Heideggers Heritage: Philosophy, Anti-Modernism and Cultural Pessimism

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all, and some he shows as gods, others as humans; some he makes slaves, others free.41
Spengler repeatedly offers observations concerning the natural rank of human beings
which would seem to accord with a conventional reading of this Heraclitean fragment:
As in every process there is a technique of direction and a technique of execution,
so, equally self-evidently, there are men whose nature is to command and men whose
nature is to obey, subject and objects of the political or economic process in question.
This is the basic form of the human life, that since the change has assumed so many
and various shapes, and it is only to be eliminated along with life itself.42

On the next page Spengler goes on to write:

Finally there is a natural distinction of grade between men born to command
and men born to service, between the leaders and the led of life. The existence
of this distinction is a plain fact, and in healthy periods and by healthy peoples
it is admitted (even if unwillingly) by everyone. In the centuries of decadence
the majority force themselves to deny or ignore it, but the very insistence on the
formula that all men are equal shows that there is something here that has to be
explained away.43

If one simply states that Heidegger invoked the Heraclitean fragment above (conventionally translated) and left it at that, then one may well be tempted to infer that
Heidegger and Spengler are singing from the same hymn sheet. Consider, however,
the way Heidegger himself chose to translate this fragment from Heraclitus:
Confrontation is indeed for all (that comes to presence) the sire (who lets emerge),
but (also) for all the preserver that holds sway. For it lets some appear as gods,
others as human beings, some it produces (sets forth) as slaves, but others as the
free. (IM: 65)

It is clear, from the translation alone, that Heidegger and Spengler are talking about
different things. Spengler would most presumably subscribe to a fairly conventional
reading of this Heraclitean fragment which would more or less accord with the
passage from Man and Technics quoted above, while Heidegger would clearly resist
this reading of the Heraclitean fragment. Heidegger elaborates on his understanding
of Heraclitus arguing that
The polemos named here is a strife that holds sway before everything divine and
human, not war in the human sense struggle first and foremost allows what
essentially unfolds to step apart in opposition, first allows position and status and
rank to establish themselves in coming to presence. (IM: 65 emphasis added).

Notwithstanding, Heidegger manages to muddy the waters in this already hoary

context by invoking other notions from the Ancients which are dangerous (to say the
least) in this context and represent an unambiguous attack on the democratic sensibilities of we contemporary Europeans:
Being as logos is originary gathering, not a heap or pile where everything counts
just as much and just as little and for this reason, rank and dominance belong