The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader

Rating:
Summary: good selection, but
Review: First let me start of by saying that this is a good edition of articles on Heidegger's nazism and also provides the reader with first hand literature on Heidegger's participation in national socialism (ie, letters, addresses, etc, etc). This is definitely a book that one must look towards if they are doing any serious study of Heidegger's participation in nazism (unlike that shame of a book by Farias). However, I was discouraged by the editors introductory remark as I feel he incoporates too much of his own agenda and is just all together off. For example, rather that speaking about the text as a whole, he goes on a rather large tangent about how Derrida would not allow him to publish one of his essays for this edited volume and then progresses to kritik Derrida's texts on Heidegger for what appears to be somewhat personal reasons. I was left shaking my head and asking why this made it into the text. Next, I find that his attempt retrieve the importance of biraries ultimately disabling, which may cover over a hidden agenda the editor has. For example, Wolin says that we need to keep the binary between nazism and non-nazism distinct. The problem with this is that it is in keeping this binary open in the manner he does that he ultimately participates in a good/evil binary which is so often used in our philosophical and political tradition to either legitimate forms of violence or call to the inherent evil in other non-legitimated forms of violence (ie, vietnam/'native american' genocide v Nazism). Its violence no matter how you spin it and it appears to me that underneath the fluff this is a part of the agenda that this book participates in.

Rating:
Summary: some background
Review: Just wanted to provide a little background for this book. The animus between Wolin and Derrida, which the first reviewer perceived, is real. Wolin reproduced (in the first edition of this book) Derrida's "the Philosophers' Hell" without permission and in a poor, often misleading translation. (Derrida cites many of these errors in "Points..." pp. 440-444. The editor of that text cites more of them on pp.486-487.) For these reasons, Derrida requested that it be excluded from subsequent printings. There is also an exchange consisting of several letters and articles from the various parties printed in The New York Review of Books in the Spring of 1993.

Rating:
Summary: A Different View than that of the Revisionist Reviewer
Review: This book includes some decent essays from all vantage points concerning the question of what is to be made of Heidegger's Nazism. The first section of the book includes essays from Heidegger himself, including "The Self-Assertion of the German University", "Overcoming Metaphysics", and the brilliant interview with <<Der Spiegel>> magazine "Only a God Can Save Us Now". The second section includes the important essay "Total Mobilization" by Ernst Junger as well as several other letters and essays dealing directly with Heidegger's Nazism. Finally, the third section includes essays attempting an interpretation of Heidegger's Nazism from various standpoints. A disturbing aspect of this approach is that many of the individuals writing these essays concerning Heidegger are themselves avowed Marxists, who supported a totalitarian regime far more bloody and repressive than the Nazis. For instance, we have the essay of the despicable individual Herbert Marcuse. This is from a man who lumped all of humanity into two categories: the progressive and the regressive. One can only wonder what sort of scheme Marcuse and his politically correct Marxist cronies had in store for those he deemed "regressive". However, despite this, this book is important for understanding Heidegger's relation to Nazism, for his interview "Only a God Can Save Us Now", his later thought, and also for the essay "Total Mobilization" of Ernst Junger.

Rating:
Summary: The Question of Heidegger's Nazism.
Review: This book includes some decent essays from all vantage points concerning the question of what is to be made of Heidegger's Nazism. The first section of the book includes essays from Heidegger himself, including "The Self-Assertion of the German University", "Overcoming Metaphysics", and the brilliant interview with <> magazine "Only a God Can Save Us Now". The second section includes the important essay "Total Mobilization" by Ernst Junger as well as several other letters and essays dealing directly with Heidegger's Nazism. Finally, the third section includes essays attempting an interpretation of Heidegger's Nazism from various standpoints. A disturbing aspect of this approach is that many of the individuals writing these essays concerning Heidegger are themselves avowed Marxists, who supported a totalitarian regime far more bloody and repressive than the Nazis. For instance, we have the essay of the despicable individual Herbert Marcuse. This is from a man who lumped all of humanity into two categories: the progressive and the regressive. One can only wonder what sort of scheme Marcuse and his politically correct Marxist cronies had in store for those he deemed "regressive". However, despite this, this book is important for understanding Heidegger's relation to Nazism, for his interview "Only a God Can Save Us Now", his later thought, and also for the essay "Total Mobilization" of Ernst Junger.

Rating:
Summary: A Different View than that of the Revisionist Reviewer
Review: This is a fine documentation of the Heidegger controversy, containing a fair and broad selection of views. Two points in the previous review I found infuriating. Firstly, Marcuse, although strongly influenced by Marx, was not a Communist, or at least in any form that the Communist parties of his time could accept or understand. He took very independent stands on many issues, and managed to infuriate both the hard left and the hard right at various times of his life. In fact, I found Marcuse's response to Heidegger's fairy tale--the beginning of the Nazi period looked wonderful, but then the Nazi leaders proved stubborn, close-minded, etc., especially because they refused to heed Martin H.--one of the most moving and devasting replies of all: the beginning was already
the end, at least of all humanist and humane values in Germany.
Secondly, nobody has an exact body count yet for the Soviet Union, but no serious historian has contested that the rate of the Nazi killing--at least 20 million killed in six years of war, about 5 million Jews within about two years at the end of the war, plans for further ethnic cleansing throughout Europe and Asia should they have won the war, and so on--far outmatched that of the Soviet Union, even at its worst. The deaths caused by lousy planning, famine, destruction of the environment, irradiating their citizens, and so on, are more difficult to tally, but this is not the same as systematically killing non-combatants on a scale perhaps never before seen in history. I beg the reviewer not to trivialize this issue.

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