A Parapraxis and a Half

Your author is thankfully not going to follow the latest ‘meme’ (why do I dislike that word so much?) and list how many books he owns. He could list all the books whose price he has ‘self-lowered’ (as the Autonomist euphemism goes). But no, instead he is going to tell you about what he has been reading in the library, and following Thomas Mann’s perceptive comment, display “that childish impulse to force upon the reader verbatim all that the writer has read and drawn his consolation from, instead of allowing it to form the silent and reassuring background of his message.”

The book in question is Heidegger’s Four Seminars, including the very interesting Le Thor Seminar from 1968. Contained therein is an unusual (and surprisingly sympathetic) exposition of Hegel’s Differenzschrift, particularly its key passage on ‘the need of philosophy’ which arises when ‘diremption’ [Entzweiung – in Heidegger’s translators’ infelicitous rendering, ‘scission’] appears most fixed and immovable. This exposition is worth a read in itself (and at 40 pages won’t divert you excessively).

But what struck me is a strange parapraxis which Heidegger makes. At one point during his exposition he quotes Hegel’s famous aphorism about the old sock, “A torn sock is better than a mended sock.” But immediately, as the notes to the seminar record, there is embarrassed whispering from his auditors. Heidegger had got it wrong. Hegel, they know, says something different: he says, “A mended sock is better than a torn sock; not so with self-consciousness”. Heidegger, blushing (if one can read between the lines) defends himself with an elaborate story that Hegel’s editor had changed the manuscript of the Wastebook (where the aphorism occurs) at the last minute, and what he has quoted was what Hegel originally said. His audience are clearly unconvinced. Rightly so. The editors of the Four Seminars do their best to defend Heidegger, arguing that his version of the line and his subsequent exposition of it are consistent with the spirit of Hegel’s aphorism. There is some truth in this, admittedly, though Heidegger can be said to take Hegel’s line for something of a walk. The torn sock allows Heidegger a Sein und Zeit-esque reflection on the ‘equipment’ which shows up its readiness-to-hand only when it doesn’t function (and this makes me wonder if he knew of the Hegel quote back in 1927 when he wrote Sein und Zeit, and if it influenced, in misremembered form, that seminal part of his Meisterwerk).

But of course Hegel’s point lies in the second half of the clause. Self-consciousness is not like a sock. It is better for it to be torn (as Heidegger’s translators correctly note, for it to face up to diremption and to work with it, work through it) than for it to dwell in the self-satisfaction of being whole and complete. This little aphorism, incidentally, gives the lie to all those Hegel-interpretations which stress his teleology and finality to the exclusion of the lingering diremption, the always potential division of self-consciousness.

There's part of the anecdote I haven’t mentioned. On first hearing the embarrassed whispers of his auditors Heidegger is confused. But he soldiers on, repeating the quote. This time he gets laughter in response. Now he is angry, and in a raised, sarcastic, and slightly hurt voice says, “Perhaps you are all content with being whole?” It is a wonderful moment, one of which Hegel would have been proud.

Comments

[John]

And what they both ignore is that every sock must have at least one hole in it.

[A Disgruntled Postal Worker]

Maybe it's just me, but I find there's something ironic about Heidegger's blast at his students. Heidegger's outburst seems a declaration of his own *superior* wholeness, one that has come to him through a philosophical tearing. No lingering diremption for him.

Of course, now I realize I'm doing the same thing here. *sigh*

[YH]

I have a certain sympathy for Heidegger here, probably because he is going out of his way to be sympathetic to Hegel (unusual for him). To that extent what he says about wholeness is probably what Hegel would have said too, though perhaps not as an outburst (but then perhaps in Berlin the early 1800s students weren't allowed to laugh at lecturers...) I think the spirit(!) of Heidegger's reading is actually laudably aporetic rather than dogmatic, and so there is a hint of the logic of diremption retained in how he approaches Hegel's text. Interestingly I also see a real anticipation of deconstruction in the way he tackles Hegel here, the 'double reading' Derrida once spoke of, one part sympathetic exposition, one part exposing the hidden presuppositions of a text. Of course Heidegger thinks the hidden presupposition in Hegel is a philosophy of consciousness which he has definitively destructed in the opening pages of Sein und Zeit. Personally I have no problem with a philosophy of (self-)consciousness (the 'self-' qualifier is all important; it is what brings us into the realm of intersubjectivity and history and out of the Cartesianism which Heidegger equates it with) so his criticism is for me water off a duck's back. But I still admire the approach he has taken, and I am all for close sympathetic readings preceding critique, the point being that they don't necessarily lead one to deconstructive outcomes, e.g. the objectionable notion of 'undecidability'. Everyone should read closely, regardless of their philosophy, I think this is what I'm getting at, and that's why I like the Heidegger piece despite my first instincts.