Peter Trawny

Ende Oktober 2014 organisierte das Martin-Heidegger-Institut in Wuppertal die erste internationale Tagung uber Heideggers "Schwarze Hefte" in Deutschland. Im Fruhjahr desselben Jahres hatte die Veroffentlichung der "Uberlegungen," der ersten Reihe der "Schwarzen Hefte," gezeigt, dass Heidegger zwischen 1938 und 1941 in seinen Aufzeichnungen antisemitische Gedanken auftreten lasst. Es war und ist die Frage, welche Motive den Philosophen dabei leiteten. Wie sind jene Ausserungen zu verstehen? Wie weit betreffen sie Heideggers Denken uberhaupt? Der Band versammelt die Resultate dieser Tagung. Er enthalt Aufsatze von Jean-Luc Nancy, Donatella Di Cesare, Francoise Dastur, Danielle Cohen-Levinas u.a.

Eine Einfuhrung in die Philosophie Martin Heideggers ist nach der Veroffentlichung der "Schwarzen Hefte" ein Wagnis. Heideggers Auaerungen uber das "Weltjudentum" und seine politische Hartnackigkeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg belasten sein Denken schwer. Wie kann man in diese Philosophie einfuhren, ohne gleichzeitig den Boden zu bereiten, auf dem diese inakzeptablen Ideen wachsen konnen? Peter Trawny versteht seine kritische Einfuhrung als eine Darstellung auch und gerade des Problematischen von Heideggers Denken. Zugleich versucht sie allerdings, seine auaergewohnliche Bedeutung im Kontext der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts zu erfassen.

How do we challenge the structures of late capitalism if all possible media through which to do do is inescapably capitalist? This urgent political question is at the heart of Peter Trawny's major new work. With searing precision Trawny demonstrates how our world has become wholly determined by technology, capital, and the medium. In this world of the 'TCM', we universal subjects remain in a state of apathy that is temporarily punctuated, but also reinforced, by the phantasmatic dream of difference offered us by the 'Hollywood machine.' Our sole motivation is to gain money and the power it brings. The only meaningful difference in the world of the TCM universal is the difference between wealth and poverty. Freedom here is then the freedom to dispose of things (particularly technological objects) and to gain pleasure. It makes our relation to our surroundings essentially 'touristic,' and our relation to the earth an essentially exploitative one. The notion of personal or societal freedom has never been more controversial or, seemingly, more far from our grasp. While exploring in details the difficulties we face in our attempts to be free, Trawny builds an almost Utopian vision of how to break out of the mediums in which we operate and experience a new kind of freedom – both one of intimacy, and one through philosophy. An ambitious and lively yet completely rigorous work, this book offers a fascinating vision of how to live and live well.

Since the beginning of its history philosophy deals with the question for the meaning of war. This question, however, was always understood as the question for the causes of war: Why is there war? Where does it come from? The article presupposes that only this question and the attempts to respond to it can shed light onto the interpretation of the historical reality of war, which is finally the only reason to reflect on its causation. The article refers to a set of notions and texts, which belong to a discourse on war unfolding through the centuries of European thinking. These notions are: contradictions, body, justice, nature, right, politics, and morals. Even if this sequence is only one possible sequence of the philosophical reflection on warfare, I consider it to be one of greater importance. We see, how a plurality of causes creates a context, in which we could try to analyze actual events: For it is evident that no war has only one reason. And the article has finally one other intention, namely to show that probably every possible sequence of causes of war will have the same consequence. This con-sequence will be the final destruction of the world, the coming of the ash.

In 2014, the first three volumes of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks—the personal and philosophical notebooks that he kept during the war years—were published in Germany. These notebooks provide the first textual evidence of anti-Semitism in Heidegger’s philosophy, not simply in passing remarks, but as incorporated into his philosophical and political thinking itself. In Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy, Peter Trawny, the editor of those notebooks, offers the first evaluation of Heidegger’s philosophical project in light of the Black Notebooks. While Heidegger’s affiliation with National Socialism is well known, the anti-Semitic dimension of that engagement could not be fully told until now. Trawny traces Heidegger’s development of a grand “narrative” of the history of being, the “being-historical thinking” at the center of Heidegger’s work after Being and Time. Two of the protagonists of this narrative are well known to Heidegger’s readers: the Greeks and the Germans. The world-historical antagonist of this narrative, however, has remained hitherto undisclosed: the Jews, or, more specifically, “world Judaism.” As Trawny shows, world Judaism emerges as a racialized, destructive, and technological threat to the German homeland, indeed, to any homeland whatsoever. Trawny pinpoints recurrent, anti-Semitic themes in the Notebooks, including Heidegger’s adoption of crude cultural stereotypes, his assigning of racial reasons to philosophical decisions, his endorsement of a Jewish “world conspiracy,” and his first published remarks on the extermination camps and gas chambers. Trawny concludes with a thoughtful meditation on how Heidegger’s achievements might still be valued despite these horrifying facets. Unflinching and systematic, this is one of the most important assessments of one of the most important philosophers in our history.

Desde su publicación a principios de 2014 los Cuadernos negros de Martin Heidegger incitaron a un debate tanto en la academia como en la esfera intelectual pública. Supuestamente estos cuadernos ponen en evidencia cómo Heidegger comulgaba con el antisemitismo y el nacionalsocialismo. A partir del análisis elaborado por David Nirenberg en su libro Antijudaísmo: la tradición occidental, se discute si el referente del antijudaísmo representa un fenómeno real o si el antijudaísmo es una visión del mundo en donde el significado de “los judíos” representa una función en la autocomprensión de aquellos que hablan de “judío” o “ser judío”, sin que este significado posea un referente real. Aquello que aquí se denomina ‘referencia real o fáctica’ representa un problema constante para la filosofía. Si ésta tuviera siempre que remitirse a algo real, sería entonces una ciencia particular como la biología. El “objeto” de la filosofía parece ser, no obstante, un problema filosófico. Por ello, en este caso se trata llanamente de la cuestión de si el discurso filosófico de Heidegger en los Cuadernos negros se corresponde o no con algo del mundo. Se trata, en pocas palabras, de definir el tipo de antisemitismo que se expresa en los Cuadernos negros.

Hannah Arendt v svoji interpretaciji Kantove teorije »razsodne moči«, le-to vzame iz njenega prvotnega sobesedila, razmisleka o dobrem in lepem, ter ji podeli politični pomen. Po eni strani Kantov pojem »reflektirajoče razsodne moči« Arendtovi omogoči prikaz določene nujnosti v politični presoji, za katero je značilno, da se vedno odvija v singularnih okoliščinah in se ne more sklicevati na nobeno vnaprejšnje, univerzalno ali splošno merilo. Po drugi strani Arendtova interpretira »nezainteresirano ugajanje«, ki je pri Kantu predpostavka za estetsko sodbo, kot nujni pogoj teoretičnega motrenja zgodovine. Pomembni interpreti, kot sta Beiner in Vollrath, so na osnovi tega trdili, da gre za protislovje. V svojem besedilu želim pokazati, da se to protislovje razreši v »hermenevtični etiki«, ki jo je možno pokazati v delih Hannah Arendt, celo v najbolj zgodnjih.Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Kant’s conception of the »power of judgment« extracts this faculty from its intended context, considerations of the beautiful and of nature, and grants it a political significance. On the one hand, Kant’s conception of a »reflective power of judgment« offers Arendt the possibility of referring to a certain necessity in political judgments; judgments which always take place under singular conditions and which cannot presume a universal or general measure. On the other hand, Arendt interprets »disinterested pleasure«, which is for Kant a presupposition of aesthetic judgment, as a necessary condition for theoretical considerations of history. Between these two aspects of Arendt’s Kant interpretation, important scholars, such as Beiner and Vollrath, have claimed to find a contradiction. In my article I would like to show that this contradiction is dissolved by way of a »hermeneutical ethics«, which can be identified throughout the work of Hannah Arendt, even in its earliest forms.

Hannah Arendts Kant-Lektüre findet ihren Abschluß in einer Interpretation der „Urteilskraft“. Im „Urteilen“ entdeckt sie einerseits das zentrale Vermögen des politischen Handelns, andererseits die eigentliche Tätigkeit eines notwendig sich von allem Handeln zurückziehenden die Geschichte betrachtenden Denkens. Daraus entsteht der Anschein, die Denkerin habe ihre Politische Philosophie zuletzt durch einen Widerspruch ruiniert. Auf der Basis des von Seyla Benhabib in die Diskussion gebrachten Begriffs des „narrativen Handelns“ läßt sich jedoch zeigen, daß dieser Widerspruch nur ein Scheinproblem darstellt. Arendts Philosophieren findet in der Auslegung der „Urteilskraft“ die Möglichkeit, ihrer Hermeneutik der „totalen Herrschaft“ ein ethisches Fundament zu verschaffen. Das durch einen tiefgreifenden „Traditionsbruch“ gestörte „Verstehen“ der politischen Sphäre findet in der „moralischen Urteilskraft“ einen Anhaltspunkt, sich den Gefahren einer durch den Totalitarismus bedrohten Moderne zu stellen. So wird es möglich, die wichtigste Intention von Arendts Denken als eine „politische Ethik“ zu charakterisieren