Interpreting a misinterpretation: Ludwig binswanger and martin heidegger

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 244-257

  Frie, Roger ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039786631     PISSN: 00071773     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00071773.1999.11007259     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Martin Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, ed.Medard Boss, (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1987), 147–57.
2. Binswangen's work was first introduced to North America and Great Britain on the basis of a selection of loosely translated essays and case studies in Rollo May et al. Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1958) and Jacob Needleman, ed. Being in the World: The Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswanger (New York: Basic Books, 1963). The great majority of Binswangen's work, including his chief philosophical work, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (1942), remains untranslated.
3. The letters are housed at the Binswanger Archive at the University of Tübingen; (443/13) refers to the Binswanger-Heidegger file at the archive. My thanks to Dieter Binswanger for permission to quote from the correspondence and to Hans Joachim Frie for his assistance. All translations of the correspondence and Binswanger's writings are my own.
4. Other thinkers included Viktor, von Gebsattel, Eugen, Minkowski and Erwin, Strauss. See Torsten Passie, Phänomenologisch-Anthropologische Psychiatire und Psychologie (Hürtgenwald: Guido Pressler Verlag, 1995).
5. SeeGerhard Fichtner, ed. Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Binswanger Briefwechsel, 1908–1938. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1992. For a personal account of the friendship, see Ludwig Binswanger, Sigmund Freud: Reminiscences of a Friendship, trans. N. Guterman (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1957).
6. For a discussion of Binswanger's theoretical relationship to Freud and psychoanalysis see Roger Frie, Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997) 21–33. In spite of his reservations about aspects of Freud's theory, Binswanger maintained an association with psychoanalysis throughout his career.
7. Martin Heidegger, Letter to Binswanger, October 31, 1928 (443/13-lb).
8. Ludwig Binswanger, Letter to Heidegger, November 5, 1928 (443/13–2).
9. Herbert Speigelberg, Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 205.
10. Heidegger, Letter to Binswanger, February 16, 1929 (443/13–3).
11. Binswanger, Letter to Heidegger, February 20, 1929 (443/13–4).
12. Binswanger, “Die Bedeutung der Daseinsanalytik Martin Heideggers für das Selbstverständnis der Psychiatrie,” in Ausgwählte Vorträge und Aufsätze, bd.II (Bern: Francke, 1955), 264.
13. Binswangen, “Über die daseinsanalytische Forschungsrichtung in der Psychiatrie,” in Ausgwählte Vorträge und Aufsätze, Bd. I (Bern: Francke, 1947), 217.
14. Binswangen's study was the basis for Michael Foucault's first published work: “Dream, Imagination and Existence: An Introduction to Ludwig Binswangen's ‘Dream and Existence,’” trans. F. Williams, in Dream and Existence, ed.K., Hoeller (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993), 29–78.
15. Heidegger, Utter to Binswanger, May 22, 1933 (443/13–5). Although the Binswanger-Heidegger correspondence dates from the period of National Socialism in Germany, I would argue that Binswangen's critique of Heidegger places him outside of the so-called Heidegger controversy. At the same time, the nature of their relationship problematizes any simple labeling of Heidegger's thinking.
16. Binswanger, Utter to Heidegger, November 21, 1934 (443/13–6). It is worth noting that whereas the topic of the body was virtually absent in Being and Time, Heidegger discusses the importance and role of the body at length in the Zollikoner Seminare.
17. Binswanger, Utter to Heidegger, February 23, 1937 (443/13–8).
18. SeeKarl Löwith, Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen (1928), Sämtliche Schriften, Bd. I. ed.Klaus Stichweh (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1981).
19. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), 344.
20. Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins, in Ausgewählte Werke Band 2, eds. M., Herzog and H.J., Braun (Heidelberg. Asanger, 1993), 113.
21. Heidegger, Being and Time, 158–59.
22. Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins, 217.
23. Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins, 116–118. For an elaboration of this concept see Frie, Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Binswanger's account of self-other interaction also has considerable parallels to recent psychoanalytic theory. See Frie, “Listening to Language,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 34 (1998), 151–157; Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (London: Virago, 1988); and Arnold Modell, The Private Self (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
24. Binswanger, Utter to Heidegger, February 12, 1944 (443/13–9).
25. Heidegger, Utter to Binswanger, February 24, 1947 (443/13–10).
26. Binswanger, Utter to Heidegger, March 6, 1947 (443/13–11).
27. SeeHugo Ott, Martin Heidegger, A Political Life, trans. Allan Blunden (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 346.
28. Heidegger, Utter to Binswanger, May 6, 1947 (443/13–13).
29. Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” Basic Writings, ed. and trans. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 1977), 239.
30. Binswanger, Utter to Heidegger, May 13, 1947 (443/13–15).
31. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, x. See also William J. Richardson, “Heidegger among the Doctors.” In Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, ed.John Sallis, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)49.
32. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, 299.
33. Speigelberg, Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry, 335.
34. Medard Boss, Sinn und Gehalt der sexuellen Perversion. Ein daseinsanalytischer Beitrag zur Psychopathologie des Phänomens der Liebe (Bern: Hans Huber, 1947). The second and third editions (1952 and 1966) demonstrate the revisions in Boss's application and understanding of Heidegger's philosophy.
35. Medard Boss, Psychoanalyse und Daseinsanalyse (Bern: Kindler 1957) 88–117. The English translation was essentially rewritten for an audience that lacked prior knowledge of the field. The notes and conversations between Boss and Heidegger contained in the Zollikoner Seminare suggest that Boss elaborated his Binswanger-critique with Heidegger's full cooperation.
36. For a comparative analysis of the work of Binswanger and Boss, see Alice, Holzhey-Kunz, “Ludwig Binswanger: Daseinsanalyse als wissenschaftlich exakte Untersuchung von Weltentwürfen,” Daseinsanalyse 7, (1990): 81–101.
37. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, x.
38. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, 151.
39. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, 237.
40. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, 152.
41. Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins, 4.
42. Hans Kunz, “Die Bedeutung der Daseinsanalytik Martin Heideggers für die Psychologie und die philosophische Anthropologie,” in Martin Heideggers Einfluss auf die Wissenschaften, ed.A, Carlos (Bern: Franke, 1949), 49.
43. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F.G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985) 149–50.
44. Michael Theunissen, The Other, trans. C. Macann (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984) 187–93.
45. See, for example, Lawrence Vogel, The Fragile “We:” Ethical Implications of Heidegger's Being and Time (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994).
46. See, for example, Edith Weigert, “Existentialism and its Relations to Psychotherapy,” Psychiatry 12 (1949) 399–412.
47. Binswanger, Letter to Heidegger, December 19, 1955 (443/13–43). The book appeared in 1956 and was dedicated to Martin Heidegger “with gratitude.” See Binswanger, Drei Formen missglückten Daseins in Ausgewählte Werke Band 1, ed.M., Herzog (Heidelberg: Asanger, 1992), 233.
48. Heidegger, Letter to Binswanger, January 5, 1956 (443/13–44).
49. Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, 341. Heidegger presented a paper entitled “Zur Frage nach der Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens.”
50. For a full discussion of Binswanger's theory of intersubjectivity, see Theunissen, Der Andere (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977) and Frie, Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.
51. Klaus Hoffman, “Ludwig Binswanger's Collected Papers—Introduction and Critical Remarks,” International Forum of Psychoanalysis 6 (1997), 191–201.