This social philosophy fits perfectly with the form in which it is expressed. In fact, one has only to resituate Heideggerian language in the space of contemporary languages where its distinction and social value are objectively defined in order to see that this particularly improbable stylistic combination is rigorously homologous to the ideological combination it is responsible for conveying: that is, to highlight the pertinent points only, the conventional and hieratic language of post-Mallarm^ poetry in the style of Stefan George, the academic language of neo-Kantian rationalism in the style of Cassirer, and lastly the language of the ‘theorists’ of the ‘conservative revolution’ like Moller van den Bruck*’ or, certainly closer to Heidegger politically, Ernst Junger.31 In opposition to the highly ritualized and purified language (above all in its vocabulary) of post-Symbolist poetry. Heideggerian language, which is its transposition in the philosophical order, welcomes, thanks to the freedom implied in the strictly conceptual logic of the Begriffsdichtung, words (e.g. Fiirsorge) and themes which are excluded from the esoteric discourse of great experts32 as well as the highly neutralized language of academic philosophy. Taking his cue from the philosophical
tradition which encourages the exploitation of the infinite potentialities of thought contained in ordinary language33 and common-sense proverbs. Heidegger introduced words and things into academic philosophy (according to the parable of Heraclitus’ oven, which he relates with self-satisfaction) that had previously been banned, but by conferring a new nobility on them through the imposition of all the problems and emblems that characterize the philosophical tradition, and by integrating them into the fabric woven by the verba) games of conceptual poetry. The difference between the spokespersons of the ‘conservative revolution’ and Heidegger, who introduced virtually all of their theses and many of their words into philosophy, lies entirely in the form which renders them misrecog-nizable. But the specificity of Heideggerian discourse would doubtless be lost if the totally original combination of distance and proximity, of loftiness and simplicity, which is realized in this pastoral variant of professorial discourse, were reduced to one or other of its antagonistic aspects: this bastard language embraces perfectly the purpose of the elitism which is within reach of the masses and which offers the most ‘ordinary’ people the promise of philosophical salvation, provided they are capable of hearing, above the corrupt messages of wicked pastors, the ‘authentic’ thoughts of a philosophical Fuhrer who is never more than a Fursprecher, a humble advocate serving the sacred word and thereby made sacred.
Internal Reading and the Respect for Forms
Fritz Ringer was no doubt right to identify the truth about the reaction of the German ‘mandarins’ to National Socialism in the words of Spranger, who. in 1932. believed that The national students’ movement is still authentic in its content, but undisciplined in its form'.54 For academic logocenlrism, whose limit is set by the verbal fetishism of Heideggerian philosophy - the philo-logical philosophy par excellence - it is good form which makes good sense. The truth of the relation between philosophical aristocratism (the supreme form of academic aristocratism) and any other type of aristocratism - including the authentically aristocratic aristocratism of the Junkers and their spokespersons - is expressed in the imposition of form and the prohibition against any kind of ‘reduc-tionism', that is, against any destruction of form aimed at restoring discourse to its simplest expression and, in so doing, to the social conditions of its production. The only proof one needs of this is the
