Throughout contemporary Europe, far right parties are threatening to tip the political balance from democracy to new forms of autocracy. Among the intellectuals who have nurtured the ideology underlying the new political authoritarianism, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s doctrines and ideas have played a central role. These linkages are especially disturbing in light of the recent publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, which demonstrate his unstinting support for National Socialism and its agenda of genocidal imperialism.

Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History, Political Science and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Among his books are: Heidegger’s Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse; The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism, and The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s, which was listed by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2012. He frequently writes on intellectual and political topics for the New Republic, The Nation, and Dissent.

Supported by the Richard Ader/Paul Konigsberg Endowment for the UVM Center for Holocaust Studies.