You have told me1 how difficult life is for you because of a constantly swelling flood of letters. But since you graced me with such an exquisite gift,2 I must thank you nonetheless. You have to bear the consequences of the evil deed, and allow yet another letter to wash over you. I must also deeply apologize for not thanking you right away. Long sought-after syntheses of thought suddenly presented themselves, as if dropped from the heavens. A considerable amount of work was required to quickly provide them with a stable form. Your short dramas, which were constantly by my side, were a great source of inspiration, even though I was only able to read certain parts here and there. For me, the inner states that are portrayed in your art as purely aesthetic, or not exactly portrayed, but elevated into a sphere of pure aesthetic beauty, these states hold, in this aesthetic objectification, a particular interesti.e. not only for the art lover in me, but also for the philosopher and phenomenologist. For many years I have attempted to get a clear sense of the basic problems of philosophy, and then of the methods for solving them, all of which led me to the phenomenological method as a permanent acquisition. It demands an attitude towards all forms of objectivity that fundamentally departs from its natural counterpart, and which is closely related to the attitude and stance in which your art, as something purely aesthetic, places us with respect to the presented objects and the whole of the surrounding world. The intuition of a purely aesthetic work of art is enacted under a strict suspension of all existential attitudes of the intellect and of all attitudes relating to emotions and the will which presuppose such an existential attitude. Or more precisely: the work of art places us in (almost forces us into) a state of aesthetic intuition that excludes these attitudes. The more of the existential world that resounds or is brought to attention, and the more the work of art demands an existential attitude of us out of itself (for instance a naturalistic sensuous appearance: the natural truth of photography), the less aesthetically pure the work is. (To this also belong all kinds of tendency.) The natural stance of the mind, the stance of actual life, is existential through and through. Things that stand before us in a sensuous way, the things of which actual scientific discourse speaks, are posited by us as realities, and acts of mind and will are based on these positings of existence: joythat this is, sorrow, that this is not, wish, that it could be, etc. ( = existential attitude of the mind): the opposite pole of that stance of the mind that belongs to pure aesthetic intuition and the corresponding emotional state. But just as much the opposite pole of the pure phenomenological attitude of the mind, which is the only one within which philosophical problems can be solved. For the phenomenological method too demands a strict suspension of all existential attitudes. Above all in the critique of knowledge.3 As soon as the sphinx of knowledge has posed its question, as soon as we have looked into the abyssal depths of the possibility of a knowledge that would be enacted in subjective experiences and yet contain an in-itself existing objectivity, our attitude to all pre-given knowledge and all pre-given beingto all of science and all assumed realityhas become a radically different one. Everything questionable, everything incomprehensible, everything enigmatic! The enigma can only be solved if we place ourselves on its own ground and treat all knowledge as questionable, and accept no existence as pre-given. This means that all science and all reality (including the reality of ones own I) have become mere phenomena. Only one thing remains: to clarify, in a pure intuiting (in a pure intuiting analysis and abstraction), the meaning which is immanent in the pure phenomena, without ever going beyond them, i.e. without presupposing any transcendent existences that are intended in them; that is, to clarify what knowledge as such and known objectivity as such mean, and mean according to their immanent essence. This applies to all types and forms of knowledge. If all knowledge is questionable, then the phenomenon knowledge is the only thing given, and before I permit one particular kind of knowledge as valid, I perform my research in a purely intuiting (as if it were aesthetic) fashion: what validity in general means, i.e., what knowledge as such means, with and in its known objectivity. If I am to investigate in an intuiting way, I must of course not hold on to a merely verbal quasi-knowing (symbolic thought), but to the proper, evident and insightful knowing, even though the symbolic thought, in its relation to evident knowing, also requires a phenomenological analysis of essences. Phenomenological intuiting is thus closely related to the aesthetic intuiting in pure art; obviously it is not an intuiting that serves the purpose of aesthetic pleasure, but rather the purpose of continued investigations and cognition, and of constituting scientific insights in a new sphere (the philosophical sphere). Another thing. The artist, who observes the world in order to gain knowledge of nature and man for his own purposes, relates to it in a similar way as the phenomenologist. Thus: not as an observing natural scientist and psychologist, not as a practical observer of man, as if it were an issue of knowledge of man and nature. When he observes the world, it becomes a phenomenon for him, its existence is indifferent, just as it is to the philosopher (in the critique of reason). The difference is that the artist, unlike the philosopher, does not attempt to found the meaning of the world-phenomenon and grasp it in concepts, but appropriates it intuitively, in order to gather, out if its plenitude, materials for the creation of aesthetic forms. * What a hopeless and typical professor! He cannot even open his mouth, without giving a lecture. But happily enough, part of the philosophical essence of a lecture is the absence of a demand for an answer, and the same thing holds for the essence of academic freedom, that one can fall asleep or skip school as much as one wants. But I wish you all the best, dear H, in the new year. And what I wish you, I wish the entire world of people who take such a great interest in your inner development and growth, with its blossoms and flowerings. P. S. I find myself reluctant to say anything about your work. I think that you would be indifferent to praise and scorn, and wise talk of any kind. And the three golden rules for the artist (in the widest sense), which at the same time are the public secrets of all true greatness, are surely familiar and evident to you: 1) He shall have genius obviously, otherwise he is not an artist. 2) He shall follow, purely and solely, his daimonion, which, from within, drives him to an intuiting-blind production. 3) Everyone else knows better, thus he observes them allin a purely aesthetic and phenomenological fashion. With best regards, from all of us to all of you Yours truly