Yale Daily News on Faye

In one sense, Faye’s book isn’t even worth discussing. In another sense, IT’S FASCINATING HOW MUCH PRESS IT IS GENERATING.

Banning Heidegger from curricula as “hate speech”? Come on. That doesn’t even pass the straight face test.

Would it even be worthwhile to ban, say, Mein Kampf from American libraries? I think not. And there’s a clear case of hate speech and not too much else (except, of course, for the great historical interest of anything written by Hitler).

But ban Being and Time as hate speech? Does Faye really even mean it, or is it just an attention-grabbing ploy? Hard to tell.

I’m not sure why it’s supposedly so hard to think the following things simultaneously:

1. Heidegger was a Nazi

2. Heidegger wrote one of the great philosophical books of the 20th century

Sure, it’s an almost unique paradox in the history of philosophy. But the way to resolve the paradox is not by denying the simple brute factuality of point #2.

I guess we’re doomed to revisit this debate once every 20 years or so. And of course, Heidegger himself has to take most of the blame for that.

Also, recall the following difference in punishments after the war…

*Alfred Rosenberg = hanged

*Carl Schmitt = imprisoned

*Heidegger = banned from teaching

We shouldn’t forget that there are degrees of guilt, and the listed discrepancy in punishments for the three authors strikes me as more or less the right range for each of them at the time. If I were in charge of the French occupation authority, I would have banned Heidegger from teaching then too. But jail or hanging? It doesn’t pass the straight face test.