Heidegger's Black Notebooks

What kind of record are the Black Notebooks?

The Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte) are the philosophical notebooks Martin Heidegger kept in black oilcloth covers; the name comes from their binding, and Heidegger himself referred in a note to "the records of the black notebooks". They measure roughly 136 by 192 millimetres. Heidegger called them his "workshop notes". According to his assistant Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, they lay on a table next to his bed, and he wrote in them at night before going to sleep.

Most bear simple titles: fifteen "Ponderings" (Überlegungen), nine "Annotations" (Anmerkungen), and others called "Four Notebooks", "Intimations" (Winke) and "Provisional Remarks" (Vorläufiges). In these short sketches Heidegger tried to outline a grand narrative of the rise, fall and renewed rise of "Being" and of "humanity", claiming at the same time to reveal "what is happening now".

They are not a private diary meant to be seen by no one. Heidegger wrote them from the start to be published after his death as the conclusion of his collected edition.

When and how were they published?

In 2013 the philosopher Peter Trawny, a co-editor of Heidegger's collected edition, announced the publication of the hitherto unknown notebooks. Trawny passed some excerpts in advance to French philosophers, who published them, and from mid-2013 a debate about Heidegger's antisemitism flared up again. German media joined it from December 2013.

The first three volumes appeared in February and March 2014 as volumes 94 (1931–1938), 95 (1938/39) and 96 (1939–1941) of the collected edition. Volume 97 (1942–1948) followed in March 2015. It included the notebook "Annotations I", found in private hands shortly before publication: Heidegger had given it to the mother of the Heidegger scholar Silvio Vietta. Vietta claimed it contained "not a single sentence against Jews", and the editor Trawny contradicted him. Publication continued until volume 102, with the notebooks of 1963–1970, the last. The very first notebook, "Ponderings I", is still missing.

Some basic facts differ between sources. The German Wikipedia gives the writing period as 1931–1975 and the number of notebooks as 33. The English Wikipedia gives October 1931 to 1970 and 34 notebooks, while elsewhere in the same article citing the publisher's figure of 33 notebooks in nine volumes and 3,384 pages. The volumes actually published end with the notebooks of 1963–1970 (volume 102).

What do they contain?

As the German Wikipedia summarizes them: "Ponderings II–VI" (1931–1938) deal with the decision to take on the rectorate of Freiburg University in 1933/34. In "Ponderings VII–XI" (1938/39) Bolshevism and race theory are both criticized as embodiments of "machination" (Machenschaft), and "Jewry" comes into view for the first time in a problematic way. "Ponderings XII–XV" (1939–1941) interpret the world war and everyday life as "signs" of machination in every area of life. "Annotations I–V" (1942–1948) interpret the spiritual downfall of the Germans and contain further problematic remarks about Jewry; Heidegger experienced the post-war period as Germany's betrayal of its mission to found the "other beginning" of the history of Being.

"Machination" is a key word of the later Heidegger. Roughly, it names the way modern technological civilization rules by turning everything into something to be calculated, planned and manipulated. The problem is that he linked this "machination" to a particular people, the Jews.

What is documented?

In this debate it matters to separate what the documents establish from interpretation. The notebooks and related texts establish the following.

• In the notebooks of 1938–1941 and 1941–1948 Heidegger writes about Jewry, the "Judenschaft" and "world Jewry" (Weltjudentum).
• In a note of about 1940 Heidegger writes that the question of the role of world Jewry is "not a racial but the metaphysical question" of what kind of humanity, utterly unbound, can take on the uprooting of all beings from Being as its "world-historical" task.
• Elsewhere he writes that the imperialist-warlike and the humanitarian-pacifist ways of thinking, that is, those of the totalitarian states and of the democracies, both belong to metaphysics, and that "international Jewry" can therefore make use of both.
• A passage of 1937 explicitly identifies "groundlessness" with "Jewry" and depicts it as practising empty calculation in place of Being. In another passage Heidegger writes that the calculating increases the power of the Jews, and counts among them his own teacher Edmund Husserl, who had converted to Christianity in 1886.
• In "Annotations II" (1946) he mentions that the great prophets are Jews and adds the caveat that the remark has nothing to do with "anti-Semitism".

There are records outside the notebooks too. Heidegger was elected rector of Freiburg University on 21 April 1933. On 1 May of that year he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party and remained a member until the end of the regime. He gave speeches honouring Adolf Hitler, and in November 1933 in Leipzig he gave one of the founding speeches of the German professors' declaration for Hitler. He denounced two colleagues, one Jewish and one not; on the other hand, as rector he tried in several cases to ease the situation of Jewish university members. After resigning the rectorate in 1934 he sat at least until 1936 on the committee for legal philosophy founded by Hans Frank. Karl Jaspers reports that in 1932, when he called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion "malicious nonsense", Heidegger answered: "But there is a dangerous international alliance of the Jews." After the war Heidegger was barred from teaching until his retirement in 1951.

How do interpretations differ?

According to the German Wikipedia's summary, the great majority of Heidegger scholarship regards the passages as antisemitic. The disagreement is over how to characterize that antisemitism.

Some scholars speak of a "being-historical" or "metaphysical" antisemitism, meaning that Heidegger treated the Jews not as a biological race but as a metaphysical figure that takes on "machination" and rootlessness in the history of Being. The editor Trawny holds that Heidegger's antisemitism shaped not only his private life but contaminated his philosophy of the history of Being; Trawny himself has also been accused of letting an uncritical attitude to that antisemitism colour his editing. The label has been criticized as an attempt to move Heidegger's antisemitism away from that of the Nazis. Some go further and connect the quotations with an "eliminatory antisemitism", arguing that Heidegger endorsed the "Final Solution". On the other side, opponents deny that Heidegger was a "naive follower of racism". Helmuth Vetter, later chairman of the Heidegger Society, saw his attitude as religious "anti-Judaism" rather than antisemitism.

The English-language debate is divided in a similar way. Some lower the weight of the notebooks by pointing to their character as sketches not meant for publication. Jesús Adrián Escudero identified an antisemitism that is not racial, social or political but appears only in a certain use of the concepts of German philosophy of his time. Adam Knowles, by contrast, documents Heidegger's deep philosophical commitment to völkisch antisemitism in the notebooks. The Italian philosopher Donatella Di Cesare's Heidegger, die Juden, die Shoah (2016) is another major work in the debate. Some scholars leave the question open.

What were the consequences?

In January 2015 Günter Figal, professor of philosophy at Freiburg, resigned as chairman of the Martin Heidegger Society, saying that in view of the antisemitic passages he could no longer officially represent Heidegger. In Germany there were calls to rename institutions and streets named after Heidegger. In 2018 Freiburg's municipal council, on the recommendation of an expert commission, voted in principle to rename the "Martin-Heidegger-Weg"; the commission's report said that examination of the philosopher's political role and convictions had "reached its high point" with the publication of the notebooks. In 2020 the street was renamed "Oberer Harbuckweg".

The editorial practice of the collected edition also came under fire. It has no independent scholarly editorial board; the family appoints the editors, so the order of publication and access to the manuscripts lie with the family and its chosen editors. In 2014 the journalist Eggert Blum revealed that a sentence about the "predetermination of Jewry for planetary criminality" had been left out of the first edition of volume 69, The History of Beyng. The young editor Trawny had removed it in 1998 on the instruction of the senior editor von Herrmann, and it was restored only in the third edition of 2015. Richard Wolin claimed that the custodians and editors had systematically removed pro-Nazi and antisemitic statements; the publisher Vittorio Klostermann replied to the charges.

What do the letters with Marcuse show?

In 1947 Herbert Marcuse, Heidegger's former student, wrote asking him to distance himself publicly from National Socialism. In his reply of 20 January 1948 Heidegger refused, on the grounds that Nazi followers had declared their change of mind "in the most disgusting way" and that he had nothing in common with them. In the same reply he wrote that the Allies had been able to kill "East Germans" before the eyes of the world, whereas the Nazis had kept the Holocaust secret, a passage still disputed as weighing Auschwitz against the expulsion of Germans. In his answer of 13 May 1948 Marcuse objected that Heidegger's talk of a "spiritual renewal" through National Socialism confused "the liquidation of Western thought with its renewal", and broke off contact. Almost seventy years before the notebooks, these letters already showed what Heidegger's silence meant.

What is fact and what is interpretation?

In sum: that Heidegger joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party, gave speeches supporting the regime as rector, and wrote sentences about "world Jewry" in the Black Notebooks are facts established by documents. That the majority of scholars regard those sentences as antisemitic is also a fact. How deeply that antisemitism runs through his philosophy as a whole, including Being and Time, whether calling it "metaphysical" explains or excuses it, and what in his thought can still be used today, are matters of interpretation. Around these questions both Heidegger scholarship and the left thought that took him up, from Heideggerian Marxism to French phenomenology, are still being reassessed.