Heidegger’s Stuff

John Paul Ennis has a tidbit up on Heidegger’s hut. I’ll simply say it (this is not directed at Paul, who has a level head about these things): I don’t care a wit what weird little habits this south German hick had. I remember when I was in Freiburg and grad students there could tell you all the little minutiae about his habits, his favorite bench, and so on. And the book on Heidegger’s hut—and people’s endless fascination with it—strikes me as really strange. It’s a hut. There’s nothing telling about it, nothing that says anything about him or his work, and certainly people shouldn’t be given to copying this lifestyle by thinking leaving the world behind to look at the Black Forest and its endless paths—all while thinking this is the surest route to intellectual wonder. Would you dress like him? Then why would you care what hut he had? Remember well, too, that the hut thing was there because he was a poseur: he wanted to pretend to be the rural, uneducated bumpkin closer to Being.