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Letters : 1925-1975

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Perhaps it's a sign of the times in which we live, but the biggest stories of recent note in philosophy have been Heidegger's flirtation with National Socialism and the revelation of his affair with his student, Hannah Arendt, in the 1920s. The affair with Arendt has left a bad account of the affair (Ettinger) and a badly written novel in its wake, but perhaps these lumps of fool's gold have led us to the real thing, for they helped persuade Heidegger's son, Herman, to open the private files of his famous father and release these letters to the public. These, along with the letters to Arendt that are extant, comprise a volume that belongs in the library of every serious student of Arendt and Heidegger. It provides a glimpse of the lives and thought of two intellectual giants and of how events led to their estrangement and shaky reconciliation.

The first part of the book comes across as a one-way conversation, as only Heidegger's letters to Arendt are extant. Obviously Heidegger was smart enough to destroy Arendt's letters lest they fall into the hands of Mrs. H. The tone of these early letters is that of a besotted adolescent. Heidegger sends her bad poetry and, in one letter, refers to her as his "little wood nymph." As these letters were meant to be strictly private, we cannot help but suffer the embarrassment of an unintentional voyeur. However, the section ends on an ominous note with a letter from Heidegger in 1933 answering Arendt's charges that he is anti-Semitic. This came shortly after the ascension of Hitler and makes us sad that Heidegger destroyed Arendt's letter making the charges.

The correspondence begins anew after the war and only because Arendt saw it in her heart to forgive her former mentor and in effect bury the hatchet. Heidegger seems most pleased and the letters lead to a personal reconciliation with Arendt visiting Heidegger and his wife in Germany. But all was not to remain quiet. Heidegger had confessed all to his wife, and took her willingness to see Arendt again as a sign all was back to normal, as it were. The letters he sends in 1950 give the impression that he is more than willing to resume their affair; to once again have his cake and eat it, too. But a sudden dispatch from Heidegger warns Arendt to cancel a postponed visit and not to write for a while. Seems Elfride Heidegger was not the willing accomplice her husband believed her to be.

But time heals all and the letters (and visits) resume. Heidegger is more interested in what he is doing and the American response than in what Arendt is doing. In one telling letter, he admits he has no idea of what she means by "radical evil." Another subject on which Arendt treads lightly is that of Karl Jaspers: Jaspers and Heidegger attempted a reconciliation after the war, but failed and each has bitterness toward the other with Arendt playing the diplomat in the middle, though in her letters with Jaspers there is no doubt about whose side she is on.

Another missed opportunity is the sudden death of Merleau-Ponty a few months before he was to meet Heidegger in Marburg. Arendt has a higher opinion of him than does Heidegger, although in a philosophical debate I'd place my money on Merleau-Ponty, whose forays into aesthetics, ontology and physics expose Heidegger as stuck in a neo-Kantian continuum.

All in all, this is the book students of these two intellectual giants have waited for, and I, for one was not disappointed in the least.

This collection of letters is as one- sided as the relationship between Heidegger and Arendt was in certain respects. In this collection Heidegger is the one who speaks, over three - fourths of the one- hundred sixty- six letters are his. We do not have key documents, Arendt's early letters to Heidegger which were destroyed either by Heidegger himself or a member of his family.
The relationship in the first stage at Marburg in 1925 was of the great intellectual figure Heidegger, already a person of tremendous reputation, thirty- five married with children, and that of an eighteen old student worshipper. The illicit love affair was clearly passionate and deeply felt on both sides.
However in little more than a year there are signs that he does not mind her going out with a fellow student,and off to study somewhere else a sign perhaps of his being troubled that the affair exposed might cause harm to his reputation.
A second stage came with the rise of the Nazis to power , Arendt's exile, and Heidegger's becoming a collaborator with the Nazi regime. At this stage Arendt becomes disturbed about allegations of Heidegger's anti- Semitism.
The third stage came after a long hiatus in letter - writing. It was only after the war that there was a renewal of their relationship, though it is not clear that this was also a romantic renewal. For by this time Arendt was married to Heinrich Blucher. At this point Arendt played the role of advisor to Heidegger in helping him deal with the charges of collaboration with the Nazis. This chapter is not one which does Arendt credit. Her readiness to not simply excuse Heidegger for his revolting behavior, (including anti- Semitic remarks, dismissal of Jewish colleagues, a use of concepts of his own philosophy in a pro- Nazi speech, ) but to help him get off the hook reflects a loyalty void of all judgment. And this from the philosopher for whom 'judging' was a fundamental philosophical category.
Their post- war reconciliation was prompted and pushed by Heidegger's viciously anti- Semitic wife, Elfreide. Elfreide despised Arendt but understood that she could help Heidegger, and so encouraged the renewal of the relationship. Heidegger for his part never read Arendt's work and could not give her the kind of respect and esteem that she continued to give him.
Heidegger and Arendt are profound souls, and this is felt in the content and tone of these letters. They are people of high ideals and aspirations. They are two of the most significant thinkers of the twentieth century. Their story of love and friendship is a fascinating one. And whatever additional light is thrown on this relationship is eagerly seized upon by students of their work. Yet their relationship illicit at the outset , later became even more suspect as it worked to cover up Heidegger's immoral behavior. The dishonesty and evasiseness of Heidegger in dealing with the charges against him is all the more reprehensible as it is that of one whose fundamental enterprise is in striving for Truth.Arendt's excess of caring to protect Heidegger are in painful and troubling contrast with her insensitity to survivors of the Shoah, this of course in her famous 'banality of evil' analysis of the action of Eichmann. Her tone in ' Eichmann in Jerusalem' was contemptuous and superior, a tone she might too have learned from Heidegger. There are those who claim that the final phase of the Heidegger- Arendt relationship involved a reversal in which she was the powerful one and he the one more needing and enslaved. But these letters do not seem to bear this out. Her loyalty to him and love enabled her to continue serving him too well to the end of their days. She died in the latter half of 1976 and he only six months later.

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This collection of letters is an absolute necessity for anyone interested in Hannah Arendt, and particularly her relationship with the controversial German philosopher (and mentor) Martin Heidegger. The letters are well annotated and there is a helpful introduction as well. The only problem is that there are relatively few letters from Arendt. And those that appear in the collection are somewhat concise, whether from the editing or simply because they were not extensive. As a result, the reader does not get the intimate and expansive view into Arendt's thinking and activities that one comes away with from reading, for example, her collection of letters to and from Mary McCarthy. Of particular interest is the exchange of poetry between the two--somewhat ironic given Heidegger's controversial career and purported anti-Semitism during the Nazi period. One cannot help thinking, as the letters pass by, as to why Arendt chose to treat Heidegger with such kid gloves; nonetheless, there is a touching quality about this late-in-life correspondence of two former lovers. Quite pleasant and informative and not overly technical in philosophical terms.

Most of the material in this correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt shouldn't come as much of a surprise to most students who are familiar with these great thinkers's respective work. Although, there is surprisingly little discussion of the unfortunate political situation of Heidegger, I suppose the de-Nazification trials exhausted the subject. Still, this is a nice collection of letters; what unfolds are the painful vicissitudes of their affair, and the almost complete destruction of their (and their families) lives on account of WWII. What is a pleasure to read here, however, is Heidegger's casual remarks on his serious philosophical projects, it provides an excellent window into his craft. One reaction, though it hardly comes as a surprise: Heidegger was a terrible poet. For example:

"SONATA SONANS"
What rang rings.
It sinks
Into lament's unknown ware's
Sings into what no one dares,
What's formed from the wreath,
Takes place,
Gentle's love and woe
Into the Same.

Etc. Etc.

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of this collection is (at least for me), that it turns the reader into a creepy voyeur who peers into these personal love letters. Still, there is enough scholarly material contained within for scholars and students to make it a worthwhile collection.

Well, this is quite a surprising little book that casts Martin Heidegger less as the controversial and unrelenting thinker, and more as a man in his world concerned with the quality and concerns of his life and career. It is also an extraordinarily personal and endearing extended love letter to a woman who meant the world to him.
This will strike the usual Heidegger reader as entirely different. There is no hidden marvellous de-coding of his demanding trek. This is a collection of mostly Martin's letters to Hannah with a few responses. The collection spans the course of their lives, and clearly show not only how much he loved her but how much he trusted in her thinking. They were equals in far more sophisticated ways and in far more honest and enduring ways than Sartre and deBeauvoir, who come across as petty bourgeois rats in Henri-Levy's recent biography.
No, here you'll find sign posts and journal entries along the path to Language, Thinking, Heracleitus and Parmenides, Totalitarianism, and the resolution of past controversies. There are Romantic and Philosophical poems (yup, Martin was smooth), endearments and sentinments that come from the heart.
Heidegger refudiates categorically any notion that he is anti-Semitic, and in truth, there's no evidence that he ever was. A bit stupidly enthralled with German nationalism, and certainly a supporter of National Socialism as opposed to Communism, but not anti-Semitic. He refuses to engage in any mea culpa's on that score, and that's it, as far as he is concerned. Arendt, herself Jewish, must have believed him. And that's good enough for me, in any case.
But there is so much more to their relationship than just this point. Her presence in his life upset Elfride Heidegger. There is a curious absence of Hannah's letters to Martin, and perhaps Elfride or Jorg or Hermann decided against preserving them. It's a pity. They clearly had an impact on Martin. Nonetheless, the story of their emotional and philosophical lives continues apace, and the real hallmark of this story is that it succeeds in getting the reader to think, as Heidegger so desperately wanted humans to do, about the little things that we often take for granted, and yet open the way to what is hidden. Hannah has a brilliant description of what Heidegger is about about midway through the book, just before the "Autumn" section begins. It is an analysis that only comes from someone who honestly knows the person she admires, loves and respects, and it thoroughly presents Martin Heidegger as he is.
This isn't weighty stuff for the advance seminars, just a brilliant and extraordinarily personal view of the two greatest philosophical minds of the twentieth century. And it is quite moving.

If it has indeed been confirmed that the 1960 German book sent to Heidegger was the translation of "The Human Condition" then Letter 89 of this volume, for me, may be the most shocking letter - assuming that she sent it and that she meant what she said in that text.

Of course any close reading of Heidegger on the use of simple tools and the lived-space in which simple tasks are performed - his account of space - should be enough to see the link with that Arendt book.

Today I think of those who assigned the book to us to read as students who would have been loathe to assign the "thinker" Heidegger but were confortable recommending Arendt.

Her letter to Elfride on the Sophie Blumenthal letter is disturbing as is her whitewash of Heidegger's supposed 10 months as a Nazi.

The really troubling question is how she justified excluding "Martin" from Men in Dark Times when there are two pieces on Jaspers.

My interpretation is that in the latter book, the opening of the prize speech is in fact veiled justification of Heidegger.

Martin Heidegger (1889 -- 1976) and Hannah Arendt (1906 -- 1975) were among the most influential Twentieth Century thinkers. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger remains best-known for "Being and Time" (1927) and for his later "turn" to poetry and exegesis. Hannah Arendt escaped from Nazi Germany and became and American citizen in 1951. She became a political philosopher and the author of books including "The Origins of Totalitarianism", "The Human Condition" and "Eichmann in Jerusalem." The long personal and intellectual relationship between Heidegger and Arendt is chronicled in this collection of letters written between 1925 -- 1975, published and annotated by Ursula Ludz.

In 1924, Arendt, a young and impressionable student, fell under the intellectual and personal influence of Heidegger at the University of Marburg. At the time, Heidegger was 35, married, a father, and working furiously on "Being and Time." The teacher and student began a passionate affair which gradually evolved into a lasting friendship.

The affair was intense on both sides. "I must come see you this evening and speak to your heart.", Heidegger writes to Arendt in the opening letter of October 11, 1925. In a much later letter of 1950, after the two had resumed contact after 25 years, Heidegger writes of a recent photograph of Arendt: "You do not realize that it is the same gaze that leaped toward me on the lectern -- oh it was and will remain eternity, from afar and intimacy."(letter no. 60) For her part, Arendt left Marburg abruptly in 1926 and soon thereafter made a bad marriage which ended in divorce. Arendt married her second husband, Heinrich Blucher, in 1940 and the marriage lasted until Blucher's death in 1970.

Ludz arranges the letters in the collection in three groups. The first group, headed "At first sight" covers the period between 1925 -- 1933 to include the love affair and its immediate aftermath. Notable in this group is the final letter, no.45 written by Heidegger in 1932 or 1933 in which he tries, in an unconvincing way, to respond to allegations of anti-semitism that Arendt had asked him about in a letter that has not survived.

In 1950, after an absence of 25 years, Arendt and Heidegger began to correspond, with Arendt visiting the philosopher and his wife, Elfride. This section of the letters, captioned "The second look" covers the period 1950-1965. Heidegger and Arendt have a difficult reconciliation, with Arendt struggling to allay the jealousy of Heidegger's wife, Elfride. Heidegger had at first concealed the affair from Elfride (research subsequent to the publication of this book shows that the Heidegger's had an "open marriage")and subsequently admitted to it. The issue, apparently, was the concealment. Heidegger and Arendt discuss in a restrained manner their former relationship, but these letters include a great deal of discussion of Heidegger's ongoing writings and reflections. Heidegger does not appear overly interested in Arendt's writings during this time. While the prose of the letters is restrained, Heidegger also wrote short poems for Arendt in these letters which, in their elliptical, philosophical way, testify to their former relationship as lovers.

The third set of letters, subtitled "Autumn" begins in 1966 and continues through 1975, just before Arendt's death. (An Epilogue includes correspondence from Heidegger on learning of her death.) These are intellectually the most interesting of the letters, as both Heidegger and Arendt discuss their ongoing writings and in a sometimes lively manner exchange ideas. The letters discuss the translation of Heidegger's works into English and their publication in the United States, Heidegger's organization of his unpublished papers, Heidegger and Elfride's move into retirement and Arendt's steadily increasing fame as a writer -- which Heidegger acknowledges at last. Heidegger continues to write and to quote poems and the two exchange and discuss their own books and the books of others. For example Arendt, sends Heidegger Melville's "Billy Budd", one of her favorite novels.

Most of the letters in the collection are by Heidegger, but Arendt more than holds her own. The lifelong influence of Heidegger upon Arendt comes through. The letters includes Arendt's famous lecture "Martin Heidegger at Eighty" delivered as a radio address on Heidegger's 80th birthday which Arendt sent to Heidegger as a birthday present. (Letter no 116) In this address, Arendt describes Heidegger's great influence of a generation of students, (especially herself) and his efforts to practice and teach thinking, among the rarest of gifts. She describes Heidegger's influence both in destroying traditional philosophy and in rehabilitating the nature of thought. The address also explores Heidegger's relationship with Nazism. Arendt attempts to downplay this part of Heidegger's life by calling it a brief mistake and by analogizing it with Plato's experiences with the tyrant Dionysus of Syracuse. Subsequent historical research has not been as gentle with Heidegger on this matter.

Both Heidegger and Arendt wrote these letters in a chaste style, but their early passion comes through. These letters will be valuable to those with an interest in either thinker. Reading these letters may also encourage exploration of the major works that Arendt and Heidegger intended for publication and for which they should be remembered.

Robin Friedman

Everybody knows what two people in a situation like Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger in 1925, a female student and a married philosophy professor, shouldn't say to each other. With imaginary docudramas filling in the blanks of the lives of so many famous people in ways that fulfill the fantasies of millions of TV viewers, as well as the readers of historical novels, those who watch movies about Samson, and theologians who wonder what Adam and Eve ever saw in the forbidden fruit, it is a relief to be getting some actual documents from a famous romance. Heidegger's fame was growing rapidly at the beginning of this book, and Hannah Arendt was bound to become known for paying attention. The fiftieth item in this book, "Martin Heidegger for Hannah Arendt: Five Poems," ends with the short poems:

Correspondence

Godless is God
alone, and no
other thing--
death first
corresponds,
to the ring
of Being's poem,
the first.

DEATH

Death is, in the world's own rhyme,
Being's mountain chain.
Death will evade what's yours and mine
in the falling weight
falling toward silence's tor,
star of earth, nothing more.

For the friend's friend (pp. 63-64, prior to a letter dated Febr. 15, 1950).

Hannah Arendt responded in item 127, twenty years later, a few weeks after Heidegger sent her a poem about time, but trying to quote the earlier poem, from New York, on November 27, 1970:

Dear Martin,
For days, weeks, I have wanted to write to you, at least to tell you how much good your letter did me, your sympathy, the time poem as an aid to reflection. Together with the other from many, many years ago

Death is, in the world's design,
Being's mountain chain.
Death will evade what's yours and mine
In the falling weight.
Falling toward silence's tor,
Star of earth, nothing more. (p. 173).

British users of the English language might know that tor is a hill. Heinrich Blucher had died and a memorial service was held at Bard College on November 15. Like soldiers in a time of mounting casualties, people of different ages often have unsettled feelings about death because which will survive is not obvious. Hannah Arendt died in December, 1975, a few months before Heidegger's death in May, 1976. The `Romeo and Juliet' ending of fifty years of being German, Jewish, or American thinkers, bound together by an interest in the years that offered multiple lessons to be learned on both sides, makes this a bit more interesting to me than the other collections of Hannah Arendt's Letters with Karl Jaspers, Mary McCarthy, Hermann Broch, Kurt Blumenfeld, and Heinrich Blucher.

This book mentions Nietzsche or Heidegger's book about Nietzsche about a dozen times, but the interesting comments are in Hannah Arendt's tribute, "Martin Heidegger at eighty" on pages 148-162, and a brilliant short description of Heidegger as a fox in July 1953 which ends with:

But the fox living in the trap said proudly: So many fall into my trap; I have become the best of all foxes. And there was even something true in that: nobody knows the trap business better than he who has been sitting in a trap all his life. (p. 305).

Most of us could apply the trap business view to everything in life that requires our involvement. Longing for a few ideas, we can pick up a book like this as the inside and outside view of an intellectual trap. Lacking the ability to read this book all at once, I had bookmarks in several places for weeks at a time as my ability to comprehend was expanding to get a grip on what this book has to offer. The Index is helpful for those who have particular interests. Minor items like Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor are not to be found in the Index, however much it might have been on Heidegger's mind when he wrote his letter of April 12, 1950, listing Beethoven, opus 111 Adagio, Conclusion as an addressee on page 74 and thanking Hannah for the opportunity to listen to it:

"And now, Hannah, you have, on top of everything, and with a loving word, also given me Beethoven's Opus 111. Its sound has already become kin to the light I mentioned at the beginning of this letter.

"Elfride returns your greeting and kiss with a happy heart and is glad you returned home safely. Say hello to your dear husband from me." (p. 76).

The index does not have an entry for Elfride Heidegger on page 76, but it did list page 74, where Heidegger wrote about "what is loving about love that cast its light into my room when Elfride and you embraced. We will need time to make what has become of us our own: That you came, that what grew close in us became the closest closeness; that Elfride was helpful with all of it, that our love needs her love; that everything, including your safe return home, is reflected, clarified, and validated in everything else."

I'm sure that Nietzsche wrote that a married philosopher, like Socrates, ought to be cast in some comedy, as Aristophanes did with Socrates in `The Clouds' in 423 B.C., a comedy which placed last in the competition with Cratinous and Ameipsias at the Great Dionysia in the month of March, 423 B.C. Fortunately, Aristophanes revised his comedy, so "The Clouds' that we have today, "as purely farcical as the presentation of the philosopher himself suspended in a basket betwixt heaven and earth" in the notes for the Rogers translation, might be much better than running through it the first time. Heidegger's opportunity in these LETTERS to get himself right all over again after five half decades had passed has a miraculous quality, to say the least.