Benjamin Andrew - Sparks Will Fly: Benjamin and Heidegger

Sparks Will Fly

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor

Sparks Will Fly

Benjamin and Heidegger

Edited by

Andrew Benjamin

and

Dimitris Vardoulakis

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2015 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu

Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Kate Seburyamo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sparks will fly : Benjamin and Heidegger / edited by Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis.

pages cm. (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4384-5505-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) EISBN 978-1-4384-5506-8 (ebook)

1. Benjamin, Walter, 18921940. 2. Heidegger, Martin, 18891976. I. Benjamin, Andrew E. II. Vardoulakis, Dimitris.

B3209.B584S635 2015

193dc23

2014012475

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Sparks Will Fly

Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis

W alter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger were almost contemporaries, born in the last decade of the nineteenth century. But their life trajectories were very different. Benjamin failed in his attempt to obtain a position at a university and subsequently concentrated on essay writing, initially in the form of reviews. When that became impossible in 1933 and Benjamin was forced to exile in Paris, he started writing for academic journals published outside Germany. Heidegger became an academic star in Germany with the publication of Being and Time (1927). The following year, he succeeded his former teacher, Edmund Husserl, as professor at Freiburg University and five years laterat the same time that Benjamin was ostracized because of his Jewish backgroundHeidegger was joining the Nazi Party in order to be elected Rector. The troubled years of exile ended in Benjamins death under unclear circumstances at the Spanish borders in 1940. Heidegger was denazified after World War II and allowed to return to teaching. Given their life histories, then, Benjamin, the cosmopolitan Jew, and Heidegger, who preferred his peasant hut in remote Todtnauberg to city life, seem hardly to have anything in common.