enpodynic
10-05-2006, 05:55 AM
Der Spiegel interview
Some years later, hoping to quiet controversy, Heidegger gave an interview to Der Spiegel magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. It should be noted that Heidegger extensively edited, at his insistence, the published version of the interview. In that interview, Heidegger's defense of his Nazi involvement runs in two tracks: first, he argued that there was no alternative, saying that he was trying to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and thus had to compromise with the Nazi administration. Second, he saw an "awakening" ("Aufbruch") which might help to find a "new national and social approach". After 1934, he said, he would (should?) have been more critical of the Nazi government. Heidegger's answers to some questions are evasive. For example, when he talks about a "national and social approach" of national socialism, he links this to Friedrich Naumann. But Naumann's "national-sozialer Verein" was not at all national socialist, but liberal. Heidegger seems to have deliberately created this confusion. Also, he alternates quickly between his two lines of arguments, overlooking any contradictions. Furthermore, his defense often tends to take the form of pointing to the greater extremism of other educators and thinkers, as to minimize his own Nazi sympathies by comparison.
The Der Spiegel interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation where he calls engineered food production and the Holocaust "essentially the same." While Heidegger's defenders have attempted to account for this "similarity of essence" by reference to his essay "On the Essence of Truth," this account of the technological 'frame' that now infects human nourishment and human mortality is not a conventional reaction to genocide. Moreover, many of those who align themselves with Heidegger philosophically have pointed out that in his own work on being-towards-death, we can recognize a much more salient criticism of what was wrong with the mass-produced murder of a people. Thinkers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler have made this point sympathetically. Commentators differ on whether this philosophical shorthand is evidence of a profound disregard for the Jews or simply the astygmatism of an old man concerned more with his own legacy than with that of the Holocaust.
In fact, the Der Spiegel interviewers were not in possession of most of the evidence now known for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies. For more on this interview and its aftermath, see "Only a God Can Save Us," Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger (1966) and Jürgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): 431-56.
The question of the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics has been debated in very many books. Conclusions have varied from those arguing that his philosophy has no connection to his politcs, to those who see a direct connection, with every shade of opinion in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_and_Nazism
Some years later, hoping to quiet controversy, Heidegger gave an interview to Der Spiegel magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. It should be noted that Heidegger extensively edited, at his insistence, the published version of the interview. In that interview, Heidegger's defense of his Nazi involvement runs in two tracks: first, he argued that there was no alternative, saying that he was trying to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and thus had to compromise with the Nazi administration. Second, he saw an "awakening" ("Aufbruch") which might help to find a "new national and social approach". After 1934, he said, he would (should?) have been more critical of the Nazi government. Heidegger's answers to some questions are evasive. For example, when he talks about a "national and social approach" of national socialism, he links this to Friedrich Naumann. But Naumann's "national-sozialer Verein" was not at all national socialist, but liberal. Heidegger seems to have deliberately created this confusion. Also, he alternates quickly between his two lines of arguments, overlooking any contradictions. Furthermore, his defense often tends to take the form of pointing to the greater extremism of other educators and thinkers, as to minimize his own Nazi sympathies by comparison.
The Der Spiegel interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation where he calls engineered food production and the Holocaust "essentially the same." While Heidegger's defenders have attempted to account for this "similarity of essence" by reference to his essay "On the Essence of Truth," this account of the technological 'frame' that now infects human nourishment and human mortality is not a conventional reaction to genocide. Moreover, many of those who align themselves with Heidegger philosophically have pointed out that in his own work on being-towards-death, we can recognize a much more salient criticism of what was wrong with the mass-produced murder of a people. Thinkers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler have made this point sympathetically. Commentators differ on whether this philosophical shorthand is evidence of a profound disregard for the Jews or simply the astygmatism of an old man concerned more with his own legacy than with that of the Holocaust.
In fact, the Der Spiegel interviewers were not in possession of most of the evidence now known for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies. For more on this interview and its aftermath, see "Only a God Can Save Us," Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger (1966) and Jürgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): 431-56.
The question of the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics has been debated in very many books. Conclusions have varied from those arguing that his philosophy has no connection to his politcs, to those who see a direct connection, with every shade of opinion in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_and_Nazism