Heidegger was a Nazi. Should we stop reading him?

Tinkerpeach said:
It’s up to the individual

I’ve read Mein Kamph
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Heidegger was one of the 20th century's most highly regarded intellectuals.

Hitler was an intellectually challenged criminal psychopath.

Heidegger is controversial for comments he made in the 1930s sympathetic to the Nazi regime, but AFAIK he wasn't an active Nazi himself. His major philosophical works stand on their own merits.

There can't be any benefit or anything to be gained by reading Mein Kampf, which is the rantings of a depraved criminal mind.
 
Cypress said:
Heidegger is controversial for comments he made in the 1930s sympathetic to the Nazi regime, but AFAIK he wasn't an active Nazi himself. His major philosophical works stand on their own merits.
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I don't think they are completely unrelated. Heidegger often said only a god can save us. The Fuhrer was a messianic figure in Germany and national socialism.
The idea of a truth that will reveal everything is a Christian idea of a Messiah--or Fuhrer.
 
BidenPresident said:
The controversies that have haunted the publication of Heidegger’s work are significant, insofar as they concern not merely occasional and understandable editorial lapses but instead suggest a premeditated policy of substantive editorial cleansing: a strategy whose goal was to systematically and deliberately excise Heidegger’s pro-Nazi sentiments and convictions.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-heidegger-hoax/
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Does his philosophy center on the historic aspects of Nazism that we find objectionable such as racial superiority and Government Run Cartels running the economy?

In short: Did it take some article identifying him as a Nazi for you to even know he was one?

If so, now that you know he was pro Nazi will you suddenly become one because you have read his philosophical theories? Is it possible that someone who was so off on politics that they thought Hitler was pretty cool could have thoughts that may be correct in other aspects of their lives?

If your answer to the last question is "no" then we should not listen to Heidegger and should begin to reject his ideation now, and with great zeal and strain to our moral and physical characters... If the answer to the last question is "yes" then we can read and argue the validity of his philosophy without fear of idea infection and our sudden conversion to Hitler-loving Nazi sympathizers...
 
Damocles said:
Does his philosophy center on the historic aspects of Nazism that we find objectionable such as racial superiority and Government Run Cartels running the economy?

In short: Did it take some article identifying him as a Nazi for you to even know he was one?
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I knew Heidegger was a nazi decades ago. A published book of his lectures would often end with, "Heil Hitler!"
 
Damocles said:
If the answer to the last question is "yes" then we can read and argue the validity of his philosophy without fear of idea infection and our sudden conversion to Hitler-loving Nazi sympathizers...
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I always read philosophy for what is stated in the text, not for the philosopher's personal life or opinion on other topics.

But there is a mystical side to Heidegger, talk about the unconcealed, that answers a lot of questions about what Heidegger thinks truth is.
 
BidenPresident said:
I don't think they are completely unrelated. Heidegger often said only a god can save us. The Fuhrer was a messianic figure in Germany and national socialism.
The idea of a truth that will reveal everything is a Christian idea of a Messiah--or Fuhrer.
Click to expand...

All I know about Heidegger is that he was widely regarded as a premninent existential philosopher (though he himself might have rejected the label), he had a concept of human life and being as Daisen, and had Nazi sympathies. Otherwise, I draw a blank on him
 
Cypress said:
All I know about Heidegger is that he was widely regarded as a premninent existential philosopher (though he himself might have rejected the label), he had a concept of human life and being as Daisen, and had Nazi sympathies. Otherwise, I draw a blank on him
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1. The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being

THIS question has today been forgotten. Yet the question we are touching upon is not just
any question. It is one which provided a stimulus for the researches of
Plato and Aristotle, only to subside from then on as a theme for actual
investigation. What these two men achieved was to persist through many
alterations and 'retouchings' down to the 'logic' of Hegel. And what
they wrested with the utmost intellectual effort from the phenomena,
fragmentary and incipient though it was, has long since become
trivialized.

http://pdf-objects.com/files/Heideg...trans.-Macquarrie-Robinson-Blackwell-1962.pdf

The opening of Being and Time.
 
BidenPresident said:
1. The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being
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Heidegger was not a brilliant philosophical mind. He happened to be one of the first to attempt to formally define what we refer to in STEM as "entities" or "objects" or "instances", etc. Heidegger simply didn't have the tools that we have today to make the answers to his questions obvious as they are nowadays.

The advent of computers, software in higher-order languages, architectural frameworks, commercial engineering projects, networks, etc ... have all gotten vast multitudes of minds to consider all aspects of ontologies, and to build on each other's ideas. Today, our level of understanding is rather complete, and Heidegger's work is drastically obsolete and should only be studied in an historical context.

To anyone who actually wants to learn more about the understanding Heidegger was pursuing, I recommend downloading Web Ontology Language (OWL) and watching a couple of YouTube videos on how to make an ontology. Once you do, you'll be ready to travel back in time and explain to Heidegger all the answers to his questions.


I can only get one video into the post. The below link is a short 10-minute video on the OWL ontology language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aKYu6ebDLg"
 
Damocles said:
Does his philosophy center on the historic aspects of Nazism that we find objectionable such as racial superiority and Government Run Cartels running the economy?

In short: Did it take some article identifying him as a Nazi for you to even know he was one?

If so, now that you know he was pro Nazi will you suddenly become one because you have read his philosophical theories? Is it possible that someone who was so off on politics that they thought Hitler was pretty cool could have thoughts that may be correct in other aspects of their lives?

If your answer to the last question is "no" then we should not listen to Heidegger and should begin to reject his ideation now, and with great zeal and strain to our moral and physical characters... If the answer to the last question is "yes" then we can read and argue the validity of his philosophy without fear of idea infection and our sudden conversion to Hitler-loving Nazi sympathizers...
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I'm betting Yes.
 
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