Heidegger, Philosophy, and Politics: The Heidelberg Conference

Jacques Derrida · Hans-Georg Gadamer · Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Sep. 2016 · Fordham Univ Press

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Three renowned philosophers discuss the work of Martin Heidegger, and the moral quandary of engaging with a major philosopher who was also a Nazi.
 
In February 1988, philosophers Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe came together in Heidelberg before a large audience to discuss the philosophical and political implications of Martin Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s involvement in Nazism has always been an unsettling stain on his legacy. But what is its real relation to his work in phenomenology or hermeneutics? What are the responsibilities of those who read, analyze, and elaborate this thought? And what is at stake should this important but compromised philosopher be completely dismissed?
 
The reflections presented by three of the most prominent of Heidegger’s readers, spoken in French and transcribed here, were an attempt to approach these questions before a broad public while maintaining a nuanced view of the questions at issue. Ranging over two days and including exchanges with one another and with the audience, the discussions pursued by these major thinkers remain highly relevant today.
 
Also included are a forward by Jean-Luc Nancy and a preface by Reiner Wiehl.

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Jacques Derrida was born in El-Biar, Algeria on July 15, 1930. He graduated from the École Normal Supérieure in 1956. He taught philosophy and logic at both the University of Paris and the École Normal Supérieure for around 30 years. His works of philosophy and linguistics form the basis of the school of criticism known as deconstruction. This theory states that language is an inadequate method to give an unambiguous definition of a work, as the meaning of text can differ depending on reader, time, and context. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 40 books on various aspects of deconstruction including Of Grammatology, Glas, The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, and Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce. He died of pancreatic cancer on October 9, 2004 at the age of 74. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was a major figure in twentieth-century philosophy and was particularly important in developing the field of hermeneutics. Among his many books, the best known is Truth and Method. Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg. His wide-ranging thought runs through many books, including The Literary Absolute, Being Singular Plural, The Ground of the Image, Listening, Corpus, The Disavowed Community, and Sexistence.