Aaron Wendlandi avalik loeng: Heidegger - For and Against National Socialism

Public Lecture by Aaron Wendland: Heidegger - For and Against National Socialism

On Wednesday, 07 December 2016, 16:15 at Jakobi 2, Room 336

Aaron James Wendland is Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Tartu.

The lecture is based on Heidegger's recently published private notebooks from the 1930s. The aim of this lecture is to reassess the relation between Heidegger's extremely influential philosophy and his decision to join the Nazi Party in 1933.  

Abstract:  Martin Heidegger is arguably the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century. He was also a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party. Debate over the relation between Heidegger’s thought and his political engagement has raged since Heidegger officially joined the Nazi Party in 1933. However, the recent publication of Heidegger’s private notebooks has provided scholars with detailed insight into Heidegger’s philosophical development and political thinking in the interwar period. This lecture examines Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazi regime in light of the philosophical account of Western history Heidegger develops in his notebooks of the 1930s. Specifically, this talk claims that Heidegger’s early enthusiasm for National Socialism was based his belief that the Nazis represented a radical break from the Western tradition that begins with Greek techne and culminates in the environmental degradation and human dislocation in our modern, technologically advanced societies. This lecture then shows that Heidegger eventually comes to see that, far from a radical break with the Western tradition, National Socialism represents the apotheosis of modern technology and the danger it entails. And so, Heidegger’s later critique of technology can be read as an implicit and occasionally explicit critique of the Nazis.