Tuesday, November 5, 2024

to a literary scholar who felt stalked



Today, Americans are avoiding what Weimar couldn't prevent, I pray. 

No, praying won't exorcise preyers. We teach. That was Heidegger's "politics," i.e., his extending the emancipatory interest of Being and Time by exempli-
fying
critical phenomenology through ways of therapeutic thinking. (Don't mistake critical mirroring for Self expression.)

I thought of you again when recently I read (re-read, I forget) Heidegger's 1949 "Introduction" to "What Is Metaphysics?" He writes that separating one’s sense of being from becoming is invalid. It’s symptomatic of the metaphysicalism which he variably deconstructs in terms of others’ phenomenality.

A feature of metaphysicalist “thinking” is that it destines itself, whereas authentic openness loves to see chances for re-thinking.

Therefore, Heidegger may have let others’ stubborn attachments (and academic vanity) have its way (groupthink)—there being schadenfreude, fer sure—while he continued his own precursory appeal for ones to come.