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  Heidegger’s ‘Heritage’: Philosophy, Anti-Modernism and Cultural Pessimism 47

critical o what they see as an excessively romantic tendency in Heidegger’s ‘critique’ o

the modern technological world. For Steiner, Heidegger is a thoroughgoing agrarian

and his views are excessively coloured by his obsession with the virtues o a peasant’s

lie in the yawning shadows o orests and mountains. And, o course, when one reads

Heidegger’s account o his decision not to take the chair o philosophy in Berlin and

the peasant’s steadying embrace and a solemn stare that silently conveyed to him what

the ‘authentic’ path was, one can o course see where Adorno and Steiner were coming

rom.8 Notwithstanding, Heidegger’s seminal meditation on the essence o technology

is not somehow rendered ridiculous by such pretentious flourishes and gestures which

Adorno dismisses as a kind o peasant kitsch.

In Adorno we find a sureit o examples o shameless bandwagoning as he gleeully

upbraids Heidegger’s posturing. ake, or example, his quick aside upon quoting

Heidegger himsel in this context:

‘And philosophical work does not take place as the spare-time activity o a crank.

It belongs in the midst o the labor o armers.’ One would like at least to know the

armers’ opinion about that.9

Te problem with this kind o jibe, clever though it may be, is that it is nothing more

than intellectual rivolity. Tese incessant attempts to win the imagined gallery have,

in the end, nothing to recommend them in terms o philosophical merit. Tey are sel-

indulgent and irresponsible. Indeed Adorno’s whole account o Heidegger’s decision

not to accept a chair o philosophy in Berlin, which admittedly provided the occasion

or some rather arcical posturing on Heidegger’s part, is recapitulated with all theunflinching acerbity o a comic but then lef to stand as though it were representative

o the deepest essence o Heidegger’s conrontation with technology:

His reflected unreflectiveness degenerates into chummy chit-chat, or the sake

o the rural setting with which he wants to stand on a confidential ooting. Te

description o the old armer reminds us o the most washed-out clichés in

plough-and-urrow novels, rom the region o a Fressen; and it reminds us equally

o the praise o being silent, which the philosopher authorizes not only or his

armers but also or himsel.10

Te problem in all o these cases, and even to a lesser degree in the more sober efforts

o someone like Zimmerman, is clear enough; in identiying certain resonances

between Heidegger’s bucolic proclivities and the anti-modern cultural pessimism

endemic to his German contemporaries, these critics take the urther step o

supposing that Heidegger’s philosophy is nothing more than the reproduction o those

same resonances, themes and ideas.

Neither is Adorno above the ad hominem  attack. Indeed, he routinely cites

Heidegger’s provinciality and associated cultural attitudes and prejudices as being the

ultimate catalysts or his philosophical positions:Whoever is orced by the nature o his work to stay in one place, gladly makes a

 virtue out o necessity. He tries to convince himsel and others that his bound-

ness is o a higher order. Te financially threatened armer’s bad experiences