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Books

A Philosophy for Hitler

Roger Caldwell reviews Heidegger’s Crisis – Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany by Hans Sluga.

The main contours of Martin Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazi movement are by now well-known. He joined the Party in 1933 and, on assuming his duties as Rector at Freiburg University, proclaimed that “the Führer himself is the only present embodiment and future embodiment of German action and its law,” then attempted to steer the university in accordance with this dictum. He meanwhile aspired to the position of dominant Nazi philosopher – an aspiration that, mercifully for his later reputation, was unsuccessful – and then gradually drifted away from any open political commitment, disappointed at his lack of preferment. This drifting away, however, involved no repudiation of the Nazi movement. In the post-war years there was to be no condemnation, no comment on the Holocaust; rather, he found only that the Nazis had been “too limited in their thinking” to accept his philosophy.

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