Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1992 245

NEW ISSUES

Philosophy and Fascism

PAUL GILBERT

Prospective readers of new books commonly leaf through the index to see what great names might most have influenced the author. Engaged in this instructive occupation recently, I was suddenly struck by the ubiquity of references to Hitler, Adolf-though Mein Kampf made no appearance in bibliographies. What could explain this curious phenomenon?

Well, another use of a reference is to record the influence that philosophers have had upon others, rather than to register the influences upon themselves. It is by way of such reminders that R. M. Hare [l] castigates philosophers who write on practical questions without rigour, or with a rigour which terminates in ‘private intuitions or prejudice’. They bear the kind of blame attaching to German philosophers for ‘the flow of thought one of whose results was Hitler’. ‘Fish rot’, Hares quotes an old Turkish proverb as saying, ‘from the head downwards’.

I imagine that Heidegger would be a German philosopher in the tradition which Hare condemns-failing lamentably to exemplify the ‘method of thinking rationally about moral questions’ upon which Hare embarks so uncomplicatedly in his essays. Martin Heidegger and National Socialism [ 2 ] is the subject of a fascinating compilation which invites us to probe further than Hare chooses to. Jurgen Haberman [3] urges us to consider ‘the inner connection that exists between Heidegger’s political engagement and his changing attitude to Fascism, on the one hand, and his critique of reason, which is also not without its practical motivation, on the other’. The critique stems, of course, from the observation that reason presupposes an understanding of the world rooted in practice, in particular mores which it cannot, therefore, legitimate. It is a reasoned critique of the Enlightenment conception of reason, rather than its unrea- soned abandonment.

Pursuing this by now familiar theme, however, can scarcely lead direct to Fascism. Heidegger’s infamous Rectorial Address at Freiburg in 1933 with its adjuration to students to pursue ‘the spiritual mission of the German people’ requires rather more. For reason to be replaced, in M. Krizan’s words [4] ‘as the driving force of history by the (German) race’, a particular conception of where the mores which underpin it are located is needed. A particular conception is needed of the life of a nation-a Volk. If, as Krizan insists [5], the crimes of the Nazis are worse than large-scale slaughter in general, it is because the conception of national life that gives rise to them is an especial evil.

Hitler was not just a moral monster: he was a political-and, this implies, a philosophical-one. That is what makes citing him as simply an individual manifesta- tion of evil so inadequate. Perhaps Raimond Gaita [6] is right to say that Hitler was ‘beyond the epistemic reach’ of the ‘fatuous’ remark that he ought not to have murdered the Jews. But that he was beyond the reach of ordinary moral judgements

246 P. Gilbert

was not merely an individual moral isolation. Hitler’s racial purification project was surely not due to ‘the confusion of [an] atomised dislocated frustrated [self] at sea in a world where common meanings have lost their force’ [7]. It was a political project with political support which, however incomprehensible it has seemed to Germans since, seemed quite natural to them then. While Gaita grasps this point, his own radical disjunction between moral and political necessity-‘governments do evil to protect their peoples.. . we always have done this and we always will, and that is no justification’ [8]-seems to make the political essentially incomprehensible, simply a brute fact of our ‘humanity’.

Simone Weil is frequently cited in Gaita’s book, but not, curiously, in his chapter ‘Ethics and Politics’. Yet in their interesting study of Weil and Marxism [9], Blum and Seidler insist that Weil demonstrates the necessity for accepting a broader responsi- bility for Hitler in her willingness to treat him not as pathology but as ‘living out Western ideals and values’-in particular the Roman ideals of power and greatness. Weil sees moral values themselves as the principal casualties of power. But what is needed to preserve them from it? We may not be altogether reassured by such thoughts as that it was in clubs for English gentlemen that ‘Hitler, who never entered one of these ancient temples, had already-though he knew it not-met his doom. . . the enduring atmosphere of normality within was far more powerful than the temporary atmosphere without’. It is a different articulation of the ideals of power and greatness that we meet here-fascinatingly explored in Chains of Empire [lo]-not an alterna- tive to them.

Philosophers have a tendency to suppose that people can quite easily ‘substitute a civilised standard of values for the lust of domination’ [ 111. Some go on, like Bertrand Russell, to exhort us to passive resistance in the face of such evil-a notion interestingly explored in Civil Disobedience in Focus [ 121-or to acts of moral heroism like Schindler’s sheltering of Jews in Nazi Germany [13]. But this may be over- optimistic. As Stuart Hampshire points out [14], under Hitler ‘the only reality in public affairs was to be pure domination and pure subjection, with no outrage forbidden and no limit set. The abolition of justice in public life, and therefore the abolition of morality itself in public life, very nearly succeeded’.

Hampshire attributes this fact in part to ‘the replacement of the idea of justice by the idea of liberty as the dominant concept in political morality during the nineteenth century’ [15]. Should we conclude, as Macaulay did [16], that as a result ‘either civilisation or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians . . . as the Roman Empire’. Addressing precisely this picture of ‘the combined danger of totalitarianism and mass society’, Hannah Arendt [17] discerned an ‘even more dangerous threat. . . to stifle initiative and spontaneity as such. . . to deliver us entirely to the automatic processes by which we are surrounded anyhow’-a threat resulting from the desire to be free from politics.

Absurdly, Hitler claimed to be ‘the greatest liberator of mankind’ [18]. Yet dispensing with the constraints of justice can seem like liberation, leading Goering to boast: ‘Recht ist das, was uns gefallt’ [19]. It is too quick to regard this as a rejection of the ethical, for we need to know from what shared reasons those who felt themselves thus liberated acted. Why did the German people act as they did, and why do others now?

These are questions about the conduct of nations from which philosophers tend to shy away. Janna Thompson’s Justice and World Order [20] is a notable exception, with

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a useful chapter on nationhood. International Relations in Political Theory [21] by Howard Williams surveys the background in Western philosophy to the troubled relations between nations-relations which constitute, of course, in Hobbes’s view [22], a state of war. W. B. Gallie makes a valiant attempt at Understanding War [23], but for him too the effects of the power which promotes it-‘comparable to those of beauty or personal charm’-are allowed to remain inexplicable-‘beyond the control of reason’.

What is needed to counter the persisting attractions of Fascism? Attention to ‘law and morality’ [24] in the relations between nations is insufficient. For what is needed is a cogent account of the obscure but potent Western values which most dangerously subvert these practices. Until we have this our social and political philosophy will leave a gaping hole in our defences-a hole that corresponds to the invisible gaps in every index through which a host of nameless influences blow.

NOTES

[ l ] R. M. HARE (1989) Essays on Political Morality (Clarendon Press, Oxford), pp. 34-35. [2] GUNTHER NFSKE & EMIL KETERING (eds) (1990) Manin Heidegger and National Socialism (New

[3] Quoted ibid. p. xxvi. (41 BRENDA ALMOND & DONALD HILL (eds) (1991) Applied Philosophy: Morals and Metaphysics in

[5] pace DOUGLAS LACKEY, ibid., pp. 141-155; cp., GAITA infia, pp. 254-255. [6] RAIMOND GAITA (1991) Good and Evil (Basingstoke, Macmillan), pp. 94-95. [7] OWEN FLANAGAN (1991) Varieties of Moral Personality (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press),

p. 156, cp., p. 71 ff. (81 GAITA, pp. 265-267. [9] BLUM & SEIDLER (1989) A Truer Liberty (London, Routledge).

York, Paragon House).

Contemporary Debare (London, Routledge), pp. 156-157.

[ lo] P. J. RICH (1991) Chains ofEmpire (London, Regency Press), quoting ARTHUR BRYANT, p. 145. [ l 11 Quoted by ALAN RYAN (1990) Bertrand Russell: A Political Life (Harmondsworth, Penguin), p. 148. [12] H. A. BEDAU (ed.) (1991) Civil Disobedience in Focus (London, Routledge). [13] Discussed by FLANAGAN, pp. 5-8, and by M. W. JACKSON, in ALMOND & HILL (eds), pp. 158-165. [ 141 STUART HAMPSHIRE (1992) Innocence and Experience (Harmondsworth, Penguin), p. 75. [15] Ibid., p. 71. [16] Quoted by JOHN HOSPERS, in ANTHONY SERAPINI (ed.) (1989) Ethics and Social Concern (New York,

[17] DAVID MILLER (ed.) (1991) Liberty (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 77-78. [18] Quoted by TM GRAY (1991) Freedom (Basingstoke, Macmillan), p. 38. [19] Quoted and discussed by PAUL JOHNSTON (1989) Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy (London,

[20] JANNA THOMPSON (1992) Justice and World Order (London, Routledge). [2 11 HOWARD WILLIAMS (1 992) International Relations in Political Theory (Buckingham, Open University

[22] See T. AIRAKSINEN & M. A. BERTMAN (eds) (1989) Hobbes: War Among Nations (Aldershot, Avebury). [23] W. B. GALLIE (1991) Understanding War (London, Routledge), p. 72. [24] As in WILLIAM O’BRIEN (1991) Law and Morality in Israel’s War with the PLO (London, Routledge).

Paragon House), p. 461.

Routledge), pp. 95, 114.

Press).