HI Annie
the fact of his Nazi party membership , for me, trumps anything useful he might
have to say to us, indeed renders it utterly suspect, if not toxic.
He never expressed public regret for being an active member of a party
which went on to kill six million jews and countless others - gypsies, slavs ,
people with disabilites &c.
There are accounts of him wearing a Nazi party badge 2 years after his supposed
"disillusion" and that, moreover, in a meeting with a Jewish colleague, Karl
Löwith.
Not only did he never apologise, he
compounded things by a statement in 1949 in which he compared the Holocaust to
industrial agriculture:
"Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its
essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the
extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of
countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen
bombs."
The painting is, of course, a provocation - I'm fed up with hearing him quoted
as if he was some sort of disinterested seeker after truth. But I remain
convinced that the irrefutable fact to which it refers is of greater
significance than anything Heidegger ever wrote.
cheersmichael
________________________________
From: Annie Abrahams <[email protected]>
To: Michael Szpakowski <[email protected]>
Cc: netbehaviour <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: there are facts in philosophy
Often I prefer paintings to words, not this time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_and_Nazism
The relationship between the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Nazism is
a controversial subject.
Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, ten days after being
elected Rector of the University of Freiburg. A year later, in April 1934, he
resigned the Rectorship and stopped
taking part in Nazi Party meetings, but remained a member of the Party
until its dismantling at the end of World War II. Heidegger had held high hopes
of reforming the university system with the help of Nazism as a Conservative
Revolution, but, by the end of the War, had become expendable and was even
prevented from teaching. The denazification hearings immediately after World
War II led to Heidegger's dismissal
from Freiburg, banning him from teaching; after several years of
investigation, the French military finally classified Heidegger in 1949
as a Mitläufer or Nazi follower (Mitläufer : person who gives into peer
pressure without participation nor resistance nor inner conviction, unlike a
fellow traveler, literally "with-runner" similar to "lemming-like"). The
teaching ban was lifted in 1951 and he was granted emeritus status in 1953, but
he was never allowed to resume his philosophy
chair. His involvement with Nazism and the relation between his
philosophy and National Socialism are still highly controversial,
especially because he never apologized nor expressed regret,[1] except
privately when he called his rectorship and the related political engagement
"the greatest stupidity of his life" (die größte Dummheit seines
Lebens).[2]http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_et_le_nazisme
On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 5:48 PM, Michael Szpakowski <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/szpako/8534703986/in/photostream
>
>
>
>
>cheers
>
>michael
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