Heidegger during the Great Depression

Abstract

Heidegger’s life and philosophy reached a significant turning point around 1929–32, the time of the Great Depression and the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The philosopher, who until then had appeared to be apolitical, turned his attention to Hitler and the Nazis. Nevertheless, Heidegger’s philosophy shows no conspicuous change in political orientation. Yet a careful reading of the texts he produced around this time reveals a connection between Heidegger’s new political sympathies and his search for a philosophical way forward. Of course, Heidegger did not formulate a Nazi philosophy. Rather, he placed the position of philosophy on a historical level. He made the viewpoint he thought philosophy could ascend to a historical one and a question of power. Heidegger constructed his intellectual horizon from the position of metaphysical action to be realized on the historical level; he believed that metaphysics could act as a world and history-defining power in Germany.