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Notes on video lecture:
Husserl, the Great War, and the Meaning of Death
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on June 13, 2016 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Napoleonic, students, physical, patriotism, primal, Verdun, catastrophe, sacrifice, death, Landauer, trench, Second, dumbfounded, encompassing, Fichte, humanity, library, solidarity, Opfer, redemptive, Münsterberg, Freiburg, vision, French, German, father, content, philosopher, Brussels, Socrates, complexity, son, political
in 1914, the destruction of Leuven
German intellectuals took defense of the cause
Husserl's support of the world implicated him in the support of German actions during the war including the destruction of the Leuven library
it is an irony that Husserl's own manuscripts were saved on the eve of the World War
one hundred years after the war to end all wars, we look back with a kind of amazement at how an entire generation of sophisticated intellectuals like Husserl seemingly lost all sense of reason and philosophical orientation in supporting the war
Gustave : "Nothing failed so much in the war as the intellectuals"
this has a bitter truth to it
but this bitter truth belies a certain
this complexity is expressed in Husserl's ambiguous attitude toward the war, what one might call the Jekyll and Hyde relationship he has to the war
on the one hand, Husserl is a university professor, a public intellectual
on the other hand, Husserl is also a , whose two sons fought in the war, one who was killed at the Battle of Verdun in 1916
in 1917, the war had taken its toll on and academics who had been sent to the front
1916 failed offensive at
increasingly deteriorating home front due to economic sanctions
Husserl gave three lectures on Fichte's ideal of humanity
University of
organized at the behest of the Ministry of War
Kriegsnot seminars
mostly for soldiers who were wounded or who had seen service who were now returning to the university
many of these soldiers would be sent back after a brief university experience
repeated these lectures twice in 1918
the first a few months before the Ludendorff spring offensive
the second one week before the end of the war
functioning as a university professor
an educator who is delivering not only a philosophical message but a message
1918 daughter's letter to a friend
mentions Husserl's enthusiasm for the war, that it was not lost
saw a complete victory
staging of the of these lectures
what Husserl understands the significance is of in the context of the war in 1917-1918
makes a connection between the First World War and the Befreiungskrieg of 1813
"the depths of the soul"
Innerlichkeit
"the saving power"
of the war
the power
the spiritual relationship of Germany to itself
articulates a certain philosophical and political vision of
"Need and death are today's teachers. For many years now, death is not an exceptional event which permits itself to hide and to have its majesty debased through splendid congregations under piles of bouquets and wreaths. Death has again won back its wholly rite. It is again the great reminder of eternity in time."
death is an educator
by implication, the as educator is the educator of death, who teaches how to know to die
1. death is tied to a notion of remembrance
to anamnesis in a Platonic sense
in that sacrifice that soldiers are called to, eternal values are re-actualized, recalled, made present once again
2. death is a
for the truth of German Idealism
the German idealism which had been forged in teh context of the Wars, can be finally realized again
so what is at stake in the First World War is German idealism
soldiers/students perception of Husserl's speeches
the war will be victorious
the German is something which no amount of philosophical speaking can avoid
Husserl's letters
a voice not as the public intellectual and professor
but more intimately, in the private setting of correspondence
in reaction to the death of his in 1916
to his wife:
after Wolfgang had been wounded in 1915
on a postcard from
"Wolfgang is extraordinarily beautiful and well accommodated here, and has a voracious appetite."
1916 sent back to front
to his colleague Hugo at Harvard University
"The feelings that every death means is that it is a voluntary and this gives a lofty dignity and raises the individual suffering into a sphere above all individuality. We hardly live any longer as private persons."
individual sacrifice raises the individual
elevating the German nation to a sense of
something Husserl felt with regard to his own son
Wolfgang was killed in the Battle of Verdun in 1916 trying to storm a
a note by Husserl where he tries to imagine and visualize the precise location of his son's death
talks about who is buried where in relation to him, both German and
builds an arc which encompasses not only the passage from the individual to the anonymous, but from German death to French death
death becomes all-
reflects the reality of being killed in the First World War
the majority of causalities did not leave remains
no identifiable graves
the word " " is used frequently, which means both victim and sacrifice
the ambiguity of sacrifice between the personal and the public, the anonymous and the individual, is something that would forever haunt Husserl's thinking in his own reflections on the nature of and sacrifice
letter to Arnold Metzger in September 1919
a few months of the one year anniversary of the war
"I am not called to become the leader of a struggling for blessed life. In the passionate drive of the war years, I had to recognize this. My daimonion had warned me."
the daimonion was the voice that referred to told him not what he should do but what he should not do