From: h.vantuijl-AT-kub.nl
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 20:34:34 +0100
Subject: Re: Heidegger in Germany


Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro wrote:

> I think your are really taking a sentence out of the context (of this
> particulary of this page (!), as well as of the whole article).

Rafael,

First of all, thank you for your mail. It is a friendly warning not to
make a fool of myself and not to stray too far away from a sensible
interpretation of Heidegger's Koinon-essays. I therefore highly
appreciate your posting. Nevertheless, I cannot follow your advice.
Although I am, also thanks to you, well aware of the fact that I could
be overcautious and do Heidegger injustice - for example, in Bateson's
words, by misinterpreting the context markers. 

As Paul Murphy wrote, "context is the key here". In my view the context
of the Koinon-papers is the beginning of World War II. Most of
Heidegger's Jewish colleagues have left the country. Others like Jaspers
with a Jewish wife are still there. Living a life full of fear. All of
them are "forgotten" by Heidegger. It is also the year of the fall of
the ghetto of Warsaw and the beginning of the "purging" of the Western
world. 

Precisely in this year Heidegger writes about racism - or as he likes to
call it with the bureaucrats of his days: the "cultivation of race". And
he calls it a necessary measure. He writes this in such a way that no
Nazi-official could have read it as a protest against the Fuehrer, the
Party, the Third Reich - and least of all against racism. Heidegger must
have known this. I do not see how he could not have.  

Thanks again. Perhaps some day we will agree on Heidegger - for example
about his brilliant analysis of Sophocles's Antigone.

Kindest regards,
Henk



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