Heidegger’s language-stretching project parallels modernist literary experiments like Gertrude Stein’s

Evidence

One way of thinking about Heidegger is as a literary innovator, and perhaps even as a kind of modernist novelist. I was well into working on this book when, via Janet Malcolm’s study Two Lives, I came across excerpts from Gertrude Stein’s experimental novel The Making of Americans. Stein sets out as if to relate a standard family saga, but abandons conventional ways of writing in order to say things like this about her characters: … Heidegger would have disliked Stein’s imprecision, but he might have appreciated the sight of a writer stretching language to its utmost to avoid the dulling effect of ordinary perceptions. He might also have recognised that her distinction between characters and the ‘being’ in them foreshadows his own notion of the ontological difference. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 206

Categorization

• XREF: Bridges Continental philosophy and literary modernism; could connect to the reader’s interest in how phenomenology crossed into the arts. — connects to: Stein’s fiction anticipates Heidegger’s ontological difference between beings and Being — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 209; Heidegger saw his linguistic violence as necessary to a philosophical overthrow of metaphysics — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 210; Heidegger’s obscure style reflects an aim to overturn all of metaphysics — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 210 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Stein distinguishing characters from ‘being’ in them foreshadowing the ontological difference is a suggestive but compressed analogy worth unpacking.

Broader Connections

• Stein’s fiction anticipates Heidegger’s ontological difference between beings and Being #expands (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 209
• Heidegger saw his linguistic violence as necessary to a philosophical overthrow of metaphysics #expands (0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 210
• Heidegger’s obscure style reflects an aim to overturn all of metaphysics #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 210
• Heidegger accepted awkward prose as the price of overturning the history of philosophy #expands (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 204