Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question

by Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington (Translator), Rachel Bowlby (Translator)

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." These are the first words of Jacques Derrida's lecture on Heidegger. It is again a question of Nazism—of what remains to be thought through of Nazism in general and of Heidegger's Nazism in particular. It is also "politics of spirit" which at the time people thought—they still want to today—to oppose to the inhuman.

"Derrida's ruminations should intrigue anyone interested in Post-Structuralism. . . . . This study of Heidegger is a fine example of how Derrida can make readers of philosophical texts notice difficult problems in almost imperceptible details of those texts."—David Hoy, London Review of Books

"Will a more important book on Heidegger appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit. . . . Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style."—David Farrell Krell, Research in Phenomenology

"The analysis of Heidegger is brilliant, provocative, elusive."—Peter C. Hodgson, Religious Studies Review

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, France, Nonfiction, Ebooks

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

(That's what I like about Heidegger. When I think about him, when I read him, I'm aware of both of these vibrations at the same time. It's always horribly dangerous and wildly funny, certainly grave and a bit comical.)

That wonky Derrida, pulling an aside about the knee-slapping effects of Heidegger, especially in a text devoted to Martin H's involvement with Third Reich. That is brazen. The book deals with Heidegger's evasions and the changing forms with which the word spirit (geist) takes in Heidegger's work from Being and Time through his Nazi period and finally into the early 1950s. This is rather challenging material, requiring extensive rereading, backtracking, head-scratching and otherwise astonished near-reverence. The other authors broached (particularly Valéry) afforded similar gasps and reconfiguring of those bastard to-read plans.

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Derrida opens with the premise that Heidegger warns against using the term ‘spirit,’ geist, both in 1927’s Sein und Zeit and then in 1953: but “How are we to explain that in twenty-five years, between these two warning signals (‘avoid,’ ‘avoid using’), Heidegger made a frequent, regular, marked (if not remarked) use of all this vocabulary, including the adjective geistig?” (1). This manner of avoiding is perhaps not signature Heidegger—though it does summon the sous rature concept: “modalities of ‘avoiding’ which come down to saying without saying: in quotation marks, for example, under a non-negative cross-shaped crossing out (kreuzweise Durchstreichung), or again in propositions of the type: ‘If I were yet to write a theology, as I am sometimes tempted to do, the word ‘Being’ ought not to appear in it’” (2)—classical rhetorical antiphrasis, surely, but much more.

Despite his usage, “spirit, so it seems at least, is not a great word of Heidegger’s. It is not his theme. It would seem that he was able, precisely, to avoid it” (3). However, “to the precise extent that it does not appear at the forefront of the scene, it seems to withdraw itself from any destruction or deconstruction, as if it did not belong to a history of ontology—and the problem will be just that” (5). That said, “this motif is regularly inscribed in contexts that are highly charged politically” (id.)—such as how Heidegger “draws abundantly in the years 1933-35” (id.). The inference to be drawn is that “it is not only inscribed in contexts with a high political context” but “perhaps decides as to the very meaning of the political as such” (6).

Perhaps incongruous with his writings elsewhere equating deconstruction with justice, Derrida suggests that “spirit seems to designate, beyond a deconstruction, the very resource for any deconstruction and the possibility of any evaluation” (15). This is because the quoted language is itself a grammatological ghost, a hauntological moment: “Between the quotation marks, through the grid they impose, one sees a double of spirit announcing itself. More precisely, spirit visible in its letter, scarcely legible, becomes as it were the spectral silhouette—but already legible, this one—of another” (24). This is “the law of quotation marks. Two by two they stand guard: at the frontier or before the door, assigned to the threshold in any case, and these places are always dramatic” (31). NB “in German ‘quotation mark’ is Anfuhrungsstriche or Anfuhrungszeichen, to conduct, to take the head, but also to dupe, to make fun of or brainwash” (66). Eventually we see that “Heidegger here inscribes invisible quotation marks in the use of the same word. This word is thus divided by an internal difference” (95).

He proceeds to “the opening to the question of Being. Even if Being must be given to us for that to be the case, we are only at this point, and know of ‘us’ only this: the power or rather the possibility of questioning, the experience of questioning” (17)—which seems to be the primary operativity of Dasein. The consequence here is that “a few years later, when the references to spirit are no longer held in the discourse of Destruktion and in the analytic of Dasein, when the words Geist and geistig are no longer avoided, but rather celebrated, spirit itself will be defined by this manifestation and this force of the question” (18)—which reduces Dasein to the language that is to be avoided: “in the pure concept, the essence of spirit, a difference of difference” (26).

He explains further: “The word ‘order’ designating both the value of command, of leading, duction or conduction, the Fuhrung, and the value of mission: sending, an order given. Self-affirmation wants to be (we must emphasize this wanting) the affirmation of spirit through Fuhrung. This is spiritual conducting, of course, but the Fuhrer, the guide—here, the Rector—says he can only lead if he is himself led by the inflexibility of an order, the rigor or even the directive rigidity of a mission” (32). These terms are drawn from the Rectorship Address, FFS (cf. 34-38 )—a “typological motif, and even an onto-typological motif” (id.). Heidegger “spiritualizes National Socialism” but also “by taking the risk of spiritualizing Nazism, he might have been trying to absolve or save it by marking it with this affirmation” (39). If Heidegger’s program in the Rectorship Address

seems diabolical, it is because, without there being anything fortuitous in this, it capitalizes on the worst, that is on both evils at once: the sanctioning of Nazism, and the gesture that is still metaphysical. Behind the ruse of quotation marks of which there is never the right amount (always too many or too few of them), this equivocation has to do with the fact that Geist is always haunted by its Geist: a spirit, or in other words, in French as in German, a phantom, always surprises by returning to be the other’s ventriloquist. Metaphysics always returns (40 )

—which constitutes complete failure of Heidegger’s primary philosophical project. Heidegger “denounces, then, a ‘spiritual decadence’” (45)—similar to the NSDAP’s ‘spiritual socialism.’

This decadence is perhaps definitional, as spirit is a matter of humanity; accordingly “Animality is not of spirit” (47). What’s at stake is the striking out of ‘rock’ when discussing it from the lizard’s perspective, say: “Erasure of the name, then, here of the name of the rock which would designate the possibility of naming the rock itself, as such and accessible in its being-rock. The erasing would mark in our language, by avoiding the word, this inability of the animal to name” (53). Derrida explains the “inability to name” as deriving “from the properly phenomenological impossibility of speaking the phenomenon whose phenomenality as such, or whose very as such, does not appear to the animal and does not unveil the Being of the entity” (id.). Ultimately, there can be “no animal Dasein, since Dasein is characterized by access to the ‘as such’ of the entity and to the correlative possibility of questioning. It is clear that the animal can be after a prey, it can calculate, hesitate, follow or try out a track, but it cannot properly question. In the same way, it can use things, even instrumentalize them, but it cannot gain access to a tekhne” (57)—spirit then as a sub rosa marker of Dasein. Animal or human, a threshold of indistinction, in the “instrumentalization of spirit” (64)?

Derrida thinks that the “whole deconstruction of ontology” that Heidegger proposes, “insofar as it unseats, as it were, the Cartesian-Hegelian spiritus in the existential analytic” is here “compromised rather by a thesis on animality which presupposes—this is the irreducible and I believe dogmatic hypothesis of the thesis—that there is one thing, one domain, one homogenous type of entity, which is called animality in general, for which any example would do the job,” which “remains fundamentally teleological and traditional” (57). These things “bring the consequences of a serious mortgaging to weight upon the whole of his thought” (id.) (mortgage as a cool metaphor, incidentally).

Heidegger otherwise sees a “darkening of the world,” as though we lived in a fucking fantasy novel, arising out of a “destitution of spirit” (59). The “discourse on the crisis might constitute one of the symptoms of the destitution” (61) (cf. Moretti on the German tragic vision, crisis as moment of truth, etc.). Part of his problem is that “the degradation of the spiritual into the ‘rational,’ ‘intellectual,’ ‘ideological’ is indeed what Heidegger was condemning in 1935” (96).

Spectres of Gobineau in “the thought of race [Rassengedanke] is interpreted in metaphysical and not biological terms” (74). “Is a metaphysics of race more or less serious than a naturalism or a biologism of race?” (id.). Also shades of Gobs in the notion of decline: “The azure becomes crepuscular ‘spiritually,’ geistlich. Now this becoming-crepuscular, this Dammerung, which does not signify a decline (Untergang) nor an occidentalization, is of an essential nature” (88).

Derrida’s hypothesis is “to recognize in it, in its very equivocation or indecision [NB], the edging or dividing path which ought, according to Heidegger, to pass between a Greek or Christian—even onto-theological—determination of pneuma or spiritus, and a thinking of Geist which would be other and more originary. Seized by German idiom, Geist would rather, earlier, give to think flame” (82). That is,

’Doch was ist der Geist?’ Heidegger asks. What is spirit? Reply: ‘Der Geist is das Flammende. How to translate? Spirit is what inflames? Rather, what inflames itself, setting itself on fire, setting fire to itself? Spirit is flame. A flame which inflames, or which inflames itself: both at once, the one and the other, the one the other. Conflagration of the two in the very conflagration. (84)

NB: “Nothing is more foreign [!] to Heidegger than commentary in its ordinary sense” (85).

“Does it not remain open from its origin and by its very structure onto what Greek and then Latin had to translate by pneuma and spiritus, that is, the Hebrew ruah?” (100):

Nazism was not born in the desert. We all know this, but it has to be constantly recalled. And even if, far from any desert, it had grown like a mushroom in the silence of a European forest, it would have done so in the shadow of big trees, in the shelter of their silence or their indifference but in the same soil. I will not list the trees which in Europe people an immense black forest, I will not count the species. For essential reasons, the presentation of them defies tabular layout. In their bushy taxonomy, they would bear the names of religions, philosophies, political regimes, economic structures, religious or academic institutions. In short, what is just as confusedly called culture, or the world of spirit. (109-10)

“Spirit—in flames—deploys its essence (west), says Heidegger, according to the possibility of gentleness (des Sanften) and of destruction (des Zerstorerischen)” (102).

[Spoust1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was about to write that Derrida's interpretation of Heidegger is interesting because Derrida is, in a sense, a Heideggerian. Then, the Derrida in me responded: "Is not the term 'Heideggerian' highly problematic? For to call a person or a text 'Heideggerian' presupposes that we can identify a particular quality that we might, in a gesture that I will not be so hasty as to call 'Heideggerian,' call 'Heideggerian-ness.' That is, in order to call something 'Heideggerian,' we would have to know something of the essence of Heidegger: we would, in fact, have to know exactly the essence of Heidegger. Such a knowledge is possible only on condition that we reduce the irreducible heterogeneity of those texts that Heidegger, as some old-fashioned people might still say, 'authored.' Since these texts 'of' Heidegger are irreducibly heterogeneous, then, we must leave hanging any project that requires the reduction of what cannot be reduced by definition - that is, the text 'of' Heidegger. The Heidegger we hope to find when we read these texts, the essence, the knowledge we look for, is never really present at hand: it must always be a Heidegger a venir. So, too, to come, then, are 'the Heideggerians,' a mass, or perhaps only a family, or a team, that we can imagine but never limit, never name."

Okay. I had my fun. Here's the deal: Do you like Heidegger? Do you like Derrida? If you answered "yes" to either of those two questions, this book is for you. Otherwise, it is not.

[Mr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The question of Heidegger and politics has plagued (and will continue to plague) continental philosophy since Heidegger's induction into the Recktorship under the Nazi regime in the thirties.

Why did he? But, and perhaps more importantly, why does something like Nazism come up? What is it about the West that breeds this kind of pathological racism? And how could Heidegger, for all his time concerned with, and working on authenticity and inauthenticity get swept up in the most inauthentic political movement of the century?

For Derrida, this kind of fascistic-nationalistic racism is not a problem of facticity, it is a problem of Spirit (Geist). Heidegger avoids the question and problem of Spirit, and it is a failure of his fundamental ontology and onto-theology.

This is a fascinating lecture from the late Derrida, who investigates Heidegger in new and unfamiliar modes. He relates (what he and the majority of others perceives to be) Heidegger's avoiding (vermeiden), of the question of Spirit ( Hegelian Geist). Avoiding means the saying without saying, the writing without writing, using words, without using them.

"No one ever speaks of spirit in Heidegger" (pg.4), well now Derrida has provided us with the speaking.

"The question of spirit must be recognized in indifference" (pg. 19), and Derrida performs this with remarkable coolness, though not lucidity.

This lecture is about spirit, about politics, about Europe, and about language. All students of Heidegger should read it, as it is one of the best.

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is pretty marvelous in that Derrida tackles Heidegger's philosophy from a side angle regarding one term, and then later shows how that term comes to ground Heidegger's philosophy, perhaps leading to his blind involvement with Nazi Germany. This is interesting in that Derrida was also a dues paying Nazi for a time, while he was a student of Heidegger.

What's interesting here is that Derrida is basically saying that Heidegger went Nazi because Heidegger fell into metaphysics, that the German language, different from English or French, had different words for Spirit that allowed for this metaphysical notion to creep in. This is an interesting read, especially because Derrida, as a post-structuralist (despite his disavowal of the term) has, as a whole, worked against metaphysics in the pursuit of differance. Metaphysics in philosophy works to destroy differance, to stablize meaning as univocal and universal.

In that sense, this is another iteration of postmodernity in the post-structuralist turn, to note the limitations of the imposition of rational thought, as believing in the veracity of one's ideas unconditionally, in this case, led Heidegger to support Nazism.

[Mehrnaz]

تقریبا یک هفته‌اس که سعی می‌کنم ارتباط هایدگرِ دریدا و روح رو بفهمم اما نمی‌دونم چی فهمیدم. شایدم چیزی نفهمیدم.

[Arkar Kyaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Derrida raises an interesting question: why is "Spirit" not a big deal among Heideggerians and anti-Heideggerians? This simple observation brought him down the rabbit hole of Heidegger's relationship with "Spirit." Further down the rabbit hole, he realizes that "Spirit" hiding in plain sight is might be intentional tactic by Heidegger himself. This evolves into a complex, at times convoluted, discussion and investigation of what Heidegger thought about Spirit, why he avoids it, and what it all might mean.

Derrida is flashy, unorthodox, performative, (sometimes overly dramatic) but without doubt a thinker of considerable depth. His writing is strenuous to read and difficult to understand. Sometimes I am not sure what the outcome of the whole discussion and journey into Heidegger's relationship with Spirit is. I understand the academic habit not to make definitive claims but sometimes I wish he would say what he think more clearly. There are some hints and insinuations regarding Heidegger's flirtations with Nazism but he leaves it up to the reader to make their own conclusion.

Is it enjoyable to read? Sometimes, especially when he is being dramatic. Can you learn something from it? Maybe. If you are interested about Heidegger and Hegel and want to think more about "Spirit", you can give this a try.

[Ethan]

Covers Heidegger's attempt, in Being and Time to "avoid" talking of Geist. This avoidance, however, is in vain in that talk of Spirit sneaks in. First through quotation marks, as if to hide consideration, and later in more overt forms.

This sneaking of Spirit back in, or Geist, is not straightforward, and this book illustrates that in its style alone. We cover not simply Geist, but geistig (the primary use from Heidegger seems to turn on this) geistlich, etc. Derrida is a great writer, and weaves brilliantly through a lot in about 120 pages (plus notes), but certain passages are necessarily difficult. I had to bear in mind just how much translation was at work here, funnily enough on a book that is generally about the translatability and the meaning of Geist (multiple chapters cover Heidegger's views of the primality of German over other languages for, in part, this reason.) Derrida, of course, was working with German, delivering a lecture in French, this lecture is written, and all of this is translated, somehow, into English. Along this passage, it is inevitable difficulty arises.

One section, for example, depends on an analysis of Heidegger's analysis of a fragment (possible alteration of) of a Hölderlin poem. This poetry reads:

nemlich zu Hauss ist der Geist
Nicht im Anfang, nicht an der Quell. Ihn zehret die
Heimath.
Kolonie liebt, und tapfer Vergessen der Geist.
Unsere Blumen erfreun und die Schatten unserer Wälder
den Verschmachteten. Fast wäre der Beseeler verbrandt

The fragment, under Heidegger's interpretation, seems broadly concerned with the way in which Spirit "is never at home" (p. 80). Derrida leaves the fragment untranslated, and so much of the work has to be done by the reader. This is not without reason for Derrida, and though bits of this fragment get translated, (i.e. the strange line "Kolonie liebt, und tapfer Vergessen der Geist" which, translated comes out as "It loves the colony, and valiant forgetting, Spirit" which requires an additional comma, some strange syntax, understanding the subject of the line Spirit to be "never at home" in order to understand why "it loves the colony" etc.) the passage is never given in full outside of German due to the first few lines. The reasons for this are justified, e.g. engaging in such translation recalls debates on the tonality of the "nicht" (on which Adorno and Bella Allemann dispute Heidegger's reading (p. 79)).

Derrida's writing is typically brilliant, and despite these problems of translation which get very meta, it shines through. The first lines alone, "I shall speak of ghost [revenant], of flame, and of ashes. And of what, for Heidegger, avoiding means." (notice already "revenant" in square brackets, this talk of ghost of Geist, of flame, etc., gets all convoluted).

These are all very disparate comments, because summarising this book would be ridiculous. It should be read along any Heidegger unquestionably.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best and the worst of Derrida in the same book

[Shahed · Rating 4 out of 5]

پیچیده‌گویی/نویسی دریدا، برای فردی که به‌صورت غیرحرفه‌ای به مطالعهٔ فلسفه می‌پردازه فهم مطالب رو سخت می‌کنه. گفته‌های دریدا در چیزی بین تطهیر و توصیف صرف هایدگر و تأثیرگذاری اندیشه‌هاش بر نازیسم شناوره، با این حال در گفتاورد دهم کتاب همه‌چیز رو بدون تعارف و کاملاً -و شاید با عجله و زودهنگام - پیش روی مخاطب/خواننده قرار می‌ده. سوای این مسئله، قانونی به خوبی از پس ترجمه برمیاد و آهنگ سخن‌وری دریدا به خوبی منتقل می‌شه. مطالعهٔ هستی و زمان قبل، بعد و حتی همراه با مطالعهٔ این کتاب، به خواننده دید روشن‌تر و بی‌واسطه‌تری در مورد مواضع هایدگر می‌ده.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

what happened?

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

This english translation of a french speech demonstrates Derrida’s critical insights on the nature of “Spirit” (note the guards on duty) within Heidegger’s written works and teachings. This is not only a poignant analysis of that which was left unsaid for a large part of his writing life, but also an excellent addendum to Heidegger’s existential analytic with Being & Time.

Some of the explanations lack in basic clarity, but that is characteristic of french intellectuals, metaphysics and the like. At the price of this, though, I was able to understand and better explain (to myself) some of the more developed (deeper?) elements of Dasein.

Explaining it to myself, I would say that Spirit, to Heidegger, is the unlevelled time of the apophatic as-such function of Dasein that remains bound up in the world through the epochal and historical procession of time. This is why humans are “rich in world” to Heidegger, and animals/rocks/hammers are “poor” in world. The capacity of the as-such function (maybe the wrong word) is what distinguishes the “rich” from the “poor”. This is getting prophetic now.

I enjoyed Derrida’s reading of Heidegger’s anti/post-cartesian subject (pp. 25-26), as well as the dialectical current which flows throughout the work as a kind of motif for Derrida’s explanation of Spirit. His explanation of Spirit as the negation of negation within time (27) is a profound and griping explanation of the epochal Geist which remains (as it must be) up in the air.

[Egor xS · Rating 5 out of 5]

La théorie du revenant et de la hantise, dédoublée comme fantôme à partir du motif du retour à la patrie de Hölderlin et Trakl dans l’interprétation de Heidegger. Sa métaphysique est à la fois détournée ailleurs et suivie. Très subtiles lectures de la rature, de l’effacement, de l’évasion et des guillemets qui s’enchevêtrent le mot Geist à travers toute l’œuvre de Heidegger, chronologiquement.

L’histoire est le destin ou la dispensation, la mission dans son vouloir-dire plus originaire, en particulier dans l’allemand, dont la traductibilité est en cause. Comment la répétition rigoureuse de la tradition, même sans aucun ajout, devient-elle nécessaire ? Pourquoi les modes de promesse, de mémoire, de poésie, de foi, de religion sont-ils à venir ? Ceci est explicité dans la manière profonde.

J’aimerais feindre que l’Erörterung traduira la situation, quand celle-ci décèle un emplacement dans le sens courant de la positionnalité et de la perspective déterminée.

[Giulia Ferrara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sono molto fiera di me per aver letto questo libro in tre giorni dopo che quando l'ho comprato, nel 2019, avevo scritto addirittura una nota su Tumblr su quanto poco capissi delle parole scritte al suo interno, per poi mollarlo al capitolo 3

[susan haris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The question about the question.

[Xvaughn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great book to see how much of a Nazi Heidegger was and how it is within his most famous work itself.

[Jack Rosetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible reading of Heidegger. I think this is one of Derrida’s more lucid texts, meaning anyone semi-familiar with Heidegger will get a lot out of this.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Ammon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential for anyone wanting to understand how to treat the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and his national socialism seriously. Also crucial for understanding the ontological themes in deconstruction. One of Derrida's most sustained considerations of Heidegger, whose work shows up in subtle and ambiguous ways in all of Derrida's texts.Also crucial for understanding the complexities of post-modernisms ambivalence towards humanism.

[William Durden]

This is another Derrida work, like Politics of Friendship, that I need to re-read. There is a very important moment in a footnote to the ninth chapter that I base my impressions of this work on, which just emphasizes how little of this I actually retained in reading it.

[David Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derrida looks at the explicit (and implicit) uses of Geist in Heidegger's writings from Being and Time through the late works on Trakl and Holderlin. Along the way Derrida criticizes Heidegger's Dasein and it's (lack) of animal nature. A really fascinating read and well worth the time it takes.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, eliciting much thought. Far from Derrida's strongest, most powerful works though.

[Nasrudin muhammad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bagaimana Derrida yang heideggerian membaca Heidegger. :)

[Vince · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is the best exposition of what spirit really is.

[M7md Alghanmi · Rating 2 out of 5]

مثير لـ… اممم التواضع.
نعم، مثير للتواضع.