Everyday life, for revolutionary conservatives like German philosopher Martin Heidegger, was a notorious concept which connoted inauthenticity and fallenness. It was thus marked by a failure to keep one’s promise – a promise to become who one already is. Yet, a virus proved that without such a failure there isn’t any “origin”, any home, to which one would yearn to return. The “idle talk” that permeated everyday life turns out to be not so pointless after all. Take that away: there remains no refuge.

¶ 4:00 AM