Book cover for Remarks I–V: Black Notebooks 1942–1948 by Martin Heidegger

Remarks I–V

Black Notebooks 1942–1948

2025 Released
479 Pages
10-11 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Indiana University PressISBN 9780253073488
Translated by Adam Knowles

This volume of Martin Heidegger's Black Notebooks contains five short notebooks the philosopher composed during the pivotal years of 1942 to 1948. The notebooks constitute a form of intellectual diary with personal reflections on the fall of National Socialism, the occupation of Germany after WWII, and Heidegger's own philosophical legacy. They address Heidegger's political activities as Rector of Freiburg University in the early phase of National Socialism and testify to his embittered reaction to his own denazification process.

While this volume constitutes Heidegger's most intensely personal and autobiographical text, it also documents pivotal philosophical moments between his earlier and later philosophy. Readers interested in the history of intellectuals under National Socialism will find personal insights from the hand of a major philosopher who became involved with National Socialism. Readers interested in the development of Heidegger's thinking will find insightful documentation for the emergence of his post-WWII philosophical work.

Martin Heidegger

Heidegger’s contribution to the growth and development of National Socialism was immense. In this small anthology, Dr. Runes endeavors to point to the utter confusion Heidegger created by drawing, for political and social application of his own existentialism and metaphysics, upon the decadent and repulsive brutalization of Hitlerism. Martin Heidegger was a philosopher most known for his contributions to German phenomenological and existential thought. Heidegger was born in rural Messkirch in 1889 to Catholic parents. While studying philosophy and mathematics at Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg, Heidegger became the assistant for the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Influenced by Husserl, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, Heidegger wrote extensively on the quality of Being, including his Opus Being and Time. He served as professor of philosophy at Albert-Ludwig University and taught there during the war. In 1933, Heidegger joined the National Socialist German Worker’s (or Nazi) Party and expressed his support for Hitler in several articles and speeches. After the war, his support for the Nazi party came under attack, and he was tried as a sympathizer. He was able to return to Albert Ludwig University, however, and taught there until he retired. Heidegger continued to lecture until his death in 1973.

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