[lit-ideas] Re: George Steiner
- From: epostboxx@xxxxxxxx
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2020 15:37:39 +0100
On 5. Feb 2020, at 12:50, I wrote:
It was something which George Steiner wrote (I believe in the mid-nineties -
I'm searching for the quotation and will post it when i find it) which
convinced me that as a philosopher taking up residence in Germany I could not
merely ... dismiss [the writings of the unrepentant Nazi Heidegger].
The relevant quotation is from Steiner's piece on the Heidegger-Arendt
correspondence, published in the Jan. 29th, 1999 edition of the TIMES LITERARY
SUPPLEMENT:
"It does look as if Martin Heidegger will tower
albeit controversially and as yet enigmatically
... over much of the spectrum in philosophy in this
closing century and in the centuries to come. A
recent survey indicates that publications on Heidegger,
ranging from technical comments and monographic
investigations to biography, political debate and even
fiction, are equalling, if not exceeding, those on
Plato and Aristotle.
.... [T]he recent ROUTLEDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
... is crowded with Heidegger's presence. Key words
in his idiom ... are cited in a prodigality of contexts.
Heidegger's current status in European, in North
and Latin American, in Far Eastern philosophic projects
are considered, sometimes in separate articles.
Heidegger's role in hermeneutics, phenomenology,
theology and historicism spills, as it were, across the
boundaries of his own writings to cast its light and
shadow on the entire landscape of existentialism, of
deconstruction, of postmodernism (these movements
being, in their source and development, extended foot-
notes to SEIN UND ZEIT)."
I also made mention of P.F. Strawson's review of two of Steiner's books (MARTIN
HEIDEGGER, and ON DIFFICULTY AND OTHER ESSAYS) in the APRIL 19, 1979 issue of
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS; since full access is tagged as"exclusive content
for subscribers only," I will here quote the relevant sections:
"As George Steiner remarks, the name and the work of Heidegger
are apt to evoke extreme and violently opposed reactions. To some
he appears as a thinker of unique depth ... Others ... see him as the
embodiment of Teutonic pseudo profundity, a charlatan who peddles ...
a distasteful mixture of nonsense and banality.
"Both reactions are intelligible and both are, to different degrees,
exaggerated.
Heidegger is both philosopher and preacher ... In each role he is, up
to a point,
a genuine performer; he has—however opaque or distressing his way of
saying it
—something significant to say. The link between the roles is more
questionable,
though it is the supposition of such a link that must account, in part,
for the
enthusiasm of his wholehearted admirers; for, while an oft-told tale
about how to live,
about supreme values, may, in itself, be worth retelling, it seems to
gain an extra
force if backed by the authority of first philosophy, a disclosure of
the ultimate nature
of Being. The philosopher of modern times who wrote most impressively
in this mode
wrote also with a succinct dignity in comparison with which Heidegger
often appears
merely clownish ...
...
"[In Heidegger's writings] we see that the notion of Being has taken on
an entirely new
and quasi-mystical tone, inviting a comparison, indeed, with the DEUS
SIVE NATURA of
Spinoza, but a comparison which makes us only the more aware of the
contrast between
the strict intellectualism of Spinoza and Heidegger’s fervid
emotionalism; an emotionalism
which assumes a more sinister form in the collectivist, nationalist
note he sometimes
sounds ...
"Apart from Greek ... German alone is exalted as the truly
philosophical and ... tongue.
George Steiner writes of “the total inherence of his [Heidegger’s]
meaning in German
and in its linguistic past” and adds ... that “no aspect of
Heideggerian thought can be
divorced from the phenomenon of Heidegger’s prose style.”
"If these things were indeed so, the claims of “Heideggerian thought”
to universal validity
or to any but a highly parochial interest would seem, at least,
dubious. Indeed it is hard
to think of more (unintentionally) damaging comments than those just
quoted. But they
are less than just. For some reasonably clear philosophical criticism
and a reasonably clear
“message” can alike be detached from Heidegger’s opaque idiom and his
endlessly
repetitive prose; and only those—they are not few —who are titillated
or excited by obscurity
will regret the dispelling of the fog. Of the value of Heidegger’s
philosophical criticism
something has already been said. What, then, of his “message”?
"Here each will react for himself. Everyone of any sensitivity, one
supposes, understands
well enough the notion of inauthenticity and of secondhand, second-rate
conventionality;
and also has some acquaintance with those moments in which the world
appears
“appareled in celestial light.” These and other ingredients of
Heidegger’s message have been
dealt with ... often enough in styles less pretentious and more
aesthetically appealing ...
But this is not all. To hold that inauthenticity is the primal
condition of social man, for which
there is no remedy except resolutely to confront one’s predicament and
to have an acute
awareness, transcending both practical concern and scientific analysis,
of the dense reality
of things—to hold this is surely to fall into one of the over
simplifications of romanticism.
... It is to take just two aspects of a far more complex reality for
the whole of it. There is
more to human life and human nature than a sense of the numinous on the
one hand and
a blind and trivial busyness on the other. ...
"George Steiner’s treatment of this over- and underestimated figure is
exemplary, or very
nearly so. ... He admits ... professional expertise in philosophy
[which] accounts for his
limited recognition of the large measure of good sense which is
discernible in Heidegger’s
strictly philosophical criticism. On the other hand, it is hard not to
feel that Steiner
overestimates the ultimate importance of Heidegger ... There is ...
something absurd
in the suggestion that he belongs in the class of Plato, Aristotle,
Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant
... because ... the actual, detailed intellectual content that can be
distilled from ... its cumbrous
wordplay is simply too little; which is not to deny that, read as a
preacher or a visionary,
he may continue to be found impressive by some ... But these ... are
strictures on Heidegger
rather than on Steiner. It is better that a thinker should have an
oversympathetic, rather than
an undersympathetic, interpreter; and Steiner’s short book, in its
generosity of feeling and
range of reference, is a continuous pleasure to read."
As my quotation from Steiner appeared close to 2 decades after Strawson's
comments, it would appear that Steiner did not accept Strawson's view that he
[Steiner] had overestimated Heidegger's ultimate importance.
I now do.
Chris Bruce, in
Kiel, Germany
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