Reductio ad Hitlerum
Frank Scalambrino
Green themes like scarcity and purity and invasion and protection all have right-wing echoes. Hitler’s ideas about environmentalism came out of purity, after all.
Betsy Hartmann, “The Greening of Hate”
Reductio ad Hitlerum (RAH) is a species of the reductio ad hominem genre of logically fallacious reasoning. Logically speaking, all of the various species of ad hominem may be refuted by noting that “Just because X or an X said it, doesn’t mean it’s false.” In other words, we may dislike that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, however, his owning slaves does not make all of the statements he ever made, thereby, false. Similarly, if on a Tuesday Adolf Hitler noted that it was Tuesday, then we wouldn’t say that just because Hitler said it, it must not be Tuesday.
In this way, it is clear that ad hominem arguments, such as RAH, may be understood as “fallacies of relevance.” Yet because in some contexts such claims may be relevant, the following helps clarify when RAH is logically fallacious and when it is not. On the one hand, it is clear that the truth-value of a claim may be understood in most cases as independent from the person making the claim, that is, excluding various types of claims such as those with reference to the person making the claim. On the other hand, in certain social and political contexts, the character of the person making claims
plays an intimate role in how one should reasonably relate to the possible truth-value of the claim. For example, when a politician or a potential mate makes promises regarding the future, if we associate the claim-maker with the perpetration of evil acts, a lack of integrity, and infidelity, then it would not be unreasonable to be suspicious of the truth-value of his statements, that is, promises, regarding the future. Yet, it is still true that being a wretched person does not determine the truth-value of the claims such a person may make.
The most notorious example of the RAH in philosophy is the association of Martin Heidegger with Hitler and the Nazi Party. Heidegger was, in fact, a member of the Nazi Party. Yet, logically speaking, the fact of his membership in the Nazi Party does not necessitate the falsehood of his philosophical claims. For example, Heidegger (1962) begins “Division Two” of Being and Time noting, “our existential analysis of Dasein up till now cannot lay claim to primordiality” (276). The truth-value of this statement does not depend on its author’s relation to Hitler. Though, of course, we may find fault and think his membership in the Nazi Party to be blameworthy, the logical truth of his utterances is a separate question. Further, notice that Hitler rose to power in 1933; Heidegger’s magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) was first published in 1927 and was famously dedicated to Heidegger’s Jewish colleague and friend Edmund Husserl.
Tom Rockmore not only associates Heidegger’s philosophy with Nazism, he also associates the study of philosophy itself with Nazism in a kind of chain argument from the Heidegger-Nazi identification to the Heidegger- philosopher identification, and ultimately to the “philosophical discipline” itself (1991, 1995). In the general and abstract, of course, the chain argument looks straightforward; however, if we add particular content to the argument, then the fallaciousness of its reductio emerges. For example, on the one hand, Heidegger famously criticized the worldview associated with French philosopher Rene Descartes. On the other hand, there are many different historical instances, subjects considered, and approaches taken in regard to the “philosophical discipline” other than those in which Heidegger participated. Yet, the RAH makes it seem as though philosophically critiquing the Cartesian worldview or providing proofs of valid inference in a formal logic course would be tantamount to being desirous of perpetrating the Holocaust.
Thus, the logical question regarding the truth-value of Heidegger’s philosophical claims is separate from the moral question of whether actions perpetrated by “Nazis,” or in the name of “Nazism,” were evil. Insofar as any murdering of innocent people is evil, then by most accounts those actions were obviously evil.Originating in regard to the ignorant and routine nature of many online “postings” and “chat room” conversations involving such specific ad hominem arguments as RAH, some have suggested a rule that whenever someone first resorts to making a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis in an argument, the argument should be considered over, and the Nazi reference maker considered to have forfeited the argument. Ultimately, in order to avoid this fallacy, we should keep our feelings regarding a person separate from our understanding of the truth-value of the claims she makes.
References
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Rockmore, Tom. 1991. On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Rockmore, Tom. 1995. Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, Antihumanism and Being. London: Routledge.