The 1930s presented those in the German world with a very clear, and radical alternative. Those who were somewhat decent, like Sigmund Freud and Ludwig von Mises, left. The scumbags stayed - and the specially wicked, like the subject of today’s article, joined the Nazi party. I am, however, a firm believer in giving the devil his due, so today we will take a look at Martin Heidegger’s philosophy.
Before I go into his merits, however, let’s get his flaws out of the way. Heidegger was a collectivist and a relativist - he believed our thinking to be conditioned by our language and our interests, as much as the other way around. He adopted a similar brand of subjectivism to the American Pragmatists, in which objects had no knowable objective nature other than their relationship to the individual - a form of primacy of consciousness. It is worth noting that it was the same combination of subjectivism, relativism and collectivism that led him to Nazism which led the Pragmatists to its American equivalent, the Progressive movement.
Unlike the Pragmatists, however, who were rather dull overall, Heidegger had some interesting ideas, which preceded important Objectivist notions. While other subjectivists, from Hume to the Peirce, rejected the idea of an objective reality in its entirety, conceptualizing existence as some form “universal consciousness”, Heidegger took that mistake out of the realm of metaphysics, restricting it to epistemology - things exist, but we can only perceive them in relationship to ourselves. His idea of things we’re not interacting with as “Vorhanden”, or having their “presence-at-hand”, is essentially the Rand’s idea of consciousness as identification turned on its head - bad for today’s standard, but pretty good for a Nazi in a world dominated by mysticism.
His idea of “Da-sein”, as the self-aware mode of being characteristic of human beings, is also interesting. On one hand, it goes against the Positivist notion that humans are “just chemicals”, no different than any other object. On the other, it goes against the determinism of idealists like Hegel, who believed we are but vessels for ideas. In fact, his idea of Da-sein as volitional, yet restricted by causal factors is very similar to Rand’s idea of Man as a creator, which must nonetheless identify and adjust to metaphysical facts
Lastly, his idea of “Zuhanden” is a precursor to the Objectivist view on property. Zuhanden, or “being-at-hand” refers to the mode of being of an object that has been made one with us for a period of time - when you shoot a gun, for instance, Heidegger would say you and the gun have become one, as your focus is on the target, not the operation of the gun itself. Although the idea is steeped in subjectivism, it is much closer to Rand’s view of property as an extension of one’s being than, say, John Locke’s intrinsicist idea of “mixing labour” with a resource.
Subjectivist academics often spout the myth that Heidegger went through a “turn” in the 30s, in which he changed his way of thinking from a rather free-will oriented philosophy to his atrocious Nazi philosophy. As Rand pointed out, however, a contradiction, unless addressed, will grow. Heidegger didn’t change - like every other Proto-Objectivist, the seeds of his demise were in his work all along, and only sprouted over time. He is a testament to the fact that freedom and reason cannot coexist with force and mysticism.
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