In the turbulent 1930s, Martin Heidegger gave a lecture on “Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language.” Upon close inspection, this text expounds a form of covenantal thinking guided by the Puritan theme of an errand into the wilderness. The proffered analysis shows how Heidegger invokes a poetic conception of colony to reconfigure Germany’s self-image as a culture nation in search of a “new past.” What can be gleaned from this account is a central but neglected link between Heidegger’s thought and colonial discourse, in uneasy proximity to a special form of eschatological racism which divides humanity into spiritual classes marked by varying degrees of fitness for salvation.
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