نامه ی ادموند هوسرل به پیفاندر، در باره ی پدیدار شناسی وعلت های ریشه ای اختلافش با مارتین هایدگر
HUSSERL TO PFÄNDER
Translated by Burt C. Hopkins
Freiburg in Breisgau, Jan. 6, l93l
40 Loretto Street
Dear Colleague:
Your letter shook me so profoundly that I was unable to answer
it as
soon as I should have. I am continuously concerned with it in my
thoughts.
Judge for yourself whether I have not inflicted more pain on myself than on
you, and whether I may not ethically regard this guilt towards you and blame
towards myself as stemming from the best conscience, something I
have had to
accept, and still must accept, as my fate.
Clarifing the matter requires that I lay out a part of my life
history.
I had quickly realized that the project for Parts II and III of
my
Ideas
was
inadequate, and in an effort (beginning in the autumn of l9l2)
to improve them
and to shape in a more concrete and differentiated fashion the
horizon of the
problems they disclosed, I got involved in a new, quite
far-ranging
investigations. (These included the phenomenology of the person
and
personalities of a higher order, culture, the human environment
in general;
the transcendental phenomenology of “empathy” and the theory of
transcendental
intersubjectivity, the “transcendental aesthetic” as the
phenomenology of the
world purely as the world of experience, time and individuation,
the
phenomenology of association as the theory of the constitutive
achievements of
passivity, the phenomenology of the logos, the phenomenological
problematic of
“metaphysics,” etc.) These investigations stretched on all
through the workfilled
Freiburg years, and the manuscripts grew to an almost
unmanageable
extent. As the manuscripts grew so too did the ever greater the
apprehension
about whether, in my old age, I would be able to bring to
completion what had
been entrusted to me. This impassioned work led to repeated
setbacks and
repeated states of depression. In the end what I was left with was an allpervasive
basic mood of depression, a dangerous collapse of confidence
in
myself.
It was in this period that Heidegger began to mature -— for a
number of
years he was constantly at my side as my close assistant. He
behaved entirely
as a student of my work and as a future collaborator, who, as
regards all the
essentials of method and problematic, would stand on the ground
of my
constitutive phenomenology. My ever-increasing impression of his
extraordinary
natural talent, of his absolute devotion to philosophy, of the
powerful energy
of this young man's thought finally led me to an excessive
assessment of his
future importance for scientific phenomenology in my sense of
the term.
Because I realized that no one among the phenomenologists of the
Göttingen and
Munich tradition followed me in earnest; and because I had an
absolute inner
certitude that the phenomenological reduction and the
transcendental
constitutive structuring of philosophy would mean a “Copernican”
revolution
for philosophy; and because I felt
overwhelmed with the burden of responsibility for securing that,
it is
understandable how I placed the greatest hopes in Heidegger.
Yes, that was
the great, up-lifting hope: to open up to him -- presumably my
one true
student -- the unsuspected breadth of my investigations, and to
prepare him
for his own discoveries, that was a great, uplifting hope. Time
and again we
talked of working together, of his collaboration completing
my
investigations. We talked of how
he
would take charge
of my manuscripts when I
passed away, publishing the ones that were the fully developed,
and in general
of how he would carry on my philosophy as a framework for all
future work.
When he went to Marburg, I regarded his enormous success as a
teacher as
if it were my own success. His visits during [the academic]
vacations were
joyful events, highly prized opportunities to speak my mind with
him and to
inform him of my developments. Tto be sure, in the course of
these visits,
just as during the Freiburg years, he was rather vague or silent
regarding the
development of his own ideas. I, as usual, held firmly to my
extravagant idea
of his genius; inwardly I was virtually convinced that the
future of
phenomenological philosophy would be entrusted to him, and that
he not only
would become my heir but also would surpass me.
Certainly when
Being
and Time appeared in l927 I was surprised by
the
newfangled language and style of thinking. Initially, I trusted
his emphatic
declaration: It was the continuation of my own research. I got
the impression
of an exceptional, albeit unclarified, intellectual energy, and
I worked hard
and honestly to penetrate and appreciate it. Faced with theories
so
inaccessible to my way of thinking, I did not want to admit to
myself that he
would surrender both the method of my phenomenological research
and its
scientific character in general. Somehow or other the fault had
to lie with
me; it would lie with Heidegger only insofar as he was too quick
to jump into
problems of a higher level. He himself constantly denied that he
would
abandon my transcendental phenomenology, and he referred me to
his forthcoming
Volume Two. Given my low self-confidence at the time, I
preferred to doubt
myself, my capacity to follow and to appreciate another’s
movement of thought,
rather than to doubt him. That explains why I entrusted to him
the editing of
my l905 lectures on time (something that I afterwards had
occasion enough to
regret); and why I submitted to him (!) for his criticisms my
rough draft of
an article for the
Encyclopaedia
Britannica and together with him (!) tried to
reorganize it (which of course promptly miscarried). I might
mention that I
had been warned often enough: Heidegger’s phenomenology is
something totally
different from mine; rather than furthering the development of
my scientific
works, his university lectures as well as his book are, on the
contrary, open
or veiled attacks on my works, directed at discrediting them on
the most
essential points. When I used to relate such things to Heidegger
in a friendly
way, he would just laugh and say: Nonsense!
Thus, when it came down to choosing my successor, obsessed as I
was with
the idea of assuring the future of the transcendental
phenomenology I had
founded, I saw
him
as the only one
who was up to the task, and so I had to
decide unconditionally in his favor. I appeased my inner
misgivings with the
thought that his call to Marburg may have taken him away too
soon from my
instruction and influence. When he would come back to my side
[here in
Freiburg] -— especially when he would learn about the important
clarifications
I had strugged to achieve in the meantime -- he would reach his
full maturity
and get beyond his raw brilliance, He himself readily agreed:
Our common
life in Freiburg would be one of profound intellectual exchange
and steady
philosophical continuity. --
This blindness arose from a profound exigency -- from a sense
of
overwhelming scientific responsibility -- and God help me, it
was blindness,
caused basically by the fact that I felt so completely isolated,
like an
appointed leader (
Führer) without followers, that is, without collaborators
in
the radical new spirit of transcendental phenomenology.
As regards you, dear colleague, what has nwever changed are my
feelings
of friendship, my high esteem for your professional seriousness,
for the
exemplary solidity of your work. But one thing has changed: I
have lost the
faith of earlier years that you recognized the revolutionary
significance of
the phenomenological reduction and of the
transcendental-constitutive
phenomenology that arises from it, and that you and your
students would share
in the immense problematic of its meaning. -- As for the rest,
you should not
overlook the role your age (you were 58 in l928) had to play in
the question
of filling a chair. In that regard, as best you might have made
the list
[only] in an honorary capacity, and the way things stood it
would possibly
have been in third place, and even that would have been
very
unlikely.
But
for your own sake I could not let this happen. Your sponsor
could not have
been a member of the commission: In the commission,
it
is true, mention of you
was made by me; but admittedly you were not considered more
closely in further
discussions. There was not much discussion among the faculty,
since from the
beginning the mood was only for Heidegger and Cassirer. Only
Cassirer
presented any occasion for questions (possibly N. Hartmann,
too?), which I had
to answer. --
However, I still have to tell you how things turned out later
between
Heidegger and me. After he took over the chair, our exchanges
lasted about
two months. Then, with complete amicability, it was over. He
removed himself
from every possibility of professional discussion, even in the
simplest form.
Clearly such discussion was an unnecessary, unwanted, uneasy
matter for him.
I see him once every couple of months, even less frequently than
my my
other colleagues.
The success of the Paris lectures, along with
Formal
and Transcendental
Logic,
which
were wrung from me at the same time (both in the course of
four
months) have given me back -- and this is a great turn-about --
the confidence
in my powers. In looking back over the situation of my works
since l913 I
realized that all the major lines have sketched out now, more
that I ever
would have ventured to hope. [This is] enough for the writing of
a concluding
work whose plan has burdened me for a decade. Immediately after
the printing
of my last book, in order to come to a clear-headed and
definitive position on
Heideggerian philosophy, I devoted two months to studying
Being
and Time,
as
well as his more recent writings. I arrived at the distressing
conclusion that
philosophically I have nothing to do with this Heideggerian
profundity, with
this brilliant unscientific genius; that Heidegger’s criticism,
both open and
veiled, is based upon a gross misunderstanding; that he may be
involved in
the formation of a philosophical system of the kind which I have
always
considered it my life's work to make forever impossible.
Everyone except me
has realized this for a long time. I have not withheld my
conclusion from
Heidegger.
I pass no judgment on his personality -- it has become
incomprehensible
to me. For almost a decade he was my closest frien; nNaturally
this is all
over: Inability to understand each other precludes
friendship.
1
This
reversal
in professional esteem and personal relations was one of the
most difficult
ordeals of my life. Also in its consequences, among which
belongs your
changed relationship to me, owing to the insult I must have
inflicted on you.
Do you now understand why I failed to write as frequently as I
would have
wanted?
It has saddened me deeply to hear that you and your wife had to
suffer
so much because of illness. I reiterate my own and my wife’s
deeply felt best
wishes. Also for the completion of your work. My relation
to
you is
clear.
Nothing will change my feelings of friendship and my high esteem
for you.
Your old friend,
E. Husserl
I urge you to please treat this letter with discretion. How I
may stand
scientifically
to
Heidegger I have plainly expressed at every opportunity.
There is now gossip enough, and my personal disappointment with
Heidegger etc.
1
"Unverständlichkeit
schließt Freundschaft aus."
is nobody else's business.