ALGEMEINER
by Jeremy Rosen
October 3, 2014
As we meditate this year on the resurrection of anti-Semitism and its new acceptability, let us not forget the role academia, supposedly objective and sane, plays in perpetuating it. Anyone familiar with university politics knows full well the hypocrisy of ideologies, be they Marxist or fascist (even Zionist and anti-Zionist) that can impose themselves on staff and students.
Of all the well-known Western philosophers, Martin Heidegger must be the most morally despicable. I have no expertise in physiognomy, but just looking at his portraits as a young professor I see a weasel-like malignance and arrogance. Having deflowered his brilliant but flawed Jewish student, Hannah Arendt, he set about systematically blaming Jews for every failing of modern societies to the point where he joined the Nazi party and paid his dues right up until the very end of the war. He admired Hitler and to his dying day he not only refused to repudiate him but also thought that Nazism was the right way for Germany to go, even if the specific manifestation that lost the war was in his opinion a deviation.
He enthusiastically sacked Jews from their positions in the University of Freiburg when he was appointed chancellor in 1933. He approved the racist Nuremberg laws Hitler introduced and never once responded to requests from other academics to condemn Hitler’s policy of exterminating innocent Jews. If ever there was proof that philosophy has little to do with morality, Heidegger must be the perfect example…..
ArchitectGuy on Israel 