西洋哲学の寵児の政治的判断

ハイデガーは、ヒトラーが1933年1月30日にナチス党内閣首班としてドイツ首相になった後の、同年4月22日にフライブルク大学の総長に就任します。その直後ともいえる同年5月1日にハイデガーはナチス党に入党します。そして彼は同年5月27日にフライブルク大学総長としての就任演説をしました(以上Wikipediaより)が、その演説の英訳は、ここで読むことができます。

今、その原文をチェックする時間はありませんが、下に引用した箇所だけみても、"the essense", "'academic freedom' will be expelled" あるいは大学の"bond"としての"Labor Service," "Military Service," "Knowledge Service"などの警戒すべき言葉が多用されています。

特に"Knowledge Service"では、"Knowledge does not serve the professions but the reverse: the professions effect and administer that highest and essential knowledge of the people concerning its entire existence." とも言われています。

話は飛びますが、教育学部や工学部などというのは実学志向が強くあるべきところであり、教育学部にいる私も自らの研究を現実と遊離したものにしないように常に気をつけているつもりです。しかし学問研究も、「国民」「非常時」といったことばの乱用により歪められてしまい、気がついたら大政翼賛、戦争協力にまでつながってしまいかねないということは、歴史の教訓として肝に銘じておきたいと思います。

ハイデガーの政治的判断の誤りは、彼が西洋哲学の最も優秀な哲学者であるにもかかわらずなされたものなのか、それとも彼が西洋哲学の寵児だったからこそなされたものなのか。ハンナ・アレントは後者の解釈を取っています。

いずれにせよ、かつて下のような語り方をした者がいたことを記憶しておきたいと思います。そしてこれに似た語り方を聞くことがあれば、この政治的には愚か、いや愚か以下だった西洋哲学の寵児のことを思い出したいと思います。

Out of the resoluteness of the German students to stand their ground while German destiny is in its most extreme distress comes a will to the essence of the university. This will is a true will, provided that German students, through the new Student Law, place themselves under the law of their essence and thereby first define this essence. To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded “academic freedom” will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. In future, the bond and service of German students will unfold from this truth.

The first bond binds to the national community [Volksgemeinschaft]. It obligates to help carry the burden of and to participate actively in the struggles, strivings, and skills of all the estates and members of the people. From now on, this bond will be fixed and rooted in the existence of the student by means of Labor Service [Arbeitsdienst].

The second bond binds to the honor and the destiny of the nation in the midst of all the other peoples. It demands the readiness, secured by knowledge and skill and tightened by discipline, to give the utmost in action. In future, this bond will encompass and penetrate the entire existence of the student as Military Service [Wehrdienst].

The third bond of the students binds them to the spiritual mission of the German people. This people works at its fate by opening its history to all the overwhelming world-shaping powers of human existence and by continually fighting for its spiritual world anew. Thus exposed to the most extreme questionableness of its own existence, this people wills to be a spiritual people. It demands of itself and for itself that its leaders and guardians possess the strictest clarity of the highest, broadest, and richest knowledge. Young students, who at an early age have dared to act as men and have extended their willing to the future destiny of the nation, force themselves, from the very ground of their being, to serve this knowledge. These students will no longer permit Knowledge Service [Wissensdienst] to be a dull and rushed training for a “distinguished” profession. Because the statesman and the teacher, the doctor and the judge, the minister and the architect lead the existence of people and state, because they guard and hone it in its fundamental relations to the world-shaping powers of human being, these professions and the education for them are entrusted to Knowledge Service. Knowledge does not serve the professions but the reverse: the professions effect and administer that highest and essential knowledge of the people concerning its entire existence. But for us this knowledge is not the dispassionate taking note of essences and values as such, but the most severe endangerment of existence in the midst of the overwhelming power of what is. The very questionableness of Being forces the people to work and fight and forces it into its state [Staat], to which the professions belong.
The three bonds . by the people, to the destiny of the state, in spiritual mission . are equally primordial to the German essence. The three services that arise from it . Labor Service, Military Service, and Knowledge Service . are equally necessary and of equal rank.