Abstract

The question of the political meaning of the thought of Martin Heidegger has been the subject of an extensive debate in the literature since the publication of Victor Farias's book, Heidegger and Nazism. This dissertation contributes to that debate by arguing that the political implications of Heidegger's work can best be seen not in his ambivalent relationship to National Socialism, but rather in his project to confront Western thought as a whole and to attempt to bring about a refounding of history. In my dissertation I show that this project is carried out through a return to the concealed origins of Western thought in the writings of the Pre-Socratic thinkers. By disclosing the hidden source of the first beginning of Western thought, Heidegger hopes to make possible the emergence of another beginning, one which would rescue human being from its present malaise at the end of metaphysics. Integral to this attempt to deconstruct and reappropriate early Greek thought, I argue, is a reorientation of the traditional understanding of the human being and his relation to the world. Here the political significance of Heidegger's thought emerges. For in this reorientation, the political is ontologized, that is to say, the essential place political action and deliberation has traditionally held for man disappears in Heidegger's schema in favor of an essential ontological dependence: human being is determined first and foremost in terms of its relation to Being. The ontological imperative inherent in Heidegger's attempt to make possible a refounding of history conceals, therefore, a reconfiguration of the realm of politics to a secondary and inessential component of human existence.