explain the fact that one of the greatest philosophical

Fail Slow, Fail Hard minds of the 20th century had also been a Nazi? Looking
back on it now, I take it as a remarkable sign of my
teachers’ commitment to free and open inquiry that they
By Martin Woessner • August 28, 2015 made the question of teaching Heidegger as important as
the question of being, which according to Heidegger was
Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy by Peter Trawny the only question that really mattered.
I WENT to graduate school for two reasons: to study Whether or not the question of being or Seinsfrage is the
Heidegger, and because there was a wealthy university only properly philosophical question worth asking, the
in Texas that inexplicably offered to fund such study. question of how, let alone whether, Heidegger’s works
Who could resist four more years to keep reading big should be taught is now, in light of the recent publication
books and thinking deep thoughts, even if it meant of his private notebooks — the so-called Schwarze Hefte,
trading picturesque San Francisco for hot and humid or black notebooks — inescapable. Some 40 years after
Houston? After only a couple months of pondering in the his death, Heidegger continues to scandalize; the fallout
air-conditioned comfort of the university library, I from the publication of the black notebooks has been felt
realized that it wasn’t really Heidegger I was interested in seminars and reviews both far and wide (see Gregory
in — it was Heideggerians. What a strange lot, and why Fried’s “The King Is Dead” and Santiago Zabala’s
would anyone want to be counted amongst them, myself essay “What to Make of Heidegger”). Providing a window
included? onto Heidegger’s most private philosophical musings,
the notebooks offer troubling evidence not just of his
Once you start looking for them, Heideggerians are pervasive anti-Semitism, but also his abiding
everywhere. But identifying what they had in common commitment to certain strands of National Socialist
with each other wasn’t easy. It was hard to tell who even ideology. By the time of his death in 1976, Heidegger
counted as a Heideggerian, anyway, especially in the surely knew that the notebooks in which he scribbled his
United States — a nation for which Heidegger himself philosophical and political reflections were riddled with
had little positive to say throughout his life (among other dubious, even incriminating remarks. So why, then, did
things, we had too much technology and too little he decide not just to include them in the edition of his
history, he thought). Catholics read him, but so too did collected works that would ensure his fame, but also, and
Protestants and Jews. Existentialists claimed him as one more importantly, to dictate that they appear as the
of their own, despite his protests, but deconstructionists culminating volumes of the decades-long project? What
did the same, and by then he was no longer around to could he have been thinking?
protest. Pragmatists sometimes made their peace with
him, and occasionally poets and novelists played around As the editor of the black notebooks, German
with his wordplay-filled writings. I found that those last philosopher Peter Trawny knows their contents perhaps
ones generally had the most fun, partly because they more intimately than anybody else, and it is precisely
didn’t take it all so terribly seriously. Critical Theory, that question that he tries to answer in his short little
Hermeneutics, and Phenomenology — theoretical book, Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy. I’m not sure
paradigms predicated on seriousness — each he answers it, exactly, but as a kind of Rorschach test, his
genuflected in Heidegger’s direction at one point or essay certainly proves useful. How you respond to it will
another, sometimes skeptically, sometimes not. There tell you what kind of Heideggerian you are, or if you are
was hardly a corner of the American academy that hadn’t one at all anymore.
been infiltrated by some kind of at least latent
Heideggerianism —except, of course, actual philosophy One of the strengths of Freedom to Fail is that its author
departments, where Heidegger often remained simply is not an orthodox Heideggerian, but that may not be
too foreign and too suspicious. One had better luck saying much these days. The black notebooks may have
finding him in anthropology, literature, or theology. made the idea of a strict fidelity to Heidegger’s writings
moot — they have become, as Trawny puts it, “an
As an undergraduate I was (un)lucky enough to have unavoidable point in question for anyone who would like
landed in two departments — one history, the other to encounter Heidegger’s thinking.” Bemoan them,
philosophy — where Heidegger was taught in a serious, criticize them, lament them, but there is no avoiding
and, occasionally, fun way. But even my professors them. The black notebooks exist. Although the remark is
couldn’t agree about how, or more importantly, why, to buried in a footnote, Trawny suggests that
teach Heidegger. Was he a philosophical role model, a “unconditioned partisanship of Heidegger’s own
representative intellectual-historical figure, or did he thinking” is now out of the question. It is time to face the
represent something else entirely, perhaps even a kind facts — well, sort of.
of morality tale for the modern era — how else could one
 been taken simply by quoting Heidegger’s late
As if to signal the danger inherent in these culminating confession, as reported by his student Hans-Georg
volumes of Heidegger’s collected works, the three Gadamer, that “Nietzsche hat mich kaputt gemacht” —
epigraphs Trawny chooses to introduce his essay — or, to translate it a little loosely, “Nietzsche broke me.”
from Hölderlin, Heidegger, and Paul Celan, respectively
— dwell on things “monstrous,” “tragic,” and, in Celan’s On one level, Trawny’s essay is a meditation on the
case, a combination of the two. In a direct reference to necessity of brokenness and failure for philosophical
the Holocaust, the third epigraph speaks of “the thinking. It takes as its lodestar Heidegger’s infamous —
monstrousness of the gassings.” The original German and undeniably self-serving — postwar declaration that,
title of Trawny’s book, Irrnisfuge, or “Errancy Fugue,” “He who thinks greatly must err greatly.” Without
deliberately echoes Celan’s famous poem “Todesfuge,” or failure, success is meaningless. Without endings, no new
“Death Fugue,” from which the epigraph is drawn. That beginnings. Without daring and danger, no true safety
poem describes “death” as a “master from Germany.” In nor security. One could go on to list any number of
another celebrated poem titled “Todtnauberg,” a productive oppositions: darkness and light, concealing
reference to the location of Heidegger’s celebrated Black and revealing, calculating and poetizing, erring and
Forest hut, Celan immortalized a famous postwar thinking. Heidegger’s understanding of truth as aletheia,
meeting with the philosopher, during which the poet’s or unconcealment, was predicated upon this
hope for a word of contrition and/or explanation — a chiaroscuro-like interplay of opposing forces — things
word literally “to the heart” — from his host never came. were revealed one minute, only to slip into darkness and
For a philosopher who made mortality, our “being- oblivion the next. Who was to say when something stood
towards-death,” a cornerstone of all philosophizing, such in the light of truth and not, in fact, in the shadow of
silence surely spoke volumes to Celan, who lost both his error? “Is there an absolute criterion for the assessment
parents in the Holocaust. “Todtnauberg” was published of a philosophy?” Trawny asks, once again more
only after Celan’s suicide, in Paris, in 1970. rhetorically than not.

In deciding to render Irrnisfuge as Freedom to Fail, There probably isn’t any “absolute criterion for the
Trawny’s English-language translators have obscured assessment of a philosophy,” but we can probably agree
this explicit reference to Celan, but otherwise their that certain statements, whether “philosophical” or
decision cannot be faulted (they explain their reasons in entirely prosaic, do or do not describe the world in ways
a brief and helpful introduction). The book really is that we find helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking.
about the freedom to fail, not just in a pragmatic, Take, for instance, Heidegger’s remarks about “world
everyday sense, but in a kind of grand gesture of Jewry” throughout the black notebooks. Trawny makes
philosophical experimentation. Trawny’s essay can be no bones about the fact that Heidegger certainly
read as a retelling of the story of Icarus, with Sein in “harbored a private ressentiment against Jews,” which
place of the sun, and Heidegger taking over for the “cannot be understood otherwise than as anti-Semitic.”
winged highflyer. But where some might see hubris at But he thinks that such sentiments cannot be used to
work, others see only a willingness to push the envelope, “condemn his entire thought.” We can’t be done with
and it is clear from the very beginning that Trawny Heidegger because philosophy “cannot be brought to a
would rather have his philosophers be daredevils than conclusion.” The only cure for philosophical errancy?
hall monitors — Nietzsche rather than Kant, Kierkegaard More thinking, and more errancy, clearly.
instead of Descartes. In trading “drama” and “poetry”
and “tragedy” for mere “argument,” contemporary Trawny repeatedly portrays Heidegger as the living
philosophy has, Trawny thinks, totally lost its way. Or as embodiment of the philosophical life, as somebody who
he puts it: “The drama of thinking has vanished in the did everything for, and through, philosophy — even the
world of the argument.” Freedom to Fail is a lament — bad stuff. But this runs the risk of taking everything
not for Heidegger’s mistakes, but for a philosophical Heidegger said at face value, of taking all too seriously
epoch that, as he sees it, avoids mistakes at all costs. the act that Heidegger was always performing, which
was that of the academic outsider, the philosophical
According to Trawny, Heidegger’s commitment to rebel who showed up to conferences and lectures still
thinking leads him into a realm beyond argumentation. It wearing his ski clothes. Many of Heidegger’s most
also led him into a realm beyond good and evil. famous students, from Hannah Arendt to Herbert
Rhetorically, but also dramatically, Trawny asks if Marcuse, were taken in by this image, but they also
Nietzsche, who first surveyed this territory, was eventually came to see its limitations. Even the first
“Heidegger’s master” and then spends the next 80 pages Americans to hear about him or to see him teach, such as
answering his own question. Many of these pages make Sidney Hook and Marjorie Grene, knew that Heidegger
for captivating reading, but a shorter route could have was putting on a show. He may have railed against
academic philosophy, but he still participated in it. historical unfolding of being itself. Heidegger was just
Unlike Nietzsche, his “master,” Heidegger never the first and only thinker to recognize as much. He knew
abandoned his academic post and, when he got the that history was tragedy and he thought he knew what
chance, he even tried to reorganize the venerable roles he and the German people were supposed to play
University of Freiburg along Nazi party lines. What kind in it. He may have been miscast.
of academic outsider goes into university administration
willingly, and then tries to militarize it? The one who “The truth of being is onto-tragic,” Trawny writes at one
errs greatly, of course. point in Freedom to Fail. Following Heidegger, he thinks
that the tragic history of being can be traced back “to the
Trawny makes a big deal of Heidegger’s preference for first of all inceptions, the inception of the history of
poetry and tragedy over technology and ethics. It was a being” itself. Heidegger thus came to see his life and his
preference that, supposedly, motivated his enthusiasm philosophy as part and parcel of the tragic narrative that
for overhauling university education: not necessarily resulted from this inception, an inception that pre-dated
more of the former and less of the latter; more like, some Socrates and stretched back to Heraclitus and maybe
of the latter, but only in service of the former. What the even all the way back to Daedalus, Icarus’s father, who
university needed, what Germany needed, was a grand gave him those wings in the first place. The history of
narrative to latch onto. The one Heidegger offered was being was, for Heidegger, the history of the forgetting,
one that, as Trawny admits, had a lot in common, though the oblivion of being. Tragedy was the only genre that
not everything, with Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the suited it.
West. It was a narrative of operatic proportions.
“Heidegger wanted to narrate this history to the Once one begins to think in world-historical and onto-
Germans,” Trawny suggests. “He wanted to determine a tragic proportions things often get dicey — never more
role for them to play in it.” He would connect the dots so than when you start to think of yourself in such terms.
between the history of being — as it played out in Hegel had enough hubris to think that he stood at the
everything from Ancient Greek tragedy to the poetry of end of history; Heidegger likewise considered himself
Friedrich Hölderlin — and 1930s geopolitics. In the first true philosopher since Heraclitus, precisely
Trawny’s formulation, “the narrative imperative runs: Be because he alone had seen the tragic unfolding of the
Oedipus! Be tragic! Yet it came about altogether history of being leading up to him. Heidegger also
differently.” That last line might be a bit of an thought he was alone in recognizing how, like Greek
understatement. tragedy, the onto-tragedy of being contained within it
the possibility of a new beginning. (In the black
Heidegger’s tragic, overblown interpretation of Nazism notebooks he also recognized that the names Heraclitus,
may have been unique to him, but he was certainly not Hegel, and Hölderlin each began with the letter “H.” So
the only 20th-century philosopher to think that poetry too did Heidegger and Hitler, of course. Was it fate?)
and tragedy might preserve something integral to human
experience that was in danger of being swallowed up by How tolerant you are of this kind of thinking will
the forces of reason and demystification. Even somebody determine how persuasive you find Trawny’s defense of
as different from Heidegger in temperament and Heidegger’s errancy, which entails accepting at least
orientation as the analytic philosopher Bernard Williams three interrelated things: first, that Heidegger’s errancy
— a reader of Nietzsche who also went into university was a necessary component of his thinking; second, that
administration, but with far better and more humane his thinking was destined by the history of being going
results to show for it — thought that we could learn back to Ancient Greece; and third, that this tragic
more about how to live from Sophocles than from narrative exists not just beyond good and evil, but also
Socrates and Aristotle. beyond guilt and responsibility, in an “abyss of freedom.”
In other words, true thinking means never having to say
But Williams never went so far as to proclaim that his you’re sorry (see critics’ responses to Gregory Fried’s
own philosophical works were themselves the results of “The King Is Dead”).
a tragic, world-historical narrative. And here is where
Heidegger’s self-conception sets him, and those At times, Trawny’s meditation on Heidegger’s errancy
Heideggerians who follow too closely in his footsteps, reads almost like a kind of secularized theodicy. He
apart. Whereas for Williams the lessons of Greek tragedy dwells as much on the inescapability of evil as he does on
emphasized the contingency and frailty of even our best the inevitability of failure. “For Heidegger,” Trawny
intentions (hence his famous idea of “moral luck”), for writes, “evil belongs to thinking. Insofar as it elucidates
Heidegger they pointed towards the inescapability of being, it elucidates evil. For even evil belongs to the
fate and destiny. True philosophy wasn’t a matter of luck world-narrative.” But does this mean that, insofar as I
or chance at all: it was predestined, scripted even, by the recognize the role I play in the “onto-tragic” narrative of
western history, I do not have to take responsibility for and rewarded most vociferously. Industry mottos such
my actions? Is it all being’s fault? as “Fail fast, fail often” or, in a more Beckettian tone, “Fail
better,” encapsulate our current narratives of intellectual
Trawny is sharp enough to recognize that, in the light of daring and innovation. In the domain of digital
day, all this can sound more than a little dubious. technology, small failures are seen as a sign of small
“Errancy can operate as an immunization of thinking,” he thinking; large failures, meanwhile, are held up as the
admits, and there is always the danger of such talk hallmarks of revolutionary change. Has “technicity” — as
slipping into “farce” or even “buffoonery.” Richard Rorty Heidegger called it — co-opted even errancy itself? Or is
once suggested that we should take Heidegger’s talk of this just the inevitable farce following the tragedy?
fate and destiny with a grain of salt, especially when it Whatever it is, we should remember that, though he may
came to Heidegger’s understanding of his place in the not have failed fast, Heidegger sure failed hard. Maybe
history of philosophy. “Heideggerese is only Heidegger’s there is a lesson in that somewhere, whether you are a
gift to us,” Rorty remarked, “not Being’s gift to Heideggerian or not.
Heidegger.” But Trawny will not go so far as that.
¤
There’s no room in Trawny’s narrative for Heideggerians
who, like Rorty, might want to leaven all this errancy and Martin Woessner is Associate Professor of History &
tragedy with a bit of irony, or even some self-deprecating Society at The City College of New York’s Center for
comedy. Only seriousness prevails. And that’s a shame, Worker Education. He is the author of Heidegger in
for it imposes a with-us-or-against-us mentality that America (Cambridge UP, 2011) and is currently writing a
limits engagement with Heidegger’s writings only to book about the philosophical films of Terrence Malick.
those who have demonstrated their full fidelity to the
Heideggerian narrative. Readers of Heidegger are asked LARB CONTRIBUTOR
to “give it everything they’ve got” or “to give up. Isn’t this
asking for precisely the kind of “unconditioned Martin Woessner is associate professor of History &
partisanship” that Trawny rightly calls into question in Society at the City College of New York’s Center for Worker
his footnotes? Education. He is the author of Terrence Malick and the
Examined Life(forthcoming with University of
In any case, what would it mean to give Heidegger Pennsylvania Press) and Heidegger in
everything we’ve got? Trawny ends his essay with a America (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Heideggerian lament about how we now live a rational,
technological world, one in which argument holds sway
over poetry and tragedy. Our intellectual “sobriety,” he
thinks, marks the “end of all ‘greatness.’” Maybe he’s
right. Maybe academic philosophy today has conceded
too much ground to demystifying argumentation, to
judgment and quantification. Maybe we do need more
poetry in our lives. Maybe films really do represent a last
gasp for tragedy and grand-scale thinking in the modern
world. (Trawny mentions Terrence Malick’s The Thin
Red Line as a suitably Heideggerian work, though its
debts to Heidegger, rather than, say, Emerson, are
debatable.)

From a current West-coast vantage point, though, it

seems clear that, when it comes to failure, there is no
need to worry. Or, alternatively, that there is every
reason to worry, just not any of those suggested by
Trawny’s book. After all, “the freedom to fail” is very
much alive and well these days, and that might just be
the problem in and of itself, especially because it has
taken root in a place that any real Heideggerian would be
horrified by: Silicon Valley — the land of Uber rather
than the Übermensch. It is in the world of tech start-ups
and venture capital, algorithms and IPOs, where the
productive and undeniable power of errancy is praised