At the Existentialist Café (58 page)

Chapter 8: Devastation

1
    Nomads: Spender, [etc], ‘Rhineland Journal’,
New Selected Journals
, 34 (July 1945) (ori-ginally published in
Horizon
, Dec. 1945). On German devastation, also see Victor Sebestyén,
1946: the making of the modern world
(London: Macmillan, 2014), especially 38 for homelessness figures.

2
    Well over twelve million ethnic Germans: around 12.5 to 13.5 million Germans were expelled from or intimidated into leaving other European countries: see Werner Sollors,
The Temptation of Despair: tales of the 1940s
(Cambridge, MA & London: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2014), 119; for Europe generally, see Keith Lowe,
Savage Continent: Europe in the aftermath of World War II
(London: Viking, 2012).

3
    Lost eyes and ‘a delicate smile’: Petzet,
Encounters and Dialogues
, 193–5, this 194, translating Max Kommerell’s account of visit in 1941. See same source, 45, on Heidegger’s feeling misunderstood generally.

4
    Fritz Heidegger: Safranski,
Martin Heidegger
, 8. Bietingen: Ott,
Heidegger
, 371.

5
    Cave: Heidegger,
Letters to his Wife
, 188 (Martin to Elfride Heidegger, 15 April 1945).

6
    Wildenstein:
for this whole episode, see Ott,
Heidegger
, 302–5. For works on Hölderlin, see Heidegger,
Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry
.

7
    ‘As we were marching’ and following quotes: Heidegger, ‘Evening Conversation: in a prisoner of war camp in Russia, between a younger and an older man’, in
Country Path Conversations
, 132–60, this 132–3.

8
    
Verwüstung
and
Wüste
: ibid., 136.

9
    ‘Everything remains overseeable’: ibid., 138–9.

10
  Wait: ibid., 140.

11
  Manuscript pick-up drive: this whole account is from Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 87–90, with Towarnicki’s transcription and translation of the Sophocles chorus, 91–4.

12
  Breakdown: Safranski,
Martin Heidegger
, 351. For dates, see Heidegger,
Letters to his Wife
, 191 (first letter dated 17 Feb. 1946). He had visitors, including his former teacher Conrad Gröber, who found him in a withdrawn state, and Towarnicki (Towarnicki,
À la rencontre de Heidegger
, 197n.) He was looked after by the psychiatrist Viktor Emil Freiherr von Gebsattel and others.

13
  Sons: Heidegger,
Letters to his Wife
, 194 (Martin to Elfride Heidegger, 15 March 1946; see also ed.’s note by Gertrude Heidegger, 191). For Jörg still being away in 1949, see Heidegger & Jaspers,
The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence
, 165 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 5 July 1949).

14
  ‘His living conditions’: Schimanski, ‘Foreword’, in Heidegger,
Existence and Being
, 2nd edn (London: Vision, 1956), 9–11.

15
  Challenging and storing: Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
, 3–35, this 12–15.

16
  ‘Places the seed’: ibid., 15.

17
  ‘Everything is ordered’, and
deinos
: ibid., 16–17.

18
  Losing ability to stand as object: ibid., 17.

19
  ‘In the midst of objectlessness’: ibid., 27.

20
  ‘Human resources’: ibid., 18.

21
  ‘But where danger is’: ibid., 28. He is quoting Hölderlin’s hymn ‘Patmos’: ‘Wo aber Gafahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.’ For the full poem, see Friedrich Hölderlin,
Selected Poems and Fragments
, tr. M. Hamburger, ed. J. Adler (London: Penguin, 1998), 230–31.

22
  ‘Belongingness’: Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
, 3–35, this 32.

23
  Heisenberg: Petzet,
Encounters and Dialogues
, 75.

24
  ‘What seems easier’ and ‘rest upon itself’: Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in
Poetry, Language, Thought
, 15–88, this 31. This work was drafted in 1935 and 1937, and published in 1950 in his collection
Holzwege
.

25
  ‘Poetically, man dwells’: Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, in
Basic Writings
, 213–65, this 260. The lines come from a late poem by Hölderlin, ‘In lovely blue’ (‘In lieblicher Blaue’), in
Hymns and Fragments
, tr. R. Sieburth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 248–53.

26
  ‘Clearing’: Heidegger,
Introduction to Metaphysics
, 219.

27
  ‘A way for the cosmos’:
Cosmos
(written by C. Sagan, A. Druyan & S. Soter, first broadcast on PBS, 1980), episode 1: ‘The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean’.

28
  ‘The landscape thinks itself in me’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’, in
Sense and Non-Sense
, 9–25, this 17.

29
  Heidegger’s anti-humanism and its later influence: see, among others, R. Wolin, ‘National Socialism, World Jewry, and the History of Being: Heidegger’s Black Notebooks’,
Jewish Review of Books
(6 January 2014); Rockmore,
Heidegger and French Philosophy
; Karsten Harries, ‘The Antinomy of Being: Heidegger’s critique of humanism’, in Crowell (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism
, 178–98; Mikel Dufrenne,
Pour l’homme
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968); and L. Ferry & A. Renaut,
French Philosophy of the Sixties
, tr. M. H. S. Cartani (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990).

30
  Shoes: Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in
Poetry, Language, Thought
, 15–88, this 33–4.

31
  Whose shoes: Meyer Schapiro, ‘The Still Life as a Personal Object: a note on Heidegger and Van Gogh’ (1968), and ‘Further Notes on Heidegger and Van Gogh’ (1994) in his
Theory and Philosophy of Art
(New York: G. Braziller, 1994), 135–42, 143–51. See esp. 136–8, on the shoes being Van Gogh’s own, and 145, citing fellow student François Gauzi’s account of Van Gogh buying old shoes at a Paris flea market — ‘the shoes of a carter but clean and freshly polished. They were fancy shoes. He put them on, one rainy afternoon, and went out for a walk along the fortifications. Spotted with mud, they became interesting.’ Schapiro also cites Heidegger’s own marginal note of uncertainty on a 1960 edn of his own essay (150). For more, see Lesley Chamberlain,
A Shoe Story: Van Gogh, the philosophers and the West
(Chelmsford: Harbour, 2014), esp. 102–28.

32
  ‘Standing there’: Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in
Poetry, Language, Thought
, 15–88, this 42. For more on architecture, see Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, ibid., 145–61; and Adam Sharr,
Heidegger for Architects
(New York: Routledge, 2007).

33
  ‘A
different thinking
’: Jaspers,
Philosophy of Existence
, 12.

34
  ‘House of Being’: Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, in
Basic Writings
, 213–65, this 259, 262.

35
  ‘Came onto the way of thinking’: Gadamer,
Philosophical Apprenticeships
, 156.

36
  ‘Babbling’ and ‘Nobody is likely’: Arendt & Jaspers,
Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence
, 142 (Arendt to Jaspers, 29 Sept. 1949).

37
  ‘Is this really the way?’: Herbert Marcuse and Martin Heidegger, ‘An Exchange of Letters’, in Wolin (ed.),
The Heidegger Controversy
, 152–64, this 161 (Marcuse to Heidegger, 28 Aug. 1947, tr. Wolin). See also Wolin,
Heidegger’s Children
, 134–72.

38
  ‘To former students’, ‘your letter’, and ‘in the most loathsome way’: ibid., 163 (Heidegger to Marcuse, 20 Jan. 1948, tr. Wolin).

39
  ‘Dismissed from the duty’ and ‘commandment’: Jacques Derrida, ‘Heidegger’s Silence: excerpts from a talk given on 5 February 1988’, in Neske & Kettering (eds),
Martin Heidegger and National Socialism
, 145–8, this 147–8.

40
  Holocaust compared to expulsion of Germans: Herbert Marcuse and Martin Heidegger, ‘An Exchange of Letters’, in Wolin (ed.),
The Heidegger Controversy
, 152–64, this 163 (Heidegger to Marcuse, 20 Jan. 1948, tr. Wolin).

41
  ‘Outside of the dimension’: ibid., 164 (Marcuse to Heidegger, 12 May 1948, tr. Wolin).

42
  Jasperses’ names on list: Mark W. Clark,
Beyond Catastrophe: German intellectuals and cultural renewal after World War II, 1945–1955
(Lanham, MD & Oxford: Lexington, 2006), 52.

43
  Jaspers to Switzerland: ibid., 72.

44
  ‘Heidegger’s mode of thinking’: Ott,
Heidegger
, 32, quoting Jaspers’ report on Heidegger, 22 Dec. 1945.

45
  ‘How am I guilty?’: Jaspers,
The Question of German Guilt
, 63.

46
  ‘If it happens’: ibid., 71.

47
  Relearning communication: ibid., 19.

48
  Language a bridge: Heidegger & Jaspers,
The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence
, 169 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 6 Aug. 1949). The texts sent
probably included Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’, which contains the phrase ‘the house of Being’.

49
  ‘Advent’ or appropriation (
Ereignis
): Heidegger & Jaspers,
The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence
, 190 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 8 April 1950).
Ereignis
was one of Heidegger’s pet notions of this period. See e.g. Heidegger,
Introduction to Metaphysics
, 5–6; Heidegger,
Contributions to Philosophy
(
From Enowning
) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

50
  ‘Pure dreaming’: Heidegger & Jaspers,
The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence
, 197 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 24 July 1952).

51
  ‘Dreaming boy’: ibid., 186 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 19 March 1950).

52
  ‘When discussion begins’: Petzet,
Encounters and Dialogues
, 65–6, citing Stroomann’s
Aus meinem roten Notizbuch
. Stroomann, who remained a friend of Heidegger, later specialised in ‘manager sickness’. See Josef Müller-Marein, ‘Der Arzt von Bühlerhöhe’,
Die Zeit
(18 April 1957).

53
  ‘Ovation like a storm’: Petzet,
Encounters and Dialogues
, 75.

54
  ‘I quickly learned’: Calvin O. Schrag, ‘Karl Jaspers on His Own Philosophy’, in his
Doing Philosophy with Others
(West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2010), 13–16, this 14.

55
  It just happened that way: see Arendt & Jaspers,
Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence
, 630 (Jaspers to Arendt, 9 March 1966).

56
  Train time: Ott,
Heidegger
, 26–7.

57
  Jaspers’ seventieth birthday: Heidegger & Jaspers,
The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence
, 199 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 19 Feb. 1953).

58
  ‘I would have taken hold’: ibid., 200 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 3 April 1953).

59
  ‘Enchanted in a snowstorm’: ibid., 202 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 22 Sept. 1959).

60
  Levinas in the camp: Lescourret,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 120; Malka,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 67, and 262 for the taunts (citing conversation with Levinas’ son Michael).

61
  Camp and hiding: Malka,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 238–9.

62
  Levinas’ family in Kaunas: Lescourret,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 126–7; Malka,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 80.

63
  Levinas’ reading: Malka,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 70–71; Lescourret,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 120–23.

64
  Notebooks: Levinas, ‘Preface’, in his
Existence and Existents
, xxvii; Lescourret,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 127; Colin Davis,
Levinas, an Introduction
(Cambridge: Polity, 1996), 17.

65
  Horror of ontological difference: Levinas,
Existence and Existents
, 1.

66
  ‘Are also governed’: ibid., 4.

67
  Dog: Levinas, ‘The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights’, in his
Difficult Freedom: essays in Judaism
, tr. S. Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 152–3.

68
  Buber: Martin Buber,
I and Thou
, tr. R. G. Smith, 2nd edn (London & NY: Continuum, 2004), 15.

69
  Face: Levinas,
Existence and Existents
, 97–9. Also see his first main discussion of the face, in the 1946–7 lectures ‘Time and the Other’, in Levinas,
Time and the Other, and Additional Essays
, tr. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 39–94. It was never clear whether Levinas believed the face must be human, despite the dog story. When interviewers quizzed him about this, he sounded cross: ‘I don’t know if the snake has a face. I can’t answer that question.’ Peter Atterton & Matthew Calarco (eds),
Animal Philosophy
(London & New York: Continuum, 2004), 49, citing ‘The Paradox of Morality: an interview with Emmanuel Levinas’ (by T. Wright, P. Hughes, A. Ainley), in Robert Bernasconi & David Wood (eds),
The Provocation of Levinas
(London: Routledge, 1988), 168–80, this 171.

70
  ‘He doesn’t practise Grandpa’s philosophy!’: Malka,
Emmanuel Levinas
, 240.