[Professor Steiner's most recent publications are On Difficulty and Heidegger. We do not yet know what his] next book will be 'about', but we may guess, on the basis of such texts as are available, that the aboutness will direct itself—will aim its most urgent responsions—towards some great zone of silence ('topic' would be too restricting a term, too banal and ungiving in its locality) about which we do not, as yet, 'know' anything at all.

You think I am mocking. Perhaps I am not. For such speculation is the favourite Steiner mode. It is true that knowledge and tradition have accumulated in this one mind to such an extent that the loss of that mind (one pictures for instance a number 11 bus, out of control, bearing down upon the Professor) would rank with the burning of the library at Alexandria. How remarkable, then, that everything Steiner knows must take its place alongside the enormous amount that he does not know. Or does not yet know. Some people would be satisfied with knowing so much. Steiner turns giddy—delightedly giddy—at the thought of knowing so little.

Some of this not-knowing is a matter of contingency. Slightly less than a third of Heidegger's work is available in definitive form, and the authoritative collected edition will not be ready until the 1990s. This seems both to dismay and to excite Steiner. Or again: we do not yet know whether sadistic literature encourages or sublimates sadism. Steiner is inclined to the belief that it encourages—and he has difficulty in dismissing the notion of censorship in this connection. But in both these examples, our ignorance will have its term. Steiner expects the answer to the psychological question in much the same way as he expects the collected edition….

[And] there is a matter with which Steiner must live uneasily without an answer. This is the hermeneutic loop. Hermeneutics is defined as 'the disciplined understanding of understanding'. But how can understanding understand itself, without becoming involved in a logical circularity? Steiner believes it cannot, that such circularity is, however uncomfortable, an 'inevitable, perhaps necessary attribute of any discourse, of any articulate commentary whose object is itself "textual"'.

I suggest there is a certain glee in this discovery. If we could comfortably understand understanding, how dull life would be. Or if there were something mere about the fact of existence, how banal. When Heidegger, at the end of a lifetime of speculation, comes up with the blinding tautology, 'Being is Being', and suggests that the pursuit of being is a circular game, Steiner does not throw up his hands in scorn. The bleak pursuit of a tautology may well be worth while.

This love of the abyss, the appreciation of the unknowable, the conception of intellectual inquiry as a progress along a Moebius strip—how utterly unEnglish it is. What is the language of Steiner's thought? It is difficult to say—it seems to vary from moment to moment. And yet, if language and thought are, as Steiner believes, the same thing, it is a question worth asking. Steiner has said that his thought is trilingual. Is this possible? The language of his writing is English, and there is continual evidence, in vivid flashes, of a deeply learned appreciation of the history and nature of the tongue. But, beautiful and effective as it often is, Steiner's English does not feel like English. One might say, if the word did not have such dreadful connotations, that he writes in European.

It is this complexity of internal language which accounts not merely for the virtues but also for the faults of Steiner's writing. And there are faults, moments when the author is playing for histrionic effect. There are sentences which seem designed to meet the acoustical problems of some auditorium—they are not sentences for the page. And then there is a tendency to mask his meaning behind an unnecessary number of words. There are terms thrown in, casually, to give a little extra seasoning to what might otherwise seem a rather ordinary stew. (p. 743)

I have been particularly struck, while reading these books in trains, planes, airport lounges, cafés and restaurants—generally, on the move—by Steiner's observation that the habit of reading in solitude and silence has more or less died out. One certainly needs that solitude and silence to appreciate these books to the full. One needs a library—not a university library, one's own library. Unfortunately, as Steiner also points out, personal libraries are a vanishing phenomenon.

It has reached the stage, Steiner argues, when reading itself will have to be taught. There is a conflict, he believes, between democratic values and education. American education is, indeed, no less than 'programmed amnesia'. How can we, belonging to a society in which education has more or less been defined as the opposite of learning by heart, appreciate writers from cultures in which learning by heart was the norm? And how can we read, say, Byron, without having read Byron's reading-list? But Byron's reading-list would take us back through the Italian epics to Dante. How can we read Dante, without having read Dante's reading-list? Dante's reading-list, as Steiner points out, does not include Homer, but it does include Virgil. How can we read Virgil, on the other hand, without having read Homer? At this point, one comes to a Steinerian brick wall. For how can one read Homer, when Homer had no reading-list? We simply do not have access to the materials which would give us the basis for a Steinerian 'reading' of Homer. To read him in this way, we would have to hear him. And that would be impossible if, as has been argued, 'Homer' did not exist.

I have satirised the position to a certain degree. It seems to me at times that Steiner wilfully involves us in a 'tortoise and hare'-style paradox, to humble us for our moral good. Steiner the guru seems determined all the time to remind us of what we do not know. He often forgets what we do know. (pp. 743-44)

Of the books under review,… [Heidegger] is the more substantial, and contains among other things what seems to me a fair and discriminating account of the philosopher's relation to the Third Reich. The essays collected in On Difficulty have considerable areas of overlap, even when the ostensible subject matter is entirely different. This is not a drawback. It gives us a clear picture of Steiner's present obsessions, and enthusiasm, indeed, is a key quality in these writings. It is the quality which carries one along, even when the territory is unfamiliar. One cannot help but admire him deeply. Learning requires such enthusiasm. We do need Professor Steiner. We need him, as he himself might put it, urgently. (p. 744)