degger book has a background in another scandal, this time
concerning not a beloved friend but one of Derrida’s idolized
philosophical ancestors. During the 1980 s Hugo Ott, a scholar
from Heidegger’s own University of Freiburg, was amassing
material on the philosopher’s involvement with the Nazis. At
the same time, a writer named Victor Farias circulated a man-
uscript on Heidegger’s connection with Nazism.
Farias’s book came out in France in 1987 , just after Der-
rida’s Of Spirit,and led, as expected, to a storm of controversy.
Farias, like Ott, accused Heidegger of having a far more thor-
oughgoing investment in the Nazi regime than had been
realized. Ott’s book was the more scholarly one by far: Farias’s
descended, at times, into crude, far-fetched innuendo. Both
Ott and Farias argued that Heidegger was an open anti-Semite
and a consistent supporter of Hitler’s policies. Heidegger had
assumed the rectorship of the University of Freiburg in 1933 ,
but he shortly afterward resigned that position. After World
War II, he depicted his resignation as an act of protest against
Nazism. This was not the case. Recent research by the Heideg-
ger scholar Emmanuel Faye has made us more aware than be-
fore of the depth of Heidegger’s commitment, in his lectures of
the thirties and forties, to Nazi racial theory. Indeed, years be-
fore the Nazi seizure of power, Heidegger had complained
about the Verjudung(“Jewification”) of German universities.^8
Heidegger, who referred in a lecture course given during the
1930 s to the “inner truth and greatness” of National Socialism,
remained a loyal Nazi. Until the end, Heidegger was convinced
that the German-instigated war was the only way to save civi-
lization from the twin menace of Bolshevism and crass Amer-
ican materialism.
In 1949 , Heidegger made his only public allusion to the
Shoah when he remarked that “agriculture today is a motor-
212 Gadamer, Celan, de Man, Heidegger