August 22nd 2000
Rene de Bakker wrote:
Hello Gary,
I'm reminded of the television interview
with Heidegger, as reported in "Erinnerung
an M. H." In a discussion before the
interview the interviewer proposes his questions
and H. makes some changes. The last question
is: Can H., as the eighty-year-old philosopher
he is, tell the people something about his
understanding of death and loneliness? Heidegger,
very sharply:
With this question you hit yourself in the
face!
Long silence. Interviewer feels offended,
it reminds him of Zen-tactics. Then Heidegger
begins: Mein lieber Herr....
You cannot know about my loneliness, which
is what your question suggests.
Dear Rene de Bakker,
Something just occurred to me which could
use this whole letter as a basis for its
exposition. What triggered it was Heidegger's
response, what it just BEGINS TO TOUCH ON,
JUST SLIGHTLY, JUST BARELY, that what struck
me about it, appropriately or inappropriately
right at first but may not have struck everyone
the same way, was that the "you"
in "You cannot know . . ." is not
necessarily addressing just the interviewer,
that the "you" is addressing everybody.
Now I know in the circumstances in which
it was spoken normally this would not be
a justified conclusion. But taking into consideration
Heidegger's LIFE HISTORY, and the world history
he confronted sometimes abruptly and violently,
and the same world history that confronted
him much more abruptly and violently, a bit
of it in logical reaction, would he not possibly
really be addressing everyone in addressing
with such an answer than one small and insignificant
person such as the interviewer? And if so,
what does it really point to?
This is where I might say we can get off
into "being ridiculous" that I
mentioned below. But in this case I mean
"being ridiculous" deliberately,
becoming intentionally absurd in the face
of accepted human intercourse and accepted
'knowledge'. For when someone like Heidegger
talks about "loneliness" I would
propose that it is no longer loneliness as
we normally accept it in our everyday lives
that we immediately belittle, find ways to
bypass, and--'ultimately'-- forget since
any pretense of its being fundamental, existential,
and enduring 'forever' that wells up in consciousness
for just a moment, peaks, and dies out in
the view that, in our everyday affairs, we
not only have no lack of people around us,
and very few of us completely lack at least
some people to express concern for us, and
even more, there are so many more people
that rudely intrude their personal concerns
into our lives. Being truly and ontologically
lonely (not 'alone' but "lonely")
in the midst of this huge crowd that suffocates
each of us! Ridiculous.
Exactly. But this is what I groundlessly,
and without any justification whatsoever,
propose is what Heidegger is saying, i. e.,
"You cannot KNOW about MY loneliness
. . .", that it is a matter of the "knowledge"
as such held by the "you" of "my
loneliness". In my 'thinking', that
such a man has not only confronted the whole
of present day thinking about anything and
everything whatsoever, confronted and dissected
all philosophical history, and essentially
confronted all history itself and made it
an accusation against the present moment's
culmination, who has violated the ethical
norms of every person on earth not simply
politically but much more importantly philosophically
-- in my ridiculous 'thinking' this would
necessarily mean HIS loneliness is not only
special, but is even ontologically unique
as something even more threatening than the
ultimate boredom he analyses in THE FUNDAMENTAL
CONCEPTS OF METAPHYSICS. For one thing, in
calling it 'loneliness' instead of the many
other things we might call such a mood within
us, this must necessarily be a total detachment
that is not the goal taken up by a religious
or philosophical hermit but is involuntary,
something that has come DOWN on him (not
'alone' but "lonely").
As I said, I have nothing to back this up.
This is the kind of 'metaphysics' that both
Heidegger and Kant make fun of, that Heidegger
says has the innate tendency to make concepts
that should be formal intentions into 'objects'
present-at-hand, and Kant, if I remember
right from the "Dialectic" of the
CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, says goes off into
fantasies like waking dreams. But then, they
also both say it is something fundamental
to the human mind. It is like trying to get
into the noumena, the thing-in-itself which,
by definition, is unknowable yet indicates
something we know very well is extremely
important to every aspect of our lives because,
though it is indifferent or utterly wordless
toward us, it is the real our intentions
strive for and contend with and defeat us
when "phenomena" reveal themselves
PARTIALLY toward us while hiding most of
what they are. Now, the way I have presented
Heidegger's "loneliness" is extreme,
an essentially negative description because
its basic premise is based on, "You
cannot KNOW about MY loneliness".
Now that I have already gone beyond all just
bounds of properly defined thought, there
is no point now in refraining from discussing
two other philosophers that, I say, and,
of course, deliberately with no justification
whatsoever, also 'attained' this philosophic
plateau --or rather, like Heidegger (not
'alone' but "lonely") were trapped
deep within their own situations they created
themselves in the virtuous search for noble
'philosophical truth'. These other two philosophers
are Holderlin and Nietzsche. Now, I have
not kept up with the most recent theories
of the physiological causes of their insanity.
It seems sufficient to me that the contradictory
symptoms, the total lack of medical evidence,
the purposive USE of the image of their insanity
in the eyes of others to threaten, bully,
and play with them (this was also observed
in Nijinsky) which is actually typical of
the average supposed victim of insanity but
which would seem to me to indicate something
fundamentally flawed with the very notion
of insanity as a sickness, especially a physiologically
based sickness, and the periods of so-called
remission (on what basis is it considered
a 'remission' as such? why could that period
of so-called 'temporary' clarity not be something
else altogether?). And, basically, their
insanity was firstly and basically diagnosed
by ordinary people who saw the obvious, that
they were not acting in an everyday setting
like ordinary people.
And then the 'professionals', the alienists,
the mind-doctors, that dealt with them later,
have you ever read about what they really
were? To call them quacks by any standard
would do them dignity. On the whole they
were motivated by science, i. e., personal
indifference, and were no better, and no
better motivated, than 'real' sadists. The
'patient', if it rated even that much attention,
was no more than an experimental animal.
And as R. D. Liang has demonstrated in his
whole career, and as I have personally observed
(from the outside of course! not as a 'patient'!
not yet anyway) they are only minimally better
today.
And that is a SMALL 'minimal'. The virtue
and aspect of psychiatric and psychological
"professional indifference" by
its very nature can hide every evil under
the sun ESPECIALLY FROM THE PRACTITIONERS
THEMSELVES! The other side of the coin is
called "self confidence" since
how can such a professional act without FEELING
that they know what they are doing without
question and know they are doing good things
to people? Essentially in the maintenance
of REAL practice you MUST MANUFACTURE that
FEELING. And only the grossest of violations
of method or ethics can come to your attention,
and then only through the suggestion of another
if not a downright screaming denunciation.
And even then the shell is rarely cracked,
and not for long, and right back to business
as usual. Because people in general tend
to forget or ignore that psychiatric 'health
care' is primarily, and can in reality only
exist and endure as, a business.
To be just, the bottom line is not always
being paid. But on the other hand, and MOST
important in 'psychiatric' care -- WHO IS
DOING THE PAYING AND WHAT IS THEIR SOCIAL
STATUS? This was obvious to me when a friend
was institutionalized involuntarily for ninety
days simply, purely, and totally on her parents'
request. And though no psychiatrist was present
at the court hearing, thet had absolutely
no objection at 'taking her in'. She, luckily,
took it all with a sense of humor. I, however,
did not. Supposedly things have changed for
better--but, as usual in such things, not
because of internal reform but because the
courts took their powers and their playthings
away from them. This is also glaringly obvious
in Freud's "The Case of Dora" where
the daughter was "obviously" neurotic
because the father said so, and secondly
what the daughter said assaulted the social
status and familial position of the father
figure as such -- even though her explanation
accorded with the facts in the only consistent
way, and was the only rational explanation
Freud ever heard. But she was 'treated' essentially
because the father did not like the way she
acted. i. e., disrespectful of parental authority.
Whether it was justified or not was not a
factor in Freud's thinking! And specifically
this case became the initial 'scientific'
basis of Freudian psychiatry and the so-called
theory of neurosis whereby a child's memories
cease to be possible real events and can,
of course, only be fantasies! In other words,
this is the basis from which the judgement
of insanity was pronounced against Holderlin
and Nietzsche, i. e., first that it was the
judgement of ordinary people they were not
acting appropriately in their social surroundings,
and second it was the judgement of 'professionals'
that, especially in their day, were totally
incompetent and corrupt. Now, since Heidegger
himself has delineated situations where the
truly authentic self can find themselves
completely outside the social norms (most
clearly brought out in PLATO'S SOPHIST where
Heidegger is talking about Aristotle's 'wise
man', and made even more clear by Doctor
Hubert L. Dreyfus' paper "Could Anything
be more Intelligible than Everyday Intelligibility?"
which you can find at his sight on the web
that is largely based on PLATO'S SOPHIST)
in a situation where judgements are made
completely, totally, ABSOLUTELY in the Hegelian
sense, on their own (I might say "responsibility"
but, if you understand the situation correctly,
then you see also the authentic self is beyond
"responsibility" in the usual sense
of moral conscience), then here is the logical
basis for what L. D. Liang presented as the
logical reaction to one's personal history
and circumstances that others regard, who
merely know they aren't acting right, as
"mental illness".
Has anyone ever tried to relate Holderlin's
and Nietzsche's personal situations, even
as far as their limited knowledge went, to
what was called their "mental illness"?
To me it seems if one has lost absolutely
everything of value and all hope for the
future without any reasonable expectation
of change for the better whatsoever, such
a person might become a little disengaged
from normal social practice as seen in the
eyes of the horse drover or the morning clerk
going to work or the flower lady selling
flowers or the customs duty clerk at the
border. And what possible help to a person
truly in such an ABSOLUTE situation could
any 'professional' provide different than
the local drug pusher or the wine and spirits
salesman? If one has come to 'have' and 'expect'
nothing whatsoever, and this is a long considered,
rational judgement of real facts, what can
a psychiatrist do? Other than push drugs
of course? Then it would be proper for me
to see if that conclusion truly fit Holderlin's
and Nietzsche's situations. Now, Holderlin's
situation briefly is a hopeless love affair
and almost total lack of public recognition
(tell me if I am wrong on the second part).
As to public recognition, he received some
kind attention from Schiller that backfired
when Schiller tried to interest Goethe in
his poetry.
As to the love affair, both realizing nothing
could happen since she was married and divorce
at that time for women was an extremely cruel
joke, they agreed to break up. He left for
southwest France, where the observers said
he acted strangely. But was that because
he might have had some unsolvable problem
on his mind, or because he was German, or
had the typical unconventionally of a poet?
And then, while in an alien land, the love
of his life dies. Now I know in this sophisticated
age such things are silly and unimportant
and one gets over them fast, very fast. But
his age was not as sophisticated as ours
is where we can give a proper valuation to
such trivial things as love. And in his unsophisticated,
simple-minded way, he had the illusion his
life was bound to hers literally, and any
helpful, modern process of self-denegration
that we so pride ourselves in probably would
never have occured to him. Now, throughout
the time this was going on, he not only wrote
poetry, but wrote essentially private philosophical
treatises, only two of which he ever intended
for publication, the introductions to his
translations of Antigone and Oedipus Rex,
and these were relatively late productions
in this time period. He had evolved in his
private ruminations, instead of the eliptical
style most people use that is the equivalent
of notes that skip the chain of thought in
all its particulars and just hit the highlight,
a style of all inclusive run on sentence
that was later diagnosed as obviously schizophrenic.
It is very hard to follow his line of thought,
but it can be done, so that would mean, if
the diagnosis is right, we have here a well
worked out crazy philosophy.
I have tried myself with my incompetent skills
to translate Holderlin's "Pindar Fragmente"
because the existing translation seemed to
have very little to do with Holderlin. It
is with great difficulty only that one can
break up one of his sentences into more easily
understandible parts. Superficialy, from
normal experience with run-on sentences,
it would simply seem to be a matter of putting
this complete thought here with a period
and that complete thought there with a period.
But Holderlin's 'thought' is more like the
directly recorded flow of literal experience
before it properly becomes divided into scientifically
appropriate units. Each part of the long
sentence was intertwined with the other part,
reflecting the different verbs and the different
subjects throughout so that any truncation
seemed to totally destroy the movement of
the unified whole. Though this was strange,
and very difficult to deal with, could my
experience be more like a savage confronted
with a computer who proceeds to destroy it
to kill the demon inside rather than the
discovery of mental illness? The fact that
Holderlin thinks in a different way than
we do, is that sufficient to call it crazy?
And to judge the actions of such a 'desperate'
man as crazy, first of all even to call him
desperate gives him a stretched and lean
grasp on hope. But Holderlin thought he had
no grasp on any hope whatever and would never
again have any. It would seem at that point
in one's life social norms would be rather
unimportant no matter who it offended. And
as to Nietzsche, 'late' in his 'conscious'
life, amid a dwendling circle of friends
such as the simple-minded but devoted Peter
Gast or the stolid but decent Franz Overbeck,
he finally received some recognition!
A Danish literary critic, Georg Brandes,
liked his books and was lecturing on them
in Copenhagen while in Germany his books
rarely received even book notices of their
publication. Except of course THE BIRTH OF
TRAGEDY which was denounced as a scholarly
farce. His circle of friends and relatives
was dwendling because he refused to be exploited
any longer which, of course, left the tried
and true Gast and Overbeck and a few others
occasionally. He practiced to a fine point
that "Honesty was the only virtue".
In his personal life he was a person of extremely
restrained privacy, quiet dignity, and great
politeness even to the rude. However, in
his later years, even those he wrote private
letters to were not really close and intimate
friends that were intellectual equals, even
Overbeck who could take his thinking and
change it into something of interesting but
essentially practical use in his unchristian
protestant theology.
And Gast, though devoted, was hopeless. And
the most gastly, yet closest person of all,
his sister, was completely cut off by Nietzsche
from communicating to him because of exploitiveness,
her antisemitism, and her general character
qualities, i. e., lying Yes, he was rather
in an extremity of loneliness. And being
almost entirely cut of from serious human
intercourse which was even more extreme than
not receiving any serious attention in Germany
in whose language he had written much of
the greatest prose ever put on paper. But
one must remember a few Danes loved him.
However, in Germany Kierkegaard was more
popular than he was. Would this not approach
in such a philosopher an ontological degree
of loneliness, a total disengagement from
humanity and the 'world'?
Gary. C. Moore.
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