Heidegger: The Question

The Rectorate, the Black Notebooks, and the verdict

A course on the thought of Martin Heidegger.

Course outline

1. The Rectorate — In 1933 Heidegger became rector of Freiburg, joined the Nazi party, and lent his voice to the regime. Not opportunism alone — he saw in the upheaval a chance for the "other beginning." That is what…
2. The Being-Historical Narrative — The engine of the whole affair. Heidegger read all of history as the unfolding of Being's forgetting — Greeks to machination — with the Germans as the people who might begin again. This story drew…
3. The Black Notebooks — The hardest module. In his private notebooks of 1938-41 Heidegger wrote antisemitism directly into the history of Being. We read the actual passages — Jews as calculation, as the principle of race…
4. How Far Does It Reach? — Trawny's central question: the antisemitism is real, but is it a few contained pages or does it seep through the thinking? We read the wartime nadir — and weigh "contamination" against both the…
5. The Verdict: Separability and Silence — Being and Time was finished in 1927, before the rectorate and the notebooks. Can it be read apart from what came after? We weigh the strongest case for separation against the Husserl break and the…

Part of the Symposium course library.