Arendt and Heidegger, the postwar 'friendship"

[Mark Kohut]

That is not my understanding. I.E. the 'break'. 

And why are we talking about Heidegger and Arendt again? 
O, this is the plist. 

Dear Herr Professor Doctor Heidegger, 
"Where exactly were we standing when we 'fell into Being?'" ---Herzog

My question of Heidgger is almost Nietzschean: if all philosophy starts in autobiography, how did
the choices of his life affect---infect, he puns slantingly---his thinking?

Was his master race nationalism inextricably bound--philosophers sorta love intellectual coherence--- with all those ideas which make him a 'great philosopher" as Arendt and others believe. Therefore? 










----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2013 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: Arendt and Heidegger, the postwar 'friendship"

Didn't hear the one about the sock tucker, the cork soaker and the coke sacker. Do I want to?
I do have a note to blow and nut to blitherate. This is it. Far as I can tell Heidegger didn't really let his fascist fire glow in the dark but he did  endorse and join the Nazis and that is where the break with Arendt came.  Assent is all that is required from most people to start an imperial reign of terror by the truly committed creeps. But even if he failed to see what was coming, he never appears to have fully reckoned with the effects of his co-operaton.  

The strain in Heidegger's thinking that seems most dangerous to me was something very common to his time. It is the idea of race , of some essential unique identity of a "people" which was becoming synonymous with nation. This identity generally turns out to be the master race, the chosen ones, the exceptional nation, the smartest kids in the room, the true faith, the royal rulers of land and sea. Purity ain't easy; there is all that cleaning to do: ethnic cleansing,  political bloodbaths, lapel pins on crisp blue suits, orwellian linguistics, regular checkups on your whereabouts and associations,  passport complications, private interviews with the secret police, stress release in the form of fantasy violence, etc. etc. Thank God and George and Obama it can't happen here.



On Dec 4, 2013, at 10:36 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Guys, guys, ain't you heard of compromisation?  Remember the one about the sock tucker, the cork soaker and the coke sacker?
> 
> I gather, as one might gather nuts in May (here we go blithering nuts in May...) that this Heidegger dude was a philosopher of some repute and may have had some fairly interesting things to say (which is possible, I guess) and that that Hannah Arendt (yes she are...) made some philosophical hay out of the postwar coming to grips with the Holocaust (insofar as there can be any coming to grips with such monstrosity)
> 
> So that Mark's speculation on their relations is the sort of shocking addendum that may have given Kai the same sort of jolt as I got reading (lo these many years ago) Abbie Hofmann's _Revolution for the Hell of it_ wherein he recounts encountering a liberal priest at an antiwar rally or someplace and telling him, "go fuck a nun"
> 
> A comment like that is made for pure outrageousness and was in keeping with Abbie's public image but Mark's comments usually run to more thoughtful territory...
> 
> Yes I guess it is in keeping with a theme of FATF (female attraction to fascists) but Heidegger wasn't so much an operative a la Brock Vond or Windust or Deuce (not deuce Bigelow, he wasn't at all fascist), rather...
> - a-and I think this is a point Kai has been sharpening - his writings were co-opted (not without a degree of consent) as apologia for the odious deeds.
> 
> Anyway one might be taken aback by the conjuring of specific carnality in the case of these widely-considered-August personages, but as somebody said in GR, "he came out of a quim just like you"
> 
> Ayn Rand probably would've jumped his bones as well...
> 

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