Prolegomena to any future Destruction of Metaphysics: Heidegger and the Black Notebooks

Following Kant's idea of a "prolegomena" to any future metaphysics, the paper asks the methodological question as to how our current understanding of the Schwarze Hefte might change our habits of reading Heidegger's philosophy in the future. The paper focuses on a certain interpretative dilemma. It has been a customary strategy for defenders of Heidegger's philosophy to distinguish between its arguments and its history. But if one treats Heidegger's work primarily as a set of arguments that can be abstracted from their own historical and cultural-political milieu, one commits precisely that gesture of "deworlding" the world (Entweltlichung der Welt) which Heidegger himself diagnosed as a species of rationalistic neutralization. Those who defend Heidegger in the customary fashion therefore appeal to the very ideal of a dehistoricised and atemporal truth that Heidegger saw as part of the tradition of metaphysical error. To defend Heidegger is therefore to betray him. The paper suggests that this gesture of betrayal cannot be avoided, and it concludes that Heidegger's philosophy should now be understood not as an integrated or holistic "doctrine" but should rather be read in fragments from the ruins of the philosophical tradition.