-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- James Donald wrote:

At 06:10 PM 11/14/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:

...

By the way, the same can be said about the work of Heidegger, a thinker who has had some influence on me. Whenever I cite anything Heidegger ever said, I can count on some numbskull to parrot the "Heidegger was a Nazi" shtick.

Probably because Heidegger *was* a Nazi, who pranced around in full drag Nazi uniform and sent certain of his colleagues to the concentration camps.

To very crudely oversimplify the relationship between Heideggers philosophy and Nazism, it goes like this.

No objective, only the intersubjective, therefore the community defines reality, therefore truth is merely relative to the community.

Yeah, I know it is more complex than that, but it still boils down to debates being resolved by hanging people from the ceiling with piano wire rather than by appeal to the external world.

You are doing something slightly different from people who respond to a point with "Heideggar? That Nazi!" The people who do this are short circuiting the discussion instead of showing how the point made is in error. In a sense, they are not discussing an idea, but the group affiliations of each speaker. I find that the ideas are more interesting. (Although, if one were interested in Heideggar, his biography would probably be interesting, too.) Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNHNYfJaWtjSmRH/5AQHHQgf+P4JzdjyftjxLeMONc6BnT+++TO1CDJ9B 2KKQfPwC1nW5vM1eY+Yl1HPK577GYkCWaV1xPfiJ+zNBqgjr3p4vtWJU8RrBGs4Y xHy+4v/r2xSCBaPcBx5/0qqJkWMLr+zntusDfevJOviDcuozXj6uOJfWmg1bTrKz l/qoKTVVVfeNIHYYjWm+BfuNVsar0P5bOx2U6N/FkglK1XZEC+3q4/ibCjhjXCAm TFYuvO1tBlT0DAvjAcjv9m1drISNYVT2SsY4buOqb8CFkegBL9fUDcdPBt7x07rr 9Oe4AVFi17T9x6mP6evdz2ILffC2G8DhPK0Gqqhzlm8bxGcy8Dgq6Q== =ZwGc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----