I’ve been working on a text discussing (briefly) the latest Heidegger “scandal” (one of many in recent years). One strange thing is that some of his more outrageous remarks that link his anti-semitic racism with the core concepts of his theory of modernity and technology (or his entire Seinsgeschichte) do not seem to have appeared in English coverage. Here’s some of the characteristics or terms he ascribes to “World Jewery” (his term):
- Weltlosigkeit literally “worldlessness,” something that Heidegger (and his student Gadamer) attribute elsewhere to animals
- Machenschaft, variously translated as “machination” or “manipulative domination” (Guardian)
- die zähe Geschicklichkeit des Rechnens und Schiebens; something like “tenacious destiny of calculation and writing”
- Machtsteigerung, an expansion of power, that…
- in turn is connected to a Sichbreitmachen einer sonst leeren Rationalität und Rechenfähigkeit: a proliferation of an otherwise empty rationality and calculability.
- And finally, a Bodenlosigkeit [die] alles sich dienstbar macht, a groundlessness or soil-lessness that instrumentalizes or “puts” everything “into its service.”
The text discussing this is available as a .pdf:
