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Heidegger, History and the Holocaust

There is a regrettable paucity of comprehensive philosophical attempts to tackle

seriously the question of the intellectual, cultural and political milieu from which
Heidegger emerged with a view to identifying some, at least, of the inspiration for
and influences on some of his most important philosophical insights concerning
technology, politics or indeed, modernity in general. Some might counter, of course,
that Zimmermans well-known study (Heideggers Confrontation with Modernity,
Technology, Politics, Art) serves such a purpose. However Zimmerman is frequently
guilty of errant reasoning, buttressing much of his study with non-sequiturs and
instances of the genetic fallacy.2 Another attempt to situate Heideggers philosophical
corpus in some kind of intellectual and historical context was produced by Richard
Wolin in The Politics of Being. Pierre Bourdieu and Lacoue-Labarthe also weighed in
on the debate at different times but all of these studies are laced with and indeed often
hamstrung by a series of prejudices and interpretative handicaps. The problem with
Wolins work, for example, is that he hawks a somewhat undercooked Habermasian
critique of Heideggers thought oblivious to the fact that even the fully cooked dish
served up by the Head-Chef himself has failed to cut any mustard with serious
scholars of Heideggers work. Wolin is an eloquent writer with an impressive grasp of
the intellectual and political landscape of twentieth-century Europe; notwithstanding,
he simply has an insufficient grasp of Heideggers philosophy, relying excessively
instead on a watered-down version a la Habermas and that, quite simply, is a recipe
for an intellectual disaster. Other studies come to mind; Hans Slugas book (Heideggers
Crisis) is well researched and interesting but it is not looking to deal with the problems
that this study confronts while Charles Bambachs useful work in Heideggers Roots
simply overplays the strengths of its most important analyses by trying to prove that
absolutely everything that Heidegger said and wrote reduces to his political obsession
with rootedness and the concomitant intellectual and cultural heritage which he traces
as a source for that motivation.
The aim in this chapter then is to examine the work of some of Heideggers contemporaries, in particular, feted champions of the German Conservative Revolutionary
movement; a movement, moreover, that was suffused with metaphors and rhetoric
which Heidegger frequently borrowed. However, we shall then attempt to demonstrate
the philosophical distance between these various figures (some of whom Heidegger
counted among his friends)3 and Heideggers own work, thereby undermining the
foundational premises of critics such as Adorno, Bourdieu, Wolin and Habermas
concerning the generic nature of Heideggers early thought.
As we begin this part of our investigation, it is crucial to bear one important fact in
mind; Heidegger, more than anyone, wore his philosophical influences on his sleeve
and, indeed, deliberately embroidered those voices, influences and tropes through
his work. In doing so, Heidegger is remaining true to his hermeneutic convictions,
as evidenced in Being and Time, and which he reaffirmed throughout his career. No
one, least of all Heidegger, emerges from a vacuum cultural, intellectual, historical,
what have you. In his work, Heidegger self-consciously tries to demonstrate what is
often unique in his vision while dealing with elements of his background, research and
training which collectively shaped the way he responded to his situation. However, in
the frenzied enthusiasm with which critics of Heidegger myopically trawl through his