In Memoriam Samuel IJsseling (1932-2015)

Samuel IJsseling (1932-2015) Many alumni of the international program of the Higher Institute of Philosophy may know professor IJsseling only by name or reputation. Though his English was fluent, he stubbornly declined teaching in Leuven in a language other than his native Dutch. His teaching mainly consisted in reading aloud what he had written at home in his unmistakable small, clear and elegant handwriting. Yet, he was a most enthralling and successful teacher. While most of his philosophical reading, writing and teaching was on German and French texts, IJsseling claimed he could think and write only in his mother tongue. No wonder that the relation between thought and language became a lifelong subject of his philosophical meditations. No wonder too that his listeners and readers admired him as much for the simple elegance and clarity of his writing as for the originality of his philosophical insights. IJsseling was a poetical philosopher and philosophical poet – a sort of Heidegger of the Low Countries without the Master’s provincialism and with a secure feeling for literary style and taste. As a secluded writer and thinker who was at the same time a most social and open person, Samuel IJsseling embodied what he taught on the nature of Greek logos and the Leibnizian monad: eager to collect, gather and concentrate the most diverse points of view in himself; capable of reconfiguring and expressing them from his own, singular and unique perspective. Outgoing in his reading and transmitting, he was at the same time introverted in his private thinking and letting his thoughts sink into his own language. IJsseling wrote on Heidegger and Nietzsche, Novalis and Schelling, Freud and Lacan, Foucault and Derrida, the gods and muses of the Greeks, yet all his texts render unmistakably an IJsselingian sound or music. A precise and (as he proudly claimed) “slow” reader and writer, IJsseling was also a man of the spoken word, talented with a great deal of rhetorical persuasion and seduction. Most typical of the way in which his thought remained in close touch with his own life, he investigated, in many of his texts, the relation between philosophy and the written and spoken word. Before Derrida made him think about the nature of the written letter, of texts and contexts, IJsseling was immediately attracted by Foucauldian and Nietzschean perspectives on the power of the spoken word. His 1975 book on Retoriek en filosofie (Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict) bears the significant (and still quasi-Heideggerian) subtitle: Wat gebeurt er wanneer er gesproken wordt? (What is Happening when Speech is Spoken?). (Subtitle omitted – because impossible to translate? – in the 1976 English translation.) A gifted writer IJsseling was also a most inspiring interlocutor in philosophical dialogue. It thus comes as no surprise that several of IJsseling’s last books resulted from recorded interviews. One can hardly feel the difference between these and the texts he painstakingly wrote by hand. Also, those who knew him personally will forever hear his voice when reading one of his texts. A man who spoke like he wrote and wrote like he spoke, IJsseling never ceased to be a teacher. He introduced many generations of Dutch speaking students, listeners and readers to Heidegger and Derrida, to Nietzsche and Foucault. He did it in such a personal and convincing way that they now often ascribe to these great thinkers what was actually IJsseling’s own personal contribution. However, they couldn’t help but notice that IJsseling’s Greeks looked and sounded notably different from those of his colleagues who taught Classical Philosophy. As a reader and writer, as a thinker and teacher, as a scholar and influential public figure Samuel IJsseling was less a man of oppositions than of mediation. It is striking how often, already in the title of his texts, he binds together strong opposites with a softening “and”: Denken en danken, geven en zijn (Thinking and Thanking, Giving and Being) (1964, 20152); Het zijn en de zijnden (Being and Beings) (1966); Nietzsche en de retorica (Nietzsche and Rhetoric) (1973); Hermeneutiek en retoriek (Hermeneutics and Rhetoric) (1977); Macht, taal en begeerte (Power, Language and Desire) (1979); Deconstructie en ethiek (Deconstruction and Ethics) (1992); Heidegger en het geschreven woord (Heidegger and the Written Word) (1992); Macht en onmacht (Power and Powerlessness) (1999); Derrida, Heidegger en de Grieken (Derrida, Heidegger and the Greeks) (2004); Dankbaar en aandachtig (Grateful and Attentive) (2013). Maybe “mediation” sounds a little too flat, too weak and too harmonious to characterize IJsseling’s entire opus. Settling conflicts by mediation is only how IJsseling’s long philosophical travels began – in a time when the young priest and doctoral student of Alphonse De Waelhens saw little antagonism between philosophy and theology, between thinking and praying, between the early and the later Heidegger. Hermeneutics supposedly could absorb and digest all strong differences and oppositions. IJsseling’s stay in Paris (1967/68) radically changed his outlook on philosophy, and when he came back to Leuven as a professor in 1969 he thought (very) differently and also dressed differently (only a little, still with sandals). Hermeneutics had made room for structuralism. Heidegger needed to be reread through Foucault, Derrida and Lacan. Christian faith was to be confronted with Nietzsche’s death of God. Philosophical thought was to be questioned as to its underlying strategies of power. Tension and disruption of traditional orders of discourse weighed on IJsseling’s mind. In his teaching and writing, however, he remained largely the same. He continued to patiently and prudently search for means to bridge abyssal differences. The “and” was no longer taken for granted, but it remained a legitimate aim of endeavor in the process of an endlessly deferred resolution of conflictual differences. Harmony being out of reach, philosophical thought became a way to slow down the universal Heraclitian war, to rest for a while before one was chased out of life. It was a long journey from Thinking and Thanking (1964) back to Grateful and Attentive (2013). On the way, IJsseling had restaged the battle between the power of the word cherished by the Sophists and Heidegger’s concealment of truth. Structuralism and deconstruction had shaken his former belief in humanism. Will and even the will to power had been replaced by a new sensitivity for a passivity older than all subjective passivity. Subjective desire had dissolved in a network of mirroring strategies of power. In his short book Mimesis. Over schijn en zijn (Mimesis. On Semblance and Being) (1990) IJsseling made a last effort to bind together the metaphysical oppositions he had patiently deconstructed during his last twenty years. Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Girard, J.L. Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe were given their last big common show. They soon had to make room for Apollo, Dionysus, Aphrodite (Apollo, Dionysos, Aphrodite en de anderen. Griekse goden in de hedendaagse filosofie (1994)), for Mnemosyne, Demeter, Moira (Drie godinnen. Mnemosyne, Demeter, Moira (1998)), for king Midas and Silenus (Koning Midas en de Sileen (1995)), for Tyche and kairos, etc. The one God was exchanged for the many Greek gods, the Revelation for stories, religion for myths. IJsseling became a seductive storyteller who reached a new and wider audience. He had found a playful and lighter way to tell the desperate story of human finitude. His former students and the still-growing community of his readers will remember Sam IJsseling as a man of many contrasts – yet one whose contrasted personality truthfully expressed itself in his teaching and writing. Although each was split or divided into many parts, his life and work formed a perfect unity – a differentiated unity in the process of constant displacement. No wonder that “context” became the key-word in IJsseling’s deconstruction of texts, “network” in his analysis of the structure of power and desire, “translation” in his mode of interpretation. No wonder either that he never much cared whether the official title of the course he taught was “Philosophy of Language”, “History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy” or “Phenomenology”. It was all the same to him and to his enthusiastic students. A time may come when the figure of this almost mythic philosopher-poet will be given its due place in academic philosophy. One will then begin making links and find a coherence and constancy the author himself was unaware of. No doubt that the notes of the “gift” and the “call”, of “gratefulness” and respectful “response” that IJsseling struck in his earliest work will then stand out as the alpha and omega of his long philosophical wandering. It would be unfair to the memory of professor IJsseling not to mention the institutional context of his powerful presence in Leuven. He was not only the teacher, speaker and writer who introduced several generations to Heidegger and contemporary French philosophy. IJsseling was also devoted with body and soul to the welfare of the Higher Institute of Philosophy where he occupied numerous positions with great responsibility. Most worth mentioning are his serving as Editor in chief of Tijdschrift voor Filosofie (1983-1989) and especially, from 1974 until his retirement in 1997, as Director of the Husserl Archives. Husserl was never IJsseling’s primary philosophical love, but for more than twenty years the publication and administration of Husserl’s legacy became IJsseling’s most constant and time consuming occupation. To the great astonishment of many, IJsseling became a successful manager of a multinational enterprise. Neither the founder of the Archives, Herman Leo Van Breda, nor IJsseling’s successors Rudolf Bernet and Ullrich Melle can pride themselves to have initiated and successfully completed the publication of as many volumes in the series Husserliana and Phaenomenologica. The secret of Samuel IJsseling’s success as the leader of the Husserl Archives must be sought in his amiable personality and his philosophical prestige. He gave the editors sufficient freedom and encouragement to make working under his direction most profitable and enjoyable for them. The force of his own philosophical thought provided IJsseling with a good judgment in editorial matters and gave him a natural authority in the sometimes difficult negotiations with publishing houses and directors of the Husserl Archives abroad. Under IJsseling’s direction the Husserl Archives in Leuven became what they were officially called only a few years ago: a “Centre for Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy”. It was IJsseling’s strong conviction that the Archives needed not only to be open to the entire philosophical world (which was the case since their foundation by Van Breda), but that the editorial work on Husserl’s texts must go together with a philosophical valorization and critical evaluation. IJsseling’s approach to Husserl’s phenomenology was so liberal that it became an object of suspicion for the defenders of a Husserlian orthodoxy who resisted all attempts to reread Husserl through Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and Freud. As often happens, what was exceptional in IJsseling’s time soon became mainstream – with the result that many phenomenologists today turn to pre-Husserlian rather than post-Husserlian thinkers in their attempt to keep Husserl’s thought alive. After his death on May 14, 2015, official and less official manifestations have shown how present professor IJsseling remains in the minds and hearts of his former students and colleagues. His last, posthumously published book (De tijd, het schrift, het verschil – Time, Writing, Difference (2015)) has won him new readers. For those who have personally known him, it will forever be impossible to discriminate what they owe to his bright philosophical insights and to his genuine human kindness. Just as life and death belong together, as IJsseling constantly emphasized, his philosophy and his person remain inseparable in their memory. Rudolf BERNET 5