[Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism - NYTimes.com

[Martin John Packer]

In case the link doesn't work:

"In German Idealism and the Jew, Michael Mack uncovers the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the German philosophical tradition. While many have read German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's conception of universal reason.

Offering the first analytical account of the connection between anti-Semitism and philosophy, Mack begins his exploration by showing how the fundamental thinkers in the German idealist tradition—Kant, Hegel, and, through them, Feuerbach and Wagner—argued that the human world should perform and enact the promises held out by a conception of an otherworldly heaven. But their respective philosophies all ran aground on the belief that the worldly proved incapable of transforming itself into this otherworldly ideal. To reconcile this incommensurability, Mack argues, philosophers created a construction of Jews as symbolic of the "worldliness" that hindered the development of a body politic and that served as a foil to Kantian autonomy and rationality. 

In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Franz Rosenzweig, and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and Jewish. Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees, while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened—a concept that differed substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner. By speaking the unspoken in German philosophy, this book profoundly reshapes our understanding of it."



On Mar 31, 2014, at 8:54 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:

> Yes, the problem runs deeper than Heidegger:
> 
> <http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3645200.html>
> 
> Martin
> 
> On Mar 31, 2014, at 4:48 AM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <pmocombe@mocombeian.com> wrote:
> 
>> As an african/haitian, I am baffled when contemporary scholars want to ban heidegger from philosophy for his so-called antisemitism.   By their logic, people of African descent should be clamoring for the banishment of almost all scholars since descartes who showed any sign of racism in their writings.
>> 
>> 
>> Dr. Paul C. Mocombe
>> President
>> The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc.
>> www.mocombeian.com 
>> www.readingroomcurriculum.com 
>> www.paulcmocombe.info 
>> 
>> <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> </div><div>Date:03/30/2014  10:47 PM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> </div><div>Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heidegger's Notebooks Renew Focus on Anti-Semitism -
>> 	NYTimes.com </div><div>
>> </div>Martin:
>> 
>> I've only seen short extracts from the "Black Notebooks", but what
>> I've seen suggests that the real problem is not time but precisely the
>> problem of "worlding" which was mentioned earlier.
>> 
>> Jews, according to the "Black Notebooks", are an "unworlded" people,
>> and because of that they are necessarily parasitic upon peoples who
>> are deeply and profoundly in the world, i.e. his truly.
>> 
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/books/heideggers-notebooks-renew-focus-on-anti-semitism.html?_r=0
>> 
>> It's a big world, and there are lots of other things to read. They are
>> only short extracts, but they are more than enough.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>> 
>> On 31 March 2014 10:02, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:
>>> Hi David,
>>> 
>>> Yes, this always the problem with Heidegger: his appalling politics, both professional and personal.  However, the conceptual problem he was working on was also important to philosophers with very different politics. For example, Lucien Goldmann found parallels between Heidegger and Lukacs (ref below). I find it helpful to (try to) understand what Heidegger was trying to do, and also understand how a philosopher of human existence was unable to prevent himself from becoming a very unpleasant human being. (The problem lies in his treatment of time, in my view.)
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> Goldmann, L. (1979). Lukacs and Heidegger: Towards a new philosophy. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mar 30, 2014, at 7:10 PM, David Preiss <daviddpreiss@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> As an aside to the ongoing references to Heidegger... May be of interest or not.
>>>> DP
>>>> mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/books/heideggers-notebooks-renew-focus-on-anti-semitism.html?referrer=
>>>> 
>>>> Descarga la aplicación oficial de Twitter aquí
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Enviado desde mi iPhone
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>