Between Exclusion and Intersection: Heidegger’s Philosophy and Jewish Volkism1

Abstract

This article deals with some unexplored Jewish resp.onses to the volkish elements in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger’s idiosyncratic and deeply philosophical account of volkism stood at the heart of his political support of National Socialism and of his exclusion of the Jews from the ontological task of thinking. This article demonstrates, however, that some of Heidegger’s Jewish readers identified with volkish moments in his philosophy and found these to be pertinent to their own condition as Jews in the modern world. This was made possible by the fact that, within the intellectual climate in which Heidegger’s thinking took shape, the volkish lexicon (Volk, Gemeinschaft, ‘fate’, ‘destiny’, and even ‘struggle’) was commonplace, indicated no clear association with any certain political view, and, indeed, was a central organ through which Jews made sense of their own existence and historical and political situation. Thus, while Heidegger’s volkism led to a philosophical marginalization of Jews, the multifariousness and widespread currency of volkish thinking brought some Jewish readers to recognize their shared conceptual horizon with Heidegger and to differentiate between Heidegger’s practical politics, which were anti-Jewish and loathsome, and his volkism, which was seen as fitting and useful for the Jewish case.