Jean-Luc Nancy and Jeff Fort
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823275922
- eISBN:
- 9780823277056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823275922.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Heidegger was perfectly capable of investigating the provenance of anti-Semitism, but he did not. Instead he received his age’s prejudices, and put them to work in his thinking. Why did he not pursue ...
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Heidegger was perfectly capable of investigating the provenance of anti-Semitism, but he did not. Instead he received his age’s prejudices, and put them to work in his thinking. Why did he not pursue such an investigation? Did he read Theodor Lessing’s book on Jewish self-hatred? Heidegger called for both the conquest and abandonment of self, a renunciation and a sacrifice. If he had investigated anti-Semitism he might have learned that this repudiation of self is the very structure of the latter. Instead he gives the anti-Semitic image of the Jew as destructive of the West a historial dimension in the forgetting of beyng.Less
Heidegger was perfectly capable of investigating the provenance of anti-Semitism, but he did not. Instead he received his age’s prejudices, and put them to work in his thinking. Why did he not pursue such an investigation? Did he read Theodor Lessing’s book on Jewish self-hatred? Heidegger called for both the conquest and abandonment of self, a renunciation and a sacrifice. If he had investigated anti-Semitism he might have learned that this repudiation of self is the very structure of the latter. Instead he gives the anti-Semitic image of the Jew as destructive of the West a historial dimension in the forgetting of beyng.
Jean-Luc Nancy
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823275922
- eISBN:
- 9780823277056
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823275922.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger’s recently published Black Notebooks. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “banality of evil,” Nancy offers an ...
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Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger’s recently published Black Notebooks. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “banality of evil,” Nancy offers an analysis of the philosophical or “historial” anti-Semitism found in the Black Notebooks. He notes especially that this anti-Semitism is marked by the “banality” of ordinary anti-Semitism pervading Europe. He does this by linking Heidegger’s remarks to the well-known anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose terms are strikingly similar. Heidegger’s thought is also placed in the broader context of Western thought and culture, particularly in relation to the notion of a “decline” and to the sense of crisis pervading Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, to which anti-Semitism was a frequent response. Nancy critiques Heidegger’s continual evocation of a “beginning,” to be found solely in Greek thought, that has been covered over but whose destiny must be renewed in “another beginning,” and he links this to the impulse in European thought, and especially in Christianity, toward ever more initial foundations of “self.” The rejection of Judaism by Christianity, in its very foundation, is compared with Heidegger’s insistence on “another beginning.” Nancy finds in this complex ensemble a hatred of self at the heart of the West.Less
Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger’s recently published Black Notebooks. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “banality of evil,” Nancy offers an analysis of the philosophical or “historial” anti-Semitism found in the Black Notebooks. He notes especially that this anti-Semitism is marked by the “banality” of ordinary anti-Semitism pervading Europe. He does this by linking Heidegger’s remarks to the well-known anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose terms are strikingly similar. Heidegger’s thought is also placed in the broader context of Western thought and culture, particularly in relation to the notion of a “decline” and to the sense of crisis pervading Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, to which anti-Semitism was a frequent response. Nancy critiques Heidegger’s continual evocation of a “beginning,” to be found solely in Greek thought, that has been covered over but whose destiny must be renewed in “another beginning,” and he links this to the impulse in European thought, and especially in Christianity, toward ever more initial foundations of “self.” The rejection of Judaism by Christianity, in its very foundation, is compared with Heidegger’s insistence on “another beginning.” Nancy finds in this complex ensemble a hatred of self at the heart of the West.
Jean-Luc Nancy and Jeff Fort
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823275922
- eISBN:
- 9780823277056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823275922.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
For Heidegger in the Black Notebooks, the West is bringing itself to an end, in oblivion, decline, and devastation. This end is understood ontologically also as the possibility of a beginning, an end ...
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For Heidegger in the Black Notebooks, the West is bringing itself to an end, in oblivion, decline, and devastation. This end is understood ontologically also as the possibility of a beginning, an end that “comes about” both from within and from without. This thinking of a coming devastation of the world has an anti-Semitic motif inscribed within it, insofar as the Jewish people are the driving force of decline and groundlessness. For the end/beginning to come about, the Jewish people must suppress itself, must exclude itself. One finds a similar argument already in Kant, who speaks of the “euthanasia of Judaism.”Less
For Heidegger in the Black Notebooks, the West is bringing itself to an end, in oblivion, decline, and devastation. This end is understood ontologically also as the possibility of a beginning, an end that “comes about” both from within and from without. This thinking of a coming devastation of the world has an anti-Semitic motif inscribed within it, insofar as the Jewish people are the driving force of decline and groundlessness. For the end/beginning to come about, the Jewish people must suppress itself, must exclude itself. One finds a similar argument already in Kant, who speaks of the “euthanasia of Judaism.”
Jean-Luc Nancy and Jeff Fort
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823275922
- eISBN:
- 9780823277056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823275922.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
For Heidegger, the first beginning is Greek. The beginning is thus brought about by a people, whereas the decline is brought about by the mixing and indistinction of peoples. But this too is for ...
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For Heidegger, the first beginning is Greek. The beginning is thus brought about by a people, whereas the decline is brought about by the mixing and indistinction of peoples. But this too is for Heidegger brought about by a figure-people, a caricature of a people, drawn from the vulgarity and banality of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose proximity to Heidegger’s language on calculation, democracy, manipulation and internationalism is clear enough as to leave no doubt. This is the case regardless of whether Heidegger read the Protocols or not, for he very clearly absorbed its language, as had his age more generally. Heidegger believes he is collecting banalities for the sake of higher ends, by way of a deconstruction/destruction of metaphysics which, for Heidegger, also points toward the necessity of a destruction of the West that will liberate it from its own destructive elements: a destruction of destruction. Could this be the sign of a constitutive self-rejection at the heart of the West?Less
For Heidegger, the first beginning is Greek. The beginning is thus brought about by a people, whereas the decline is brought about by the mixing and indistinction of peoples. But this too is for Heidegger brought about by a figure-people, a caricature of a people, drawn from the vulgarity and banality of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose proximity to Heidegger’s language on calculation, democracy, manipulation and internationalism is clear enough as to leave no doubt. This is the case regardless of whether Heidegger read the Protocols or not, for he very clearly absorbed its language, as had his age more generally. Heidegger believes he is collecting banalities for the sake of higher ends, by way of a deconstruction/destruction of metaphysics which, for Heidegger, also points toward the necessity of a destruction of the West that will liberate it from its own destructive elements: a destruction of destruction. Could this be the sign of a constitutive self-rejection at the heart of the West?
