Talk:Martin Heidegger/Archive 1

message: I recently happened to read a paper speculating on the links between Heidegger's political views and his ideas of phenomenology. According to this analysis, Heidegger saw the rootedness and sense of place (analysed through phenomenology) of the Germans in direct contrast to the rootlessness and placelessness of the Jews and appreciated/ admired the former and had strong negative feelings towards the latter. The speculation also remains whether his political views led to the philosophy or vice versa. I was shocked when I first read this. If this is a valid academic debate, I think it is important enough to be included in the page. I hope that someone who knows about this better would contribute. KRS 09:52, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the thesis of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's book 'The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger'.--XmarkX 09:15, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political ontology 

message: "What does Thinking mean?" would be a more accurate translation of "Was heisst Denken" than "What is called Thinking", the translation suggested in the entry. (Or at least that's how I feel:) ) --Tamas 19:10, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Since the title for the English translation is "What is called Thinking?", and readers here are likely to seek the translation, I think it makes more sense to retain it. -- Simonides 04:12, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

message: The article claims that Sartre was a student of Heidegger. I believe this to be false. Heidegger at one point adored Sartre's writings, but they met only much later in France, hardly a teacher-student relationship. AxelBoldt 18:34, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Sartre studied Heidegger, but he did not study under Heidegger, IIRC, so I too think the sentence should be changed. -- Simonides 04:12, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sartre a student? 

message: === Right Conduct? Heidegger and Nazi Germany ===
Professor Heidegger's life was marred by episodes requiring serious consideration for anyone wishing to assess his character as a man; namely, his affiliation with the Nazi Party and his extra-marital affair with one of his young students- Hannah Arendt. 
Heidegger (among other German scientists and intellectuals)
:name some (e.g. Carl Schmitt) or take out this bracket
joined the Nazi Party on May 1st 1933, before being appointed the rector of the university in Freiburg. He resigned from the rectorship in February 1934. During this time Heidegger's former teacher Husserl, who was Jewish, was denied the use of the university library at Freiburg because of the racial cleansing laws issued by the Nazi Party.
:In the Spiegel interview, Heidegger denies that he denied Husserl this right. If we take this as correct, the sentence does not necessarily belong here.
Moreover, Heidegger removed the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time when it was reissued in 1941.
:Correct. Heidegger says that this was due to pressure from his publisher Max Niemeyer. This apology cannot be proven, but should be mentioned as Heidegger's statement.
::Why? It cannot be proven- as you state. What more does a reader need to know? You seem to have a bias, a POV which masquerades as fairness. You, nor I, know what Heidegger really thought, the fact of the exclusion- on his book- not Max Niemeyer's, is primary. Publishers are entities all writers must deal with, if Heidegger had withdrew the book it would be different. You seem to be searching for an exculpation. --Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
Additionally, when his Introduction to Metaphysics (originally 1935) was reissued after the war, he declined to remove a glowing endorsement of the Nazi Party, nor comment on that endorsement.
:The critical phrase in "Einführung in die Metaphysik" is innere Wahrheit und Größe dieser Bewegung (nämlich [die] Begegnung der planetarisch bestimmten Technik und des neuzeitlichen Menschen) (inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely, the contact/opposition of planetary technology and modern man)). In a way, the phrase in brackets is a comment (however idiotic). The problem here is not that he never removed it or that he was unclear about it, but that he in fact kept this belief in an "inner truth" of national socialism, much the same as socialists until today believe in the "inner truth" of communism.
::The phrase is a comment, true, it is also an attempt to clarify his consistent belief. I fail to see how you have added much here, whatever you think the 'problem' is, the fact remains the same and the section should be in the article. Your analogy to "socialists" is hard to take with much veracity or value- it is your POV and a valid topic for the Discussion Pages, not a reason to delete the long standing article sentence.--Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
A further complication to the story is his affair with Hannah Arendt, a Jew, when she was a doctoral student of his at the University of Marburg.
: which is, in the 20s, long before Heidegger's rectorate
It did not even end when she "fled" from him and moved to Heidelberg to continue with Karl Jaspers, and she later spoke on his behalf at his denazification hearings, and their friendship resumed, if extremely cautiously, after the war, despite or even because of the widespread contempt that Heidegger was held in for his political sympathies, and despite his being forbidden from teaching for a number of years. Heidegger engaged in a sexual affair with Arendt while he was married and she was his student, both of which have been viewed as improper. 
Some years later, hoping to quiet controversy, Heidegger gave an interview to Der Spiegel magazine, in which he promised to discuss the issue provided it was published posthumously. When the article was finally published, however, he did not quell rumors, making a comparison between the hardships encountered after the War by Germans in Communist East Germany with those suffered during the Holocaust. Incredibly, the only reference made about the Holocaust in the entire interview was a rationalization that the Holocaust could not have happened without technology. In effect, he blamed the organized, systematic destruction of millions on the increasing world power of techne, or technology, despite the interviewer's repeated attempts to get him to assess Germany’s culpability.
: As I have said before, this is wrong. My suggestion would be the following:
:::What is wrong? The whole thing, be more clear about what you are claiming as a factual inaccuracy as opposed to interpretation. --Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
:: [... provided it was published posthumously.] It should also be mentioned that the published version was not a real interview, but the protocol had been largely "corrected" on Heidegger's demand. In this interview, Heidegger's defense of his Nazi involvement runs in two tracks: firstly, he argues that there would have been no alternative; he says he had tried to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and had to make compromises with the Nazi administration. But secondly, he also saw an "awakening" ("Aufbruch"), something which might help to find a "new national and social approach". From 1934 on, he would have been more critical towards the government. - Heidegger is evasive on some questions in this interview. For example, when he talks about a "national and social approach" in national socialism he links this to Friedrich Naumann. But Naumann's "national-sozialer Verein" was not at all national socialist, but liberal. Also, he changes between his two arguments quickly, not regarding they are in a way contradictory. And his statements often tend to take the form "others were much more nazis than me" and "the nazis did bad things to me, too" which is true, but misses the point in question. [paragraph] Also, the Spiegel interviewers did not bring to question Heidegger's quote from 1949 where he compares the shoah to engineered food production ("essentially the same"); in fact, they were not in possession of much of the evidence for Heidegger's sympathies towards nazism which is known today.
:::I think the issue you have failed to address is his analogy between the Holocaust and the plight of communist East Germany. You need to be more constructive and percise, as opposed to sweeping 'corrections' based on your own assessment of the interview and argument. Not a very good edit. --Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
Heidegger's involvements with the Nazis and the lack of a clear apology for them complicated many of his friendships, and continues to complicate the reception of his work. It is disputable whether Heidegger was antisemitic or if he was taken in by the charismatic projections of Nazi propaganda, but he had clear sympathies for certain elements of Nazism. Whether this is in any way a result of his philosophy is still contested; what is clear is that while Heidegger certainly was a Nazi, the Nazis at large were not Heideggerian in their philosophy.
:I would cut out the part after "contested;". Heidegger was a member of the NSDAP. Whether Heidegger was a nazi in ideological terms is the very disputed question. If "the Nazis" existend as a homogenous mass, had one philosophy and how far this was heideggerian is irrelevant. - For the matter of antisemitism, someone in de:Diskussion:Martin Heidegger used the fitting phrase of Heidegger being an "anti-intellectualist intellectual", regarding that anti-intellectualism and antisemitism were roughly the same in Germany even before 1933 and perhaps up to the 1960s. Heidegger was not an aggressive antisemite, but antisemitism would fit into his nationalist (and, one could argue, völkisch) Weltanschauung. At least, he would accept the nazis' antisemitism if it were for their "good" aims.
====Obligations & Unsplendid Silence: Celan at "Todtnauberg"====
Shortly after giving the Spiegel interview and following Celan's lecture at Freiburg, Heidegger hosted Paul Celan at his chalet at Todtnauberg. The two walked in the woods. Celan impressed Heidegger with his knowledge of botany (also evident in his poetry), and Heidegger is thought to have spoken about elements of his press interview. Celan signed Heidegger's guest book.
Celan, often taken to be one of the great post-war poets writing in the German language, was born in 1920 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Romania and orphaned by the Shoah. The Shoah is the explicit subject matter of numerous Celan poems, including earlier work such as "Black Flakes" and "Death Fugue" and later ones such as "Stretto". Peter Szondi was perhaps the first critic to begin to understand that Celan's poetry was not hermetic but incorporated extensive references to Celan's own experiences. Celan's poetry ought not, however, be taken as strictly or primarily autobiographical because of this experential substrate -- Celan offered only a handful of essays on poetics, but these give us better to understand a number of things. One is that Celan's poetics are deeply informed by Heidegger's philosophy (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe argues that poems such as "Tübingen, January" could in any case only be understood on the basis of Heidegger's remarks on Hölderlin). Another is that Celan regarded poetry to exist as a distinct field of linguistic experience, the content which cannot be exposed simply through biographical explication, even if the latter remains indispensable. It is with such caution then that one ought to read "Todtnauberg", which Celan composed very shortly after their meeting and sent to Heidegger in the first copy of a limited bibliophile edition.
In his Poetry as Experience, Lacoue-Labarthe advanced the argument that, although Celan's poetry was deeply informed by Heidegger's philosophy, Celan was long aware of Heidegger's association with the Nazi party and therefore fundamentally circumspect toward the man and transformative in his reception of his work. Celan was nonetheless willing to meet Heidegger (although he may not have been willing to be photographed with him or to contribute to Festschriften honoring Heidegger's work). Heidegger was a professed admirer of Celan's writing, although he did not attend to it as Hölderlin or Trakl. "Todtnauberg", however, seems to hold out the unrealized possibility of a profound rapprochement between their work, albeit on the condition that Heidegger break a silence that virtually blanketed his work to the end (Lacoue-Labarthe has commented on the insufficiency of Heidegger's one known remark about the gas chambers, made in 1949). In this respect Heidegger's work was perhaps redeemable for Celan, even if that redemption or what need was had for it was never transacted between the two men. Lest one implicitly take this as Celan simply demanding an apology of Heidegger (such a scenario seems simplistic, the more so given that neither was given to simplism), there are reasonable grounds to argue that it was (and still is) at least as important to specify how the Nazi period is das Unheil (disaster, calamity) (which is to say: specificity as to a great deal more than counting the dead). What compelled Heidegger to write about poetry, technology, and truth ought to have compelled him to write about the German disaster, all the more so because, on the basis of his thought, Heidegger attributed an "inner greatness" to the movement that brought about that disaster.
Lacoue-Labarthe and Jacques Derrida have both commented extensively on Heidegger's corpus and both have remarked on affinities links with his Nazi commitments that persisted until the end. It is perhaps of greater important that Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, following Celan to a degree, believed Heidegger capable of a profound criticism of Nazism and the horrors it brought forth and hold Heidegger's greatest failure not to be his involvement in the National Socialist movement but his "silence on the extermination" (Lacoue-Labarthe) and refusal to elaborate a thorough deconstruction of Nazism beyond laying out certain of his considerable objections to party orthodoxies and (particularly in the case of Lacoue-Labarthe) their passage through Nietzsche, Hölderlin, and Richard Wagner, taken to be susceptible to Nazi appropriation. It would be reasonable to say that both Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida regarded Heidegger as capable of engaging Nazism in this other fashion and have undertaken such work on the basis of his (one ought to note in due course the questions raised by Derrida in "Desistance" in calling attention to Lacoue-Labarthe's parenthetical comment: "(in any case, Heidegger never avoids anything)").
:This whole paragraph should be strictly shortened. The Celan meeting is more or less a parenthesis of this excerpt from Safranski's book.
::Then do it! Why delete the entire passage? If you want to shorten it, correct it, edit it, improve it- please do so. A deletion from the article is not warrented. it is a strict POV edit. To suggest it is a "parenthesis of Safranski's book" is grotesquely incorrect. It comes from a variety of sources independent of the biography, as buffyg discusses on this page.--Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
====Conclusion====
The possibility that Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party was the result of his philosophy would lead many to discredit Heidegger as a philosopher solely on this basis (please note that such criticism would be prospective in application; as Jean-François Lyotard remarked, the formula becomes "if a Nazi, then not a great thinker" or, conversely, "if a great thinker, then not a Nazi"). It is worth noting, however, that whether or not this affiliation is distasteful or even ethically horrifying, it cannot as such be reduced to a sole criterion for judging the validity of his philosophy; to understand Heidegger's philosophical wrong one must arrive at a scholarly understanding of the extent to which the one partakes in the other (rather than attempting to "have nothing to do" with either). What is most objectionable in sharply dismissive criticisms of Heidegger's work is conflation of the two or the assertion that the two are simply but thoroughly coextensive (for example: Adorno's remark, offered in mitigation of his concessions to the National Socialist regime, that Heidegger's philosophy was "fascist down to its innermost workings," in contrast to his own failings, incidental by the contrast offered).
Having mentioned the contributions of Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Lyotard, it is worth noting that Heidegger's relation to the Shoah and Nazism was the subject of great and occasionally fractious debate across various deconstructions, whose stakes included the extent to which specific practitioners of deconstruction could entirely do without Heideggerian deconstruction (as Lyotard in particular may have wished) or were therefore obliged to further (and in the cases of many mis- and uninformed criticisms, recall) already extensive criticisms of Heidegger which considerably predated (in the case of Derrida, by decades) the broad recognition of Heidegger's activities as a National Socialist precipitated by press attention to the Farias book and extensive treatments of the Shoah and its implications (for example, the proceedings of the first conference dedicated to Derrida's work, published as Les Fins de l'Homme, the essay from which that title was taken, Derrida's Cinders and "Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing," or the studies on Celan by Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida which shortly preceded the detailed studies of Heidegger's politics published in and after 1987). On so many of these matters, please see Avital Ronell's "The Differends of Man" in Finitude's Score. Particularly given that the ways in which various deconstructions have more or less self-consciously inherited from Heidegger is often used to find them complicit in his most reprehensible politics by implication, one ought to review at least the above readings before indulging such a line of argument or when otherwise wishing to understand what filiation has been taken to mean in a philosophical context.
: What is missing here is the Conservative Revolutionary movement, cf. de:Konservative Revolution and also de:Sein und Zeit (both en articles are in need of help). If you crossread Being and Time and, e.g., writings of Carl Schmitt, you see the correlation. Heidegger believed in some kind of "true" and "good" national-socialism. He may be a great thinker, but his works, which do contain political aspects that can lead to nazism, are highly dangerous.
=====See also=====
To further evaluate the nazi issue, read "Only a God can save us now"
:The German title is "Nur ein Gott kann uns retten"; there is no "now".
Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger(1966) and Jurgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): pp. 431-456.
======The above needs work======
So I moved it in here. Feel free to return undisputed portions as you see fit, but much of it certainly should not be in the article, especially not with that slant. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:34, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made my comments. Please excuse mistakes in language.--80.143.52.124 20:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  moved from article 

message: Professor Heidegger's life was marred by episodes requiring serious consideration for anyone wishing to assess his character as a man; namely, his affiliation with the Nazi Party and his extra-marital affair with one of his young students- Hannah Arendt. 
Heidegger (among other German scientists and intellectuals)
:name some (e.g. Carl Schmitt) or take out this bracket
joined the Nazi Party on May 1st 1933, before being appointed the rector of the university in Freiburg. He resigned from the rectorship in February 1934. During this time Heidegger's former teacher Husserl, who was Jewish, was denied the use of the university library at Freiburg because of the racial cleansing laws issued by the Nazi Party.
:In the Spiegel interview, Heidegger denies that he denied Husserl this right. If we take this as correct, the sentence does not necessarily belong here.
Moreover, Heidegger removed the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time when it was reissued in 1941.
:Correct. Heidegger says that this was due to pressure from his publisher Max Niemeyer. This apology cannot be proven, but should be mentioned as Heidegger's statement.
::Why? It cannot be proven- as you state. What more does a reader need to know? You seem to have a bias, a POV which masquerades as fairness. You, nor I, know what Heidegger really thought, the fact of the exclusion- on his book- not Max Niemeyer's, is primary. Publishers are entities all writers must deal with, if Heidegger had withdrew the book it would be different. You seem to be searching for an exculpation. --Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
Additionally, when his Introduction to Metaphysics (originally 1935) was reissued after the war, he declined to remove a glowing endorsement of the Nazi Party, nor comment on that endorsement.
:The critical phrase in "Einführung in die Metaphysik" is innere Wahrheit und Größe dieser Bewegung (nämlich [die] Begegnung der planetarisch bestimmten Technik und des neuzeitlichen Menschen) (inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely, the contact/opposition of planetary technology and modern man)). In a way, the phrase in brackets is a comment (however idiotic). The problem here is not that he never removed it or that he was unclear about it, but that he in fact kept this belief in an "inner truth" of national socialism, much the same as socialists until today believe in the "inner truth" of communism.
::The phrase is a comment, true, it is also an attempt to clarify his consistent belief. I fail to see how you have added much here, whatever you think the 'problem' is, the fact remains the same and the section should be in the article. Your analogy to "socialists" is hard to take with much veracity or value- it is your POV and a valid topic for the Discussion Pages, not a reason to delete the long standing article sentence.--Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
A further complication to the story is his affair with Hannah Arendt, a Jew, when she was a doctoral student of his at the University of Marburg.
: which is, in the 20s, long before Heidegger's rectorate
It did not even end when she "fled" from him and moved to Heidelberg to continue with Karl Jaspers, and she later spoke on his behalf at his denazification hearings, and their friendship resumed, if extremely cautiously, after the war, despite or even because of the widespread contempt that Heidegger was held in for his political sympathies, and despite his being forbidden from teaching for a number of years. Heidegger engaged in a sexual affair with Arendt while he was married and she was his student, both of which have been viewed as improper. 
Some years later, hoping to quiet controversy, Heidegger gave an interview to Der Spiegel magazine, in which he promised to discuss the issue provided it was published posthumously. When the article was finally published, however, he did not quell rumors, making a comparison between the hardships encountered after the War by Germans in Communist East Germany with those suffered during the Holocaust. Incredibly, the only reference made about the Holocaust in the entire interview was a rationalization that the Holocaust could not have happened without technology. In effect, he blamed the organized, systematic destruction of millions on the increasing world power of techne, or technology, despite the interviewer's repeated attempts to get him to assess Germany’s culpability.
: As I have said before, this is wrong. My suggestion would be the following:
:::What is wrong? The whole thing, be more clear about what you are claiming as a factual inaccuracy as opposed to interpretation. --Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
:: [... provided it was published posthumously.] It should also be mentioned that the published version was not a real interview, but the protocol had been largely "corrected" on Heidegger's demand. In this interview, Heidegger's defense of his Nazi involvement runs in two tracks: firstly, he argues that there would have been no alternative; he says he had tried to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and had to make compromises with the Nazi administration. But secondly, he also saw an "awakening" ("Aufbruch"), something which might help to find a "new national and social approach". From 1934 on, he would have been more critical towards the government. - Heidegger is evasive on some questions in this interview. For example, when he talks about a "national and social approach" in national socialism he links this to Friedrich Naumann. But Naumann's "national-sozialer Verein" was not at all national socialist, but liberal. Also, he changes between his two arguments quickly, not regarding they are in a way contradictory. And his statements often tend to take the form "others were much more nazis than me" and "the nazis did bad things to me, too" which is true, but misses the point in question. [paragraph] Also, the Spiegel interviewers did not bring to question Heidegger's quote from 1949 where he compares the shoah to engineered food production ("essentially the same"); in fact, they were not in possession of much of the evidence for Heidegger's sympathies towards nazism which is known today.
:::I think the issue you have failed to address is his analogy between the Holocaust and the plight of communist East Germany. You need to be more constructive and percise, as opposed to sweeping 'corrections' based on your own assessment of the interview and argument. Not a very good edit. --Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
Heidegger's involvements with the Nazis and the lack of a clear apology for them complicated many of his friendships, and continues to complicate the reception of his work. It is disputable whether Heidegger was antisemitic or if he was taken in by the charismatic projections of Nazi propaganda, but he had clear sympathies for certain elements of Nazism. Whether this is in any way a result of his philosophy is still contested; what is clear is that while Heidegger certainly was a Nazi, the Nazis at large were not Heideggerian in their philosophy.
:I would cut out the part after "contested;". Heidegger was a member of the NSDAP. Whether Heidegger was a nazi in ideological terms is the very disputed question. If "the Nazis" existend as a homogenous mass, had one philosophy and how far this was heideggerian is irrelevant. - For the matter of antisemitism, someone in de:Diskussion:Martin Heidegger used the fitting phrase of Heidegger being an "anti-intellectualist intellectual", regarding that anti-intellectualism and antisemitism were roughly the same in Germany even before 1933 and perhaps up to the 1960s. Heidegger was not an aggressive antisemite, but antisemitism would fit into his nationalist (and, one could argue, völkisch) Weltanschauung. At least, he would accept the nazis' antisemitism if it were for their "good" aims.
====Obligations & Unsplendid Silence: Celan at "Todtnauberg"====
Shortly after giving the Spiegel interview and following Celan's lecture at Freiburg, Heidegger hosted Paul Celan at his chalet at Todtnauberg. The two walked in the woods. Celan impressed Heidegger with his knowledge of botany (also evident in his poetry), and Heidegger is thought to have spoken about elements of his press interview. Celan signed Heidegger's guest book.
Celan, often taken to be one of the great post-war poets writing in the German language, was born in 1920 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Romania and orphaned by the Shoah. The Shoah is the explicit subject matter of numerous Celan poems, including earlier work such as "Black Flakes" and "Death Fugue" and later ones such as "Stretto". Peter Szondi was perhaps the first critic to begin to understand that Celan's poetry was not hermetic but incorporated extensive references to Celan's own experiences. Celan's poetry ought not, however, be taken as strictly or primarily autobiographical because of this experential substrate -- Celan offered only a handful of essays on poetics, but these give us better to understand a number of things. One is that Celan's poetics are deeply informed by Heidegger's philosophy (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe argues that poems such as "Tübingen, January" could in any case only be understood on the basis of Heidegger's remarks on Hölderlin). Another is that Celan regarded poetry to exist as a distinct field of linguistic experience, the content which cannot be exposed simply through biographical explication, even if the latter remains indispensable. It is with such caution then that one ought to read "Todtnauberg", which Celan composed very shortly after their meeting and sent to Heidegger in the first copy of a limited bibliophile edition.
In his Poetry as Experience, Lacoue-Labarthe advanced the argument that, although Celan's poetry was deeply informed by Heidegger's philosophy, Celan was long aware of Heidegger's association with the Nazi party and therefore fundamentally circumspect toward the man and transformative in his reception of his work. Celan was nonetheless willing to meet Heidegger (although he may not have been willing to be photographed with him or to contribute to Festschriften honoring Heidegger's work). Heidegger was a professed admirer of Celan's writing, although he did not attend to it as Hölderlin or Trakl. "Todtnauberg", however, seems to hold out the unrealized possibility of a profound rapprochement between their work, albeit on the condition that Heidegger break a silence that virtually blanketed his work to the end (Lacoue-Labarthe has commented on the insufficiency of Heidegger's one known remark about the gas chambers, made in 1949). In this respect Heidegger's work was perhaps redeemable for Celan, even if that redemption or what need was had for it was never transacted between the two men. Lest one implicitly take this as Celan simply demanding an apology of Heidegger (such a scenario seems simplistic, the more so given that neither was given to simplism), there are reasonable grounds to argue that it was (and still is) at least as important to specify how the Nazi period is das Unheil (disaster, calamity) (which is to say: specificity as to a great deal more than counting the dead). What compelled Heidegger to write about poetry, technology, and truth ought to have compelled him to write about the German disaster, all the more so because, on the basis of his thought, Heidegger attributed an "inner greatness" to the movement that brought about that disaster.
Lacoue-Labarthe and Jacques Derrida have both commented extensively on Heidegger's corpus and both have remarked on affinities links with his Nazi commitments that persisted until the end. It is perhaps of greater important that Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, following Celan to a degree, believed Heidegger capable of a profound criticism of Nazism and the horrors it brought forth and hold Heidegger's greatest failure not to be his involvement in the National Socialist movement but his "silence on the extermination" (Lacoue-Labarthe) and refusal to elaborate a thorough deconstruction of Nazism beyond laying out certain of his considerable objections to party orthodoxies and (particularly in the case of Lacoue-Labarthe) their passage through Nietzsche, Hölderlin, and Richard Wagner, taken to be susceptible to Nazi appropriation. It would be reasonable to say that both Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida regarded Heidegger as capable of engaging Nazism in this other fashion and have undertaken such work on the basis of his (one ought to note in due course the questions raised by Derrida in "Desistance" in calling attention to Lacoue-Labarthe's parenthetical comment: "(in any case, Heidegger never avoids anything)").
:This whole paragraph should be strictly shortened. The Celan meeting is more or less a parenthesis of this excerpt from Safranski's book.
::Then do it! Why delete the entire passage? If you want to shorten it, correct it, edit it, improve it- please do so. A deletion from the article is not warrented. it is a strict POV edit. To suggest it is a "parenthesis of Safranski's book" is grotesquely incorrect. It comes from a variety of sources independent of the biography, as buffyg discusses on this page.--Mikerussell 08:30, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)
====Conclusion====
The possibility that Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party was the result of his philosophy would lead many to discredit Heidegger as a philosopher solely on this basis (please note that such criticism would be prospective in application; as Jean-François Lyotard remarked, the formula becomes "if a Nazi, then not a great thinker" or, conversely, "if a great thinker, then not a Nazi"). It is worth noting, however, that whether or not this affiliation is distasteful or even ethically horrifying, it cannot as such be reduced to a sole criterion for judging the validity of his philosophy; to understand Heidegger's philosophical wrong one must arrive at a scholarly understanding of the extent to which the one partakes in the other (rather than attempting to "have nothing to do" with either). What is most objectionable in sharply dismissive criticisms of Heidegger's work is conflation of the two or the assertion that the two are simply but thoroughly coextensive (for example: Adorno's remark, offered in mitigation of his concessions to the National Socialist regime, that Heidegger's philosophy was "fascist down to its innermost workings," in contrast to his own failings, incidental by the contrast offered).
Having mentioned the contributions of Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Lyotard, it is worth noting that Heidegger's relation to the Shoah and Nazism was the subject of great and occasionally fractious debate across various deconstructions, whose stakes included the extent to which specific practitioners of deconstruction could entirely do without Heideggerian deconstruction (as Lyotard in particular may have wished) or were therefore obliged to further (and in the cases of many mis- and uninformed criticisms, recall) already extensive criticisms of Heidegger which considerably predated (in the case of Derrida, by decades) the broad recognition of Heidegger's activities as a National Socialist precipitated by press attention to the Farias book and extensive treatments of the Shoah and its implications (for example, the proceedings of the first conference dedicated to Derrida's work, published as Les Fins de l'Homme, the essay from which that title was taken, Derrida's Cinders and "Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing," or the studies on Celan by Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida which shortly preceded the detailed studies of Heidegger's politics published in and after 1987). On so many of these matters, please see Avital Ronell's "The Differends of Man" in Finitude's Score. Particularly given that the ways in which various deconstructions have more or less self-consciously inherited from Heidegger is often used to find them complicit in his most reprehensible politics by implication, one ought to review at least the above readings before indulging such a line of argument or when otherwise wishing to understand what filiation has been taken to mean in a philosophical context.
: What is missing here is the Conservative Revolutionary movement, cf. de:Konservative Revolution and also de:Sein und Zeit (both en articles are in need of help). If you crossread Being and Time and, e.g., writings of Carl Schmitt, you see the correlation. Heidegger believed in some kind of "true" and "good" national-socialism. He may be a great thinker, but his works, which do contain political aspects that can lead to nazism, are highly dangerous.
=====See also=====
To further evaluate the nazi issue, read "Only a God can save us now"
:The German title is "Nur ein Gott kann uns retten"; there is no "now".
Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger(1966) and Jurgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): pp. 431-456.
======The above needs work======
So I moved it in here. Feel free to return undisputed portions as you see fit, but much of it certainly should not be in the article, especially not with that slant. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:34, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made my comments. Please excuse mistakes in language.--80.143.52.124 20:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Right Conduct? Heidegger and Nazi Germany 

message: The possibility that Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi party was the result of his philosophy would lead many to discredit Heidegger as a philosopher solely on this basis (please note that such criticism would be prospective in application; as Jean-François Lyotard remarked, the formula becomes "if a Nazi, then not a great thinker" or, conversely, "if a great thinker, then not a Nazi"). It is worth noting, however, that whether or not this affiliation is distasteful or even ethically horrifying, it cannot as such be reduced to a sole criterion for judging the validity of his philosophy; to understand Heidegger's philosophical wrong one must arrive at a scholarly understanding of the extent to which the one partakes in the other (rather than attempting to "have nothing to do" with either). What is most objectionable in sharply dismissive criticisms of Heidegger's work is conflation of the two or the assertion that the two are simply but thoroughly coextensive (for example: Adorno's remark, offered in mitigation of his concessions to the National Socialist regime, that Heidegger's philosophy was "fascist down to its innermost workings," in contrast to his own failings, incidental by the contrast offered).
Having mentioned the contributions of Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Lyotard, it is worth noting that Heidegger's relation to the Shoah and Nazism was the subject of great and occasionally fractious debate across various deconstructions, whose stakes included the extent to which specific practitioners of deconstruction could entirely do without Heideggerian deconstruction (as Lyotard in particular may have wished) or were therefore obliged to further (and in the cases of many mis- and uninformed criticisms, recall) already extensive criticisms of Heidegger which considerably predated (in the case of Derrida, by decades) the broad recognition of Heidegger's activities as a National Socialist precipitated by press attention to the Farias book and extensive treatments of the Shoah and its implications (for example, the proceedings of the first conference dedicated to Derrida's work, published as Les Fins de l'Homme, the essay from which that title was taken, Derrida's Cinders and "Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing," or the studies on Celan by Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida which shortly preceded the detailed studies of Heidegger's politics published in and after 1987). On so many of these matters, please see Avital Ronell's "The Differends of Man" in Finitude's Score. Particularly given that the ways in which various deconstructions have more or less self-consciously inherited from Heidegger is often used to find them complicit in his most reprehensible politics by implication, one ought to review at least the above readings before indulging such a line of argument or when otherwise wishing to understand what filiation has been taken to mean in a philosophical context.
: What is missing here is the Conservative Revolutionary movement, cf. de:Konservative Revolution and also de:Sein und Zeit (both en articles are in need of help). If you crossread Being and Time and, e.g., writings of Carl Schmitt, you see the correlation. Heidegger believed in some kind of "true" and "good" national-socialism. He may be a great thinker, but his works, which do contain political aspects that can lead to nazism, are highly dangerous.
=====See also=====
To further evaluate the nazi issue, read "Only a God can save us now"
:The German title is "Nur ein Gott kann uns retten"; there is no "now".
Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger(1966) and Jurgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): pp. 431-456.
======The above needs work======
So I moved it in here. Feel free to return undisputed portions as you see fit, but much of it certainly should not be in the article, especially not with that slant. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:34, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made my comments. Please excuse mistakes in language.--80.143.52.124 20:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Conclusion

message: To further evaluate the nazi issue, read "Only a God can save us now"
:The German title is "Nur ein Gott kann uns retten"; there is no "now".
Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger(1966) and Jurgen Habermas, "Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective." translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): pp. 431-456.
======The above needs work======
So I moved it in here. Feel free to return undisputed portions as you see fit, but much of it certainly should not be in the article, especially not with that slant. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:34, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made my comments. Please excuse mistakes in language.--80.143.52.124 20:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: See also

message: So I moved it in here. Feel free to return undisputed portions as you see fit, but much of it certainly should not be in the article, especially not with that slant. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:34, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made my comments. Please excuse mistakes in language.--80.143.52.124 20:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The above needs work

message: ...although much of 20th century hermeneutics has been attributed to Heidegger.
http://www.google.com/search?q=heidegger+hermeneutics
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/hermeneutics-_2.html
: Whether you want to say that it's been "covered" or not, it is in the discussion of Being and Time, which includes a link to the hermeneutics entry. Not sure that it's reasonable to say that "much of 20th century hermeneutics has been attributed to Heidegger," particularly given the role Gadamer plays (although it may be equally unreasonable to make the sole section of that article on "Hermeneutics after Dilthey" a reference to the Gadamer entry). Perhaps a more lengthy discussion might begin by de-stubbing the entry dedicated Being and Time. Buffyg 19:34, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hermeneutics hasn't been covered in this text 

message: The section that's brilliantly titled Obligations & Unsplendid Silence: Celan at 'Todtnauberg' really needs to go.  I mean come on, just look at it.  "Obligations and Unsplendid Silence"?  What does that mean?  And why is it be relevant in an encyclopedia article about Heidegger that he walked in the woods with Paul Celan?  Or that Paul Celan signed his guest book?  Or whether or not "Heidegger's work was perhaps redeemable for Celan"?
If you want to write a pretentious article examining the influence of Heidegger on Paul Celan (or whatever this is supposed to be about), I certainly won't stop you.  But the Wikipedia entry on Heidegger isn't the place for it.  Delete.     --** signed by Frederick T. "Squirrel Boat" Thronton III **--
:If you want to discuss this, please consult Wikipedia:Wikiquette. In particular: please sign your posts and be polite. Buffyg 30 June 2005 11:45 (UTC)
:You still lost me at "Pretentious Douchebaggery" and a lack of signature. Buffyg 3 July 2005 10:31 (UTC)
::Alright, I've gotta be good by now, right?     --** signed by Frederick T. "Squirrel Boat" Thronton III **--
:::Now it is possible that we can discuss this. I'll give you a reply over the weekend. Buffyg 6 July 2005 09:08 (UTC)
Who knows if this discussion is still on, but i agree that this appears to be an inappropriate section in this entry and should be removed and rerouted.
Platypusjones 19:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Obligations & Unsplendid Silence"--Unsplendid Indeed

message: I created a page for Heidegger in wikiquote and added a link to it on this article.
Should we remove the quotations section from this article?
Alex 04:02, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving the quotes to wikiquote 

message: "Of course, Being is a fundamental concept in metaphysics, Heidegger did not deny this, 'to be' is not a material object to be encountered like a door, and like 'meaning' Being must be considered after physics."
:This sentence should be rewriiten, or just eliminated. Being is a fundamental concept for Heidegger, but to say "'to be' is not a material object to be encountered" is misleading.  Heidegger distinquished between "Being" and "being", or the "ontological" and the "ontic", but he did not say that objects could not "be".  "Being must be considered after physics" contradicts what was stated in the previous part of the sentence as well.  Being is fundamental and Heidegger reminded us that we are in forgetfulness of being and our roots, so "after physics" means what?  All it means is that Aristotle placed the book after the Physics and this entry has no bearing or consistency with what the sentence states, or Heidegger's position. Amerindianarts 20:32, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I am a professional philosopher and versed in Heidegger.  I did not say that metaphysics were unimportant to Heidegger, you did.  I know all about Sorge, it is referred to later in the article because I put it there.  You completely distorted what I said and your misinterpretation and distortion, and your poor choice of forum, reflects quite a bit of hostility. Interpretation, Anglo or non-Anglo,should be the same in order to be NPOV.  There is no Anglo version.  There is no non-Anglo version.  There is only what Heidegger wrote.  Your efforts to make this an ethnic or political issue reflects really poor judgment. Amerindianarts 00:53, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Please don't edit other people's comments, Martin.  I restored your edit.  --FranksValli 00:20, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Martin, I have only restored your edits to another person's comments on this talk page.  --FranksValli 04:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I do. See my comments above concerning instigation of ethnic issues.  Does any one Know?? How does one file a complaint against a user who edits other peoples comments on talk pages, uses articles as a forum for comments and the general instigation and negativity for ethnic purposes? Amerindianarts 01:24, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

text: No one's out to get you - this is only what is showing up in the edit history.  This is the address that is editing the article and also leaving these comments, including your comment above.  You can see the edit history by clicking on "History".  It might not be your actual IP address if you're connected to the internet through a proxy or if your IP address is spoofed.  Please create an account if you don't want to be associated with that IP.  --FranksValli 04:16, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

text: While the two concepts overlap, there is a definite distinction and they are often confused.  An occasional Philosopher in the past has used the two terms interchangeably but for the most part ontology is considered a subdivision of metaphysics.  Some see ontology as one of the four major divisions in philosophy and metaphysics as the 'first philosophy' which permeates the divisions.  Others treat metaphysics as one of the four divisions with ontos as a subdivision.  "Ontology" as a term was first used in the seventeenth century as a term to distinguish taxonomic structure from the scholastic natural theology.  The Wolffian school used "ontology" to distinguish a deductive method distinct from metaphysics, utilizing the principle of contradiction and sufficient reason.  Kant used ontology to distinguish rational psychology from empirical psychology, and it is often used to denote taxonomic structures in being.  Heidegger used the term "ontology" non-systematically and non-deductively.  He criticized the Wolffian "Why is there something rather than nothing?" by stating that the query presupposes knowledge of Being and Nothing.   Quine's use was a logical preoccupation with the distinction between intensional and extensional logic, questioning to what type of entity is our existential commitment.  The list goes on. Amerindianarts 22:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: To bypass the inunendo and refer to the question of 'metaphysics': it is quite clear (see What Is Called Thinking? and 'What Are Poets For?') that Heidegger considers metaphysics as an aspect of philosophy that is not a fundamental. To quote: "Therefore the thinking that in Being and Time tries to advance thought in a preliminary way into the truth of being characterizes itself as "fundmental ontology." It strives to reach back into the essential ground from which thought concerning the truth of being emerges." -Letter on "Humanism", p 271. Thus metaphysics constitutes a human endeavour in the field of philosophy, one that Heidegger would no doubt consider an example of 'muddled thinking' -his description of philosophy in Poetry, Language, Thought. His project is to recover the basic nature of thinking that was 'practicised'in the presocratic times (by Heraclitus et al). But to answer the question concerning metaphysics directly: Nietzsche completed the project of Western metaphysics. It is for Heidegger no longer a 'live' issue, the only question might be how current thinking is affected by this juncture; this specifically can be seen in his discussion of Rilke's poetry in What Are Poets For? Nietsche's philosophy (his Superman etc, which represents to Heidegger this completion) is discussed in What Is Called Thinking? Tsop 14:33, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introductory edits

message: There should be some mention of gestell imho. Anyone agree?
:Put it in the proper section, keep it short and in the context of his position on technology, and link to Gestell (which is where the real work should be). Amerindianarts 06:23, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gestell 

message: The article was lacking a formal biography section, which is particularly bad for Heidegger, seeing that his biography is so much the focus of the discussion of his philosophy.  Thus, I added what I hope to be an objective biographical sketch, without any references to influences etc.  I also added as another subsection something on his personal and family life, for the same reasons - I do not like the keyhole approach to biography, but Heidegger's affairs are important and so are, actually, those of his wife.  I am not sure whether that segment is correct at that point or in that category; could be a subsection in "Biography" as well.  I've then restructured the rest of the article accordingly, I hope with as little damage as possible - just deleting duplications (and one erroneous mixup of his PhD with his Habil) and sorting out general remarks on his philosophy, things on his education and influence, and biographical stuff.  The article needs much more work, especially a.f.a. the structure is concerned, but I hope it is at least a bit more informative now. Clossius 10:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes re Biography 

message: Re FINNEGAN'S WAKE.
The works of James Joyce are written in English. Except for Finnegan's Wake. This is written in Joyceish, an UNTRANSLATABLE variant of English. Not everyone who speaks English understands Joyceish. But no one who does NOT understand English can understand Joyceish.
All the works of Martin Heidegger are written in Heideggerish, an UNTRANSLATABLE variant of German. Not everyone who speaks German understands Heideggerish. But no one who does NOT understand German can understand Heideggerish.
Switzerland is the only country, where a majority of people can still read and evaluate a German text. Among these people, there are at least SOME that might also be able to read Heideggerish. You can't do without the Swiss.
--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Heidegger was fond of the quote, 'Possibility is higher than actuality.' Considered explicitly with regards to Heidegger's 'text', this entails that to understand his words it is necessary to 'do violence' to what he wrote. While this is not so much so with B&T/S&Z it is more so with his later texts that could be considered as containing a mystical/poetic 'gloss' [cover]. Heidegger was deliberate in his manner with language so that his points would not be conflated with the stale concepts of the Western philosophic cannon. I think the most rigorous manner in debating points of contention would be to quote the text that is contended. While obviously the translation can be a killer when debating in English, some basic understanding of his most frequently used German terms is not impossible to come by and may ameliorate matters somewhat?  Tsop 14:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is it possible to study Heidegger without the help of the Swiss?

message: I think this inaccurate, and misleading, to suggest he was the only philosopher to write 9except for Aristotle) to write about other philosophers. Also, is it a little unbalanced just to say in "Influences" Kierkigaard was his primary influence? --Mikerussell 04:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only Philosopher to write about other philosophers? 

message: I am in the process of writing an environmental ethics paper that focuses on the various issues raised by Heidegger (avoidance of subject-object schema; being-in-the-world; thought as presupposing a world of practical involvement as the backdrop; etc.). What I am having trouble with is making sure I don't commit a fallacy of ambiguity with "world".
How can we reconcile 'world' in the Heideggerian sense ("that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'") with "nature". I am trying to discuss nature as the fundamental world in which we are involved, by there are obviously a multiplicity of worlds, and I am trying to reconcile this fact with the "natural world". I know Heidegger talks about nature in his later works, does he address this? -Drifter 02:23, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much for the suggestion. I have recently taken "Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics" out of the university library. However, is there any specific place in the book that addresses the natural world, or nature in contrast to world? I also have the Hermeneutics of Facticity. While useful, it deals much more with hermeneutics, facticity, and Dasein, than it does with world (so it is only half-helpful to me). Thanks again, Drifter 00:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Drifter, you are entering a thick forest with this topic. What is the deadline for your paper, and what works by Heidegger have you read so far? Heidegger has had much to say about nature or phusis in many places.  While he does much with world too, he does not pay the etymological attention to the conceptual origin of kosmos as he does phusis.  Kosmos originally meant 'ornament'. Scholars of ancient philosophy such as F. Cornford have made much of this (cf Plato's Cosmology).   For H there is the world-making of human beings (in contrast to the world-poor of animals and worldlessness of rocks) and there is a critic of 'world-view'.  Nature, not as a collection of beings but as something pre-socratically identified with Being, seems to be more primordial than world. Zeusnoos 18:42, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Nature, not as a collection of beings but as something pre-socratically identified with Being, seems to be more primordial than world." I was actually wondering if this case could be made. Could we say, then, that nature is veritibly an essential part of any world, insofar as nature is in some sense identified with the beings of that world? Drifter 16:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can only provide my knowledge of Heidegger on these matters. Your use of them, meaning making a case for a philosophical position, should be your own conclusion.  H might say that Nature is not 'part' of any world and is only perceives as such through the secondary present-at-hand sort of thinking.  As far as the identity with beings in the world, H's method is to let beings reveal themselves for what they are (phemenomenally) rather than for how we compartmentalize them. This will sound cryptic - how do beings reveal themselves? H turns to presocratic experience (his understanding of it) for the answers. Zeusnoos 18:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  World and nature 

message: Concerning the "Heidegger and Nazi Germany" section
Is this NPOV? "None of these fazed Rector Heidegger, who spoke of the thugs as pure spirits attempting to impose true German values on campus"? And shouldn't it be cited?
NPOV? "During his time as Rector, Freiburg denied Heidegger's former teacher Husserl, born a Jew and an adult Lutheran convert, access to the university library, invoking the Nazi racial cleansing laws." Cite?
"Many readers, notably Jürgen Habermas, came to interpret this ambiguous remark as evidence of his continued commitment to National Socialism." Shouldn't this be cited? I've read only a little of Habermas on Heidegger and J.H.'s view may well be called hostile, but I've not heard this claim before.
Concerning subsection "Der Spiegel interview"
"It is simply not believable that he was trying to save the university or anything else from politicization given that his own speeches and publications at this time call for the politicization of everything. Heidegger even wanted to blend education, military service and party service into a single institution! With this plan, he tried to catch the eye of Hitler (to whom he sent two telegrams)." I hardly think exclamation points used in an uncited assertion are NPOV. And shouldn't these telegrams be cited? 
There is no debate about Heidegger's moral/ethical failure in not only joining the Nazi party, but finally never dealing with his Nazi past. However, the assumption here seems to be that M.H. was a life-long N.S. follower, something very few Heidegger scholars (if any) believe or claim. Indeed, Arendt's (and let's not forget that her most powerful work was done in response to the Holocaust and National Socialism) reconciliation with Heidegger would lead us to believe she very deeply felt that his affiliation with N.S. was much more one of convience and lack of moral character, rather than that of an evil Nazi. I think a far more accurate represenation of the mainstream (Continental) assesment of Heidegger's tainted legacy would mention his clear ethical lapses, an unfortunate attempt to "lead the leader" (a Habermas quote from "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity") by assuming the rectorship and trying to reform German higher ed using the Nazi push, and finally of being seduced by Nazi ideology to some extent (as were millions of other Germans citizens). The real scandal is not Heidegger's failure as a human being when confronted with Nazism as did so many others, but rather his truly disappointing failure to ever offer a mea culpa, tell the truth, and regret his decision. 
At the very least, this section should include discussion of the contemporary discussion about Heidegger from Heidegger scholars and not just Habermas, who is as a pupil of Adorno, is avowedly anti-Heidegger. Where is Dreyfus? Wrathall? Charles Taylor?
Dieziege 04:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Dieziege- i wonder if the NPOV check is still necessary. You appear to have removed the contentious sentences (per your last post), although note the entry itself is still tagged. are there other NPOV issues remaining, or can we go ahead and remove? Any other feedback? Platypusjones 18:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the POV check. Diezige has some points (I too feel that Heidegger's refusal to speak about his past is very disturbing). However there is no doubt about Heidegger's connexions to Nazism, including in his work. Dreyfus, Wrathall, Charles Taylor maybe, but also Victor Farias, Hugo Ott, Emmanuel Faye... See :fr:Heidegger et le nazisme. Santa Sangre 16:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV check April, 18 2006 

message: Re  SMALL TALK.  You are absolutely right, Drifter. Labels allow everybody to make small talk: Heidegger is a Philosopher, Heidegger is not a Philosopher, Heidegger was a Nazi, Heidegger was not a Nazi, The Famous Psycho-Historian X said..., The Famous Psycho-Historian Y said..., and so on ad infinitum.
Now, this is what articles in an encyclopedia are here for. But a commentary is a different thing, Drifter. A commentary on Wittgenstein's attitude towards Heidegger e.g. cannot be answered with gossip about Wittgenstein I, II, or XVII. The commentator will just tell you that this is irrelevant at best because none of your Wittgensteins would have wanted to be compared to Herr Heidegger. --BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 13:24, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "none of your Wittgensteins would have wanted to be compared to Herr Heidegger". This is precisely what my question was. I thank you for answering it. I now understand that labels are merely utilized (appropriately) in the making of small talk. This makes me feel much better, as I was earlier under the impression that only the Swiss could properly study Heidegger. But because "Swiss" is nothing but a label, and does not apply to commentary, I find that now I can myself, as well as Hubert Dreyfus and some of the other prominent American scholars, study Heidegger with the potential for proper understanding and commentary. You have reinstilled me with optimism and hope! Thank you so very much Herr Zollinger! Drifter 16:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And I was talking about Wittgenstein the person, and Heidegger the person. But yes, I do get the main point, and perhaps I will take on German. Thank you for all the thoughts. Drifter 14:38, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: LABELS (cont. as requested above)