Marty

Years ago conservative historian Paul Johnson published an hysterical book entitled Intellectuals.  It examines the lives of many important philosophers and artists, finding them, in general, to be hateful, foolish, cheap, nasty and filthy.  Oh yes--most of them were secular leftists, i.e., Johnson's arch enemies.  So there it is, page after page on one thinker's inability to pay his debts, another obsessing about his penis, another failing yet again to bathe.

I find the book funny because, aside from all the odd (and sometimes questionable) facts Johnson unearthed, what exactly is the point?  Even Johnson admits few lives can withstand serious scrutiny--especially in the hands of a tendentious historian.  Should we expect artists and intellectuals to be any better than the rest of us?  To Johnson, if you're a thinker, and you want to change the world, you apparently have a higher duty. I don't see it.  In fact, if you want to make a change, or be noticed, in addition to being brilliant it helps if you're driven--if you put your ideas, and your work, before personal relationships.  This doesn't always lead to the best personal outcomes.  And once you're lucky enough to attain wealth, power or fame, there are many temptations that can lead you astray.

One person Johnson didn't attack (if I recall) was Martin Heidegger.  Heidegger was, after all, one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century, but also a man who joined the Nazi party when they took over Germany. (Some claim Johnson left him alone because Heidegger's often associated with the right, but that's a whole different argument.) It could have just been bad timing, because new revelations were coming out regarding Heidegger and National Socialism just as Johnson was finishing his book.

For years, the excuse had been Heidegger had to join up or lose his position, and that he may have been hopeful at first but soon learned that Nazis weren't congenial to his thinking.  But as the full extent of his involvement became clearer, that was hard to maintain.

Lately, even more revelations have come out--personal notebooks written in the 1940s which show how anti-Semitism was part of Heidegger's thinking, or, perhaps, how he applied his thinking to the Jews.  Here's a piece in The New Yorker by Joshua Rothman about how tough it's been getting for Heideggerians lately.

Rothman was excited by Heidegger when he first read him. (I wasn't so excited, though perhaps I didn't read closely enough.  Heidegger seemed to me yet another obscure and mystical German taking up questions the Greeks handled better.) Unlike Johnson's examples, the trouble here isn't just the personal life of Heidegger--it's how his association with the Nazis infected his thinking. There it is in his notebooks, where he says Jews are different, always plotting, and not able to fully participate in what it means to be human.

Perhaps this means we have to throw over Heidegger.  Though the question becomes, in general, how do we deal with old thinkers.  Ideas change, and the unquestioned assertions of yesteryear become the anathema of today. Back in the 1930s, straight up racism didn't grate like it does today, and fascism (not necessarily tied to racism) seemed like a new idea that might be able to deal with the problems of capitalism.

In general, older thinkers regularly let us down.  Look at, for example, the things they say about something as basic as the differences between men and women.   And no doubt people today will disappoint those in the future for our lack of vision.  For that matter, I'm pretty disappointed in the perennial popularity of socialism among intellectuals.

So throw out Heidegger.  Who needs the bastard?  But I'm not sure where we'll stop.