Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre: Human, All Too Human, a documentary about radical thinking, in three parts.




As a lapsed philosophy major, I highly recommend these three documentaries in a 1999 BBC series entitled Human, All Too Human. An essay at Open Culture provides invaluable context to accompany your viewing.

Human, All Too Human: 3-Part Documentary Profiles Nietzsche, Heidegger & Sartre

Certainly three of the most radical thinkers of the last 150 years, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre were also three of the most controversial, and at times politically toxic, for their perceived links to totalitarian regimes. In Nietzsche’s case, the connection to Nazism was wholly spurious, concocted after his death by his anti-Semitic sister. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s philosophy is far from sympathetic to equality, his politics, such as they are, highly undemocratic. The case of Heidegger is much more disturbing—a member of the Nazi party, the author of Being and Time notoriously held fascist views, made all the more clear by the recent publication of his infamous “black notebooks.” And Sartre, author of Being and Nothingness, has long been accused of supporting Stalinism — a charge that may be oversimplified, but is not without some merit.

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