Heidegger Documentary "Only a God Can Save Us" | Director Interview with Stephen Hicks

foreign Hicks here at Rockford College my guest today is Jeffrey van Davis and Davis is a documentary filmmaker and he's recently released a film on Heidegger and higher's connection with national socialism in Germany in the 20s 30s and Beyond the title of the documentary is only a God can save us and that comes from an interview Heidegger did when he was older long after World War II was over and he was in a somewhat despairing mood about the future of Germany and and the broader World culture a fascinating set of issues here about Heidegger one of the great philosophers of the 20th century whether one agrees with him or or not uh and at the same time on the history side of things the the Nazis are notorious and justly so for for the the horrors that they perpetrated in uh in in World War II uh so let me ask you Jeffrey how you came to make this film in the first place well as everybody says it's a long story but I'll make it short okay uh when I was a young man I was a serious young man at one time and I was raised a Catholic and I wanted to be a priest and I so I went to study for the priesthood and I was in a seminary for two years and when I was in the Seminary we had two majors which was Theology and philosophy and it was in a philosophy course that I first learned about Heidegger and that was the spark that then led me to even after I left the Seminary realized that the priesthood was not for me and then I got my bachelor's degree and my master's degree in philosophy and started reading Heidegger uh quite serious I was considered myself a Heidi Gary at the time at this point there are some biographical similarities there Heidegger was initially a Catholic and went to Seminary and of course went on in philosophy as well yeah it's interesting my wife kept saying the same thing I never really thought about that much and then it dawned on me but uh well let me what Drew you to a Heidegger in particular of the many philosophers out there when you were younger yeah well um actually I I really was interested in existential Philosophy from Jean-Paul Sartre and if you read his his Major Works you learn that he was greatly influenced by Heidegger so through santra I went back to Heidegger but I'll never forget I was in a class I was maybe 19 years old or 20. and this priest philosopher professor was talking about Heidegger and uh he he made this comment and it was one of those things that just caught me and stayed with me and that was he was talking about existence and being he says it's not so much why something is where it is why it is how it is but rather what is its business and at the age of 19 or 20 I thought wow what a powerful insight and that was it I in fact 30 years later that line is the center of a script that I wrote a feature film script about Heidegger and the it's all centers on this idea of what is business at that time I thought it was extremely profound now I'm you know more jaded so a little bit more about your career I know you would at undergraduate in California and a master's degree back here in Illinois and then went to Germany for further study yeah uh uh where in Germany were you studying I was also in philosophy yeah I was at the Ludwig Maximilian universitate Mansion which is known as the University of Munich and um I was in officially the political science department but I was studying political science and philosophy and cultural history uh in in the German system you have a major subject and you have two minor subjects working towards your doctorate and so um uh yeah I mean I was reading Rawls I was reading uh you know most of the European philosophers I read a lot of Kant and Hegel and schopenhauer and right at the same time or shortly after doing your graduate work in philosophy in Germany you were interested in film issues and parlayed that into a career doing documentary type films I understand yeah I I think I as I explained before my professor who guides you through the doctoral process is called the doctor father and he tragically died and and at that same time I was friends with a German filmmaker and we formed a film company together and started making short films and I was so fascinated with the process of filmmaking I'd always been interested in film studies and film Theory and film is an art form but here was a chance for me to actually practice it and and once that happened uh I I was given an opportunity to go back and and and and and continue with my doctoral studies but I got the bug and that was it yeah all right so you have your interest in heideggerian philosophy and certainly you're interested in political philosophy and no doubt political practice as well comes together with your filmmaking and hence Only a God can save as the documentary is a natural right for you yeah let's go back to uh Heidegger in the 20s by the time we get to Heidegger in the 20s how old is he pushing for 30 50 or so yeah he first met Hannah arndt in 1924 when he had a professorship at Marburg University and he was 37 at that time and uh in the realm of things he was relatively old for getting a professorship uh he wanted to get the chair at Freiburg University but was denied it and was kind of resentful because of that that was a chair in Catholic philosophy then he left and took a position at Marburg and it's during this time that he became more and more interested in Protestant thought Protestant theology in fact the people at Marburg thought he was a Protestant Marburg in the northern part of Germany is a well-known Bastion of of protestantism in Germany whereas Freiburg is in the southern-vertenberg area which is like 99 Catholic so in the middle part of the 20s Heidegger is working on being in time that's published in 27-27 yeah how would you characterize Heidegger's reputation then in the broader world of German philosophy than by the mid to late 1920s well um it's interesting um Heidegger did not publish anything uh in fact uh in a long six-hour interview I had with his son Hermann Heidegger he made it quite clear to me that uh the reason one of the reasons why being in time came into existence was because Heidegger was at a certain level and he needed to publish to make more money and he was reluctant to do that because he was doing so many other things and finally he threw these things together I'm saying that figuratively and he published uh being in time in 1927 and that of course overnight he became a philosophical sensation but by the late 20s early 30s it was probably the most well-known famous philosopher in Germany as well as being highly respected what's interesting is before he published being in time he still had this reputation among students students came from all over to listen to the Magician of mass cares he had this wonderful reputation of being a great teacher a great lecturer he would expound upon a particular topic and deconstruct it tear it apart and then rebuild it again and he would just leave the students you know in wonderment so to speak and this reputation Drew people like Hannah arant who came from East Prussia she was born in Hanover but her family eventually were in Far Eastern Germany and she came all the way down to Marburg as did many other students to study under Heidegger he had this sort of um reputation that was unofficial but people students knew so by the time we get to the late 1920s early 1930s Heidegger is a major star so to speak in the absolutely if we go back to the 20s then again uh Heidegger as a political thinker to what extent do you think his political views were formed or still being shaped uh in the 1920s yeah that's a good question and and it's partly um in debate but I think we have to understand that first of all Heidegger grew up in a small village a very conservative traditional way of thinking lifestyle even though he was a very strict traditional catholic and he was informed by being raised this kind of Catholic eventually he would reject Catholicism but he still grew up in an area which was highly identifiable in terms of being nationalistic patriotic uh all things German and and but being being a right-wing Catholic or I don't want to say a right-wing Kathy but a very conservative traditional very arch-traditional conservative Catholic didn't lead him to Nazism but uh it it it it it did create a a way of thinking I think or a way of looking at the world that he was definitely not Cosmopolitan definitely not multi-culty when Heidegger said uh deshbraka is thus house designs language is the house of being uh if you investigate it a little further he really means especially the German language he was a brilliant man he he knew as a young man at the University he knew Latin in Greek inside and out you know the Classic Education and for him there were two great sources one was German and the other one was Greek and for him that was the only way would you say in the 1920s there's any sense that aside from the the cultural conservatism right so to speak including the nationalism uh that there are other elements of the natural Nazi political philosophy that Heidegger has signed on to in the 20s even at a theoretical level yeah I think it's sort of like osmosis through a semi-permeable membrane when you when when you grow up in a certain culture you adapt or automatically accept certain Concepts or ideas and these were very strong um we know that at that time you know since the turn of the century from the 1800s to the 1900s there were some key uh German writers who were talking about race talking about German culture and German language being Superior that you know Germany was the land of dyster and danker you know of poets and thought thinkers and Heidegger certainly belonged to that to that class of people would you include Oswald Spangler in this group yes or more abundant broken absolutely as a matter of fact there's a good good that you brought that up Heidegger red Spangler knew him in a through you know in and out he read people like Ernest younger younger was a friend even this very Arch conservative uh politically conservative um almost xenophobic um um what some people would consider to be this arrogance of German culture which really is an outward manifestation of extreme um low self-esteem I don't know that's up to Modern term but Germany came to Nation statehood very late in the history of Europe um they even have tried for a while colonization on West Africa which was a terrible failure uh and so they were sort of the Johnny come latlies in the European political scene I mean who was it uh Frederick the great that said that he only spoke German to his horse otherwise the people at the whole you know the people in the court spoke French all right so uh Heidi was coming from a culturally conservative background he was associated with intellects like Spangler intellectuals rather like Spangler and say Vandenberg uh we're also working that territory is there any evidence in the 20s that Heidegger's particularly aware of the National Socialist movement which is of course Rising through the 1920s so it has Connections in particular there yeah uh I think what's interesting about Heidegger and that and those kinds of connections is that he was he was a soganata front comorad you know he'd been in the first world war but he never saw combat but the people who came out of that war like Ernst younger and wrote books like stalgoviters storm of Steel that's the English title right and uh there were there were two kinds of people that came out of or you know as far as writers of books that came out of the World War One experience you had people like ants younger who glorified War glorified the bonding that went on among men facing death and uh the the existential idea of your facing death together and then there were people like Eric Maria remark and Jewish writers who were extremely anti-war who wrote All Quiet on the Western Front and it's interesting to see both of these things played out being played out and and the other thing is is this the this element of anti-Semitism in part as Reiner Martin made a comment in my film is really anti-cosmopolitanism Heidegger believe that this ruthlessness of thought people who are not rooted in the soil or in the land or in an area or region cannot really be authentic and he for example he uses the term as early as 1916 folks go Mineshaft now this idea of the people's Community is in German very carries a lot of heavy load it's as opposed to how we would translate it it meant the Falk being bloot on Bowden you know the blood and soil of a people growing in the same area but also of the same blood it was certainly not multi-culty or anything like that and these strong feelings uh meant that the people in the city that's a great story if I can just digress heideger was offered the chair and philosophy the Hegel chair in philosophy at Berlin he turned it down and he turned it down and I mean that is the highest honor in philosophy Hegel the German philosopher and he turns it down and the story is at and supposedly it's true it sounds too good to be true is that he was in his little Hut and mess in in totalberg and he went to the local Farm woman the the farmer's wife and he loved the bower the farmers the pet peasants that lived in that area and he says what do you think should I go to Berlin and she just nods her head and so he writes his letter sorry yeah he had he had this unbelievable romanticizing of of people who worked the soil and as Reiner Martin says he never really got over uh the transition from a rural Agricultural Society to an industrial Cosmopolitan one certainly in his post-world War II writings that comes through here and then of course cosmopolitanism is a buzzword for anti-Semitism because the Jews the eternally Wandering Jew they end up in cities centers they end up in finance they end up in law they end up in in professorships sure and uh Franklin Cosmopolitan Community both in banking and academics right and and uh Heidegger was a farm boy and frankly I think he was intimidated and uh couldn't stand competition and he'd have to he'd have to you know you have to speak up when you when especially among Jewish intellectuals because they they uh they come out of a tradition of reading the talmud And discussing and arguing and there there's they're challenging at all times Heidegger would profess an idea that he thought was a profound and he just expected people to accept it for that you know let's fast forward a bit into 1932 1933 clearly the Nazi movement is in its ascendancy and it comes to power right in 1933 uh and then how does this change Heidegger and Galvanize uh him so to speak politically well it's really quite fascinating because Heidegger had so many students that were Jewish Herbert marcusi Hana aren't Carl Irvin hunts Jonas um and he was a he was a studied under hussarel who was the father of phenomenology and hosural was Jewish and he knew Carl Jasper's and Jasper's wife was Jewish and so he uh and he even had this thing about dark-haired brown-eyed Jewish women I mean I spoke with his son I know this is a depression but I spoke with his son and he told me Herman said that he knew that his father had at least 12 affairs and uh many of them or several of them were Jewish students the the three Gretchen in Marburg and then Elizabeth blockman and others but so you had this this seemingly contradiction when he becomes Rector of German the first director in Germany of Freiburg University he openly joins the pub the Nazi party uh and then he enthusiastically goes along with the glichstal tone which means the the bringing of the university in line with Nazi thought and uh many of the people I interviewed said look it it couldn't have been that he within a week or so became a Nazi uh there are many things that led up to his by 1931 he was reading the focusable oh doctor he was a well aware of Nazi thought and much of what he thought about Nazism he was in agreement with now he's he's quoted because he was wanted to be the leader of the leader he thought that Nazism or the national socialism was too important to just hand over to these crude Nazis you know but of course they used him and by the time the the average Nazi didn't have a clue about philosophy and so they they didn't know who he was I mean in terms of how important he was to their movement they just used him and then they said well we don't understand what the hell he's talking about and uh so he uh but he he wanted to become um a major leader in the academic circles he went uh to a conference in Leipzig I think it was and of University professors and University leaders this will still be a 33 uh this would have been later this would have been a little bit later but around the 33 area okay yeah Heidegger's officially becoming a Nazi in 1933 yeah and his Ambitions there and how he was used or Not by the Nazis yeah it was both yeah yeah it was both uh but he uh again he believed that in in in the uh certain essential aspects of national socialism that were the hope for Germany and to keep it in context um fascism in the 20s and 30s didn't have the pejorative definitely right in fact many people young people political leaders Etc believed that fascism was the way to go to counteract bolshevism communism on the one side and mad dog capitalism and American modernity on the other and if you look at in that context you know it was very attractive for a lot of people and uh but there's still there was still this element of anti-Semitism which is all right so after coming to power that in the 30s the Nazis then go a long way to implementing their program World War II breaks out uh they end up losing that war news about the Holocaust uh right emerges uh let's turn to Heidegger's reactions or or his inactions right so to speak after World War II he lived until 1976 or I believe so it lives another 31 years um and one of the interesting issues here is that he never Recons right on his uh national socialism I never says anything about the Holocaust and so forth uh why do you think that was it's interesting I've thought about this for a long time and the only way that it makes sense for me to try to understand this is my wife who was a clinical psychologist uh and did a lot of therapy for many many years she said he was a narcissist and there's no doubt that he was a narcissist and that narcissists cannot see themselves even if it's shown to them right in front of their faces the narcissists cannot see themselves as being wrong it's just not in their picture build on the other hand what's interesting about Heidegger is I mean you take somebody like hansuke or gotimer you know he at a time was an enthusiastic Nazi and but what gotimer did was he took all of his writings that he wrote during the Nazi period and pulled him out of circulation and rewrote them and re-changed them and many of those things he published later after the war became Major Works of gautamer okay Heidegger refused to do that with some sort of a stubborn kind of of I don't want to say honesty but he he left all of that stuff in you know that he thought that national socialism was a the last hope you're giving a psychological interpretation that he is a narcissist yeah can't admit that he's wrong right and so forth uh what about an intellectual interpretation which would be to say that he still believes that the philosophy or his philosophy is correct uh or that his political philosophy is correct at least in principle um and so he doesn't seem to need to change anything that's right and that that is also true then there'll still be an issue of his particular connections to Hitler and the Nazis and the issues of the Holocaust if he wants to preserve the philosophy as a theory he would at least be making some distancing saying that the Nazis perverted it or they didn't carry out the program correctly but he didn't do any of that either no uh it's it is uh a mind-boggling issue in many respects Herbert marcusi wrote him a letter saying pleading look just step back make an apology point out that you were wrong here and here and here that it was wrong to lead young men to Nazism and Heidegger refused to do so and I think in part because he didn't think it was wrong Hermann Heidegger who's the son of his father being Martin Heidegger and he makes a quote that's not in my film because I was not allowed to use it in which his father said to him my ideas and My Philosophy the Germans are not yet ready for it maybe in another hundred years and there are some very conservative nationalistic right wing if you want to use that term German thinkers cultural thinkers today that just worship Heidegger and think in those same terms that the time's not yet right for this great philosophical truth to find its fruition in Germany now the thing about it is is it's still highly nationalistic it's German if you talk to Heidegger Scholars like Ted Kissel and others there are elements of Heidegger that are being used by scholars in Japan in Asia in Russia even in in other parts of the world who take heideggerian insights and apply it to their own language so the there that there is something in Heidegger that that is fascinating and is of value but Emmanuel Phi on the other hand really makes a case and most academics disagree with him but he makes a case that Heidegger's writings are Nazi to the Core and if you talk to a scholar like Ian Thompson at the University of New Mexico he'll be first to say that you know Heidegger was a terrible person his he made terrible mistakes he was wrong about his Nazism but yet there are certain ideas in Heidegger that we have to we have to read him critically and there are certain things that are of value and and the job is to separate the good from the bad so to speak so there are a couple issues here one is to positions that are possible here I want us to say that Heidegger's philosophy as a whole actually has no connection to national socialism as a political philosophy and political practice any opposite position would be phase position uh he's develop a Paris correct yeah yeah who would argue that there's a tight integration between the philosophical Theory and the philosophical practice uh what's your view on that I've mixed feelings uh Matt Martin said Heidi could not apologize and could not confess doing anything wrong politically because if he were to admit wrongness politically then it would be admitting wrongness philosophically because as Martin pointed out these things are together okay so there is a theory practice connection on that view yeah so and that's the position that Phi is taking and Ian Thompson at University of New Mexico is disagreeing with that position right okay another view though is if you are a follow-up issue then if you think there is an integration between the two it would be a question which one comes first right in Heidegger's thinking is it at first he comes up with the theory and sees the political practice as a natural application of it or were his commitments first political and cultural and that he's backtracking into a philosophical theory that justifies it or in worst case rationalizes it do you think he was first and foremost a philosopher or first and foremost a cultural activist thinker God that's a good question my first impression would be I think first and foremost he was a philosopher but you know I have a master's degree in philosophy I'm not a philosopher and I know that there are philosophers out there that would vehemently take one side or the other I've read half of Emmanuel Faye's book and I'm getting the impression of correct me if I'm wrong that he is leaning toward the the politics driving the philosophy more than the philosophy driving the policy that's correct okay yeah in fact his controversial thesis is quite frankly that uh Heidegger's greatest sin is bringing Nazism politics into philosophy sure okay yeah all right let's go to uh your making of the film when did you first get serious about the project well I'd been a heideggerian and I can remember being in Germany this was in 1972 or 73 and I was just talking to a German buddy of mine and he was talking about some philosopher and and oh yeah he was talking about we were talking about Sinatra and I said yeah Sandra is you know a key thinker and a great influence in my life but probably the most profound thinker of the 20th century was Martin Heidegger a German he looked at me and says Heidegger this you know like his left hand he says Heidegger everybody knows Heidegger was a Nazi and it blew me away I hadn't I had no idea that he was a Nazi uh and this and what's interesting for American Scholars Ian Thompson tells a wonderful story he he he studied under Bert Dreyfuss at Berkeley and who is still there and and in quite a Heidegger scholar and he says in that first semester we studied Heidegger and we got into it and it was fascinating his concepts of zorga and and authenticity and and design with some toe design and stuff like that and he says and then in the second semester he popped the bomb on us Heidegger was a Nazi and he said it was just mind-boggling and uh and so came this this whole thing about you know how do you deal with Heidegger's Nazism when at one level you think that he's a profound thinker and that was my issue and uh so I I thought to myself well you know I understand the German point of view you know the the this kind of resentment of that other generation that brought us to Nazism and then in 1987 88 or 89 I read Victor farius's book right then I read Hugo Ott's book and then I read Tom rockmore's book and I remember coming home and speaking to my wife and saying you know that Heidegger was a Nazi and uh that was it that was I said I'm gonna make a film about this all right and uh Richard wolin had also written a book at that time and they all came out within two or three years of another that's right and that was when when Victor Fara has his book which is highly debatable and controversial because they say it's not very scholarly but he did collect all of these sources together and he opened up the dam broke right and and Hugo ought in the Zurich or zaitung at that time in 1989 was saying you know the the sky has fallen in France you know it was an intellectual Scandal because French philosophy is hi to Gary into the core the postmodern thinkers yeah and uh and what's on what's interesting about Heidegger is you have those French philosophers on the right and those on the left the Marxist as well as the absolutely that adopted elements out of out of Heidegger so and I said well that's it and I I got a hold of Richard Wallen who at that time was at Rice University and I was teaching in the department of media arts at University of Arizona and I said would you be willing to come up and give a lecture and then I'd like to interview you on camera and he said sure and he came and and uh I got the history Department media arts and philosophy and I don't know what some other department and we packed this lecture hall of about 200 people and he gave this great lecture and it was a great debate and then uh I was director of the of the film and television Studio at at the University of Arizona and they have also a PBS station as well and I brought him into the studio and I shot him at that time in I was a cineist and a real snob I didn't use video it was that three-quarter umatic crap that I couldn't stand I shot it in 16 millimeter film and uh that's the black and white stuff that's in the documentary yes and but it was originally in color uh and um uh my wife's got ill and her health turned bad and and I took the the the the the can uh the negative color negative and I put it in storage and it sat there for about 13 12 13 years and when I finally decided I'm going to continue my wife's health and improved and I had taken this position in Germany and uh I resurrected the film and it was Green and Purple colors it had deteriorated so I was able to get copied in black and white and that's why so the other people you interviewed Hugo Ott Emmanuel Faye Ian Thompson Tom rockmore and a few others when were most of those interviews done okay um um Richard Bolton was done in the in the towards the late 90s yes uh and then um I had scraped some money together and some former students of mine who were camera people and technicians I had a cameraman and an assistant and a sound man then I used my American Express credit card and we flew to Germany with my wife and you sort of used it as a quasi vacation but at the same time I went to Berlin and interviewed Victor farius right okay that was in 2002 and he was very animated in the document yes yes yeah I mean I took some things out that Faria said because they were so outrageous and people told me you got to take that out even in manual Phi said you've got to take that out uh but as a filmmaker farius was wonderful because he was just so electrifying and then we went to tote now Berg we shot footage there we went to Fryeburg University and then um at that time my wife and I decided Well look if we really want to do the film we gotta go back to Germany and so that's when I got a position teaching at a college which is on Lake Constance and not far from mesquish and so in 2003 then I interviewed Hugo Ott and then in 2004 because I was a teacher and I could only do it when I had a break 2004 I interviewed Reiner Martin and uh Baron Martin and then I did 2005 and six uh Tom Tom rockmore lives in France and he came to Germany I interviewed him in my in my home in Germany and then uh rockmore knew Emmanuel Phi and he was kind enough he's been a good friend and a supporter and so then in 2005 or 6 2006 we went to Paris shot a manual fly and uh Silka SEMA and I shot in 2007. and then I spent about a year and a half editing holiday I mean I just had hours and hours my rough cut was six hours sure I also interviewed Ian Thompson I believe that was in New Mexico yes that's an interesting uh might interest filmmakers the story um I had no more money and I'd read Thompson's book which I thought was quite interesting and I realized that my film was one-sided I mean I'll admit that because it's highly critical of Heidegger and his Nazism but Thompson was one of these guys that was riding the fence know he's saying look there's profound stuff that's of value there's stuff we have to be critical and throw out um and I had read his book and so I could not afford to fly to New Mexico get a crew and go in there and shoot him and then uh it just turned out I thought I had this brilliant idea I called him up we talked for a long time and I said look it's much cheaper for me to call you on the phone we can do a conference call I contacted the head of the media department at the University of New Mexico and she set up the camera in Ian Thompson's office and he had a speakerphone here and I was asking the questions in Germany and he was answering them on camera in New Mexico and some of that stuff I had to edit because he kept forgetting and he was always kind of looking down right and when he was supposed to be looking at a at a uh a dummy sitting in a chair pretending it was me so and and and the content of that interview was really fascinating much of it I couldn't use cinematically because he's just looking down and I had a section in there and somebody said the content was good yeah and I had a section in there where somebody says why is he looking down and I realized well I so I had to put in insert pictures yeah so you finished the shooting in 2008 or so yeah okay and then went on to do the editing through 2009 yeah the first showing was late 2009 or so yeah um it took me about a little over a year to edit it um because I had all this material and embarrassment of riches and the the premiere the very first premiere of the film was July in Fryeburg University at the Iowa at the Freiburg Auditorium where Martin Heidegger in May of 1933 gave his famous Rector speech wow and uh there's a photograph of that same owl with Nazi banners and stuff and the statues that were in that photograph are still there you know a classic German visenshaft and and all pre-nazi stuff you know I wasn't had um and so I showed it in July and um that would be uh 76 years and a few months to the day yeah yeah and what's interesting is the body shatsai tone which is the major newspaper in Freiburg um a reporter called me up and heard that I was going to show this film and asked if he could see it and or if she could see it it was a woman and I said sure So I sent her my film and a couple days later she called me back up and she was just she and her husband watched it together her husband happens to be a garministic professor at the University of fry board and a big paw salon expert I'm now using him in my Paul Salon film but um she was totally beguys or totally enthusiastic and wrote a full page front page on the cultural section of the body Saito about my film and um originally I was going to show it in a smaller room and then they had to overnight move me into the Allah because they realized that people were going to show us was now an event yeah it was now an event and in fact what I found out later is that events like this the Heidegger family shows up Herman Heidegger and his family York Heidegger and his wife they came they sat in the second row right at the front and um the the house the place was packed and uh part of the reason is the heideggers there's this freezeal there's this thing going on in Freiburg which is a small town and people know every no no knows every everyone knows each other and um whenever there's something about Heidegger Hammond shows up because he's always out there protecting his dad's reputation which I understand and so in the as this film was rolling along in about the middle of the film somebody's yelling out lurga Alice luga lies lies all eyes was Herman Heidegger and then a little bit later he calls out nishtvar this is nishtvar that's not true that's not true and then people were saying shut up you know and then I realized this is going to be a and sure enough we had this big post film discussion with Tom rockmore Hugo Ott Reiner Martin bat Martin silke Simon who wrote the book on denotification at Freiburg University and myself and Herman Heidegger in the audience and at one point he got so angry he came up to the podium he says can I come up I said of course you may we helped him up he was in his late 90s and he was just had a cancer operation and there were the pro heideggerians the anti-hydogarians and people started screaming you back and forth some people were really Nazi and I'm sitting here thinking wow I couldn't ask for a better story and and um but I have to say this I I spent six and a half hours with Hammond Heidegger and I like them immediately I you know and and uh some people were being pretty uh uncivil and I got up to the podium and I said listen I said Hammond Heidegger is the Son and he obviously his father loved him and he loved his father and I understand why he's here to protect his father's reputation and to defend him but there are some things that just can't be defended and and then the the head of the philosophy department at Freiburg right at the beginning of the film he walked up to me says who's responsible for this and I said well I've been invited by the history Department the philosophy Department wouldn't touch it really no not because they're heidi-garians fun Hermann head of the philosophy department and he came up to me who's responsible with this I said well I guess the history department and then I'm the director and so at in the question and answering period he had he had stood up and he said well you know I would have thought if you were to do a film about Heidegger you would have done much more about the Greek you know presidents the antecedents and going back to this and that and I said well yeah I said um and my suggestion is if if you if you want make your own Heidegger film uh I said you know I'm responsible for the film I made not for the film somebody thinks I should have made sure and um it it was really uh an unbelievable thing the reason why is because there's a lot of resentment in Fryeburg against the uh the Heidegger family because every time somebody writes something in the article in the newspaper they're immediately on the phone yelling and screaming to the press and to you name it and I think that just irritated and plus Alfreda Heidegger is loathed just hated among many sections of Freiburg Society because who is she she was Martin Heidegger's wife and and Alfreda was the real enthusiastic Nazi and rabbit anti-semite a real Jew hater and when she was in the Nazi she was a member of the some Nazi group and she directed women who worked the streets when the ryeburg was bombed to clean up the the the the the destruction and bricks and stuff and if these women were sick or even pregnant she would insist that they not leave their she really was hated and Hammond Heidegger even said to me once he said you know my mother was just a difficult person all the way through her life I mean and so you can imagine and if you read her the the letters that Herman the Martin Heidegger wrote his wife Alfreda um you can see this real problem I mean she knew that he was unfaithful uh yet at the same time she did everything she could to promote his career and to help him along in in that and she was the one that was the the enthusiastic Nazi as if either wasn't enthusiastic enough already well it's interesting um Heidegger rejected much of rabid Nazism that came out of the Rosenberg you know in those of us in America or at least those are not that familiar with European or German history we think Nazism is a monophysic but there was a left side there was a middle and there was a right right wing Nazism and Rosenberg was part of that biological racism you know Jewish blood Bloods from from sub mentioned like blacks in Africa or the Slavs in Eastern Europe and Heidegger rejected that biological racism but he accepted the so-called geisters or spiritual or intellectual racism right right all right so Dynamite material the film's about two hours is that correct yeah okay and you do a certain amount of history on location shots Heidegger's significant places and seven or eight by my count of leading Heidegger Scholars focusing on different aspects of Heidegger's thought and yeah which to answer the question you asked about 10 minutes ago how I had come to interview these people yes when I showed my film at Penn State University Doug David Smith and uh forget the other guy's name they're strong heideggerians and very nice people very smart you know certainly smarter than I am and they were very nice to me and then I showed my film and Professor Smith's first comment was I don't know what to say that's got to be the worst film I have ever seen and then it started they came loaded for bear okay they just attacked right and left and uh everything they could nitpick about the film because they really felt threatened uh they really felt that my film was so one-sided and they said to me why didn't you have the so-and-so in the film why didn't you have so-and-so in the film I said all right let me just say this I'm a filmmaker and I accept your criticism you have a perfect right not to like my film and your criticism to an extent is valid I said but as a journalist filmmaker I decide I'm going to make a film about Heidegger and I'm going to make a film about Heidegger and Nazism so what I do is I do research and what do I find I find all of those people that wrote books about that topic are the people I contacted I said you guys didn't write a book about hiding or a Nazism you wrote some books about Heidegger but I mean my god there must be what fifteen thousand books on Heidegger sure I mean it's a cottage industry So to that extent I went to what I consider to be the experts on Heidegger and Nazism Hugo ought Victor Faris Tom rockmore and in that sense then uh well I was a good friend of mine in Germany says it's not one-sided it's just the truth well the truth is one-sided that's right the debate about the truth is often two-sided yeah if I could ask you then the the those who are uh interested in carrying on Heidegger's Legacy uh and who therefore feel threatened by your film what aspects in the film do you think are most threatening to them is that they would uh not like to have mentioned or discussion of Heidegger's interaction with the Nazis because they think it's not true or that it's irrelevant uh or that in some sense it is relevant but they believe the philosophy is sound and so they want to naturally distance as much as they can what what's the case it's a good question and and that question changes over time initially that was it they didn't even want to admit but they can't do that anymore all of them admit Heidegger was a Nazi all right okay uh they but of course if you know anything about Heidegger's philosophy you know that you can't like other thinkers you can't separate the man from his thought because that's an integral part of his own philosophy Fraga the great mathematician was a rabbit Jew hater yet nobody denies his Brilliance in mathematics and the heideggerians are trying to do the same thing they're trying to say and he was brilliant in his thought but as a mensch as a human being he failed you know and uh separate the man from the thinking yeah all right yeah all right all right uh what is the availability of the documentary now well um it's going to be back on we just ordered a bunch more and it's going to be back on Amazon um in about a week okay well thanks for being with us here today thank you I enjoyed speaking with you very much fascinating missionaries

Channel: CEE Video Channel

Views: 5,701

Keywords: cee video channel, stephen hicks, jeffrey van davis, documentary, only a god can save us, martin heidegger, nazism, existentialism

Id: iFlxSmNNLx4

Length: 49min 17sec (2957 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023