Though the pair return continually to the joke of their respective intellectual blind spots, they also find themselves returning again and again to science. Heidegger vehemently maintains that philosophy is a science, and Schöner remains skeptical. Further, Heidegger says, science has become too fragmented — he rattles off the various divisions and disciplines in the university as if he is a judge pronouncing a lengthy sentence. “But,” he says, “it is not too late. All science needs to do, really, is to recover its essence.” He praises the Greeks, how in the true spirit of discovery they had no separate designations for chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, physics, and so were better able to apprehend nature as a whole. At first, Schöner is thrilled to learn of Heidegger’s enthusiasm for such work, for he has secretly lamented such divisions, the petty snobberies and snubbings that they invite. The mathematicians look down on the physicists, who can’t quite do the pure math. In turn, the chemists couldn’t cut it in physics, and the biologists, like himself, are at the bottom of the pecking order, dealing with spotted haunches and big leafy greens, even while the physicists are plying away at the atomic limit of matter. Schöner feels that he is viewed by many, in spite of Freiburg’s prestige, as a taxonomist, or, worse, a glorified gardener.
He is also delighted by Heidegger’s reverence for classical civilizations. At last he’s found an ally who will sympathize with his own insistence on instilling Latin terms in his students’ minds. Heidegger, though, never simply agrees or disagrees, and in this case he frowns.
“The Romans translated everything, but the essences were destroyed in the act. Unlike the Greeks, remember, the Romans were a brutal, materialistic people right down to the morpheme.”
Schöner is no match for him as a philologist, so he tries to swing the conversation back to the need for interdisciplinarity, where they will surely agree. “Anything else is sheer stupidity,” says Schöner. The trees grow in the soil. For that, we need to understand nitrogen compounds. To understand these, we must understand nitrogen atoms, right down to physics. Labels impede scientific work. Worse, they impede progress.” He practically sings the last word.
Heidegger seems more amenable as he speaks, but in the end he continues to hem and haw. “Progress. A word to be infinitely suspicious of,” he says. “Science needs to get back to its roots, its origins. In its essence, science has no divisions. But the essence of science has little to do with its practical forms.”
“I’m afraid,” admits Schöner, “that maybe I don’t understand what you mean by the ‘essence.’”
“You’re not alone, then,” says Heidegger.
On many occasions, they loop around to a spot they’ve been that morning, and Heidegger will ask, “Were we here earlier?”
“We were.”
In these cases, Schöner is so sure that the other is thinking, “As with our conversations,” he doesn’t bother remarking it himself.
In late November, crunching through fresh-fallen snow, they come upon a veritable army of towering pines. Heidegger asks, “How old are these?”
Schöner looks over them, tightly bound with crisscrossing bands of branches at chest height and upward, a stand of the type that gives the Black Forest its name. “Probably a couple of hundred years.” Together, they search for a downed tree that will reveal its rings.
After they confirm that the trees are at least 250 years old, Heidegger gazes up, marveling at their lattice formation. “They live so much longer than us. For that, and lacking consciousness of their mortality, they call our attention to our own.”
As winter comes through, they ski, and Heidegger is a daredevil, even though he claims he did not start skiing until he was an adult. The philosopher teases him for taking turns too wide, especially on precipitous slopes, and Schöner wonders if this is how his students feel when he antagonizes them for being reluctant to climb. At some point, several minutes behind, he hears Heidegger’s scalding laughter from below, echoing off the walls of a canyon. As he skis downhill toward the sound, for a moment he feels a sudden urge to run Heidegger down. Instead, as he pulls into a stop, he tears off his skis and leaps into the lower branches of a beech tree and begins ascending, panting and calling down, “If I’m such a coward, you won’t start to look like a little mouse as I get higher and higher above you.” Heidegger stays on the ground, and his voice sounds faint as he calls up, “Schöner, you’re braver than I thought.”
By 1932, the university is beginning to feel the effects of political ferment, which are still just a ripple, not quite a shudder, throughout Germany. Freiburg may be far from Berlin and Munich, but the National Socialists have struck the universities, like the bark disease striking beeches, youngest first. Of course, soon nothing will be intact; for now, the Nazis are overrepresented in the schools but still a minority elsewhere.
Over time, Schöner has taken on greater responsibilities, sitting on various committees and administrative bodies, which all take away from time he’d rather be spending in the forest. Still, he teaches his class, and gets outside as much as possible. Heidegger, too, has increased his commitments, and while they see each other less regularly, their relationship is still cordial.
The students seem different, though, more brazen, more disaffected, less drawn in by his enthusiasm and his humor. The enthusiasm feels more forced, too. He is reluctant to prod students, even gently, with his walking stick. He doesn’t climb trees anymore, after a couple of students filed an anonymous complaint and he was reprimanded. That felt like a gut punch, and while he always suspected who it was, and that it was resentment and laziness that had motivated the complaint rather than genuine concern for the well-being of their fellow students, he could never pin it down with certainty. During classes, he has begun to feel as though he’s being watched.
Moreover, the students are more inclined to challenge him directly. “What exactly is the point of all this?” one asks.
He’s heard the question before, in a less acidic tone. Nevertheless, he holds his ground and answers patiently. “Germany’s forests are a source of her history, her greatness. If we do not understand what is around us, we will never understand who we are or where we are going.”
But the students are not as quickly appeased by this sort of answer as they once had been. “Where we are going has nothing to do with the woods and these Hansel and Gretel fairy tales,” one says. “Germany’s greatness is in its blood, its resolve. Our science ought to be about the Volk, not the trees.”
On a desk in his classroom, someone has written “Who gives a flying damn what’s in the canopy?” Because he holds class inside more often now, he is forced to look at it day after day. And in different handwriting, frighteningly neat and compact, someone has written, “Is a Jew hanging in a tree shade-tolerant?” beside a drawing of a hanged man dangling from a noose. No longer does he admonish them about carving in the trees. Recently, he has sighted a couple of swastikas etched into them, and he shook his head and said nothing. It occurred to him then that the swastika, with its many straight lines, might very well have been invented by a veteran carver of trees.