What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important philosopher? Martin Heidegger's sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement's philosophical preceptor, "to lead the leader." Yet for years, Heidegger's defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued, in effect, that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. But with the 2014 publication of Heidegger's Black Notebooks, it has become clear that he embraced a far more radical vision of the conservative revolution than previously suspected. His dissatisfaction with National Socialism, it turns out, was mainly that it did not go far enough. The notebooks show that far from being separated from Nazism, Heidegger's philosophy was suffused with it. In this book Richard Wolin explores what the notebooks mean for our understanding of arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and of his ideas--and why his legacy remains radically compromised.

What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century’s most important philosopher? Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement’s philosophical preceptor, “to lead the leader.” Yet for years, Heidegger’s defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued, in effect, that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. But with the 2014 publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, it has become clear that he embraced a far more radical vision of the conservative revolution than previously suspected. His dissatisfaction with National Socialism, it turns out, was mainly that it did not go far enough. The notebooks show that far from being separated from Nazism, Heidegger’s philosophy was suffused with it. In this book Richard Wolin explores what the notebooks mean for our understanding of arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and of his ideas—and why his legacy remains radically compromised.

In Heidegger's Early Philosophy, James Luchte sets forth a comprehensive examination of Heidegger's phenomenology between 1924 and 1929, during which time Heidegger was largely concerned with a radical temporalization of thought. The book seeks to re-construct Heidegger's radical phenomenology through an interpretation of all his published and unpublished works of the period, including the 1920s lecture courses and his published works, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and his magnum opus, Being and Time. The book also explores Heidegger's relationship with other philosophers, such as Husserl, Kant and Leibniz, with respect to the question of the relationship of thought and temporality. The book addresses a significant void in the treatment of Heidegger's early phenomenology, emphasizing the importance of Heidegger's lecture courses and other works besides Being and Time, and thereby investigates the many fragments of Heidegger's work so as to more fully comprehend the meaning and significance of the original project. James Luchte makes an extraordinary and hugely important contribution to the field of Heidegger Studies.

In this collection of essays, leading scholars provide a variety of models from which to view the unique relationship between the bodies of thought of Heidegger and Hegel, revealing how these philosophers offer ways of thinking historically that understand such thinking not merely as extensions and elaborations of a given paradigm but as actively engaged in the critical and transformative revisioning of the world. Beginning at the point where Heidegger encountered Hegel, this volume of provocative essays addresses the respective philosophies of the two men. Leading scholars provide a variety of models from which to view the unique relationship between the bodies of thought of Heidegger and Hegel: bodies of thought that cannot be taken as two objects to be compared, contrasted, and finally evaluated but that must be viewed in dynamic terms, as a relationship in which self-transformations lead to mutual transformations and vice versa.

This book focuses on literal and metaphorical ruins, as they are appropriated and imagined in different forms of writing. Examining British and American literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book begins in the era of industrial modernity with studies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Daphne Du Maurier. It then moves on to the significance of ruins in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of conflict, waste and destruction, analyzing authors such as Beckett and Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Leonard Cohen. The collection concludes with current debates on ruins, through discussions of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, as well as reflections on the refugee crisis that take the ruin beyond the text, offering new perspectives on its diverse legacies and conceptual resources.

The Roman Empire has been a source of inspiration and a model for imitation for Western empires practically since the moment Rome fell. Yet, as Julia Hell shows in The Conquest of Ruins, what has had the strongest grip on aspiring imperial imaginations isn’t that empire’s glory but its fall—and the haunting monuments left in its wake. Hell examines centuries of European empire-building—from Charles V in the sixteenth century and Napoleon’s campaigns of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to the atrocities of Mussolini and the Third Reich in the 1930s and ’40s—and sees a similar fascination with recreating the Roman past in the contemporary image. In every case—particularly that of the Nazi regime—the ruins of Rome seem to represent a mystery to be solved: how could an empire so powerful be brought so low? Hell argues that this fascination with the ruins of greatness expresses a need on the part of would-be conquerors to find something to ward off a similar demise for their particular empire.

The problem of the will has long been viewed as central to Heidegger's later thought. Focusing on this problem, this book aims to clarify key issues from the philosopher's later period, and demonstrates how his so-called "turn" is not a simple "turnaround" from voluntarism to passivism.

Martin Heidegger is, perhaps, the most controversial philosopher of the twentieth-century. Little has been written on him or about his work and its significance for educational thought. This unique collection by a group of international scholars reexamines Heidegger's work and its legacy for educational thought. Thematically, the collection focuses on Heidegger's critique of modernity and contributors investigate the central significance for education of Heidegger's ontology and his investigation of the question of the meaning of Being by examining his 'art of teaching' (a translation of his submission to the denazification hearing), his view of science and reason, his philosophy of technology, his poetics, and the implications of his thought for learning. These essays point to the crucial importance of Heidegger's work for understanding modern, highly-technologized forms of education and for the possibilities of redemption from its worst excesses.

Since the nineteenth century, mass-production, consumerism and cycles of material replacement have accelerated; increasingly larger amounts of things are increasingly victimized rapidly and made redundant. At the same time, processes of destruction have immensely intensified, although largely overlooked when compared to the research and social significance devoted to consumption and production. The outcome is a ruin landscape of derelict factories, closed shopping malls, overgrown bunkers and redundant mining towns; a ghostly world of decaying modern debris normally omitted from academic concerns and conventional histories. The archaeology of the recent or contemporary past has grown fast during the last decade. This development has been concurrent with a broader popular, artistic and scholarly interest in modern ruins in general. Ruin Memories explores how the ruins of modernity are conceived and assigned cultural value in contemporary academic and public discourses, reassesses the cultural and historical value of modern ruins and suggests possible means for reaffirming their cultural and historic significance. Crucial for this reassessment is a concern with decay and ruination, and with the role things play in expressing the neglected, unsuccessful and ineffable. Abandonment and ruination is usually understood negatively through the tropes of loss and deprivation; things are degraded and humiliated while the information, knowledge and memory embedded in them become lost along the way. Without even ignoring its many negative and traumatizing aspects, a main question addressed in this book is whether ruination also can be seen as an act of disclosure. If ruination disturbs the routinized and ready-to-hand, to what extent can it also be seen as a recovery of memory as exposing meanings and presences that perhaps are only possible to grasp at second hand when no longer immersed in their withdrawn and useful reality? Anybody interested in the archaeology of the contemporary past will find Ruin Memories an essential guide to the very latest theoretical research in this emerging field of archaeological thought.

A portrait of Martin Heidegger as a man and a philosopher In this biography of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), now available in English, historian Guillaume Payen synthesizes the connections between the German philosopher's life and work. Critically, but without polemics, he creates a portrait of Heidegger in his time, using all available sources--lectures, letters, and the notorious "black notebooks." Payen chronicles Heidegger's "changing destinies" after the First World War, an uncompromising Catholicism gave way to a vigorous striving for a philosophical revolution--fertile ground for National Socialism. The book reflects a life of light and shadow. Heidegger was a great philosopher and teacher who cultivated friendships and love affairs with Jews but also was an anti-Semitic nationalist who lamented the "Judaization of German intellectual life."