Leiter on Romano on Heidegger; And the Philosopher Who Lives Philosophy

Leiter weighs in, in his usual acerbic fashion. He adds little to the discussion, but as usual, his vitriol makes his efforts amusing.

The discussion that has resulted from Romano's article reminded me of something Nietzsche once wrote in "Schopenhauer as Educator" (Dan Brezeale's translation; emphasis mine):

I profit from a philosopher only insofar as he can be an example. That he is capable of drawing whole nations after him through his example is beyond doubt; the history of Indian, which is almost the history of Indian philosophy, proves it. But this example must be supplied by his outward life and not merely in his books--in the way, that is, in which the philosophers of Greece taught, through their bearing, what they wore and ate, and their morals, rather than by what they said, let alone what they wrote. how completely this courageous visibility of the philosophical life is lacking in Germany!

Writing this in an essay on Schopenhauer seems appropriate, since, as a rabid misogynist, he had no problem throwing his landlady down the stairs. When she died, and he no longer had to pay her restitution, he famously wrote in his account book, "Obit anus, abit onus," the pretentious 19th century equivalent of saying, "The bitch is dead, the I don't have to pay anymore" (literally more like, "The asshole is dead, the burden departed"). So he was certainly living that aspect of his philosophy.

More to the point, this sentiment seems somewhat strange in 2009, when the vast majority of professional philosophers are working on issues that would be difficult to reflect in their outward lives--in the way that they carry themselves, in what they wear, eat, etc. How, for example, might one wear clothes reflective of one's position on whether the denotation of a predicate is its extension or its intension? What should predicate dualists or eliminative materialists eat? In a time when philosophy has become an increasingly specialized discipline, and increasingly removed from life, it has become increasingly difficult to know what living a philosophy would entail, to say nothing of actually doing so.

Still, I think there's something important in the sentiment that a philosopher should live his or her philosophy, to the extent that a philosopher's philosophy is relevant to living. If nothing else, a philosopher living in a way that is not only consistent with, but actually reflects his or her philosophy shows that he or she takes it quite seriously, and suggests that we, as their readers, should take it seriously as well.

One can apply this maxim to much of systematic philosophy, and to much of the generally asystematic Continental tradition. Heidegger's philosophy, which both systematic and as part of that tradition, is certainly is relevant to living, and thus it's not inappropriate to ask whether he lived in a way that reflected it. We might, for example, explore how well Heidegger's life reflected one of the central ideas in his philosophy, the concept of authenticity (eigentlich), and one of its primary components, "resoluteness" (Entschlossenheit), in his siding with the Nazi's largely for reasons of personal and professional gain, his efforts to get us to ignore this episode in his life while refusing to apologize for it, his treatment of his friends Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuese, and Karl Jaspers (during the Nazi years, treating them rather poorly, even insulting them, but afterward, when his reputation was in need of repair, calling on them to come to his aid), etc.

Heidegger wrote in Being and Time that resoluteness, again part of authenticity, is "letting oneself be called forth to one’s ownmost Being-guilty." He had in mind a sort of existential guilt (not unlike original sin, I suppose), in this part of Being and Time, but sees this existential guilt as the ground for all feelings of responsibility and guilt. Yet Heidegger refused to admit responsibility, or show any form of guilt, when it came to his Nazism and other blatantly immoral personal and professional behavior. His refusal to apologize to the very people he'd most directly harmed, his friends and students like Arendt, Jaspers, and Marcuse, shows this quite clearly. Is this Heidegger failing to live his philosophy, or at least an important aspect of it? It's difficult to draw any other conclusion.

How much, then, can we profit from him as a philosopher? How seriously should we take his philosophy in light of the fact that he so blatantly failed to live in accordance with it? I assume we could forgive small indiscretions. Philosophers are no more perfect than any other human beings. But Heidegger's indiscretions were anything but small. At this point, the fact that Heidegger's thought has been so influential probably renders his living of it irrelevant from a historical perspective. We can profit greatly from it in understanding the work of those who came after him. But I am interested in philosophy first and foremost from an individual perspective: what does it tell me about the world, myself, and life in general that I can use in my own life? There is no doubt in my mind that I can take bits and pieces from Heidegger to inform my own thinking (I frequently use his lectures on the Principle of Sufficient Reason in my own thinking on science and ontology, e.g.), but Heidegger's own failure to live his philosophy makes me skeptical of his project as a whole. I don't think his personal failures constitute sufficient grounds for rejecting his philosophy, of course, but it is certainly one rather large quarrel in the critic's quiver.

What do you think?

Added (Slightly) Later: The example I gave is not meant to be the only one in which Heidegger's life is relevant to his philosophy. Nor is "seriousness" meant to be the only reason why living a philosophy is relevant to what we take away from it. Nietzsche himself gives us more reasons in Beyond Good and Evil when he talks of the prejudices of philosophers. A philosophers personality will inevitably be reflected in his or her philosophy, but sometimes indirectly: a philosophy, for example, may be designed to make a philosopher seem like an extremely moral, erudite, or principled person, when in fact he or she is an unprincipled, immoral jerk. In Heidegger's case, his borrowing of terminology from the Nazis (mentioned in the Romano comment thread) show quite clearly how his life affected his books, and therefore how his life is relevant to how we read them, and how much we will profit from them.