Heidegger, History and the Holocaust (Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy)
Mahon O'Brien
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 1472510194
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward.
Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues that, however inflammatory, Heidegger's rhetoric cannot be simply reduced to crude Nazi jingoism.
This book is a genuinely philosophical approach to the Heidegger controversy and a much-needed re-examination of his ideas and influences.
Nietzsche, God and the Jews: His Critique of Judeo-Christianity in Relation to the Nazi Myth
Resources within Heidegger’s account should have been sufficient for him to see the absolute untenability of any form of ethnic chauvinism. 2 Martin Heidegger. Martin Heidegger: Letters to his wife 1915–1970. Selected, edited and annotated by Gertrud Heidegger. Translated by R. D. V. Glasgow, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008, 33. 3 Karl Löwith. ‘My Last Meeting with Heidegger in Rome, 1936’. In The Heidegger Controversy, 142. 4 The reason we examine Heidegger’s discussion of solicitude.
Granted that much, there was enough incriminating evidence before the appearance of the Black Notebooks, for example, to disincline one to offer such extreme apologetics. 13 In a slightly odd publication (Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, 1929-1976), Heinrich Petzet recalls his many encounters and conversations with Heidegger and is keen to rehabilitate the image of his hero. In terms of Heidegger’s antisemitism, Petzet simply explains away Heidegger’s apparent antisemitism.
Not Jews! In other words, the mere fact of being inmates at the camps seems to have been sufficient for Höss’s second in command to reduce the same people to rodents to be removed from industrial premises using these kinds of means. 34 Heidegger, History and the Holocaust Auschwitz: Factory of death If we consider briefly the expansion and development of Auschwitz during the 1940s, we begin to get yet another insight into the emergence of mass extermination as a real ‘possibility’. The.
Adorno’s heavy-handed derision of Heidegger, and indeed we find versions of the same criticism in Habermas, Steiner and Wolin too. And yet, Bourdieu thinks this kind of superficial reductionism is proof positive of the cogency of his story concerning the sociology of knowledge. One wonders, however, if Bourdieu’s claim isn’t staggeringly arrogant in its scope, since there seems to be little reason to suppose that his claims can be restricted to Heidegger, and, if they are not, then Bourdieu’s.
Not ultimately grease the tracks that carted millions to their deaths? What of the ‘non-criminal’ types who stood idly by? What of the ‘Heideggers’ of the Second World War who didn’t favour genocide or persecution but who yet supported those who would have rid the world of the Jewish people as though they were a parasite or pest to be exterminated? Where do we ourselves, the accusers, the prosecutors, judges and jurors, in short – the victors – where do we draw the line when it comes to.