On Esoteric Ism - Heidegger and Cassirer at Davos

On Esotericism: Heidegger and/or Cassirer at Davos Author(s): Geoffrey Waite Source: Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 5 (Oct.
, 1998), pp. 603-651 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191766 Accessed: 15/01/2009 05:46
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ON ESOTERICISM Heideggerand/orCassirerat Davos

WAITE GEOFFREY Cornell University
There was a famous discussionbetween Heideggerand ErnstCassirerin Davos which revealed the lostness and emptiness of this remarkablerepresentativeof established academicphilosophyto everyone who had eyes. Cassirerhad been a pupil of Hermann Cohen, the founder of the neo-Kantianschool. Cohen had elaborateda system of philosophy whose center was ethics. Cassirerhad transformed Cohen's system into a new system of philosophy in which ethics had completely disappeared.It had been silently dropped:he had not faced the problem.Heidegger hadfaced the problem. He declaredthatethics is impossible,and his whole being was permeated the awareness by thatthis fact opens up an abyss.... Only a greatthinkercould help us in our plight.But hereis the greattrouble: only greatthinker ourtimeis Heidegger.The only question the in of importance, course,is the questionwhetherHeidegger'steachingis trueor not. But of the very questionis deceptivebecauseit is silent aboutthe questionof competence-of who is competentto judge. -Strauss Heideggerconceals nothing.He does not lie. He says what he really thinks. -Janicaud2 It is importantfor us to understand,above all, the true intentions of our author,to illuminatewhat he thinksreallyneeds to be said, andto surmisewhat is most criticalfor him. -Levinas3
AUTHOR'SNOTE: This is a revised version of a paper read at the conferencePhilosophyof Cultureand SymbolicForms:New Perspectiveson ErnstCassirer; YaleUniversity, October 4-6 1996. 1 thankits organizerCyrusHamlinfor invitingmyparticipationand KarstenHarriesfor his commentator's critique.
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Only once or twice in my thirtyto thirty-fiveyears of teachinghave I ever spokenabout what really mattersto me. -Heidegger4 For a long time I have not said what I believed, nor do I ever believe what I say, and if indeed I do happento tell the truthI hide it among so many lies thatit is hardto find. -Machiavelli5 The 'doctrine'of a thinkeris what is unsaidin his saying, to which man is exposed so that he mightexpend himself for it. -Heidegger6 But for those on the outside everything is in parables;so that they may see but not perceive, and hearing,they may hearbut not understand; they shouldturn,and their lest sins be forgiventhem. -Mark 4:127 "Now do you recognize that I am a philosopher?" "Iwould have, had you remained .... silent." -Boethius8 The same goes for Heidegger:It is necessary to know how to listen to the silences of philosophers.These are always eloquent. -Althusser9
THESCENARIO INTRIGUE OF These nine epigraphs stage an intriguing scenario as the scenario of intrigue: a decisive victory (over academic philosophy) by a postethical humansubjectthatnever (quite)says whatit really meansto say, never uses all its weapons, and yet, at exactly the same time, concealing (almost) nothing,informsits interlocutors with the deceptionthey desireto receive as truth,by saying aloudpreciselywhatit reallythinksin an (almost)undetectable way-in eloquent silence. Which entails our own ethical silence, althoughrarelyso eloquentas within andbetweenthese epigraphs.Extending in Westernthought at least to Plato and to the Jewish-Christian Bible, this constitutive paradox can be named but never fully grasped: the double rhetoric,parabolicspeech, sigetics (the rhetoricof silence), and the noble, holy, or prudentlie. I call it the 'paradoxand paranoia'-the paradoxa and paranous-of exo/esotericism. 'Beside' and 'beyond'but also 'within' the
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so-calledhistoryof consciousnessas its determining absence,exo/esotericism rendersradicallyproblematic abilityto graspthatlong history,assuming our (as we mostly do) thatthis historyconsists of exoteric statementsalone, that philosophersnecessarilymean whatthey say, and thatwhen they do not this is due only to the structural interferenceof the unconscious. As a form of as the manipulation othersubjects'consciousness by surreptitious lying, of means, every form of exo/esotericism nonetheless points-more or less tacitly-to its systemically and systematicallyunstatedpremise, its elusive surplus:truth.But what, then, is truth? normasui, & falsi est,"Spinozasays, articulating constitutive the "Veritas is of tautologyof all secularthought:"[T]ruth the standard itself, and of the false."10 "Truth," Kantsays, is "aprincipleof cognition,indeed,the essential and inseparableconditionof all its perfection"; contrast,"[W]hatmakes by errorpossible ... is illusion, in accordance with which the merelysubjective " is confusedinjudgmentwith the objective."' Suchillusion,for post-Enlightenment Marxism, is a root definition of ideology, by means of which particularinterests are presented-consciously or unconsciously-in concealed formas if they wereuniversallybinding.2 Exactlylike Spinozisttruth, Althusser notes,"[T]he worldof ideologyis its ownprinciple intelligibility."'13 of But this argumententails that everythingis irradicablyideological, both epistemologically and politically. In presecularterms, ideology is God; in that secularterms,we have arrivedat the paradoxandparanoia the only truth As is that ideology is truth.'4 Althusserfurtherargued,coherentand frank Marxismmust admitthatit "cannotconceive thateven a communistsociety could ever do without ideology, be it in ethics, art or 'world outlook.' ,15 "Ideologyhas no outside (for itself), but at the same time. . . is nothingbut outside (for science and reality)."'6Yet, it now appearsthat truthitselfimpossibly-has beenrendered relative;andthemaximumthateitherscience or Marxism then could ever know is to know ideology, and to struggle one accordingly-one ideology pittedagainstanother, 'science' and 'reality' pitted againstanother.In the still tautologicalbut now slyly bellicose terms of Heidegger's political ontology in 1936, "Truth happensonly in the way thatit instaurates itself in the disputeand scope which areopenedup by it."'7 To be sure, in Lacan'sterms,"Themirageof truth,from which only lies can be expected (this is what, in polite language, we call 'resistance'),has no other term than the satisfactionthat marksthe end of analysis."'8 Analysis, an nevertheless,is also said to be interminable, interminable strugglewith no cure-save for the only ethic of "notceding to one's desire":whateverthat desire may be, whereverit may lead us and the world.'9 What,then,aretheepistemologicalandpoliticalstakeshere-inescapably inside 'truthand lie in the extramoralsense'? Epistemologically,we are
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close to a Nietzscheandefinitionof nihilisminsofaras, afterthe precariously alleged 'deathof God,' nihilism"is the statein which a being has the need to call itself continuallyinto question,to raise continuallythe question of the grounds of its existence, without anything being able to count as such In grounds."20 political terms, and concomitantly,we also are precariously close to the self-definition of philosophicallycoherentfascism. Mussolini andotherfascist philosopherspubliclyaverredthatungrounded relativismis fascism's only ground, the conceptual preconditionfor the realization of or into Italianas gerarNietzscheanRangordnung orderof rank(translated The sole thingthatcan decide-ultimately-between comchia: hierarchy). peting ideologies is raw power. For fascism, however, entailed is not any simple, immediatesuppressionof "equality" (I'ugualianza)-for thatcan be is Fascism'sargument, stupidlycounterproductive.2' rather, thatorderof rank on "natural "corrects" inequalities" behalfof thepowerfulwho areequalonly inter pares, who know that the truth is ungroundedand decisionistically arbitrary, who are willing to use any means necessary-including conand trolleddosages of free debate-to maintainthis truthandtheirown power.22 Poised to take state power in 1922, Mussolini boldly announced in his article"Relativismo Fascismo"("RelativismandFascism") e programmatic (1921) that "the philosophy of force" (la filosofia della forza)-on which Fascism is conceptuallyand institutionallygroundedin explicit contrastto Germannational socialist (racist) essentialism-is nothing but relativist.23 For his primaryauthorities,Mussolini drew on Nietzsche himself and on the Nietzscheanandhis "philosophyof HansVaihinger, leadingneo-Kantian the as-if."We knowthatrelativismand fascism are ungrounded systems but we decide to act as if they were grounded,so thatthis very ungroundedness in effect becomes our ground."In truth,we are relativistspar excellence," Mussoliniproclaimed,and"themomentrelativismlinkedup with Nietzsche, and with his Will to Power, was when ItalianFascism became, as it still is, the most magnificentcreationof anindividualanda nationalWillto Power."24 Mussolini also arguedthat Marxist socialism simply cannot grasp the fact thatthereareno eternalverities:God is dead,all is permitted; only the strong decide what truthis; and if and when fascism itself is eventuallycrushedby a superiorforce, as history teaches us happensto all concepts and political movementssooneror later,then so be it. Logicallyrigorousfascist socialism was thus an explicit and publicly announcedcynical, decisionistic, historicistic, andrelativistsolution,via Nietzscheannihilism,of a profoundepistemological and political aporia that extends throughouthistory and has swallowed up the Left. Fascism, like capitalism (whose power fascism is to chooses to harnessby channelingit into corporatism) prepared employ either exotericism or esotericismwheneverthe situationdemands:exoteri-
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cism when it feels unchallenged is exemplifiedby Mussoliniin the 1920s), (as andexo/esotericismthe restof the time, be it conjoinedwith consent(hegemony) or with coercion. By contrast,all liberal apologists for capitalismand most Marxists, feeling equally secure in their Enlightenmenttradition, naively thinkthateverythingis basicallyexotericandthatit is both necessary andsufficientto exposeor critiqueideology for it to be overcome.In this way, it is possible to grasp and combat effectively neither exo/esotericism nor fascism and capitalism. The implicationsof the Nietzscheandefinitionof nihilismareparticularly all encompassingand omnipotentin our 'postideological,'pluralist,cynical, as historicist,and relativistage (institutionally incorporated deconstruction, new historicism, and cultural studies), where it is widely believed that Marxism and communism,and thus the majorhistoricalopposition to the statusquo, have been definitivelydefeatedconceptuallyandpolitically.What Nietzsche called nihilismis todayglobal capitalism,andhis "lastmen"have turned out to be those not of 'actually existing socialism' but of actually existing capitalism. Whetherunderstoodas an economic, social, cultural, ideological, logical, or discursive system, it is the radically ungrounded the capitalist system that has demonstrated supremecapacity-the greatest in humanhistory-to "call itself continuallyinto question,to raise continually the questionof the groundsof its existence, withoutanythingbeing able to countas suchgrounds." Specifically,capitalismcalls itself continuallyinto question by its own self-producedcrises in all forms-maintaining and itself throughthem.Capitalism radicallyungrounded, is perpetuating exactly like fascism, but in this cynicalrelativismlies its very strengthandtruth.The myth of capitalismappearsto be invincible, renewing its strengthfrom all opponentsas long as it touches only ungrounded ground-in contrastto the mythicalAntaeus.To date,no Herculeshas been able to defeatcapitalismas he did Antaeus: by holding him in the air to stranglehim. For capitalism would have to be pushed onto the ground,but there seems to be no ground on which to standto accomplishthis feat. As Marxput it in Capital,"[T]he true limit [or barrier:die wahreSchranke]of capitalistproduction capital is itself."25Disastrouslyreadby evolutionary Marxists'diachronically' guarto antee capitalism'sinevitable demise, Marx's thesis can also be read 'synchronically'to the contrary; namely,"thatit is this very immanentlimit, this 'internalcontradiction,'which drives capitalism into permanentdevelopment."26 think the only, albeit preliminary, I way out of this aporia(i.e., the antinomybetweenabsoluteoptimismandabsolutepessimismwith regardto the possibility of destroyingcapitalism)is impliedin the basic Althusserian thesis thatMarx's Capitaldemonstrates "thatthe time of economic production is a specific time (differingaccordingto the mode of production),but
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also that, as a specific time, it is a complex and nonlineartime-a time of times, a complex time thatcannotbe read in the continuityof the time of life of out or clocks, buthas to be constructed of thepeculiarstructure production. The time of the capitalisteconomic productionthatMarx analyzedmust be And constructedin its concept."27 so must also be constructedin its concept for mode of production it to exist in the firstplace. the time of any alternative In other words (and I will discuss Marxist constructivismpresently), it is obviously possible to read the futureof capitalism(or fascism) either optimistically or pessimistically,or both, but it is also possible to constructat least a concept of economic, political, and discursive opposition to it. The exigent question today remains,however, how any oppositionalsystem of thought,let alone action,can be groundedat a time when thereis a common consensus (often appealingto Nietzsche) thatnothingcan be groundedafter the 'deathof God.' Yet, this God is not in fact dead but (the) unconscious.28 And if capitalismis today at once God, the unconscious,and the truth(i.e., the standardof itself and of any oppositionto itself), then, to be grounded, any alternativeor oppositionalsystem must begin with this truth.Here, we returnto the problem of exo/esotericisminasmuchas it controls when and how truthand lies ever become public in whatevermay remaintoday of the res publica. If the central problem of political theory today is to produce effective opposition to capitalism,and if the only reason to study the past is to find alternativesto the present,then the overall functionof exo/esotericismis to obstructboth tasks. But this obstructionis not primarilyaccomplishedby prohibiting the possibility of opposition and alternatives.Capitalismitself encouragescrises and challengers,even producesthem itself, to ensurethat it remains dynamic. Generally, overt prohibitions are counterproductive insofar as they are easily identifiableand contestableas such. Therefore,I argue, the most effective way of keeping complex systems in power lies neitherin prohibition even in producinghegemonicconsentthrough"the nor diffusionof ideology (through presentation inculcationof culture),"29 the and but ratherin renderingradicalalternativesto appearlogically impossiblein the firstplace, in ourcase in rendering capitalism(the)unconscious-exactly like God, ideology, and absolute truth. Such is the general function of exo/esotericismin secularmodernity. For the tradition thoughtlinkingSpinoza,Kant,Marx,andFreud(even of to Nietzsche, albeit,arguably, radicallyopposedpoliticalends),truthremains the absolutecriterionof falsity, illusion, and ideology. However,unlike that which eventuallyleadsto postlinguisticphilosophical aspectof this tradition hollows its way into the real thanks psychoanalysis(Lacan)-where "[t]ruth to the dimensionof speech.Thereis neithertruenorfalse priorto speech"30-
Marxismhas generallydistinguisheditself fromthis development,as well as from the Nietzschean exo/esotericism that leads to Heidegger and to Leo Strauss,by remainingprelinguistic.Concomitantly, most Marxism(and the remainderof the 'Left') has distinguisheditself by its studieddisinterestin, or simple ignoranceof, the ancienttraditionof exo/esotericism(first openly codified by Machiavelli)whereinfalsity,illusion, andideology areproduced and manipulatedby some subjects consciously so as to be incorporated by others unconsciously.3" The epistemologicaland political costs to Marxism of this disinterestand ignorancehave been enormous,almost irredeemable; and this failure demands rectification. At the same time, Marxism has As remainedlargelyprepsychoanalytic. Althusserput it, "Marxwas unable to go beyond a theoryof social individualityor historicalforms of individuality. There is nothing in Marx that anticipatesFreud's discovery; there is I nothingin Marx that can grounda theory of the psyche."32 would add that this applies more to almost all 'Marxism'than to Marx himself, but in any to case this lacuna,too, has contributed makingit well-nigh impossible for Marxismeven to read the greatexo/esoterictradition-let alone effectively combatingcapitalismphilosophicallyor politically.In my terms, it cannot even read the psyche that is preparedto manipulateother psyches unconsciously by means of eloquentsilence. Truthdoes properlyremainthe precondition any conceptuallycoherent of and politically effective Marxist alternativeto capitalism,just as it does of the philosophy of psychoanalysisin Lacan'svoice: "Truth based only on is the fact thatspeech, even when it consists of lies, appealsto it and gives rise to it."33 while it is impossible to articulate whole truth,"[P]recisely But the because of this impossibility,truthaspiresto the real."34 this aspiration And is whatexo/esotericism,todayin its 'late'or 'postmodernist' capitalistmode, best understandsand most successfully exploits. If exploitationremains a Marxistconcern,Marxistsmust turnto truth.This means they must turnto the unconsciousandto lies, andhence to the problematic exo/esotericism. of And this means that they must grasp not only the position of all opponents but also the debates between them when they embody-consciously or unconsciously-the problematicof exo/esotericmanipulation. In the remainderof this essay, therefore,I turn to one debate that has proven to be especially symptomaticboth of the way capitalist hegemony works and of Marxism's inability to settle accounts with it and with exo/esotericism,andhenceto mountcogentandeffective oppositionto either. This was the public confrontationin 1929 between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer in Davos, Switzerland. I argue that this seminal event, widely thought to end with the triumphof the formerover the latter,means more thanthe triumphof the ideological 'Right'over the 'Left.'For it also means
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over Cassirerian exotericism.To thatHeideggerianexo/esotericismtriumphs date, no Marxist or communist voice has been raised to protest what this alleged 'debate'conceals or to offer an alternativeaccount.
STUDIES FROMDAVOSTO CULTURAL of Whatwe call 'Davos' is actuallythe transcript the second of fourannual in events, beginning in 1928 and terminating 1931 as the geopolitical situworsened.35 mandateof the The ation in Europeand the world dramatically colloquiumseries was to promotewhat its organizerscalled "understanding and cooperationbetweenpeoples [or nations:Volker],especially the French and German"-referring to all the still-festeringtraumasof World War I, future.Other desperately tryingto staunchnew ones loomingin thedarkening speakersbesides Heidegger and Cassirerwere given their chance to speak during the international colloquium held from March 16 to April 6, 1929, theme of "manand generation," underthe umbrella althoughmost of those present thought that the absolute watershedof philosophical history was occurringbefore their eyes: Cassirer incorporatingthe old philosophical regime, Heideggerthe new. And so the otherparticipants struggledas best they could to take the measure of this radical epistemological break. In additionto all his scholarlyacademicwritings,Cassirerhadjust recently,in the autumnof 1928, gone on public political record at the University of Hamburg(where he was soon to be the first Jew in historyto become rector of a German university) by defending the Weimar constitution-widely despised across the ideological spectrum-with what he claimed to be the In authenticallyGermanheritage,exemplifiedby GoetheanWeimar.36 addition to mostly understated allusionsto "theJewish question,"othersigns of the times were evident at Davos: the students organized a workshop on anotherwas held on "TheCurrent Difficult Problemof War but "Marxism," and A Propaganda NationalIncitement." few monthslater,Heideggerdelivered his inaugurallectureat Freiburg-"What Is Metaphysics?"-in which he decisively and affirmativelylinked the question of radical, authentic thinkingto anxiety in the face of being andnothingness.37 Cassirerwas most widely known at the time for his philosophyof symbolic forms and myths. the Throughout 1920s, philosophicaldiscussionsof myth in Europewere shadowed by several more explicitly political interventions:Mussolini's public declaration,in October 1922, that the fascists had createdtheir own myth-that of the nation; and Carl Schmitt's subsequentopen embraceof Mussolini'sdecisionisticmythmakingas being superior all otheravailable to forms of political thoughtand action, in tandemwith Schmitt'sphilosophi-
constitution parliament, and cally grounded rejectionof theWeimar including its commitmentto discussion,debate,anddialogue-all of which serve only endlessly to defer hard decisions about exceptional circumstances.38 Secularization, in particularEnlightenment,lent itself by structuralnecessity to this radically ungroundedauto ex nihilo act of decisionistic selflegitimation.39 MonthsafterCassirer's defense of the WeimarRepublic,after Heideggerhad had his say at Davos, a new word-the word-was passed around.Heidegger had defeated Cassirerdecisively, and what Goethe had said aboutNapoleonandgeopoliticsin the previousepoch was finally taking place in philosophy:"Fromhere and now on, a new epoch of world history begins, andyou can say thatyou were present."40 Preciselysuch possibilities of radicalgeopoliticalbreak,or renewal, 'postmoderns' definitioncannot by grasp. Thanks,I argue,to Heidegger's willed 'victory,'Cassirer'sunwilled 'defeat'-both of which postmodernshave inheritedand embodied,knowingly or not. Generallyspeakingandwith few exceptions,accountsof the Davos debate break down-now as then-along self-consciously ideological lines: the Cassireriantends to be conciliatory and attemptsto strike a balance, the Straussianto be more aggressively charged,the Heideggerianaloof.41 This differenceis explainableas the effect of differentconclusionsreachedfrom a commonpremise:in the final analysis,all threesides assumethatHeidegger or really won the confrontation; at least they assumethatthis is the common perceptionof the outcome, and hence sociologically, if not also philosophihave to adapta strategy cally, simply the case. So it appearsthatCassirerians of reconciliation,whereasHeideggeriansarefree to go on to other tasks.As for Straussians,they have their own brief againstHeidegger(and Cassirer) in a situationof minorityagainstthe Heideggerian (andCassirerian) majority, fighting over the same turf,theiroverallmood bellicose (such arethe wages of ressentiment).42At the end of the day,however,HeideggeriansandStraussians differ mainly abouthow to use exo/esoteric languageprudentlyso as to ensure an identically elitist vision of the perceived necessity for Nietzschean orderor rank(i.e., the socioeconomic division of mentalfrom manual labor) to allow philosophy to exist. By contrast, Cassireriansdo not worry about exo/esotericism at all, and so-in spite and because of some squeamish 'ethical' reservationsabout capitalismcommon to liberal humanism-they end up affirming unwittinglythe same intellectual and economic divisions of laborthat Straussiansand Heideggeriansaffirmconsciously. In short,I am arguingthatthe Davos 'debate'was never a debatein two primaryregards.First, as Heidegger was aware but Cassirerwas not, they held radicallyincompatible'ethical'assumptionsaboutthe natureand properuse of philosophicallanguage,and authenticdebatecan never occur,
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for Heidegger,at the merely thematicand exoteric level. Second, both men sharedthe same basic class interest,and had no reasonto debatethis fact, no matterhow muchtheirrespectivepoliticalideologies may appearas different or even opposed. that In any case, it remainsa seriousbutcommonmisperception one could or can simply 'choose' at Davos: between 'Cassirer or Heidegger' and between them only, ignoring the possibility of a thus logically excluded middle term.Moreover,this dualdelusion is far too partial in both senses of as the termandto datehas existedasymmetrically, a one-way street.Whereas Heidegger and Heideggerians(and, for differentreasons, Straussians)have always assumed that they definitively won the debate, excluding Cassirer from seriousphilosophy,Cassirerhimself,unlikemost Cassirerians, less was confidentaboutthe truthof his own positionat Davos, trying-unrequitedto continue his Davos 'dialogue' with Heidegger in published and unpublished formto the bitterend. To be sure,merelyby reconstructing another yet version of whathappened-or even, as I say, whatdid not happen-between Cassirerand Heideggerat Davos, I myself risk contributing the consensus to myth that one's only 'choice' (then or today) is 'Cassirerand/orHeidegger' (both 'and'and 'or' being duplicitouslittle words, inclusive and exclusive). Nonetheless,refocus on the 'choice' betweenCassirerand Heideggermakes sense heuristicallyif significantaspectsof theirdebateremainoccludedfrom view. With regard only to exo/esotericism (i.e., leaving shared class interest momentarilyto one side), Davos was a debateonly in the guise of an open dialogue (between Cassirerand Heidegger)helplessly confrontinga secret monologue (Heidegger's). This part of my claim is not fully original with me-noted as it was at Davos by those most familiar with Heidegger, especially by Strauss.Rather,it is the specific structures consequences and of this nondebatethat have yet to be identified and analyzed.If unsettling obscuritiesremainto be excavatedandexorcisedfromthisfoundational event in the historyof consciousness,thenthis taskis important least if "Davos not was an early form of our contemporary conference and symposium for format"43_and "symposium," readalso essay. This essay was originallyconceivedforthe occasionof the firstsystematic attempt in North America (the internationalCassirer conference in New Haven, 1996) to use a criticalreconstruction appropriation Cassirer's and of publishedand unpublishedceuvreto provide-building on his "philosophy of symbolic forms"and "comprehensive philosophy of culture"-a critical counterpointto the hegemony of culturalstudies in the human and social sciences, including the history of science. Alternativelyput, the perceived task of the occasion was to provide cultural studies, and multicultural
rich philosophical pluralism,with a conceptuallyrigorous,hermeneutically base that these predominantlyempirical studies demonstrablylack. The has strongthesis wouldbe thatCassirer createdtheonlyrigorousandcoherent theoryavailableto the projectof providinga moreor less criticalphilosophical groundingfor cultural studies-a project I argue is doomed from the start.44 Today,Cassireris being widely toutedby liberalandconservativehumanists alike-a celebrationsymptomaticof an unacknowledgedconsensusnot merelyfor havingengagedin a significantdialoguewith somethingcalled "the postmodernthinking of pluralism"long before the fact, but also for having already surpassedit, on the groundsthat Cassirerian"multiplicity" and "diversity"not ensue from the "weaknessand skepticism"that is then imputedto postmodemismbut stand instead for "a pluralityof world-relations that must today take the place of the one-dimensionality traditional of Be rationalism."45 such claims (orpious wishes) as they may,Heidegger,too, is commonly understoodalso to have opposed "one-dimensional rationalbut ism," as well as "weaknessand skepticism"; in his case this was hardly on behalf of pluralistic diversity. Who, then, has finally won the Davos debate?Should culturalstudies in fact appealto Cassirer(or Heidegger)for help in its broadignoranceof philosophy?Before asking, we need to know morewhatthe real stakesandformsof the originaldebatewere, andwhether it was a debateat all. Therecan be no doubtthatCassirercan be resuscitated in purportedly'avant-garde' disciplines, includingthose following Bakhtin, Foucault, and Panofsky-all of whom were very positively influenced by Cassirer.Nor has his influence been negligible on the more 'traditional' disciplines of literarycriticism and aesthetics.I am thinkinghere not only, say, of the work of SusanneLangerandPhilipWheelwright,46 also of the but remark of Paul de Man in 1964: "Cassirerhas curtailed the somewhat fantasticsubjectivismthat surrounded many Americanconcernswith myth and symbol."47 affirmthe need to readphilosophyin the academytoday at I a time when the currenthegemony of culturalstudies, particularlyits antitheoreticalanimusin which "philosophies," best badly studied,"serveas at an ideological substitute for the theoretical foundations that the human sciences lack."48 notjust any style of philosophywill help us in our nonBut and antiphilosophical plight. Before resuscitatingCassirer'scorpse (or any other,including a fortioriHeidegger's), before incorporating corpus of any work in our own corps,we shouldknow as much as possible aboutwhat and whom we are resuscitating,who did the killing at Davos, and how. One of the most basic definitionsof philosophy,as putby Althusserin one of his moods, is simply to draw lines of demarcation.49 we will see that And Heidegger,at the end of his Davos encounterwith Cassirer,seems to say the
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same thing. Drawing one such line, I claim thatMarxismand communism areexactly like Platonism,Jewish-Christian theology,nihilism,fascism, and and capitalisminsofaras all arelogically constructivist decisionistic;thatis, they all sharethe aporiathat they are ultimatelygroundedon no logic save for tautology.But Marxismandcommunismcan also be differentfromthose otherpositions in threerelatedrespects:in termsof discursivepracticethey are in principleexoteric;in termsof socioeconomicand ethical aim they are in principle egalitarian;and in terms of epistemology they maintain in principlean open, heuristic,andasymptoticrelationto the truth.50 this last In regard,Marxism and communismrelate to the philosophicaltradition(encompassingSpinoza,Kant,Marx,Lenin,Wittgenstein, Lacan,andAlthusser) thatcontinuallyaspiresto point ('scientifically,'if you will) towardthe truth. In this way, they arenot logically decisionisticandconstructivist, safeguarding as they do a certainsurplus-truth-vis-a-vis the tradition againstwhich they are in mortalcombat.And, as Althussercautions,"[T]heconflictuality of Marxisttheoryis constitutive its scientificity,its objectivity"51-inother of terms,its ethicalperformativity the truth.Howeverbroadmy claim, I will of inscribe 'Davos' with a hithertounremarked of demarcation-the hithline erto obscureinterferenceof exo/esotericismin the debate-in orderthat we the might betterunderstand relationship lack thereof)betweenHeidegger (or and Cassirerand whatreally went wrong (or right)at Davos. In any case, to draw a clear line is soonermy intentthanit is to defend eitherHeideggeror Cassirerfromtheirdevotees (borrowing Adorno'squipaboutBach);afterall, in this case, it is the devotees who need defending. A break with hegemonic systems (including fake debates disguised as genuine; monologues as dialogues) might appearto come, in Althusserian terms,"notfromwithinbutfromwithout.... This idea, or rather concept this of an absolute(theoretical) exteriorityis the enablingconditionof a theoretical understanding interiorityitself.""2 one hand, this position seems of On blatantly to contradictAlthusser's (properly Leninist) position, which I elaboratedearlier,to the effect thatany system alternative oppositionalto or capitalismcan be groundedonly on capitalismas Spinoziantruth.53Besides, in the Lacaniansense which Althusserthere adapts,the real (le reel) is not exterior to anything but rather'extimate'(intimatelyexterior)54-which is of certainlyno guarantee anything'alternative' 'oppositional,'althoughit or must remaintheir minimal precondition.Nonetheless, qua purely heuristic device, a certainhypothesisof exterioritycan be productivelyappliedto the foundationalevent that was 'Davos,' if it was only a fake debate;because then a provisional third position exterior to it, at least, is demanded.For Althusser(as for Lacan),this 'extimate'position is 'science' and 'the real,' and also in his case (butnot Lacan's) 'class struggle'as the ultimatepolitical
For 'line of demarcation.' my purposeshere,my tertiumquid or "conceptof is an absolute(theoretical) exteriority" the conceptof exo/esotericism;andit entails substantialreservations about both Cassirer and Heidegger (and Strauss). What my argumentwill leave unspecified, however, is what a radicallydifferentphilosophy or ethics beyond exo/esotericismmight look like, if it is even possible. My own (neocommunist)methodological and ideological position should emerge more clearly as we proceed, but it is generally moie germaneto the task at hand to understate thirdposition my 'outside' the Davos debate, even as I remain 'extimately'within it-not in the guise of false objectivity,but on behalf of promotingreal debates that point toward the exteriority prerequisiteto grasp the interiorityof long and misunderstood fake debates. the Symptomatically, appositeanalogywith which to describe 'Davos' is open to dispute.Does it recall to us "theimportant disputationesduringthe Middle Ages, when the best minds of the time struggledwith one another," as one Heideggerianacolyte now tells us; or rathera boxing matchthathas suddenly materializedfrom a radio broadcastinto living reality, as was remarkedby a young man in the audience?"5 as anotherparticipant, the Or, philosopher Kurt Riezler, quipped at the time, was 'Davos' the uncanny coming to life of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain(1924)?56 Think of it: Cassirerembodying Settembrini, liberalhumanistson of the Enlightenthe ment, and Heideggerthe Jesuiticalnihilist,Naptha.But now we are aheadof the argument.
FIRSTPRELUDETODAVOS: QUESTION STYLE A OF By shiftingthe axis not of philosophy,necessarily,but of one way to read philosophy, from what might be called 'content' to 'style' (thus making explicit a parallelmove madeby Heideggeragainstthe historyof metaphysics tacitly,in additionto all his explicit arguments), supplementthe disquiI etingreminiscenceof Cassirer'smost important doctoralstudent,Leo Strauss (who wrote his dissertationon Spinoza underhim), about the post-ethical Heidegger by arguingthat the truly silent question is not merely whether Heidegger'sown "teachingis trueor not,"noreven whetherwe are"competent to judge" it in terms of any imagined 'content.'The question,rather,is whether what Heidegger himself implies is his own "unsaid" teaching is designed sigetically to be exo/esoteric, whether it is intended-in its very surface visibility that Spinoza and Althusser call "the opacity of the immediate"57-to be incorporatedslightly, stealthily, silently beneath our capacityever to perceive andjudge it rationally. This, I argue,is indeed the
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implication that Heidegger quietly drew for his own rhetoricaluse in his public lectureat Davos, "KantsKritikder reinenVernunft und die Aufgabe einer Grundlegungder Metaphysik" (Kant'scritiqueof purereasonand the task of a grounding of metaphysics). This is his reading of Kant's First Critique to the effect "daj3der Ansatz der Vernunft zerstort ist"-which means, for Heidegger, not only that the beginnings, base, or approachof reasonhave been definitivelydestroyedby Kant,butalso thatthe latter,along with Cassirer,"shrinks back"or even "draws backin terror" (zuriickschreckt) before the radical consequences.58 When specifying what he thinks these radical consequences are, Heidegger does not include the implicationsfor languagein general,andfor his own rhetoricof persuasionin specific. It also would have made neither logical nor pragmatic sense, in his (and our) postlogical world, were Heideggerto have drawnthese consequencespublicly, if he wished to make effective use of them, as he doubtless did. This, then, is the lesson Cassireroverheard when debatingHeideggerat Davos, as othermembersof the audience(especially Strauss)definitelydid not. Today a strong move is underway in the academy for ecumenical 'cultural-philosophical' reconciliation,arguing(as do I, albeit for very differentreasons)againsta simple 'choice'betweenCassirerandHeidegger.On this view, the latter'sfar superiorgraspof the questionof ontology can and shouldbe supplemented Cassirer'sricherhoardof culturalreferencesand by ostensibly more nuancedcritiqueof the mathematical naturalsciences. Yet in fact Heidegger's graspof the sciences (especially physics and mathematics) was considerablydeeperthan many today assume, and surpassedCassirer's in important respects.One of the surprising things aboutHeidegger's stunning 1929-30 lecturecourse, "TheFundamental Conceptsof Metaphysics," which gives an indicationof his pedagogical approachat the time of Davos, is the length anddepthto which he went to link his reflectionson the topic to experimentalbiology and zoology, including the possibility of an "ontology of life."59But the most surprisingthing about these lecturesbeyond even his remarkable analysis of boredomand solitude as the constitutive "fundamental moods"(or attunements: Grundstimmungen) moderof nity alongside the anxiety (Angst)analyzedin Being and lime-is Heidegger's patternof indirectallusions to the problemof exo/esotericism,that is, to silences, moods, cunning,andconcealmentsof all kinds, as when he tells his studentsthat his own lectures"couldindeed be a mere deception-who can know?"60 so. This remarkalludesto his 'questionof style.' Just The manifest theme of Heidegger's 1929-30 course is the continuing (nearly irreversible)swerve of modernmetaphysicsaway from its ancient claim to be the "firstphilosophy"(tpwnr Xlkouo4ta),due to a mode of questioning(beings) thatit can only falsely assume to be radical(regarding
in stateas merelyone academicdiscipline Being), andculminating its current inter alia interpares. This Heideggerderisively calls a discipline limited to mere "content."'M begins his open assault on the bogus metaphysical Here desire to attain "theformal level of an absolute science."61 It is in this sense that the hegemony of modern metaphysics and science entails the victory of "content"over more radically and authentically"questioning." here againleaves silent, however, What Heidegger'sdefinitionof "content" is the stylistic and rhetoricalconsequence his position must have for the articulationof radicalquestioninginsofar as it relates to what he calls "the authority"of "silent persuasion."63 Although sometimes appearingcritical in abouthis own authority the pedagogicalsituation,whatmattersmorethan any stated valorizationis not only thathe thus hints at his awarenessof the ancienttraditionof silent persuasion,but also thathe is logically requiredto make use of it to recruit the new philosophical lifeblood inasmuch as authenticquestioningper definitionemcan never transpireat the level of "content."At Davos, the most attentive listeners, and not only Strauss, intuitedthatit was Heidegger'sstyle thathelpedcarrythe day over Cassirer's "content."64 They may even have intuitedthat,in a sense, in exo/esotericism (exoteric)style is (esoteric)content,althoughHeideggeriansandStraussians are rarelyso frankaboutthis ancientproblem. Since at least Plato, "[T]hequarrelbetween philosophy and poetry is in the first instancepoliticalandmoral."65 thesis is crucialbut insufficient. This What is new since Plato is not exclusively a philosophical and/or poetic problematic,for this has remainedremarkably constant, althoughincreasingly less visible as it becomes dispersedthroughout mass andjunk culture. What is really new is capitalismon one hand,and on the otherthe radically diminishedawareness of the ethical role of exo/esotericismin maintaining the discourses of philosophy and political economy alike, including with regard to ethics. It is "capitalwhich creates the foundationfor a general humanmorality," Kautskynotedin 1906, "butit only createsthe foundation this moralitycontinuallyunderits feet."66 by treading And it is the forms of exo/esotericism collaboratingwith this destructionthat would have to be identified and destroyed if the full socioeconomic preconditions for an alternative,oppositionalethics will ever be produced.67 venia verbo, the Sit exo/esoteric problematic logically-and also epistemologically, aesthetically, politically, and ethically-precedes any imaginable 'content' of philosophy or poetry. Here, 'firstness' is also to be understood,in properly Heideggerian terms, neither ontologically nor ontically but as their exo/ esoteric fusion in political ontology. Herein lies the underlying 'silent' problem of ethics at Davos. Pace the public remarks of Heidegger and Strauss,but as they knew full well, the basicpost-Nietzschean questionis not
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whetherethical groundingis impossibleor possible but rather how to speak, and to whom to speak,in eithereventuality. stakewith exo/esotericismis At the ethical problemof trustqua questionof style: Who can trustus? Whom do we trust?
SECONDPRELUDETODAVOS: ON SOURCES, MYTHIC AND SYMBOLIC Part of Cassirer'spoint in working out a comprehensivephilosophyalthoughnever quite ethics-of culturewas indeed to appropriate critically all the mathematicaland naturalsciences, as well as the social and human sciences. This is also to say-with a nod to culturalstudies-that Cassirer's work (nourishedby the incomparable resourcesof Aby Warburg's libraryin was Hamburg) eminentlyinterdisciplinary inceptionandcross-cultural by by implication.And for this veryreasonhis projectcan be criticizedby a cogent philosophicalargumentduly suspicious of the ideological trapsof interdisBe ciplinarity.68 this as it may, there is general agreementtoday that it is inaccurateto reduce Cassirer'ssources, as was often done in the past, to a neo-Kantian problematic. AlthoughI would add thatone of the most important aspects of neo-Kantianism-Vaihinger'sNietzscheanreformulation of the Platonicnoble lie in terms of the "philosophyof as-if' and "doctrineof conscious illusion"-seems to have eluded Cassirer'sconceptualnet.69 As importantfor Cassireras Kant undeniablyis, however, other sources are equally influential.The propernames are familiar:Dilthey, Hegel, Herder, Humboldt, Leibniz,Plato,Rousseau,Friedrich TheodorVischer,andnot least Vico's seminaldefinitionof man as animalsymbolicum. Cassirer'snotionof symbolic form is also indebtedto the physical sciences, includingHeinrich Hertz's concept of notation in mechanics. But wherever one seeks the articulation the humanand the naturalsciences, especially in the German of tradition,sooner or laterthe figure lying nearestthe source is Goethe. The most fitting, albeit characteristically ironic, epitaph for Cassirer's ceuvre may have been foundby de Man,writingin 1957 thatone of Cassirer's theses aboutGoethe serves as "a definitionof the entirehistoryof ideas"namely,thatGoethe "rejects historywhen historyis imposedon him as mere matter[Stoffl;buthe reclaimsit as a necessaryway finallyto understand form in itself and its own creativity."70 a sense, Cassirer'sconcept of symbolic In form does indeed live and die on Goethe's most expansive definition: that "Everything happensis symbol, by representing itself entirely,it points to whatremains.It seems to me thatin this observation the highestdegree lies of arroganceand the highest degree of modesty."71 far more important, But,
Goetheandefinition,one Cassirer'snotionwould also live anddie on another playing little if any role in Cassirer'sworldview:"Symbolism[or the symbolic function:die Symbolik]transformsthe appearance into idea, the idea into an image, and in such a way that the idea always remains eternally efficacious and unattainable,and, even though spoken in all languages, nonetheless would remainunspeakable."72 Note that this second Goethean definitionof symbol andsymbolismis premisednot on Hegelianexpressivist causality, such as Cassirer'sdefinition of symbolic form seems to require claim thatmythicalconscious(e.g., in his often repeatedbutundertheorized ness "findsexpression"as symbolicform),butrather a mode of structural as "is causality,as Althusserwould argue;namely,thatany structure immanent in its effects in the Spinozistsense of the term,thatthe whole existenceof the structureconsists of its effects, in shortthatthe structure, which is merely a specific combinationof its peculiarelements,is nothingoutsideits effects."73 (To use Spinoza's own concept, the cause 'indwells' its effects as causa immanens.74) But I do not want to overemphasizethe fact that Cassirer's of appropriation Goethe overlooks the problematicof structural causality. After all, it would be left to us to give theoretical precisionto the notoriously opaque relation, in all Cassirer'swork, between (transhistorical) symbolic form and (historical) culturalform.75 other terms, if Cassirerused the In concept of structural causalitywithoutmentioningit, thereis not necessarily in that. Emphaticallyto be stressed,however, is that Cassirer any disgrace never seems to have appreciated fact thatGoethe's enigmaticdefinition the of the symbolic entailed the affirmationof its quintessentiallyesoteric dimension: something unsaid remains "eternallyefficacious and unattainable" even as it is spoken in any naturallanguage. Goethe's version of exo/esotericismshedsdisruptivelight on his relationship boththe Enlightto enmentandthe anti-Enlightenment Romantics.76 to Worse,it threatens shred into dysfunctionalbits Cassirer'spurportedly Goetheanprojectof a philosophy of symbolic forms and of culture that (ostensibly in opposition to Heidegger'spublic embraceof the "errant pathof thinking") would be open de jure et facto to logical scrutinyandpublicdebate(Habermasian "communicative action") by using a language that is in principle shared by all disputants.Cassirer and his followers simply cannot ground an exoteric theory of symbolic form on Goethe's profoundlyesoteric definition of the symbolic. Put differently,if Cassirer(consciouslyor unconsciously)'silently'withheld his full insight abouthis sources,includingGoethe,so as to conceal his own inabilityto groundhis entireproject,andhence also to conceal his lack of an ethics, or if for him this concealmentwas for any reasonnecessaryfor conceptual and social cohesion against opposing forces (including fascist
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then we confronta quite serious irony both for him and for irrationalism), any cultural studies that would ground itself on him, inasmuch as it has For if always already given up even asking the question of intentionality. Cassirerwas silentaboutthe esotericdimensionof his key sources,he himself would have been accepting and even using-consciously or not-the Heideggerian double rhetoric and its antecedents.If Rosen is right, this problem is not merely neo-Kantian(as in Nietzsche and Vaihinger)but properlyKantianas well.77And deeperstill it is Platonic,as Cassirernever Cassirerwas a marvelousreader(or,if you prefer,paraphraser) understood.78 of the vast Westernphilosophicalandculturalheritage(hence,his interestfor culturalstudies)-but only on its exoteric plane. He simply did not grasp exo/esotericismand, thus, had no weapons with which to debateHeidegger on his own turf.Whatis more,Cassirerwas thusripeto become an unwitting memberof the Nietzschean-Heideggerian corps/e.79 Like Heidegger, Nietzsche was a Platonist with regard to the double rhetoricand noble lie to secure social cohesion.80 But Heidegger was also in the sense of Nietzsche's famous position that Kant'sformuNietzschean lation of the root epistemological question of Pure Reason-"How are synthetic judgments a prioripossible?"-was the exoteric version of the esoteric political question: "Why is belief in syntheticjudgments a priori The necessary?"8' consequencesof overlookingthis neo-Kantian momentin Nietzsche aresevere-and this in two basic directions.On one hand,in terms of the historyof consciousness,even Cassirer(since muchof whatis at stake at Davos and thereafter his exceptionalityas public debaterwith "theonly is greatthinkerin our time")may be folded into the tradition dupednot merely philosophically by the Platonic noble lie and the doctrine of conscious illusion but also politically. Which is to say a dupe of Machiavellianism, Jesuitism, and the cynical reason describedby Sloterdijk;82 dupe of the a and anthropological psychoanalytic structureje-sais-bien-mais-quand-me^me (I know [thatit is not the case], but [I believe it] nonetheless)as describedby Mannoniand Zi'zek;83 not least, a dupe of what Lenin excoriatedas the and, "accursed periodof Aesopianlanguage,literary bondage,slavishspeech, and ideological serfdom."84 the otherhand,any currentabilityto use Cassirer On to grounda coherent of philosophy culture the basisof a theoryof symbolic on forms-to counter constitutive the relativism merelyacademic'politics'of and cultural studies-would be similarlycompromised. And whataboutCassirer's othermajorsources?Was his insight thereas limited,dubious,or naive? What, beyond Goethe, are the essential sources for graspingCassirerian symbol and myth?Accordingto Heidegger'sextensive review (in the Deutof sche Literaturzeitung 1928) of Cassirer'sMythical Thought(the second volume of ThePhilosophyof SymbolicForms, 1925), the decisive influence
on Cassirer'snotion of symbol, andhence myth,was Schelling.85 Heidegger also used this review to expand his own discussion of myth in Being and Time,as well as to set the table for his interventionin Davos a few months later.86 Heidegger begins with a comparativelyneutral,even appreciative, of never contestedeither by paraphrase Cassirer'sargument-a paraphrase Cassireror by Heidegger's students.87 "Theintentionof the investigation," Heideggerwrites of Cassirer'smagnumopus, "is to pursuethe disclosureof 'myth' as a unique possibility of humanDasein which has its own kind of truth.By posing the question in this manner,Cassirerexplicitly takes over the view of Schelling that 'everythingin mythology is to be understoodas myth expresses it, not as if somethingelse were thoughtor somethingelse were said' (Einleitungin die Philosophie der Mythologie)."88 What is here wholly unclarified,tacit, and thereforecrucial in Heidegger's allusion to Schelliiig areboththe implicationthatmythis exotericandthe deep structure of exo/esotericism to which Heideggerrefers in passing. Any definition of 'myth' aside, at the level of 'content,' Heidegger's allusion to Schelling retainsthe category of esotericismin the phrase"as if somethingelse were thoughtor somethingelse were said."Openedup is the possibility,at least, that this "something"exists only insofar as it is the logical and linguistic preconditionof the exoteric definition.Whatmight this surplus"something else" be? How might its "as-if' functionfor Heideggerperformatively? Now, a specter haunts everything Schelling said-a specter createdby himself. Schelling wrote in 1795 that "[i]t is a crime against humanityto conceal fundamental principlesthatare communicableto a generalpublic." But Schelling (as a typical bourgeoisrevolutionary fearingreigns of terror from all directions)immediatelyappendeda crucialesoteric rider that was audible to Heidegger as it was not to Cassirer.Schelling continued:"But Nature itself has set limits on this communicability;it has preserved a philosophy for the worthythatby its own agency becomes esoteric because it can not be learned,not mechanicallyechoed, not resimulated,and also not repeatedby secret enemies and spies-a symbol for the covenant of free spirits [ein Symbol den Bundfreier Geister],by means of which they all fir recognize one anotherand yet which, known only to themselves, will be an eternalenigmato the others."89 short:on the Schellingianand Cassirerian In view, if mythand symbolare exoteric, thenphilosophy,on the Schellingian and Heideggerianview,is esoteric at its mostradicalconceptual,social, and rhetoricalroot. In effect, I argue,Heideggersides decisively with Schelling againstCassirer,andthusradicallyundermines very sourceof Cassirer's the merely exoteric concept of symbolic form and myth. In his 1928 review of Cassirer'sPhilosophyof SymbolicForms, Heidegger also paraphraseswhat he calls "a basic feature of the mythic object-
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consciousness";namely,"theabsenceof a cleardelineationbetweendreaming and waking experiences, between the imagined and the perceived, between the original and the copy, between the word (signification) and the thing,betweenwished-forandactualpossession, betweenliving anddead."90 This conceptualand terminologicalmuddlemight sound to some of us like a precociousdefense of a postmodern,poststructuralist sensibility,or, alternatively,a criticalanalysis of just this sensibilityqua myth. And we should recall Levi-Strauss's seminal structuralist definition of the general social function of myth as a "logical mode capable of overcoming a contradiction"-which is, Levi-Straussaddsparenthetically, impossibleachieve"(an ment, if, as it happens, the contradictionis real).""9 here the properly But Heideggeriancomplexity-the shift from the content and locution to the illocution andperlocution-is thatthis problematicmust also entail, beyond all Heidegger's paraphrased Cassirerianbinaries, a deeper binary.It is the exoteric-esotericway of reading,thinking,and speakingas Heidegger did, and Cassirerdid not-but, worse, thatCassireralso could not even perceive when encounteringit in his primarysources and interlocutors. It is becauseof this hermeneutic naivetethatHeideggercould not consider Cassirera worthyconversationalist Davos on the KantianKampfplatz at der Metaphysik(battleground metaphysics)-not least because of Cassirer's of perceived incompetenceto teach the really hardphilosophical,ethical, and political lessons to the next generation,his commitmentto natca&ubeing insufficiently attuned esotericawareness prudence. private, to and In Heidegger and Jaspers had concurred as early as 1925 that Cassirer was perhaps "instructive" fundamentally"boring"-although instructiveand boring but people were handy to have aroundnow and then.92 And for this pedagogic and pragmaticreason, Heideggerneeded to debatehim publicly in orderto recruitfor himself the youngergenerationof global philosophicaltalent (in additionto Germanyand France,also representedat Davos were Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and perhaps Japan). Ultimately, however, the philosophical(logographic)task from Platoto Nietzsche andHeideggerand beyond, as Strausswrites of Machiavelli,is how to be a "captain withoutan army,"and undermodernconditionsthatmeans to recruitan army"onlyby means of books."93 Heidegger's 1928 review of Cassirer'sbook on symbolic forms includes a seemingly innocuousremark aboutthe historical(andhistoricizing)dimension of Cassirer'sargument. Heideggerwrites:"Thevariationsof the different feelings for time andthe corresponding indicationsof conceptionsof time accountfor 'one of the profoundest differencesin the character individual of religions.' Cassirershows ... the main featuresof the typical views of time among the Hebrews,Persians,Indians,Chinese and Egyptiansas well as in
There is a Nietzscheansubtexthere, and Nietzsche is Greek philosophy."94 basically terra incognita, when not anathema,to Cassirer.As Heidegger would have known fromreadingNietzsche's BeyondGood and Evil (1886), one of the few places Nietzsche identifies the problem of esotericism by name, at the very core of great philosophy (i.e., philosophy not found in "booksfor all the world which are always foul-smellingbooks, the smell of small people clinging to them")lies the fact thatthe exoteric-esotericdistinction has been the foundingprincipleof every society groundedon "orderof rank"-and the one entailsthe other.This,Nietzschecontinues,has beenwell known to all philosophersglobally, giving as examples: "Indiansas well as Greeks,Persians,and Muslims, in short,whereverone believed an orderof rank,not in equalityand equal rights."95 Typically,Nietzsche kept silent the specific consequencesfor his own rhetoricalpractice,preferring produce to and use, not mention, them. By leaving to readersthe task of comparing Cassirer'sremarkto Nietzsche's, Heidegger offered certaincognoscenti a tacit but effective critique of Cassirer'signorance of esotericism, without furtherexposing the great transhistoricaland sociohistorical principle to public scrutiny. and Heideggerian"courage" "resoluteness" (philosophicallylegitimated already in Being and Time)entail an irreversibledecision for exo/esoteriafterWorldWarII, their supplemental cism-including, in his later "turn," replacement "releasement" by (Gelassenheit),which,howeverhardly, means a turnaway from exo/esotericism.All of Heidegger'sutterancesare contingent on this priordecision-which may appearcourageous,modestly withdrawn,or whateverelse the situationdemands.As we have seen, at Davos, Heidegger'skey rhetoricaltropein this regardhad been that Kant,followed in by Cassirer,"shrinksback"or "drawsback in terror" the face of his own discoverythathe hadunwittinglydestroyedthefoundation reason.96 of Under the banner sapereaude! Kant'sonly partialandtimorousontologicalturnhad also underminedall previous and future attemptsto provide a foundation ethics, along with Geist and Xoyou, as well as Vernunft.97 homology, for By Heideggeras for Strauss,Cassireris likely impaledon a versionof a dynamic antinomy,in one Kantian sense, in whichpurereasonfails becausetwo views of the same phenomenonare mutuallyexclusive and incompatible,and yet each is internallycoherentlogically and true.98 one hand, Cassirercan On "notface"an allegedfact; thatis, the impossibilityof foundingan ethics. On the other hand, Cassirerstill requiresan ethics, indeed a presupposedone, but cannot develop it because it is sensu stricto impossible to do so. Pace Strauss,however,Cassirerdoes not entirely"drop" ethics out of his philosophy of symbolic forms or of culture.99 his own mind, he develops a In in provisionalethics (particularly the years 1935-41), and nothinghas pre-
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10 fromelaborating further. But the farmoreinteresting it ventedCassirerians from the Heideggerianperspective, is what it might mean, as problem, Strauss also says, if Cassirer dropped an ultimately impossible project silently. For Cassirerdid not graspeloquentsilence-unlike Heidegger. Turningto 'Davos' proper,we must keep in mind thatthe ultimatestakes in any debatefor Heidegger(andfor all those for whom he is "theonly great thinkerin ourtime")mustdependnot on any openly discussible 'content'but on the effective use of exo/esoteric 'silence'-its capacity to persuadeand dissuadebeneathconsciousnessand logic.
AND SILENCE DAVOS: ELOQUENCE At Davos, Heidegger and Cassirergave their independentlectures (one mornings,the otherafternoons),culminatingin the much-awaitedweekend Bollnowremarked essenOttoFriedrich an confrontation. Heidegger'sstudent withoutknowing what it meant:Cassirerattemptedto tial point, apparently integratediscussion of Heidegger into each one of his talks, beginning by saying that basically they were in agreementin spite of some quibbles; whereasHeidegger,ostensibly using the occasion to develop his new interof Cassirer his ideasuntilthe weekend and pretation Kant,neveroncementioned debatemade this studiedlack of reciprocityformallyunavoidable.101 The publicly debatedtopic at Davos remainswell known:how exactly to the define neo-Kantianism; relationsof finitudeto infinity,time to temporality, history to historicity;and the precise meaning of Kant's "Copernican revolution." As Heidegger seminally formulatedthe latter issue, "[T]he Dialectic is ontology,"andhence "theproblemof appearance [Schein]in the Transcendental Logic, which for Kantis only negative in the form in which it first appearsthere,is [actually]a positive problem."'102 whereasSchein And is positive, freedomis figuredas negative.Finally,then,thereis the entailed ethical problem, for Kant and his legacy, of freedom and free will in their relationto reason,to understanding, imagination, to intuition.In short, to and can ethical freedombe groundedat all, and if so, in which faculty,by what means, and to what effect? Now, as Kant is commonly understood,Pure Reason seeks unity. (Like the Lacan's le reel, Spinoza'sDeus sive Natura, and thatto which Wittgenstein rigorously can only point.) This unity is at once greater than the a understanding (Verstand, termdefined by Kantonly in termsof its discursive andlogical deployment),andyet it mustbe expressedin understanding's terms;which means thatunderstanding's graspof unity,hence of reason, is The always insufficientfor reason.103 requisitemediatingfunctions,for Kant,
of imagination (the common root of sensibility and understanding)and intuition (knowledge in immediaterelationto empiricalobjects)-as each bears on the problem of both symbolic representation freedom, hence and also ethics-was formulated Cassirer Davos as follows, settingthe stage at by for the debatewith Heidegger:
The power of imaginationis the connectionof all thoughtto the intuition.Kantcalls the power of imaginationsynthesisspeciosa. Synthesisis the basic power [Grundkraft] of purethinking.For Kant,however,it [purethinking]does not dependsimplyon synthesis, but depends instead primarilyupon the synthesis which serves the species. But this problem of the species leads us into the core of the concept of image, the concept of symbol. If we keep the whole of Kant'swork in view, severe problemssurface.One of these is the problemof freedom.For me, thatwas always really Kant'smain problem. How is freedompossible? Kantsays thatthis questiondoes not allow being conceived in this way. We conceive only of the inconceivabilityof freedom.104
As glossed by Heideggerin rebuttal, "Cassirer wantsto show thatfinitude in becomes transcendent the ethical writings";whereasthe properquestion is only "How is the innerstructure Dasein itself, is it finite or infinite?""0' of Heideggerquicklyansweredhis own question,provisionallyremainingsilent aboutthe ethical implications,or lack thereof:
As a finite creature,the human being [der Mensch] has a certain infinitude in the ontological.But the humanbeing is never infiniteand absolutein the creatingthe being itself [des Seiendenselbst];rather, is infinitein the sense of the understanding Being it of [des Seins]. But, as Kant says, providedthatthe ontologicalunderstanding Being is of only possible with the inner experience of beings, this infinitudeof the ontological is bound essentially to ontic experience so that one must say the reverse:this infinitude which breaksout in the power of imaginationis precisely the most strongestargument for finitude,for ontology is an index of finitude.106
In this sense, ontology can be ontic andhistorical.And ontology is normally understood(at least constatively,as opposed to performatively)to be concerned not with the 'ought' but only with the 'is,' whereas the ontic per definitionemis closed to Being and open only to beings-hence potentially to the problem of ethics and other cultural concerns. For Heidegger, in Cassirer"theterminusad quemis the whole of a philosophyof culturein the sense of an elucidationof the wholeness of the formsof a shapingconsciousness"'107-whereasthe terminus a quo is ontologically obscure or even nonexistent.Led by his thesis about Kant'sCopemicanturn as being only timorous and partial,Heidegger asserts with regardto Cassirerthat "[m]y position is the reverse.The terminusa quo is my centralproblematic," which "occursnot in a Philosophyof Culture,but ratherin the question:tC To 'ov, or rather:what in generalis called Being?"''08 (Which Kantmight have said
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and is the index of finitude, understanding, the ontic-although this is not Heidegger's Kant.) fashion)thatwhat It would be a mistake,however,to think(in 'Cartesian' Cassirerand Heidegger is a binary opposition, is here being contested by division of labor, or choice between two rational systems: with the one focusing on ontological origins, the other on ontic effects. Nor (pace an otherwisesalutaryremarkby PeterGay at the YaleCassirerconference)was 'politics' in any obvious sense at stake, either.Rather,as Cassirerhimself Kantian reasonto undermine worried,Heideggerwas using or appropriating not merely Kantianreason, but reason tout court. Like Nietzsche, he was postrational-that is, sub- and surrational-modes of seeking appropriately speaking and writing, and any constated 'political' stand he might take is transmitted and subtendedby the problemof how it can be performatively received."0 Although Heidegger's decision for exo/esotericism can be viewed as an authentically politico-ontologicalact, on his own definition,by of the same token no specific "content" this act can be publicly expressed. For,as Heideggerhad said a year later(in 1930), the " 'doctrine'of a thinker is what is unsaid in his saying, to which man is exposed so that he might expend himself for it.""' To repeat,not 'content'but 'style'-the eloquence of silence-is ultimatelyoperative. Once in the Davos debate, Cassirer himself begins to approach this problemby addressingthe problemof language.Interestingin this regardis the "philologicalcomment,"the only outside interventionrecordedin the transcript,which the Dutch philosopher Henrik Pos directed to the two "Bothspeaka completelydifferentlanguage.Forus, it is a matter disputants: of extracting something common from these two languages.""'But Pos, symptomatically,meant only the possible (Cassirerian)task of translating two somewhat differentsets of philosophicalterminology,ratherthan the impossible (Heideggerian)task of translatingan intentionallyexo/esoteric language exoterically.In other words, Pos sided with Cassirer.Before analyzing this crucialmomentfor Cassirerin the debate,however,we will attend to the context in which it occurred. Heidegger had said bluntly that not any mere anthropology(read also: cultural studies) was under dispute, but nothing less than "philosophy's centralproblematic itself, which leads manbackbeyondhimself andinto the totalityof beings in orderto makemanifestto him, with all his freedom,the nothingnessof his Dasein." He continued:
This nothingnessis not the occasion for pessimism and melancholy.Instead,it is the occasion for understandingthat authentic activity takes place only where there is oppositionand thatphilosophyhas the task of throwingman back, so to speak [or to a
into of certainextent:gewissermapien], thehardness his fate [dieHarteseines Schicksals] from the shallownessof a man who merelyuses [or lives off] the work of the spirit [der 12 des bloji die Werke Geistes benutzt]."
To paraphrase later Levinas, "The Da of Dasein is already an ethical the And problem.""13 what a problem!The Davos audience must have gasped silently, if not aloud. For it was clear to "everyone who had eyes" that and Cassirer-his person,institution, tradition-was suddenlybeing accused of inauthentic,cowardly, opportunisticparasitism.The rule of academic decorumhad been irrevocablybroken:in Nietzscheanfashion the ad hominem had invadedphilosophicaldisputation.'14 A quasi-classdistinctionbetweenthe two debaterswas visible and palpable: on the one side of the podium there was the fifty-five-year-oldhautebourgeois, cosmopolitan, eloquent, conciliatory, immaculately dressed, white-haired,andmomentarily ill-disposedCassirer.On the otherside stood a forty-year-old,swarthy,hale and heartyprovincialSwabianciting impeccable Greek. This overall impressionwas to be recalledby all presentas a mechanicallyreiteratedtrope or mantra.Cassirer,it was said, looked like "reincarnated Goethe,"whereasHeideggerwas perceived as the reincarnation of nobody known, wearingwhat his Marburgstudentshad dubbedhis "existentialsuit," the "costumeof his own invention"-part forester,part " peasant.' As he had made clear before the debate,Heideggerhad come to Davos not least for the superb skiing. Now, such anecdotes are not as incidental or exclusively ad hominem as they may appear.Bourdieu has shown that they are an intimatepartof the habitusthat informsthe "philosophicalfield" (le champphilosophique)generally,includingbattlessuch as 'Davos.'116And, as defined superblyby Kant,"[A]nargumentum homiad nem is an argument obviously is not truefor everyone,but still serves to that reduce someone to silence.""117 By way of response to Heidegger's veiled personal attack, Cassirer contestsHeidegger'sNietzschean(indeedSchmittian) to imputation philosophy of oppositionand struggleunto death.But in the end, Cassirercan offer only a rather pious anddesperateobservationunderthe circumstances, given the evident paradigmshift of the audiencetowardHeideggerand the latter's use of ad hominemargumentation. this axial momentin the debate-the At moment given to summarizingremarks-Cassirer replies to Heidegger's referenceto "thehardnessof fate"and"theshallownessof a manwho merely uses the work of the spirit":"Wearemaintaining position wherelittle is to a be accomplishedthrougharguments thatarepurelylogical.""' Extremelyinterestinghere-and this is one of my main points-is that with this remark Cassirer unwittingly confirms Heidegger's basic thesis
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about Kant'sFirst Critique,nominallyunderdispute:that Kanthad "drawn beforethe logical consequencesof his own critiqueof reason. back in terror" not These consequencesHeideggerunderstands merelyas devastatingfor the but also as legitimating,indeednecessitatproblemof groundingany ethics, and that postrational ing, a mode of philosophicalargumentation is inherently postlogical, hence exo/esoteric. Accordingto Heidegger's 1929 book Kant a philosophicalproblemlies und das Problemder Metaphysik, fundamental radicallyto confronttheirown in the generalfailureof Kantandhis tradition premises and conclusions. Specifically, "The Critique of Pure Rea'Logic' is son ... threatensthe supremacyof reasonand the understanding. deprivedof its preeminencein metaphysics,which was builtup from ancient times. Its idea has become questionable[Ihre Idee wirdfraglich: i.e., not home in the precis And authenticallyfragwiirdig]."119 this pointis hammered und KritikderreinenVernunft of Heidegger'spubliclectureat Davos, "Kants a der die Aufgabe einer Grundlegung Metaphysik," lectureCassirercannot himself attend, since he has fallen momentarilyill, but the gist of which Heideggerconveys to him in Cassirer'shotelroom-interpreted as a humane gesture by all present.120By his plaintive admission that their debate had that reachedthe point where "littleis to be accomplishedthrougharguments are purely logical," Cassirer unwittingly incorporates Heidegger's core position on Kant,the very bone of contentionat Davos, in spite and because of the fact that Cassirercould not rebut,nor even grasp,it conceptually.In other words, Heideggerianexo/esotericism was working,claiming its first victim. important has Heidegger's overall politico-ontologicalstyle of argumentation been neatly summarizedby Bourdieu (wedding Debordiandetournement to a Marxistcritiqueof political economy):
a Philosophicalstrategyis inseparably politicalstrategyat the heartof the philosophical field: to uncover the metaphysics at the foundation of the Kantian critique of all au metaphysicsis to divertfor the profit [c'est d6tourner profit] of "essentialthinking" (das wesentlicheDenken)-which perceivesin Reason,"glorifiedcenturies,""themost relentless adversaryof thought"-the capital of philosophical authorityheld by the Kantian tradition. It is this masterful strategy that allows the neo-Kantians to be and combated,but in the name of Kantianism, thus accumulatesboth the profitsgained This is not authority. and fromattackingKantianism those gainedfromclaimingKantian a small thingon a field where all legitimacyemanatesfrom Kant.121
And the implications of this Heideggerianstrategy are certainly no small Kant thing today as culturalstudies struggles-impossibly-to appropriate and neo-Kantianismto grounditself. Bourdieuis simply wrong, however, when he goes on to suggest thatCassirer,"one of the prime targets"of this
strategy,"was not deceived by it," and that the real power of Heidegger's To rhetoriccan be explained in cognitively graspableterms.122 the precise as Cassirerunwittinglyincorporates his own the same exo/esoteric contrary, Heideggerianphrasesandconceptsthathe persistsin disputingonly exoterically and rationally. the Withthisunconsciousincorporation, Davos debatewas effectively and definitively terminated-"for everyone who had eyes." It nominallydroned on, of course, for all those who did not-most notablyCassirerhimself. And so it is that Cassirer adds: "Hence we have been condemned here to a relativity.'Whatone chooses for a philosophydependson what sortof being one is.' But we may not perseverein this relativity,which would be central for empirical men."''23 This "may not" is what seems today so pious, so incrediblyfragile and naYve, finally incapableof groundinganythingso except as an arbitrary, decisionistic,relativisticthrownnessand projectunto death.Precisely Heidegger'sexo/esotericturf. Heidegger'searlierresponsein the debateto Cassirer'sexplicit chargeof relativism-reminiscent of Dilthey's main charge against Nietzsche-had been this:
of On the groundsof the finitudeof the Being-in-truth humanbeings, thereexists at the same time a Being-in-untruth. Untruthbelongs to the inmost core of the structureof Dasein. And I believe here to have found for the first time that upon which Kant's metaphysical"appearance" "illusion":"Schein"]is metaphysicallygrounded.Now [or to Cassirer'squestionconcerninguniversally valid eternaltruths.If I say: truthis relative to Dasein, this is no ontic assertionof the sortin which I say: the trueis always only what the individual human being thinks. Rather,this statementis a metaphysicalone: in general, truthcan only be as truth,and as truthit only has a sense in generalif Dasein
exists.124
Just here is where Cassirer overhearsthe consequence for language and rhetoric-the exo/esoteric manipulation "metaphysical of illusion"-which is entailed by Heidegger'sradicalpositioningof untruthas well as truthas an authenticmodality of Dasein.'25 And it is also at this point in the debate that Cassirerattemptsto addressthe problemof language. Desperatelyseeking exoteric dialogue where there simply was none for Heideggerper definitionem,Cassirerpersists in attemptingto differentiate his position from Heidegger'sin termsof content,before attemptingto turn to the problemof style:
and Like mine, his position cannot be anthropocentric, if it does not want to be such, then I ask, where the commoncore of our disagreement lies. Thatit cannotbe empirical is clear. We must search again for the common center,precisely in this disagreement.
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And I say, we do not need to search.For we have this centerand, what is more, this is because there is a common, objective humanworld in which the differencesbetween but that individualshave in no way been superseded, with the stipulation the bridgehere from individualto individualhas now been knockeddown. This occurs repeatedlyfor me in the primalphenomenonof language.Each of us speaks his own language,and it is unthinkable the languageof one of us is carriedover into the languageof the other. that And yet, we understandourselves throughthe medium of language. Hence, there is somethinglike the language.And hence thereis somethinglike a unitywhich is higher than the infinitude of the various ways of speaking. Therein lies what is for me the decisive point. And it is for thatreasonthatI startfrom the objectivityof the symbolic form, because here "the inconceivablehas been done" [Weilhier "das Unbegreifliche getan" ist].l26
Now, Cassirer is likely aware that Heidegger loathed Goethehis from Faust of Care(Sorge) in Being and notwithstanding appropriation Time as a fundamentalattunementof Dasein.127 Here, near debate's end, Cassirer's main line of defense against Heidegger is reduced to citing as shibbolethfromhis own humanisttradition. Faust's culminatingcoda is But different:"das Unbeschreibliche hier ist getan"(the indescribablehere has been done).'28Which Cassirer,appealing to "the objectivity of symbolic form,"transformsinto "the inconceivable has been done." Symptomatically, he thus displaces the linguistic (the indescribable)by the epistemological (the inconceivable)-at the expense of language.It is simply impossible to combat Heideggeron this groundinsofar as in his exo/esotericism whatcannot,andshouldnot,be describedexotericallycan still be maintained esoterically.In short,there is never any radical 'linguisticturn'in Cassirer, as therecertainlyis in Heidegger,and any culturalstudiesthatwould ground itself on Cassirerand symbolic form shouldrealizethatit is groundingitself on quicksand.Cassirerhere also makes the fundamental mistake, helpless againstHeidegger,to assumea priorithatthereis one-exoteric-language, and that at Davos he is debatingan opponentwho, like any rationalman, speaks (or at the very least presupposesthe existence of) that same language.129Cassirer'sexoteric "die Sprache"(the language)should never be confused with the later Heidegger's exo/esoteric "die Sprache spricht" (languagespeaks), or with the LacanianCaparle. Cassirer,whose inability ever to take adequateaccount of Freudianpsychoanalysisis well known, generally deluded himself that there is no difference between speaking esoterically and speaking exoterically-trapped as he was in an opening gambitof which he had never studiedor even dreamt. The last word, the checkmate,of the Davos transcript Heidegger's.He is turnsaway from Cassirerto look into the eyes of an audiencealreadywon over to him, whetherit knew it or not.
Take one thing away with you from our debate:do not orientyourselves to the variety of positionsof philosophizinghumanbeing, anddo not occupyyourselveswith Cassirer and Heidegger.Rather,the point is that you have come far enough to have felt thatwe are on the way towardonce again gettingdown to business with the centralquestionof metaphysics.And on top of that,I would like to pointout to you that,in small measure, what you have seen here is the differenceamong philosophizinghumanbeings in the unity of the problematic,which on a large scale expresses something completely different,and thatit is preciselythis freeingof itself fromthe differenceof positions and which is essentialin the debatewith the historyof philosophy;[it is essential standpoints to see] precisely how the differentiationof standpointsis the root of philosophical work.130
Infine, ignorebothCassirerandHeidegger-but agreeonly with Heidegger. Some of the audiencestill wantsthe debateto continuethe next day, as does has Cassirerhimself, althoughno continuation beenscheduled.OnlyHeidegfor ger declines. For him andhis own, the debatehas definitivelyterminated the simple reasonthatno open debateever beganin the firstplace, could ever of occur.In the event, the exo/esoteric"differentiation standpoints" been had definitively accomplished: hier war getan. Such is Heidegger's way of 'drawinglines of demarcation.' Thatwas 1929:the firstglobalcatastrophe not yet omnipotent for Capital; the accelerating drift of Europe and the world toward fascism, national socialism, belligerent imperialism (and Stalinism)-against which the Briand-Stresemann accords, not to mention debates among international philosophers, were among the many hapless casualties. The death of the powerfulforeign ministerof the WeimarRepublic,GustavStresemann, half a year after Davos (October 1929), was more than a symbolic event. It coincided exactly "withthe changingeconomic conjuncture the concluand '3' sion of reparations negotiations." Almost immediately, bourgeoisparthe ties shiftedto oppose the olderpoliticalcoalitionsandone important political result-the rollbackof organizedlabor'seconomic gains-opened up a new field of politicalopportunities all parties,most lethallythe extremeRight. for This turnof events played directlyinto the handsof the NSDAP.For one of its greatstrengthsup to the seizureof power-when it was required begin to makingpolicy itself, andthusthreatened cease being "TheMovement"(as to Heidegger and otherNazis preferred call themselves) and to become yet to anotherloathedpolitical party,which eventuallynecessitatedHitler's 1934 of purgeof R6hm's S.A.-was the propagation "avery dexterousand clever mixture of conservative capitalist and populist anticapitalistpositions,"132 which were attractive aneconomicallydisparate to cross-sectionof Germany, includingthe bloc of urbanpetty bourgeoisieand peasantry. This otherwise in heterogeneous constituency had been "short-changed all the Weimar
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politically by the coalitions or blocs since 1924 and had been reaggregated 133 Nazi Party." And it was with this political conjunctureand draconian with solutionthatHeideggermost identified,'34 Cassirer(andespeciallythose helpless and/orfartherto the Left) paying the piper. more Now, my claim is not thatHeideggerhad yet fully honed his exo/esoteric technique at Davos, but that his forensic success against Cassirer there emboldened him to continue to seek ways to speak, write, and influence without ever being fully 'heard' or 'read.' Heidegger's own attitude in ambivalent, enteringthe debatein Davos appearsto have been appropriately with (butincompletelyavailable)correspondence accordingto his important he wroteher his student,the philosopherElisabethBlochmann.On one hand, on 14 April 1929 thathe had gone to Davos a few weeks earlierawareof the that "theentirething would become merely sensational,"and that "danger" he had not wantedto be "pushedinto the center"of attention.On the other was extremelynoble in the hand, he wrote in the same letterthat "Cassirer discussion and almost too friendly [verbindlich].Thus I found too little opposition, which prevented giving the problems the necessary acuity of 35-a remark would likely come as a surpriseto all present, that formulation"' and only makes sense in termsof perfectinghis practiceof exo/esotericism. it If Heideggerhad not been really "in the centerof attention," is only in the sense that his "unsaid"doctrine per definitionemcan never be centrally identified in exoteric terms. His hesitationto Blochmanndoes mean, however, thathe was not yet fully certainabouthis abilityto use exo/esotericism effectively, at least not extempore.In a letter to Jasperson 25 May 1929, Heideggersummedup his experiencein Davos in these terms:"withall the unpleasantnessunbefitting my style, in Davos I nonetheless experienced directly and powerfully that it still makes sense to be there [in Davos habe es ich doch unmittelbarund stark erfahren,daJ3 noch einen Sinn hat, da zu and so one has to takeinto accountthe fact thatone will come into idle sein]; chatter[es in Kaufnehmen,daj3man ins Geredekommt].'36This apparently important.It offhand use of the phraseda zu sein is in fact extraordinarily ontologyto thepolitical, in the sense of takinga resolute preciselyarticulates stand about Being by being existentiallyengaged in combat, putting one's in body on the line-at the necessaryrisk of participating idle chatterand intothe quotidian Since, forHeidegger,'even' gossip of themajority. entering of Geredecan conceal andreveal an authenticcomportment Dasein to Sein, also be employed to exo/esotericeffect.'37 it can Given his own commitmentto exo/esotericism,however,Heideggeralso could not have reallydisagreedwith anythingCassirermight say, thatis, not and in terms of "content" not if it proves useful for disseminationin appropriate conceptual or social conjunctures.Nonetheless, on this particular
der circa 1929 in the battlebeing occasion-on the Kampfplatz Metaphysik waged over the next generationof select philosophers-Heidegger had to dispute Cassirerin a certain way. But, afterhaving stakedout the grounds could be carriedout with reasonablehope of success, on which recruitment Cassirerwas no longer as particularly interestingfor Heidegger.Which is why Heidegger refused to continue the debate at Davos, and yet also felt perfectly comfortablemonths laterwhen he invited Cassirerto speak at his own Freiburg(Cassirerchose to lectureon Rousseau,of all things). On the royal road to philosophy, noblesse oblige, particularlywhen the major opponents have been corps/ed and when, after Davos, 'the rumor of the hiddenking'(Hannah Sooner Arendt)of philosophywas a rumorno longer.138 a public secret, if not noble lie. Liberalhumanism,Enlightenment, their and 'publicity'are most useful, now and then, to maintainsocial cohesion when the Holderlinian the gods havedeparted, Nietzscheannightof the soul is dark. And when political ontology standspoised-imperceptibly-to smash liberal humanismand Enlightenment from withoutand from within whenever the time is ripe and wheneverit sees fit. Alternativelyposed as questions: Is Heideggerianpolitical ontology a structuralcomponent of humanismand Enlightenment,developing within them immanentlybut, as Cassirermight argue,as such in principlesusceptible to exoteric critiqueand self-critique?Or is insteadpolitical ontology an externallyimposed, radicalother,that always eludes detection even as it is being incorporated throughesoteric means, as Heideggerwould affirm?Or, as I am suggesting in this essay, is therea thirdalternative thatcan comprehend and combatboth possibilities?
IDLE TALK, VIOLENT TALK Today's hallmarkof postmodernityin general and of cultural studies specifically is that academic discussions have lost theirpassion as well as theirprecision-rendering it ever more difficult to appreciatethe precision and passion of earlierphilosophicaldisputes.Yet, realprecisionandpassion for Heidegger occur only at the exo/esoteric level. At Davos, any public turnin Kant'sFirstCritique,whether dispute-whether thereis a Copernican the natureof that turnis from the ontic to the ontological, and whetherthis turncan be groundedin an existing ethics or has consequencesfor a possible ethics-is all mere exoteric squabblingfor Heidegger.All Cassirer'sarguments, and mutatismutandisthose of liberalhumanismgenerally,can only be Gerede.
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Again, this is not to say that Gerede is somehow avoidable or even undesirable,as Being and Timehad gone to impressive lengths to show; indeed, it can and must be used exo/esoterically, politico-ontologically. However, this is to say that we ignore at our own risk the covert as well as overt violence thathas profoundlyinformedthe historyof consciousness in This violence includesthe ancientGreek xywv all its so-calledconversations. and tOXEgoa, later adapted by Nietzsche; Kant's Kampfplatz der Metaphysik;the Schmittianideal that "it belongs only to humanbeings to make war, not only to kill but to die, for a high cause and ultimatelyfor the highest cause, which is their faith";139 Heidegger's hair-raising teaching to his studentsin 1929-30 thatthe very mission of authentic thinkingis to make us "againcall out to him who is able to drive terrorinto our Dasein" 140-in shortto the Fuhrerprinzip; not least,theAlthusserian thesis thatphilosoand, 141 phy is "class struggle in the specific elementof theory." This violence in mind, we can confirm anotherof Strauss's brutaljudgments: Cassirer at Davos shows thathe only "represented establishedacademicposition.He the was a distinguishedprofessorof philosophybut he was no philosopher.He was eruditebut he had no passion. He was a clear writerbut his clarity and 142 placidity were not equaled by his sensitivity to the problems." Which problems, exactly? In a word, the exo/esoteric problematicthat is always alreadydesigned to crush-when it cannotexploit and manipulate-"clear writing,""clarityand placidity." So it was thatthe limits of Cassirer'sonly partiallygraspedGoetheanand returned Schellingian"symbolicform"and "myth" with a vengeancewhen, at the end of his life, he attemptedto face the "myth of the twentieth century"-German national socialism-but with inadequateweapons and 143 with what Strausscalled "weak-kneed eclecticism." Which is to say with a Xoyoa or philosophy that has always alreadyunknowinglyconceded the field to poetry or gvOom. Any distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric (and hence crucialdifferentiaspecifica amongthe varioustotalitarian mythsof the State,notablybetweenItalianfascist relativismandGerman nationalsocialist essentialism) is effectively obliteratedin Cassirer'sposthumouslypublishedTheMythof theState(1946)-his last will andtestament in terms of applyinghis theoryof myth to the most pressingcurrentevents. Cassirerwas thus simply incapableof providingan effective analytic and theoreticalweaponbothretroactively againstnationalsocialism in 1946 and prolepticallyfor his followers'use in combattodayagainstneo-Nazism-let alone against the neofascist relativism that is transnationalcapitalism. Heidegger's victory over Cassirerat Davos had 'predicted,'as it were, that the philosophy of symbolic forms and its capacity to analyze fascism are politically inadequate,in addition to serving ontologically as yet another
apologist for the age-old concealment of the question of Being. When Cassirerconcluded The Myth of the State (and his life work) by admitting that "it is beyond the power of philosophy to destroy the political myths," because "a myth is in a sense invulnerable. .. imperviousto rationalargube ments,"andhence "cannot refutedby syllogisms,"'"he was still confirming one of Heidegger's basic arguments,was still unwilling or incapableof takingthe next step andaskinghow mythmightthenworkso supremelywell as illocutionary act and perlocutionaryeffect. For his part, Heidegger's in exo/esotericintervention the ThirdReichwas capableof notjust producing at that time what he notoriouslycalled "theinnertruthand greatnessof the but Movement" (i.e., national socialism)"45 later reproducinghis brandof fascism to live to fight anotherday exo/esotericallylong after it had sucduring cumbedpolitically-as is the inevitablefate of any onticphenomenon of the long marchof the transhistory Being. As helpless as virtuallyany isolated individualor philosopheris in the face of historicaldisaster,in TheMythof the State Cassirercould add only one qualificationto his admissionthat "it is not in the power of philosophy to destroythe politicalmyths":"Butphilosophycan do us anotherimportant the better.In orderto fight the service. It can make us understand adversary face to face in enemy you must know him.... We should see the adversary The orderto know how to combathim."'46 uncannyproblem,however,is that this enemy may be us. And it is us, if graspingthe exo/esotericdimensionof to and modernmyth is indeedimpossible,"impervious rationalarguments," withoutourabilityfully to know how the enemy debates,thinks,writes.One thing is certain.In 1929 Davos, ErnstCassirerhad met his enemy face to face-absolutely clueless abouthow to combathim effectively. And today this is the Cassirerian ball that is in 'our' court, includingthe conceptually foundationlesscourtof culturalstudies.
CABARETAFTER DAVOS But in one important respect Heideggerdid not simply 'win' the Davos debatewhereasCassirersimply 'lost' it. In termsof class struggle (not to be conflated with political ideology), Cassirerand Heidegger always say the same thing-albeit the one exoterically,the other exo/esoterically.In this sense, they both won the real debate, the one 'extimate' to all academic philosophicaldisputes:the debateon behalf of capitalistinterests. At the very end of the Davos event, a slapstickcabaretwas organizedwith 4" of the inevitablecaricature the mainparticipants. Cabaret-like the carnivalesque generally-is an established institution to legitimate dominant
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systems by critiquing them only within carefully policed limits. One of Otto FriedrichBollnow, played Heidegger's assistants,the aforementioned the 'victorious' Heidegger-repeating over and over again: "interpretari meansturninga thing on heiBteine Sache auf den Kopf stellen"(interpretari its head). To which the figure playing Cassirerrepeatedlyretorted,"Ichbin versohnlich gestimmt"(I'm in a conciliatorymood)-shaking flour out of the wig he was wearing,in mimicryof Cassirer'sflowing white hair.But then flour continuedto pourout of holes in his pockets-a more cruel allusion to Cassirer'snow perceptibleintellectualpoverty and abject 'defeat.' Playing EmmanuelLevinas. the role of Cassirerwas the twenty-three-year-old Was this the same man who would later, as he said, "never forgive" Heideggerfor associatingwith nationalsocialism, who swore an oathduring WorldWar II never to returnto Germany,but also who would continue to averthatthe earlyHeideggerhad written"oneof the most beautifulbooks in With the historyof philosophy"?'48 this question,we find ourselvesstuckstill in an uncannyaporiaof the historyof consciousness:Who among us today dares to be Cassirer,who Heidegger, who Bollnow, who Levinas? How and-if our subjectpositions are distribseparateare they from one another, between them internally-is there no external uted equally or unequally Is alternative? the upshot of our own slapstickcabaretcalled the History of some past philosopheror Consciousnessthat we are all only impersonating philosophy, all footnotes to Plato-or to Heidegger? Given the elusive existence of theirexo/esotericism,can we ever know whom we are ventriloquizing?Canwe ever speaknotmerelyin ourown voice, butin an alternative, oppositionalvoice? Is life just a cabaret? however, there is at Even remainingwithin this anecdoteand metaphor, "Withphilosophersyou know least weak hope. As Althusseronce remarked: what to expect: at some point they will fall flat on their faces. Behind this mischievous or malevolenthope thereis a genuinereality:ever since Thales and Plato, philosophy and philosophers have been "falling into wells." But problemis thatwe do not Slapstick.But thatis not all!"149 the intractable always know what to expect with philosophers,let alone exo/esoteric ones. And do they eventuallyfall flat on theirfaces? Finally,what is this "notall" that exceeds them? to Near the outset of this essay, I said that I hoped to avoid contributing the and themyththatat Davos Cassirer Heideggerrepresented only two major of possible choices for the next generations philosophers-with Heidegger's camp carrying the day, at least for a long time and the time being. An alternative, oppositionalpositionmighthave been presentat Davos. Canonical myth to the contrary,it may not be true necessarily that everyone
witnessing the great event thoughtthat Heidegger had triumphed,and not merely because a tiny minority stubbornlyinsisted on giving the laurel to Cassirer.But were there any real dissenters to the dominant consensus? Among the audiencewere several young self-describedMarxists:including Alfred Sohn-Rethel, later the leading FrankfurtSchool economist, and HerbertMarcuse, although the latter was already swimming fast toward The Heidegger'sundertow."5' recordshows thatthey were all silent. But then vulgarMarxists-here definedas all those unawareof, andhence victims of, exo/esotericism-are always reducedto silence. Andjustly so. I conclude.Whateverwill be the 'final'outcomeof the encounter between Cassirer and Heidegger (i.e., their mutual victory disguised as a 'debate' 'won' by Heidegger), and whetherany academicdiscipline could ever find its philosophicalbase orethicsin Cassirerand/orHeidegger,thepresentessay has attemptedto rectify the evident vulgar Marxist silence-not only at Davos. My argumenthardly amounts to a philosophy or an ethics that constitutes an effective opponent of capitalism, fascism, Stalinism, and exo/esotericism. But, drawing one line of demarcation,this may be one exoteric start.
NOTES
1. Leo Strauss, "An Introductionto HeideggerianExistentialism,"in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism:An Introduction the Thoughtof Leo Strauss,ed. ThomasL. to Pangle (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1989), 28. 2. Dominique Janicaud,The Shadow of That Thought:Heidegger and the Question of Politics, trans.Michael Gendre(Evanston,IL: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1996), 60. 3. EmmanuelLevinas,"Martin HeideggerandOntology," Diacritics 26, no. 1 (1996): 11. 4. Martin Heidegger,"Zurcher Seminar," Seminare,Gesamtausgabe, CurdOchwadt in ed. am (Frankfurt Main: Klostermann,1986), I/15:426. I will cite this edition as GA, followed by section, volume, and page numbers. 5. Niccolo Machiavellito FrancescoGuicciardini,May 17, 1521, in The Prince: A New Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Peripherica,ed. and trans.RobertM. Adams (New York:W. W. Norton, 1977), 135. 6. Heidegger, "PlatonsLehre von der Wahrheit," Wegmarken in (Frankfurt Main: am Klostermann,1967), 109 (emphasisadded). 7. Compare also Isaiah 6:9-10. The passage from Mark is the core exhibit in Frank Kermode's The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretationof Narrative (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress, 1979). 8. Boethius, Philosophiaeconsolationis,II, 74-77. 9. Louis Althusser,"Du cotd de la philosophie,"in Editionposthumed'aeuvres Louis de Althusser, vol. 5, Ecrits philosophiqueset politiques, TomeII, ed. Fran,ois Matheron(Paris: Stock/lMEC, 1995), 259.
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CarlWinter,1925), 10. Benedictde Spinoza,Spinozaopera,ed. CarlGebhardt (Heidelberg: 2:124; The Ethics, in The Collected Works Spinoza,ed. and trans.Edwin Curley(Princeton, of NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1985), 1:479 (pt. II, prop.XLIII,schol.). 11. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Logic, ed. and trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1992), 557, 561. accountof this andother(often contradictory) definitionsof ideology, 12. For the standard see RaymondWilliams, Keywords:A Vocabulary Cultureand Society, rev. ed. (New York: of OxfordUniversityPress, 1983), 153-57. 13. Althusser," 'On the Young Marx': TheoreticalQuestions,"in For Marx, trans.Ben Brewster(New York:Vintage, 1970), 57. 14. On the way the prudentdiscoursepeculiarto sacredthoughtwas eventuallyreplaced relationto realityand intersubjectivity, by anotherdiscourse informedby its own problematic see Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truthin Archaic Greece, trans.JanetLloyd (New York: MarxreplacesGod in the presecular Zone, 1996). In Stalinisthumanism, definition,truthin the For Spinozist and Kantian,and ideology in the Althusserian. Stalinism,"Theteachingof Marx is omnipotent because it is true" (Rede Erich Honeckers auf der InternationalenWissendes der schaftlichenKonferenz Zentralkomitees SED: "KarlMarxundunsereZeitalter-Kampf um Frieden undsozialen Fortschritt"[Dresden:VerlagZeit im Bild, 1983], 11). in 15. Althusser,"Marxand Humanism," For Marx, 232. in 16. Althusser,"Ideologyand IdeologicalStateApparatuses," Leninand Philosophyand OtherEssays, trans.Ben Brewster(New York:MonthlyReview Press, 1971), 175. 17. Heidegger, "Der Urprung des Kunstwerkes,"in Holzwege (Frankfurtam Main: Klostermann,1980), 47. 18. The Seminarof Jacques Lacan,Book XI: TheFour Fundamental Conceptsof PsychoW. Analysis,1964, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller,trans.Alan Sheridan (New York: W.Norton,1998), viii. 19. See TheSeminarofJacquesLacan,BookVII:TheEthicsof Psychoanalysis,1959-1960, ed. Jacques-AlainMiller,trans.Dennis Porter(New York:W. W. Norton, 1992), 311-25. 20. TracyB. Strong,"Nietzsche'sPoliticalMisappropriation," TheCambridgeCompanin ion to Nietzsche,ed. Bermd Magnusand KathleenM. Higgens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 123. 21. This is something grasped not only by fascism but by Nazism. As the master of propaganda, Goebbels, memorablyput it in March 1933, the strong state does not need overt whichindeedis a sign of weakness:"Thebest propaganda notthatwhichis always propaganda, is is openly revealingitself; the best propaganda thatwhich as it were works invisibly,penetrates the whole of life withoutthe publichavingany knowledgeat all of the propagandistic initiative" (cited in Julian Pedley,Capital and Culture:GermanCinema 1933-45 [London:BFI, 1979], 101). 22. See Benito Mussolini and Alfredo de Marsico, as cited in Amerigo Montemaggiore, Dizionariodella dottrinafascista (Turin:G. B. Paravia& Co., 1934), 369, 371 (from the entry "Gerarchia"). 23. See Mussolini, "Relativismoe Fascismo",in Opera omnia, ed. EdoardoSusmel and Duilio Susmel (Florence:La Fireze, 1951-63), 17:267-69. 24. Ibid., 269. 25. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critiqueof Political Economy, ed. FrederickEngels, trans. Samuel Moore and EdwardAveling (New York:International, modi1967), 3:250 (translation ed. fied); Das Kapital:Kritikderpolitischen Okonomie, Friedrich Engels (Berlin:Dietz, 1978), 3:260. 26. Slavoj Zizek, The SublimeObjectof Ideology(London:Verso, 1989), 52.
27. Louis Althusserand Etienne Balibar,Reading Capital, 2nd ed., trans.Ben Brewster (London:NLB, 1970), 101. 28. See The Seminarof Jacques Lacan, BookXI, 59. 29. Althusser,"Philosophyand the SpontaneousPhilosophyof the Scientists,"in Philosophy and the SpontaneousPhilosophyof theScientists& OtherEssays, ed. GregoryElliott,trans. Ben Brewsteret al. (London:Verso, 1990), 93. 30. The Seminarof Jacques Lacan, Book : Freud'sPapers on Technique,1953-54, trans. John Forrester (New York:Norton, 1988), 228. of 31. Antonio Gramsci'sprofoundgraspand appropriation Machiavelliin the 1930s is of course the greatMarxistexception in this regard(see Selectionsfrom the Prison Notebooksof Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith [New York: International, 1971], 125-205), butthereis no theoryof the unconsciousin Gramsci.And fascist prisonturnedhim intothe greatestleftistpractitioner exo/esotericism.Althusser, practiced of too, a formof exo/esotericism("aleatory to materialism") critiqueStalinisthumanism,inevitablism, and totalitarianism-although mainly from within them. This is becoming evident with the publication of his opus postumus (e.g., see Sur la philosophie, ed. Olivier Corpet [Paris: Gallimard,1994], esp. 34-44). 32. Althusser,"TheTbilisi Affair, 1976-1984,"in Writings Psychoanalysis:Freudand on trans.JeffreyMehiman(New York:Columbia Lacan,ed. OlivierCorpetandFran,ois Matheron, UniversityPress, 1996), 118 (emphasiseliminated). 33. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, 133. This follows Lacan's analytic caveat aboutthe relationof the unconsciousto conscious knowledge:"All I can do is tell the truth.No, thatisn't so-I have missed it. Thereis no truththat,in passingthroughawareness,does not lie. But one runs after it all the same" (p. vii). Although Lacan focused on lies in relationto the unconsciousmuchmore thanon the possibilityof theirexo/esotericmanipulation, although and Althusser largely followed suit, elements of Althusseriantheory are just now being used to critiquethisperceivedlacunain theLacanian system,as well as in Marxismgenerally.See Robert Pfaller,Althusser:Das Schweigenim Text;Epistemologie,PsychoanalyseundMoninalismus in LouisAlthussersTheoriederLektaire (Munich:Fink, 1997), esp. 74-157; and "Negationand Its Reliabilities:An EmptySubjectfor Ideology?"in Cogitoand the Unconscious,ed. SlavojZizek (Durham,NC: Duke UniversityPress, 1998), 225-46. 34. Lacan, Tilivision (Paris:du Seuil, 1973), 83. 35. The Davos transcripthas been published as "Davoser Disputationzwischen Ernst Cassirerund MartinHeidegger,"in Heidegger,Kantunddas Problemder Metaphysik, rev. 4th am ed. (Frankfurt Main:Klostermann, 1973), 246-68. It has been partiallyandbadly translated as "A Discussion between Ernst Cassirerand MartinHeidegger,"trans. Francis Slade, The ExistentialistTradition:Selected Writings,ed. Nino Languilli (GardenCity, NY: Doubleday/ Anchor, 1971), 192-203; and more fully and precisely as "Davos Disputationbetween Ernst Cassirerand MartinHeidegger,"in Kantand the Problemof Metaphysics,trans.RichardTaft (Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1990), 171-85. (Thistranslation the book supersedes of the one in 1962 by James S. Churchill.) 36. See Ernst Cassirer, Die Idee der republikanischenVerfassung:Rede zur Verfassungsfeier am 11. August 1928 (Hamburg: Friederichsen,1929). JurgenHabermashas argued thatCassirer's"unclarified" to relationship Judaismwas responsiblefor Heidegger's"questionable victory" at Davos insofar as the latter was able to articulatecontemporary avant-garde existentialismwith the claim to returnto the deepest origins of "Occidental" thought.To this potent mixture, the Enlightenmenthumanist Cassirer could find no antidote because the on Enlightenment, Habermas'saccount,had only partiallyfreedJews andJewish thoughtfrom the ghetto,but at the expense of "thedepthof its own tradition, Cabala," the which alone could
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have met ancient Greek thought,as exemplified by Heidegger,in terms of profundity("Der deutsche Idealismusund die judischen Philosophen,"in Philosophisch-politische Profile, 3rd ed. [Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp,1981], 53-54). In other terms, Habermasimplies that Cassirer failed in not being authenticallyor sufficiently Jewish, whereas Heidegger was victorious in being what? Authentically and sufficiently Greek? In any case, historicizing exo/esotericism. 'explanations'can graspnothingof transhistorical 37. See Heidegger, "WasIst Metaphysik?" Wegmarken in am (Frankfurt Main: Klostermann, 1967), 1-19. 38. See Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of ParliamentaryDemocracy, 2nd ed., trans. Ellen MA: MITPress, 1985), 76. The greatrivalmyththatSchmitthadin mind Kennedy(Cambridge, was of course Sorel's "mythof the general strike."See MarkNeocleous, "Friendor Enemy? Reading Schmitt Politically,"Radical Philosophy79 (September-October, 1996): 13-23. Supplementing Neocleous's argument, I'd say that the paradoxicalcomplexities of Schmitt's relationshipto fascism and nationalsocialism, in tandemwith his generallypositive influence to of on ourown contemporary aredueto his commitment thedoublerhetoric exo/esotericism. Left, 39. See Hans Blumenberg,The Legitimacyof the ModernAge, trans.RobertM. Wallace (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1985), 89-102. 40. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as cited in Otto FriedrichBollnow, "Gesprachein an Neske (Pfullingen:Neske, 1977), 28. Davos," in Erinnerung MartinHeidegger,ed. Gunther The referenceis to Goethe's Die Compagnein Frankreich,publishedin 1822 but datingback to his experiences at the siege of Mainz in 1792-93. It was also Goethe's habitto use aesthetic that categoriesto describeNapoleon.Goethetold an acquaintance "Napoleondirectedthe world according to about the same basic principlesas he [Goethe] did the theater"(J. D. Falk, 14 October 1808; Goethe, Artemis-Gedenkausgabe Werke,Briefe und Gesprache [Zurich: der Artemis, 1944 ff], 22:512). 41. The Straussianview remainsinformedby Leo Strauss'seyewitness accounts,to which I refer.(Strauss'sacademiccareerwas launchedby lettersof recommendation fromthe unlikely pairof CassirerandCarlSchmitt-yet anotherstorythere.)The mainHeideggerianeyewitness is Bollnow, "Gesprache Davos."The Cassirerianeyewitness is HenrikJ. Pos, "Recollections in of ErnstCassirer," trans.RobertW. Bretall,The Philosophyof Ernst Cassirer,ed. Paul Arthur Schlipp (Evanston,IL: The Libraryof Living Philosophers,1949), 61-72. As we will see, Pos directeda remarkto Cassirerand Heideggerduringtheirdebate,which is the only intervention from the audiencerecordedin the availabletranscript. 42. Strauss's only extended analysis of Heidegger is "An Introduction Heideggerian to Existentialism," we arewarnedby AlanUdoff that"[t]herelationship Straussto Heidegger yet of is not at all adequatelysuggestedby the titles of his works or theirindices-Natural Rightand History being an outstandingexample" ("On Leo Strauss:An Introductory Account,"in Leo Strauss'sThought:Toward CriticalEngagement[Boulder,CO: LynneRienner,1991], 27). a 43. KarlfriedGrunder, "Cassirer Heideggerin Davos 1929,"in Uber Ernst Cassirers und Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, ed. Hans-Jurg Braun et al. (Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp,1988), 290-302. Grunder'sessay provides basic anecdotal informationabout the Davos event andits prehistory, does Heinz Paetzold,ErnstCassirer-Von Marburgnach New as York: Eine philosophischeBiographie(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,1995), 86-105 ("Die Davoser Disputationzwischen ErnstCassirerund MartinHeidegger 1929"). 44. To be sure, culturalstudiesmay not need a philosophicalbase; or, more precisely,as a form of historicism,it can and does not perceive such a need (on this issue avant la lettre, see Leo Strauss,"WhatIs PoliticalPhilosophy?" WhatIs Political Philosophy?and OtherStudies in [Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1988], esp. 20-27). Today,this problemis debated,more or less directly,within culturaland postcolonial studies perhapsmost intensely in the journal
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Cultural Critique (specifically, vol. 33, spring 1996; see especially Mario Moussa and Ron Scapp, "ThePracticalTheorizingof MichelFoucault:PoliticsandCounter-Discourse," 87-112). I know of no specific analyticyield supposedlyindebtedto Cassirer'smethodologythat could that not have been arrivedat from anotherroute;andit is symptomatic none of the contributions to the 1996 Cassirerconference at Yale attemptedto apply Cassirerianconcepts to specific problems.This holds true as well of the majoranthologieson his work thatare now appearing in Germany, including Uber Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen; and nachErnstCassirer,ed. EnnoRudolphandBemd-OttoKuppers Kulturkritik (Hamburg: Meiner, vol. 1995; Cassirer-Forschungen, 1), bothof which containmoreor less insightfularticlesabout to to but Cassirerandhis relationship otherthinkers, neitherof whichreallyattempts use Cassirer himself. But this reluctanceor even incapacitywould make sense if the Cassireriansymbolic Cassirerwas neverable formis indeeda conceptualnightin which all cows areblack.Certainly, to define andcritiquehis own mostbasic concept-symbolic form-in the termshe used in 1907 to depict one of Spinoza's own basic concepts-substance. As paraphrased Negri, "This by and conceptof substance,Cassirercontinues,is indeterminate, whenone triesto graspits content, it appearsat times as 'existence,'at times as a 'totality'of theparticular determinations, 'ordering of the singularbeings'; finally,the positivityof the concept of substanceseems to reside in the mathematical dependencethatthe thingsestablish,once andforall, amongthemselves"(Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly:The Power of Spinoza'sMetaphysicsand Politics, trans.Michael Hardt[Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1991], 78; citing Cassirer,Das Erkenntnisder problemder Philosophie und Wissenschaft neuerenZeit, vol. 2 [Hildesheim:Olms, 1973], 107-112). Finally,does culturalstudieshave reasonto be concernedaboutexo/esotericism?No more and no less thanany otherdiscipline or would-be discipline. 45. Paetzold,Ernst Cassirer, 104. 46. See Susanne K. Langer, "On Cassirer's Theory of Language and Myth," in The The Philosophyof ErnstCassirer,379-400; andPhilipWheelwright, BurningFountain(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954). For two important,very different critiques of the fascinationof North Americanliterarycriticismin the 1950s with the Cassirerian concepts of symbol and myth, see Paul de Man's early 'deconstructionist' position in "The Dead-Endof FormalistCriticism,"in Blindness and Insight:Essays in the Rhetoricof Contemporary Criticism, 2nd rev.ed., introduction Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: by Universityof MinnesotaPress, Marxistpositionof UrsulaBrumm,"Derneue Symbolis1983), esp. 242-44; andthe 'orthodox' mus in Amerika,"Neue deutsche Hefte 5 (1958-59); along with the later elaborationof her argument one of East Germany'sleadingliterarytheorists,RobertWeimann,in his Structure by and Society in LiteraryHistory: Studiesin the Historyand Theoryof Historical Criticism,rev. ed. (Baltimore,MD: JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress, 1984), 131-45. 47. De Man, "Spacecritics:J. Hillis Miller and Joseph Frank", in Critical Writings 1953-1978, ed. LindsayWaters(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1989), 108. 48. Althusser,"Philosophyand the SpontaneousPhilosophyof the Scientists,"91. 49. Ibid., esp. 83, 88. 50. By repeatingthe rider"in principle," intentis not to beg the questionbut ratherto my acknowledgethatMarxismand communismhave not always lived up to these principles. 51. Althusser,"TheTbilisi Affair,"110. 52. Althusser,letter to Lacan, 4 December 1963, "Correspondence with Jacques Lacan on 1963-1969,"in Writings Psychoanalysis, 157. I 53. The contradiction identifyhere is constitutiveof Althusser'sentireceuvre.Its cause is but overdetermined, includingby his manic psychopathology, can also be explained(although not explainedaway)by the fact thatall the writingsAlthusserpublishedareexo/esoteric.Inbrief, the comparatively esoteric Althusseris more cogent thanthe comparatively exoteric.
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54. See The Seminarof Jacques Lacan, Book VII, 139. On Lacan's neologism 'extimite' (which combines ex-terieurwith in-timite),see LacanianTheoryof Discourse: Subject,Structure and Society, ed. Mark Bracher et al. (New York: New York University Press, 1994), especially the contribution Jacques-AlainMiller. of 55. For the first analogy, see HeinrichWiegand Petzet, Encountersand Dialogues with MartinHeidegger 1929-1976, trans.ParvisEmad and KennethMaly (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1993), 13; the second is Ludwig Englert's,as cited by Grunder, "Cassirer und Heideggerin Davos 1929," 299. 56. See KurtRiezler'sreport Davos (sidingwithHeidegger)in theNeueZurcherZeitung, on 30 March 1929; also cited in RudigerSafranski,Ein Meisteraus Deutschland:Heidegger und seine Zeit (Munich:Hanser,1994), 220-21. Accordingto Safranski, HeideggerhadreadMann's novel in the summerof 1924 togetherwith his lover, the philosopherHannahArendt. 57. See WarrenMontag, "Spinozaand AlthusseragainstHermeneutics: or Interpretation in Intervention," TheAlthusserianLegacy, ed. E. Ann Kaplanand Michael Sprinker(London: Verso, 1993), 51-58. 58. Heidegger,"DavoserVortrage: KantsKritikderreinenVernunft die Aufgabeeiner und in der Grundlegung Metaphysik," Kant unddas Problemder Metaphysik,245. This pr6cishas been translated "DavosLectures:Kant'sCritiqueof Pure Reason and the Taskof a Layingof as the Groundfor Metaphysics,"in Kantand the Problemof Metaphysics,169-71. 59. See Heidegger,Die Grundbegriffe derMetaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit,ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm Herrmann von (Frankfurt Main:Klostermann,1983); GA, 11/29/30;The am FundamentalConceptsof Metaphysics:World, Finitude,Solitude,trans.WilliamMcNeill and Nicolas Walker(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1995), esp. chs. 3-4. 60. Heidegger,The FundamentalConceptsof Metaphysics,12. 61. Ibid., 39-40. 62. Ibid., 55. 63. Ibid., 13. On silence as a constitutivefeatureof Heidegger's thinking-although the author unaware theproblem exo/esotericism its rhetorical is of of and for implications Heideggersee Berel Lang, Heidegger'sSilence (Ithaca,NY: CornellUniversityPress, 1996). 64. Compare,for example, Bollnow, "Gesprache Davos." in 65. StanleyRosen,TheQuarrelbetweenPhilosophyandPoetry:StudiesinAncientThought (New York:Routledge, 1988), 13. 66. KarlKautsky,Ethics and the Materialistic Conceptionof History, 4th rev. ed., trans. J. R. Askew (Chicago:CharlesH. Kerr,n.d.), 160. As notedby Steven Lukes,Kautskyis one of very few Marxists to address the problem of ethics in any depth. And he did so within a problematicbasically established by the Marburgneo-Kantians,including Cohen, Natorp, Lange, Stammler, and Staudinger, Vorlander-all of whom attempted supplement "to Marxwith Kant, whose practicalphilosophy,they thought,could providethe ethicaljustificationfor the pursuitof the socialist goal" (Lukes,Marxismand Morality [Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1985], 15). On this topic, see Timothy R. Keck, "Kant and Socialism: The MarburgSchool in Wilhelmian Germany" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975); and Klaus Christian Kohnke,EntstehungundAufstiegdes Neukantianismus: deutsche Universitatsphilosophie Die am zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus(Frankfurt Main: Suhrkamp,1986). As Lukes also points out, otherMarxistswho were influencedalso by Kant(includingthe Austro-Marxism of Adler, Bauer, and Mach) did not share Kautsky'sneed for ethical grounding,and still others attemptedto mediatethe two positions. I would add thatby his neglect of ethics, Cassirerwas indirectly opposing this 'ethical' moment in socialism. At least he was neglecting ethics comparedto Marburgneo-Kantians-most notably Cassirer's teacher,HermannCohen. As PierreBourdieuhas put it, Cohenhad "proposed Socialistinterpretation Kant,in which the a of
categoricalimperativeenjoiningus to treatthe otherperson [le personne d'autrui]as ends, not means, is interpretedas the moral programof the future"(L'ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger, 2nd rev. ed. [Paris:Minuit, 1988], 55-56). Heidegger's rejectionof the validity of even the question of ethics was in this context a more direct attackon at least this socialism. Heideggerhere followed Nietzsche (who hadlearnedmuchof whathe knew of Kantianism and socialismfromFriedrich AlbertLange'sHistoryof Materialism). this is notto denythatmany All thinkthey have found an ethics in Heidegger (as othershave found one in Cassirer);or, to be more precise, they have inventedone for Heideggerby readinghim only exoterically(e.g., the articlesby John D. Caputoand Jean Grondinin ReadingHeideggerfrom the Start:Essays in His EarliestThought, TheodoreKisiel andJohnvon Buren[Albany:StateUniversityof New ed. YorkPress, 1994]). 67. As for the existentialprerequisites, they may be foundin Trotsky'sdepictionof Lenin (or, if one prefers, Lenin as ego ideal): "the 'amoralism'of Lenin, that is, his rejection of supra-class morals, did not hinder him from remainingfaithful to one and the same ideal his throughout life; fromdevotinghis whole being to the cause of the oppressed; fromdisplaying the highest conscientiousnessin the sphereof ideas andthe highestfearlessnessin the sphereof action;from maintainingan attitudeuntaintedby the least superiorityto an 'ordinary' worker, to a defenseless woman, to a child. Does it not seem that 'amoralism'in given a case is only a pseudonym for higher human morality?"(Leon Trotsky,"TheirMorals and Ours,"in Their Moralsand Ours:MarxistversusLiberalViewson Morality;Four Essays byLeon Trotsky, John Dewey, and George Novack, 4th ed. [New York:Pathfinder,1969], 34). "As for us," Trotsky wrote in 1920, "we were never concernedwith the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about 'sacredness of human life.' We were revolutionariesin opposition, and have remainedrevolutionariesin power. To make the individualsacredwe must destroy the social orderwhich crucifies him. And this problemcan only be solved by blood and iron"(Terrorism and Communism[Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961], 82). On this occasion, Trotskyneglectedto add:but not by blood and iron alone. 68. Fora cogentattackagainsttheideology of interdisciplinarity, Althusser,"Philosophy see and the SpontaneousPhilosophyof the Scientists,"esp. 85-100. " 69. See HansVaihinger, Philosophyof "As-If, 2nd ed., trans.C. K. Ogden(New York: The Harper& Row, 1935). Vaihinger'sposition was developedindependently but finds its great of, philosophicalprecedentin, Jeremy Bentham'sposthumouslypublished "Theoryof Fictions" (Bentham'sTheoryof Fictions, ed. C. K. Ogden [Paterson, Littlefield,Adams, 1959]). NJ: 70. Cassirer,Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt:Drei Aufsatze(Berlin:Bruno Cassirer, 1932), 26, as cited in de Man, "Thematic Criticismandthe Themeof Faust,"trans.Dan Latimer, in Critical Writings,80. Readersof the first paragraph Nietzsche's UntimelyMeditationon of "The Uses and Disadvantagesof Historyfor Life" will recognize a key source of this view of Goethe.Priorto Davos, Cassirerhadof coursewrittenextensivelyaboutGoethe(as bothscientist and man of letters), including Freiheit und Form: Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin:BrunoCassirer,1916), ch. 4; Idee und Gestalt:Fuinf Aufsdtze(Berlin:BrunoCassirer, 1921), chs. 1, 2; and"GoetheundPlaton,"Sokrates48 no. 1 (1922), reprinted Goetheunddie in geschichtlicheWelt,ch. 3. In English, see his RousseauKantGoethe:TwoEssays, trans.James Gutmannet al. (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1945), esp. 61-98. 71. Goethe,letterto K. E. Schubarth, January 12 1818, inArtemis-Gedenkausgabe, 21:286. 72. Goethe,MaximenundReflexionen(Nr. 1113), in Artemis-Gedenkausgabe, 9:639. 73. Althusserand Balibar,ReadingCapital, 193. 74. Spinoza,TheEthics, 1:428(pt. 1,prop.XVIII);Spinozaopera, 2:62. "Deusest omnium rerumcausa immanens,non vero transiens."
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of 75. This returnsus to the ironybehindde Man'saffirmation Cassirer'sparadigmshift of Europeanand NorthAmericanliterarycriticism"fromthe historyof themes"(Stoffgeschichte) "to the history of ideas" (Geistesgeschichte),by which the demandfor a 'historyof images' is elided and obviated ("ThematicCriticism and the Theme of Faust," 80). De Man took a refreshinglycandidneoformaliststandwith regardboth to the historyof ideas and to presuppositions about the idea of history,and was entirelyjustified in his imputationto Cassirerof "a erratic certaintheoryof history"that"is shown to bring orderand coherencein the apparently developmentof literature"-but this means, for de Man, an illicit orderand coherence in its in actually erraticdevelopment("ModemPoetics in Franceand Germany," Critical Writings, 157). In other words, Cassirersimply presupposed the existence of a philosophy of history commensuratewith his philosophy of symbolic forms, thus renderingtheir precise epistemorelational logical status basically undecidable.Are these forms ahistoricalor transhistorical of structures,not to say archetypes?Or are they merely concatenations empiricalobservations withoutconceptualgrounding? and Romanticismas 76. ContrastCassirer'sview of Goethe's relationto Enlightenment presentedin bothRousseauKantGoethe:TwoEssays andThePhilosophyof the Enlightenment, trans.Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove(Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1951), esp. 360. as 77. See Rosen,Henmeneutics Politics (New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1987), ch. 1: whichincludesa close analysis Ambiguity:TheRhetoricof theEnlightenment," "Transcendental of an often overlooked section of Kant's First Critique:"The Discipline of Pure Reason with Respect to Its Polemical Use" (B 766-97). Also compareVaihinger'srelated view of Kant's on argument(based particularly the opuspostumus)to formulate"thephilosophyof as-if." 78. Cassirer's writings on Plato, and on Greek philosophy generally, confirm Strauss's remarkthat, after Schleiermacher'sdismissal of the thesis that Plato was an esoteric writer, German philosophy began to lose its contact with the exo/esoteric problematic,which thus "failedto see the crucialquestion,"introeffectively ended with Lessing. For Schleiermacher ducing as he did "thatstyle of Platonicstudies in which classical scholarshipis still engaged" (Strauss,"ExotericTeaching,"in The Rebirthof Classical Political Rationalism,67-69). And in "GeneralIntroduction," Introduccompare,indeed, FriedrichErnstDaniel Schleiermacher, tions to the Dialogues of Plato, trans.William Dobson (London:John William Parker,1836), had esp. 5-19. WhereasSchleiermacher to at least take the questionseriously,Cassirerdid not. his In additionto Cassirer's"GoetheundPlaton," in thisregard Die Philosophieder Griechen see von den Anfangenbis Platon (Berlin:Ullstein, 1925), esp. pt. 2, ch. 3: "Platon." 79. On this term,see Geoffrey Waite,Nietzsche'sCorps/e:Aesthetics,Politics, Prophecy, NC: Duke UniversityPress, 1996), of Life (Durham, or,the SpectacularTechnoculture Everyday esp. 51-58. 80. For anotherview of this Nietzscheanproblematic,see Rosen, TheMask of EnlightenCambridgeUniversityPress, 1995). But this is ment: Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" (Cambridge: nothow Rosen views Heideggerin TheQuestionofBeing: A Reversalof Heidegger(New Haven, CT:Yale UniversityPress, 1993). 81. Nietzsche, "Jenseitsvon Gut und Bose: Vorspieleiner Philosophie der Zukunft,"in ed. Kritische Gesamtausgabe,Werke, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari(Berlin and New York:Walterde Gruyter,1967 ff), 6/2:19 (pt. I, aphorism11). I will cite this edition as KGW, followed by section, volume, and page numbers. 82. See Peter Sloterdijk,Critiqueof CynicalReason, trans.Michael Eldred(Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1987). Sloterdijkdistinguishes"cynicism,"a form of modern false consciousness,"from the premodern (Diogenes) and also postmodernmode "enlightened of liberatory, carnivalesque belly laughter that he calls "kynicism." Here, Nietzsche and
own explicitlyleft-Nietzscheanandleft-Heideggerian Heideggerareaxialpointsfor Sloterdijk's brand of kynicism, which, I would argue, wholly misses what Nietzsche and Heidegger themselves were aboutexo/esoterically. v 83. See OctaveMannoni,Clefspourl'imaginaire(Paris:du Seuil, 1968), 14-32;andZizek's of many appropriations Mannoni's work, including in For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment a Political Factor (London:Verso, 1991), 245-53. as and in varioustrans. 84. V.I. Lenin,"Party Organization PartyLiterature," CollectedWorks, (Moscow: Progress, 1972), 10:44. 85. See Heidegger, "ErnstCassirer,Philosophie der symbolischenFormen. 2. Teil: Das 21 mythischeDenken,"Deutsche Literaturzeitung (1928): 1000-1012; "Review of ErnstCasin sirer's Mythical Thought," The Piety of Thinking,ed. and trans.James G. Hartand John C. Maralso(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1976), 32-45. 86. JacquesTaminiauxhas pointedto the great importanceof Heidegger'sreview for the to developmentof a crucial aspect his thinking:the thematizationof the attribution primitive of Dasein of an understanding Being-a thematizationmore extensive and precise than the in presentation Being and Time("TheHusserlianHeritagein Heidegger'sNotion of the Self," trans.Fran,ois Renaud,inReadingHeideggerfromtheStart,282). Fordiscussionof Heidegger's own views on myth and symbol, see 281-84. in 87. See Bollnow, "Gesprache Davos." 88. Heidegger,"ErnstCassirer,"1000. 89. FriedrichWilhelm Joseph Schelling, "PhilosophischeBriefe uber Dogmatismusund Kriticismus," in Samtliche Werke,ed. Karl Friedrich August Schelling (Stuttgart:J. G. Cotta'scher Verlag, 1856), 1/1:341 (emphasis added). Symptomatically,the problematicof exo/esotericismin Schelling is one of the only significantissues in his work not touchedon by Heideggerin his 1936 lecturecourse on Schelling's concept of freedom(Heidegger,Schelling, am VomWesender menschlichenFreiheit (1809), ed. HildegardFeick [Frankfurt Main: Kloson termann,1988];GA,2/42; Schelling'sTreatise theEssence of Freedom,trans.JoanStambaugh [Athens:Ohio UniversityPress 1985]). To be precise,Heideggerdoes alludeto this problematic of silence here:once. But he does so obliquelyand by way of Nietzsche,whom Heideggertells his charges in his "Introductory Remarks"is "The only essential thinker after Schelling" (Schelling's Treatise,3). Heidegger then mysteriouslyadds: "Duringthe time of his greatest productivity his deepestsolitude,Nietzsche wrote the following verses in a dedicationcopy and of his book Dawn of Day (1881): 'Whoeverone day has muchto proclaim/ Is silent aboutmuch/ Whoevermustone day kindlethe lightning/ Mustbe for a long time-cloud (1883)' " (pp. 3-4). 90. Heidegger,"Review of ErnstCassirer'sMythicalThought," As Heideggerfurther 33. argues, this problematicis neo-Kantianinsofar as Cassirer's"analysisof the mythic form of thoughtbegins with a generaldescriptionof the way in which objects standover againstmythic consciousness.The object-consciousness mathematical of by physics as understood the Kantian of There is an active interpretation HermannCohen serves as a guide to the characterization: formingof a passively given 'chaos of sensation'into a 'cosmos.' " 91. Claude Levi-Strauss, StructuralAnthropology,trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke GrundfestSchoepf (New York:Basic Books, 1963), 229. 92. KarlJaspersto Heidegger,21 June1925, MartinHeidegger/Karl Jaspers:Briefwechsel 1920-1963 (Munich:Piper, 1992), 50. 93. Strauss,Thoughtson Machiavelli(Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1978), 154. 94. Heidegger,"Reviewof ErnstCassirer'sMythicalThought," 36. 95. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut undBose; KGW,6/2:44-45 (pt. II, aphorism30). 96. "Drawingback in terror" also a centralterm in Heidegger'spedagogicalrepertoire, is around1929, as when he warnedstudentsto whom he was introducing metaphysics particularly
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thatthey might do precisely this, "whenfaced with the peculiareffort in graspingmetaphysics directly"(The FundamentalConceptsof Metaphysics,4). 97. Heidegger,"DavoserVortrage," 245; "DavosLectures,"171. 98. See Kant,Critiqueof Pure Reason, A 405-568; B 432-596. 99. Of course, even the most cursorylook at Cassirer'smore popularlate works (e.g., the 1944 Essay on Man andthe 1946 TheMythof theState)gives the impressionthatthey arechock full of ethical concerns,and this leads to observationssuch as thatof the theologianPaulTillich aboutDavos;namely,thatit was "theconflictbetweenone who, like Cassirer, camefromKantian moral philosophy with rationalcriteriafor thinkingand acting, and one who, like Heidegger, defended himself on the notion that there are no such criteria"("Heideggerand Jaspers,"in Heideggerand Jaspers, ed. Alan M. Olson [Philadelphia: TempleUniversityPress, 1994], 17). But the claim of Heideggeriansand Straussians ratherdifferent;namely,that Cassirercould is not ground his ethical concerns, which may well be a legitimate complaint. Appealing to argumentsby JacquesRivelaygue and Alexis Philonenko,Luc Ferrysuggests laconically that "one of the principleissues in the quarrel between HeideggerandCassirerat Davos" was about an impassableaporiabetween ethics and epistemology thatwas inscribedalreadydeep within Kant himself: "[l]t is very hardto reconcile the idea of freedom(of intelligibleand noumenal causality) with Kant's theory of meaning which requires that a concept be temporalized (schematized)to have meaning.It is thenso hardto see how freedomandcausalityarereconciled in a particularcase (the historical event) that one cannot imagine setting forth the various interpretations proposedby the commentators Kant"(Ferry,Political Philosophy,vol. 2, The of Systemof Philosophiesof History,trans.Franklin Philip [Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1992], 148-49). 100. See, for example, Paetzold, Ernst Cassirer, 157-90 ("Cassirers Jahre in Goteborg/Schweden[1935-1941] und die Wendeder Kulturphilosophie Ethik"). zur 101. Bollnow, "Gesprache Davos," 27. in 102. "DavoserDisputation,"247 (Heidegger);"A Discussion," 193; and "Davos Disputation," 172. Gadamerhas suggestedthat"[a]fterhis encounterwith Cassirerin Davos and,more important,following his growing insight into the inappropriateness this transcendental of self-interpretation his own thinking,Heideggerbeganto interpret for Kant'sphilosophyas being moreentangledin the historyof the forgetfulnessof Being, as shownby his laterworkson Kant" (Hans-Georg Gadamer,"The History of Philosophy,"in Heidegger's Ways,trans. John W. Stanley [Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1994], 162). 103. See Kant,Critiqueof Pure Reason,A 486; B 514. 104. "Davoser Disputation,"248 (Cassirer);"A Discussion," 193; "Davos Disputation," 172-73. 105. Ibid., 252 (Heidegger);"A Discussion,"195; "DavosDisputation," 175. 106. Idem. 107. Ibid., 260 (Heidegger);"A Discussion,"199; "DavosDisputation," 180. 108. Idem. For a concise depictionof the changingcomplexityof Heidegger's position on culture,see JeffreyAndrewBarash,"Heidegger's Ontological'Destruction' WesternIntellecof tual Traditions," Reading Heideggerfrom the Start, 111-21. Noting Heidegger's apparent in dismissalof the term 'culture' his Davos responseto Cassirer, in Barashrightlyarguesthat"[t]his deliberateneglect of a philosophicalconceptwhose significanceHeideggerhimself had underscored in his early Freiburg courses by no meansindicatesa suspensionof Heidegger'scritical thrustin this directionbutrather broadening its focus"(p. 115)-a thrust,however,thatwas a of as radicallynew as it was shroudedin obscurity. 109. This basic point is missed by most extendedrecentattemptsto reopenthe questionof Heidegger'srelationto Kant:Daniel0. Dahlstrom, "Heideggers Kant-Kommentar, 1925-1936,"
Philosophisches Jahrbuch (1989): 343-66; and "Heidegger'sKant-Coursesat Marburg," in ReadingHeideggerfromtheStart,293-308;FrankSchalow,TheRenewalof theHeidegger-Kant Dialogue: Action, Thought,and Responsibility(Albany:State University of New YorkPress, 1992); and (buildingon the work of PierreAubenque)Christopher Macann,"Heidegger'sKant in Interpretation," Critical Heidegger, ed. ChristopherMacann (London: Routledge, 1996), 97-120. This is true also of the great earlier treatmentof the Kant-Heideggernexus: Jules Vuillemin,L'heritagekantienet la revolutioncopernicienne(Paris:P.U.F.,1954), 210-96. See PierreAubenque,"Ledebatde 1929 entreCassireret Heidegger," Ernst Cassirer:De further in Marburga New York; L'itin6raire philosophique,ed. Jean Seidendgart(Paris:du Cerf, 1990). tone of the Davos discussions-not only clearly Aubenqueis also rightto highlightthe "violent" on Heidegger's side but also, althoughmore understated, Cassirer's(see esp. pp. 87, 92). on 110. See Heidegger,"PlatonsLehrevon der Wahrheit," 109. 111. "DavoserDisputation," (Pos); "Davos Disputation," 259 180. 112. "DavoserDisputation," 263 (Heidegger);"A Discussion,"201; "Davos Disputation," 182. Heideggerrepeatedsuch terms,againwith veiled referenceto Cassirer, his contemporain neous lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 11. On the import for Heidegger at the time of the Davos debate of the term Harte, includingits fascoid resonance already then, see WinfriedFranzen,"Die Sehnsuchtnach Harteund Schwere: Uber ein zum NS-Engagement disponierendes Motiv in Heideggers Vorlesung 'Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik' von 1929/30," in Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie, ed. Annemarie and Gethmann-Siefert OttoPoggeler(Frankfurt Main:Suhrkamp, am 1988),78-92. Heidegger's to riposteto Cassireris also disturbing severalFrenchreaders,particularly verbbenutzen,in his which they hear"exploit"(exploiter)or even "drawutilitarian profitfrom"(tirerdes ceuvresde l'esprit unprofitutilitaire),which is HenriDecleve's translation. cites PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe Decleve's translationalong with Alain David's "Levinasen France"(1986), an unpublished this in essay that "interprets statementas an anti-Semitictopos, corroborating this regardthe famous(anddisputed)testimonyof MadameCassirer" (Lafiction dupolitique:Heidegger;l'art et la politique [Breteuil-sur-Iton: ChristianBourgois, 1987], 25). Lacoue-Labarthe adds, "[I]f anyone is surprisedby Heidegger's 'revolutionary radicalism'in 1933 ... then let him re-read the minutes of the 1929 Davos colloquium"(pp. 36-37). For Toni Cassirer'sremarksabout 'Davos' and Heidegger'sthen allegedly well-knownanti-Semitism,see herAus meinemLeben mit Ernst Cassirer(New York:privatelypublished,1950), 165. All this seems to me both right andaltogethertoo simple. Heidegger'santi-Semitism, seriousas this problemis in existential as terms, is a red herringin terms of graspinghis thinkingand writing,in which all conceivable prejudices (including adherence to racialist or racist political movements) are contingent epiphenomenavis-a-vis the priordecision (in the strongSchmittiansense of legal decisionism) to employ exo/esotericism. And it is this decision that 'debates' about 'Heidegger, art and politics,' 'Heidegger and Nazism,' 'Heidegger and anti-Semitism,'and 'Heidegger and the Holocaust'effectively occlude fromview. If Heideggerwas racist,he was not essentiallyracist, at least not in his own terms. 113. Levinas, "Aproposof Buber:Some Notes," in Outsidethe Subject,trans.Michael B. Smith (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1994), 48. 114. In the recollectionyears laterby his studentand acolyte Bollnow,Heidegger's"sharp" tone of voice "borderedon the impolite" ("Gesprachein Davos," 28). In using Bollnow's recollections of Davos, which were commissioned for a final Festschriftfor Heidegger, my intentionis not to imply thatthey shouldbe takenat face value. Rather,I want to recreatesome of the atmosphere,indeed pathos and bathos, of that occasion in orderto deconstructit from within, 'extimately,'partiallyin its own terms.For his part,Bollnow's main agenda,in telling his version of Davos, was that Heidegger was never really a Nazi. As often happens with
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Heideggerians,Bollnow's eulogy is really an apologia. Bollnow adds that he, a basically shy to man embarrassed be in proximityto greatness,saw Heideggerreally only twice afterDavos (up to thatpoint, he had attendedHeidegger'sseminars,had devouredBeing and Timewhen it came out in 1927, and had been personallyinvited by Heideggerto come to Davos): once in told Bollnow that " 'one must go into the catacombs,'" and 1936, when Heideggerapparently once in 1974, nearthe end of Heidegger'slife, when he told Bollnow thatone of his last greatest pleasures was that he had been discovered in Japan ("Gesprachein Davos," 28-29). In the and interveningyears, however,Bollnow hadjoined Heidegger,Gadamer, many otherGerman professors(on 12 November 1933) in signing the open letter"Allegianceto Adolf Hitler";and, like them, became one of the more prominentNazi-affiliateduniversityprofessors (lecturing des extensively on Nietzsche during the Third Reich). See MarthaZapataGalindo, Triumph Willens zur Macht: Zur Nietzsche-Rezeptionim NS-Staat (Hamburg:Argument, 1995), 99, zum N-S Engagement 212-13; and George Leaman,Heidegger im Kontext:Gesamtuberblick trans.RainerAlisch andThomasLaugstien(Hamburg: Argument, der Universitatsphilosophen, 1993), 32-33, 40-41. in 115. Bollnow, "Gesprache Davos," 26. 116. See Bourdieu,L'ontologiepolitique, ch. 2: "Le champ philosophiqueet l'espace des possibles." 117. Kant,Lectureson Logic, 241. 264 "A 182. 118. "DavoserDisputation," (Cassirer); Discussion,"201; "DavosDisputation," 119. Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,236; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,166. Generally,Heideggeris rigorouslyindifferentto whetherstatementsare true or false, what mattersonly is whetherthey are 'worthyof question.' 120. For the pr6cis, see Heidegger, "Kants Kritik der reinen Vemunft," 245; "Davos Lectures,"170-71. 121. Bourdieu,L'ontologiepolitique, 71. 122. See ibid., 76-77. "A 264 183. 123. "DavoserDisputation," (Cassirer); Discussion,"201; "DavosDisputation," 124. Ibid., 253 (Heidegger);"A Discussion," 196; "DavosDisputation,"176. 125. Cassirerpersistedin this overhearing.Thus, in his 1931 review of Heidegger's Kant book, he lists severalbinaryoppositionsthathe thinksinformthe FirstCritique,where they had been held apart,whereas Heideggerconflates them:"sensibleand intelligibleworld,""experience and idea,""phenomenon noumenon," so on. But Cassirerdoes not push on to see and and the deeperimplicationof two types of language,exotericandesoteric, which areconcomitantly also to be held apartor conflated.Hence, he admitsthathe is baffledby a "strangely paradoxical aspect"of Heidegger'sentirework, somethinghe cannotquiteput a fingeron. Finally,Cassirer feels the need to emphasizethat,in his review,"[N]othingwas further my mindthanany kind in of personal polemic"(Cassirer, "Kant Bemerkungen Martin zu unddasProblemderMetaphysik: Kant-Studien nos. 1-2 [1931]: 9, 18, 25). Indeed,the real 36, Heideggers Kant-Interpretation," polemic does lie elsewhere-concealed andrevealedbetweenthe lines of Heidegger'slanguage. 126. "DavoserDisputation," 264-65 (Cassirer); Discussion,"201; "DavosDisputation," "A 183. 127. See Taminiaux,"The HusserlianHeritage,"283-84. But I disagree with Taminiaux's otherwiselucid discussionon one crucialpoint;namely,when he relatesHeidegger'snotionsof Careand symbolismby suggestingthat"thesymbol is not here the traceof a lost treasureor of an enigma thatcould be make one wonder.Symbol does not lead to thinkinganythingunusual. It can at the most illustrate,by confirmingit, thatwhich fundamental ontology claims to be able to see by itself' (p. 284). This is at best an unwittingdepictionof the exoterichalf of Heidegger's relationto myth and symbol.
128. It has been suggested that Cassirer'shabit of citing Goethe to Heideggerconceals his lack of an effective counterargument, frustration his philosophyof culture"cannotreach his that the questionof Being, becausehe acceptsuncritically traditional the demarcations philosophy, of includingthose ratifiedby Kant.The foundationCassirerbelieves he possesses is 'the idealism from which I have never wavered.' This position is more than a philosophical doctrine, as Cassirer's use of Goethe in his responses to Heidegger shows. Heidegger's antagonism is directedagainst the culturalensemble in and for which this use of Goethe sufficed to address fundamentalissues" (James F Ward,Heidegger's Political Thinking[Amherst:Universityof MassachusettsPress, 1995], 60-61]). However,I would add that,aside from Cassirer'sseveral detailedanalysesof Goethein essays devotedspecificallyto him, Cassirerin otherwritingsand lecturestended-as he did at Davos-to hold up Goethe as an unquestioned shibbolethto ward off demons.This is roughlyanalogousto the way Heideggercited Holderlinin passingwhen he was not dealingwith him in depth.If CassirerembodiedSettembrini plus Goethe,then mirabile dictu HeideggerembodiedHolderlinplus Naptha. 129. Accordingto Gadamer, deep problemwith Cassirer'sworklies in his limitedconcept a of language,all the many appearances the contrary: to "Evenwhen ErnstCassirerincludedthe phenomenonof languagein the topic of the neo-Kantian idealism,he did so methodicallywith the methodicalidea of objectification" ("The MarburgTheology,"in Heidegger's Ways,30). This is not to deny, in the words of SusanneLanger,that Cassirer's"knowledgeof linguistics on which he bases vol. I of his Philosophieder symbolischenFormenis almoststaggering" ("On Cassirer'sTheory of Language,"399). But it is a radicallydifferentkind of 'linguistics'thatis at work for both Heideggerand Gadamer,committedas they are to (fascoid) exo/esotericism. On Gadamer in this regard, see Teresa Orozco, Platonische Gewalt: Gadamerspolitische Hermeneutik NS-Zeit(Hamburg: der Argument,1995). 130. "DavoserDisputation," 268 (Heidegger);"A Discussion,"203; "Davos Disputation," 185. 131. David Abraham,The Collapse of the Weimar Republic:Political Economyand Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York:Holmes & Meier, 1986), 309. I am awareof the problematicstatusof this book (particularly the first edition)but believe thatits basic thesis is correct. in 132. Ibid., 310. 133. Ibid., 314. 134. Heidegger's "inwardturn"with regardto the Nazi Party seems to have come only after-indeed because of-the 1934 Rohm purge. This has been confirmed not only in the notoriouslyerraticworkof VictorFarias(Heideggerundder NationalSozialismus,2nded., with a forewordby JurgenHabermas[Frankfurt Main:Fischer,1989]), butalso by the impeccable am work of Hugo Ott, MartinHeidegger: Unterwegszu seiner Biographie (Frankfurt Main: am Campus, 1988), 275-76, 304-305. Ott also shows that Heidegger remainedcommitted,from within the Party,to the positions takenby Goring(see pp. 146-66). 135. Martin Heidegger/ElisabethBlochmann:Briefwechsel 1918-1969, ed. Joachim W. Storck(Marbacham Neckar:Deutsche Schillergesellschaft,1989), 30. 136. MartinHeidegger/KarlJaspers: Briefwechsel,123. 137. For this reason,Levinas'sparaphrase Heidegger'spositionon Geredeis misleading, of remaining as it does on the exoteric surface of the problem:"In Heidegger, for whom the 'languagethat speaks' is not subjectto the hazardsof humanspeech-for whom it is language that speaks in humanspeech (die Sprachespricht)-it is the revelationof being thatcoincides with thatspeaking.Hence the languageof everydaylife can only be a fallenlanguage;it becomes Gerede,its own 'object'and its own goal, conformingto what they say, what theydo, what they read,motivatedby a vain curiosity,comfortable with ambiguity. has fallenfromthe ontological It statusof language,andappearsto have no othersubjectthanthe anonymous'they,'once it loses
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LanguageandRhetoricwithout ("Everyday the horizonof the being of beings, the field of truth" Eloquence," in Outside the Subject, 141). Levinas comes somewhat closer to the properly et Heideggerian problematic of exo/esotericism with his remarksin Totalite6 infini (1961) on "rhetoricand injustice" when he argues that "[n]ot every discourse is a relation with only exteriority"-if by thatLevinaswere to mean thatnot every discourseis to be understood trans.AlphonsoLingis [Pittsburgh: and Infinity:An Essay on Exteriority, exoterically(Totality Duquesne University Press, 1969], 70). Much is at stake for Levinas on this point, since he en groundshis own ethics on the principlethat"Theotherqua other is the Other"(L'Autre tant qu'autreestAutrui)-l'Autrui being Levinas's termfor "you qua personalother"in relationto l'autre, "the impersonalother."As he elaborates,"Equalityamong persons means nothing of itself; it has an economic meaningandpresupposesmoney,andalreadyrestson justice-which, when well-ordered,begins with the Other.Justiceis the recognitionof his privilege qua Other whichis ruse,emprise,andexploitation. is andhis mastery, access to theOtheroutsideof rhetoric, was, (p. And in this sensejustice coincides with the overcomingof rhetoric" 72). This argument in effect, Levinas'sriposteto the totalimpassein ethicsreachedbetweenCassirerandHeidegger if was neo-Kantian inspiration, not indeed Platonic.In in at Davos insofaras theirproblematic thatone can love "Hermann Cohen (in this a Platonist)maintained Levinas's own formulation, to of only ideas;but the notionof an Ideais in the last analysistantamount the transmutation the otherinto the Other" 71). However,for a critiqueof Cohen'sgraspof Platonism-and of the (p. in unresolvedcontradiction his thinkingbetween freedom and faith-see Strauss,Philosophy to of and Law: Contributions the Understanding Maimonidesand His Predecessors,trans.Eve Adler (Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1995), esp. 26-27, 46-51, 129-33. Finally, for an effective critiqueof Levinas's overly clear distinctionbetween l'Autruiand l'autre and his concomitanttheologicalcommitmentto the existence of an Absolute Otheridentifiedwith God, see Derrida,"Violence and Metaphysics,"in Writingand Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1978), 79-153. 138. This is the point of departureof John van Buren's meticulous book, The Young Heidegger: Rumorof the HiddenKing (Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1994). and 139. JosephCropsey,forewordto HeinrichMeier,CarlSchmitt Leo Strauss:TheHidden Dialogue, trans.J. HarveyLomax (Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1995), ix. der GA, 11/29/30:255. 140. Heidegger,Die Grundbegriffe Metaphysik; 141. EtienneBalibar,"Althusser'sObject,"Social Text39 (Summer1994): 157. 142. Strauss, "KurtRiezler, 1882-1955,"in WhatIs Political Philosophy? 246. Note the context of this remark: "Riezler delivered his speech on Gebundenheitund Freiheit des gegenwartigen Zeitalters in Davos before the same audience which immediatelybefore had Riezlertook the side of Heideggerwithout listenedto a debatebetweenHeideggerandCassirer. any hesitation. There was no alternative.Mere sensitivity to greatness would have dictated the Riezler'schoice. Cassirerrepresented establishedacademicposition.He was a distinguished professorof philosophybut he was no philosopher.He was eruditebut he had no passion. He was a clearwriterbuthis clarityandplaciditywere notequaledby his sensitivityto the problems. Cohen'sphilosophicsystem, the Cohenhe had transformed Havingbeen a disciple of Hermann very center of which was ethics, into a philosophy of symbolic forms in which ethics had Heideggeron the otherhandexplicidlydenies the possibilityof ethics because he disappeared. betweentheidea of ethics andthosephenomenawhich feels thatthereis a revoltingdisproportion Straussian herethe use of a characteristically to ethics pretended articulate" 246). Interesting (p. trope of exo/esotericism. Cassireris faulted for having eliminatedsomething (ethics) which Heideggerhad shown is simply impossible.So the most Cassirercan be faultedfor is a lack of couragein facing this fact, not in eliminatingsomethingthatis impossibleanyway.Exoterically translated: not facing up to impossibilityof ethical grounding(which Heideggerdid face up by
to), Cassirereliminates ethics from his philosophy for the wrong reasons, not because it is impossible (as only Heidegger fully realized)but ratherbecause Cassirerwas not courageous its enoughto face up to its impossibility,andso ignorednot ethics perse but rather impossibility. But the real clue in Strauss'sremarkis the phrase, "He was a clear writer but his clarity and placidity were not equaled by his sensitivity to the problems"-that is, his failure was in the clarity of his (logographic)writing,whateverits content-and lack thereof-might have been. In other words, between the lines, Straussfollows Heideggerto recommendto studentsless a "content" philosophythana style of speakingandwritingphilosophy:betweenthe lines. "The of problems" which Straussalludesareintentionally to unspecified-involving as they do the How, but not the What,of whatis silentlymeant.Strauss'srhetorical strategyherefollows the properly of Platonicdictum,for him, that"Onecannotseparatethe understanding Plato's teachingfrom the understanding the form in which it is presented.One must pay as much attentionto the of How as to the What"(The Cityand Man [Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1977], 52). 143. Strauss,"An Introduction HeideggerianExistentialism," to 34. 144. Cassirer,TheMythof the State (GardenCity, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1946), 373. 145. On Heidegger's manipulation this remarkafterhe wrote it in the ThirdReich, see of Otto Poggeler, "Heideggerspolitisches Selbstverstiindnis," Heidegger und die praktische in Philosophie, esp. 38-39. 146. Cassirer,TheMythof the State, 373. 147. See Grunder, "Cassirer Heideggerin Davos 1929." und 148. Levinas, "Bewunderungund Enttiiuschung,"in Antwort: Martin Heidegger im Neske andEmil Kettering Gesprach,ed. Gunther (Pfullingen: Neske, 1988), 163. Levinasplaces Being and Timein the select company of Plato's Phaedrus, Kant's Critiqueof Pure Reason, Hegel's Phenomenologyof Mind,and Bergson's Timeand Freedom. 149. Althusser,"Philosophyand the Spontaneous Philosophyof the Scientists,"76. 150. In 1928, Marcuse,then a basically uncriticaladvocateof Heidegger,had writtenin an articlein a new Berlinphilosophical journalthathaddevotedits firstissue to discussionof Being and Time.Marcuseattempted bringHeideggerinto contactwith Marxism,so as to work out to a "phenomenology historicalmaterialism" HerbertMarcuse,"Beitragezu einer Phanoof (see menologie des historischenMaterialismus," PhilosophischeHefte 1 [1928]: 45-68). The article immediatelycaught the bemused eyes of Heideggerand Jaspers(see Jaspersto Heidegger,8 July 1928, Heidegger/Jaspers:Briefwechsel,102).
GeoffreyWaiteis associate professor of Germanstudies and comparativeliteratureat Cornell University, wherehe teachesphilosophy, political theory,and visual culture.He is the author of Nietzsche's Corps/e:Aesthetics,Politics, Prophecy,or, the Spectacular Technoculture EverydayLife (Duke UniversityPress, 1996). of

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On Esotericism: Heidegger and/or Cassirer at Davos Author(s): Geoffrey Waite Source: Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 5 (Oct.

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