Plot

Martin Heidegger is considered to be one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, yet much of his philosophy is shrouded in confusion and controversy. His appalling and enthusiastic support for National Socialism poses some serious questions about Heidegger's thought in particular and philosophy in general. Was he, as many believe, the most profound thinker of the 20th century or was he a petty bourgeois from the province whose thought sprung from the Blut und Boden (blood and soil) of the humble origins of his conservative Catholic youth, or both?—Anonymous

We now know that Heidegger's 'flirtation' with Nazism was actually a lifelong committment propelled by ideas deep in his own philosophy. After the war he was arrested and banned from teaching. In his 'Introduction to Metaphysics' published in 1953, one cannot fail to notice his incriminating insistence on the intrinsic 'saving power and greatness' of National Socialism. More scandalous than Heidegger's enthusiastic backing of Hitler, however, was his lifelong silence about the Holocaust.

Many scholars have displayed dangerous failures of political judgement by promoting uncritically Heidegger's thought. This film offers an extraordinary response and radical challenge to Heidegger's rejection of democracy and his support of Nazism.

At stake is the future of democracy and the successful opposition to the resurgent nazisms of our own time.

In 1987 Victor Farias' book, Heidegger and Nazism, established with no uncertainty that Martin Heidegger was an enthusiastic Nazi. In 1933 Heidegger became the first Nazi rector of a German universtiy. He actively worked for Gleichschaltung, transforming the university according to Nazi principles.

More scandalous than his support for Hitler and his belief in the 'inner truth and greatness' of the Nazi revolution, was Heidegger's silence about the Holocaust. Karl Jaspers and Herbert Marcuse made attempts to get Heidegger to refute his Nazi past. In 1947, like the poet Paul Celan, Marcuse travelled to Heidegger's Black Forest retreat, against the advice of his fellow German-Jewish emigres, in search of a 'single word' of repentance. Heidegger refused to respond.

In a 1976 interview with Der Spiegel, Heidegger reiterated his distaste for democratic society. His aversion of things modern (read American) is almost pathological. He complained about the hardships he had to suffer, yet was able to live in a villa in Freiburg from 1945 till his death in 1976 in relative peace and comfort under the protection of the new democratic Germany. One only has to think about the millions who died in the war, a war started by the evil regime he openly supported, and one's patience with his petulance begins to grow thin. His final words of despair in Der Spiegel interview make it clear that he had no faith in democracy or for that matter liberal democratic government of any kind. The only hope? There is none. 'Only a God can save us.'