Why was Heidegger a Nazi?

[soluble duck]

Its so strange to me that Heidegger could have such an insight into humanity and yet at the same time, want a proportion of humanity to destroyed.

He even argued that his former mentor Husserl be thrown out of the university for being Jewish. Why? Why would he want the person who tutored him, who developed the whole school of phenomenology, who paved the way for Heidegger's thought, to be murdered?

I really can't understand it, and it makes me quite sad that a genius can be flawed in such a disgusting way, and there seems to be little indication in his work of his fascist tendencies.

 

[northernhord]

I wouldnt be too shocked at the fact that intellectuals can have low-life beliefs, I found this about Martin the Nazi
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/babich.htm

 

[dylanredefined]

fear ,avarice who knows Sometimes the strangest people align themselves with evil and sometimes its those you would money on to be grade one bastards do the right thing .All you can hope is you are never in such a postion.

 

[kyser_soze]

Same as all the European intellectuals who stayed loyal to Russia after the fallacy of the Potemkin villages and the horrors of The Purges came to light really. I sometimes think it's easier for those who make the claim to intellectual goodness also find it easier to excuse material terrors of all sorts, not just Nazism.

 

[soluble duck]

Same as all the European intellectuals who stayed loyal to Russia after the fallacy of the Potemkin villages and the horrors of The Purges came to light really. I sometimes think it's easier for those who make the claim to intellectual goodness also find it easier to excuse material terrors of all sorts, not just Nazism.

maybe i've just been niave about philosophers, but i always thought philosophy included a concern for man's place in the universe, particularly in phenomenology, which i supose is not contrary to wanting the jews dead, but you'd think someone with such a large intellect would see the flaws in nazism.

 

[kyser_soze]

maybe i've just been niave about philosophers, but i always thought philosophy included a concern for man's place in the universe, particularly in phenomenology, which i supose is not contrary to wanting the jews dead, but you'd think someone with such a large intellect would see the flaws in nazism.

Why? Nazism's precepts are present in part in Plato's Utopia and is inherent in Platonic thinking and Nazism itself is the product of a nasty view of the position of man in the universe.

 

[118118]

As far as what bits of his philosophy, i don't know. Maybe something about reducing hs being-with to Sameness. So the only person you have ethical responsibility towards is someone just like you. Forgetting the Forgoton?

Tho in reality he was a arch conservative, like alot of german acdemics at the time (dostoevsky etc?). And an anti-semite. So its not that surprising, considering the time he was in.

 

[118118]

Slight derail:
Call out to PhilDwyer: wtf are philosophy professors like? Do they look down on their students etc. Whenever I meet any, I am worried about acting as if I am confident on my "pihilosophy" skills. Why should I feel like that?

 

[soluble duck]

Why? Nazism's precepts are present in part in Plato's Utopia and is inherent in Platonic thinking and Nazism itself is the product of a nasty view of the position of man in the universe.

yeh, its not a very justifiable view, more a preconception about philosophy.

its just you would have thought someone who gives their life to understanding man, or man's Being in the world, would see all humans as equal. Dasein is black, jewish, white, Heidegger.....

also, he actively campaigned for Husserl to be thrown out of Frieburg University which just seems completely insane, his books surely would have been destroyed by the Nazis because Husserl was Jewish.

 

[soluble duck]

As far as what bits of his philosophy, i don't know. Maybe something about reducing hs being-with to Sameness. So the only person you have ethical responsibility towards is someone just like you. Forgetting the Forgoton?

Tho in reality he was a arch conservative, like alot of german acdemics at the time (dostoevsky etc?). And an anti-semite. So its not that surprising, considering the time he was in.

interesting

i havnt actually read the whole of Being and Time , only extracts for my phenomenology course.

but context isnt an excuse, he was a racist, he actively supported, and perhaps even contributed to the death of 6 million jews

 

[Dubversion]

Slight derail:
Call out to PhilDwyer: wtf are philosophy professors like? Do they look down on their students etc. Whenever I meet any, I am worried about acting as if I am confident on my "pihilosophy" skills. Why should I feel like that?

mine was anything but that. he was an avuncular funny 'diamond geezer' type bloke

 

[118118]

the irritating thing is that i can only muster a decent conversation with them if i am overly confident about my philosophy skuills, cos otherwise i don't think that I know what theyu are saying. But then I feel like they are looking down on me. Its a never endding spiral of inadequacy

 

[118118]

no they seem nice tbh. Except my continental tutor. Confuses the hell out of me, seems just unwilling to set me on the right track.

 

[soluble duck]

mine was anything but that. he was an avuncular funny 'diamond geezer' type bloke

one of my professors, Michael Morris, is also one of those funny old eccentrics, not the sort of stuffy old buggers you would expect to be teaching Wittgenstein.

 

[jbob]

118:

Dwyer isn't a philosophy lecturer.

Like most people, academics are all different. I find that most go out of their way to be helpful, but there is a minority of pompous fools, too. If you do the work and make the effort, they'll generally remember you more easily and treat you more warmly, which always helps.

Dostoevsky was a 19th century Russian novelist.

-----

Heidegger did what he did to stay alive; in such times morals and ethics are compromised and brutal decisions have to be made. But also, what Kyser said has some bearing. Intellectuals are often the first against the wall in such times, so surrendering to self-preservation and pledging allegiance probably isn't so unlikely.

There's a tendency to invest a little too much in philosophers as people. What philosophers do isn't neccessarily a heartfelt, moral and ethical concern; it is moreover an intellectual pursuit, doing your job, making a name for yourself, type of situation. To make a slightly tenuous analogy, medical doctors might smoke and drink excessively, and eat food that's bad for them, but will tell their patients not to.

 

[bluestreak]

when i was interviewed for my PGCE at king's my interviewer asked me why i thought learning was important.

i explained that i believed learning helped break down the barriers between peoples (but in a much longer more intellectual way) and he countered with something along the lines of "the nazis used intellectualism and the study of philosophy, theosophy, anthropology, and classics to support their worldview.

i tried to call godwin's law on him, but somehow that didn't seem appropriate.

btw, i studied philsophy under a few minor philosophers and none of them were pompous or dismissive. maybe i was lucky cos i've met some wankers but they ain't all arseholes.

 

[jbob]

when i was interviewed for my PGCE at king's my interviewer asked me why i thought learning was important.

i explained that i believed learning helped break down the barriers between peoples (but in a much longer more intellectual way) and he countered with something along the lines of "the nazis used intellectualism and the study of philosophy, theosophy, anthropology, and classics to support their worldview.

i tried to call godwin's law on him, but somehow that didn't seem appropriate.

Seems entirely appropriate. What a silly thing for an interviewer to say. Mind you, it's not uncommon, John Carey's recent recent-ish publications have taken such a reductionist approach (although strictly speaking he's a lit critic/theorist).

 

[bluestreak]

i don't think it was silly at all - it was challenging a naive assumption on my part.

 

[jbob]

Still hard to neccesarily equate wanting to be a teacher with the intellectual drives and motivations of national socialism, though. A good a case of Godwin's if ever there was one.

 

[bluestreak]

like i said, i don't think it was anything other than a devil's advocate argument designed to see where i went with it. i got in so i can't have done too bad!

 

[jbob]

Well, yes, but come on, the logic of it:

Potential student #1: Hello, I'd like to be a medical student.

Interviewer: What, so you can become the next Josef Mengele? You sick fuck!

Potential student #1: eh?!

----

Potential student #2: Hello, I'd like to study architecture.

Interviewer: Got our own Auschwitz planned, have we? You disgust me!

Potential student #2: What?!!

 

[bluestreak]

well, i'd agree if it was anything like that whatsoever!

 

[Karen Eliot]

It's been a long time since i've read anything but commentaries on Heidegger but to me it seems that it's only a few short steps from Dasein (being-in-the-world/being-there or some variant translation) to belonging, and with that the door is open - and he happily went through it, displaying yet another level of hypocrosy by carrying out an affair with Arendt at the same time.

 

[dessiato]

I was reading about this earlier this morning, yes he was a nazi, no he never apologised or recognised it as having been wrong. He justified it by the application of his own philosophy.

 

[118118]

I don't see 'belonging', depending on its pitch, as a problem. I tried saying it was that being was heavy, but the continental bloke questined that this made sense, so I stopped asking and just agreed with Lyotard.

 

[jbob]

I wish you'd start making sense

 

[118118]

which authors have a problem with 'belonging'?

 

[jbob]

It was more of a comment on your incoherrent posting style, than what I think you're actually trying to say.

 

[118118]

depending on what beloning means in Heidegger's philosophy (if e.g. it means "hate people who aren't your neighbours" then thats terrible, if e.g. it means the belonging together of two sincere friends, then thats ok).

I tried in argue in a draft of a essay, that Heidegger's evil side was because he understood 'being' to drag on us, that it was heavy, and being is the origin of ethics. This was said to be rubbish, so I gave up asking why Heidegger was a Nazi (in my essay) and wrote that I agreed with Lyotard's opinion in what was unethical in Heidegger's philosophy.

Any clearer?

 

[phildwyer]

Slight derail:
Call out to PhilDwyer: wtf are philosophy professors like? Do they look down on their students etc. Whenever I meet any, I am worried about acting as if I am confident on my "pihilosophy" skills. Why should I feel like that?

You shouldn't. Any philosophy lecturer worth his salt will have absorbed the truth of Antonio Gramsci's dictum: "everyone is a philosopher."