“Muffling Fog” takes its name from a lecture Heidegger delivered at the University of Freiburg in 1929, in which he said that profound boredom “removes all things and human beings and oneself along with them into a remarkable indifference” to the point where, out of the haze, “being as a whole” can become manifest. Mr. Janiashvili’s Nazi gesture was no doubt intended as a comment on Heidegger’s membership in that party and his anti-Semitic leanings. But his pretentious and grating work brought me no closer to grasping either Heidegger or “being as a whole.”

¶ 6:51 AM