Heidegger’s Hut

Ennis makes A BRIEF POST ON HEIDEGGER’ S HUT.

Gratton responds WITH HORROR ABOUT THE HUT, though not about Ennis’s post.

My own views on this theme are mixed.

1. I hate Heidegger Kitsch, and this is the main reason that I have always avoided going anywhere near the hut. I’ve been to Freiburg a number of times for various reasons, but have purposely never made any effort to go to the hut, even though I really ought to for professional reasons. (But see below.)

2. Freiburg has never been a pilgrimage site for me, except that when I first went there at age 21, I was a starstruck undergrad on his first trip to Europe and I did get really excited about being in that Freiburg. Otherwise, Marburg is really the Heidegger city for me. I’m still willing to say that the Marburg years were intellectually his best, and though he didn’t write Being and Time in Marburg, he did write History of the Concept of Time there (same work in germ) and he also didn’t write Being and Time at the hut, but at the home of a neighboring farmer.

3. I was as horrified as anyone when Adam Sharr’s Heidegger’s Hut book came out. Its mere existence embarrassed me, and I avoided looking at it for a long time. But that was my mistake. It’s a nice and at times even beautiful book. It is neither fawning nor affectedly critical (never fawning at all, and affectedly critical only in a few passages that seem forced).

4. As a result of reading the book, I now very much do want to see the hut. And I will, the next time I’m in the vicinity.

In any case, no one should let their praiseworthy contempt for Heidegger Kitsch prevent them from spending a lovely evening with that book, as I did nearly a year ago.