Heidegger avoided visiting Greece for fear reality would shatter his vision of it.

Evidence

But that was why he was nervous: too much was at stake. In 1955, he arranged to go with his friend Erhard Kästner. Train and boat tickets were booked, but at the last minute Heidegger cancelled. Five years later the two men planned another trip, and again Heidegger pulled out. He wrote to warn Kästner that this was probably how things would go on. ‘I will be allowed to think certain things about Greece without seeing the country … The necessary concentration is best found at home.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 955

Categorization

• XREF: A thinker who feared the lived reality he romanticized — parallels the existentialist tension between lived experience and intellectual construction. — connects to: Heidegger’s philosophy could accommodate reality only when it matched his preconceptions. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 959
• SEED: Essay angle: the fear of seeing the place that shaped your inner world — the risk of disappointing oneself with the real.

Broader Connections

• Heidegger’s philosophy could accommodate reality only when it matched his preconceptions. #expands (0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 959