Martin Heidegger: A Political Life

This meticulously detailed, important study demolishes the notion that famed German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who joined the Nazi party, was a politically naive intellectual caught up against his will in a movement he did not understand. According to German social historian Ott, Heidegger, who made many pronouncements acclaiming Adolf Hitler as the Fuhrer, was waiting for the promised National Socialist revolution and saw himself as the true apostle of the movement's quasi-mystical essence. Ott establishes that Heidegger assumed the rectorship of the University of Freiburg (a position from which the philosopher later resigned) as the trusted agent of a small circle of Nazi professors who wanted him to undertake a reform of the university in line with the dictates of Hitler's program. Ott, a professor at the University of Freiburg, also refutes Heidegger's postwar attempt to justify his links to Nazism and to minimize their importance. (Aug.)