Love Letters and a Sleazy Seduction

How to woo like a philosopher

Not all philosophers, it must be acknowledged, are literary powerhouses—masters of the beautiful turn of phrase. Here’s Martin Heidegger, for example, waxing lyrical about the ontic and ontological:

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive state of Dasein's Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards that Being—a relationship which itself is one of Being. And this means further that there is some way in which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein's Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological. (Being and Time, p. 32)

Clearly, this sort of thing will rob more sober readers of their will to live. Imagine, therefore, what it would be like if you were dating Heidegger, and the great philosopher, in between penning paeans to the Fatherland and rehearsing the Horst-Wessel-Lied, decided to write a love letter to you. The chances are that it would contain passages such as this one:

We change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other—the distance that allows nothing to dissolve—but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there.” That the presence of the other breaks into our own life—this is what no feeling can fully encompass. (Great Philosophers Who Failed At Love, Andrew Shaffer, loc 852)

To which Hannah Arendt, the recipient of the letter, must surely have been tempted to reply, "What in God’s name are you banging on about?".

Still, as a heartfelt expression of love, it perhaps beats this passage penned by William Gladstone, which, rather extraordinarily, formed part of a marriage proposal:

I seek much in a wife in gifts better than those of our human pride, and am also sensible that she can find little in me: sensible that, were you to treat this note as the offspring of utter presumption, I must not be surprised: sensible that the lot I invite you to share, even if it be not attended, as I trust it is not, with peculiar disadvantages of an outward kind, is one, I do not say unequal to your deserts, for that were saying little, but liable at best to changes and perplexities and pains which, for myself, I contemplate without apprehension, but to which it is perhaps selfishness in the main, with the sense of inward dependence counteracting an opposite sense of my too real unworthiness, which would make me contribute to expose another — and that other! (Disraeli, Douglas Hurd, loc 2441)

Amazingly enough, Gladstone's proposal, which in context was actually rather sweet, met with success, and his marriage to Catherine Glynne endured for 59 years until his death in 1898.

There are, of course, people who write a fine love letter, some of them even philosophers. Take Jean Paul Sartre, for example–iffy philosopher, jolly good letter writer. Here are three extracts from letters written to Simone de Beauvoir in the summer of 1939 (from Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir):

This is just a brief note to tell you that I love you with all my might and that you’re my little sweet. I received your good letter, and I’m sad to be away from you, my flower. I’m a bit less gloomy today because I’m working, and also we’ve gotten out some. Yesterday afternoon we took an excursion to Auxerre, about which there is nothing to say, except that it filled the day.

[..]

Farewell, my darling Beaver, my little flower. I think so intently about you, every day, nothing but you, and I would so like to be near you.

I love you so, my darling Beaver, I long to see you again, and have some fun with you. You don’t seem at all abstract to me. I feel you very close and think with joy I’ll see you soon. But it is pure time that separates me from you, time swallowed like individual spoonfuls of cod liver oil, with the feeling that everything will be disgorged all at once.

Do write to me, and often. Your letters are my only pleasure. I love you so.

My darling Beaver

I received your two delightful letters, which I read without skipping a single one of the descriptions… and I was very moved by your small compliments. Dear God, how nice you are, my Beaver. You fill me with regrets and longings, and yesterday I was completely morose not to be with you. Who wanted this? you will ask. I did, probably, but without you it’s like Paradise Lost. I love you.

This is much more like it, though the sentiments contained are somewhat diminished by the knowledge that Sartre was at this time writing exactly the same kind of stuff to another woman, Bianca Bienenfeld.

My dear little flame

I was so counting on a letter from you this morning… I am sure you must have written to me, I have such confidence in you. I simply imagine the letter must be lost or they couldn’t find it at the post office. But I’m left with a feeling of great emptiness, because ever since my last glimpse of your little hand waving at the window of the bus, I’ve had nothing more from you–only memories. I love you passionately.

I am sad not to have gotten the letter. I would so like to know about your return, how they treated you, whether you had much trouble: I love you so much… My love, what a long time it is till September 25th. But you know, I haven’t yet lost your face; on the contrary, it is clear as day, and I feel a little pang each time I see it again, beautiful little eyes, dear little mouth. I love you passionately.

Still, this is definitely a step up from Heidegger’s efforts. In fact, in her memoir, A Disgraceful Affair, Bienenfeld wrote that Sartre was “the master of the language of love”.

Unfortunately, his mastery didn’t extend to the domain of physical relations. His efforts to entice Bienenfeld into his bed for the first time were disgraceful.

Sartre began pursuing Bienefeld in the spring of 1939, soon declaring his love for her. Despite Bienenfeld’s ambivalence, talk between them quickly turned to the circumstances in which they would consummate their relationship. On the agreed occasion, Sartre began proceedings by announcing that he’d taken another girl’s virginity in the same hotel room the day before. He then undressed in front of Bienenfeld, and washed his feet in the bathroom sink. He refused to draw the curtains when asked, and then mocked Bienenfeld for her shyness. After this display of boorishness, it is entirely unsurprising that Bienenfeld was unable to go through with the act, though she does note in her memoir that he “achieved his goal” in the days that followed. (see A Disgraceful Affair, Bianca Lamblin, pp. 42-3)

It is relevant here that Bienenfeld was just 18 years old when all this happened—Sartre was 34, almost twice her age. It is also relevant that she was a student of Simone de Beauvoir, with whom she was also having an affair.