GRGR(5): Weissmann & Heidegger: being-towards-death

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote:

>  In 'Dog years' there is also a passage in which the dog is told that Hitler &
>  Heidegger "invented each other". Of course that's far too cheap. But to diss
>  Heidegger was popular in those days, like it still is today. At least among
>  the Non-Postmodernist minds [ :> ].

I don't diss, I leave that to the reckless swingers of the wrecking ball. It's sad
really, that young students are exposed to such dissing of  texts--of great
texts--the stories of our common humanity, but I've expressed my opinions on this
matter and I don't think anyone wants to here them again. All I can say, is I read
for myself , and I abhor the self serving strategies of some contemporary
"Hermeneutics," and more appalling and more dangerous are the "teachers" who tell
young students Plato was a "this" or Eliot was a "that," or those were the "dark
ages," so read Derrida and skip Plato, or worse still, read this article on Derrida
and Deconstruction.  But, in the land of the blind, the one eyed prophet is king.

> In 1964, Adorno published "Jargon der
>  Eigentlichkeit" against Heidegger. His worst book; today we can see clearly
>  that is was only meant to hide & cover the parallels in the deep of these two
>  brilliant theories.

At your suggestion (thank you) and the suggestions of others, I tried to read
Adorno again and gave up again. I'm sure others have experienced the same thing
with other authors. I'll try him again some day.

> What really interests me: Why do you think that Heidegger
>  was "so important to the war"? Never heard something like that. He wasn't
>  esteemated by the Nazis at all. Not even between 1933 and 1935, when he tried
>  to take part in their 'revolution' on the academic level. Intructive insights
>  (not only) into the relation of Heidegger & the NS you can find in Ruediger
>  Safranski's study "Ein Meister aus Deutschland. Heidegger und seine Zeit"
>  (1994). By now there must be a translation.
>                                                     Yours, Kai

The "war," the ongoing war. Consider Germany if you like and its ongoing war, as
Grass does--or History and America, as Pynchon does in his fiction. This is what I
have been talking about. It is Pynchon's theme. The mail is not working too well,
so perhaps you have not read my post on Pynchon, Doblin, Grass, and the ongoing
"war. "   In any event, even if we consider only WWII, as Grass has asked, “What do
we tell our children?” Moreover, how do we tell them? With stories, I think. Fifty
odd years is not a long time to absorb such a calamity for the West and indeed for
the world.  It seems to me that the current controversies surrounding Paul De Man,
and, more importantly here, Martin Heidegger reflect some sort of psychic economy
of reason in face of horrific evil, great losses and human suffering.  We might
consider, the pedagogical and academic implications of intellectuals attempting to
comprehend (as if it were some form of insanity or evil Enigma), how such men of
learning, who demonstrate such a profound and subtle appreciation for the art and
philosophy of the West, could have countenanced, indeed be complicit with, an evil
that seems to erode any possible explanation, justification, or contextualization.
And again, it seems to me that way to tell our children, the only way, is not
intellectual evasion, justification, technical, social or psychological
explanation, but to tell stories—as Pynchon does, as Cherrycoke does, “to keep the
children amus’d.” M&D.6

> Terrance