On Reading Heidegger--After the 'Heidegger Case'?

Phenomenological Reviews, 2020

The book Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue in Politics and Philosophy does present the readers with the expected level of critical analysis needed to revise Heidegger’s literature in contemporary philosophical research. Given the discoveries that Heidegger himself was associated with German nationalism through the rise of the Third Reich and during the Second World War, the academic space has brought into question the extent to which Heidegger should be taken seriously. Additionally, Heidegger’s work has grown in popularity with the French scene in the mid-20th century, as well as with contemporary Americans. The notion of whether or not his works should be taught continues to be present in lecture halls and contemporary literature on German philosophy. Despite the concern towards the researchers that have built their academic careers on unpacking and clarifying Heidegger’s views, we must also address the theme of how we, as an academic community, should proceed with integrating the works of Heidegger in the philosophical literature, particularly within the branch of phenomenology. This book initially began as an exchange of correspondence between Gregory Fried and Emmanual Faye, which later on accepted commentaries from other scholars within the radar of Heidegger and phenomenological studies. The text contains a wide plethora of arguments both in favor and against allowing Heidegger to be read and discussed within academic circles, between researchers on one hand, as well as with students on the other. During my review and synthesis of the contributions to this text, I shall outline four primary areas of contextualizing Heidegger within the aforementioned theme: philosophical, historical, political, and academic. The philosophical portion shall outline the charges and defenses of Heidegger within the text itself, isolated by the commentaries of the contributors. The historical portion is going to elaborate on the historical scenarios in which Heidegger himself operated, and the extent to which such historical phenomena have shaped his thoughts and writing style. Thirdly, the political discussion is going to clarify how Heidegger’s affiliations with German nationalism influenced not only the nationalistic culture of Germany in the 20th century, but also how this has inevitably lead to the accusations of antisemitism. Lastly, the academic section is going to explore the extent to which the earlier three sections justify either allowing or rejecting Heidegger’s works in contemporary research. Surely, all four aspects of the review are interwoven with each other, in some cases with such convergence that it is perhaps difficult to delineate between them. Since understanding Heidegger’s place within the philosophical space is already a difficult task, this process of correctly delineating between the social contexts which are affected by him is also an obstacle towards maintaining ethical standards within contemporary research. As we shall see with the contributors of the texts, the priority of Heidegger scholars must be disambiguating his intentions and the contexts which were outside of his control, with events which Heidegger himself not only endorsed but supported one way or another.

Philosophia, 2019

Peter Trawny’s Heidegger: A Critical Introduction examines the various phases of the philosopher’s thought, with special attention to questions of politics and antisemitism. This review sums up the book and discusses the relevance of Heidegger today for analytic philosophy, Jewish thought, and political philosophy.

2002

2019

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TOC and Introduction (page-proofs) to the expanded 2016 paperback edition. Martin Heidegger is one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers, and now also one of the most contentious as revelations of the extent of his Nazism continue to surface. His ground-breaking works have had a hugely significant impact on contemporary thought through their reception, appropriation and critique. His thought has influenced philosophers as diverse as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Adorno, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida and Foucault, among others. In addition to his formative role in philosophical movements such as phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, deconstruction and post-modernism, Heidegger has had a transformative effect on diverse fields of inquiry including political theory, literary criticism, theology, gender theory, technology and environmental studies. The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger is the definitive textbook to Heidegger's life and work, in fifty-nine original essays written by an international team of leading Heidegger scholars. This new edition presents comprehensive coverage of Heidegger life and contexts, sources, influences and encounters, key writings, major themes and topics, and reception and influence, and includes a chapter addressing the controversial Black Notebooks, National Socialism, and Antisemitism. This is the ideal research tool for anyone studying or working in the field of Heidegger Studies today.

Contribution to upcoming volume on the Fried-Faye exchange concerning Heidegger and politics (Confronting Heidegger, eds. G. Fried & R. Polt). The live stake in confronting Heidegger in the light of everything we know in 2019, it contends, principally includes how Heidegger's work should be conceived and taught to the next generations, given what this generation of the scholarly community, as against previous post-war generations, know of the complete works. It is primarily with that “futural” aim in view that the following critical considerations are tendered: • the first, concerning claims that Heidegger, after resigning the Rectorship then after the war, can plausibly be thought of as an “anti-Nazi” thinker (Part II); • the second, concerning the claims Heidegger’s mature thinking makes about the history of Western philosophy, and what the uncritical acceptance of this metanarrative serves to omit, distort, or prejudice students against (Part III); • and the third, too briefly, on Heidegger’s persona as a philosopher, given the continuing anxieties academic philosophers face about our place in the “contest of the faculties”, and the democratisation and technicization of education (Part IV).

Does the recent publication of Heidegger's Black Notebooks require a re-evaluation of his thought? This is the question from which we start, and we reach the conclusion that a change of theoretical perspective on Heidegger's work, regardless of biographical judgments, is justified. The franker and less cautious style of the Black Notebooks brings in the foreground stances that were already known, but were previously relegated to the background: it becomes possible to establish that Heidegger's thought hosts a significant lot of sheer prejudices, which are readily incorporated in his picture of the 'history of being'. We argue that in his process of radicalization of questioning Heidegger progressively drops all known rational methods and epistemic criteria and that this paves the way to the unwitting reception of personal prejudices in his ambitious theoretical frame: Heidegger knowingly abandons all the theoretical instruments that could enable him to discriminate between deeply felt prejudices and proper philosophical intuitions. We conclude our analysis by proposing some criticisms that should be acceptable also to scholars who are sympathetic with Heidegger's thought. Thus, Heidegger's vindication of an 'erratic' way of thinking, where the journey is more significant than the result, turns out to be hardly compatible with the assertiveness of the many unjustified claims disseminated across the Black Notebooks. Moreover, while Heidegger wants to show the narrowness of an overwhelmingly dialectical and argumentative attitude, his late style of thinking unwittingly discredits any philosophical style (as his own) that widely appeals to a 'principle of charity' in the collaboration between author and reader.

Journal of British Society for Phenomenology, 1994