Black Notebooks

The ''Black Notebooks'' () are a set of 34 notebooks written by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) between October 1931 and 1970. They were originally a set of small notebooks with black covers in which Heidegger jotted observations (sometimes called "sketches").

Heidegger called the Black Notebooks the “workshop notes” (“Werkstattaufzeichnungen”). One of Heidegger's assistants, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, said the Notebooks were kept on a table next to Heidegger's bed, and that Heidegger wrote in the notebooks at night before going to sleep.

Format and titles

The Black Notebooks are about 5 1/4 × inches, approximately in DIN format D5 (136 × 192 mm).

* Fifteen bear the title “Ponderings,” (Überlegungen);
* Nine are called “Annotations” (Anmerkungen);
* Two “Four Notebooks” (Vier Hefte);
* Two “Vigilae”;
* One “Notturno”;
* Two “Intimations” (Winke);
* Four are named “Provisional Remarks” (Vorläufiges) 

Two additional manuscripts have been mentioned in association with the Black Notebooks.  Those are “Megiston” and “Grundworte” (Zum Sagen der Grundworte - "''To speak plainly''").

Publication

Peter Trawny edited the manuscripts, and they were added to Heidegger's existing collected writings, Gesamtausgabe (GA), published by Vittorio Klostermann.

There are nine volumes published; from GA 94, 1931-1928 until the final volume GA 102, 1963–1970. There are 34 notebooks in this group and about 3384 published pages.

The first manuscript was published in 2014. 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).

In 2022 ''Vorläufiges'' I–IV Preliminarieswas published as GA 102; and according to Klostermann in the publishe
notes
(GA 102) this is the last of the ''Black Notebooks'', a total of 33 notebooks, published as nine volumes, of 3384 pages.

According to Trawny in 2015: “In addition, two further booklets with the titles "Megiston" and "Grundworte” asic wordswere found in the DLA Marbach archives. Whether and how they belong to the "Black Books" has yet to be clarified”. (GA 97, page 521). Heidegger himself mentions ''Grundworte'' in the text (GA 99, page 64); and Trawny (2019) says in a footnote at the bottom of the page, “publication nothing has been decided yet” (GA 99, page 64).

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'."

Controversy

The notebooks contain content criticized as antisemitic, which at the time of their release reignited the debate about Heidegger's Nazism and its relationship to his philosophical project. Critics of this claim 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.

In the Notebook ''Anmerkungen II'' (1946), Heidegger remarks:

Published volumes

Notes

References

External links

*
*Free Indexes: Ferrer, Daniel. Fidel. (2016). ''Heidegger Schwarze Hefte (1931-1948): An Index'' https://archive.org/details/HeideggerSchwarzeBlackNotebooksIndex Ferrer, D. F. (2016). ''Martin Heidegger Esoteric Writings: An Index'' https://archive.org/details/HeideggerEsotericIndex Ferrer, D.F (2017). ''Heidegger Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942-1948): An Index'' https://archive.org/details/HeideggerGA97Index Ferrer, D.F. (2016). ''Heidegger Überlegungen XII-XV (GA96): An Index.'' https://archive.org/details/HeideggerGA96Index

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20th century in philosophy
Books by Martin Heidegger
German non-fiction books