In this book, Daniel Herskowitz examines the rich, intense, and persistent Jewish engagement with one of the most important and controversial modern philosophers, Martin Heidegger. Contextualizing this encounter within wider intellectual, cultural, and political contexts, he outlines the main patterns and the diverse Jewish responses to Heidegger. Herskowitz shows that through a dialectic of attraction and repulsion, Jewish thinkers developed a version of Jewishness that sought to offer the way out of the overall crisis plaguing their world, which was embodied, as they saw it, in Heidegger's life and thought. Neither turning a blind eye to Heidegger's anti-Semitism nor using it as an excuse for ignoring his philosophy, they wrestled with his existential analytic and what they took to be its religious, ethical, and political failings. Ironically, Heidegger's thought proved itself to be fertile ground for re-conceptualizing what it means to be Jewish in the modern world.

Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942-1948)

Heidegger and His Jewish Reception

Gunther Anders (1902-1992) was an Austrian philosopher, critical theorist, political activist, and a writer of poems, short stories and novels. His works on the critical theory of technology have remained rather undiscovered. His main work Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen ( The Antiquatedness of the Human Being ) appeared in two volumes and has thus far not been published in English. This essay reviews key aspects of Anders’ works and uses them to critically assess big data capitalism. It first discusses Anders’ concept of the Promethean gap; the gap between what humans can produce with the help of technologies and the capacity of imagining the negative effects these technologies can have. The essay also engages with Anders’ analysis of commercial television and radio. Anders sees capitalism as having catastrophic potentials. He argues that Auschwitz and Hiroshima are two symbols of 20 th -century catastrophism. The article discusses Anders’ letter to Klaus Eichmann, the son of Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the organisation of the displacement and deportation of Jews in the Third Reich. It furthermore analyses the exchange of letters between Anders and Claude Eatherly, the pilot of an aircraft that supported dropping the nuclear bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. Finally, the paper engages with Anders’ critique of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. In the age of the Internet and big data capitalism, Anders’ warnings about the potential negative effects of capitalist technologies and capitalism remain of crucial relevance and have taken on new qualities. Anders’ philosophy is an undiscovered critical theory of technology that allows us to critically understand power structures in the age of big data and social media. Gunther Anders and Hannah Arendt. Source: posted on Flickr as CC by acido nucleio, https://www.flickr.com/photos/guntheranders/4248063814

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Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942-1948)

Citations

Heidegger and His Jewish Reception

Günther Anders’ Undiscovered Critical Theory of Technology in the Age of Big Data Capitalism

Dwelling Prophetically: Martin Buber’s Response to Heidegger

Which God Will Save Us? Heidegger and Judaism

Kant’s Legacy and New Thinking: Heidegger, Cassirer, and Rosenzweig

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