Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany [Hardcover]

Hans Sluga (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1993

Heidegger's Crisis shows not only how the Nazis exploited philosophical ideas and used philosophers to gain public acceptance, but also how German philosophers played into the hands of the Nazis. Hans Sluga describes the growth, from World War I onward, of a powerful right-wing movement in German philosophy, in which nationalistic, antisemitic, and antidemocratic ideas flourished.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sluga (philosophy, Univ. of California, Berkeley) provides a synoptic survey of German philosophy in the Nazi era and examines how it relates to the politics of the time. He uses Heidegger's actions as a center from which to elucidate what other, less prominent German philosophers were doing, thinking, and writing. The decisive influence of Fichte and Nietzsche is well developed, but the attempt to use the concepts of crisis, nation, leadership, and order as a bridge between philosophy and politics is less convincing. Nevertheless, this scholarly yet very readable study of an important aspect of the Nazi era belongs in all but the smallest philosophy, political science, and history collections.
- Leon M. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

[The author's] aim is neither to indict nor to acquit any single individual. Rather, Sluga maintains, it is the outlook and presuppositions of an entire generation that demand our most urgent scrutiny and, when found guilty, our repudiation...Lynching Heidegger is academic scapegoating in the worst sense, for it is nothing other than a diversionary tactic for evading intellectual responsibility. (John C. Haugeland, University of Pittsburgh )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (November 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674387112
• ISBN-13: 978-0674387119
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #867,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars War is father to all things. -Heraclitus, June 24, 2001

By 

New Age of Barbarism "zosimos" (EVROPA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Paperback)

This book takes a look at the complex relationship between philosophy and politics as exemplified by the participation of philosophers, especially Martin Heidegger, in the political environment of Nazi Germany. The book does not so much focus on Heidegger, as it does try to understand his political involvement in light of that of other philosophers. Fortunately, the author does not engage in senseless moralizing, nor does he attempt to exonerate Heidegger, but only to examine the relationship that philosophy bears to politics. The most important notion that played a role in the minds of Nazi philosophers was that of crisis. It is for this reason that the philosophies of Fichte and Nietzsche were chosen as important forerunners of National Socialism. In fact, Heidegger's rectoral address included parts that were modeled on a similar address given by Fichte concerning the French Revolution. The book argues that far from being a unified body, the philosophy of the National Socialist period was divided into many factions. The conservative camp argued for a return to Kant. The radical camp was based upon the ideas of Nietzsche, for example, and included Heidegger. Arguments over idealism versus realism, and absolute values versus relativism framed the debate at the time over which philosophy served as a legitimation for the Nazi revolution. The book provides much interesting information about some of the lesser known philosophers or those whose political involvements had been covered up, at the time. Heidegger attempted to step out in front and direct the Nazi movement, attempting to legitimize it through his philosophy, but ultimately withdrew into silence, for various reasons. His silence was so pervasive that he never really commented on his involvement again, except for an interview with "Der Spiegel" where he avoided any real discussion of the necessity of philosophical legitimation of political events. This silence has plagued the minds of both his fans and his enemies. Ultimately though, the Nazis themselves rejected their supposed philosophical forerunners, in that, they believed National Socialism to be its own unique movement and not simply a logical conclusion of Nietzsche, for example, as was first argued. Other philosophers involved in the movement either slipped into silence as did Heidegger or even into obscurity, made some sort of apology, stopped philosophizing altogether, or had their involvement covered up. The book offers some fairly sane conclusions about this involvement and involvement in politics in general, as well as a short discussion of the relationship between power and truth.

3 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A context with a Modern sense of Timing., August 5, 2001

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Paperback)

I recently looked back into this book for a sense of what made Heidegger unique in 20th century philosophy. A lot of philosophers were facing political questions in the years in which Heideggers support of Hitler made his professional advancement possible. This book is not trying to pick on Heidegger in an individual way in its overall approach to the situation, even when it points out that those professors whose careers were cut short when Heidegger found them unGerman were also not unique. Any problems which I may be having, dealing with my own political opinions related to the concept of how crisis, modernity, and what is German, all of which this book considers in a conservative way relating to Fichte at the birth of the political, become strictly my own personal problems as long as I am inclined to see things from a more radical perspective inspired by Nietzsche. At the young age of 33 I tried to deflect a lot of these things off myself by reflecting them back on Walter Kaufmann, who had translated THE GAY SCIENCE by Nietzsche into English in 1974. Given the uncertain nature of my life at that time, it would have been difficult for him to tell me that I had been trying to read philosophy too politically, because, for all he knew, being political might have turned out to be important to me in my life.

This book mentions a few very German thinkers who are now familiar to me: Carl Schmitt, and two brothers named Gehlen. Two of those three might be considered unnerving, because Schmitt would withhold judgment about anything important until the basic condition of friend or foe had been established, and one of the Gehlen brothers was involved in a kind of intelligence which evaluated information strictly on how reliable a source the information could be attributed to. Those who know me must be glad that I havent managed to be any more political than I have been for both reasons, be they friend or foe, as I feel highly suspect in either of those categories. What really tied Fichte to Heidegger for me in this book was the bold statement on page 39, in Fichtes Addresses to the German Nation. There must always be one who is first; then let him be first who can. Now that everybody knows that it didnt work out well for Heidegger, anyones willingness to do that politically for philosophy is highly suspect, and modern philosophy seems to be just as likely to belittle any individual attempter as any other element of modernity will tend to chaos.

What I understood in this book when I read it a few years ago seems obvious to me now, but there is a lot more philosophy than I really like, and it is tough to say that any of it is more important than the philosophy. If Walter Kaufmann paid any attention to my views on Nietzsche, it might have been because I was some indication that an element of chaos had become so obvious in America (the hypersexuality of sex, soldiers and swearing was not a topic covered by this book, or philosophy in general) that some ideas might actually be considered important in restoring a sense of order, a topic which is mentioned in this book, but order has not been an aspect of the modern intellect which it has been possible for me to deal with personally.