Heidegger’s Radical Antisemitism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Heidegger's Jews: Inclusion/Exclusion and Heidegger's Anti- Semitism
Heidegger’s thinking once seemed to bear on everything and every philosopher, from the Pre-Socratics, such as Anaximander and Parmenides as well as Heraclitus, to Plato himself, to Aristotle as well as Plotinus and Augustine, Duns Scotus and Aquinas and all the modern names like Descartes and Leibniz. Kant, too, as well as Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Marx, Dilthey and arguably above all: Nietzsche. And Heidegger read Husserl. But with the publication of the Black Notebooks, everything turns around. If Heidegger could remind us as he does precisely in his reflections on the very idea of the Nachlaß as such, reflections constituting a central focus beginning with the first volume of the Black Notebooks arguing that posthumous works work – this is their Wirkungsgeschichte – to invert the order of time, the effect effected in what I call the “black night” of the Black Notebooks, has to be a Kehre to beat them all. Emmanuel Faye’s former student, Sidonie Kellerer, has even suggested that the turn itself was invented as a cover for a more insidious concern: anti-Semitism at the core. Thus, it seems Heidegger was preoccupied less with the Seinsfrage than the Judenfrage, particularly in terms of what Peter Trawny characterizes as Heidegger’s now ineliminable seinsgeschichtliche Antisemitismus, an obsession with Weltjudentum, wherein Heidegger is also revealed as having been fatally one-sided in his naming of names in the history of philosophy, especially his contemporaries and students. NB: This is an author's corrigendum addressing print artifacts or typographer's errors. For the printed and official version, but also for the contributions in the issue, please see the publisher's official website: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rbsp20/47/2
Heidegger's Origin Story and His Anti-Judaism
Synopsis The publication of Martin Heidegger's 'Black Notebooks' in 2014 has reignited the debate on the degree to which Martin Heidegger was an 'anti-Semite'. As the contested literature attests, this is not easily resolved. If he was an anti-Semite, as a few references in his Black Notebooks appears to make clear, then is his work so infused with anti-Semitism, so ideologically bound by hate, that it should be removed from contemporary university curricula? Some believe we should take this drastic step. I will argue that if there is an adequate understanding of Heidegger's work then it can be concluded that Heidegger was not an anti-Semite in racial terms and therefore not a Nazi. I will argue that if there is an understanding of Heidegger's work, an anti-Judaism or, if you like, an intellectual anti-Semitism can be discerned from his conclusions. Heidegger opposed the theological commitments of Judaism and their socio-political ramification but opposed 'biologism'. Although Heidegger opposed the intellectual trajectory of Jewish thought, he understood this tradition to be derived from a more fundamental problem that can be seen to emerge with philosophy in ancient Greece. Heidegger therefore situates the Jewish tradition along with 'Amercianism', 'global democracy', 'Catholicism' and others as expressions of this more fundamental problem. As an alternative, Heidegger hoped to articulate an origin myth that would function as a paraenetic myth, much like Homeric poems functioned prior to the emergence of philosophy. To understand Heidegger's position there needs to be a differentiation between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism. We need to read and understand Heidegger's work with the greatest urgency as today we are beset by the greatest danger to confront humanity, meaninglessness.
article in Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy 32 (2024) 35–59, 2024
My essay positions Heidegger's Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte) in the light of the later transformation of his thought after die Kehre, which introduces a new motif: "the withdrawal of Being." And while the Jewish question disappears from his official discourse, the essay poses it nonetheless, despite and against Heidegger's silence: Does the diagnosis from the Black Notebooks, which perceives the Jew as the agent of metaphysical destruction, still stand? In my analysis, the figurative Jew emerges in a role which Heidegger refuses to recognize: as a positive agent of letting-be, acting in accordance with Being's rhythm of self-withdrawal.
Wolin Heidegger &-Jewish Question
Antisemitism Studies 7 (2), 2012
The recent publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks has renewed the discussion concerning the nature and extent of Heidegger’s antisemitism. The initial wave of responses to this fraught and controversial topos by Heidegger’s supporters has been disappointingly—if predictably—apologetic. In their haste to downplay the philosophical import of Heidegger’s antisemitism, his defenders have often lost sight of the bigger picture: as a vigorous champion of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft and as someone who, as late as 1953, continued to insist on the “inner truth and greatness of National Socialism,” Heidegger recognized that the goal of making Germany Judenrein was an essential step toward creating a homogeneous and self-assertive “national community.” The Black Notebooks demonstrate that Heidegger’s antisemitism, as well as his belief in a “Jewish world conspiracy,” persisted after the war. Heidegger’s postwar thoughts on the “Jewish Question” attest to the prevalence of so-called “secondary antisemitism,” an attitude epitomized by Zvi Rex’s dark witticism, “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.”
MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND THE THINKING OF EVIL: FROM THE ORIGINAL ETHICS TO THE BLACK NOTEBOOKS
According to some interpretations, the recent publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks seems to nail Heidegger to responsibility for the Third Reich and moreover for the Holocaust. On the one hand, we find some scholars that stress that the banality of Heidegger’s evil is due to his anti-Semitic convictions (Nancy); on the other, we find others that underline Heidegger’s contribution to the philosophy of Nazism (Faye, Wolin). Surfing between different conceptions of antisemitism, such as ontological or metaphysical (Trawny, Di Cesare), we are faced with a new image of Heidegger: not only the philosopher linked to National Socialism, but an antisemite that has contributed to the theoretical ground of evil. The aims of this paper are on three levels: firstly, I will show how the afore-mentioned interpretations regarding the Black Notebooks are grounded on a series of fallacies and misinterpretations that produce only «petitio principii» and «confirmation bias»; secondly, I will go back to the original ethics that since «Being and Time» remains the framework of ontological interrogation; thirdly, I will show how Heidegger’s relationship with Nazism played a very limited role in his reflection and is far removed from the entire history of Being (Seinsgeschichte). KEYWORDS: Heidegger, Black Notebooks, Holocaust, Ethics, Seinsgeschichte.
Heidegger, "World Judaism", and Modernity
In March 2014, Heidegger’s Überlegungen II–XV, a series of what he called his Black Notebooks, were published. These texts differ from Heidegger’s previously known writings in that they seem to speak more clearly and directly to the philosophical motivations and intentions in Heidegger’s thinking of the 1930s, and they demonstrate that Heidegger’s being-historical thinking during the Second World War was open to anti-Semitic ideas. The discussions, which have until now been behind the scenes in Heidegger research, have so far brought no agreement. The often unnecessary struggle for the prerogative of interpretation has finally highlighted a question again. Heidegger’s Black Notebooks force us, like no other manuscript from this philosopher, to ask: How do we read Heidegger?
Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy
2016
Heidegger's Manichaeism: Comments on Peter Trawny's Heidegger and the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy. In the book Heidegger and the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy, Peter Trawny convincingly shows that anti-Semitism in Heidegger's thought does not have the shape of the Nazi call for racial discrimination, but rather is a stereotypical and unfortunate element of Heidegger's call for a transformation of thinking so that philosophy and the human attitude to life would be focused on Being itself (Seyn selbst) instead of beings (Seiendes). Despite the advantages of Trawny's book, I think that Trawny unlawfully tries to demonstrate that anti-Semitism is the main ethical and political problem of Heideggerian philosophy, while in my opinion the main problem is Heidegger's "being-historical Manichaeism"-a phenomenon which is only marginally evoked by Trawny. This Manichaeism brings Heidegger to criticize the values of human subjectivity, personality and social and economic self-security as the enemies of Being. These views not only can have severe political collectivist implications, butto put it in the terminology of Sein und Zeit-they also make Heidegger speak in the manner of the conservative variant of "idle talk" (Gerede) of "the they" (das Man).