From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: heidegger and race
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 11:13:29 -0000


Allen,

Thanks for your thoughts on the third Hoelderlin course. I think this is one
of Heidegger's finest courses - but that should not be taken as its blind
acceptance.

I think it needs to be read in conjunction with the first course on the
Germania and Rhine Hymns (GA39). In that course, H begins by talking of the
German homeland, and then makes the transition to the Rhine by drawing on
line four of the Germania hymn - 'waters of my homeland'. H suggests all of
Hoelderlin's river hymns have an intimate relation with the Germania hymn
(GA39, 90-1). Reading this, it is perhaps inevitable that the later work on
the Ister falls into this larger general project. This would perhaps
contextualise your problem.

I wrote a review of the Ister Hymn for Radical Philosophy, No 86 "The Shadow
of Indirect Light", a piece entitled "Heidegger's Hoelderlin and the
Importance of Place", forthcoming in the Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology, and "Rethinking the Polis: Implications of Heidegger's
Questioning the Political", which I have just sent to Political Geography. I
don't feel I have exhausted the possibilities of this text just yet.

It would be interesting to hear more about Henk's opinion of H's "brilliant
analysis of Sophocles's Antigone". To my mind this is political through and
through, and a distancing from his earlier attitude (as well as being a
critique of Schmitt).

Best wishes

Stuart



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