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Encounters and dialogues with Martin Heidegger, 1929–1976
Book Reviews
603
Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, 1929-1976, by Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, tr. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 284 pp., 35 halftones, £27.95/$40.25 cloth. Since Victor Farias' 1987 book, Heidegger et le nazisme, there have been a number of publications examining the life of Heidegger; unlike the treatment of many intellectuals (eg., scientists, artists, etc.), Heidegger's biographers generally imply that his life is a key to interpreting and evaluating his intellectual activity. However, though important and legitimate questions have been raised concerning the personal and political events of Heidegger's life, these treatments nevertheless have failed to explain the conceptual relation between Heidegger the person and his philosophy, and hence the relation between life and work is for the most part constructed via allusions, insinuations and loose analogical 'reasonings.' The present book offers the recollections of Henrich Petzet, by training an art historian and literary critic who, as a student, came to know Heidegger. Though Petzet humbly claims that his book is not a biography but, primarily, recollections of his own encounters with Heidegger, it is unmistakable from the first page that Petzet, who reverses Heidegger and cherished every personal contact, also intuits a life/work correlation; his presentation of the life of Heidegger is informed by an interpretation of the nature and meaning of Heidegger's philosophizing that views it as a font of unvarnished truth, an interpretation which, for the most part, is never examined in any rigorous or scholarly way. However, given the premise and lack of pretensions of the book, this seems excusable. Petzet offers no major revelations of Heidegger's life; rather, through a series of vignettes one gains a sense, albeit one filtered through the adoring eye of Petzet, of what Heidegger was like as a person, one who seems to have been deeply conflicted and alienated. Though Heidegger seemingly enjoyed the grandeur of his early fame and had high hopes for the socio-political effect of (his) philosophy, Heidegger was disappointed that the population did not become more thoughtful by virtue of its exposure to him; his involvement in National Socialism alienated him, first from the Nazis, who did not prove amenable to instruction, and subsequently, from journalism and the masses it serves for misunderstanding him--a misunderstanding that he apparently took little interest in setting straight. His disaffection with his own time pervades even those 'bright' moments of intelectual community at the Club of Bremen, the Munich Academy or the 'salon' at Biihlerh6he and provides the backdrop for his acquaintances with Clara Rilke, Jean Beaufret, Erhart K~istner, Paula Becker-Modersohn and others, and it reaches an extreme in Heidegger's fascination with Buddhism which, in Petzet's rendering, is essentially linked with a rejection of the Western world as incapable---either because of its trenchantly metaphysical character or its being increasingly influenced by English, that 'completely unphilosophical' language [ 174]---of understanding his philosophy. Interestingly, Petzet seems largely responsible for the latter view of Heidegger. Petzet relates interesting anecdotes about Heidegger's exposure to and evaluation of art and the art world, as well as intimations of the reportedly enormous and important intellectual correspondence deposited in the Heidegger Archive. Rather than the duplicitous ogre some biographers have seen in Heidegger, Petzet's image of Heidegger underscores his remoteness. This may be as banal as his clandestine viewing of televised soccer matches and the purchase of a telephone or his once engaged and studentengaging pedagogy becoming 'a monologue of essential thinking' [215]. This remoteness could arouse a sense of awe and the extra-ordinariness of the man, as it clearly did for Petzet, or it could appear as the condescension of the aloof, imperious and self-involved philosopher that others have seen in Heidegger. In any event, the image Petzet gives us
Volume 21, No. 4, July, 1995
604
Book Reviews
is one of increasing solitariness exacerbated by his intrication in National Socialism and its aftermath, and this indeed seems, regardless of the etiology one wants to ascribe to it, to jive with the preponderance of information that we have concerning his life and thought. It should be noted that the 'other-worldly' and perhaps stilted image of Heidegger presented in this book is due in part to its translators: in his Introduction, which is dedicated to the question of Heidegger's politics, Emad suggests that those who are disturbed by Heidegger's political misadventures simply have not reached that fundamental level of thinking, inhabited by Heidegger, where all questions of his life and thought must be addressed, a level which, by definition, is the site of the true revelation of being. It seems, for Emad, at the fundamental ontological level of Denken that, for instance, the question of guilt is not a matter of specific actions but is constitutive of one's (viz. everyone's) being-in-the-world, one's thrownness [xxxi]. This strategy of transposing all issues of the individual and 'worldly' to the fundamental ontological level seems designed to make it impossible legitimately to assess critically Heidegger's life for there is no meaningful sense of innocence.sleft; unfortunately, the effect of such a displacement is to put off the uninitiated reader from Heidegger and his philosophy tout court. Emad's and Maly's jargonized translation, which often seems willfully and unnecessarily hermetic, has a similar effect: the translation of Zuvorkommen in der Zuriickhaltung as 'forthcoming holding-in-reserve' rather than, say, 'candor in being reticent' or of Wesen as 'root-unfolding' rather than 'essence' or 'nature' are but a few examples of a translation which unnecessarily complicates Petzet's text and, ironically, does not invite the reader to engage in a reflection on Heidegger, but appears arcane and suspicious of reader accessibility. In this regard, while the obvious biases of Farias, Wolin and other 'enemies' of Heidegger require rebuttal, Petzet---exaggerated by the translation of Emad and Malay-unwittingly ill-serve their philosophical mentor by presenting him as remote, aloof and disdainful of the ordinary and commonsensical. Petzet's book is certainly worth reading, but to give it a chance one must not expect too much from it; rather, one must, as he himself says, take it as the recollections of a man whose path crossed Heidegger's many times. Reginald Lilly
Skidmore College
Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought, Joshua Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), xi + 252 pp., £27.95/$40.25. The conventional wisdom concerning early modem political thought which was fed to me in my student days was to the effect that the major thinkers for the most part introduced theological notions as a kind of afterthought, or as a presentational device to commend their ideas to a still irremediably religious public. Stripping away the theology and the biblical references would leave their secular arguments to shine forth with rational clarity, freed from bows in the direction of obscurantism. Few students, for example, were encouraged to read Part 3 ('Of a Christian Commonwealth') or Part 4 ('Of the Kingdom of Darkness') in Hobbes's Leviathan, and they were taught to slide quickly over the many theological and biblical references in Part 1 ('Of Man') and Part 2 ('Of Commonwealth') as of little significance.
History o f European Ideas
603
Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, 1929-1976, by Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, tr. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 284 pp., 35 halftones, £27.95/$40.25 cloth. Since Victor Farias' 1987 book, Heidegger et le nazisme, there have been a number of publications examining the life of Heidegger; unlike the treatment of many intellectuals (eg., scientists, artists, etc.), Heidegger's biographers generally imply that his life is a key to interpreting and evaluating his intellectual activity. However, though important and legitimate questions have been raised concerning the personal and political events of Heidegger's life, these treatments nevertheless have failed to explain the conceptual relation between Heidegger the person and his philosophy, and hence the relation between life and work is for the most part constructed via allusions, insinuations and loose analogical 'reasonings.' The present book offers the recollections of Henrich Petzet, by training an art historian and literary critic who, as a student, came to know Heidegger. Though Petzet humbly claims that his book is not a biography but, primarily, recollections of his own encounters with Heidegger, it is unmistakable from the first page that Petzet, who reverses Heidegger and cherished every personal contact, also intuits a life/work correlation; his presentation of the life of Heidegger is informed by an interpretation of the nature and meaning of Heidegger's philosophizing that views it as a font of unvarnished truth, an interpretation which, for the most part, is never examined in any rigorous or scholarly way. However, given the premise and lack of pretensions of the book, this seems excusable. Petzet offers no major revelations of Heidegger's life; rather, through a series of vignettes one gains a sense, albeit one filtered through the adoring eye of Petzet, of what Heidegger was like as a person, one who seems to have been deeply conflicted and alienated. Though Heidegger seemingly enjoyed the grandeur of his early fame and had high hopes for the socio-political effect of (his) philosophy, Heidegger was disappointed that the population did not become more thoughtful by virtue of its exposure to him; his involvement in National Socialism alienated him, first from the Nazis, who did not prove amenable to instruction, and subsequently, from journalism and the masses it serves for misunderstanding him--a misunderstanding that he apparently took little interest in setting straight. His disaffection with his own time pervades even those 'bright' moments of intelectual community at the Club of Bremen, the Munich Academy or the 'salon' at Biihlerh6he and provides the backdrop for his acquaintances with Clara Rilke, Jean Beaufret, Erhart K~istner, Paula Becker-Modersohn and others, and it reaches an extreme in Heidegger's fascination with Buddhism which, in Petzet's rendering, is essentially linked with a rejection of the Western world as incapable---either because of its trenchantly metaphysical character or its being increasingly influenced by English, that 'completely unphilosophical' language [ 174]---of understanding his philosophy. Interestingly, Petzet seems largely responsible for the latter view of Heidegger. Petzet relates interesting anecdotes about Heidegger's exposure to and evaluation of art and the art world, as well as intimations of the reportedly enormous and important intellectual correspondence deposited in the Heidegger Archive. Rather than the duplicitous ogre some biographers have seen in Heidegger, Petzet's image of Heidegger underscores his remoteness. This may be as banal as his clandestine viewing of televised soccer matches and the purchase of a telephone or his once engaged and studentengaging pedagogy becoming 'a monologue of essential thinking' [215]. This remoteness could arouse a sense of awe and the extra-ordinariness of the man, as it clearly did for Petzet, or it could appear as the condescension of the aloof, imperious and self-involved philosopher that others have seen in Heidegger. In any event, the image Petzet gives us
Volume 21, No. 4, July, 1995
604
Book Reviews
is one of increasing solitariness exacerbated by his intrication in National Socialism and its aftermath, and this indeed seems, regardless of the etiology one wants to ascribe to it, to jive with the preponderance of information that we have concerning his life and thought. It should be noted that the 'other-worldly' and perhaps stilted image of Heidegger presented in this book is due in part to its translators: in his Introduction, which is dedicated to the question of Heidegger's politics, Emad suggests that those who are disturbed by Heidegger's political misadventures simply have not reached that fundamental level of thinking, inhabited by Heidegger, where all questions of his life and thought must be addressed, a level which, by definition, is the site of the true revelation of being. It seems, for Emad, at the fundamental ontological level of Denken that, for instance, the question of guilt is not a matter of specific actions but is constitutive of one's (viz. everyone's) being-in-the-world, one's thrownness [xxxi]. This strategy of transposing all issues of the individual and 'worldly' to the fundamental ontological level seems designed to make it impossible legitimately to assess critically Heidegger's life for there is no meaningful sense of innocence.sleft; unfortunately, the effect of such a displacement is to put off the uninitiated reader from Heidegger and his philosophy tout court. Emad's and Maly's jargonized translation, which often seems willfully and unnecessarily hermetic, has a similar effect: the translation of Zuvorkommen in der Zuriickhaltung as 'forthcoming holding-in-reserve' rather than, say, 'candor in being reticent' or of Wesen as 'root-unfolding' rather than 'essence' or 'nature' are but a few examples of a translation which unnecessarily complicates Petzet's text and, ironically, does not invite the reader to engage in a reflection on Heidegger, but appears arcane and suspicious of reader accessibility. In this regard, while the obvious biases of Farias, Wolin and other 'enemies' of Heidegger require rebuttal, Petzet---exaggerated by the translation of Emad and Malay-unwittingly ill-serve their philosophical mentor by presenting him as remote, aloof and disdainful of the ordinary and commonsensical. Petzet's book is certainly worth reading, but to give it a chance one must not expect too much from it; rather, one must, as he himself says, take it as the recollections of a man whose path crossed Heidegger's many times. Reginald Lilly
Skidmore College
Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought, Joshua Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), xi + 252 pp., £27.95/$40.25. The conventional wisdom concerning early modem political thought which was fed to me in my student days was to the effect that the major thinkers for the most part introduced theological notions as a kind of afterthought, or as a presentational device to commend their ideas to a still irremediably religious public. Stripping away the theology and the biblical references would leave their secular arguments to shine forth with rational clarity, freed from bows in the direction of obscurantism. Few students, for example, were encouraged to read Part 3 ('Of a Christian Commonwealth') or Part 4 ('Of the Kingdom of Darkness') in Hobbes's Leviathan, and they were taught to slide quickly over the many theological and biblical references in Part 1 ('Of Man') and Part 2 ('Of Commonwealth') as of little significance.
History o f European Ideas