New Book Review on Heidegger’s Antisemitism

I am pleased to share my recent review of Richard Wolin’s Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology for Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.

By now, philosopher Martin Heidegger’s antisemitism and Nazism, and the fact that he personally drew connections between these and core concepts of his philosophical oeuvre, is widely known and acknowledged by the philosophical academic community. For quite a long time, though, it was relatively taboo to discuss in many academic philosophy departments. This was especially the case if one suggested that Heidegger’s “philosophy” might have been damaged by his “politics” and that the two could not be easily separated. At a time of rising fascist movements and the influence of Heidegger on several fascist figures and organizations today, it is more imperative than ever to not sweep this under the rug.

Richard Wolin was ahead of his time in exploring Heidegger’s antisemitism and Nazism and the possible impact of these on his philosophy, before it was widely understood that Heidegger had consciously connected the two. I believe Wolin paid a price for sticking his neck out on this question and have wanted to stick up for him on it for a while. When I was a graduate student I invited Wolin to be a keynote speaker of our graduate student conference and later to be an external member of my dissertation committee in the early 2010s. It is gratifying to see the increasing engagement with this important topic by the academic community, although more work remains to be done.

The review is available here: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/21148_heidegger-in-ruins-between-philosophy-and-ideology-by-richard-wolin-reviewed-by-joan-braune/.