Nothing to do with these crudities, were the lessons on metaphysics imposed by the Master. Because it was like this: his thinking imposed itself, penetrated us, awakening us. I will avoid the painful question, or not. Why not ask it? Was there still time for awakening? Or the desert, the nihilism, the improper relationship of man’s with technology, the domination of beings, their militaristic instrumentation, their readiness for war had taken ownership of the world, casting it in shadow, sinking mankind into the forgottenness of being, throwing it into a warlike pathos that made every being, every object into a warrior object. Heidegger discarded two vulgar categories, coming from puerile digressions, from the trivialities the mediocre feeds: pessimism and optimism. He classified them as risible. Something is risible when it pretends to explain an event of such density and complexity, that, for those precise and implacable motives, it will never grasp. If Heidegger, there, before us, with his clear diction, so precise that it prevented not listening, no ignoring a single word, spoke to us of the darkening of the world, of the flight of the gods (here, at least I, who understood him, I believe, deeply, lean towards the Greeks), of the destruction, of the razing of the earth, of the massification of man, of the suspicion that what was knocked down was above all the creative, especially the spiritual and free, he told us that those happenings had reached dimensions so uncontrollable that the categories of optimism or pessimism had turned pathetic, dropping to the minimal level of the risible or the ridiculous or, easily, the hilarious, if he spoke to us like this, what might we expect?


There is a paradox here, Martin: very much so.

Heidegger wasn’t coming to work with our primary feelings, with our optimism or our pessimism. Even the light weight Frenchman Voltaire has joked humorously of optimism. And even Hegel himself acknowledges it. No: the Master spoke to us, as always, from the horizon of being. Here, on the other hand, in 1935, Being had placed itself in the center, just as in the center, in between pincers, was Germany. Heidegger (who’s second stage, that of the history of Being, has never been, allow me, not modesty but sincerity, my strength) had expelled the Cartesian subject (and, with it, man) from that center from which was thrown the domination of the entities by means of technology; now, on the other hand, in that center, that of the West, he placed the German nation. I have my notes. Yes, Martin, I hectically took note of his words throughout that day! And the ones that followed. They are, without a doubt, approximate, but they will be, forever, those of someone who was there, who listened to him, and watched him. How many others can say the same? Few were granted that privilege.

Labels: The Shadow of Heidegger

¶ 4:33 AM