Bultmannn/Heidegger exchange on the Nazis

At long last I came to the portion of Heidegger’s correspondence with the theologian RUDOLF BULTMANN that deals with the rise of the Nazis. Here are some samples…

——
Bultmann to Heidegger
December 14, 1932

It is said that you are now also politically active and have become a member of the National Socialist Party. It would naturally interest me to hear whether that is correct…

For my part I have never understood why the National Socialist Movement became a “party.” The authentic movement was and perhaps still is something great, with its instinct for the ultimate, for the feeling of solidarity, and for discipline. But must these forces be brought into party and electoral struggles?…

After the impression I received of superb National Socialist students, I had placed great hopes in the movement. But the impressions I now receive are depressing.
——

Heidegger to Bultmann
December 16, 1932

I am not a member of this Party and never will be, just as little as I have ever been a member of any other.

[“Never say never.” Heidegger joined the Nazi Party 4 months and 17 days later.]

——

Bultmann to Heidegger
June 18, 1933

In the meantime I have read as much of your Rectoral Address as the Freibuger Tagespost printed of it…

“We will ourselves!” you say, if the newspaper reports correctly. How blind this willing appears to me!

The correspondence drags on for many years afterward, but with a long wartime break, and no real resumption of the former intimacy between the two friends.

The only sign of tension in the friendship before this was when Bultmann, appalled by Prussian government interference in the appointment of Theology professors, reported that his wife had suggested that he go to Freiburg and habilitate in Philosophy with Heidegger– a career change from Theology to Philosophy, essentially. Heidegger gave this plan a chilly and evasive reception, and rather than letting it slide, Bultmann responded defensively that it wasn’t as stupid an idea as Heidegger seemed to think.

That issue ended there in the correspondence, though there may have been a phone call to help smooth things over for all I know.

Whenever I read Heidegger’s correspondence, brilliant though it is, what makes me queasy is the extent to which he always has the upper hand in all of his dealings with other humans. Heidegger is always in the driver’s seat. His correspondents are always trying hard to please him, never the reverse, and he rarely pays full compensation for the good treatment he’s receiving. People come to him. (And this is not true just of younger admirers, but of his peers as well, such as Bultmann and Jaspers.)

It would surely have been worthwhile to attend his lectures, but I think close contact with the man would have been best avoided. Among his more talented closer students (Arendt and Gadamer) signs of real psychological damage are visible. Among those who kept their distance and merely listened to the lectures (Levinas and Zubiri) such damage is absent, and they innovate Heidegger’s thoughts in a clean and healthy manner rather than being all tied up in the psychology of it like Arendt and Gadamer. (Whenever Arendt speaks of Heidegger it sounds like arrested emotional development, and no wonder, while Gadamer seems deeply and incurably insecure whenever he refers to Heidegger.)