Evans Experientialism  Evans Experientialism
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DID EDMUND HUSSERL | ||||
| Jud Evans | ||||
Is everybody absolutely and totally certain
that the person known as Edmund Husserl
actually
existed?
It seems that the unapodictically, indemonstrable
or unnecessarily true Husserl was not
utterly
sure on this point, for the written
records
of the time show that he was continually
sitting looking at tea-pots on tables
and
wondering if he and the tea-pot actually
existed or not
Clearly if he didn't exist then obviously
he didn't ask any questions regarding
the
existential actuality of the teapot
or himself
in the first place, and therefore somebody
else did - or did they? This is a very
important
subject and is not to be taken lightly,
and
I have a feeling that Husserl's descendants,
[if they exist] would be avidly interested
in the reply, for their own very existence
depends upon an existentially favourable
answer to the perennial question -
"Did
Edmund Husserl actually exist?
Was 'Edmund Husserl' perhaps nothing more
than an imagined character rather in
the
way that Lieutenant Kije was a figment
of
the Regimental Quartermaster in the
Preobrazhenski
Czarist Guards, who invented the officer
in order to receive his pay? As is
well known
he then had to invent a birthday and
a birthplace
and a courtship and a marriage, a death
and
a burial for his phantom soldier. Prokofiev
made this story into his delightful
Lieutenant
Kije Suite, Op. 60 (1934): Kije's Birth;
Song; Kije's Wedding; Troika Song;
Kije's
Burial, etc.
Is it feasible that the imagined 'Edmund
Husserl' was the academic Lieutenant
Kije
of Freiburg University? Is it possible
that
some éminence grise unknown at the University of Freiburg invented
the character we now know as Husserl,
and
was then forced to do the same as the
unfortunate
Russian Paymaster and invent the facts
of
his phantom scholar's life - such as
that
he was born in Prossnitz in Moravia
to milliner
Adolf Abraham Husserl and his wife,
Julie
Husserl neé Selinger?
It meant that this unknown conniving Freiburg
University employee would have been
forced
to write the book in 1887, and the
1st part
of his long tome : the "Prolegomena zur reinen Logik"in 1895, etc.
I suspect that the unknown creator of the
indemonstrably true Husserl may well
have
lived to regret his action in inventing
the
non-existent phenomenological professor,
for whoever he was he certainly let
himself
in for a lot of hard work. Whoever
actually
wrote the stuff though, he certainly
did
future philosophy students a favour,
for
he provided the thinking man of posterity
with some wonderful entertainment and a multitude of
belly-laughs, and brightened up popular
philosophy
with a degree of levity scarcely equalled
even by that great stand-up comic of
the
German lecture halls - the celebrated
W.
C. Fields of Germany - Martin
Heidegger himself [the comedian with
the
red nose and pudding-like expressionless
face, and the little Daschund sausage-dog
called 'Ereignis' under his arm.]
Was 'the Nazi ontological gag-man Martin Heidegger aware of the scam or even involved in the plot? Is it possible that in fact the man behind the pretend-name 'Husserl' was actually none other than the wily conceptual clown Martin Heidegger himself? It would make sense if one remembers that Heidegger's philosophy is often referred to as: 'The Philosophy of Let's Pretend.' It seems strange that the unapodictically true Husserl is said to have named and helped Martin Heidegger to the post of Assistant to the Philosophy Chair at Freiburg after seeing Heidegger's act at Das Musik-Hall Theater Freiburg. The alleged intervention by 'Husserl was enough to secure the vaudevillian a job in the Der Elfenbeinerne Turm-Klub as resident philosophical comedian, for his application was approved by the faculty. Although Heidegger would have only have been
2-years old at the time of the publication
of Husserl's "Prolegomena' in
1887,
he could have easily forged the book
and
the date later, in the infrequent intervals
between licking Hitler's posterior
and having
affairs with underage students. By
using
his high position in the Nazi Party
he may
well have inveigled and paid a corrupt
printer
to cooperate in the book scam? This scenario would make sense, for Heidegger
was a well known liar, and he already had
a felonious and corrupt philosophical record,
with a long string of earlier serious offences
of false ontological pretences, having been
previously caught out red-handed for inventing
a non-existent spiritual 'attendee' he called
'Herr Dasein,' on the basis of which during
the World War Two he was apparently drawing
extra rations from the Nazi Ministry of Food
for this notionally true but unapodictic
lodger, who he claimed was billeted at his
home in a menage a trois relationship with
him and his Nazi-freak wife -- a moon-faced
fanatical fascist Hausfrau called 'Mrs
Elfride Dasein', who was cruelly imprisoned
in the airless cellar to keep her away from
the philandering attentions of the rutting
ontological differentiable wraith Herr. Dasein. Nevertheless, the questions cannot be avoided:
(1) WAS 'EDMUND HUSSERL' ACTUALLY MARTIN
HEIDEGGER IN DISGUISE?
(2) WAS THE DIFFERENCE IN THE TWO LOONY PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES DEVISED AS A CLEVER SMOKESCREEN TO HIDE THIS FACT? (3) WAS THE TRUE AUTHOR OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS ACTUALLY THE ENGLISHMAN JOHN MERRICK (ALSO KNOWN AS THE ELEPHANT MAN) WHO WAS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN IN FREIBURG IN 1884 WHILST DELIVERING A LECTURE ON THE SUBJECT OF: 'OBSERVING ENGLISH TEAPOTS?'
Kije's Birth Song Kije's Wedding Troika Song
Kije's Burial The great Russian film
director
But Prokofiev had written film music before
meeting Eisenstein. His first project
on
returning to Russia in1993, after years
of
self-imposed exile in the West, was
the score
to Lieutenant Kije, a satiric comedy
set
in the court of Czar Paul I. In the
film
the czar misreads the report of one
of his
aides and creates a non-existent name
out
of the syllable 'ki', which ended the
aide's
name, and a Russian expletive ji. The
aide
was afraid to correct an imperial error,
so Lt. Kije had to exist. With a little
connivance
from the courtiers, Kije assumed a
paper
existence which kept everyone hopping
to
prevent the czar from learning the
truth.
After completing the music for the film,
Prokofiev arranged the popular suite
in 1934.
Like the music for Alexander Nevsky
it is
substantially rewritten to stand on
its own
while tracing some of the central incidents
of the film - in this case the history
of
the fictitious hero: his birth, his
romantic
ardour when in love, his marriage (combining
brief pomp with unbuttoned festivity
in the
tavern), a ride in a troika, or carriage
drawn by three horses, to the tune
of a tavern
song, and the death of our hero. This
is
in no way mournful; on the contrary,
once
Kije "dies", all those involved
in maintaining the deception can at
last
breathe a sigh of relief.
Program note by Steven Ledbetter In the film, Tsar Nicholas I misread a military report and created a Lieutenant Kije. Instead of correcting the Tsar's minor mistake, the underlings go along with the mistake. They produce fake reports of Lieutenant Kije's bravery, his romances and wedding. Until one day, the Tsar decides that he really wants to meet the military hero. The underlings now facing the greatest challenge produce a report of Kije's death on the battle field. Lieutenant Kije, an imaginary character is then laid to rest with a real military funeral and pages of honours. | ||||
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Sergei Eisenstein marvelled at Prokofiev's
genius for film music. In the evening
he
would watch a series of edited takes
a few
times, note down the number of seconds
that
certain events lasted, then go off
to his
studio and return the next day at noon
with
the score of that scene perfectly attuned
to the screen action. To Eisenstein,
Prokofiev
was capturing the inner rhythm of the
film
in his music. Indeed, Eisenstein's
Alexander
Nevsky is one of those very rare occasions
when a great film is accompanied by
a superb
score.