«Heidegger and the Jews is the book that had never been written on the relationship between the great twentieth-century philosopher and anti-Semitism. The book by Donatella Di Cesare is today the real editorial novelty in the discussion around Martin Heidegger and Nazism. Through the pages of Heidegger and the Jews, the so far undisclosed Black Notebooks, now partially published, shed new light and provide the outline of a real document of a time when a decisive part of the culture of the last century is summarized.
Yet, far from just collecting the papers of a trial against Heidegger, Di Cesare reads his adherence to Nazism as the tip of an iceberg long hidden in modern philosophy. Through a tersely presented documentation, ranging from Luther to Carl Schmitt, the relationship between philosophy and the myth of the race goes far beyond the figure of Heidegger. A sort of short circuit is produced in him: to think the "complicity" between the Jew – the "uprooted" individual par excellence - and Western metaphysics. It is a short circuit in which Heidegger, in complete contradiction with his theory of the ontological difference, responds with the illusion of a new beginning of philosophy, in the land and in the blood of Hitler’s Germany».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Gianni Vattimo

«Pour Donatella di Cesare, Heidegger aurait donc bien livré son interprétation de la Shoah : il s’agirait d’une auto-annihilation des Juifs par les Juifs. Comment ne pas penser en effet aux ordres donnés par Reinhard Heydrich, quelques semaines après le début de la guerre, de créer des « conseils juifs » (Judenräte) afin de laisser aux « Juifs » le soin d’organiser leur propre déportation ?»
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Le Monde

«Di Cesare wrote that the Shoah for Heidegger is “presented as playing a decisive role” in a main tenant of Heidegger’s philosophy of the history of being».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——The Jerusalem Post

«The Black Notebooks are Heidegger’s private notes. Their reading prompted Di Cesare to come to terms not only with Heidegger but also with the whole tradition of German philosophy, which amounts to most of Western philosophy. A philosophy that, according to Di Cesare, is in great part founded on the anti-Semitic prejudice, which is not racial but rather metaphysical and ontological (and therefore radical, that is, concerning the origin of things). In this perspective, the Jew has been perceived, narrated and analysed by Western philosophers, those of the Abends Land, as an alien entity within Western history, whom therefore had to be annihilated».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——L’Espresso

«To deny the Jew that he is a propriety of Being and the bearer of the Name that names him means, in Heideggerian terms, to deny him the being-there (Dasein) and therefore to exclude him, to wipe him out. Like a genocidal hand wearing rubber gloves».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Guido Ceronetti, Corriere della Sera

«The argument for the metaphysical nature of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism (and actually also of National Socialism) is of central importance. For it undermines the ambiguous separation between philosophical depth and wrong political choices, which is often called for when dealing with Heidegger and many other intellectuals of his time. A separation that only serves to take a conciliatory attitude towards those intellectuals on the one side and to taboo as absolute evil those political experiences. The “repression of National Socialism from philosophy”, writes Di Cesare, has come to an end».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Il Foglio

«Di Cesare’s book is genuinely new, it is the book that had never been written. Not only does it provide new insights on Heidegger but it sheds new light on the philosopher, like a real document from those times, providing an outline of the crucial years of the past century. Di Cesare’s study causes a short-circuit: the point is not, as common opinion has it, to bring Heidegger and his theory to trial, but rather to see how that very theory is only the tip of an iceberg that has been floating for centuries in our culture».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Gianni Vattimo, L’Espresso

«Donatella Di Cesare gets back to Heidegger’s unpublished writings with two arguments: she attributes Heidegger’s Nazism essentially to his ant-Semitism and she illuminates the metaphysical shift that anti- Semitism underwent with Heidegger, against a wider background including the whole of Western thought».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Roberta De Monticelli, Il Sole 24 Ore – Domenica

«Di Cesare’s is a brave book, of considerable theoretical penetration, if we get over the sensation around the Heidegger affair, we see that the question of being intersects with the Jewish question. Di Cesare clearly illuminates – surprisingly, given the notorious obscurity of Heidegger’s prose, which Di Cesare closely investigates – the philosophical roots of the German thinker’s anti-Semitism, intertwined as they are with a rich tradition that, at least in Germany, goes back to Luther. Most importantly, Di Cesare is not at all interested in passing sentences or in acquitting people. Her only aim is to give us all the elements we need to understand».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——La Stampa

«I agree with Di Cesare: we cannot make away with the Black Notebooks, there is still much to say about the philosopher’s responsibility and the ethics of his thought. Philosophers, even when they remain silent, are making history: this we must make clear».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Libero

★German, French, World Spanish, Danish and World English rights sold!
★The book was 2nd in the Philosophy top-15 in Ibs.it.

After the most recent publication of the Black Notebooks, Heidegger’s private papers that have revealed to which extent he adhered to Nazism and its project, here is the first book on the relationship between his philosophy and the Shoah.
Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks), private writings composed between 1931 and 1941, were published in Germany in 2014 and 2015, causing a great stir in the philosophical field. The relationship between Heidegger and Nazism has always been the subject of heated debate, in which the philosopher’s life and his philosophical thought have often been confused. Those who worship Heidegger reject all charges of conniving with Nazism, while his enemies wouldn’t mind if his name was ruled out from philosophy readers. The Notebooks clearly show to which extent his thought was actually attuned to the Nazi climate of opinion. In fact, they are an original philosophical work, which systematically investigates the history of being. Heidegger – who, after the war, always refused to address such issues – gives free reins to his conception of National Socialism and to his vision of Germany, which he sees as the guiding force of the Western world during the last world war. We also find considerations on Jews and “world Jewry” – Weltjudentum – in which Heidegger, like Carl Schmitt, identifies the ultimate enemy, the stranger, who undermines being from inside.
Working on these recent texts, Donatella Di Cesare provides us with an outline of Heidegger’s ontological anti-Semitism, putting it against the background of Hitlerism and of the large group of German philosophers who made of the Jewish question a philosophical issue. Then, what does the Jew represent for Heidegger? Why does his presence in the world not fit within the destiny of the Western world? In which terms did Heidegger envisage the final war against the Jews at the beginning of the Forties? And what was his responsibility in the issue of extermination? Today we can say that Heidegger’s silence after Auschwitz does not tarnish his consistency: still, at stake is his very philosophy and its future. Donatella Di Cesare therefore asks: is Heideggerian thought forever doomed? Or does the Jew, the “other”, mark a new beginning by breaking into being?

Donatella Di Cesare is full professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University La Sapienza of Rome. She counts among the most engaged philosophers in the current public debate. Among her last books: Grammatica dei tempi messianici (2011), La giustizia deve essere di questo mondo (2012), Se Auschwitz è nulla. Contro il negazionismo (2012), Crimini contro l’ospitalità (2014). For Bollati Boringhieri, she has published Israele. Terra, ritorno, anarchia [Israel. Land, Return, Anarchy] (2014), Heidegger & Sons. Eredità e futuro di un filosofo [Heidegger & Sons. Legacy and Future of a Philosopher] (2015), Heidegger e gli ebrei. I “Quaderni neri” [Heidegger and the Jews. The “Black Notebooks”] (2014), new expanded edition (2016).