Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy

In 2014, the first three volumes of Heidegger's Black Notebooks-the personal and philosophical notebooks that he kept during the war years-were published in Germany. These notebooks provide the first textual evidence of anti-Semitism in Heidegger's 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 Heidegger's philosophical project in light of the Black Notebooks. While Heidegger s affiliation with National Socialism is well known, the anti-Semitic dimension of that engagement could not be fully told until now. Trawny traces Heidegger s development of a grand narrative of the history of being, the being-historical thinking at the center of Heidegger s work after Being and Time. Two of the protagonists of this narrative are well known to Heidegger s 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 Heidegger s 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 Heidegger s 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.