The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger

By Richard Wolin

Martin Heidegger’s ties to Nazism have tarnished his stature as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century philosophy. With the publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, which reveal the full extent of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism as well as his enduring sympathy for National Socialism, the controversy has reemerged in full force. When first published during the 1990s, Richard Wolin’s The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger played a seminal role in the voluble debates that ensued over the intellectual consequences of Heidegger’s Nazism. In this expanded edition, Wolin provides a substantial new preface that addresses the question of how the Black Notebooks’ publication affects our understanding of the relationship between politics and philosophy in Heidegger’s work. Building on his path-breaking, earlier interpretation of Heidegger’s political thought,.Wolin demonstrates convincingly that philosophy and politics cannot be disentangled in Heidegger’s oeuvre, insofar as. völkisch ideological themes suffuse even his most sublime philosophical treatises. Thus despite Heidegger’s profundity as a thinker, his critique of civilization is saturated with disturbing anti-democratic and anti-Semitic leitmotifs and claims.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9780231543026

Richard Wolin

Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center. His books include The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (1990) and The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (1992).