Measure for Immeasure

In the Spring of 1942, Martin Heidegger held the last of a series of lectures on the poetry of Hölderlin, in which he returns to the motif of the “Uncanny” that he had discussed some years earlier. At a critical juncture in the war, Heidegger reflects on the relation of the “home” to the “foreign,” and on the ways in which poetry — and specifically that of Hölderlin — can contribute to history and historical understanding. This talk seeked to retrace and untangle some of the strands compose the complex intertwining of poetry and politics, language and violence.

Samuel Weber teaches German and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University, where he holds a chair in Humanities. He also directs the Northwestern Paris Program in Critical Theory, now in its 24th year. His current research attempts to rethink the relation of singularity to generality with respect to politics, poetry and literary studies.