Heidegger, 1942 and the most dangerous form of modernity
May 8, 2013
An early draft of my recent review of Thomas Albert Howard's brilliant monograph on European perceptions of American religion contained a paragraph which I simply could not fold in to the whole in an elegant manner. As a result, I removed it; but, as it speaks to the status of a philosopher who enjoys some vogue among the evangelical philosophical avant garde, I reprint it here:
"As a final comment, I was struck once again that anybody takes Martin Heidegger seriously: that master of bombastic obfuscation was a member of the Nazi party and in 1942 -- 1942! -- pompously declared 'Americanism' to be the most problematic and dangerous form of modernity. I suspect it is a safe bet that that view was not shared by the Jewish children who were at that very point in time being rounded up as a result of the policy decisions made by his fellow Party members at the Wannsee Conference, nor by my own father who was spending nights as a toddler hiding in the bomb shelter at the end of his street as the Luftwaffe attempted to crush the allies of 'the most problematic and dangerous form of modernity'. Heidegger is surely a shining example of an intellectual whose cleverness led him into the farthest reaches of juvenile clichés and asinine malice. His comment would be sheer buffoonery if it were not so malevolent. Nevertheless, I believe that many still treat him as a serious philosophical interlocutor on the deepest questions of reality."
"As a final comment, I was struck once again that anybody takes Martin Heidegger seriously: that master of bombastic obfuscation was a member of the Nazi party and in 1942 -- 1942! -- pompously declared 'Americanism' to be the most problematic and dangerous form of modernity. I suspect it is a safe bet that that view was not shared by the Jewish children who were at that very point in time being rounded up as a result of the policy decisions made by his fellow Party members at the Wannsee Conference, nor by my own father who was spending nights as a toddler hiding in the bomb shelter at the end of his street as the Luftwaffe attempted to crush the allies of 'the most problematic and dangerous form of modernity'. Heidegger is surely a shining example of an intellectual whose cleverness led him into the farthest reaches of juvenile clichés and asinine malice. His comment would be sheer buffoonery if it were not so malevolent. Nevertheless, I believe that many still treat him as a serious philosophical interlocutor on the deepest questions of reality."
