Heidegger’s ‘Worlds’. Inner Circle Seminar 265 (21 February 2021)

Heidegger’s ‘Worlds’
Early Freiburg Lectures (1919-25)
A 100^th-anniversary revaluation
The ‘self-world’ and other ‘worlds’
Why did Heidegger propose and then give up his three-‘worlds’ theory?

Anthony Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 265
Sunday 21 February 2021
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger at home in Freiburg

In the 1940s, the psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger described many idiosyncratic ‘worlds’ of his patients, such as Ellen West’s ‘swamp world’, ‘tomb world’ and ‘aetherial world’; these undoubtedly were phenomenological descriptions of the patients’ actual experience. He also, though only for a short time, tentatively proposed a relatively constant triad of ‘worlds’ supposedly of more general application: ‘Umwelt’ (‘around-world’), ‘Mitwelt’ (‘with-world’), ‘Eigenwelt’ (‘own world’). Half a century on, the existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen added a fourth: the ‘Überwelt’ (‘over-world’). These four ‘worlds’ have been taught in training institutes and regarded as an important part of existential therapy, at least in London, for more than thirty years. But do they really make sense as a way of understanding our being-in-the-world-with-others? How is it that, for example, personal relationships are assigned in one book to the ‘Eigenwelt’ and in another book by the same author to the ‘Mitwelt’? How could such relationships be restricted to one or other such partial ‘world’ or ‘dimension’, rather than by their very nature embodying a shared search for wholeness that always already precedes and transcends such fragmentation into ‘worlds’?

As it happens, unmentioned by Binswanger and van Deurzen, presumably because the relevant lectures had not yet been published, Martin Heidegger had already, in his Freiburg lectures a hundred years ago, proposed a triad like Binswanger’s, though with ‘Selbstwelt’ (‘self-world’) rather than ‘Eigenwelt’ – only to denounce it a few years later, even before he published Being and Time (1927), as misconceived. Today we shall explore Heidegger’s reasons for this early ‘turn’ in his thinking. An ‘Überwelt’ would have been even more alien to him, implying a quasi-schizoid split-off world of ‘meaning’ and ‘spirituality’, rather than meaning and spirit illuminating the one world in which we all live, move and have our being. In any case, we may ask, if there were to be an ‘Überwelt’, why not also an ‘Unterwelt’ (‘underworld’), as so powerfully documented throughout the millennia from ancient mythology to Freud and Jung? Of course, Heidegger, like Freud, acknowledged and alluded to such ordinary and familiar ‘worlds’ as the ‘work-world’, the ‘world of mathematics’, the ‘classical world’, the ‘dream-world’, the ‘wish-world’; but by 1927 he had firmly dismissed his own earlier schematic threefold of ‘worlds’; and he wrote, definitively, in Being and Time: ‘The world of Dasein is Mitwelt.’

That is to say, our Mit-sein, our being-in-the-world-with-others, is not one ‘world’ or ‘dimension’ among others of being human. Rather, it is what being human is.

It is hoped that today’s seminar will involve creative dialogue between those who have found it helpful and constructive to conceive experience in terms of a three- or four-‘world’ scheme and those who have found this an artificial and misleading conceptualisation.

If possible, this seminar will be at the venue specified below, but if necessary this will be an online seminar, using Zoom.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 208 888 6857 or: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

A Most Worthwhile Thing. 2. Rogers: ‘A Silent Young Man’. Inner Circle Seminar 264 (24 January 2021)

A Most Worthwhile Thing
   

‘Psychotherapy is one of the most worthwhile things in the world.’

       Thomas Szasz, 2007                                   

   

2. Carl Rogers: ‘A Silent Young Man’ (1967)

Anthony Stadlen  Naomi Stadlen
conduct
Inner Circle Seminar No. 264
Sunday 24 January 2021
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers published, in his 1967 book The Therapeutic Relationship and its Impact: A Study of Psychotherapy with Schizophrenics, a transcript of two interviews, with lengthy silences, from his 166-session psychotherapy of a hospitalised ‘silent young man’, ‘James Brown’, whose diagnosis was ‘schizophrenic reaction, simple type’. Rogers wrote: ‘I hope and believe that the interaction of the two hours speaks for itself.’ He included a letter from James Brown reporting his independent life two years after leaving therapy. Rogers added fifteen randomly selected four-minute transcripts from the therapy with detailed evaluations and criticisms from six leading therapists, including existential analyst Rollo May and family therapist Carl Whitaker. In today’s seminar you are invited to examine the two interviews; the letter; the fifteen extracts; and the comments of Rogers and the other therapists. Does this case of ‘a silent young man’ confirm that psychotherapy can be, as Thomas Szasz said, ‘one of the most worthwhile things in the world’?

It is hoped that this seminar will be at the venue specified below, but if necessary this will be an online seminar, using Zoom.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £140, others £175, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 208 888 6857 or: +44 (0) 7809 433250

E-mail: stadlen@aol.com or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Seeing Ourselves. 2. Reclaiming Humanity from God and Science. Raymond Tallis conducts Inner Circle Seminar 263 (6 December 2020)

Seeing Ourselves
2. Reclaiming Humanity from God and Science

Raymond Tallis
conducts Inner Circle Seminar No. 263
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 6 December 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Raymond Tallis 

Raymond Tallis is one of our best-loved invited speakers. Today he conducts his seventh Inner Circle Seminar (his first was on 2 December 2012). It is the second seminar of a pair with the joint title Seeing Ourselves. The first, on 2 June 2019, had the subtitle Rescuing the Self from Science, and the second of the pair, today, has the subtitle Rescuing the Self from God and Science. He explicitly regards it as a summation of the symphony of seven seminars which culminates today. (He reassures us, though, that there are still more seminars to come.)

Tallis has shown in six profound Inner Circle Seminars that he is one of the world’s leading demystifiers of what he calls the ‘neuroscience delusion’ (‘neuromania’) and the ‘intellectual plague of biologism’ (‘animalism’). His ruthless, good-humoured exposure of reductive natural-scientism continues the tradition of Heidegger and Szasz, for example, but is utterly his own. Psychotherapists are free to choose to go on pretending to be ‘validated’ by ‘neuroscience’; but their work, such as it is, sometimes radically transforming and helpful, sometimes best passed over in silence, speaks for or against itself as the case may be, and no pseudo-scientific ‘validation’ (or ‘invalidation’) can disguise this.

Raymond Tallis is one of the select few who affirms and advocates the devoted use of devotedly human language to depict and describe the human world and human relationships.

In his book Logos Professor Tallis exposes the absurdity of the argument that evolutionary biology or neuroscience show that our thinking is merely a function of our bodies-as-objects-for-science and therefore can have no truth-value of its own unless it is in some way itself derived from evolutionary biology or neuroscience, which are taken to be ‘objectively true’. But those sciences are themselves human creations, and therefore, by this argument, not ‘objectively true’. Professor Tallis remarks that those who use this argument are worthy successors of the Cretan of old who said all Cretans were liars.

In today’s seminar he continues to focus on the so-called problem of ‘the self’ . 

Raymond Tallis writes about today’s seminar:

The seminar will bring together and build on themes from my previous seminars. Their central thesis was that humans are neither supernatural beings hand-made by God nor mere pieces of nature. The human subject is transcendent in ways that will be discussed. I will argue that the most important task for humanism is to reclaim this transcendence from religious discourse.

I will challenge the notion that a secular vision is necessarily that of a disenchanted universe. The common view that science has proved the world to be meaningless is undermined by the fact that the human subject and science itself cannot be accommodated in the scientific world picture.

The question then arises as what we shall do with a positive vision of humanity? I will address the fear that,  in the absence of belief in God, humans will lack a moral compass. The response will examine the empirical evidence regarding godless societies; will discuss whether religion will make us better or worse behaved; and will look at secular sources of morality.

The seminar will then examine ways in which we might flourish in the face of the knowledge that we die and that our aims and ambitions are necessarily transient, even if they are fulfilled. A life without religion lacks sacred spaces, a certain profound sense of belonging,  the convergence of meaning and purpose in one’s life comparable to that enjoyed by believers whose life is devoted to  praising, serving, and worshipping God, and the consolation of a hereafter and the restoration of the losses and injustices  of earthly life.

I will touch on the perils, pitfalls and disappointments of life devoted to the good of others. I will look at other secular sources of salvation: gratitude; love; art; and philosophy. An overarching theme will be that of an enduring project that binds our days each to each and exorcises the banality of mere ‘and’. I will then discuss the idea of humanism as a religion. Finally, I will discuss the potential for a dialogue between believers and non-believers at the very least discussing what each may learn from the other about the dangers of a descent from beneficent visions to collective thuggery.

The seminar will raise more questions than it provides answers.

For an account of how Raymond Tallis writes his extraordinary books, see his article ‘My writing day: In my favourite pub, the staff turn down the speaker in my writing corner’, in The Guardian Review of 29 April 2017:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/29/my-writing-day-raymond-tallis

Raymond Tallis was a Professor of Geriatric Medicine and consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly. He has published two hundred research articles in the neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation, as well as a novel, short stories, three volumes of poetry, and thirty books on philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism. He has received many awards and honorary degrees. In 2009, the Economist listed him as one of the world’s twenty leading polymaths.

Nicholas Fearn wrote in The Independent:

‘When Kirsty Young was asked to name her favourite guest on Desert Island Discs, the rock star Paul Weller was beaten into second place, for her own luxury item would be the writer Raymond Tallis.’

Raymond Tallis, whose seventh Inner Circle Seminar this will be, kindly confirms that our seminar structure, in which dialogue is of the essence, enables him to communicate and reflect on his ideas. He wrote, after his first Inner Circle Seminar, The Intellectual Plague of Biologism, on 2 December 2012:

‘The seminar was for me an incredible experience. I have never previously had the opportunity to discuss the topics we covered in such depth with a group of people who came at it from such different angles but in a way that I found illuminating. I learned a lot. It was a tremendous privilege.’

It is hoped that this seminar will be at the venue specified below, but if necessary this will be an online seminar, using Zoom.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £132, others £165, some bursaries; coffee, tea, Durrants rock, mineral water included; payable in advance; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857     E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools, and universities.

Doing ‘Nothing’: The Work of Mothers and Psychotherapists. Naomi Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 261 (13 September 2020)

Doing ‘Nothing’

The Work of Mothers and Psychotherapists

Naomi Stadlen
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No. 261
Sunday 13 September 2020
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Naomi Stadlen

Naomi Stadlen writes:

It’s impossible to do nothing. Mothers often say: ‘I’ve got nothing done all day.’ This can’t be a literal statement. It’s a statement of value. While I was writing What Mothers Learn, I noticed many similarities between the work of mothers and that of psychotherapists. Both can feel as if they are ‘doing nothing’ exactly when they are working well. So ‘nothing’ must be ‘something’ that we seem to undervalue. We will use this seminar to identify and explore some of the actions that so easily get dismissed as ‘doing nothing’. Psychotherapists, mothers, and interested others are warmly invited to take part.

Mother, grandmother, existential psychotherapist, supervisor and teacher Naomi Stadlen has conducted weekly discussion groups, Mothers Talking, for nearly thirty years. Her books What Mothers Do – especially when it looks like nothing (2004) and How Mothers Love – and how relationships are born (2011) are translated into many languages and enjoyed by mothers round the world who say that their experiences are described and valued in them. Her third book, just published, is What Mothers Learn – without being taught (April 2020).

Naomi Stadlen conducted Inner Circle Seminar No. 77, Listening to Mothers, on 25 April 2004; and (with Anthony Stadlen) Inner Circle Seminar No. 125, Merleau-Ponty: ‘The Child’s Relations with Others’, on 16 March 2008. 

This will be an online seminar, using ZOOM.

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £132, others £165, some bursaries; payment must be made in advance by bank transfer; a ZOOM invitation and instructions will then be sent; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857  iPhone: 07809 433 250
E-mail: stadlen@aol.com  or: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers. 15. Claude Eatherly. Hiroshima Bomb Pilot. Anthony Stadlen conducts Inner Circle Seminar 260 (9 August 2020)

Locked Up: ‘Patients’ and their Gaolers

15. Claude Eatherly

(2 October 1918 – 1 July 1978)

Repentant Hiroshima Bomb Pilot

An investigation into his alleged ‘insanity’

75 years after Nagasaki (9 August 1945)

and into Bertrand Russell’s and Martin Heidegger’s

responses to the threat of thermonuclear war

Anthony Stadlen

conducts

Inner Circle Seminar No. 260

Sunday 9 August 2020

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

  

Claude Eatherly

Bertrand Russell

Günther Anders

Friday 6 August 2020 and Sunday 9 August 2020 are the 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. Major Claude R. Eatherly was the pilot of the weather reconnaissance aircraft Straight Flush from which he gave the go-ahead for the crew of the plane Enola Gay to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.

Robert Jungk wrote:

‘It is said that after the shattering experience of Hiroshima Major Eatherly spoke to no one for days on end.’

In striking contrast to the other servicemen involved, who were feted as heroes, he could not reconcile his conscience with what he had done. He was, as a result, certified and incarcerated as ‘mentally ill’.

The philosopher Günther Anders, former student of Martin Heidegger and former husband of Hannah Arendt, initiated a correspondence with Eatherly in the asylum where he was imprisoned. Their letters were published in 1961 as a book, Burning Conscience, with a Preface by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who wrote:

‘No unbiased person, after reading Eatherly’s letters, can honestly doubt his sanity. [...] The world was prepared to honour him for his part in the massacre, but, when he repented, it turned against him, seeing in his act of repentance its own condemnation.’

Lord Russell also wrote that, if the man who wrote these letters is considered mad, then:

‘I shall not be surprised if my last years are spent in a lunatic asylum – where I shall enjoy the company of all who are capable of feelings of humanity.’

Russell did, in fact, himself commit carefully considered civil disobedience later that year, 1961, at the age of 89, by sitting down in Trafalgar Square to protest against preparations for thermonuclear war; he was not arrested on that occasion, but not long afterwards spent seven days in Brixton Gaol (where he had already spent six months for pacifist activity during the First World War) for refusing to be of ‘good behaviour’ by refraining from inciting further civil disobedience.

Heidegger, who had a position as preeminent philosopher in West Germany comparable to Russell’s in the United Kingdom, did not become involved in his former student Anders’s collaboration with Eatherly. Heidegger once signed a petition against a nuclear power station, but otherwise limited himself to observing that the atomic bomb was merely the ‘last emission’ of the ‘atomisation’ effected centuries earler by Descartes. In other words, insisted Heidegger,

‘The Dreadful [‘das Entsetzliche’] has already happened.’

(R. D. Laing’s translation)

If the hydrogen bombs did not go off and destroy all life on earth, he warned, a far worse danger would threaten humanity. Men and women were in danger of losing their essential nature as meditative rather than merely calculative beings.

He used the same word, ‘das Entsetzliche’, that he had used to characterise the ‘Holy’ in the 1930s. This links today’s seminar with last Sunday’s seminar on the ‘Holy’ and Heidegger’s understanding of it. We shall try to make intelligible that Heidegger could use the same word for both. How should it be translated in each case?

We shall explore Claude Eatherly’s case as a paradigm of a procedure of locking up ‘inconvenient’ people that is still prevalent in our society today. We shall also compare and contrast the very different, but complementary, responses to the nuclear arms race of the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger.

This will be an online seminar, using ZOOM.

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £132, others £165; or, for this seminar and the previous one (on 2 August) together, trainees £88, others £110 per seminar; some bursaries; payment in advance by bank transfer or PayPal; no refunds or transfers unless seminar cancelled; a ZOOM invitation and instructions will then be sent.

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857  iPhone: 07809 433250

Email: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/


The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.

The ‘Holy’. 1. Buber, Heidegger, Lévinas on the ‘Holy’ and the ‘Sacred’: Implications for psychotherapy. Keith Hoeller, Frank Schalow, Anthony Stadlen conduct Inner Circle Seminar 259 (2 August 2020)

The ‘Holy’

1. Buber, Heidegger, Lévinas 
on the ‘Holy’ and the ‘Sacred’

What are the implications for psychotherapy?

Keith Hoeller   Frank Schalow   Anthony Stadlen

conduct

Inner Circle Seminar No. 259

Sunday 2 August 2020

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Martin Buber           Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger   Martin Buber

Martin Heidegger
Mont Sainte Victoire

Emmanuel Lévinas

This is the first of a subseries of Inner Circle Seminars devoted to questioning what people have meant by ‘the Holy’ – and the possible implications for psychotherapy.

We start with the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s writings on ‘the Holy’, comparing and contrasting his thinking on the poetry of Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin with that of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Lévinas on the Biblical understanding of ‘the Holy’. We may also refer to the use of the word ‘Holy’ by other thinkers such as Dietrich von Hildebrand, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Jacques Derrida, as well as in philosophy generally, in poetry, religion, theology, psychotherapy, and everyday life.

Does ‘the Holy’ differ from ‘the Sacred’? Lévinas certainly thought so; one of his books of Talmudic Studies has the title From the Sacred to the Holy. How does Lévinas’s Biblical invocation of ‘the Holy’ differ from Heidegger’s Hellenic-Germanic meditation on ‘the Holy’ in his Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry and other fundamental works? Is Heidegger’s ‘Holy’ merely a kind of Nature mysticism, divorced from Lévinas’s ethical imperative? Or is ethics implicit in Heidegger’s quest for the Ereignis, the seeking of Seyn and Da-sein, ‘Beyng’ and the human being, for each other?

Although Lévinas was present as a student at the epochmaking debate between Heidegger and the philosopher Ernst Cassirer in Davos in 1929, and even played the part of Cassirer in a satirical reenactment of the debate by the students attended by both the great philosophers, he developed his critique of Heidegger only after the war, after Heidegger’s turn to Nazism, and still maintained that Being and Time was one of the very few greatest works of philosophy of all time; he did not confront Heidegger face-to-face.

But Martin Buber did. After the war, Buber said he had made his criticisms of Heidegger, and they met in a castle on the Rhine, according to Buber walking up and down like like dwarves with large heads, gesticulating at each other, in what Heidegger later called ‘a beautiful conversation with Martin Buber’. Did they discuss their differing understandings of ‘the Holy’?

Perhaps the differing uses of ‘the Holy’ mean there is no single meaning, no essence of ‘the Holy’; rather, as Wittgenstein put it, ‘family resemblances’? But would that make it pointless to ask what ‘the Holy’ is, because this is all ‘subjective’? Is ‘holiness’ just a matter of ‘feeling’? This might be so, but it does not follow logically from the fact that people use the term in different ways, any more than it follows that a family is a figment of somebody’s ‘subjective feelings’.

Research has shown that, among psychotherapists, both psychoanalytic and existential, there is a tendency to disparage religious experience. It may be acknowledged that such experiences are ‘comforting’ for those, including clients, who have them; but the implication is that they are merely ‘intrapsychic’, or ‘social’, or matters of ‘faith’, but do not refer to anything ‘real’. This is logically, scientifically, and phenomenologically unsound. The therapist claims that this attitude does not affect the therapeutic relationship with the client, but such a defence would be given short shrift in relation to any other prejudice. If it were a question of race or sex, the therapist would risk disciplinary action by the registering organisation.

These seminars will attempt a phenomenological exploration of the nature of ‘the Holy’, without starting from this prevailing preconception. It is hoped that there will be respectful and fruitful dialogue, in which we learn from each other, between those with differing positions on this.

There are curious links with next Sunday’s seminar on the Hiroshima pilot, Claude Eatherly, who was locked up as insane because he expressed guilt about his part in the atomic devastation. Not only was Heidegger’s beloved poet, Hölderlin, whose poetry he regarded as the very quintessence of ‘the Holy’, also locked up as insane (thereby giving us the subject of a crucial future Inner Circle Seminar in the subseries Locked Up:‘ Patients’ and their Gaolers), but Heidegger also memorably observed that the atomic bomb was merely the ‘last emission’ of the ‘atomisation’ effected centuries earler by Descartes. In other words, insisted Heidegger, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as the arms race raged, despite the fact that human beings looked on helplessly at the prospect of universal devastation by perhaps imminent thermonuclear war, the reality was that

‘The Dreadful [‘das Entsetzliche’] has already happened.’
(R. D. Laing’s translation.)

If the hydrogen bombs did not go off and destroy all life on earth, he warned, a far worse danger would threaten humanity. Men and women were in danger of losing their essential nature as meditative rather than merely calculative beings. He used the same word (‘das Entsetzliche’) that he had used to characterise the ‘Holy’ since the 1930s. We shall try to make intelligible that Heidegger could use the same word for both, and seek an adequate translation in each case.

Professor Keith Hoeller, distinguished translator of Heidegger’s Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry (2001), will again join us from Seattle, USA, where he was Professor of Philosophy for many years. He edited the Review of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy from 1978, as well as a number of books of key papers on Binswanger, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Boss, Sartre, Szasz, Foucault, May. He is one of the very few authorities on both Szasz and Heidegger, and edited Thomas Szasz: Moral Philosopher of Psychiatry (1997), contributed a chapter on Szasz to Existential Therapy (ed. Barnett, L. and Madison, G., 2012), and received the Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Services to the Cause of Civil Liberties (professional category) from the Center for Independent Thought, New York City in 2002.

Professor Frank Schalow will also join us for an hour (12 noon to 1 p.m.) from New Orleans, where he is Professor of Philosophy. He will speak about addiction in relation to transcendence, drawing on his recent book Toward a Phenomenology of Addiction: Embodiment, Technology, Transcendence (2017). His areas of specialisation include 19th- and 20th-century German thought, Phenomenology, and Continental Philosophy. He has published numerous other books, including: The Incarnality of Being (2006), Heidegger and the Quest for the Sacred (2001), The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue (1992), and, most recently, the edited volumes Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking: Essays in Honor of Parvis Emad (2011), and The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought (2014). Currently, he is co-editor of the international journal, Heidegger Studies, which is published in three languages (English, German, and French).

Rabbi Rodney Mariner, emeritus rabbi of Belsize Square Synagogue, London, who brilliantly conducted Inner Circle Seminar No. 88, Freud on Jokes, on 8 May 2005, will also participate and be available for consultation on Judaism and the ‘Holy’. 

This will be an online seminar, using ZOOM.

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £132, others £165; or for this seminar and the next together (on 9 August) one third reduction, so trainees £88, others £110 oer seminar; some bursaries; payment must be made in advance by bank transfer or PayPal; a ZOOM invitation and instructions will then be sent; no transfers or refunds unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857  iPhone: 07809 433250

E-mail: stadlenanthony@gmail.com

For further information on seminars, visit: http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and universities.