Heidegger and History - by Joseph Belbruno

8/2/2019 Heidegger and History - by Joseph Belbruno

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HEIDEGGER AND HISTORY

En Ser y tiempo, el hombre no es pensado como sujeto, porque esto hara de l una cosasimplementepresente; es, por el contrario, Dasein, ser-ah, es decir, sobretodo, proyectualidad. El sujeto, piensaHeidegger, tiene una sustancialidad que elser-ah como proyecto no tiene; el hombre se define, no como una

sustanciadeterminada, sino como poder ser, como apertura a la posibilidad. El ser-ahslo se piensa como

sujeto, esto es, como sustancia, cuando se piensa entrminos inautnticos, en el horizonte del ser pblico y

cotidiano150. (p.98 the note is to parr.10 and 25 of SuZ.)

La muerte es la posibilidad de

la imposibilidad de toda otra posibilidad, la posibilidad de la pura y simple

imposibilidad delDasein64; La muerte es la posibilidad ms propia delDasein:

esto se puede ver atestiguado por el hecho de que todos mueren, es decir, que esaposibilidad es coesencial alDasein; pero la raz del hecho emprico de que todos

mueren es la circunstancia de que la muerte es la posibilidad ms propia delDasein en cuanto lo afecta en su mismo ser, en su esencia misma de proyecto,

mientras que cualquier otra posibilidad se sita en el interior del proyecto mismo

como su modo de determinarse65. (Vp.41)

The authenticity of Dasein, its openness to the being of being, its liberation from the

inauthenticity of its thrown-ness as being-in-the-world, can be located in its totality onlyupon its comprehension of death, of its contingency, upon its appropriation of its

being-toward-death! One may reflect bitterly or ironically about the authenticity of a

Dasein whose care for the world ultimately cowers wimpishly into the Angst of itsapprehension of Death!

El miedo a la nada, que es la angustia, se explica slo admitiendo que en ella aquello de que se sienteamenazado el Dasein no es este o aquel ente en particular, sino qu es la existencia misma como tal. En

cuanto proyecto que abre e instituye el mundo como totalidad de los entes, elDasein no est en medio de

los entes como un ente entre los dems; cuando advierte este hecho - y, como podemos decir ahora, cuandoadvierte su propia trascendencia - se siente en un ambiente extrao, ajeno en el mundo, en el cual no se siente

como en su casa porque justamente advierte que no es un ente del mundo como los otros entes. En cuanto

modo de existir en la trivialidad cotidiana, elDasein se concibe como ente entre otros entes, y hasta

se siente protegido y tranquilizado por los entes que lo rodean; el simple miedo atestigua esto, ya que tener

miedo de algo significa concebirse siempre como dependiente de ese algo de alguna manera. La angustia,

como miedo que no se puede explicar de ese modo, como miedo de nada, coloca alDasein frente a su propia

trascendencia, frente a la existencia como tal (y para entendernos major diremos tambin, frente a su propia

responsabilidad: porque es el Dasein el que abre e instituye el mundo). (p.61)

La liberacin anticipante por la propia muerte libera de la dispersin en

las posibilidades que se entrecruzan fortuitamente, de suerte que las posibilidades

efectivas, es decir, situadas ms ac de aquella posibilidad insuperable, puedan

ser comprendidas y elegidas autnticamente. La anticipacin abre a la existencia,

como su posibilidad extrema, la renuncia a s misma y as disuelve toda

solidificacin en posiciones existenciales alcanzadas... Puesto que la anticipacin

de la posibilidad insuperable abre al mismo tiempo a la comprensin de las


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posibilidades situadas ms ac de ella, ella lleva consigo la posibilidad de la

anticipacin existencial del Dasein total, esto es, la posibilidad de existir concretamente como poder-ser-

total.66 (pp.395-6). As la muerte se revela como la posibilidad ms propia, incondicionada e

insuperable. (Ibd., pg. 378).

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Heideggers notion of authenticity-totality opposed to the inauthentic-fragmentedquotidian reality of the one (German, man) invites the obvious parallel with Lukacss

earlier vision of the scientific totality of the proletariat escaping its alienated condition

as the individual Subject-Object of history! (The link is drawn by L. Goldmann in hisLukacs et Heideggerwho even argues that Sein und Zeitwas written as a reply to Lukacss

Geschichte.) In sharp contrast, Nietzsche saw the perspective of the herd as a need-

necessary out-come, result (Folge) of the Will to Power in its operari, in its manifestationas the ontogeny of thought in life and the world: his entire focus is on the historical

significance of the Will to Power in its physiological, albeit ontogenetic, manifestations in

morality, in science, in politics, with art playing only an illustrative and marginal role

despite Heideggers efforts to place it at the centre of Nietzsches thought as creativity,thus wrongly defining the content of the Will to Power (see discussion below). This

explains why human history and institutions are so much more central to Nietzsches

explorations of the Will to Power:physis and istorein are much more intimately connectedwith and central to Nietzsches philosophy than they are to Heideggers where they play a

marginal, if at all congruous, role. (In this regard, one may well agree with Cacciaris

judgement that Nietzsches attitude to mass democracy is far more complex and evenfavourable than many imagine. We will revisit this argument later.)

This is indeed a far cry from Nietzsches affirmation of life! Heideggers petty-bourgeois

revulsion at the mundanity of everyday life, at its inauthenticity, is nonchalantlybetrayed byVattimo who seems blissfully unaware of the enormity of what he is saying:

elDasein autntico es tal precisamente y slo en cuanto se relaciona con el mundo

en trminos de posibilidades. Y, de manera ms general, en el anlisis

preparatorio de la primera seccin deSer y tiempo, la autenticidad permaneca en

suspenso y en cierto modo abstracta, pues era todava principalmente laestructura de fondo que la reflexin existenciaria descubre slo en la

inautenticidad de lo cotidiano. El concepto de anticipacin de la muerte pone de

manifiesto lo que es, precisa y concretamente, la existencia autntica. (p.44)

Heidegger in the end finds himself precisely back at the point upon which Hobbes erectedhis entire axiomatic political theory and psychology the decision:

En sustancia, ahora que se ha precisado la nocin de autenticidad-totalidad mediante el concepto de

anticipacin de la muerte, se trata de ver si en el plano existencial, no en el de la reflexin filosfica sino en

la vida concreta, el ser para la muerte se presenta como trmino efectivo de una alternativa que elDasein

puede elegir. La busca de una posibilidad existencial de la anticipacin de la muerte conduce a Heideggera elaborar una compleja doctrina de la

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decisin, que implica el empleo de conceptos objetivamente enredados70, como los conceptos de

conciencia y de culpa

(This about com-prehension is a point entirely similar to Heideggers exposition of Dasein

in SuZ[cf. Vattimos first essay in Introduction to H..] But note how Heideggersunderstanding of Dasein differs from the Wille zur Macht in that the latter is physiologicalrather than existential and phenomenological! Nietzsche is concerned with conflict in life

and the world as an immanent physiological almost biological - process, whereas

Heideggers final concern is exquisitely ontological, and therefore transcendental; it isthe phenomenology of Being within the horizon of time, and therefore being-toward-death

and philosophical anthropology authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) and art above all. Worse still,

Heidegger is able to understand the passage from com-prehension to interpretation of life

and the world by the Dasein purely in terms of authentic individual experience that is notmediated by the doxa of public opinion or of socially-constructed reality! The mere

thought of authenticity, so dear to Heidegger in his openly bourgeois vision of the

world, would seem scandalously artificial to Nietzsche who sees the ontogeny of thoughtitself as a manifestation of the Will to Power in life and the world as a perspective of the

herd, but as a need-necessary perspective that cannot be subjected to the moralizing

examen of Heideggerian authenticity! Here is Heidegger:

En el pasaje en que habla del crculo comprensin-interpretacin, Heidegger dice que:

en l se oculta una posibilidad positiva del conocer ms originario, posibilidad que es captada de manera

genuina slo si la interpretacin comprendi que su tarea primera, duradera y ltima es la de no dejarse

imponer nunca pre-disponibilidad, pre-videncia y precognicin (son los terminus constitutivos de la

precomprensin) por la situacin o por las opiniones comunes, sino que debe hacerlas surgir de las cosas

mismas con lo que quedar garantizada la cientificidad del tema59.

[Again, Vattimo, ibidem.]

The difficulty of Heideggers position, its profound a-historicity, its dis-embodiment of the

Dasein from its physiological roots - which are the crucial focus in Nietzsche (however

ontogenetically he may understand these) - is neatly evinced by Vattimo in what is adesperate, unconvincing attempt to validate his socio-historical credentials (much in the

manner Cacciari does in PNR):

Hay pues una precomprensin que no se limita a expresar que lasituacin histrico-social pertenece almundo del se; trtase de unaprecomprensin que surge de alguna manera de la cosa misma: noevidentementeen el sentido de que la cosa se d de algn modo como simple presencia, sino enel sentido deque la comprensin que realmente abre al mundo es nuestra relacinconcreta con la cosa. La charla habla detodo y especialmente de las cosas con lasque no tiene una relacin directa; la autenticidad es apropiacin

fundamentalmente en este sentido: se apropia de la cosa al relacionarsedirectamente con ella. (p.36)

But far from anchoring the existential Dasein in physiological and historical concreteness,

one detects immediately in Vattimos churlish (dare one call it inauthentic?) apologia

for Heideggers clumsy pre-comprehension of the historico-social situation its yawning

abstrusion and asportation from the world of common opinion (Vattimo calls itgossip!) - an esoteric revulsion at that very phenomenological world of quotidian life


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from which Heidegger ostensibly derives the concreteness of his existential analytic! With

mindless disinvoltura, Vattimo brilliantly epitomizes the gnawing self-disgust of the

estranged intellectual in the bourgeois era:

Construed in this purely negative or, to adopt Vattimos terminology, weak sense,Heideggers discussion of metaphysics as the history of Being rapidly turns into a vapid and

meaningless abstraction a novel edition of the qualitas occulta, the inscrutable quality of

the prima philosophia, from Platos Ideas to the Kantian thing-in-itself or Schopenhauers

Will to Life! Even if we agreed that the subject-matter of Western metaphysics,Nietzsches included, was a presence, an essence, a substance and finally a Subject whose

totality stood as a timeless quality or quidditas or value inscrutable to human reflection

but knowable to philosophical reflection at least from its subjective side (cf. Vattimo,

Intro, p.73), - even then we would fail to see the difference between Heideggers ownposition and, say, the exordium of Genesis, where the whole quaestio of the

complementarity of Being and Nothing, of creation ex nihilo is most vividly posed (cf.Lowith), to the near entirety of German Idealism in which, as Nietzsche always

acknowledged, there is always a side of Being that conceals itself and that philosophy

consciously aims to comprehend theoretically but never empirically, except in the caseof Fichte for whom the Subjectposits the non-Subject (the empirical I), and whose

solipsism, in any case, has been universally repudiated ever since. (Schopenhauer was most

scathing in his regard).

Heidegger insists on interpreting Nietzsches Will to Power as a relation of Will with itself,

with a self, with oneself. Hence, for him, Will is resoluteness toward oneself (ch.10)

and will to power is to go further than oneself, self-assertion. Yet in this self-assertionHeidegger, the phenomenological and existentialist philosopher, cannot see beyond the

self-assertion to the very object of that assertion which is not self but another Will!

Will to Power is not self-assertion as self-mastery resolve as resoluteness Heideggers

dis-closure (Ent-schlossenheit) of the Dasein. Rather, it is mastery and command anddomination over others!

Nor is Nietzsches Will to Power filled with the Angst, thefear of death that characterizes itsdecision or responsibility from Hobbes to Hegel through to Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

In the former couple, the fear of death comes from an external, objective threat. In the

latter couple, it always originates ec-sistentially, hence transcendentally, in thepossibility of death, of non-existence, of nothing-ness. In all cases, its ultimate

foundation, as Nietzsche discovers, is nihilism despair in the worth of existence.


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Heidegger perceives the ec-sistence of Da-sein, its thrown-ness into the world of beings,

its lack of totality and therefore its contingency as a fall (Verfall), as a lack of

authenticity in a quotidian life whose triviality he execrates. It is this de-jection thatreveals the brittleness of Heideggers Sorge (care) which no sooner is articulated than it turns

into its real essence anxiety and alienation, fear and loathing (Kierkegaard)! Angst for the

finitude of ec-sistence; loathing for its error, for the averageness, the anonymity (man)of publicity, for the triviality of quotidian life. And therefore a wish for that totality,

the totality of Being, which is only accessible to Dasein as the anticipation of death, as the

apprehension of nothing-ness (why is there something rather than nothing? is theleitmotif of theEinfuhrung).

Al ser-para-la-muerte Heidegger llega, en efecto165,

planteando un problema que a primera vista parece exquisitamente metafsico,

en la forma y en el contenido: la analtica existenciaria, desarrollada en la

primera parte de la obra, nos ha puesto a disposicin el Dasein en la totalidad de

sus estructuras? Pero, se pregunta en seguida Heidegger, qu significa para el

ser-ah ser una totalidad? Este problema, perseguido coherentemente, lleva

justamente a ver que el ser-ah se constituye en una totalidad, y por consiguientese fundamenta (ya que la asignacin del Grund, en que consiste la

fundamentacin, ha significado desde siempre el cierre de la serie de lasconexiones, la constitucin justamente de una totalidad, contra el regreso in

infinitum) en la medida en que se anticipa para la propia muerte. Traduciendo el

lenguaje heideggeriano un poco libremente diremos: el ser-ah est ah

verdaderamente, es decir, se distingue de los entes intramundanos, en cuanto se

constituye como totalidad histrica,(p.113)

But however he twists it, Vattimo simply cannot extract from the mere being there, the

sheer thrown-ness of the Dasein, from the contingencyof its being and its anticipation

of death the sense of ontic reality requisite for historical analysis and action:

Heideggerinsiste mucho sobre el hecho de que no se debe leer esta relacin con la muerte

en un sentido puramente ntico, y por tanto tampoco en sentido biolgico. Sin

embargo, como todos los momentos en que la filosofa encuentra anlogos

puntos de paso (ante todo aqul entre naturaleza y cultura), tambin esta

distincin heideggeriana es densa de ambigedades. Si, en efecto, es cierto que el

ser-ah es histrico - tiene una existencia como discursus continuo y dotado deposibles sentidos - slo en cuanto puede morir y se anticipa explcitamente para

la propia muerte, es tambin cierto que l es histrico, en el sentido de disponer

de posibilidades determinadas y cualificadas, teniendo relaciones con las

generaciones pasadas y futuras, precisamente porque nace y muere en el sentido

literal, biolgico, del trmino. La historicidad del ser-ah no es slo la

constitucin de la existencia como tejido-texto; es tambin la pertenencia a una

poca, la Geworfenheit que, por lo dems, califica ntimamente el proyectodentro del cual el ser-ah y los entes se relacionan el uno con los otros, vienen alser en modos improntados de vez en cuando de manera diversa. Es este doble

significado de la historicidad, en su relacin con el ser-para-la-muerte, uno de lospuntos en que ms explcitamente, si bien problemticamente, sale a la luz el

nexo fundamentacin-desfundamentacin que es uno de los sentidos, ms an,

quizs el sentido, de Sein und Zeit. (p.114)


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But Vattimo misses the essential point! And that is that it is not sufficient to conceive of Da-

sein as a contingent and mortal mode of Being even in the active sense of

Lichtung to make it historical! The very fact that Vattimo refers to historical totalitymeans that Da-sein cannot be situ-ated within that totality! The historical point about

human beings is not that they die or that they must die the finitude of their being, its

contingency but rather the manner, the causes and reasons of how they live and die! Thisis the biggest difference between Hobbes and Hegel to the extent that they theorise the

human apprehension of death. Heidegger instead is almost exclusively concerned with the

anticipation of death - that is, with death as an event that occasions the distinction betweenbeing and not-being, the relationship between Being and nothing-ness.

At best, such a de-finition can situate the Da-sein within the ontic sphere as opposed to the

ontological one and then only as philosophical anthropology. After all, it is preciselyHeidegger who claims originality in his remembering the question of Being as against that

of being-as-essent. But Da-sein remains locked within its philosophical birth certificate

precisely because its very concept is incurably philosophical and abstract. Da-sein remains

walled within its own self-referential phenomenological categories. It describes theexistential questions confronting human beings to the extent that they are beings only

in this onto-logical dimension. Da-sein cannot even remotely begin to tell us how Da-seinsinter-act, not only with one another in social relations, but not even with the natural world in

a manner that goes beyond the most remote existential categories that, again, concern

the Da-sein only as Da-sein, only as being in its ontological acceptation.

Contrast Nietzsches Of First and Last Things in HATH which deals very much not with

either thing but with the be-tween! Heidegger is more concerned with the sum of the

cogito Nietzsche with the vivo!

It is symptomatic that Heidegger refers to HegelsPhenomenologie and the preparedness of

German Idealism (even in Schelling) to include negation and death in the concept of Being

(ch.13) because his own ontology reflects and contains this nihilistic longing for totality,for the com-prehension of Being from purely philosophisch and therefore subjectivist and

idealist transcendental premises! Small wonder, then, that Heidegger should seek to

understand the Will to Power in terms of creativity and art (chpts.10-12). One may well

agree with Vattimo that it is no longer Heidegger who interprets Nietzsche as a thinkerunable to overcome nihilism but rather the other way round! It is Nietzsche who shows us

why Heideggers ontology remains within the circle of metaphysics; why it is unable to

grasp the materiality of life and the world, the physiology of the Will to Power.

This is where Hobbes and Heidegger meet, as it were - in the Heideggerian decision in

anticipation of death whose authenticity is founded on the transcendental anxiety of the


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Dasein in its being-toward-death that prescinds from the conventional inauthenticity of

quotidian life.

El discurso sobre el ser-para-lamuerte, incluso estructuralmente, es paradigmtico del modo como Sein und

Zeit, partiendo en busca de una fundamentacin, an en sentido amplio, metafsica, llega luego a resultados

nihilistas, al menos en el sentido del trmino al que he aludido. (Vattimo, p.113)

But this is a lucus a non lucendo! This negativity of the truth that un-conceals itself and

the Being that gives itself, which supposedly is what introduces historiality in our

reflection on life and the world are only historial in the flimsiest, most dis-embodied,

ontological, transcendental sense. As Vattimo observes, with praiseworthy objectivity,Heideggers negative approach to Being may itself justify a charge of nihilism (p.111).

Despite his insistence on articulating the foundation of Being, Heidegger was never able

clearly to delineate its Grund, its positive or strong basis. (It may be said, jokingly, thatBeing and Time is like Hamlet without the Prince, in the sense that it does not discuss

Being itself.)

It is not history that Heidegger engages with, but rather metaphysics as the history of

Being and then again only to emphasise its Vollendung, even going so far as to revive, in

the Einfuhrung, the notion of Abendland (the Occident as land of the setting sun) as the

geographical site of the retreat of Being. But if Nietzsche denounces the shipwreck ofmetaphysics on the rock of nihilism, it is only because he can see that the metaphysical quest

for truth has de-throned the very subject of that quest not just God, but Man above all!

And in this de-throning of Man as the auto-phagous subject of life and the world,

Heideggers Dasein is fully implicated! And this implication in nihilism only serves tohighlight the pre-eminence of Nietzsches thought over Heideggers as a guide to the

overcoming (Uberwinding) of nihilism.

Ya en Sein und Zeit el ser es olvidado como fundamento; en el lugar del ser capaz de funcionar como

Grund se percibe - precisamente en la centralidad que asume la analtica existencial y la elucidacin del

nexo con el tiempo - un ser que, constitutivamente, no es ya capaz de fundar, un ser dbil y depotenciado.

El sentido del ser, que Sein und Zeit busca y al que, al menos en cierta medida, llega, debe entenderse

sobre todo como una direccin en la que el ser-ah y el ente se encuentran encaminados, en un movimiento

que los conduce no a una base estable, sino a una ulterior permanente dislocacin, en la cual se encuentran

desposedos y privados de todo centro. La situacin descrita por Nietzsche (en el apunte que abre la vieja

edicin del Wille zur Macht) como caracterstica del nihilismo, aquella en que, a partir de Coprnico, el

hombre rueda fuera del centro hacia la X, es tambin la del Dasein heideggeriano: el Dasein, como el

hombre poscopernicano, no es el centro fundante, ni habita, posee, coincide con, este centro. La bsqueda delsentido del ser, en el desarrollo radical que tiene en Sein und Zeit, saca progresivamente a la luz que este

sentido se da al hombre slo como direccin de desposesin y desfundamentacin. Por tanto, tambin contra

la letra de los textos heideggerianos, ser preciso decir que la bsqueda comenzada en Sein und Zeit no nos

encamina a la superacin del nihilismo, sino a experimentar el nihilismo como la nica va posible de la

ontologa. Esta tesis choca contra la letra de los textos heideggerianos porque en ellos nihilismo significa el

aplastamiento del ser sobre los entes, es decir, el olvido del ser, que caracteriza la metafsica occidental y que

al fin reduce el ser a valor (en Nietzsche), a validez puesta y reconocida

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por el y para el sujeto. As sucede que, del ser como tal, no queda ya nada. No es aqu el lugar de discutir si y

en qu medida el nihilismo entendido de este modo caracteriza fiel y completamente la posicin de

Nietzsche. Pero est claro que tambin y sobre todo el uso, por parte de Heidegger, de la nocin de nihilismo

para indicar la culminacin del olvido del ser en el momento final de la metafsica es responsable del hecho

de que de su pensamiento, en cuanto alternativo o, en cualquier caso, esfuerzo de superacin, uno se espera,en cambio, que el ser, contrariamente a lo que sucede en el nihilismo, recupere su funcin y su fuerza

fundamentadora.

Heideggers attempt to historicise his existentialphenomenology is flawed from the outset

precisely because his Dasein lacks a physio-logical dimension, which is instead crucially

indispensable in Nietzsches conception of the Will to Power, and is therefore condemned to

an abstract temporality that flounders in an ethereal, ontological transcendental intuitionof time (the explicit phrase adopted in theKantbuch) without ever being able to ground the

Dasein and this temporal intuition (a pale shadow ofistorein) in the immanence that the

very materiality of the intuition of time, of the istorein (in-quiry), requires.

A totality that is truth a truth that can only be accessible partially to the Dasein and

that therefore can reveal itself objectively not under the control of Dasein. It becomesclear why Heidegger conceded in a seminar in 1964 thatBeing and Time should have been

titled Being andLichtung (in Vattimo, p.62)! But Heidegger equivocates sybillinely

between the Lichtung as a revealing light that is thrown actively by the Dasein ontoindividual beings (essents) or instead as an unconcealing light with which Being

illuminates the worldforthe Dasein (recall Heideggers ambiguity of Being as es gibt

[is there or it gives] to which we drew attention earlier). Vattimo is so caught up in this

obfuscation that he fails to notice it even as he falls prey to it almost in mid-sentence!

Aqu importa subrayar la expresin en cuanto: que de la nada provenga todo ente en cuanto ente no quiere

decir que de la nada provenga la realidad del ente entendida como simple presencia; ha de entenderse encambio que el ser del ente es como un colocarse dentro del mundo, como un aparecer a la luz que el Dasein

proyecta en su proyectarse. Contrariamente a la concepcin del ser como simple presencia, la concepcin del

ser, que se anuncia como implcitamente supuesta enSer y tiempo y en estos escritos posteriores, es

precisamente la concepcin del ser como luz proyectada por elDasein como proyecto103. El hecho de que

empero elDasein sea siempre proyecto lanzado, como hemos visto, descarta que el ser pueda concebirse

como su producto y que la filosofa de Heidegger se reduzca a una forma de idealismo emprico o

trascendental. Estas dos doctrinas suponen siempre, inseparablemente, una concepcin del ser como simple

presencia y una concepcin del Dasein que olvida el carcter de ser lanzado: ambas lo resuelven todo en larelacin sujeto-objeto, en la cual el sujeto o bien funda y produce directamente la realidad (simple presencia)

de las cosas (idealismo emprico: esse est percipi) o bien por lo menos funda y ordena el mundo como mundo

de la experiencia (trascendentalismo kantiano o neokantiano). En ambos casos, no se pasa ms all del sujeto

y aun ste, lo mismo que el objeto, es concebido como presente y se olvida su carcter de lanzado. (pp.62-

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Note that Vattimo initially speaks of the being of the essent appearing in the light that theDasein projects in its projecting. So here it is the Dasein that projects light(Lichtung)onto the essent. Yet in the very next sentence Vattimo says the opposite! He speaks of the

conception of being as lightprojected for the Dasein as project. Here it is being, not the

Dasein (and certainly not the essent!) that projects lightfor the Dasein!


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We have come full circle now with the turn (Kehre) from the phenomenological

anthropocentrism ofBeing and Time to a new theo-logy! (Lowith). Indeed, time itself hasdisappeared from view. All that remains is the immateriality of Lichtung, the e-

venientiality, the historiality of truth as the essence of Being a truth and Being that are

entirely negative, from which the Dasein is wholly estranged alienated. (Cf. Negrisessays.) And the alienation is tangible, becomes material in science and technology. As we

have shown, Heideggers time differs from Nietzsches in this syndotic respect despite

its historical pretensions that never manage to go beyond the phenomenological and thatmore often than not as in the being-toward-death and the anticipation of death and the

existential status of decision that mark the freedom of Dasein as authenticity (an aspect

developed by Sartre) relapse inevitably into sheertranscendentalontology, the prima

philosophia of the metaphysica generalis. [On Heideggers inadequate comprehension andintegration of physis and istorein in his Entwurf, cf. Lowith inHeidegger.]

It simply will not do to assert, as does Heidegger, that the very fact that we can pose thequestion about the occultation of being or obscuring of the world perpetrated bymetaphysics as the history of Being of the last two thousand years constitutes already a

sign that Being gives to the Dasein. It is hard to see how this occultation differs from the

noumenality of Kants thing-in-itself and indeed Schopenhauers Will to Life as(precisely!) a qualitas occulta. Or even, as Vattimo discusses it (p.86), of Hegels

Aufhebung!

En efecto, si el pensamiento liberado de la metafsica fuera ese pensamiento que recuerda el ser en el sentido

de asumirlo finalmente como contenido temtico propio, entonces verdaderamente Heidegger no se

distinguira sustancialmente de Hegel y elSchritt zurcksera slo un nuevo disfraz [disguise], ms o menos

disimulado, de la autoconciencia hegeliana.

Again, we may contrast Heideggers truly obscurantist stance indeed, obfuscatorysophistry! with Nietzsches infinitely more specific ontogeny of thought. In a perceptive

and valiant attempt to give a strong, positive slant to Heideggers ontology, Vattimo even

comes very close to proposing Nietzsches own intuition of time (as we have presented ithere) in its extra-temporal, extra-mundane immediacy as opposed to the intra-temporal and

intra-mundane one:

This should put paid to the fumblings and insinuations of post-heideggerians about any

precedence over Nietzsche by Heidegger who, if anything, merely copied from the geniusfrom Rocken even in the characterization of the ontogeny of thought, which Heidegger re-

christened quotidian life (Alltaglichkeit). (The screen of Max Scheler used by Heidegger

cannot disguise the evident Nietzschean matrix of their phenomenology and sociological


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analysis, as in terms like ressentiment. Vattimo, much to his credit, is only too keen to

stress the continuity of Heideggers thought with Nietzsches. What we are doing here is

obviously to reaffirm the immanentist and materialist superiority of the philosopher ofRocken over any and all of his epigones.) Note that Heidegger in his Kantbuch seeks to re-

interpret Kant exactly in this anthropological sense already indicated by Scheler much

to the dismay of Cassirer and the neo-Kantians at Marburg [see chronicle of their Swissencounter] -, away from metaphysica specialis [epistemology, philosophical anthropology]

to the metaphysica generalis [ontology]. Husserl perhaps best intuited, as his marginal notes

to HeideggersKantbuch reveal, the anthropological affinity of Heideggers tendentiousinterpretation of Kant with Nietzsches Entwurf. We have reviewed these matters in detail in

ourHeideggers Kantbuch.)

Slo a un

proyecto definido y finito las cosas pueden manifestarse en su verdadera

esencia de cosas. Antes de llegar a la nocin de estado-de-yecto y a la nocin de

autenticidad, poda parecer que el ser en el mundo era una armadura rgida en

cuyo interior tuvieran lugar las relaciones posibles delDasein con su mundo sinque la armadura misma estuviera implicada en su ser63; es decir, elDasein

pareca poder cambiarse por el yo trascendental. Pero la idea de Geworfenheit

nos mostr que el proyecto mismo est histricamente definido y, por lo tanto,

que es finito. (c. p41)

Heidegger on Schelling: Idealism, Freedom and Identity

The possibility that is Da-sein, its contingency, opens up its reverse relationship tofreedom: freedom is no longer a function of man, but man is a function of freedom. Of

course, this freedom needs to be de-fined, to be specified: Heidegger clearly sees it in

relation to his own notion of Being of beings. The negativity of Heideggersunderstanding of Being its being bounded by Nothing-ness entails an entirely different

approach to freedom than that espoused by traditional metaphysics, including (for him) the

Nietzschean notion of Will. Even in Aristotle, the telos implies a dependence of the

world of beings on the initial physis that therefore conditions the unfolding or evolution ofan entity into its id-entity. Heidegger like Schelling is seeking to avoid a de-finition of

freedom that de-termines the concept into a system which is precisely the problem with

the traditional metaphysics that inevitably ends up in the wasteland of nihilism. TheCopernican de-centring of Man is the destiny of the metaphysical misinterpretation or mis-

taking of Being with presence, with a given-ness that engenders the a-historiality of

Being, its removal or severance from its own Nothing-ness, and therefore its frozenidentification or (in Nietzsche) equivalence (Gleichheit) with the essents (Seiende) that

is the objective of mathesis.

This id-entification of truth with certainty, of being with cognition, with calculation andmeasurement with predictability and repeatability (experimentation) is what ensures that

system remains incompatible with freedom in the philosphia perennis perennial


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precisely because its formal identities destroy themselves, an-nul themselves in the Will

to System (or Certainty) (Heideggers version of Nietzsches Will to Truth designed to

preserve the word for his a-letheia). German Idealism, from Leibniz through to Schelling andHegel, seeks to trans-scend this determinism in Leibniz with the monadic An-schauung,

and in Kant with the material intuitive grounding of Reason in the sensuousness of

experience (concepts without experience are empty, experience without concepts is blind).German Idealism, especially with Hegel and Schelling, moves from the frozen identities of

formal logic, even the Kantian, to the dialectical identities of Reason, animated by the

Spirit; it moves from the antithesis of system and freedom to that of necessity and freedom.(Heidegger discusses, passim, the dialectic at c. p76.)

At p46:

But with the demand for knowledge in the sense of intellectual intuition,

German Idealism seems to fall back to the condition of philosophy before Kant.Kant called this philosophy before him "dogmatism" in contradistinction to his

own to which he gave the name of "criticalism," the philosophy which traversed

the Crztique ofpure Reason and was founded upon such a critique. Thus, GermanIdealism must have been interested in preventing its philosophy from beingthrown together with pre-Kantian philosophy.

It is characteristic of "dogmatism" that it simply accepts and asserts the

knowability of the Absolute as a matter of course; it lives in terms of this assertion

ordogma. More exactly, in this assertion of the self-evident knowability of theAbsolute lies an untested prejudice about the Absolute itself.

What absolutely is, is what-is-for-itself and what-is-of-itself (substance). But

according to Descartes, true substance is subject, that is, "I think." The Being of God is pure thinking, cogitare,and must therefore also be comprehensible through

thinking.

At p47:

The philosopher as the knower is neither related to things, objects, nor to

"himself," the "subject," but, in knowing, he knows whatplays aroundandplays

through existing things and existingman and whatprevails through all this as a whole

in existing. (The subject-object and the object-subject.)"The knowledge that the having-outside-itself of the Absolute (and of course

the mere having-for-itself immediately related to this, thus the thought-being of

the latter) is itself only an illusion and belongs to illusion is the first decisive step

against all dogmatism, the first step toward true Idealism and to the philosophy

which is in the Absolute" (ibid., p. 356).

Schelling wrote this in 1802, five years before Hegel'sPhenomenology ofSpirit!

Whoever knows this work of Hegel's will easily understand that Hegel'sPhenomenology

is only a great, self-contained sequence of variations on this theme.

This philosophy of German Idealism, intellectual intuition, is no figment of the

imagination, but the real laborof the Spirit on itself. It is no coincidence that"labor" is favorite word of Hegel's.

A system is formal equation of identities. But identities are not and need not be identical-

ness. As Nietzsche stresses, no two things in nature are identical in the sense of id-entities. Only the formal positing of an absolute identity (A=A) results in the annihilation of

the identity (A-A=0), in the an-nulment of the identities equated systematically. This is the

important discovery we have made, and on which Heidegger touches circa pp86-8 of his


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work on Schelling. A mathematical equation gives us identical expressions of what are

two separate realities: 5 plus 7=12. But the equation is based on the formal identity of

units that are identities in the sense that they annul themselves in tautology (1=1, forexample). It is this definition of units that are ideally identical but that do not and cannot

ec-sist in reality that makes every application of mathematics and logic to life and the world

only useful but never true! Because no two leaves are ever (!) identical, their equationcan never be established except as a practical assumption. Two apples and two apples will

never make four apples because there is nothing in each apple or part thereof that allows it to

be counted or identified in a manner suitable for mathematical equations. Yet, asNietzsche establishes, science is based entirely on such equations or on the possibility

that such equations can be carried out or effected. When such an effectiveness

involves, as with Mach, the search for the determination of private sensations

(psychology) with the public sensations of physics then we know that Copernicannihilism has arrived, in that human beings operate on themselves as if they were

equateable or identifiable mathematically. The extreme mathesis is to define Being as

something given, as an ob-ject that can be measured and infinitely replicated just like an

abstract concept!

(However, if one takes the inappropriate concept of identity as a base, identity

= identicalness, then everything in the sentence "God is everything" is lumped

together with God as being the same thing. Everything is not admitted as other, as

something different, and thus the possibility of being different, that is, man's

standing on his own basis, that is, his freedom, is not admitted either. The

ontological foundation, identity, must be properly understood in advance for the

demonstration which has now become our task: that pantheism properly understood

requires freedom.)

What follows from this for the interpretation of the statement "God is everything"?

What is the task of demonstration? We shall characterize it briefly in

advance. According to the formal concept emphasized by Schelling again and

again, pantheism is the doctrine of the immanence and inclusion of all things in

God. All things being contained in God includes in any case some kind ofdependence of things on God. With pantheism the dependence of beings on God

is posited. Precisely this pantheism must not only allow for freedom, but require

it. Thus a dependence must be thought which not only leaves room for the

independence of what is dependent but which-note well as dependence essentially

demands of what is dependent that it be free in its being, that is, be

independent in virtue of its nature. Schelling gives this demonstration on p. 18.

We shall follow the individual steps and watch how the earlier ontological interim

reflection comes into play.For if, at first glance, it seems that freedom, unable to maintain itself in opposition toGod, is here submerged in identity, it may be said that this apparent result is merely theconsequence of an imperfect and empty conception of the law of identity. This principledoes not express a unity which, revolving in the indifferent circle of sameness, would getus nowhere and remain meaningless and lifeless. The unity of this law is of an

intrinsically creative kind. (Heidegger at p86)

And then at p87 (note reference to will as free and discussion of being-as-becoming

which is the springboard for German Idealism):

But dependence initially means only that what is dependent is dependent on itsground in that it is at all, but not inwhat it is. That a son is, for this a father isnecessary. But what is dependent, the son, need not, therefore, be whatthe groundis, a father. What is dependent is at first only dependent on and together with theground in the realm ofthe context in which it comes to Being, that is, inbecoming. Nothing is as yet said about Being itself, finished self-


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containedness.On the contrary, if what is dependent were not finally something set free, cutloose, and placed initself, dependence without something dependent would be aconsequence without something following. That Godis man means that Godallows man to be as consequence; that is, man must be self-contained if he is to betruly aconsequence at all.

The necessity of this can be made completely clear right here. If God is theground and if God himself is not amechanism and a mechanical cause, but rathercreative life, then what he has brought about cannot itself be a meremechanism.

If God as the ground reveals himself in what is grounded by him, he can onlyreveal himself there. What isdependent must itself be a freely acting being, justbecause it depends on God.God looks at things as they are in themselves. To be in itself, however, means tostand independently in oneself.What God brings before himself, his representations,"can only be independent beings." What rests upon itself,however, is whatis free - is will. What depends on God must be made dependent (ab-gehangt)through him andfrom him in such a way that it comes to itself to stand assomething independent. What is dependentlyindependent, the "derived absoluteness,"is not contradictory. Rather, this concept captures what constitutes the

band between the ground of beings as a whole and beings as a whole.

Cartesian mathesis involves a dichotomy between Spirit and Nature, Soul and Body, Mindand Matter, Noumenon and Phenomenon. This dichotomy is what Kant seeks to transcend

with the transcendental practical dialectic inferred synthetically from a Logic that is

necessary (Nietzsche) given Kants presuppositions with regard to the inferences of PureReason from (exclusively) human intuition. Again there is a dif-ferentiation or

distinction between the human autonomous Will and the heteronomy of the physical

world. Yet, Kantian formalism still results in antinomic apories because the Ob-ject is still

posed as such and not, as in dialectics, as subject-object and object-subject. German Idealismleaps therefore from the op-position of Spirit and Nature, of necessity and freedom, to the

positing of the possibility of a system of freedom, which is Schellings aim in the Essay.

Here is Heideggers masterful summation at p61:Until now, the realm of system was

articulated by the distinction of the realms of nature and freedom. And, accordingly,

philosophy divided itself, still with Kant, into a metaphysics of nature and a

metaphysics of morality (freedom). And the highest systematical task consisted in

mediating between both realms as something immovable. Freedom was discussed

in the realm of practical reason and as something theoretically incomprehensible.

Now we must show that freedom rules in all realms of beings,

but leads to a unique crisis in man and thus demands a new structure of beings as

a whole. The realm of system needs a new outline and articulation.

To show the necessity of such a foundation-shattering transformation of the

question is the real intention of our introduction beginning now. To this purpose,

the question of system must now be formulated more definitely. And the question

takes its definiteness from the decided orientation toward the opposition of

necessity and freedom. Behind this opposition, however, or already in this oppositionstands the question of man's freedom in opposition to the ground of beings in

general, in traditional language: to God. The question of God and the totality of

the world, the question of "theism" in the broadest sense, appears.

And again at p62:

It is important to notice that the previous formulation of the question of

"system and freedom" now reads necessity and freedom. This is claimed as the moreprimordial and higher formulation of the question of freedom.

In Schelling's foreword to the treatise on freedom, he refers to what is

insuficient in the formulation of the opposition, traditional since Descartes,

"nature and Spirit" (res extensa, res cogitans; mechanism, I think) which was notyet overcome by Kant either.


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And at p84:

5. The formal concept of freedom is independence as standing within one's own essential law. This is whatfreedom means in the true sense, historically

, Iexpressed, in the Idealist sense. Kant's philosophy creates and forms the transi-

tion from the inappropriate to the appropriate concept of freedom. For himfreedom is still mastery over sensuousness, but not this alone, but freedom as

independence in one's own ground and self-determination as self-legislation. And

yet the determination of the formal essence of human freedom is not yet completed

in Kant's concept of freedom. For Kant places this freedom as autonomy

exclusively in man's pure reason. This pure reason is not only distinguished from,

but at bottom also separated from, sensuousness, from "nature," as something

completely other. Man's self is determined solely in terms of the egoity of the "I

think." This egoity [Ich-heit] is only piled on top of sensuousness as man's animality, but it

is not really admitted to nature. Nature and what is so designated remains what is

negative and only to be overcome. It does not become constitutive for an

independent ground of the whole existence of man. But where nature is thus

understood, not as what is merely to be overcome, but as what is constitutive, it

joins a higher unity with freedom. On the other hand, however, freedom for its

part joins with nature, although undeveloped. Only Schelling went beyondFichte and took the step to this complete, general essential concept of freedom, astep for which Leibniz had shown a general metaphysical direction in another

respect.

We shall see that Heideggers appropriate concept of freedom is inappropriate for our

uses, and for reasons that concern directly his mis-interpretation of Nietzsches notion of the

Will to Power which (we have tried to show) is founded on a novel intuition of time andplace [Ort], of human reality that is categorically historical (not historial) and therefore

materialistic in an immanentist sense contrarily to Heideggers (and Schellings and the

German Idealist) purely onto-theo-logical conception.

At p51:Philosophy's questioning is always and in itself both onto-logical and theological

in the very broad sense. Philosophy is Ontotheology. The more originally it isboth in one, the more truly it is philosophy. And Schelling's treatise is thus one of

the most profound works ofphilosophy because it is in a unique sense ontological

and theological at the same time.

And at p66:Thus we stated that the inner movement of questioning already starting with the introduction is a continuous

playing back and forth between the theological question of the ground of beings as a whole and the ontological

question of the essence of beings as such, an onto-theo-logy revolving within itself. Hegel'sPhenomenolou of

Spiritis such an onto-theo-logy, only of a different kind; Nietzsche's plan for his main work, The Willto Power, issuch an ontotheology, again of a different kind. (At p66.)

Kants autonomy of the Will, the necessity (Nietzsche) of the synthetic apriori ratherthan its possibility, were the confessional subject of his dismaying doubts in the Ubergang,the Opus Postumum, that Heidegger with infallible acuity notices at pp39-40:

According to Kant, philosophy is teleologia rationis humanae, essential knowledgeof that toward which man's reason, and that means man in his essence, is

oriented. In this conceptual determination of philosophy, human reason is not

understood just as the tool with which philosophy cognizes. Rather, reason is the

objectof philosophical science, and indeed the object with respect to what constitutes


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the leading and comprehensive unity of reason, its system. This system is

determined by the highest concepts of unity and goal, God, world, man. These

are the archetypes in which the realm is projected, according to representation,

where existing things are then placed. This system is notderivedfrom experience;but, rather, set upfor it.

Why doesn't Kant arrive at a system? The philosophy of the logos of the ratio

humans (genitivus objectivus and subjectivus) is now explicitly understood asf0~ming a system. The Critique of Judgmentis understood as the battle forthe system.But why isn't the system simply carried out? Why isn't Kant himself systematically

thought through to the end? Why go beyond him? And how does the new

point of view look? However, before we can contrast the philosophical concepts

with each other, it is necessary to make visible the motivating difficulty in Kants

[40] system. For this purpose, a look at Kant's last thoughts about a system at a time

when the first steps of German Idealism were already coming to light might be of

help.

At stake is "a system which is all and one, without increase and improvement"

(XXI, 8), (Opus postumum, first half). "The highest principle of the system of purereason in transcendental philosophy as the opposing relation of the Ideas of God

and the world" (ibid. 18). But in what does this "opposing" rest and consist? And,

also, "the concept of the subject unifying them which brings (apriori) a syntheticunity to these concepts (God and world) in that reason makes that transcendental

unity itself' (ibid. 23).

"System ofTranscendental/Philosophy in three sections (as title). God, theworld, universum and I, Myself, man, as a moral being. God, the world and the

world inhabitant, man in the world. God, the world and what thinks both in the

real relation opposing each other, the subject as a rational world being."

"The medius terminus (copula) in the judgment is here the Judging Subject (the

thinking world being, man, in the world). Subject, predicate, copula" (ibid. 27).

The mediating unity, human reason, is the crux of the system. God-what is

absolutely in itself and stands within itself, World-what is predicated, what

becomes in the word, Man-as the copula (all of this reminiscent of Hamann).

We have long since known that Kant was especially fascinated by the task of

system up until his last years. Excerpts from this manuscript of the Nachlass have

been known for a long time but only since a few weeks ago do we have the first partof the Nachlass in a complete edition as vol. XXI of the Akademie-Ausgabe of Kant's

works. Here, one can see how Kant begins a project of system again and again in

numerous repetitions, and for the first time that and why he got stuck with his

whole will in an indissoluble difficulty, moreover in a difficulty which runs

through the whole of modern philosophy from Descartes to Nietzsche (System

and Freedom) (Being and human being).

The highest leading concepts-God, world, man-are Ideas and have a

merely heuristic character.

Heidegger and History - by Joseph Belbruno

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Transcript of Heidegger and History - by Joseph Belbruno