_What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century’s most important philosopher?_ Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement’s philosophical preceptor, “to lead the leader.” (...) Yet for years, Heidegger’s defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued, in effect, that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. But with the 2014 publication of Heidegger’s _Black Notebooks_, it has become clear that he embraced a far more radical vision of the conservative revolution than previously suspected. His dissatisfaction with National Socialism, it turns out, was mainly that it did not go far enough. The notebooks show that far from being separated from Nazism, Heidegger’s philosophy was suffused with it. In this book Richard Wolin explores what the notebooks mean for our understanding of arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and of his ideas—and why his legacy remains radically compromised. (shrink)

Studies the politics of Heidegger in terms of "thrownness" or "existential contingency". Attempts to think through Heidegger's philosophy in a manner that parallels his own dialogue with other key western thinkers.

Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offering a philosophically rich exposition of his complex relationship to Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism, and Western Marxism. Wolin provides nuanced interpretations of Benjamin's widely studied writings on Baudelaire, historiography, and art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In a new Introduction written especially for this edition, (...) Wolin discusses the unfinished _Arcades Project_, as well as recent tendencies in the reception of Benjamin's work and the relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates about modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

This anthology is a significant contribution to the debate over the relevance of Martin Heidegger's Nazi ties to the interpretation and evaluation of his philosophical work. Included are a selection of basic documents by Heidegger, essays and letters by Heidegger's colleagues that offer contemporary context and testimony, and interpretive evaluations by Heidegger's heirs and critics in France and Germany.In his new introduction, "Note on a Missing Text," Richard Wolin uses the absence from this edition of an interview with (...) Jacques Derrida as a springboard for examining questions about the nature of authorship and personal responsibility that are at the heart of the book.Richard Wolin is Professor of Modern European Intellectual History and Humanities at Rice University. He is the author of Walter Benjamin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger, and The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism and Poststructuralism. (shrink)

This study reconstructs the relationship between philosophy and politics in the way in which Heidegger's failure as a politician influenced the redevelopment of philosophy in the 1930s. The author also explains how Heidegger's failure influenced the content and direction of his later work.

An intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, this book shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. It calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left - and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum.

In his new introduction, "Note on a Missing Text," Richard Wolin uses the absence from this edition of an interview with Jacques Derrida as a springboard for ...

Richard Wolin, in his article 'Nazism and the Complicities of Hans-Georg Gadamer: Untruth and Method' ( New Republic , 15 May 2000, pp. 36-45), wrongly accuses Gadamer of being 'in complicity' with the Nazis. The present article in reply was rejected by the New Republic , but is printed here to show that Wolin in his article is misinformed and unfair. First, Wolin makes elementary factual errors, such as stating that Gadamer was born in Breslau instead (...) of Marburg. He relies on a highly questionable source, Teresa Orozco, as 'definitive'. He argues often by misconstruing the evidence and guilt by association. For instance, he associates Gadamer with Werner Jaeger, with whom he disagreed and had little contact. Finally,he misinterprets basic terms in Gadamer's hermeneutics, Vorurteil and authority, attributing to them the popular sense of these terms instead of their place in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Vorurteil , popularly translated as 'prejudice', but better rendered as 'prejudgment', refers to the prior knowledge that one needs in order to understand a situation or a text. In some cases, this is part of the inherited tradition. Authority refers to the respect one pays to those one recognizes as having more knowledge than oneself: one's doctor, or parent, or teacher, a judge, or certain texts. It is not an abject surrender to all authority but the necessary respect for authority in human relationships and in society in general. By misconstruing these terms, Wolin attempts to discredit Gadamer's general philosophy,not just to demonstrate a connection to the Nazis. At the end, his argument turns into a misinformed general political attack on Gadamer as an enemy of Enlightenment values. (shrink)

Written by a former student of Heidegger, this book examines the relationship between the philosophy and the politics of a celebrated teacher and the allure that Nazism held out for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism.

Despite their differences in origin, the three influential schools of twentieth-century continental cultural criticism--the Frankfurt School, existentialism, and poststructuralism--have long been treated as an ensemble and with critical hesitancy. Examining these schools as responses to the apparent collapse of Western civilization in the twentieth-century and as formidable intellectual challenges to the cultural legacies of the Enlightenment, this book provides a productive base for criticism and broadens our understanding of their histories and reception.

In zijn Doktor Faustus lijkt Thomas Mann te willen zeggen dat culturele fijnzinnigheid weinig waarborgen biedt tegen zedelijk verval. Wolin onderschrijft deze stelling van Mann. Bij esthetische waardering oordelen we strikt volgens formele criteria - de innerlijke geslaagdheid van een esthetisch object - ongeacht de doelen, zelfs de morele doelen. Moderne democratie heeft het nodig dat de individuen een mondig ethisch oordeelsvermogen ontwikkelen. Een hoogontwikkeld cultureel leven biedt slechts een beperkte bijdrage aan het welslagen van moderne democratie. Bespreking van (...) het aristocratische liberalisme van Tocqueville en anderen. 'Een van de slachtoffers van de moderne kunst - en meer nog van de postmoderne kunst - is het idee geweest dat de kunst iets zou moeten zijn dat "adelt" of "verheft".' In de wereld van onze tijd, waarin het kwaad nog lang niet ten grave is gedragen, lijkt hoog-cultureel elitisme een onvoorstelbare luxe. Maar wat is de zin van de kunst als zij prozaïsch wil zijn? (shrink)

"Powerfully testifies to the persistence of intellectual engagement in an era of cynical exhaustion". -- Martin Jay.

Carl Schmitt's polemical discussion of political Romanticism conceals the aestheticizing oscillations of his own political thought. In this respect, too, a kinship of spirit with the fascist intelligentsia reveals itself. Jürgen Habermas, “The Horrors of Autonomy: Carl Schmitt in English”The pinnacle of great politics is the moment in which the enemy comes into view in concrete clarity as the enemy.Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (1927).

This book explores how four of Heidegger's most influential Jewish students came to grips with his Nazi association and how it affected their thinking.

With the end of the Cold War the world approached the prospect of realizing what one might call the ‘Kantian moment’ in international relations. Auspiciously, 1995 marked both the 50th anniversary of the establishment of UN Charter, in which human rights guarantees prominently figured, as well as the 200th anniversary of Kant’s celebrated text on ‘Perpetual Peace.’ During the era of the EastWest political stalemate, the idea of effective world governance remained a chimera, as both political camps willfully exploited international (...) governmental organizations (IGOs), such as the UN and UNESCO, for the self-serving ends of Realpolitik. Human rights claims were brazenly politicized. The Soviets lambasted American racism and the inadequacy of social rights. The USA and its allies, conversely, pilloried their opponent’s failure to minimally respect basic, first-generation civil and political liberties. (Published: 26 May 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2010, pp. 143-153. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i2.5213. (shrink)

Martin Jay is well aware of the pitfalls involved in contributing a volume on Adorno to the “Modern Masters” series. “Adorno, let it be admitted at the outset, would have been appalled at a book of this kind devoted to him,” is the sentence with which the book begins. Indeed, for Adorno, who strove concertedly to resist easy consumption in the bourgeois marketplace of ideas, such canonization would have been simply anathema. At the outset of his portrait Jay offers several (...) reasons why, despite the misgivings that could be anticipated from his subject, an accessible, summarizing account of a philosophical approach notorious for its hermeticism would still be warranted. The first reason pertains to the (by now hackneyed) hiatus between authorial intention and reception of a work. (shrink)

Het fascisme is uitgeroeid: wat rest zijn nog slechts schimmen. Maar de opkomst van extreem-rechtse partijen, die weliswaar doorgaans klein blijven, maar die niettemin van grote invloed zijn op de politieke agenda van de grotere partijen, duidt erop dat het gevaar voor de democratie nog niet is geweken. Ditmaal komt het niet van buitenaf, maar van binnenuit: wij leven in een tijd van zacht totalitarisme, van verslapping van moraal en wil, van passiviteit.

It is well known that in his “Author's Introduction” (1920) to the “Collected Essays on the Sociology of World Religions” Max Weber grapples with the problem of the cultural specificity of the West. He phrases his inquiry in the following way: Why is it “that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having universal significance and value”? He continues to cite a wealth of (...) cultural phenomena — systematic theology, the rational concept, standardized methods of scientific experimentation, rational harmonious music, extensive utilization of perspective in painting, bureaucratic conduct of the organizational sphere, and the systematic rational pursuit of economic affairs — that are unique to the West and illustrative of its self-avowed universality. (shrink)