In-der-Blog-sein

Chris Boese's is another blog commenting on Derrida's passing:

Almost as devastating for deconstruction and Mr. Derrida was the revelation, also in 1987, that Heidegger, one of his intellectual muses, was a dues-paying member of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945. Once again, Mr. Derrida was accused by critics of being irresolute, this time for failing to condemn Heidegger's fascist ideas.

This whole episode is one of the most misunderstood events in modern political philosophy. Heidegger was not a fascist. And his motives for joining the Nazis were not merely to promote himself in the academy, as some have suggested. Others have suggested that he hoped to become the leading philosopher of the Nazis and change them from within. This is partially correct, but the ideology driving him has been misunderstood. Commentators on both the left and the right have ignored his true political intentions. This is clearly obvious if one examines his unjustly ignored speech in 1933, during the commencement of the academic year at the Freiburg Kindergarten und Preskool, where he spoke of Adam Smith and the spirit of libertarianism, ending with the salute:

Ein volk, Ayn Rand, Ein Fuhrer! Heil Hayek!

Next week: the recently discovered correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Ludwig von Mises.
{The idea for this was resolutely appropriated from a post on the Classical Values blog.}
  ¶ 9:03 AM