Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference - Softcover

Derrida, Jacques; Gadamer, Hans-Georg; Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823273679 ISBN 13: 9780823273676

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2016

Synopsis

In February 1988, philosophers Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe came together in Heidelberg before a large audience to discuss the philosophical and political implications of Martin Heidegger’s thought. This event took place in the very amphitheater in which, more than fifty years earlier, Heidegger, as rector of the University of Freiburg and a member of the Nazi Party, had given a speech entitled “The University in the New Reich.” Heidegger’s involvement in Nazism has always been, and will remain, an indelible scandal, but what is its real relation to his work and thought? And what are the responsibilities of those who read this work, who analyze and elaborate this thought? Conversely, what is at stake in the wholesale dismissal of this important but compromised twentieth-century philosopher?

In 1988, in the wake of the recent publication of Victor Farias’s Heidegger and Nazism, and of the heated debates that ensued, these questions had become more pressing than ever. The reflections presented by three of the most prominent of Heidegger’s readers, improvised in French and transcribed here, were an attempt to approach these questions before a broad public, but with a depth of knowledge and a complex sense of the questions at issue that have been often lacking in the press. Ranging over two days and including exchanges with one another and with the audience, the discussions pursued by these major thinkers remain highly relevant today, especially following the publication of Heidegger’s already notorious “Black Notebooks,” which have added another chapter to the ongoing debates over this contested figure. The present volume recalls a highly charged moment in this history, while also drawing the debate toward its most essential questions.

About this title

About the Author

The late Jacques Derrida was the single most influential voice in European philosophy of the last quarter of the twentieth century. His Athens, Still Remains, The Animal That Therefore I Am, Sovereignties in Question, and Deconstruction in a Nutshell have been published by Fordham University Press.

Review

In light of the renewed debates about Heidegger and Nazism, Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics is a timely book. Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe and Gadamer tackle Heidegger’s thinking head on, providing new insights into his legacy. (―Leonard Lawlor Penn State University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0823273679
• ISBN 13: 9780823273676
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 116
• Editor: Calle-Gruber Mireille