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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

The Heidegger affair « Previous | |Next »
March 26, 2004

Okay, so Heidegger's politics was German fascism. And he never faced up to Auschwitz after 1945. He just maintained a determined silence about the extermination of the Jews.

He is to be condemned for that. It is an unforgiveable silence. And Heidegger is to be condemned for his evasions after 1945.

Is that the end of the matter with Heidegger? I ask the question as philosopher, since that it is what I am, and it is the tradition that I work within.

To say yes implies that a philosopher's work can be reduced to his politics; or that Heidegger's philosophy leads to this kind of fascist politics. Or that the essence of Heidegger's philosophy is that which corresponds to his fascist politics and every else in his philosophy is ornament or superfluity.

So the question concerning Heidegger is the question concerning Heidegger's Nazism.

Fair enough, if you want to devote your energies exploring that vein. Let me say that Heidegger was not a reluctant liberal joining the National Socialist Party to defend the freedom of the university. Heidegger was not a liberal who defended the parliamentary democracy of the Weimar government, nor did he join the Party to defend the academic freedom of the university as it then existed. He was a radical conservative.

However, this way of approaching Heidegger through his politics does remind of people in the 1970s in Australia condemning Hegel's philosophy because he was a conservative, the philosopher of the restoration who supported the Russian state. The implication? One should not read Hegel because he was a conservative.

Most of them were analytic philosopher who thought that Hegel's philsophy was the pits. How did they know? They had read Bertrand Russell's tabloid History of Western Philosophy. Bertie was the bees knees in those days.

It is similar scenario with Heidegger.

I read Heidegger differently. I initially read him through both the late turn to ecology and his early turn against the modern philosophical tradition. What he says in both phases is important and significant in terms of both the re-writing of modernity and the development of another kind of thinking to that of science and technology.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:24 PM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

A similar question in literature arises with Ezra Pound. For years he was condemned for his association with Italian fascism, and his poetry considered contaminated by the association. He's still condemned for his fascism, but now, as more time passes, many people read his poetry and decide it's actually not that good as poetry. (He's now more often praised as a translator.)

Something similar will happen with Heidegger. With the passage of time he'll again be assessed as a philosopher. Except in his case, the work will probably last. His atrocious politics will still be condemned, but it won't be possible to assert that the philosophy stemmed from the politics.

Daniel,
That very elegantly expresses my own position.

Heidegger's philosophy was a turning back to Aristotle to reconnect philosophy with praxis in opposition to the metaphysics of modern techno-science.

Praxis pretty much meant a counter movement to nihilism; a leading Europe out of nihilism and into a new kind of history.

There is a lot of philosophy behind that politics: a philosophy that directly confronts and engages with the western philosophical tradition.