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Re-assessing the ‘Affair’

Nazism was not born in the desert. We all know this, but it has to be constantly recalled. And even if, far from the desert, it had grown like a mushroom in the silence of a European forest, it would have done so in the shadow of big trees, in the shelter of their silence or their indifference but in the same soil. I will not list these trees which in Europe people an immense black forest, I will not count the species… In their bushy taxonomy, they would bear the names of religions, philosophies, political regimes, economic structures, religious or academic institutions. In short, what is just as confusedly called culture, or the world of spirit.1

somewhat hysterical phrases are deployed by critics who, recognizing Heidegger’s rejection of biologism, none the less wish to tar him with the brush of Auschwitz.2

It has proved next to impossible for most commentators to discuss Heidegger’s ‘politics’ without eventually becoming mired in polemics or apologetics.3 All too often, a binary code obtains such that one is ‘required’ to declare allegiance to either the acolytes or the witch-hunters before one is lent an ear. In this chapter, we will look to situate the Heidegger controversy within the context of a prevailing ‘agenda’ and concomitant set of attitudes that have come to monopolize this debate. Indeed, we have seen the same problems that have stymied any progress in previous incarna-tions of this controversy emerge most recently as soon as there was the mere mention of possibly further incriminating evidence concerning Heidegger’s Nazism and his antisemitism in his notebooks from the 1930s and 1940s. The irony is that the most vigorous clashes in this particular version of the Heidegger controversy had already blown themselves out before the notebooks had even been published. And even then, one almost wished to remind those involved that we hardly needed any further evidence of Heidegger’s Nazism or his antisemitism. Having said as much, when one considers the lengths that some Heideggerians have gone to in order to brush his antisemitism under the carpet or indeed to explain it away as though it were a trifling matter, the recent discovery of further disturbing passages from Heidegger’s notebooks and some of his seminars from the early 1930s helps to delegitimize any such efforts as hopelessly delusional. Moreover, what we also begin to see in the recent publications is incontrovertible evidence that Heidegger was trying to make connec-tions between not only his philosophy and his political views but with his antisemitic prejudices as well.