한나 아렌트가 전범 아돌프 아이히만 재판 보고서에서 '악의 평범성'이라는 단어를 써서 유명해졌다. 그러나 그녀의 연인이자 철학적 선생이었던 하이데거가 2차 세계대전 이후, 대학에서 쫓겨나 복귀가 어렵자, 적극적으로 나서서 하이데거의 대학 복귀를 도왔다.
사람들의 속 생각과 실제 삶은 우리가 생각하는 것보다 더 복잡하다. 그리고 기성 법과 제도와 갈등이 있다고 해도 개인적인 사생활 공간은 침해당해서는 안된다.
하지만 하이데거의 나치 당원 가입에 대한 반성을 공개적으로 하지 않은 점, 나치의 학살에 대한 공개 반성 표명없이 죽은 하이데거는 용서받기는 어렵다.
한나 아렌트는 그 연인이자 선생이었던 하이데거를 옹호하면서, 그의 당원가입은 ‘관습적 행동에 반대한 모험적인 행동(Escapade)’이었다고 말했다.
한나 아렌트가 마틴 하이데거를 어느 정도 사랑하고 그랬는지 모르겠지만, 진정한 친구이자 철학적 도반 (道伴)이었다면, 하이데거가 자신의 과오를 공개적으로 반성하도록 조언이라도 했어야 했다. 대학교수로 복귀시키는데 앞장서는 것 대신에.
(아래 글 요약)
1963년 예루살렘에서 독일 나치주의자 전범, 아돌프 아이히만에 대한 재판이 있었다. 아렌트가 아이히만 재판 보고서를 작성해서 유명해졌다.
마틴 하이데거는 독일 마부르크 대학에서 철학을 가르칠 때, 당시 17세 한나 아렌트와 연인관계였다. 당시 하이데거는 애 아빠였고, 한나는 그를 가르켜 “내 생각을 지배하는 은둔의 왕”이었다고 말했다.
한나 아렌트는 1929년 귄스터 슈테른과 결혼했다.
1933년 히틀러와 나치가 권력을 장악했다.
유태인 한나 아렌트는 나치의 체포를 피해 어머니와 파리로 탈출했다. 1937년 귄스터와 이혼하고, 두번째 남편인 하인리히 블뤼어를 만나 포르투갈을 경유 미국 뉴욕으로 망명해, 거기에 정착했다.
하이데거가 나치에 가담했을 때, 한나 아렌트는 실망을 했지만, 마틴 하이데거와 지속적으로 교류를 했다. 하이데거가 대학교수 동료인 게하르트 에드문트 훗설을 경멸했는데, 이런 이야기도 한나 아렌트는 알고 있었다. 2차 세계대전이 끝난 후, 하이데거는 나치 가담 경력으로 대학에서 교수자리를 잡기가 힘들었다. 한나 아렌트는 이 때에도 하이데거의 대학 복귀를 진심정성으로 도왔다.
부가설명: 게하르트는 현상학의 대부로 알려진 에드문트 훗설의 아들이었다. 에드문트 훗설의 고향은 모라비아 Moravia 로, 현재 체코 도시 프로스케오프 Prostějov 태생이었고, 모라비아는 집시들이 많이 모여살던 땅이었다. 히틀러 나치는 유태인만 학살한 게 아니라, 러시아인 폴란드인 집시들도 대량학살했다.
자료 1.
안토니아 그루넨베르크, 한나 아렌트와 마틴 하이데거 - 사랑의 역사
자료
2.
Hannah Arendt & the Complexities of Loving
Jack Pemment considers the strange attraction between two deep minds.
The difficulty in explaining one’s love for another person in the ‘in love’ sense is rivaled only by trying to write about it. I think there is a strange infinity to such love, involving endlessly falling, a complete surrender of the self, where even language seems to become superfluous, giving the poets an uphill struggle to produce something credible. But who needs language when you have the complete understanding and empathy of another?
Yet these moments of ‘infinity’ are anything but infinite. And when love goes, it happens quick, it happens hard, and it seems to abscond with a large part of ourselves. Loving others, loving oneself, even loving symbols and ideology, are enough to keep people tingling with purpose and buzzing with meaning. So we can see that, whatever love is, it has to be the strongest motivator, the most authoritative enabler, and the commonest of common denominators for all human behavior. With love, we would die to protect it. Without love, we would die to find it. Love is riddled with these paradoxes.
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (1906-75) by Gail Campbell, 2023
I’ve deliberately framed love in this way because I think this recognition of its paradoxical nature is integral to understanding relationships that are often perplexing to those on the outside. We have all come across couples that have left us wondering how they could possibly still be together. What is the elusive factor that makes these people put up with each other, even as they seem to delight in tearing each other apart?
Recently I came across the paradox of love in the relationship between Hannah Arendt (1906-75) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Both Arendt and Heidegger were among the most prominent minds of the Twentieth Century. The political philosopher Arendt is perhaps best known for her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963, and for her analysis of totalitarianism, and Heidegger was a phenomenologist whose groundbreaking work reflected on the human sense of being.
Their relationship was problematic for several reasons. Firstly, Arendt was Jewish, and Heidegger, a few years after his romantic entanglement with her, joined the Nazi Party. Secondly, Heidegger was a married man with young children. In addition, Heidegger was seventeen years Arendt’s senior. He was her professor when she was an undergraduate at the University of Marburg.
There is no doubt that through his teaching, the charismatic Heidegger inspired Arendt in the most profound way, and at a crucial time in her philosophical development. She called him “the hidden king [who] reigned in the realm of thinking.”
That kind of powerful intellectual influence is scant in all our lives. When we encounter it, especially while young, perhaps the temptation to fall in love is strong. Such a celebration of cerebration is a wondrous moment of intellectual freedom, and a landmark in our cognitive development. It makes me wonder if the sheer ecstasy of intellectual liberation can itself open one up to giving oneself to the liberator. I’m pretty sure that it was for these reasons that the young Arendt was not shy about becoming involved with her married professor; and Heidegger no doubt basked in the adoration of his brilliant and beautiful student.
After the affair, Arendt married Günther Stern in 1929. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 her world crashed around her. Antisemitism and political repression led to her arrest by the Gestapo, and then she fled with her mother to Paris, where she was safe for a few years. She divorced Stern in 1937 and met Heinrich Blücher, who became her second husband. After Germany invaded France, the couple were eventually rounded up and put in separate camps. Fortunately, they were able to escape, flee to Portugal together, and book passage to New York, where they would live for the rest of their lives.
Despite all this, Arendt remained in contact with Heidegger. Although she was dismayed when he joined the Nazi Party, and heard stories that he was starting to treat his Jewish colleagues such as Husserl with disdain, she would still find ways to defend him. After World War II, Heidegger struggled to maintain his academic standing because his reputation had been wrecked by his involvement with the Nazis. But Arendt continued to fight for him, and used her own academic reputation to help restore his credibility.
Arendt and Heidegger continued to need each other for the duration of their lives. Heinrich and Elfride, their respective spouses, even seemed to accepted this as necessary for their wellbeing. This would make many spouses in otherwise monogamous relationships feel queasy, but Heinrich and Elfride apparently loved their partners so much that they could come to terms with it out of respect.
All this raises the question, is there something different about leading an intellectual life that requires a different understanding of love? The needs of an intellectual do seem unique. Intellectuals often experience loneliness and isolation, and perhaps meet few people in their lives who are fully able to ‘get’ them.
A rare occurrence of the melding of minds does therefore come with a degree of euphoria, and both parties are likely to fight to remain within talking distance. Arendt and Heidegger were intimate with each other’s thought processes and schemas for framing the world. In addition, there’s something enduring about intellectual intimacy compared to, for example, short term physical desire.
If you both occupy a corner of the conceptual universe that nobody else is capable of entering, there seems to be an almost infinite, boundless, and exhilarating journey awaiting you both that will outlive the cartilage in your joints. If this journey also began within a crucible of shared feelings and desires, the need for each other will remain cemented in the soul, in spite of where life takes you. So I maintain that the love life of the intellectual is the most complicated love of all.
© Jack Pemment 2023
Jack Pemment is a science writer and author, and can be found on Substack.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/158/Hannah_Arendt_and_the_Complexities_of_Loving
Hannah Arendt & the Complexities of Loving | Issue 158 | Philosophy Now
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