Words as "Toxins": Heidegger and the Jewish Question

Abstract

Abstract: The recent publication of Heidegger's Black Notebooks has renewed the discussion concerning the nature and extent of Heidegger's antisemitism. The initial wave of responses to this fraught and controversial topos by Heidegger's supporters has been disappointingly—if predictably—apologetic. In their haste to downplay the philosophical import of Heidegger's antisemitism, his defenders have often lost sight of the bigger picture: as a vigorous champion of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft and as someone who, as late as 1953, continued to insist on the "inner truth and greatness of National Socialism," Heidegger recognized that the goal of making Germany Judenrein was an essential step toward creating a homogeneous and self-assertive "national community." The Black Notebooks demonstrate that Heidegger's antisemitism, as well as his belief in a "Jewish world conspiracy," persisted after the war. Heidegger's postwar thoughts on the "Jewish Question" attest to the prevalence of so-called "secondary antisemitism," an attitude epitomized by Zvi Rex's dark witticism, "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust."