Abstract

The tendency in the history of ideas in the 20th century, which has been succinctly described as the „betrayal of the intellectuals“ (J. Benda), causes philosophy to tip over into ideology. The resulting anti-democratism is exemplified on the political ‚right‘ by Martin Heidegger and on the ‚left‘ by Georg Lukács. Thus, according to the diagnosis of the essay, in the spirit of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, a tendency to fundamentally negating extremes in democracy emerges. Then it is shown (II.) how Heidegger increasingly develops the phenomenological version of everyday existence in the „Man“ into a fighting concept against the deliberative public. This tendency culminates in Heidegger’s ‚Rectorate Speech‘, it also shows a continuity that is by no means only reflected in the ‚Schwarze Heften‘, but also in the large manuscripts on the History of Being (Contributions to Philosophy). In the second main section, with a view to Georg Lukács (III.), it is shown how an avant-garde interweaving of ethics and aesthetics, inspired by Max Weber and the George Kreis and vital in its verve, can be transformed into a realization of philosophy in the tactics of revolution. While Heidegger’s type is that of an anti-democratism that keeps away from the ideologues of nationalism, Lukács shows the tragic sample of self-submission to the twists and turns of communist Stalinist ideologies. Finally (IV.), a method is discussed how to distinguish the undeniable contributions of both authors to the philosophical self-understanding of modernity from its ideological muddling: an open-heart surgery, which requires judgement and „tolerance of ambiguity“ in order not to end up in the stereotypical illusory alternative of a „primacy of democracy over philosophy“ (R. Rorty).