Heidegger's Retrieval of Aristotle and the Relation of Volk and Science in the Rector's Address of 1933

Abstract

Heidegger's has drawn perhaps inordinate attention in recent years, particularly as evidence of Heidegger's involvement in National Socialism-which it undoubtedly offers. interpretations of Ott (150-58), Rockmore (54-72), Philipse (268-69), Kochler (205-- 09), and Fritsche (217-24) among others, are typical in the sense that they implicate Heidegger in the totalitarian designs of National Socialism, even if they allow that Heidegger's version of Nazism was not necessarily racist, in fact, unorthodox in its entire tendency. Yet the philosophical grounds of Heidegger's invocation of the fundamental interrelation of Volk, work service, and science in the Address remain insufficiently clarified by these interpretations. In what follows, I propose to show that Heidegger's deconstruction and retrieval of Aristotle, in particular, prepares the way for his understanding of Volk in its relation to the historicity of science, and that, consequently, the Address reflects some of the central theses of Heidegger's thought, and is not merely an opportunistic response to the political situation of 1933. Grounds of Science and The Self-Assertion of the German title of Heidegger's Rector's Address (SU) insists that the University must win back its ground in the unity of knowledge, which can only arise out of our response to the being of beings. In this sense the University asserts itself; its assertion of its political independence, in Humboldt's sense, is not only derivative of a more fundamental self-assertion, but overtaken by the necessity of leading the Volk in submission to the demand of the historicity of Volk (cf. GA 16, No. 155: 301-07). This does not mean that the University, and philosophy, should serve a political agenda, but that both take their measure from the historicity of being. University does not assert itself by following the ideal of value-free science: its self-assertion consists in the overcoming of the separation of science, or theoria, and praxis, for in doing so it affirms the power of being in its presencing. Heidegger's Address responds to the perceived deracination of knowledge from its ground and the consequent transformation of the University. Perhaps the inaugural address of 1929 articulates this problem, which had concerned Heidegger since 1919, most pointedly: scientific fields are quite diverse. ways they treat their objects of inquiry differ fundamentally. Today only the technical organization of universities and faculties consolidates this burgeoning multiplicity of disciplines; the practical establishment of goals by each discipline provides the only meaningful source of unity. Nonetheless. the rootedness of the sciences in their ground has atrophied. (What is MetaphYsics? 104/94) What is at stake is the unity of the sciences in their essential ground. Evidently Heidegger holds that the idea of the University propagated by Humboldt had been so undermined by the increasing primacy of the applied sciences that it can no longer prevent the disintegration of the University into a technical research apparatus. While Humboldt's central theses-the freedom of research and teaching, the unity of teaching and research, the unity of the sciences, and the priority of Bildung over vocational training (Gebert 121)-still tended to determine the terms of the debate regarding the idea of the University and the possibility of university reform, Humboldt's fundamental premise that philosophy could found the fundamental unity of all disciplines no longer seemed tenable (GA 16, No. 155: 294-97; cf. Gebert 122-28). It therefore comes as no surprise that in 1933, Heidegger, along with many others, contemplated the reform of the University, to found its unity anew, and thus to facilitate the return of the sciences to their source (GA 16, No. 155: 292-- 97). As Hans Sluga has shown, Heidegger would briefly ally himself to reformers such as Krieck and Baeumler in his effort to fundamental ly restructure the University. …