Heideggers Heritage: Philosophy, Anti-Modernism and Cultural Pessimism

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critical of what they see as an excessively romantic tendency in Heideggers critique of

the modern technological world. For Steiner, Heidegger is a thoroughgoing agrarian
and his views are excessively coloured by his obsession with the virtues of a peasants
life in the yawning shadows of forests and mountains. And, of course, when one reads
Heideggers account of his decision not to take the chair of philosophy in Berlin and
the peasants steadying embrace and a solemn stare that silently conveyed to him what
the authentic path was, one can of course see where Adorno and Steiner were coming
from.8 Notwithstanding, Heideggers seminal meditation on the essence of technology
is not somehow rendered ridiculous by such pretentious flourishes and gestures which
Adorno dismisses as a kind of peasant kitsch.
In Adorno we find a surfeit of examples of shameless bandwagoning as he gleefully
upbraids Heideggers posturing. Take, for example, his quick aside upon quoting
Heidegger himself in this context:
And philosophical work does not take place as the spare-time activity of a crank.
It belongs in the midst of the labor of farmers. One would like at least to know the
farmers opinion about that.9

The problem with this kind of jibe, clever though it may be, is that it is nothing more
than intellectual frivolity. These incessant attempts to win the imagined gallery have,
in the end, nothing to recommend them in terms of philosophical merit. They are selfindulgent and irresponsible. Indeed Adornos whole account of Heideggers decision
not to accept a chair of philosophy in Berlin, which admittedly provided the occasion
for some rather farcical posturing on Heideggers part, is recapitulated with all the
unflinching acerbity of a comic but then left to stand as though it were representative
of the deepest essence of Heideggers confrontation with technology:
His reflected unreflectiveness degenerates into chummy chit-chat, for the sake
of the rural setting with which he wants to stand on a confidential footing. The
description of the old farmer reminds us of the most washed-out clichs in
plough-and-furrow novels, from the region of a Fressen; and it reminds us equally
of the praise of being silent, which the philosopher authorizes not only for his
farmers but also for himself.10

The problem in all of these cases, and even to a lesser degree in the more sober efforts
of someone like Zimmerman, is clear enough; in identifying certain resonances
between Heideggers bucolic proclivities and the anti-modern cultural pessimism
endemic to his German contemporaries, these critics take the further step of
supposing that Heideggers philosophy is nothing more than the reproduction of those
same resonances, themes and ideas.
Neither is Adorno above the ad hominem attack. Indeed, he routinely cites
Heideggers provinciality and associated cultural attitudes and prejudices as being the
ultimate catalysts for his philosophical positions:
Whoever is forced by the nature of his work to stay in one place, gladly makes a
virtue out of necessity. He tries to convince himself and others that his boundness is of a higher order. The financially threatened farmers bad experiences