Heidegger's Jews: Inclusion/Exclusion and Heidegger's Anti- Semitism

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2017

With the publication of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, it has become impossible to avoid Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. There has been the expected controversy with Heideggerians on the defensive and the philosopher’s detractors condemning his work outright. But there has been little serious exploration of the matter aside from several recent works. This article builds on this literature on Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and concludes that an anti-Semitic narrative lies at the heart of Heidegger’s history of the oblivion of Being as nihilism. Moreover, Heidegger adopts the narrative framework set up by Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morality. In the end, we assert that Heidegger advocates a kind of war against Judaism that seeks to eradicate the Jewish influence in the western tradition. Heidegger’s ‘metaphysical’ anti-Semitism aims to overcome the nihilism of the ‘Jewish Christian’ revenge [ Rache] against death, a nihilism that has evolved into the technological effort to ...

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.”

Abstract: English This paper explores Heidegger’s critique of the Judeo-Christian tradition developed in the Black Notebooks. This critique is not simply the result of Heidegger’s break from his original faith, but is rooted in his life-long engagement with the question of Being. The aim here is to dismantle and displace the primacy of historical Christianity (in terms of Christendom) in philosophy back to a Greek origin that it had “corrupted” and “altered”, there by opening metaphysics and the West [Abendland] to the oblivion of Being. In the framework of this understanding, the critique of Catholicism occupies a specific place and is stratified at three levels: historical, speculative and political. It is in this stratified context that this paper explores Heidegger’s already notorious remarks about the Jews. In doing so we see that the Judenfrage is not the main theme of the Black Notebooks, but belongs in the broader framework of Heidegger’s critique of the Christian West, and the “modernity” that unfolds in the historical holding sway of the oblivion of Being. German: Dieser Beitrag setzt sich zum Ziel, die Tragweite der Kritik an der jüdisch-christlichen Tradition, besonders am Christentum, in Heideggers Schwarzen Heften zu zeigen. Diese Kritik entsteht nicht nur aus der Ablösung von Heideggers ursprünglichen Glauben, sondern ist auch in der tiefen philosophischen Notwendigkeit verwurzelt, die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein zu beantworten und den Vorrang der historischen Gestalt des Christentums in der Philosophie abzuschaffen. Denn dieser Vorrang verunstaltete das griechische Denken und ebnete dadurch den Weg für die abendländische Metaphysik und für die damit verbundene Seinsvergessenheit. Heideggers Ansicht nach ist die historisch-politische Entwicklung des Christentums eine der verheerenden Wirkungen der abendländischen Metaphysik und der Seinsvergessenheit. Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Christentums ist deshalb die einleuchtendste Abgrenzung des metaphysischen Zeitraums. Unter diesen Voraussetzungen spielt die Kritik am Christentum eine bestimmte Rolle und entfaltet sich auf historischer, philosophischer und politischer Ebene. Mein hermeneutischer Vorschlag ist es, die Textstellen, an denen Heidegger sich auf die Juden Bezug nimmt, im begrifflichen Rahmen dieser Kritik zu verorten. Entfernt von denjenigen Auslegungen, die dem Denken Heideggers einen (seinsgeschichtlichen, metaphysischen oder geistlichen) Antisemitismus zusprechen, vertrete ich die These, dass die Judenfrage kein zentrales Thema der Schwarzen Hefte ist und sie innerhalb des weiteren Horizontes der Modernitätskritik betrachtet werden sollte, zu der Heideggers Erwähnung der Juden gehört.

This document attempts to collect and translate all the references to Jews, Jewry, and Judaism in the volumes of Heidegger's Black Notebooks that have been published so far (Gesamtausgabe 94-97).

Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition 1, 2018