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    The Heidegger Affair, part 356

    Report by Jonathan Derbyshire here.

    This decade's eructation is the official publication of Heidegger's Schwarzen Hefte. The earlier story at Le Nouvel Observateur is here. The French article is interesting because it notes that Heidegger specified the release dates of all this stuff, including these notebooks, right before his death. It also describes Hadrian France-Lanord, of a recent French Heidegger dictionary, who after seeing the notebooks has publicly retracted his previous claim that Heidegger never wrote anything anti-semitic.

    From the entire Observateur article I confidently predict that Heidegger's defenders will once again recycle the grossly ignorant canard that since Heidegger did not have a biological concept of race,* he was somehow undermining the Nazis.  

    In any case, I'm not clear about what the stakes are supposed to be here.


    (1) Yes it's depressing that philosophical and moral goodness can seperate so much, but most of us learned that in graduate school via human interaction. (2) One of the things we should have learned from National Socialism is to distrust overly romantic conceptions of anything, including and especially philosophy. Philosophy as a magical elixir that will turn you into a saint is dangerous because the conception of anything as a magical elixir is dangerous. (3) Just about anyone reading this who hasn't compromised themselves as bad as did the good Germans and occupied French and Polish should thank God they haven't been tested in the same way.  

     [Notes:

    *Neither did Hitler or most of the influential Nazis! An anti-scientific racism rooted in romantic notions of blood and soil long predate the pseudoscientific biology that was part of Nazi usurpation of higher education. Heidegger on technology and the Frankfurt School on instrumental reason have made otherwise intelligent people forget this.]

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    4 responses to “The Heidegger Affair, part 356”

    1. Miles Rind Avatar
      Miles Rind

      Frege’s notebooks are also reported to have contained some nasty anti-Jewish stuff, though that was long before the rise of Hitler; and in Frege’s case, the discovery was actually surprising.
      Correction: “Heidegger’s schwarze Hefte,” or perhaps “Heidegger’s Die schwarzen Hefte” (if they are published under that phrase as a title), but not “Heidegger’s Schwarzen Hefte.”

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    2. Brad Avatar
      Brad

      Jon,
      Though only tangentially related, you may want to read John Heilbron’s biography of Max Planck.
      http://www.amazon.com/Dilemmas-Upright-Man-Fortunes-Science/dp/0674004396
      On the one hand, he was in a position of great power in German science, and he was a committed nationalist (through both wars). On the other hand, he attempted to shield and aid some of his Jewish colleagues when they were about to lose their jobs. Further, one of Planck’s sons was implicated in a plot to kill Hitler, and was executed for his involvement in it.

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    3. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Wow, that got past the Prospect editors as well as our own crack team here at newapps.
      I think the discussion in Glover’s wonderful “Humanity” book makes the best case than one can for taking Heidegger, but not Frege’s, anti-semitism to be relevant to the work. But I also think that Glover would probably withdraw the argument in light of what the California Heideggerians have done by way of trying to explain Heidegger to the rest of us who are not appropriately versed in the history of philosophy.
      Frege was a pathetic old man who had lost his son in the war and also had his life’s work potentially invalidated by a simple paradox.
      There’s finally been extensive pushback against all of the foolish dismissal of Philip Larkin’s poetry when some of his unflattering private letters with Kingsley Amis were published. I think something analogous will happen with respect to the Heidegger controversy.

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    4. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Brad, ooh thanks. I also want to read Bo Lidegaards’ recent book on how Denmark managed to not go along with the holocaust. TNR did a very nice review that raises many of these questions at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115670/denmark-holocaust-bo-lidegaards-countrymen-reviewed .

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