Ponderings XII–XV: Black Notebooks 1939–1941

238 Pages·2017·1.69 MB·English

by  Martin Heidegger

Ponderings XII–XV
Studies in Continental Thought
EDITOR
JOHN SALLIS
CONSULTING EDITORS
Robert Bernasconi James Risser
John D. Caputo Dennis J. Schmidt
David Carr Calvin O. Schrag
Edward S. Casey Charles E. Scott
David Farrell Krell Daniela Vallega-Neu
Lenore Langsdorf David Wood
Martin Heidegger
Ponderings XII–XV
Black Notebooks 1939–1941
Translated by
Richard Rojcewicz
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Published in German as Martin Heidegger Gesamtausgabe 96:
Überlegungen XII–XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939–1941), edited by Peter Trawny
© 2014 by Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
English translation © 2017 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
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system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The Association of American University Presses’
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976, author.
Title: Ponderings : Black notebooks / Martin Heidegger ;
translated by Richard Rojcewicz.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2016– |
Series: Studies in Continental thought | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035416| ISBN 9780253020673 (vol 1
cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253020741 (vol 1 ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976—Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
Classification: LCC B3279.H48 S36213 2016 | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015035416
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
CONTENTS
Translator’s Introduction vii
Ponderings XII 1
Ponderings XIII 59
Ponderings XIV 131
Ponderings XV 197
Editor’s Afterword 221

Translator’s Introduction
This is a translation of volume 96 of Martin Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe
(“Complete Works”). The German original appeared posthumously
in 2014.
The volume is the third in the series publishing Heidegger’s “Black
Notebooks.” These are small (ca. 5 × 7 in.) notebooks with black cov-
ers to which the thinker confided sundry ideas and observations over
the course of more than forty years, from the early 1930s to the early
1970s. The notebooks are being published in chronological order, and
the four herein correspond to the years 1939–1941. In all, thirty-three
of the thirty-four black notebooks are extant and will fill up nine vol-
umes of the Gesamtausgabe.
Heidegger gave a title to each of the notebooks and referred to them
collectively as the “black notebooks.” The first fifteen are all “Pon-
derings.” Their publication began in volume 94 with “Ponderings II”
(“Ponderings I” is the lost notebook). Volume 95 included the second
five “Ponderings,” VII–XI. The present volume with its four notebooks
concludes the publication of the extant “Ponderings.”
As can be imagined regarding any notes to self, these journal en-
tries often lack polished diction and at times are even cryptic. Never-
theless, the style and vocabulary are mostly formal, not to say stilted,
and are seldom colloquial. This translation is meant to convey to an
English-speaking audience the same effect the original would have
on a German one, the degree of formality varying pari passu with
Heidegger’s own. A prominent peculiarity of the style I was unable
to render in full, however, is the extensive use of dashes. Heidegger
often employs dashes not merely for parenthetical remarks but for any
change in the direction of thought. Sometimes dashes separate sub-
jects and predicates, and some dashes even occur at the end of para-
graphs. Due to differences in English and German syntax, I could not
include all the dashes without making for needless confusion and
could not place them all at the exact points that would correspond to
the original sentence. This admission is of course not meant to imply
I did capture the varied styles of the notebooks in all other respects.
The pagination of the notebooks themselves is reproduced here
in the outer margins. All of Heidegger’s cross-references are to these
marginal numbers. The running heads indicate the pagination of the
Gesamtausgabe edition. I have inserted myself into the text only to alert
the reader to the original German where I thought it might be helpful
viii Translator’s Introduction
(for example, as indicating a play on words I could not carry over into
English) and to translate any Latin or Greek expressions Heidegger
leaves untranslated. I have used brackets ([]) for these interpolations
and have reserved braces ({}) for insertions by the editor. All the foot-
notes in the book stem either from me, and these few are marked as
such, or from the editor and are then placed within braces.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for a critique of an earlier
version of this translation.
Richard Rojcewicz
Ponderings XII–XV