Heidegger’s Jewish Conceptions of Being, Language, and Time

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to consider ways that Heidegger’s thinking relates to some main lines of traditional Jewish thought. Following Heidegger’s own hermeneutical principle of trying to think what an author leaves unthought, Marlene Zarader took up a similar line of consideration in her aptly named work, La dette impensée: Heidegger et l’heritage hébraique. Zarader’s work has come in for at least two sorts of criticism. She has been criticized for (a) leaving the impression that there is a single Hebraic tradition to which Heidegger’s debt can be traced and (b) largely restricting her account of that tradition to twentieth century scholars (notably, Scholem). In my opinion, these criticisms, though not without merit, overreach. Still, while such considerations mitigate the force of these criticisms, they do so by conceding that they have a point. Accordingly, the present paper is meant to serve as a complement to Zarader’s project, in light of these criticisms. In the interest of indicating how Heidegger’s thinking echoes various Hebraic traditions, I discuss three distinct sources of those echoes: Maimonides’ negative theology, Mendelssohn’s conception of language (as it contrasts with Solomon Maimon’s conception), and the messianic idea of the Lurianic Kabbalastic tradition.