“Only a God Can Save Us” documentary
The line is from Martin Heidegger’s resigned and despairing Der Speigel interview, shortly before his death in 1976.
At Rockford College we are hosting a showing of Jeffrey Van Davis’s film on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and his disturbing relationship with National Socialism. After the showing, we will have a panel discussion featuring director Van Davis, professors David Sytsma and Jules Gleicher of the Rockford College history and political science departments, respectively, and myself as moderator.
Heidegger is one of the most influential of all twentieth-century philosophers, yet he was also a strong supporter of National Socialism in Germany. Is there a connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and his Nazism or is the coincidence accidental? More generally, is there a connection between philosophical theory and political practice? Heidegger died in 1976 — what should we think of his never recanting his support for the Nazi movement even after the end of World War II and the Holocaust?
Time and place of the showing: March 4, 3 p.m., Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, Burpee Center, Rockford College (campus map).
From the film’s website:
“Only A God Can Save Us” 
Length: 118 min.
Shot in 16mm, mini DV
Country of Origin: Germany
Shot in: USA, Germany, France, Holland
Persons featured in film:
Kardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz
Alfred Denker, Heidegger Biographer
Hugo Ott, Freiburg University
Victor Farias, Free University of Berlin
Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University, USA
Richard Wolin, City University of New York, USA
Ted Kisiel, Northern Illinois University, USA
Rainer Marten, Freiburg University
Emmanuel Faye, University of Paris
Bernd Martin, Freiburg University
Iain Thomson, University of New Mexico, USA
Jürgen Paul, Dresden University
Silke Seemann, Freiburg University
Rangvi Wesendonk
Axel Graf Douglas, Schloss Langenstein
Some of the topics covered in the documentary:
1. Heidegger’s concept of Being and the “turning” from Dasein to Sein
2. His humble beginnings and staunch Catholic education.
3. The Rectorship and his denunciation of teachers such as Nobel Prize winner Staudinger. His enthusiasm for Gleichschaltung of Frieburg University.
4. His highly manipulative love affair with Hannah Arendt.
5. His relationship to Edith Stein.
6. His refusal to give a word of reconciliation to Paul Celan who visited him in his hut at Todtnauberg.
7. The denazification process and his refusal to recant his support for Hitler.
More information at Van Davis’s site.
I have written about Heidegger here, here, and here.
“The philosopher still makes some academics feel itchily uncomfortable, not because they truly believe his Nazism will leap from the pages of his works, but because his deeply anti-humanist arguments sound a little too familiar.” 
So we have to go up a level of abstraction to see the connections. Just as “left” Communism and “right” Nazism are two particular applications of a broader collectivist and authoritarian political vision, Heidegger’s particular philosophy and contemporary postmodernists’ particular philosophy share essentially the same anti-reason and anti-human vision. 
My own discussion of Heidegger appears in Chapter Three (pp. 58-67) of my Explaining Postmodernism. 
