Heidegger and the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy / Peter Trawny ; translated by Andrew J. Mitchell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Trawny, Peter, 1964- author.

Contributor:

Mitchell, Andrew J., 1970- translator.

Standardized Title:

Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976--Views on Jews.

Heidegger, Martin.

Antisemitism.

Jews--Identity.

Jews.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (160 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Preface to the English translation

Introduction: a thesis in need of revision

The being-historical landscape

Types of being-historical anti-semitism

The being-historical concept of "race"

The foreign and the foreign

Heidegger and Husserl

Work and life

Annihilation and self-annihilation

After the shoah

Attempts at a response

Afterword to the German second edition

Afterword to the German third edition.

Notes:

"Originally published as Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2014. 3rd, revised and extended edition 2014."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780226303871

022630387X

OCLC:

1233041377