Views and Perspectives

In a famous passage, Proust not only comes back to the ground-breaking involuntary memories which paved the way for his entire narrative; remarkably, he connects them with death :  “[M]y apprehensions on the subject of my death [ mes inquiétudes au sujet de ma mort ]”, the narrator says, “had ceased from the moment when I had unconsciously recognised [ reconnu inconsciemment ] the taste of the little madeleine because at that moment the being that I then had been was an extra-temporal being and in consequence indifferent to the vicissitudes of the future.”  It seems as if what the narrator calls the ”unconscious recognition” of a past moment in the present for the first time in his life illumines death for the narrator. It does so by removing his worries or uncertainties ( inquiétudes ). Memory takes away uncertainty, both the uncertainty about “my death” and the “vicissitudes of the future”. My death will no longer belong to the vicissitudes of the future, because my death

Freud’s disciple Oskar Pfister attributes the condensed life impression which may occur due to the shock experience of imminent death to anti-cathexis; the psyche, Pfister claims, offers consolation by  erroneously suggesting that the selection of contemplated experiences make up for a whole life. [1]   To Pfister’s deprecatory account of enhanced recollection at death, I prefer Bergson’s. Bergson emphasises that imminent death gradually removes our perception-determining interest and allows for a completely disinterested life-view. [2]   Interestingly, both accounts rest upon the same argument (viz., interest, self-protection). Bergson’s, though, presupposes less than Pfister’s while being more inclusive, or so it seems. If, as Bergson suggests, the removal of self-interest equally removes obstacles for recollection and accordingly activates memory, the result will be a more embracing or comprehensive consciousness and an invigorated personhood.  The latter would b

The recollection-provoking assets of dreaming are salient: will, and the concomitant control and filter function of the mind, become gradually extinguished. As a result, the recollective function is strengthened: “ der Schlaf [macht] häufig den im Wachen vorangegangen Prozess des Vergessens rückgängig ”. (Carl d u Prel, Philosophie der Mystik , p. 289) As a rule, dream content is drawn from memory even though it can only be recognised as such, if at all, upon awakening. As a matter of fact, dreaming can activate recollection without corresponding recognition: “ es findet Reproduktion ohne Erinnerung statt ”. ( ib. , p. 290)   If we take as an example Freud’s famous dream about Irma’s injection (quoted in his Traumdeutung ), Freud can only recognise (that is, consciously re -mind, re -member) the dream events after awakening and upon subsequently reflecting on his dream (even more so upon a deliberate analysis of the dream). Awakening can make us ‘recollective’, that is, it

The presence of the face has a stabilising virtue as regards time and space. Compare the following passage in Max Picard, in which presence and eternity are succeeded by ‘temporarily’ expectant time and space. “So warten Zeit und Raum still vor der Gegenwärtigkeit des Menschengesichtes, sie warten, dass die Ewigkeit hier zu ihnen trete. “Das Menschengesicht aber steht da wie ein Platzhalter der Ewigkeit, ruhig und strahlend. “Dann auf einmal haben Zeit und Raum lange genug gewartet, sie hören auf, stille zu stehen und brechen wieder auf. Aber die Zeit bewegt sich rhythmischer nun, wenn sie hier gewartet hat, und der Raum dehnt sich jetzt geordneter als vorher in seine Weite. “Das ist das Geschenk der Gegenwärtigkeit an den Menschen: er ist durch sie aus Zeit und  Raum herausgehoben”. [1] As appears from this passage, presence is a qualitative category, both affecting time and space with relativity (‘surrounding’ them with presence), and inculcating them with conte

Ludwig Klages  (1872-1956). The following anecdote shows that Klages combines a sharp intuition of what he calls genius loci – the guardian spirit of a specific location – with an overall premonition of imminent threat.  Needless to say that Klages’ sensitivity to imminent threat pervades his entire philosophy (which is strongly inspired by environmental concerns and worries about the increasing agony of nature). Biographically, this sensitivity seems to have densified in 1910, during a short visit to a city park in Vienna with his host, a local friend who had invited him to his house. During the walk, Klages suddenly hears the vibrating strings of an Aeolian harp that had been hung in the trees. He responds to the sound by spontaneously quoting two lines from the Romantic German poet Nikolaus Lenau: “ Wie auf dem Lager sich der Seelenkranke,  So wirft im Wind der Strauch sich hin und her.”   His amazed host, whose wife happened to be severely ill at the time, info

Here is an interesting website on the enigmatic rabbi Monsieur Chouchani, the teacher of Levinas and Elie Wiesel.

Paul Kammerer (1880-1926)  was a forerunner of  C.G. Jung’s synchronicity concept (he coined the term ‘seriality’). Author of Das Gesetz der Serie (1919), Kammerer was a widely respected researcher of reptiles and insects. A (probably false) accusation of scientific fraud with midwife toads made Kammerer take his own life.  Just as Jung, Kammerer kept a log-book in which he registered samples of the coincidences or synchronicities he experienced from the age of twenty to forty. He listed these samples in Das Gesetz der Serie and subdivided them over the following categories: 1) numbers, 2) words and names, 3) persons, 4) mail, particularly letters, 5) dreams, 6) memories, 7) music, 8) science, 9) casualties and accidents, 10) crimes, 11) travels, and 12) other cases and events. [1] From the almost one hundred listed coincidences, I will only select two which are directly related to Paul Kammerer himself and to his research. On 16 February 1917 Kammerer reads an article in

Hans Driesch  (1867-1941) was both a philosopher and a scientist. In fact, he started as a biologist and only later became a philosopher.  In his autobiography, Driesch mentions the year 1898 as a major turning point in his life. Not only did he definitively convert from materialism to vitalism; he also met his wife, Margarethe Reifferscheidt. This coincidence, which regards two key moments (public and private life), already has some significance in itself. As his autobiography shows, private life and scientific research were insolubly linked. Driesch became a major supporter of biological vitalism by addressing and proposing solutions for the conundrum of morphogenesis. Beyond his scientific successes, his marital life was happy, and his wife accompanied him on his many travels. Interestingly, there also seems to be another link between the private and the public (apart from their personal impact ).  After having described how in 1899 he married in Naples, Driesch adds t