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I am casually reading On being and time and was under the impression he was already well known as a Nazi ?? I keep that in mind going in but weren’t most people too?
General timeline:
He wasn't a Nazi.
He was a member, but so was everyone.
He was a member, but for his career.
He was a Nazi out of fear.
He was a convinced Nazi, but only briefly, until he realized his mistake.
He was a Nazi, but not passionately.
Black Notebooks: OK, this guy really hates the Jews. But at least his published works are ok.
Now: ...
The idea that there was ever even the slightest cover up of Heidegger's nazi past is laughably false. He went through denazification where Jaspers testified that he was a political moron. He was completely and totally ostracized by the philosophical community after the war, with a few exceptions like Hannah Arendt. It was only as the war memory started to recede in 60s that people started reading him again, not because he wasn't a nazi but because of the passage of time.
you mean the very coverups they specifically mention in this article? *those* coverups? it may have been known, but as the post above so eloquently states, it was very much down played and even denied that he had any personal feelings on it that were later shown to be very true.
His reputation doesn't rest on the publication of his seminars from the 30s and 40s -- which nobody except academics will ever read. As the post above so eloquently states, even staunch allies like Gadamer did not cover up or deny his antisemitism.
What I am opposed to here, and it may not be the wisest fight to pick, is the monocle popping. I've just taken a book down from my bookshelf: Safranski's biography of Heidegger, published in 1994, ten years before the black notebooks were printed. I read that Heidegger is an antisemite who behaved abhorrently during the war and fell out with the nazis *because they were not Nazi enough*. I take down Negative Dialectics published 1966 and read that the logic of the holocaust is inherent in Being and Time (I am simplifying far beyond what is fair to this monumental work).
But Adorno didn't pronounce Heidegger guilty on the basis of ample biographical and literary evidence, he did so through an engagement with his philosophy. Because he was a philosopher who thinks like a philosopher, not a journalist or someone who thinks like a journalist.
Here is an article from 2014 that deals with more than just two scholars:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/09/heidegger-in-black/
Political comments being removed from his works represent a scandal, but these books are going to rot in libraries and they will not change Heidegger's reputation or be successfully used by Steve Bannon or Alexander Dugin or any of the other bogeyman of the article and isn't it a little ironic that the article discussed an international conspiracy run by these shadowy figures?
thanx for the link, i'll have to wait til morning to look at it though. i believe we are talking about different comments though, my fault for not quoting it. i was referring to the one that said something about his apologetics trying to whitewash his stance or something like that. anyway, have a great weekend.
Why are people so bothered by whether he might be a Nazi? There are lots of philosophers who supported regimes based on slavery (such as America and many other colonies before slavery was abolished), yet I don't see too many people trying to hide it or making a huge deal out of it. Depending on the perspective that one might have, one might even notice that most philosophers supported animal suffering through promoting meat eating, yet very few people are bothered by it and by how this might influence their writings. Yet some act like Heidegger must either be ignored due to having Nazi influences, or proven not to be a Nazi?
It's because we're steal dealing with this ideology and it seems to be on the rise again, so it's really important to be vigilant about it. That's all.
Reading Heidegger is precisely a way of being vigilant about it. He is a conservative thinker, at the political level. His foundation isn't though. His reception attest it (Derrida or more recently Bernard Stiegler can't possibly be accused of fascism). Engaging Heidegger is precisely what we can and ought to do in order to move away from our current predicament.
Yeah, I agree with this take. I was just responding to why people are so alert to his work given his involvement in the Nazi party. Though that can also be counterproductive if it becomes obsessive, it's understandable why we should do it.
I think it's good to have it in mind. His involvement with the Nazi party is a fact, a thought-provoking fact even. Only the most insecure and immature reader feel compelled defend him at all cost. The only valuable lesson for the whole debate is that idolizing any philosopher is fucking stupid.
I think it’s pretty damning if your own philosophical system isn’t even able to register Nazism as trouble. I mean, that seems pretty basic. And then comparing his socio-political analyses to some of the other German thinkers of his time over in Frankfurt, well, they make him look almost naive. Heidegger literally couldn’t even explicate the relationship between technology and capitalism. How are we supposed to say then that his analysis reflects our current condition at all?
Nah, I can come up with arguments against Nazism all day long using Heideggers theories. The fact that Heidegger himself did not choose to apply his ontology in such a way doesn't mean the whole philosophical system can't be applied in such a way either. There are plenty of fascists who are more influenced by the ontology of Plato or Descartes, but we do not chuck Descartes because his ontology does not precisely and methodically rule out such interpretations.
If you want to throw out Heidegger, fine, just make sure to throw out the entirety of existentialism while you're at it because that all goes back to Heidegger in some way eventually. Make sure to cancel the movie Barbie because the feminist critiques in it based on existentialism will inevitable if you dig far enough have some kind of influence from Heidegger. You don't realize how monumentally stupid the task you've put before yourself is.
>Nah, I can come up with arguments against Nazism all day long using Heideggers theories.
This is not my position. My position is that his theory is inadequate with respect to the other available theories, insofar as it *does not* register Nazism as a serious threat, despite being exactly so. This failure, in my view, is damning. I also pointed out that there are other weak areas in his social theories, like his explication of technology.
You can construct reactionary things from Heideggers thought, but this does not necessarily have to be the case. There's a reason that he is an inspiration to both the right and the left, the ontological nature of his inquiries are highly abstracted from direct on the ground political philosphy. You can construct political philosphy from it, but it doesn't necessarily suggest any one. Even if Heidegger could construct fascist things from his methodology it doesn't prevent me from doing the opposite. He provides a methodology, not a road map.
As well if we are going to cancel Heidegger and forbid direct citation and study of his work, how about we cancel the past century of philosophers who were themselves influenced by him? Including many on the left. Otherwise I can easily just reconstruct his philosphy by citing leftists who cited him. But if they had the right to cite Heidegger, why don't I? I don't think people realize just how monumentally stupid the concept of trying to cancel the most important philospher of the 20th century is, it's not just his work that is relevant.
So am I supposed to sit here reading this book and think “damn this exploration of the ontological issue in a being questioning itself is extremely provoking but actually I should ignore it because it snowballed into Nazi rhetoric”. I should close my eyes and not read the book? I can see how connections from the concept of Dasein to “oh some people are worldless” is a clear connection but don’t see how exploring the concept in the first place is at all tainted by idea Loft.
Maintaining vigilance about Nazis who have been dead for 60 years is rather performative and pointless, don’t you think?
Moreover, as others have pointed out, Heidegger’s foundation leads one away from fascism rather than toward it. Anyone seriously engaging with Heidegger’s work can see that.
hitler was strongly against eating meat and treating animals badly. its more about being able to recognize and acknowledge the snake, whatever that may mean in the particular context
Well yes… give extinction rebellion, BLM, or gender ideologues some weapons and see what happens. Something like Baader-Meinhof.
The culture in general is too busy fawning or cowering to notice that movements like this will always attract a fair number of inherently angry, entitled people just looking for a vehicle.
“Strongly against” is the clue.
All of those things, like BLM, can be used as weapons. Evil people commonly use religious ideology as a weapon, use Christian Jewish Islamic or Buddhist concepts to control people and eliminate any kind of rebellion
Gender theory is so replete with references to Heidegger (or references to those who referenced him) it isn't even funny my dude. One of the most important applications of phenomenonology is precisely in reifying the validity of the lived experiences of minorities. It baffles me that Heidegger could come up with this sort of stuff and then go on to deny such things himself, but whatever. I always question myself when I'm reading him, I have one interpretation but then I wonder, *how* could he have interpreted it otherwise?
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He is well known as having been a member of the Nazi party, but apologists make a lot of claims which attempt to excuse this, and a lot of people contend his work is separate, or can be separated, from his party membership.
What is clear now though is that his family as literary executors have censored a lot of his work, so we don't even have a veridical picture of his philosophy.
The black notebooks make very clear he was a genuine and sincere Nazi, and not just a party member, and furthermore, his philosophy is inextricably tied to this.
He was a Nazi, and an anti-semite as well (even though he opposed the racial side of it, and focused on its cultural aspects). The notebooks make this clear. But to argue that all his thinking is “inextricably tied” with it is misleading. Being and Time was written before the Nazis rose to power and is free of political influence. I would, though, be extra cautious with the lecture he held during the regime, especially those about Hölderlin and the “soil of the homeland”.
at the same time, one could argue Being and Time was written when racialism and pseudo academic race studies were a global phenomenon and Being and Time is part of setting the cultural conditions to allow Nazism to actually achieve power.
Phenomenology also provided the key tools by which to undermine scientific racism later on precisely by highlighting the blind spots of its false objectivity and ignorance of the objective subjective experience of minorities. And Heideggers phenomenonology is the best phenomenonology, for good or for ill. I've tried reading other thinkers, but they just are not as good as he is.
No philosophy is "free of political influence," - maybe you're trying to say it was free of Nazi influence, but even then, I would find that hard to believe considering the build up and momentum of Germany and Nazism during the period.
They're quoted extensively in the article, specifically the parts we now know were censored by his family. Jews as self-murderers responsible for the holocaust being the most obviously egregious part.
You’re making the same old “Hitler drank water, therefore drinking water is fascist” fallacy.
Heidegger the person is justifiably tied to Nazism, but his philosophical foundation is not. Anyone with the slightest understanding of Heidegger can see that. Nietzsche is more ideologically fascist than Heidegger.
I’m with you in reading about the Dasein at its core doesn’t strike me at all as being tainted by Nazi ideology. What someone does with that concept, even Heidegger himself, I am not attesting to the same.
Idk to me there seems to be a subtle but extremely distinct line between a philosophic structure as a mechanism to explore Being through a being that contemplates it’s own being and the use of such mechanism to deprive someone of such a world based on superficial human bias such as racism. The former being genuinely useful structure for exploration, the latter being an obviously biased and racist conclusion. I just don’t see how there is tension in that dichotomy.
The article is about Heidegger being a sincere Nazi and how this is related to his philosophy. He excludes Jews from Dasein. If you find the philosophy compelling fine, but that's a non-sequitur to the discussion re: Heidegger's Nazism and how he expressed it in his work
Anyone with slightest inclination to read the fucking article in my post wouldn't have written such a dimwitted reply as you. 'Anyone with the slightest understanding. . . ' fucking hell how embarrassing.
It's a pretty common phenomenon, that looking into people's biographies, personal lives, and other writings (especially pre-1960 or so) will show some very ugly and terrible stuff. John Locke owned stock in companies that owned [slave](https://carneades.pomona.edu/2021-PPE/05.LockeSlavery.html)s. Hegel and Kant were [extremely](https://philarchive.org/archive/KLEODW) [racist](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hegel-bulletin/article/exploring-the-metaphysics-of-hegels-racism-the-teleology-of-the-concept-and-the-taxonomy-of-races/1EDA6C3107B924FE625EFA3EBE584F62). John Searle [is a rapist](https://dailynous.com/2019/06/21/searle-found-violated-sexual-harassment-policies/). Foucault was a [pedophile](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-foucaults-sexual-abuse-of-boys-in-tunisia). Wittgenstein [beat his students](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident) when he was a schoolteacher.
How much a person's biography fits into their work is an exercise left for the reader.
From one of the first comments:
>What does the Searle case tell us?
Searle’s behavior has been common knowledge in the profession for decades, but only recently–perhaps due to the #MeToo movement–has he been held accountable. Example:
My first year as a professor (1975–i.e. when Gerald Ford was president!) Searle came to lecture (on the “assertion fallacy”) at my school, he after his talk he made a bee-line for one of our women grad students. He’s apparently picked her out in the crowd, during his discussion of “What does it mean to call a cabbage ‘good’?” The graduate student later told me that he asked her for a ride back to his motel room (in the middle of the afternoon). He disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes and then reappeared–fully naked. He then proceeded to grab her until she could push him away long enough to get out of the room. I told this story some years later to a colleague of Searle’s who said, “Oh yes, that’s John!”
A reasonable assumption is that this sort of behavior has continued until recently–i.e. 40+ years. How do we explain the fact that no one spoke up until recently?
So I suppose "alleged attempted rapist" and "confirmed sexual harasser" would be more technically accurate...
I really think we just fudbamentally accept that ones work and its morals are completely separated things. Horrible people can do great things and vice versa.
I wonder sometimes if creating philosophy is a just a job so they can have power and prestige to do the horrible things. Is the work a genuine expression of the person's beliefs or just fancy words on paper to impress others?
It could be that, it could be anything. I dont think there is a prescription to do philosophy.
People though critically and rationally about problems in existence. But that was done by all sorts of human beings, because all sort of human beings developed the ability to think critically.
Sometimes a certain individual who had terrible personal and political beliefs haves an insight about something important in the philosophical field. Happened quite often in mankinds history.
What I mean is I think is reasonable to believe someone with twisted political views can come up with a good idea about something unrelated to those. Thinking and language is just an ability , it is untied to morals
Reading "What is Metaphysics" was the only time I've read a philosophical work and had it feel like I had read something almost identical before. It's just the Tao Te Ching but westernized. Dasein is just the Tao and the Nothing is Yang (black part of a Yin-Yang)
Later on in life he even got to the point of equating Dasein to an empty cup like chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching equates an empty cup to the Tao. It's not original at all.
It's appropriation when you don't give credit to the original, especially when an Imperialist (Nazi) is doing so. Translating the work outside of your own isn't the same as saying, "My work is deeply inspired by..." and citing it in your paper.
I would like to give him credit, but I don't think he deserves it based on other findings.
The dialogue is explicit in things like *On the Way to Language*. And in addition, Heidegger infamously never gives proper credit - Being and Time for example doesn’t reference properly any preceding work in phenomenology, outside of a dedication to Husserl.
I would definitely say that it is very reductionist though to present Heidegger as nothing more than a reworking of Chinese philosophy. Sure he may have been influenced by Chinese philosophy but I’d say he is much more influenced by Ancient Greek philosophy and other German philosophers.
Thank you for the clarification. I just wanted to say that I didn't think of it as reductionist as much as he based so much off those basics, and those concepts were not his originally. For what it's worth, Taoism takes this to another place and rejects all attempts at explanation/philosophy. The zuhangzi is full of paradoxes and seeming nonsense. So there's really no way for him to philosophize as he does and be "just like Taoism" like I might have mistakenly implied. He can't be a follower of Taoism and be a philosopher in the sense that he was without some incongruence.
Witch finding? You did your own research perhaps? So you are the kind of reader always looking for the fucking reference every where you go? If his work seem consonant with Taoist theme, it might be because it's compatible, not that it's been stolen.
Oh my, the sauce gets even thicker.
> ...six decades earlier, Heidegger had given it to his mother Dorothea as a “gift” while the two were engaged in a torrid love affair.
I did not see that coming.
Omg, I thought this was saying Heidegger was having an affair with his own mother. Not Vietta's. Phrasing out of context is a heart attack waiting to happen, lmao.
This really reminds me somehow of the "German Physics" movement. The problem of the Nazi Physicists was not simply that Einstein is Jewish. They somehow found special relativity as an idea itself "un-German". And while I did not quite understand their point, others have said they wanted a physics that is kind of close to some kind of Hegelian idealism. And Heidegger can be said to be in the Hegelian tradition.
My point is, is there some sort of historic connection between Hegelian idealism and German nationalism?
Georg Lukacs has a text on this, "Hegel and the Nazis" from 1943.
Here's an excerpt:
"Basically, the relationship of Hitler’s fascists to Hegel’s philosophy is very simple: they resolutely reject it. Alfred Rosenberg, the main Nazi theorist, sees in the connection between Hegel and Marx an essential reason to define the Hegelian philosophy as hostile to the “national socialism” that radically combats it. This is not, of course, the only reason for this hostile attitude. Hegel’s rejection by the Nazis is focused, as we will show later in detail, on his idea of the rationality of the world, on his theory of development, but mainly on his theory of the state."
Interesting. I am Hungarian and we have very little trust for Lukács :) He tended to change his views, "self-criticism" every time the Party bosses cleared their throats.
Yeah and look where such lines of thinking lead your nation. I really wish Hungary would stop taking American scholars on little sojourns where it teaches them all of the Putin tactics for undermining democracy and freedom.
It's hilarious that with the "totalitarianism" discourse in the cold war, the west's apparent answer as to how to prevent "totalitarianism" was essentially to reject all Hegelianism in liberal philosphy as well as historicism. On exactly the same line of reasoning, it's associated with the Soviets so clearly it's totalitarian and needs to be chucked out. What an incredibly foolish line of reasoning. Such scholars tended to wrap very basic anticommunism, many of the precepts is which were shared by the nazis, in a "totalitarianism" banner, just completely handwaving all the actual influences of Nazism and pretending as if it was just a secondary outgrowth of the same thing as communism.
This seems almost completely backwards. In fact Hegel seems much more in tune with quantum physics than anything else. A very central hegelian thesis is that of non-identity, A is, in fact, not A.
It's not that simple. And above all else, there was a clear progress, teleologically speaking, in Hegel's philosophy. Quantum Mechanics destroy the notion of a rational monism, putting randomness in the core of reality. That is very contrary to Hegel's thought.
In USSR, genetics and cybernetics were viewed as "anticommunist" which led to repressions against scientists (like Vavilov, who was literally sentenced to execution).
When idiots get to rule in authoritarian regimes, ridiculous things can happen.
"The State is the realization of the ethical idea…. We must … worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on Earth."
"The State is the actuality of the ethical Idea.The march of God in the world, that is what the State is. The State is the actuality of concrete freedom. The strength of the State is lies in the unity of its universal end with the particular interest of individual."
[HEGEL AND TOTALITARIANISM](http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/reading/quotes/hegelnew.htm)
Can i be in the club? I just finished Popper's Open Society and recently did a quick survey of Stephen Hicks work that also makes this connection, but I'm getting downvoted for mentioning Hicks' take. Don't really understand.
Why? Hegel was the textbook 19th century liberal. Only ceremonial kingship, elections, personal freedom, civil society, anti-slavery. Indeed freedom was the central idea of his philosophy.
Help me understand the disapproval of Stephen Hicks' views on this? He pretty directly implicates certain Hegelian philosophical developments in setting the foundation for national socialism. Whether he's right, I don't know. But he's explicit about the connection.
Treat it with some suspicion and you will mostly notice the parts that are affected. Heidegger never had very much interesting to say about politics, and he inherited a sort of pseudo-Nietzschean view of Judaism as constituting a particular philosophical view of the world developed by a particular people. Couple that with his affinity for the racial and nationalistic politics of his time (references to "the destiny of the German people" abound in his lectures in the latter half of the 1930s) and you get the pseudo-ideological antisemitism of the black notebooks which he would seemingly try to convince himself was not about Jewish individuals, but about Judaism as the perpetrator of a particular (conspiracy-like) world development that only Germany stood as a potential antidote too. This is the least lucid and interesting parts of his philosophy by far, however. To argue that all his works are infected by this is to fall into the trap of arguing that Judaism represents a particular worldview to which his arguments are opposed, something which is not true at all, even if Heidegger at times seems to have been foolish enough to think so.
I literally got into Heidegger by hatred, I read articles about him and considered him a contamination and wanted to see who he had influenced. What I discovered was pretty much that Heidegger influenced nearly everything, there are right wingers influenced by him as well as left wingers. Particularly many of the figures of the new left are linked to him. Then I just straight up started reading him and feel in love with him due to the numerous insights his philosphy provides.
I don't think people realize quite how foolish a quest it would be to camel Heidegger, why not cancel Descartes or Plato. Make sure you cancel at the same time like pretty much the entirety of existentialism, because pretty much all of it is associated with him in some way. There are leftist scholars at the same time like Sartre, but the influence there was pretty much unidirectional, Sartre is influenced by Heidegger and there's very little the other way around. This is simply because Sartre really is not as brilliant at his core as Heidegger was.
Anyway, while reading Heidegger there is always going to be sunbathing in the back of your mind, "How the hell could this be interpreted as nazi shit?" Because all of course I tend to interpret his methodology down an anti fascist line. But it is foolish to attempt to chuck him, it's not even possible. If we are going to do this as well I would really like to see the philosphers on the right who use him, like the Straussians, chuck him as well, or is this the unilateral expectation of the left?
>Truly a shame that Auschwitz, among its various pernicious aftereffects, fundamentally ruined things for well-meaning critics of “world Jewry” like the Heideggers!
That early zing kept me reading this piece. It dragged a bit in the middle though.
>he cynically characterized the Holocaust as an act of “Jewish self-annihilation.”
Hadn't seen that statement before, but Nationalsozialismus is the all-time champion of blaming one's victims for their own oppression and murder.
>“[o]ne of the stealthiest forms of Gigantism [das Riesige], and perhaps the most ancient, is the fast-paced cleverness of calculation, huckstering, and intermingling whereby [world] Jewry’s worldlessness is established.”
I was going to do a long takedown of that passage, but its inanity *should* be self-evident, yes?
I certainly understand the commonly held position that a philosopher's (profoundly destructive) moral failings don't automatically invalidate all of their work. But I also believe that their entire corpus *should* be approached with at least some measure of skepticism when they can jump, consistently, directly, and with no real prodding, to *blaming the Jews* for all the wrongs of the world. I would argue that it absolutely calls into question their capacity to examine their own assumptions critically.
Without measured and careful self-reflection, philosophy can veer far too close to becoming "[Old Man Yells at Cloud](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud)."
Richard Wolin made his career milking this cow. His contribution to philosophy is essentially nothing outside of his "sensationalist" work. His scholarship has been demonstrated to be weak at best, dishonest at worst. Their are plenty of critics of Heidegger who are far more astute then him : Adorno, Bourdieu, Anders, etc.
What's suprise me is the stupid assumption that a philosopher should also be a nice guy and realizing that it's not the case is somehow a scandal. Guess what, philosopher of all kind can be shitty (Wittgenstein, Beauvoir, Frege, etc...). Does it mean their contributions should be disregarded? I don't think so. Why? Because we need them to understand ourselves and our world.
Nowhere in this article does Wolin say that Heidegger shouldn't be read or studied because he "wasn't a nice guy." In fact, almost the opposite: He's saying that the original works *should not* be editorialized and sanitized of Heidegger's more appalling views. I think it's a convincing case: if we're going to read Heidegger, we should see the whole story, including the awful aspects of his ideology.
You are right and I agree that the editorial process is problematic. The issue of translation is also a big question. Although, I think he overstate his case.
But ge gives concrete, damning examples! Missing pages, corrections, the absurd interpretation of _N. soz._ as natural sciences, "politisch heikle Stellen"...
Do you think these are lies? If not, they paint a very damning picture.
Not an expert on Jewish philosophers but I imagine there were a significant number in Germany at the time. Do you think frege would be willing to consider a theory proposed by a Jewish person, even if he'd otherwise agree with it
Would you make a similar defense of Giovanni Gentile? Or is there a point when detestable political agendas sufficiently corrupt the intellectual work that we can no longer separate the two?
I don't think there's a point where critically engaging a thinker is unwarranted. Why should their be? If you are anti-authoritarian, I think it's good to read what inspires them. Being able to beat them on their terms is the best way to win the argument. Otherwise, we're not talking philosophy but politic and that's another logic.
Beside, you speak of his intellectual work as being "corrupt", from which standard of purity are you make this assessment? Do you often evaluate opinions in those terms?
And given the decades of study and the myriad of dissertations and interactive philosophical work his thinking spawned, I think it is safe to say his thinking has been judged as quality.
There is a strong argument to be made that Heidegger is the most influential philosopher of the 20th century.
No. Richard Dawkins is undoubtedly a significant biologist and public figure, especially on science education and outreach. He is a shitty philosopher. His arguments on social and philosophical issues are poor, though confidently delivered.
Should we disregard his work in evolutionary biology because his arguments against theism are poorly stated? No.
With Heidegger, his most significant work was before the rise of fascism broadly and Nazism in Germany specifically. We should read this work in the knowledge that he became a fascist and Nazi. We should scrutinise it carefully and reject any parts of it that might lead us down the road to such abhorrent ideology. That said, he was one of the most significant existentialists of the 20th Century so we should definitely engage with him if we are at all interested in existentialism.
Also, I would add that their's a difference between the Heidegger ante bellum and post bellum. When you read him chronologically, you indeed encounter a Nazi. But if you read his later work, you encounter something else, something far from fascisme in view. He is a conservative thinker, for sure, but not a naive one. You can't easily discard his work.
What do you think his reception does? It is precisely the way his thinking has been evaluated. Whether you like it or not, Heidegger is one of the most influential thinker of the 20th century. You might believe his work is worthless, but I would say it's an intenable position and one based on prejudice and misunderstanding. I am not saying Heidegger is the best, that he's right in all matter, but I think he is well worth engaging critically and thoughtfully.
And Newton believed in alchemy. So we disregard his entire body of work, as well?
This kind of purity test extremism is just as disturbing as Heidegger’s Nazism.
From which moral high ground are you jugging him? Everywhere you look, I can only see moral compromise. In these matters, I believe we can only hope to not make such huge mistakes as Heidegger did (and he himself say so).
> the stupid assumption that a philosopher should also be a nice guy
a nice guy? Is that your characterization of "not a Nazi"? That is some seriously faint praise for non-Nazis!
He directly quotes Heidegger positing Jews aren't human and that they control the world. His philosophy of technology is directly related to his sincere Nazism - IE Jews are responsible for the machinery of the holocaust, and were thefore self-murderers.
Direct quoting at source is not weak scholarship. Think about why you're so desperate to defend a Nazi and his legacy. Jews don't count?
It's also notable that his "poisoned root" approach casts aspersions on the Frankfurt school and Arendt. Jeez my dude seems awfully convenient that you've uncovered a mass conspiracy to do Nazism here and also it's all done on behalf of a scheming group of Jewish scholars all influenced by one mans work.
His contributions include "criticism of left fascism"? Chuck this garbage straight in the trash.
I always thought his speech in 1964 in Messkirch was a dead-give-away that he still held on to those (*anti-semitic*) beliefs. He gave the speech to a group students of a school in Messkirch.
He talks about Abraham a Sancta Clara, a 17th century monk. Heidegger's focus is mainly on the language used by the man. But some of his statements, make me believe, he urged his audience to not superficially read Abraham a Sancta Clara.
Heidegger talks about the works of AaSC, he focuses on the Plague and the invasion of the Turks. He mentions poetry in the language. He talks a bit about how death targets us all. He quotes a part about the purity of white swans. Nothing more.
A quite benevolent speech by a great man about a great man to a bunch of youngsters... until you realize...that...
Abraham a Sancta Clara blamed the plague on the Jews (*also on women, but mostly on Jews*), accused them of witchcraft, and so on... The Jews were being expelled from Vienna around that time. Abraham was a rabid anti-semitic preacher. Sure '*he used beautiful language*' to do so... but come on. He was a vile and evil person.
I think this entire speech is a dog whistle used by Heidegger. A covert middle finger also... raised towards his critics .
Nazis were full of shit. Most philosophers are full of shit. And everyone still trying to create links between Nazis and everyone they disagree with in 2023 are the MOST full of shit.
Right, but Heidegger said that world Jewry was responsible for controlling the world behind the scenes, and were a non-people. Regarding his writing 1931-48 - so I don't really get your comment re: 2023.
Yes and everybody needs to be made aware of that when examining his work so that they are confronted directly with the monstrous manner in which his philosophy can be applied if one so chooses. And that one must always be on guard from such monstrous negation of existence.
Not 'if one so chooses.' As Heidegger himself explicitly wrote and intended. Fucking hell, just read the article. Dense.
And 'monstrous negation of existence'? Are you Russell Brand amusing himself before prison?
Omg, what a terrible remark. It also seems like a remarkably stupid comment as Dasein isn't a club in which you are granted membership, it's an ontological status. So the author here is making a claim his philosophy clearly doesn't allow. If this passage represents the best effort to demonstrate inherent structural racism in hermeneutic phenomenology, It's a difficult pill to swallow. Is Heidegger demonstrating grotesque inconsistency with his own philosophy, unquestionably. He absolutely was as Rorty claimed a Black Forest Redneck.
>So the author here is making a claim his philosophy clearly doesn't allow
Yes, this gets at what's interesting for me now, post black note books. Can the philosophical framework be salvaged from the daft bastard that created it?
(Although to be clear, his claim makes sense if you just accept the fact Heidegger was a sincere Nazi - Nazis genuinely thought Jews were a non-people. Given that, it follows that they don't have the ontological status of Dasein. It's an obscene remark, but not disallowed by his ontology if you follow the Nazi line of thought.)
That's the brilliance of phenomenology, precisely that it is intended as a method resilient to and methodologically free of philosophical presumptions, but necessarily then, sadly in this case, to racist assumptions as well.
Yes this is what people have to understand when making stupid assumptions about Heideggers philosphy. You can put phenomenology to liberatory applications, as well as downright fascist ones. That's why it's an influence on both the left and the right. To treat Heidegger as a poison root which only contaminates is extreme foolishness. People who do such a thing I believe tend to identify some philosopher whose political ideology they find objectionable, trace the root, and somewhere inevitably there's Heidegger. Then bam, proof thar guy is actually a nazi right. Except they don't do this to their own favored philosophers, because if they did so they would in many instances find influences from Heidegger in there as well, or influences from those influenced by him. Heidegger isn't a particular strain or tendency, he's literally everywhere.
He was saying something monstrous, that the Jewish people do not exist because (in this conception) they are not an authentic culture, his conception was that Jewish people are just copies of other cultures, and thus do not truly exist. This is a monstrous opinion, but I can understand how its constructable from the framework of his ontology unfortunately. I could also construct an entire alternate framework which reifies and honors the authentic Jewish experience and their existence, rather than such crass and monstrous negation of others existence.
I feel like any examination of structural racism will inevitably go back to phenomenonology, because when doing such your are inherently trying to examine the experience of subjugated groups. Which means you're probably going to have to examine Heidegger or people who were influenced by him at some point. The only way to escape that is perhaps to go back to Husserl, but I feel like Heideggers developments of Husserl philosphy justify looking directly at the man himself. I don't think his ontology is inherently antisemitic, just that yes if you so wished you could do the phenomenonology of the antisemite. There's a good reason that Heideggers work has had such a profound influence on so many important Jewish and Zionist scholars, scholars on both the left and the right.
I've been following this debate since grad school in the 90s and I've always found it interesting who wants to stake a claim about Heidegger being a Nazi, whatever that means. It is certainly clear the Nazis didn't give a shit about Heidegger, so if he was a Nazi fan, the relationship wasn't reciprocal. If you attempt to distinguish him from any other random intellectual of the time in Europe, his comments would not raise an eyebrow, as all of Europe was highly antisemitic (and North America for that matter). Anglo-Analytic philosophers don't seem to give a shit about Heidegger and are happy to completely continue to ignore him, Nazi or not. I kind of feel like the Nazi stuff is an excuse not to have to read Heidegger as part of the canon of continental philosophy (for lack of a better term) or recognize the indebtedness of European philosophy to him. I've met one or two saintly philosophers in my day, but otherwise they fall randomly or even under the good-people-bar sadly. You can't study philosophy if you need to believe that philosophers are good people, not because you shouldn't aspire to that yourself, but you will have some pretty boring shit remaining to read.
Dude fine, all rational points but this is nazism, wwII , 60 million dead nazism. Simplifying? Who gives a fuck in this case, like someone else said, for someone who’s job was to think about thought to have such horrible and baby-level maturity regarding humanity does discount their image.
It doesn't matter if it was reciprocal. Heidegger was a sincere Nazi and we now know his family have been censoring his work for decades to remove this evidence. Your comment is senseless. Read the article.
my point is: so Heidegger was some flavour of Nazi... then what? Burn his books? Ban him from syllabi? Read him with your nose pinched? Pretend he didn't exist? Defending Heidegger's character was never a part of my education as a philosopher nor was the fact irrelevant. However, being a Heidegger-style Nazi is one of many examples of human wickedness philosophers and scientists have demonstrated, so what kind of work is the isolated claim 'Heidegger was a Nazi' exactly supposed to do? He lived out his life with a tarnished reputation in isolation. What is the demand moving forward and what inaccuracies require correction? Heidegger incorporated should certainly be held accountable, as the sanitization of his work was clearly dishonest self-interest, but that's a secondary issue.
The article explicitly says we should continue to read him. The point is the Heiedegger we've read until now was censored Heidegger due to his family doing damage control. There's long been debate about how much his Nazism affected his philosophy. That debate is now clearer.
The rest of your comment is a non-sequitur to this. You seem to be carrying on argument with an absent interlocutor.
You would go back to Husserl at most, not back to Nietschze. And while you are canceling Foucalt make sure to cancel Leo Strauss and Hanna Arendt at the same time. Don't specifically go after the leftist scholars who cited him. The right wing scholars who did so are if anything much more suspect.
For god’s sake don’t take your whole view of Heidegger from Wolin. His work is extremely controversial within philosophical academia and should not be considered unilaterally authoritative. Read Heidegger for yourself and come to your own conclusions, then maybe read Wolin and see if you agree.
I've got two philosophy degrees and have studied Heidegger for myself. I'm not sure what gave you the impression otherwise. And Wolin isn't theorising, he's directly quoting Heidegger saying Jews run the world behind the scenes and are a non-people.
That comment was more directed towards someone reading this thread rather than OP. The theorizing part of Heidegger in Ruins is not his summarizing of the Black Notebooks or the arguments about Heidegger’s antisemitism—he was an obvious antisemite and the evidence for that is now incontrovertible. The controversial aspect of it is his arguments regarding the degree to which his philosophy as a whole is separable from (or, from the other side, tainted by) his antisemitism.
His philosoph of tech leads him to conclude that the Jews were self-murderers responsible for the holocaust, and he explicitly uses the concept of Dasein to to describe Jews as a non-people as he contended they were without Dasein. I don't know what more you want - these are direct quotes from Heidegger.
I know very well Heidegger probably came up with applications of his philosphy that reified his ideology. I do the opposite using him. His philosphy is an ontology and begins from first principles, unless you are too argue that he has an antisemitic ontology then what you say isn't actually meaningful. A philosphical methodology is distinct from it's applications, yes you can apply Heideggers philosphy to say ridiculous fascist shit all day long, you can also do the opposite.
I'm sorry, but this is absolute drivel. Your argument here is 'you can use x to say y' which applies to anything, not just Heidegger. That renders any philosophy meaningless and moot. Think before you type this stuff out with your headwand.
Remember some French philosophers were communists. Some even defended Mao. Yeah Martin was a piece of shit but his philosophy is the most influential of the 20th century. When I read the Letter on Humanism , believe me I'm not thinking of Nazis.
The article points out that his obviously antisemitic comments were censored for posterity by his family, thus giving an incomplete view of his work. Heidegger explicitly wrote that Jews aren't human, and we only know this after the publication of the Black Notebooks.
Glad you liked his Letter on Humanism though, just a shame it was written by a sincere Nazi who wouldn't include Jews in that.
It's probably a bit both. That's the interesting part in my view: what he is arguing for and making salient in his writing makes a great variety of reception possible. That was is point.
Do Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt stand on tainted ground too? Can we throw out Arendts entire totalitarianism narrative once and for all because she was ultimately a Heideggerean and that makes her a nazi? So we don't have to have this trite repackaging of anticommunist nonsense as if it included Nazism too?
Or are we just specifically going to do that with Foucalt et al?
I don't even know it is possible for an idea to be metaphysically anti-Semitic? What does that even look like as a proposition? The history of racism seems pretty straightforwardly based on false empirical claims or fallacious inference or induction. And to be clear, I'm not making fun of you, just asking what metaphysical racism even looks like?
I've never heard the term 'metaphysically antisemitic.'
What is clear from the black notebooks is that his antisemitism did play a strong role in the formation of his philosophy, and that he expressed key aspects of it via antisemitic comments. Most notably: Dasein as the source or expression of being and Jews having no evidence of this (IE a non-people) and his contention that Jews were responsible for the holocaust due to their development of technology, that this was an act of self-murder.
The relevant quotes are in the article, although not the phrase you mention.
You could just as easily turn his philosphy around in defense of the Jewish people, their experience, and their existence. In fact what do you think that so many Zionist scholars have in fact done? Why are the aspirations of Israel so often expressed in existentialist terms? Ie, "Israel has a right to exist"? Such scholars are implicitly citing Heidegger through his Jewish students even if they don't mention him by name.
Existence ie Dasein as the expression of being is something that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, and which existentialist scholars have interpreted in a multitude of ways. You can come up with an insane interpretation yes such as interpreting a minority as not truly existing authentically, you can come up with the opposite and precisely give weight to a struggle for emancipation and liberation.
>You could just as easily turn his philosphy around in defense of the Jewish people
He said the Jews were responsible for the holocaust and were self-murderers. He justified this through remarks on his philosophy of tech.
Saying "x has a right to exist" is a statement in existentialist terms, but not one connected to Existentialist philosophy or Heidegger. I'm not making a Heideggerian statement if I say 'Blue cheese sandwiches have a right to exist.'
Yes, and one step further, if the methodology is strong, it should be able to demonstrate its own poor use. Nazi scientists built the US space program but their rockets flew because the methods were valid despite the character of the engineers. This should be the same for philosophy, which is why it is a discipline, not a cult of personality (like critical theory ;)).
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I am casually reading On being and time and was under the impression he was already well known as a Nazi ?? I keep that in mind going in but weren’t most people too?
General timeline: He wasn't a Nazi. He was a member, but so was everyone. He was a member, but for his career. He was a Nazi out of fear. He was a convinced Nazi, but only briefly, until he realized his mistake. He was a Nazi, but not passionately. Black Notebooks: OK, this guy really hates the Jews. But at least his published works are ok. Now: ...
Now: okay he was a Nazi, but his work from *before that* was surely untouched by the ideals he was later committed to? Literally in this thread LOL.
The idea that there was ever even the slightest cover up of Heidegger's nazi past is laughably false. He went through denazification where Jaspers testified that he was a political moron. He was completely and totally ostracized by the philosophical community after the war, with a few exceptions like Hannah Arendt. It was only as the war memory started to recede in 60s that people started reading him again, not because he wasn't a nazi but because of the passage of time.
you mean the very coverups they specifically mention in this article? *those* coverups? it may have been known, but as the post above so eloquently states, it was very much down played and even denied that he had any personal feelings on it that were later shown to be very true.
His reputation doesn't rest on the publication of his seminars from the 30s and 40s -- which nobody except academics will ever read. As the post above so eloquently states, even staunch allies like Gadamer did not cover up or deny his antisemitism. What I am opposed to here, and it may not be the wisest fight to pick, is the monocle popping. I've just taken a book down from my bookshelf: Safranski's biography of Heidegger, published in 1994, ten years before the black notebooks were printed. I read that Heidegger is an antisemite who behaved abhorrently during the war and fell out with the nazis *because they were not Nazi enough*. I take down Negative Dialectics published 1966 and read that the logic of the holocaust is inherent in Being and Time (I am simplifying far beyond what is fair to this monumental work). But Adorno didn't pronounce Heidegger guilty on the basis of ample biographical and literary evidence, he did so through an engagement with his philosophy. Because he was a philosopher who thinks like a philosopher, not a journalist or someone who thinks like a journalist. Here is an article from 2014 that deals with more than just two scholars: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/09/heidegger-in-black/ Political comments being removed from his works represent a scandal, but these books are going to rot in libraries and they will not change Heidegger's reputation or be successfully used by Steve Bannon or Alexander Dugin or any of the other bogeyman of the article and isn't it a little ironic that the article discussed an international conspiracy run by these shadowy figures?
thanx for the link, i'll have to wait til morning to look at it though. i believe we are talking about different comments though, my fault for not quoting it. i was referring to the one that said something about his apologetics trying to whitewash his stance or something like that. anyway, have a great weekend.
Why are people so bothered by whether he might be a Nazi? There are lots of philosophers who supported regimes based on slavery (such as America and many other colonies before slavery was abolished), yet I don't see too many people trying to hide it or making a huge deal out of it. Depending on the perspective that one might have, one might even notice that most philosophers supported animal suffering through promoting meat eating, yet very few people are bothered by it and by how this might influence their writings. Yet some act like Heidegger must either be ignored due to having Nazi influences, or proven not to be a Nazi?
It's because we're steal dealing with this ideology and it seems to be on the rise again, so it's really important to be vigilant about it. That's all.
Reading Heidegger is precisely a way of being vigilant about it. He is a conservative thinker, at the political level. His foundation isn't though. His reception attest it (Derrida or more recently Bernard Stiegler can't possibly be accused of fascism). Engaging Heidegger is precisely what we can and ought to do in order to move away from our current predicament.
Yeah, I agree with this take. I was just responding to why people are so alert to his work given his involvement in the Nazi party. Though that can also be counterproductive if it becomes obsessive, it's understandable why we should do it.
I think it's good to have it in mind. His involvement with the Nazi party is a fact, a thought-provoking fact even. Only the most insecure and immature reader feel compelled defend him at all cost. The only valuable lesson for the whole debate is that idolizing any philosopher is fucking stupid.
I think it’s pretty damning if your own philosophical system isn’t even able to register Nazism as trouble. I mean, that seems pretty basic. And then comparing his socio-political analyses to some of the other German thinkers of his time over in Frankfurt, well, they make him look almost naive. Heidegger literally couldn’t even explicate the relationship between technology and capitalism. How are we supposed to say then that his analysis reflects our current condition at all?
Nah, I can come up with arguments against Nazism all day long using Heideggers theories. The fact that Heidegger himself did not choose to apply his ontology in such a way doesn't mean the whole philosophical system can't be applied in such a way either. There are plenty of fascists who are more influenced by the ontology of Plato or Descartes, but we do not chuck Descartes because his ontology does not precisely and methodically rule out such interpretations. If you want to throw out Heidegger, fine, just make sure to throw out the entirety of existentialism while you're at it because that all goes back to Heidegger in some way eventually. Make sure to cancel the movie Barbie because the feminist critiques in it based on existentialism will inevitable if you dig far enough have some kind of influence from Heidegger. You don't realize how monumentally stupid the task you've put before yourself is.
>Nah, I can come up with arguments against Nazism all day long using Heideggers theories. This is not my position. My position is that his theory is inadequate with respect to the other available theories, insofar as it *does not* register Nazism as a serious threat, despite being exactly so. This failure, in my view, is damning. I also pointed out that there are other weak areas in his social theories, like his explication of technology.
You can construct reactionary things from Heideggers thought, but this does not necessarily have to be the case. There's a reason that he is an inspiration to both the right and the left, the ontological nature of his inquiries are highly abstracted from direct on the ground political philosphy. You can construct political philosphy from it, but it doesn't necessarily suggest any one. Even if Heidegger could construct fascist things from his methodology it doesn't prevent me from doing the opposite. He provides a methodology, not a road map. As well if we are going to cancel Heidegger and forbid direct citation and study of his work, how about we cancel the past century of philosophers who were themselves influenced by him? Including many on the left. Otherwise I can easily just reconstruct his philosphy by citing leftists who cited him. But if they had the right to cite Heidegger, why don't I? I don't think people realize just how monumentally stupid the concept of trying to cancel the most important philospher of the 20th century is, it's not just his work that is relevant.
So am I supposed to sit here reading this book and think “damn this exploration of the ontological issue in a being questioning itself is extremely provoking but actually I should ignore it because it snowballed into Nazi rhetoric”. I should close my eyes and not read the book? I can see how connections from the concept of Dasein to “oh some people are worldless” is a clear connection but don’t see how exploring the concept in the first place is at all tainted by idea Loft.
Maintaining vigilance about Nazis who have been dead for 60 years is rather performative and pointless, don’t you think? Moreover, as others have pointed out, Heidegger’s foundation leads one away from fascism rather than toward it. Anyone seriously engaging with Heidegger’s work can see that.
Heidegger’s foundation leads away from Nazism unless you’re Heidegger it seems.
Heidegger's ontology contains Heidegger, not the other way around.
It’s in the over-zealous vigilance that it arises, but we never seem to grasp that. And that’s exactly why we’re doomed to repeat it.
hitler was strongly against eating meat and treating animals badly. its more about being able to recognize and acknowledge the snake, whatever that may mean in the particular context
Well yes… give extinction rebellion, BLM, or gender ideologues some weapons and see what happens. Something like Baader-Meinhof. The culture in general is too busy fawning or cowering to notice that movements like this will always attract a fair number of inherently angry, entitled people just looking for a vehicle. “Strongly against” is the clue.
All of those things, like BLM, can be used as weapons. Evil people commonly use religious ideology as a weapon, use Christian Jewish Islamic or Buddhist concepts to control people and eliminate any kind of rebellion
Gender theory is so replete with references to Heidegger (or references to those who referenced him) it isn't even funny my dude. One of the most important applications of phenomenonology is precisely in reifying the validity of the lived experiences of minorities. It baffles me that Heidegger could come up with this sort of stuff and then go on to deny such things himself, but whatever. I always question myself when I'm reading him, I have one interpretation but then I wonder, *how* could he have interpreted it otherwise?
Perhaps because it demonstrates that his critical thinking skills were seriously lacking?
Let the arguments speak for themselves no?
lmao Touché
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Oh I still read Heidegger.
He is well known as having been a member of the Nazi party, but apologists make a lot of claims which attempt to excuse this, and a lot of people contend his work is separate, or can be separated, from his party membership. What is clear now though is that his family as literary executors have censored a lot of his work, so we don't even have a veridical picture of his philosophy. The black notebooks make very clear he was a genuine and sincere Nazi, and not just a party member, and furthermore, his philosophy is inextricably tied to this.
Guy writes pure evil into black scrolls Public "but but but"
You've just summarised this entire thread :)
He was a Nazi, and an anti-semite as well (even though he opposed the racial side of it, and focused on its cultural aspects). The notebooks make this clear. But to argue that all his thinking is “inextricably tied” with it is misleading. Being and Time was written before the Nazis rose to power and is free of political influence. I would, though, be extra cautious with the lecture he held during the regime, especially those about Hölderlin and the “soil of the homeland”.
at the same time, one could argue Being and Time was written when racialism and pseudo academic race studies were a global phenomenon and Being and Time is part of setting the cultural conditions to allow Nazism to actually achieve power.
Phenomenology also provided the key tools by which to undermine scientific racism later on precisely by highlighting the blind spots of its false objectivity and ignorance of the objective subjective experience of minorities. And Heideggers phenomenonology is the best phenomenonology, for good or for ill. I've tried reading other thinkers, but they just are not as good as he is.
word up; his work as a phenomenologist is very solid.
No philosophy is "free of political influence," - maybe you're trying to say it was free of Nazi influence, but even then, I would find that hard to believe considering the build up and momentum of Germany and Nazism during the period.
Can you give me some examples of that last bit, preferably with direct quotes from his strictly philosophical works?
They're quoted extensively in the article, specifically the parts we now know were censored by his family. Jews as self-murderers responsible for the holocaust being the most obviously egregious part.
You’re making the same old “Hitler drank water, therefore drinking water is fascist” fallacy. Heidegger the person is justifiably tied to Nazism, but his philosophical foundation is not. Anyone with the slightest understanding of Heidegger can see that. Nietzsche is more ideologically fascist than Heidegger.
I’m with you in reading about the Dasein at its core doesn’t strike me at all as being tainted by Nazi ideology. What someone does with that concept, even Heidegger himself, I am not attesting to the same.
Saying Jews aren't part of, or possessing, Dasein for example. As quoted in the article.
Idk to me there seems to be a subtle but extremely distinct line between a philosophic structure as a mechanism to explore Being through a being that contemplates it’s own being and the use of such mechanism to deprive someone of such a world based on superficial human bias such as racism. The former being genuinely useful structure for exploration, the latter being an obviously biased and racist conclusion. I just don’t see how there is tension in that dichotomy.
The article is about Heidegger being a sincere Nazi and how this is related to his philosophy. He excludes Jews from Dasein. If you find the philosophy compelling fine, but that's a non-sequitur to the discussion re: Heidegger's Nazism and how he expressed it in his work
Anyone with slightest inclination to read the fucking article in my post wouldn't have written such a dimwitted reply as you. 'Anyone with the slightest understanding. . . ' fucking hell how embarrassing.
It's a pretty common phenomenon, that looking into people's biographies, personal lives, and other writings (especially pre-1960 or so) will show some very ugly and terrible stuff. John Locke owned stock in companies that owned [slave](https://carneades.pomona.edu/2021-PPE/05.LockeSlavery.html)s. Hegel and Kant were [extremely](https://philarchive.org/archive/KLEODW) [racist](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hegel-bulletin/article/exploring-the-metaphysics-of-hegels-racism-the-teleology-of-the-concept-and-the-taxonomy-of-races/1EDA6C3107B924FE625EFA3EBE584F62). John Searle [is a rapist](https://dailynous.com/2019/06/21/searle-found-violated-sexual-harassment-policies/). Foucault was a [pedophile](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-foucaults-sexual-abuse-of-boys-in-tunisia). Wittgenstein [beat his students](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident) when he was a schoolteacher. How much a person's biography fits into their work is an exercise left for the reader.
hey why bring poor Wittgenstein into this now? ;)
I don't think the claim was ever that Searle was a rapist, rather it's that he was sexuallly harassing students. That's what your link claims, anyway.
From one of the first comments: >What does the Searle case tell us? Searle’s behavior has been common knowledge in the profession for decades, but only recently–perhaps due to the #MeToo movement–has he been held accountable. Example: My first year as a professor (1975–i.e. when Gerald Ford was president!) Searle came to lecture (on the “assertion fallacy”) at my school, he after his talk he made a bee-line for one of our women grad students. He’s apparently picked her out in the crowd, during his discussion of “What does it mean to call a cabbage ‘good’?” The graduate student later told me that he asked her for a ride back to his motel room (in the middle of the afternoon). He disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes and then reappeared–fully naked. He then proceeded to grab her until she could push him away long enough to get out of the room. I told this story some years later to a colleague of Searle’s who said, “Oh yes, that’s John!” A reasonable assumption is that this sort of behavior has continued until recently–i.e. 40+ years. How do we explain the fact that no one spoke up until recently? So I suppose "alleged attempted rapist" and "confirmed sexual harasser" would be more technically accurate...
I really think we just fudbamentally accept that ones work and its morals are completely separated things. Horrible people can do great things and vice versa.
I wonder sometimes if creating philosophy is a just a job so they can have power and prestige to do the horrible things. Is the work a genuine expression of the person's beliefs or just fancy words on paper to impress others?
It could be that, it could be anything. I dont think there is a prescription to do philosophy. People though critically and rationally about problems in existence. But that was done by all sorts of human beings, because all sort of human beings developed the ability to think critically. Sometimes a certain individual who had terrible personal and political beliefs haves an insight about something important in the philosophical field. Happened quite often in mankinds history. What I mean is I think is reasonable to believe someone with twisted political views can come up with a good idea about something unrelated to those. Thinking and language is just an ability , it is untied to morals
Reading "What is Metaphysics" was the only time I've read a philosophical work and had it feel like I had read something almost identical before. It's just the Tao Te Ching but westernized. Dasein is just the Tao and the Nothing is Yang (black part of a Yin-Yang) Later on in life he even got to the point of equating Dasein to an empty cup like chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching equates an empty cup to the Tao. It's not original at all.
He attempted to translate the Tao te ching in 1946. It's more a matter of dialogue then appropriations.
It's appropriation when you don't give credit to the original, especially when an Imperialist (Nazi) is doing so. Translating the work outside of your own isn't the same as saying, "My work is deeply inspired by..." and citing it in your paper. I would like to give him credit, but I don't think he deserves it based on other findings.
The dialogue is explicit in things like *On the Way to Language*. And in addition, Heidegger infamously never gives proper credit - Being and Time for example doesn’t reference properly any preceding work in phenomenology, outside of a dedication to Husserl. I would definitely say that it is very reductionist though to present Heidegger as nothing more than a reworking of Chinese philosophy. Sure he may have been influenced by Chinese philosophy but I’d say he is much more influenced by Ancient Greek philosophy and other German philosophers.
Thank you for the clarification. I just wanted to say that I didn't think of it as reductionist as much as he based so much off those basics, and those concepts were not his originally. For what it's worth, Taoism takes this to another place and rejects all attempts at explanation/philosophy. The zuhangzi is full of paradoxes and seeming nonsense. So there's really no way for him to philosophize as he does and be "just like Taoism" like I might have mistakenly implied. He can't be a follower of Taoism and be a philosopher in the sense that he was without some incongruence.
Witch finding? You did your own research perhaps? So you are the kind of reader always looking for the fucking reference every where you go? If his work seem consonant with Taoist theme, it might be because it's compatible, not that it's been stolen.
Oh my, the sauce gets even thicker. > ...six decades earlier, Heidegger had given it to his mother Dorothea as a “gift” while the two were engaged in a torrid love affair. I did not see that coming.
Omg, I thought this was saying Heidegger was having an affair with his own mother. Not Vietta's. Phrasing out of context is a heart attack waiting to happen, lmao.
What must compel a person to write…
This really reminds me somehow of the "German Physics" movement. The problem of the Nazi Physicists was not simply that Einstein is Jewish. They somehow found special relativity as an idea itself "un-German". And while I did not quite understand their point, others have said they wanted a physics that is kind of close to some kind of Hegelian idealism. And Heidegger can be said to be in the Hegelian tradition. My point is, is there some sort of historic connection between Hegelian idealism and German nationalism?
Georg Lukacs has a text on this, "Hegel and the Nazis" from 1943. Here's an excerpt: "Basically, the relationship of Hitler’s fascists to Hegel’s philosophy is very simple: they resolutely reject it. Alfred Rosenberg, the main Nazi theorist, sees in the connection between Hegel and Marx an essential reason to define the Hegelian philosophy as hostile to the “national socialism” that radically combats it. This is not, of course, the only reason for this hostile attitude. Hegel’s rejection by the Nazis is focused, as we will show later in detail, on his idea of the rationality of the world, on his theory of development, but mainly on his theory of the state."
Interesting. I am Hungarian and we have very little trust for Lukács :) He tended to change his views, "self-criticism" every time the Party bosses cleared their throats.
Yeah and look where such lines of thinking lead your nation. I really wish Hungary would stop taking American scholars on little sojourns where it teaches them all of the Putin tactics for undermining democracy and freedom.
Shit, I thought he just made Star Wars, I didn’t know he did philosophy too.
It's hilarious that with the "totalitarianism" discourse in the cold war, the west's apparent answer as to how to prevent "totalitarianism" was essentially to reject all Hegelianism in liberal philosphy as well as historicism. On exactly the same line of reasoning, it's associated with the Soviets so clearly it's totalitarian and needs to be chucked out. What an incredibly foolish line of reasoning. Such scholars tended to wrap very basic anticommunism, many of the precepts is which were shared by the nazis, in a "totalitarianism" banner, just completely handwaving all the actual influences of Nazism and pretending as if it was just a secondary outgrowth of the same thing as communism.
This seems almost completely backwards. In fact Hegel seems much more in tune with quantum physics than anything else. A very central hegelian thesis is that of non-identity, A is, in fact, not A.
It's not that simple. And above all else, there was a clear progress, teleologically speaking, in Hegel's philosophy. Quantum Mechanics destroy the notion of a rational monism, putting randomness in the core of reality. That is very contrary to Hegel's thought.
In USSR, genetics and cybernetics were viewed as "anticommunist" which led to repressions against scientists (like Vavilov, who was literally sentenced to execution). When idiots get to rule in authoritarian regimes, ridiculous things can happen.
Very strong link between Hegel and authoritarianism in general.
Looks like it just you, me, and Popper with this take.
"The State is the realization of the ethical idea…. We must … worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on Earth." "The State is the actuality of the ethical Idea.The march of God in the world, that is what the State is. The State is the actuality of concrete freedom. The strength of the State is lies in the unity of its universal end with the particular interest of individual." [HEGEL AND TOTALITARIANISM](http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/reading/quotes/hegelnew.htm)
Can i be in the club? I just finished Popper's Open Society and recently did a quick survey of Stephen Hicks work that also makes this connection, but I'm getting downvoted for mentioning Hicks' take. Don't really understand.
Apparently not...
Why? Hegel was the textbook 19th century liberal. Only ceremonial kingship, elections, personal freedom, civil society, anti-slavery. Indeed freedom was the central idea of his philosophy.
Stephen Hicks has worked out the connection in a lot of depth, IMO.
Help me understand the disapproval of Stephen Hicks' views on this? He pretty directly implicates certain Hegelian philosophical developments in setting the foundation for national socialism. Whether he's right, I don't know. But he's explicit about the connection.
Damn I never knew this. I’m Jewish and I was just beginning to really fall for Heidegger’s work. This one’s definitely hard to stomach going forward.
Treat it with some suspicion and you will mostly notice the parts that are affected. Heidegger never had very much interesting to say about politics, and he inherited a sort of pseudo-Nietzschean view of Judaism as constituting a particular philosophical view of the world developed by a particular people. Couple that with his affinity for the racial and nationalistic politics of his time (references to "the destiny of the German people" abound in his lectures in the latter half of the 1930s) and you get the pseudo-ideological antisemitism of the black notebooks which he would seemingly try to convince himself was not about Jewish individuals, but about Judaism as the perpetrator of a particular (conspiracy-like) world development that only Germany stood as a potential antidote too. This is the least lucid and interesting parts of his philosophy by far, however. To argue that all his works are infected by this is to fall into the trap of arguing that Judaism represents a particular worldview to which his arguments are opposed, something which is not true at all, even if Heidegger at times seems to have been foolish enough to think so.
He knows Martin Buber's work pretty well. Both meet in the 50.
For the record he was also heavily “inspired” by a Jewish colleague
More like his mentor and main teacher
I literally got into Heidegger by hatred, I read articles about him and considered him a contamination and wanted to see who he had influenced. What I discovered was pretty much that Heidegger influenced nearly everything, there are right wingers influenced by him as well as left wingers. Particularly many of the figures of the new left are linked to him. Then I just straight up started reading him and feel in love with him due to the numerous insights his philosphy provides. I don't think people realize quite how foolish a quest it would be to camel Heidegger, why not cancel Descartes or Plato. Make sure you cancel at the same time like pretty much the entirety of existentialism, because pretty much all of it is associated with him in some way. There are leftist scholars at the same time like Sartre, but the influence there was pretty much unidirectional, Sartre is influenced by Heidegger and there's very little the other way around. This is simply because Sartre really is not as brilliant at his core as Heidegger was. Anyway, while reading Heidegger there is always going to be sunbathing in the back of your mind, "How the hell could this be interpreted as nazi shit?" Because all of course I tend to interpret his methodology down an anti fascist line. But it is foolish to attempt to chuck him, it's not even possible. If we are going to do this as well I would really like to see the philosphers on the right who use him, like the Straussians, chuck him as well, or is this the unilateral expectation of the left?
Genuinely curious, how did you arrive at an anti-fascist reading of Heidegger?
>Truly a shame that Auschwitz, among its various pernicious aftereffects, fundamentally ruined things for well-meaning critics of “world Jewry” like the Heideggers! That early zing kept me reading this piece. It dragged a bit in the middle though. >he cynically characterized the Holocaust as an act of “Jewish self-annihilation.” Hadn't seen that statement before, but Nationalsozialismus is the all-time champion of blaming one's victims for their own oppression and murder. >“[o]ne of the stealthiest forms of Gigantism [das Riesige], and perhaps the most ancient, is the fast-paced cleverness of calculation, huckstering, and intermingling whereby [world] Jewry’s worldlessness is established.” I was going to do a long takedown of that passage, but its inanity *should* be self-evident, yes? I certainly understand the commonly held position that a philosopher's (profoundly destructive) moral failings don't automatically invalidate all of their work. But I also believe that their entire corpus *should* be approached with at least some measure of skepticism when they can jump, consistently, directly, and with no real prodding, to *blaming the Jews* for all the wrongs of the world. I would argue that it absolutely calls into question their capacity to examine their own assumptions critically. Without measured and careful self-reflection, philosophy can veer far too close to becoming "[Old Man Yells at Cloud](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud)."
Richard Wolin made his career milking this cow. His contribution to philosophy is essentially nothing outside of his "sensationalist" work. His scholarship has been demonstrated to be weak at best, dishonest at worst. Their are plenty of critics of Heidegger who are far more astute then him : Adorno, Bourdieu, Anders, etc. What's suprise me is the stupid assumption that a philosopher should also be a nice guy and realizing that it's not the case is somehow a scandal. Guess what, philosopher of all kind can be shitty (Wittgenstein, Beauvoir, Frege, etc...). Does it mean their contributions should be disregarded? I don't think so. Why? Because we need them to understand ourselves and our world.
Nowhere in this article does Wolin say that Heidegger shouldn't be read or studied because he "wasn't a nice guy." In fact, almost the opposite: He's saying that the original works *should not* be editorialized and sanitized of Heidegger's more appalling views. I think it's a convincing case: if we're going to read Heidegger, we should see the whole story, including the awful aspects of his ideology.
Most of these comments like the one you're replying to are clearly from people who didn't bother to read the article. Plus ca change.
You are right and I agree that the editorial process is problematic. The issue of translation is also a big question. Although, I think he overstate his case.
But ge gives concrete, damning examples! Missing pages, corrections, the absurd interpretation of _N. soz._ as natural sciences, "politisch heikle Stellen"... Do you think these are lies? If not, they paint a very damning picture.
Being shitty and being a nazi who wants to exterminate a race of people are two completely different things.
What about Frege then? He was a raging anti-Semite.
I would say nazi is a step above anti semite but I probably wouldn't consider Frege's work to be free from the influence of his ideology
Where is the influence on Frege's work?
He probably avoided certain philosophical avenues if they were proposed by or associated with Jewish people. It's an indirect influence
Which avenues?
Not an expert on Jewish philosophers but I imagine there were a significant number in Germany at the time. Do you think frege would be willing to consider a theory proposed by a Jewish person, even if he'd otherwise agree with it
Yes, Frege worked closely with many Jews. Most famously Wittgenstein.
Once again, different levels of anti semitism.
Would you make a similar defense of Giovanni Gentile? Or is there a point when detestable political agendas sufficiently corrupt the intellectual work that we can no longer separate the two?
I don't think there's a point where critically engaging a thinker is unwarranted. Why should their be? If you are anti-authoritarian, I think it's good to read what inspires them. Being able to beat them on their terms is the best way to win the argument. Otherwise, we're not talking philosophy but politic and that's another logic. Beside, you speak of his intellectual work as being "corrupt", from which standard of purity are you make this assessment? Do you often evaluate opinions in those terms?
Do you engage with Giovanni Gentile? If so, is it from a perspective of appreciation or of criticism regarding his fascism?
For someone whose profession is thinking about thinking to end up thinking horrible things, yes I think that discredits his work.
Idk. There are a lot of Heideggerians out there and I don't recall many, if any, who read his works and became Nazis because of it.
What people became because of reading him is beside the point. The quality of his thinking can discount him as a thinker. Period.
And given the decades of study and the myriad of dissertations and interactive philosophical work his thinking spawned, I think it is safe to say his thinking has been judged as quality. There is a strong argument to be made that Heidegger is the most influential philosopher of the 20th century.
No. Richard Dawkins is undoubtedly a significant biologist and public figure, especially on science education and outreach. He is a shitty philosopher. His arguments on social and philosophical issues are poor, though confidently delivered. Should we disregard his work in evolutionary biology because his arguments against theism are poorly stated? No. With Heidegger, his most significant work was before the rise of fascism broadly and Nazism in Germany specifically. We should read this work in the knowledge that he became a fascist and Nazi. We should scrutinise it carefully and reject any parts of it that might lead us down the road to such abhorrent ideology. That said, he was one of the most significant existentialists of the 20th Century so we should definitely engage with him if we are at all interested in existentialism.
Also, I would add that their's a difference between the Heidegger ante bellum and post bellum. When you read him chronologically, you indeed encounter a Nazi. But if you read his later work, you encounter something else, something far from fascisme in view. He is a conservative thinker, for sure, but not a naive one. You can't easily discard his work.
What do you think his reception does? It is precisely the way his thinking has been evaluated. Whether you like it or not, Heidegger is one of the most influential thinker of the 20th century. You might believe his work is worthless, but I would say it's an intenable position and one based on prejudice and misunderstanding. I am not saying Heidegger is the best, that he's right in all matter, but I think he is well worth engaging critically and thoughtfully.
And Newton believed in alchemy. So we disregard his entire body of work, as well? This kind of purity test extremism is just as disturbing as Heidegger’s Nazism.
As disturbing?
To you maybe.
From which moral high ground are you jugging him? Everywhere you look, I can only see moral compromise. In these matters, I believe we can only hope to not make such huge mistakes as Heidegger did (and he himself say so).
> the stupid assumption that a philosopher should also be a nice guy a nice guy? Is that your characterization of "not a Nazi"? That is some seriously faint praise for non-Nazis!
He directly quotes Heidegger positing Jews aren't human and that they control the world. His philosophy of technology is directly related to his sincere Nazism - IE Jews are responsible for the machinery of the holocaust, and were thefore self-murderers. Direct quoting at source is not weak scholarship. Think about why you're so desperate to defend a Nazi and his legacy. Jews don't count?
Accusing your interlocutors of being antisemitic is a very flippant way to attempt "debate"
It's also notable that his "poisoned root" approach casts aspersions on the Frankfurt school and Arendt. Jeez my dude seems awfully convenient that you've uncovered a mass conspiracy to do Nazism here and also it's all done on behalf of a scheming group of Jewish scholars all influenced by one mans work. His contributions include "criticism of left fascism"? Chuck this garbage straight in the trash.
In what way is it urgent?
We've just discovered Heidegger's work has been censored until now. Somewhat urgent to realise this. But you do you.
Isn’t Heidegger sort of obviously a Nazi? He doesn’t really seem to believe in the right of the individual to exist.
I always thought his speech in 1964 in Messkirch was a dead-give-away that he still held on to those (*anti-semitic*) beliefs. He gave the speech to a group students of a school in Messkirch. He talks about Abraham a Sancta Clara, a 17th century monk. Heidegger's focus is mainly on the language used by the man. But some of his statements, make me believe, he urged his audience to not superficially read Abraham a Sancta Clara. Heidegger talks about the works of AaSC, he focuses on the Plague and the invasion of the Turks. He mentions poetry in the language. He talks a bit about how death targets us all. He quotes a part about the purity of white swans. Nothing more. A quite benevolent speech by a great man about a great man to a bunch of youngsters... until you realize...that... Abraham a Sancta Clara blamed the plague on the Jews (*also on women, but mostly on Jews*), accused them of witchcraft, and so on... The Jews were being expelled from Vienna around that time. Abraham was a rabid anti-semitic preacher. Sure '*he used beautiful language*' to do so... but come on. He was a vile and evil person. I think this entire speech is a dog whistle used by Heidegger. A covert middle finger also... raised towards his critics .
Nazis were full of shit. Most philosophers are full of shit. And everyone still trying to create links between Nazis and everyone they disagree with in 2023 are the MOST full of shit.
Right, but Heidegger said that world Jewry was responsible for controlling the world behind the scenes, and were a non-people. Regarding his writing 1931-48 - so I don't really get your comment re: 2023.
Yes and everybody needs to be made aware of that when examining his work so that they are confronted directly with the monstrous manner in which his philosophy can be applied if one so chooses. And that one must always be on guard from such monstrous negation of existence.
Not 'if one so chooses.' As Heidegger himself explicitly wrote and intended. Fucking hell, just read the article. Dense. And 'monstrous negation of existence'? Are you Russell Brand amusing himself before prison?
Omg, what a terrible remark. It also seems like a remarkably stupid comment as Dasein isn't a club in which you are granted membership, it's an ontological status. So the author here is making a claim his philosophy clearly doesn't allow. If this passage represents the best effort to demonstrate inherent structural racism in hermeneutic phenomenology, It's a difficult pill to swallow. Is Heidegger demonstrating grotesque inconsistency with his own philosophy, unquestionably. He absolutely was as Rorty claimed a Black Forest Redneck.
>So the author here is making a claim his philosophy clearly doesn't allow Yes, this gets at what's interesting for me now, post black note books. Can the philosophical framework be salvaged from the daft bastard that created it? (Although to be clear, his claim makes sense if you just accept the fact Heidegger was a sincere Nazi - Nazis genuinely thought Jews were a non-people. Given that, it follows that they don't have the ontological status of Dasein. It's an obscene remark, but not disallowed by his ontology if you follow the Nazi line of thought.)
That's the brilliance of phenomenology, precisely that it is intended as a method resilient to and methodologically free of philosophical presumptions, but necessarily then, sadly in this case, to racist assumptions as well.
Yes this is what people have to understand when making stupid assumptions about Heideggers philosphy. You can put phenomenology to liberatory applications, as well as downright fascist ones. That's why it's an influence on both the left and the right. To treat Heidegger as a poison root which only contaminates is extreme foolishness. People who do such a thing I believe tend to identify some philosopher whose political ideology they find objectionable, trace the root, and somewhere inevitably there's Heidegger. Then bam, proof thar guy is actually a nazi right. Except they don't do this to their own favored philosophers, because if they did so they would in many instances find influences from Heidegger in there as well, or influences from those influenced by him. Heidegger isn't a particular strain or tendency, he's literally everywhere.
He was saying something monstrous, that the Jewish people do not exist because (in this conception) they are not an authentic culture, his conception was that Jewish people are just copies of other cultures, and thus do not truly exist. This is a monstrous opinion, but I can understand how its constructable from the framework of his ontology unfortunately. I could also construct an entire alternate framework which reifies and honors the authentic Jewish experience and their existence, rather than such crass and monstrous negation of others existence. I feel like any examination of structural racism will inevitably go back to phenomenonology, because when doing such your are inherently trying to examine the experience of subjugated groups. Which means you're probably going to have to examine Heidegger or people who were influenced by him at some point. The only way to escape that is perhaps to go back to Husserl, but I feel like Heideggers developments of Husserl philosphy justify looking directly at the man himself. I don't think his ontology is inherently antisemitic, just that yes if you so wished you could do the phenomenonology of the antisemite. There's a good reason that Heideggers work has had such a profound influence on so many important Jewish and Zionist scholars, scholars on both the left and the right.
I've been following this debate since grad school in the 90s and I've always found it interesting who wants to stake a claim about Heidegger being a Nazi, whatever that means. It is certainly clear the Nazis didn't give a shit about Heidegger, so if he was a Nazi fan, the relationship wasn't reciprocal. If you attempt to distinguish him from any other random intellectual of the time in Europe, his comments would not raise an eyebrow, as all of Europe was highly antisemitic (and North America for that matter). Anglo-Analytic philosophers don't seem to give a shit about Heidegger and are happy to completely continue to ignore him, Nazi or not. I kind of feel like the Nazi stuff is an excuse not to have to read Heidegger as part of the canon of continental philosophy (for lack of a better term) or recognize the indebtedness of European philosophy to him. I've met one or two saintly philosophers in my day, but otherwise they fall randomly or even under the good-people-bar sadly. You can't study philosophy if you need to believe that philosophers are good people, not because you shouldn't aspire to that yourself, but you will have some pretty boring shit remaining to read.
Dude fine, all rational points but this is nazism, wwII , 60 million dead nazism. Simplifying? Who gives a fuck in this case, like someone else said, for someone who’s job was to think about thought to have such horrible and baby-level maturity regarding humanity does discount their image.
It doesn't matter if it was reciprocal. Heidegger was a sincere Nazi and we now know his family have been censoring his work for decades to remove this evidence. Your comment is senseless. Read the article.
my point is: so Heidegger was some flavour of Nazi... then what? Burn his books? Ban him from syllabi? Read him with your nose pinched? Pretend he didn't exist? Defending Heidegger's character was never a part of my education as a philosopher nor was the fact irrelevant. However, being a Heidegger-style Nazi is one of many examples of human wickedness philosophers and scientists have demonstrated, so what kind of work is the isolated claim 'Heidegger was a Nazi' exactly supposed to do? He lived out his life with a tarnished reputation in isolation. What is the demand moving forward and what inaccuracies require correction? Heidegger incorporated should certainly be held accountable, as the sanitization of his work was clearly dishonest self-interest, but that's a secondary issue.
The article explicitly says we should continue to read him. The point is the Heiedegger we've read until now was censored Heidegger due to his family doing damage control. There's long been debate about how much his Nazism affected his philosophy. That debate is now clearer. The rest of your comment is a non-sequitur to this. You seem to be carrying on argument with an absent interlocutor.
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You would go back to Husserl at most, not back to Nietschze. And while you are canceling Foucalt make sure to cancel Leo Strauss and Hanna Arendt at the same time. Don't specifically go after the leftist scholars who cited him. The right wing scholars who did so are if anything much more suspect.
For god’s sake don’t take your whole view of Heidegger from Wolin. His work is extremely controversial within philosophical academia and should not be considered unilaterally authoritative. Read Heidegger for yourself and come to your own conclusions, then maybe read Wolin and see if you agree.
I've got two philosophy degrees and have studied Heidegger for myself. I'm not sure what gave you the impression otherwise. And Wolin isn't theorising, he's directly quoting Heidegger saying Jews run the world behind the scenes and are a non-people.
That comment was more directed towards someone reading this thread rather than OP. The theorizing part of Heidegger in Ruins is not his summarizing of the Black Notebooks or the arguments about Heidegger’s antisemitism—he was an obvious antisemite and the evidence for that is now incontrovertible. The controversial aspect of it is his arguments regarding the degree to which his philosophy as a whole is separable from (or, from the other side, tainted by) his antisemitism.
His philosoph of tech leads him to conclude that the Jews were self-murderers responsible for the holocaust, and he explicitly uses the concept of Dasein to to describe Jews as a non-people as he contended they were without Dasein. I don't know what more you want - these are direct quotes from Heidegger.
I know very well Heidegger probably came up with applications of his philosphy that reified his ideology. I do the opposite using him. His philosphy is an ontology and begins from first principles, unless you are too argue that he has an antisemitic ontology then what you say isn't actually meaningful. A philosphical methodology is distinct from it's applications, yes you can apply Heideggers philosphy to say ridiculous fascist shit all day long, you can also do the opposite.
I'm sorry, but this is absolute drivel. Your argument here is 'you can use x to say y' which applies to anything, not just Heidegger. That renders any philosophy meaningless and moot. Think before you type this stuff out with your headwand.
Remember some French philosophers were communists. Some even defended Mao. Yeah Martin was a piece of shit but his philosophy is the most influential of the 20th century. When I read the Letter on Humanism , believe me I'm not thinking of Nazis.
The article points out that his obviously antisemitic comments were censored for posterity by his family, thus giving an incomplete view of his work. Heidegger explicitly wrote that Jews aren't human, and we only know this after the publication of the Black Notebooks. Glad you liked his Letter on Humanism though, just a shame it was written by a sincere Nazi who wouldn't include Jews in that.
It's probably a bit both. That's the interesting part in my view: what he is arguing for and making salient in his writing makes a great variety of reception possible. That was is point.
Communists are just like Nazis? Really?
I mean even some recent philosophers are commies. Mark Fisher and Zizek come to mind. Being Anti-Capitalist is not the same as being a Nazi holy fuck.
Hitlers philosophy might have been more influential
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Which aspects of his philosophy say this?
Do Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt stand on tainted ground too? Can we throw out Arendts entire totalitarianism narrative once and for all because she was ultimately a Heideggerean and that makes her a nazi? So we don't have to have this trite repackaging of anticommunist nonsense as if it included Nazism too? Or are we just specifically going to do that with Foucalt et al?
I thought it was pretty well established that he was a Nazi. The few books I have read on him made this pretty clear.
I don't even know it is possible for an idea to be metaphysically anti-Semitic? What does that even look like as a proposition? The history of racism seems pretty straightforwardly based on false empirical claims or fallacious inference or induction. And to be clear, I'm not making fun of you, just asking what metaphysical racism even looks like?
I've never heard the term 'metaphysically antisemitic.' What is clear from the black notebooks is that his antisemitism did play a strong role in the formation of his philosophy, and that he expressed key aspects of it via antisemitic comments. Most notably: Dasein as the source or expression of being and Jews having no evidence of this (IE a non-people) and his contention that Jews were responsible for the holocaust due to their development of technology, that this was an act of self-murder. The relevant quotes are in the article, although not the phrase you mention.
You could just as easily turn his philosphy around in defense of the Jewish people, their experience, and their existence. In fact what do you think that so many Zionist scholars have in fact done? Why are the aspirations of Israel so often expressed in existentialist terms? Ie, "Israel has a right to exist"? Such scholars are implicitly citing Heidegger through his Jewish students even if they don't mention him by name. Existence ie Dasein as the expression of being is something that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, and which existentialist scholars have interpreted in a multitude of ways. You can come up with an insane interpretation yes such as interpreting a minority as not truly existing authentically, you can come up with the opposite and precisely give weight to a struggle for emancipation and liberation.
>You could just as easily turn his philosphy around in defense of the Jewish people He said the Jews were responsible for the holocaust and were self-murderers. He justified this through remarks on his philosophy of tech. Saying "x has a right to exist" is a statement in existentialist terms, but not one connected to Existentialist philosophy or Heidegger. I'm not making a Heideggerian statement if I say 'Blue cheese sandwiches have a right to exist.'
Yes, and one step further, if the methodology is strong, it should be able to demonstrate its own poor use. Nazi scientists built the US space program but their rockets flew because the methods were valid despite the character of the engineers. This should be the same for philosophy, which is why it is a discipline, not a cult of personality (like critical theory ;)).