Reflective Thinking Makes us Open to What is Happening to Us
Heidegger's "Memorial Address," ¶15–20
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Post Summary
This post explores how Heidegger models reflective thinking in the first bit of the middle part of “Memorial Address.”
Reflection, for Heidegger, goes beyond self-awareness. It prepares us to be open to the world and to what is happening to us now.
Heidegger begins by situating his audience in their immediate context—a memorial in a small German town—then expands outward to their broader cultural heritage.
He raises a culturally conservative assumption: that great works must be rooted in native soil, only to challenge it.
Because of the depth of the technological transformation of the world and the way calculative thinking has displaced reflection, he says that no one is rooted and at home.
Heidegger does not call for a return to tradition but urges us to find new ways of finding connection (via his version of philosophical reflection).
Introduction to the Post
As I explained in my last post, these next few posts will focus especially on how Heidegger thinks.
Up until this point in “Memorial Address,” Heidegger has only offered a brief overview of reflective thinking, and he does not return to a fuller portrayal of it until later in the essay.
The middle part of “Memorial Address” is really a demonstration of his thinking in action, as he adopts a reflective tone.
He does this by situating his immediate audience at the memorial service within the broader patterns of their cultural heritage, particularly in the context of post–World War II Germany.
But as we will see, reflection in Heidegger’s hands does not mean what we usually mean by the term.
In everyday language, we say someone is being self-reflective when they are thoughtful about how their past, background, and ‘journey’ has shaped who they are today. Heideggerian reflection includes this aspect, but it goes deeper: it calls on us to reflect in a way that makes us more open to things, people, and experiences that are still unfolding.
One way we become more reflective and thoughtful is by admitting that we do not yet fully understand how deeply the danger of technology and calculative thinking blocks us from being truly present and thoughtful in the here and now.
In this passage, we see Heidegger challenging his conservative audience at the memorial service to recognize that they have not yet grasped the depth of what is happening to them in the age of technology.
Questioning How the Background of Culture Shapes the Immediate Situation (¶15–20)
Why does Heidegger mention the memorial and German cultural heritage? (¶15)
What does this celebration suggest to us, in case we are ready to meditate?
…
Thinking about it further makes clear at once that Central Germany is likewise such a land, and so are East Prussia, Silesia, and Bohemia.
Heidegger now asks his audience to reflect once again on the situation they find themselves in. They are gathered for a memorial celebration honoring a well-known composer who came from their own town. After drawing their attention to Messkirch, he invites them to step back and consider how other regions of Germany have also recently produced great artists, thinkers, and poets.
This captures the initial movement of Heidegger’s reflective thought: it begins with the immediate situation and then seeks to understand how that situation is shaped by a larger cultural-historical pattern.
He then raises a question that touches on an assumption that many in his audience might hold.
Why does Heidegger ask whether a work requires connection to a native soil to flourish? (¶16–17)
We grow thoughtful and ask: does not the flourishing of any genuine work depend upon its roots in a native soil?
…
Ether here means the free air of the high heavens, the open realm of the spirit.
Before clearing up Heidegger’s rationale for raising this question, there are a couple of interpretive points to clear up about the text itself.
First of all, what does he mean by a work?
By work, Heidegger means any created thing that can serve as the occasion for contemplative thoughtfulness.
This could be an artwork, such as van Gogh’s peasant shoes in his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art.”
It could be a built thing, like a bridge, a hut, or a jug, as discussed in “The Thing” and “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.”
It could be a poem or a piece of literature, as in “…Poetically Man Dwells….”
Or it could be a work of philosophy.
In this text, Heidegger uses the occasion of memorializing Kreutzer’s art to reflect on the creation of great works more broadly.
For Heidegger more generally, both art and philosophy give rise to a kind of reflective thinking that stands at the origin of their creation and appreciation. Philosophical reflection is closer to the thoughtfulness that arises from contemplating art than to the logic of calculative thinking.
So raising the question of the origin of great works brings us into the realm of reflective thinking, which he seeks to guide us into.
Why does Heidegger emphasize the metaphor of the sky as a realm of spirit?
Remember from an earlier post, I mentioned that the English translation, “spirit,” can be misleading.
Heidegger is not promoting a form of meditation or contemplation that depends on spiritual or religious beliefs. The “open realm of spirit” does not refer to a spiritual or religious dimension.
In Heidegger’s later work more broadly, the open region and the sky refer to a dimension of experience in which we are no longer bound by the necessities of means-end, or calculative, thinking.
It is open and free because it is not burdened by the demands of practical life. It offers a space to step back from the flow of daily concerns and reflect on the meaning of being in a deeper and more thoughtful way.
Heideggerian reflection is the practice of stepping back from everyday life in order to encounter things, places, others, and the world apart from practical concerns, within a philosophically contemplative mode of thought.
Why does Heidegger quote Hebel?
After asking his audience to reflect on the situation they are in at the memorial, Heidegger brings in a quote from a writer from the same region of Germany, Johann Peter Hebel (1760–1826).
Heidegger uses the quote to create a reflective moment, raising the question of whether a great work must be rooted in the land—whether the creator needs a deep connection to place, to the rhythms of nature, and to the life and ways of its traditions.
Those familiar with popular caricatures of Heidegger might assume that, in raising this question, he is actually arguing that great works must be rooted in the land. He is often portrayed as a cultural conservative and a romantic of rural life who longs for a return to the pre-industrial traditions of the German countryside.
Heidegger himself often embraced a lifestyle that seemed to reinforce this portrayal.
But in this passage, we will see that he is not actually arguing that true art, poetry, or philosophy must be rooted in tradition in this way. In fact, he suggests that this way of thinking is no longer possible, at least not in the way it once was.
So Heidegger is not saying that we need to live in the countryside to be truly creative and thoughtful?
No, he is not saying this.
Remember that Heidegger’s immediate audience in this address is gathered in a small rural town in a culturally conservative region of Germany. Many families had lived there for generations, and most people in the audience likely had no intention of leaving.
(This is very different from many of those who read him today, and probably from many of you who are reading this post now.)
Then why does he quote Hebel, who does seem to say this?
There are two reasons for this in the text—one more immediate, and the other more distant. (The answer to the second will be explored in a later post.)
The more immediate reason is that he is calling into question his audience’s cultural conservatism. Hebel’s view is likely a view that many in his audience held—even if many of us don’t today. Heidegger mentions it to call it into question and to challenge it.
We see this in the next paragraph (¶18):
We grow more thoughtful and ask: does this claim of Johann Peter Hebel hold today?
…
Is there still a life-giving homeland in whose ground man may stand rooted, that is, be autochthonic?
Note: Autochthonic (or autochthonous) comes from the Greek autochthon, which originally meant “sprung from the earth.” It refers to something indigenous or native. In this context, it suggests being deeply rooted in a homeland.
In this paragraph, Heidegger questions whether Hebel’s claim still holds true today. So when he quotes Hebel, he does so to meet his 1955 small-town German audience where they are, and to invite them to reflect on an assumption many of them would have naturally held.
And, in fact, in the next paragraph, he states that even though his audience still lives in its homeland, they have already lost their connection to it.
Why does Heidegger think that his audience is no longer connected to their homeland (¶19–20)?
Many Germans have lost their homeland…
…
…closer than the conventions and customs of his village, than the tradition of his native world.
Heidegger introduces several social and historical factors that his audience would have recognized. Through these, he explains why he is questioning the rootedness of the German people in general, and of his small-town listeners in particular.
Because of World War II, the redrawing of national borders afterward, and the division of Europe during the Cold War, many Germans were forced off their land and had to relocate.
Even beyond the effects of the war, many Germans followed the larger trend of urbanization and industrialization, leaving their hometowns in search of work and opportunity in the cities.
But even those who have stayed in their hometowns have lost their connection with it, and might even be more disconnected than those in the cities, because:
radio, TV, and illustrated magazines have captured their attention,
and film and cinema have captured their imagination.
And he summarizes his argument in the next paragraph:
We grow more thoughtful and ask: What, is happening here…
…
The loss of autochthony springs from the spirit of the age into which all of us were born.
It is important to recognize that in this paragraph, Heidegger does the opposite of what many popular caricatures suggest he would do.
First, instead of singling out any one group of people—such as city dwellers—Heidegger states that even those who believe they are rooted are not.
Rootlessness is a general condition that we must all come to terms with, even those who still live in their traditional homeland.
No one is rooted. No one is at home today.
Why?
Because through Western culture, calculative thinking has infiltrated every aspect of our lives.
Why does Heidegger thinking calculative thinking disconnects us from things and the world?
He does not explain this in depth here. We will explore why he believes technology and calculative thinking undermine our connection to places, things, and others in a coming post.
For now, we can say that calculative thinking does not connect us to things as they truly are, but only in terms of how they serve an external goal or purpose. In other words, Heidegger believes we no longer find fulfillment in the simple presence of things; instead, we value them only for what they can achieve beyond themselves.
This is, in essence, what Heidegger understands as the nihilism underlying the basic direction of the technological age.
Because of the dominance of this mindset, we have lost touch with our need for philosophical contemplation—an activity that can reconnect us with the richness and depth of things in their own right.
The second way that Heidegger avoids his popular caricature in this passage is that, in response to rootlessness, he does not call for a conservative return to traditional ways of life. Instead, the direction of his thought suggests that such a return is no longer possible.
Something so monumental is happening to us that it prevents a simple restoration of the past.
What is happening?
The age of technology and calculative thinking has overshadowed the need for philosophy and for reflection on the meaning of being.
And so we must find new ways to rediscover our connection to place, to things, and to one another.
This is the promise of reflective thinking.
What has this passage taught us about reflective thinking so far?
Heidegger teaches us several important things about reflective thinking in this passage.
First, he shows that reflection begins with our immediate situation—wherever we happen to find ourselves—and then steps back to consider the broader cultural frameworks that influence and shape our experience.
He did this with his immediate audience by first drawing their attention to the memorial they were attending. From there, he expanded the focus to include the broader German cultural heritage that many of them would have felt proud of. In doing so, he named a culturally conservative assumption that many in the audience may have held by default because of their nationalist commitments.
But then he called into question and challenged the assumption that great works need to grow from a deep connection to the land.
Second, this passage also shows us that Heideggerian reflection is different from what we usually think of as ordinary self-reflection.
We often describe someone as thoughtful when they are aware of where they have been, the experiences they have had, and how these have shaped them. We even recognize thoughtfulness in those who understand how their environment and context have influenced who they are. But Heidegger’s notion of reflection goes deeper.
For Heidegger, reflection is not just about looking inward or backward. It is a way of preparing ourselves to become more open to the world around us and to what is happening to us.
And what he says is happening to his audience—and what we might still say is happening to us—is the unfolding of a technological age in which calculative thinking appears to have displaced the need for philosophical reflection.
Later in the “Memorial Address,” Heidegger explains how reflective thinking can draw us out of the practical and calculative mindset that our culture traps us in.
But before he does this, he asks his audience to think more carefully about the origin and nature of the technological age in which they live.