Phoenix Out of the Abyss: Lawrence, Heidegger and Responding to Our Nada

Abstract

This paper will proceed from the assumption of Anne Fernihough that there are “very intricate links between Lawrence’s work and Heidegger’s philosophy” and that “some of Lawrence’s ideas” are “developed “in ways which have more in common with Martin Heidegger than with Lawrence’s predecessors.” Peter Fjagsund also notes that a “closer examination” of the German influences on Lawrence’s thought is justified while Michael Black says that the “Beyond” for which Lawrence was forever seeking can be described in terms of Heidegger’s bringing “into presence.” Michael Bell goes so far as to say that “the essential capacity underlying Lawrence’s oeuvre is best elucidated through the approach to Being which constitutes the central philosophical concern of Martin Heidegger” This paper will attempt to provide more evidence for what these scholars have been contending. The case will be made that while working in complete independence of one another the two thinkers came to remarkably similar points of argument and emphasis. Both Heidegger expound a “Death Philosophy” as central to their thought. Heidegger’s case is that the possibility of Death is a living part of human existence or Dasein. For his part Lawrence says that “Corresponding with the desire for absolute life, and immediately consequent to it “is the desire for death.” It is in his inability to admit that “Now I am single in my desire for destructive death” that mankind has gone astray. It is obvious from the above that we can hear in Lawrence echoes of Heidegger and vice versa. It can be readily allowed that Heidegger is an academic thinker who conducts his investigations in a very “technical” manner while Lawrence is a literary artist who writes in an impressionistic style. But for all that the paper will indicate that from the existential point of view these two metaphysicians have much in common. It will attempt to show how the Rector and the Phoenix can mutually illuminate each other's thoughts on the meaning of death, Western logocentrism, and modern man's need to re-discover the importance of a metaphysical approach to life.