The virtuous philosopher and the chameleon poet: Husserl and Hofmannsthal

This paper explores the intricacies of Edmund Husserl's celebrated letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Although Husserl claims to have found "great inspiration" in Hofmannsthal's aesthetics for the forging of his own phenomenological method, this paper examines how Husserl imagined this source of inspiration while at the same time actually drawing on insights from Hofmannsthal's aesthetics. In addition to a treatment of Husserl's envisioned analogy between the aesthetic attitude and the phenomenological attitude, this paper further complicates Husserl's perception of Hofmannsthal through a discussion of Hofmannsthal's "magical" conception of symbolism and the essential multi-lingualism of his literary works.