Michael Ermarth conducts a close investigation of the use of the term “Americanism” and “Americanization” in Heidegger’s writings from the mid-1930’s to the late-1960’s. In order to address these terms, he first addresses Ruinanz, Heidegger’s concept of the ruination of the world and obscuring of Being by way of modernity and technological progress (the “unworlding” we’ve discussed in classes before). Ruinanz is characterized by the vast turning of our attention to things, objects, concepts, anthropomorphic human-centered convenience. If one understands Heidegger’s argument that beings obscure Being as such,Ruinanz is not far behind. Ermarth argues that after WW1 Heidegger had an evolving tendency of utilizing the catchphrase of “Americanism” to provide a succinct, largely taken for granted or pre-understood, but perfect example of exactly what Ruinanz in the making was.
This, Ermarth says, is the closest Heidegger gets to a reductive stereotype through the common vocabulary of his day. Because, Ermarth writes, Heidegger wasn’t the only one. “Americanism” in the Weimar period became a buzzword used at many levels of cultural criticism and other fields. This reduction of Ruinanz to a commonly understood term with a clear connotation is, for Ermarth, seemingly out of place among Heidegger’s clearly critical aims. For Heidegger, it is clear that the reduction of life to “life the way Americanism determines it” is a step in the wrong direction toward modernity and non-phenomenological thinking. However, according to Ermarth, he himself makes continuous use of this term without putting it directly under his Heideggerian microscope.
After Being and Time, Heidegger begins to write that due to the boundless domination of technology, man becomes overpowered by his own instrumental power. This leads to the homelessness and lack of grounding which is human alienation. However, during his time as rector of Freiburg, Ermarth cites writings in which it seems clear that Heidegger believes philosophy, culture, and politics should be unified categories. Americanism, and the ruination of the world, was encroaching on Europe (but specifically Germany) from the West by Americanism and from the East by Bolshevism (which Heidegger describes to be derivative of the far more consuming and dangerous Americanism). Even following his time as rector, Ermarth argues that Heidegger’s criticism of Nazism never went far beyond centering its problems with a deeper, more ideological Americanism.
A quotation from the essay which I think sums up its aim: “Heidegger’s polemic against American was an integral and unwavering element of his critique of modernity, humanism, and the whole Western intellectual tradition…it remained his habitual incantatory mantra.”
Ermarth, Michael. “Heidegger on Americanism: Ruinanz and the End of Modernity.” Modernism/Modernity. Vol. 7, Issue 3, 2000. pp 379-400.
