Ditto Laurence's weary reminder that anyone on the list who thinks
seriously about Heidegger has struggled with this issue of Heidegger's
flirtation with National Socialism, and that the discussion about the issue
on the list has not proved very fruitful or satisfying. But I thought I
might take this opportunity to mention an essay in this connection which
has meant a lot to me: Hannah Arendt's "Heidegger at Eighty." She
suggests what I think are some useful ways of thinking about the
connections and disjunctions between H's life as a man and his life as a
thinker which were obviously hard won and, at least to me, don't smack of
rationalization on the one hand or polemic on the other. Some samples:
"The thinking I is ageless and it is the curse and blessing of thinkers, so
far as they exist only in thinking, that they become old without aging.
Also, the passion of thinking, like the other passions, seizes the person--
seizes those qualities of the individual of which the sum, when ordered by
the will amounts to what we commonly call character-- takes possession of
him and as it were annihilates his character which cannot hold its own
against this onslaught. The thinking "I" which "stands within" the raging
storm", as Heidegger says, and for which time literally stands still, is
not just ageless; it is also, although always specifically other, without
qualities. The thinking "I" is everything but self consciousness."
And then she ends the essay this way:
"With these few ( great thinkers) it does not finally matter where the
storms of their centurs masy have driven them. For the wind that blows
through Heidegger's thinking--like that which still sweeps toward us after
thousands of years from the work of Plato--does not spring from the century
he happens to live in. It comes from the primeval. and what it leaves
behind is something perfect, something which like everything perfect ( in
Rilke's words), falls back to where it came from."
Allen
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
seriously about Heidegger has struggled with this issue of Heidegger's
flirtation with National Socialism, and that the discussion about the issue
on the list has not proved very fruitful or satisfying. But I thought I
might take this opportunity to mention an essay in this connection which
has meant a lot to me: Hannah Arendt's "Heidegger at Eighty." She
suggests what I think are some useful ways of thinking about the
connections and disjunctions between H's life as a man and his life as a
thinker which were obviously hard won and, at least to me, don't smack of
rationalization on the one hand or polemic on the other. Some samples:
"The thinking I is ageless and it is the curse and blessing of thinkers, so
far as they exist only in thinking, that they become old without aging.
Also, the passion of thinking, like the other passions, seizes the person--
seizes those qualities of the individual of which the sum, when ordered by
the will amounts to what we commonly call character-- takes possession of
him and as it were annihilates his character which cannot hold its own
against this onslaught. The thinking "I" which "stands within" the raging
storm", as Heidegger says, and for which time literally stands still, is
not just ageless; it is also, although always specifically other, without
qualities. The thinking "I" is everything but self consciousness."
And then she ends the essay this way:
"With these few ( great thinkers) it does not finally matter where the
storms of their centurs masy have driven them. For the wind that blows
through Heidegger's thinking--like that which still sweeps toward us after
thousands of years from the work of Plato--does not spring from the century
he happens to live in. It comes from the primeval. and what it leaves
behind is something perfect, something which like everything perfect ( in
Rilke's words), falls back to where it came from."
Allen
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---