Metaphysics after Heidegger: for his eighty‐fifth birthday

Extract

’ Without this theological provenance I should never have come upon the path of thinking. But provenance decides destination’ (Unterwegs zur Sprache, page 96).

Heidegger’s reputation in English philosophical circles has suffered badly from his association with Nazism. It would be easy to accumulate quotations to show how the connection suffices to discredit him philosophically. Yet we have no reason for expecting philosophers to be politically informed or enlightened or even sensible. They have in fact often proved very authoritarian and elitist in their views. Furthermore, Wittgenstein visited Russia in the 1930s and seriously considered emigrating there as late as 1939, when it was surely plain enough what Stalinism was like (cf. John Moran: “Wittgenstein and Russia’, New Left Review No. 73), but this fact has not affected any one’s estimate of his philosophical work. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s philosophy may not be so independent of his social, political and religious opinions and experience as his most devoted exponents have led us to believe. But in the context of his life Heidegger’s connection with Nazism is not unintelligible.