Reciting a Rosary Before Heidegger’s Hut – 2

If Heidegger had taken one more of his rare trips, and let’s say he had gone to Egypt, what would he have seen, and what would have changed in his conceptions of Being? We know that in 1935 Heidegger paid a ten-day visit to Rome, during which he gave his first lecture on Hölderlin, titled “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry.” Likewise, the Van Gogh paintings he analyzes in his work The Origin of the Work of Art were seen by him during a visit to Amsterdam. Heidegger did not travel much. Perhaps, in terms of travel (but only in terms of travel), he can be likened somewhat to Gustav von Aschenbach, the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Aschenbach wants to go far, very far, but the journey he undertakes for this purpose cannot take him beyond Venice. Heidegger, who ranks Venice second in history after the ancient Greeks, yet considers it a subject not of history but of historiography (because “history precedes historiography. In history, what reigns is fate [Geschick]”), and perhaps alluding to Mann, laments that it is “an attractive scene for confused novelists.” When it comes to travel, Heidegger can hardly get past the western shores of the Mediterranean; excluding Amsterdam, apart from his trips to Rome and Provence, one of his longest journeys is to Greece. Moreover, he even encourages Hans-Georg Gadamer—known as a chronic traveler—to stay put and write his book on Plato instead of going to America as a professor. Therefore, when it comes to travel—and indeed when it comes to Being—Heidegger does not even entertain the idea of Egypt or any other non-European place. Still, this does not mean that Egypt or other non-European lands had no place in his thought or his journeys.

Heidegger’s notes regarding his visit to Greece are available to us today. They were first published in German in 1989 under the title Aufenthalte, and in English in 2005, translated by J. P. Manoussakis and published by SUNY Press, as Sojourns: The Journey to Greece. Translating both the German word and the English word sojourn, which includes the subtitle “Journey to Greece,” into Turkish is somewhat difficult. In both words, there is an implication of a “stay” at the place visited, but as the English word emphasizes more clearly, this “residence” is not permanent—it is temporary; more like stopping briefly, as in a pause. Nevertheless, as we will see below, it is possible to say that this naming carries a special connotation for Heidegger.

Heidegger embarks on the trip to Greece—a “gift” from his wife Elfride—reluctantly: in his mind is the “place” mentioned in Hölderlin’s verses about the Greeks and their lands, where the return of the departing gods is awaited, and he wonders, “Will we be able to find the region we are looking for?” However, as the idea of traveling to Greece begins to materialize, yet another “prolonged reservation” arises within him—a “reservation” caused by the “fear of disappointment”: the concern that “today’s Greece might hinder the Greece of antiquity and what is unique to it from coming to light.” In fact, this reservation expresses, in Heidegger’s own terminology, a point that many Western scholars writing on the ancient Greeks have long emphasized. Classicists (such as E. R. Dodds, for example) have always lamented that instead of Greeks who are as clear as the blue waters of the Mediterranean, as radiant as marble statues, and as open-minded and far-sighted as to pose the most essential questions about existence, they find in today’s Greece bigoted, rural, superstitious, and provincial Greeks. Yet, there is also a dimension of “doubt” in Heidegger’s reservation: Could it be that “the thought devoted to the land filled with gods is nothing more than a mere invention,” and “therefore the path of thinking [Denkweg] may turn out to be a mistaken path [Irrweg]”? (pp. 4–5)

His doubts intensify as he approaches Corfu from Venice—Corfu being described in Book VI of the Odyssey—and he laments not being able to see “what he had felt and hoped for.” The island of Ithaca evokes the same feeling, and his doubt begins to focus on whether “that which is authentically Greek” can ever truly be experienced. Moreover, when they disembark at the port of Ithaca, he laments “the absence of the Greek element,” encountering instead “something Eastern, Byzantine” (p. 11). The “Greek element” remains like an “expectation,” something Hölderlin once felt in his poetry (p. 19).

The real “painful conflict” begins as they cross the Gulf of Corinth and prepare to visit Mycenae, near Corinth: “Although the first thing that helped the Greeks grasp the element appropriate to them was a critical exchange with it, I felt a resistance to a pre-Hellenic world” (p. 19). For this reason, he does not utter a single word about Mycenae. Instead, he turns to a narration that describes the region as “a single stadium inviting festive games.” Yet, as the journey continues, the question “Where should we look for the Greek element?” constantly lingers in his mind, and it remains so as they approach Crete. However, he describes Crete as a “strange, pre-Greek world.” More interesting are his remarks regarding his visit to Minoan sites. He does not visit every site associated with this civilization, but in the ones he does, he notes having witnessed a “non-warrior, rural, and commercial Dasein.” Here, there is a “feminine divinity,” and her highly stylized and refined way of life is accompanied by labyrinthine features. Ultimately, “what appears in the landscape belongs to the Egyptian-Eastern essence” (p. 23).

He describes his journey from Crete to Rhodes as “approaching the shores of Asia Minor.” He asks, “Are we very far from Greece? Or are we already within the domain of its destiny—structured through its ‘confrontation’ [Auseinandersetzung] with ‘Asia’—which transforms wild and conciliatory passion into something ‘greater,’ something that remains great for mortals and thereby ensures their reverent awe?” The answer is clear: “Conflict with the Asian element was a beneficial necessity for Greek Dasein.” For this “conflict is, for us today—in a completely different way and to a greater degree—a decision about the fate of Europe and what is called the Western world” (p. 25). Yet, as they depart from Rhodes, a thought arises in him: “As the blue of the sky and the sea changed moment by moment, could the East be another dawn of light and clarity for us, or were these deceptive lights—like a revelation coming from there—and thus nothing more than an artificially provided historical fabrication?” He then adds: “The Asian element once brought the Greeks a dark fire, a flame by which they rearranged their poetry and thinking with light and measure.” In this way, “Heraclitus called all existing things [Anwessenden] kosmos [κόσμος] and understood it as ton auton apanton [τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων], ‘the same adornment everywhere,’ an adornment created ‘neither by one of the gods nor by one of the humans’” (p. 27). It is this kosmos that distinguishes the Greek element from the labyrinthine ornamentation belonging to the “Egyptian-Oriental essence” of Minoan culture and describes it “not as an additional adornment, but as lightning, as something that brings something into the light, as something that enables what exists to exist in the light, as an ornament that I must understand as possessing its own moment, as a gathering that is different—and therefore unique—within its own limits at every moment” (p. 27).

Thus, in Heidegger’s journey to Greece—one that begins with doubts and reservations before departure and continues with constant questioning upon arrival—the “Greek element” he had always been seeking only emerges after continual confrontations and tensions with what he identifies first as the “Eastern-Byzantine,” then the “Pre-Hellenic,” later the “Egyptian-Eastern,” and finally the “Asian element.” In other words, Heidegger does not find the “Greek element” on its own, in full clarity and self-revelation; rather, he discovers it by constantly juxtaposing it with the “Eastern-Byzantine,” the “pre-Hellenic,” the “Egyptian-Eastern,” and once again the Eastern “Asian.” In the remainder of his journey, he recounts how he became preoccupied with discovering alētheia—commonly translated as “truth,” though literally meaning the disclosure or unveiling of what is hidden—especially in the sanctity of the island of Dalmos, which he describes, without giving its etymology, as “visible, apparent, gathering everything in its clarity, protected by the emergence that gathers everything it offers in one presence” (p. 30). He then goes on to narrate how he visited Athens and other places. Moreover, whatever happened in Dalmos, his doubtful journey now takes the form of Aufenthalte (sojourn)—that is, a temporary dwelling. Heidegger finds his temporary place of dwelling in his journey precisely after discovering the difference between the Greek and the non-Greek through the non-Greek, and after capturing the Greek element.

The subsequent parts of his journey are of no concern to us—at least for now (in fact, the opening section of a project I’ve long had in mind but have yet to undertake—titled Training One’s Hand to Be Timid Against Europe, which aims to question why the critique of “Eurocentrism” in Turkey is so weak—would consist of precisely these parts of Heidegger’s journey to Greece that are currently of no relevance to us). The reason I have recounted a portion of Heidegger’s visit to Greece here is to accompany him on certain issues that İbrahim Kalın addresses in his book Journey to Heidegger’s Hut.

Of course, it should be noted—without forgetting that Kalın approaches Heidegger’s hut with a conception of Being that transcends Heidegger’s own, and perhaps precisely for this reason, projects Heidegger into a “boundless ocean”—that Kalın harbors certain reservations about Heidegger’s conception of Being. He expresses this with the sentence: “I value the journey we embarked on with Heidegger, but I have doubts about where he wants to take us.” While this may sound like a philosophical objection, he further explains: “Philosophically, he leaves us somewhere between Being and beyond-being, but it is impossible to say clearly what that place is.” Moreover, not only in this regard but also on a number of other points, he questions Heidegger—at least to some extent—and, in fact, the rosary he holds in the photograph taken in front of Heidegger’s hut opens up an entirely different window for us.

There is no need to remind the reader that Kalın’s Journey to Heidegger’s Hut is not a book about Heidegger. Kalın himself makes it sufficiently clear throughout the course of his journey that he is not writing an “introduction to Heidegger.” Moreover, on two particular points—one concerning Heidegger’s conception of Being and the other regarding the general direction of his thought—he explicitly cautions his readers. He questions how far Dasein, the concept Heidegger employs to interrogate the meaning of Being and thereby to overcome every conception of subjectivity that sees itself as dominant, possessive, or sovereign, really distances us from the very “subject-centered” conceptions it promises to save us from: “Could it be that Dasein, which arrives in the midst of things, is ‘being-in-the-world’ with other beings, and gives voice to Being by thinking its meaning, is at times surpassing Being itself? Does placing such emphasis on Dasein lead Heidegger, in his attempt to escape the Cartesian subject, toward a new Dasein-centered subjectivism? Could what Heidegger describes as the language of Being in fact be the words of his own Dasein?” (pp. 78–79). In truth, this is a question that, even among those who fiercely criticize Heidegger in the literature, has rarely been raised—though it is a matter that truly deserves deeper elaboration. Is Dasein, as “being-there” or “being-in-the-midst,” a product of a categorical construction much like the category of subject? In my view, it is—but this issue would require an analysis of Dasein so detailed and interwoven with philosophical terminology that it cannot be addressed here. Therefore, as Kalın reminds us, it suffices to recall the issue in the following way for our purposes: Heidegger’s Dasein is categorical to such a degree that it entails the danger of a “Dasein-centrism”; moreover—and this should be added in addition to Kalın’s observation—Dasein is not psukhē (or, if you will, nafs), either.

Kalın’s second warning, which requires somewhat more extensive treatment than the first, concerns the accusations of Nazism directed at Heidegger. By recalling these accusations, Kalın issues a number of cautions. This is the issue that, under the name of the “Heidegger question,” has been repeatedly brought to the agenda after Nazi Germany on various occasions, constantly debated, and has produced a substantial body of literature. Heidegger, for his part, has largely responded with silence—aside from stating that he initially regarded Hitler’s rise to power, however briefly, as an opportunity to transform German existence, but distanced himself once he realized that this regime defined Germanness in terms that veered toward biologism. Kalın first contextualizes these accusations by briefly summarizing the debate. There are two sides in the discussion. One side maintains that Heidegger’s connection—however tenuous—with the Nazi regime is also linked to his thoughts on Being; in other words, that his philosophy of Being itself is a political manifestation of Nazism. The other side contends that if there is any Nazism in Heidegger, it was a personal lapse, a short-term error, and that his thoughts on Being should be evaluated independently of this personal failure. Kalın’s stance on the debate over Heidegger’s Nazism is, in fact, one that seeks to reconcile both sides—a middle-ground approach. This approach consists of acknowledging the “dark sides” of Heidegger’s thought while still continuing to read him with seriousness.

In doing so, he draws attention to two elements. The first of these highlights “Heidegger’s philosophical nationalism and Eurocentrism” (p. 105). This is one of the themes that Derrida, himself a Jew, continually circles around while reading Heidegger with seriousness; and he does not content himself with evaluating the issue merely as a matter of Nazism. While he sees Nazism as the most painful and genocidal manifestation of the European problem and responsibility, he is also curious about what else philosophy might be entangled with. In this sense, the core issue Kalın emphasizes is that Heidegger’s thought of Being ultimately anchors itself in an ethnocentric position. While Heidegger claims that the entire history of philosophy since Plato has forgotten Being—preferring instead to think about beings, the manifestations of Being—he also assigns Germanness a mission with respect to Being: if there is to be a return from the forgetting of Being and from its withdrawal, experienced only through its manifestations, “there is but one nation capable of bringing about this return, and that is the Germans.” Thus, Heidegger designates the Germans as the “ontological nation” (p. 106).

Still, Kalın argues that such a “chosen nation syndrome” can be found in other nations as well, but that the real issue in Heidegger’s case is the “Jewish question.” According to him, even if there were no other evidence presented on the matter, the Black Notebooks—composed of Heidegger’s personal notes and only published within the last fifteen to twenty years—demonstrate “bluntly and sharply” that Heidegger indeed had a “Jewish problem.” The Black Notebooks present a “dark and disturbing picture” and contain “a number of troubling associations” (pp. 104–106). It does not seem possible to rescue the philosopher unscathed from this. Moreover, the problem could easily “spread” into other domains, substituting “another community for the Jews… Africans, Chinese, Muslims.” This, in turn, ultimately necessitates a return to the issues of “philosophical nationalisms and Eurocentrism.” Kalın underscores this point repeatedly: “Heidegger’s German nationalism is not only ethnic-based and geographical, but also intellectual and ontological. That is, it concerns the place he assigns to it in the history of Being.” (For further detail on this issue, see the section titled “Egocentrism or the Tragedy of Humanism” on pp. 223–241.)

Nevertheless, it is also necessary to read Heidegger with seriousness. In fact, one must continue to read Heidegger even in spite of Heidegger, and strive to “surpass him by means of himself.” For “Wisdom is the lost property of all of us, and we take it wherever we find it. We cleanse it of the soot and rust it may have accumulated and continue our search in pursuit of the true and the beautiful. In the final analysis, Heidegger, too, is one of the mortals we encounter on this journey—one with whom we walk for a while, before continuing on our own path” (p. 109). Thus, Kalın’s second caution consists in emphasizing the need to avoid attributing to Being the faults and flaws that may, as a mortal, rightfully belong to Heidegger; to do so requires care, attention, and diligence—that is, Sorge, as Heidegger himself might say. Heidegger may not be innocent, but for the sake of “wisdom,” it is a wiser path not to impute this to Being or to the thought of Being.

At this point, it becomes clear why Journey to Heidegger’s Hut by Kalın is not a book about Heidegger, and why it should not be regarded as an “introduction” to the philosopher’s thought. Even a cursory reading of the book makes immediately apparent that, rather than directly confronting Heidegger’s two serious faults, Kalın addresses issues that could have warranted confrontation by engaging them in alternative ways. In other words, beyond his warning about the potential problems of “Dasein-centrism,” Kalın does not undertake extensive analyses, nor does he direct any significant criticisms at Heidegger’s reflections on Being, aside from offering a few interpretive openings. Instead, he overcomes Heidegger’s first major issue—“Dasein-centrism”—by developing a narrative that does not center Dasein, even when he discusses it. The second issue—“philosophical nationalisms and Eurocentrism”—he overcomes by presenting nearly all of his key concepts concerning Being through the lens of the Turkish language (with only a few exceptions, such as highlighting the semantic proximity between vecd and ecstasy). In other words, interrelated concepts such as konma-konuşma-komşuluk (to settle–to speak–neighborliness), vücud-mevcudat-vecd (being–existents–ecstasy), zahir-zevahir-tezahür (manifest–appearance–manifestation), öz-özgür-özügür (essence–free–self-free), and singular terms such as murakabe (vigilant contemplation) and musahhar (subjugated) become decisive for understanding Being.

Of course, this does not mean that Kalın avoids using certain technical terms of Heidegger’s, such as Dasein; however, even these are drawn toward Turkish conceptualizations of Being. Here, Turkish is not employed to assert a sense of “Turkishness” or a Turkish spirit in opposition to Heidegger’s Germanness or the German spirit that bears the weight of Being. In this sense, and to recall Kalın’s own words, he “does not attempt to make Heidegger into a Turk, a Muslim, an Easterner, one of us, etc.” On the contrary, he makes Heidegger’s hut a pretext—an occasion—for the call to “begin building our own hut” (pp. 254–259). For this reason, Kalın’s book goes beyond the framework of, for example, Heidegger in the Islamicate World—a volume edited by Kata Moser, Urs Gösken, and Josh Hayes, which has been translated into Turkish and focuses on how Heidegger’s thought has been received in intellectual circles in Turkey, Iran, the Arab world, and South Asia.

Moreover, he makes it clear that the call to “begin building our own hut” should not be tied solely to a visit to Heidegger’s hut; he illustrates this by recalling Mulla Sadra’s visit to the Khan Madrasa in Shiraz, in a manner reminiscent of Heidegger’s journey to his own hut. In fact, time permitting (and he expresses hope that it will), he announces to his readers his intention not to translate into Turkish the doctoral work on Mulla Sadra that he originally prepared and published in English, but instead to “rewrite his journey with Sadra” in a narrative form similar to his account of the journey to Heidegger’s hut—this time within “the garden of the Turkish language.” If the journey to Mulla Sadra can be completed, he believes that “a journey to Heidegger’s hut and a voyage into Mulla Sadra’s domain of Being would make for a fine pairing” (p. 248).

However, this does not mean that his aim is “to explain Heidegger’s concept of Being through Ibn Sina’s, Ibn Arabi’s, or Sadra’s concept of wujūd, or to attempt to substitute one for the other”; such an approach, he argues, would amount to “not understanding the issue from the outset.” For this reason, he neither “entered Heidegger’s hut in search of the secrets hidden behind Mount Qaf, Plato’s Atlantis, the mirrored chamber of the Simurgh, or the axis mundi,” nor did he overlook the fact that “Sadra’s language of al-wujūd and conceptual framework differ from Heidegger’s Dasein terminology”: “I had to remain resistant and vigilant against superficial comparisons and baseless identifications prompted by the similarity of terms” (p. 243).

In this context, we may understand his claim that he went to Heidegger’s hut “as himself.” He approached the visit with his own intellectual inheritance, and although he brought along “al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra, and many other Eastern—and [for example, Meister Eckhart and Rilke] Western—scholars, sages, mystics, writers, poets, and artists,” he ultimately recounted his journey as a mortal who “reads them and seeks to draw inspiration from them”; he wrote as things came to his “mind” and “heart” (p. 244).

Thus, Kalın situates Heidegger within a framework that regards him as someone who, in fact, remains confined within the “journey” envisioned by his own “tradition” (or his hut on a mountain in the Black Forest), unable to cross the “river”—and in this context, projects him into a “shoreless ocean.” Yet in doing so, he takes ḥikmah (wisdom) into account, and this serves a purpose: to seek an answer to the question, “Could Heidegger’s effort to save European civilization through ancient Greece rest on an optimistic but mistaken presupposition?” Although he states that he will leave it at simply posing the question, he cannot refrain from briefly venturing into the “archaeology of Being”: Were the ancient Greeks made “Greek” by their own originality—as Heidegger claimed, in terms of both their status as a beginning and their thinking of Being as Being—or was it their “contact with the broader Mediterranean basin, the Anatolian landscape, ancient Egypt, and Africa”? Were not most of the “pre-Socratic Greek thinkers” whom Heidegger himself valued (prior to what he saw as the forgetting of Being initiated by Plato), such as “Parmenides and Pythagoras,” in contact with Anatolia and Egypt? “Archimedes was from Samsun. Plato believed that true knowledge and wisdom came from Egypt. Aristotle conducted his comprehensive work on botany and taxonomy in Egypt… Even recalling these few facts—forgotten under the heavy burden of Eurocentric conceptions of history—may provide us with a more authentic perspective on the roots of Western civilization” (pp. 238–239; emphasis in original on the word “contact”).

Moreover, Kalın continues to develop this perspective by sending Heidegger on an imaginary journey: “Had Heidegger, in seeking to remedy the intellectual ills of European civilization by returning to its beginnings, gone back a bit further, perhaps he would have reached lands and ancient civilizations beyond ancient Greece. But he did not… What if he had? What kind of ‘history of Being’ would have emerged? Where would the archaeology of Being have taken us, beyond Anatolia, ancient Egypt, and Africa?” (p. 239). Yet as we have seen, in fact, during his journey to Greece, Heidegger’s doubts and reservations about Greek thought are resolved precisely through a sense of resistance toward other geographies and civilizations of the Mediterranean—through a “resistance to a pre-Hellenic world”—and it is in this way that he begins to contemplate the “Greek element.”

Kalın, however, speaks of another possibility for seyrān (contemplative wandering) through the tesbih (prayer beads) he carried in his pocket during his visit to Heidegger’s hut. Here, the tesbih serves as a reminder of the guiding motif that accompanies both his visit to the hut and the book recounting that visit. The tesbih is not merely a string of beads. It represents the “mental, spiritual, and physical state” one must assume while using it; it is the “utterance” that is “intoned with each bead.” If we were to remove the tesbih that Kalın took from his pocket and began to recite in front of Heidegger’s hut, we would also be eliminating all the “states of being” and “moments of meaning” that arose in that instant. In other words, Ibrahim Kalın, who draws his tesbih in front of Heidegger’s hut, is in need of that tesbih and of the space of being it opens up for him.

Moreover, the tesbih itself embodies a mode of coming into being that reaches beyond the ancient Greeks and extends into Africa—an “archaeology of Being,” so to speak: the raw material of the tesbih came from Tanzania, and it was crafted in Istanbul. And now, it rests in the village of Todtnauberg. Thus, he describes that moment in front of Heidegger’s hut as one in which “the realm of his own being and the realm of the tesbih’s being” come together. He calls this “beings inviting one another into being” (p. 19). It is with such a gaze—such a perspective on Being—that he makes his call to “begin building our own hut.”

Here, if we were to replace the tesbih with “anything”—material, physical, spiritual, conceptual, mathematical, aesthetic, etc.—that Being, as envisioned during Heidegger’s hut-bound journey, could potentially converge with, and which gives rise to “endless manifestations, unveilings, forms, and states,” we would be approaching the domain that Kalın intends to designate by Being. We might even add to these “other forms of manifestation” of Being such things as “number,” “category,” “place,” and “sky”—provided, of course, that we do not disregard Dasein, which Kalın rightly approaches with caution and considers in need of interrogation (pp. 42–43 and 59).

Still, one question remains: What was lacking in Heidegger that led him to regard the ancient Greeks as an original people and the Germans as the people historically capable of fulfilling that originality—not by imitation, but in their own right? Why did he expect that Dasein, which is supposed to hearken to the call of Being and come into meaning by questioning it, would manifest—through one of its categorical existential states—as Mitsein (being-with), that is, as a community, society, or people, specifically in the form of Germanness? Why did he expect Germanness, as a collective identity, to assume the burden and responsibility of Being? Within this framework, alongside Heidegger’s frequently posed questions—“What is Being?”, “What is truth?”, “What is thinking?”—was it not worth asking, “What is spirit?” (Is it really Geist?), or even “What is psukhē?”—especially considering Plato’s cave allegory, in which psukhē is opposed to the intellect, thus implying not a mental transformation or opening, but an altogether different kind of transformation?

There are nearly a dozen photographs that depict Heidegger alongside his hut. Most of them were taken by Digne Meller-Marcovicz during the interview Heidegger gave to Der Spiegel in 1966—with the stipulation that it be published only after his death—and likely as a result of the acquaintance that emerged during this occasion, during a later visit to Heidegger in 1968. Because these images are copyrighted, most can only be seen in sources that have obtained the rights (aside from a few pirated copies). One of these photographs, included in Adam Sharr’s Heidegger’s Hut, shows Heidegger standing in front of his hut with its door wide open. In the photo, Heidegger is positioned directly in line with the open wooden door, wearing a white shirt, a tie, a buttoned-up jacket, wide trousers—whether ironed or not is unclear—and a fedora on his head. His right hand is slightly lifted away from his body, and in his left hand, he holds a rake. As far as the photo reveals, the area in front of the hut is covered in grass and appears spotless. With his urban attire and the rake in hand, it is as if Heidegger has just finished tidying up the front of his home moments before the photograph was taken. According to Sharr, this photo of Heidegger holding a rake in front of his hut—like several others that depict him together with the hut, “seemingly lost in deep thought”—was most likely staged, possibly at Meller-Marcovicz’s suggestion.

Ibrahim Kalin, too, shares a few photographs from his visit to Heidegger’s hut—a visit that inspired his book Journey to Heidegger’s Hut. One of these photographs serves as a playful homage to the well-known image of “Heidegger with a rake.” In Kalin’s version, the hut’s door is also open. However, Kalin appears bareheaded, wearing a light-colored shirt visible beneath a V-neck cardigan, topped with a comfortable jacket, and casual trousers. Though not standing in the exact spot where Heidegger held his rake, he is positioned slightly to the left, centering himself between the open door and the doorway, holding with both hands a tesbih—a prayer bead—which he describes as having a “realm of being” that meets his own. Like every photograph, this one is also somewhat staged. Kalin openly acknowledges that he “posed” for the photo and clarifies his intent behind it: “For those who perceive their meaning, both a rake and a tesbih can become means of dhikr, remembrance, contemplation, reflection, recollection, and invocation.” He adds, “So long as one knows how to relate to the ‘things’ around them—tools, utensils, and the various modes of Being’s manifestation.” Still, there is a notable difference between the photo of Kalin holding a tesbih in contemplation and the one of Heidegger with his rake, to which Kalin makes a homage. When Kalin visited, the grassy area in front of the hut was speckled with fallen leaves—presumably due to the season. Unlike the carefully raked and pristine lawn seen in Heidegger’s photo, the front of the hut during Kalin’s visit appeared unkempt, likely because Heidegger’s heirs no longer frequented it.

Then let us return to the beginning: Is it not possible that, in Heidegger’s own thinking on Being—where the “river,” even if not the sea of Being itself, is said to be synonymous with the journey—what he pulled out with his fishing line was not a fish, but rather an old boot or (why not?) a sandal from ancient Greece, the kind that might have been worn by Socrates himself, the very figure who, in the Western tradition, is said to have initiated metaphysics?

Section 1: https://kritikbakis.com/heideggerin-kulubesinin-onunde-varligi-dusunmek/