NP (but him again): Dear Herr Doctor Professor Heidegger:

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Yes, it's not beer-hall antisemitism. More like the Spinoza chapter in 
Carl Schmitt's book on the Leviathan from 1938: Jews as agents of 
modernity who are dissolving all traditional social relations outside 
their own tribe. The most problematic thing here is the assumed 
contradiction between Germanness and Jewishness. For Heidegger, the 
Germans are the people of 'the other beginning' (which recapitulates and 
transforms 'the first beginning' in - especially: pre-Socratic - Greek 
philosophy); as such they are according to Heidegger the only people who 
can find an escape from alienated and overtechnologized modernity. As I 
already explained here some months ago, this is not about the matter of 
fact Germans of Heidegger's time (or some fictional 'Aryan' gene pool), 
yet about the future readers of the poet Hölderlin. "One nation under a 
groove," so to speak.
The sad thing now is that the Heidegger from the Black Notebooks - 
despite the concrete relations he had with Jewish people before and 
afterwards - sees 'world-Jewry' (das Weltjudentum) as kinda spiritual 
enemy to the German people in their effort to find 'the other 
beginning'. He diagnoses a transition phase inside which 'the monstrous' 
(das Riesenhafte), globalizing the planet by science and capital, is 
trying to hold 'the other beginning' down. And the Weltjudentum - 
there's no way to deny this - is to Heidegger a (perhaps: the) major 
agent of this process.
So here we have it: Germans vs. Jews. While this has, as far as I can 
see, no consequences for the thinking of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) 
from 1927, which I just reread completely, all writings after the Kehre 
(turn), which took place in the early 1930s, must now also be seen in 
this context. So do we have, as some people do suggest, to put Heidegger 
into the poison-cabinet? Not really. In its basic way of thinking 
Heidegger's philosophy - on art, technology and the history of Being - 
does work without ethnic identifications. Actually it's a phenomenology 
of freedom. The human Da-sein ('existence') is what connects people from 
all nations. Heidegger doesn't say 'The German is the shepherd of 
Being,' he says 'Man (der Mensch) is the shepherd of Being' (Letter on 
Humanism).
But of course it's a problem for me as a Heidegger reader. Since I'm 
also a reader of Carl Schmitt (and of Ernst Jünger), I know the feelings 
and profound worries related to it. So let me toss in a very personal 
statement: In my - 'other', 'secret', or 'imaginary' - Germany people 
are welcome no matter their religion/ethno-cultural background or color 
of skin. Language skills might be helpful.
You know, when I got started with philosophy, I was a huge fan of the 
Frankfurt School. Over the years it became obvious to me, that if you 
took all the Schmitt and all the Heidegger out of the Frankfurt School 
teaching, a rather crude brand of Freudomarxism would be all that's left 
. So I got confronted with the decision whether to quit research out of 
political correctness or to dig deeper where it all came from and what 
exactly happened during the 1930s in the sphere of thinking.

On 30.04.2014 21:47, Mark Thibodeau wrote:
> It seems to me the problem with Heidegger's thinking/writing on the
> Jews isn't that it is "totally unhinged" and "irrational", as some
> quoted in that article pretend, but that it is rational in a way that
> they find disturbing. This is a problem for Heidegger's readers more
> than it will ever be for Heidegger.
>
> YOPJ
>
> On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>   "Please tell me EXACTLY where we were standing when we 'fell into Being?'"---
>> Moses Herzog.
>>
>> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/04/is-heidegger-contaminated-by-nazism.html
>>
>> Yes, his whole 'philosophy' is contaminated. All of it.
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>

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