NOTES TO PAGES 89 – 90 // 133
people and eternity). An obstacle to approaching Judaism as a religion for Heidegger was certainly its significance for Christianity.
21. Another way of approaching Heidegger’s being-historical anti-Semitism is that of an idiosyncratic affinity. Thus he says at one point: “Ethnology [Volkskunde] of whatever kind or extent never finds the ‘eternal people’ if those individuals of essential questioning and speaking are not first assigned to this, the ones who seek the god of the people and who throw the decision for or against this god right into the essential center of this people.” Heidegger, Überlegungen XI, 83, in Überlegungen VII–XI, GA 95. Let us keep the possibility open for a few moments that this “god” who would have to be thrown into the “essential center of this people” would have something to do with the “last god.” This would offer the opportunity, starting from this thought, to cast a glance at Judaism. The thinking of the “last god” as the nonuniversalist god of a people, a thinking that at times is to be characterized as thoroughly messianic, sounds somewhat similar to the way God is conceived in Judaism (this is an entirely preliminary pronouncement). Did Heidegger not see the Germans as a “chosen people”? How does the “last god” stand in relation to this “chosenness”? Is there in Heidegger an unacknowledged proximity to Judaism? And if there were such a proximity, what would it mean for his being-historical anti-Semitism? Cf. on all of this, Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), 316; GA 65: 399.
22. Heidegger, Anmerkungen V, 10, in Anmerkungen I–V, GA 97.
23. At one point in the Anmerkungen, Heidegger says: “But it would be necessary that someday someone consider my anti-Christianity at least once and give it even one thought. This should not happen, so as to tolerate my thinking as still possibly “Christian.” I am not a Christian, and solely because I cannot be one. I cannot be one because I, spoken in a Christian manner, do not have grace. I will never have it so long as thinking expects something of my path.” Heidegger, Anmerkungen II, 138, in Anmerkungen I–V, GA 97. In point of fact, in the interpretation of Heidegger’s thinking, the position has stubbornly persisted for decades that Heidegger’s deliberations regarding, for example, the “last god” (and the “gods”) can still be understood in a “Christian” manner. It would have been Christian to regard them as targeted blasphemies.
24. Heidegger, Anmerkungen IV, 62, in Anmerkungen I–V, GA 97.
25. Heidegger, Anmerkungen I, 30, in Anmerkungen I–V, GA 97.