Tenou’a is fortunate to publish this powerful conversation between the authors of L’Adversaire privilégié, Raphael Zagury-Orly and Joseph Cohen, and our precious editor-in-chief, Antoine Strobel-Dahan. Their new book will undoubtedly mark history.

There has already been much written about philosopher Martin Heidegger. He has been the subject of much (heated) debate: we declare his work should no longer be studied—and then declare it must be; we remind ourselves that he was a card-carrying member of the Nazi party; we do what Zemmour did with Pétain by explaining that he was actually trying to help the Jews, dear; we like to profess that his most prestigious students were Jews (including a list of unforgettable names), along with his secret lover.

But by getting bogged down in these pseudo-arguments, we forget to return to the texts and conduct a meticulous analysis of his work. In doing so, Cohen and Zagury-Orly accomplish a thing of unprecedented depth and clarity: they argue that anti-Semitism is not a forceful enough term to describe Martin Heidegger’s relationship to Jews. Instead, we must turn to the word “foreclosure”.