Papers by Benjamin Brewer
Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, 2025
This paper argues that the "atomic age" was a central concern of Heidegger's from 1945 to the lat... more This paper argues that the "atomic age" was a central concern of Heidegger's from 1945 to the late 1950s. It begins by presenting evidence that Heidegger may have been involved in the Kampf dem Atomtod movement, an anti-nuclear protest movement that gained wide public support in the German Federal Republic from 1957-58. The second part of the paper reexamines Heidegger's writings on nuclear energy and technology, which it argues were paradigmatic examples of technology's ontological structure that allowed him to make key distinctions between different modes of destruction and of futurelessness. In the final part of the paper, I argue that Heidegger's own response to the challenge of the atomic age for thinking is ambivalent and that this ambivalence points to fundamental difficulties for Heidegger's conception of thinking, ontological difference, and the essence of the human in this period.
Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 2023
This essay reconstructs Oskar Becker’s idiosyncratic conception of
aesthetics and its importance ... more This essay reconstructs Oskar Becker’s idiosyncratic conception of
aesthetics and its importance for phenomenology. For Becker, the
aesthetic is not simply one type of phenomenon among others;
rather, it occupies a privileged position as, first, that phenomenon
which is itself “wholly phenomenal,” and, second, that phenomenon
which discloses the ontological structure of phenomenality
itself (and is thus what he calls “hyperontological”). The paper first
reconstructs Becker’s descriptive phenomenology of the aesthetic
(which he restricts to the realm of masterpieces of fine art). For
Becker, the key characteristic for understanding the givenness of
beauty is its sense of fragility, which he uses to reveal a complicated
interweaving of temporality and modality at the heart of the aesthetic.
This essay then shows how this is rooted in Becker’s larger
ontological project of developing a phenomenology of the non-
historical in dialogue with Heidegger’s early work, a project which
began in 1927 with the publication of his magnum opus
Mathematical Existence.
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2022
Please note that due to a hiccup in the publishing process, the translator's introduction and the... more Please note that due to a hiccup in the publishing process, the translator's introduction and the translation itself were published under a single table of contents item titled "Translator's Introduction to 'Transcendence and Paratranscendence.'" What is provided here is the translator's introduction alone.
Symposium, 2022
This paper reconstructs Oskar Becker’s phenomenology of race, a project he called “paraontology.”... more This paper reconstructs Oskar Becker’s phenomenology of race, a project he called “paraontology.” For Becker, a fervent National Socialist, paraontology provided a phenomenological account of “nature”—a realm of ahistorical essences encompassing both the “super-historical” truths of mathematics and metaphysics and the “sub-historical” forces of “blood and soil.” The impetus for this reconstruction is the re-emergence of this term in contemporary Black studies, where it is used to problematize ontology’s usefulness for thinking black life. This paper asks what the possibility of such an iteration shows about Becker’s project and its investment in non-historical repetition, arguing it reveals a profound disavowal of the historical at the heart of Becker’s project rather than a phenomenological disclosure of the natural.
Cet article reconstruit la phénoménologie de la race d’Oskar Becker, un projet qu’il appela « parontologie ». Pour Becker, fervent national-socialiste, la parontologie fourni une phénoménologie de la « nature » : un domaine d’essences anhistoriques englobant à la fois les vérités « suprahistoriques » des mathématiques et de la métaphysique et les forces « subhistoriques » du sang et du sol. L’ essor de cette reconstruction s’anime par la réémergence du terme « paraontologie » dans les Black studies contemporaines, où il est utilisé pour problématiser l’utilité de l’ontologie pour tenir compte de la vie des Noirs. Cet article interroge ce que la possibilité d’une telle itération révèle du projet de Becker et de son investissement dans la répétition non historique, et conclut qu’elle prouve un profond désaveu de l’his- torique au cœur du projet de Becker plutôt qu’un dévoilement phénoménologique d’une racialité censée être subhistorique.
The Secret Law of Selfhood: Reading Heidegger’s Ipseity after Derrida’s Hospitality
Oxford Literary Review, 2020
Kabiri: The Official Journal of the North American Schelling Society, 2021
Good Enough Justice: Stanley Cavell and Walter Benjamin on the Moral Demands of Justice
Philosophy Today, 2020
This essay contends that Stanley Cavell’s criterion of “good enough justice,” which designates th... more This essay contends that Stanley Cavell’s criterion of “good enough justice,” which designates the minimal condition of social justice necessary for his perfectionist understanding of ethical selfhood, constitutes an avoidance—rather than an acknowledgment—of the problem of injustice. Taking Cavell’s misreading of Walter Benjamin as exemplary of this tendency, the essay shows how Cavell’s moral perfectionism consistently converts questions about the suffering of others into a problem of the self and its conscience, thereby avoiding the ethical claim at the heart of Benjamin’s project.
"Victory is an Illusion of Philosophers and Fools": Heidegger, Faulkner, and the Ruination of the Proper
Heidegger and the Literary World: Variations on Poetic Thinking, 2021
(Heidegger and the Literary World. Edited by Florian Grosser and Nassima Sahraoui, 141-55. London... more (Heidegger and the Literary World. Edited by Florian Grosser and Nassima Sahraoui, 141-55. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
This essay stages an encounter between Heidegger’s thinking of memory and destiny and William Faulkner’s haunting novel of historical memory, Absalom, Absalom!. Heidegger’s interest in remembrance (Andenken) emerges from his encounter with the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin, whose poetry, according to Heidegger, might teach the Germans how to discover their own destiny through a changed relation to the past. Remembrance opens up the possibility of encountering in the past something that might have been, and it is this unthought possibility that is to be appropriated as a destiny that would finally constitute the Germans properly as a people. Absalom, Absalom! presents the underside, equally parodic and tragic, of this schema of historical memory. As Thomas Sutpen and his descendants try to protect the purity and propriety of their dynastic future from racial contamination, they rob themselves of that destiny through the very gestures by which they attempt to save it. Faulkner’s novel thus pushes to its breaking point the logic of appropriation and destiny at the heart of Heidegger’s thinking of historical memory. It is not so much, then, Heidegger’s thinking that gives us the key to interpret Faulkner’s novels (as Sartre famously argued); rather, it is Faulkner’s work which poses a powerful challenge to Heidegger’s thinking.
Distracted Images: Ablenkung, Zerstreuung, Konstellation
Thinking in Constellations: Walter Benjamin in the Humanities, eds Nassima Sahraoui and Caroline Sauter, 2018
Reviews by Benjamin Brewer
An inheritance is never gathered together, it is never one with itself. Its presumed unity, if th... more An inheritance is never gathered together, it is never one with itself. Its presumed unity, if there is one, can consist only in the injunction to reaffirm by choosing … One always inherits from a secret -which says, "read me, will you ever be able to do so?" Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx ∵ One thing will be apparent to any reader of Ian Alexander Moore's Dialogue on the Threshold: this is a singularly impressive work of scholarship. It is the first book length examination of Heidegger's encounter with the poetry of Georg Trakl; it is the most lucid explication to date of Heidegger's texts on Trakl (which are notoriously dense, even by the standards of Heidegger's corpus);1 it is astonishingly well-researched, bringing a wealth of historical, archival, and philological research to bear upon its topic; and it does this all in an engaging, pedagogical prose that neither revels in obscurity nor shrinks back from complexity. The book, however, is not merely a work of erudition. As Moore clarifies in the introduction, it emerged from the flurry of conferences and publications around the publication of Jacques Derrida's Geschlecht III in 2018, and Moore himself carries on a kind of dialogue with Derrida throughout his discussion of Heidegger's dialogue with Trakl. I highlight this fact because it is a certain fidelity to the Derridean spirit of "taking on the tradition," as Michael Naas puts it, 1 Moore includes an endnote with citations from commentators in German, French, English, and Spanish remarking upon the complexities of Heidegger's reading (301fn2). David Farrell Krell, for instance, claims that "Language in the Poem" is "of an order of difficulty that is unmatched by any of Heidegger's other essays. Compared to it, 'Time and Being ' (1962) and the Beiträge (1936-38) are child's play.
Review of "Doing Justice: Three Essays on Walter Benjamin," by Pablo Oyarzún
The Oxford Literary Review Supplement, 2025
Review of Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity
Philosophy Today, 2020
Review of Jacques Derrida, _Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity_, trans. Rodrigo Therezo ... more Review of Jacques Derrida, _Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity_, trans. Rodrigo Therezo and Katie Chenowith, eds. Rodrigo Therezo, Katie Chenoweth, and Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2020).
Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, 2019
Translations by Benjamin Brewer
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2022
Please note that due to a hiccup in the publishing process, the translator's introduction and the... more Please note that due to a hiccup in the publishing process, the translator's introduction and the translation itself were published under a single table of contents item titled "Translator's Introduction to 'Transcendence and Paratranscendence.'"
Uploads
Papers by Benjamin Brewer
aesthetics and its importance for phenomenology. For Becker, the
aesthetic is not simply one type of phenomenon among others;
rather, it occupies a privileged position as, first, that phenomenon
which is itself “wholly phenomenal,” and, second, that phenomenon
which discloses the ontological structure of phenomenality
itself (and is thus what he calls “hyperontological”). The paper first
reconstructs Becker’s descriptive phenomenology of the aesthetic
(which he restricts to the realm of masterpieces of fine art). For
Becker, the key characteristic for understanding the givenness of
beauty is its sense of fragility, which he uses to reveal a complicated
interweaving of temporality and modality at the heart of the aesthetic.
This essay then shows how this is rooted in Becker’s larger
ontological project of developing a phenomenology of the non-
historical in dialogue with Heidegger’s early work, a project which
began in 1927 with the publication of his magnum opus
Mathematical Existence.
Cet article reconstruit la phénoménologie de la race d’Oskar Becker, un projet qu’il appela « parontologie ». Pour Becker, fervent national-socialiste, la parontologie fourni une phénoménologie de la « nature » : un domaine d’essences anhistoriques englobant à la fois les vérités « suprahistoriques » des mathématiques et de la métaphysique et les forces « subhistoriques » du sang et du sol. L’ essor de cette reconstruction s’anime par la réémergence du terme « paraontologie » dans les Black studies contemporaines, où il est utilisé pour problématiser l’utilité de l’ontologie pour tenir compte de la vie des Noirs. Cet article interroge ce que la possibilité d’une telle itération révèle du projet de Becker et de son investissement dans la répétition non historique, et conclut qu’elle prouve un profond désaveu de l’his- torique au cœur du projet de Becker plutôt qu’un dévoilement phénoménologique d’une racialité censée être subhistorique.
This essay stages an encounter between Heidegger’s thinking of memory and destiny and William Faulkner’s haunting novel of historical memory, Absalom, Absalom!. Heidegger’s interest in remembrance (Andenken) emerges from his encounter with the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin, whose poetry, according to Heidegger, might teach the Germans how to discover their own destiny through a changed relation to the past. Remembrance opens up the possibility of encountering in the past something that might have been, and it is this unthought possibility that is to be appropriated as a destiny that would finally constitute the Germans properly as a people. Absalom, Absalom! presents the underside, equally parodic and tragic, of this schema of historical memory. As Thomas Sutpen and his descendants try to protect the purity and propriety of their dynastic future from racial contamination, they rob themselves of that destiny through the very gestures by which they attempt to save it. Faulkner’s novel thus pushes to its breaking point the logic of appropriation and destiny at the heart of Heidegger’s thinking of historical memory. It is not so much, then, Heidegger’s thinking that gives us the key to interpret Faulkner’s novels (as Sartre famously argued); rather, it is Faulkner’s work which poses a powerful challenge to Heidegger’s thinking.
Reviews by Benjamin Brewer
Translations by Benjamin Brewer