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Eliot Dominic Heath Griffiths A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy, The University of Auckland, 2012 Abstract This thesis explores, thematically and chronologically, the substantial concordance between the work of Martin Heidegger and T.S. Eliot. The introduction traces Eliot’s ideas of the ‘objective correlative’ and ‘situatedness’ to a familiarity with German Idealism. Heidegger shared this familiarity, suggesting a reason for the similarity of their thought. Chapter one explores the ‘authenticity’ developed in Being and Time, as well as associated themes like temporality, the ‘they’ (Das Man), inauthenticity, idle talk and angst, and applies them to interpreting Eliot’s poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Both texts depict a bleak Modernist view of the early twentieth-century Western human condition, characterized as a dispiriting nihilism and homelessness. Chapter two traces the chronological development of Ereignis in Heidegger’s thinking, showing the term’s two discernible but related meanings: first our nature as the ‘site of the open’ where Being can manifest, and second individual ‘Events’ of ‘appropriation and revelation’. The world is always happening as ‘event’, but only through our appropriation by the Ereignis event can we become aware of this. Heidegger finds poetry, the essential example of language as the ‘house of Being’, to be the purest manifestation of Ereignis, taking as his examples Hölderlin and Rilke. A detailed analysis of Eliot’s late work Four Quartets reveals how Ereignis, both as an ineluctable and an epiphanic condition of human existence, is central to his poetry, confirming, in Heidegger’s words, ‘what poets are for in a destitute time’, namely to re-found and restore the wonder of the world and existence itself. This restoration results from what Eliot calls ‘raid[s] on the inarticulate’, the poet’s continual striving to enact that openness to Being through which human language and the human world continually come to be. The final chapter shows how both Eliot and Heidegger value a genuine relationship with place as enabling human flourishing. Both distrust technological materialism, which destroys our sense of the world as dwelling place, and both are essentially committed to a genuinely authentic life, not the angstful authenticity of Being and Time, but a richer belonging which affirms our relationship with the earth, each other and our gods. ii For my father, who taught me to think for the sake of dwelling. And M, for everything. iii Acknowledgements Julian Young, for his supervision, friendship and clarity of thought. Matheson Russell, for his meticulous, supportive co-supervision and friendship. To my wife Maria, who makes everything possible, whose constant companionship, love and masterful editing enabled the writing and completion of this thesis. Jordan Collins, John Bishop, Glen Pettigrove, Bob Wicks, Indrek Männiste, Tim Dare and the Department of Philosophy for its support and funding. The University of Auckland for its fantastic library and excellent graduate support. The New Zealand International Doctoral Research Scholarship (NZIDRS) and the New Zealand government for providing the opportunity and funding to complete Doctoral studies in New Zealand. The Faculty of Art Doctoral retreats which provided excellent opportunities for thinking and writing. The Auckland suburb of Grafton and the People’s Republic of Park Road where I spent four happy years. My family in the Hawkes Bay and South Africa. Fr. Brian and the monks of Southern Star Abbey, Kopua. iv Table of Contents Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................................... vii Works by Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) ............................................ vii Works by Martin Heidegger (26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) ...................................................... vii Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 1 Eliot’s ‘objective correlative’ ................................................................................................................. 7 German Idealism and F. H. Bradley .................................................................................................... 10 F.H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies .............................................................................................................. 12 F.H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality ............................................................................................... 13 T.S. Eliot’s ‘situatedness’ ...................................................................................................................... 15 From context to comparison ............................................................................................................... 17 Chapter One: Authenticity ......................................................................................................................... 20 Section I: Dasein and the ‘they’ (Das Man) .......................................................................................... 22 Reckoning with time ........................................................................................................................... 24 Rejecting the self ................................................................................................................................. 26 Finding the others ............................................................................................................................... 28 Losing the others ................................................................................................................................. 29 Finding yourself ................................................................................................................................... 35 Section II: Prufrock and Other Observations ........................................................................................ 38 Idle talk (Gerede) ................................................................................................................................. 48 Angst ..................................................................................................................................................... 52 Chapter Two: Ereignis ................................................................................................................................. 57 Section I: The early ‘early’ Heidegger ..................................................................................................... 61 On the way to Ereignis ......................................................................................................................... 61 The first encounter with Ereignis ...................................................................................................... 65 War Emergency Lectures (1919) ......................................................................................................... 67 The next step on the way: Ereignis unfolds ...................................................................................... 73 Heidegger’s critique of and debt to Jaspers’s ‘limit-situation’ ........................................................ 75 The ‘early’ Heidegger................................................................................................................................ 81 Being and Time ...................................................................................................................................... 81 Augenblick ............................................................................................................................................. 81 The ‘middle’ Heidegger ..........................................................................................................................