Depopulation: On the Logic of Heidegger’s Volk

Abstract

This article provides a detailed analysis of the function of the notion Volk in MartinHeidegger's philosophy. At first glance, this term is an appeal to the revolutionary masses of the National Socialist revolution in a way that demarcates a distinction between the rootedness of the German People (capital "P") and the rootlessness of the modern rabble (or people). But this distinction is not a sufficient explanation of Heidegger's position, becauseHeidegger simultaneously seems to hold that even the Germans are characterized by a lack of identity. What is required is a further appropriation of the proper. My suggestion is that this logic of the Volk is not only useful for understanding Heidegger's thought during the war, but also an indication of what happened after he lost faith in the National Socialist movement and thus had to make the lack of the People the basis of his thought. addressed this problem in a series of different lecture courses. In Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache held in the summer semester, Heidegger rejected the traditional understandings of the People (as body, soul or spirit) and opted for a fourth understanding of the people that would bring it into line with his analysis of resoluteness [Entschlossenheit] in Sein und Zeit: 1 In the moment that we grasp the We as something relying on resoluteness [entscheidungshaftes], the decision [Entscheidung] concerning our being-ourselves also takes place. It is already a decision concerning who we are ourselves, that is, das Volk. (GA 38: 59) 2 Here the moment [Augenblick] of decisiveness seems to be the defining feature of the People The People must take upon itself its historicality and decide (for) its own Being, its being-itself. Thus, the People is not defined according to facts, but based on its decisive facticity, or, as James Phillips puts it, "[t]he people decides and thereby throws itself into determination, and yet it is only by deciding, by casting itself into the openness of decision that it can wrest itself from the determinate and confront itself as an exception to the ontology of the present-at-hand." 3 Whereas this appears to be a quasi-militaristic decisionism capable of asserting the national identity and uniqueness of the Germans, Heidegger is a bit more cautious in the winter semester in the course Hölderlins Hymnen 'Germanien' und 'Der Rhein', where the decision to become a People is problematized by a form of existential uncertainty:We do not know our proper historical time.In order to decide ourselves as a People, we must know our historical time or moment, and in order to do so, we must "participate in poetry," so that we can achieve "the necessary conditions" for experiencing "who we are" (GA 39: 58f). As expressed in the lectures on Hölderlin, the task of poetry is, exactly, to facilitate such an experience of the People that can ground its decisiveness. In this way, the poet is the "founder of Being [Stifter des Seyns]" who through his "Saying [Sage]" can bring the "Dasein of a People" to a stand (GA 39: ...

Heidegger and the genesis of social ontology: Mitwelt, Mitsein, and the problem of other people

“…Instead, he would question the relation between being and sociality by invoking the term das Volk and a series of Greek concepts that he would provide with idiosyncratic translations, as when he speaks of the Stätte ( polis ) or Fug ( dikè ). During World War II, Heidegger would slowly phase out his use of the concept of the people (on the development in Heidegger's usage of the term Volk , see Knudsen, ), whereas the Greek terms would still be used occasionally. Instead, an emphasis on place would prove itself more and significant for Heidegger .…”

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