The psychoanalytic concept of transference--or projection--isn't without its problems, but it clearly points to a phenomenon that is undeniable. My problem with it lies in its assumption that we are isolated individuals who take our internal psychic contents and project them onto some blank object--the leader, the beloved, or in a negative way on the Other. This is very un-Heideggerian, and we are all Heideggerrians now, whether we know it or not.

The problem with Heidegger, from what I know about him through what his friends Jaspers and Arendt have written about him, was that while he had depth of experience--i.e., he had a filtering system that was more porous than most--he had not developed a substantive moral Self capable of discerning what was delusional from what was real. There was a kind of hypertrophied passivity about Heidegger that made him extraordinarily receptive to the disclosures of Being, but I think also a kind of vanity about his capabilities that produced a parody of the Self that stunted him spiritually. In the end he was rather a cipher.

¶ 7:59 PM