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Heidegger and Marx
Heidegger and Marx

A PRODUCTIVE DIALOGUE OVER THE

LANGUAGE OF HUMANISM

Laurence Paul Hemming

northwestern university press / evanston, illinois

Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu

Copyright © 2013 by Laurence Paul Hemming. Published 2013 by Northwestern

University Press. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hemming, Laurence Paul.

Heidegger and Marx : a productive dialogue over the language of humanism /
Laurence Paul Hemming.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8101-2875-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. 2. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. 3. Hegel, Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. 4. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900.
5. Humanism. I. Title.
B3279.H49H38245 2013
193—dc23
2012027984

o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Amer-
ican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
 for Bogdan
in friendship
Und wie steht es mit Marx und Nietzsche?
Treten sie schon aus der Bahn der neuzeitlichen
Philosophie heraus?
Wenn nicht, wie ist ihr Standort zu bestimmen?

And how does it stand with Marx and Nietzsche?

Do they already step out of the course of modern
philosophy?
If not, how is their standpoint to be determined?
—Martin Heidegger, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (1956),
from a lecture at Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy, August 28, 1955

Τάνταλος
θυμός ποθ’ ἁμὸς οὐρανῷ κυρῶν ἄνω
ἔραξε πίπτει καὶ με προσφωνεῖ τάδε
—γίγνωσκε τἀνθρώπεια μὴ σέβειν ἄγαν—

Tantalus: “A human heart, once having reached up to the

ruling heavens
is thrown down to the earth, and addresses me thus:
‘Learn not to be in awe of what lies within the reach
of man.’ ”
—Aeschylus, Tantalus (Fragment)
 Contents

Preface xi

Introduction There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx 3

Heidegger and Marx

Chapter 1 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx 17

Chapter 2 The History of Marx and Heidegger 41
Chapter 3 The History and Negation of Metaphysics 61
Chapter 4 Logic and Dialectic 82
Chapter 5 Metaphysics of the Human State 104

Historical, Political, and Ideological Background

Chapter 6 The Situation of Germany 124

Chapter 7 The Ideology of Germany 140
Chapter 8 Nazism, Liberalism, Humanism 167
Chapter 9 The Jewish Question 185

The Productive Dialogue: From Humanism to the Last God

Chapter 10 Speaking of the Essence of Man 201

Chapter 11 Production—Previously This Was Called God 220
Chapter 12 The End of Humanism 237
Chapter 13 Between Men and Gods 257
Chapter 14 Conclusion 275

Bibliography 281
Index 305
 Preface

This book began as a series of public lectures in the spring of 2010 from the
Institute of Advanced Studies in Lancaster University (where I was awarded
a research fellowship in 2008), and as seminars in the research training pro-
gram of the university’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Manage-
ment School. The idea for the lectures was hatched with two colleagues,
Bogdan Costea and Mick Dillon, without whose encouragement and help
they could not have come to fruition. I owe a profound and powerful debt to
Bogdan Costea for his many suggestions for improvement and clarification
of the book as it was being written. No scholar can be accorded greater kind-
ness or a higher privilege than this. Together with others who attended some
parts of the series, three colleagues, Norman Fairclough, Gavin Hyman, and
Kostas Amiridis, and thirteen student participants, Huw Fearnall-Williams,
Eleanor Fitton, Chris Fletcher, Adam Gregory, Ralph Guth, Eleanor Lamb,
Alex (Cary) Monreal-Clark, Dunja Njaradi, Andrea Rossi, Ruth Slater, Susan
Starling, Diana Stypinska, and Peter Watt, formed the core of what was one
of the most invigorating intellectual experiences of my work so far. Their
enthusiasm and commitment to the matters at hand were a formidable spur
to what emerged. A number of the students offered invaluable comments
and suggestions on earlier drafts of the manuscripts: special thanks are due
for this to Huw Fearnall-Williams for his many careful observations on a
late draft, and to Adam Gregory for his helpful corrections. To this must be
added my thanks to Uta Papen and Michaela Scott for their help in organiz-
ing the seminars. As always, I am in debt to Ferdinand Knapp, whose un-
swerving affection, and whose patience with my German, has now stretched
over sixteen years. Gratitude is also owed to Fred Dallmayr, emeritus of
Notre Dame University, and Stuart Elden, of Durham University, for en-
couraging the Northwestern University Press to publish this book, and for
their important and helpful observations on the text, and to those at the
Press, especially Henry Carrigan, Jr. and Peter Raccuglia, who have done so
much to bring the book to publication
When quoting Martin Heidegger, I have referred predominantly to the

xi
 Preface

Heidegger Gesamtausgabe and only deviated where material is not, or not

yet, available in that collection. The relevant volume number is in each case
indicated by the initials GA and the volume number. The Gesamtausgabe
is scheduled to run to a total of 102 volumes by the time it is complete, of
which just under 80 volumes have so far appeared. The schema and the basis
for the Gesamtausgabe was laid down by Heidegger himself, and the first
volume to be published, twenty-fourth in the schema, appeared two years
before his death.1 The Heidegger Gesamtausgabe is anything but a critical
edition and is certainly not without its scholarly difficulties. Heidegger really
only ever wrote one book, Sein und Zeit, and even that is incomplete, in
ways that are important for this study. All the other books he published in his
lifetime were either redactions of lectures, lecture courses (such as the Kant-
buch or the two volumes compiled from his lectures between 1937 and 1944
on Friedrich Nietzsche),2 or collections of essays. In the Gesamtausgabe
editions of the works that were also published in his lifetime, Heidegger’s
marginal notes to his own copies have been reproduced as footnotes and
comments. Rarely do we have a date for these remarks, especially in those
cases where the same text or sentence occasioned more than one, sometimes
several, remarks. In addition, and especially with his manuscripts, Heidegger
often reworked his material, so that the “authentic” date of the exact word,
or the precisely periodized thought, is all too often impossible to determine
(even if this were a worthy scholarly goal). An exact “chronometry” of the
development of Heidegger’s thought, a concern of some Heidegger scholars
and commentators, is almost impossible—if not pointless—to reconstruct.
Robert Bernasconi has wisely cautioned that “Heidegger scholars should be
used by now to finding what had seemed to be late developments firmly
located in earlier texts.”3
Heidegger specifically refused the production of a “critical edition” of
his writings. Many of the volumes of his university lecture courses and semi-
nars are in fact reconstructed not only from his own notes but also from the
verbatim or protocol reports of students who attended them, reports which
were often circulated, having been typed up and then cyclostyled (before
the advent of photocopying). Heidegger himself at times kept and circu-
lated copies of these transcripts. While at times the precise word, the precise
wording, of a thought is decisive, at others it is not. Paradoxically, the peda-

1. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (GA24).

2. Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (GA3). The two volumes of ex-
tracts from Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche did not appear until 1961, published by Günther
Neske (GA6.1 and GA6.2). The full texts of the lecture courses and discussions on which these
two Gesamtausgabe volumes were based can be found in GA43, GA44, GA46–GA48, and GA50
(see the bibliography for a full explanation).
3. Robert Bernasconi, “The Greatness of the Work of Art,” 115, n. 4.

xii
 Preface

gogical voice often emerges from these compilations more effectively than if
every volume had been approved and “settled” by the author—although at
times and in cases Heidegger did exercise this intensity of editorial control.
A recurring question in this book concerns how the texts of the authors
with which it deals are to be read. This question was sharply present before
the authors in question. The character and need to interpret Nietzsche’s
ironic voice is well known, but the for whom and to whom is always in play.
The lectures and exercises Heidegger laid out for his students are motivated
pedagogically, but at times (especially when there were Nazi spies in the lec-
ture hall) even these withdraw into a cryptic or coded language. If Being and
Time (1927) is the book which, of all his work, Heidegger intended to have
the widest reach, the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Contributions to Philosophy,
1989), first of the personal notebooks which we will discuss in some detail,
is addressed thus: “for the few—for the rare.”4 Heidegger spoke in different
voices and at different times: at times he concealed most from those who
would have thought themselves his intellectual peers: the most arcane mate-
rial he at times put before the least academic audiences (as in the case of his
Bremen Lectures of 1949). Heidegger’s voice is often pitched as one to which
the hearer has to find his own way.
It is perhaps necessary to comment on one set of publications in more
detail. Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche were edited by him and published
by Günther Neske in two volumes in 1961: the original texts from which
they were edited have only appeared later (although these are the ones I
have cited, unless I have remarked otherwise in the text), and I have tried
to provide in the bibliography as full notes as possible to enable the edited
1961 texts to be coordinated to their earlier manuscript and reported forms.
Are the earlier texts more authentic? And even if we were to say that they
are, do I subscribe to the view that Heidegger was, in the 1961 material,
“covering up” certain matters, or making them more palatable for postwar
audiences compared to his earlier views? It could well be that in 1961 Hei-
degger thought that there were matters for which the world was not ready:
this is not my concern. What, in any case, is the “authentic” text? Anyone
who works with so-called critical editions or historical variations of texts, or
historically differentiated texts, knows, or ought to know, that such a thing
as the pure text, the pure thought, never really exists. We leave these preoc-
cupations to the forensic hygienists of intellectual life. I doubt their impar-
tiality as much as I fear the sterilized prose which seems to be their goal.
Despite textual and historical variation, and even the emendations of editors,
the original thinker can all too often be caught or heard in just a few of his

4. Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (GA65), 11. “Für die Wenigen—Für die
Seltenen.”

xiii
 Preface

genuine words. To hear in this way is what lets us into texts; an altogether
riskier, more dangerous business, one in which we are required to be inter-
preters, and for which we ourselves can, and should, ever be held to account.
This is the leap into the authentic word. Every encounter with a thinker
demands an attitude of interpretation—there is no escape from this require-
ment; rather it is the very stuff of it, be he Heidegger, Marx, Nietzsche, or
the person in the room next door.
There have been two attempts at a Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe
(MEGA), together with an additional collection in between, the Marx Engels
Werke of the Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus of the Communist Party of
the former German Democratic Republic. I have chosen to use the Marx
Engels Werke, because at present, it is the most complete set of texts, al-
though it omits large quantities of Marx’s writings in English (many of which
remain unpublished, or hidden in the nineteenth-century editions of the
American newspapers in which they originally appeared). Volume numbers
of the Marx Engels Werke cited are indicated by the initials MEW and the vol-
ume number. The MEGA-2, which has already published fifty-six volumes, is
scheduled to run in its entirety to 112 (reduced from an original plan of 170),
including the “Excerpt” notebooks toward which the editor of the first Ge-
samtausgabe, David Riazanov, had a forceful, if idiosyncratic, prejudice. The
reading of Marx which I propose in these lectures is, perhaps, therefore pro-
visional, or questionable, from the standpoint of the improved texts (espe-
cially of Das Kapital, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and the
Grundrisse) of the MEGA-2, the more so since its relocation to the Interna-
tional Marx Engels Foundation (IMES), across three national jurisdictions—
Berlin, Amsterdam, and Moscow.5
A central question in the establishment of the various editions of Marx’s
works has been the place and editorial role of Friedrich Engels. Jürgen Ro-
jahn, secretary of IMES from its inception in 1990 until 2000, was reported
in 1999 as saying: “In the past it was thought that Marx and Engels were
intellectual twins, but current research suggests that significant differences
separated Marx from Engels.”6 From this the interviewer draws the conclu-
sion (which may mischievously report Rojahn, but did not upset IMES suf-
ficiently to prevent them foregrounding the quotation in their own publicity)
that “the MEGA will show in what way Engels altered Marx’s text for vol-
umes two and three [of Das Kapital]. It appears that it was Engels who re-
vised these texts into a prophecy of inevitable decline of capitalism, whereas

5. See, for an excellent short history of the fate of Marx’s published and unpublished works,
the appendix to Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins, 247–52.
6. Norman Levine, “What Marx Really Said.”

xiv
 Preface

Marx himself never foretold such an ending.”7 There were important differ-
ences between Marx and Engels over the various forms and editions of Das
Kapital (especially the difference between the French editions of 1872 and
1875, translated by Joseph Roy, but edited with important emendations by
Marx himself), and discussed between them.8 It is certainly true that Marx
regarded the French edition as definitive in ways that Engels appears to a
greater extent to have overlooked in his edited editions of 1886, and in what
actually came to be the defining edition of 1890: Marx suggests that “what-
ever the literary imperfections of this French edition, it possesses a scientific
value independent of the original and needs to be consulted even by readers
familiar with the German language.”9 The differences, however, are, while
important, largely technical and do not alter the fundamental metaphysical
comportment of either Das Kapital or Marx himself. It is difficult to sustain
the argument that they represent a formal or ideological split between the
two men (although this thought is now in vogue).
The editors of the MEGA-2 appear, however, to favor a “scientific”
Marx, free of the meddling Engels, despite that the intellectual friendship
of these two men represented perhaps the closest partnership of its kind in
modern thought. The enterprise of producing such a Marx at the expense
of Engels surely falsifies both, in their persons and in the history of their
reception.10 Inasmuch as Heidegger’s most important philosophical develop-
ments from 1936 to 1948, and those greatly pertinent to us from 1946 and
1949, arise on the basis of a political engagement, even more so do the works
of Marx and his collaborator Engels. No one should attempt to free them-
selves from the tone of Marx’s and Engels’s writing: always in concert, if not
always harmonious, never in any sense antiphonal. At worst, catty, petulant,
journalistic, at other times humorous, but at best cool, sharp, and penetrat-
ingly thought through to the very end, the sheer urgency of especially Marx’s
voice, as much as the content itself, betrays the vitality with which Marx and

7. Ibid.
8. See, for instance, the letters between Engels and Marx on November 29 and 30, 1873, in
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Briefe Juli 1870 bis Dezember 1874 (MEW33), 94–95.
9. Karl Marx and Joseph Roy, “Note des éditeurs,” in Karl Marx, Le Capitale, 1:9. “Quelles
que soient donc les imperfections littéraires de cette édition française, elle possède une valeur
scientifique indépendante de l’original et doit être consultée même par les lecteurs familiers
avec la langue allemande.”
10. Kevin Anderson has considered with nuance the relationship between Marx and Engels,
and the issue of Engels’s editorial decisions, especially surrounding Das Kapital, and the differ-
ences between the German and French editions. See Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins,
4–5 and 154–95. As Anderson notes (4), whatever else the intellectual relation between them
(and as Engels himself freely acknowledged on more than one occasion) “Engels was not Marx,”
a wiser and more just observation than any attempt to set them at odds.

xv
 Preface

Engels wrote and thought, and the urgency of the moment into which they
wrote. Marx’s voice is almost always addressed to the widest audience. It is
not accidental that he, like several other revolutionaries (Lenin and Trotsky
are cases in point), was often most at ease with a journalist’s voice. At the
same time, Marx had direct experience of the Prussian censors in editing
the Rheinische Zeitung. It was for the sake of attaining a freedom of voice
that Marx came to England, and it was not only for the income but also
for the possibilities for freedom of expression that led him to publish in the
New York Daily Tribune. At the same time, the appropriation of Marx by
(especially the Soviet) Communist authorities also resulted in a posthumous
censorship of his writings—the privileging of some, even the suppression of
others—whose consequences are yet fully to be undone. Access to Marx’s
accessible voice has at times been rigidly policed.
The most productive dialogues are often those conducted in philia,
which can mean in Greek both friendship and love. Friendship, as we pres-
ently conceive it, is never adequate to what philia names: the name of love,
as it is now too often understood (through categories that mask modern
love’s sentimentality, its self-consumption, kitsch, and melancholy), can all
too easily exceed what it opens up. Philia is not the frenzied, incandescent
blaze of emerging friendship, a kind of possession that can also lay claim to
being love or even eroticism. Rather is philia the love that passes instinc-
tively between two who recognize each other as equals and as (long-lasting)
friends, even where they clash. It names an equality based not on equaliza-
tion or an enforced homogeneity, but on mutual understanding given in dif-
ference. Only friends can truly comport to each other as equals or the same:
for this very reason they need not always, and in the most weighty things
might never do. Only between friends can true freedom arise, for freedom is
not something we take or attain, but always something that is returned to us:
it comes, not as a point of liberation, but as an unfettered, even unexpected,
gift. It does not need to be requited, nor need it bring cost or loss to the one
giving. Philia is in itself appropriate, which means it appropriates those on
whom it is bestowed to charis—that is, to a divine grace—and in a stable
holding that is at the same time a mutual reserve and thankfulness. A com-
mon life in friendship provides hope against what passes for the politics that
marks our times. This book is grounded in this place of philia and charis by
two particular friendships: Paul Fletcher’s, without whom I would not first
have come to Lancaster (and whose untimely death in the summer of 2007
we still mourn), and Bogdan Costea’s, to whom this work is dedicated and
who keeps me in friendship when I am there.
The only person to have attempted a full-scale synthesis of Heidegger’s
and Marx’s thinking is Kostas Axelos. His work was strongly influenced by
Heidegger, whom he first met at the country house of Jacques Lacan in 1955.

xvi
 Preface

Axelos was at the same time a committed scholar of Marx and a Marxist,
although he had broken with the Communist Party formally in 1946. While
in no sense have I tried to follow the path he laid down (discussed in more
detail in chapter 1), the depth of his engagement with both Heidegger and
Marx was invaluable in attempting to understand and bring to light the “pro-
ductive dialogue” which is the subject of this book. His death in the small
hours of Thursday, February 4, 2010 (at the age of 85), occurred in the
middle of the lectures which were the beginning of this book, and we marked
his passing and his stature as a thinker of these two giants formally in the
week following his death. He represents perhaps the last of that generation
of French thinkers—Jean Beaufret, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Lévinas,
and others as well as Axelos—who (prior to Jacques Derrida’s remarkable
and powerful confrontation with Heidegger) had first engaged so acutely and
in person with Heidegger.11 Of all of these, Axelos was the one who was most
committed to the politics of the Left.
I have throughout translated der Mensch as “man” and favored the
masculine pronoun to speak of humanity. The text and translations are always
intended to be taken inclusively, although I have often eschewed inclusive
language where it seems to do violence to the sense or seems clumsy: I have
always believed the use of female pronouns by a male author to be a coloni-
zation more totalizing than any imbalance it seeks to correct. Of those read-
ers for whom any of this use is a difficulty, I ask forbearance.
We owe the greatest debt to those with whom we learn to think: and so
I acknowledge my own indebtedness to the thinkers with whom I have sought
to enter dialogue: first Martin Heidegger, from whom I have learned so much
of what I know of thinking, and Karl Marx, who influenced me strongly as a
young man and in this book represents for me something of a return. What-
ever I have said that truly inquires into what they themselves inquired into,
I hold for their honor, and for whatever I have failed in and falsified, should
be held to my account alone.

11. Axelos discussed both his Marxism and his understanding of Heidegger in an interview
with Stuart Elden in “Interview: Kostas Axelos, Mondialisation without the World,” 25–28.

xvii
Heidegger and Marx
 Introduction

There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

M A R X A N D H E I D E G G E R E A C H understood that
what they had to say arose from their own place and time. In this, they are,
if in quite different ways, among the most concrete and rigorous of think-
ers. More than any other thinkers in the last two hundred years, each, al-
though differently, thought historically and sought to explain history as he
understood it. Each is capable of great abstraction, both of them spoke from
concrete situations. The situations of both were marked by urgency, and, in
contrast to many others of their caliber, their own biography was entangled
in what they thought and said. Each has ushered in not one, but a wealth of
schools of followers. To attempt to address the thought of either on his own
betrays a deal of ambition: to have attempted both, and together, is perhaps
to have doomed oneself to failure. This book is not, therefore, an attempt
to be a final word: it aims to do no more than identify the main strands of
thought that might place these two thinkers within the same dialogue. It is
in this sense merely an introductory text—and even that low aim has proved
challenge enough, if it succeeds at all.
Peter Gast’s manufactured Preface to the work he published in Frie-
drich Nietzsche’s name, a work all of whose words were Nietzsche’s in a
book of which Nietzsche was not the author, the Will to Power, opens with
the words “what I recount is the history of the next two centuries.”1 This tale
alone is evidence enough for how in these two centuries all too often what
is thought by one is put to use for the purposes of others.2 The history is a

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht, 3. “Was ich erzähle, ist die Geschichte der
nächsten zwei Jahrhunderte.” Gast took the Preface from a notebook of Nietzsche’s of Novem-
ber 1887–March 1888, from a text which was entitled Vorrede—Preface (= Friedrich Nietz-
sche, vol. 13, Nachlaß 1887–1889, 189).
2. The history of the text Der Wille zur Macht is explained in Walter Kaufmann’s “Editor’s In-
troduction” to his English translation, Walter Kaufmann (ed. and trans.), Friedrich Nietzsche:
The Will to Power, xiii–xxix; the background to the fiction is given in H. F. Peters, Zarathus-
tra’s Sister: The Case of Elisabeth and Friedrich Nietzsche. The problematic status of the work

3
 Introduction

philosophical one: Nietzsche was only able to speak of history and its re-
counting because of the prevailing way in which philosophy itself had be-
come historical. Prior to him, Karl Marx had concretized and materialized
the thought of the one philosopher who had thought through and made pos-
sible the historical character of philosophy in the modern age: Georg Frie-
drich Hegel. Prior to Hegel, the highest philosophy, the philosophy of the
absolute and infinite (which Hegel sought to treat), had dealt only with that
which is eternal and unchanging: “eternal being,” the most extreme pole to
which first Plato and then Aristotle had driven thinking in the birth itself
of Western philosophy. The Christianization of philosophy, if not from Jus-
tin Martyr or Augustine, then certainly from the sixth century onward, had
identified the eternal being as God. In the move into history, the eternal
thought of being left God behind and had itself become the philosophy of,
not being, but becoming. Nietzsche dares to write a history of the future, be-
cause becoming is above all concerned with what is not yet, or rather, what
not yet is. Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche: each gave birth to the philosophy of
becoming that is the thought of our age and these centuries, and they mate-
rialized that becoming as politics. This book is about how they conceived the
materialization of this, a history yet to come.
It is Martin Heidegger who sought to make clear, over a lifetime’s think-
ing, how this history was to be understood as both a history of being and a
history of the forgottenness of being. In this he sought to show how (and this
means for whom) the “first” and “highest” philosophy had become historical,
and what of the “political” had been forgotten in that course. The pursuit of
what he called this “path” of thinking brought him increasingly into confron-
tation with the whole of modernity, in ways for which he has only partially
been either understood, or even forgiven. He has been accused of nostal-
gia, Luddism, and an eccentric “philhellenism” (the word is not mine), or of
merely being a peasant farmer with intellectual pretensions: none of which is
true. This book is about how that confrontation with modernity is to be under-
stood, and what “being-historical” really means. Heidegger frequently makes
a distinction between history (die Geschichte) and historiography (die Histo-
rie)—the latter being the mere assemblage of “facts” and sequences of events
constituted self-evidently as historical “knowledge.” In Being and Time, Hei-
degger reminds us that philosophy is none of these kinds of “theory” of histo-
riography but is “the interpretation of the properly historical entity [Seienden]
in its historicality.”3 It did not seem necessary in this work to explore this par-

meant that it was left out of the critical edition of Nietzsche’s works and Nachlaß edited by
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (see bibliography).
3. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (GA2), 14. “Die Interpretation des eigentlich geschicht-
lich Seienden auf seine Geschichtlichkeit.” See especially 518–24.

4
 There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

ticular distinction that Heidegger made (so often for pedagogical purposes),
so that throughout, it is taken for granted that in both Heidegger and Marx,
“facts” are grounded in interpretation, such that “history [die Geschichte] is
never necessarily historical [historisch]” and that “in the theory of historiog-
raphy, history holds sway as what cannot be got around.”4
Marx, far more than Hegel, and perhaps (although perhaps not) even
more than Nietzsche, is still the thinker of that epoch in history we name
“modernity.” Marx’s account of the inevitability of progress gives immediate
shape to modernity’s commitment to technology, to an endless moral, social,
political, and economic advancement and development, wherein modernity
does not think, but first, and only, acts. For modernity, thinking is disdained
as afterthought.
Although primarily concerned with two, this book is really about four
figures—Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. It is also a book about
how we might understand the half (and a bit) of the “next two centuries”
of Nietzsche’s extravagant claim, through which we have already lived. To
be in-midst of something is to find oneself in the most difficult of places for
understanding. We neither properly see the end, nor entirely remember the
beginning. Yet life itself is this “being in the midst”: life rarely, if ever, grants
us more than this. And so it is both the most difficult, and the most familiar,
and even the most privileged, place from which to think. If we are halfway
through, we are in the eye of the tempest. And what tempest there has been.
For since the birth of 1888 we have seen a resurgent Germany, the eye of
the European storm, crushed not once, but twice. We have seen the mighty
empires of Britain and the Soviet Union (if it is correct to understand the
latter as an empire) enter their full flower and fade or fall. We have seen
another ancient empire come to an end and transform itself into a mighty
nation which is communist by name, and seemingly capitalist by nature, and
which is locked in a financial, economic, and political brace with its seeming
opposite—if this is one way to understand the extraordinary fate of China
and its emerging and surprising relations with the United States. It has been
said more than once that “the proletariat of the United States is Chinese.”
And we have seen the United States, a “second Europe” in both size and
design, become the guarantor and pinnacle of Western liberal democracy.
All of this has been called by Heidegger, and by others around him (Ernst
and Georg Jünger, and the circle around the journal Die Tat), the planetary,
global, reach of Occidental ideas, which had its intellectual and spiritual
birth in antiquity, in Greece. This book is also an attempt to grapple with the

4. Martin Heidegger, “Wissenschaft und Besinnung” (GA7), 58. “Die Geschichte ist niemals
notwendig historisch. . . . In der Theorie der Historie waltet die Geschichte als das Unumgäng-
liche.”

5
 Introduction

mighty phenomena of which I can speak here in only the broadest terms,
and which have been unleashed as the first of Nietzsche’s next two centuries
has ended, and we enter the second.
The two centuries in question are, above all, European, and this book
is essentially about Europe. In saying this there is a great danger—that every
non-European, or everyone who thinks himself to have overcome the “Eu-
rocentrism” of modern thought, will decide “this book is not for me.” To say
these centuries are Europe’s is to understand the extent to which Europe
has overtaken the world. North America, that site of the improvement and
overcoming of Europe, is itself an entirely European affair. Karl Marx was in
no doubt that Europe—even Germany alone—was the vanguard of progress
toward communism: he was no nationalist or provincial thinker. To think that
Europe can be, or has been, “overcome” and left behind, is itself a coloni-
zation of the worst kind, for to believe that the foremost intellectual ideas are
themselves a vanguard which have already reached far beyond the shores of
Europe in laying hold of the whole planet through a single grasp is already
to be oneself in the grip of the essence of European, Western, thought, and
so not its overcoming. Heidegger noted in a lecture in 1957 that—for just
three examples—the worlds of ancient India, China, and Japan remained
ever more lost to thinking: “this question becomes ever more urgent, as
European thinking threatens evermore to become planetary, so that today
Indians, the Chinese and Japanese in many cases can only pass on the matter
of their experiences in our European manners of thought.” In this kind of
Eurocentrism, everything becomes a “mishmash” so that we no longer know
“whether the ancient Indians were English empiricists or whether Lao-tzu
was a Kantian.”5
Europe is no longer a particular place on the surface of the globe, but
rather it is the manner in which all who wield power (often by most denying
that they do) seize upon, and attempt to grasp in action and thought, the
planet as a whole. Heidegger distinguished the German term Abendland—
the land of the evening, of the passing of the day, and the preparation for
the new beginning (the day that is yet to come), from the word “Europe,” by
which latter term he meant the entire West and its planetary reach (he even
at one time speaks of Europe and Asia as “Eurasian,” and a single place, by
which he meant to indicate the essential identity and uniformity of Western

5. Martin Heidegger, Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge (GA79), 145–46. “Diese Frage wird
um so brennender, als das europäische Denken auch darin planetarisch zu werden droht, daß
die heutigen Inder, Chinesen und Japaner uns das von ihnen Erfahrene vielfach nur noch in
unserer europäischen Denkweise zutragen . . . ob die alten Inder englische Empiristen waren
und Laotse ein Kantianer.”

6
 There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

political forms with “Bolshevism”).6 For this reason I have employed the term
“Europe” to speak of what Heidegger terms either Europe or, more rarely,
“the Western”; and the word “Occident,” denoting the falling or dying away
of the sun, for when he specifically refers to the Abendland,7 or “evening
land.” Heidegger understands that, as the opening toward the “other begin-
ning” of which we will learn something as we proceed, “the evening-land is
the future of history,”8 and so is the promise of what comes after the twilight
of the end, and what unfolds after we have undergone the rediscovery of the
meaning of the darkness of the night. The Occident is, for Heidegger, a word
which yields the meaning of our history: by contrast the merely European,
or Western, is the drive to seize the planet, to grasp and dominate it through
the essence of technology, a drive which occludes the Occidental destiny.
To return to action: does thought give rise to events, or are events the
basis for ideas? This is the riddle of metaphysics, from beginning to end.
This riddle, this question, which lies at the heart of these two centuries, lies
at the center of this book. At the same time, the riddle of metaphysics will
turn out to be the riddle of subjectivity, as we shall see. Who is the subject of
this book, and for whom is it written? The question of subjectivity, of how to
understand the human person and what humanity is (how the subject thinks
and acts) has also formed the basis of the intellectual and spiritual struggle
over the future of thinking, and the future of Europe and the planet as a
whole, that came to such a refinement in the nineteenth century and has
given birth to the ideas of its successor and our own. Even more than René
Descartes was Immanuel Kant the thinker of modernity’s understanding of
subjectivity. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger are each responding to
questions that are Kant’s legacy for modern thinking. Kant is the thinker par
excellence of the Übersinnliche, the “supersensible,” that unity of the subject
which constitutes the formal ground and cause of its freedom and is the ori-
gin of practical (ethical) action in the human subject, over against the visible
appearances of the things of nature. Kant in several places posited a formal,
seemingly unbridgeable division between the supersensible and the realm
of sense, although he does concede that the power or faculty of judgment,
because it can grasp nature as an end (the ground of grasping the planet as a

6. See Martin Heidegger, Das Ereignis (GA71), 95, §131, “ ‘Abendland’ und Europa” and
§132 “Das Abendland und Europa.”
7. On one occasion at least Heidegger explicitly distinguished the Abendland from the Occi-
dent, as a way of repudiating the cultural pessimism of Spengler, but to have replicated this in
my English translations would have meant leaving the word Abendland untranslated, an unsat-
isfactory solution.
8. Martin Heidegger, Das Ereignis (GA71), 96. “Das Abendland ist die Zukunft der Ge-
schichte.”

7
 Introduction

whole), can constitute such a bridge.9 This is not the place to examine Kant’s
determining of the supersensible (although we will explore it in depth as we
proceed), but rather to understand that from Hegel hence, and certainly in
Nietzsche’s two hundred years, a tireless war has been waged on the super-
sensible in its every form, through thought and deed. Marx’s drive for a fully
concrete materialism is born from this war: but not less is Heidegger’s de-
termined understanding—expressed as early as 1925—that “philosophical
research is and remains atheism,”10 adding “and precisely in this atheism
[it] becomes what a great man once called the ‘Gay Science.’ ”11 Heidegger
speaks here of Nietzsche, in whose The Gay Science (Die Fröhliche Wissen-
schaft) is recounted the proclamation of the death of God: his argument is
that with the historical event of the death of God, the identification of God
and being has finally come apart, so that the question of being and its mean-
ing is reopened all over again.
The centrality of Marx’s writing to modern thought means that Marx’s
terms are very familiar to us. Marx was not, in any case, a particular innova-
tor of terms, even as he was an innovative thinker. Class, surplus value, com-
modity fetishism, alienation, realism, “nature,” historical and dialectical ma-
terialism, humanism (and its counter-essence, antihumanism)—all of these
and the character in which Marx (and Engels) speak have become part of the
intellectual fabric of Western thought. This is not because we have absorbed
Marx and Marxism—unwittingly, as it were—but because Marx spoke, and
still speaks, not just to, but for and of the age in which we are. Marx’s famil-
iarity to us is because ours is first his voice, when (whatever our “personal”
political commitments) we think socially: his voice, as much as Nietzsche’s,
is and will continue to be the narrator’s, as we live the unfolding history of
these two hundred years.
Heidegger’s language is altogether more strange. A master of the Ger-
man language on the level of Martin Luther or Friedrich Nietzsche, Hei-
degger has often been accused (either approvingly, or with disdain) of coin-
ing neologisms to weave a poetic, even mystical, language for thinking. Much
of Heidegger’s German translates, or has been translated, only poorly into
English (which is invariably hardly the fault of the translators, as my own at-

9. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 107 and following. See also Kant’s letter to
Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk of December 11, 1797, in Immanuel Kant, Briefwechsel, §411,
757–61, especially 756.
10. Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA20), 109–10. “Philos-
ophische Forschung ist und bleibt Atheismus.”
11. Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA20), 110. “Und
gerade in diesem Atheismus wird sie zu dem, was ein Großer einmal sagte, zur ‘Fröhlichen
Wissenschaft.’ ”

8
 There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

tempts to translate him have proved to me too frequently). Heidegger him-

self was aware of how newly arrived the German tongue was to the language
of thinking, and he commented on issues of translation in many of his lec-
ture courses and public writings.12 The tradition of widespread knowledge of
classical languages in Germanic centers of study (we should recall that the
nation of “Germany” is itself an object of nineteenth-century manufacture,
the effect of the statecraft of Otto von Bismarck) lasted for far longer than
in France—where revolution and the love of all things new put paid to the
learning of antiquity—or England—where education was progressively re-
ordered to producing a colonial civil service or for mercantile and industrial
success—neither goal finding much use for classics. We take for granted
that a term in one language has an immediate cognate in another. Heidegger
was often at pains to point out that translation from one language to another
tends to seize upon one meaning in an otherwise polysemic term which, in
rendering that well, excludes the others. All too often the very significance of
the term and its employment is its polysemy—what it is able to suggest and
draw forth in its penumbra, as much as what it directly says. On one occa-
sion, he cites the example of the translation of a phrase employed by Greek
mathematicians, koinai ennoiai, into German as allgemeine angenommene
Vorstellungen. Heidegger notes that “Plato was fond of this word; it says:
insight, to get insight, and, indeed, with the inner eye.”13
Reginald Lilly, who translated these passages of Heidegger into En-
glish, reads allgemeine angenommene Vorstellungen as “universally assumed
ideas,”14 but they could just as well be translated as “generally perceived
representations.” Plato’s koinai ennoiai, more literally “things commonly
in-minded,” does indicate community of knowledge, but not in the sense of
an already-agreed meaning (as “universally assumed ideas” might suggest)
but as what might give you the same insight as I might have, were we to be
granted the insight that a thing can give to the one well attuned to it and ca-
pable of rising up to reach it. This is very far from Gottfried Leibniz’s view, as
Heidegger understands it, that the allgemeine angenommene Vorstellungen
are in each case “what is held by all as obvious”: aptitude, capacity, alertness,
success, and—far from psychological capability—what can be granted by

12. Heidegger’s discussions of issues of translation are too numerous to cite. Much of the
subject matter of the lecture course Der Satz vom Grund (GA10) is concerned with issues of
translation, and the issue is repeatedly discussed in Was heißt Denken (GA8), where Heidegger
says (178) “jede Übersetzung ist aber schon Auslegung” (“each translation is, however, already
interpretation”).
13. See Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (GA10), 22. “Platon gebraucht das Wort
gern; es besagt: Einblick, Einblick nehmen und zwar mit dem geistigen Auge.”
14. Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason (GA10), trans. Reginald Lilly, 15.

9
 Introduction

what is thought of (and so also the moment, the mood, the place) are all of
far greater consequence.15 Heidegger’s argument is that to deliberate across
these meanings allows us slowly to tease out both their possibilities and their
history of interpretation, and so to bring ourselves into a thoughtful proxim-
ity with both what they mean now, and how we learn to discover what they
originally meant. Heidegger concludes that “the possibilities for thoughtful
conversation with a tradition that nurtures and invigorates us fails, because
instead we consign our speaking in electronic thought- and calculation-
machines, an occurrence which will lead modern technology and knowledge
to completely new procedures and unforeseen consequences, that perhaps
will push aside reflective thinking as something useless and therefore dispos-
able.”16 Anyone who has ever lifted a sentence or definition from an online
“community encyclopedia” to embellish an argument or even just a footnote
should understand instantly what it is that Heidegger names here.
Heidegger did coin neologisms, but many of these were developments
of words either already present in the tradition, or renderings into German
of Greek terms. Dasein, literally “here-being” (and never “being-there”),17
can also mean “existence” and “presence,” and is a word to be found all
over the works of Kant, Hegel, and Marx himself. Mitsein, meaning “with-
being,” which Heidegger (in Being and Time especially) expanded into
Miteinandersein, “being-with-one-another,” is a literal rendering of the Greek
word sunousia, “with-being,” “together-being,” which can mean community,
sociality, society, “society” (in the older English sense of “company”), and
(among other meanings) even sexual copulation. Perhaps one of Heidegger’s
least understood, but most abused, neologisms is “ontotheology,” a term he
developed specifically in explanation of Hegel’s thought, and so which will
concern us later. Ontotheology names the whole of metaphysics, and names
this whole by naming how every being (Greek on) is taken as a “thing” to be
inquired into, and so is taken in relation to what is most “beingful” in the
thing, which Aristotle had defined as either “first or highest being” and then
“theology.” The theology in question was at first nothing to do with Abraham

15. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (GA10), 23, quoting Leibniz’s Latin formulation
“quae ab omnibus pro manfestis habentur.” The Latin literally says “things which are held by
all for having been made evident” (compare Leibniz, “Consilium de Encyclopædia nova con-
scribenda methodo inventoria,” 32).
16. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (GA10), 22. “Weil die Möglichkeiten des den-
kenden Gesprächs mit einer uns erregenden, fördersamen Überlieferung fehlen, weil wir statt
dessen unser Sprechen in die elektronischen Denk- und Rechenmaschinen hineinschicken, ein
Vorgang, der die moderne Technik und Wissenschaft zu völlig neuen Verfahrensweisen und un-
absehbaren Erfolgen führen wird, die vermutlich das besinnliche Denken als etwas Unnützes
und darum Entbehrliches abdrängen.”
17. See the discussion of Heidegger’s rejection of this translation on 31, n. 44.

10
 There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

and was not Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, but in antiquity named the “es-
sence” of the gods, and so the totality and entirety of what is “most beingful.”
For Aristotle, it named what of a thing is “divine” and so expressive of the
aei on—the “being-ever-same” that is the property of the gods. In what Hei-
degger calls the “christianisation of philosophy” this becomes (the revealed,
Abrahamic) God himself, as that one who is “most in being” and so who gives
being to all particular beings. This “giving being” is also to be understood as
“causing each being to be,” a philosophical rendering of the first line of the
biblical Book of Genesis “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.” Ontotheology names the whole tradition of metaphysics from its
inception in Plato and Aristotle, through its theistic entanglements, up to
Hegel, and so beyond. In this sense, Heidegger first coined the word “Onto-
ego-theo-logy,” the “ego” in question naming Hegel’s “absolute subjectivity,”
which we will examine in great detail, and which names the whole of meta-
physics as both a psychology and the humanism with which divinity, God,
and being became wrapped up.
The riddle of subjectivity underpins the whole of the dialogue this book
attempts to enter. That riddle is given in the indeterminacy of the subjectivity
of the subject in the metaphysics of Hegel and Nietzsche—the metaphysics
which Marx and Heidegger confront. The subjectivity of the subject, given
in the pure ego cogito which accompanies every self-reflexion of the being of
being-human, is at the same time empty. The word cogito is ordinarily trans-
lated as “I think” but can just as well mean “I deliberate” and even “I act”: it
stands in contrast to the other verb for thinking that Descartes uses, intelligo:
“I know”; “I understand.”
The distinction in two forms of knowledge—intelligo and cogito—
Descartes had in effect received from the origin of philosophy, a distinction
described by Aristotle. Aristotle suggests that there are two ways in which
something is true. The first, he says, is what is seen for itself: “the seeing of a
particular thing is true” (elsewhere he speaks of this as “always” true),18 and
this “seeing” refers to thinking (nous) directly, and recognizes the thing in its
“being true,” its essence,19 such that this is not some concern about how it is
to be described or said.20 The second, however, concerns speaking of some
thing through assertion and denial, such that it is understood with respect to
the true and the false.21 What is said with respect to the true and the false is,
for Descartes, always grounded in the will, rather than the intellect. It is for

18. Aristotle, De anima, 430b29–30. τὸ ὀρᾶν τοῦ ἰδίου ἀληθές (πᾶς, ἀεὶ).
19. Aristotle, De anima, 430b28–29. ὁ τοῦ τί ἐστι κατά τὸ ἦν εἶναι.
20. Aristotle, De anima, 430b29. οὐ τὶ κατά τινος.
21. Aristotle, De anima, 430b25–26. ἔστι δ’ἡ μὲν φάσις τι κατὰ τινος, ὥσπερ ἡ κατάφασις, καὶ
ἀληθὴς ἢ ψεθδὲς πᾶσα.

11
 Introduction

this reason that Descartes selects the verb cogitare for the establishment of
the subjectivity of the subject in the indubitability of the statement cogito,
ergo sum. This statement is not the result of a proof, or a syllogism, but a
matter so self-evident that it is outside the realm of every possible doubt,
and so is inerrant. It is the one statement which, belonging to the sphere of
what is deliberative (the realm of “the true and the false”), whenever spoken
by a subject, must only be true.
For Descartes, what the intellect knows, it knows absolutely, and as a
matter of fact. However, whereas the will of God cannot err, the will of man
not only can, but routinely does err. The human will is, of its very nature, er-
rant. If Descartes can find one truth that the will knows and which cannot be
said to err, then he has established a connection between the actually infinite
will of God and the only potentially infinite will of man. That truth is cogito.
Cogitare has an active sense: it is essentially a productive thought. To cogi-
tate is not to twiddle the thumbs, but productively to think the “I”-think, ac-
tively to represent the self to the self. Such a thinking is also a doing. Several
times Heidegger drew attention to the etymology of cogitare as co-agitatio,
from Latin co-, meaning “with,” “alongside and together,” and agere, “to act,
to do.”22 The riddle of metaphysics—of the question of the relative priority
of thinking and acting, acting and thinking—lies at the heart of the establish-
ment of the subjectivity of the subject, and it lies at the heart of what follows
from the death of God. We shall see that Marx effortlessly takes over this
place of God for the sake of man, when he describes man alone as the crea-
tive one, that one who creates by producing his own future. For to produce
is to create, and creation, hitherto and in the epoch of theistic metaphys-
ics, is the one action proper to God (which man can only imitate, after the
fact of his own creation). As Heidegger himself tersely noted: “the agere as
facere, creare.” We would paraphrase this as: “humanly to act is to make, to
create.”23 This is the fundamental connection that comes to be established in
the history of thought between Latin agere and Greek ergon—work, labor,
doing. The subject produces and creates, in virtue of the will. The will, in
thinking, acts. Heidegger shows how “this co-agitatio is, therefore, in itself
already velle, willing. With the subjectivity of the subject will comes to ap-
pearance as the essence of subjectivity.”24 The will, in acting, thinks. This

22. Compare Martin Heidegger: “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” (GA5), 110; “Nietzsches Wort:
Gott ist Tot” (GA5), 243; “Entwürfe zur Geschichte des Seins als Metaphysik” (GA6.2), 426.
23. Martin Heidegger, “Entwürfe zur Geschichte des Seins als Metaphysik” (GA6.2), 432.
“Die ἐνέργεια wird umgedeutet zur actualitas des actus. Das agere als facere, creare.” The first
part says “Energeia comes to be reinterpreted as the actuality of the thing done.”
24. Martin Heidegger, “Nietzsches Wort: Gott ist Tot” (GA5), 243. “Die co-agitatio aber ist
in sich schon velle, wollen. Mit der Subjektität des Subjekts kommt als deren Wesen der Wille
zum Vorschein” (Heidegger’s emphasis).

12
 There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

possibility opens up only in the history of metaphysics as it is thought from

Plato and Aristotle up to Marx and Nietzsche. Indeed, in establishing the
distinction between factual, “visible” (self-evident) truth and deliberative
truth—the distinction on which Descartes draws to establish the subjectiv-
ity of the subject—we find Aristotle wondering why this distinction was not
noticed by anyone before.25
The subjectivity of the subject is two-sided. On the one hand, subjec-
tivity establishes the human being as a pure postulate, a self-representation
to itself: as such this postulate is indeterminate in itself. The subject is prior
to gender, class, education, history, color, race, sexuality, ability, belief, and so
on. On the other hand, in order to bring about its determinations, the sub-
ject has to act, or rather enact the subjectivity that it is: it becomes the things
that it does or represents in the “outer” world. A conventional, and purely
psychological account of this enacting determines subjectivity from out of
“drives” and “lacks,” the fulfillment of “needs.” None of this explains the mo-
ment of extreme risk and confrontation with nullity undertaken by the acting
subject, who wills, to become. Descartes was largely unconcerned with this
aspect of subjectivity, but Kant illustrates the essential connection between
cogitation and the justification required for every cogitation. Kant refers to
this as the problem of “how, in particular, subjective conditions of thought
can have objective validity”: how they might become.26 This, as Heidegger
points out, is how “Kant, in his critical foundation of metaphysics thinks the
ultimate self-securing of transcendental subjectivity as the quaestio iuris of
the transcendental deduction”—it is, in other words, how justice, “justifica-
tion,” for the subject is secured as “self-justification.”27 Every act of will of
the willing subject is subject to justification, and must be justified in order
to establish its validity. Risk and nullity are overcome by the justification
of the self in self-justification: “I have the right to be, or do, this that I am,
or enact.”
Nietzsche’s understanding of justice and justification (Gerechtigkeit)
is the ground from out of which he establishes the differences between sub-

25. See Aristotle, De anima, 427a22–b10. Aristotle mentions Empedocles explicitly, but then
goes on to speak of all the “earlier ones” (οἴ ἀρχαῖοι) who preceded him and failed to make this
distinction. It seems to elude him (unless he is being ironic) that the distinction was never made
because the earlier thinkers were thinking in a quite different way about the nature of ἀλήθεια,
“truth,” and that Aristotle’s distinction is therefore a genuine innovation.
26. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 129 (A89; B123). “Wie nämlich subjektive
Bedingungen des Denkens objektive Gültigkeit haben [sollten].”
27. Martin Heidegger, “Nietzsches Wort: Gott ist Tot” (GA5), 245. “Kant denkt in seiner kri-
tischen Grundlegung der Metaphysik die letzte Selbstsicherung der transzendentalen Subjek-
tivität als die quaestio iuris der transzendentalen Deduktion. . . . Recht-fertigung . . . Selbst-
Gerechtigkeit.”

13
 Introduction

jects. Justice retains its connection with legality only in the sense that justice
legitimates and authorizes difference, differentiation as such. Inasmuch as
I can lay claim to a justification, I can lay claim to the value on which I
am set and it cannot, without justice, be taken from me. Nietzsche argues
that “merely to possess the will is in no way sufficient”:28 rather, “truly, no
one has a higher claim to our veneration than he who possesses the drive
and strength for justice.”29 We must hear this sentence in all its Nietzschean
irony, as a reworking of Kant’s opening remarks to the section concerning the
“Transcendental Deduction” of the Critique of Pure Reason with its refer-
ence to law and jurists.30 For if justice has hitherto been a matter of estab-
lishing the truth (in law), now the law of the will is to establish the truth by
means of justification. Morality is established from out of the justification
that any subject can summon in defense of his or her cogitation. Every con-
temporary politics functions in this manner. Nevertheless, we must under-
stand what this means: for the will to power as Nietzsche understands it is
not the “will to will” in the most obvious sense of “I must get what I want,
all I need is to dare to will, to get it.” Justice means that, for instance, every
commanding political leader experiences the command to lead from out of
the will to power as a destiny to which he or she is justified, and to which he
has to rise up to attain. Justice confers, not the enactment of a supervenient
sense of power, but the attainment to a sense of entitlement. Every leader
called into this destiny does so for the sake of all other social relations which
flow from that leadership: “I am the one destined to undertake this task for
all your sakes”: “I do this for you: each and all.”
The most public and prevailing concept in contemporary political dis-
course is indeed that of “justice.” A battle cry of the Left,31 it names some-
thing so immediately intelligible to the modern world that it is increasingly
taken up with equal force in the rhetoric of the Right. It is in this sense
that the politics of Left and Right (and every other politics besides—iden-
tity politics, ecological politics, the politics of animal rights, and so forth) is
on the way to being better explained by Nietzsche than by Marx. Or rather

28. Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 1, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, 287. “Es genügt durchaus
nicht, den Willen dazu allein zu haben.”
29. Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 1, Unzeitmäßige Betrachtungen, 287. “Wahrlich, niemand hat in
höherem Grade einen Anspruch auf unsere Verehrung als der, welcher den Trieb und die Kraft
zur Gerechtigkeit besitzt.”
30. Compare Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 125 (A84; B117).
31. See, for example, the character of Alain Badiou’s, in his play L’incident de Antioch, and
whom he quotes in his L’hypothèse communiste. In the name of the revolution, she speaks re-
peatedly of the “will to justice,” “the consciousness that organizes justice,” and “the history of
justice.” Alain Badiou, L’hypothèse communiste, 23, 25. “La volonté de justice . . . la conscience,
qui organise la justice . . . l’histoire de la justice.”

14
 There Is No Justice in Heidegger or for Marx

we should say, Nietzsche foresaw what politics would become: justice is not
a moral question: rather morality (or, as we would now say, ethics) is to be
established through the self-justification of the subjectivity of the subject.
Every subjectivity, to exist and appear in the social sphere, must be able to
justify its place. To achieve this, my claim to justice must be unassailable:
you must give me justice because you can find no reason to deny me. In this,
justification retains its essential connection with law as it is understood in
contemporary liberal democracy.
If this is Nietzsche’s view, then not so Marx,32 who (in savaging the
pretensions of the “socialists” who founded social democracy in Germany)
held justice in contempt, describing it as a merely bourgeois concept: “do
not the bourgeois assert, that today the distribution of property is ‘just’? And
is it not in fact the only ‘just’ distribution on the basis of today’s means of
production?”33 Marx asks, “are economic relations regulated through con-
cepts of justice, or do the relations of justice not spring the other way about,
from the economic?”34 The question is rhetorical (anticipating Nietzsche’s
own reversal of the meaning of justice): for Marx, economic relations deter-
mine social relations (like those of justice and right), which is why the inevi-
table development of economic relations is at the same time the inevitable
development of the social. In Das Kapital, Marx expressly connects relations
of will with economic relations. Every contractual, legal relation (relation of
justice) is a reflection of the real economic relations that pertain and make
them possible: “the contents of this relation of will or justice is given through
the economic relation itself.”35
Heidegger also advances no concept of justice, although he discusses
Nietzsche’s understanding of justice not once, but repeatedly. An entire divi-
sion of Heidegger’s 1938–39 seminar on the second of Nietzsche’s Untimely
Meditations was devoted to the relation in Nietzsche between justice and
truth.36 If justice is the basis for the establishment and justification of differ-
ence between subjects, both Heidegger and Marx (in contradistinction to

32. A. M. Shandro, in attempting to formulate a Marxist theory of justice, provides a good

survey of the American, French, and Soviet literature that discusses the extent to which no
theory of justice exists in Marx. A. M. Shandro, “A Marxist Theory of Justice?” especially 27–30.
33. Karl Marx, “Kritik des Gothaer Programms” (MEW19), 19. “Behaupten die Bourgeois
nicht, daß die heutige Verteilung ‘gerecht’ ist? Und ist sie in der Tat nicht die einzige ‘gerechte’
Verteilung auf Grundlage der heutigen Produktionsweise?”
34. Karl Marx, “Kritik des Gothaer Programms” (MEW19), 19. “Werden die ökonomischen
Verhältnisse durch Rechtsbegriffe geregelt, oder entspringen nicht umgekehrt die Rechtsver-
hältnisse aus den ökonomischen?”
35. Karl Marx, Das Kapital (MEW23), 99. “Der Inhalt dieses Rechts- oder Willensverhält-
nisses ist durch das ökonomische Verhältnis selbst gegeben.”
36. Compare Martin Heidegger, Zur Auslegung von Nietzsches II. Unzeitgemäßer Betrach-
tung (GA46), 157–97.

15
 Introduction

Hegel and Nietzsche) share a radical rejection of the claims of justice. On

the one hand, Marx seeks to show how all differentiation between subjects
will be overcome through the highest development of economic relations.
This development will result in an absolute equalization of every subject, so
that the inequalities of surplus value will be replaced, not by the abolition
of value, but by each participating fully in the value he creates. Heidegger,
on the other hand, seeks to show how the end of metaphysics is itself the
overcoming of subjectivity: in this sense justice as an effect of the will to
power is overcome by dikeˉ (ordinarily translated from the Greek as “jus-
tice”). Heidegger says of dikeˉ “just as impossible as the interpretation of the
[Greek] polis on the basis of the modern state or the Roman res publica is
the interpretation of this dikeˉ in the sense of modern justice and the Roman
iustitia.”37 Heidegger translates dikeˉ “as the jointure, which ordains for hu-
manity the relations of its comportments.”38 The word I have translated as
“jointure” (der Fug) literally means a join (like a dovetail) in a wooden con-
struction that is fixed using no nail or screw. The word has resonance both
with what is ordered by fate (vom Schicksal gefügt), but also that which is
fügsam, “obedient.” Obedient to what and to whom we will only discover in
understanding Heidegger’s own political engagement, as we proceed. What
Heidegger seeks to convey is a proper “fittedness” of human life, its being
held together in its relations without compulsion or constraint, but in proper
order.39 Heidegger does not say so here, but it is clear that in releasing him-
self into what is ordained for him, Heidegger thinks that man encounters
genuine dikeˉ as a freedom.
Marx and Heidegger reject the contemporary “juridical” understand-
ing of justice because each understands that what is truly at issue for hu-
manity is not what man wills for himself, but rather what is ordered and or-
dained for humanity, which then lets humanity truly come to be, that which
(although Marx never speaks in these terms) is fated for humanity and into
which it grows up, rather than what it simply wills as its choice or desire: in
this they both thought alike and yet did not think the same. It is this under-
standing of “the political,” and what Marx and Heidegger understood this to
mean, that truly concerns this book and the dialogue it seeks to unfold.

37. Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (GA54), 142–43. “Gleich unmöglich wie die Deutung der
πόλις aus dem neuzeitlichen Staat oder aus der römischen res publica ist die Deutung der δίκη
aus der neuzeitlichen Gerechtigkeit und der römischen iustitia.”
38. Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (GA54), 143. “Die δίκη als der Fug, der das Menschen-
tum in die Verhältnisse seines Verhaltens weisend fügt.”
39. “Order” is the word chosen by the English translators of this text. Compare André
Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz, Martin Heidegger: Parmenides (GA54), 96.

16
 Chapter 1

Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

K A R L M A R X A N D Martin Heidegger are each in their

own right among the most commented-on and discussed thinkers of the
recent period. Each has had a formative influence on not just one, but many,
schools of thought, interpretation, and in Marx’s case, political practice. Even
among those who would bear the name “Marxist,” we find vastly differing in-
terpretations of Marx. On the other hand, those who have attempted to place
Marx and Heidegger side by side or put them into dialogue of any kind have
been few. Philosophically, both thinkers stand in a strong tradition of writ-
ing after Hegel—and of the self-conscious repudiation of Hegel, although
for Marx and Heidegger this takes quite different forms. Both are strongly
influenced by Aristotle (as indeed, was Hegel), although this book will only
glimpse, and only very much later, the confrontation with Aristotle that un-
derlies the dialogue between them. Heidegger apparently only rarely, and
then never systematically, engaged with Marx, but as we shall see later, there
are constant intimations that his reading of Marx (and other Marxists, Lenin
included) ran far deeper than is commonly supposed. This chapter begins
with Heidegger’s most publicly visible commentary on Marx (a commentary
he makes in other places in the same decade)1 before examining how other
thinkers have sought to bring Marx and Heidegger together. This provides
the preliminary backdrop of the contrasting understanding of the “produc-
tive dialogue” that the following chapters will develop, a dialogue which (to
my knowledge) has not been attempted on this scale before.
To bring Marx and Heidegger into proximity in this way immediately
brings before us the common language that they share. Marx and Heidegger
both inquire into, and take up, the range of terms that was established before
them, especially in the tradition of German idealism, beginning with Kant,
and more fully developed in Hegel and Friedrich Schelling. Marx and Hei-

1. See for just two examples Martin Heidegger, “Zeichen” (GA13), 211; “Kants These über
das Sein” (GA9), 447.

17
 Chapter 1

Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

K A R L M A R X A N D Martin Heidegger are each in their

own right among the most commented-on and discussed thinkers of the
recent period. Each has had a formative influence on not just one, but many,
schools of thought, interpretation, and in Marx’s case, political practice. Even
among those who would bear the name “Marxist,” we find vastly differing in-
terpretations of Marx. On the other hand, those who have attempted to place
Marx and Heidegger side by side or put them into dialogue of any kind have
been few. Philosophically, both thinkers stand in a strong tradition of writ-
ing after Hegel—and of the self-conscious repudiation of Hegel, although
for Marx and Heidegger this takes quite different forms. Both are strongly
influenced by Aristotle (as indeed, was Hegel), although this book will only
glimpse, and only very much later, the confrontation with Aristotle that un-
derlies the dialogue between them. Heidegger apparently only rarely, and
then never systematically, engaged with Marx, but as we shall see later, there
are constant intimations that his reading of Marx (and other Marxists, Lenin
included) ran far deeper than is commonly supposed. This chapter begins
with Heidegger’s most publicly visible commentary on Marx (a commentary
he makes in other places in the same decade)1 before examining how other
thinkers have sought to bring Marx and Heidegger together. This provides
the preliminary backdrop of the contrasting understanding of the “produc-
tive dialogue” that the following chapters will develop, a dialogue which (to
my knowledge) has not been attempted on this scale before.
To bring Marx and Heidegger into proximity in this way immediately
brings before us the common language that they share. Marx and Heidegger
both inquire into, and take up, the range of terms that was established before
them, especially in the tradition of German idealism, beginning with Kant,
and more fully developed in Hegel and Friedrich Schelling. Marx and Hei-

1. See for just two examples Martin Heidegger, “Zeichen” (GA13), 211; “Kants These über
das Sein” (GA9), 447.

17
 Chapter 1

degger both speak of the nation or people (Volk), but also Dasein (existence,
presence), which immediately throws into relief much of the commentary
on these two terms in subsequent literature (some of which we will examine)
that has understood Heidegger’s use of the term Volk in Being and Time
in 1927 to be evidence of his proto-Nazism, or Dasein to have been a term
unique to Heidegger. It is worth recalling how recently the German language
had become a philosophical language—arguably only with Kant. Kant’s im-
mediate predecessors, the Silesian Christian Wolff, the Berliner Alexander
Baumgarten, and before them the almost pan-European Gottfried Leibniz,
had all written the burden of their philosophical work in either Latin, or in
Leibniz’s case, Latin and French. German had, until the Enlightenment in
which Kant, and to a lesser extent Gotthold Lessing, were such central fig-
ures, been a demotic, rather than technical, speech. When Marx speaks in
1843 of how Germany assumed only theoretically (and so in its philosophy)
the progress that other Western nations had made in practice (and so in
fulfilment of their history),2 he is speaking of a Germany that is itself at the
time a theoretical rather than geographical unity (attaining its greatest size
only in 1870 under Bismarck), and a philosophy that was truly articulated in
the German language only within living memory. The freshness and promise
of all Marx names with this statement is barely visible to us now, and yet is
itself for Marx the very evidence of an upsurge of possibility of vast import,
proportion, and vitality.
In 1969 Heidegger raised the question of Marx, as if spontaneously,
in a television interview with Richard Wisser.3 Taking Marx’s “Theses on
Feuerbach” from a bookshelf adjacent to where he was seated, Heidegger
proceeded (without looking up the place) to read the eleventh (last) thesis
and to comment on it:4

The question of the demand for world change leads us back to Karl Marx’s
frequently quoted statement from his “Theses on Feuerbach.” I would like
to quote it exactly and read out loud: “Philosophers have only interpreted the
world differently; what matters is to transform it.” When this statement is
cited and when it is followed, it is overlooked that changing the world presup-
poses a change in the positing of the world. A positing of the world can only
be won by adequately interpreting the world. That means: Marx’s demand
for a “change” is based upon a very definite interpretation of the world, and
therefore this statement is proved to be without foundation. It gives the im-

2. See the discussion of this on 130.

3. The interview with Richard Wisser was broadcast on the German television channel ZDF
on September 24, 1969, and again the day after Heidegger’s death, on May 27, 1976.
4. Karl Marx, “Thesen über Feuerbach” (MEW3), 7.

18
 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

pression that it speaks decisively against philosophy, whereas the second half
of the statement presupposes, unspoken, a demand for philosophy.5

What appears at first to be so decisive a dismissal of Marx is, of course,

nothing of the kind. It is hardly accidental that, in 1969, the question of
Marx and the consequences of what he thought should have been to the
fore: a little more than a year before there had been a near-social revolution
in France, led in part by Marxist influences, and which had repercussions
across Europe and especially, for Heidegger, in West Germany, given the
widespread student movements that followed it there. The cold war with the
Soviet Union, with its concomitant, the constant threat of nuclear annihila-
tion, was the backdrop of international relations. Communism was counter-
posed to social democracy in every region of the globe: either directly, or in
the spirited struggle for influence.
What Heidegger exposes is not the marginal character of Marx, but
an ambiguity, one that persists to the present day: does thought produce
action, or is every action preparatory for what is to be thought? What does it
mean to interpret the world? And in interpreting the world, why does inter-
pretation differ with respect to who interprets, and when? Is there a single
interpretation of the world, which is “true,” and against which every par-
ticular interpretation is ultimately to be measured? Or is all interpretation
merely grounded in the particularity of “standpoint,” mine, and yours, and
theirs? The implication of Marx’s statement is that change overcomes differ-
ence: transformation is a unifying force. How so? Into this Heidegger inserts
his own thinking: from where does the demand for thinking, for philosophy,
spring? From the experience of change; or from the need to interpret; or
does it spring forth from a decisive standpoint that already holds in view, and
so has decided (despite the way the world is) how the world should be? And
in this latter, if we know what should be on the basis of what is not, then from
whence did that knowledge of what we know should pertain spring, given
that it did not spring from the conditions of things as they are, but rather

5. Martin Heidegger, “Martin Heidegger im Gespräch” (GA16), 703. “Die Frage nach der
Forderung der Weltveränderung führt auf einen vielzitierten Satz von Karl Marx aus den ‘The-
sen über Feuerbach’ zurück. Ich will ihn ganz zitieren und vorlesen: ‘Die Philosophen haben die
Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt darauf an, sie zu verändern.’ Bei der Zitation dieses
Satzes und bei der Befolgung dieses Satzes übersieht man, daß eine Weltveränderung eine Än-
derung der Weltvorstellung voraussetzt und daß eine Weltvorstellung nur dadurch zu gewinnen
ist, daß man die Welt zureichend interpretiert. Das heißt: Marx fußt auf einer ganz bestimmten
Weltinterpretation, um seine ‘Veränderungen’ zu fordern, und dadurch erweist sich dieser Satz
als nicht fundierter Satz. Er erweckt den Eindruck, als sei entschieden gegen die Philosophie
gesprochen, während im zweiten Teil des Satzes unausgesprochen die Forderung nach einer Phi-
losophie vorausgesetzt ist” (Heidegger’s and Wisser’s emphases from the published transcripts).

19
 Chapter 1

as they are not? How then do conditions determine “consciousness,” where

consciousness would function as a name for thinking? Is it at this point that
dialectic enters in?
We are again living through a period of economic and political tur-
moil which threatens new political upheaval and uncertainty on a scale not
seen since twice in the twentieth century, when civil turmoil in Europe was
plunged into the pursuit of politics by other means: in the worldwide wag-
ing of war. Such warfare is so far from being a possibility in the present age
that the governments of the West, and globally, now seek with all iron force
to manage and assure the future of their political economies (in every reso-
nance of that term) by managing the direction and processes of production
while at the same time taking the planet as a whole in hand through every
means of technical control and manipulation. For good or ill, we are not
witnessing the end of history, but its return with intensified imperative. We
learn that the fate of the whole planet is at stake in what comes next. The
power of the state, and its abilities to interact with corporations as the means
of the global management of political economy in face of this apocalypse, is
about to be yet further refined and enhanced, which means all the questions
that beset the globe and came to a certain head in the 1930s return in a new
and intensified way. Our every good and optimistic intention for a “better”
future is co-opted and coerced into a collaboration with a metaphysical and a
moral imperative whose ground at the same time remains obscure and diffi-
cult to exhibit. This is the imperative voice of the renewed state: the moral
injunction to avert the end of the world. The power of the state has nothing
to do with the size of the state—indeed, it is the very invisibility of this force
of management that lends it such power and effectiveness.
The claim to have, or even to desire and so need to acquire, the means
to avert the end of the world is itself metaphysical. The attempt to manage,
addressed as it is in an apocalyptic voice, and to mass audiences, the “we
must” of so much contemporary political rhetoric, is orchestrated as much
in public relations exercises and by means of careful interaction and nego-
tiation with the organs of the mass media, as it is in actual actions to be
taken or state organs to be established, and in fact represents the means of
managing the destiny and future of the world as a whole. Nothing less is at
issue than the world history of European thought (of which America is only
yet another intensification). Not to understand this is to fail to understand
what Heidegger means when he speaks of “metaphysics.” To understand this
is to understand how metaphysics, as that which speaks from, and of, the
“beyond,” nevertheless determines a fate and an outcome for all materiality,
and so is always a politics.
The phrase “a productive dialogue” is taken from Martin Heidegger’s
Letter on Humanism, sometimes called the Humanismusbrief. Heidegger

20
 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

speaks here of the dimension within which a productive dialogue with Marx-
ism becomes possible.6 To open the way to speak with Marxism, we will con-
centrate on Heidegger’s engagement with Karl Marx. This focus is because
Heidegger almost always speaks specifically with respect to the texts and
works of Marx, never with Engels, and although he refers to “Marxism” and
“Bolshevism” at times, only on the rarest of occasions does he refer to other
Marxists.7 Heidegger’s discussion of Marx is fragmentary, and there is no
systematic or prolonged treatment of Marx or Marxism in any of Heidegger’s
works. Remarks and observations are scattered throughout his public lec-
tures and more private notes and notebooks. In prewar Germany, the scope
for an engagement with Marxism was extremely limited—after 1933 it could
only have taken the form of Nazi-approved polemic. Postwar Germany, with
the presence of the German Democratic Republic in the east, and in the
light of Heidegger’s own Nazi commitments prior to 1945, arguably afforded
little additional opportunity. It is outside Germany that Heidegger speaks
most freely of Marx, especially when he speaks with his French interlocu-
tors—Beaufret, Sartre, Axelos. Nevertheless, I wish to disavow the truth of
Kostas Axelos’s claim that “Heidegger does not supply us with the basic out-
lines of a Marx interpretation”8 by showing not only where, but also how, it is
to be found. There is the beginning of a publicly available dialogue as early
as the Letter on Humanism, nevertheless Heidegger wrapped his “Marx in-
terpretation” up in a language that as much concealed, as made available,
how it was to be understood. There is a sense in which this entire book is no
more than a commentary on the passages in the Letter on Humanism where
Heidegger carries this out.
The Letter on Humanism was written in the fall of 1946 as a response
to a letter to Martin Heidegger by Jean Beaufret, the text of which is not cur-
rently in the public domain. The Letter on Humanism was first published in
1947, at a time when Europe was at one and the same time in ruins and on the
threshold of an extended upswing of optimism and growth that would last for
nigh on sixty years. This was the inception of a period marked by the fierce
ideological clash between two seemingly antagonistic worldviews—Western
capitalism and Soviet communism—that had together inflicted defeat on a
third—Nazism and other forms of fascism and “national” socialism. Even
before the Second World War, thinkers like Martin Heidegger and Ernst

6. Martin Heidegger, Brief über den Humanismus (GA9), 340. See 23, n. 12.
7. In a note in a bundle of slips seemingly from 1940, Heidegger cites Lenin’s Materialism
and Empirico-Criticism from 1909, and adds a quotation which he attributes to the Soviet peda-
gogical and industrial theorist (sentenced to death in Stalin’s show trials in 1939) Alexei Gastev.
Compare Martin Heidegger, Leitgedanken zur Entstehung der Metaphysik (GA76), 301.
8. Kostas Axelos, Einführung in ein künftiges Denken: Über Marx und Heidegger, 8. “Hei-
degger liefert uns nicht die Grundlinien einer Marx-Interpretation.”

21
 Chapter 1

Jünger were claiming that these three, together with their related political
forms, are to be understood from out of the same metaphysical ground. In
1930 Jünger had argued: “In Fascism, in Bolshevism, in Americanism, in Zi-
onism, in the movements of non-white peoples, advance is made into a prog-
ress that would have been formerly unthinkable; in effect it performs a som-
ersault, in order to continue its movement on a very simple level after a circle
or circular movement of artificial dialectic.”9 In 1935 Heidegger claimed that
“Russia and America are both, metaphysically viewed, the same.”10 Through-
out his later public engagement with Jünger, Heidegger names all of this as
a planetary “movement of nihilism.”11 How we are to understand that claim
will be decisive for us in working out what Heidegger meant by “a productive
dialogue.”
What is intended by the phrase “a productive dialogue”? We live in an
age when everything must, in order to be justifiable, be instrumentalized to a
purpose. A productive dialogue therefore “solves” something or allows some-
thing to be done, to be achieved: there is always a better outcome ahead.
Surely, therefore, we intend to put two “great” thinkers into a dialogue: Hei-
degger and Marx: Marx and Heidegger. To sit at their feet, and to “learn
from” and “absorb” the clash of differences between them. Except that as an
ambition nothing could be more shallow, unless we ourselves begin to think.
Marx as the thinker of capital, and Heidegger as the thinker of being, surely,
have nothing to say to each other? What is at issue in any dialogue? Rather,
we should ask, what makes a thinker a great thinker? Is a great thinker so
because everyone thinks he is great and therefore reads him? How could we
enter into such a dialogue except by getting in between? All thinking thinks
of something. Are we trying to think of Marx and of Heidegger—or are we
not, rather, and in dialogue with them, trying to think of what they them-
selves thought of ? Greatness in thought is that thinking which strives to be
adequate to what it thinks of, and so with what it is concerned.
Heidegger’s remark concerning a “productive dialogue” in the Letter
on Humanism makes specific reference to the phenomenologist Edmund
Husserl and the existentialist Sartre: “Since, however, neither Husserl, in-
sofar as I can see up until now, nor Sartre recognise[s] the essentiality of

9. Ernst Jünger, “Die Totale Mobilmachung,” 27. “Der Patriotismus wird durch einen mo-
dernen, stark mit Bewußtseinselementen durchsetzten Nationalismus abgelöst. Im Faschismus,
im Bolschewismus, im Amerikanismus, im Zionismus, in den Bewegungen der farbigen Völker
setzt der Fortschritt zu Vorstößen an, die man bisher für undenkbar gehalten hätte; er über-
schlägt sich gleichsam, um nach einem Zirkel der künstlichen Dialektik seine Bewegung auf
einer sehr einfachen Ebene fortzusetzen.”
10. Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (GA40), 40. “Rußland und Amerika
sind beide, metaphysisch gesehen, dasselbe.”
11. Compare Martin Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage (GA9), 386, 391–93, 395.

22
 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

the historical in being, for that reason neither phenomenology nor existen-
tialism enter into only that dimension within which a productive dialogue
[Gespräch] with Marxism becomes possible.”12 Phenomenology, as the name
for that kind of thinking that named a movement that attempted to follow
in the wake of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, and Heidegger,
had sparked various attempts at dialogue with Marxism in the period before
the Nazis came to power in Germany. In October 1945, Sartre had given
a lecture to the Club Maintenant, published the following year under the
title “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” in which Sartre had explicitly sought a
dialogue with communists from an atheistic existentialist standpoint (within
which he included Martin Heidegger), and in which he asserted (following
Francis Ponge) that “man is the future of man.”13 This future which is itself,
for Sartre, a production of man is, as we shall see, already metaphysically the
same as that future which Marx addresses. For Heidegger, an existentialism
of this kind could not enter into a dialogue of difference with Marxism on
the most essential ground, which Heidegger identifies here as that of his-
tory, because it already springs forth from that same ground in too much the
same way. There was no difference to be attained. It seems extremely likely,
but (to my knowledge) is unknown, whether Heidegger had any version of
Sartre’s essay to hand when he wrote the Letter on Humanism.
Of the three French figures who were closely allied and represented
part of the nucleus of the very specific intellectual milieu out of which Sartre
was speaking, Sartre, Beaufret, and Axelos, only Kostas Axelos was a for-
mally committed Marxist. Axelos’s dissertation, published in 1961 and trans-
lated into English in 1976 as Alienation, Praxis, and Techneˉ in the Thought
of Karl Marx, was the second volume of a trilogy whose overall title is The
Deployment of Errance, and was strongly influenced by Heidegger (as the
overall title suggests).14 Axelos’s most important contribution to Heidegger’s
dialogue with Marxism is his untranslated Introduction to a Futural Think-
ing: On Marx and Heidegger from 1966,15 aspects of which he repeated for a
French audience in the second of Jean Beaufret’s four volumes of essays on

12. Martin Heidegger, Brief über den Humanismus (GA9), 340. “Weil aber weder Husserl
noch, soweit ich bisher sehe, Sartre die Wesentlichkeit des Geschichtlichen im Sein erkennen,
deshalb kommt weder die Phänomenologie, noch der Existentialismus in diejenige Dimension,
innerhalb deren erst ein produktives Gespräch mit dem Marxismus möglich wird.”
13. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, 38. For the reference to Heidegger,
see Sartre, L’existentialisme, 17. Sartre was citing an article by the poet Francis Ponge, “Notes
premières de l’homme,” in Les Temps Modernes 1 (1945).
14. Kostas Axelos, Le déploiement de l’errance. The three titles under this heading were
Marx, penseur de la technique; Héraclite et la philosophie (published in 1962); and Vers la pen-
sée planétaire (published in 1964).
15. Kostas Axelos, Einführung in ein künftiges Denken: Über Marx und Heidegger.

23
 Chapter 1

Heidegger, under the title The “Dialogue with Marxism” and the “Question
of Technology,” engaging directly with the Letter on Humanism.16
Axelos knew Heidegger personally through Beaufret, and there are
hints in Axelos’s texts that Heidegger (as he sometimes did with those who
engaged with him) gave Axelos some personal access to material that has
only very lately come into the public domain. Axelos interprets Marx as heav-
ily indebted to Hegel’s dialectic and logic, and, through a wide engagement
with those writings of Heidegger’s that were available at the time, Axelos
pieces Heidegger’s reading of Marx together in the light of Heidegger’s sug-
gestion that Hegel and Nietzsche represent the “completion” of metaphys-
ics. “Marx and Heidegger,” Axelos claims, “name the same . . . in no way do
[they] say the same, their thinking moves itself within ‘the same.’ ”17 Axelos
seeks constantly to show Heidegger’s, and Marx’s, relation to the “end of
metaphysics” and its “overcoming”: “Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger:
four names; four thinkers, who, each in their own manner, are remarkable in
their passage on the same paths.”18 It is this constant constellation of the end
of metaphysics, brought together through unfolding of the hidden essence of
technology, that Axelos seeks to explain.
In this sense, Axelos exhibits with dexterity one theme central to Hei-
degger’s work from beginning to end, that leaves Axelos himself unable to
abandon either his manifest admiration for and commitment to Marx, or his
sensitivity to what Heidegger is also seeking to name. Axelos is acutely aware
of the place Marx also occupies in Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity: “Marx
does not get over the representing of subjectivity, in fact it overcomes him,”19
which leads him to ask, and persist in asking, “does not therefore Marx be-
long to the epoch of subjectivity, so within the metaphysics of humanism?”20
In this Axelos betrays a very careful understanding of Heidegger’s “history
of being.” For the history of being as it manifests itself in Marx is the cul-
mination of the history of the nothing. From around 1935 Heidegger makes
a distinction between being as das Sein and (using an archaic, Schwabian
Germanic spelling) being as das Seyn.21 If das Seyn is be-ing as it is in itself,

16. Kostas Axelos, “Le ‘dialogue avec le Marxisme’ et la ‘question de la technique.’ ”

17. Kostas Axelos, Einführung in ein künftiges Denken: Über Marx und Heidegger, 12, 13.
“Marx und Heidegger das Gleiche nennen. . . . [Sie] sagen keineswegs das Gleiche, ihr Denken
bewegt sich innerhalb des ‘Selben.’ ”
18. Ibid., 16. “Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger. Vier Namen, vier Denker, die, jeder in
einem anderen Schritt, auf demselben Wege gehen und fallen.”
19. Ibid., 28. “Marx übersteigt nicht die Vorstellung der Subjektivität, er übersteigt sie sogar.”
20. Ibid., 28. “Gehört also nicht Marx der Epoche der Subjektivität, der Metaphysik des Hu-
manismus an?”
21. There is a tendency for some commentators to write “beyng” from an archaic English
spelling, which I have eschewed. Das Seyn is indicated in the text by the term “be-ing.”

24
 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

being as such, then the history of being (das Sein), being manifesting itself
historically, is the way in to the thinking of being as such. History (as it is
thought metaphysically) is, however, characterized by negation: by the can-
cellation of what went before for the sake of making way for what is yet to
come. We will encounter this character of cancellation in both Hegel and
Marx as the essential inner working of dialectic in its relation to time (and
hence to history), named as “sublation,” German Aufhebung, which can also
be translated variously as cancellation, abolition, revocation, but also pre-
serving, lifting, uprising, and even as transcending. Axelos therefore says
“the nothing presences as being . . . the nothing is being itself.”22
Hegel and Nietzsche each in their own way, for Heidegger, unfold the
completion of nihilism and the persistent presence of the nothing as at the
same time the presencing of being (das Sein). This unfolding of the nothing
is itself nothing other than the history of being, the forgetfulness of being, as
both being’s “withdrawal,” and the historical unfolding of man’s forgetting of
being. Axelos goes some way to bring Marx and Heidegger side by side: his
most basic assertion, that they spring from “the same,” is, from Heidegger’s
perspective at least, fundamentally correct. However, inasmuch as he brings
them together, in two short essays and in his highly impressionistic and at
times aphoristic style, he is unable to identify “the same,” and so to show
how an identical ground manifests itself differently in each thinker. A task of
this book will be to show what “the same” names, and how we are to under-
stand what is the same in each of these thinkers—Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche,
and Heidegger.
Axelos avoids the question of Heidegger’s own political engagement in
his juxtaposition of Marx and Heidegger. This avoidance comes despite the
fact that Heidegger’s Nazism had emerged as an issue in France as early as
1946 with the publication there of Karl Löwith’s denunciation of Heidegger’s
politics, and the first “Heidegger affair,” something Axelos could not have
been ignorant of.23 Axelos, naming Heidegger’s suggestion that human being
is sexually neutral, argues that, in the same manner, “Heidegger actually
says nothing of class struggle, of the proletariat, of capitalist exploitation. He
says nothing of it or against it. . . . He attempts to think through a so-called
social or political neutrality.”24 Heidegger’s political withdrawal after 1945,

22. Kostas Axelos, Einführung in ein künftiges Denken: Über Marx und Heidegger, 40, 41.
“Das Nichts west als das Sein . . . Das Nichts ist das Sein selbst.”
23. Karl Löwith, “Les implications politiques de la philosophie de l’existence chez Hei-
degger.”
24. Kostas Axelos, Einführung in ein künftiges Denken: Über Marx und Heidegger, 28. “Hei-
degger sagt tatsächlich nichts von Klassenkampf, vom Proletariat, von der kapitalistischen Aus-
beutung. Er sagt nichts dafür und nichts dagegen. . . . Heidegger versucht auch, die sogenannte
gesellschaftliche oder politische Neutralität zu durchdenken.”

25
 Chapter 1

indeed after 1934, will turn out, as we shall see, to be anything but the neu-
trality that Axelos suggests, as a kind of lofty indifference. If Heidegger does
not think with Marx’s categories, this does not mean that Heidegger does not
think through the political, nor does it mean that his thought is any kind of
political neutrality.
Axelos identifies Marx’s strong relation to Hegel by frequently citing
Marx’s early (1844) text, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.25 One
of Axelos’s commentators, the veteran American former Marxist and disciple
of John Dewey’s Sidney Hook, says (derogatorily) of Axelos’s writing “this is
idealistic metaphysics with a vengeance” and is harshly critical of Axelos’s
interpretation of subjectivity, commenting: “This ‘subject’ is obviously a frag-
ment or phase of the Hegelian creative spirit and had very little to do with
the subject Marx describes, after repudiating both Hegel and Feuerbach,
whose consciousness is determined by his social existence.”26 Hook argues
that “Marx was not born a Marxist. Axelos should have at the very least come
to grips with the possibility that Marx, as his criticism of the German true
socialists in The Communist Manifesto shows, subsequently regarded all the
talk about alienation in the so-called Philosophic-Economic Writings of 1844
as ‘philosophical nonsense.’ ”27 Hook’s prejudices against Hegel (and against
dialectic,)28 are insupportable in the light of the presence of the word “alien-
ation” all over later texts of Marx, irrespective of its seeming absence from
Das Kapital (an absence we will revisit), but Hook’s dispute with Axelos indi-
cates what is at issue with the refusal of many Marxists to enter into dialogue
with Heidegger.
This refusal is highlighted by David Schweickart, who cites Sartre’s
summary dismissal of any Marxist reading of Heidegger (“ ‘and there is no

25. Axelos usually refers to this text by the alternative title Nationalökonomie und Philoso-
phie. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts sometimes also go under the title of the
Parisian Manuscripts.
26. Sidney Hook, “Alienation, Praxis and Techneˉ in the Thought of Karl Marx by Kostas
Axelos,” 744.
27. Sidney Hook, “Alienation, Praxis and Techneˉ,” 744, referring to “der deutsche oder der
‘wahre’ Sozialismus” [“the German or ‘true’ socialism”], “Sie schrieben ihren philosophischen
Unsinn hinter das französische Original. Z.B. hinter die französische Kritik der Geldverhält-
nisse schrieben sie ‘Entäußerung des menschlichen Wesens’ ” (“They wrote their philosophical
nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, under the French critique of the relations
of money they wrote ‘alienation of the human being’ ”). (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
[MEW4], 485–88, compare 486).
28. See Sidney Hook, “Dialectic and Nature,” 253–84. While Hook undertakes a deft demoli-
tion of Engels’s use of the term “dialectical,” like many who fell under the spell of Anglophone
logical analysis, he fails to answer his own question—in this case, just why it is that (253) “the
philosophy of dialectical materialism is easily one of the most important social doctrines of our
times.”

26
 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

longer any Marxist, to my knowledge, who is still capable of doing this’ ”) as

the basis for his own relapse into “a truth-condition acceptable even to most
Marxists” which must, because of fierce division “be general.”29 Having es-
tablished this “truth-criterion” acceptable to all Marxists, he then proposes
to “recast certain Heideggerian positions—those related to his critique of
Marxism—in such a way that they may be tested by this criterion.” The su-
perficiality of this alternative need hardly detain us, except to note that it
exactly evades Axelos’s entirely correct inquiry into “the same,” as that from
which Heidegger and Marx spring, which is not at the same time mere “com-
mon ground,” let alone some trivial point of consensus or, worse yet, merely
“logical” truth-criterion.
The word “dialogue,” translating Heidegger’s word Gespräch, comes
from both the translations into English of the Letter on Humanism30 but
might better be translated “conversation.” What is the “topic” of the conver-
sation at hand? Heidegger’s subsequent remarks make us listen to this seem-
ing adjective “productive” all over again. Marx is primordially concerned
with production: both how what is produced is produced, and who owns the
means of its production. The Greek verb ergazomai means “to produce,”
to labor, to bring forth into the open. This word is strongly related to the
verb ergein, “to work,” which gives us the neuter noun ergon, “work,” but
also “labor” as such. The original Greek should be sounded with the miss-
ing digamma, έργον, Indo-European *werĝ, from which German wirken (to
realize) and English “work” are all derived. Here we must also hear the con-
nection with Aristotle’s energeia (and we will return to this much later): that
which is en-ergized, “set to work,” that which we would now call the “real.”
The essential, by which we mean philosophical, counterpart to energeia that
Aristotle identifies is dunamis: not the merely possible, the “potential,” but
what plenitudiously lets things into being, the from-out-of-which they are,
to be realized.
The productive dialogue Heidegger has in mind is not one with an
“end,” a product, in view, but rather what in itself concerns “the productive.”
The “productive dialogue” with Marxism immediately and first off concerns
a dimension: the dimension from out of which “the productive” speaks, that
dimension whose origins can be found by thinking through and behind Ar-
istotle’s discussion of the pair energeia-dunamis. In this, Heidegger both ac-
knowledges the extent to which Marx is himself indebted to Aristotle, and

29. David Schweickart, “Heidegger and Marx: A Framework for Dialogue,” 230, citing the
English translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1957 essay “Question de méthode.”
30. See the translation originally by Frank A. Capuzzi in collaboration with J. Glenn Gray as
Letter on Humanism in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, 217–265 (compare 243), revised in
Pathmarks, 239–76 (259).

27
 Chapter 1

the extent to which Marx as a thinker brings to light an essential interpreta-

tion of a thought as old as the history of Occidental thought itself. Essential
here means, an interpretation which presses in on him, and which demands
to be brought to description—a thought which cannot be evaded, and from
out of which Marx’s own thinking both is bound to history and makes an
ineluctable claim on him.
It is with this in mind that we can make sense of Heidegger’s remarks
from the Letter on Humanism that immediately follow: “for this [i.e., the
conversation] it is certainly necessary that one free oneself from naive con-
ceptions concerning materialism and from the cheap refutations that are sup-
posed to get us out of it. The essence of materialism does not consist in the
assertion that everything is mere matter, but rather in the metaphysical deter-
mination according to which every being appears as the material of labour.”31
About the best-known statement of Marx’s and Engels’s is “a spectre is
haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”32 The Communist Manifesto
notes that “all powers of the old Europe have bound themselves into a holy
chase against this ghost.”33 Not less was Heidegger concerned with this ques-
tion of the “whereto” of Europe: “the danger, into which the former Europe
is ever more strongly pressed into, presumably consists in this, before all
else, that its thinking—once its greatness—falls behind the essential course
of a dawning world destiny that at the same time in the basic features of
its essential provenance remains determinedly European.”34 We should hear
here the concern for the destiny and whereto of, not only Europe, but also
the planetary reach of European thinking, and so, therefore, of the whole
globe. Heidegger emphasizes in the editorial alterations he made between
the 1947 edition of the Letter on Humanism and the 1976 Gesamtausgabe
edition, and in his marginal notes to the text (preserved in the German and
the revised English translation), that the “danger” that he names, which we

31. Martin Heidegger, Brief über den Humanismus (GA9), 340. “Hierzu ist freilich auch
nötig, daß man sich von den naiven Vorstellungen über den Materialismus und von den billigen
Widerlegungen, die ihn treffen sollen, freimacht. Das Wesen des Materialismus besteht nicht in
der Behauptung, alles sei nur Stoff, vielmehr in einer metaphysischen Bestimmung, der gemäß
alles Seiende als das Material der Arbeit erscheint.”
32. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei in Marx Engels
Werke (MEW4), 461. “Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa—das Gespenst des Kommunismus.”
33. Ibid., 461. “Alle Mächte des alten Europa haben sich zu einer heiligen Hetzjagd gegen
dies Gespenst verbündet.”
34. Martin Heidegger, Brief über den Humanismus (GA9), 341. “Die Gefahr, in die das
bisherige Europa immer deutlicher gedrängt wird, besteht vermutlich darin, daß allem zuvor
sein Denken—einst seine Größe—hinter dem Wesensgang des anbrechenden Weltgeschickes
zurückfällt, das gleichwohl in den Grundzügen seiner Wesensherkunft europäisch bestimmt
bleibt.”

28
 Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx

will return to later, is “a falling-back of thinking into metaphysics, [which]

takes on a new form.”35
A significant number of Heidegger’s students were, at one point or
another, Marxists, especially at the time when they studied with him. If Karl
Löwith, who later converted to Lutheranism, was one of these, another was
perhaps the most often cited Marxist interpreter of Heidegger, Herbert Mar-
cuse. Marcuse wrote his Habilitationsschrift (thesis) on Hegel under Hei-
degger’s direction, and it was published in 1932,36 but never formally granted
(apparently as a result of Heidegger’s own opposition).37 Marcuse’s early work
attempted a critique of the idealism of Marxism from the perspective of what
he understood to be the more concrete appeal to experience he recognized
in the phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl.38 Douglas Kellner has at-
tempted to analyze Marcuse’s attraction to Heidegger’s thought in some de-
tail39 but does not really assess how, despite his engagement with Heidegger,
Marcuse is not able to engage with the radical and systematically destruc-
tive critique of philosophical subjectivity that Heidegger believed himself
to be undertaking. After the publication of Being and Time, and before
1933, Marcuse enthusiastically took up much of Heidegger’s terminology
and analysis, in particular Heidegger’s term Dasein. In discussion Marcuse
much later said “we saw in Heidegger what we had first seen in Husserl,
a new beginning, the first radical attempt to put philosophy on really con-
crete foundations—philosophy concerned with human existence, the human

35. Ibid., 341, n. a (but compare note b on the same page, both prefixed “1. Auflage 1949.”
“Der Rückfall des Denkens in die Metaphysik nimmt eine neue Form an” (“The relapse of
thinking into metaphysics takes on a new form”).
36. Herbert Marcuse, Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschicht-
lichkeit. In the German university system, a Habilitationsschrift is a further thesis, after the doc-
toral thesis, publication of which gives the holder the right to teach at a German state university
as a Privatdozent. Marcuse was never granted that right.
37. Herbert Marcuse, Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschicht-
lichkeit. Richard Wolin reports that “during the 1980s Frankfurt School historian Rolf Wiggers-
haus found a 1932 letter from Edmund Husserl to University of Frankfurt Rector Kurt Riezler
confirming that, for reasons that are still unclear, Heidegger ‘blocked’ Marcuse’s attempt to ha-
bilitate” (see Herbert Marcuse, Heideggerian Marxism, xxii and n. 25).
38. See Herbert Marcuse, Heideggerian Marxism. See also from this period Herbert Mar-
cuse, “Beiträge zu einer Phänomenologie des Historischen Materialismus” (“Contributions to a
Phenomenology of Historical Materialism”); “Über konkrete Philosophie”; “Über die philoso-
phischen Grundlagen des wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Arbeitsbegriffs” (“On the Philosophical
Foundation of the Concept of Labor in Economics”); “Zum Problem der Dialektik I” (“On the
Problem of the Dialectic”).
39. Douglas Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism, 38 and following. Richard
Wolin has a useful summary of Marcuse’s relationship with Heidegger in The Heidegger Con-
troversy: A Critical Reader, 152–60.

29
 Chapter 1

condition.”40 In an article in 1928, Marcuse first attempted an integration of

phenomenology with Marxism and historical materialism. Explicitly drawing
attention to (the then only just published) Being and Time, Marcuse argues
that a phenomenology of historical materialism entails a revolutionary atti-
tude such that historicality “culminates as the basic determination of human
existence [Dasein] and with a new understanding of reality [Wirklichkeit]
we get the possibility of a radically transformative action.”41 Marcuse col-
lapses the relationship between being (das Sein) and the entity in being (das
Seiende) into “human existence [Dasein]” when he says of Being and Time,
“but the whole of the first section that has already appeared treats of the in-
terpretation of a preeminent being [Sein], the ‘Dasein,’ by which the human
Dasein is always understood. ‘This being [Seiende], that we ourselves indeed
are . . . which we fix terminologically as Dasein.’ ”42
The whole of Being and Time turns on the distinction between das
Sein and das Seiende, which Marcuse here collapses into Dasein, making
each term indistinguishable with respect to it. The problem with this inter-
pretation—even apart from its conflations—is that it inevitably drives the
interpretation of the term Dasein toward becoming a masked name for the
subjectivity of the subject. Marcuse is careful to show how “world” is neces-
sarily a precondition of Dasein, and so not secured, as Descartes secures the
cogito, through radical doubt, and so cancellation of “world.” Marcuse also
correctly (in terms of Heidegger’s own understanding and claims) identifies
that what is missing in the formula cogito, ergo sum is any genuinely phe-
nomenological investigation of the sum, the being of the “I am.”43 What he
lapses into, however, is a concentration on the “human,” such that he ends
up implicitly positing the formula “every human being is ‘a’ Dasein.” This
formula is in itself ambiguous, especially in English (where Dasein is left
untranslated), as we are apt to hear the term Dasein as a designator, a proper
noun (as in “the” cogito), rather than its ordinary German meaning (in a way
used frequently by Marx) as “existence,” or Heidegger’s own utterly techni-

40. Herbert Marcuse, “Heidegger’s Politics: An Interview with Frederick A. Olafson,”

165–66.
41. Herbert Marcuse, “Beiträge zu einer Phänomenologie des Historischen Materialismus,”
348. “Als der Grundbestimmtheit menschlichen Daseins gipfelt und mit einem neuen Verste-
hen der Wirklichkeit die Möglichkeit einer radikal verändernden Tat bekommt.”
42. Ibid., 358, quoting at the end Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (GA2), 9. “Aber der ganze
bisher erschienene erste Teil behandelt die Interpretation eines vorzüglichen Seins, des ‘Da-
seins,’ worunter stets das menschliche Dasein verstanden wird.”
43. A point Heidegger himself repeatedly made. See, for instance, Martin Heidegger, Sein
und Zeit (GA2), 33. “What [Descartes] left undetermined with this ‘radical’ beginning, is the
manner of being of the deliberating thing, more precisely, the meaning-of-being of the ‘I am.’ ”
(“Was er aber bei diesem ‘radikalen’ Anfang unbestimmt läßt, ist die Seinsart der res cogitans,
genauer der Seinssinn des ‘sum’ ” [Heidegger’s emphases].)

30
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The game is almost peculiar to the North of England. There is a
poem called “The Trip Match” in Mather’s Songs.
See “Nur and Spel,” “Trap, Bat, and Ball.”

Trip and Go
Trip and go, heave and hoe,
Up and down, to and fro;
From the town to the grove,
Two and two let us rove;
A-maying, a-playing,
Love hath no gainsaying;
So merrily trip and go,
So merrily trip and go.
—Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, cccxlviii.

A game rhyme, but undescribed.

Trip-trout
A game in which a common ball is used instead of the cork and
feathers in “Shuttlecock.”—(Kinross) Jamieson.
See “Shuttlefeather,” “Teesty Tosty.”

Troap
A game played by two persons, with bandies or sticks hooked at the
end, and a bit of wood called a nacket. At each end of the ground
occupied a line is drawn. He who strikes off the nacket from the one
line, tries to drive it as near the other as possible. The antagonist
who stands between him and the goal tries to throw back with his
hand the nacket to the line from which the other has struck it. If he
does this he takes the place of the other. If not, the distance is
measured between the striking point and the nacket with one of the
sticks used in striking, and for every length of the stick one is
counted against the caster.—(Angus) Jamieson. The editor of
Jamieson adds that the name must have been originally the same as
the English Trap, although in this game a ball is used instead of a
nacket, and it is struck off as in cricket.

Troco, Trucks
This was an old English game formerly known as “trucks.” Strutt, p.
270, 299 (who gives an illustration of it), considers this game to be
the original of billiards. Professor Attwell says, Notes and Queries,
7th series, xii. 137, “This game was played at Nassau House School,
Barnes, for twenty years. It is played on a lawn with balls, cues, and
rings.”

Troule-in-Madame
In the Benefit of the Auncient Bathes of Buckstones, compiled by
John Jones at the King’s Mede, nigh Darby, 1572, 4to. p. 12, we
read: “The ladyes, gentle woomen, wyves, and maydes, maye in one
of the galleries walke; and if the weather bee not aggreeable too
theire expectacion, they may haue in the ende of a benche eleuen
holes made, intoo the which to trowle pummetes, or bowles of
leade, bigge, little, or meane, or also of copper, tynne, woode, eyther
vyolent or softe, after their owne discretion; the pastyme troule-in-
madame is termed.” Probably similar to “Nine Holes.”

Trounce-Hole
A game at ball resembling trap, but having a hole in the ground for
the trap, a flat piece of bone for a trigger, and a cudgel for a bat.—
Norfolk, Holloway’s Dictionary of Provincialisms.
See “Trunket.”

Troy Town
A game in which a plan of a labyrinth is drawn on a slate and
presented as a puzzle by boys to their schoolfellows for them to find
a way into the central citadel. It appears to owe its origin to the
mediæval mazes or labyrinths called “Troy Towns,” or “Troy Walls,”
many of which existed in different parts of England and Wales. It
appears that games connected with the midsummer festivals were
held in these labyrinths. This may, perhaps, account for the origin of
this puzzle being considered a game. For accounts of labyrinths or
mazes called “Troy Towns,” see Notes and Queries, 1st series, xi.
132, 193; 2nd series, v. 211-213; 8th series, iv. 96, 97; in which
many references are given; Tran. Cymmrodorion Soc., 1822, i. 67-
69; Roberts’ Cambrian Antiquities (in which is a plan), 212, 213; and
Folk-lore Journal, v. 45.

Truncher
A game requiring dexterity. A young man lies flat, resting only on his
toes at a certain mark at one extremity and on a trencher in each
hand at the other. He then tries to reach out the trenchers as far as
possible, and if not held at the right angle and edgewise, down they
go and he is defeated.—Dickinson’s Cumberland Glossary.

Trunket
A game at ball played with short sticks, and having a hole in the
ground in lieu of stumps or wickets as in “Cricket”; and with these
exceptions, and the ball being “cop’d,” instead of bowled or trickled
on the ground, it is played in the same way; the person striking the
ball must be caught out, or the ball must be deposited in the hole
before the stick or cudgel can be placed there.—Halliwell’s
Dictionary.
See “Cudgel,” “Trounce Hole.”

Truss
A boy’s game like “Leap-Frog.”—Halliwell’s Dictionary.
Tuilyie-wap
A childish amusement in Teviotdale, in which a number of boys take
hold of each other’s hands and wrap themselves round the one who
is at the head; clasping themselves as firmly together as possible,
and every one pushing till the mass falls over.—Jamieson.
See “Bulliheisle,” “Eller Tree,” “Snail-Creep,” “Wind the Bush Faggot.”

Turn, Cheeses, Turn

Green cheeses, yellow laces,
Up and down the market places;
First a penny and then a groat,
Turn, cheeses, turn.
—Leicester (Miss Ellis).

Green cheeses, yellow laces,

Up and down the market places,
Turn, cheeses, turn!
—Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, cccx.

This is acted by two or more girls who walk or dance up and down,
turning, when they say “Turn, cheeses, turn.”—Halliwell.
I remember playing this game, but my remembrance is very
imperfect. As far as I remember, there were two lines or rows of
children. They danced forwards and backwards, crossing to the
opposite side, and turning round. At the words, “Turn, cheeses,
turn,” the cheeses all turned round rapidly and then sank on the
ground. The players tried to inflate their dresses as much as
possible, and then stooped down to the ground, so that the dress
remained inflated; only the head and shoulders surrounded by a ball-
like skirt then appeared, intended to represent a cheese. All joined
hands and danced round at the end. The lines sang were the same
as the Leicester except the third, which was—“Some a penny, some
a groat, turn, cheeses, turn.” It was necessary for skirts to be very
“full” to make good cheeses—as wide at the waist as at the bottom
of the skirt.—(A. B. Gomme.)
Holland (Cheshire Glossary) says, a frequent amusement of girls is
making cheeses. They turn round and round till their dresses fly out
at the bottom; then suddenly squatting down, the air confined under
the dress causes the skirt to bulge out like a balloon. When skilfully
done the appearance is that of a girl’s head and shoulders peeping
out of an immense cushion. Evans’ Leicestershire Glossary mentions
this game. He says, “The performers sing a song of which the refrain
is ‘Turn, cheeses, turn,’ but I do not remember to have heard the
example cited by Mr. Halliwell-Phillips.”—Percy Soc., iv. p. 122.
I always understood that the green cheeses were sage cheeses—
cheeses containing sage. Halliwell says, “Green cheeses, I am
informed, are made with sage and potato tops. Two girls are said to
be ‘cheese and cheese.’”

Turn Spit Jack

A game at country balls, &c., in which young men compete by
singing for their partners in the next dance.—Patterson’s Antrim and
Down Glossary.

Turn the Ship

This is commonly a girls’ game. Two join hands and trip along, with
hands crossed, turning from one side to the other, and crossing their
arms over their heads without letting go their hold of each other,
singing at the same time—

Tip, tip, toe, London, lo!

Turn, Mary Ann, and away you go.

Or—

Tip, tip, toe, leerie, lo!

Turn the ship and away you go;
 A penny to you, and a penny to me,
And a penny to turn the basket.
—Fochabers (Rev. W. Gregor).

Turn the Trencher, or, My Lady’s Toilet

An indoor game played at Christmas time by children and adults. All
the players in the room must be seated. They are then asked by the
leader of the game to choose some article of a lady’s toilet, which
article they will personally represent, such as diamond ring, bracelet,
comb, brush, jug, basin, powder, hair-dye, dress, mantle, &c.—any
article, in fact, belonging to the toilet.
The leader then goes to the centre of the room with a small trencher,
round card tray, plate, or saucer in her hand. She spins this (the
trencher) round as quickly as possible, saying, “My lady’s going out
and needs her ‘dress,’” or any other article she chooses to name. The
player who has taken the name of “dress” must get up from her seat
and catch the trencher before it falls. If successful this player then
spins the trencher, calling out the name of another article of the
toilet. If the player fails to catch it, a forfeit is demanded by the
leader. Occasionally the spinner will say, “My lady’s going to a ball (or
elsewhere), and needs the whole of her toilet.” When this is said,
every player has to get up and take another place before the
trencher falls; the last one to get a place has to take the trencher,
and if it is down, to pay a forfeit. At the end of the game the forfeits
are “cried” in the usual way.—(A. B. Gomme.)
This (called “Truckle the Trencher”) used to be a standard game for
winter evenings. A circle was formed, and each one was seated on
the floor, every player taking the name of a flower. This game was
entered into with the greatest vivacity by staid and portly individuals
as well as by their juniors.—Dorsetshire (Folk-lore Journal, vii. 238).
A trencher, saucer, or plate is used. The players sit in a circle, and
one twirls the trencher, at the same time calling out the name of one
of the players. He or she jumps up and tries to catch the whirling
trencher before it falls. If it falls or is knocked over, a forfeit is
lodged, and the player who lodged the forfeit now becomes the
twirler. If the trencher is caught, it is handed back and twirled again,
and another name called out. The game continues till all or, at least,
most of the players have lodged forfeits. It is called “Turn the
Plettie.”—Macduff (Rev. W. Gregor).
This game is played in the same way in Ireland. It is called “Twirl the
Trencher,” and the players take names of towns or beasts.—(Miss
Keane.)
Brogden (Provincial Words, Lincolnshire) and Halliwell (Dictionary)
mention it as “Turn Trencher,” a game played at Christmas time.
Moor (Suffolk Words and Phrases) calls it “Move all.”

Turvey
Turvey, turvey, clothed in black,
With silver buttons upon your back;
One by one, and two by two,
Turn about, and that will do.
—Haverfordwest (Notes and Queries, 3rd series,
v. 394).

The children marched two and two, in a measured step to a given

distance, then turned and marched back again.
See “Alligoshee.”

Tutt-ball
“Tut-ball,”[12] as played at a young ladies’ school at Shiffnal fifty
years ago. The players stood together in their “den,” behind a line
marked on the ground, all except one, who was “out,” and who
stood at a distance and threw the ball to them. One of the players in
the den then hit back the ball with the palm of the hand, and
immediately ran to one of three brickbats, called “tuts,” which were
set up at equal distances on the ground, in such positions that a
player running past them all would describe a complete circle by the
time she returned to the den. The player who was “out” tried to
catch the ball, and to hit the runner with it while passing from one
“tut” to another. If she succeeded in doing so, she took her place in
the den, and the other went “out” in her stead. This game is very
nearly identical with “rounders.”—Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 524.
A game at ball, now only played by boys, but half a century ago by
adults on Ash Wednesday, believing that unless they did so they
would fall sick in harvest time. This is a very ancient game, and was
elsewhere called “Stool-ball,” indulged in by the clergy as well as laity
to avert misfortune.—Ross and Stead’s Holderness Glossary. The
game is not described.
Addy (Sheffield Glossary) says this game is the same as “Pize-ball.”
Halliwell (Dictionary) says it is a sort of “Stob-ball Play.”
See “Cat and Dog,” “Rounders,” “Stool Ball.”

[12] Tut, a prominence, from A. S. tótian, whence also E. tout, q. v.—W. W. S.

Twelve Days of Christmas

[Play]

—Rimbault’s Nursery Rhymes.

I. The first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

A partridge in a pear-tree.

The second day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear-tree.

The third day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Three French hens and two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

The fourth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

The fifth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Five gold rings, four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear-tree.

The sixth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,
Four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear-tree.

The seventh day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,
Four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear-tree.

The eighth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,
Four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

The ninth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Nine drummers drumming, eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
 Five gold rings, four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

The tenth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,
Four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

The eleventh day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Eleven ladies dancing, ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming, eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings, four colly birds,
Three French hens, two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.

The twelfth day of Xmas, my true love sent to me

Twelve lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying, five gold rings,
Four colly birds, three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear-tree.—Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, cccxlvi.

II.The king sent his lady on the first Yule day,

A papingo-aye [a peacock];
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?

The king sent his lady on the second Yule day,

Three partridges, a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?
The king sent his lady on the third Yule day,
Three plovers, three partridges, a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?

The king sent his lady on the fourth Yule day,

A goose that was grey,
Three plovers, three partridges, a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?

The king sent his lady on the fifth Yule day,

Three starlings, a goose that was grey,
Three plovers, three partridges, and a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?

The king sent his lady on the sixth Yule day,

Three goldspinks, three starlings, a goose that was grey,
Three plovers, three partridges, and a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?

The king sent his lady on the seventh Yule day,

A bull that was brown, three goldspinks, three starlings,
A goose that was grey,
Three plovers, three partridges, and a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and carries it away?

The king sent his lady on the eighth Yule day,

Three ducks a-merry laying, a bull that was brown— [The
rest to follow as before.]

The king sent his lady on the ninth Yule day,

Three swans a-merry swimming— [As before.]

The king sent his lady on the tenth Yule day,

An Arabian baboon— [As before.]

The king sent his lady on the eleventh Yule day,

Three hinds a-merry hunting— [As before.]
 The king sent his lady on the twelfth Yule day,
Three maids a-merry dancing— [As before.]

The king sent his lady on the thirteenth Yule day,

Three stalks o’ merry corn, three maids a-merry dancing,
Three hinds a-merry hunting, an Arabian baboon,
Three swans a-merry swimming,
Three ducks a-merry laying, a bull that was brown,
Three goldspinks, three starlings, a goose that was grey,
Three plovers, three partridges, a papingo-aye;
Wha learns my carol and —Chambers’s
carries it away?
Pop. Rhymes, p. 42.

III.My lady’s lap dog,

Two plump partridges and my lady’s lap dog;
Three grey elephants, two plump partridges and my lady’s lap
dog;
Four Persian cherry trees, three grey elephants, &c.;
Five Limerick oysters, four Persian cherry trees, &c.;
Six bottles of frontignac, &c.;
Seven swans a-swimming, &c.,
Eight flip flap, floating fly boats, &c.;
Nine merchants going to Bagdad, &c.;
Ten Italian dancing-masters going to teach ten Arabian magpies
how to dance, &c.;
Eleven guests going to celebrate the marriage of the Princess
Baldroulbadour with the Prince of Terra-del-Fuego,&c.;
Twelve triumphant trumpeters triumphantly trumpeting the tragical
tradition of Telemachus.
—London (A. B. Gomme).

IV.Twelve huntsmen with horns and hounds,

Hunting over other men’s grounds!
Eleven ships sailing o’er the main,
Some bound for France and some for Spain;
I wish them all safe home again.
Ten comets in the sky,
 Some low and some high;
Nine peacocks in the air,
I wonder how they all come there,
I do not know and I do not care.
Eight joiners in a joiners’ hall,
Working with the tools and all;
Seven lobsters in a dish,
As fresh as any heart could wish;
Six beetles against the wall,
Close by an old woman’s apple stall;
Five puppies of our dog Ball,
Who daily for their breakfast call;
Four horses stuck in a bog,
Three monkeys tied to a clog;
Two pudding ends would choke a dog,
With a gaping wide-mouthed waddling frog.
—Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, cclxxx., cvi.

(c) “The Twelve Days” was a Christmas game. It was a customary

thing in a friend’s house to play “The Twelve Days,” or “My Lady’s
Lap Dog,” every Twelfth Day night. The party was usually a mixed
gathering of juveniles and adults, mostly relatives, and before supper
—that is, before eating mince pies and twelfth cake—this game and
the cushion dance were played, and the forfeits consequent upon
them always cried. The company were all seated round the room.
The leader of the game commenced by saying the first line.
Generally the version used was similar to No. I. In later years the
shorter version, No. III., was said. The lines for the “first day” of
Christmas was said by each of the company in turn; then the first
“day” was repeated, with the addition of the “second” by the leader,
and then this was said all round the circle in turn. This was
continued until the lines for the “twelve days” were said by every
player. For every mistake a forfeit—a small article belonging to the
person—had to be given up. These forfeits were afterwards “cried” in
the usual way, and were not returned to the owner until they had
been redeemed by the penalty inflicted being performed.
In version No. IV., the game began by the leader saying to the player
sitting next to her, “Take this!” holding the hands as if giving
something. The neighbour answered, “What’s this?” The leader
answered, “A gaping, wide-mouthed, waddling frog.” The second
player then turned to the third and repeated, “A gaping, wide-
mouthed, waddling frog,” and so on all round the room. The leader
then said, “Two pudding-ends would choke a dog,” continuing in the
same way until twelve was reached. Chambers does not describe the
way the game given by him was played, but it was probably much in
the same manner. Rimbault’s Nursery Rhymes gives the tune to
which words of the song were repeated. The words given are almost
identical with No. I., but the tune, copied here, is the only recorded
one I have found.
(d) It seems probable that we have in these rhymes a remnant of a
practice of singing or chanting carols or rhymes relating to the
custom of sending gifts to friends and relatives during the twelve
days of Christmas. The festival of the twelve days was an important
one. The great mid-winter feast of Yule consisted of twelve days,
and from the events occurring during those days it is probable that
events of the future twelve months were foretold.—On the festival of
the twelve days consult Keary’s Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 381.
Miss Burne records that the twelve days rule the year’s weather; as
the weather is on each day of the twelve, so will it be in the
corresponding month, and for every mince-pie eaten in friends’
houses during these days a happy month is promised. In the games
usually played at this season, viz., those in which forfeits are
incurred, and the redemption of these by penances inflicted on the
unhappy perpetrators of mistakes, we may perhaps see a relic of the
observance of certain customs and ceremonies, and the penalties
likely to be incurred by those persons who omitted to religiously
carry them out. It is considered unlucky in the North of England and
Scotland to enter a neighbour’s house empty-handed. Christmas
bounties, and the practice of giving presents of food and corn and
meal on St. Thomas’s Day, 21st December, to the poorer people,
when they used to go round to the farmers’ houses to collect food to
prepare for this festival, may have had its origin in the idea that
nothing could be prepared or cooked during the festival of the twelve
days. It was a very general practice for work of all kinds to be put
entirely aside before Christmas and not resumed until after Twelfth
Day. Dr. Gregor records that no bread should be baked nor washing
done during this period, nor work left unfinished. Jamieson, in a note
on Yule, says that the gifts now generally conferred at the New Year
seem to have originally belonged to Yule. Among the northern
nations it was customary for subjects at this season to present gifts
to their sovereign,—these were called Jolagiafir, i.e. Yule gifts. The
custom in Scotland of presenting what we vulgarly call a sweetie-
skon, or a loaf enriched with raisins and currants, has an analogy to
this.
It is difficult, with the scanty evidence at command, to do more than
make the simple suggestions above. The game is evidently in a
process of very rapid decadence, and we have probably only poor
specimens of what was originally the form of verses sung in the two
versions from Halliwell and Chambers. The London version, No. III.,
is only recognisable as belonging to this game from the fact that it
was known as playing at the “twelve days,” was always played on
Twelfth Day, and it was not considered proper nor polite for the
guests to depart until this had been played. This fact has induced me
to add the fourth version from Halliwell, because it appears to me
that it may belong to the final form which this game is taking, or has
taken, namely, a mere collection of alliterative nursery words, or
rhymes, to puzzle the speaker under a rapid repetition, and to exact
forfeits for the mistakes made.
See “Forfeits.”

Twelve Holes
A game similar to “Nine Holes,” mentioned in Florio ed., 1611, p. 20.
—Halliwell’s Dictionary.
Uncle John is Ill in Bed
I. Uncle John is ill in bed,
What shall I send him?
Three good wishes, and three good kisses,
And a race of ginger.
Who shall I send it by?
By the carrier’s daughter;
Catch her by the lily-white hand
And carry her over the water.
Sally goes a-courting night and day,
Histal, whistal, by her side,
Johnny Everall by her side.
—Shrewsbury, Chirbury (Burne’s Shropshire Folk-
lore, p. 511).

II.Uncle Tom is very sick,

What shall we send him?
A piece of cake, a piece of bread,
A piece of apple dumpling.
Who shall we send it with?
Mrs. So and So’s daughter.
She is neither without,
She is neither within,
She is up in the parlour romping about.
She came downstairs dressed in silk,
A rose in her breast as white as milk.
She pulled off her glove,
She showed me her ring,
To-morrow, to-morrow the wedding shall begin.
—Nairn (Rev. W. Gregor).

(b) The Shropshire version is played by the children forming a ring

by joining hands. After the eighth line is sung all the children stoop
down—the last to do so has to tell her sweetheart’s name. In the
Scotch version the players stand in a row. They sing the first five
lines, then one player is chosen (who chooses another); the other
lines are sung, and the two shake hands. Another version from
Scotland (Laurieston School, Kirkcudbright, Mr. J. Lawson), is very
similar to the one from Nairn.
Mr. Newell (p. 72) gives versions of this game which are fuller and
more complete than those given here. He thinks it bears traces of
ancient origin, and may be the last echo of a mediæval song, in
which an imprisoned knight is saved from approaching death by the
daughter of the king, or soldan, who keeps him in confinement.

Up the Streets
[Play]

—Liverpool (C. C. Bell).

I. Up the streets and down the streets,

The windows made of glass;
Is not [naming one of the children] a nice young lass?
She can dance, she can sing,
She can show her wedding-ring.
Fie, for shame! fie, for shame!
Turn your back behind you.
—Liverpool (C. C. Bell).

II.Up streets, down streets,

Windows made of glass;
Isn’t “Jenny Jenkins” a handsome young lass?
Isn’t “Johnny Johnson” as handsome as she?
 They shall be married,
When they can agree. —Monton, Lancashire, Colleyhurst, Manchester
(Miss Dendy).

III.Up street and down street,

Each window’s made of glass;
If you go to Tommy Tickler’s house
You’ll find a pretty lass.
—Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, cccclxxx.

(b) In the Liverpool version the children stand in a ring and sing the
words. At “Fie, for shame,” the child named ceases to sing, and the
others address her particularly. When the verse is ended she turns
her back to the inside of the ring. All do this in turn. The Monton
game is played the same as “kiss-in-the-ring” games.
(c) Northall (English Popular Rhymes, p. 549), gives a version almost
the same as the Monton version. He also quotes some verses from a
paper by Miss Tennant in the English Illustrated Magazine, June
1885, which she gives as a song of the slums of London. In Gammer
Gurton’s Garland (1783, reprint 1810, p. 34), is a verse which is the
same as Halliwell’s, with two additional lines—

Hug her, and kiss her, and take her on your knee,
And whisper very close, Darling girl, do you love me?
[Addendum]

Wadds and the Wears (1)

Mactaggart, in describing this, says it is one of the most celebrated
amusements of the Ingle ring. To begin it, one in the ring speaks as
follows:—

I hae been awa at the wadds and the wears

These seven lang years;
And come hame a puir broken ploughman,
What will ye gie me to help me to my trade?
He may either say he’s a “puir broken ploughman” or any other
trade, but since he has chosen that trade some of the articles
belonging to it must always be given or offered to recruit it. But the
article he most wants he privately tells one of the party, who is not
allowed to offer him anything, as he knows the thing, which will
throw the offerer in a wadd, and must be avoided as much as
possible, for to be in a wadd is a very serious matter. Now, the one
on the left hand of the “poor ploughman” makes the first offer by
way of answer to what above was said—“I’ll gie ye the coulter to
help ye to your trade.” The ploughman answers, “I don’t thank ye for
the coulter; I hae ane already.” Then another offers him another
article belonging to the ploughman’s business, such as the moolbred,
but this also is refused: another gives the sock, another the stilts,
another the spattle, another the naigs, and so on until one gives the
soam, which was the article he most wanted, and was the thing
secretly told to the one player. This throws the giver into a wadd, out
of which he is relieved in the following manner:—
The ploughman says to the one in the wadd, “Whether will ye hae
three questions and two commands, or three commands and two
questions to answer, or gang on wi’, sae that ye may win out o’ the
wadd?” For the one so fixed has always the choice which of these to
take. Suppose he takes the first, two commands and three
questions, then a specimen of these may be—“I command ye to kiss
the crook,” says the ploughman, which must be completely obeyed
by the one in the wadd; his naked lips must kiss the sooty
implement. Secondly, says the ploughman, I command ye to stand
up in that neuk and say—

“Here stan’ I, as stiff’s a stake,

Wha ’ill kiss me for pity’s sake?”

which must also be done; in a corner of the house must he stand

and repeat this couplet, until some tender-hearted lass relieves him.
Then the questions are asked, such as—“Suppose you were in a bed
with Maggie Lowden and Jennie Logan, your twa great sweethearts,
what ane o’m wad ye ding owre the bedside, and what ane wad ye
turn to and clap and cuddle?” He has to choose one, perhaps to the
great mirth of the company. Secondly, “Suppose ye were stannin’
stark naked on the tap o’ Cairnhattie, whether wad ye cry on Peggie
Kirtle or Nell o’ Killimingie to come wi’ your claise?” He has again to
choose. Lastly, “Suppose ye were in a boat wi’ Tibbie Tait, Mary
Kairnie, Sally Snadrap, and Kate o’ Minnieive, and it was to coup wi’
ye, what ane o’ ’em wad ye sink? what ane wad ye soom? wha wad
ye bring to lan’? and wha wad ye marry?” Then he has again to
choose between the girls named.
Chambers gives the following versions of the “Wadds”:—
The wadds was played by a group seated round the hearth fire, the
lasses being on one side and the lads on the other. The questions
are asked and answers given alternately. A lad first chants—

O it’s hame, and it’s hame, and it’s hame, hame, hame,
I think this night I maun gae hame.

One of the opposite party then says—

Ye had better light, and bide a’ night,

And I’ll choose you a bonny ane.

O wha will ye choose, an’ I wi’ you abide?

The fairest and rarest in a’ the country side.

At the same time presenting an unmarried female by name. If the

choice give satisfaction—

I’ll set her up on the bonny pear-tree;

It’s straught and tall, and sae is she;
I wad wake a’ night her love to be.

If the choice do not give satisfaction, from the age of the party—

I’ll set her up i’ the bank dike;

 She’ll be rotten ere I be ripe;
The corbies her auld banes wadna pike.
If from supposed want of temper—

I’ll set her up on the high crab-tree;

It’s sour and dour, and sae is she;
She may gang to the mools unkissed by me.

A civil mode of declining is to say—

She’s for another, and no for me;

I thank you for your courtesie.

The same ritual is gone through with respect to one of the other sex;
in which case such rhymes as the following are used:—

I’ll put him on a riddle, and blaw him owre the sea,
Wha’ll buy [Johnie Paterson] for me?
I’ll put him on my big lum head,
And blaw him up wi’ pouther and lead.

Or, when the proposed party is agreeable—

I’ll set him on my table head,

And feed him up wi’ milk and bread.

A refusal must be atoned for by a wadd or forfeit. A piece of money,

a knife, or any little thing which the owner prizes, will serve. When a
sufficient number of persons have made forfeits, the business of
redeeming them is commenced, and generally it is then that the
amusement is greatest. The duty of kissing some person, or some
part of the room, is usually assigned as a means of redeeming one’s
wadds. Often for this purpose a lad has to kiss the very lips he
formerly rejected; or, it may be, he has to kneel to the prettiest, bow
to the wittiest, and kiss the one he loves best before the forfeit is
redeemed.—The substance of the above is from a note in Cromek’s
Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 114, who says—In this
game formerly young men and women arranged themselves on each
side of the fire, and alternately bestowed husbands and wives on
each other. Carleton’s Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, p.
106, also describes the game without any material difference.
Another form of this game, practised in Dumfriesshire in the last
century, and perhaps still, was more common. The party are first
fitted each with some ridiculous name, not very easy to be
remembered, such as Swatter-in-the-Sweet-Milk, Butter-Milk-and-
Brose, the Gray Gled o’ Glenwhargan Craig, &c. Then all being
seated, one comes up, repeating the following rhymes—

I never stealt Rob’s dog, nor never intend to do,

But weel I ken wha stealt him, and dern’d him in a cleugh,
And pykit his banes bare, bare, bare eneugh!
Wha but —— wha but ——

The object is to burst out suddenly with one of the fictitious names,
and thus take the party bearing it by surprise. If the individual
mentioned, not immediately recollecting the name he bore, failed, on
the instant, to say “No me,” by way of denying the accusation
respecting the dog, he was subjected to a forfeit; and this equally
happened if he cried “No me,” when it was the name of another
person which was mentioned. The forfeits were disposed of as in the
former case.—Popular Rhymes, pp. 125-126.
It will be seen that the first version of Chambers more nearly
resembles “Hey Wullie Wine” (vol. i. p. 207), and that the latter part
of the version given by Mactaggart is similar to “Three Flowers”
(ante, p. 255, and the first part to “Trades,” p. 305). Mr. W.
Ballantyne sent me a version from Biggar as played when he was a
boy. It is similar to Mactaggart’s.
This game may indicate an earlier form of playing at forfeits than the
“Old Soldier,” “Turn the Trencher,” and kindred English games.
Mactaggart does not state that any article belonging to the person
who perpetrates the offence was given up and afterwards redeemed
by the owner performing a penalty. In Chambers’ versions this is
done. It may be that, in Mactaggart’s case, each offending person
paid his or her penalty immediately after committing the blunder or
offence instead of a leader collecting the forfeits from all offenders
first, and then “crying” all together afterwards. Whether the game
originated in the practice of “tabu,” or was an outcome of the custom
of restitution, or ransom, legally made for the commission of crimes,
such as that called wergeld, the penalty or price to be paid to the
relatives of a slain man, or of punishment for certain offences then
being in the hands of a certain class of people, we cannot now
decide; but it was customary for penalties to be attached to the
commission of minor offences, and the punishment enforced without
appeal to any legally constituted authority. The object of most of the
present forfeit games seems to have been to make the offenders
ridiculous, or, in the case of the above form of games, to find out the
person loved or hated. In Shropshire “Crying the Weds” is the name
given to the game of playing at forfeits. Wadd means a pledge.
Jamieson says “Wears” signifies the “Wars.” “At the wars” is a
common mode still retained of describing the life of a soldier. Ihre
supposes that the early term wadd or wed is derived from wadd-
cloth, from this kind of merchandise being anciently given and
received instead of money; when at any time a pledge was left, a
piece of cloth was used for this purpose, and hence a pledge in
general would be called wadd.
In Waldron’s description of the Isle of Man (ante, vol. i. p. 139) is an
account of a Twelfth Day custom which throws light on the game as
described by Chambers.
See “Forfeits,” “Hey Wullie Wine,” “Three Flowers,” “Trades.”[Addendum]

Wadds and the Wears (2)

Jamieson describes the game differently. He says—The players being
equally divided, and a certain space being marked out between
them, each lays down one or more wadds, or pledges, at that
extremity where the party to which he belongs choose their station.
A boundary being fixed, the object is to carry off the wadds from the
one of these to the other. The two parties advancing to the boundary
seize the first opportunity of crossing it, by making inroads on the
territories of the other. If one who crosses the line is seized by the
opposite party before he has touched any of their wadds, he is set
down beside them as a prisoner, and receives the name of a
“stinker;” nor can he be released until one of his own party can
touch him without being intercepted by any of the others, in which
case he is free. If any one is caught in the act of carrying off a wadd,
it is taken from him; but he cannot be detained as a prisoner, in
consequence of his having touched it. If he can cross the
intermediate line with it, the pursuit is at an end. When one party
has carried off to their ground all the wadds of the other the game is
finished.

Waggles
A game of tip-cat. Four boys stand at the corners of a large paving-
stone; two have sticks, the other two are feeders, and throw the
piece of wood called a “cat.” The batters act much in the same way
as in cricket, except that the cat must be hit whilst in the air. The
batter hits it as far away as possible, and whilst the feeder is
fetching it, gets, if possible, a run, which counts to his side. If either
of the cats fall to the ground both batters go out, and the feeders
take their place. A game called “Whacks” is played in a similar way.—
London Streets (F. H. Low, Strand Magazine, Nov. 1891).
See “Tip-cat.”

Wallflowers
[Play]
 —Nottingham (Miss Youngman).

[Play]

—Connell Ferry, near Oban (Miss Harrison).

[Play]

—Beddgelert (Mrs. Williams).

[Play]

—Ogbourne, Wilts. (H. S. May).

[Play]
 —Longcot choir girls, Berks. (Miss I. Barclay).

I. Wallflowers, wallflowers, growing up so high,

All of you young ladies are sure to die.
Excepting ——, she’s the best of all.
She can hop, and she can skip,
And she can turn a candlestick.
Oh my, fie for shame, turn your face to the wall again.
—Fernham and Longcot (Miss I. Barclay).

II.
 Wallflowers, wallflowers,
Growing up so high,
All you young ladies
Are meant to die.
Excepting little ——,
She is the best of all.
She can skip, and she can dance,
She can turn the candlestick.
O my, fie for shame,
Turn your back to the wall again.
—From London maidservant (Miss E. Chase).

III.Willy, willy wallflower,

Growin’ up so high,
We are all maidens,
We shall all die.
Excepting ——,
She’s the youngest daughter,
 She can hop,
She can skip,
She can turn the candlestick.
Fee, fie, shame, shame,
Turn your backs together again:—,
——, your sweetheart is dead,
He’s sent you a letter to turn back your head.
—Wakefield, Yorks (Miss Fowler).

IV.Wallflowers, wallflowers,
Growing up so high,
We young ladies, we shall die.
Except ’tis ——,
She’s the youngest daughter.
She can hop, and she can skip,
She can play the wire,
Oh for shame, fie for shame,
Turn your back and have a game.
—Hampshire (Miss E. Mendham).

V. Wally, wally wallflower,

Growing up so high—
All ye young ladies
You must all die.
Excepting ——,
She’s the best of all—
She can hop, and she can skip,
She can turn the mangle,
Oh my, fie for shame,
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Barnes, Surrey (A. B. Gomme).

VI.Wall flowers, wall flowers, growing up so high,

We are all children, and we shall all die.
Excepting ——, she’s the youngest child,
She can hop, she can skip,
She can turn the wedding ring,
 Fie, fie, fie for shame,
Turn your face to the wall—Nottingham
again. (Miss Youngman).

Wally, wally wall-flower,

VII.
A-growen up so high,
All we children be sure to die.
Excepting [naming the youngest]
’Cause she’s the youngest,
Oh! fie! for shame! fie! for shame!
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Symondsbury, Dorset (Folk-lore Journal, vii.
215).

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high,

VIII.
We are all living, and we shall all die.
Except the youngest here [naming her].
Turn your back to overshed. (?)

(This last line is repeated three times.)

—Symondsbury, Dorset (Folk-lore Journal, vii.
215).

IX.Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high!

We shall all be maidens, [and so] we shall all die![13]
Excepting Alice Gittins, she is the youngest flower,
She can hop, and she can skip, and she can play the hour!
Three and four, and four and five,
Turn your back to the wall-side!

Or,

She can dance and she can sing,

She can play on the tambourine!
Fie, fie! fie, for shame!
Turn your back upon the game!
—Ellesmere, Berrington, Wenlock (Shropshire
Folk-lore, p. 513).
X. Willie, willie wall-flowers, growing up so high!
We are all fair maids, we shall all die!
Excepting little ——, and she’s the youngest here,
Turn your head towards the south, and she’s the one to bear,
The willie, willie wallflowers.

Or,

Oh! for shame, fie, for shame, turn yourself to the wall again—
—Sporle, Norfolk (Miss Matthews).

XI.Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high!

We are all ladies, we must all die!
Excepting ——, who is the prettiest child.
Fie, for shame, fie, for shame, turn your back to the wall again.
—Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire (Miss
Winfield)

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high!

XII.
We’re all ladies, and we shall all die!
Excepting [naming smallest child in ring],
She can hop, and she can skip, and she can play the organ!
Oh! for shame, fie, for shame,
Turn your back upon our game.
—Enbourne School, Berks. (Miss M. Kimber).

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high!

XIII.
We are all pretty maidens, we all have to die!
Except ——, she’s the youngest girl,
Ah! for shame, ah! for shame,
Turn your back to us again.
I’ll wash you in milk,
I’ll dress you in silk,
I’ll write down your name,
With a gold pen and ink.
—Earls Heaton (Herbert Hardy).
 Oh flower, oh flower, growing up so high!
XIV.
We are all children, we have all to die!
Except ——, she the youngest gay,
Oh! for shame, fie, for shame,
Turn your back against the wall.
—Beddgelert (Mrs. Williams).

XV.Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high!

We are all little, and we’ve got to die!
Excepting ——, and she’s the only one,
Oh! for shame, fie, for shame,
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Cowes, Isle of Wight (Miss E. Smith).

Little Molly white-flower, we are all maidens,

XVI.
And we shall all die, except Polly Pegg,
She’s the best of all,
She can hop, and she can skip, and she can turn the candlestick!
Oh! fie, for shame,
Turn your back to the wall.
—Hanbury, Staffordshire (Miss Edith Hollis).

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high!

XVII.
We are all playmates, we shall all die!
Excepting ——, for she’s the youngest flower,
Cry shame, cry shame,
And turn your face to the wall again.
—Sheffield (S. O. Addy).

Wall-flower, wall-flower, growing up so high!

XVIII.
All the pretty maidens shall not die!
Excepting ——, she is the youngest child,
Oh! for shame, fie, for shame!
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Dean, near Salisbury (Mrs. C. Brough).

Water, water wall-flower, growing up so high,

XIX.
 We are all maidens, we must all die,
Except ——, the youngest of us all.
She can laugh, and she can dance, and she can play at ball;
Fie! fie! fie for shame! turn your face to the wall again.
—Connell Ferry, near Oban (Miss Harrison).

XX.Water, water wall-flower, growing up so high,

We are all maidens, we must all die.
Except ——, she’s the youngest of them all;
She can dance, she can sing,
And she can dance the wedding ring (or “Hieland fling”)
Fie! fie! fie for shame!
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Galloway (J. G. Carter).

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers,
XXI.
Growing up so high;
All ye young maidens
Are all fit to die.
Excepting ——, and she’s the worst of all,
She can hop, and she can skip,
And she can turn the candlestick.
Fye! fie! for shame,
Turn your face to the wall again.
—(Suffolk County Folk-lore, p. 67.)

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growing up so high,

XXII.
All you young ladies will soon have to die;
Excepting ——, and she’s the best of all.
She can dance, she can skip, she can turn the mangle quick;
Hi, ho! fie for shame! turn your back to the wall again.
—Cambridge (Mrs. Haddon).

Wally, wally wall-flower, growing up so high,

XXIII.
We are all maidens, and we shall die;
All except the youngest one, and that is [child’s name].
Choose for the best, choose for the worst,
 Choose the one that you love best.

Now you’re married, I wish you joy,

First a girl and then a boy,
Seven years after son and daughter,
Now, young couple, kiss together.
—Hersham, Surrey (Folk-lore Record, v. 84).

Wally, wally wall-flowers,

XXIV.
Growing up so high;
We’re all ladies,
We shall all die.
Excepting little ——,
She’s the only one;
She can hop, she can skip,
She can play the herald,
Fie! fie! fie for shame!
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Deptford, Kent (Miss Chase).

Water, water wall-flower,

XXV.
Growing up so high;
We are all maidens,
And we must all die.
—— is the youngest,
She must kick,
And she must fling,
And she must turn the sofa;
Fie! fie! fie, for shame!
Turn your back to the wall again.

Except ——, and she’s the youngest one,

XXVI.
She can hop, and she can skip,
She can turn the sofa;
Oh fie! fie! fie, for shame!
Turn your back to the wall again.
—Cullen and Nairn (Rev. W. Gregor).
 She can skip, she can dance,
XXVII.
She can ding us all o’er.
—Aberdeen (Rev. W. Gregor).

Green, green grovers, growing up so high,

XXVIII.
We are all maidens,
And we must all die;
Except ——, the youngest of us all,
She can dance, and she can sing,
She can dance the Hieland fling;
Fie! fie! fie, for shame!
Turn your back to us again.
—Nairn (Rev. W. Gregor).

Water, water, well stones,

XXIX.
Growing up so high,
We are all maidens,
And we must all die.
Except ——,
She’s the youngest of us all,
She can dance, she can sing,
She can dance the “Hielan’ Fling,”[14]
Oh fie, fie, for shame,
Turn your back to us again.
—Dyke (Rev. W. Gregor).

Here’s a pot of wall-flowers,

XXX.
Growing up so high;
We’re all maidens, and we shall die.
Excepting [girl’s name],
She can hop, and she can skip,
And she can play the organ.
Turn your back, you saucy Jack,
You tore your mother’s gown.
—Northants (Rev. W. Sweeting).

Wall-flowers, wall-flowers, growin’ up so high,

XXXI.
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