alone

Es wird auch noch Jahre dauern, bis Hannah erkennt, dass Heideggers Liebe zu ihr und seine Philosophie viel miteinander zu tun haben. Seine Abkehr vom "Man", seine Vorstellung, dass man nur alleine, in Abkehr von den Anderen Menschen zu sich selbst finden kann, führen zu einem Bild von Menschen wie einem Gott, einem heroischen, aber sehr einsamen Gott. In einem Essay über die Existenzphilosophie schreibt Hanna Arendt über ihren ehemaligen Lehrer: "Was infolgedessen bei Heidegger als 'Abfall' erscheint sind alle jene Modi des Menschseins, die darauf beruhen, dass der Mensch Gott nicht ist und mit seinesgleichen zusammen in einer Welt lebt."

Was für Heidegger der "Abfall", das Abfallen von einem eigentlichen Leben ist, wird Hannah als eigentliches menschliches Glück verstehen. Es ist das Glück, eben kein einsamer Gott zu sein, sondern zusammen mit seinesgleichen in einer gemeinsamen Welt zu leben, die man auch nur gemeinsam gestalten kann. Hannah Wird Heidegger ein leben lang verbunden bleiben, "treu" bleiben, wie sie sagt, und sie wird auch versuchen, eine philosophische Antwort auf ihn zu finden.
(Alois Prinz, Hannah Arendt oder Die Liebe zur Welt, p. 59)

My translation:

It would take years before Hannah recognized that Heidegger's love for her and his philosophy had a lot in common. His rejection of "one"- his idea that a person can only find themselves alone, in turning away from others - led to a conception of man like a god: a heroic, but very lonely god. In an essay about existential philosophy, she wrote of her former teacher: "as a result, all the various modes of human existence related to the fact that humans are not gods and live together in a world with others like them looked to Heidegger like 'waste'."

What to Heidegger was "waste" - unnecessary in a true life - Hannah would come to understand as true human happiness. This is the happiness that comes precisely in the fact that we are not solitary gods, but live together with others like us in a world that we can only create in cooperation with each other. Hannah would stay connected with Heidegger for the rest of her life - remain "faithful," as she put it - and she would also try to formulate a philosophical reply to him.

This - both Hannah Arendt's philosophy and her life story - has gotten me thinking about the times in my life when I've managed seemingly-impossible things either because (1) I knew (or imagined) that someone believed I could do it or (2) I wanted to prove to someone who thought I couldn't do it that they were wrong. And when I say "someone" I generally mean "a guy I was attracted to."

I suspect that this is how a lot of seemingly-impossible things get done. Which is a hard-won realization very much at odds with the myth of rugged individualism that I grew up with. In a way it's helpful to blame myself for my lack of success, because if the problem all my own fault then it's fully in my power to fix. But...it isn't actually physically possible to pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps, right? Not that I'm powerless here. But there are elements to this that I can't control. It's hard to hold both those things - I am in control and I am not in control - at once.