeidelberg Conference brings up, Di Cesare dedicated half of his Heidegger & Sons. Eredità e futuro diun filosofo (2015) to face the problem of Heidegger’s legacy. Two paths seem to be shaped in the face ofthe intellectual inheritance of the German thinker. On the one hand, “orthodoxy”, which either denies ortrivializes the status of Heidegger’s political statements, reacts with loyal impotence, marginalizing texts,problems, even people. On the other hand, a spectacular parade of pamphleteer whistleblowers sets out tohunt down the “Heideggerians”, suspected subscribers of any action or omission of Heidegger. Of course,22/11/2017 Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Phenom…http://reviews.ophen.org/2017/11/22/jacques-derrida-hans-georg-gadamer-philippe-lacoue-labarthe-heidegger-philosophy-politics-heidelberg-conferenc… 4/6these are false options that take us to just a single alternative: refusing to think. For, as Di Cesare affirms,“an inheritance is never something that can be either fully received or, on the contrary, totallyrefuted”[xxi]. We are heirs, whether we want it or not; that means having to learn to be both faithful andunfaithful[xxii]. Reading Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: the Heidelberg Conference will notdissipate the new questions that the publication of the Schwartze Hefteopened, but may give us both avision of a path that must be understood as well as an understanding of some initial conclusions of threemajor philosophers that should be necessary overcome if we are really willing to confront once again tothe challenges posed by Martin Heidegger’s thought.References:Blanchot, Maurice. “Notre compagne clandestine”, in Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: J.-M. Place,1980).Cohen, Richard A. Face to face with Lévinas (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986).Derrida, Jacques, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics:the Heidelberg Conference (Fordham University Press, 2016).Di Cesare, Donatella. Heidegger e gli ebrei. I «Quaderni neri»(Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2014).Di Cesare, Donatella. Heidegger & sons: eredità e futuro di un filosofo (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri,2015).[i] Cohen, Richard A. Face to face with Lévinas (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986),43. Originally in Blanchot, Maurice, “Notre compagne clandestine”, in Textes pour EmmanuelLevinas (Paris: J.-M. Place, 1980), 81.[ii] Derrida, Jacques, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Philosophy, andPolitics: the Heidelberg Conference (Fordham University Press, 2016), xiii.[iii] Farías, Víctor. Heidegger et le nazisme (Paris: Verdier, 1987).[iv] Schneeberger, Guido. Nachlese zu Heidegger (Bern: Suhr, 1962).[v] Derrida, Jacques, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Philosophy, andPolitics: the Heidelberg Conference, 63.[vi] “Sur le livre de Victor Farias, Heidegger et le nazisme”, in Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. La fiction dupolitique: Heidegger, lart et la politique (París: Christian Bourgois, [1987] 1998), 173-188. The textresumes with some modifications an article appeared in the Journal Littéraire: “Le procès Heidegger”, LeJournal Littéraire, no. 2: 115-117, December 1987-January 1988.[vii] Published originally as “Zurück von Syrakus?”, in Die Heidegger-Kontroverse, ed. Jürg Altwegg(Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988), 176-79; later was published in French in Le Nouvel Observateur,January 22-28, 1988, translated by Geneviève Carcopino. It was also translated into English as “Backfrom Syracuse?,” trans. John McCumber, Critical Inquiry15, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 427-30. The Englishversion of Gadamer’s text was included in the edition here reviewed.22/11/2017 Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Phenom…http://reviews.ophen.org/2017/11/22/jacques-derrida-hans-georg-gadamer-philippe-lacoue-labarthe-heidegger-philosophy-politics-heidelberg-conferenc… 5/6[viii] Derrida, Jacques, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Philosophy, andPolitics: the Heidelberg Conference, 37-38.[ix] Ibid., 64-75.[x] Ibid., 11-12.[xi] Ibid., 41.[xii] Ibid., 35-36.[xiii] Ibid., 16.[xiv] Ibid., 65-68.[xv] Derrida, Jacques, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Mireille Calle-Gruber. Laconférence de Heidelberg, 1988: Heidegger, portée philosophique et politique de sa pensée (Paris: Lignes,2014).[xvi] Derrida, Jacques, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Philosophy, andPolitics: the Heidelberg Conference, vii.[xvii] Di Cesare, Donatella. Heidegger e gli ebrei. I «Quaderni neri» (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2014),3. All Di Cesare’s translations by Facundo Bey.[xviii] Derrida, Jacques, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Philosophy, andPolitics: the Heidelberg Conference, 35.[xix] Di Cesare, Donatella. Heidegger & sons: eredità e futuro di un filosofo (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri,2015), 79.[xx] Trawny, Peter. Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung (Frankfurt: VittorioKlostermann GmbH, 2015).[xxi] Di Cesare, Heidegger & sons, 33.[xxii] Di Cesare, Heidegger & sons, 33-34.PUBLICADO PORFacundo BeyPh. D. Candidate in Philosophy (UNSAM). Political Scientist (UBA). Political Science AdjunctProfessor (USAL). Researcher (CIF, UBA). Scholar (CONICET).22/11/2017 Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Phenom…http://reviews.ophen.org/2017/11/22/jacques-derrida-hans-georg-gadamer-philippe-lacoue-labarthe-heidegger-philosophy-politics-heidelberg-conferenc… 6/6