Abstract

Title: Martin Heidegger's Critique of Freedom Author: Charles Robinson Advisor: Professor Susan Shell Boston College Political Science Department This is a study of thought and politics of Martin Heidegger. It presents an examination of his understanding of freedom, principally as he expressed it in Being and Time, but also considers some of his subsequent essays and lectures, as well as his Rectorate Address. Ever since Heidegger's public embrace of National Socialism, his defenders and critics have argued about the possible relation between his thinking and his infamous political commitments. While many of his critics have linked his commitments to an alleged lack of understanding of freedom, some of his scholarly defenders have sought to present interpretations of his concept of freedom at odds with his infamous politics, in order to separate his thought from any association with Nazism. The conclusions of these critics and defenders of Heidegger are both mistaken: in Being and Time Heidegger sought the meaning of being in the authentic experience of human self-determination revealed by the conscience, which he worked out as "forward running resolve." It was this militant concept of freedom that grounded his project for a destined community of battle to be championed by a free corps of freedom fighters, and led him to embrace, in the very name of freedom, the tyranny of Hitler's new Reich. The study of Heidegger's concept of authentic freedom reveals that, far from lacking any understanding of freedom, it was rather a central theme and concern of his philosophical efforts, and that his infamous political commitments were indeed its necessary and coherent practical consequence. Heidegger's thought thus poses a more trenchant and pressing challenge to liberal (and leftist) politics than many of his critics and defenders appreciate. There have been comparatively few sustained thematic treatments of Heidegger's understanding of freedom in English. This study accordingly hopes to contribute to an understanding of this central theme of Heidegger's philosophical efforts, which not only reveals their necessary connection to his politics, but also promises to improve our access to the coherent intelligibility of his thought as a whole