Thinking of the themes of this course, I chanced upon a passage in Heidegger that seemed remarkably prescient in describing Hogue. The passage is in Being & Time (New York: Harper Perennial: 2008) pages 216-7. I have reproduced the text below.
"When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) butjust in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world. Therefore curiosity is characterized by a specific way of not tarrying along-side what is closest. Consequently it does not seek the leisure of tarrying observantly, but rather seeks restlessness and the excitement of continual novelty and changing encounters. In not tarrying, curiosity is concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marveling at them - [greek word]. To be amazed to the point of not understanding is something in which it has no interest. Rather it concerns itself with a kind of knowing, but just in order to have known. Both this not tarrying in the environment with which one concerns oneself, and this distraction by new possibilities, are constitutive items for curiosity; and upon these is founded the third essential characteristic of this phenomenon, which we call the character of "never dwelling anywhere" [Aufenthaltslosigkeit]. Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein - a kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself."
Hogue constantly uproots himself in his unsatisfied search for self-creation (and so self-destruction). Runners can never satisfy themselves for the exact reason that they satisfies themselves: the incessant need to run precludes the possibility of a pause long enough to interrupt the running. The policeman Samuels interviews says something similar in regard to Hogue's criminal activities. Noting that criminals like Hogue are caught not because of the remarkable aptitude of the investigators, but because of the simple fact that criminals cannot stop committing crimes, the policeman references the repetitive nature of Hogue's crimes. To what extent that is a correct diagnosis remains to be seen. Nevertheless, there is something particular about Hogue's uprootedness. Clearly an intelligent person, Hogue could easily find employ or a degree of financial security in one way or another. Let us not forget that his Princeton professor gives him asecond chance by recommending him to the Harvard museum, whereby Hogue proceeds to repeat, and repeat, his incessant movement from crime to crime. Hogue is taken in by a life that promises too much for one persona. And so, his ability to recognize his own possibility leads him to the direct experience of the possibility itself, or in other words, lying. In a position of "never dwelling anywhere" Hogue realizes the latent promise of the American dream, in so far as one has time to do so. Our collective fetishization of creative potential finds itself manifest in characters like Hogue. To one extent or another, we are all liars, not in the sense of telling an untruth, but in the openness with which we face our possibility of being-in-the-world. That which distinguishes the liar is the ease with which the liar regards truth and untruth as one and the same, and so , leaves the decision by which such recognition can arise, open to the one constant beholder of the lie: the liar themselves. Curiosity, as described by Heidegger, "know[s] in order to have known".
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