Love, I long for your continued existence: read "The Philosopher and Her Lover"

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Will read the book Hannah. Elland and Martin. Heidegger, in addition to wanting to know more about the "Heidegger case" that has been so much troubled and controversial in the history of twentieth century thought, there is a deeper reason: that is, by A piece of history that has happened, I want to see that philosophers are not just analyzing and describing the concept of "love", but their own personal decision and investment, participating in the accidental, ever-changing, erratic nature of this world. in uncertain love. To borrow Marcel's words, is it possible for philosophers to make an "ontological stake"? That is to say, a person who usually thinks in terms of the universality or commonality of things, will he go beyond the current feeling, thinking, and state of existence, and risk changing and destroying "I am me", Still want to get in touch with something you can't fully control, to participate in its existence?

This book provides us with an example that allows us to think about this. Hannah. Erlan prefers to let her loved ones share her life. After meeting her future husband, Heinrich Blücher, she slowly became willing to confide in her feelings, confess her feelings, and entrust herself to another person. Compared with Erlan, Heidegger seems to be different. Heidegger always speaks one-sidedly; he is charismatic and draws others into his world. But when would he be willing to step into someone else's world? His second partner, Elisabeth Blochmann, told him shortly before his death: "All our common language, even if meaningful, exists only in a very limited area."

In my opinion, such questions are not reserved for "philosophers" in the narrow sense as a profession, but for everyone who has to face and respond to what place other people have in our lives; in other words: that is, each of us. Because we must all live in some kind of relationship with others, the difference is how we interpret the relationship and what actions we are willing to take for it.

companion of love

Augustine said: "When I say 'love', I mean: I want you to continue to exist." (Love means: I want you to be.) Heidegger kept this sentence in mind and wrote it in love letters, which he sent to him successively. Two cheaters. But the irony is that, at least according to the information collected in this book, this kind of "complete love" that allows the other party to develop and be happy is actually richly realized in Elan.

When Elan and Heidegger interacted, as we said earlier: Elan can be said to be the one who paid more. Heidegger exhausted all kinds of means, such as letters, notes, greeting cards as visible signals, and asking Elan to transfer schools. impact. Therefore, under such circumstances, although the young Erlan continued to pay for love, she was unable to learn what Augustine called "full love" from Heidegger. Therefore, after Erlan left Germany in 1933, she naturally cut off the relationship between her and this man who did not give, but only hurt.

And if we look back from the perspective of hindsight: it was because Ellan fell in love with Bruscher later, and realized what complete love is in Bruscher, so she had enough courage and resources. , you can re-understand the relationship that happened between her and Heidegger. Perhaps, it is precisely because of this new understanding that there is a possibility of a second friendship between her and Heidegger.

Bruchel is not like Heidegger. Bruscher is willing to share his inner feelings, difficulties and fragility with Elan; unlike Heidegger, who always wants to maintain his wisdom, mystery and charm, he is unwilling to admit his need for love, and can only use many Manipulating loved ones in roundabout ways. If Heidegger wanted an audience, Bruscher wanted a companion. Bruscher respected Ellan's independence, ideas and independent development. In his letter to Erlan, he said: "You are still you, and I am still me." They can be two personalities who share the same love; they do not need to be one who has love and one who is owned by love. .

This just echoes what Heidegger said earlier: true love ("caring") does not ignore, cancel or replace another person, and carry what he cares about in the name of love; on the contrary, true love is to give The other person has enough support to help him get back to himself, so that he can face and face up to his concerns.

let it exist

Later Heidegger emphasized this idea more, which he called "letting-be". The word "let it be" means behind it: "Love" is to let another person develop his "essence". how to say? Heidegger said:

Thought exists—that is to say: existence has been fatefully supporting the essence of thought. To support a "thing" or a "person" in its essence means: to love a "thing" or a "person", to like a "thing" or a "person". More primitively, this liking means: to send out the essence. Such a liking is the true essence of the ability not only to be able to do this or that, but to make something "be what it is in its source," that is, to make it exist.

Here, what Heidegger wants to talk about is what "thought" is; and the relationship between "thought" and "being". For human beings, "thought" and "love" are not two things that can be clearly divided; because thinking needs the support of a "love of being", otherwise it is impossible for people to think about anything at all.

For example: if there is "no" ("not exist") some people, things, or concepts that we can think of, what else can we think about? It seems that we should be unable to open our minds to total non-existence; because we have lost a sphere in which to frame our thoughts and allow our thoughts to operate. Existence is the greatest, all-encompassing scope. Everything we might think of, come into contact with, and understand must already "exist" in some way; only then can it be thought of by us.

So, what does this have to do with "love"? Just as in a sense, we can also say that "existence" has "love"; because "thought" can develop itself and express its own characteristics, it needs the support from "existence"; and, It is very important that while "being" supports "thought", it does not try to manipulate what "thought" thinks. We can interpret and react to the gifts of existence to us in our specific, similar life situations. Similarly, this is what Heidegger called "love": we should not be manipulating and controlling the person we love, restricting what he should think and do to conform to our own wishes; instead, we should support him and help him. He, so that he can freely develop his own characteristics, to think and act as he is willing to undertake.

Here, what we mean by "essence" is not just the "essence" of what a table is a table, a chair is a chair, and a human being is a human being; it is our "possibility". "Possibilities" limit us so that I can only be myself, not someone else; it is only possible to change the present, but not the past, and so on. But on the other hand, "possibility" also gives us the freedom to choose how to respond to our own life, experience, and existence. What kind of person a person is, that is actually what possibilities he has, and what possibilities he decides to realize and let go. To love a person is to support his possibility of responding to himself.

love, practice, and the world

In this book "Hannah. Elland and Martin. After reading Heidegger, we need to make a supplement to it. At times, this book sees Heidegger as a "racist"; given that he often obeyed Nazi Party orders, and that after World War II, he never admitted what he had done, but kept downplaying, covering up, and Lie, such speculation is actually understandable. However, after long-term research in the academic community, we should now be sure: Heidegger is not a racist. However, he is indeed a person with a rather disappointing character; although he has lofty ideals, his actual personal actions, whether he is swaying, sitting on the sidelines, falling into trouble, maliciously slandering, and his performance in love, are in the All shook their heads.

However, Heidegger himself is such a person, does this devalue his thinking? Does it make his mind so unreliable? I don't think so either. Because whether a thought is reliable or not depends on whether its internal rationale is consistent, and whether it can be confirmed in our actual life. Although Heidegger herself was an unreliable person, Elan was inspired by him and showed in her life the possibility of being supported by "being" and allowing the loved one to develop her own possibilities, as if It is a gift of love.

In the later period of Heidegger, he liked to read Eckhart, the master of theology; and Eckhart liked to quote Dionysius. He said: "Love has such a nature that it changes man and brings him into what he loves." Here, Heidegger wants to talk about the relationship between the "reification of things" and the "worldization of the world." When we truly love a thing, I will not limit it to his present, his past, to those reasons that made me love him; on the contrary, we will see him, and what is behind him. The connection between the vast world brought, we will open him to the world he cares about, and let him go to the future. For us, the meaning of the world in our eyes is also displayed in him.

small note

In the translation cited in this article, the translator Sun Zhouxing translated "being" (Be/Being) into "being" (Be/Being), which is quite correct. However, for the sake of clarity of the article, I ended up rewriting all the words "being" in this article (including in the quoted translation) as "being" (Be/Being).

references

Isberta. By Elzbieta Ettinger. Translated by Su Youzhen: The Female Philosopher and Her Lover: Hannah. Elland and Martin. Heidegger (1997).

By Heidegger. Translated by Wang Qingjie and Chen Jiaying: "Being in the world as co-existence and self-existence. "Ordinary People"". Being and Time (1993).

By Heidegger. Translated by Sun Zhouxing: "Letters on Humanism". Road Signs (1998).

By Heidegger. Translated by Sun Zhouxing: "Things". Selected Works of Heidegger (1996).

By Marcel. Translated by Cen Yicheng: "The Mystery of Existence". Item withdraws and edited: "The Existing Background of Human Dignity" (1988).

Liu Guoying: "Is Heidegger a Nazi Philosopher? : The Political Implications of Heidegger's Philosophy." Included in the first issue of Phenomenology and Contemporary Philosophy (2007).

Guan Ziyin: "Heidegger's Nazi History and His "Anti-Semitism" Controversy. "Wandering Between Heaven and Man: Heidegger's Philosophical Thoughts" (2021).