Re: [Pen-l] Exchange on I.F. Stone

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:51 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
> Louis Proyect quotes:
> > > Martin Heidegger, who not only welcomed the Nazi Party's rise to  
> > > power,
> > > but remained a proud member of the Nazi Party until the end of the  
> > > war.
>
> ravi wrote:
> > Well played! A smear by association, in response to another!
>
> are you saying that Heidegger wasn't a Nazi?



I am saying that calling Heidegger a Nazi, which is essentially an  
attempt to tie him to mass murder of Romas, homosexuals and Jews, is  
the rough equivalent (if technically more accurate) of calling someone  
a Stalinist because he had some sympathy with the CPUSA at some point.  
Yes, Heidegger was a card-carrying member of the party, and even gave  
a few positive speeches about national socialism and the "Führer" but  
IMHO these were motivated by his esoteric hopes and dreams of German  
nationalism and revivalism, as also his somewhat cowardly ambitions  
and impatient authoritarianism (ironically, the quote that the WSWS  
offers, from as early as mid-1934, in their attempt to damn the man,  
illustrates the true nature of Heidegger's involvement with national  
socialism and his ignorant attempt to tie the movement into his own  
philosophies: “The stuff which is now being bandied about as the  
philosophy of National Socialism—but which has not the least to do  
with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the  
encounter between global technology and modern man)—is casting its net  
in these troubled waters of ‘values' and ‘totalities'.”). He spent a  
year or so as a rector at Freiburg (which ended, IIRC, 1935), by some  
accounts discriminating against Jews, by other accounts sheltering  
some of them, but there is enough reason to believe his attitude  
bordered on anti-semitism. After the war, he kept mum and when his big  
mysterious explication was finally published in the later half of the  
20th century, it was mostly more self-extrication. None of that adds  
up to or justifies the knee-jerk response that Western readers are  
conditioned to exhibit when they hear the word "Nazi".

	--ravi

--
Support something better than yourself ;-)
PeTA       => http://peta.org/
Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/
If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l