Martin Heidegger: A Political Life

By Hugo Ott

Book Overview

A documented account of how one of this century's leading philosophers came to embrace and promote Nazism, with fateful consequences for both his thought and German intellectual life in general. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465028985
• ISBN13: 9780465028986
• Release Date: November 1993
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 407 Pages
• Weight: 1.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Heidegger's Political Life

In the 1980s and 1990s, the philosoper Martin Heidegger's (1889 -- 1976) association with Nazism came under increasing scrutiny. I have been struggling with Heidegger again and rereading "Being and Time" (1927). In the process, I wanted to learn more about the nature of Heidegger's ties to Nazism. Thus, I read with interest this book by Hugo Ott, "Martin Heidegger: A Political Life" (1993) which has become one of the standard treatments of the subject. Ott is Professor of Economics and Social History at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger spent most of his philosophical career at Freiburg, as an assistant to the famous philosopher Edmund Husserl and then, following a period at Marburg where he wrote "Being and Time" assuming Husserl's chair at Freiburg in 1928. Infamously, Heidegger became Rector at Freiburg in 1933 where he was a strongly activist supporter of Hitler. In his latter years, with an inteview he gave to the German newspaper Der Spiegel in 1966 (not published until after his death) and in a book called "Facts and Thoughts", Heidegger tried to downplay his association with Nazism. Many of Heidegger's supporters have tried to characterize the philosopher as a political innocent who had no real idea of the nature of the political views he claimed to espouse. Using archival material. letters, and Heidegger's own writings, Ott shows that Heidegger's claims and those of apologists do not stand up. From the early days of the 1930s Heidegger became increasingly involved with Nazism and with remaking the German universitites in its image. His involvement continued well into the 1930s, following his resignation from the Rectorship in April, 1934. Heidegger was indeed a committed follower of Hitler and National Socialism and he vied albeit unsuccessfully with other less intellectually gifted and more unscrupulous individuals for a position of intellectual leadership within the movement. Ott's book is not a full biography of Heidegger. It is sketchy on matters other than the philosopher's political involvement and includes little of his intellectual development -- the books he read that influenced him -- and his personal life. Ott also does not discuss Heidegger's philosophy in much detail. His account of the writing of "Being and Time" is scant in the extreme. Ott claims that philosophy is not within his expertise. Beyond some rather broad generalizations, he does relatively little in exploring the extent and nature of the link between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics. Thus, in his study, Ott shows Heidegger increasingly involved with Nazi activity, but I still was unsure how, why and when Heidegger became attracted to Nazism. Ott gives a detailed portrayal of Heidegger's activites during his Rectorship, including his inaugural speech, his attempt to reshape the German universities, his informing on a chemist named Herman Staudinger, a subsequent recipient of the Nobel Prize, and his shabby treatment of Edmund Husserl, his fo

Illuminates Heidegger The Man

As Heidegger's philosophy has long been of interest to me, this book is a useful addition to refining and defining his life's work. My expectation in reading this particular volume was that it would show how his philosophical thinking underlay and gave rise to his later, political judgements--judgements that cast a permanent cloud of ignominy and (at best) doubt over Heidegger the man and his system of thought. My expectations were partially fulfilled, but the surprise for me in reading through this careful explication of anecdotes, correspondence, and comparative portrayals of events in Heidegger's formation and rise to prominence as a philosopher of the first rank, was that this book primarily illuminated the man himself. Naturally, there is a close relationship between the temperament, personality, and life story of any individual and that person's historical thinking. However, with Heidegger more than with most other philosophers, there have been widespread efforts to distinguish the thought of the man from the man himself--thus my anticipation that this volume would lead me through an examination of his thinking and the resultant political views he espoused. Instead, I was shown a human being who was, from a relatively early age, an opportunist, a back-stabber, and quite possibly a sociopath. His tears and sentiments were for himself and his capacity for self-pity appears boundless. It was not the author's intent to do any sort of hatchet job on the man--indeed, it is quite obvious that Ott intended no such thing--but what I derived from the meticulous examination of how, when, and why he reported one man to the Gestapo or wrote of another man's unsuitability for appointment to a university professorship because of his "proximity to Jewish thinking," was an individual of venomous character. Not only in politics, but also in his relationship to ostensible friends, he appears entirely calculating and self-serving, both willing and able to perform a volte face whenever it served to current advantage. All that said, his philosophy remains of great interest to me. I've another volume at hand--this, about "the Heidegger controversy," edited by Wolin--and will soon revisit Heidegger's work, "What Is Thinking?" Mr. Ott's volume has opened my eyes to Heidegger the man; it remains for me as for other readers, to determine how much of the man enters into his philosophical discursus, and what might accordingly be held out that is of lasting value.

Sacred Reich

True enough, Heidegger had no *real* knowledge of the parliamentary-political processes which led to the rise of National Socialism, long covenanting himself to the historical mission of Adolf Hitler to bring about the spiritual and intellectual metamorphosis of the Germanic peoples, assured of the Fuhrer's status as a true fountainhead of Being, the penultimate expression of Being-in-the-world. "Of this there was no doubt at all in Heidegger's mind - to him alone had been vouchsafed the quasi-mystical vision of the true essence of National Socialism, `the inward truth and greatness' of the movement; and this knowledge he could never disavow, never, as long as he lived"(135).It sends us back to the old discussion, reviled by Primo Levi and his peers, of whether any of our belated generation could have had the foresight to universally rejected the Nazi programme, our morality and self-esteem buttressed by such debasing simplifications as Spielberg's *Schindler's List* and its imitators, history as melodrama, the flattering of modern audiences with a contrived moral superiority. After all, if one of the greatest minds of the century could endorse Hitler as a spiritual leader, how can any of *us* ever claim inviolability? Hugo Ott has given us one of the most chilling historical treatises of the preceding decade. Its subtle cataloguing of archives, anecdotes, documentation and desideratum, is at times grindingly dull and absolutely gripping. We see Heidegger the promising young theology student develop into the mind-blowing author of *Sein und Zeit*(1927), followed by a shattering journey of the fall as he tries catastrophically to adapt his philosophy of Being to the political realm. Isolating himself from his Jewish colleagues, his correspondence becomes increasingly logistical and militaristic, and by this point it is clear that Heidegger has lost all contact with reality. Addressing an assembly of students: "May you ceaselessly grow in the courage to sacrifice yourselves for the salvation of our nation's essential being and the increase in its innermost strength in its polity. Let not your being be ruled by doctrine or `ideas'. The Fuhrer himself and he alone *is* the German reality, present and future, and its law. Study to know: from now on all things demand decision, and all action responsibility. Heil Hitler!"(164). Before we know it, Heidegger has become Fuhrer-Rector of Freiburg University, encouraging his pupils to greet him with Nazi salutes, and recommending that his mentor Husserl be sacked on account of "political undesirability." Barely surviving the nightmare of the WWII, Heidegger had another war waiting for him when the French "denazification" commission arrived to get some political payback for the German Occupation. Virtually banished from the academic world, it took many petitions and signed affidavits (from such wary supporters as Karl Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre) to assure the French authorities that the confisc