Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time

In this paper I focus on the specific communal setting within which Heidegger places Dasein’s authentic co-historicizing, namely, the Volk. Section §74 of Being and Time, with its invocation of the charged Volkish notions of fate, destiny, heritage, and struggle, has long been in the center of the debates over the possible connections between Heidegger’s philosophy and his early affiliation with National Socialism. In my paper I wish to intervene in this debate by looking at the early Jewish receptions of Heidegger’s philosophy in the 1930s and expose a strand in this reception that did not disapprove of the Volkish terminology put to use in the Dasein analytic, and at times even found it particularly fitting for the Jewish case. Exposing this strand allows for a better understanding of the historical and conceptual context within which Heidegger’s Volkish terminology was put to use, indicating that claims regarding a necessary ‘cause and effect’ connection between his early philosophy and fascist politics are simplistic.

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Nationalsozialismus, Antisemitismus und Philosophie bei Heidegger und Scheler – zu Trawnys Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie ◽

10.1515/dzph-2015-0065 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 63 (5) ◽

Author(s):

Johannes Fritsche

Keyword(s):

National Socialism ◽

Being And Time ◽

Main Criterion ◽

Max Scheler ◽

Anti Semitism ◽

History Of ◽

The Right

AbstractAccording to Trawny, Heidegger’s Black Notebooks show that his thinking could be “contaminated” by National Socialism and anti-Semitism only between 1931 and 1944/1945. However, in this paper it is argued that already in Being and Time (1927) Heidegger had made a case for National Socialism, which he discovered in 1938 − the ‘true’ National Socialism -, and that Trawny’s main criterion is false. Heidegger’s case is compared with Max Scheler, who, because of Hitler, turned from the right to the centre. In addition, alternatives to Trawny’s detailed interpretations of three of Heidegger’s anti-Semitic remarks are offered, and the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger’s history of Being are presented.

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Introduction

Toward a Concrete Philosophy ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501752377.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Mikko Immanen

Keyword(s):

Martin Heidegger ◽

National Socialism ◽

Being And Time ◽

Herbert Marcuse ◽

Intellectual Life ◽

Max Horkheimer ◽

Cultural Self ◽

Modern Europe ◽

Blind Spots

This chapter begins with the publication of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) in 1927, which made the philosopher Martin Heidegger become one of the most discussed figures in German intellectual life. It explains that Being and Time thoroughly questions the scientifically minded philosophical and cultural self-understanding of modern Europe. It also suggests that Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse saw in Heidegger the most provocative challenge and competitor to their own analyses of the discontents of European modernity. The chapter focuses on the years between the publication of Being and Time and Heidegger's notorious embrace of National Socialism in 1933. It examines what Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer saw as the merits and the blind spots of Heidegger's philosophy before its contamination by Nazism.

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