Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger Author(s): Daniel Maier-Katkin and Birgit
Maier-Katkin Source: Harvard Review, No. 32 (2007), pp. 34-48 Published by: Harvard Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27569287 . Accessed: 12/12/2013 19:19
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DANIEL MAIER-KATKIN & BIRGIT MAIER-KATKIN

Love and Reconciliation: The Case ofHannah Arendt andMartin Heidegger
It is by now well known that Hannah Arendt had a love affair with Martin She was eighteen years old and his student atMarburg. He was Heidegger. Sein und Zeit (Being had two children, and although thirty-five, married, and Time) had not yet been published, he already enjoyed a reputation as a intellectual history. leading figure in German was a charismatic teacher, a brilliant man with jet black Heidegger famous for the intricacy of his thought and hair and a dark complexion, an avid skier, the beauty of his language. He was energetic and youthful, hiker, understand to He attracted the brightest students, who struggled the subtlety of his thought and regarded him as a sort of magi inmaturity was one of the twentieth century's cian. Hannah Arendt, who as a most and greatest original political theorists, was equally extraordinary and swimmer. secular Jewish woman of exceptional emancipated, intelligence. Her an as describe beautiful and her with contemporaries intensity, inner shy, and determination that also created an aura of magic about her. direction, in Latin and Greek, well read in his already competent she came tory and the classics, and familiar with the world of ideas when to study at Marburg University, which she chose because of a rumor that Arendt Martin Heidegger was a teacher aware from whom of Arendt's thinking could be learned. lectures on became in his presence later he recalled the moment from withdrawn grace, was
young,
Heidegger quickly Plato's Sophist. Twenty-five entitled would "November
years 1924": "If only fall toward me!" in their romantic in 1933, was the dismissal liaison
in a poem she, the one,
Interest the Nazi
Party
turns on the fact that Heidegger joined of Freiburg, elected rector at the University
implemented put his considerable Arendt about was driven
of Jews from the faculty, and enthusiastically intellectual prestige at the service of the F?hrer, while into exile to escape the virulent anti-Semitism that was
to culminate in the destruction of European Jewry, and that, despite a at after total in time when she had emerged 1945, this, Germany's collapse as a major intellectual figure in her own right, Arendt took the lead in es tablishing a reconciliation with Heidegger.
34 Harvard Review 32
The most interesting question presented by the relationship these two giants of twentieth century intellectual history is:How have forgiven him? After
between could she
a lecture one day early in February 1925, Heidegger to asked Arendt come to his office. He later described her as "wearing a raincoat, a hat pulled low over her face, now and then uttering a barely audible 'yes' or 'no.'"
On February 10 he wrote a note which begins: "Dear Miss Arendt! Imust . . . see are come You you this evening and speak to your heart my pupil to and I your teacher, but that is only the occasion for what has happened never us. Iwill be able to call you mine, but from now on you will belong it shall grow with you." Four days later he wrote to her two weeks later suggests again this time as "Dear Hannah." A letter written on the "In and rainstorm reveals mood: the growing intimacy Heidegger's in my life, and and great. Iwould have liked to way home, you were even more beautiful wander with you for nights on end." in strict secrecy. Elf ride, Theirs was a hidden, adulterous love, conducted was a town this meant not to in and small know, wife, Heidegger's university sometimes attic apartment; the lovers met in Arendt's sent notes in code the place and Heidegger cryptic specifying a with the time of their next rendezvous system of signals of lights to be switched on and off to show if he was in his study. His letters during the know. Often of their relationship iswhat for the beloved?that express his longing: ismost wonderful?for to "Being allowed it is in the wait that no one must
first months wait
... After the concert, I is 'present,'" or "Dear Hannah! ing that the beloved was so moved by being near you that I could not bear it any longer?and would much rather have wandered left, when I through theMay night with beside and you you?walking silently sensing your dear hand and your for and why but just 'being.'" A later letter great gaze?not asking what if I can not and may not do so?for your love." ends: "Thank you?even Without the obvious power of physical attraction and the diminishing excitement of their transgressive of the relationship the exhilaration was to Heidegger a young, affair, derived beautiful he was it is nevertheless clear that part of from their shared intellectuality. woman who could follow the into existential
Arendt
complicated philosophy
paths of his thought; and the life of the mind.
to her an initiation
was in the early stages of the work that came to fruition Heidegger two years later in Being and Time, and their talk was filled not only with but also with his awe in literature, poetry, and classic works of philosophy,
Maier-Katkin
35
the face of Being?suspended must eventually fall. Arendt as shadows across her heart,
over confessed
into which it the abyss of nothingness fears of death passed that childhood
and he responded that there are shadows only where there is also sun, and that he was "made helpless" by her elementary joy and quiet, resolute persistence. From Heidegger nothingness Arendt learned the appreciation heightens In of fear of freedom. death life, Heidegger possibilities ordinary taught, is repressed; individuals seek distractions and forget their own Being in concerns. Work, family, politics, and the petty concerns of ev day-to-day from awareness else they may be, are all distractions eryday life, whatever of Being in the moment?with awaiting each man. its concomitant awareness of the impending faith of his the Catholic the inevitability that embracing and of of the present moment of
catastrophe
childhood, Heidegger's finality of death head the possibilities inherent
Having rejected to Arendt and the world was to face the challenge on with no retreat into spirituality, and to embrace in limited
existence without fear or illusions, awareness of Being. sustained of the possibilities only by one's joyful to determination Arendt absorbed Heidegger's existential his fortitude, and his non-negotiable that serious human questions, position on first and last things, but a lifetime of dwell persistently that she did not accept the centrality of death in his thought,
ask difficult thought must work reflects preferring existential
instead to focus on birth and new beginnings. Where Heidegger's isolation as the way to escape man's help solipsism emphasized to the pettiness less addiction of the social world, Arendt replied with a of plurality, amor mundi, which ennobled public life.
philosophy
im of her thought, however, was far in the future; more This explication Arendt began to experience the alienating effects of a secret love mediately was no in for which there the shared world of public life: "Why," she place
wrote,
...
do
you
give
me
your
hand
Shyly, knowledge Are you from such a distant land That you do not know our wine? had become By the end of 1925 their contact and correspondence to of family demands letters attribute the this frequent. Heidegger's and his need to withdraw from everything human in order less life
of it only mine?
to do creative
work,
as "the most magnificent human experience he characterizes . . . the most . . . [but which to concrete situations with is] regard one can encounter." Perhaps there was in this an element repugnant thing to family of deceit in the face of cooling ardor, or a renewed commitment them was painful The growing life and respectability. separation between for Arendt, who was, after all, still very young. A poem of that period about which I know distant
velvet,
love repeats
heavy as
the refrain:
"The evening
has enwrapped
me,
/ Soft as
sorrow."
to study with to Heidelberg to move Arendt Heidegger encouraged Karl Jaspers. and the his distinguished friend, psychiatrist, philosopher that he could send her away, but the break She went, hurt and confused and secret meetings them was far from clean. Correspondence between was traveling to Switzerland, In July 1926, when Heidegger continued. at a train station in a small town en route to meet Arendt he arranged became more where spo they could spend the night. But such meetings less frequent. The exchanges were mostly radic and their correspondence love of his abiding send assurances initiated by Heidegger, who would for his absence with excuses of ill health, and longing for her, apologizing and forbidding her to respond except on specific occa work, meetings, to this is how she first began sions when he asked her to write. Perhaps was "always, as she put it twenty years later, that Heidegger recognize,
at every opportunity ... a notorious liar." Nevertheless, as late as 1928,
when
vacationing and without letter from Heidegger for a rendezvous with
Arendt
was
in N?rnberg amoment's
with
friends,
she received interrupted
a her
hesitation
travel
him.
Heidegger the offer
wrote
to Arendt
to assume
Husserl's
associated the visibility taneous publication of Being and Time elevated his anxiety about being a young woman about whom he was no compromised by an affair with a so met in few and days later passionate. longer feeling They mid-April, think Ihave to Heidegger: "That you will not come now?I Arendt wrote ... I love know you as I have [since] the very first day?you . . . will love you And 'God willing/I this this, and Ihave always known more after death,'" a rough paraphrase of the last lines of the Elizabeth understood Barrett Browning poem which begins: and ends, "I love thee with the ways," life!?and, if God choose,/! shall but "How do I love thee? Let me the breath, count / Smiles, tears, of all my love thee better after death."
on April 2,1928, saying that he had accepted at Freiburg. Perhaps chair in philosophy and the simul this important promotion with
Maier-Katkin
37
are letters over the next few years inwhich Arendt refers to con as one love for of of life and longs the her tinuing Heidegger great blessings to kiss his eyes and brow. The intensity of love in youth leaves an indelible and bittersweet and this may help explain Arendt's readiness, impression, There years later, to reconcile with Heidegger, a complete and dramatic estrangement. but in the years just ahead there was The last letters before the Second
World War passed between them in the winter of 1932-33, just as the Nazis were coming to power. to her concern about rumors that he In response was becoming declared that these were slanders, anti-Semitic, Heidegger and offered a presumably insensitive account but exculpatory profoundly of his behavior towards disaster: towards Jews at a time when their destiny was turning
I am
on
sabbatical
this
. . . semester
and
. . . announced
well
in
advance
that Iwanted
to be left alone
and would comes
projects wants to write

me every
and the like. This man who a dissertation

to report on
not be accepting anyway and urgently comes

...
is a Jew. The man who

a large work in progress
to see
is also a
month
text for an urgent reading Jew. The man who sent me a substantial a few weeks a is two I helped get ac fellows The whom Jew. ago cepted in the last three semesters are Jews. The man who, with my to call this help, got a stipend to go to Rome is a Jew.Whoever wants iswelcome to do so. Beyond that, I am now 'raging anti-Semitism' in University issues as Iwas ten years just as much an anti-Semite ... To say absolutely about my personal ago inMarburg nothing with Jews [e.g., Husserl, Misch, Cassirer, and others]. relationships And above all it cannot touch my relationship to you.
1933, Shortly thereafter, Heidegger joined the Nazi Party, and inAugust into exile in France. For the next seventeen years there was Arendt went only silence between them.
For Arendt the hands
this was of Nazi
to Paris, where her way without for she worked papers a Zionist organization Youth Aliyah, to Israel; children immigrate helping then after the fall of France in 1940 she escaped from the infamous detention center at Gurs. Cleverness, timing, and daring conspired to mark Hannah
police officer and then made
a period of danger and deprivation. She slipped out of a young officials twice: first in 1933 when she persuaded in Berlin to dismiss charges against her of anti-state activity
Arendt was
but survival in exile also involved great suffering and in fortune. Arendt had the good part, a matter of uncertain always, fortune in Paris to meet and marry Heinrich Bl?cher, a strong, articulate, a German even leftist heroic handsome, courageous, intelligent, figure, associated with and theatrical circles surrounding the intellectual Bertolt Brecht. Through years of exile and statelessness Arendt said of Bl?cher that in her own four walls?wherever she felt secure?as she was with him. It
as a survivor,
was
also a matter
preparation) gain visas to enter the United and she a leading For Heidegger,
of good fortune (combined with that Arendt and Bl?cher were among States, where public intellectual. the Third Reich began with
effort and thoughtful to the last 250 people citizens became they eventually
to lead ambitions grandiose a historic spiritual and intellectual of the German nation, but rejuvenation to have a leading and despair. The Nazis were pleased ended in disrepute to the position of among their ranks and he was appointed philosopher Rektor at Freiburg University, where he behaved atrociously: abolishing a F?hrer system of governance, the faculty senate, instituting firing Jew to ish faculty members, the with the Nazi system align university helping to a band of thugs. In public regime, and lending intellectual respectability addresses he called upon students to undertake labor service and military service on behalf of the Reich, honored of the German ending salute: threefold Volk and German "Heil Hitler," of unprecedented the exceptionalism language, thought, and will, and excellence tradition, with often this
his speeches "To the man Sieg Heil!"
and on at least one occasion to our F?hrer Adolf
Hitler?a
On a personal M?ller by writing but criticizing the promotion
level, Heidegger disrupted a letter of reference praising
the career of his student Max him as a scholar and teacher
at Heidelberg. recommended Heidegger won in in 1953, Prize Nobel the (who Staudinger chemistry at and was already in the 1930s one of the most famous faculty members as be removed of from his because his position pacifist Freiburg) professor in this and anti-nationalist inclinations. The Ministry of Culture concurred that Hermann concerned about worldwide judgment, but the higher authorities, to retain his position. sions, allowed Staudinger repercus
too closely circle surrounding
his negative attitude towards the Nazi state, and he blocked of his student, Eduard Baumgarten, him as characterizing associated with intellectuals and liberal-democrat the Jewish Max Weber
Maier-Katkin
39
treatment of his closest friends. Perhaps most damning was Heidegger's He betrayed Edmund Husserl, the his teacher and steadfast champion, a baptized Austrian of his generation, Jew, leading existential philosopher and especially to the chair in philosophy elevation Heidegger's to Heidegger: the time Husserl wrote professing the years Lutheran, and German patriot whose at the time of his own enthusiastic retirement support over made possible At
at Freiburg University.
you have begun to realize your own true being as a philosopher. From that beginning you will grow to new and greater stature. No too, that no ill feelings will body has more faith in you than I?faith, of confuse or divert you from the work that is purely a consequence the talent entrusted to you, conferred upon you at birth.
Four years later, itwas Rektor Heidegger the form letter who ^~ued at from the the Jewish faculty dismissing university, including Husserl own es In a letter to Karl Jaspers, reflecting her his emeritus position. from Arendt commented this "would that have trangement Heidegger, left Husserl and indifferent if someone killed else had him, this signature
murderer."
almost
signed I can't but
[but as] this letter as a regard Heidegger
it...
potential
In June, 1933, shortly after ascending to the rectorship, Heidegger vis as Hitler ited Karl Jaspers. To Jaspers' question "How can a man as coarse no is "Culture of Just govern Germany?" importance. Heidegger replied: look at his marvelous wife, Gertrud, hands." When the news cried over that his Jewish Jaspers complained she read in the newspaper, Heidegger to cry sometimes," and then leftwithout
responded,
"Itmakes
one feel better
house he had visited taking his leave of Mrs. Jaspers, in whose properly for long stretches dating back to the 1920s. Seventeen years later, inMarch been told Arendt that this 1950, Heidegger, Jaspers interpreted having by come to your wrote to Jaspers saying, "I haven't affront as anti-Semitic, a Jewish woman lived there, but because Iwas a little book, On the masterful simply ashamed." Jaspers, who had written a of letters that German after brief concluded Guilt, Question of exchange as was not as ashamed he ought to have been and broke off the Heidegger house since 1933 not because correspondence; Heidegger and returned any repulsion the two men never met or spoke again after 1933. from his position as Rektor inMay of 1934
resigned suddenly to professorial life. This seems to have been based less on than on their growing he may have felt towards the Nazis
disinterest university losopher. executed
in him. He had hoped to be placed in charge of the German a earn to in and system place history as the leading Nazi phi as it happens, These honors, fell to Alfred Rosenberg, who was by the Allies was too rari Heidegger's philosophy racist to have much appeal for the Nazis, who were at N?rnberg.
fied and insufficiently
a of him. Over the next decade the SS maintained suspicious increasingly file on Heidegger; and his rights to publish and he was under surveillance
travel were somewhat restricted. Nevertheless, after the war he was not
to teach to be denazified, declared and he was not allowed immediately was was It for felt that many years. unrepentant again widely Heidegger to the university and to Germany and that he had done too much damage stage. by throwing his prestige behind the Nazi regime in its formative 1949, Arendt, now celebrated as the author of Origins of To as inAmerica talitarianism, and rising to a position of widespread visibility amission as executive a scholar, writer, and public intellectual, undertook In November director of Hebraica which with would to recover 1.5 million volumes of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Germans and Judaica that had been appropriated and to the by or "ownerless" property. She visited they now referred as abandoned Jaspers in Switzerland contact Heidegger when to hand-deliver and indicated that she did not think she in Freiburg. Once there, however, the next day. That afternoon he came an invitation to visit at his home that evening. she was
Karl
she sent him a note which to her hotel She was
he received
in the dining room, and the waiter, the famous local recognizing announced him. They talked until late in the night and again philosopher, were at his home the next morning, and Elfride Heidegger where Arendt
introduced.
This outpouring This

life
initial
act of reconciliation wrote
was
of feeling. Arendt and
accompanied by a tremendous the next day, saying: of an entire

it, was never
evening
this morning
that, when
are the confirmation

it comes down to
. . . confirmation
expected. expected
suddenly Iwould not have to anyone
the waiter (I had not actually spoke your name not received after had the letter, all), itwas as if time you, stood still. Then all at once I became aware of something When confessed before, neither tomyself nor to you nor . . . [that] the [to contact you] had power of the impulse saved me from committing the only really inexcusable and forfeiting my life. But one thing you should
mercifully act of infidelity
Maier-Katkin
41
know
little to do with each other, after (as we have had relatively as not as we and that all, openly might have), if I had done it, then it would only have been out of pride, that is, out of sheer crazy stupidity. Not for reasons.
Within
many
days Heidegger
more over the
had written
following weeks.
five poems
One was
to her, and he composed

a reaction to her com
ment
that she had
never
considered
herself
a German
woman
and had
herself a Jewish woman, but felt as if she long since stopped considering a from Schiller?"The Girl From were, "after all"?here borrowing phrase Abroad." "Mountain of joy," he wrote, "... Stranger: home of the solitary . . . world where all the fires' ashes and igniting gaze begins outglowing of charity." At Heidegger's returned for a second visit a few weeks urging Arendt later. We do not know how Heidegger characterized his role in the Third Reich in those first conversations, but it is inconceivable that their talk circumvented from a romance tors and victims life and work. to her mis that Heidegger characterized himself same the in he had his denazification in 1945 way leadingly, application and again, years later, in a final interview published in Der posthumously denied and Spiegel. Heidegger publicly put culpability unapologetically forward an image of himself almost as a victim of the regime. He took on the rectorship, he claimed, because the university needed him. He only it facilitated his efforts to protect the university, joined the party because and because he believed that the participation of intellectuals would Socialism. He accepted the Jewish Proc deepen and transform National lamation reluctantly and only to keep the university from being closed. in 1933 and 1934 were filled with enthusiasm If his public statements for the F?hrer, who would and such itwas because Hitler did indeed seem at the time to be the man out of crisis and towards lead Germany its national destiny; were he sentiments, out, among pointed widespread leading and religious leaders at the time. He never referred to business, for personal greatness within the National for contributing that the thinking revival, to the legitimacy of the that led to his d?tente to have behaved as he Socialist It can be assumed the world events that had transformed their relationship into a political and racial discourse perpetra involving of heinous at center crimes?the the of Arendt's subject embers
political, his ambitions never Nazi with
acknowledged revolution, the Nazis
responsibility never admitted flawed
was
or that he was mistaken
did. His would
position was that in 1933 itwas by no means yet clear that things a decade before turn out as they did. If he did not foresee Auschwitz it happened, few did.
Indeed, Heidegger he saw that there was
in 1934 because he left the rectorship maintained, an unbridgeable gap between himself and the Nazis, of the greatness because he rejected their materialist race-based explanation of the Volk (in favor of a more cultural and spiritual explanation), and that But he never acknowledged this separated him from Nazi anti-Semitism. that racial prejudice and brutality were already evident when he publicly cast his lot with the Nazis, or that the party, by elevating political hacks to in the national university all the leadership positions system, had signaled that the movement
him.
did not want
him on board
and had no further use
for
In his post-factum construction of reality, Heidegger that he suggested of spiritual resistance. He did not abandon had entered an inner emigration to German rebirth, but the party his v?lkische ideology, nor his commitment had too little regard for his intellectual leadership and could not be counted on to move events in some ways inwhich was in the right direction. In his own mind, Heidegger more National Socialist than the Nazis; but itwas a National neither the national nor the social elements were intrin
Socialism
to anti-Semitic, racist theory. Why then did he biological sically connected to pay dues to not attend Husserl's funeral in 1938? Why did he continue itwas the party until May 1945? Perhaps he was afraid to be conspicuous; known that those who fell into disfavor with the movement were at some after this to his risk. There are no further allegations of serious Nazi but about character period, questions Heidegger's but to his persistent, early Nazi enthusiasm in 1933 and 1934. about his activities collaboration
attach not only
self-serving
disingenuousness
It does not seem likely that Arendt was taken in by Heidegger's duplic and that she forgave him because she believed his lies. She certainly ity knew about his behavior toward Husserl and Jaspers. Might her attitude if she had known all the additional have hardened details that Heidegger to Heinrich Bl?cher and Karl Jaspers writ repressed? Letters from Arendt ten after her meeting in 1950 show that she viewed him with Heidegger
as and a liar and evasive." as a man of flawed character whose reactions were "cautious
A July 1953 diary entry in the form of a parable is particularly illustra tive. It begins with a declarative almost said sentence, certainly something in one of their meetings in 1950 or 1952: by Heidegger
Maier-Katkin
43
is a fox." This is says proudly: "People say Heidegger Heidegger was once a fox so utterly the true story of Heidegger the fox: There without fell into traps but could cunning that he not only constantly
not even distinguish a trap from a non-trap .. .
Arendt
was na?ve about the affairs that Heidegger to the transparency of his lies. In a letter toMary McCarthy dated June 7,1957, Arendt wrote about an affair about whom had had with an Englishman, she unhappy McCarthy still had tender feelings, but who turned out to have lied habitually about to have concluded of men and oblivious himself and his background. lie about facts are better Arendt cautioned her to remember that men than those who lie about feelings because facts what they do . . . [but Ifmen who lie about facts are
seems
who
"will come out and show as to lies about honest woman, about
them to be liars no matter
feelings] who can find out?" their feelings, they can sometimes be redeemed by the love of a but what for?some Some of these men can form of respectability? that itwill overrule by genius or a talent so compelling else." Here, she offered as examples Brecht and Heidegger.
also "be redeemed everything Consider
could Hannah the question with which we began: How creative the of her and zenith Arendt, approaching powers public recognition and despite the dislocation and suffering of the Nazi period, have forgiven again Martin as an unrepentant then still widely viewed Nazi? Heidegger, she did not trust him or hold his character in high regard, Although of love and continuing admiration for there was forArendt both the memory
Heidegger's genius. For Arendt, neither Heidegger's disgraceful behavior in of character that made duplicity the critical year 1933-34, nor the weakness rather than candor his principal defensive strategy in the postwar years, were as to place him outside of the human community of such amagnitude is always a possibility. within which, she believed, reconciliation was itself an early topic in the renewed discourse between Reconciliation Arendt Arendt A letter from Heidegger, in May and Heidegger. 1950, addresses as "Oh you! most trusted one" and recalls a conversation between are "You them on her second visit to Freiburg inMarch: right," he wrote,
reconciliation and revenge."
"about
We Arendt's
do not know what
was
Denktagebuch fundamental equality of human
observes
them; but a lengthy entry in the that forgiveness (Verzeihung) destroys relations by setting the person who forgives said between
apart from and above the person who is forgiven. It destroys relationships a to the person who be because forgives pretends superior person, and one was not Heidegger's who asks to be forgiven (which in any event the can seeks which humans neither give to one another position) something nor take from one another. because preserves the person seeking vengeance always stays close (at no sense) to the other, with pretense of superiority. and revenge have in common the solidarity of sin Revenge the other did Imight have done or could do. rather than emo for forgiveness (Rache), on the other hand,
relationships least in a psychological Christian
ners?recognition Reconciliation
forgiveness that what
rational (Vers?hnung) is a true alternative, or tional revenge and substituting spiritual, abandoning and hope for new and better beginnings. honest memory Over the meaning sociated The Human never time, at least in her English writing, Arendt of "forgiveness" many of the attributes reconciliation. Condition, Arendt
came to include within
with
In the chapter noted that in an uncertain
as that she originally on Action in her 1958 classic, world people can taken are ir
of their behavior, but actions predict the consequences reversible: what was done or not done cannot be changed. Only forgiving can undo the deeds of the past, which otherwise "hang like Damocles' sword
over every new generation." disputation Citing Jesus of Nazareth's against the scribes and Pharisees, Arendt argued that the power to forgive is not exclusively divine, but that men must forgive each other before they can hope to be forgiven by God. Arendt does not assert a duty to forgive (or reconcile with) the extremi ties of willed the evil, but only (still following Jesus) human "trespasses," are not of do less characteristic which that necessarily injury they principal from men acting than willed evil, but that they arise from thoughtlessness, when reasons, they "know rather than spiritual they do." For practical in which if the web of relationships requires forgiveness is to go on: not what
trespass life is enmeshed
release from what they do can Only through this constant mutual men remain free agents, only by constant willingness to change their minds and start again can they be trusted with so great a power as that to begin Arendt something new.
does not excoriate reaction seems
automatic ing, now
it as the natural, expected, revenge, but denigrates to transgression, while forgiveness (which, in her think can never be predicted: to incorporate reconciliation)
Maier-Katkin
45
tioned
It is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way, uncondi act it the and which therefore by provoked freeing from its consequences both the one who and the one who is forgives
forgiven.
commented that every life, Arendt been an afterthought for her, a reflection on experience. With it is hard not to read Heidegger into these sentences:
Near
the end of her
thought had this inmind
it establishes and the relationship is always an eminently or private) individual affair in personal (though not necessarily which what was done is forgiven for the sake of who did it. . .For Forgiving it is one of the rarest occurrences in human love, although ... is unconcerned to the point of total unworldliness with the loved person may
achievements, failings,
lives what . . .
be, with
and
his qualities
and shortcomings
transgressions.
We must romantic,
be careful
to remember
that the love of which
Arendt
puts between
admiration
but "regard for another person from the distance of shared humanity us," based on awareness
or esteem.
speaks is not that the world rather than on
In response to her friend W. H. Auden, who argued for a more liberal to forgiveness based on principles of universal approach charity and the to turn the other cheek, Arendt wrote admonition that she did not approve in the person who of forgiving everything (?berhaupt), including betrayal on of the human sinfulness and betrayed grounds solidarity with the sinner. to forgive in the spirit "I admit," she wrote, "that there is a great temptation ofWho am I to Judge? but I'd rather resist it." Better, she thought, to forgive in the spirit of friendship, which cannot be universal, (unlike friendliness) us to make distinctions individuals. among requiring the Lessing Prize of the years later, on the occasion of receiving of Hamburg, Arendt returned to the theme of forgiveness and of Gotthold theWise that in the end, love, observing Lessing's play Nathan Some wisdom consists
Free City
to sacrifice truth to solely in his readiness of new beginnings friendship." This and her hope in the possibility explain seems to concur in the Arendt's reconciliation with Heidegger; and Auden "Nathan's bases for her judgment. His poem "The Common Life" ends:
And
always, though truth and love can never really differ, when seem they The subaltern should be truth.
to
It is important reconciliation flood
in closing to observe the enduring effects of forgiveness in the lives of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.
and The
of correspondence between them in 1950 and 1952 slowed substan Then there were almost tially in 1953 and 1954 but remained affectionate. no letters between them for ten years and no further visits. There is a warm inApril 1965, from Heidegger, for having sent greet thanking Arendt on occasion the of his and 1966 then in October ings seventy-fifth birthday; a letter from him to her on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, recalling the seminar on Plato's Sophist more has been converges than forty years earlier: "It often seems to on a single moment that salvages what can back that his letter had given her the "greatest possible ... iswhere wrote: "What endures their first meetings,
note
me as ifwhat last." Arendt
wrote
joy" and, recalling one can say [here quoting and ending?always the Goethe]?'Beginning new same.'" After this their correspondence grew active again. beginning There were of and books small and other then renewed exchanges gifts in the summer of 1967. visits beginning In September delivered 1969, Arendt a radio address in honor of
Heidegger's eightieth birthday, recalling his lectures on Plato, noting that he exemplified the difference between and discussing philosophy come alive with passion. and that he made doing philosophy thinking that Heidegger and Plato, when in involved they became to tyrants and F?hrers," but this "escapade" human affairs "resorted in a she "is called 'mistake' the life, said, Heidegger's mostly today?after ..." bitterness has subsided and Heidegger this 'mistake' "recognized She after a short time and then risked German with universities back note an affectionate more than was common at considerably then." She sent a copy of this talk to Heidegger lamented
that ended: "May those who come after us, when our century and its people and try to keep faith with them, not they recall the sandstorms that swept us up, each in his own way, devastating forget man and in which like this and his work were still possible." something
In the next years there were more visits and a very active correspon
here and there books, ideas, problems with publishers, discussing or on visits further visits had how such planning commenting pleasant in Heidegger's been. One notices, of life's letters, the damping especially
dence
Maier-Katkin
47
he apologizes for a delay in writing, saying: "I should have written I but used best for the hours work." long ago, Hannah Arendt died suddenly of a heart attack at dinner with friends in December 1975. She was sixty-nine years apartment old. Martin Heidegger, informed by telegram, wrote that he was in deep are and that and remembrance left to us." He died mourning "only grief a few months later at the age of eighty-six. In their last years an easy com in her Manhattan merce
towards
fire, as when
between
winter's
old friends
night.
added warmth
to autumn
days,
the sun fading
Forgiveness manifestations with Martin
and reconciliation, which restore peace and friendship, are of love as regard for another. Hannah Arendt's reconciliation
honors the memory of young love and holds the Heidegger a of world reconstructed Is "Being-in promise through new beginnings. the-world" made better by this? Perhaps the best answer is Carl Sandburg's existential question: if any get more
dust. . .
tell me
in the
than the lovers
...
in the cool tombs.
NOTES: spondents, Karl
This
essay
draws Hannah
on
the Arendt
letters
of Hannah
Arendt
and Letters
her
closest
corre edited
especially
and Martin
Heidegger: by Lotte
1925-1975,
by Ursula Ludz and translated by Andrew

Jaspers Correspondence 1926-1969,
Shields
(Harcourt, 2004); Hannah Arendt

Kohler and Hans Saner and
edited
translated by Robert and Rita Kimber

degger-Jaspers correspondence, 1920-1963,
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

edited by Walter Biemel
1992); TheHei
and Hans Saner
and translated by Gary E. Aylesworth (Humanity Books, 2003); Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949-1975, edited by Carol Brightman (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1995); and Within Four Walls: The
Correspondence and translated Between by Peter Hannah Arendt and Heinrich (Harcourt 1933 and Bl?cher, Brace edited by Lotte 1996). source Kohler Richard Constantine Jovanovich, excellent
Wolin,
full
The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (MIT Press, 1998) provides

speeches during 1934. An on
the
this
text of Heidegger's
life isHugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, translated period inHeidegger's Allan Blunden (Basic Books, 1993). The quotation from the Husserl-Heidegger by
correspondence is drawn from this source.

Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

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Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

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Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger Author(s): Daniel Maier-Katkin and Birgit

DANIEL MAIER-KATKIN & BIRGIT MAIER-KATKIN

Heidegger quickly Plato's Sophist. Twenty-five entitled would "November

in a poem she, the one,

Interest the Nazi

implemented put his considerable Arendt about was driven

between could she

first months wait

paths of his thought; and the life of the mind.

childhood, Heidegger's finality of death head the possibilities inherent

ask difficult thought must work reflects preferring existential

vacationing and without letter from Heidegger for a rendezvous with

she received interrupted

Heidegger the offer

and would comes

projects wants to write

and the like. This man who a dissertation

not be accepting anyway and urgently comes

is a Jew. The man who

For Arendt the hands

this was of Nazi

police officer and then made

his speeches "To the man Sieg Heil!"

and on at least one occasion to our F?hrer Adolf

On a personal M?ller by writing but criticizing the promotion

level, Heidegger disrupted a letter of reference praising

the career of his student Max him as a scholar and teacher

too closely circle surrounding

signed I can't but

[but as] this letter as a regard Heidegger

one feel better

disinterest university losopher. executed

fied and insufficiently

she sent him a note which to her hotel She was

This outpouring This

act of reconciliation wrote

of feeling. Arendt and

accompanied by a tremendous the next day, saying: of an entire

are the confirmation

suddenly Iwould not have to anyone

mercifully act of infidelity

to her, and he composed

that she had

political, his ambitions never Nazi with

acknowledged revolution, the Nazis

responsibility never admitted flawed

or that he was mistaken

did. His would

Indeed, Heidegger he saw that there was

did not want

and had no further use

attach not only

them to be liars no matter

also "be redeemed everything Consider

do not know what

Denktagebuch fundamental equality of human

relationships least in a psychological Christian

forgiveness that what

came to include within

In the chapter noted that in an uncertain

trespass life is enmeshed

does not excoriate reaction seems

automatic ing, now

the end of her