Clarity, Clarity!: The Epistemology in the Philosophy of National Socialism

Can evil be philosophical? Even though those skilled in the field of applied ethics might find this question elementary, to the intellectual historians, this question is problematic to the extent of causing possible aversion. This is because the key component of this interrogative question, the concept of evil with its extensive normative implications, is one that is either ahistorical or temporally relative. But what if there existed a historically situated evil that is not, or does not allow to be, relative? National Socialism is that historical evil, so much so that the ideology was almost sealed off by its incredibly rigidly defined historicity to prevent any form of re-actualization as a phenomenon. As a result, one can, theoretically, ask the question as one belonging to the subject of intellectual history: Was National Socialism philosophical? What was the National Socialist philosophy? Although it is still impossible to overlook the incompatibility between almost purely normatively oriented "evil," which is often associated with an incongruously self-serving logic and the crassness of its phenomenal manifestations, and the elevated coherence of philosophy, this paper will inquire the evil of National Socialism by treating it as a positive aspect constituted and justified through philosophical means. Doing so requires suspending value judgement of the aforementioned vulgarity within the Nazi logos and reinterpreting it as a serious part of the philosophizing process of National Socialism without aggrandizing the ideology. It is difficult to argue that the conception of Nazi philosophy, or the philosophizing of National Socialism was a fully mobilized institutional effort underpinned by conscious political decisions. But this paper argues that there was nevertheless a body of primary sources in Nazi Germany regarding its ideology that, when examined collectively, point to the existence of a somewhat coherent Nazi philosophy centered around epistemology.