OPEN COURT HeideggerExplained

Heidegger Explained22/19/112:23 AMPage 2IntroductionThis means that the being of the hammer is always absent; it laborssilently in invisible depths, and is not “present-at-hand,” to useHeidegger’s term. But absence is only one side of the story.Hammers, candles, and trees cannot be only absent, because thenwe would never see anything or have any relations with anythingat all. Yet quite obviously, the hammer is also present: I see itswooden handle and metallic head, feel its weight, and interpret iteither as a tool for building, an item of hardware priced for sale, ora weapon for hand-to-hand combat. For a dog, a baby, an ant, ora parrot, most of the hammer’s usual properties are not there at all,which shows that the presence of a thing is also determined bythose who encounter it.Putting these two sides of the story together, we find that theworld is ambiguous, or two-faced. On the one hand, things hidefrom view and go about simply being whatever they are (whichHeidegger calls “past”). On the other hand, things become present with certain characteristics through being interpreted as tools,weapons, or items of entertainment (which Heidegger calls“future”). Together, these two dimensions unite in a new kind of“present,” since the world is dynamically torn between the beingof things and the oversimplified surfaces through which theyappear to us. The world is a constant passage back and forth,between shadow and light—and this endless passage is called time.With this simple idea, Heidegger inaugurates a revolution inhuman thought. He holds that the entire history of philosophyand science since ancient Greece has reduced objects to some formof presence, and has thereby missed the full richness of their reality. Modern technology, too, has stripped things of their mysteryand reduced them to nothing but stockpiles of useful presence.Here we find one possible explanation for Heidegger’s shockingsupport for the Nazi movement, which he claimed was the onlyforce able to confront the dangerous technological worldviewshared by American capitalism and Soviet communism.But there is another central idea in Heidegger that most readers find convincing, though I myself find it mistaken. This is thenotion that time belongs primarily to human beings, not to inanimate objects. The name for human existence in Heidegger’s philosophy is Dasein (pronounced DAH-zeyn), a German wordusually not translated into English. This term literally means“being-there,” and is used in everyday German to refer to the exis-

Heidegger Explained2/19/112:23 AMPage 3Introduction3tence of anything at all: whether humans, mushrooms, or chairs.But Heidegger restricts this term to human beings alone, since hebelieves that only humans truly exist in the world, fully open to it,whereas physical objects merely sit around in the world withouthaving any access to it. He prefers the term Dasein because if wesay “human being,” we already have too many theories and prejudices in advance about what human being means: for example, wemight already think of humans as rational animals, tool-makinganimals, highly advanced African apes, or mortal bodies inhabitedby immortal souls. In order to exclude these prejudices from thediscussion, Heidegger speaks of Dasein so that we focus only onthose aspects of human being that can be displayed in a rigorousphilosophical way. For Heidegger, only Dasein is temporal. Rocksand mountains can be viewed as merely present-at-hand physicalobjects, but in the case of human beings there is always a two-facedinterplay of shadow and light, veiling and unveiling—the interplayknown as time.In this way, Heidegger follows the tradition of the greatGerman thinker Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), still the dominantphilosophical figure of our era. In 1781, the largely unknown Kantpublished his masterwork Critique of Pure Reason. According tothis book, philosophy has no hope of discussing the way things arein themselves, since human beings only gain access to the world ina limited human way: for instance, we cannot know whether timeand space exist independently of us, but can only say that they areconditions of possibility of all human experience. Humans willnever know what lies outside the structure of human experience.After a brief delay, Kant’s book struck Western philosophy like anearthquake, and the aftershocks continue more than two centurieslater.Heidegger remains loyal to this Kantian tradition in philosophy: he never tells us anything about the causal relationshipbetween fire and cotton, but focuses on the human experience oftemporality, on the veiling and unveiling of things encountered inthe world by Dasein. The title Being and Time refers to the interplay between the veiled reality of things and their luminous butoversimplified appearance in what Heidegger calls the “clearing”of human existence, in reference to the occasional treeless spacesfound along dark forest paths. This is Heidegger’s entire philosophy in a nutshell; the rest is just commentary. The difficulty of his

Heidegger Explained42/19/112:23 AMPage 4Introductionwriting style should not be allowed to conceal the unusual simplicity of his ideas.Readers of this book may wish to have one of Heidegger’s ownworks on hand as well. My usual recommendation is History of theConcept of Time. The name of this book is misleading, since the fullGerman title calls it the preface to a history of the concept of time,and it never gives any history at all. It is actually an early version ofBeing and Time, presented by Heidegger to his students at theUniversity of Marburg, and somewhat easier to understand thanhis more famous book. History of the Concept of Time also gives usHeidegger’s clearest criticism of the philosophical school known asphenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl in 1900–1901.The young Heidegger was widely regarded as Husserl’s starpupil, but eventually became the most radical critic and rebelwithin his teacher’s movement. For this reason, we will begin bydiscussing phenomenology and Heidegger’s own radicalized version of it. Phenomenology walls philosophy off from science byasking us to forget every scientific theory about how the worldworks, and to focus instead on a patient, detailed description ofhow the world appears to us before we invent any theories. In oureveryday experience, we do not hear sound waves, but simply heara door slamming; the sound waves are just a scientific theory, nomatter how solid this theory may seem. Likewise, we do not actually see a can of sliced fruit, but only see one side of the can at atime, while the existence of the rest of the can is merely assumed.In other words, Husserl’s phenomenology holds that things arephenomena (appearances) for human consciousness. By contrast,Heidegger claims that the being of things is not their presence atall, since things are always partly withdrawn into shadow, andexceed all visibility and all concepts we might have of them.

Heidegger Explained2/19/112:23 AMPage 51BiographyEarly LifeMartin Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889, in Messkirchin southern Germany, a small town difficult to reach even today.The meaning of Messkirch in German is probably “Mass Church”(there is some dispute), and appropriately enough, the town ishome to a magnificent Baroque church called St. Martin’s. Thephilosopher’s father was employed as sexton at the church, and thefamily lived in a small house that still faces it. Young Martinassisted in ringing the church bells, and was otherwise raised in anatmosphere of deep Catholic piety. In political terms, Messkirchwas a stronghold of Catholic centrism, and during the 1920swould consistently register fewer votes for the Nazi Party thanmost other parts of Germany. For this reason, it would be mistakento trace Heidegger’s later Nazism to some sort of provincial smalltown bigotry.Martin’s sister Marie was born in 1891 and died in 1956. Forsome reason she is often omitted entirely from biographies of thephilosopher, though his letters show that they enjoyed warm interactions during his visits to Messkirch. Martin’s brother Fritz wasborn in 1894 and died in 1980, and had an incalculable influence onMartin’s life. Often portrayed as just a lovable country boy who kepthis famous brother humble, Fritz Heidegger was in fact a remarkablefigure. Removed from training for the priesthood due to a speechimpediment, he eventually became a skilled local banker, a belovedorator of rare comic brilliance, and a prolific author of unpublishedbooks of worldly wisdom. Fritz was entrusted with Martin5

Heidegger Explained62/19/112:23 AMPage 6Chapter 1: BiographyHeidegger’s manuscripts during the most dangerous period ofWorld War II, and worked selflessly to type them.Given the limited finances of the Heidegger family, Martinneeded the assistance of a Church scholarship to attend theGymnasium (preparatory high school) in the nearby city ofKonstanz. In 1906, he transferred to a Gymnasium in Freiburg nearthe Black Forest, his first contact with the city of his future glory.Another stroke of destiny occurred the following year, whenHeidegger’s early mentor Conrad Gröber, the future Archbishop ofFreiburg, presented seventeen-year-old Martin with a book by theAustrian philosopher Franz Brentano, On the Manifold Meaning ofBeing according to Aristotle. This gift had a major impact onHeidegger’s life. In the first place, it gradually led him towardBrentano’s student Edmund Husserl, founder of the movementknown as phenomenology, which Heidegger would later adopt andradicalize. But in a deeper sense, Brentano’s book led the youngstudent to wonder vaguely, “If being has several meanings, what isits most fundamental meaning?” The question of the meaning ofbeing would eventually become Heidegger’s trademark.Two years later, in 1909, Heidegger entered the Jesuit novitiatein Tisis, Austria. A brilliant career as a Jesuit theologian seemed tolie in store. Yet within just a few weeks, he was discharged fromtraining due to a heart condition (ironically, he would pursue anathletic lifestyle and live to the age of eighty-six). This incidentbegan Heidegger’s gradual alienation from the Catholic Church,culminating in a permanent break with the Church a decade later.With his brief Jesuit training ended, Heidegger turned toward hisstudies at the University of Freiburg, focusing on philosophy andtheology. During these years, his continued interest in Brentano’sphilosophy led him to Husserl, whose masterwork LogicalInvestigations never seemed to be in demand at the universitylibrary, allowing Heidegger to borrow it repeatedly. To visualizethe young Heidegger lost in the pages of Husserl’s great book isto imagine one of the most dramatic scenes of twentieth-centuryphilosophy. Heidegger is best understood as a heretical disciple ofHusserl—a radical phenomenologist who overturned phenomenology and turned it into something entirely different.Heidegger received his doctorate in 1913. The German academic system requires a further postdoctoral process known asHabilitation in order to become a university teacher. This includes

Heidegger Explained2/19/112:23 AMPage 7Rising Star7another lengthy thesis beyond the Ph.D., which Heidegger completed in 1915 with an interesting work on the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. In the meantime, World War I had broken out.Like the rest of his unlucky generation, Heidegger was called intoservice in this famously abysmal conflict. The continued questionssurrounding his health excluded him from armed combat; heserved instead in the postal censor’s office, and at a meteorologystation near Verdun.In the immediate postwar years, the main elements ofHeidegger’s adult life began to take shape. In 1917 he marriedElfride Petri, an economics student in Freiburg and the daughterof an enlightened Protestant military officer. The couple wouldhave two sons: Jörg (in 1919) and Hermann (in 1920). At agefourteen, Hermann was told by his mother that his true biologicalfather was not Martin Heidegger, but rather her childhood friendDr. Friedel Caesar, a secret that Hermann loyally kept until it wasmade public in 2005. Due to Heidegger’s increasing distancefrom Catholicism, the couple broke their promise to have the boysraised as Catholics. Meanwhile, in Heidegger’s latest stroke ofamazing philosophical luck, the newest professor of philosophy inFreiburg was none other than Edmund Husserl himself.Heidegger tried repeatedly to become a close associate of Husserl,but the older thinker viewed him at first as a “Catholic philosopher,” and assumed that his strong religious commitments wouldprevent full openness to the radical questioning demanded by phenomenology.In the winter semester of 1917-18, Husserl finally acceptedHeidegger as his assistant. He grew deeply impressed by the talentsof his apprentice, eventually coming to see him as an intellectualheir. As Husserl supposedly told Heidegger one day, “Phenomenology, that is you and me!” But the relationship gradually led todisillusionment. Heidegger’s growing intellectual distance fromHusserl beginning in the early 1920s was capped in the followingdecade by Heidegger’s Nazi allegiances, while Husserl, Jewish bybirth, was barred from university facilities.Rising StarHeidegger’s own philosophical career began in 1919, with the socalled War Emergency Semester in Freiburg. In a lecture course

Heidegger Explained82/19/112:23 AMPage 8Chapter 1: Biographynow available in English as Towards the Definition of Philosophy, wefind Heidegger’s first original steps beyond Husserl’s phenomenology. In 1920, he began an important friendship with thephilosopher Karl Jaspers, bringing him the new experience of afriend roughly his own age and of somewhat comparable intellectual stature. This friendship too would sour during the Naziperiod; Jaspers’s wife was Jewish and faced genuine physical danger despite her husband’s fame.By the early 1920s, the youthful Heidegger was already a legendary teacher in Freiburg. But like his teacher Husserl, he hadpublished far less than he had written, and this lack of publicationhad kept him stranded at the level of a mere instructor. Even so,his reputation for originality had reached the point that theUniversities of Marburg and Göttingen both began to considerprofessorships for him. It was in the hilly central town of Marburgthat the lightning struck. Heidegger accepted a professorshipthere in 1923, and would remain in Marburg for a brief but spectacular period until 1928, when he was called back to Freiburg asHusserl’s successor. The half-decade in Marburg was no doubtthe most important period of Heidegger’s life, and one of themost illustrious chapters in the history of the city as well. It wasduring this time that Heidegger began to do philosophical workin his famous Black Forest hut in Todtnauberg. This was also theperiod of Heidegger’s growing reputation among students as the“hidden king” of German philosophy, despite his continued lackof publications.Semester by semester, Heidegger’s Marburg lecture coursesbroke fresh ground and solidified his highly original vision of philosophy. There was an important friendship with the theologianRudolf Bultmann, who would incorporate many of Heidegger’sideas into his own work. Still more importantly, there was hismeeting with Hannah Arendt, later a brilliant political philosopherin her own right. In 1924, Arendt was still an eighteen-year-oldJewish student from East Prussia, a shy but forceful character whofascinated her fellow students no less than Heidegger, who wasthen a married professor of thirty-four. In February of 1924 theybegan a love affair. Although by no means the only affair ofHeidegger’s life, this one was so important to him that he onceclaimed Arendt was the inspiration for all his major works of the1920s.

Heidegger Explained2/19/112:23 AMPage 9Rising Star9Foremost among these works was Being and Time, justlyregarded as Heidegger’s greatest achievement. Late in 1924, theconflicted Arendt left Marburg to study with Jaspers inHeidelberg. During the summer semester of 1925, despite theabsence of his young muse, Heidegger gave the lecture course inMarburg now known in English as History of the Concept of Time—a lucid first draft of Being and Time prefaced by a brilliant surveyof the achievements of Edmund Husserl, whom he both celebratesand surpasses. Heidegger was now on the doorstep of Being andTime, which like so many great works in the history of philosophywas published only due to external pressures. When the philosopher Nicolai Hartmann left Marburg for Cologne, his full professorship became vacant. The Marburg faculty favored Heideggerfor the job, especially since Hartmann himself had spoken in glowing terms of an outstanding book in progress by Heidegger. Theproblem for the young philosopher, now as ever, was his lack ofpublications; his colleagues urged him to speed up the writingprocess.In 1925, Heidegger was nominated by the Marburg faculty tofill the vacant full professorship. This suggestion was vetoed by theMinistry of Culture in Berlin, with a rejection letter stating that achair as important as the one in Marburg should not go to someone with such a minimal publication record. In the summer of1926, the Marburg faculty renewed its request, this time enclosingthe galleys of Heidegger’s new book. In one of the most embarrassing blunders in academic history, these pages were returnedfrom Berlin marked “inadequate.” Only in 1927, when Husserl’sfamous journal Yearbook for Phenomenology and PhenomenologicalResearch included Heidegger’s book in its pages, was Heideggerfinally approved as Hartmann’s successor.He did not remain on the job for long. Already in 1928,Heidegger was summoned back to Freiburg as Husserl’s successor, now a crowned king of philosophy rather than a hidden one.His return to Freiburg featured intriguing lecture courses such asthe 1929–30 Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (on theunlikely twin themes of boredom and animals) and even morefamous one-shot lectures such as What Is Metaphysics? (on theconcept of nothingness). Many of the students who came toFreiburg to work with the aging Husserl were soon bewitched byHeidegger’s magic instead. After the publication of Being and

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David Ramsay Steele, Atheism Explained Rohit Dalvi, Deleuze and Guattari Explained Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page iii. MARTIN HEIDEGGER Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page iv. Heidegger Explained From Phen