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It hasn’t been just the last few years. Heidegger’s Nazism became an issue already in the 1960s, when other intellectuals like Paul Celan struggled to reconcile
by Mediterraneo10 7y ago
It hasn’t been just the last few years. Heidegger’s Nazism became an issue already in the 1960s, when other intellectuals like Paul Celan struggled to reconcile his philosophical insights with his actions during the Hitler regime.
- dang 7y agoMarcuse was corresponding with him about it in 1947. https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/40spubs/47MarcuseHeidegger.htm https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/40spubs/47MarcuseHeideg...
- cygx 7y agoHeidegger's response looks rather weak to me, but note that Marcuse also didn't get his point about the treatment of East Germans by 'one of the Allies': Not too long ago, I saw an exhibition on the 'Wolfskinder'[1], and what happened there looked pretty genocidal to me (though of course it wasn't the same as the meticulously planned 'Endlösung'). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_children
- lordgrenville 7y agoBut things changed completely when the 'Black Notebooks' were published a few years ago [1]. They showed antisemitism to be a much deeper part of his thought, and it's much harder to argue that he just paid lip service to Nazism. He explicitly asked for them to be published last of all his writings [2], perhaps because he knew how controversial they were. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/martin-heidegger-black-notebooks-reveal-nazi-ideology-antisemitism https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/martin-heidegg... [2] http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/martin-heideggers-black-notebooks-reveal-the-depth-of-anti-semitism.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/martin-heideggers-black-n...