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Why Does It Matter If Heidegger Was Anti-Semitic?
Brody, Richard
http://www.newyorker.com/the-front-row/why-does-it-matter-if-heidegger-was-anti-semiticDate Written: 2014-03-27 Publisher: The New Yorker Year Published: 2014 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX16715 The publication of the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s “Schwarzen Hefte” (“Black Notebooks”), written between 1931 and the early nineteen-seventies, is likely to cause an uproar. Abstract: - Excerpt: Early debate about 'Black Notebooks' is focussed on Heidegger’s acknowledgment of the important role of anti-Semitism in his philosophy.... Heidegger’s 'Notebooks' are works of the full flowering of his philosophical maturity, written privately, as a means for him to work out his ideas. Heidegger has long been suspected of anti-Semitism in his private life, as well as of collaboration with an anti-Semitic regime, but, Trawny writes, "nobody would have suspected an anti-Semitism transmuted into philosophy." (Trawny’s new book is titled "Heidegger and the Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy.") According to Thomas Assheuer, writing in Die Zeit, "The Jew-hatred in ‘Black Notebooks’ is no afterthought; it forms the foundation of the philosophical diagnosis." In other words, these newly published writings show that, for Heidegger, anti-Semitism was more than just a personal prejudice. Subject Headings |