The world of appearances, without doubt, invites the unwary. Many an overly sensitive soul becomes reclusive, not out of an inability to love but rather by its excess. Whether by great loss or deep longing, buffered one way or another, the sufferer falls head over heels into a black hole — the unbearable separateness of heartbreak.

Consider the plight of these ‘romantics,’ born sentimentalists who lose themselves in the needs of others. Deceived by winsome smiles and sugary words once too often, such delicate ones learn to repress their true selves…pulling down a hard, brittle shell for protection. An analogue of the hermit crab not by choice; on the contrary, by felt necessity. Nothing is what it seems!

Every recluse needs a safe hideaway, an ascetic retreat far away from urban distractions. In this case, his self-styled ‘hut’ was in fact — like most things Deutsche — with three rooms, solidly-built to withstand the worst blizzards. He liked to think of it affectionately as ‘die Hutte’, his very own mountain aerie, detached from the rest of the world that lay ‘down below.’

The solitary circumstances of the hut — simple tasks such as splitting wood for heat — said much about its austere owner. He could witness uninterrupted the great comings and goings of the seasons, the inspiration for his classic work, ‘Being and Time’ (1927). Always, the struggle to mould the ineffable into language, researching his beloved Greeks, thinking, and writing. No clocks allowed.

Only as an old man, did he finally agree to have the telephone and electricity connected. A hillside well, fed by a spring, lay adjacent to the double-glazed windows of his study. Water was drawn using a bucket and carried indoors along a short flagstone path. With its ‘private property’ signposting — surely the ultimate redundancy — the isolated cabin was nestled into the side of a snow-covered peak and alpine woods, as one with its surroundings. Far below in the valley floor stood the remote village of Todtnauberg, a loose scattering of ancient farmhouses with their quaint high-pitched roofs, deep into the Black Forest Mountains of southern Germany.

These ‘born to love’ true romantics find themselves, ironically, dismissed out of hand as nothing but irascible curmudgeons. Better to be feared than fearful. Famous for his spellbinding lectures, he remained aloof inasmuch that students were at once fascinated yet approached with caution. Such a single-minded ‘defense’ sidesteps the issue without dealing with the inner tension…a conflicted state of non-being, shorn of the possibility to be. Stuck in his self-imposed shell, his perpetual frown and downcast aura told their own story.

From the outset, like-for-like, she had seen through Heidegger’s prickly disguise.

***

Such were Hannah’s thoughts, as they trekked together through fairytale groves of fir-trees and pine, across meadows in bloom with clover, narcissi, and bluebells, alive with birdsong. She stopped to pick a bouquet of wildflowers for the table. Heidegger was fresh from his writing, still in his tweed vest and shirtsleeves rolled up over his elbows, an incongruous straw hat pulled down over his balding head.

Passing through the moorland gorse, they entered a heavily wooded slope, finally reaching an ancient oak. A church bell was chiming faintly from the valley below. She paused for a cigarette while they sat, side by side on a weathered bench, leaning back against the gnarled trunk… just like old times. They shared the elemental love of the deep forest, without speaking. Heidegger stoked his leather-bound pipe, busily, as a mountainous silence settled upon them, almost palpable.
Hannah stared dreamily into space. She could sense the oneness of the natural world, something primeval, the ancient Druidic magic of the tall trees and mysterious woods, a ‘cathedral’ spotted with orange lichen, illuminated by the slanting rays of soft, dappled sunlight. It was late afternoon. A certain ethereal quality of the light tugged at her memory. The seemingly casual stroll, she realized all at once, was strangely familiar. It was here where they had first kissed long ago, a singular moment suspended in time and place… after he had surprised her with a love poem. She stared straight ahead, perplexed. Their innocent stroll was a pilgrimage of the heart, no less.

Only later had she come to see it as a break of sorts, partitioning her past life from all that followed. She was awe-struck, blinded by love, friends had whispered discreetly — she had forgotten their names now. What mattered to Hannah, however, was the vibrant life of the mind: the febrile garden of all sensual delight. Yet she never imagined that their secretive affair, despite the many hurdles, would blossom into a lifelong relationship. Just a newly minted graduate at the time, as she recalled, blushing at her youthful passion no less than her own wayward naivety.

At first, she was offended when he prevented her from signing the cabin’s logbook of visitors. In the event, she found his sense of the clandestine to be endearing, guarding their privacy. Growing up, she had been dismissed from school for insulting one of her professors — she recalled pursing her lips — and now she was dating another. Oh, My!

***

‘Does solitude beget loneliness?’ he asked quietly, reverentially, as if musing to himself. It was his manner to turn away, lapsing into awkward silence when discomforted.

Her face fell in dismay. Up to this time, their conversation was mostly lighthearted banter.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he murmured uneasily, flushed, surprised to see that his hand was trembling. He plainly did not know what to do next.

Hannah faltered, struggling to think of what to say…if anything, fearing a misstep. His melancholic ‘slumps’ always lingered in the background. She cast a somber glance. Another long pause.

She knew this to be one of those rare moments when her friend was fully open, dropping his normal guarded persona. She savored the unspoken intimacy between them, the old spark. Above all else, she would remember it fondly when she returned home, to New York City, in a few days’ time.

‘These are two different states of being,’ replied Hannah at last, grandly, ‘One can be lonely in a crowd, or else, be totally alone yet content in one’s own company, without any loneliness.’

He nodded slowly, thoughtfully, cocking an eyebrow at her.

She didn’t add that loneliness can also be a state of missing a loved one, whether in solitude or a crowd. His question, she knew, was rhetorical.

She quietly reached out for his hand…as she met his eye, unblinking. There was a moment’s pause as they looked at each other. He chuckled, breaking into a broad smile.

But what means do the many vectors of chance or luck intersect, begetting the uncanny, implying some level of pre-determination, as if things are meant to be in the very way they are playing out? At what point does probability cross that fated line, becoming destiny? The Greek tragedians — she remembered his fiery lecture long ago — often toyed with this same wish-fulfillment device. Now here she was, no longer his wunderkind student…but still, with a pounding heart.

At first glance, the lithe, willowy figure of Hannah Arendt, self-possessed, with her luminous dark eyes and aura of the exotic, struck an immediate contrast with the heavyset, if unremarkable, figure of Heidegger. Her mass of thick, black hair was worn in a loose bun, overflowing down the nape of her neck in a profusion of curls. More astonishing however, was the synchronicity between them, an acute, shared intelligence even extending to idle mannerisms.

It was not uncommon for them to complete each other’s sentences, a feat made all the more impressive since the changeover was effortless, almost undetectable. To all appearances, it seemed that they were, for a moment, one and the same. So flawless was the continuity of speech between them, that listeners would be left in a watery gaze, bewildered, struggling to piece together what they had offhandedly witnessed, as if some magical art had taken place unknowingly before their very eyes.

As it happened, there may perhaps be a modicum of truth to this inscrutable behavior since the principals were anything but an everyday couple. The nominally ‘secret’ friendship was playing out between two of the most renowned philosophers of the post-war twentieth century whose thinking was closely honed and shared over many decades.

***

After escaping from a Gestapo detention camp in 1941, Hannah fled to New York City which became her permanent residence… apart from frequent visits to Europe following the war. Much to her chagrin, Hannah found that in the meantime Heidegger had become a card-carrying devotee of Hitler, placing himself on the wrong side of history. Post-war reconstruction — and retribution — had begun. Despite his plaintive about-face denials, the fascist professor was censured by the University of Freiburg, losing his teaching privileges for several years.

Without doubt, everything seemed stacked against the couple, not least that they were married to other people, with children on both sides. Moreover, the contrasting ethnicities of Hannah and Heidegger, Jew and Aryan — it was murmured by critics — would inevitably blow them apart.

They understood neither his neediness nor her strength.

***

There’s nothing like roiling over old chestnuts, excavating down to the substratum of turn-of-the century writing. In the case of Hannah and Heidegger, several impressive works, each feeding the next, collectively set off what reviewers colorfully described at the time as a ‘swirling debate.’ Still, the matter remains dormant but not forgotten even to the present day. An archetypal, tell-all tale since time immemorial: florid passion gone astray, between a brilliant student and her famous philosopher, mentor and lover. A not uncommon human dilemma surely, Oedipal or otherwise, as anyone familiar with the rumor-mill of campus life would be aware.

So what, ho-hum! Why this straightforward, rather tasteless scenario between consenting adults should became so overheated in the first place, loaded with partisan opinions from all quarters, is the real mystery? A virtual sub-genre unto itself, the reportage hinted at some greater truth that may lie embedded, just out of reach. The age-old gimmick of frustrated journalism: ‘watch this space!’ After all, they were revered philosophers!

With both parties dying only six months apart (1975 / 76), the simmering tension — strange as it seems — was not put to rest and forgotten. Contrarily, their passings set the stage for a gathering storm of scholarly debate. ‘Putting out fire with gasoline’ springs to mind. But I am getting ahead of my story.

***

The tale begins innocently enough with ‘Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World’ (1982) by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a practicing psychoanalyst as well as a former student of Hannah Arendt. The first in a long line of biographers, the text is authoritative and otherwise carefully detailed. If it has any faults, these lie in its cosmetic, nimble handling of ‘the warm friendship’ — as with many authorized biographies — largely sidestepping the passionate side of their ‘odd couple’ relationship.

It seemed that matters were settled once and for all. Nonetheless, rumors circulated, told and retold, back-and-forth, becoming evermore weighty as they gathered momentum. It couldn’t last. Sizzling new material was brought to light by Ettinger Chodakowska, an MIT Professor of Writing and Humanistic Studies (‘Hannah Arendt / Martin Heidegger,’ 1997). From their first meeting, Heidegger had pursued his gifted Jewish student ‘like a man possessed’; ‘love…based solely on sexual drive and the exercise of power.’ His melodious yet suggestive letters spoke of his crushing loneliness, while praising her innate gifts. For her part, Hannah supposedly ‘idealized Heidegger beyond measure.’

After years of idle speculation, Professor Chodakowska’s sensational disclosures (she warily used a pen name in the first edition) became the first domino to fall. Other works followed, picking apart the minutiae of the couple’s fraught relationship. How could Arendt, the arch critic of totalitarianism, author of the classic ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil’ (1963), the trial of the century, become emotionally involved with the antisemitic ex-Nazi, Heidegger?

Not only was Hannah openly defending Heidegger’s reputation, perhaps ill-advisedly, but also actively promoting his philosophy in the United States. By this stage, Hannah’s career had become meteoric if controversial, with appointments at several elite universities, including Princeton, UC Berkeley, finally settling at The New School for Social Research in New York. Several offers of tenure were declined, however, since she believed this would curtail her autonomy, always of vital concern to her. A free-spirit, notwithstanding the cap-and-gown. At the same time, the world was struggling to adjust to the the emerging shock of the Holocaust, casting its long, haunting shadow.

In keeping with the confused emotions of that period, Hannah became an easy target of accusations: “How could she praise Heidegger and promote his work, when she herself had been arrested by the Gestapo?” As the renowned reporter of ‘Eichmann’s banality of evil,’ now found to be fraternizing with a former Nazi, the sense of betrayal was keenly felt. Others argued that Hannah had endured her own trials and was entitled to the freedom of a private life regardless of her public persona…though such a rejoinder itself rests upon an implicit disapproval.

Professor Chodakowska describes in florid detail the tempestuous on-off, give-and-take attachment between Heidegger and Hannah that continued, whether parted or otherwise, for the rest of their lives. The ever-inventive French have a colorful phrase for such a condition, ‘folie a deux’ (‘madness of the two’), which has found its way into mainstream clinical usage. Shades of Plato who, in his Phaedrus, argues that love is a state of divine madness.

Other biographers, however, took matters a step further by defining the relationship as a ‘co-dependency.’ Whether this usage applies in the present case is doubtful, not least because the term has a dubious history as a pejorative ‘wastebasket diagnosis’. After all, surely most humans — considered as complex social beings — are necessarily co-dependent at some level. Where to draw the line? When does passionate loving become an addictive pathology? Who can say?

***

Just as the Hannah / Heidegger commotion was settling down into tired obsolescence several other ‘cliffhangers’ followed, each claiming to present a fresh perspective. All too often, this became a matter of which of several narrative strands was emphasized over others, generally tilting in Hannah’s favor with each publication. In the event, even changes in her physical appearance were carefully analyzed for their broader significance (Julia Kristeva, ‘Hannah Arendt: Life is a Narrative,’ 1999). The poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch ruefully observed that ‘the most intense curiosity about Arendt in the past few years has less to do with her work than with her life’ (The New Yorker, 2009).

Consider ‘Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness’ (2010) by Daniel Maier-Katlin, Professor of Criminal Justice, and Human Rights. The author paints a picture of Heidegger as a self-absorbed man, his defensive arrogance and inveterate lying on full display. With his post-war career compromised, however, he spent much of the rest of his life distancing himself from the taint of Nazism…with Hannah valiantly supporting him.

Still simmering, “Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times” (2015) by Anne C. Heller is noteworthy for its emphasis on Hannah’s resilience and emotional honesty in the face of the fiery debate raging around her, ‘berated as a poseur and a fraud’. Rising to a finale, the unrelenting saga even achieved the populist notoriety of a 2018 play, ‘Arendt-Heidegger’ by Philosophy Professor Douglas Lackey who, to make his point, adopted the style of Euripides and other classical Greek tragedians. Probing the darker side of human nature, the playwright turned to the actionable stage to tease out the nuances of the tale under the salubrious sub-title of ‘A Love Story.’ 

A reasonable span of years has now elapsed, usually halcyon in retrospect, those ‘good old days’ some cheerfully call them. For others, painful nostalgia, for things that are now irretrievably lost, despite our earnest regrets. A time before mass marketing, suffocating true individuality, descended upon the world like a monstrous black tarantula. Such is life. The boom in long-haul global travel has spawned a world-wide, interconnected economy, in which ethnicity, environmental issues, and gender-identity have come to the fore. Macro-economies, however, tilts evermore towards Mammon in which the top ten percent of the USA population own fifty percent of the material wealth of the nation.

For better or worse, we find ourselves somewhat bemusedly at the first-quarter mark of the 21st century. Still, the sub-genre continues to bloom with the arrival of “Hannah Arendt” (2021) by Samantha Rose Hill, a compelling work, nonetheless. Hannah is a neglected feminist heroine, writes Hill, who stood up to male dominance within her profession. The writer threads wisely, ignoring the muckraking that by this time — like an errant comet —left behind a long tail of malicious debris. Hill’s exacting research, interestingly, does unearth Hannah’s FBI file:  uncomplimentary to say the least, which makes its own statement about Director J. Edgar Hoover. A salutary rite of passage perhaps, even a perverse endorsement?

***

Without doubt, Hannah’s writings were provocative, deliberately so, inviting readers to reconsider the scope of the human condition…particularly that evil which otherwise normal people were capable. Her understanding of humanity was a lifelong pursuit that evolved through several iterations, having a profound effect on her own life choices and her relationships with others (‘The Human Condition,’1958, by Hannah Arendt).

Hannah was the epitome of that resilient personality who strived to live by what she professed — Heidegger’s ‘authenticity’ — even when this meant a reversal of her prior views. Her openness to change was tested with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, seized in Argentina by Israeli agents (Mossad). Eichmann stood trial in Jerusalem, accused of arranging the extermination of millions of East European Jewry, yet as ‘only a small cog in a vast machinery’ he did not consider himself to be personally guilty.

The Eichmann show-trial dragged onwards with Hannah attending every day, covering the trial for The New Yorker magazine with a series of five monthly articles. Hannah struggled to understand how this thoroughly unimpressive man — no devilish horns or cloven hooves — could perpetrate evil on such an industrial scale. His slavish defense of ‘a mere soldier following orders,’ a familiar trope of the earlier Nazi trials at Nuremberg, rang hollow to Hannah right from the start.

In place of the traditional focus on Eichmann as inherently abnormal, she wondered whether originally, he was an unexceptional individual (he had a wife, children, and extended family!). Only later, did he become the rabid monster of infamy described in her New Yorker bulletins? If so, she asked herself what made an otherwise ordinary man — more or less — culpable of such vile acts of ethnic hatred?

As witness upon witness gave heart-wrenching testimony, the question of evil — a deceptively simple question — gained ever greater significance in Hannah’s thinking. A larger issue was at stake, she surmised, beyond the guilt of one puny man. Day by day, with the ghastly details mounting, a catharsis of sorts was working its way through her awareness. She was about to take a step after which nothing would ever be the same again. Slowly, the unthinkable rose up before her, that evil conceived as a potential, was ubiquitous to all humanity…though latent and repressed in most civilized people. Such a startling truth was a bold departure from the traditional back-and-white concept of evil described in her first major work, ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ (1951). Her new life, square in the public gaze — bittersweet — was about to begin.

As a corollary to Hannah’s ‘banality of evil,’ the catchphrase had the unintended consequence of closing the distance between Eichmann and his Jewish victims, as if they were cut from the same flawed human material. It comes as no surprise then, if not a peculiar paradox, that German Jewry bristled at such an odious idea, and directed a furious response against Hannah, their one-time idol…though she herself also came from a German-Jewish family. Bigotry takes on many forms. Undaunted, Hannah stood firm in her beliefs. The begrudged recognition of a shared ‘banality of evil’ within us all, she insisted, is surely the great leveler of history.

Furthermore, Hannah was able to understand for the first time, how this insidious ‘banality thing’ had also corrupted Heidegger, albeit to a lesser degree — resulting in his Nazi membership — which had its roots in his own deep neediness. ‘Loneliness,’ Hannah concluded, knowingly, ‘is the cause of all totalitarian movements, cutting us off from ourselves.’ Without excusing him, she nevertheless was able to accept his aberration, mending their strained relationship. His moral-ethical ‘failure’ (his early support of fascism and the Third Reich), she reasoned, was truly a ‘failure’ of the flawed human condition shared by all humanity.

While she could accept Heidegger, many would never forgive Hannah for this.

***

The show-trial was viewed worldwide on flickering black-and-white television screens, from April – December 1961. Eichmann was subsequently convicted, a foregone conclusion, and summarily executed by hanging. Hannah’s landmark analysis (1963) in the aftermath of the Eichmann trial became an overnight bombshell, prodding readers to reconsider the scope of the human condition. In particular, the unpleasant ‘truth’ that otherwise normal people were capable of evil, despite the thin veneer of civilization. Blaming it all as a German abnormality, or by-product of Nazi indoctrination, Hannah argued, was insufficient as an explanation. The binary idea that ‘a few bad people are predestined to do bad things, while the rest of us struggle to do good things’ was simplistic at best, not to mention the arrogant whiff of denial.

In its place, the ‘banality of evil’ — putting aside such noble traits as goodwill and compassion — spoke to humanity’s appetite for instinctual aggression and cruelty. Still under the long shadow of the Second World War, the general public were unprepared for such an outrageous conclusion, and — with communism looming everywhere (think China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba) — the timing was unfortunate.

Survival was inextricably tied to a notion of Evil as a worldly thing ‘out there,’ never within us…even when such a belief may conflict with the stark reality of everyday life! The result is a felt discomfort, a so-called ‘cognitive dissonance.’ Always the hard-headed pragmatist, Hannah became that nasty Jewess with the sharp tongue, waving primitive, smelly reality under the noses of an upright citizenry. The ‘dissonance’ was not long in coming!

Once the darling of the press, an eminent scholar and German Jew who had hoodwinked the Gestapo, Hannah was now shunned as a leper, even by her most avid supporters. Moreover, her scandalous relationship with ‘Sieg Heil Heidegger’ provided a convenient rationale for much displaced anger. Beware that what goes around, comes around.

Overnight, Hannah found herself dubbed notoriously as ‘the Nazi-loving Jewish traitor’. For better or worse, she had indeed made the headlines as a public intellectual and political theorist…but never as she imagined. Hannah believed, incorrectly, that the storm was close to running its course.

***

‘We are all capable of evil,’ if not directly then by passive compliance, declares Hannah wholeheartedly in her ‘Eichmann’ best-seller. After first admonishing him and refusing to meet, Hannah’s final acceptance of Heidegger’s Nazi past following the ‘Eichmann’ trial, should be understood in this light. So too, should the smear campaign of a ‘cunning seductress’ be seen in part, as retribution for Hannah’s sin of unexpectedly shining a bright light in dark places. ‘No doubt she was in collusion with the Nazi Heidegger’ is the unspoken message.

The furor over ‘the banality of evil’ is also a step forward in explaining why the otherwise straightforward ‘scandal’ of Hannah and Heidegger has continued to fester over time. Hannah’s ‘startling’ core beliefs about the human condition were embedded, unacknowledged, lurking behind the moral ruckus with Heidegger, conflating one with the other. The illicit sexual innuendo not only garners attention — whether such shaming is warranted or otherwise — but also serves an ‘ad hominem’ function, discrediting the author’s outrageous views on humanity.

Hannah’s unflinching account of the Eichmann trial suggests that this deeply disturbing experience also marked a turning point in her own life. Blaming the mass atrocities of the Holocaust as a standalone, unique manifestation of the Third Reich and Nazi indoctrination, however convenient this may be, was inadequate as an historical fact. Racial-based massacres litter the annals of human history and continue to do so to the present day. The ‘brutal banality,’ Hannah came to realize — as she sat quietly, listening, day after day, month by month — could not be confined to a singular man or ideology. Rather, it applied to all humanity without exception. The world would never be the same again.

In a nutshell, Hannah’s position was further eroded when — consistent with her evolving beliefs — she renewed her ‘friendship’ with Heidegger, now the repentant Nazi. As a result, Hannah’s ‘heretical’ insights on the ‘banality of evil,’ surely the larger question, became conflated with her ‘scandalous’ behavior with Heidegger. The couple’s past liaisons then shifted to centre stage, becoming the focus of moral impeachment and bookish sensation… ‘and I thought she was such a nice girl!’

***

Enough. The time has come, once and for all, to separate the signal from the noise. This entails stepping back, if for no other reason, then only for the way this sub-genre of revelatory books may shine a light on the way in which sex, love, commitment, and duty are conceived through the refracting prism of ‘then and now’? At bottom, lies the base human condition, Adam and Eve, in all their serpentine nakedness and titillating animal instincts? Is it true that everything changes — following Nietzsche’ s eternal recurrence — yet essentially stays the same…merely endless repeats with a postcoital change of clothes? If so, we are left with an oxymoron line of enquiry that neither leads us far nor explains the remarkable longevity of the controversy.

One wonders if, with all the literary posturing and fireworks, there must surely be more to the matter than leering lasciviously through the lovers’ bedroom window late at night. Is this all we are? On the other hand, the post-war, post-holocaust saga of Hannah and Heidegger, as some reviewers have grandly opined, may indeed point to a prophetic bell-weather of our ever-evolving humanity… a deeper unease over the rise of mass-hatred, even wild despair, touching upon peoples’ collective unconscious. Who we have been yet still becoming. The perplexing issue itself may arguably be greater than the sum of its parts, separate from — if not more profound — than the simple, sordid ‘tale of a star-crossed twosome.’ If something else, then how to unpack it?

Seeking a deeper truth, we come full circle, back to Heidegger’s own writings and their correspondences with Hannah’s works. In its rudiments, their shared philosophy goes something like this. Inspired by the ancient Greek Pre-Socratics — Heraclitus in particular — Heidegger begins his monumental work, ‘Being and Time’ (1927), by focusing on the fundamental ontology by which people conceive of their own innate separateness. Heidegger proposes a basic premise underpinning existence: his so-called ‘being-in-the-world’, the process of choice and usage by which the everyday world of objects (including other people) becomes intelligible and knowable.

Other people or objects become utilitarian to this greater existential purpose… as opposed to contemporary notions of subjectivity. We are reminded of Kierkegaard’s claim that ‘truth is never derived from the crowd’: ‘they’ always remains outside of existence. Unlike most post-modern conceptions, the Self is viewed as an ‘on-going narrative construction’, always separate and conditional, contingent upon the choices made from moment to moment.

In the case of Hannah and Heidegger, their existential choice of a shared ‘being-in-the-world’ continued despite the puritanical judgements leveled against them. On the other hand, the conventional view of a universal, kindhearted humanity, the world as we would like it to be — in the wake of the Holocaust and Hannah’s reportage — was shaken to the core. A new truth, grounded in reality, was emerging then…and continues still to this day. As with most societal change, progress hobbles forward albeit dragging the sad ghost of yesterday behind it, mewing and caterwauling as it fades away, into times past. It is worth repeating Heidegger’s caveat, that ‘things only exist within the milieu of time, past or present.’

***

With 2001 came a new millennium. A fresh slew of authors took up the cudgels for Hannah, applauding her for widening our understanding of the human condition, warts and all, though the ‘unpalatable’ truth — even today — is not always welcome. The bookish ‘Tower of Babel’ however, is cracking and crumbling as the tired narrative of identity politics and smutty innuendo draws to a close.

Putting all the tacky melodrama aside, the ‘loving friendship’ would hardly raise an eyebrow nowadays, which of itself, is a litmus test of the seismic shift in understanding human complexity. In this vein, Heidegger was not a predatory monster, and Hannah was neither a gullible student wearing blinkers nor a designing mistress. Moreover, their lifelong attachment was imbued with genuine tenderness and affection on both sides. Such pure sentiments, however, do not sell books. The resulting literary uproar, at least on the surface, was fueled by this ‘wanton scandal’; but in fact, had its roots — as argued in the present piece — in Hannah’s exposition on the banality of evil and the mass hostility it received, propelling her private life into the spotlight.

Heidegger for his part, was a multilayered personality. Hannah could see through the self-defeating blunders of this conflicted man — his petty lies, half-truths, and bluster — to the teachings of one of the great German philosophers of the twentieth century… but above all, to the overly sensitive soul at the core of his being, isolated in his mountain cabin, whom she loved through thick and thin.

We struggle against the downward pull of gravity all our lives…but nay, relentless, eventually it wins. May Hannah and Heidegger take their well-deserved rest, if not together, at least in peace. Singular spirits, both. Amen. 

***

Paul B. Donovan is a humanist writer and forensic psychologist, best known for his seminal work, “Epicurus in Love: Mythos and Desire in Ancient Greece” (2023, The Euphorion Press). He is a regular contributor to The Montreal Review.              Pamela S. Pease has exhibited her art in Santa Fe and Maine galleries, as well as internationally. Inspired by the shapes of Nature and the geometry of objects, her artistic style has been described as ‘at once both impressionistic and abstract.’ She is also the author and illustrator of several children’s books, lately "El Joffee: Poodle de Santa Fe.”

***