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Heidegger en de mythe van de Joodse wereldsamenzwering
In 2014 verschenen Heideggers Überlegungen, 'Overdenkingen', de eerste reeks van de door hemzelf zo genoemde Zwarte Schriften. Ze voegen een geheel nieuwe dimensie aan het oeuvre van Heidegger toe en hebben tot een buitengewone media-aandacht geleid. Heideggers Überlegungen laten zien dat antisemitische ideeën in een bepaald stadium zijn denken kleurden. Daarbij lijken de Protocollen van de wijzen van Sion, de voornaamste bron van het moderne en postmoderne antisemitisme, een hoofdrol te spelen. Peter Trawny gaat in Heidegger en de mythe van de Joodse wereldsamenzwering in op de vraag welke betekenis deze geestelijke knieval heeft voor het geheel van Heideggers denken.
PETER TRAWNY (1964), een van 's werelds invloedrijkste Heidegger- kenners, is hoogleraar filosofie en directeur van het Martin Heidegger Instituut aan de universiteit van Wuppertal. Als redacteur van Heideggers Schwarze Hefte is hij nauw betrokken bij de publicatie van diens Verzameld werk.
PETER TRAWNY (1964), een van 's werelds invloedrijkste Heidegger- kenners, is hoogleraar filosofie en directeur van het Martin Heidegger Instituut aan de universiteit van Wuppertal. Als redacteur van Heideggers Schwarze Hefte is hij nauw betrokken bij de publicatie van diens Verzameld werk.
- GenresPhilosophyPolitics
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 4, 2026
The 20th century's most celebrated European thinker, the man who drew Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, and Emmanuel Levinas into his intellectual orbit like iron filings to a very complicated magnet, harbored and philosophically elaborated a species of antisemitism so peculiarly his own that Trawny must invent a new category to contain it.
He calls it "being-historical antisemitism" (seinsgeschichtlicher Antisemitismus), because Heidegger did what any self-respecting German idealist would do with a vulgar prejudice, he promoted it to an ontological rank. The Jews, in Heidegger's secret notebooks, do not occupy the Lebensraum of racial paranoia; they occupy the history of Being itself, cast as the avatars of "machination," of rootless, calculating, world-destroying rationality.
Trawny's inquiry is proved on three explosive citations he excavates from the Überlegungen (the Black Notebooks, penned around 1937–38), in which Heidegger weds the most ancient of European slanders to the grandest of philosophical scaffolding.
"World Judaism" materializes in these pages as the embodiment of the very "gigantic" and "machinational" force that Heidegger believed was dismantling Western civilization, displacing authentic "rootedness" with the "empty rationality and calculative ability" historically projected onto Jewish moneylenders since at least the twelfth century.
Husserl, Heidegger's own teacher and the founder of phenomenology, gets inscribed too; his phenomenology is explained away, at least partly, by his belonging to a "'race'" incapable of reaching the "regions of essential decisions." Trawny traces with scrupulous, appalled patience how Heidegger's famous critique of "calculative thinking" and his beloved binary of "rootedness" versus "worldlessness" can no longer be read in postwar seminars with clean hands.
What Trawny adds to this philosophical autopsy is a portrait of a man who, after the Shoah, responded to Herbert Marcuse's anguished letter about the murder of the Jews by comparing Allied postwar policy to the Nazi atrocities, surrounded "gas chambers" with scare quotes in private notebooks, and wrote cryptically of a "spirit of revenge" bent on the "spiritual and historical extermination of the Germans."
Heidegger composed a single poem for Hannah Arendt upon their postwar reunion that speaks obliquely of "all the chasms of that wrath," and Trawny must assess whether that constitutes the sum total of a great thinker's reckoning with catastrophe. He does so with a rigorous honesty that makes the conclusion all the more vertiginous. The history of Being, as Heidegger wrote it, may be antisemitic to its Greek-worshipping core, and the apologist industry that spent decades insisting otherwise has a great deal of very uncomfortable homework still ahead of it.The apologist wing of Heidegger studies, which spent decades insisting that Being and National Socialism occupied separate floors, has gone conspicuously quiet, which is itself a form of confession.
Heidegger dressed "world Judaism" in philosophical robes so that polite people could hate without feeling common. Today's campus radicals, clutching their oat-milk lattes and their "decolonization" syllabi, have simply removed the robes.
The terminology migrated from Being-historical "machination" to Instagram "settler colonialism," but the targeting system remained factory-calibrated. The irony Trawny's book leaves smoking on the table is this: the heirs of Frankfurt School critical theory, itself largely a Jewish intellectual tradition, now deploy its vocabulary as a bludgeon against Jewish existence. Heidegger would recognize the machinery. He helped build it.
❤️ 🇮🇱
He calls it "being-historical antisemitism" (seinsgeschichtlicher Antisemitismus), because Heidegger did what any self-respecting German idealist would do with a vulgar prejudice, he promoted it to an ontological rank. The Jews, in Heidegger's secret notebooks, do not occupy the Lebensraum of racial paranoia; they occupy the history of Being itself, cast as the avatars of "machination," of rootless, calculating, world-destroying rationality.
Trawny's inquiry is proved on three explosive citations he excavates from the Überlegungen (the Black Notebooks, penned around 1937–38), in which Heidegger weds the most ancient of European slanders to the grandest of philosophical scaffolding.
"World Judaism" materializes in these pages as the embodiment of the very "gigantic" and "machinational" force that Heidegger believed was dismantling Western civilization, displacing authentic "rootedness" with the "empty rationality and calculative ability" historically projected onto Jewish moneylenders since at least the twelfth century.
Husserl, Heidegger's own teacher and the founder of phenomenology, gets inscribed too; his phenomenology is explained away, at least partly, by his belonging to a "'race'" incapable of reaching the "regions of essential decisions." Trawny traces with scrupulous, appalled patience how Heidegger's famous critique of "calculative thinking" and his beloved binary of "rootedness" versus "worldlessness" can no longer be read in postwar seminars with clean hands.
What Trawny adds to this philosophical autopsy is a portrait of a man who, after the Shoah, responded to Herbert Marcuse's anguished letter about the murder of the Jews by comparing Allied postwar policy to the Nazi atrocities, surrounded "gas chambers" with scare quotes in private notebooks, and wrote cryptically of a "spirit of revenge" bent on the "spiritual and historical extermination of the Germans."
Heidegger composed a single poem for Hannah Arendt upon their postwar reunion that speaks obliquely of "all the chasms of that wrath," and Trawny must assess whether that constitutes the sum total of a great thinker's reckoning with catastrophe. He does so with a rigorous honesty that makes the conclusion all the more vertiginous. The history of Being, as Heidegger wrote it, may be antisemitic to its Greek-worshipping core, and the apologist industry that spent decades insisting otherwise has a great deal of very uncomfortable homework still ahead of it.The apologist wing of Heidegger studies, which spent decades insisting that Being and National Socialism occupied separate floors, has gone conspicuously quiet, which is itself a form of confession.
Heidegger dressed "world Judaism" in philosophical robes so that polite people could hate without feeling common. Today's campus radicals, clutching their oat-milk lattes and their "decolonization" syllabi, have simply removed the robes.
The terminology migrated from Being-historical "machination" to Instagram "settler colonialism," but the targeting system remained factory-calibrated. The irony Trawny's book leaves smoking on the table is this: the heirs of Frankfurt School critical theory, itself largely a Jewish intellectual tradition, now deploy its vocabulary as a bludgeon against Jewish existence. Heidegger would recognize the machinery. He helped build it.
❤️ 🇮🇱
January 29, 2017
When it comes to Trawny and other Heideggerians, his milkshake does bring all the boys to the yard. All Heideggerian sophists squirm in the face of Trawny, relapsing into altogether much too crude, coarse and commonplace thinking. Trawny's work is seriously challenging and easily misunderstood. Much to my surprise, he offers much more arguments against the presence of any viable conception of antisemitism in Heidegger than for. To be clear: I am deeply convinced that he has what you may call a 'hidden agenda', although I am of course of the opinion that this agenda is apparent.
The itinerary of the book is largely unclear and seems associative. It structurally expounds a 'contamination' in Heidegger's thought - a concept that he admits is Heideggerian (I was thinking more Derridean, but whatever). As Trawny explicitly states, one cannot really think through the consequences of this contamination. Ultimately, one must rather attempt the thought of the problem itself and determine how to understand it. Thinking is mutilated by Heidegger. Thinking must bear its proper pain, having been lead astray by Heidegger. Such consistent appeals are entirely consonant with Heidegger's appeal to the thought of Being. The idea that Heidegger reminds us of the darkest pages of our history and we could be thankful for it - is this not the gist of Trawny's essay? Is it not now that we can finally carry the weight of being a German on our shoulders, or that we can start 'trusting the trail of tears' (Celan [so yeah, not the 'Trail of Tears' - sorry])? Unlike the often very complex rhetorical questions posed in Trawny's book, which allow him to avoid drawing any conclusions or condemnations, mine one should simply answer with 'yes'.
It strikes me that at the very least profound irony befalls this whole discussion. Surely, one could ponder the question of Heidegger's nazism long and hard, but perhaps that's altogether not as urgent as Trawny makes it out to be. Trawny's work is not coincidentally 'contaminated'; its train of thought forcefully moves within the Heideggerian framework, further mythologizing it. Let me guess: only in the vicinity of the ultimate obscurity of this problem can a secret become pertinent for us all, and will we be at the height of our thinking? What about all the other worries mankind has?
As part Heidegger enthousiast, I can imagine this to be a pretty profound and touching narrative for most. Peter Trawny is a brave and erudite man and I regret that he's become such a controversial figure (among people he should be getting respect from). But as so much more than part Heidegger enthousiast, I can only giggle at the reception this is getting and shake my head at the often confusing state of philosophical discourse.
The itinerary of the book is largely unclear and seems associative. It structurally expounds a 'contamination' in Heidegger's thought - a concept that he admits is Heideggerian (I was thinking more Derridean, but whatever). As Trawny explicitly states, one cannot really think through the consequences of this contamination. Ultimately, one must rather attempt the thought of the problem itself and determine how to understand it. Thinking is mutilated by Heidegger. Thinking must bear its proper pain, having been lead astray by Heidegger. Such consistent appeals are entirely consonant with Heidegger's appeal to the thought of Being. The idea that Heidegger reminds us of the darkest pages of our history and we could be thankful for it - is this not the gist of Trawny's essay? Is it not now that we can finally carry the weight of being a German on our shoulders, or that we can start 'trusting the trail of tears' (Celan [so yeah, not the 'Trail of Tears' - sorry])? Unlike the often very complex rhetorical questions posed in Trawny's book, which allow him to avoid drawing any conclusions or condemnations, mine one should simply answer with 'yes'.
It strikes me that at the very least profound irony befalls this whole discussion. Surely, one could ponder the question of Heidegger's nazism long and hard, but perhaps that's altogether not as urgent as Trawny makes it out to be. Trawny's work is not coincidentally 'contaminated'; its train of thought forcefully moves within the Heideggerian framework, further mythologizing it. Let me guess: only in the vicinity of the ultimate obscurity of this problem can a secret become pertinent for us all, and will we be at the height of our thinking? What about all the other worries mankind has?
As part Heidegger enthousiast, I can imagine this to be a pretty profound and touching narrative for most. Peter Trawny is a brave and erudite man and I regret that he's become such a controversial figure (among people he should be getting respect from). But as so much more than part Heidegger enthousiast, I can only giggle at the reception this is getting and shake my head at the often confusing state of philosophical discourse.
February 7, 2026
Filosofen hebben vaak de neiging om in hun uiteenzettingen over complexe metafysica zeer specifiek, haast persoonlijk, vakjargon te gebruiken. Soms verzinnen ze zelfs woorden. Martin Heidegger is hiervan een uitstekend voorbeeld. Daarom is het altijd handig om eerst een boek te lezen geschreven door een expert die de filosofie als het ware zal 'vertalen'. Wanneer die experts echter exact diezelfde taal spreken wordt het iets moeilijker. Peter Trawny spreekt voor een lezerspubliek van Heideggerkenners en niet voor een algemeen publiek. Het thema is evenwel echt boeiend omdat de vraag of Heidegger - en in hoeverre - antisemitisch was een zeer genuanceerd antwoord behoeft. Zo had hij kritiek op het wereldjodendom, maar ook op het nationaalsocialisme. Zijn kritiek was bovendien veel eerder filosofisch, en niet raciaal, hoewel hij ook filosofeerde over ras. Kortom, de nuance is hier erg belangrijk en erg complex en de auteur slaagt er naar mijn gevoel niet in om dit uit te leggen voor niet-Heideggerspecialisten. Een voorbeeld van een zin: "Heeft men niet het gevoel dat het Duitse volk en land nu reeds één enkel concentratiekamp vormen, een kamp zoals de wereld dat nog nooit gezien heeft en dat de wereld ook niet wil zien - en dat dit niet-willen nog willender is dan onze willoosheid tegenover de verwildering van het nationaalsocialisme?" Het is een zin - weliswaar van Heidegger zelf - die haast elke lezer meermaals moet lezen maar die vervolgens beter zou moeten worden uitgelegd door een kenner. Maar ook de zinnen van Trawny dienen vaak opnieuw gelezen te worden. Kan beter.
January 21, 2025
3.8?? An sich ein schlüssiges Werk, welches sehr interessante Parallelen und Bezugspunkte in der Argumentation herstellt. Aber Trawny scheut sich vollends, Heidegger Antisemitismus zuzuschreiben. Manchmal finden sich auch komische Formulierungen im Text...Aber an sich ein sehr guter Einstieg in das Thema.
February 9, 2016
Good, as far as it goes.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews