In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger's Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism's influence on the philosopher's thought and politics.
In this provocative book, Faye uses excerpts from unpublished seminars to show that Heidegger's philosophical writings are fatally compromised by an adherence to National Socialist ideas. In other documents, Faye finds evidence of racist and genocidal views.
Faye disputes the view of Heidegger as a naïve, temporarily disoriented academician and instead shows him to have been a self-appointed "spiritual guide" for Nazism whose intentionally was clear. Contrary to what somw have written, Heidegger's Nazism became even more radical after 1935, as Faye demonstrates. He revisits Heidegger's masterwork, Being and Time, and concludes that in it Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare. Faye's book was highly controversial when originally published in France in 2005. Now available in Michael B. Smith's fluid English translation, it is bound to awaken controversy in the English-speaking world.
Bronze medal winner of the 2009 Book of the Year Award in the Philosophy category, presented by ForeWord magazine
— Book of the Year Award
Foreword to the English Edition Tom Rockmore vii
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgments xxvii
Introduction 1
1 Before 1933: Heidegger's Radicalism, the Destruction of the Philosophical Tradition, and the Call to Nazism 8
2 Heidegger, the "Bringing into Line," and the New Student Law 39
3 Work Camps, the Health of the People, and the Hard Race in the Lectures and Speeches of 1933-1934 59
4 The Courses of 1933-1935: From the Question of Man to the Affirmation of the People and the German Race 87
5 Heidegger's Hitlerism in the Seminar On the Essence and Concepts of Nature, History, and State 113
6 Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and Alfred Baeumler: The Struggle Against the Enemy and His Extermination 151
7 Law and Race: Erik Wolf Between Heidegger, Schmitt, and Rosenberg 173
8 Heidegger and the Longevity of the Nazi State in the Unpublished Seminar on Hegel and the State 203
9 From the Justification of Racial Selection to the Ontological Negationism of the Bremen Lectures 243
Conclusion 316
Appendix A The Political Trustworthiness of the Parteigenosse Heidegger According to the Secret Reports of the SD 325
Appendix B Excerpt from Heidegger's Rectorship Address, Published Alongside the Anti-Semitic Theses of the Deutsche Studentenschaft in 1938 by Ernst Forsthoff 331
Notes 335
Bibliography 411
Index 431
With an strict use of the original documents and in the original language, Mr. Faye reveals with total clarity the stupidity of a "Philosophy" that rennounces to the universal in Philosophy and defends the regional, what Heidegger, following the Nazi ideology, names "Blood and Soil".
The reader will find here astonishing letters and texts of Heidegger that definitivly reveal what was realy in his mind, under that cryptic language that de Nazi philosopher used to have.
The book also takes it's focus on some other Nazi philosophers like Clauss or Rothacker, Schmitt or Jünger.
Overview
In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger's Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism's influence on the philosopher's thought and politics.
In this provocative book, Faye uses excerpts from unpublished seminars to show that Heidegger's philosophical writings are fatally compromised by an adherence to National Socialist ideas. In other documents, Faye finds evidence of ...