178 Ethics October1992

Accordingto thisview,liberal education fosterspersons who are disposed to

choose the betterratherthan the worse. Service breeds compassion, political
activitypromotesjustice, workdiminishessnobbery,artisticperformanceen-
hances sensitivity,
general education increasesrespectforpersons,enlightened
professionaleducationsharpensthe conscience,scienceovercomessuperstition,
and philosophy instillsan appreciation of moral dilemmas. In short,Kadish
concludes that "higher education is education for virtue"(p. 175).
This book is effectivein evokingthe spiritof open inquirythatlies at the
heartof liberaleducation. And its proposal to view general education courses
as maps of the intellectualterrainexplains theirusefulnessand helps structure
them.
But the book's central concept of "self-formation" will not fulfillthe role
assigned to it. If, in order to construct the self, classroom study needs to be
supplemented by jobs, service, and artistic performance, then why not also
by innumerable other activities? Presumably, Willie Mays progressed toward
self-formation by playing baseball, Chris Evert by playing tennis, and Charles
Goren by playing bridge, and others have done so by engaging in an array
of pursuits, such as travel, cooking, apiculture, philately, or significantpersonal
relationships. Yet none of these activities is central to anyone's concept of a
liberal education. So in what way does that education make a distinctive con-
tribution to shaping the self?
Furthermore, the analogy of education to ballet, while suggestive, is over-
drawn. After all, one dancer is not instructing another, and that is the essence
of the relationship between teacher and student. "Which is educated, which
is educator?" The educator is the one who receives a salary check; the educated
pays a tuition bill. This difference ought to reflect a difference in what the
participants contribute to the learning process.
As for considering institutions of higher education as "gambling houses"
(p. 38), this notion is not apt to convince governmental and private funders
that the many billions of dollars presently being provided to higher education
is money well spent. What justifies our society's massive efforts in support of
colleges and universities? To answer this critical question calls for a weightier
response than this book offers.

STEVEN M. CAHN
GraduateSchool,CityUniversity
ofNew York

Wolin, Richard, ed. The HeideggerControversy:

A CriticalReader.
New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1991. Pp. ix+315. $35.00 (cloth).

Rockmore,Tom. On Heidegger'sNazismand Philosophy.

Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1992. Pp. ix+382. $45.00 (cloth).

Richard Wolin had no sooner published his superb anthology on Martin

Heidegger's involvementwithNazism than the book was killed off.
In 1987, followingHugo Ott's and VictorFarias'sdevastatingrevelations
of Heidegger's profoundand long-lastinginvolvementwithNazism,Le Nouvel

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 Book Reviews 179
Observateur published a briefinterviewwithJacques Derrida on the subject.
Richard Wolin formallyobtained the rightsto that interviewfromLe Nouvel
Observateur, and he included an Englishtranslationof it,entitled"Philosophers'
Hell," in his collection.
Then in November 1991 Derrida, forreasons he has not yetmade public,
threatenedColumbia UniversityPress withlegal action in the event that the
interviewwere reprintedin any futureeditions of The HeideggerControversy.
Contraryto whatthe copyrightsofficeofLe NouvelObservateur affirms,Derrida
claims thathe has the rightsto the text.And he does not want it republished
in Wolin's anthology.
Fair enough. Upon hearing of the legal threats,Wolinimmediatelywrote
Derrida to apologize forany unintended offenseand to tryto make amends.
Derrida did not respond to the letter.Instead, he continued to threatenthe
press withlegal action. Wolin decided to compromise: he informedColumbia
UniversityPress that he would excise the interviewfrom the forthcoming
paperback edition,so long as Columbia allowed him to compose a new preface
explaining why the textwas dropped.
The new preface (which, not surprisingly,turned out to be criticalof
Derrida) was found unacceptable by Columbia UniversityPress, which, it
should be noted, publishes several of Derrida's books in English. The press
tried to get Wolin radicallyto cut the new preface down to four innocuous
pages. Wolinrefusedto cave in, and instead he withdrewthe book rightsfrom
Columbia. Aftera brief four months of life, the book is now dead. And as
Wolintriesto interestotherpressesin reissuingthecollection,Derridacontinues
to pursue him (and, indirectly,anyone who would republish the book) with
the same legal threats.
The world of culture, having been instructedby Derrida himselfabout
the ambiguitiesof authorshipand the ironiesof itsproprietaryclaims,eagerly
awaits clarificationof this complex matter.Apart from the formal issue of
who owns the rightsto the interview,the question remainsabout whyDerrida
is policing its publication,and attemptingto censor its reappearance, in this
volume. The answer seems to be simple: Derrida does not like the volume
(Wolin'sinterpretation of the Heidegger-Nazismrelationis decidedlydifferent
fromDerrida's) and does not want his brieftextto appear in it.
Meanwhile, as the "Heidegger controversy"devolves into its ever more
pettyand tedious subplots,an immenselyimportantcollectionof textsrelating
to Heidegger's involvementwithNazism has been muscled out of print.
Richard Wolin, professorof historyat Rice University,is also the author
of The PoliticsofBeing: The PoliticalThoughtofMartinHeidegger([New York:
Columbia UniversityPress, 1990]; reviewed in Ethics 102 [1992]: 696), and
he presentsTheHeideggerControversy as a "documentarycomplement"(p. viii)
to thatbook. AfterWolin'slucid introductionto the volume, part 1 comprises
a dozen shorterpieces by Heidegger, including his most notorious political
speeches and writingsfrom 1933 to 1934, his 1945 apologia for his Nazi
activities,his 1966 interviewwithDer Spiegel,in whichhe reviewshisinvolvement
with Nazism, and a set of philosophicaljottings from 1936 to 1946 on the
topic of "overcomingmetaphysics."
Part 2 entitled"Contextand Testimony,"includes an exchange of letters
between Herbert Marcuse and Heidegger in 1947-48, Karl Jaspers's 1945

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 180 Ethics October1992
letterto the denazificationcommissionthatdecided Heidegger's postwarfate,
an excerpt fromErnstJunger's TotalMobilization,and Karl Lowith's account
of Heidegger's 1936 affirmationof continuingsupport for Nazism.
Part 3 is made up of interpretationsof Heidegger's relation to Nazism
by Lowith, Habermas, Poggeler, Tugendhat, Derrida, Bourdieu, and Wolin
himself. Wolin's concluding essay is unambiguously criticalof Derrida for
attributingHeidegger's Nazism to "a surfeitof metaphysicalhumanism" (p.
300), although surely thisjudgment can have nothing to do with Derrida's
stridentopposition to having his interviewincluded in the volume.
The texts support the arguments Wolin made in his earlier book that,
while Heidegger's political commitmentmay not have been the necessary
corollaryofBeingand Time,hisphilosophynonethelessprovedreadilycompatible
with,and was utilizedby Heidegger himselfin supportof,Nazism.He concludes
that"the philosopherhimselfperceivedhis Nazi involvementsnotas a random
course of action,but as a logicaloutgrowth ofhisphilosophical
doctrines"(p. 283).
Wolinargues thatHeidegger neverfullyemerged,politicallyor philosophically,
fromhis commitmentto Nazism.
Equally pointed is Wolin's indictmentof the attemptsby French and
American Heideggerians to explain away Heidegger's support for Nazism as
due eitherto a philosophical error("metaphysicsmade him do it") or to being
politicallyhoodwinked by Hitler. "According to the testimonyof the writer
ErnstJiinger,"Wolin reports,"Heidegger claimed afterthe war that Hitler
would be resurrectedand exonerate Heidegger, since he [Hitler] was guilty
of having misled him" (p. 298). The textscollected in thisvolume bolsterthe
thesis that Heidegger knew what he was supportingwhen he backed Hitler
in 1933 and then continued providingoutspoken justificationsof Nazi war
aims-allegedly defendingthe Westfromnihilismand bolshevism-well into
the forties.
Tom Rockmore'sOn Heidegger's Nazismand Philosophyargues foran organic
connectionbetween Heidegger's philosophyand his commitmentto Nazism.
"Heidegger's philosophical thoughtand his Nazism are inseparable" (p. 283),
in fact "Heidegger evidentlythoughtof himselfas the only 'orthodox' Nazi,
as the onlyone able to understandthe essence of National Socialism"(p. 240).
The philosophical cornerstoneon which Rockmore's argument rests is
the conjunction made in Being and Time between the concepts of (1) "au-
thenticity,"the notion that an adequate understandingof being requires a
proper understandingof the self (or, as Rockmore puts it, "a certain purity
of mind" wherebyone "sees beyond appearance into the essence of things"
[pp. 287 and 72]) and (2) human "historicality," which,accordingto Rockmore,
entailsthatthepossibility whichone mustchoose in orderto achieveauthenticity
"lies in the past" (p. 47). Puttingthe two concepts together,Rockmoreclaims
thatauthenticityis enacted ("ratherlike pickingout a lifestyle"[p. 46]) in "the
repetitionof a prior tradition"and that "to be authenticis to embrace or to
repeat the past in one's own life through a reinstantiationof the tradition"
(p. 47).
For Rockmore the notions of authenticityand historicality commit Hei-
degger to-in factnecessitate(p. 284)-a kind of politicssensulatiori."There
is a kind of aristocraticauthoritarianismbuilt into Heidegger's theoryof fun-
damentalontologywhichleads seamlesslyto a politicallyantidemocratic political

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 Book Reviews 181
point of view" (p. 72), and, fromthere, Heidegger's theoryof Being "leads
seamlesslyto Nazism" (p. 287). Rockmoreinsiststhatthe hintsBeingand Time
offersthathistoricalauthenticityis a social possibility(and theyare onlyhints,
at pp. 41, 436, and 438 of Beingand Time[New York: Harper & Row, 1962],
drawn froma mere fivepages of Dilthey'sGesammelte Schriften)
made for an
easy transitionto Nazism on Heidegger's part.
Rockmore focuses with considerable success on Heidegger's frequently
overlooked obsession withthe German Volkas the alleged bearer of a meta-
physicaland postmetaphysicaldestiny.Rockmore traces this obsession back
to nineteenth-centuryGerman romanticismand follows the idea forward
through Heidegger's 1933 rectoral address, his courses on Holderlin and
Nietzsche,and his posthumouslypublished Beitrdgezur Philosophie, dating to
1936-38. Rockmoreaccuses himof "a formof philosophical,even metaphysical
'racism' based on the exaltation of [the German] people alone among all
others" but a racism that is "neither biological nor anti-Semiticas such"
(p. 296). In Beitrdge,moreover, Rockmore finds that "Heidegger does not
rejectNational Socialism as such" but only"foritssupposed failureto provide
an adequate theoryof Being" (p. 200).
Rockmore'scritiqueof Heidegger would seem to be total,leavingnothing
of value in his philosophythatcould escape the taintof some kindof Nazism.
If itis the case that"the persistenceof a politicalpreferenceforthe aim shared
with Nazism . .. motivates all [!] his writingsafter the rectoral address"
(p. 187), if "his Nazism is indeed an essential element, withoutwhich his
positionis literallyincomprehensible" (p. 295), if"Heidegger'seffort
to reawaken
the long-forgottenquestion of Being leads seamlesslyto Nazism" (p. 287),
then one wonders what Rockmore has in mind when he concludes-out of
rightfield,as itwere-that "thepointis emphaticallynot to discardHeidegger's
philosophy"but rather"to understandwhat remainsof value in his thought"
(p. 300).
No hint is offeredwhethersuch a task is even possible or, if it is, how it
mightbe carried out. I would offerone suggestionof how to begin: reread
Beingand Timeon authenticityand historicality, especiallybut not exclusively
section 74, to check whether or not Rockmore has gotten it right on the
philosophical cornerstoneof his entireargument.

THOMAS SHEEHAN
LoyolaUniversity
Chicago

Wyschogrod,Edith. Saintsand Postmodernism: RevisioningMoral Philosophy.

Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1990. $40.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Edith Wyschogrod has writtenthe firstsustained book on ethics and post-

modernism.She gives a ratherbroad reading of ethics,namely,"the sphere
of transactionsbetween 'self' and 'Other"' (p. xv). Wyschogrodargues that a
postmodern "revisioning"of moral philosophywill not resultin the dreaded
returnto nihilismoftenpredictedby the criticsof postmodernism.Throughout
thisbook she contendsthataltruismiscompletelyconsistent withpostmodernism,
although not the altruismassociated withmodern analyticphilosopherssuch

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