Concluding, the Was ist Metaphysik? lecture, from the novel Hopeful Monsters.

The auditorium of the lecture-hall was a semi-circle of wooden stalls rising steeply in tiers. I thought - This is like that café-theatre in Berlin: will Heidegger's message be conveyed by coloured lights and splashing music? When he did appear he was a short, sedate-looking man with a huge head. He peered amongst the audience as if there might be someone there he might recognise - not someone he already knew, but someone (it seemed) who might understand if not his words then still what he would be saying. When he spoke his voice was lilting, almost caressing: as he looked amongst the audience he seemed to be asking - Is it you? Is it you?

What Heidegger said in his inaugural lecture (or what I imagined him to have said: I have kept my notes) was roughly this -

Science takes us to the limit of what we can know about objects: beyond science there is nothing. But this nothing is postulated by science, for how can science be aware of itself except from a standpoint of what is beyond it? Facing this nothing we experience dread: but we also experience rapture, because it is what gives us a sense of our freedom from the tyranny of things. It also gives us the possibility of being in a knowing relation to things. Without this nothing, we would ourselves be just things.

Heidegger spoke this stuff in his quiet, melodious voice: he peered amongst his audience. It was as if the riddles that he posed were not the kind that required answers, but of the kind that go round and round and by which things are sifted, either remaining or falling through.

After the lecture I looked for Bruno, who had come straight to the lecture-hall from the train. I wondered - Will Bruno be someone I still recognise? who has not fallen (or has fallen?) through.

P. 115

The author, Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale, is the son of Sir Oswald Mosley.  ¶ 2:49 PM