Heidegger in Jerusalem: A Chapter in the History of a Local Philosophy

This paper examines the reception of Heidegger’s philosophy within the context of the emerging Hebrew philosophical discourse in Mandatory Palestine of the 1930s and 1940s. It presents the first responses to Heidegger as reflecting the complex setting within which a local philosophical discourse was developing, thus illuminating a forgotten chapter in Israel’s intellectual history. Analyzing the responses of Raphael Seligmann, Schmuel Hugo Bergman, Martin Buber and Julius Guttmann, the paper traces the complex manner in which this emerging philosophical discourse related to its roots in European culture. We argue that the responses to Heidegger should be read as an integral part of the formation of an intellectual culture in Israel, which was dependent on European culture – a culture that at the time was in crisis and thus could not provide a stable and supportive frame of reference.

We show that the local concern with Heidegger stemmed not only from a preoccupation with the manner in which Germany and German culture had betrayed its Jews, but from a deep philosophical affinity to Heidegger’s philosophical project. Heidegger – whose alliance with Nazism was locally known at least since the Rectorial Address of 1933 – was understood as an important thinker who responded boldly to a troubling crisis of reason and meaning, the crisis of a generation of which these responding Jewish thinkers were a part. For these immigrant thinkers, Heidegger epitomized a search with which they identified: a search for a spiritual renaissance that embraces the culture’s oldest roots within a new political vision.