According to Awee Prins, who recently retired as Associate Professor at the Erasmus School of Philosophy at Erasmus University, philosophy is a process of tentative and dwelling thinking. Over four decades, he taught his students how to orient themselves in an ultimately incomprehensible world. His lectures on Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas were so legendary that a ‘band’ of former students decided to ‘preserve them for eternity’ in the form of a podcast and video series entitled First Philosophy. We visited the retired philosopher and discussed the importance of philosophy, the ‘geriatric adolescence’ of retirement, and the most difficult task for philosophers: to stop.
What makes your lectures so special that they had to become a video series?
‘I guess the makers of the series should really answer that, but for me the university has always been more then a place where knowledge is transferred. Teaching is wandering together in the dark. The lecturer may have read so much more and thought so much more than his students, but he is also still searching, just like them. What binds lecturer and student is a shared perplexity about what it means to be human. Philosophy is not about knowing but about orienting oneself in a fundamentally incomprehensible world.
One of my greatest joys is seeing former students draw on their studies at crucial moments in their lives. Someone may approach me, years after his graduation, telling me: ‘I am now the CEO of a large company, and recently I had to fire several employees. At that moment I thought of Levinas and what he said about the importance of putting the Other first, and that really made me think twice.”
Another example: in class I teach that according to Sartre, freedom means that in every situation you can always say what something is not. I sometimes alluded to my mourning over the death of my wife to illustrate this. Every woman I meet is not-Jacqueline, even now. I often hear from former students that they recognized this ‘truth’ in their own lives, many years later, when their parents died, and how suddenly all other parents were not-their parents.
At my farewell-lecture, Eddie Adelmund, Max Wassink, Sonia Shvets and Kas Molenaar told me they wanted to make a video series of my lectures. They wanted to prevent it from being only a memory for the students who were lucky enough to be there. I was of course, most pleasantly surprised. Now, I receive emails from former students who are listening to the course together with their children. Wonderful.’
Teaching is finding our ways together in the dark. The lecturer may have read so much more and thought so much more, but he is also still searching. What binds lecturer and student is that shared perplexity about what it means to be human.
Dr. Awee Prins
Dr Awee Prins, former associate professor of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
What does the title First Philosophy refer to?
‘The title may seem a bit pretentious, but the point is that genuine philosophizing is only possible from the first-person perspective. No matter how you think about the political structures that reign and depict our culture, the first-person perspective can not be avoided, nor surpassed. You can tell ‘grand’ stories about those structures . Together with Foucault we can talk in great indignation about power structures, but first and foremost philosophy is about people in their unique situations.
Take, for example, feminist phenomenology, which investigates what it feels like to be seen as a woman and how to relate to that gaze. Or the brilliant manifesto I Am Not Your Negro, based on the manuscript by James Baldwin. That is pure phenomenology: showing how it is, how you experience it. Only then can you begin to understand how to challenge and change structures.
In this course, we look at thinkers who show how, from the ‘frailty’ of existence, new perceptions of, and new relations to the world continually arise. And in doing so I try not only to teach students philosophical lessons, but also to intensify their being in the world.’
Watch a Snippet from the First Episode
How does philosophy differ for you from other academic disciplines?
‘We are inclined to reduce the world to problems and solutions: there is the refugee problem, the climate problem, relationship problems. These days you even have to work on your marriage. If that is true, half of the Netherlands could apply for disability benefits.
Problem-solving is the paradigm of our time, but it is a shallow way of thinking. I have tried to teach my students that primarily there are only events, and how we relate to those events. ‘Stirring thinking’ – which is how I do philosophy – shows that problem-solving thinking is just one way of thinking. Realizing there are many other ways of thinking, gives us new, much needed, air and space.
A doctor who focuses solely on how patients function ignores their existence. Medicine should not only be about repairing the body, but also about paying attention to how someone relates to being ill. Medicine is not only about functioning, but also - and above all - about existing. I call this ‘frail care’ (‘broos behandelen’). It makes medicine more humane and wiser.’
The sciences can still learn a lot from Philosophy. Over the years I have told successive Executive Boards of the EUR that the Department of Philosophy is a pearl farm amidst the fish markets.’
Do you miss teaching?
‘I do, but I very consciously chose to stop with academic philosophy. People tell me: How wonderful that you are a philosopher, you can just keep doing that after you retire. I find that a strange way of thinking. Why should a philosopher keep on being a philosopher? A retired bricklayer doesn’t fill his garden with walls, and a retired surgeon – hopefully – doesn’t start operating on his grandchildren.
Kierkegaard once wrote: ‘The most difficult thing for philosophers is this: to stop.’ Well, let me be the one to give that a try.
Also, there is – I believe - such a thing as ‘geriatric adolescence’. It’s a bit like long ago, when you were sixteen, seventeen years old, and you looked at your room in your parent’s house, thinking: ‘I had a good time here, but now it’s time for me to leave’. Perhaps the same goes for retirement: You – gratefully - look back on forty years of work and think: I have done this for a long time, and with great pleasure. But now it’s time for something else.
I am now trying to think what I have never thought, but perhaps should have; and I am reading what I have never read, but perhaps should have. Of course I still do some philosophical thinking – Kierkegaard was right! – for example about old age, which – beyond the clichés of gyms and geraniums – I call our ‘existential involution’, but not in order to give lectures. I want to make room for the younger generation.
That doesn’t take away from the fact that I am glad a new generation of thinkers can, due to First Philosophy, relate to the tales of this old man. To quote the famous Dutch author Gerard Reve: It has been seen; it has not gone unnoticed.’
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About First Philosophy
First Philosophy is an initiative by Max Wassink and Eddie Adelmund. The concept and production were carried out by Max Wassink. The series is presented by Sonia Shvets and Kas Molenaar. All four attended Awee Prins’ lectures and, in this series, let themselves be stirred again by that first encounter with philosophy.
There are seventeen episodes in total, and every Tuesday morning a new episode is released online. You can watch First Philosophy on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify.
For questions or press inquiries, please contact our press officer Eddie Adelmund (Adelmund@esphil.eur.nl).
