Abstract
Good Morning, Herr Professor, I hope this form of address is acceptable to you and that your ghost has not already been put into an unphilosophical state of mind, a "mode of attunement to the world" inimical to the impassioned but disinterested inquiry which I intend that we shall embark upon together. With a little bit of research, I suppose I could find out how you were customarily addressed by those who wished to indicate their respect for your person; or at least how individuals of your standing would normally have expected and wanted to have been addressed. But there is, as Henry James that most philosophical of anti-philosophers pointed out, a "fatal futility" in mere facts. A morning in a library, spent thinking not about Da-sein and Mitda-sein but employed researching the appropriate way of addressing high-ranking German academics, would take me rather closer than I would wish to inauthentic Da-sein — even to the realm of "Idle talk", of Gerede, which has its place but not here. Our business together is with the ontological and primordial, not with the ontic and derivative. So, for the present, it will be as "Herr Professor" that I shall address you.