As the source of authority and guarantees, texts are naturally the object of strategies which, in these domains, are effective only if they are concealed as such, and especially - that is the function of belief -in the eyes of their own authors; sharing in their symbolic capital is granted in exchange for that respect for the proprieties which define in each case, according to the objective distance between the work and the interpreter, the style of the relation to be established between them. What is required is a more complete analysis, in each particular case, of the specific interests of the interpreter, whether researcher, official spokesperson, inspired commentator or straightforward teacher, according to the relative position of the work being interpreted and the interpreter in their respective hierarchies at a given moment; and to determine how and where they guide the interpretation. It would thus be very difficult to understand a position as apparently paradoxical as that of the French Heideggerian Marxists - followers of Marcuse49 and Hobert50 - without bearing in mind that the Heideggerian whitewashing exercise came just in time to meet the expectations of those Marxists who were most concerned to let themselves off the hook by linking the pleibeia philosophia par excellence, then strongly suspected of being 'trivial', with the most prestigious of contemporary philosophies.51 Of all the manipulative devices hidden in the ‘Letter on humanism’,w none was able to influence ‘distinguished’ Marxists more effectively than the second-degree strategy which involved re-interpreting for a new political context - committed to talking the language of ‘a fruitful dialogue with Marxism' - the typically Heideggerian strategy of an (artificial) overcoming through radicalization which the early Heidegger directed against the Marxist concept of alienation (Ent-
fremdung): ‘the fundamental ontology’ which grounds what Marx described as ’the experience of alienation' (albeit in a manner that remained too ‘anthropological’) in the most radical and fundamental alienation of human beings, i.e. their forgetting of the truth of Being, surely represents the nec plus ultra of radicalism.53
One only has to reread the account of a discussion between Jean Beaufret. Henri Lefebvre and Kostas AxclosM in order to convince oneself that this unexpected philosophical combination owes little to what may be called strictly ‘internal' arguments: *1 was enchanted and seized by a vision - not a particularly exact description - that was all the more striking for the way it contrasted with the triviality of most of the philosophical texts that have appeared over the years’ (H. Lefebvre); ‘There is no antagonism between Heidegger’s cosmic-historical vision and Marx's historical-practical conception' (H. Lefebvre): ‘What provided the common ground and I believe links Marx and Heidegger is the era itself in which we live, the era of highly advanced industrial civilization and of the global diffusion of technology ... Ultimately, the two thinkers do at least share the same objective ... Unlike, for example, the sociologists who analyse only specific manifestations here and there’ (F. Chatclei);55 'Marx and Heidegger both proceed to a radical critique of the world of the present as well as the past, and they share a common concent to plan lor the future of the planet' (K. Ax-elos); 'Heidegger’s essential contribution is to help us understand what Marx has said’ (J. Beaufret); ‘The impossibility of being Nazi is part and parcel of the reversal between Being and Time and Time and Being. If Being and Time did not preserve Heidegger from Nazism. Time and Being, which is not a book but the sum of his reflections since 1930 and his publications since 1946, distanced him from it for good' (J. Beaufret): ‘Heidegger is well and truly materialistic' (11. Lefebvre); 'Heidegger, in a very different style, continues Marx's work’ (F. Chatelet).
