The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader. (book reviews)

Nation, The, February, 1993 by Pochoda, Elizabeth

Das 'Boot'

Just when you've given up on this business you are surprised by something as riveting as Thomas Sheehan's essay "Why Heidegger Liked Hitler," in the January 14 issue of The New York Review of Books. Sheehan has two books under review: a reissue of The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, of which more later, and a biography of Heidegger by Ernst Nolte, an acolyte and friend of the family. The Nolte book has not been translated into English (and perhaps won't be, judging by the review), so we can be grateful to Sheehan for his patient reading of its full and sympathetic account of the ways in which Heidegger's pro-Nazi passions intersected with his philosophy. Sheehan accepts Nolte's view that Heidegger's support for Hitler was not, as Hannah...

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