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Science, on the other hand, has to assert its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is concerned solely with what-is. Nothing-how can it be for science anything other than a horror and a phantasm? If science is right, then one thing stands firm: science wishes to know nothing of Nothing. Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing. (Heidegger, "What Is Metaphysics?" Regnery ed. 359)
One day Mrs. Hopewell, of Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" picks up her daughter's book and reads the words of Martin Heidegger that rher daughter Hulga has underlined. While Hulga would likely be pleased by the way the words work upon Mrs. Hopewell "like some evil incantation in gibberish" (CW 269), the words might as well be gibberish for all that Hulga herself actually comprehends their meaning. In fact, Hulga entirely misreads Heidegger in supposing that he expresses her own perspective. In "What Is Metaphysics?" Heidegger critiques the modern scientific mindset for its narrowness in only taking an interest in beings and not in being itself. Ironically, throughout "Good Country People," we witness Hulga's concern "solely with what-is," which corresponds to her disdainful rejection of the spiritual, and so what Hulga takes from this passage is exactly what Heidegger is arguing against. O'Connor's incorporation of this passage into the story serves to align Hulga's character with the scientific mindset Heidegger is critiquing. Although this reference to Heidegger is brief in the context of the entire story, it serves not only to develop a profound critique of Hulga and her subsuming all reason to instrumental reason, but also, and more importantly, to extend that critique beyond Hulga in the sense that she embraces a pervasive and coercive (rather than individual or isolated) way of seeing in postwar American culture with which Heidegger- and O'Connor-find fault. This quotation functions more broadly as O'Connor's own critique of the scientific objectivity of the modern era, of a mode of technological thinking that is dangerous and destructive, which becomes increasingly apparent in Hulga herself.
In previous articles in the Flannery O'Connor Review, Ralph Wood and Henry T. Edmondson have discussed O'Connor's critique of nihilism in "Good Country People," but both understand...