Anti-Semitism and History: On the Role of “World Judaism”in Heidegger’s History of Being

Abstract

Since their publication in early 2014, Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks have prompted a debate both in academia and in public intellectual circles. Allegedly these notebooks show how Heidegger sympathized with anti-Semitism and National Socialism. On the basis of David Nirenberg’s analysis in his book Anti-Judaism: the Western Tradition, I discuss whether “anti-Judaism” has a real referent or if, rather, anti-Judaism is a worldview where the meaning of “the Jews” represents a function in the self-understanding of those who speak of “Jew” or “being Jewish,” although this meaning lacks any real referent. What is here referred to as ‘real or factual reference’ represents a constant problem in philosophy. If philosophy always had to refer to something real, then it would be a particular science like biology. The “object” of philosophy, however, seems to be a philosophical problem. In this case, therefore, the question is whether or not Heidegger’s philosophical discourse in the Black Notebooks corresponds to something in the world. In short, it all boils down to defining the type of anti-Semitism expressed in the Black Notebooks.