Why Are Philosophers Hard To Understand? (Part II)
Yesterday, I asked why philosophers are hard to understand. Today, I’m going to take a short passage that’s difficult, and try to explain it. The meta-question is whether you think the point could have been made more simply or needs to be expressed opaquely. This will begin a series in which I paraphrase challenging paragraphs from difficult thinkers.
This is from Heidegger (in translation):
The historicity of a thinker, which is not a matter of him but of being, has its measure in the original loyalty of the thinker to his inner limitation. Not to know this inner limitation, not to know it thanks to the nearness of what is unsaid and unsayable, is the hidden gift of being to the rare thinkers who are called to the path of thought. (Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, pp. 78).
Here’s my paraphrase:
The historical conditions that determine what a thinker thinks are not determined by him or her, but by the age into which s/he is born.
A thinker is loyal in the sense of beholden to his or her age, originally, before any conscious choice. It’s a fundamental limitation.
Because the limitation is fundamental, the thinker can’t see it or know it. It’s the lens through which s/he sees, rather than an object up for investigation. It is “near” and yet because of that, hidden.
Although we might be tempted to think of the philosopher’s limits as faults or liabilities, we shouldn’t. The thinker’s epoch-given limits are not to be thought of as an obstacle, but a gift.
The limits are gifts, because they allow the thinker not just to describe what s/he knows and sees, but, indirectly what s/he doesn’t. The latter are a gift to us, who come later. They are also gifts in the sense that they are the thinker’s “givens.”
Great and rare thinkers don’t just write correct propositions; they enter into relationship with what there is to be thought (an always incomplete project).
Why didn’t Heidegger just write in bullet points, as I have tried to do? Would his thought be improved or worsened by being more prosaic?
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