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

by Sarah Bakewell

  77 Levinas’ lampoon and regrets: Gordon, Continental Divide, 326–7, citing interview with Richard Sugarman, who spoke to Levinas in 1973.

  78 ‘What Is Metaphysics?’: Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, in Basic Writings, 81–110, this 95.

  79 ‘The total strangeness of beings’: ibid., 109. (On uncanniness, see also BT, 233/188.)

  80 ‘Why are there beings’: ibid., 112.

  81 ‘The things of the world’: Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, 12.

  82 Rejecting Heidegger’s work and ‘I arrived at the distressing conclusion’: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 398 (Husserl to Ingarden, 2 Dec. 1929), and 403 (Husserl to Pfänder, 1 Jan. 1931).

  Chapter 4: The They, the Call

  1 Heidegger after First World War: see Heidegger, Letters to his Wife, 55 (17 Oct. 1918).

  2 Aron in Germany: Aron, The Committed Observer, 26.

  3 Weil in Germany: Weil, ‘The Situation in Germany’, in Formative Writings, 89–147, this 97–8 (originally published in L’ecole émancipée, 4 Dec. 1932 to 5 March 1933).

  4 Weil on revolutionary potential: ibid., 106.

  5 Mail surveillance, etc.: Haffner, Defying Hitler, 96.

  6 Beauvoir on not worrying: POL, 146.

  7 Murder and oddity stories: POL, 130.

  8 Rome trip: POL, 153–4.

  9 ‘I rediscovered irresponsibility’: Sartre, ‘Cahier Lutèce’, in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, 907–35, this 210 (a notebook written sometime between 1952–4).

  10 Beauvoir’s visits: POL, 180, 184 (Feb.); POL, 191–6 (June).

  11 Blood on mayonnaise: POL, 147.

  12 Jaspers on his mistake: Jaspers, ‘On Heidegger’, 119. Beauvoir on French students: POL, 180. For others, see also Haffner, Defying Hitler, 156, and Fest, Not I, 42.

  13 Raising an arm: Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), 268.

  14 Uncanniness, anaesthesia, yoked: Haffner, Defying Hitler, 112, 126.

  15 Fragmentation and demagogues: Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 317, 478.

  16 ‘Banality of evil’: Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil.

  17 Think!: see Arendt, The Life of the Mind, I, 5.

  18 Was heisst denken?: the English translation renders it as What Is Called Thinking?

  19 Das Man: BT, 164/126.

  20 Responsibility/answerability: Stambaugh has ‘responsibility’, M&R ‘answerability’: BT, 165/127; Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Stambaugh, 127/124.

  21 Voice: BT, 313/268. Calls Dasein to itself: BT, 319/274. Alien or uncanny form: BT, 321/276–7.

  22 Schickele: quoted in Ott, Heidegger, 136.

  23 Anti-Semitic remarks: Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 413 (Husserl to Dietrich Mahnke, 4–5 May 1933).

  24 Arendt: her questions are not preserved, but his answer is, in Arendt and Heidegger, Letters, 52–3 (Heidegger to Arendt, undated but winter 1932–3).

  25 Book burning: Ott, Heidegger, 189, 194.

  26 ‘Black Notebooks’: Heidegger, Überlegungen, ed. Peter Trawny, GA, 94–6 (2014), generally referred to as the Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks), and containing his notes from 1931 to 1941. Heidegger wished them to be published last in his collected edn, and their appearance has caused much debate. See for example Richard Wolin, ‘National Socialism, World Jewry, and the History of Being: Heidegger’s Black Notebooks’, Jewish Review of Books (6 Jan. 2014); Peter Trawny, ‘Heidegger et l’antisémitisme’, Le Monde (22 Jan. 2014); Markus Gabriel, ‘Der Nazi aus dem Hinterhalt’, Die Welt (13 Aug. 2014); G. Fried, ‘The King is Dead: Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” ’, Los Angeles Review of Books (13 Sept. 2014); and Peter E. Gordon, ‘Heidegger in Black’, New York Review of Books (9 Oct. 2014), 26–8. For a fuller commentary by the volumes’ editor, see Peter Trawny, Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s anarchy (Cambridge: Polity, 2015). The discovery led Professor Günter Figal, chair of the Martin Heidegger Society in Germany, to resign in Jan. 2015, saying that he no longer wished to represent Heidegger. For much earlier background and evidence on Heidegger’s Nazism, see Ott, Heidegger, and Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy.

  27 Rectorial address: Heidegger, ‘The Self-Assertion of the German University’ (27 May 1933), tr. William S. Lewis, in Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy, 29–39, quoted sections 34–6. Also see contemporary newspaper reports in Guido Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger: Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken (Berne: Suhr, 1962), 49–57; and Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: philosophy and politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1–2.

  28 Declaration: Heidegger, ‘Declaration of Support for Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State’, 11 Nov. 1933, tr. in Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy, 49–52, this 51.

  29 Summer camps: Ott, Heidegger, 228–9, citing Heidegger’s letter of 22 Sept. 1933 to university teaching staff.

  30 Husserl’s status: ibid., 176

  31 Flowers and letter: Elfride Heidegger to Malvine Husserl, 29 April 1933. The letter survives only as a copy transcribed by Frédéric de Towarnicki in his ‘Visite à Martin Heidegger’, Les Temps modernes (1 Jan. 1946), 717–24, this 717–18, here as translated in Kisiel & Sheehan, Becoming Heidegger, 411–12. For the Husserls’ response, see Kisiel & Sheehan, 412–13 (Husserl to Dietrich Mahnke, 4–5 May 1933), and Ott, Heidegger, 174–7.

  32 Disappearing dedication: Ott, Heidegger, 173.

  33 Border situations: Jaspers, Philosophy II, 178–9. Lived, existential situations: 159, 335–6.

  34 Expecting to die young: Gens, Karl Jaspers, 50, citing Gertrud Jaspers to Arendt, 10 Jan. 1966. Managing energies: 24–7. Breath and pauses: 113–15.

  35 Heidegger amazed: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 162 (Heidegger, draft letter to Jaspers, 6 Feb. 1949).

  36 ‘I think about your study’: Arendt & Jaspers, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 29 (Arendt to Jaspers, 29 Jan. 1946).

  37 ‘True philosophy needs communion’ and ‘Uncommunicativeness’: Jaspers, Philosophy II, 100.

  38 Letters, visits and plans: Gens, Karl Jaspers, 158; Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 39 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 6 Sept. 1922), 42 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 24 Nov. 1922).

  39 Heidegger’s silences: Jaspers, ‘On Heidegger’, 110. Uncanny feeling: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 40 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 19 Nov. 1922).

  40 Revolution needed: Jaspers, ‘On Heidegger’, 109. Views on style, and the challenge and denial: 111–14.

  41 ‘Estranging’: ibid., 112.

  42 ‘One must get in step’ and the talk: ibid., 117.

  43 ‘It is just like 1914’ and hands: ibid., 118.

  44 ‘Now I must say to myself’: Kirkbright, Karl Jaspers, 148, citing Gertrud Jaspers’ letter to her parents, 29 June 1933. Heidegger’s rudeness: Arendt & Jaspers, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 630 (Jaspers to Arendt, 9 March 1966).

  45 ‘Ashamed’: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 185 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 7 March 1950). Jaspers sceptical: Arendt & Jaspers, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 630 (Jaspers to Arendt, 9 March 1966).

  46 ‘It was nice to see it’: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 149 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 23 Aug. 1933).

  47 Failing Heidegger: Jaspers, ‘On Heidegger’, 118–20.

  48 Realising that life could not continue unaltered: Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), 258–63.

  49 Marcel and crispation: Gabriel Marcel, ‘On the Ontological Mystery’, in his The Philosophy of Existence, 1–31, esp. 27.

  50 Staying awake: Gabriel Marcel, ‘Conversations’, in Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 217–56, this 249. He wrote something similar in Men Against Humanity, tr. G. S. Fraser (London: Harvill, 1952), 81–3.

  51 Meaning of Dasein’s Being is Time: BT, 39/17.

  52 �
��Being-towards-Death’ (Sein zum Tode): BT, 279/235.

  53 ‘Anticipatory resoluteness’: BT, 351/304. Giving it up: BT, 308/264.

  54 Jonas: Hans Jonas, ‘Heidegger’s Resoluteness and Resolve’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 197–203, this 200–1.

  55 Resigning: Ott, Heidegger, 240–41, and letter of resignation quoted 249.

  56 Restored dedication: ibid., 173, 178.

  57 Harassed by party: Heidegger, ‘The Rectorate 1933/34: facts and thoughts’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 15–32, this 30–32.

  58 ‘The Rectorate’: ibid., 17.

  59 ‘Dummheit’: Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 125.

  60 ‘Dreaming boy’: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 186 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 19 March 1950).

  61 Berlin academy proposals: Farías, Heidegger and Nazism, 197–202, citing Heidegger’s letter to Wilhelm Stuckart, 28 Aug. 1934; also see Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 279–81.

  62 Rome and Nazi pin: Löwith, My Life in Germany, 59–60.

  63 Müller: Max Müller, ‘Martin Heidegger: a philosopher and politics: a conversation’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 175–95, this 189–90. (Interview with Bernd Martin and Gottfried Schramm on 1 May 1985.)

  64 Responses to Heidegger’s Nazism: Heidegger’s involvement was well known from the start. Sartre knew of it in 1944, as did the French occupiers in his area of Germany after the war. More was revealed by a major collection of documents published in 1962: Guido Schneeburger’s Nachlese zu Heidegger. When I was studying Heidegger in the early 1980s, the Nazi question did not loom large, partly because of a then-prevalent view that questions of life and personality were not significant in considering the philosophy. In 1987 this changed, with the Chilean historian Victor Farías’ Heidegger y el Nazismo (Heidegger and Nazism), a work condemning Heidegger’s entire philosophy as contaminated by his Nazism. There ensued a ‘Heidegger affair’, especially in France, with some arguing that Heidegger’s philosophy was unaffected by his politics, and others joining Farías’ denunciation. Observing from Germany, the Freiburg historian Hugo Ott wrote ‘in France a sky has fallen in — the sky of the philosophers’ (Rockmore, Heidegger and French Philosophy, 155). Ott then published his own extensively documented account of Heidegger’s Nazi activities in 1992, including much material from the Freiburg city archives: Martin Heidegger: unterwegs zu seiner Biographie (Martin Heidegger: a political life). The discussion subsided until a new ‘Heidegger affair’ in 2005 when Emmanuel Faye’s Heidegger found further Nazi evidence in Heidegger’s seminars of 1933–4, and similarly concluded that the philosophy was tainted. A still more recent Heidegger affair began in 2014 with the publication of his private notebooks from 1931 to 1946 (GA, 94–6), showing clear pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic views.

  65 Selecting safe elements: for example, American philosopher Marjorie Grene attended Heidegger’s lectures and read Being and Time in the early 1930s. She agonised over the Nazi question for sixty years, then wrote in her Philosophical Testament (1995) that she would have liked to dismiss Heidegger as unimportant but could not, and therefore had decided to preserve what was essential in his thought, assimilate it to a ‘more adequate framework’, and abandon the rest. Marjorie Grene, A Philosophical Testament (Chicago & La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1995), 76–9. Grene’s Heidegger (New York: Hillary House, 1957) was one of the first books devoted to Heidegger in English.

  66 ‘Solicitude’: BT, 157–9/121–2.

  67 No character: Arendt & Jaspers, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 142 (Arendt to Jaspers, 29 Sept. 1949).

  68 ‘Heidegger has no character’: Sartre, ‘A More Precise Characterization of Existentialism’, in Contat & Rybalka (eds), The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, II, 155–60, this 156. For more on the notion of character in Sartre, see Webber, The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.

  69 ‘The darkening of the world’: Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 40.

  70 ‘Thin stammering’ and ‘The manifold uncanny’: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 151 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 1 July 1935). This is the ‘Ode on Man’ chorus from Sophocles, Antigone V, 332–75, this 332. Heidegger’s German version is: ‘Vielfältig das Unheimliche, nichts doch / über den Menschen hinaus Unheimlicheres ragend sich regt’ (GA, 13, 35). The line could be rendered more conventionally as ‘Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man’ (tr. R. C. Jebb) or ‘Many things are formidable, and none more formidable than man!’ (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones). The word translated as ‘formidable’ or ‘wonderful’ is deinà (deinos), also meaning ‘terrible’; it features in Heidegger’s later discussions of technology. Heidegger’s translation, ‘Chorlied aus der Antigone des Sophocles’, is in Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, 35–6; he had it privately printed in 1943 as a birthday present for Elfride (GA, 13, 246n).

  71 Die Kehre: This interpretation was first put forward in 1963 by William J. Richardson, an extraordinary American scholar who, as he said, developed it while living ‘in quasi-isolation as chaplain to a group of Benedictine nuns in a renovated Black Forest cloister’. William J. Richardson, ‘An Unpurloined Autobiography’, in James R. Watson (ed.), Portraits of American Continental Philosophers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 147, cited Woessner, Heidegger in America, 200. See Richardson, Heidegger: through phenomenology to thought. His interpretation has mostly prevailed since, though some do differ: see for example Sheehan, Making Sense of Heidegger: a paradigm shift.

  72 Rejecting Berlin job, and ensuing quotes below: Heidegger, ‘Why Do I Stay in the Provinces?’, in Sheehan (ed.), Heidegger: the man and the thinker, 27–30; see also editor’s note 30n.

  73 Brender: see Walter Biemel, ‘Erinnerungen an Heidegger’, in Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2/1 (1977), 1–23, this 14.

  74 ‘All things become solitary and slow’: Heidegger, ‘The Thinker as Poet’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, 1–14, this 9. The line has been inscribed as a sign above a bench in Todtnauberg.

  75 ‘Personal destiny’: Hannah Arendt, ‘What Remains? The Language Remains’, in P. Baehr (ed.), The Portable Hannah Arendt (New York: Penguin, 2003), 3–22, this 5–6 (an interview with Günter Gaus on West German TV, 28 Oct. 1964). Their escape: Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 105–8.

  76 Husserl not leaving Germany: Van Breda, ‘Die Rettung von Husserls Nachlass und die Gründung des Husserl-Archivs — The Rescue of Husserl’s Nachlass and the Founding of the Husserl-Archives’, 47.

  77 ‘He was a strongly monological type’: Max Müller, ‘Martin Heidegger: a philosopher and politics: a conversation’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 175–95, this 186 (interview of 1 May 1985).

  78 Husserl’s Prague letter: ‘Lettre de M. le professeur Husserl: An den Präsidenten des VIII. internationalen Philosophen-Kongresses Herrn Professor Dr Rádl in Prag’, in Actes du huitième Congrès international de Philosophie à Prague 2–7 septembre 1934 (Prague: Comité d’organisation du Congrès, 1936), xli-xlv.

  79 ‘Heroism of reason’: Husserl, ‘Vienna Lecture’, in Crisis, Appendix I, 269–99, this 290–99.

  80 Publication of Crisis: David Carr, ‘Introduction’, in Husserl, Crisis, xvii.

  81 Husserl’s last words: Ronald Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: beginnings and ends in phenomenology, 1928–1938 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 69, citing translated notes made by Husserl’s daughter Elisabeth Husserl Rosenberg, ‘Aufzeichnungen aus Gesprächen mit Edmund Husserl während seiner letzten Krankheit im Jahre 1938’, in the Husserl Archives. On Husserl’s illness, see also David Carr, ‘Introduction’, in Husserl, Crisis, xvii.

  82 ‘He died like a holy man’: Malvine Husserl & Karl Schumann, ‘Malvine Husserls “Skizze eines Lebensbildes von E. Husserl” ’, Husserl Studies 5(2) (1988), 105–25, this 118.

  83 Fear of des
ecration of grave: Van Breda, ‘Die Rettung von Husserls Nachlass und die Gründung des Husserl-Archivs — The Rescue of Husserl’s Nachlass and the Founding of the Husserl-Archives’, 66.

  84 Heidegger missing funeral: in a 1985 interview, Max Müller recalled that Heidegger ‘was missing from Husserl’s funeral, like most colleagues of his faculty, because he was ill’. Max Müller, ‘Martin Heidegger: a philosopher and politics: a conversation’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 175–95, this 187.

  Chapter 5: To Crunch Flowering Almonds

  1 Sartre proselytising for Husserl: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Philosophy of Existence’, in Texts and Dialogues, 129–39, this 134. Beauvoir reading him: POL, 201.

  2 ‘Like waking up’: Wilson, Dreaming to Some Purpose, 234.

  3 Sartre’s drug experience: Sartre, ‘Notes sur la prise de mescaline’ (1935), in Les Mots, etc., 1,222–33; also POL, 209–10; and Sartre By Himself, 38.

  4 Naples: Sartre, ‘Foods’, in Contat & Rybalka (eds), The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, II, 60–63.

  5 Contingency notebook: Flynn, Sartre: a philosophical biography, 15. On the history of Melancholia and other manuscript versions in the Bibliothèque nationale, see M. Contat, ‘De “Melancholia” à La nausée: la normalisation NRF de la contingence’ (21 Jan. 2007), at ITEM (L’Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes): http://​www.​item.​ens.​fr/​index.​php?id=27113. (Revised version of article originally published in Dix-neuf/Vingt, 10 (Oct. 2000)

  6 Pebble, doorknob, beer glass: Sartre, Nausea, 9–10, 13, 19.

  7 ‘I must say’: ibid., 9.

  8 ‘I slumped on the bench’: ibid., 190.

  9 ‘Some of These Days’: ibid., 35–8. Sartre writes that the song is sung by a ‘Negress’, but George Cotkin points out that it was more likely to have been the Jewish singer Sophie Tucker, whose signature tune it was: Cotkin, Existential America, 162.