Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 12:28:34 EST
Subject: MT: Re: Goldhagen







>Justin, I called him 'neo-racist'. I don't mean that the 'race' is
>issue here, but an effort to label one particular group, or 'nation'.
>I've wondered recently why it's so important to refer to
>'nationality'. For example, our James Heartfield (from thaxis) has
>written in his reviews in Living Marxism few times about 'German
>irrationalists' (Nietzsche and Heildegger for him) without any
>logical reason even to refer them (not to mention that there was
>any argument concerning them). But when such an expression appears
>four times in one review we can call such repetition systematic. That
>makes me wonder the function of such an expression. What is the aim?


Probably the aim is to draw attention to the particularly strong, particularly
influential, tradition of irrationalism in German philosophy over the last
century or so, and possibly to intimate a connection between that tradition
and the success of Nazism.  There's nothing "neo-racist" about that.

Best regards,

David Hawkes

Department of English
Lehigh University