The first Sunday we drove about 90 minutes south to Heidelberg to walk through its old town market and climb the hill to the castle. Heidelberg is known for its university–the oldest in Germany–and the roster of important thinkers associated with it: Hegel, Gadamer, Habermas, Jaspers, and Apel. We also saw the site where Hannah Arendt once lived. It’s a bit weird, I think, for tourists to use these philosophers as points of interest. I can name a handful of colleagues from my university who would visit this town solely because Hegel walked these streets. I just went to see what I could see, not to do the pretentious “walk of fame” circuit. I swear. We didn’t even stop at the university to search for the lecturn where Hegel preached dialectics. (Why do I feel like I need to defend myself…?)
