Existentialist philosophers’ personal rivalries structured the movement’s history

Evidence

Their intellectual battles form a long chain of belligerence that connects the existentialist story end to end. In Germany, Martin Heidegger turned against his former mentor Edmund Husserl, but later Heidegger’s friends and colleagues turned their backs on him. In France, Gabriel Marcel attacked Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre fell out with Albert Camus, Camus fell out with Merleau-Ponty, Merleau-Ponty fell out with Sartre, and the Hungarian intellectual Arthur Koestler fell out with everyone and punched Camus in the street. When the philosophical giants of each nation, Sartre and Heidegger, finally met in 1953, it went badly and they spoke mockingly of each other ever after. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 101

Categorization

• CANDY: Koestler punching Camus in the street is a perfectly tweetable, absurd fact.
• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how personality and philosophy intertwine, mirroring a recurring anxiety in the reading list about ad hominem vs. ideas. — connects to: Existentialists’ personal rivalries formed a continuous chain of falling-outs — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 101