In 2014 the first publication of Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte (the Black Notebooks) made the headlines. Finally, we had the clear piece of evidence that the grand German philosopher was indeed antisemitic and that his anti-Semitism contaminated his writings. Heidegger is no longer only a philosopher who lived in a Nazi Germany and had to enrol in the party to save his position at the university of Freiburg and to avoid troubles, but has somehow defended an antisemitic position in his philosophical writings. For some intellectuals, reading Heidegger in light of his clear antisemitic opinions is immoral and Heidegger should be non grata in universities and even outside. In this article I will argue the contrary, not by demonstrating that anti-Semitism is moral (which is obviously not the case) but by arguing that a boycott of Heidegger underlies a profound misconception about what philosophy is and what its aim is.
The Heidegger case is somehow tricky. I see two dimensions to this problem: the man and the work. First, Heidegger’s life is morally condemnable. Second, his writings are morally condemnable as well (at least his Black Notebooks). If I want to persuade the reader that Heidegger is still entitled to be studied today, I have to deal with these two arguments by showing that it is not morally containable to read immoral writing written by an immoral person. I will consider these two aspects (author/opus) separately.
First, can we morally consider a piece of work of an author if he/she have/had a morally condemnable life even if this piece of work doesn’t seem at first glance immoral? This question is quite blur. Let’s examine it more analytically. There are two levels in this question: ad hominem and ad rem. The first one pertains to an attack one can address to the author themselves, while the second pertains to a concern one can state about the purity of a work committed by a sinner mind.
- In the ad rem perspective, one can wonder if the authors’ life or political opinions may impact their writings even if those are a priori absolutely free of immorality. A famous example in philosophy would be the Searle’s writings. John Searle is a contemporary American philosopher who addressed some significant contributions in the field of philosophy of language. Although he received tons of prizes from institutions for his work, he was revoked for his emeritus position at UCB due to several allegations of sexual assaults. The question is: despite all these facts, should we still consider his works in a philosophical perspective? As far as I know (and please let me know if it is not the case), in the Searle’s work, there is no trace of misogyny, sexism, rape/harassment promotion or other immoral position regarding gender. One could conclude then that his work is “sexist safe” or “morally clean” and that the personal (immoral) life of Searle had zero impact on his writing. As a conclusion, these writings should be considered per se and independently of the sins of the author. The same kind of argument was used for Polansky’s movie J’accuse premiere when he was as the same time accused of sexual allegations (and was already condemned for one of them). However, one might argue that the prior author’s opinion always impacts the author’s writing, that his personal ethic acts as a background noise in his writings… In my opinion, this position – however stated – is either trivial, either untenable. It is true that all works are impregnated by the personal life of their author : Spinoza wouldn’t have written the Ethics if he were not persecuted by his own Jewish community, that Levinas would have had another point of view on ethics if he wouldn’t have experienced Second World War as a Jew, etc. The examples are as much numerous as trivial. This position is a pure truism. However, if we extend this position by stating that author’s personal opinion and life, not only shape the opus (like previous trivial thesis stated) but also explicitly impregnate the opus, it constitutes a more extreme statement which is, in my opinion, untenable. If you pretend so, please email me the extract in which Searle explicitly promote rape, the notes sequence of a waltz of Chopin explicitly impregnated by his (well-known) anti-Semitism, an extract of Voyage au bout de la nuit where Céline make apology of anti-Semitism… This position is untenable and cope more with a “spooky immaterial and undetectable immoral spectrum” than concrete immoral text samples. Personally, I prefer judging on facts instead of adopting a moralistic McCarthyism. Stated differently: there is no necessary and sufficient logical condition between the authors’ political opinions or live morality and his/her final opus’ morality. As I demonstrated, the condition is only sufficient, not necessary : naughty books imply naughty authors (unless written under torture or blackmail) but naughty authors don’t imply naughty books. The ad rem argument is debunked.
- In response of what I said, some might argue that it is true that the Searle’s works are not sexist per se, but due to the bad actions of Searle in real live, his writing should nevertheless be forbidden. We are here on a different level. We are in the ad hominem perspective. This question is trickier. The inquiry is no more psychohermeneutical (Does the life impact the opus?) but ethical (Are we morally entitled to promote the (not immoral) work of a bad person?) One can respond to this attack by noticing that Jewish writing were considered immoral under the Drittes Reich not because of the writings themselves but due to the morality of people who wrote them. Doing the same nowadays may be considered as a comeback to the dark era of Nazi Germany. For the sake of Godwin point’s preservation, I won’t consider this argument here. I would instead argue that the concept of “morality of an author” is quite vague and blur. Because morality is socially constructed and space-time dependent, it is not clear for me how you can define precise and absolute criteria according to which you will judge the author’s life morality to determine if his/her works are compliant or not with your moral standard. If you put in the no-go condition immoral values such as anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, transphobia, fatphobia…, then you have to rule out 95% of the books in public libraries. Furthermore, these notions didn’t exist two centuries ago, so many authors were sinners without noticing it. Even the book written by the most contemporary kind, altruistic, moral and respectful authors will be ruled out in one century because of the shift in the morality of future readers. In this case, be prepared to burn Butler’s and Vergès’ books in few decades (and your own writings of course). This position is, of course, untenable and a pitfall for public debate. However I can understand a need for recognition addressed by some minorities toward these racist or/and sexist authors. It is definitely an interesting topic but I don’t have time to develop this more political-grounded position here. I think I am done with the ad hominem argument.
The first main argument has been debunked: we can read moral books written by immoral authors. Reading immoral authors, who wrote moral books (or, at minima, not immoral), is not morally condemnable. To finish my demonstration, I need to prove that reading immoral books is not morally condemnable. That is the most difficult part of my argument and I think that the core of the problem lies in it.
Second, I am very sorry but before going further I have to remind the reader a truism: reading a text doesn’t imply agreeing with this text. If you disagree with this statement, please keep in mind that you have just read 2 seconds ago a sentence with which you disagree. It proves my point. QED. This truism implies that reading immoral stuff doesn’t make you an immoral person as long as you don’t adopt the immoral thesis of the author[1]. Reading antisemitic stuff doesn’t make you Nazi. Reading sexist stuff doesn’t make you sexist. If it were the case, all historians should go to jail immediately.
For the ease of the demonstration, I will only consider philosophical writings (for a reason that will become clear later on). Beforehand, we have to determine what is doing philosophy really? I will here adopt Martial Gueroult’s position. Martial Gueroult is a French philosopher from the early past century, quite known in France but pretty unknown outside (he hasn’t been translated yet). Gueroult states that philosophy is all about living in the author work’s house. A book is like an apartment in which you live in, discover its architecture, its secret rooms, the life flow it implies, the routine furniture imposes us, the landscape through the window… Reading philosophically a philosophy book is not only being able to see the world through the same glasses as the philosopher’s ones but understanding the reasons structuring his/her work. These reasons are not psychological or sociological reasons, but philosophical reasons: why is it important for Descartes to introduce the cogito? What is the consequence of stating the existence of a substance in the Spinoza Ethics? Why does Heidegger focus so much on the concept of Dasein? The answers to these questions are not reducible to psychological, ethical or sociological factors. Philosophy in not reducible to psychology or history, even if these disciplines allow us to understand the work in another complementary perspective. In each piece of work, there is something intemporal, not reducible to sociohistorical factors. This hard core is called the philosophical genius of the work. Doing philosophy is trying to find, exhibit and appreciate this logical and eternal structure within a philosophical work. The gist of philosophy resides in this intemporal thought of the author. Having this in mind, how should we deal with immoral philosophical works? Let’s take an example. It is true that Aristotle promotes slavery as a natural feature that some individuals have in the society. Nowadays this statement is utterly considered as immoral. But the point of a good philosophy reader is not about stating if natural slavery is bad or not, but is about analyzing and understanding the rationale behind this (immoral) statement. This rationale is not a relativism (for example by explaining that Aristotle promotes slavery because, at that time, all Geeks though the same, Aristotle included), but an absolutism: beyond what is moral or not, what is the philosophical brilliance of Aristotle in this text? what is outbreaking with his position about slavery? which logical consequences does he draw from it? Mutatis mutandis, in this perspective, reading Heidegger antisemitic paper is not about judging if it is moral or not, but understanding the arguments and logical connections between them. It is just a more rigorous and courageous way of doing philosophy instead of throwing through the widow a book not compliant with our ethics.
So far I have demonstrated a weaker version of my second and last point: reading immoral philosophical books in not condemnable. However, we can even extend this demonstration to no philosophical works as far as they are argumentative discourses (for instance, essays). I can see two special kinds of books not included in my speech: novels and pamphlets. In my opinion, immoral novels don’t suffer from so strong attacks as essays. Candide from Voltaire is still given at school even if there are clear antisemitic and racist passages inside. I think these writings are less controversial in the sense that their aim is not to convince the reader, but to produce some narrative which put the author detached from the immoral opinion stated by the characters or the narrator. Pamphlets is the more subversive type of writings. They are more convincing that argumentative. Such writing can be Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Schopenhauer On Women… Their philosophical gist is quite poor (like in other moral pamphlets) but they have a highly convincing power. These writings are just forbidden in several countries because they are said to promote hate speech and discrimination against minorities. The forbiddance of these writings is not only moral but also political. I won’t enter into the debate about either or not we should allow these texts for the sake freedom of speech. I have never used any freedom-of-speech argument in my paper and don’t want to use it now. The only argument I may consider for reading such pamphlets is their high historical impacts and the insightful picture of a specific past society they can give us.
In this paper, I demonstrated the two followings. First, we are morally entitled to read a moral text written by an immoral person. Second, we are formally entitled to read an immoral text written by a moral or not person. The logical consequence of these two premises is that we can read moral or immoral books written by a moral or immoral person. In light of what has been said, rejecting an opus due to its immoral content or immoral author (or both) is just a demonstration of intellectual laziness. A laziness hidden behind a pretension of moral superiority and orthodox awareness.
[1] Of course if immoral texts are the only text you have access, the more you will read them, the more the discrete propaganda they contain will have influence on you and you might become immoral. But I hope it is not your case and you have access to different opinions.