Yes, another post about myself. Remember, "to be, or to be believed to be, a Genus, you must adopt an objective viewpoint of the world...and a rather subjective viewpoint of yourself."
I am exceedingly naive. Especially when it comes to reading and understanding books--whether philosophy, literary theory, or pure fiction. I often love or hate a book, phrase, thought, or image without any knowledge whatsoever about the author. Sometimes this gets me into trouble.
For example: I am an unabashed fan of Martin Heidegger. I decided to bring in a comment about Heidegger and "Being" during a conversation (admittedly sophomoric) about sub-strains of generic existentialism in modern Christianity. I was consequently shunned from the rest of the conversation for sympathizing with a Nazi.
Please remember that I qualified the discussion as sophomoric, so you can't really give much credit to the crowd or the conversation that ensued, but it is an example of my common way of thinking. Another time, in a Graduate class on Shakespeare's Tragedies, while discussing the "Rape of Lucrece", I brought up something about the Neo-Platonic imagery in the poem and was immediately shot down, as that seems to be an observation that has been made about 30 trillion times in the great land of Academia.
Well, I don't care. I would prefer to be somewhat naive about the things I read (not knowing that Emerson was a Transcendentalist, Marquez and Rushdie Magical Realists, etc.) than know about it going into the story. I don't like carrying prejudices into my reading. If I do, I will judge the material based on what I know going in and not on its own merit. I guess this goes against more mainstream literary criticism, but even if I were to critique a work of literature or poem, I would rather not know the history. I don't want to know that Ginsberg was a homosexual before I read "Howl". Not because I will judge it more positively or negatively on that basis, but because I will begin to read things into it even in the first line. It is extremely difficult to break myself of knowledge if I do have it.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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4 comments:
Heidegger was only a member of the NSDAP for about a year. He was actually placed under Gestapo surveillance and eventually sent to do hard labor during the last year of the war. The only mention of National Socialism in his writings (and an obscure one at that) that I have come across is at the end of "An Introduction to Metaphysics." Many of his university lectures during the war, particularly the ones given in his courses on Nietzsche, are subversively hostile to the Nazi regime. I do not think that Heidegger was an anti-Semite, and neither did Hannah Arendt. Heidegger also had a profound influence on Jean-Paul Sartre, who was most decidedly anti-Nazi, and whose praise for Jewish members of the Resistance and support for the State of Israel is well known and documented. Ergo, being influenced by Heidegger does not make one a Nazi, anti-Semite, etc.
That being said, whatever literary or poetic value Heidegger's writings may have (and that is highly debatable), I have zero use for Heidegger as a philosopher. He was a deliberately abstruse obscurantist whose philosophy has as many interpretations as there are interpreters. Anyone who has patiently waded through the pages of "Being and Time" from cover to cover knows this. He was also (arguably) an atheist, and his philosophy explicitly excludes the identification of "God" with "Being." The impact this proposition had on twentieth-century Christian theology cannot be overestimated, however, the fact that it leaves one in the uncomfortable position of denying being to God for the sake of consistency makes it somewhat of a dead end for theists, I would think.
Heidegger was also working within a philosophical tradition that still accepted Kant as the last word on epistemology, and much of Heidegger's philosophy is a tortuous attempt to overcome the problems generated by Kant's peculiar view of the subject-object distinction, which in turn harks back to Platonism. Despite his study of Aristotle, Heidegger apparently missed one of Aristotle's most important contributions to epistemology, namely, that the mode of being of the knower is not the same as the mode of being of the known. Aristotle's insight into this psychological fact made possible the grand realist systems of the Christian philosopher-theologians, and paved the way for the Scientific Revolution. Had Heidegger realized the profundity of Aristotle's insights in the "De Anima," much of his work on Being would probably never have been written.
Drew,
I could care less whether Heidegger was a Nazi or not in terms of literary/philosophical value. Of course he is a miserable philosopher. He makes little to no sense and goes on and on in repetitive fashion with no real finality. But his stuff is so much fun to read. I am a fan of his like I am a fan of the Chicago Fire--they are mediocre at best, but a lot of fun to watch.
My only point was that I hate the fact that in order to discuss the literary/philosophical value of some work with most people, you have to address the person themselves (like, was Plato a boy-lover). That is what I find idiotic.
Ironically, the conversation I had was over at your mom's house for that Christmas party one time. I totally was not involved in the conversation after the Heidegger-Nazi connection was made.
An understandable frustration. But.
You make it sound like one can avoid prejudice - like utter naivete is possible, whereas actually there are only different kinds of naivete, some of which we are all guilty of, at different times in life.
Plus: what about your subsequent reads of any text? Initial reads have a peculiar charm, and second and third reads have their own pleasures.
Indeed, second and third reads are just as pleasurable, if not more so than the first. I suppose I was a little overzealous in ascribing to the ideal reading the necessity of Tabula Rasa, but there is some sense in which the first reading of a text ought to be clear-minded and open. Subsequent readings may involve more external engagement, but the first ought to be rather uninformed.
Naturally, I was speaking more of the responses I got to my lack of knowledge--If I had known that some people associate Heidegger with National Socialism (right or wrong), I probably would still have brought him up in that conversation. Even had I known of the dead-horse approach to Shakepearean Neo-Platonism, I would still have brought it up, just because it is a fun topic to discuss and should not be entirely disregarded.
Those two examples aside, I can see where there is a difference between utter naivete and critical distance. The one assumes a lack of knowledge and the other a simultaneous engagement and suspension of knowledge.
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