"An important book, one that provides a careful, thoughtful, and innovative analysis of the Heidegger affair."--Michael E. Zimmerman, author of Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity

That Martin Heidegger supported National Socialism has long been common knowledge. Yet the relation between his philosophy and political commitments remains highly contentious and recently has erupted into a vociferous debate.

Boldly refuting arguments that the philosopher's political stance was accidental or adopted under coercion, Rockmore argues that Heidegger's philosophical thought and his Nazism are inseparably intertwined, that he turned to National Socialism on the basis of his philosophy, and that his later evolution is largely determined by his continuing concern with Nazism.

After developing a framework that clearly outlines the interrelation of Nazism and Heidegger's philosophy, Rockmore analyzes the famous rectoral address the philosopher delivered in 1933 upon becoming rector of the University of Freiburg. In that speech Heidegger sought to ground politics in philosophy. Rockmore examines the inseparable relation of politics and philosophy in Heidegger's Being and Time, the recently published Contributions to Philosophy (written from 1936 to 1938), and the interpretations of Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and technology.

In his conclusion Rockmore considers the ongoing discussion of Heidegger's thought and Nazism in France. Combining extensive documentation of the Heidegger controversy with philosophical and historical analysis, this book raises profound questions about the social and political responsibility of philosophy.

About the Author
Tom Rockmore is Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University. His books include Fichte, Marx, and the German Tradition (Southern Illinois, 1989) and Habermas on Historical Materialism (Indiana, 1989). He co-edited the translation of Heidegger and Nazism by Victor Farías (Temple, 1989), whose publication in France in 1987 sparked the current Heidegger controversy.

Read On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy Online

Hardcover: 400 pages
Author: Tom Rockmore
Publisher: University of California Press (December 5, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520077113
ISBN-13: 978-0520077119

Introduction: On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy

This book considers the nature and philosophical significance of the controversial relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his Nazism. The significance of this relation is clear in virtue of the importance of Heidegger's philosophical thought and its widespread influence not only in the philosophical discussion but throughout the cultural life of this century. Heidegger's supporters and even his most ardent critics agree that Heidegger's thought is important and cannot merely be dismissed. Heidegger is often held to be one of the most important contemporary philosophers, even the most important philosopher of this century, maybe even one of the small handful of truly great philosophers in the history of the philosophical tradition.

Heidegger is certainly the most influential philosopher of our time. Heidegger's influence is widely felt in contemporary philosophy: in negative fashion in Husserl's final phase; in the positions[1] of Gadamer and Derrida, his two closest students; in the thought of Herbert Marcuse, the first Heideggerian Marxist; in the phenomenological theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur; and more distantly in the writings of Foucault, Apel, Habermas, and Rorty, as well as in those of a host of other figures such as Hans Jonas, Hannah Arendt, and Leszek Kolakowski.

The Heidegger literature has by now taken on such proportions that no one, not even the most industrious student, can possibly read it all. Heidegger is now widely present in the discussions in Germany, even more so in the United States, but above all in France, where for several decades he has functioned as the main "French" philosopher, the unacknowledged but omnipresent master thinker whose thought continues to form the horizon of French philosophical thinking.

Heidegger's influence, which is by no means limited to philosophy, is widely apparent throughout the recent discussion: in theology in the work of Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, and Karl Rahner; in psychoanalysis in the work of Jacques Lacan, Ludwig Binswanger, and Medard Boss; in literary theory through Paul de Man; in feminism through Gayatri Spivak; in ecology through Albert Borgmann and Wolfgang Schirmacher; in political theory through Fred Dallmayr; and so on. The list of those influenced by Heidegger, which is impressive, rivals in scope that of such other conceptual giants of this century as Freud and Weber. ...

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