At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails With Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
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3 ‘Real little Buddha’: Sartre, War Diaries, 123.
4 ‘At Husserl’s expense’: ibid., 184.
5 Blond hair: memories of a former schoolmate as quoted in Andrew D. Osborn, The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: in its Development from His Mathematical Interests to His First Conception of Phenomenology in Logical Investigations (New York: Columbia University/International Press, 1934), 11; also see Spiegelberg, ‘The Lost Portrait of Edmund Husserl’, 342, quoting Husserl’s daughter and reproducing images of the portrait.
6 ‘Watchmaker’ and ‘the fingers’: Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 35, the watchmaker comparison being quoted from a friend, Fyodor Stepun.
7 Film: A Representation of Edmund Husserl, film by James L. Adams (1936), available online at http://www.husserlpage.com/hus_imag.html. Taken from a video cassette produced by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, c. 1991.
8 Pocketknife: Husserl told the story to Levinas, who passed it on to S. Strasser, the editor of the Husserliana edn (Hussserliana I:xxix); it is retold in Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 2. Husserl’s comment, ‘I wonder whether …’ comes from a version heard by Beauvoir and noted in her diary: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 161 (18 Nov. 1939).
9 ‘In the habit of falling’: Andrew D. Osborn, The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl (New York: Columbia University/International Press, 1934), 11.
10 Brentano: Husserl, ‘Recollections of Franz Brentano’ (1919), in Shorter Works, eds P. McCormick & F. Elliston (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 342–8. Also see T. Masaryk & K. Čapek, President Masaryk Tells His Story (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1934), 104–5, and Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, 23–59.
11 Husserl’s grief and depression: see Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, 80–81, and Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 360 (Husserl to Heidegger, 10 Sept. 1918), 401 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).
12 Kindergarten: Borden, Edith Stein, 5. ‘I am to stay’: Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters, 6 (Stein to Roman Ingarden, 28 Jan. 1917).
13 ‘Most distressing’: Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink, ed. by the Husserl Archives in Louvain (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 11 (13 Aug. 1931).
14 ‘A new way’ and ‘to see what stands’: Husserl, Ideas, 39.
15 ‘Give me my coffee’: Moran, Husserl, 34, citing and translating Gerda Walther’s account of a seminar in 1917, from Walther, Zum anderen Ufer (Remagen: Reichl 1960), 212. Heidegger, by contrast, preferred tea: see Walter Biemel, ‘Erinnerungen an Heidegger’, in Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2/1 (1977), 1–23, this 10–11. For more recent philosophising about coffee, see Scott F. Parker & Michael W. Austin (eds), Coffee — Philosophy for everyone: grounds for debate (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), and David Robson, ‘The Philosopher Who Studies the Experience of Coffee’ (an interview with David Berman of Trinity College, Dublin), BBC Future blog, 18 May 2015: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150517-what-coffee-says-about-your-mind.
16 Music and phenomenology: see, for example, Thomas Clifton, Music As Heard: a study in applied phenomenology (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1983).
17 Sacks’ leg: Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, 91, 96. On medicine and phenomenology, see works including S. K. Toombs, The Meaning of Illness: a phenomenological account of the different perspectives of physician and patient (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), and Richard Zaner, The Context of Self: a phenomenological inquiry using medicine as a clue (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981). For many other applications of phenomenology, see Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgaard (eds), The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology (London & New York: Routledge, 2012).
18 Jaspers and Husserl letters: Jaspers, Philosophy I, 6–7 (1955 epilogue), quoting both; also see Kirkbright, Karl Jaspers, 68–9, citing Jaspers to his parents, 20 Oct. 1911.
19 ‘A different thinking’: Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence, 12.
20 In love, something is loved: Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 88.
21 ‘To wrest oneself’ and ‘in a nice warm room’: Sartre, ‘A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology: intentionality’, in Critical Essays (Situations I) 40–6, this 42–3 (originally published in 1939).
22 Sartre was already becoming aware: Sartre developed his analysis of Husserl further in The Transcendence of the Ego, tr. A. Brown, foreword by S. Richmond (London: Routledge, 2004) (originally published in Recherches philosophiques in 1934).
23 ‘Withdraw into himself’: Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 2. Also see Paul S. MacDonald, Descartes and Husserl: the philosophical project of radical beginnings (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000).
24 Augustine: Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 157.
25 Debate and ‘dear old leather sofa’: Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters, 10–11 (Stein to Roman Ingarden, 20 Feb. 1917); also see Alasdair MacIntyre, Edith Stein: a philosophical prologue (London & New York: Continuum, 2006), 103–5. Her thesis: Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Her doctorate was awarded in Freiburg in 1916, and the dissertation published in Halle, 1917.
26 Hamburg: Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters, 36 (Stein to Fritz Kaufmann, 8 Nov. 1919).
27 Converting and later career: Borden, Edith Stein, 6–10.
Chapter 3: The Magician from Messkirch
1 ‘For manifestly’: BT, 19/1. The quotation is from Plato’s The Sophist, 244A, where it appears in a discussion of the word ‘to be’. Heidegger taught a lecture course on The Sophist at Marburg in 1924–5, attended by Hannah Arendt among others: see Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist, tr. R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997).
2 ‘The sky is blue’ and ‘I am happy’: BT, 23/4 (giving ‘merry’); Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Stambaugh, 3 (giving ‘happy’).
3 Why is there anything?: Gottfried von Leibniz, ‘The Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason’ (1714), in Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Writings, ed. P. Loptson, tr. R. Latta & G. R. Montgomery, rev. P. Loptson (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2012), 103–13, this 108–9 (paragraph 7).
4 ‘The great master of astonishment’ and ‘put a radiant obstacle’: Steiner, Martin Heidegger, 158.
5 Praise: BT, 62/38; dedication: BT, 5.
6 Brentano’s thesis: Heidegger, ‘A Recollection (1957)’, in Sheehan (ed.), Heidegger: the man and the thinker, 21–2, this 21. The thesis: Franz Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, tr. Rolf George (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
7 Heidegger siblings: Marie Heidegger, born 1891, grew up to marry a chimney sweep, and died in 1956. On her and on Heidegger’s mother, see F. Schalow & A. Denker, Historical Dictionary of Heidegger’s Philosophy, 2nd edn (London: Scarecrow, 2010), 134. Fritz was born in 1894.
8 Bells: Heidegger, ‘Vom Geheimnis des Glockenturms’, in his GA, 13 (Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, 113–16); also see Heidegger, ‘The Pathway’, in Sheehan (ed.), Heidegger: the man and the thinker, 69–72, this 71; and Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 7. For other early memories, see Heidegger, ‘My Way to Phenomenology’, tr. Stambaugh, in On Time and Being, 74–82.
9 Cooper: the list is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_(profession).
10 Collecting wood, etc.: Heidegger, ‘The Pathway’, in Sheehan (ed.), Heidegger: the man and the thinker, 69–72, this 69.
11 Glass globe, etc.: Heidegger, Letters to his Wife, 5 (13 Dec. 1915).
12 Path and bench: Heidegger, ‘The Pathway’, in Sheehan (ed.), Heidegger: the man and the thinker, 69–72, this 69.
13 Meeting people’s eyes: Löwith, My Life in Germany, 45.
14 ‘Martin?’: Gadamer interviewed in Human, All Too Human (BBC, 1999), episode 2.
15 Borrowing Logical Investigations: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 25; Ott, Heidegger, 57.
16 Hermann Heidegger: his letter in He
idegger, Letters to his Wife, 317.
17 Symphilosopheín: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 357 (Husserl to Heidegger, 30 Jan. 1918).
18 ‘O your youth’: ibid., 359 (Husserl to Heidegger, 10 Sept. 1918).
19 Postscripts and chatterbox: ibid., 361 (Husserl to Heidegger, 10 Sept. 1918).
20 Marvelling: see Ott, Heidegger, 181 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).
21 ‘Phenomenological child’: Jaspers, ‘On Heidegger’, 108–9.
22 ‘I truly had the feeling’: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 325 (Heidegger to Husserl, 22 Oct. 1927).
23 ‘Foggy hole’: Ott, Heidegger, 125.
24 Todtnauberg hut: see Sharr, Heidegger’s Hut. Sharr also wrote about Heidegger’s town house: Sharr, ‘The Professor’s House: Martin Heidegger’s house in Freiburg-im-Breisgau’, in Sarah Menin (ed.), Constructing Place: mind and matter (New York: Routledge, 2003), 130–42.
25 Rhythm of chopping wood: Arendt & Heidegger, Letters, 7 (Heidegger to Arendt, 21 March 1925).
26 ‘One’s ownmost’ look: Löwith, My Life in Germany, 45; also see Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, 12. Gadamer describes him wearing skiing clothes (to give a special lecture on skiing, in Marburg), and says the students called his usual clothes his ‘existential outfit’: Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 49.
27 ‘Impenetrable’: Löwith, My Life in Germany, 28.
28 ‘Because he was much more difficult’: Hans Jonas, ‘Heidegger’s resoluteness and resolve’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 197–203, this 198. (A radio interview.)
29 ‘Breathtaking swirl’ and ‘deep dark clouds’: Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 48.
30 ‘Little magician from Messkirch’: Löwith, My Life in Germany, 44–5.
31 Thinking and digging: Arendt, ‘Martin Heidegger at Eighty’, in Murray (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, 293–303, this 295–6.
32 ‘A ponderous device’: Daniel Dennett and Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, ‘The Philosophical Lexicon’, 2008 edn: http://www.philosophicallexicon.com.
33 ‘Masterfully staged’, ‘We do not Heideggerize’ and ‘How can Heidegger’: Georg Picht, ‘The Power of Thinking’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 161–7, this 161, 165–6.
34 ‘Thinking has come to life’: Arendt, ‘Martin Heidegger at Eighty’, in Murray (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, 293–303, this 295.
35 ‘Wordlessly, expectantly’: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 147, quoting Hermann Mörchen’s manuscript ‘Aufzeichnungen’.
36 Pointing to being: see Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 35. My explanation here owes much to Magda King’s classic Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, 16.
37 ‘Ontological difference’: BT, 26/6. Being and beings: English doesn’t have such a convenient pair of terms as German, so translators either use ‘entity’ for Seiende or distinguish between ‘being’ and ‘Being’ using the capital letter. Macquarrie & Robinson use both, while Stambaugh uses ‘being’ and ‘beings’ but often adds the German as well.
38 Vague, preliminary, non-philosophical understanding of Being: BT, 25/6; BT, 35/15.
39 ‘Ontical’: BT, 71/45ff.
40 Corbin and réalité humaine: Heidegger, Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique?, tr. H. Corbin (Paris: Gallimard, 1938).
41 Spuds, rats: Günter Grass, Dog Years, tr. Ralph Manheim (London: Penguin, 1969), 324, 330 (translation amended slightly).
42 ‘Felt strangeness’: Steiner, Martin Heidegger, 11.
43 Brecht: see Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 155.
44 ‘Awkwardness’: BT, 63/39.
45 ‘Ahead-of-itself …’: Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Stambaugh, 312/327; Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 327.
46 Stein: Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans: being a history of a family’s progress (Normal, IL & London: Dalkey Archive Press, 1995). ‘I am always feeling’: 373. ‘Always I am feeling in each one of them’: 383. ‘Can be slimy, gelatinous’: 349. See Janet Malcolm, Two Lives (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007), 126. (The novel was written between 1902 and 1911, well before Heidegger.)
47 ‘Everydayness’: BT, 37–8/16; also see BT, 69/43.
48 Being-in-the-world: BT, 78/52ff.
49 Das Hammerding: Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 69. In translation: BT, 98/69.
50 Care and concern: BT, 83–4/56–8.
51 ‘Equipment’: BT, 97/68 translates das Zeug as ‘equipment’, but I prefer Stambaugh’s ‘useful thing’: Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Stambaugh, 68/68.
52 ‘Readiness-to-hand’ vs ‘presence-at-hand’: BT, 98–9/69–70. Stambaugh uses ‘handiness’ for Zuhandenheit: Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Stambaugh, 69/69.
53 Revealing a world: BT, 149/114.
54 Heidegger’s table: Heidegger, Ontology: the hermeneutics of facticity, 69, cited in Aho, Existentialism, 39.
55 Mitsein: BT, 149/114. Mitwelt: BT, 155/118.
56 ‘From whom, for the most part’: BT, 154/118.
57 ‘Deficient’ mode of Being-with: BT, 156–7/120.
58 Boat: BT, 154/118.
59 ‘States the obvious’: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 155.
60 Husserl’s marginalia: ‘Husserl’s Marginal Remarks in Martin Heidegger, Being and Time’, in Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931), 258–422, esp. 283 (‘But that is absurd’, on p. 12 of 1927 edn), 419, 422 (interrobangs, on pp. 424 and 437 of 1927 edn). On Husserl’s readings, see Sheehan, ‘Husserl and Heidegger’, in same volume, 1–32, esp. 29. ‘Nonsense!’: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 402 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).
61 ‘Ludicrous’: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 372 (Heidegger to Löwith, 20 Feb. 1923). ‘He lives with the mission’: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 47 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 14 July 1923).
62 Encyclopaedia Britannica: Husserl, ‘ “Phenomenology” (Draft B of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Article), with Heidegger’s Letter to Husserl’, in Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 304–28. A fuller version with variant drafts: Husserl, ‘The Encyclopaedia Britannica article (1927–28)’, in Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931), 35–196, including introduction by Sheehan relating the story of their collaboration. The entry, tr. C. V. Salmon, was published in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edn (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica Co., 1929). On not expressing themselves clearly: see Heidegger, Letters to his Wife, 108 (Martin to Elfride Heidegger, 5 Feb. 1927), and Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 402 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).
63 Husserl’s hopes: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 401–2 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).
64 Heidegger’s speech: Heidegger, ‘For Edmund Husserl on his Seventieth Birthday’ (8 April 1929), tr. Sheehan, in Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931), 475–7, this 475. Husserl’s speech in reply: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 418–20.
65 ‘An appointed leader’: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 402 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).
66 ‘Common sense’: Friedrich Heinemann quotes him as saying, in 1931, ‘Heidegger moves on the level of common sense’ (bewegt sich in der die natürlichen Einstellung). Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, 48.
67 ‘Anthropology’: Husserl, ‘Phenomenology and Anthropology’ (a lecture of June 1931), in Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931), 485–500, this 485.
68 ‘The Being-just-present-at-hand …’: BT, 103/73. German: Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 73.
69 ‘Slumps toothlessly’: Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (London: Granta, 1998), 13–14.
70 ‘The obstinacy’: BT, 103–4/74. Lights up the project: BT, 105/75.
71 Chandos: Hu
go von Hofmannsthal, ‘The Letter of Lord Chandos’, tr. Tania & James Stern, in his The Whole Difference: selected writings, ed. J. D. McClatchy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 69–79 (originally published in Der Tag, 18–19 Oct. 1902).
72 Breakdown: for example, Matthew Ratcliffe draws attention to the experience of James Melton, whose account of depression describes a withdrawal in which he cannot work out even how to approach a chair to sit down on it, as the world has ‘lost its welcoming quality’; Heidegger might say he had no concern with things. See Melton’s account in Gail A. Hornstein, Agnes’s Jacket (New York: Rodale, 2009), 212–13, and Matthew Ratcliffe, ‘Phenomenology as a Form of Empathy’, Inquiry 55(5) (2012), 473–95. See also cases discussed in Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (London: Picador, 2011).
73 Heidegger reading The Magic Mountain: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 185.
74 Davos: the conference ran from 17 March to 6 April 1929, with around 300 scholars and students attending. See Cassirer and Heidegger, Débat sur le Kantisme et la philosophie; Gordon, Continental Divide; Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago & La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2000), and Calvin O. Schrag, ‘Heidegger and Cassirer on Kant’, Kant-Studien 58 (1967), 87–100. See also Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 5th edn, tr. R. Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). On the influence of Kant on Husserl and Heidegger, see Tom Rockmore, Kant and Phenomenology (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
75 Seeing one world end: F. Poirié, Emmanuel Lévinas: qui êtes-vous? (Paris: La Manufacture, 1987), 79. Not everyone agrees with this stark interpretation: see Gordon, Continental Divide, 1.
76 ‘As awkward as a peasant’, etc.: Toni Cassirer, Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), 181–3, tr. Peter Collier in P. Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 48–9. Maurice de Gandillac, who was there, explicitly compared Heidegger’s appeal to that of Hitler: Gandillac, Le siècle traversé, 134.