A problem I have been dealing with in Heidegger is that In BEING AND TIME, Heidegger takes a very radical view of dasein's authentic appropriation of tradition which, by necessity, completely takes it apart and puts it back together again as dasein actually knows it instead of the 'everyday' passive acceptance of a vague theme of what tradition is that never examines it rationally in detail or judge even if it fits together coherently.Gary C. Moore 2001

Gary Moore To: heidegger@lists.village.virginia.edu August 28, 2000

Dear Rene de Bakker!

Once again you demonstrate you are a wonderful and beautiful person, but MOST OF ALL exceptionally perceptive! After writing this letter, especially after receiving the first reply, I regretted having written it. But in writing it, I had clearly defined for myself the aspect about Heidegger that has been constantly bothering me. And you have put your finger exactly upon the point. "With this question you hit yourself in the face! . . . My dear sir, you cannot know about my loneliness . . ." There are echoes here that, to me, recall the wild eyed German Romanticist aspect of his philosophy, his passionate commitment to the RISK of death, the excitement of the constant call of danger! He doesn't speak to the interviewer filled with the stuffy pride of status, but with the tone of one who has danced on the edge of Hell as if saying, "Who are you to think you understand any part of what I have experienced in life!" which is said both with the pride of one who has survived, and the corresponding sorrow of one who did not survive. He has a closed privacy in his life absent to a large degree in most every other philosopher, though some, like Nietzsche SEEMED to make public spectacles of themselves as a means of hiding what was possibly (?) really going on. Sartre certainly made a public spectacle of himself, but I cannot help but like him for it. Others, like Kant and Hegel, may have hid their feelings because of the political danger involved, which led to them being portrayed as moral and political conservatives which I think is completely false. But I do not think anyone really has a real clue as to what motivated Heidegger, although surprisingly (to me who admires the thoroughly 'systematic'--in Hegel's personal and real sense --philosophy of his early years) stated several times, including a marginal note to BEING AND TIME, that his way of philosophy was JUST HIS WAY, and that there were many other ways just as possible as his. In other words, everybody else was just along for the ride, but he had somewhere definite he wanted to go which he kept to himself. So that when he seems sly and devious, that may simply be the outward aspect of something he simply refuses to acknowledge and explain since, philosophy being an intensely personal matter to him, it's none of our damn business! Anyway, your letter has certainly lifted my spirits. If you agree with Heidegger's double statement that philosophy is a crazy/transcendent business, it is because, in real philosophy, you deal with drastic issues in a calm and casual manner. If you are doing it right, you are out 'there' all by yourself. Absolutely, as Hegel would say, alone.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore