Gass on Poetry/Philosophy

"I have a distrust—not so much from Wittgenstein as a natural bent of mind—a very Wittgensteinian distrust of philosophical pronouncements, the difficulty of getting anywhere in the subject, so that the suspicion about ideas is very great. But the notion that literature was going to give them to me I never really had. For example, Rilke, I suppose my favorite writer really, and in the best sense a profound writer, is full of shit. I mean his ideas as nonsensical. As philosophical notions I have no respect for them at all, but as poetic notions they are absolutely beautiful. This is one of the reasons I am really a Heidegger hater, because Heidegger gets most of his ideas from Rilke and does not have the sense to see that this is great poetry. He projects it into religion, and I have an immense mistrust of that."

William Gass in conversation with G.A.M. Janssens in 1979. From Conversations with William H. Gass (University of Mississippi Press, 2003).

 This is a pretty good summation of a basic problem that can arise when literature and philosophy are undertaken in close proximity. A couple caveats:
1) I am not as ready as Gass to separate philosophical feasibility with poetic beauty, and I happen to find Rilke full of shit as a poet as well as as a philosopher. I think it is healthy to have a distrust of literary pronouncements (especially profound ones) as well as philosophical pronouncements.
2) Heidegger got most of his ideas from Husserl, not Rilke, but it was indeed the literary, Rilkean spirit of his approach that led him to make such a botch of phenomenology.

Hiller gegen Hegel, addendum

Zizek recently in the Guardian:

"Politics," he reflects, "has always been shitty. It is something I am involved in often against my will. My first interest is theory. I am a Hegelian looking for facts to fit the theory."

The cruelest satirist could not have put it better. Hiller's anti-Hegelianism represents the reaction against exactly this sort of political detachment, which is only the after-effect of an intellectualized detachment from the real world into the world of theory (Zizek even admits that he privileges the theory before the fact, a completely irresponsible and untenable position only accepted by cynical academics and those poor souls they mislead). It is deplorable that this approach continues to exert influence in philosophical circles today, almost two centuries after the fact.

 "My thinking moves so quickly how could it not be full of contradictions?"

We turn to Wittgenstein in Culture and Value: "This is how philosophers should greet each other: 'Take your time!'"

Hiller gegen Hegel

I'm currently at the Deutsches Literatur Archiv in Marbach where I am researching the mostly forgotten post-war German writer Werner Riegel (more info from Wikipedia for the curious). As so often during research, what we find is not always what we initially look for, and I've had the pleasure of acquainting myself more with the work of Kurt Hiller, the essayist and publisher who was one of the first figures of the older generation to offer his support and guidance to Riegel and his colleague Peter Rühmkorf during the early stages of their careers.
Hiller is known primarily as a pacifist, a non-orthodox socialist in the tradition of Aktivismus and an early proponent of gay rights. His essays are hilarious, firebrand broadsides, maybe lacking the Verfeinung of Kraus' criticism, yet possessing a certain aggression which is undoubtedly what so attracted Riegel and Rühmkorf. Hiller's witticisms are anything but frivolous.
Yet the one aspect of Hiller's criticism that I find most fascinating is his anti-Hegelianism. Hiller always presented himself as part of a somehow Schopenhauerian Marxist tradition, a move which, in criticizing the Hegelianism of other Marxist movements, would bring him into conflict with certain communist groups. For Hiller the Aktivist, Hegel represents the passive observation of the historical process, and the intellectualizing reformation of history into a theory which only justifies, and cannot criticize. Hiller is close in spirit to Kierkegaard in such denunciations of Hegelian mystification.

Übrigens ist unter den Gattungen philosophischer Hochstapelei jene, die sich bemüht, die Vernunft verächtlich zu machen, nur die zweitärgste. Die ärgste ist die, deren fauler Tiefsinn uns weismachen möchte, die Vernunft herrsche bereits, sie sei das der Welt immanente Prinzip, sie komme in jedwedem vorgefundenen Staat nicht minder zum Ausdruck als in den Bahnen der Gestirne, und unsre einzige Aufgabe sei, ihrer gewahr zu werden, gerade in den zufälligen und überlebten Organisaten fragwürdiger menschlicher Macht. Den vorgefundenen Staat nicht kritisieren, ihn nicht ändern und umformen wollen, nein, ihn als Ausdruck der Weltvernunft begreifen lernen, um sich mit ihm zu "versöhnen", mag er beschaffen sein wie -auch-immer, - das lehrte Hegel und das impliziert auch die mit einem fashionablen Ismus beklebte moderne Hegelei. Wir dürfen Hegel definieren: Hegel oder die Deutung des Massenmords an Kindern als Ausdruck der Weltvernunft.

Hiller would also criticize this philosophical distancing from political reality (which has a rich history in German literature, stemming most prominently from Goethe's aloof attitude towards the political events of the 1790s) in Thomas Mann. Yet the question is not simply political for Hiller. It is concerned more generally with ethics, and the conservative collusion between philosophy (in the Hegelian tradition) and power.

'Das, was ist, zu begreifen, ist die Aufgabe der Philosophie, denn das, was ist, ist die Vernunft.' Dieser Ausspruch, Damen und Herren, stammt aus keinem Parodien-Atelier; dieser Ausspruch ist von Hegel. Es ist der Schwertstich durch alle Ethik, es ist der konservativste, der schmierigste Satz der Weltlitteratur.

Stuttgart 2 days ago. (Hegel: exactly wrong)

Mann speaks annoyingly and condescendingly of his respect for Hiller before claiming that "Hillers Feindschaft gegen mich ist die der Aufklärung gegen die Romantik," as if Hiller wasn't an Aktivist/socialist and Mann himself didn't stand for the worst bourgeois, un-political non-engagement.

More gems from Hiller can be found here: http://www.hiller-gesellschaft.de/prosa.htm