Black, Tim. "Why They’re Really Scared of Heidegger." SP!KED REVIEW OF BOOKS (November 2009).

Faye, Emmanuel.  Heidegger: the Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy.  New Haven: Yale UP, 2009.

It is a sign of these confused, amnesiac times that a straight-faced discussion can be held across the liberal-leaning pages of the New York Times and the Chronicle Review about whether to burn the books of one-time Nazi and full-time philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

Not literally burn them, of course; the irony would surely be too much even for the most historically forgetful. No, should they be metaphorically burnt? That is, should publishers stop churning out new editions of his collected works, should libraries cull him from their collections, and should university courses purge him from their syllabuses? ‘Is it degenerate literature?’, they just about stop themselves from asking.

The occasion for this mini-outbreak of illiberal liberalism is the imminent publication of the English-language edition of Frenchman Emmanuel Faye’s 2005 intellectual scandal-mongerer, Heidegger: the Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. For anyone who’s laboured, heavy-lidded, over Heidegger’s excursus on Austrian poet Georg Trakl, Faye’s conclusions may come as something of a surprise: ‘If [Heidegger’s] writings continue to proliferate without our being able to stop this intrusion of Nazism into human education, how can we not expect them to lead to yet another translation into facts and acts, from which this time humanity might not be able to recover?’ This is what you might call a leap of Faye. One minute an undergraduate is getting to grips with fundamental ontology, the next he’s given himself a severe side-parting, donned a brown shirt, and has begun planning the systematic extermination of Jewry. Being and Time today, being a Nazi tomorrow.

While commentators might not have quite caught Faye’s Nazi-fever, they have been suffering from considerable liberal self-doubt. In the New York Times, Patricia Cohen wondered if a philosopher’s unsavoury life-history should see his philosophy disregarded. She concluded with Faye’s warning: ‘Teaching Heidegger’s ideas without disclosing his deep Nazi sympathies is like showing a child a brilliant fireworks display without warning that an ignited rocket can blow up in someone’s face.’ Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum, the author of Explaining Hitler, worried that Heidegger’s thought is so permeated with Nazism that it had rubbed off on his long-term lover, the venerated Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt. And Carlin Romano, in an entertainingly disrespectful piece for the Chronicle, just wanted the ‘Black Forest babbler’ ridiculed out of the cultural canon. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7762/.