Or was not at least an enthusiastic one for very long…

While he was a member of the party Heidegger was not an avid Nazi. A lot of the discussion focused on his work are about his connections to National Socialism, as well as the political rhetoric of that time as well as his anti-Semitic comments. However, without even reading his Black Notebooks with a fine-tooth comb or with interpretations that stretch the meaning of Heidegger’s words to their limit, it can be determined that Heidegger did not support the party in the way that it went. It could be argued that he wished to be the philosopher of the new Germany that he saw arising. However, Heidegger quickly became despondent about the direction the Nazi leaders were taking the new German people.

In the opening 100 pages of the 1^st volume of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks (Ponderings II-VI in the English translation) Heidegger is concerned largely with the university. But in his talk of the university there are distinctive remarks made about the way that National Socialism was destroying the prospect of the dawn of the citizens of Germany as a new historical people.

Heidegger placed importance on the cultivation of knowledge and a thinking concerned with Being. All he saw in universities however bourgeois intellectualism and scientific research. He also saw students ill-equipped to question in an essential manner. This questioning is not one that aims at an answer. Rather it is one that seeks the right question. Only after a series of questions will an answer even be glimpsed. This is unusual within our thinking. We often search for an answer rather than questions.

Heidegger advocates the destruction of universities in their current state, replaced by universities that cultivate knowledge.

So how does this relate to the fact that Heidegger is not a Nazi? Well. Heidegger was the rector of the university of Freiburg from 1933 to 1934. During this time he write, in the Black Notebooks, of his desire to change the university. He wants to challenge normal ways of thinking and cultivate a knowledge in the students in order to push forward a new understanding of Being. When it comes to the time at which he resigns as rector in 1934 he is despondent. His aims have not been achieved and he holds his hands up to the fact that the march of bourgeois science and morals cannot be stopped. He argues that while the Nazi party talks of the people and a return to the earth and agriculture this is merely a veil for the further abandonment of Being.    

While I am still reading this Volume and I am yet to get my hands on the others I would argue this is is at least some insight in to the implausibility of the idea that Heidegger was an unwavering supporter of the Nazi party. In the next few weeks, I may update this as I come across more ideas and evidence of this fact. Heidegger may have been a member of the Nazi party but it is easy to avoid the complexity of Heidegger’s thought due to this association. This complexity is highly eye opening and must not be ignored. We are on the verge of losing some of the more important thought in philosophy. Should we do some simply because of a political connection that is questionable. If we look a bit further and do not fall into confirming our impression of Heidegger as a Nazi do we not find a thinker who may have initially seen hope in the political movement but who within a year was less and less enthusiastic about the possibility that arises in National Socialism. Is one year of dedication to a movement enough to dismiss a philosophers work?

These are merely some musings on the topic. I have not gone into any great depth here. If you are interested in the black Notebooks of Heidegger I would recommend reading Ullrich Haase’s Approaching Heidegger’s History of Being Through the Black Notebooks in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology.