Heidegger's Fountain Pens

[PhilProf]

 

Thank you for your wonderful reply! (This is all going to be a little effusive so please forgive me.) Reading an essay by Charles Taylor was the closest I ever got to understanding Heidegger. I've heard he can be better in German, though that is not something I feel comfortable attempting. My sense of his work seemed to be that he was finding ways to attack myths of immediacy that had become (and perhaps still are) philosophical dogma. What ultimately prejudiced me against him--maybe continental philosophy generally--was that many people in my undergraduate life seemed to take cues from Heidegger, Derrida, etc. to use impenetrable prose to avoid having a point.

 

I'm reading Kripke's on Wittgenstein now, and enjoying it very much. I like Quine a lot (though behaviorism leaves me cold). Otherwise, I am sadly ignorant of much of your list. I find myself reading Diamond, Castaneda, and Perry a fair amount. I just finished an anthology called The New Wittgenstein, in which Diamond and Cavell, another favorite, are featured prominently. Alice Crary, one of the editors, is also great.

 

At the moment I am on tenterhooks to hear back from grad schools. I guess that you either work in, or study philosophy. Any advice, help, or conversation you might have I would love.

 

Best.

Good luck with the grad school applications.

[playtime]

Good luck as well! I myself only earned a undergraduate degree in philosophy, but still remain enthusiastic about it even now, years after graduation:). Therefore, I will be of little practical assistance with your ambitions for graduate school. I am sure you know this already, but just in case you do not, Brian Leiter's blog may assist you. Among other questions, he has fielded a number of inquiries concerning the grad school application process......

 

I think your observation, I mean "prejudice", is well-founded:) Impenetrable prose - and aping it! - serves no end to understanding; of course, not all philosophers of the "Continental tradition" (hate the phrase) are opaque. I'm sure you're well familiar with the SEP - the articles are top notch, and the bibliographies are a treasure trove of secondary sources.

 

As for Wittgenstein - Hacker and Baker are excellent sources: try Insight and Illusion.

Routledge recently published a volume on Quine.

As to David Lewis - just jump in head first. His take on modal realism will leave you with an "incredulous stare".

you spoke of the "myth of immediacy" - perhaps Wilfred Sellars take on the "myth of the given" might intrigue you. Try his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

probably should expose yourself to Frege, and from there Dummet - dummet's Origin of Analytic Philosophy is a nice read.

Aussie philosophy? Jackson, Armstrong, JJC Smart.....

GEM Anscombe on Intentionality?

 

And of course perhaps the most significant text published in the last 1000 years - The Philosophy of Jokes by Ted Cohen.

 

 

Just so much to cover.......

Edited January 22, 2015 by playtime

[JDV]

As a serious student of Philosophy and of Heidegger in particular (once upon a time I wrote a Master's Thesis defending Heidegger and his work against charges of Nazism), I'm very sorry to see that, still today, people will dismiss his work out of hand without even having read it. But I guess that happens all the time in the real world, anyway. Their loss.

 

My first philosophy professor advised us to stick to primary sources... that is read the original work whenever you can, wrestle with the ideas yourself and form your own judgements. I think that was the best advice he could have given.

[Ernst Bitterman]

I've been pretty happy reading this thread, as there's been a Monty Python song in my head the whole time.

 

Just out of curiosity, is that indeed an Esterbrook base the MB in the first picture is stuffed into, or was that shape more widely used than I had thought?

[SaintLoup]

As a serious student of Philosophy and of Heidegger in particular (once upon a time I wrote a Master's Thesis defending Heidegger and his work against charges of Nazism), I'm very sorry to see that, still today, people will dismiss his work out of hand without even having read it. But I guess that happens all the time in the real world, anyway. Their loss.

 

My first philosophy professor advised us to stick to primary sources... that is read the original work whenever you can, wrestle with the ideas yourself and form your own judgements. I think that was the best advice he could have given.

I am very sorry I gave you that impression. I did read Being and Time, albeit with the help of a lot of secondary material, and there were moments where I found great pleasure in reading it. As I said, my prejudice grew less out of Heidegger than out of hearing one too many self important classmates ramble on about "being-towards-death" with little to no respect for the intellectual capacities of their peers. This is unfair of me, but the best that can be said is I'm not very programmatic about my prejudices.

 

Good luck as well! I myself only earned a undergraduate degree in philosophy, but still remain enthusiastic about it even now, years after graduation:). Therefore, I will be of little practical assistance with your ambitions for graduate school. I am sure you know this already, but just in case you do not, Brian Leiter's blog may assist you. Among other questions, he has fielded a number of inquiries concerning the grad school application process......

 

I think your observation, I mean "prejudice", is well-founded:) Impenetrable prose - and aping it! - serves no end to understanding; of course, not all philosophers of the "Continental tradition" (hate the phrase) are opaque. I'm sure you're well familiar with the SEP - the articles are top notch, and the bibliographies are a treasure trove of secondary sources.

 

As for Wittgenstein - Hacker and Baker are excellent sources: try Insight and Illusion.

Routledge recently published a volume on Quine.

As to David Lewis - just jump in head first. His take on modal realism will leave you with an "incredulous stare".

you spoke of the "myth of immediacy" - perhaps Wilfred Sellars take on the "myth of the given" might intrigue you. Try his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

probably should expose yourself to Frege, and from there Dummet - dummet's Origin of Analytic Philosophy is a nice read.

Aussie philosophy? Jackson, Armstrong, JJC Smart.....

GEM Anscombe on Intentionality?

 

And of course perhaps the most significant text published in the last 1000 years - The Philosophy of Jokes by Ted Cohen.

 

 

Just so much to cover.......

Thank you for all the advice! Hacker is sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I'll admit I've tended to favor those readings of Wittgenstein that see continuity between the Tractatus and the Investigations, hence Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, etc. Wilfred Sellars is great, and was indeed echoed in my phrase "myth of immediacy". Quine...I probably need to read beyond From a Logical Point of View. As for the rest, I guess I have my work cut out for me. I admit it's putting a little courage in my heart about David Lewis. Perhaps I will just jump right in.

 

Good luck with the grad school applications.

Thank you!

[AndrewThomas]

Good luck with your applications! It can be a daunting, daunting process, but well worth it.

 

And in defense of Martin H...It's good to remember that a lot of the critiques of Heidegger, either as impenetrable or as politically indefensible, are really arising out of the divides inside philosophy. As a grad student in the humanities, it's always amazed me how divided philosophy is, to the point where it's weird to me to even think that Heidegger is in the same field or discipline as Quine. I'm at an Ivy with a top 10 philosophy department and like most anglophone departments it's extremely analytic and pretty hostile to continental. They have no one on faculty who would teach Heidegger or any of the 20th century continental folks. Obviously there are exceptions, but the divide is just weird sometimes (and I think really accounts for some of the hostility to people like Derrida). Partly because of the training/culture of my field and partly because of my own predilections, I don't find very much that interests me on the analytic side, whereas I've found Levinas, Heidegger, and Ricoeur really useful for my own work.

Edited January 22, 2015 by AndrewThomas

[AnnieB123]

The other question, of course, is whether those pens are present-at-hand or ready-to-hand.

 

 

/clap

[prf5]

I have found a pretty decent picture of Heidegger's desk.

 

 

You win the name contest, Zuhanden-sein. Do you know where and when the picture was taken?

[zuhandensein]

 

Do you know where and when the picture was taken?

 

 

The picture of the Montblanc was taken at his house in Freiburg, on Friday 23rd September 1966, if my information is correct. Digne Meller Markovicz was the photographer.

 

I am very sorry to find now that in the original post I did not mention that both pictures were cropped to show the pens. And it is too late to edit that post right now. My apologies for any misunderstanding this could have may caused.

 

I think I still keep the original one/s. Feel free to send me a PM if anyone is interested.

Edited January 23, 2015 by zuhandensein

[CAG_1787]

I always take a certain pleasure out of viewing the desks of great minds. I mean, I love finding out the pens they used, but their overall desks are just as insightful into their personalities. Thanks for sharing these!

[JDV]

..I'd really much rather have a look at Nietzsche's pens.. anyone have a pic of those?

[zuhandensein]

Someone was interested on the original picture, so I decided to add these bits here also:

 

Here is a Flickr account where I occasionally post some pictures. I have uploaded the original uncropped ones (for the sake of the blotter!):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128881802@N07/

 

 

I will keep them there a few days, so please download them to your computer if your are interested (after these days you are of course welcome to PM me).

 

I also found that the date of the picture with the Montblanc is the one of the famous Spiegel interview:

http://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html

[zuhandensein]

..I'd really much rather have a look at Nietzsche's pens.. anyone have a pic of those?

 

I think he had his breakdown and stopped writing around 1890, so I am not sure if he ever had a fountain pen, i.e. a pen with a deposit for ink and a feeder, or he only knew dip pens... I would also like to know about this point. What is certain is that he owned a typewriter: http://www.malling-hansen.org/friedrich-nietzsche-and-his-typewriter-a-malling-hansen-writing-ball.html

[SaintLoup]

Someone was interested on the original picture, so I decided to add these bits here also:

 

Here is a Flickr account where I occasionally post some pictures. I have uploaded the original uncropped ones (for the sake of the blotter!):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128881802@N07/

 

 

I will keep them there a few days, so please download them to your computer if your are interested (after these days you are of course welcome to PM me).

 

I also found that the date of the picture with the Montblanc is the one of the famous Spiegel interview:

http://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html

 

Thank you for the link! The second picture made me think, 'oh dear. Martin, your flowers have died.'.

[JDV]

I never thought about whether Nietzsche used a fountain of a dip pen...but I'm guessing it was dip. I remember looking at pictures of his manuscripts and it looked like a dip pen ( I always imagined a quill, lol).

I also remember seeing studies of how his handwriting changed as he came closer and closer to his breakdown..and I remember hearing that he did write in his final days before collapse.

 

Someone mentioned Joan Stambaugh's translation of Being and Time. I remember when she first proposed it as a project in NYC, it was discouraged at first...looks like she came back with it anyway and it has taken hold. In my day Macqaurrie Robinson was it. Joan's best work, IMO is her book on Nietzsche's Thought of Eternal Return.

 

If the fellow considering grad studies in philo likes, you may contact me and I'll be happy to give you my best advice.

[playtime]

Not necessarily sympathetic to Henri-Levy himself, but a propos nonetheless....

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/why-read-heidegger_b_6570986.html

[JDV]

 

"Being" precisely the point.

 

On a more serious note, perhaps a witty aside is more malapropos given Heidegger's unapologetic stance. Yet his works are too significant to ignore.....

 

..Agreed

[meiers]

The other question, of course, is whether those pens are present-at-hand or ready-to-hand.

They would be ready-to-hand or "zu-handen" on Heidegger's desk.

Edited December 20, 2015 by meiers

[RwindleIII]

This thread is great!

[playtime]

This thread is great!

ACTUALly........