Description
Book SynopsisDespite a flood of recent works on Martin Heidegger and Nazism, there has been no sustained investigation of the shared themes that were the common ground between Heidegger''s thought and that of the ideologists of National Socialism. In this lucid and fair-minded book, Charles Bambach reads Heidegger''s writings from 1933 to 1945 in historical context. Bambach shows that Heidegger was engaged in a conversation with the National Socialists and others on the German right about the authentic mission of the German Volk, and that this theme was central to all of his thought.Bambach depicts the development within Heidegger''s work of a philosophy marked by a belief in rootedness in the homeland, the ground of ancestral kinship, and a notion of a privileged, originary connection to the ancient Greeks. Bambach makes clear that Heidegger''s philosophical account of the history of the West is structured by a grand metaphysical vision of German destiny as something rooted in the soil. All of
Trade Review
Bambach's account is a highly detailed and contextualized examination of the various links between the Nazi party and Heidegger. As a result, it places Heidegger's thought within a historical and sociopolitical perspective that will be essential to Heidegger scholars and those who see his work as relevant to contemporary hermeneutics.
-- Scott Greer, University of Prince Edward Island * Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences *
