Thursday, January 9, 2020

Review of Ronald Beiner's Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right

I am posting the below video at least in part to alleviate *some* of my disgust after glancing through a loaned copy of Ronald Beiner's Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right. Trust me, I am going to review this piece of trash book on my YouTube channel soon enough.

The fact that University of Pennsylvania Press (of all places!) would publish this absolute piece of sensationalist TRASH is beyond belief. Just the fact that the names of Nietzsche and Heidegger - HEIDEGGER - would appear atop of an image of the Charlottesville demonstrations, torches and all, makes me sick. Literally sick, as in I want to vomit when I think about it.

Again, so I am perfectly clear: I am going to review this book on my YouTube channel. And I will trounce it as it deserves to be. There is no Bibliography, the notes are complete garbage and lack any scholarly integrity completely, and the ideas within are so shopworn run-of-the-mill "connect Heidegger and Nietzsche to Nazism as fast as you can" that I absolutely cannot believe in any way that U Penn published this.

It reminds me about how many, many years ago I attended a picnic get-together hosted by my undergraduate mentor (who took his Ph.D. at U of Toronto, where sadly Beiner apparently now teaches) after I had just completed my M.A. (which, incidentally, was on Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche). There my mentor disclosed how he met Charles Guignon - the somewhat famous Heidegger scholar at the University of South Florida -- who told him that he thought my thesis was "Nazi philosophy." So, that goes to show the sort of mentality with which we are dealing here. Beiner is in that same camp. Completely clueless.

Anyway, enjoy the below video, English subtitles. I suppose because the folks in the video discuss Ernst Junger and Carl Schmitt that they, too, are "Nazi philosophers." Give me a break.