HEIDEGGER CAUGHT UP
Antijudaism, Antisemitism, and the History of Being
This lecture aims to trace, to comprehend, to analyse, in order to question, the philosophical trajectory deployed by Heidegger that sustains a certain and profound correlation between the “history” (Geschichte) of the truth of Being and the “self-annihilation” (Selbstvernichtung) of Judaism. What occurs between the history of the truth of Being and the “self-annihilation” of Judaism? In which manner do these two motifs come to mutually weave each other and what effects does this relation have? According to which Law does this correlation engage, animate and affirm itself? Why and how does the “dispositive” proper to the truth of Being deploy – through the appropriation of its history and through the Germanic reappropriation of its “initiality” beyond its Greek “beginning” – the “self-annihilation” of Judaism? Following the publication of theBlack Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte), all readings or interpretations, analysis or examination of Heidegger’s philosophy must confront these questions and therefore question without complacency, with the utmost rigor, the meaning, the effects and the causes, of this intricate relation. We must question Heidegger’s philosophy not only in order to see the “place” towards which this thought engages us, but also in order to understand why and how an entire line of the history of philosophy has also engendered a resolute antijudaism. How and why has the history of Being, in deploying the very essence of its truth, also constituted and produced an antijudaism culminating in a definite antisemitism, one without precedent in the entire history of philosophy?