In an interview clarifying the grounds of his Rektorat speech of 1933, Heidegger tells of the terror ("Ich bin erschrocken...") inspired in him by the astronauts on the moon. 1 How can the earth be home for men on the moon? Unable to see anything irrevocably tying men to the earth, the interviewer sees no reason why they should not live on the moon. Heidegger answers that everything vital (Wesentlich) and great has emerged only because men had a homeland (Heimat) and were rooted in the traditions of their respective homelands. Consequently the literature of modern, rootless intellectuals who are at home nowhere and everywhere inevitably is destructive of greatness.2
The main thrust of "The Self-Assertion of the German University" is not support for Hitler whom Heidegger rejected after a few months, but preservation of his homeland and therefore the possibility of greatness in his homeland, by the liberation of its universities from the tyranny of those intellectuals. A man's homeland was not always threatened by that tyranny which springs from the "break-out" (Aufbruch) of Greek philosophy. 3
Aufbruch is a term of violence which means to break out or up, to rebel. Greek philosophy is rebellion against the familial and civic piety out of which and against which it arose. Rooted in a piety sanctifying their families and cities, pre-philoSophic men experienced themselves primarily, if not ex-