Gary,

It’s not a bit rough on Heidegger. I don’t care what he says about instrumental reason or technological enframing, or poetics – all existentialists say a lot of useful things on a lot of topics. The issue in the end is what is it that they say, what is about existentialism, that is wrong, fundamentally wrong?

On this score you can’t see the wood for the trees. You speak disparagingly of philosophers but you typically conduct yourself just like one. Some of the very best philosophers I have come across can appreciate every faded and delicate nuance of the most intricate and complicated of thoughts. They are the experts – the Hegel experts, the Nietzsche experts, the Foucault experts, the mahjong experts, et cetera, et cetera, onward, for ever onward. The only thing the experts can’t tell you is where they ultimately stand in relation to these ideas.

Let me quote some Georges Bataille for you:

‘Anguish only is sovereign absolute. The sovereign is a king no more: it dwells low-hiding in big cities. It knits itself up in silence, obscuring its sorrow. Crouching thick-wrapped, there it waits, lies waiting for the advent of him who shall strike a general terror; but meanwhile and even so its sorrow scornfully mocks at all that comes to pass, at all there is’ (Madame Edwarda, et al, p. 147).

Here is the true path of philosophy: ‘meanwhile … its sorrow scornfully mocks at all that comes to pass, at all there is.’ Philosophy is dissatisfaction with every idea, with all that is, with all that comes to pass. The idea is precisely to be a bit rough with people like Heidegger, and to be dissatisfied with his thought in a fundamental way. This is one of the great things about Russell – he risked unfairness for the sake of dissatisfaction. And that’s what Dorothy Green can see in him, in his words, regardless of any odious philosophical baggage. It’s one of the great things about Dorothy Green. You should read her. It’s worth it.

You have to do philosophy this way or otherwise you are a convert, a disciple. Who wants to be one of those? As Canetti said, if you want to follow Kant then be like him. Kant was critical of every other view, scornful, mocking, or at least he aimed to be. Become a Kantian – fill yourself with scorn.

We can go on with some endless bullshit about the brilliance of Heidegger but it won’t get us anywhere. In the end it is a question of what is at stake, and that’s what I was talking about in my last entry.

Adorno has nothing to do with my account of Heidegger. I’m talking about my views and not Adorno’s. As far as Adorno goes, he’s wrong like everybody else.

Actually, I’m not even talking about my views but about material that may be presented at the conference, both the presentation and how I’m going to come back at it during the discussion. When someone talks about ‘enowning’ – I think that’s the word Heidegger uses – and the ‘crucial moment’, I’ve got every right to come back at them by saying that I can see how someone who thought this way might get sucked in by National Socialism.

This is an important question because lots of ordinary decent people got sucked in by National Socialism and we need to understand why. It’s absolutely crucial. Indeed, this is the most crucial issue of all, in the midst of a world in which, to quote Benjamin, ‘fascism has never ceased to be victorious’. The interesting things Heidegger had to say about poetics are irrelevant compared to this question. I also think I’ve got a right to say that he appears more stupid than he actually was – after all, he did get sucked in by National Socialism. That makes him some kind of fuckwit in my book.