Nazism, poetry and the political

Heidegger and Nazism: the issues are so contentious, so overdetermined by contemporary intellectual politics, and some of the concerns so horrific that this is a topic about which it is probably impossible to think straight. The controversy was stirred to new life by a book by Victor Farias (1989). Farias’s argument that Heidegger was a Nazi throughout his life and his work thoroughly fascist is easy to dismiss. Less dismissable is evidence gleaned by other scholars at this time, notably Hugo Ott (1993), revealing the extent and depth of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis in the 1930s. This refutes some of Heidegger’s own defensive self-presentations on these issues.