The romantic choices of many of us between the ages of 18-21 (her age during their actual affair) probably don’t bear scrutiny.
I’m not scrutinizing her for any choices between 18 and 21.
This was a lifelong relationship, Hannah herself reached out and continued writing letters in his defense from the 1950s to her death.
An ex who later became a nazi (and then recanted) is probably an excellent example of how quotidian these kinds of evils can be.
Ex? No.
Recanted? They denied he had any nazi sympathy and claimed it was all a mistake
Later, in a 1969 birthday tribute essay “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” Arendt penned what has generally been taken as an exoneration of Heidegger. In it, she “compared Heidegger to Thales,” writes Gordon, “the ancient philosopher who grew so absorbed in contemplating the heavens that he stumbled into the well at his feet.”
This was the accepted view of Heidegger until 2014 when the black notebooks came out
But major Heidegger scholars have responded in a variety of ways—including resigning a chairship of the Martin Heidegger Society—that suggest the worst. According to Daily Nous, a website about the philosophy profession, when Günter Figal resigned his position in January as chair of the Martin Heidegger Society, he said:
As chairman of a society, which is named after a person, one is in certain way a representative of that person. After reading the Schwarze Hefte [Black Notebooks], especially the antisemitic passages, I do not wish to be such a representative any longer. These statements have not only shocked me, but have turned me around to such an extent that it has become difficult to be a co-representative of this.
Hannah defends him as just so focused on high philosophy he never noticed the antisemitism
Recalls Adam Kirsch in the Times:
The seal was set on his absolution by Hannah Arendt, in a birthday address broadcast on West German radio. Heidegger’s Nazism, she explained, was an “escapade,” a mistake, which happened only because the thinker naïvely “succumbed to the temptation … to ‘intervene’ in the world of human affairs.” The moral to be drawn from the Heidegger case was that “the thinking ‘I’ is entirely different from the self of consciousness,” so that Heidegger’s thought cannot be contaminated by the actions of the mere man.
In a long, carefully documented essay, Wasserstein (who’s now at the University of Chicago), cites Arendt’s scandalous use of quotes from anti-Semitic and Nazi “authorities” on Jews in her Totalitarianism book.
Wasserstein concludes that her use of these sources was “more than a methodological error: it was symptomatic of a perverse world-view contaminated by over-exposure to the discourse of collective contempt and stigmatization that formed the object of her study”—that object being anti-Semitism. In other words, he contends, Arendt internalized the values of the anti-Semitic literature she read in her study of anti-Semitism, at least to a certain extent
And are these your own views too? I thought you said you didn’t know what to make of her.
I have to admit I’m not particularly invested in this issue, but I do think it’s a gross mischaracterisation to say the letters post relationship somehow constitute an ongoing affair. They quite obviously don’t.
Heidegger was an antisemitic Nazi and the black notebooks prove there was a lot more to that than he pretended after he publicly recanted. As far as I’m aware historians have not found any evidence that Arendt was any more aware of the content of the notebooks than anyone else was.
I agree Arendt’s work is flawed as I noted above.
When I quoted her, my intention was simply to communicate that specific idea, with which I agree - not to evoke her as if she were some kind of infallible god.
I’m not in favour of abandoning the concepts of ideology and interpellation because Althusser murdered his wife, similarly I’m not going to abandon the concept of the banality of evil because Arendt was deluded about a creepy professor she had an affair with.
And are these your own views too? I thought you said you didn’t know what to make of her.
Oh I get that comes across weird, I’m looking all this stuff up as you’re challenging me on it and what I’m finding is starting to solidify my views a bit more.
I have to admit I’m not particularly invested in this issue, but I do think it’s a gross mischaracterisation to say the letters post relationship somehow constitute an ongoing affair. They quite obviously don’t.
That doesn’t seem as obvious to the New Yorker
In 1950, seventeen years after they had last communicated, Arendt and Heidegger met again, when she went to Germany to help track down stolen Jewish cultural treasures. At times, she had been publicly critical of Heidegger’s behavior during his rectorship and afterward, but the renewal of their ties banished all her suspicions. “This evening and this morning are the confirmation of an entire life,” she wrote to him after their meeting. For the next two years, their love enjoyed a brief afterlife, as Heidegger wrote poems about her and told her things like “I wish I could run the five-fingered comb through your frizzy hair.”
(The author betrays a very obvious bias about what we’re supposed to take away to be fair)
When I quoted her, my intention was simply to communicate that specific idea, with which I agree - not to evoke her as if she were some kind of infallible god.
Yeah I’m with you there.
As far as I’m aware historians have not found any evidence that Arendt was any more aware of the content of the notebooks than anyone else was.
That I’m not sure.
I don’t think I really know enough to have a right to that strong a view when the historical record seems to be changing so recently and most of her letters are lost whole she kept all of Heideggers, but what I’m finding is a bit troubling tbh.
For over half a century she was considered the best source of insight into Eichmann and Nazi psychology.
With new knowledge about her conflict of interest and defence of Heidegger I’m left wondering how much of an expert she should be considered.
It seems from the evidence, Heidegger was a willing and complicit Nazi who wrote about genuinely antisemetic views. In that light, Hannah’s defence of him is surprising.
I’m unsure of what go make of her psychological evaluation capabilities if she had such a glaring blindspot here.
I’m not in favour of abandoning the concepts of ideology and interpretation because Althusser murdered his wife, similarly I’m not going to abandon the concept of the banality of evil because Arendt was deluded about a creepy professor she had an affair with.
Right, neither am I.
That’s why I didn’t abandon it and instead said I am unsure what to make of it.
I’m not trying to come to a black or white conclusion, I think this is a complicated subject.
Ah, I think I understand you better now. It’s an interesting conversation.
To me, that quote from the New Yorker about combing her hair etc supports my view that this was likely some sort of personal issue involving an idealisation of her ex as a person.
considered the best source of insight into Eichmann and Nazi psychology.
I suppose I’ve never regarded her in that light.
She’s a philosopher: she articulates some key concepts that are valuable, but a) philosophers hypothesizing like that isn’t exactly social science and b) I tend to see the Holocaust in the broader historical contexts of genocide and imperialism. Through that lens, Nazi psychology loses its central importance as some sort of unique phenomenon because it isn’t really much different from most of the other genocidal regimes that predate it.
This probably sounds like sacrilege in some quarters (Elie Weissel) but to me the usefullness of Arendt lies in what is generalisable, even if that was in itself rooted in material and historical specificity.
I’m not scrutinizing her for any choices between 18 and 21.
This was a lifelong relationship, Hannah herself reached out and continued writing letters in his defense from the 1950s to her death.
Ex? No.
Recanted? They denied he had any nazi sympathy and claimed it was all a mistake
This was the accepted view of Heidegger until 2014 when the black notebooks came out
Hannah defends him as just so focused on high philosophy he never noticed the antisemitism
https://www.openculture.com/2015/03/martin-heideggers-black-notebooks-reveal-the-depth-of-anti-semitism.html
Modern scholars seem to say otherwise
https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/10/troubling-new-revelations-about-arendt-and-heidegger.html
And are these your own views too? I thought you said you didn’t know what to make of her.
I have to admit I’m not particularly invested in this issue, but I do think it’s a gross mischaracterisation to say the letters post relationship somehow constitute an ongoing affair. They quite obviously don’t.
Heidegger was an antisemitic Nazi and the black notebooks prove there was a lot more to that than he pretended after he publicly recanted. As far as I’m aware historians have not found any evidence that Arendt was any more aware of the content of the notebooks than anyone else was.
I agree Arendt’s work is flawed as I noted above.
When I quoted her, my intention was simply to communicate that specific idea, with which I agree - not to evoke her as if she were some kind of infallible god.
I’m not in favour of abandoning the concepts of ideology and interpellation because Althusser murdered his wife, similarly I’m not going to abandon the concept of the banality of evil because Arendt was deluded about a creepy professor she had an affair with.
Oh I get that comes across weird, I’m looking all this stuff up as you’re challenging me on it and what I’m finding is starting to solidify my views a bit more.
That doesn’t seem as obvious to the New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/12/beware-of-pity-Hannah-Arendt
(The author betrays a very obvious bias about what we’re supposed to take away to be fair)
Yeah I’m with you there.
That I’m not sure.
I don’t think I really know enough to have a right to that strong a view when the historical record seems to be changing so recently and most of her letters are lost whole she kept all of Heideggers, but what I’m finding is a bit troubling tbh.
For over half a century she was considered the best source of insight into Eichmann and Nazi psychology.
With new knowledge about her conflict of interest and defence of Heidegger I’m left wondering how much of an expert she should be considered.
It seems from the evidence, Heidegger was a willing and complicit Nazi who wrote about genuinely antisemetic views. In that light, Hannah’s defence of him is surprising.
I’m unsure of what go make of her psychological evaluation capabilities if she had such a glaring blindspot here.
Right, neither am I.
That’s why I didn’t abandon it and instead said I am unsure what to make of it.
I’m not trying to come to a black or white conclusion, I think this is a complicated subject.
Ah, I think I understand you better now. It’s an interesting conversation.
To me, that quote from the New Yorker about combing her hair etc supports my view that this was likely some sort of personal issue involving an idealisation of her ex as a person.
I suppose I’ve never regarded her in that light.
She’s a philosopher: she articulates some key concepts that are valuable, but a) philosophers hypothesizing like that isn’t exactly social science and b) I tend to see the Holocaust in the broader historical contexts of genocide and imperialism. Through that lens, Nazi psychology loses its central importance as some sort of unique phenomenon because it isn’t really much different from most of the other genocidal regimes that predate it.
This probably sounds like sacrilege in some quarters (Elie Weissel) but to me the usefullness of Arendt lies in what is generalisable, even if that was in itself rooted in material and historical specificity.
Sorry for the typo. I meant interpellation!