Introduction

that ultimately what needs changing is the way we are revealed and the way the
world in turn is revealed through us. We share a collective guilt which needs to be
confessed before we can hope to make any progress. The defeat of Nazi Germany did
not signal the end of the problems we face as a species and we have witnessed nothing
less than the steady accumulation of countless horrors associated with the rampant
dominion of the technological mindset.
Lest our intentions be misconstrued at the outset, we must make one thing clear:
reading some of Heideggers work as a profound commentary and reflection on the
Holocaust is not to suggest that Heideggers philosophy succeeds or that it is equal
to the enormity of the task at hand. However, if, as is generally conceded now (apart
perhaps from the most blinkered adherents to one side of a phony war between the
analytic and continental traditions) Heidegger is in fact one of the most important
philosophers of the twentieth century, then what that philosopher has to say about the
greatest ever crime against humanity merits serious attention. And given Heideggers
own Nazi allegiances, his philosophical response is doubly important. Heidegger
has been consistently maligned for his moral bankruptcy, not least as a result of his
silence concerning the Holocaust following the end of the Second World War. I have
argued that Heideggers silence, in many respects, spoke volumes. That is, in refusing
to acquiesce in the Western auto-da-fs that have continued since the middle of
the twentieth century, Heidegger was already in some respects saying something.12
What is more, if we are in fact justified in taking the infelicitously named agriculture
remark as an epigraph and thereby a key to The Question Concerning Technology,
then Heidegger had quite a lot to say, philosophically at least, about the Holocaust.
That is certainly not to say that it is sufficient or that it is not ultimately bankrupt
both morally and philosophically, but we have to first see how Heideggers thoughts
concerning technology might be relevant to our reflections on the Holocaust before we
make such claims! And, I would submit, though it wont satisfy the entirely reasonable
demand to produce an outright condemnation on purely ethical grounds, it may offer
us some important insights which will allow us to reflect on the Holocaust and indeed
other acts of genocide in ways that might be of some benefit.
Heideggers silence is also consistent, of course, with his antipathy towards
Modernity and his belief that Western Liberalism and Democracy were simply the
logical outcomes of a Modernity which itself belonged within the history of Western
Metaphysics. And while we may well end up crediting Heidegger with a certain intellectual honesty here, we also find ourselves at the precipice of the gravest difficulties
that beset Heideggers thought: Heidegger cannot consistently resist Universalism
in all of its forms in the way that he wishes to in such a way as to protect his own
thought from inconsistency. Moreover, his desires to do so (for a period of time) seem
to very obviously spring from a kind of spiritual ethnic chauvinism which is simply
inconsistent with the aspects of his thought (in particular certain key sections of Being
and Time) which he looks to found an authentic provincialism on. So, while we can
compare Heideggers anti-modernism with the work of various relevant contemporaries and we can identify his willingness to use the Blut und Boden rhetoric of his day,
we must also bear in mind that Heidegger is trying to find a way to put these ideas on a
philosophical footing which does not reduce to the work of his contemporaries. Seeing