[lit-ideas] Re: Heil Heidegger?

Robert Paul wrote:

Romano begins with this gem:

". . . the pretentious old Black Forest
babbler makes one wonder whether there's a university-press equivalent
of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance."
I would not consider the claim that Heidegger was a Nazi and the claim that Heidegger was a philosophical fraud to constitute any kind of "argument."
It seems that Romano is making two separate factual claims. And it seems to me that Romano is not calling for a "ban" on Heidegger; he's calling for more caution by academic publishers to avoid being taken in by frauds. Many authors are "bad people." Some authors are "Nazis." Neither would seem to dis-qualify one from being published, and in fact for an academic publisher to publish either one is quite acceptable. But to publish works by a "fraud" is different because it violates the ethics of publication, and an academic publisher may well have a duty to refrain from publishing fraudulent works.
The current discussion here isn't all that interesting to me. The more interesting question is why Heidegger is so popular. One might try to link this to the Nazi movement, or one might argue that the appeal lies elsewhere. To me, I always just wondered why without getting very far in finding an answer. My dissertation was mostly on Karl Jaspers, who has always seemed to me to be both more philosophically interesting and more politically helpful than Heidegger, but Jaspers is hardly known at all outside of Germany. To be a "Heidegger" scholar is to be on the "A" list for jobs in continental philosophy; to be a "Jaspers" scholar is to be relegated to adjunct status at a second rate school at best. 


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"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence and ignorance." ------------------------------------------------- 
John Wager                      jwager@xxxxxxxxxx
                             River Grove IL, USA

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