Postcard from Edmund Husserl written 25.11.1921

Author Edmund Husserl

Category foreign researchers, incoming correspondence

Archive The Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences

Date of creation 25.11.1921

Reference code in archive Biblioteka PAU

Resource type postcard

Subject matter academic issues, didactic issues, personal issues, publication issues

Field phenomenology, philosophy

Tags #academic publications, #academic work, #Alexander Pfänder, #autonomy, #Bell Foundation, #child's birth, #congratulations, #conversion, #correspondence, #didactic work, #Edith Stein, #Edmund Husserl, #friendship relations, #Ingarden's son, #Japanese, #Martin Heidegger, #Max Niemeyer, #phenomenology, #philosophical seminar, #royalty, #Yearbook

Freiburg, 25. XI. 21

Dear Friend,

It is difficult for me to write you in great detail although I feel the urge to express myself to you, whom I consider to be one of my closest friends. My wife and I are delighted to read your letters. Everything that you write about your work and your plans (unfortunately, you don’t write much about your life and nothing about your teaching work) interests me vividly. I would be delighted to include any of your works in the Yearbook VI. You certainly know how high the standards are that we must meet at this point, and you will certainly do your best. Please send your manuscript as soon as finished and fully edited to Professor Pfänder, who is now the managing editor.

My wife and I would like to congratulate you and your wife on the birth of your second son. May he grow up to be an honest and pure man and may the new world to which he will belong become a better one. Is your wife also interested in philosophy? We would like to meet her. But when could you visit us?! I have a lot to tell you: I have made great progress and I have worked a lot since you left. I have been editing my extremely long manuscripts for several months now and I am planning a big systematic work that could serve as the foundation of ph[enomenology] from the bottom up.14 This semester, I only read a two-hour lecture and hold one seminar. Therefore, I have more time to focus on my work. In the seminar, I have once again many very advanced young philosophers of which some are graduates. We even have three Japanese lecturers (one of each from the three Japanese universities), who will be staying for a minimum of one year to study ph[enomenology]. I have to hold my lectures in the lecture halls (usually the largest), but nevertheless, I have again introduced a format that allows for dispute. What you wrote about Miss Stein saddened me – she did not write to me herself. Unfortunately, it is a great conversion movement – a sign of internal misery in souls. A real ph[ilosopher] can only be free: the essence of ph[ilosophy] is radical autonomy, in exactly the way you see it. I have asked Niemeyer to send you Yearbook V from the Bell Foundation of Ph[ilosophy]. In addition, I asked him to grant you a higher remuneration. Hopefully, it will be approved. Dr. Heidegger (who has a beautiful effect on others) just walked in and he sends his regards!

Sincerely yours, E. Husserl