Heidegger’s Forgetfulness of Difference

Martin Heidegger’s National Socialist political sympathies are plainer and more troubling to contemporary readers than ever before. This paper examines the relation of leader to society he uses to ground his account of the state in the 1930s. But breakthroughs in the previous decade, in Being and Time in particular, make the political ontology he endorses less compelling. Heidegger’s political positions are incompatible with his account of the ontological difference. The power of the leader of the society he or she leads cannot repeat the relation of Being over entities. Ontologically speaking, totalitarianism is a category mistake. Confusing the transcendental domain for its ontical contents, Heidegger refuses to learn his own lessons in ways Eric Voegelin helps us detect.