Martin Heidegger: Dervish Or Parson?
The Dervish instances apostolic energy; the Parson, the "Great Church," bricks and mortar.
The Dervish breaks open; the Parson closes down, locks up.
Heidegger was a Parson who so wanted to be a Dervish. There are times that I am convinced he crossed over into Dervish-hood; at other times, I am doubtful. Did he even know himself?
In "My Pathway Hitherto" [1937/38], Heidegger wrote:
Whoever is not truly deeply rooted and is not immediately struck by questioning, how will he be able actually to experience the uprootedness?
And how can the one who does not bear the experience of uprootedness be mindful from the ground up of a new grounding which is not a simple turning away from the old and a craving for the new, still less a feeble mediation and adjustment, but a creative transformation wherein everything inceptual grows up into the height of its summit?
[Mindfulness, tr. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary, 369].
How indeed?
posted by Sidi Hamid Benengeli | 5:41 PM
3 Comments:
He saw it but could not walk that path.
I am reminded of my first deep encounter with the Bhagavad Gita, tr. RC Zhaner. Krishna suggests to Arajuna that there are three pathways to the godhead. Practice of yoga is first, study of the Vedas second and third is the pathway of pure love, Bhakti, or love and devotion. Krishna suggested to Arajuna that this was the most powerful of the three. In the last Chapter, Krishna urges Arajuna to simply surrender to him in pure love and devotion.
This disturbed me to no end at that time. I could not understand how simple surrender could be seen as greater good than long study and/or practice. After all, Krishna revealed that all three were viable pathways, why preference that which seemed to take the least effort or skill?
It wasn't until much later in life that I realized that Krishna was advising Arajuna that the one real way to spirituality was surrender.
Heidegger could not surrender.
I agree in part and disagree in part. Parsons have no problem surrendering, but they surrender to all the wrong things. MH was careful not to surrender to the things to which Parsons surrender--a pre-requisite to Dervish-hood. But did he take "the pathway of pure love"? There I think you have him. We find in MH a call to surrender to the negativity of Being, i.e., to accept our mortality. This he calls resoluteness/re-solve. It is not love, nor is it joy. The closest we come to love in MH is "care." The closest we come to joy is, perhaps, pleasure (e.g., taking pleasure in the world's "worlding"). Where MH calls to resolve and care, the Dervish calls to joy and love. But does that mean that MH never escapes the Parsonage? Perhaps it just makes him a darker form of Dervish. Which begs the question I have yet to be able to answer for myself: Is a "dark Dervish" an authentic Dervish or just a Parson in a patched cloak?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH4SF7FrNzc
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