Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (English Edition)

In 2014, the first three volumes of Heideggers Black Notebooksthe personal and philosophical notebooks that he kept during the war yearswere published in Germany. These notebooks provide the first textual evidence of anti-Semitism in Heideggers philosophy, not simply in passing remarks, but as incorporated into his philosophical and political thinking itself. In Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy, Peter Trawny, the editor of those notebooks, offers the first evaluation of Heideggers philosophical project in light of the Black Notebooks. While Heideggers affiliation with National Socialism is well known, the anti-Semitic dimension of that engagement could not be fully told until now. Trawny traces Heideggers development of a grand narrative of the history of being, the being-historical thinking at the center of Heideggers work after Being and Time. Two of the protagonists of this narrative are well known to Heideggers readers: the Greeks and the Germans. The world-historical antagonist of this narrative, however, has remained hitherto undisclosed: the Jews, or, more specifically, world Judaism. As Trawny shows, world Judaism emerges as a racialized, destructive, and technological threat to the German homeland, indeed, to any homeland whatsoever. Trawny pinpoints recurrent, anti-Semitic themes in the Notebooks, including Heideggers adoption of crude cultural stereotypes, his assigning of racial reasons to philosophical decisions (even undermining his Jewish teacher, Edmund Husserl), his endorsement of a Jewish world conspiracy, and his first published remarks on the extermination camps and gas chambers (under the troubling aegis of a Jewish self-annihilation). Trawny concludes with a thoughtful meditation on how Heideggers achievements might still be valued despite these horrifying facets. Unflinching and systematic, this is one of the most important assessments of one of the most important philosophers in our history.