Letter to a Germanist friend: on Camus and Heidegger

Camus’ mature political thought represents a defence of a democratic socialism rooted in a kind of second neoclassical renaissance. This thought stands to Heidegger’s post-1930 “pathways” in ways very similar to that in which the Camus’ position in 1943-44 stands to his German Friend’s declarations in the “Letters”. Point-for-point, indeed, Camus’ critique of fascism responds to a vision of that form of political extremism very close to that embraced by Heidegger between 1933 and 1936, and never unambiguously renounced thereafter.