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Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend

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This is one of the most touching autobiography I have read. Paul Feyerabend was not only an important thinker or philosopher, I was also an interesting human being. It is not, however, so much his story that is intriguing as it is the moral we can draw from his experiences that is illuminating. Perhaps the most valuable counsel he gives us in this book is the following:"If you want to achieve something, if you want to write a book, paint a picture, be sure that the center of your existence is somewhere else and that it's solidly grounded; only then will you be able to keep your cool and laugh at the attacks that are bound to come"(147). I think any student of philosophy, literature and the arts should take this advice to heart. Feyerabend is one of the rare philosophers who realized that, after all, a worthwile life is not one devoted to abstract thinking but one devoted to love. As he says," There are strong inclinations after all;...they are not about abstract things such as solitude or intellectual achievements but about a live human being"(169). I cannot but recommend you to read this very enlightening autobiography. Vladimir Pintro, student of philosophy at S.U.N.Y.

Typical Feyerabend arrogance, spiced with unbearable charm. Brimming with intimate details of his sexual experiences, fighting with the Nazi Army on the Western Front, his lifelong (almost) apathy toward academic philosophy, and his real passion: opera singing. Philosophy, it turns out, was "just a job." I had *no* idea that Paul Feyerabend once possessed a "world voice" for opera. It was opera he loved. About 1/3 of the story is about operas he'd seen worldwide, who sang the roles, his critical opinion of the singing!

Also includes his bookish, only-child upbringing; his horribly depressed mother and her suicide in his teens; his adult depressions; his affairs and marriages; and finally, his mature love for the beautiful Graziana, which allowed him some actual truth in this life. It ends with Graziana's reminder that most of Feyerabend's life was spent in chronic pain, the result of a gunshot to his groin during the Nazi retreat from Russia. That was the injury which rendered him sexually impotent at 20 - a recurring theme in the story.

By the last page, I was in tears. Imagine tears of compassion after reading the words of that anarchist maniac who wrote "Against Method"!! But tears there were. It's a very good book.

This is a slim volume, barely 200 pages, but it charts an awesome spiritual odyssee. Paul Feyerabend - enfant terrible of late 20th century philosophy - looked ruthlessly in the mirror and painted an unadorned picture of himself. At the end of his life, he painfully recognised that its course had been shaped by absences, rather than by specific events or, for that matter, ideas: absence of purpose, of content, of a focused interest, absence of moral character, absence of warmth and of social relationships.

Only when Feyerabend approached the final fifteen years of his life and settled as a professor in the philosophy of science in Zürich - after having lectured four decades at Anglo-American universities - he started to relax. And eventually, a woman came and set things right. In 1983 he met the Italian physicist Grazia Borrini for the first time. Five years later they married. His relationship with Mrs. Borrini must have been the single most important event in Feyerabend's life. Reading his autobiography is an experience akin to listening to Sibelius' tone-poem 'Nightride and Sunrise': after 1983 the colours change dramatically and his prose is infused with warmth and immense gratefulness. It is a delight to read his rapt eulogies on the companion of the last decade of his life, on his most fortunate discovery of true love and friendship. Indeed, although Feyerabend is not interested in 'spoiling' his autobiography with an extensive reiteration of his philosophical positions, there are a few messages he clearly wants to drive home. The central role in life of love and friendship is one of them. Without these "even the noblest achievements and the most fundamental principles remain pale, empty and dangerous" (p. 173). Yet, Feyerabend clearly wants us to see that this love "is a gift, not an achievement" (p. 173). It is something which is subjected neither to the intellect, nor to the will, but is the result of a fortunate constellation of circumstances.

The same applies to the acquisition of 'moral character'. This too "cannot be created by argument, 'education' or an act of will." (p.174). Yet, it is only in the context of a moral character - something which Feyerabend confesses to having only acquired a trace of after a long life and the good fortune of having met Grazia - that ethical categories such as guilt, responsibility and obligation acquire a meaning. "They are empty words, even obstacles, when it is lacking." (p.174) (Consequently, he did not think himself responsible for his behavior during the Nazi period).

Contrary to someone like Karl Kraus, Feyerabend seems to think that men, at least as long as they have not acquired moral character, are morally neutral, whilst ideas are not. A question which remains, of course, is who is to be held responsible for intellectual aberrations and intentional obfuscation if this character is only to be acquired by an act of grace, an accidental constellation of circumstances.

There is an enigmatic passage in the autobiography which may shed light on this important problem. After having seen a performance of Shakespeare's Richard II, in which the protagonist undoes himself of all his royal insigna, thereby relinquishing not just "a social role but his very individuality, those features of his character that separated him from other", Feyerabend notes that the "dark, unwieldy, clumsy, helpless creature that appeared seemed freer and safer, despite prison and death, than what he had left behind." (p. 172) It prompts him to the insight that "the sum of our works and/or deeds does not constitute a life. These . . . are like debris on an ocean . . . They may even form a solid platform, thus creating an illusion of universality, security, and permanence. Yet the security and the permanence can be swept away by the powers that permitted them to arise." (p. 172) These ideas do not exactly solve the question about moral responsibility, but they do suggest a tragic 'Lebensgefühl' - an acknowledgment of the fact that the spheres of reason, order and justice are terribly limited and that no progress in our science and technical resources will change their relevance - which seems to underpin Feyerabends very earthbound philosophy.

Paul Feyerabend's autobiography is remarkably open and frank, fitting with the way this man wrote, thought, and led his life. Feyerabend was the man who, perhaps more than anyone else, has clearly pointed out that science has become the religion of western culture. His autobiography let me learn a little about what made this man so unafraid of thinking differently from other people. I also found it to be poignant, particularly in the picture of a boy raised without love, who as an adult is captivated by his love of beauty in music and the theater, and who finally begins to grasp what love is at the end of his life.

Paul Feyerabend's autobiography is a surprising, wise perspective on a life shaped by an extraordinary intellect, chronic pain, and an overwhelming urge to mischief. Most powerful is his late awareness of human connections, and his passion for his new wife. Near death, he wrote: "My concern is that after my departure something remains of me, _not_ papers, _not_ final philosophical declarations, but love.... That is what I would like to happen, not intellectual survival but the survival of love."

Simply a wonderful book repleat with Feyerabend's astonishing honesty and frankness no matter the consequences, his experiences of world war II stand out as remarkable in the face of horrors which most people would glady forget if they could. His energy in experiencing life and especially in the openness needed for the full experience of love is obvious when he notes that philosphy is irrelevant next to this. Written without sentimentality and an eagerness for just living the book reveals the loss suffered by the world when Feyerabend died.

Interesting thinkers like Feyerabend were nourished by an intellectual culture that valued non-conformists. For example:

"During the first plenary session [of a seminar at Alpbach] I almost fell off my chair; so much nonsense, so many errors! Didn't the learned gentlemen know anything? I made notes for the discussion, hoping to straighten them out. At last the lectures were over I raised my hand. The chairman chose one Eminent Person, and that Eminent Person spoke. He chose another Eminent Person, and that Eminent Person too spoke at great length without saying anything. Finally it was my turn. ... Ernesto Grassi and Thure von Üxküll had discussed truth in a way that struck me as empty rhapsodizing. I let them have it. ... When the discussion was over and I moved into the sun, I suddenly had Popper at my side: 'Let's take a walk,' he said. ... Popper talked---about music, the dangers of Beethoven, the Wagnerian disaster; he criticized me for having mentioned Reichenbach's 'interphenomena' (from his book on quantum mechanics), and he suggested we use the familiar du form of address. In the evening he took me to a select meeting with Bertalanffy, Karl Rahner, von Hayek, and other dignitaries; I, a mere student, and a beginner at that, had been found worthy of participating in their sublime debates!" (pp. 71-72)

The same intellectual culture also appreciated teaching as the intellectual and honourable activity that it is, rather than a "teaching load" which is how the anti-intellectual charlatan professors of today regard it. For example:

"My interest in physics and astronomy came from an excellent physics teacher at our school, Professor Oswald Thomas, a well-known figure in Viennese education. Once a month, Thomas assembled about two thousand people in a large meadow outside Vienna, turned off the streetlights and explained the constellations. ... He also gave lectures at his office and at the university. I attended most of them and assisted him in various ways. On my thirteenth birthday I was permitted to give a lecture of my own. 'Two minutes,' said Professor Thomas; I had to be removed after ten." (p. 28)

In Feyerabend's generation this spirit was upheld by professor attending each other's lectures and engaging in debates. When Feyerabend "gave my usual philosophy of science course" at Zürich, several professor from other departments attended, including van der Waerden, who "would interrupt and raise objections, and we would have a lively exchange" (p. 157). At the LSE "Imre Lakatos ... came to every lecture" and did the same (p. 128).

It seems to me that Feyerabend squandered this entire inheritance. The heritage is crucially imprtant: we saw Feyerabend assert the importance of Thomas, and of his time in Alpbach where he met Popper and had other fruitful intellectual exchanges as a young student he writes that "This was the most decisive step of my life. I would not be where I am today, with the pensions I am drawing, [and] the ambiguous reputation I seem to possess, ... had I not accepted" (p. 70).

But Feyerabend failed to be a Thomas or Popper for the next generation. Broken down to a depression following the "chauvinism, illiteracy, and intolerance" (p. 148) with which his book Against Method was met, Feyerabend lapsed into a rather disgustingly content egotism. He wines about his "teaching load" (p. 156), he cheers at being relieved of office hours (p. 158) and at having a student run his seminar ("I accepted at once---the less I had to do the better"; p. 160), etc. No wonder, then, that no Feyerabends are being produced today, since he broke with such arrogance the precious tradition that by his own admission had made his own career possible.

One of the most moving, insightful, and honest autobiographies I've ever read. Unduly influenced by the standard ignorant rap on Against Method, I was also very surprised. Get it, especially if you have a background in math, physics, philosophy, or even music.

This is an honest book by an honest man. The poverty of authority and the creativity of the individual (who can be honest to HIMSELF!) One of the most entertaining books I have read!

Not only are Feyerabend's ideas strange, he was a different guy.... He liked to give up places, women.... wanted to be retired when he was five.... and fought for Germany in WWII without really knowing what the cause was about.... He liked opera.... and.... finally.... he was one of this centuries most important philosophers.

This is a well written, well concieved book that will tell you pretty much everything about this guy. Which explains a lot. His style-- clever, ironic, kindly-- emparts little bits of warmth and wisdom. Looking back upon this book, I feel pretty fuzzy about it and highly recommend it to all people....

Especially who those who know who this guy is!