Heidegger’s Thinking of Being, University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. —— Postponements: Woman, Sensuality and Death in Nietzsche, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. —— Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing: On the Verge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. —— Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. * * *

doi:10.4324/9780203049129-19

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Heidegger’s Thinking of Being, University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. —— Postponements: Woman, Sensuality and Death in Nietzsche, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. —— Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing: On the Verge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. —— Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. * * *

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ABSTRACT

In the Selbstdarstellung of 1924-5, Freud said of even his most speculative writings, “I have assiduously avoided all approaches to philosophy proper [die eigentliche Philosophie]”. He added that such avoidance was made easier for him by his “constitutional incapacity” for philosophy (1971:87). Three decades earlier, in his letter to Fließ of 1 January 1896, the claim was quite different. Freud congratulated his friend for having advanced through medicine to physiology by taking medicine as a kind of “detour”, conceding that his own use of the medicinal detour would ultimately conduct him back to his “initial goal”, which, he confessed, was Philosophie.