The Overcoming of the Beyng of Machenschaft: Heidegger, Jünger, and T. E. Lawrence

ABSTRACT

In 1939 Martin Heidegger made the astonishing claim that the overcoming of the beyng of machination occurs in T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He arrived at this assessment in the course of his attempt to distance himself from Friedrich Nietzsche and Ernst Jünger. It is well known that Heidegger formulated his understanding of machination in part in response to Jünger's account of total mobilization, but the importance for Heidegger of Jünger's accounts of his experiences at the Front also needs to be recognized. Lawrence presented Heidegger with a very different response to a different kind of war from that of Jünger. This paper highlights some passages in Seven Pillars that help to explain what led Heidegger to believe that Lawrence provided a model of how to avoid some of the pitfalls of Nietzsche's and Jünger's attempts to overcome metaphysics.

KEYWORDS:

• Desert
• devastation
• Erlebnis
• history
• machination
• overcoming of metaphysics
• reticence

ORCID

Robert Bernasconi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9699-895X

Notes

1 I have discussed Heidegger's antisemitism in the Black Notebooks elsewhere and will not return to the theme here. See Bernasconi, “Another Eisenmenger?” 168–85.

2 Dating items in the Black Notebooks with any certainty is not easy, especially as there is some evidence that Heidegger did not complete one notebook before starting another one, but there are good circumstantial reasons to believe in this approximate dating.

3 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 423; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 330.

4 Heidegger, Besinnung, 16; trans. Mindfulness, 12.

5 On Heidegger's 1939 lectures, Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis see Bernasconi, “Heidegger, Rickert, Nietzsche, and the Critique of Biologism.”

6 Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jünger, 227.

7 Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jünger, 277.

8 Meyers, The Wounded Spirit, 104–13.

9 Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett, The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, 16 August, 1922, 360.

10 Jünger, “Über die Linie,” 159. Lawrence, most likely T. E. Lawrence and not D. H. Lawrence, is also mentioned by Jünger in passing in his War Journals: Strahlungen, 293; trans. A German Officer in Occupied Paris, 181.

11 Arendt, The Burden of our Time, 320.

12 On Lawrence's reputation in Germany, see Thomas Kramer, “Der T. E. Lawrence-Mythos auf dem Kontinent,” 275–7.

13 Lawrence was presented as an example of orientalism by Said Orientalism, 238–43. See also Calderbank, For Only Those Deserve the Name, 237–9.

14 The original by Charles Mauron in 1936 (Payot); Julien Deleuze (Gallimard-Folio, 1991); Jean Rosenthal (Robert Lafont, 1993); Renée and André Guillaume (Pochotheque, 1995); and finally by Eric Chédaille (Libretto, 2019).

15 Schramm and Martin, “Ein Gespräch mit Max Müller,” 107–8.

16 Heidegger, Reden und andere Zeugnisse, 375.

17 Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jünger, 301–433.

18 Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jünger, 236.

19 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 370; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 289. For an ambitious attempt to make the brief exchange between Martin and Müller the key to an expansive reading of Being and Time, see Altmann, Martin Heidegger and the First World War, 9.

20 Heidegger, Überlegungen XII–XV, 29; trans. Ponderings XII–XV, 24.

21 Heidegger, Überlegungen XII–XV, 113; trans. Ponderings XII–XV, 89.

22 There are various places where Heidegger in passing confirms a connection between Jünger's “Total Mobilization” and his own thinking of machination. See, for example, Zu Ernst Jünger, 202.

23 Heidegger, “Zur Seinsfrage,” Wegmarken, 390; trans. “On the Question of Being,” Pathmarks 294–5.

24 Jünger, “Die totale Mobilmachung,” 11, 14; trans. “Total Mobilization,” 123, 126.

25 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 360; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 282.

26 Jünger, Das Wäldchen, 125, 121; trans. Copse, 125, 134.

27 Jünger, In Stahlgewittern, 229; trans. Storm of Steel, 233–4.

28 Jünger, Der Arbeiter 291; trans. The Worker, 187. Heidegger, Das Ereignis, 99; trans. The Event, 84. See also Zu Ernst Jünger, 99.

29 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 370, 396; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 290, 310.

30 Heidegger, Besinnung, 16; trans. Mindfulness, 12.

31 Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, 44; trans. The History of Beyng, 40.

32 Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jünger, 227. See Blok, “An Indication of Being,” 201.

33 Heidegger, “Zur Seinsfrage,” Wegmarken, 424; trans. “On the Question of Being,” Pathmarks, 320.

34 Ernst Jünger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, 125; trans. The Adventurous Heart, 67.

35 Heidegger, Zu Ernst Jünger, 9.

36 Heidegger, “Zur Seinsfrage,” Wegmarken, 390; trans. “On the Question of Being,” Pathmarks, 294–5.

37 Heidegger, Besinnung, 26; trans. Mindfulness, 20.

38 Heidegger, Besinnung, 15, 400; trans. Mindfulness, 11, 354.

39 Heidegger, Besinnung, 400; trans. Mindfulness, 354. Translation modified.

40 Heidegger, Besinnung, 21; trans. Mindfulness, 16. Die Geschichte des Seyns, 47; trans. The History of Beyng, 42.

41 Heidegger, Besinnung, 400; trans. Mindfulness, 354.

42 Renée and André Guillaume, An Introduction and Notes, 95–7.

43 Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie, 72; trans. Contributions to Philosophy, 58.

44 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 423; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 330.

45 Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, 119; trans. The History of Beyng, 100.

46 Heidegger, Besinnung, 188; trans. Mindfulness, 166. Translation modified?

47 Heidegger, Besinnung, 28; trans. Mindfulness, 22.

48 Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, 63; trans. The History of Beyng, 55.

49 Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, 186; trans. The History of Beyng, 158.

50 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 468.

51 Renée and André Guillaume find Nietzsche's influence throughout Seven Pillars, but nowhere more so than in chapter 103. An Introduction and Notes, 250–4.

52 Heidegger, Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis, 324.

53 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 482.

54 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 502.

55 Lawrence, Die Sieben Säulen der Weisheit, 623.

56 Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche, 108; trans. Country Path Conversations, 77.

57 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 412.

58 Deleuze, Critique et Clinique, 150; trans. Essays Critical and Clinical, 119–20.

59 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 412; trans. Die Sieben Säulen der Weisheit, 505.

60 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 412; trans. Die Sieben Säulen der Weisheit, 504–5.

61 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 361–2; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 283.

62 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 335; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 262.

63 Malraux, “Le demon de l’absolu,” 1193.

64 Malraux, “Le demon de l’absolu,” 1193.

65 Jünger, Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis and Der Krieg als inneres Erlebnis.

66 Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie, 127; Contributions to Philosophy, 100.

67 Heidegger, Überlegungen II–VI, 370; trans. Ponderings VI–XI, 289.

68 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 242; trans. Die Sieben Säulen der Weisheit, 281.

69 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 412; trans. Die Sieben Säulen der Weisheit, 505.

70 Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche, 211; trans. Country Path Conversations, 136.

71 Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymnen, 131, 175;. trans. Hölderlins Hymns, 117, 160.

72 Heidegger, Überlegungen XII–XV, 14; trans. Ponderings XII–XV, 12.

73 Heidegger, Überlegungen XII–XV, 14; trans. Ponderings XII–XV, 12.

74 Hedegger, Was heisst Denken?, 31; trans. What is Called Thinking? 29.

75 Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche, 212; trans. Country Path Conversations, 137.

76 Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche, 212; trans. Country Path Conversations, 137.

77 Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche, 210; trans. Country Path Conversations, 135–6. Was heisst Denken?, 96–110; trans. What is Called Thinking? 92–107.

78 “For whom the silent desert, the simple ground, arises for the person who turns away from the self and from created things.” Eckhart, Sermons, vol. 3, p. 105.

79 Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI, 369; trans. Ponderings VII–XI, 289–90.