Original scientific paper
CRITIQUE AND METHOD: HEIDEGGER AS A CASE AND A THINKER
Dunja Melčić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4314-4771
; Blanchardstr. 24, D-60487 Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland
Abstract
The article distinguishes two ways in which Heidegger can be a subject of research. In one type of research, he is a historical figure of political events, and as such a subject of history as a science. Such research has to satisfy the scientific criteria of historiographical method regardless of how critically it treats its subject. In the second type, the subject are Heidegger’s work and the philosophical motives of his political involvement at the start of the Nazi regime in 1933/34. An analysis has in both cases come up with some sloppy scientific procedures and shown that frequently the a priori assumptions get the upper hand, and tend to lean in favour of proving his guilt. A brief introductory overview of the debate is followed by a concise historical outline of the stages in this controversy, and then by an excursus about the essence of the scientific method, and finally by a critical review of the works of some historians which serves the author to demonstrate how it is possible for research to get off the right track when not respecting the criteria and the standards of the scientific method. The second part focuses on the question of the interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and political activism. The thesis (with critical references to some recent ideas by Fried, Kisiel, Thomä) is that the philosophical motives of Heidegger’s “leap” into politics should primarily be sought in the methodological dimensions of his work, primarily in those linked to the problems of grounding, and not so much in certain notional concordances of his categories with the Nazi terminology and concepts.
Keywords
the Heidegger case; genocide of Jews; Hannah Arendt; method; Hugo Ott; Karl Löwith; Marxism; Nazism; platonism; Nietzsche; people; language; historicalness
Hrčak ID:
21832
URI
Publication date:
25.7.2005.
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