The Black Notebooks (German: Schwarze Hefte) are a set of 34 notebooks written by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) between October 1931 and 1970.
Originally a set of small notebooks with black covers in which Heidegger jotted observations (sometimes called "sketches").
[1] Heidegger called the Black Notebooks the “workshop notes” (“Werkstattaufzeichnungen”).
Two additional manuscripts have been mentioned in association with the Black Notebooks.
Peter Trawny edited the manuscripts, and they were added to Heidegger's existing collected writings, Gesamtausgabe (GA), published by Vittorio Klostermann.
The first notebook, Anmerkungen I, now GA 97, was originally believed to be lost, but was found in the possession of Heidegger scholar Silvio Vietta.
One notebook written in approximately 1930, sometimes called: “Winke Überlegungen (I)”, is still missing (GA 97 p. 521 note).
According to Trawny in 2015: “In addition, two further booklets with the titles "Megiston" and "Grundworte” [basic words] were found in the DLA Marbach archives.
[Note 2] Whether and how they belong to the "Black Books" has yet to be clarified”.
The publisher's notes suggest that by the time Heidegger was writing the last four of the Notebooks, published in GA 102, he was writing in a calmer, simpler style than previously, observing that: "Instead, a surprising preoccupation with 'cybernetics', 'industrial society', and even the 'computer' emerges.
The penultimate entry of the notebooks, written in a handwriting that is difficult to decipher, defines 'thinking' as 'an inaudible conversation with the escaped gods'.
"[3] The notebooks contain content that can be read as[weasel words] antisemitic, which at the time of their release reignited the debate about Heidegger's Nazism and its relationship to his philosophical project.
have countered it by pointing to the sketchbook character of the Black Notebooks and the intention of the author for them to remain private and unpublished ruminations on the cultural and philosophical ideas received via time and place.
Others, such as Jesús Adrián Escudero, have cited an antisemitism that does not qualify as racial, social, interpersonal or political, but rather exists only in a certain use of received concepts and German philosophical commentary up to his time.
[6] The Notebook Anmerkungen II (1946) provides an example of Heidegger's remarks about anti-Semitism: "Prophecy" is the technique of defense against the skillful of history.
That the great prophets are Jews is a fact, the secret of which has not yet been thought.
(Note for donkey (Esel): the remark has nothing to do with "anti-Semitism".
This is so foolish and so reprehensible, as the bloody and above all bloodless proceeding of the Christianity against "the heathens".
The fact that the Christian also brands anti-Semitism as "unchristian belongs to the high education of the sophistication of its power technique)” GA 97:159.Heidegger, Martin (2014).
Vigiliae und Notturno ("Schwarze Hefte"1952/53 bis 1957).