Abstract

Thomas Sheehan’s attack on my book Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, addressed neither the book’s topic nor its arguments. He instead highlighted a few isolated details in a sophistic and biased fashion. Moreover, his exposition was interspersed with ad personam insults not typically found in philosophical or scientific discussions. Although I had hitherto resolved not to respond to personal attacks, I owe it to the memory of Johannes Fritsche, who was also attacked by Sheehan, to take my turn to speak and to thereby pay intellectual tribute to Professor Fritsche. The article returns to the interpretation of Being and Time and analyzes the meaning and connotations of Heidegger’s use of the German term Bodenlosigkeit. The key methodological issue concerns the need to study the semantic, historical, and political context of concepts instead of hiding these issues by reducing everything to a battle between dogmatic positions.