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Its difficult to say who has the best "voice" on the holocaust (I would say, tentatively, Adorno), but its impossible to ignore Heidegger's analysis, especially

Its difficult to say who has the best "voice" on the holocaust (I would say, tentatively, Adorno), but its impossible to ignore Heidegger's analysis, especially the late Heidegger ("Question Concerning Technology"), in considering the technorationality of the SS. The trouble with Arendt is not that she is a Kantian, its that she is a very bad Kantian, and one who fails to see how Kant as phenomenological, via Schelling and Hegel, was instrumental in Nazi politics; only Heidegger was able to elucidate properly this problematic of Kantian "Freedom," especially political Freedom, which could be seen by later thinkers like Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari as in fact only an instrumental freedom, freedom to be instrumentalized in a grander machine. But there are many people who like Adorno better since he seems to offer something more than an elucidation of the unfreedom of freedom; his "negative dialectic" contains within it the possibility of redemption.

zoogeny 3y ago
That is some good context, thank you. I wasn't planning on reading Arendt specifically for her take on the holocaust - more for her general views. Adorno is another philosopher I hear brought up a lot in this context and I'm mostly unfamiliar with his positions. I have at most a rudimentary understanding of that Frankfurt school of critical theory. One of the problems of being an amateur is that I don't really follow a systematic path through material. Critical Theory is probably the most contemporary connection in the timeline of philosophy that I am drawn to (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger) although I am probably more interested in American Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Rorty). Postmodernism is a bit beyond me at this point, it just gets too political with its connection to Marx. I honestly would prefer to stay in the meta-physical.

zoogeny 3y ago

That is some good context, thank you. I wasn't planning on reading Arendt specifically for her take on the holocaust - more for her general views. Adorno is another philosopher I hear brought up a lot in this context and I'm mostly unfamiliar with his positions. I have at most a rudimentary understanding of that Frankfurt school of critical theory. One of the problems of being an amateur is that I don't really follow a systematic path through material. Critical Theory is probably the most contemporary connection in the timeline of philosophy that I am drawn to (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger) although I am probably more interested in American Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Rorty). Postmodernism is a bit beyond me at this point, it just gets too political with its connection to Marx. I honestly would prefer to stay in the meta-physical.