Professor Ettinger said that in the final analysis the Arendt-Heidegger relationship was the stuff of poetic tragedy. Americans have great difficulty understanding passion. When I discuss Anna Karenina with my students, they can't understand why Anna gives up a loving husband, a beautiful home and a wonderful child for this jerk of an officer. I tell them to read Manon Lescaut or D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love . Then they understand.
Love is irrational.
There is nothing we can do about it. It should stand as a significant contribution of understanding to both very different authors. Likewise Karl Jaspers is also revealed to have been an understanding friend to Arendt.