In-der-Blog-sein

mAggotty sTew from the bottom of a vOid, the blog, has been reading Gunter Grass's Dog Years:

I've nearly finished Dog Years after just two or three days. It's fantastic. But I am a bit perplexed about his treatment of Heidegger. I find the re-renditions of Heidegger's language quite amusing (rat-being, rattiness, dog-transcendence, &c. There are hundreds of little Heideggerian neologisms here), but they hardly constitute serious criticisms of Heidegger - plenty of literate illiterates, to borrow a phrase out of Grass, will go on reading books that are beyond them without ever realizing how completely they have missed the point. However, when Matern goes about with a list of names and revenge in his heart (the scene with the confessor is my favorite of these, so far), one of the people he seeks out is the same philosopher, whom he had taken to misquoting (and misunderstanding) during the dog years. He and his friends eventually use the language that they have thus invented to disguise to themselves the nature of the pile of bones on the other side of a barbed-wire fence.

Naturally, the philosopher is at his famously favorite hobby - skiing. Matern, grinding his teeth, seeks him everywhere, and finally settles for simply taking "Stockingcap's" iron gate off of its hinges and throwing it into the garden. Amidst a string of provocations aimed at the windows of Heidegger's cute little house is an accusation in the form of a question: with what rope did you strangle Husserl. Husserl is mentioned elsewhere, too, in the context of having been betrayed. He himself, apparently, felt that his student, then a rising star, had taken his thought in the wrong direction, misused it.

So, I’ll be reading more Husserl, more Heidegger. I’ll probably never understand this stuff at all, but it’s good exercise.

That's what I tell the critters about some of the stuff their teachers makes them learn.

You may gather from these comments that I suspect Grass of having taken sides in the Heidegger-Husserl argument for political-historical reasons. Well, I’m a pessimist. And all I have here is a book of fiction and a foggy memory of having once thought that I was reading philosophy as if it were a huge chess game, with intricate, scintillating pieces: meaning checks time, time to E5 takes language, Phenomenology to D76, taking genealogy, mate, next game.

I've read interviews with Grass over many years and he comes across as pretty vituperative towards those he disagrees with, while being irreproachable himself.  ¶ 5:59 AM