Accomplishments
Kassner introduced the work of William Blake to Germany. He discovered the Christian poet in Baudelaire. In 1903 he made the German public aware of the works of André Gide through his translation. Even before existential philosophy came into vogue, Kassner in his essay on Kierkegaard, which incidentally is the first German writing on Kierkegaard, had spoken about the existential predicament, the thrown-ness of man in the World. He translated from Greek, English, French and Russian. His understanding of the Indian society is full of rich insights quite different from that of a philosopher like Hegel, who had never set foot in India. Despite his physical handicap, Kassner traveled to India, met people there, saw for himself how people live there. Kassner's insights into India are an admirable example of his distinctive approach to cultural understanding and anthropology. In his own nonacademic way he was one of the most learned men of the last century. He traveled far and wide, even to inaccessible regions, despite a lifelong crippling disability. He was more widely traveled than most of his contemporaries. His knowledge of the classical world, of the oriental and occidental texts, of religion and philosophy, of history and culture, of literature and art is profound and comprehensive. He had a deep knowledge of the cultural history of modern man. He saw, as perhaps no one else saw, the internal contradictions and discontents of modernity.
Kassner was immensely productive; his literary activity extends over sixty years and he was writing till the age of eighty-five. He is considered one of the greatest essayists and "the only German essayist who processed humor." In his writings he judges severely his contemporaries and his criticisms are provocative. Given his vision and his relentless focus on man even his silences are telling. Kassner was no less an iconoclast than Nietzsche, though temperamentally he is the exact opposite of the overwrought philosopher. Mason wonders: "How little there is in the post-renaissance mental activities and achievements that he does not abominate!" But he adds, "There is something curiously authoritative about these denunciations of his.... They raise important issues, which have hitherto been overlooked; one cannot afford to ignore them." But this criticism of his never ended up in nihilism. He was above all an anti-nihilist. Kassner speaks of being a mystic in order not to become a nihilist. Though Kassner says that he is a conservative due to the exasperation and consternation that modern world caused him, he is in no sense a reactionary, cynic, pessimist or defeatist and had no romantic yearning for the past, and no escapist delusions.
Yet he is unknown. Could it be that Kassner's works were ‘out of season’? In as early as 1929 Hofmannsthal wrote about Kassner's writings that "a not too distant future will wonder how our period that is craving for new forms and contents could neglect such fresh content in such novel forms." Forty years later in 1969 Michael Schmidt comments that "this ‘staunende Zeit’ cannot of course be ours." Still a generation later in 2005 in the latest article published on Kassner Prof. Subramanian writes that even today "fame has eluded Kassner."
Kassner is variously described as ‘Philosopher’, ‘Thinker’, ‘Cultural–Historian’, ‘Platonist’, and ‘Philosopher–Poet’. One may call him a ‘cultural philosopher’, for the primary object of his studies were cultures and their symbolic representations. His contributions to the understanding of Greek antiquity, ancient India and European Modernity form an essential part of his writings. It is indeed appropriate to call him a ‘seer’, in the multiple sense of the term, for ‘seeing’ and ‘vision’ are central to his physiognomy. Whenever he observes, he conveys unfailingly his sense of wonderment. It is this wonderment of the seer that sets in train his deep probing inquiry bordering on the mystic, which yet again to Kassner becomes manifest when poetry affiliates to philosophy. It is his vision, his Anschauung that gives his works an intensity and luminosity.
For as Kassner himself said "I should regard every line of my work suspect... if the knowledge and the feeling desert me that any enlightenment of man from them must work like a physical light; out of this desire arose the form, style and the language of the whole work". His works present a distinctive way of seeing, totally different from the current empirical methods of the social sciences.
The same themes recur in Kassner again and again, in their prismatic break-up as essays, parables, dialogues and reminiscences. He visits the same zone time and again with profit. It is not as though there is no progress, indeed the progress in thought can be said to have a spiral movement, as his dogged, unflinching gaze winds itself around the phenomena.
But as Eudo C. Mason suggests, Kassner's texts, given their importance and greatness are justifiably difficult. For when we seek the source of their difficulty we cannot say that his style is pedantic or jargon-filled. His sentences are always clear and sober without rhetorical flourish but laced with gentle humor and irony. It is in a sense unfortunate that he labeled his worldview physiognomy, for it was a discredited discipline and Kassner has had to an explain over and again how his physiognomy differs from traditional physiognomy.
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