The Banality of Heidegger

Jean-Luc Nancy, Jeff Fort

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780823275939, 9780823275922
• eBook ISBN: 9780823275946
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Heidegger and Nazism: Ever since the philosopher's public involvement in state politics in 1933, his name has necessarily been a part of this unsavory couple. After the publication in 2014 of the private Black Notebooks, it is now unambiguously part of another: Heidegger and anti-Semitism.What do we learn from analyzing the anti-Semitism of these private writings, together with its sources and grounds, not only for Heidegger's thought, but for the history of the West in which this thought is embedded? Jean-Luc Nancy poses these questions with the depth and rigor we would expect from him. In doing so, he does not go lightly on Heidegger, in whom he finds a philosophical and "historial" anti-Semitism, outlining a clash of "peoples" that must at all costs arrive at "another beginning." If Heidegger's uncritical acceptance of prejudices and long-debunked myths about "world Jewry" shares in the "banality" evoked by Hannah Arendt, this does nothing to lessen the charge. Nancy's purpose, however, is not simply to condemn Heidegger but rather to invite us to think something to which the thinker of being remained blind: anti-Semitism as a self-hatred haunting the history of the West—and of Christianity in its drive toward an auto-foundation that would leave behind its origins in Judaism.

Notes

Translator’s Preface. Both/And: Heidegger’s Equivocality

1. At the moment when Nancy wrote this text, there were no translations of the Schwarze Hefte into French or English. Since then, an English translation has begun to appear. The first volume (Gesamtausgabe 94) has been published as Ponderings II–VI: Black Notebooks 1931–1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). There will be two more volumes of Ponderings, in addition to numerous further Black Notebooks under various titles, including the Anmerkungen (Remarks) discussed by Nancy in the Supplement. Nancy tends to refer to the Ponderings using the German title, Überlegungen, and in this translation I have kept these references as such (since they reflect the text he is quoting/translating); but he sometimes refers to them in French as “Réflexions” (Reflections). I have chosen to maintain a literal translation for these references; the reader should keep in mind that they refer to the texts translated into English as Ponderings.

2. For similar reasons, I have not sought to align my translations of Nancy’s translations with the newly available first volume of the Ponderings. Readers who wish to compare will be able to find the passages in question by referring to the German Gesamtausgabe pagination referred to by Nancy, which is also provided as running heads on each page of the Ponderings. Likewise the page numbers of the original notebooks themselves, which Nancy refers to in his Supplement, are also supplied in the margins of the Ponderings.

3. “Et alors? et alors?” This was his emphatic rhetorical question regarding the issue of relative proportions, as given in the first spoken presentation of this material at the 2014 conference in Wuppertal referred to in the book’s liminal note. (As of August 2016, the audio of this presentation in French was available on YouTube, labeled, “ ‘Banalité de Heidegger,’ Jean-Luc Nancy, 2014”; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8zxB9NKIOU.)

4. Is it necessary nonetheless to stress yet further that Nancy’s invocation of “banality” in no way implies a lessening of the charges, or of the weight of condemnation, directed against Heidegger? As part of an exchange of emails regarding my queries for this translation, Nancy expressed a concern (based on some responses to his arguments in France, Italy, and elsewhere) that such a misinterpretation might persist despite everything. Despite, for example, Nancy’s own very clear and emphatic statement, in italics, that what is important now is not only condemnation, but above all analysis, not in order to mitigate the former, but on the contrary for the sake of “thinking the deep reasons for our condemnations.” It is precisely this task that takes the questions at hand beyond the relatively circumscribed, if at times passionate, debates regarding Heidegger himself, and certainly beyond any rancorous or apologetic fixation on this figure.

5. One might notice the irony, and apparent inappropriateness, of referring to Heidegger’s thought as a “resource” (a word I take from Nancy, used in reference to Heidegger’s radical and essential desubstantializing of being and of the language in which it is designated). It is obviously not meant in the sense of a “standing reserve” that could be extracted, exploited, etc., but rather as a matter for thinking—and no doubt even for forms of critique that Heidegger himself was unable to formulate.

1

All notes are the author’s except where otherwise indicated and when reference is made to English translations.

1. The Notebooks from the years 1931–41 have been edited by Peter Trawny and published under the general title Überlegungen (“Reflections”), subtitled Schwarze Hefte (“Black Notebooks”), followed by the numbers assigned to the notebooks, making up volumes 94–96 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2014) (translation of quotations are my own). The subsequent years are in preparation: there are thirty-four Black Notebooks in all, covering the period from 1931 to around 1969. [The Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger’s works will henceforth be cited as GA, followed by the volume and page numbers. An English translation of the Black Notebooks is in preparation. The first volume (GA 94) has recently appeared as Ponderings II–VI: Black Notebooks 1931–1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). As in the present note, Nancy occasionally refers to these texts with the French word “Réflexions,” which I have rendered literally throughout.—Trans.]

2. I here leave to one side what is directly connected to the state of Israel, which did not exist during the period under consideration.

3. Danièle Lochak, “Ecrire, se taire … Réflexions sur la doctrine antisémite de Vichy,” in Le Genre Humain, Le droit antisémite de Vichy, nos. 30–31 (May 1996). (To understand the title of this article, it is necessary to specify that “doctrine” in the technical juridical sense designates in France all of the commentaries produced by academic jurists. The Germans sometimes say “die Rechtsdoktrin” but more often “die Rechtslehre” or “die jurisitsche Lehre.”) [The English term is jurisprudence.—Trans.]

4. See, for example, Heidegger, Überlegungen V, GA 94, 370. I take the opportunity of this first reference to pay homage to the work of Peter Trawny, editor and commentator of volumes 94 to 96. This does not mean that I entirely agree with all of his commentaries, but I salute their precision, determination, and courage. I take the opportunity also to point out that Maurice Olender refers at length to Trawny in the preface to the Italian edition of his book Razza e destino (Milan: Bompiani, 2014); translation of Race sans histoire (Paris:...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translator’s Preface. Both/And: Heidegger’s Equivocality
• Half Title
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Coda
• Supplement
• Acknowledgments
• Notes