The Heidegger Controversy -- Updated and Appraised

In: Praxis international: a philosophical journal, Band 13, Heft 1, S. 85-98

Abstract

A review essay on three books by: Gunther Neske & Emil Kettering (Eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers (New York, 1990); Richard Wolin (Ed), The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (New York, 1991); & Heidegger and the Political (special issue of The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 1991, 14:2-15:1 [see listings in IRPS No. 69]). These books examine Martin Heidegger's relation to national socialism. Neske's & Kettering's book contains several of Heidegger's essays & interviews that touch on his involvement with the Nazis. The volume also offers comments on the Heidegger controversy by such thinkers of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, & Emmanuel Levinas. Wolin's book brings together in translation politically oriented letters, essays, & texts written by Heidegger in the 1930s & 1940s. Wolin's volume also offers commentaries on the Heidegger controversy by Karl Lowith, Karl Jaspers, Jurgen Habermas, & Pierre Bourdieu. The special 2-volume edition of the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal offers a collection of outstanding essays on Heidegger's relationship to national socialism, presents documents from Heidegger's "Denazification Proceedings," & contains a helpful chronological biography of works (in various languages) on Heidegger & the political. Wolin's book, which relates Heidegger's politics in the 1930s to the philosophy of existence elaborated in 1927, is compared to Michael Zimmerman's Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art (Indianapolis, 1990), which relates Heidegger's commitment to & eventual disengagement from Nazi politics to his writings on technology & art in the 1930s & 1940s. W. Howard