Donatella Di Cesare - Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks

Donatella Di Cesare

Translated by Murtha Baca

polity

First published in Italian as Heidegger e gli ebrei. I Quaderni neri Bollati Boringhieri editore, Turin, 2014

This English edition Polity Press, 2018

The translation of this book has been funded by SEPS
Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0386-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Di Cesare, Donatella, author.Title: Heidegger and the Jews : the Black notebooks / Donatella Di Cesare.Other titles: Heidegger e gli Ebrei. EnglishDescription: English edition. | Medford, MA : Polity, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018001624 (print) | LCCN 2018018674 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509503865 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509503827 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509503834 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. Schwarze Hefte. |

Antisemitism--Germany--History--20th century. | Antisemitism--Philosophy.

Classification: LCC B3279.H48 (ebook) | LCC B3279.H48 S36233513 2018 (print) | DDC 193--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001624

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I hope that this book will be judged only after it has been read all the way to the end. In our times, there is little tolerance for complexity. The preference is for simple pro or con answers, opposite poles, black or white. But whoever philosophizes must tolerate complexity, must inhabit the varying shades of reflection. This holds true all the more for a delicate question like the one dealt with in this book.

The Black Notebooks have not placed a tombstone on Heideggers thought. Some had hoped that they would, with a sort of prediction that belied itself. Rather, something unusual happened something that goes far beyond the interest that is normally elicited by a philosophers unpublished writings. What was sparked was an intense debate that, often in heated tones, has gone beyond the boundaries of the academy, extending to the world of culture and involving an increasingly broad audience. And Heidegger has always been the leading character. The liveliness of the debate demonstrates the continuing relevance of his thought.

When considered carefully, the scandal of the Black Notebooks has very little that is scandalous about it. If these notebooks are disturbing, if they literally represent a stumbling block, it is because they overturn the schemas by which Heidegger has been interpreted up to now. In that traditional interpretation, Heideggers political thought, for example, was reduced to or circumscribed within a brief span of time. But the Black Notebooks reveal a philosopher who was attentive to historical events, and aware of his own political decisions. This is why the scandal has had such a striking effect on the Heideggerians and, more generally, on the world of continental philosophy.

The two extreme positions about the Black Notebooks have been either to dismiss Heidegger altogether, or to return to Messkirch. On the one hand, there is an expression of moral indignation, while still reserving the right to use Heideggers work for ones own purposes; on the other hand is the desire for everything to remain as it had been, regardless of what is written in the Black Notebooks. Both of these positions are profoundly anti-philosophical, rhetorical gestures.

The task of philosophy is, above all, critical interpretation, as sustained by the tradition that Heidegger himself contributed to nurturing: philosophical hermeneutics. It is impossible to know what the results will be of the publication of the Black Notebooks what the effects will be. But an author lives in the history of effects, as Hans-Georg Gadamer said. And the Black Notebooks, whether one likes it or not, are now an integral element of Heideggers thought and of the history of its effects an element that cannot be ignored.

This book takes into account what Heidegger wrote about the Jews and Judaism in the Black Notebooks that have been published as of this writing, which date from 1931 to 1948. The anti-Semitism revealed in the notebooks is their great novelty. This does not mean that it is their only theme there are many others. Choosing to confront the so-called Jewish question therefore does not imply as some have insinuated that this is a single, exclusive theme.

Heideggers anti-Semitism cannot in any way be minimized, much less denied. The sterile and in some ways macabre nature of the passages of the Black Notebooks where Heidegger speaks about Jews, Judaism, Jewish, Jewishness passages that are, moreover, much more numerous than one might imagine does not silence the presence or the importance of the anti-Semitism expressed therein. The two defensive strategies that have been hitherto adopted the one that refers to Heideggers personal relationships with particular Jews, and the other that would like to annul the entire question by maintaining that anti-Semitism does not touch the core of Heideggers thought are both sure to be proven vain and inconsistent.

I have selected the adjective metaphysical to characterize Heideggers anti-Semitism. I was already convinced of the continuity of this anti-Semitism before the publication of the first volume of the Black Notebooks, GA 97, which contains the pages dating from the postwar period pages that confirm that continuity. For that matter, anti-Semitism is not an emotion, a feeling of hatred that comes and goes and can be circumscribed within a particular period. Anti-Semitism has a theological provenance and a political intention. In the case of Heidegger, it also takes on a philosophical significance.

The adjective metaphysical does not mitigate Heideggers anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it is an indication of how deeply rooted that anti-Semitism was. Metaphysical anti-Semitism is more abstract and at the same time more dangerous than a simple aversion to Jews and Judaism. But the adjective metaphysical also refers to the tradition of Western metaphysics. In his metaphysical anti-Semitism, Heidegger was not alone: he followed in the footsteps of a long line of philosophers, from Kant to Hegel to Nietzsche. I have reconstructed a brief history of anti-Semitism among German philosophers in order to contextualize and make more understandable in their complex development some of the stereotypes and concepts that were dealt with by Heidegger.