Sherlock Holmes and Martin Heidegger

Abstract

Let me begin my commentary on Julian Thomas' provocative and stimulating project by invoking, as anthropologists seem to do from time to time, the figure of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes, as we know, classified types of persons, livelihoods, mentalities and criminalities by, among other things, the varieties of dirt on their shoes, the characteristic calluses and grooves on their hands, the imprints they made upon different utensils, the kinds of tobacco, food scraps, and bits of clothing they left behind as traces of their presence. Holmes made a living out of deducing the motivational and moral contours of a human personality from such material indices. He knew the physical components of his environment – the different soils and plants of London, which stores purveyed which implements and goods characteristically utilised by criminals – and he catalogued the sartorial and other visible indices which marked inhabitants of different districts, and socioeconomic and ethnic categories. We also learned that he was not unfamiliar with the Who's Who of London society of his time, not to mention the London constabulary and the organisation of various other professions whose activities related to his interest in crime solving.