Evil and Terror

In “Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Problem of the Essence of Nihilism” I took my first scholarly approach to the problem I had first wondered about in my childhood watching “The World at War” on television and looking at the ominous tome on the bookshelf (which seemed to be staring at me) “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, by William L. Shirer, as well as growing up in the cold war. This problem I thought of as a question: What is Evil?, or, What is the cause of Evil? To me, the two great evils of Nazism and Communism were manifestations of Evil. But what is Evil itself? Who or what causes the occurrences of evil?

Adolf Hitler and Martin Heidegger were both born in 1889, the same year that Nietzsche went insane, first Hitler on April 20, and then Heidegger on September 26 (1). Could it be that Heidegger was sent to stop Hitler? Yes, Heidegger, contra “Schicklgruber” Hitler, called for careful thinking about Germany’s historical fate and destiny; and would later, during the war, confront the Nazi regime in lectures on Nietzsche (2). Does it now seem ludicrous to have hoped a philosopher could have stopped Adolf Hitler? Yes and no. In Germany, at least since Kant, philosophy has held a very high position. Heidegger, easily the leading philosopher in Germany at that time, had as good a chance as anyone stopping Hitler. More importantly, honest thinkers could later reflect on Heidegger’s confrontation with Nazism, and think of new and better ways to stop evil.

In my own study of Heidegger, and always with that question from childhood, I considered the finding of the source of Evil, Evil as such if you will, to be the most important question; and THE question that any genuine intellectual, an intellectual that is involved in the struggle for Human Rights, must ask. This question has developed, insofar as the struggle with the evils of Evil, the many manifestations of Evil, makes Evil put on different faces like Communism and Nazism, and Stalin and Hitler. How might we restate the question so as to make it less philosophical and more relevant to the present day realities?

It’s simple. The present face of Evil is terrorism. Therefore, we must ask “What is the source or roots of terrorisms?”, “What is Terrorism with a capital T?” Identifying and exterminating the source of terrorism, Evil or, if you will, Terror itself, will end the reign of the current face of Evil, and Evil itself will be destroyed. Then we can eradicate all of the horrors caused by Evil. These horrors include hunger, disease, and poverty.

So in reconsidering the caricature of the Second Coming, Adolf “Schicklgruber” Hitler, in terms of the attempt Martin Heidegger made to stop Hitler, we might annihilate Evil itself.

Revelation 18:1-3 (New International Version)
1After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2With a mighty voice he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil[a] spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. 3For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."

Notes: a. Revelation 18:2 Greek unclean

Notes:
(1). On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche was first noted as having exhibited signs of mental illness. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown, but the often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around the horse’s neck to protect it, and collapsed to the ground. The first dream-sequence from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (Part 1, Chapter 5) has just such a scene in which Raskolnikov witnesses the whipping of a horse around the eyes. Incidentally, Nietzsche called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn."
(2). I first identified Heidegger’s very noble effort to stop Hitler in December 1991, amidst the rabid and chaotic Adornoesque rants of the likes of Farias and Lacoue-Labarthe, in my paper “Martin Heidegger and National Socialism as Postmodernity”. By far the best book on the subject is “Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks”, by Charles Bambach (ISBN: 0801472660). Heidegger’s books to see are the four volume “Nietzsche” and “The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays”.