11.

Letter to Karl Lwith on his

Philosophical Identity

Karl Lwith1 interrupted his philosophical studies with Moritz Geiger,

Alexander Pfnder, and Max Weber at the University of Munich during the postwar
revolutionary turmoil in that city to come to study with Edmund Husserl in
Freiburg in SS 1919, only to be captivated by the destructive brilliance of his hitherto unknown phenomenological assistant, Privatdocent Martin Heidegger. Heidegger in turn was likewise impressed by this urbane cosmopolitan and war veteran

This letter was translated by Gary Steiner and edited by Theodore Kisiel. The English
translation of it was first published in Karl Lwith, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, ed. Richard Wolin, trans. Gary Steiner (New York: Columbia University Press,
1995), 23539, 29192. Permission from Columbia University Press to republish it here
is gratefully acknowledged. The original German text, edited by Hartmut Tietjen, was first
published in Dietrich Papenfuss and Otto Pggeler (eds.), Zur philosophischen Aktualitt
Heideggers 2: Im Gesprch der Zeit (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990), 2730. A more accurate transcript of the letter from Dr. Klaus Stichweh, curator of the Lwith papers, enabled
me to correct two significant errors in the published German text, which are noted in
brackets in the translated text.
1. Karl Lwith (January 9, 1897May 25, 1973), philosopher and historian. Doctorate at Munich with Moritz Geiger on Nietzsche in 1923, habilitation at Marburg with
Heidegger in 1928 on the phenomenological-historical work, Das Individuum in der Rolle
des Mitmenschen [The Individual in the Role of Fellow Human Being]. Privatdocent at
Marburg until 1934. Rockefeller Fellow in Rome 19341936. Professor of Philosophy at
the Royal University of Sendai, Japan, until 1941. Hartford Theological Seminary
19411949. New School of Social Research 19491952. University of Heidelberg
19521964, thereafter emeritus. Major publications: Max Weber und Karl Marx (1932),
Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen (1935), Jakob Burckhardt (1936),
Smtliche Schriften in 9 volumes (19811988). Works in English: Meaning in History
(1949), From Hegel to Nietzsche (1941; tr. 1964), Max Weber and Karl Marx (1932; tr.
1982), My Life in Germany Before and After 1933 (1986; tr. 1994), Heidegger: Thinker
in a Destitute Time (1953; tr. 1995), The Occasional Decisionism of Carl Schmitt
(1935; tr. 1995)the latter two in Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, ed. Richard
Wolin (1995)and Nietzsches Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (1935; tr.
1997).
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and
Phenomenological Philosophy IX (2009): 1039
ISSN 1533-7472 ISBN 978-0-9701679-9-6

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BECOMING HEIDEGGER

whose gasping voice still betrayed his severe lung wound. His letters soon reflected
an increasing familiarity and remarkable openness with his very first habilitation
student in their exchanges of books, ideas, opinions, and academic gossip, against a
running record of the stages of development of Heideggers early thought. On
March 23, 1920, he writes to Lwith: The more I read Jasperss book [Psychology
of Worldviews], the more flaccid it becomes. The positively new in it is more in the
order, in the catalogue, which is basically unphilosophical. . . . For we do philosophy
not in order to hoard information and propositions, but in order to structure life.
And this does not aim to be a worldview-philosophy! On September 1, 1920: I
am now destroying myself, which is taking a great deal of effort. On September 13,
on his decision to do a seminar on Descartes in conjunction with a course on the
phenomenology of religion in WS 19201921: In regarding the Cogito, I must
take the whole of Christian philosophy into consideration, since I want to regard it
backwards, in reverse order. . . . Even Kierkegaard can only be theologically unhinged
(as I understand theology and will develop in the winter semester). . . . What is of
importance in Kierkegaard must be appropriated anew, but in a strict critique that
grows out of our own situation. Blind appropriation is the greatest seduction . . . Not
everyone who talks of existence has to be a Kierkegaardian. My approaches have already been misinterpreted in this way. But I at least want something else, which is
not much, namely, what I vitally experience as necessary in todays factic situation
of upheaval, without regard to whether this will lead to a crisis or an acceleration of
the decline [of the West].Since I myself want to learn something in my seminars,
by way of objections and difficulties, which are posed with the necessary acuity only
when the participants are equal to the matter at hand, I have for now decided to
forego a seminar on the phenomenology of religion. For, to be frank, all that would
come of it is the kind of babble in the philosophy of religion that I want to eliminate
from philosophy, this talk about the religious that is familiar to us from reference
works. Heideggers reluctance even to prepare a lecture course on the phenomenology of religion is underscored by a remark made by the old man (der Alte:
Husserl!) that Heidegger relays to Lwith on October 20: I myself am no longer
even regarded as a philosopher at all, I am still really a theologian.
The letter of August 19, 1921 translated in full below thus proceeds from a
series of frank discussions between a young instructor and an intimate circle of
favored students who had formed a phenomenology club that met on occasion
in mid-semester, some of whom were on the verge of completing one phase of
their academic studies, Lwith his first doctorate (in early 1923) and Oskar
Becker2 his second doctorate, or habilitation (1922). Heideggers contrast be
2. Oskar Becker (September 5, 1889November 13, 1964), philosopher and mathematician. Doctorate at Leipzig in 1914, habilitation under Husserl at Freiburg in 1922.
His habilitation thesis, Beitrge zur phnomenologischen Begrndung der Geometrie

LETTER TO KARL LWITH

105

tween Lwith, the existentielly inclined philosopher, and Becker, the scientifically oriented philosopher, is made in conjunction with this early attempt to explain the intent and comprehensive objectivity (Gegenstndlichkeit) of his own
situation-oriented, and thus formally indicative hermeneutics of facticity. For
the phenomenological matter (Sache) and so its relevant situationality (Sachlichkeit, what matters most), here already based on the hermeneutically distributive principle To each their own facticity, their own I am, is radically
different from the vaunted neutral objectivity (Objektivitt) of the modern sciences. The immediate background of the discussion is the postwar restructuring
of the German university in a milieu charged by the doomsday sentiment of the
impending decline of the West (Oswald Spengler).

L etter to Karl Lwith on his Ph ilosophical Identity

August 19, 1921

Dear Mr. Lwith,
Your letter addresses two issues: 1) a justification of yourself, and 2) the correct interpretation of my philosophy. A year ago I told you from Messkirch what
it is I am looking for; and I said the same to Becker (I have never spoken about this
matter to any other human being) for only one reason: you have embarked on the
path of earning a doctorate at the university. It makes no difference to me what
people think of the title, how others attain it, etc. I take the matter just as seriously
as I would take it for myself.
I am not in a position to judge the extent to which this chosen path, as a possibility of existence, is related to your attitude (completely independent of me)
about scientific philosophy (more about this below). I must take you as you pres
und ihrer physikalischen Anwendungen [Contributions to the Phenomenological Foundation of Geometry and its Physical Applications], appeared in Husserls Jahrbuch fr
Philosophie und phnomenologische Forschung VI (1923). Succeeded Heidegger as Husserls
assistant in 1923; both he and Heidegger were co-editors of the Jahrbuch when Heideggers
Being and Time appeared in it in 1927 along with Beckers Mathematische Existenz. Untersuchungen zur Logik und Ontologie mathematischer Phnomene. [Mathematical Existence: Investigations on the Logic and Ontology of Mathematical Phenomena]. Associate
Professor at Freiburg in 1928, Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at Bonn from
1931 until his retirement in 1954. Some major publications: Untersuchungen ber den
Modalkalkl [Investigations in Modal Calculus](1952), Das mathematische Denken der
Antike [Mathematical Though in Antiquity] (1957), Gre und Grenze der mathematischen Denkweise [The Greatness and Limit of the Mathematical Way of Thought] (1959),
Dasein und Dawesen: Gesammelte philosophische Aufstze [Being-here and Essence-there:
Collected Philosophical Essays] (1963).

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ent yourself to mewhich does not mean that I have always seen you primarily
and properly as my doctoral candidate. In connection with scientific work, I have
(because I have a greater concern for you than for others) a certain obligation to offer guidance. And even the scientific relationship to life [in philosophy] is different than it is in the sciences. I am concerned not with a primary and isolated
definition of philosophybut rather only with the kind of definition that is related to the existentiell interpretation of facticity.
A discussion of the concept of philosophy in the detached sense is without
purposeand likewise a discussion of what is scientific.
I must now bring the discussion to myself [in response to your remarks on
the correct interpretation of my philosophy].
The discussion hinges first of all on the fundamental mistake that you and
Becker make in measuring me (hypothetically or not) against standards like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Scheler, and various other creative and deep philosophers. You
are free to do sobut then I have to say that I am not a philosopher. I do not presume to be doing anything even comparable. That is not at all my intention.
I simply do what I must and what I regard as necessary, and do it as I can. I
do not slant my philosophical work toward cultural tasks for the sake of a universal today. I also do not have Kierkegaards inclination and direction.
I work concretely and factically out of my I amout of my spiritual and
thoroughly factic heritage, my milieu, my life contexts, and whatever is available to
me from these, as the vital experience in which I live. This facticity, as existentiell,
is no mere blind existencethis Dasein is one with existence, which means that
I live it, this I must of which no one speaks. The act of existing seethes with this
facticity of Being-thus, it surges with the historical just as it iswhich means that I
live the inner obligations of my facticity, and do so as radically as I understand
them. This facticity of mine includesbriefly putthe fact that I am a Christian
theologian. This implies a certain radical self-concern, a certain radical scientificity, a rigorous objectivity [Gegenstndlichkeit] in this facticity; it includes the historical consciousness, the consciousness of the history of spirit. And I am all this
in the life context of the university.
Philosophizing is for me [mir, not nur] factically and existentielly connected with the university. By this, I am not claiming that there could be philosophy
only there, but that philosophizing precisely in its existentielly fundamental sense
has its facticity of actualization, and so its boundaries and limits, at the university.
This does not exclude the possibility that a great philosopher, a creative
philosopher, may come from the universities, nor that philosophizing at the university may be nothing but pseudo-science, i.e., neither philosophy nor science. What
university philosophy is can then be demonstrated only by way of ones own life.
There is therefore no way to determine which of the two of you understands
me correctly, or on whose side I belong. What I mean by this is not intended to be

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107

a facile reconciliation. On the contrary, you and Becker stand equally distant from
meonly in different directions. It has always been clear to me that neither you
nor Becker would accept the Christian side of me, and I have never understood
you to be seeking agreement in this connection. I have sought to influence you as
little as I have Becker. You each take something different to be what is essential in
me, which I do not separate, nor do I hold them together in a kind of balanced
equilibrium, namely, the scientific, researching, conceptually theorizing life and
my own life. The essential way in which my facticity is existentielly articulated is
scientific researchin the way that I conduct it. Thus, for me the motive and goal
of philosophizing is never to augment the stock of objective truths, because the
objectivity of philosophy, as I understand it and factically pursue it, is something
of my own, something that belongs to me. But this does not excludeon the contrary, for me it is implicit in the sense of my existingthe strictest objectivity of
explication. Objective [gegenstndliche] rigor here does not refer to a thing, but
instead to historical facticity.
I can emphasize research, but it is concerned with a direction that is fundamentally different from Beckers. I take the person to be decisively important; but I
do so within the possibilities of actualization that I alone honestly have at my disposal, without any intention to be creative. I am thus subject to the danger of threshing empty straw, in comparison with the great philosophers, if I really only thresh
from out of myself. Unfortunately, I know all too well that even this often fails.
I do believe that you cannot theoretically bring together the how of my
philosophizing with the direction of my concern. This together is not a theme
for theoretical unraveling. I cannot make my I am into something different, but
can only take hold of it and be it in this or that way.
Even in the destruction I neither want nor envision an objectivity of the initself [An-sich-Objektivitt], for this serves to take our own facticity and twist it
around, if you like, putting a false construction upon it. It is simply a matter of
whether a fictitious non-personality which understands everything accomplishes
more than does going after things in such a way that taking hold of them depends
on our being there ourselves, present and involved. Objectively speaking we are then
one-sidedly dogmatic; but philosophically speaking we are in fact absolutely objectively rigorous [in keeping with the matters themselves].
Jaspers wrote to me and said that I have done injustice to him in several ways.3

3. Karl Jaspers had received a typescript copy of Heideggers critical review of his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen [Psychology of Worldviews] at the end of June. In a letter
dated August 1, 1921, Jaspers looks forward to a future conversation to discuss Heideggers
critique: Of all the reviews that I have read, yours goes deepest into the roots of the ideas.
It has accordingly truly moved me to the very core. But I still miss the positive method, even
in your discussions of the I am and the historical. As I read it, I sensed the pull of forward
movement, but was then disappointed when I found that I also had already come as far as

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My reply: Husserl and others have also said thisthough for me this is simply a
sign that I have at least attempted to engage his work and come to terms with it,
rather than fancifully listing the results of the book in an imaginary body of
knowledge.
It is simply a matter of each doing what he can. Ultimately he is there in the
doingunreflectivelyeven if he has a wholly reflective philosophy.
Perhaps I am much less objective than you. You are, to the extent that such
expressions say something, an objective relativist; I, on the other hand, am a dogmatic subjective relativist, i.e., I push my position throughand am unjust
toward others in the knowledge that I myself am relative. But this interpretation is of no interest to me at all; I do not want to initiate a new direction in the
history of philosophy.
What I want in my teaching at the university is for human beings to take action and become engaged. The old university cannot be overcome by making the
intellectualism of fossilized lecturers laughable and by turning to those individuals whom one considers to be richer, more lively, and deeper. Instead, it can be
overcome only by returning to the origins of actualization in what has survived in
todays facticity and by deciding for oneself what one can do. What will happen?
Will we still have universities in 50 years? Who knows? Certainly no institution
lasts forever. But there is one thing that is within our power: Will we continue to
fret in our moods and brood over possible new cultures [Neukulturen, not Urkulturen], or will we sacrifice ourselves and find our way back to our existentiell limitation and facticity, rather than reflecting our way off into programs and universal
problems? Things are going much too well for most young people today, especially intellectually. All avenues are open to them, and from early ontravel, literature, art, etc. I would not wish my student days on anyone, and yet I would also
never part with them.
You have not misunderstood me, but there is something that you do not understand, as you yourself explained so well. To this I can only answer: I cannot do
otherwise without rejecting myself and denying who I am. For you, I think, this
will suffice.
Becker has misunderstood me because he, in a somewhat isolated manner, understood the same thing all too well. Both misunderstandings are inconsequential.
Only one thing is decisive: that we understand each other well enough so that each
of us is radically devoted to the last to what and how each understands the unum

you. . . . Some of the judgments I found to be unjust. In his reply of August 5, Heidegger
observes: Husserl also remarked that I do you injustice in several ways. For me that only
proves that I have at least tried to engage you and come to terms with your book. Its goal is
fulfilled if you draw some kind of impulse from it, perhaps even one that I did not intend.
Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel 19201963, ed. Walter Biemel and Hans
Saner (Frankfurt: Klostermann/Munich: Piper, 1990), 2324.

LETTER TO KARL LWITH

109

necessarium [one thing necessary (namely, our respective facticity)]. We may be

far apart in system, doctrine, and positionbut we are together in the one way
in which humans are able to be genuinely together: in existence.
It is all to the good that you have become angry and vented it in your letter.
I have but one objection: that, in relation to the distinctness with which you interpret me and measure me, you still take me to be all too important.
But you must decide for yourself to what extent I harm or help you.
I cannot deal with people. And guidance always becomes awkward. I also
have nothing at all to say to you; my remark to Becker about you is something
that you have heard from me once, when its direct effect was not your spontaneous resistance.
Do you want to come with Becker on Sunday evening?
Warm Regards
Your
Martin Heidegger