addendum on Herzberg’s theory

His strong suit is his ability to digest biographies and grasp the most salient incidents in each life. The chapter giving examples of inhibitions is perhaps the longest in this strangely beautiful book. Rousseau’s are the saddest and hardest to read, and indeed he was surely the most psychotic of this group of 30 philosophers, at least until Nietzsche was hit by whatever hit him at the end.

Herzberg gives a convincing reading of Socrates’ famous “divine sign” as inhibition rather than conscience, since much of what it forbade was not at all unethical.

But the really moving one is his example of Schelling’s repeated failed promises to publish The Ages of the World. It reminded me of the permanent non-publication of the second part of Being and Time.

Incidentally, remember my theory about how everyone “gets away with” certain things that others don’t get away with? Well, I think Heidegger got away with something there. He somehow managed to spin the non-publication of the second part of the book in such a way that it sounds reasonable and we all buy it, rather than treating it as a failure. I thought of this recently because one of the letters to Bultmann had the air about it of: “haha, they all think I’m working on the supposed second half of Being and Time, and it’s a good cover to do whatever I want to do.” Not that I take that tone literally– I actually take this “it’s all deliberate” nonsense as a cover for his anxiety over not being able to finish.

How could someone already at the top of their game suddenly contract a new case of publication anxiety? First of all, remember that for Heidegger it wasn’t really new. He was never really an extensive publisher. The number of books published in his life was relatively small, and Being and Time was published only due to career pressures. Indeed, one of the strangest though not unknown moments in the Bultmann correspondence is the copy of a biographical entry Bultmann agreed to write on Heidegger for some encyclopedia or other. Under the heading “Major Publications” it listed only two (because that’s all there were): the thesis on Duns Scotus, and Being and Time. Talk about apples and oranges! The Marburg period is so rich that it’s easy to forget no one other than his students knew it was happening until much later.

But beyond this, if you want an example of someone who picked up inhibitions late, you need look no further than Schelling, who comes off as quite a miserable figure in middle age in Herzberg’s account, after the most precocious early years of anyone in the history of philosophy.