“Right Step (Albeit in the Wrong Direction)”: Žižek on Heidegger’s Nazism and the Domestication of Nietzsche

Abstract

At a certain point in his in In Defense of Lost Causes (2008), Slavoj Žižek suggests that, particularly with respect to Martin Heidegger's relationship with Nazism, Heidegger took "the right step (albeit in the wrong direction)." Not only does such a proposition provide a means to explain the direction Heidegger took in 1933 as it has been infamously pinpointed in his Rector's Address as the newly-inaugurated president of Freiburg, but it also becomes a means to explore Heidegger's turn towards Nietzsche by Winter 1936/1937 in a series of lectures and seminar delivered up to Winter 1944/1945. This turn presents a direction that, as Žižek describes, points to a "domestication of Nietzsche," which arises as Heidegger begins to distance himself from his active involvement with National Socialism. What his turn towards Nietzsche demonstrates, if employing Žižek's proposition, is Heidegger's desire to move in a "right direction."