Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism': A Reading

On Reconciliation / Über Versöhnung, ed. Dora García (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2018)

European Journal of Philosophy 19/4, 2011

Standpoint, 2014

2002

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.

It is in any case a dubious thing to rely on what an author himself has brought to the forefront. The important thing is rather to give attention to those things he left shrouded in silence. [Heidegger's 'Lecture on Plato's The Sophist,' 1924]

[Note: this is an English version of the paper published in German as "Epochale Polemik: Nach den 'Schwarzen Heften' mit und gegen Heidegger denken," which is on my Academia page.] Abstract: In the Black Notebooks, Martin Heidegger complains that Being and Time “has not brought me one great enemy.” This paper analyzes Heidegger treatment of πόλεμος (Kampf, struggle) in the Notebooks as the foundation for his conception of enmity during this period, in which he distinguishes an “enemy” (Feind) from an “antagonist” (Gegner) in his aspiration to usher in a new epoch in the history of Being, both in thought and in political life. The paper asks how we as readers should now treat Heidegger — as a genuinely philosophical antagonist or as a merely ideological enemy — given the revelations of the Notebooks and other writings about his adherence to Nazism. It concludes by arguing that Heidegger’s own ambiguous use of the term Feind should condition our own response to him: that we should still read him as a philosopher, but only if we take up the challenge of renewing the Platonism that he attempted to overthrow as the foundation of the Western tradition.