Useful for the Purposes of Fascism? Philosophy under National Socialism

Adam Knowles (University of Zürich)

What use was philosophy for National Socialism? How did the academic discipline of philosophy contribute to the projects of National Socialism? And how did the agencies of the Nazi regime assess the usefulness of individuals philosophers or modes of thinking? This paper analyzes these questions by reconstructing philosophy’s usefulness for National Socialism through surveillance files compiled on the discipline of philosophy. By avoiding a narrow focus on ideology and by focusing instead on philosophy’s material contributions to National Socialism, the paper develops a vocabulary for modes of complicity drawn from internal surveillance assessments. How can the rubric of usefulness guide the robust denazification of academic disciplines? What modes of complicity might emerge through such an analysis? Walter Benjamin famously wrote of developing an aesthetic theory that was “useless for the purposes of fascism.” With an eye towards the present insurgence of fascist and fascist-adjacent thinking, this paper explores what it means for academic philosophy to be useless of the purposes of fascism.