Philosopher Wilhelm K. Essler, Goethe-- Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Veery: What makes a philosopher’s career rise? Wilhelm K. Essler: In reality, it would be as follows:
In order to make a career in the field of academic philosophy, you firstly have to join a philosophical school with a currently existing (philosophical) orientation; much later, once its acme is reached, you should then leave it, and at the same time try to build up a “stable” of your own.
While still in this first stage, one should supply the “leader of the pack” with important “feeder services” if one wants to get noticed by him or her; and one should refrain from doing anything which this person could see as endangering his or her position, like for example the developing of thoughts that are genuinely one’s own, and their substantiation with the help of a methodology which that person has no command of.
To achieve that purpose, the most effective way will be to treat subjects of minor importance with elementary methods, and then present the value of the attained results in an exaggerated way, towards the outside - that is, towards people who do not count as members of the “pack.”
In the second stage, it is absolutely necessary to create a “mutual quotation circle”(by which a group of philosophers with a similar philosophical orientation is meant, who quote each other in publications, lectures, et cetera) around oneself within a few years’s time.
I would very much wish for it not to be like that, but unfortunately this is reality, this is how the system functions.
Veery: Who are your favorite writers, poets, novelists, and why? Wilhelm K. Essler: My favorite poet is Heinrich Heine; he brilliantly and effortlessly portrayed the tangle of human feelings as a captivating dream world; and he brilliantly and effectively made me experience the shock of being awakened from it.
My favorite writer of short stories is Heinrich von Kleist; I do not know anyone else who could sum up human relations in such a short space, and who could thus portray them absolutely clearly without any disrupting details.
My favorite novelist is Michail Bulgakov; in his novel The Master and Margarita - the result of long and hard work - he showed in an unparalleled way the relativity of our respective views of the world, and our captivity within those views.
Veery: What do you think about when you look at a blank sheet of paper? Wilhelm K. Essler: An empty sheet of paper lying in front of me I should like best to leave unsoiled; that has always been like that, ever since I can remember. For that reason, I preferably use sheets of paper for work that have already been printed on one side.
Strictly speaking, one should only commit those things to paper of which one can quite safely believe that they will still be worth reading in centuries to come; and there are not too many said things around.
Each differentiating is a simplifying and a falsifying. This, for example, already starts when one draws a circle on a still empty sheet of paper, and in this way makes a differentiation between the inside and the outside.
Veery: Who are your favorite artists and why? Wilhelm K. Essler: My favorite artists are Franz Marc and Marc Chagall. Franz Marc brilliantly showed how the world arises from shapes and colors, and how it continues to exist in this way; Marc Chagall showed in an unparalleled way how our world is composed of colors and emotions.
Veery: What philosophers do you respect? Wilhelm K. Essler: The ones I respect the most include in particular Socrates, Buddha Shakyamuni, Tsongkhapa, Hume, Kant, and Tarski.
Veery: Is your after hour life tightly linked to philosophy? Wilhelm K. Essler: My connection with philosophy - that is, my philosophical work - in the genuine sense, only really starts once I have left the university premises. Because once I put pen and paper away and rise up from my desk, my reflections about philosophical themes usually do not stop, but only then start at all.
Veery: Do you interest yourself in another field to bring your philosophy an added dimension? Wilhelm K. Essler: Philosophy is, firstly, basic research. But then it must not be pursued isolated from the items whose fundamentals are to be investigated. On the other hand, no one can master all fields of knowledge or even just know them roughly; therefore, one just has to select.
For this reason, I am mainly interested in modern physics and in theory of recognition, and furthermore, also in Iaido, the Japanese sword training, and finally in the Tibetan practice of meditation.
Veery: Philosophy and social/political concerns. Does one have business with the other? Wilhelm K. Essler: In a direct way, philosophy and social/political concerns have little in common; because realizing philosophical insights in social and political everyday life is necessarily connected with coarsening such insights and is thus opposite to philosophical analysis.
However, when philosophical work in the above mentioned way leads to an increased awareness and is thus built into one’s everyday life, and when through this the understanding that all humans are equal as far as their fundamental needs are concerned gets strengthened, then one’s social and political involvement will in this way receive a stable foundation which is therefore independent of one’s momentary mood.
Veery: Do you find you have personalized your creative process around your habits, schedule? Or do you veto your schedule, habits and just go full tilt, damn the calendar? Wilhelm K. Essler: Some time I would very much like to stay for a prolonged period on a remote and happy island, out of duties’s reach, and where I can undisturbed devote myself to philosophy. But, such an island exists only in the imagination; because in the reality of everyday life, everything has a price.
Thus I try - although I am by no means always successful at that - to finish my daily duties so swiftly that I have sufficient time afterwards to think about open philosophical themes without the ever audible ticking of a watch behind me.
