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The legacy of Heidegger's membership in the Nazi party has consumed almost every aspect of continental philosophical thought and is in many ways the philosophical question of the twentieth century. Yet many recent books have placed Heidegger the National Socialist before Heidegger the Philosopher. Heidegger and the Political is a balanced yet incisive account of why Heidegger saw in national socialism the possibility of reawakening Germany to its lost essence, and how this resulted in a catastrophic "failure of thinking". In an intelligent and nuanced rethinking of the Heidegger "affair", Miguel de Beistegui argues that it is Heidegger's philosophy that provides clues to his political activism. If we are to understand the absence of a systematic political philosophy in Heidegger, we must trace the thinking in his major philosophical work, Being and Time and his later writings on technology and global nihilism before we can reveal the roots of his political involvement. Even if it was for a short time, the question remains, however, why Heidegger embraced Nazism so enthusiastically. de Beistegui asserts Heidegger's involvement was subordinated to a philosophical enterprise at retrieving power from the beginning. The revolution was to revive the origin, and politics was to become archaic; though this does not excuse Heidegger's commitment, it questions what in his thought allowed for the failure to see reality. It is precisely Heidegger's failure of thinking that constitutes one of the most decisive philosophical events of this century.
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Heidegger & the Political
“I find this book exceptional and unique in the way it poses and develops its topic within the ‘setting’ of Heidegger’s thought, de Beistegui shows on the one hand that many efforts to derive Heidegger’s nationalistic politics from his philosophical ‘position’ have been truncated and ill-conceived with regard to his philosophy and his problematic of the political. On the other hand, he shows the way in which Heidegger’s thought fails from within in confrontation with fascism and the Holocaust. It is a subtle and finely conceived study. Most of the work on Heidegger and political questions remains on the outside of his thought and lacks both the understanding and nuance one finds in this book.” Charles Scott, Pennsylvania State University Recent studies of Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism have often presented Heidegger’s philosophy as a forerunner to his political involvement, his thought being read in search of pro-Nazi sentiment in order to explain his personal political involvement. This has occurred often to the detriment of the highly complex nature of Heidegger’s relation to the political. Heidegger & the Political redresses this imbalance and is one of the first books to assess critically Heidegger’s relation to politics and his conception of the political. Miguel de Beistegui shows how we must question why the political is so often displaced in Heidegger’s writings rather than read the political into Heidegger. Exploring Heidegger’s ontology where politics takes place after a forgetting of Being and his wish to think a site more originary and primordial than politics, Heidegger & the Political considers what some of Heidegger’s key motifs—his emphasis on lost origins, his discussions of Hölderlin’s poetry, his writing on technology and the ancient Greek polis—may tell us about Heidegger’s relation to the political. Miguel de Beistegui also engages with the very risks implicit in Heidegger’s denial of the political and how this opens up the question of the risk of thinking itself. Heidegger & the Political is essential reading for students of philosophy and politics and all those interested in the question of the political today. Miguel de Beistegui is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick.
Thinking the P