Heidegger, or the neglect of boundaries

Abstract

Benedikt Korf’s recent invitation to re-think the deployment of Heidegger’s philosophy within geography in the pages of this journal (Korf, 2014) is both opportune and essential: opportune, because the many and continuing controversies surrounding Heidegger’s political stance have been reignited following the on-going publication of his Schwarze Hefte (Heidegger, 2014a, b, and c); essential, because any invocation of “Heidegger” today arguably involves something additional to a reflection of the man, his politics, Weltanschauung and philosophy. What is also called for is a discussion of the conditions facilitating meaningful discourse about the nexus between “politics” and “knowledge”. Heidegger’s own construction of that nexus increasingly requires little by way of explanation: his involvement with National Socialism before, during and after his acceptance and subsequent relinquishing of the rectorship of Freiburg University in 1933, his refusal directly to comment on the Holocaust in the aftermath of World War II and the lack of support offered to his previous mentor and predecessor Edmund Husserl throughout the 1930s all speak volumes about just how the public person Heidegger saw fit to engage with politics. What is new, today, is that we can substantiate the charge of anti-Semitism given repeated pronunciations of undeniably anti-Semitic character in the Schwarze Hefte.