Existentialists’ personal rivalries formed a continuous chain of falling-outs

Evidence

Philosophical conversations between thinkers who had invested so much of themselves in their work often became emotional, and sometimes downright argumentative. 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: The image of Koestler punching Camus in the street plus the disastrous 1953 Sartre-Heidegger meeting makes lively cocktail-party material.
• XREF: connects to: Existentialist philosophers’ personal rivalries structured the movement’s history — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 101; Mid-century existentialists disputed whether political disagreement can coexist with friendship — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 780

Broader Connections

• Existentialist philosophers’ personal rivalries structured the movement’s history #corroborates (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 101
• Mid-century existentialists disputed whether political disagreement can coexist with friendship #exemplifies (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 780