AFTER THE SHOAH // 89

to that of the self-sacrificing poet that Heidegger had found in Hölderlin alone.²¹

For the thinker, prophetic speech is a “technique,” an “instrument of the will to power.” Moreover, it hides an unthought “secret.” What does he want to signify by this? Through their “‘prophecy,’” have the Jews successfully “co-organized” “in the last 12 years” the downfall of the Germans? Again we brush up against this pronouncement. Can a philosopher insinuate something like this? Does this not give the impression that the thinker has strayed into occultism, one for which all words fail us? Or must we indeed diagnose an anti-Semitic paranoia?

What Heidegger means in regard to the “secret” of the Jewish prophets he does not take to be anti-Semitism. The rationale for this assuagement is in any case not very convincing. Anti-Semitism is compared to the relationship of Christians to the “‘heathens.’” That Christians took action against non-Christians would be just as stupid as anti-Semitism. To condemn anti-Semitism in this Christian way would belong to the “power technique” of the Christians. What is so foolish and so reprehensible in anti-Semitism itself is not at all expressed—rather, Heidegger uses it only as a foil for the sake of denouncing the foolishness and reprehensibility of Christendom. Additionally, he appears to hold “above all, the unbloody actions” to be especially questionable, i.e.. probably the theological condemnation of non-Christians by Christians. Anti-Semitism for Heidegger is not “so foolish and so reprehensible” because it is located within acts of the “will to power.” Rather he finds it foolish and reprehensible because, unlike philosophy, it is not able to see through these acts.

As little as Heidegger can disperse the suspicion of anti-Semitism, so much do we have cause to say that he directly founded a further type of it. For him, Judaism and Christianity