Thanks to those who corrected my error about Heidegger's party
membership. But it seems to me that some participants in this discussion
are implicitly assuming something like: Heidegger was a Nazi, Hitler was
a Nazi, therefore Heidegger = Hitler.
We should remember that Naziism was not primarily a philosophy (if
it was one at all) but a movement. Many people jumped on the bandwagon
for various reasons of their own which may or may not have included
anti-Semitism, race, world domination, etc. I would think that only a
very small proportion of Nazi supporters would have approved of death
camps, and so it is at least crude to blame all Nazi supporters for them.
Richard Strauss, for instance, was a party member, but apparently reacted
with total incomprehension when the Nazis said he shouldn't set a libretto
by Stephan Zweig.
Before anyone thinks of Heidegger's works as "Nazi philosophy,"
we should recognize that Heidegger's reasons for embracing Naziism may
have been at least as idiosyncratic as Strauss'. Heidegger seems
primarily to have regarded Naziism as a new way of dealing with the threat
of techonology, an interpretation which I doubt would have occured to the
party brass.
One of the most crucial aspects of Naziism (and its most
notorious) is its race theory. My reading of Heidegger's works from the
30s indicates that Heidegger rejected this. In many texts (especially
Beitraege), Heidegger is working toward a linguistic rather than
biological account of Volk, and he is quite scathing about the crude
racial interpretations of Volk. If having German as a mother tongue
qualifies one as a complete German, then there is no reason to persecute
the Jews.
I think few of us would reject the idea that Heidegger's
membership in the Nazi party, and his refusal to apologize for it,
constitutes a problem of some kind. But if one is to reject his
philosophy, one has to achieve more than the kind of cheap sniping we
have seen recently both on this list and in a recent syndicated newspaper
article.
Martin Weatherston,
Philosophy & Religious Studies Dept.,
East Stroudsburg University,
East Stroudsburg, PA 18301.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
membership. But it seems to me that some participants in this discussion
are implicitly assuming something like: Heidegger was a Nazi, Hitler was
a Nazi, therefore Heidegger = Hitler.
We should remember that Naziism was not primarily a philosophy (if
it was one at all) but a movement. Many people jumped on the bandwagon
for various reasons of their own which may or may not have included
anti-Semitism, race, world domination, etc. I would think that only a
very small proportion of Nazi supporters would have approved of death
camps, and so it is at least crude to blame all Nazi supporters for them.
Richard Strauss, for instance, was a party member, but apparently reacted
with total incomprehension when the Nazis said he shouldn't set a libretto
by Stephan Zweig.
Before anyone thinks of Heidegger's works as "Nazi philosophy,"
we should recognize that Heidegger's reasons for embracing Naziism may
have been at least as idiosyncratic as Strauss'. Heidegger seems
primarily to have regarded Naziism as a new way of dealing with the threat
of techonology, an interpretation which I doubt would have occured to the
party brass.
One of the most crucial aspects of Naziism (and its most
notorious) is its race theory. My reading of Heidegger's works from the
30s indicates that Heidegger rejected this. In many texts (especially
Beitraege), Heidegger is working toward a linguistic rather than
biological account of Volk, and he is quite scathing about the crude
racial interpretations of Volk. If having German as a mother tongue
qualifies one as a complete German, then there is no reason to persecute
the Jews.
I think few of us would reject the idea that Heidegger's
membership in the Nazi party, and his refusal to apologize for it,
constitutes a problem of some kind. But if one is to reject his
philosophy, one has to achieve more than the kind of cheap sniping we
have seen recently both on this list and in a recent syndicated newspaper
article.
Martin Weatherston,
Philosophy & Religious Studies Dept.,
East Stroudsburg University,
East Stroudsburg, PA 18301.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------