FRED KERSTEN
Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, Green Bay, WI
54311, USA
* This paper is edited from remarks made at the meetings of The Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and of The Society for Phenomenology
and the Human Sciences, Memphis State University, 19 October 1991.
386
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Photo 1.
Photo 2.
387
and that in an intriguing way: according to my notes the basic steps of the
phenomenological method find a common ground in the Jahrbuch in 1913
and the new step of the method, the phenomenological reduction. Although
Spiegelberg much later would change his view to some extent on this issue,
nonetheless the basic order of presentation would remain. Equally interest-
ing is the note to the effect that Brentano had formulated eidetic insights
before Husserl, and a note in the upper right hand comer indicates that
Spiegelberg had already discovered the work of Michotte on the perception
of "causality."
The excitement of that afternoon, the shared passion of fresh discovery
of, and initiation into, phenomenology I still associate with the field.
While I was at Lawrence, Spiegelberg organized meetings at his home on
a fairy regular basis to discuss ideas central to phenomenology and
philosophy. When weather permitted we met on an enclosed back porch of
his home on Washington Street in Appleton. Here again the intense
sociality of his philosophizing was evident. Photo 2 shows one such
meeting: myself, another student, Spiegelberg and, on the far right, Carl
Wellman, Spiegelberg's colleague at Lawrence and later at Washington
University. My notes from those sessions throughout 1953 and 1954 show a
variety of topics discussed: Husserl's lectures on time consciousness, the
nature of the domain of the pre-predicative, the relation of Jasper's and
Heidegger's concepts of truth, differences and similarities of Heidegger and
Husserl, difficulties in the 5th Cartesian Meditation, the problem of the
transcendental ego in connection with the philosophic attitude. With great
enthusiasm Spiegelberg interspersed the discussions with the anecdotal
history of phenomenology. He was fascinated by the anecdotes: a recovery
of sociality past.
Sometimes I was invited by Spiegelberg "to talk shop," as he expressed
it; he did have a sense of humor. For such occasions I would prepare an
outline and set of questions for discussion, and we would meet of an
afternoon in his study to discuss them. The need to discuss the questions
was energetic, exhausting (at least for me). My notes on those discussions
contain ideas that I am still working on thirty five years later.
Photo 3 dates from the early 1970s. Still driven by the sociality of
philosophizing, Spiegelberg turned up on my doorstep "to talk shop;" I had
not been able to see him at a certain time. He greeted me with: "If the
mountain won't come to Mohammet, then Mohammet has to come to the
mountain." We discussed Pf'a_nder at length. The need to "talk shop" was
insatiable.
Rather than multiply similar anecdotes, I wish to close with another
memory from my years at Lawrence. During that time Spiegelberg worked
on a number of projects, one of which came to fruition only some ten years
388
Photo 3.