Heidegger the Horrible

I make no secret of the fact that I loathe Martin Heidegger.  I've mentioned it in this blog from time to time.  I've also mentioned it in a philosophy forum I frequent. 

My loathing of him is largely based on the fact that he was, and remained until his death, an unrepentant, and even an enthusiastic, Nazi.  It's true that I also don't care for him as what I've read of his work strikes me as romantic and even mystical, when it is comprehensible.

For example, I thought his The Question of Technology to be at once dour and fanciful.  He seemed to be condemning the use of technology to generate energy through regulation of water, and its use to extract and store coal, declaring the former to be, in effect, monstrous and the latter to be a kind of rape of the earth.  The fact that humans have been regulating (altering its course at will) water through irrigation, and using it as a source of energy in milling, for thousands of years, and cutting and storing lumber as well for millenia, isn't mentioned in the essay.  Instead, a hydroelectric plant and mining through use of technology is compared, unfavorably, with peasants lovingly planting seeds in nature's bosom and such.  It's difficult to believe that this kind of reasoning is given serious consideration.  But that isn't grounds for revulsion, typically.

I've been scolded for this by several persons.  Usually, the scolder has (sometimes grudgingly) acknowledged his Nazi past, but considers it a kind of fluke or flirtation.  If so it was a long lasting one, as he didn't relinquish his membership in the Nazi party, and was a member until the end of WWII.  I've also been told that his philosophical work must be distinguished from the man himself, and that his philosophical work is superb, sublime; think of the most excessive expression of adulation you can conceive, and repeat it with his name as a sort of mantra, and you will begin to understand the praise he receives.  

But I think the attempt to distinguish the Nazi from his work is becoming more and more difficult as we learn more and more about him.

I've been listening to an audiobook version of Richard Wolin's Heidegger in Ruins:  Between Philosophy and Ideology.  If the claims made in it are accurate (and a persuasive case is made that they are, and that they're well documented), I think it is unreasonable for anyone, now, to claim that Heidegger the faithful Nazi is unrelated to Heidegger the philosopher.

This is because the publication of the so-called Black Notebooks has served to reveal the extent of his anti-Semitism and his acceptance of the mythos of Nazism (the superiority of the German Volk and its special mission to save the West, if not the entire world, from World Jewry and technology and attendant nihilism), and their relation to his focus on Being, even as it appears in his book which is given a kind of sacred, biblical status by his followers--Being and Time.  His nearly ecstatic reflections on German superiority and its mission seem not dissimilar to statements made by Himmler.  It seems that Heidegger thought the Jews if not every other people but the Germans lacked Being.  But for the Germans, all others have no connection with Blut und Boden, apparently a necessary condition of Being.

If this does not justify the war and the Holocaust, it seems to have sufficed as far as Heidegger was concerned to relieve the Germans of any blame for them.  Thus, he wrote of the "self-annihilation" of the Jews and the "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism well after 1945.  His claims when rector at Freiberg (that's him posing as rector at the head of this post) that Hitler was the future of Germany and its law and similar hosannas to Der Fuhrer and his programs were not isolated, foolish statements, but expressions of strongly held beliefs.

I still have much to listen to, and will try to do so, though frankly the portrait of Heidegger appearing in the work so far is that of someone who was at best a disingenuous, self-important, poseur with looney, mystic beliefs in a master race and at worst a dishonest, self-serving apologist for mass-murder and a brutal autocracy.  It makes for disturbing listening.

A Controversy Over Cleopatra

There are more than a few disputes related to Cleopatra VII, the Cleopatra who was, for a time, Queen of Egypt, was involved with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony after him, and killed herself rather than become the prisoner, or trophy, of the victorious Octavian, to be known as Augustus.  The one I address is one which has arisen in response to the depiction of her as black in a documentary series to be shown on Netflix.

This has served to anger various Egyptians and Greeks, and, as seems inevitable, denizens of the right or alt-right or far-right of whatever the case may be, eager to assert that she wasn't black.  In the case of Egyptians and Greeks, a certain nationalism may be a cause of their ire.  In the case of others, outrage has become a way of life, and this will be one of many to come.

What we know of how Cleopatra looked is relatively limited.  We know that it's very likely she didn't look like Elizabeth Taylor or Vivian Leigh, two women who pretended to be her thanks to Hollywood and whoever it was did the casting for the movie version of George Bernard Shaw's play.  What we know otherwise we know based on coins and busts that have survived since antiquity.  Those don't provide any evidence regarding skin color.  The busts are white, of course; but so are all statutes which remain from ancient times, because the paint on them has worn away.  

This post features a painting which appears in what's called the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus in Pompeii.  It's believed to be a portrait of Cleopatra in the guise of Venus Genetrix, the founding goddess of the Julii, the family of Julius Caesar, based on a statute of her raised by Caesar at the time of the dedication of a temple of the goddess in 46 B.C.E.  If the evidence is accurate, it may be the only contemporaneous depiction of Cleopatra which exists.

Most, including I believe most scholars, would not be surprised if this is the case.  She was a Queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty founded by the general, friend, and possibly half-brother of Alexander the Great which ruled Egypt for approximately two hundred years.  Ptolemy was a Macedonian.  He was not black.  There's no evidence any member of that dynasty was a black person.  We don't know in any detail all of the sexual relations of the Ptolemies over the years, and certainly anything is possible, but royal marriages and status being what they were, it's likely that royal Macedonians wanted Macedonian offspring, or Macedonian/Greek offspring.  But it seems that the Ptolemies intermarried with the Seleucids, other successors to Alexander ruling in what is now Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and other parts of the Mideast, who it seems married high-born nobles of the former Persian Empire now and then.  So, it's possible Cleopatra was of a shared ancestry in that respect, at least.

Why does any of this matter?  These days actors of color play characters who were white or likely white fairly regularly.  It's odd when one sees black actors play Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, both slave owners, as was the case when I saw a production of Hamilton in Chicago.  Something about that seems peculiar, to me at least.  But a show is a show.  Everybody needs work.  Nobody believes George and Tom were black; nobody expects that people will think they weren't white.  Why should this cause offense?

One might point out that the idea of white actors playing characters who aren't white, or are of mixed race, has been considered offensive.  When Jonathan Pryce played the half-French, half-Vietnamese Engineer in Miss Saigon it was claimed that it was insulting for a white actor to be made up as a half-Asian.  Was the make up the cause for offense?  If a white actor had played that character without being made up as Asian or part-Asian, would that have made everything fine?

In the case of Miss Saigon, it also was a show.  Clearly, it's the fact that a white actor was playing a character not entirely white which made a difference, though.

May a white actor play a black fictional character without causing offense?  I would guess not.  What if a white actor played a historical figure who was black?  Frederick Douglass, for example.  Or Shaka Zulu.  It wouldn't end well.

Perhaps this may be attributed to the fact that whites have had their way, and still have their way, at the expense of others and it's insulting when they pretend to be one of those whites have taken advantage of over the years.  Less insulting, perhaps, than when one of those who were taken advantage of pretend to be one of those taking advantage.

Is a puzzlement, as a Russian actor pretending to be King of Siam was made to say.  Did Yul come under attack for his portrayal over so many years?  I can't recall.

I'm not one to express outrage over such a thing as this.  I'm not outraged or offended, but think it's inappropriate, or even disingenuous or dishonest if Cleopatra is claimed to be black when those making the claim know there is no reason to think so beyond the fact that she ruled Egypt in ancient times and Egypt was, and still is, located in Africa.  For me, there's a problem when the word "documentary" is used to describe persons or events which are not supported by facts.  Documentaries are supposed to deal with factual events.  Documentaries are not supposed to be fiction.   If you make a documentary, you should believe that what you depict is fact or has a factual basis.  If it isn't, you shouldn't call it a documentary.