The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

Volume 9, Special Issue

Theodore Kisiel, Thomas Sheehan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317548157
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

Part I
Student Years, 1910–1917

1. Curricula Vitae

As Thomas Sheehan observes in "Heidegger's Lehrjahre" his biographical-philosophical account of Heidegger's student years, both the "Curriculum Vitae 1913" and "Curriculum Vitae 1915" were part of the package of obligatory documentation in support of the application for an advanced degree at a German university. "Curriculum Vitae 1913" was accordingly submitted with Heidegger's application for the first advanced degree of doctor of philosophy; and the requisite, more detailed "Curriculum Vitae 1915" was submitted for the habituation level, which brought with it the license to teach at the university level. The latter accordingly spells out what university committees nowadays call a "research program," a direction of investigation that the candidate proposes to take in embarking on his or her career, and has already taken with the second dissertation or habitation text submitted with the application. Thus, Heidegger's narrative of his intellectual development up to this point concludes with the commitment to a "life's work" of "a comprehensive presentation of medieval logic and psychology in the light of phenomenology, with a simultaneous consideration of the historical position of individual medieval thinkers." This statement alone in its basic terms already gives us much to mull over in the mutations and shifts that they will undergo as the young Heidegger rapidly develops toward his more characteristic insights. Heinrich Rickert, Heidegger's director for the habilitation, had, for example, in his evaluation of it (see appendix I), already advised the young Heidegger against recourse to the "historical" in favor of a more strictly "systematic" approach to the problems. But Heidegger will persist, despite some hesitation expressed in "Curriculum Vitae 1915" (perhaps to appease Rickert) in regarding the two "simultaneously" or, to use a Laskian term employed now and then in the habilitation, as "equiprimordial" or "equally original" (gleich ursprünglich) in a phenomenological approach.

The recollective "Vita" of 1957 is a far richer statement of Heidegger's influences, already purportedly felt during the student years at least by way of incubation. It is of course richer because of the vantage of hindsight, a retrospective invested with an overview of the suggestive vectors that were in fact taken up and pursued in the intervening forty years. It therefore must be regarded as a bit more fanciful and quasi-factual reminiscence, as compared to die immediate and virtually contemporary witness out of the times that the prior vitae provide. It is nevertheless too rich to ignore, as Heidegger's own nostalgic account of his student years, the one he himself invoked as an entry into his Early Writings.

Curriculum Vitae 1913

I, Martin Heidegger, was born in Messkirch (Baden) on September 26, 1889, the son of the sexton and master cooper Friedrich Heidegger and of Johanna, nee Kempf, both of diem citizens of Baden and members of the Catholic Church. From 1899 to 1903 I attended the middle school of my hometown, and in the fall of 1903 I entered the first year of the gymnasium in Constance. Since 1906, after the third year of high school, I attended the Berthold Gymnasium in Freiburg in Breisgau, and there in the summer of 1909 I passed the final comprehensive examination. In the fall of the same year I matriculated at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau as a theology student. In the winter semester of 1911 I changed departments and enrolled in the Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. I attended lecture courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and botany. Throughout the entire period of my university studies I attended lecture courses in philosophy.

Curriculum Vitae 1915

I, Martin Heidegger, born on September 26, 1889, in Messkirch (Baden), the son of the sexton and master cooper Friedrich Heidegger and of his wife Johanna nee Kempf, attended elementary and middle school in Messkirch. Beginning in 1900, I received private instruction in Latin, so that in 1903 I was able to enter the first-year class [Untertertia] of the gymnasium in Constance. I am grateful to Dr. Konrad Gröber,¹ at that time rector of the minor seminary and currently pastor in the city of Constance, for decisive intellectual influence. After completing the third year of high school [Untersekunda] I attended the Berthold Gymnasium in Freiburg in Breisgau until reception of the high-school baccalaureate (summer 1909).

During the fourth year [Obersekunda], when instruction in mathematics moved away from merely solving problems and more onto the theoretical plane, my preference for this discipline became a really focused interest, which extended to physics as well. Incentives also came from religion classes, which led me to do extensive reading in the theory of biological evolution.

In the last year of high school it was above all the Plato classes of Gymnasium Professor Widder,² who died several years ago, that introduced me to philosophical problems more consciously, though not yet with theoretical rigor.

After completing the gymnasium, I entered the University of Freiburg in Breisgau in the winter semester of 1909, and I remained there without interruption until 1913. At first I studied theology. The lecture courses in philosophy that were prescribed at the time did not satisfy me much, so I resorted to studying Scholastic textbooks on my own. They provided me with some schooling in formal logic, but as regards philosophy they did not give me what I was looking for and had found in the area of apologetics through the works of Herman Schell.³

Besides the Small Summa of Thomas Aquinas and some of the works of Bonaventure, the Logical Investigations of Edmund Husserl was decisive for the course of my scientific development. The earlier work by the same author, Philosophy of Arithmetic, at the same time placed mathematics in a whole new light for me.

After three semesters, my intense engagement with philosophical problems, along with the tasks of my own professional studies [in theology], resulted in severe exhaustion.

My heart trouble, which had come about earlier from playing too much sports, broke out so severely that any later employment in the service of the church was taken to be extremely questionable. Therefore in the winter semester of 1911-19121 enrolled in the Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

My philosophical interest was not lessened by the study of mathematics. On the contrary, since I no longer had to follow the compulsory lecture courses in philosophy, I could attend a larger number of lecture courses in philosophy and above all could take part in the seminar exercises conducted by Privy Councilor Rickert.⁴ In this new school I learned first and foremost to understand philosophical problems as problems, and I acquired insight into the essence of logic, the philosophical discipline that still interests me the most. At the same time I acquired a correct understanding of recent philosophy from Kant onward, a matter that I found sparsely and inadequately treated in the Scholastic literature. My basic philosophical convictions remained those of Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy. With time I recognized that the intellectual wealth stored up in it must permit of—indeed, demands—a far more fruitful exploitation and utilization. Therefore, in my dissertation on The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism, I took my bearings both from modern logic and from basic Aristotelian-Scholastic premises and sought to find a basis there for further investigations of a central problem of logic and epistemology. On the basis of this work, I was allowed by the Philosophical Faculty of Freiburg University to take the oral examination for the doctorate, which I passed on July 26, 1913.

As a result of my study of Fichte and Hegel, my intense engagement with Rickert 's The Limits of Concept Formation in the Natural Sciences, the investigations of Dilthey, and not least of all lecture courses and seminar exercises with Privy Councilor Finke,⁵ my aversion to history, which had been nurtured in me by my predilection for mathematics, was thoroughly destroyed. I recognized that philosophy should not be oriented one-sidedly either to mathematics and natural science or to history, but that the latter, precisely as the history of spirit [Geistesgeschichte], can fructify philosophy to a far greater degree.

My increasing interest in history facilitated for me a more intense engagement with the philosophy of the Middle Ages, an engagement that I recognized as necessary for a radical extension of Scholasticism, For me this engagement consists not primarily in a presentation of the historical relations between individual thinkers, but rather in an interpretative understanding of the theoretical content of their philosophy with the means provided by modern philosophy. This resulted in my investigation into The Doctrine of Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus.

This investigation has also engendered in me the plan for a comprehensive presentation of medieval logic and psychology in the light of modern phenomenology, together with a consideration of the historical position of individual medieval thinkers. If I am permitted to assume the duties of scientific research and teaching, my life's work will be dedicated to the realization of this plan.

A Recollective "Vita" 1957

The indicated path, in retrospect and in prospect, appears at every juncture in a different light, with a different tone, and stirs different interpretations. Several traits, however, although hardly recognizable to oneself, run continuously throughout the regions of thought. This facet is shown in die little pamphlet, The Pathway, written in 1947-1948.

At the humanistic gymnasiums in Constance and Freiburg in Breisgau, between 1903 and 1909, I enjoyed fruitful learning under excellent teachers of Greek, Latin, and German. Likewise, besides my formal education—or rather, during it—I acquired everything that would last and persist over the years.

In 1905 I read, for the first time, Adalbert Stifter's Motley Stones [Bunte Steine]. In 1907, a fatherly friend from my hometown and later the archbishop of Freiburg in Breisgau, Dr. Conrad Gröber,⁶ presented me with Franz Brentano's dissertation, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862). Its many lengthy quotations from the Greek original took, for me, the place of Aristotle's collected works, which nevertheless were on my student desk one year later, borrowed from my boarding school library. The quest for the unity in the multiplicity of be-ing, then only obscurely, unsteadily, and helplessly stirring within me, remained, through many upheavals, erratic detours, and perplexities, the relentless impetus for the treatise Being and Time which appeared two decades later.

In 1908 I found my way to Hölderlin through a small Reclam paperback of his poems, still in my possession.

In 1909 I began my studies by taking theology for four semesters at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau. In the following years, philosophy, the humanities, and the natural sciences completed my course of study. Beginning in 1909 I attempted, although without adequate guidance, to grasp the meaning of Husserl's Logical Investigations. Rickert's⁷ seminars introduced me to the writings of Emil Lask⁸ who, mediating between Rickert and Husserl, attempted also to listen to the Greek thinkers.

What the exciting years between 1910 and 1914 meant for me cannot be adequately expressed; I can only indicate a bit of it by a selective listing: the second, significantly enlarged edition of Nietzsche's The Will to Power, the works of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky in translation, the awakening interest in Hegel and Schelling, Rilke's works and Trakl's poems, Dilthey's Collected Writings.

The decisive, and therefore ineffable, influence on my own later academic career came from two men who should be expressly mentioned here in memory and gratitude; the one was Carl Braig,⁹ professor of systematic theology, who was the last in the tradition of the speculative school of Tübingen which gave significance and scope to Catholic theology through its dialogue with Hegel and Schelling. The other one was the art historian Wilhelm Vöge.¹⁰ The impact of each lecture by these two teachers lasted through the long semester breaks, which I always spent in uninterrupted work at my parents' house in my hometown of Messkirch.

What later succeeded and failed on the path that I chose defies self-interpretation, which could only name that which does not belong to one's self. And therein resides everything essential.

The three vitae in this chapter—"Curriculum Vitae 1913," "Curriculum Vitae 1915," and "A Recollective 'Vita' 1957"—have been edited, with appended notes, by Theodore Kisiel.

Heidegger's original manuscript of "Curriculum Vitae 1915" was discovered by Thomas Sheehan in 1977 in the archives of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Freiburg and was first published in Sheehan's translation in "Heidegger's Lehrjahre," 78-80, with a transcription of the original German manuscript appended at 115-17. A different transcription of Heidegger's handwritten copy was later found by Hugo Ott in the Stuttgart archive of the Ministry of Culture of Baden-Württemberg and was published in Hugo Ott, "Der junge Martin Heidegger: Gymnasial-Konviktszeit und Studium," Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 104 (1984), 315-25, esp. 323-25, and again in Ott, Heidegger, 85-87/84-86, with an English translation by Allan Blunden. "Curriculum Vitae 1915" has recently been reprinted in GA 16, 37-39. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Freiburg University Library for access to the original manuscript.

What is here entitled "A Recollective 'Vita' 1957" is in fact Heidegger's inaugural address upon his nomination for membership in the Heidelberg Academy of the Sc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction to the First Edition
• Chronological Overview
• Part I: Student Years, 1910–1917
• Part II: Early Freiburg Period, 1919–1923
• Part III: The Marburg Period, 1923–1928
• Appendices: Supplements by Heidegger's Contemporaries
• Annotated Glossary
• Bibliography of GA Editions of Heidegger's Lecture Courses
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Greek Terms
• Index of Latin Terms