Martin Heidegger:His Philosophy and His Politics
Abstract
MARTIN HEIDEGGER His Philosophy and His Politics CATHERINE H. ZUCKERT Carleton College T HE FUROR AROUSED IN FRANCE by the publication of Victor Farias's Heidegger et le Nazisme has once again raised the question: What exactly was the connection, if any, between Heidegger's philosophy and his Nazi politics?' "Was so little known there [in France] about National Social- ism?" Hans Georg Gadamer mused somewhat rhetorically.2 The question concerning the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics was hardly new. It had been debated in France at the end of the war in Les Temps Modernes; and it has continued to divide commentators ever since.3 Those who have maintained that there was no necessary connection and that his involvement represented a temporary aberration have been confounded by Heidegger's own refusal to repudiate his Nazi allegiance.4 But critics who urge that Heidegger's entire philosophy was polluted by his politics have failed to show how the philosopher who maintained that the traditional Westem "metaphysical" notion of "nature" or "Being" was a product of human historicity could embrace a racist political program.5 (Race is, after all, a distinction based on birth or "nature," which Heidegger argued itself represented a misleading Latin translation