Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany by Hans Sluga (PDF)

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Heidegger’s Crisis shows not only how the Nazis exploited philosophical ideas and used philosophers to gain public acceptance, but also how German philosophers played into the hands of the Nazis. Hans Sluga describes the growth, from World War I onward, of a powerful right-wing movement in German philosophy, in which nationalistic, antisemitic, and antidemocratic ideas flourished.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review [Sluga] is much less concerned with proving to himself or to others that Heidegger’s soul was saved, and instead he sets himself the laudable task of clarifying the political, institutional, and philosophical context in which it all happened. In this he is very successful. –Ernest Gellner (New Republic)Hans Sluga has written a thoughtful work…penetrating analysis of the historical crisis within German philosophy itself that positions Heidegger’s work within its own generational and institutional context. What animates Sluga’s whole project is its unrelenting focus on the “precarious,” “unstable,” and sometimes “dangerous” interaction between philosophy and politics (vii). –Charles Bambach (German Studies Review)An important contribution to the continuing effort to comprehend the link between Heidegger’s nazism and his philosophy. –Tom Rockmore (Political Theory)The Berkeley philosopher Hans Sluga has written a first-rate account of how Germany’s leading intellectuals, who were supposed to possess a broad understanding of German politics and societal reality, readily succumbed to the temptations of Nazi ideology…In a series of brilliant intellectual portraits, Sluga demonstrates that German philosophers, starting around the turn of the twentieth century, were shaken by the challenges to their profession posed by societal changes and the rise of the natural sciences. –Elliot Neaman (Critical Review)[T]his authoritative study of German philosophy during the Nazi era does not offer a detailed analysis of the work of Martin Heidegger. Its scope is much wider. Sluga…offers a paradigmatic interpretation of the politics of philosophy exemplified in radical historical circumstances. His reading of the crisis enveloping German philosophy after the First World War rightly concentrates on the notions of nation, leadership, conflict and order, concepts which are shown to be both philosophical and political in nature…What this major work achieves is no less than the most readable, intelligent and reliable survey of German fascism in the context of a culture-specific philosophical tradition…Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany should be compulsive reading, not only for Germanists. –Manfreg Jurgensen (Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association)Sluga tells us: it’s impossible to consider the Nazi involvement of the German philosophers as a touchstone for judging their philosophy. Otherwise, we would have to consign the whole of the philsophy, in all its forms, in all its currents, and with all its differences, to the depths of hell. But Sluga is a philosopher and hears the voice of reason. He pleads in this book for another way forward: a call for philosophy to engage in a perpetual self-examination. –Didier Eribon (Nouvel Observateur) Review [The author’s] aim is neither to indict nor to acquit any single individual. Rather, Sluga maintains, it is the outlook and presuppositions of an entire generation that demand our most urgent scrutiny and, when found guilty, our repudiation…Lynching Heidegger is academic scapegoating in the worst sense, for it is nothing other than a diversionary tactic for evading intellectual responsibility. –John C. Haugeland, University of Pittsburgh About the Author Hans Sluga is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐As advertised.

⭐Excellent book and a great seller.

⭐ok no problem

⭐While perhaps not a masterpiece of philosophical exegesis like Sluga’s book on Frege, this is a fine book, and quite possibly a masterpiece of scholarship. The author looks candidly and fearlessly at the responses of German academic philosophers to the instantiation of National Socialism in Germany after World War One. He is honest about the various subterfuges, compromises, careerisms and opportunisms those philosophy professors engaged in when Hitler came to power. Wonderfully, Sluga calls these academic posers “philosophers” throughout his discourse, the justification being that one or two or them possibly were, or that this at any rate is what the men and women of today who are employed by philosophy departments in universities, call themselves (“philosophers” or “professional philosophers”). The book clarifies the actual state of philosophy in German Universities from about 1870 to 1920, which Anglo-American scholars had apparently mistaken prior to Sluga. The reader who is looking for material on Heidegger will be disappointed, but not one who wishes to understand the situation Heidegger found himself in when confronted with the reality of the Third Reich. Understandably, Heidegger and the professional philosophers of his place and time were concerned about their careers and how to advance their own pet ideas in light of the political realities of their critical time, having, clearly, nothing at all in common with genuine philosophers such as Aristotle, Socrates, Diogenes, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius,–although Sluga never mentions such awkward facts, keeping to honest scholarship and to the game of philosophy as it is played in our universities today. In a sense there could hardly be a more illuminating book on academic philosophy (John Searle’s _The Campus War_ comes to mind but it pertains to the university as a whole not to philosophy per se), but Sluga also sheds plenty of light on Heidegger’s crisis and on dealing with apparent socio-political-economic crises generally, helpfully and convincingly pointing out that in real time we do tend to overestimate the criticality and the imminence of the supposed crises we finds ourselves in. It is difficult to do justice to this book and I can recommend Sluga’s work, most of which I have read, to anyone who enjoys academic philosophical scholarship from a fresh, informed, and intelligent point of view.

⭐This book takes a look at the complex relationship between philosophy and politics as exemplified by the participation of philosophers, especially Martin Heidegger, in the political environment of Nazi Germany. The book does not so much focus on Heidegger, as it does try to understand his political involvement in light of that of other philosophers. Fortunately, the author does not engage in senseless moralizing, nor does he attempt to exonerate Heidegger, but only to examine the relationship that philosophy bears to politics. The most important notion that played a role in the minds of Nazi philosophers was that of crisis. It is for this reason that the philosophies of Fichte and Nietzsche were chosen as important forerunners of National Socialism. In fact, Heidegger’s rectoral address included parts that were modeled on a similar address given by Fichte concerning the French Revolution. The book argues that far from being a unified body, the philosophy of the National Socialist period was divided into many factions. The conservative camp argued for a return to Kant. The radical camp was based upon the ideas of Nietzsche, for example, and included Heidegger. Arguments over idealism versus realism, and absolute values versus relativism framed the debate at the time over which philosophy served as a legitimation for the Nazi revolution. The book provides much interesting information about some of the lesser known philosophers or those whose political involvements had been covered up, at the time. Heidegger attempted to step out in front and direct the Nazi movement, attempting to legitimize it through his philosophy, but ultimately withdrew into silence, for various reasons. His silence was so pervasive that he never really commented on his involvement again, except for an interview with “Der Spiegel” where he avoided any real discussion of the necessity of philosophical legitimation of political events. This silence has plagued the minds of both his fans and his enemies. Ultimately though, the Nazis themselves rejected their supposed philosophical forerunners, in that, they believed National Socialism to be its own unique movement and not simply a logical conclusion of Nietzsche, for example, as was first argued. Other philosophers involved in the movement either slipped into silence as did Heidegger or even into obscurity, made some sort of apology, stopped philosophizing altogether, or had their involvement covered up. The book offers some fairly sane conclusions about this involvement and involvement in politics in general, as well as a short discussion of the relationship between power and truth.

⭐Excellent, erudite & fair.

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