It was 1935, it was now. We were in the cloister where Heidegger addresses us with his word. That word is it directed only at us or does he have ambitions for something more. Now it is late, now, neither you nor I can ask ourselves this. I wish so much I'd had you there. I wish so much you had seen him. I took notes during that course and obtained others from trusted, brilliant students. Heidegger took us to the limits. "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?" He challenged us. "Whoever talks about Nothing does not know what he is doing. In speaking about Nothing, he makes it into a something." He was molding us. "To know means to be able to learn". It was, and it couldn't have been otherwise, the class he invited me to the most indelible of all, the one that would establish in me the true greatness of National Socialism; the only one.

That day, in that class, he spoke to us of Russia, he spoke to us of America, identifying them. He said: "which are metaphysically the same". The same what? Heidegger turned to, to show us, to his theme of world as the worlding of the ready to hand. From Being and Time we knew that theme. When I spoke to you of the Luger resting on this desk, now, as I write, I unveiled it for you. That Luger is a utensil. That utensil is there, at hand. (In this case, given that I am the only one here, it is, in this sense: it is at my hand.) Heidegger was not referring to this Luger; he was not referring to any other utensil, but to a specific one; to one solitary, unique utensil. He was referring to the pincers. Russia and America was a great pincers, and drowned by it, subjected to that double power, lay Europe, "in", to top it off, "its unholy blindness always on the point of cutting its own throat". Why did he choose pincers? I'll risk a couple conjectures. Pincers crush, kill. Pincers are a thing privileged by technology, for its power for organizing the earth instrumentally. America was technology in its business expression; it was the cipher of techno-capitalism. Russian was technology in the service of the massification of man, of collective enslavement. Both uses of technology cut off the possibility of man's historical-spiritual launch. This Heidegger (the Heidegger obsessed by the Dasein that has forgotten Being and has given himself over to conquering the planet technologically) was already in Being and Time. But only now was it fully expressed. Because, son, Martin dear, it was the fullness of spirit, the spirit of the West, in one of its most elevated, purest, moments, that surged, then, in his words. I have jottings, various notes. I have trouble re-assembling that text. Sometime the Master will polish it, his send it to the publisher and the world can know it. That was the day we knew. Prophetic, or better: menacing. Or better: in the way of the prophet that warns about what is to come Or in the way of the great philosopher that doesn't prophesize but warns. That severely warns about what has already happened and what might happen. So, Heidegger said: "When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes accessible as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously 'experience' an assassination attempt against a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo; when" I pause, son. What follows this "when" was one of the most powerful ideas that, in my long years given to philosophy, ever penetrated my spirit. "When", said Heidegger, "time is nothing but speed". Where did he get this? From his long slow walks through the Black Forest? From his long silences shared with the peasants in his neighborhood? In those shared silences while they smoked (with austere, simple slowness; which other way is there?) their rustic pipes, made, almost always, with their own hands. Heidegger was rural, not urban, philosopher. You already know: he declined being named Rektor of the University of Berlin in order to remain in Freiburg, the provinces, the earth, rootedness. Beingness. The nation, and no deviating. I was, I have told you, in Berlin. There time was speed. Only speed. Speed, velocity, the immediacy of business ate up time. Doing so eliminates "time", said the Master, "time as history". Not as fleetingness, not as bewilderment. He heard him continue: "When a boxer", he said, "counts as the great man of a people". "When the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph". When all this happens, what? Heidegger's voice got graver still, not threatening. Not prophetic. A warning, if you'll allow me. The prophet announces to us a truth that will inevitably be fulfilled in the future. Not the philosopher. Not, for sure, Heidegger. Heidegger warned, and warning is to announce the presence (not necessarily realizable) of a danger. (How difficult this was to explain to you. It is so important. Marx is a prophet. He announces to the masses a future of plenitude, a classless society. Not Heidegger. Heidegger, desperately even, warns. If "it" remains like so, if "it" is not avoided, the worse will happen. But "it" can be avoided. That was the possibility he saw in National Socialism. That possibility, he, in the dawning of his hopes, in the midday of his faith, in his shining rejection of nihilism, he found it in Adolf Hitler.) "Then", he continued, "yes then, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the question: what for? - where to? - and what then?"

Allow me to rest. I don't know what you were thinking while reading those lines, but I, on writing them to you, lost my breath. Why not allow ourselves the fertile slowness of time? Why not loathe speed, with its empty lightness.

Labels: The Shadow of Heidegger

¶ 11:49 AM