Political Science and Philosophy

Tagungsbericht zur Tagung "Politisches Denken und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in der Englischen Revolution: Aufbruch in die Moderne?" am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Hamburg 2./3. Juni 2022, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 184 vom 10. August 2022, S. N 3 (mit Lukas Potsch).

Heidegger and his followers claimed to have revolutionized philosophy in the second
half of the 20th century. But his legacy has been gradually challenged as further research
has demonstrated how much his philosophy cannot be dissociated from his
political engagement in support of Nazism. The publication beginning in 2014 (and still
ongoing at the time this writing) of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, written between 1931
and 1970, has been the latest evidence of the intimate relationship between
Heideggerian philosophy and Nazi ideology.

For a long time, the philosopher inspired far-right thinkers the world over, from Europe
to Russia and even Iran. Heidegger’s concept of Dasein posits national identify in a
specifically primitivist racial-cultural Volkishness. In the context of Heidegger's writings
after Hitler took power, it is clear that his pre-1933 definition of Dasein fit neatly into the
ideology of the emerging Nazi state and particularly that of the primitivist ideology of the
Sturmabtllung (SA), and the later Ahnenerbe. The incorporation of his ideas offers an easy cachet to far-right ideologies in search of a source of philosophical legitimacy.

The concept of Dasein can indeed be read as a straightforward legitimation of a Volkish
ontology: it calls for rootedness and nativity, arguing that every worldview is justified
through its being anchored by a local identity, thereby destroying any idea of
universalism. Heidegger’s language of the “end of philosophy” also fits an eschatological
vision of the end of the Western world, a requiem for a dying world, and by a domino
effect, the annunciation of the rebirth of anti-Western civilizations. The Dasein concept can then be repurposed for many different contexts: with a white-supremacist narrative for those hoping for a rebirth of the white race after its having been killed off by Western
liberalism; or in a Russian version as done by the infamous geopolitician Alexander
Dugin.

Dugin discovered Heidegger partly late in his intellectual journey. For a long time, the
Russian ideologist was focused on classic figures of pro-Nazi traditionalism such as Julius Evola, and on the whole ideological construction of Nazi esotericism, before realizing how much Heidegger could offer to his theories. After several works about Heidegger were published in Russian (and at least one translated into English), and several translations of Heidegger were published in Russian, Dugin adopted the Dasein concept in his Fourth Political Theory (2009), which, in a sense, is a tribute to Heidegger’s engagement with a “spiritual” National Socialism.

In this volume, the contributors address how the Black Notebooks have dramatically
reshuffled the deck of Heidegger studies (Richard Wolin), how Heidegger has been read
in the Soviet-Russian context (Michail Maiatsky), and how Dugin has been reading
Heidegger’s philosophy, projecting his own interpretation back into the Western far-right
world (Emmanuel Faye).

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the overpopulation issue of India and propose recommendations on how to overcome it. First, the paper summarizes the crucial demographic conditions and where India stands by numbers. Then the article presents the development of the state approach to the issue starting from the early years of independence up to the current policies. It does so by scrutinizing its cultural, economic and social factors and implications of overpopulation and identifies socioeconomic backwardness, early marriages and family norms, lack of adequate health care infrastructure and education as the correlated and interdependent features supporting the trend of overpopulation. The authors come up with three recommendations to tackle the issue – women empowerment, education and industrialization.