Philosophia

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00085-5

Heidegger: A Critical Introduction, by Peter Trawny,

trans. Rodrigo Therezo
Polity, Cambridge (UK) and Medford (MA), 2019, viii + 188 Pages

Richard Polt 1

Received: 1 May 2019 / Accepted: 2 May 2019/

# Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Short Abstract
Peter Trawny’s Heidegger: A Critical Introduction examines the various phases of the
philosopher’s thought, with special attention to questions of politics and antisemitism.
This review sums up the book and discusses the relevance of Heidegger today for
analytic philosophy, Jewish thought, and political philosophy.

The indefatigable Peter Trawny (Martin-Heidegger-Institut, University of Wuppertal)

has, to date, edited a dozen volumes of Heidegger’s collected writings and written
books on Heidegger, Adorno, Socrates, Marx, Arendt, Hegel, Schelling, and Jünger, as
well as his own Heidegger-inflected reflections on our times (Trawny 2013, 2014,
2017). In 2014, his editions of the first three volumes of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks
were published. These are philosophical journals where, beginning in the late 1930s,
Heidegger makes a series of hostile comments on Bworld Judaism.^ Trawny’s book on
Heidegger’s antisemitism (Trawny 2015) brought him enemies both among loyal
Heideggerians and among Heidegger’s fiercest critics.
The present book was first published in German in 2016. It revises an earlier
introductory book (Trawny 2003) to account for numerous subsequently published
texts, including those that shed light on Heidegger’s relationship to Nazism and the
Jews. As a leading expert on the texts and the philosophical and political issues,
Trawny is in an excellent position to attempt the impossible: condensing Heidegger’s
prodigious writings (some 100 volumes) into a short book that acknowledges the
thinker’s disturbing entanglement with the darkest currents of the twentieth century
while insisting that he remains Ba vital source for philosophizing in our day and age^
(viii).
Chapter 1 focuses on Heidegger’s youthful attempts to retrieve the concrete facticity
of life as it is lived, rescuing it from the distortions of theoretical objectification. Of
course, this project is itself a philosophical pursuit, so it is itself distinct from normal

* Richard Polt
polt@xavier.edu

1
Department of Philosophy, Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH, USA
 Philosophia

life. The challenge, then, is to reflect on actual, everyday existence without treating it as
if it were already reflective—yet finding, within existence, the possibility of the
reflection that we are carrying out. Philosophy, understood this way, has a peculiar
status that distinguishes it from the sciences (13–14).
Chapter 2 discusses some highlights of Heidegger’s most important work, Being and
Time, which incorporates his account of everydayness in a more ambitious, unfinished
exploration of the meaning of being itself, following the hypothesis that we understand
being in terms of our temporality. Trawny’s chapter is by no means a complete guide to
the text, as various important topics are not mentioned, including guilt, reality, truth,
and the phenomenology of useful or Bready-to-hand^ entities (truth and readiness-to-
hand are briefly discussed later: 86–87, 95). Fortunately, many other secondary works
are available for readers who are looking for a more thorough interpretation of Being
and Time. As for the central concept of BDasein^ or Bbeing-there^ in that text, Trawny
observes that it is not identical to human beings, but is Bthe ground of the human^ (36).
In the 1930s, Heidegger even holds that humans need to transform themselves into
Dasein, making his concept an analogue to the Nietzschean overman, or at least
carrying forward the philosophical tradition of speculation on the proper education
and formation of the human (90).
After discussing Being and Time, Trawny turns to Heidegger’s intensified explora-
tion of historicity in the 1930s, including Bthoroughly esoteric^ (56) manuscripts on
Bthe event of appropriation^ (das Ereignis) that were published only posthumously.
Trawny’s accounts of these texts will shed little light for the novice, but they provide
tastes of the challenging speculations to be found there. For instance (Trawny quotes
Heidegger): BThis ‘between’ is the so-called ‘time-space that determines the field of
projection of essencing and objectivity.’ The ‘abandonment by being’ is now the ‘same’
as the ‘forgetting of dif-ference’^ (56).
Chapter 3 addresses Heidegger’s politics and Bmetapolitics^ during the Nazi regime,
as well as topics such as language, art, the overcoming of metaphysics, and the gods.
The question of Heidegger’s relationship to Nazism is, of course, difficult and contro-
versial, but I believe Trawny gets it right. After an initial enthusiasm that Heidegger
himself dates to 1930–34, he comes to see Nazism as a form of objectifying control, or
Bmachination^ (68), along with other forms of modern politics and forces such as
Bworld Judaism.^ But this is not a rejection of Nazism; in fact, for Heidegger, Bthe
‘consummation of modernity’ [in Nazism] had to be fully carried out, without remain-
der. A full night first had to fall so that a new morning could then dawn^ (69). In other
words, precisely because Nazism was the most extreme form of modern nihilism, it had
to be followed to its cataclysmic end; only then might we be blessed with a Bnew
inception.^ This is all part of what Heidegger himself calls the Bmytho-logy of the
event of appropriation^ (63–64), a highly questionable narrative. As for the concrete
Bevents in the course of which millions of people were annihilated,^ as Trawny puts it
(69), Heidegger seems to view them as mere collateral damage in the history of being.
In contrast, Trawny attempts to hear Bthe ‘silent voices’ of the dead—of the Shoah^
(8) as he details the absence of empathy and justice in Heidegger’s ruminations. In this
regard, Trawny agrees with Levinas that the death of the other is at least as important as
one’s own mortality, which Heidegger takes to be crucial to authentic existence in
Being and Time (46). As for Heidegger’s comments on Jews in the Black Notebooks,
Trawny calls them Bsome of the most horrifying—but also the stupidest—passages the
Philosophia

thinker ever wrote^ (7). Here, Bworld Judaism^ is portrayed as a calculating,

machinational force that is both uprooted and uprooting (80–81). The nadir is
Heidegger’s assertion that since Nazism is a form of machination, it is metaphysically
BJewish,^ and the Shoah is thus a sort of Bself-extermination^ (82).
Chapter 4 focuses on Heidegger’s interpretations of technology. According to
Trawny, Heidegger’s notion of Bmachination^ lends itself to a BManichean narrative^
(124), whereas his postwar concept of technology as im-position or Bpositionality^
(Ge-stell) has redemptive potential as part of the history of being (127). I see less
difference between the two concepts in this regard: although Heidegger’s postwar view
is less apocalyptic, he continues to regard the technical experience of the world as a
devastating destiny that must be borne until some alternative revelation is granted.
There is a distinction, however, between his concepts of machination and positionality:
the first takes technology as a kind of objectification, whereas the second sees
technology as dissolving objectivity itself to experience beings as Bstanding
reserve^—a fluid store of energy resources that can be marshaled as needed, plugged
into the global system of exploitation.
In a brief Chapter 5, Trawny discusses the influence of Heidegger on several strands
of twentieth- and twenty-first-century continental philosophy. The book ends with a
somewhat whimsical timeline that keys events in Heidegger’s life to world events and
figures including Walt Disney, Mao, and Jimi Hendrix.
Readers who are truly new to Heidegger may be overwhelmed by the volume of
unfamiliar vocabulary they will encounter in this book. As Trawny explains, Heidegger
himself understood his thought as wandering down various paths, many of which
turned out to be dead ends (1–2). On this errant journey, he was continually
experimenting with new words and concepts. In a compressed presentation, it is
difficult to bring one group of words to life before the author must move on to a new
set.
However, Trawny knows the material, and he is a meticulous and trustworthy guide,
aside from a few slips. He describes the concept of Bthe ‘they’^ in Being and Time as an
Battempt to describe the everyday [existence] of human beings in [twentieth-century]
‘mass society’^ (41); but Heidegger’s analysis of the anonymous, default way of
existing is surely intended to apply to all human beings—even though he mentions a
few modern realities (newspapers, mass transit) and claims that the extent of the
Bthey’s^ dominion is variable. Trawny writes that BI have ‘anxiety’ about my physical
deterioration even before it has started^ (42)—but in Heideggerian terms, this is not
Banxiety^ in the face of existence per se, but Bfear^ of a particular threat. Trawny is also
a little quick to conflate the claim in Being and Time that being is concealed Binitially
and for the most part^ with Heidegger’s later view that being is intrinsically, ineluctably
characterized by Bwithdrawal^ (52–53). And in an odd factual error, Trawny dates a
significant passage in which Heidegger criticizes antisemitism to Bthe end of the
1930s^ (82), when it was probably written in 1946.
Now, is Heidegger’s thought still relevant? And does it matter outside the continen-
tal tradition? Trawny erroneously claims that Bit is nearly impossible to surmount the
philosophical divide that exists between Heidegger and Carnap. Therefore, very rarely
do we find Heideggerian work in the present context of ‘philosophy of mind’^ (137). In
fact, thanks largely to the efforts of Hubert Dreyfus and his students, Heideggerian
approaches have gained quite a bit of ground in the philosophy of mind in recent
 Philosophia

decades. Such approaches are typically based on Heidegger’s analysis of the everyday
world in Being and Time, which implies, so to speak, that mind requires minding—
engaged, practical involvement in a familiar environment. The Banalytic
Heideggerians^ may be shocked to find what a small role this analysis plays in
Trawny’s Heidegger, but the book can be recommended to them as an introduction
to the much broader landscape of Heidegger’s thought. It might also alert them to
challenging political questions that are, arguably, implicit in the phenomenology of
Being and Time.
Quite aside from the Heideggerian trend in the philosophy of mind, some analytic
philosophers today are questioning the Fregean analysis of Bbeing^ that strictly sepa-
rates predication from existence, a doctrine that is codified in modern symbolic logic.
They are exploring an ontological pluralism that has affinities to some of Heidegger’s
thought (e.g. McDaniel 2017; Edwards 2018). Will they go so far as to consider the
Heideggerian thesis that logic itself is indebted to a deeper Bunconcealment^ (86)? Or
that logic presupposes an inadequate grammatical interpretation of language (70) and
an impoverished understanding of being as Bpresence^ (30, 105)? Will they counte-
nance the possibility that poetry, rather than logic or grammar, is the appropriate clue to
the essence of language (72), and that the dominance of logic must then come to an end
(100–102, 106)? These views may be extreme, but mainstream academic philosophy
would surely benefit from more reflection on the proper place of logic in thought and
language.
As for politics and ethics, Trawny holds that although Bwe may not transfer
Heidegger’s statements concerning ‘World-Judaism’ ... onto his thinking as a whole,^
his Bphilosophy goes astray along horrifying, wayward paths that belong to the
movement of this thinking. Whoever believes he can encounter this thinking without
also pursuing these wayward paths will never be able to develop an interpretation worth
considering^ (84). Such an interpretation must come to terms not just with a particular
philosopher, but with BGerman history of the twentieth century,^ which Bbecomes
visible in Heidegger’s thought as in hardly any other thinker^ (9).
There can no longer be any doubt that this thought is deeply marked by anti-
modernism and Banti-universalism^ (97): from start to finish, Heidegger seeks to rescue
dwelling and belonging from the Buprooting^ effects of the Enlightenment. One might
then dismiss his ideas as reactionary ideology. Yet, as Trawny remarks, Bin a time
marked by massive migration flows,^ do we not need to understand why place and
heritage matter, Bwhy ‘flight’ is even a problem^ (97)? In a time of environmental
catastrophe, is it enough to try to manage technology more efficiently, or do we also
need to reflect, with or against Heidegger, on the obscurity of the earth, the limits of
modern natural science, and the relentless disclosure of beings as resources in the
technological age (e.g. Polt and Wittrock 2018)? BDistress^ (21) and Bplight^ (89–92)
run through Heidegger’s writings—understandably so, since he witnessed the most
destructive wars in European history; our plight may be just as pressing in the twenty-
first century, even though some of us, for a time, may have the luxury of turning our
backs on it.
Despite its antisemitic vein, Heidegger’s thought can also contribute to reflection on
Jewish life. In 1920, the young Heidegger had attempted to retrieve the experience of
early Christianity in a BGreek-free^ manner (19); yet by the 1940s, he was seeking Bthe
first inception among the Greeks, which remained outside Judaism and thus outside
Philosophia

Christianity^ (Heidegger 2015: 20). However, several recurring motifs in his thought
are arguably more Judaic than Hellenic, such as the historical destiny of a people, the
disclosive power of language, and Bthe relation between a call and an answer^ (91).
While denouncing the specter of modern, Brootless^ Judaism, Heidegger seems to have
unwittingly aligned himself with unmodern Judaism and its heritage of messianic
longing (23–24). It would thus be unfortunate if his demonstrable prejudices led Jewish
thinkers today to neglect his work. Not only were many of Heidegger’s best students
Jewish, but important trends in contemporary Jewish thought owe debts to Heideg-
ger or show intriguing parallels to his philosophy (Lapidot and Brumlik 2018). We
would surely have learned something if we could have listened to the animated
discussion of Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber on their long walk together in
1957 (Mendes-Flohr 2014).
Perhaps even Heidegger’s Bmetapolitics^ is not without merit. Is the destiny of a
people, for Heidegger, really Balways one ‘destiny’^ (61), and thus under the shadow of
tyranny and intolerance? Or should we attend to his Bparadoxical statement that the
‘essence of the Germans’ lies in the ‘struggle [Kampf] over their essence’^ (67)?
Destiny may be intrinsically contested, a never-ending exploration of the question,
BWho are we?^—which is not to say that Heidegger developed a conception of the
political that is appropriate to this condition.
I would argue that Heidegger’s questions and concerns are not reducible to his
particular sympathies and animosities, at least when he tackles the most fundamental
and general problems: What does it mean to be? What makes it possible for humans to
understand being? What are the crucial elements of the human condition? To be sure,
we should not naively disregard the fact that he tends to answer these questions in a
way that lends itself to right-wing nationalism; but, as Trawny shows us, Heidegger
also deployed his concepts in a criticism of Nazi ideology, and his themes bring him
into the vicinity of Jewish traditions. While one may have one’s suspicions that specific
antipathies motivate Heidegger’s general reflections—as when Trawny interprets the
Bthey^ as an attack on contemporary urban life—it would be a pity to allow our
interpretation to be limited only to such contexts, as that would prevent us from finding
broader philosophical provocations and opportunities in Heidegger’s writings. These
writings will always challenge us to Bthink through^ them (Polt 2019)—to understand
them, to learn from them, but also to get past them as we search for better
understanding.

References

Edwards, D. (2018). The metaphysics of truth. Oxford: OUP.

Heidegger, M (2015). Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942–1948). Ed. P. Trawny. Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann.
Lapidot, E., & Brumlik, M. (Eds.). (2018). Heidegger and Jewish thought: Difficult others. London and New
York: Rowman & Littlefield International.
McDaniel, K. (2017). The fragmentation of being. Oxford: OUP.
Mendes-Flohr, P. (2014). Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger in dialogue. Journal of Religion, 94(1), 2–25.
Polt, R. (2019). Time and trauma: Thinking Through Heidegger in the thirties. London: Rowman & Littlefield
International.
Polt, R., & Wittrock, J. (Eds.). (2018). The task of philosophy in the anthropocene: Axial echoes in global
space. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
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Trawny, P. (2003). Martin Heidegger. Frankfurt/New York: Campus.

Trawny, P. (2013). Ins Wasser geschrieben. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Trawny, P. (2014). Europa und die Revolution. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Trawny, P. (2015). Heidegger and the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Trawny, P. (2017). On freedom: Technology, capital, medium. London: Bloomsbury.

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