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Heidegger's Quest for Being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Paul Edwards
Paul Edwards
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College
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Extract

An almost unbelievable amount of false philosophy has arisen through not realizing what ‘existence’ means…. [It] rests upon the notion that existence is, so to speak, a property that you can attribute to things, and that the things that exist have the property of existence and the things that do not exist do not. That is rubbish (Bertrand Russell).

I have dared to puncture several metaphysical balloons and nothing came out of them but hot air (Voltaire).

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 250 , October 1989 , pp. 437 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

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References

1 ‘Seeking and Finding: The Speech at Heidegger's Burial’, in Sheehan, T. (ed.), Heidegger, the Man and Thinker (Chicago: Precedent Publishers, 1981), 73.Google Scholar

2 Philosophical Apprenticeships (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 52.Google Scholar

3 P.45.

4 P.48.

5 Ibid.

6 Kleine Schriften (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972), 204.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.

8 Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933 (Stuttgart: Metzlersche, 1986), 43.Google Scholar Löwith's book which was written in 1940 in his Japanese exile is one of the most moving accounts of the degradation of German academic life before and during the Nazi years. His portrait of Heidegger is devastating.

9 Wisser, R. (ed. ), Martin Heidegger im Gespräch (Freiburg and Munich: K. Alber, 1970), 48–49, Rahner's italics throughout.Google Scholar

10 ‘Martin Heidegger at Eighty’, The New York Review, 21 10 1971Google Scholar, reprinted in Murray, M. (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 303.Google Scholar

11 Rorty was one of the signatories of a letter published in the New York Review of Books on 2 04 1981Google Scholar, defending the Harper and Row translations of Heidegger's works against certain criticisms by Thomas Sheehan. The letter which was also signed by Stanley Cavell, Hubert Dreyfus, Karsten Harries, John Haugeland and David Hoy expressed gratitude to the publisher and to the late Glenn Gray for making available to English readers the works of ‘this immensely important and difficult philosopher’.

12 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979), 264.Google Scholar

13 P. 5.

14 Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 51.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., ix.

16 The London Review of Books (3 09 1987).Google Scholar

17 The New York Review of Books (16 06 1988)Google Scholar, contains an excellent article by Thomas Sheehan giving the highlights of Farias' book and the similar but more careful research by the German historian Hugo Otto who has published numerous articles about Heidegger's activities during the Nazi period and whose book on the subject is scheduled for publication in the near future.

18 Typical examples of this type of apology are found in Barrett', Williams introduction to the section on ‘Phenomenology and Existentialism’ in Barrett, and Aiken, (eds.), Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Random House, 1962), 163Google Scholar, and in Arendt', Hannahs above-mentioned article, 302–303.Google Scholar

19 Rorty exaggerates Heidegger's anti-Semitism. It is true that he did not express one word of regret about the holocaust and that he did nothing to help any of his many Jewish students, but he did not actively harass or persecute Jews. Sheehan, (op. cit, 39–40)Google Scholar offers a judicious assessment of Heidegger's attitude toward the Jews. Löwith, (op. cit., 40)Google Scholar absolves him on this score, pointing out that some party officials were suspicious of Heidegger because of his apparent lack of anti-Semitism.

20 ‘Heidegger's New Conception of Philosophy—The Second Phase of “Existentialism”’, Social Research (Winter 1955), 474.Google Scholar

21 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics transl. Churchill, J. S. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), 255Google Scholar. Throughout this article I quote from available English translations where these seemed to me accurate. Where the existing translations seemed unsatisfactory or when none exist I supplied my own.

22 Introduction to Metaphysics, transl. Mannheim, R. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 81Google Scholar. This book to which I will refer from now on as IM contains the fullest discussion of Heidegger, 's ‘problematic’Google Scholar of Being. In a short Preface appearing in all editions of Being and Time after 1953Google Scholar Heidegger specially refers his readers to IM for an ‘elucidation of the question of Being’.

23 IM, 25.Google Scholar

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Wegmarken (Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1967), 279Google Scholar. Wegmarken will from now on be abbreviated as W.

28 On Time and Being, transl. Stambaugh, Joan (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 2.Google Scholar

29 IM, 29.Google Scholar

30 Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis, English transl. Lefebre, L. B. (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 36.Google Scholar

31 Op. cit., 49.

32 IM, 73Google Scholar, Heidegger's italics.

33 What is Called Thinking?, transl. Glenn Gray, J. and Wieck, F. (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 225–226.Google Scholar

34 Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), 193.Google Scholar

35 IM, 27.Google Scholar

36 IM, 29Google Scholar, Heidegger's italics.

37 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, op. cit., 233.Google Scholar

38 W, 102.Google Scholar

39 Op. cit., 225.

40 What is Called Thinking?, op. cit., 234.Google Scholar

41 IM, 66.Google Scholar

42 Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), Vol. 2, 251Google Scholar. An English translation in four volumes was published by Harper, and Row, between 1979 and 1982Google Scholar. The general editor of this translation is D. F. Krell and the translators, in addition to Krell, include Joan Stambaugh and F. A. Capuzzi.

43 IM, 168.Google Scholar

44 W, 88 and 96.Google Scholar

45 W, 162.Google Scholar

46 Ibid.

47 Fay, T. A., Heidegger: the Critique of Logic (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 ‘Heidegger's New Conception of Philosophy—The Second Phase of “Existentialism”’, op. cit., 472.Google Scholar

49 IM, 170Google Scholar, Heidegger's italics.

50 W, 101.Google Scholar

51 Nietzsche, Vol. 2, op. cit., 252.Google Scholar

52 IM, 169Google Scholar, Heidegger's italics.

53 Nietzsche, Vol. 2, 252.Google Scholar

54 Ibid.

55 ‘The Confrontation Between Experimentalism and Existentialism’, in Bierman, A. K. and Gould, J. A. (eds), Philosophy for a New Generation, 1st edn (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 79.Google Scholar

56 Ibid.

57 IM, 171Google Scholar, Heidegger's italics.

58 ‘Heidegger's “Being”’, Journal of Philosophy (1952), 415.Google Scholar

59 Op. cit., 465.

60 ‘“Daseinsanalysis” and Psychotherapy’ in Ruitenbeck, H. M. (ed.), Psychoanalysis and Existential Philosophy (New York: Dutton, 1962), 84.Google Scholar Several paragraphs of this paper are taken over from Boss, ' ‘Heidegger und die Ärzte’, his contribution to Martin Heidegger zun 70. Geburtstag (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959).Google Scholar

61 Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis, 37.Google Scholar

62 ‘Daseinsanalysis and Psychotherapy’, op. cit., 86.Google Scholar

63 Ibid.

64 Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis, op. cit., 37.Google Scholar

65 W, 107.Google Scholar

66 Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), 188.Google Scholar

67 Op. cit., 205.

68 In the course of a review of Tugendhat, Ernst's Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, Rorty writes in the Journal of Philosophy (1985), 278Google Scholar: ‘Heidegger himself moved from the fervidly programmatic and quasi-Husserlian “fundamental ontology” of Being and Time to the ironic affectation of “letting go” (Gelassenheit) which characterizes his later work—an ironism carried further by Jacques Derrida’. Rorty has a wild imagination. There is not the slightest evidence of any such ‘ironic affectation’ either in Gelassenheit or in any of Heidegger's later works.

69 Discourse on Thinking, transl. Anderson, J. A. and Freund, E. H. (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 76–77Google Scholar. This translation is frequently inaccurate. As indicated most of the quotations are in my own translation.

70 Op. cit., 250.

71 W, 102.Google Scholar

72 W, 100.Google Scholar

73 P. 36.

74 P. 297.

75 Löwith, Karl was as far as I know the first to call attention to this flipflop in the first edition of his Heidegger—Denker in dürftiger Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1953).Google Scholar In a later edition Löwith quotes and demolishes an attempt by W. Schultz, a German shepherd, to show that Heidegger's earlier and later statements are not mutually contradictory but constitute a ‘dialectical unity’ (3rd edn, 1965, 40–41).Google Scholar

76 ‘Heidegger, Taoism and the Question of Metaphysics’, in Parkes, G. (ed.), Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 87.Google Scholar

77 Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), 44, my translation.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., 46.

79 Discourse on Thinking, 39.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., 66 and 86.

81 Early Greek Thinking, transl. Krell, D. F. and Capuzzi, F. A. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 36.Google Scholar

82 Basic Writings (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).Google Scholar

83 In fairness it should be mentioned that Krell is a good translator and his ‘Analysis’ at the end of Vol. IV of the Engish language edition of Nietzsche shows him to be one of the less parochial shepherds. The editing of Basic Writings on the other hand can only be described as autistic: no attempt is made to break out of the obscure language of the original and there is not the slightest awareness of objections of the kind urged in the present article.

84 The Phenomenological Movement, 2nd edn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), Vol. 2, 747.Google Scholar

85 Poetry, Language and Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 179.Google Scholar This book is a collection of miscellaneous essays by Heidegger translated by Hofstadter, A.. The original passages can be found in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), 51ff.Google Scholar

86 Heidegger and Asian Thought, op. cit., 88.Google Scholar

87 IM, 103.Google Scholar

88 There is an excellent concise summary of this analysis in Tugendhat, Ernst, Traditional and Analytical Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 300Google Scholar: ‘To establish whether unicorns exist we do not examine the possible unicorns with regard to whether the predicate of “existence” applies to them; rather we examine the objects of the spatiotemporal world with regard to whether the predicate “unicorn” applies to some of them’.

89 Irrational Man (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), 263.Google Scholar

90 Barrett, , op. cit., 271.Google Scholar

91 A History of Philosophy (London: Burns and Gates, 1963), Vol. VIII, 438.Google Scholar

92 Philosophical Books, 1960, 11–13.Google Scholar

93 La Salle, , III.: Open Court, 1979.Google Scholar

94 Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988), Lectures 8–10.Google Scholar

95 I would like to thank Jonathan Glover, Donald Levy, Terence Penelhum, J. J. C. Smart and Michael Wreen for reading this article and making helpful suggestions. Professor Norbert Hoerster of the University of Mainz has kindly kept me informed of developments in Germany and France. Although German is my native language and I had little difficulty translating Heidegger himself even when this meant translating meaningless German into meaningless English, Gadamer's lyrical effusions were too much for me. Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg came to the rescue and translated the passages from Gadamer into appropriately lyrical English.