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A few months ago the news of the publication of Heidegger's Black Notebooks (so-called as they are bound in black waxcloth) came as a bombshell.2Crucial citations were circulated both in Germany and France prior to their publication suggesting that Heidegger's philosophy was inherently antisemitic. The Nouvel Observateur referred to une nouvelle 'affaire' Heidegger;3Die Zeit to 'the poisoned heritage'4and Die Neue Züricher Zeitung to a 'veiled philosophical antisemitism'.5
Even those not familiar with Heidegger's work know at least one thing about him: that he was a Nazi. Why should we then be so scandalized to learn that Heidegger was also an antisemite? After all that is part of what defines the National Socialist ideology which Heidegger so readily endorsed. There have been endless debates about how to understand Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism. From the outset these discussions centred not only on Heidegger, the man but on Heidegger the philosopher. Not only did Heidegger join the National Socialist Party early in 1933 and encouraged others to do likewise but, more significantly, he claimed in his infamous Rectoral Addresses 1933/4 that National Socialism reflected his own philosophical standpoint. He regarded it as a force that could counter the global advance of modern technology and foster an adequate relationship to our human essence.
All this has been well documented but until now the question whether Heidegger's political views have tainted his philosophy has not been settled. The debate about Heidegger's philosophy started in the 1980s with the publication of Victor Farias' book: Heidegger and Nazism (1987) in which he argued that Heidegger's philosophy was thoroughly fascistic. In 2005 Emmanuel Faye went further, claiming provocatively that Heidegger's philosophy inspired the Final Solution and that fascist and racist ideas were so engrained into the fabric of Heidegger's thought that it no longer deserved the name philosophy. 6
These publications sent shock waves across the philosophical community. However the arguments provided by Farias and Faye were criticized as ill-founded; critics claimed that their scholarship was poor and, in the case of Faye, that the most contentious citations were either fabricated or based on hearsay. 7While there is no doubt that Heidegger was a Nazi,...