In the fall of 1939, Martin Heidegger and his young Freiburg student and friend Günther Anders were walking along the river when they saw a newspaper vendor’s sign announcing that the English had accused the German government of instigating a recent attempt to assassinate Churchill. When Heidegger remarked that it wouldn’t surprise him at all if it were true, Anders retorted that it was impossible because “the Germans were too civilized and decent to attempt anything so underhand, and such an act was incompatible with the German ‘national character’.” Heidegger was furious. Some five years later after the war, he wrote to Anders:
“Whenever I thought of you I couldn’t help thinking of a particular incident which seemed to me very important, you made a remark about ‘national character’ that shocked me by its primitiveness. I then thought: what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any journalist in the use of the dangerous phrases such people use for their own ends.”
(Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany)
Hmmm. This looks almost identical to an anecdote involving Wittgenstein and Malcolm (among other places, repeated here), with the names and nationalities changed. Any idea which is the original?
I think gwern is teasing us: there is no such quotation in Sluga’s Heidegger’s Crisis, or at least I cannot find it in the Google Books version. Perhaps gwern has taken the Wittgenstein/Malcolm story and swapped Britain for Germany to make a point about the universal applicability of the philosopher’s rebuke.
But for what it’s worth:
The date in the Heidegger version of the story is very suspicious: in 1939 Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty; he did not become Prime Minister until May 1940 and it is only with hindsight that we see his significance (even in 1940 most political actors seem to have thought that Lord Halifax would be a better choice for Prime Minister than Churchill).
The version of the anecdote featuring Wittgenstein and Malcolm is backed up by a citation to Malcolm’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir where Malcolm quotes the letter from Wittgenstein at length. Also, the 1939 date for the original quarrel about “national character” is a better fit to this story, because in 1939 no-one could doubt the significance of Hitler, and assassination attempts on Hitler were by that point a fairly regular occurrence.
Yes; I was curious what would happen when I reversed the nationalities. I really thought waiting 2 years would be enough for people to forget the original discussion, since it wasn’t a popular quote, but Vaniver and another proved me wrong and destroyed the value of the test, so now I’ll never know.
I am a little embarrassed by the Churchill mistake, though.
What a coincidence that the same event should happen to Wittgenstein!
In the autumn of 1939, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his young Cambridge student and friend Norman Malcolm were walking along the river when they saw a newspaper vendor’s sign announcing that the Germans had accused the British government of instigating a recent attempt to assassinate Hitler. When Wittgenstein remarked that it wouldn’t surprise him at all if it were true, Malcolm retorted that it was impossible because “the British were too civilized and decent to attempt anything so underhand, and . . . such an act was incompatible with the British ‘national character’.” Wittgenstein was furious. Some five years later, he wrote to Malcolm:
Whenever I thought of you I couldn’t help thinking of a particular incident which seemed to me very important. . . . you made a remark about ‘national character’ that shocked me by its primitiveness. I then thought: what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any . . . journalist in the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends.
In fact, it’s a good job that one refered to the Germans, and the other the British, or this would be a duplicate posting, and I know you wouldn’t want to steal the origional poster’s glory.
(Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany)
Hmmm. This looks almost identical to an anecdote involving Wittgenstein and Malcolm (among other places, repeated here), with the names and nationalities changed. Any idea which is the original?
I think gwern is teasing us: there is no such quotation in Sluga’s Heidegger’s Crisis, or at least I cannot find it in the Google Books version. Perhaps gwern has taken the Wittgenstein/Malcolm story and swapped Britain for Germany to make a point about the universal applicability of the philosopher’s rebuke.
But for what it’s worth:
The date in the Heidegger version of the story is very suspicious: in 1939 Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty; he did not become Prime Minister until May 1940 and it is only with hindsight that we see his significance (even in 1940 most political actors seem to have thought that Lord Halifax would be a better choice for Prime Minister than Churchill).
The version of the anecdote featuring Wittgenstein and Malcolm is backed up by a citation to Malcolm’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir where Malcolm quotes the letter from Wittgenstein at length. Also, the 1939 date for the original quarrel about “national character” is a better fit to this story, because in 1939 no-one could doubt the significance of Hitler, and assassination attempts on Hitler were by that point a fairly regular occurrence.
Yeah, this seems like one of the occasional tests/experiments Gwern does.
Yes; I was curious what would happen when I reversed the nationalities. I really thought waiting 2 years would be enough for people to forget the original discussion, since it wasn’t a popular quote, but Vaniver and another proved me wrong and destroyed the value of the test, so now I’ll never know.
I am a little embarrassed by the Churchill mistake, though.
The whole story is also much more fitting to the “character” that Wittgenstein is supposed to have as opposed to the one of Heidegger.
There was a whole comment thread to this effect, which was subsequently deleted for some reason. Just a heads up.
What a coincidence that the same event should happen to Wittgenstein!
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/witt_intro.html
In fact, it’s a good job that one refered to the Germans, and the other the British, or this would be a duplicate posting, and I know you wouldn’t want to steal the origional poster’s glory.