Rong Jian, "Wang Hui's 'Heidegger Moment?'"

Rong Jian, “Wang Hui’s ‘Heidegger Moment?’”[1]    
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Rong Jian (b. 1957) was a rising star in China’s academic world whose career was cut short by the reaction to the Tian’anmen demonstrations in 1989.  In the years immediately preceding the demonstrations, Rong, who earned his M.A. degree in 1986 from China Renmin University’s Institute of Marxism-Leninism Developmental History 中国人民大学马列发展史研究所 had published essays such as “On Democracy 民主论,” “Can the New Authoritarianism Work in China? 新权威主义在中国是否可行？” and “Opening up the Ownership System 论所有制的开放.” 

These writings, which had a considerable impact on China’s thought world, made Rong a target in the clampdown that followed Tian’anmen, and he abandoned his doctoral studies.  He subsequently went into real estate, and later into the art business, becoming a successful entrepreneur.  He began writing again some ten years ago, his wealth and independent status according him a freedom which most Chinese intellectuals can hardly dream of.  For a representative example of Rong’s work, see Gloria Davies’s translation of Rong’s “A China Bereft of Thought.”
 
The text translated here is a follow-up to Rong’s first critical attack on Wang Hui, entitled “What Does the Philosophy of Victory of the Revolutionary Mean?  Criticizing Wang Hui’s ‘Revolutionary Personality’ and ‘Philosophy of Victory.’”  Like this first essay, “Wang Hui’s ‘Heidegger Moment?” hardly needs commentary.  Rong’s initial essay left little doubt that Rong thinks Wang is selling out, but the language was not explicit. 

Here, he pushes the envelope, equating Wang with the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose “flirtation” with Hitler and the Nazis in 1933 left a stain on an otherwise brilliant career, which of course suggests an identification of the Nazis with the Chinese Communist Party and Hitler with Xi Jinping.  Indeed, Rong finally gives Heidegger the benefit of the doubt, but refuses to do the same for Wang who, according to Rong, is proactively selling his soul to Xi and the CCP for reasons of personal advancement.

Thanks to my Université de Montréal colleague Deborah Barton for checking details having to do with German history.

N.B. When the word leader appears in bold type in this translation, it is to signal that the author has used the Chinese word lingxiu 领袖, which often has a particular meaning.  See the introduction to Wang Hui's text for more information. 
                                                     
Translation
 
My online article “What Does the Philosophy of Victory of the Revolutionary Mean?  Criticizing Wang Hui’s ‘Revolutionary Personality’ and ‘Philosophy of Victory’” attracted a fair bit of attention, one version of it being read more than 260,000 times.  This may be because I am criticizing Professor Wang Hui, who undoubtedly occupies very important position in the world of China’s New Left scholars.  There have been criticisms of Wang Hui before, once over the Cheung Kong Dushu Prize affair,[2] and another time over charges of plagiarism,[3] both of which sparked brief moments of public controversy about Wang Hui's academic abilities and his professional ethics. 

This time, his essay commemorating the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s birth (“The Revolutionary Personality and the Philosophy of Victory”), destined for an elite readership, could have been ignored at a moment when practically no one in China was memorializing Lenin.  The reason why Wang’s text caught my attention was that, as I see it, Wang’s essay is not a simple exercise in nostalgia, but rather an attempt, under the pretext of commemorating Lenin’s birthday, at a moment when China is hesitating about “what is to be done,” to offer China’s leader 领袖 a theoretical plan concerning the revolutionary personality and its victory.  History offers many examples of letters appealing to power or letters pledging loyalty, but Wang Hui has invented a new version of “extolling the worthy 颂圣,” which, not to mince words, is tantamount to repeating what Heidegger said when he was rector of Freiburg University:   “The Führer, and only the Führer, is Germany’s sole reality and law, today and in the future.”
 
In terms of academic talent, Wang Hui of course cannot hold a candle to Heidegger, but these differences did not keep both of them from becoming staunch nationalists in different countries and historical periods.   In other words, they adopted similar attitudes and standpoints in addressing the highest leaders of their respective countries, and made similar theoretical gestures.  As the great master of existentialism and phenomenology, Heidegger is publicly identified by most historians of philosophy as the “most influential philosopher of our century,” and he devoted his life to the absolute nature of "thinking" and the purity of philosophy, refusing to transform his philosophical program into a program of social change. 

He went so far as to argue that “thinking” should wait 300 years before developing its practical utility, so as to avoid its being cheapened by the concerns of the moment.  Yet when Heidegger became rector of Freiberg University in 1933, he seemed to completely turn his back on the proper posture of a philosopher, and to abandon the “silence” and caution required by “thinking,” regarding Hitler’s rise to power as Germany’s “great and solemn dawn.”
 
Many scholars argue that Heidegger’s involvement in the Nazi movement was not an accidental mistake, and in my view this question relates to the hero-worship and nationalistic tendencies that we find in German philosophy since Hegel (1770-1831).  Hegel consistently argued that state rationality was rationality’s highest stage, and that the particular nature of the family and civil society could be transcended only in the universal realm of the state.  But Hegel did not believe that the personification of state rationality could be embodied in the person of the Prussian ruler. 

Quite the contrary, basing himself on ideas of the development of "world spirit" and "world history," he saw the Napoleon’s 1806 defeat of the Prussian army in Iena a moment of  "historical ending," and France and Napoleon as the beginning of modern history, while his own country, Prussia, represented the "Germanic world"—the highest stage of world history"—only in a symbolic sense.  In terms of their views of history, Hegel and Kant (1724-1804) are the same; they observed the turbulent movement of nation-states in Europe from their status as citizens of the world.  Hegel called Napoleon "world spirit on horseback,"[4] which on the one hand reflects his vision of world history beyond the nation-state, and on the other expresses his urgent yearning for great men who will carry out the mission of bringing about state rationality and world rationality.
 
Perhaps Hannah Arendt was also basing herself on this German tradition, when, in defending Heidegger after the war, she argued that Heidegger’s motivation in participating in the Nazi political movement was like Plato’s trip to Syracuse to offer [philosophical] advice to the tyrant [Dionysius], in the hopes of saving the Greek city-state by transforming the ruler.  Yet Arendt admitted that Plato did not achieve his goal, and after returning to Athens he realized that his desire to transform theory into action was meaningless.  Arendt hence noted that:  “Now we all know that Heidegger, too, once succumbed to the temptation to change his ‘residence’ and to get involved in the world of human affairs. As to the world, he was served somewhat worse than Plato, because the tyrant and his victims were not located beyond the sea, but in his own country.” 

Looking at the similar fates encountered by Plato and Heidegger as philosophers engaging in politics, Arendt summed up her views:  “We…can hardly help finding it striking and perhaps exasperating that Plato and Heidegger, when they entered into human affairs, turned to tyrants and Führers. This should be imputed not just to the circumstances of the times and even less to preformed character, but rather to what the French call a déformation professionelle. For the attraction to the tyrannical can be demonstrated theoretically in many of the great thinkers (Kant is the great exception).”[5]
 
Did Arendt’s defense reveal Heidegger’s true motives?  There is no way to know, but one thing is sure:  Heidegger’s address on becoming the rector of Freiberg University, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” was not full of Nazi propaganda, but instead insisted on university self-government, arguing that self-government meant that  “we set ourselves our own task and determine the way and manner of its realization ourselves, so that in doing so we ourselves will be what we ought to be.”[6] He also expressed something that Arendt could have identified as his “Platonic spirit”—a vision of the university as “ grounded in science and by means of science, [it] educates and disciplines the leaders and guardians of the destiny of the German people.” 

At the same time, Heidegger also demanded that German university students assume three duties, performing Labor Service, Military Service, and Knowledge Service for the country, a “spiritual mission that forces the destiny of the German people into the shape of its history.”   This is a statement that many critics have taken as Heidegger’s appeal to National Socialism.  Of course, in his address, Heidegger did not forget to proclaim the dignity of philosophy, and particularly emphasized the need to return to “the beginning of our spiritual-historical existence,” in other words the awakening of Greek philosophy, in which “knowing must unfold its highest defiance.”  The Greeks “were not concerned with aligning practice with theory. 

Rather, the reverse was true: theory was to be understood as the highest realization of genuine practice.  For the Greeks, science is not a ‘cultural asset’ but the innermost determining center of all of popular and national existence.”  With Greek philosophy as his guide, Heidegger’s goal was to shape the German people into a “historical-spiritual people,” and at the end of his address he cites Plato to the effect that “all that is great stands in the storm.”
 
Judging from Heidegger’s address, we can probably conclude that in his heart of hearts there did exist, as Arendt said, the idea of changing the Führer’s thinking through the spirit of philosophy.  He once said that Germany, trapped between Bolshevik nihilism and capitalist materialism, was the “purely philosophical country” facing the greatest danger, and that if Germany wanted to save herself, then Nazism offered the possibility of returning to her vigorous golden age and reviving the true German consciousness.  Even twenty years after the thorough collapse of the Nazi empire, Heidegger had not completely abandoned this conviction. 

In a 1966 interview with Der Spiegel (which Heidegger asked not be published until ten years after his death), he explained that, in a situation where there are 32 political parties with their own viewpoints and public opinion is in chaos, it is necessary to find a program that can put the country first, and that he saw in Nazism the possibility that “here is something new, here is a new departure.”[7]  But he also said that he regretted his counsel to university students in 1933 to allow the Führer to become Germany’s present and future “reality and law.”  Perhaps it was as a result of this historical lesson that Heidegger later developed a more pessimistic attitude concerning philosophy’s social role, and no longer held the firm conviction, as he did in 1933, that philosophy can discipline or educate Führers and tyrants. 

In his own words: “Thinking is not inactivity, but in itself the action that has a dialogue with the world’s destiny.”  He admits that:  “The distinction, stemming from metaphysics, made between theory and praxis, and the conception of a transmission between the two, obstructs the path toward insight into what I understand to be thinking…  But thinking’s greatest affliction is that today, as far as I can see, no thinker yet speaks who is great enough to place thinking, directly and formatively, before its subject matter and therefore on its path.”
 
Heidegger’s views on the purity of philosophy and the role of thinking perhaps became the inner reason explaining his post-war refusal to make a heartfelt apology for his historical collaboration with the Nazis in the 1930s.  He defended himself, saying that his surrender to the Führer was in fact a compromise, emphasizing that had he done otherwise he would have been unable to function as rector. 

An important fact supporting Heidegger’s independence is that he only served as rector at Freiberg for ten months, resigning on his own initiative, and refusing to participate in the Nazi party ceremony naming the rector who succeeded him.  In the summer of 1944, Heidegger was forcibly dispatched to the opposite side of the Rhine to dig trenches for the war effort, and was one of the oldest among the conscripted group of professors.  The Nazis exempted 500 of the most famous scholars, scientists, and artists from wartime labor, but Heidegger’s name was not on the list. 

In any event, in the eyes of many serious scholars of intellectual history, this period of history incontestably stands out as the greatest stain on Heidegger’s life, and many facts prove that the relationship between Heidegger and the Nazi’s was less than pure.  According to Karl Jaspers’ (1883-1969) memoirs, Heidegger had never revealed any trace of Nazi thought, but in the spring of 1933, he suddenly became very excited about the Nazi movement.  When Jaspers asked him how an uneducated brute like Hitler could lead Germany, Heidegger answered:  “Education itself is not all that important.  Just look at Hitler’s hands, look at his marvelous hands!”  Heinrich Bollinger (1916-1990), Heidegger’s colleague at Freiberg, considered Heidegger to be a Nazi:  “He is Hitler in the classroom.”
 
Regardless of the reasons behind them, nothing excuses Heidegger’s actions in 1933.  More important still, the “Heidegger moment” not only stands out as the most shameful period in Heidegger’s life, it also became an important event in Western intellectual history, whose question for posterity is:  How should intellectuals 知识人, especially those pioneering thinkers whose goal is to shape the spirit of a people and the consciousness of a country, make their peace with 安身立命 totalitarian tyranny? 

Both fear and temptation are probably unavoidable, but viewing thinking in the way that Heidegger did, they should at least follow their own counsel and keep silent in the face unscrupulous people do evil in the world, instead of consorting with them.  In this sense, even if the brief nature of the collaboration between Heidegger and the Nazis perhaps confers a certain historical legitimacy on the episode, it still violates the basic academic and moral principles of a thinker.  
 
As a symbolic moment in time, what the “Heidegger moment “reveals about the relationship between intellectuals, state power, and state rulers is obviously not limited to Germany.  A series of similar things happened in Japan during the Second World War, when a group of influential philosophers, historians, and authors offered their assistance to the military in an almost collective fashion, using their knowledge and thought resources to participate in the state’s “total war.”  The most representative case was in 1942 when a group of famous scholars and leftist artists associated with Kyoto University held three conferences on the themes of “World Historical Viewpoints and Japan,” “The Ethical and Historical Nature of the Co-Prosperity Sphere,” and “The Philosophy of Total War.” 

What these themes reveal is that, in constructing a historical standpoint that “transcended the modern,” the Japanese intellectual world lent its entire support to militarism.  Especially worth mentioning is the case of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) who, after the February 26 Incident,[8] wrote numerous articles calling on the Japanese people to be wary of the danger of militarism, but who also, after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, unwittingly became part of the effort to build “a philosophy of total war,” and wrote Principles of the New World Order, a text which brought him much shame later on. 

Another case is that of Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977), who is held in high esteem by China’s New Left.  After the outbreak of the Pacific War between Japan and the United States, this great worshipper of Lu Xun wrote a text proclaiming that:  “History has been created.  Overnight, the face of the world has changed.  Moved to the point of trembling, civilization watched the rainbow-like beam of light streak across the sky.  A kind of indescribable gratitude surged in our hearts.  On December 8th, the day the war was announced, the Japanese people felt a burning sense of elation and an incomparable sense of ease.” As this illustrates, even more intellectuals consciously pledged themselves to the country’s war machine in Japan’s "Heidegger Moment," becoming accomplices to militarism, and writing the most shameful pages in their personal histories.
 
Has China entered its “Heidegger moment?”  In terms of intellectual ability and knowledge production, most Chinese scholars who devote themselves to singing the praises of nationalism are theoretical opportunists, and lack intellectual capacity and philosophical accomplishment.  This includes Wang Hui, whose scholarly background and self-definition as a left-wing “critical intellectual” are at odds with his theoretical proposals, which are in reality political and “values” demands based in nationalism. 

His proposals concerning a “revolutionary personality” and a “philosophy of victory” are written expressly for China’s leader:   rewriting the revolutionary narrative for China's current political needs, calling for the arrival of new revolutionaries, and reimagining a new era led by revolutionaries.  From this perspective, Wang Hui has gone far beyond Heidegger’s attempt to use philosophy to reshape the Führer’s thinking and passively adapting to Nazi politics, and has become an active thought participant, seeking to provide a new legitimacy for the arbitrary decisions of a supreme revolutionary.
 
For this reason, I feel that I am entirely within my rights to ask:  if Wang Hui were in Germany in 1933, what would he do?  He surely wouldn’t have needed Heidegger’s philosophy to wear himself out trying to convince the Führer to fashion the German national spirit in a way consistent with the Greek philosophical tradition.  Perhaps he would have strategically yelled “long life to the emperor” three times, in the hopes of gaining the most freedom possible in an area with the right to govern itself? 

I don’t think he would have done either of these.  Clearly, Wang Hui does not possess the necessary level of philosophical awakening or  metaphysical thinking to do the former, nor does he have the guts to do the latter—to play ridiculous games with a leader with a “revolutionary personality.” Instead, all he would have had to do would be to offer his services simply and loyally, the only problem being that his obtuse style might not be immediately understood by the revolutionary of the new era. 

From this perspective, I prefer to believe that the collaboration between Heidegger and Nazis was grounded in some kind of strategic thinking or unavoidable compromise, and the fact that he finally resigned from his position as rector of Freiberg University suggests that he had not lost his basic conscience and moral quality as a philosopher; and in the case of Wang Hui, I prefer to believe that at this moment of “what is to be done?” in China, the theories he put forward prove that in fact it is all a political calculation, a calculation that has surely been deeply thought out, and from which his “duty” does not allow him to turn back.[9]   
 
Because directness is prized in politics—unlike in philosophical thought, which gets lost in its labyrinth and confuses the politicians—the Führer surely preferred Heidegger’s direct remarks to the students that the Führer is Germany’s only reality and law, today and in the future, to his long-winded speech on accepting his position.  Had Wang Hui been living in Germany in 1933, there is no doubt that his macro-narrative about the “revolutionary personality” and a “philosophy of victory” would have pleased the Führer more than Heidegger’s philosophical musings.
 
First, the title of “revolutionary personality” is perfect for the Führer, and the five characteristics that Wang identifies for the revolutionary personality—that a revolutionary is simply a revolutionary, that a revolutionary always struggles, that a revolutionary not only seizes political power but also seizes “spiritual and moral hegemony,” that revolutionaries are adept at mastering their “second nature,” and that revolutionaries never fear failure—these are a near complete description of the personality of the Führer. 

The Führer was just such a revolutionary superman, full of the revolutionary mission, an indomitable fighting spirit, who sought arbitrary power and the power to control thought of all kinds, who was adept at creating revolutionary opportunities by grasping “weak links,” and had a revolutionary personality that even in death will never admit defeat.  This kind of revolutionary does not exist solely in Red political systems, but can be the product of any system where the leader runs roughshod over political parties and rules without institutional constraints.  In this sense, Wang Hui’s revolutionary narrative was expressly fashioned for just this kind of leader.
 
Next, the dynamic relationship among leader, party and the people that Wang proposes, a relationship that is both intimate and mutually facilitating, achieved its full potential in the Nazi movement.  In terms of the relationship among the three, the Nazi movement in Germany clearly did a better job than either Russia during the Soviet era or China during the Cultural Revolution in avoiding the fracturing of the tension in the relationship—and this fracturing is the factor Wang Hui identifies as being the reason for the failure, or the transformation, of socialist countries in the 20th century. 

When Hitler came to power, replacing the Weimar Republic with the Nazi regime, this was the formal result of national democratic elections, a result that illustrated that the Nazi party and its leader possessed a base in the popular will, meaning a legitimate base.  However, the Nazi regime quickly evolved into a totalitarian system, and the Führer became a despot and the Nazi party his tool, the people completely losing their role in deciding state power due to the dual control of politics and ideology by the government. 

Consequently, putting forth the idea of the leader, as well as Wang’s arguments concerning the relationship among the leader, the party, and the people, at the most basic level is a totalitarian narrative, and its ultimate aim is for the leader to establish a relationship of domination over the party and the people.  Wang’s “dynamic tension” is expressed solely in the people’s and the party’s support of and service to the leader.
 
Third, Wang Hui’s “philosophy of victory” is meant to provide everlasting spiritual encouragement to those revolutionaries who are not afraid of failure, because if the ultimate victory is assured, then all of the failures incurred in the process of the revolution are merely temporary, and failure is but a stepping stone leading to victory.  Nazi philosophy is chock full of this kind of philosophy of victory. “Triumph of the Will,” the propaganda reel that Goebbels commissioned, is the classic example. 

​One of Hitler’s favorite words was “victory,” and the victorious picture offered by the Führer to the German people was that of world conquest, the ultimate victory of the German will and the Aryan people.  Until the final Allied conquest of Berlin, the Führer never abandoned his belief in this inevitable victory, the belief that led to the collapse of the Third Reich, and plunged Germany and the entire world into disaster.  This tells us that a tyrant who will not accept defeat, a crazy militarist who clings to a philosophy of victory, is the greatest threat to world civilization.
 
If we accept that Wang Hui’s macro-narrative of the “revolutionary personality” and the “philosophy of victory” manufactured his “Heidegger moment,” this merely identifies base-line similarities in the views of leaders or Führers held by Wang and Heidegger.  Otherwise, their differences in terms of thinking are like night and day.  When Heidegger had no choice but to bow his head and present himself as a servant to the Führer, in his mind he maintained the dignity of thinking and the superiority of philosophy over politics, which is where he found the courage to boldly leave his position after ten months. 

By contrast, Wang Hui, basing himself on changes in contemporary China and particularly on what he calls the universal crisis of political parties, abandons his formerly ambiguous, glittering, opportunistic political discourse and actively makes a clear political calculation, which is to draw political inspiration from Lenin’s “revolutionary personality,” rebuild a “philosophy of victory” in which sacrifice and tragedy support a victorious action program, finally providing new ideological and moral resources for the revolutionary leader who will reshape the new era.  When we make the comparison, we see that, in his “Heidegger moment,” Wang Hui goes much further than Heidegger.
 
Karl Marx, the founder of scientific communism, need not assume the ultimate responsibility for the failure of the history of the international communist movement or the failure of 20th century socialism, and there is no doubt that his thought was a huge inspiration for wave after wave of revolutionaries and revolutionary movements following the Paris Commune.  The historical view of revolution that he proposed, from class struggle through violent revolution, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the final achievement of communism, motivated generation after generation of revolutionaries to participate in and organize one revolutionary movement after another.  Revolutionary victories, revolutionary failures…

Yet no matter whether the revolutions succeeded or failed, surely the disastrous consequences the revolutions caused throughout the world should serve as a warning?  To not reflect on the hugely destructive role revolutions have played, or the costs they have incurred, in the society of mankind, and instead to call for the revolutionary personality and for revolutionaries to return to the front lines…What is the ultimate point?  We’ve been singing the Internationale for 150 years, “No savior from on high delivers, No faith have we in prince or peer.”  Why, in the 21st century, are there people still publicly proposing a “new political, economic and social system” led by a leader or a Führer? 

I am writing this essay to remind everyone that the “Heidegger moment” is far from over.  After philosophy, beliefs, and morals have lost their ultimate hold on intellectuals, we will continue to witness how the decline of intellectuals has helped politics re-enter a long, dark moment.
 
After the 1966 interview with Heidegger, Der Spiegel , after considerable thought, finally came up with a title:  “Only a God Can Save Us.”  Who is this god?  Does this god work for Heidegger?  For Chinese intellectuals?
 
Notes

[1] 荣剑：汪晖的“海德格尔时刻”？originally published online on June 4 or June 5, 2020, and no longer available, for obvious reasons.  A pdf of the original is available here. 
 
[2] Translator’s note:  Wang Hui was the editor of Dushu at the time but nonetheless received the prize, and was thus widely accused of self-dealing.  See Geremie R. Barmé and Gloria Davies, “Have We Been Noticed Yet? Intellectual Contestation and the Chinese Web,” in Edward Gu and Merle Goldman, eds.,  Intellectuals Between State and Market. (New York:  Routledge, 2004): 75-108.
 
[3] Translator’s note:  On the plagiarism charges, see https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20100424180813702 .
 
[4] Translator’s note:  For a brief explanation of Hegel’s thinking, see https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/napoleon-hegelian-hero/ .
 
[5] Translator’s note:  English translation taken from Hannah Arendt, “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/10/21/martin-heidegger-at-eighty/ .
 
[6] Translator’s note:  This and other translations from Heidegger’s acceptance address are taken from http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEHeideggerSelf-Assertion.pdf .
 
[7] Translator’s note:  English translation taken from https://lacan.com/heidespie.html .
 
[8] Translator’s note:  This refers to a failed coup attempt in 1936, when young members of the Japanese army carried out a number of assasinations with the aim of removing “evil influences around the throne” and allowing the Emperor to achieve full power.
 
[9] Translator’s note:  This paragraph veritably drips with sarcasm in Chinese.  I’ve tried my best, but am not sure to have done it justice.