In her article: "An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers? Published: November 8, 2009" PATRICIA COHEN highlights the content of a new book:
"a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy."
I just can find this book remotely serious, and think the author is merely exploiting the very prolific field of the "politically correct" language dynamics that many people here in the USA seem to trust their moral build up even against some basic reasoning.
It is impossible to think a man is not affected by his country and its ideologies, or that a man can escape the historic events surrounding him, not for that all that is valuable should be trashed as evil. There are an infinity of examples of such situation where valuable reasoning was intertwined with the systematic abuse of many individuals in the societies where they were produced.
Plato And Aristotle (and many other of the ancient wise men) maintained the inferiority of women and never opposed many of the abuses of the system against this HALF of humanity and of course this were societies were slavery was perfectly ok.
Let's not forget the worse case of genocide by the hands of no other than the power of the Spanish crown and its catholic mission in the Americas, Five centuries where many nations joined in the sacking and killing of native people of the Americas, and then colonization exploits around the world on the back of "progress", and the continuous abuse towards women founded in moralistic spiritual high grounds.
It is a heavy discussion indeed, but lets not think of Nazis as the only evil that has walked this earth...ignoring conveniently ongoing genocides, and when advocationg to demonize reasoning in an absolute statement.
