Heidegger's Roots

by Bambach, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780801472664
• ISBN10: 0801472660
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-29
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

Despite a flood of recent works on Martin Heidegger and Nazism, there has been no sustained investigation of the shared themes that were the common ground between Heidegger's thought and that of the ideologists of National Socialism. In this lucid and fair-minded book, Charles Bambach reads Heidegger's writings from 1933 to 1945 in historical context. Bambach shows that Heidegger was engaged in a conversation with the National Socialists and others on the German right about the authentic mission of the German Volk, and that this theme was central to all of his thought. Bambach depicts the development within Heidegger's work of a philosophy marked by a belief in rootedness in the homeland, the ground of ancestral kinship, and a notion of a privileged, originary connection to the ancient Greeks. Bambach makes clear that Heidegger's philosophical account of the history of the West is structured by a grand metaphysical vision of German destiny as something rooted in the soil. All of Heidegger's post-1933 works can, Bambach maintains, be read as arguments for a German form of racial-political autochthony. An essential reference in the debates over one of the twentieth century's most influential-and controversial-philosophers, this book demonstrates the profound influence on Heidegger's work of both historical context and the other thinkers with whom he engaged in dialogue. These latter include not only the ancient Greeks and such German predecessors as Hegel, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche, but also those contemporaries of the radical right from whom he would later try to distance himself.

Table of Contents

ABBREVIATIONS	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xv
PREFACE	xvii
INTRODUCTION	1	(11)
I. The Hut	1	(3)
II. Pastorale Militans	4	(1)
III. The Cultural Metaphysics of the Great War	5	(7)
CHAPTER 1. The Myth of the Homeland	12	(57)
I. Philosophy and Politics	12	(3)
II. The Roots of Revolution	15	(16)
III. The Commitment to Hardness and Severity	31	(7)
IV. "On the Essence of Truth" and Subterranean Philosophy	38	(8)
V. The Myth of Bodenständigkeit and the Greek Beginning	46	(5)
VI. Athens or Jerusalem?	51	(6)
VII. Death for the Fatherland	57	(6)
VIII. Heidegger's Hölderlinian Volksreligion	63	(6)
CHAPTER 2. The Nietzschean Self-Assertion of the German University	69	(43)
I. The Nietzschean Context of the Rectorial Address	69	(9)
II. The Essence of the German University	78	(3)
III. Self-Determination, Self-Assertion, and Leadership	81	(8)
IV. The Archeology of Self-Assertion	89	(5)
V. The Essence of Science as Philosophia	94	(5)
VI. Plato's Staat and Heidegger's Volk	99	(8)
VII. The Philomythos and the Myth of Heroic Greatness	107	(5)
CHAPTER 3. The Geo-Politics of Heidegger's Mitteleuropa	112	(68)
I. Heidegger's Ursprungsphilosophie	112	(9)
II. Europa and the History of the West	121	(4)
III. Heidegger, Scheler, and the "Metaphysics of War"	125	(5)
VI. The Politics and Metaphysics of Autochthony: Bloch and Rosenzweig	130	(7)
V. The Metaphysics of Mitteleuropa	137	(6)
VI. Heidegger's Idea of Europe in Introduction to Metaphysics	143	(3)
VII. The Violence of the Uncanny: Antigone and the German Volk	146	(13)
VIII. Nietzsche's "Great Politics," Heidegger's Petty Politics	159	(8)
IX. "Europe and German Philosophy" (1936)	167	(13)
CHAPTER 4. Heidegger's Greeks and the Myth of Autochthony	180	(67)
I. The Politics of the Anti-Political	180	(9)
II. Heidegger's Elegy of Aletheia and the Greek Beginning	189	(7)
II. The Athenian Myth of Autochthony and Its German Fate	196	(4)
IV. Plato in a Brown Shirt	200	(8)
V. The Politics of Hellenomania	208	(5)
VI. The Politics of a Singular Arche	213	(6)
VII. The Pre-Socratic Renaissance in Weimar	219	(8)
VIII. Heidegger, Nietzsche, and German Philhellenism	227	(5)
IX. Sophocles, Hölderlin, and the Politics of Homecoming	232	(9)
X. Norbert von Hellingrath's Myth of a Secret Germany	241	(6)
CHAPTER 5. Heidegger's "Nietzsche"	247	(79)
I. Self-Staging the Nietzsche Lectures	247	(8)
II. Heidegger's "Confrontation" with Nietzsche	255	(6)
III. Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Editorial Practice	261	(10)
IV. Heidegger's "Confrontation (s)" with National Socialism	271	(3)
V. Heidegger, Baeumler, and the National Socialist Interpretation of Nietzsche	274	(7)
IV. Nazi Biologism and Heideggerian Autochthony	281	(8)
VII. Heidegger's Early Nietzsche Lectures	289	(12)
VIII. The Metaphysics of War Redivivus	301	(8)
IX. Parmenides, Stalingrad, and the Myth of Roman Decline	309	(8)
X. Heideggerian Autochthony at the End of the War	317	(9)
POSTSCRIPT	326	(11)
INDEX	337