From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 18:38:27 EST
Subject: heidegger  Private Lives.



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Private  (Nazi ) Lives.

Some 'thots' a la Ken.
 
Yeah,  it is important to know all you can about the private lives of 
writers, well, not just writers, but also artists, philosophers,  composers 
and (importantly)  prestigidators,  and all creative people. It gives you 
insights into their work. You can probably think of many examples in your own 
reading, whereby some point in the narrative, or some philosophical musing by 
one of the protagonists in the story is suddenly made ice-clear by your 
knowledge and linkage to some biographical material about the author. They 
all bring to their mature work something of their upbringing, their formative 
education, their love lives etc. Whole books have been devoted to such 
subjects. You can read all about the influences and the processes of the mind 
in the act of literary creation, that affected James Joyce, for example, when 
he was creating 'The Dubliners.' Others have written reams on such things as, 
the influence of opium on the works of Coleridge,  and Richard Jeffries' 
rectal piles. Anything, which shines a beam of light onto the cognitive 
interspersals that lurk in the dark corners of a writer's/philosopher's  mind 
is of value. 

Heidegger  would have been fairly young in the thirties,  when he was first 
exposed to Hitler's ideas I mean - the world was in a mess. Any thinking 
person in the thirties could see the real nature of Soviet Communism. Then 
there was the obscenity of the Spanish Civil War with the sharp social 
dichotomy of Fascism and its Vatican backers, against the legally elected 
republican government  and its Socialist backers etc. I suppose that young 
Heidegger, with his dreams of futuristic chromium-plated /rustic timberesque 
(Greek model)  of civilisation of organised conservatism etc, would be drawn 
to Hitler's doctrine with its promise of political clarity and action and 
heightened judgemental effectiveness? 

History continually throws up intriguing souls who seek to look the real 
world in the face - to wrestle with its inner mechanisms. Heidegger for all 
his faults was such a person. Ever since the beginnings of human history 
those with boldness, guile and imagination have chosen to construe life's 
mysteries according to their own fashion or fantasies. A little knowledge of 
temporal natural processes - together with the ability to commingle the 
various commonalties of learning,  together with a ruthless ability to use 
other  people, (Husserl - Arendt) empowers those individuals with impressive 
strength over their more credulous fellows. They are often priests, but 
occasionally a secular/pragmatic/scheming joker such as Heidegger slithers 
from the pack. Such a top banana was our friend from Freiburg, and such a 
pack was his book:  'Being and Time,'.which was cheekily  and youthfully 
written without a clue as to the real meaning of BE.   A distinctive aspect 
of these polemical prestidigitators like Heidegger is their singular artistry 
to tell us things we already know,  and to cater for appetites sqawking like 
the yellow-open beaks of  insistant fledglings for metaphysical worms  - 
Heidegger's secret was  to recast them in such a squiggling and wriggling 
novel fashion,  and  in such an engaging annelidic form, that they appeared 
to be fresh and new munchy  nematodal  treats. The introduction of new 
paroles or the recasting of old ones with altered meanings is a feature of 
these casuistic entertainers.   Nevertheless, Heidegger did have moments of 
brilliance. 

Could it be that it would be worth putting up with the stench of his 
self-polluted literary cage for the moments of brilliance when his broken 
dirty Nazi fingernails prise loose the odd glittering diamond of perception 
from the impacted droppings of ideological excreta that befouls the cage 
floor? 

But then I admit - I'm only having fun with words. My world view is not to 
have a world view. I am a cynic content with analysisg the talk of others  
and pointing out its contradictions.    I don't hold with enclosed 
philosophic systems at all.        You can keep mouldy old atheism, tattered 
anarchism, hypocritical religion, bestial druidism, evil communism, 
self-seeking republicanism and corrupt  liberalism and stick them all where 
Paddy stuck his ninepence as far as I'm  concerned. 
Like Popeye, I am what I am what I am, and I suppose that I am, if I am 
anything, an exponent of  the Huxlian approach of  'amused cynicism.' Yes, 
that is what I am - an amused disparager of hypocrisy , a disporting 
detractor, a piss-taker of ideas, a laughing iconoclast, a tittering 
traducer, a cachinnating cynic. As a young man I was exposed a lot to the 
writings of George Meredith and studied his essay: "On the Idea of Comedy and 
the Uses of the Comic Spirit"  (1877.) The work is a celebration of the 
civilising power of the comic spirit. The mind, he affirms,directs the 
laughter of comedy, and civilisation is founded on common sense, which equips 
one to hear the comic spirit when it laughs folly out.

With my hand on my heart I can truthfully say that in the whole of my long  
life - in the whole of my extended experience.  I have never, ever,  been 
exposed to a more 'follysome' spirit than that of Martin Heidegger - 
chiseller and con-man  supreme.  Gentlemen,  let us raise out glasses to the 
greatest  illusionist in history  - to the immortal  memory of Martin 
Houdini/ Heidegger, who in spite of his grammatical illiteracy (or BECAUSE of 
his grammatical illiteracy) managed to hoodwink millions of otherwise 
intelligent  decent folk.


Jud Evans.



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