Making Sense Of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift
Making Senseof Heidegger
NEW HEIDEGGER RESEARCHSeries EditorsGregory Fried, Professor of Philosophy, Suffolk University, USARichard Polt, Professor of Philosophy, Xavier University, USAThe New Heidegger Research series promotes informed and critical dialoguethat breaks new philosophical ground by taking into account the full range ofHeidegger’s thought, as well as the enduring questions raised by his work.Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift, Thomas SheehanAfter the Greeks, Laurence Paul Hemming (forthcoming)Heidegger and the Environment, Casey Rentmeester (forthcoming)
Making Senseof HeideggerA Paradigm ShiftThomas SheehanLondon New York
Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4ABwww.rowmaninternational.comRowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliateof Rowman & Littlefield4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USAWith additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada),and Plymouth (UK)www.rowman.comCopyright 2015 by Thomas SheehanAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form orby any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage andretrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except bya reviewer who may quote passages in a review.British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN: HB 978-1-78348-118-7PB 978-1-78348-119-4Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataSheehan, Thomas.Making sense of Heidegger : a paradigm shift / Thomas Sheehan.pages cm. — (New Heidegger research)Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-1-78348-118-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78348-119-4(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78348-120-0 (electronic)1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. I. Title.B3279.H49S426 2015193—dc232014021462 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofAmerican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paperfor Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.Printed in the United States of America
FORWILLIAM J. RICHARDSON, S.J.Gentleman and scholar sans pareilIn respect and gratitudeἀπὸ τῆς ἀληϑινῆς σοϕίας,ἣν ϕιλοσόφως τε καὶ ὑγιῶς ἐπήσκησεν
ContentsFrequently Cited German Texts and Their Abbreviated English Translations ixForewordxiIntroductionChapter 1. Getting to the Topic3Part One: Aristotelian BeginningsChapter 2. Being in AristotleChapter 3. Heidegger beyond Aristotle3167Part Two: The Early HeideggerChapter 4. Phenomenology and the Formulation of the QuestionChapter 5. Ex-sistence as OpennessChapter 6. Becoming Our Openness111133155Part Three: The Later HeideggerChapter 7. Transition: From Being and Time to the Hidden ClearingChapter 8. Appropriation and the TurnChapter 9. The History of Being189231249ConclusionChapter 10. Critical Reflections271Appendices1. The Existential Components of Openness and Care2. ψυχή, νοῦς ποιητικός, and lumen naturale in Aristotle and Aquinas3. Greek Grammar and “Is-as-Having-Been”297301305Bibliographies1. Heidegger’s German Texts and Their English TranslationsA. Texts within the GesamtausgabeB. Texts outside the Gesamtausgabe2. Other Texts Cited307307328330Index of German, English, and Latin Terms337Index of Greek Terms347vii
Frequently Cited German Texts andTheir Abbreviated English Translations(For a complete list, see “Bibliographies: Heidegger’s German Textsand Their English Translations”)SZ Being and Time (Macquarrie-Robinson)GA 2 Being and Time (Stambaugh)GA 3 Kant and the Problem of MetaphysicsGA 4 Elucidations of Hölderlin’s PoetryGA 5 Off the Beaten TrackGA 6 PathmarksGA 8 What Is Called Thinking?GA 9 PathmarksGA 10 The Principle of ReasonGA 11 Identity and DifferenceGA 12 On the Way to LanguageGA 14 On Time and BeingGA 15 Heraclitus Seminar 1966/67 and Four SeminarsGA 17 Introduction to Phenomenological ResearchGA 18 Basic Concepts of Aristotelian PhilosophyGA 19 Plato’s SophistGA 20 History of the Concept of TimeGA 21 Logic: The Question of TruthGA 22 Basic Concepts of Ancient PhilosophyGA 24 The Basic Problems of PhenomenologyGA 25 Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure ReasonGA 26 The Metaphysical Foundations of LogicGA 27 Introduction to PhilosophyGA 29/30 The Fundamental Concepts of MetaphysicsGA 31 The Essence of Human FreedomGA 32 Hegel’s Phenomenology of SpiritGA 33 Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ 1–3GA 34 The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and the TheaetetusGA 36/37 Being and Truthix
xFrequently Cited German TextsGA 38 Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of LanguageGA 39 Hölderlin’s Hymn “Germanien” and “Der Rhein”GA 40 Introduction to MetaphysicsGA 41 What Is a Thing?GA 42 Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human FreedomGA 45 Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic”GA 50 Introduction to Philosophy—Thinking and PoetizingGA 51 Basic ConceptsGA 53 Hölderlin’s Hymn “The IsterGA 54 ParmenidesGA 56/57 Towards the Definition of PhilosophyGA 58 Basic Problems of Phenomenology: Winter Semester 1919/20GA 59 Phenomenology of Intuition and ExpressionGA 60 Phenomenology of Religious LifeGA 61 Phenomenological Interpretations of AristotleGA 63 Ontology: Hermeneutics of FacticityGA 64 The Concept of Time: The First Draft of Being and TimeGA 65 Contributions to Philosophy: Of the EventGA 66 MindfulnessGA 71 The EventGA 77 Country Path ConversationsGA 79 Bremen and Freiburg LecturesGA 85 On the Essence of Language
ForewordThe following effort at a paradigm shift in interpreting Heidegger is deeplyindebted to the work and guidance of my lifelong teacher, mentor, andfriend, William J. Richardson, S.J., whose monumental achievement, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, first opened my eyes to the significance of Heidegger some fifty years ago. I still remember the effect of reading,as a fourth-year philosophy undergraduate, his first article on Heidegger, whichappeared in 1963 in the Revue Philosophique de Louvain under the title “Heidegger and the Problem of Thought.” This was a separate publication of whatwould appear later that year as the introduction to his book. I had wrestled fortwo years with the few Heidegger texts available at the time, including the newtranslation of Being and Time (1962) and all the English and French secondarysources I could get my hands on. It was all very exciting—and very dark. Thensuddenly, with this article the clouds parted. To adapt Alexander Pope:Heidegger and all his works lay hid in night.God said “Let Richardson be!” and all was light.A thorough reading of his book in the summer of 1964 set my path to FordhamUniversity, where he was then teaching, and to the extraordinary experienceof studying under him. For that, and for the years of friendship, support, andcollegial exchange since then, I am forever grateful.The present effort would not be possible without Fr. Richardson’s lucid,incisive, and richly documented masterwork, the first text to make sense ofthe whole of Heidegger as it was then known and to render that accessible tonon-German readers. Drawing on his vast erudition and critical penetrationwhile coming to Heidegger at a later date and from a different starting point,I conceive of the present effort as building on his immense accomplishments.That said, I make no claim that he agrees with what I have written here. Thededication of this book to him is simply an expression of how much I owehim by way of philosophical insight and wholehearted encouragement in theexecution of a project about which he has expressed occasional—and serious—reservations.As regards the title of the book: I try to make sense of Heidegger byshowing that his work, both early and late, was not about “being” as Western philosophy has understood that term for over twenty-five hundred years, butrather about sense itself: meaningfulness and its source. In schematic form:xi
xiiForeword1. I read his work strictly as what he himself declared it to be—namely,phenomenology, which means that it is about one thing only: sense ormeaning (I take them as the same), both in itself and in terms of itssource.2. Heidegger understands both “beingness” (Seiendheit) in traditionalmetaphysics and “being” (Sein) in his own work as formally the same.1Both of these terms are formal indications of the “realness” of things,however that realness might be read.2 But as a phenomenologist Heideg ger argues that both of these co-equal expressions, whether implicitly(in metaphysics) or explicitly (in Heidegger’s own work) bespeak theAnwesen of things—that is, their meaningful presence within the worldsof human interests and concerns, whether those be theoretical, practical,aesthetic, religious, or whatever.3. However, Heidegger’s project finally makes sense only when we realizethat he was after the source of such meaningful presence, whatever thatsource might turn out to be. To put it in formally indicative terms, thatsource would be whatever makes it necessary and possible for us to understand things only discursively—that is, only in terms of their meaningful presence, whatever form that presence might take. Heideggerargued that this source turns out to be what he called “the appropriatedclearing” (die ereignete Lichtung),3 which is the same as thrown-open/appropriated human ex-sistence (das geworfene/ereignete Da-sein).I argue that the “being” discourse, the Sein-ology that has dominated Heidegger research for the last half-century, has hit the wall. Since 1989, whenHeidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie was published (English translation,Contributions to Philosophy), it has become increasingly clear that what I call“the classical paradigm”—the various ways mainstream Heidegger scholarship has understood his work over the last fifty years—is no longer able toaccommodate the full range of his lectures and writings as they are now published in his virtually complete Gesamtausgabe. As my late colleague Richard Rorty once advised me, “When your argument hits the wall, start makingsome distinctions.” The present work takes that advice seriously. In the spiritof Aristotle’s διορίσωμεν,4 it is all about distinctions, and especially the dis1. See chapter 2, note 11.2. I use the word “realness” in what Heidegger calls its “traditional” (and still formallyindicative) sense of “being”: SZ 211.26 254.32–33. See also below, chapter 2, note 6.3. GA 71: 211.9 180.1–2.4. Metaphysics X 6, 1048a26: “Let us make some distinctions.” All citations from Aristotlein Greek are taken from Aristotelis opera, ed. Immanuel Bekker.
Forewordxiiitinctions that we must make now that the Heideggerian “being”-discourse hasexhausted its explanatory power.Some of my philosophy colleagues (not to mention my three sons) havesuggested that it is about time that I move on beyond the narrow confines ofHeidegger scholarship into the wider world of philosophical discourse and intothe arguably more pressing issues—economic, social, and political—that callfor one’s attention. I agree. But I want to be sure that when I move beyondHeidegger, it is Heidegger that I am moving beyond, and not a caricature ofhis philosophy. It may be finally impossible (and it is certainly not my life’sgoal) to find out what he “really” was driving at throughout those 102 volumesof his Collected Works, but I thought it was at least worth a try. So over the lastfew years I have closely read or reread as many of those volumes as I could inan effort to ferret out and perhaps understand what was the “single thought”that he said guided him through the six decades of his philosophical career.This volume presents what I argue is that single thought, as well as some of itsphilosophical ramifications.Does what follows constitute a “paradigm shift”? And if so, does this paradigm explain more of Heidegger than do the alternatives? The reader will haveto decide. Given many of the readings of Heidegger that are currently in vogue,I think the answer to both questions is yes, and the course of the argument willattempt to show as much.The text is heavily annotated with references to Heidegger’s texts, butwith few references to the secondary literature in any language. There are tworeasons for this. First, many scholars will take this reading of Heidegger tobe quite controversial if not downright wrong—and they may well be right.So I wanted to show, as thoroughly as I can, how my reading is groundedin Heidegger’s own texts and not in the work, as excellent as it might be, ofothers. (The footnotes may also provide, as William J. Richardson once put it,“a few friendly spots of blood that would show how someone else made hisway over the rocks.”)5 Secondly, my own understandings are heavily indebted—and gratefully so—to the superb interpretations of Heidegger that havebeen generated by scholars throughout the world (with a special shout-out tomy colleagues in the Heidegger Circle). Nonetheless, I want to assume full andsole responsibility for what I write, especially for any eventual errors.As regards references, I cite Heidegger’s texts by page and line (the linenumber follows the period) in both the Gesamtausgabe and the current Englishtranslations. The bibliography at the end of this book lists the titles of the German sources and the corresponding translations. An exception to the rule: I citethe German pagination of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit not in the Gesamtausgabe5. Richardson, Heidegger, xxviii.9–10; also 707.2.
xivForewordedition (GA 2) but in the eleventh, unchanged edition published by Max Niemeyer Verlag in 1967, which is more readily available to readers. I abbreviatethe parts and divisions of Being and Time, both as published and as promised,as follows: SZ I.1, I.2, I.3 and II.1, II.2, and II.3. (See chapter 5 for a diagramof the book.) I often use my own translations from the German or else changeand adapt the published English translations without notice. All Greek andLatin terms and phrases are explained either within the text or in the footnotes.I cite Aristotle’s works sometimes by their English titles, sometimes by theirtraditional Latin titles. For example, I refer to Aristotle’s De anima and tohis De interpretatione rather than use their English titles because I think that“soul” is not a proper translation of ψυχή and that “interpretation” is not whatAristotle meant by ἑρμηνεία. The Latin anima and interpretatio may be littlebetter, but they might help de-familiarize the usual titles and point to the Greekterms that underlie them.SOME REMARKS ON TERMINOLOGY AND TRANSLATIONSHeidegger’s technical lexicon can be quite confusing, not just because he givescommon words uncommon meanings but more importantly because he wasnotoriously sloppy in how he used his key term, Sein (being). Chapter 1 provides the rationale for how I translate that word, but some brief indicationsmay be helpful at this point.Throughout his fifty-year career Heidegger was scandalously inconsistentin how he employed the word Sein, and that has thrown off the scholarship forover eighty years. Nonetheless, he does insist that whatever form the word “being” takes in a given philosopher (for example, as εἶδος in Plato, or ἐνέργεια in Aristotle, or esse in Aquinas), the term always bespeaks what that philosopherthinks constitutes the “realness” of things, or what Heidegger calls the Sein orSeiendheit of entities. In his clearer moments Heidegger reads das Sein (“being”) and die Seiendheit (“beingness”) as the same: co-equal, formally indicativenames for whatever a given philosopher thinks the realness of things consistsin. But in his less clear moments he also uses das Sein to name the thrown-openclearing. To avoid the confusion generated by these two very different uses ofSein, I will reserve the word Sein exclusively for the being of things.That brings us to the next step. As a phenomenologist, Heidegger understands Sein in all its historical incarnations as the meaningful presence (Anwesen) of things to human beings—that is, as the changing significance ofthings within various contexts of human interests and concerns. Sein as themeaningful presence of things holds both for metaphysics, which generallywas unaware of this fact, and for Heidegger’s own philosophical work. Hencethroughout this book the terms “being,” “beingness,” “meaningful presence,”
Forewordxv“significance,” and “intelligibility” (Sein, Seiendheit, Anwesen, Bedeutsamkeit, Verständlichkeit) will be used interchangeably to refer to the same thing—namely, the “realness” of things in the way Heidegger the phenomenologistunderstands that heuristic term. For him things are real to the extent that theyare meaningfully present (anwesend) to human beings. (See chapter 2: Heideg ger’s interpretation of Metaphysics IX 10.) Even though this position—being realness meaningfulness—is Heidegger’s own, it may not make all Heideggerians happy. But at least it will obviate the hair-pulling confusion caused byHeidegger’s extraordinary carelessness in his use of the word Sein.But this phenomenological interpretation of Sein as Anwesen is only thefirst step. The single issue that drove Heidegger’s work was not being-as-meaningful-presence but rather the source or origin of such meaningful presence—what he called die Herkunft von Anwesen. He called that source the clearing(die Lichtung), or more precisely, the thrown-open or appropriated clearing(die ereignete Lichtung). By contrast, many Heideggerians think that “beingitself (das Sein selbst) is “the thing itself” of Heidegger’s philosophy. However, as Heidegger uses that phrase in its primary and proper sense, “beingitself” is not any kind of Sein at all. It is not even a phenomenon, much less theFinal Phenomenon, the “Super-Sein” that it has morphed into in the secondaryliterature. “Being itself” or “being as such” is a way of saying “the essence ofbeing,” and all three of those terms are simply formal indications and heuris ticstand-ins that point toward the sought-for answer to Heidegger’s question—namely, whatever will turn out to be the “essence” of being, that which accounts for and is the source or origin of meaningful presence at all. And thatturns out to be the appropriated clearing, or in shorthand, appropriation (Ereignis)—which is simply the later Heidegger’s re-inscription of what he hadearlier called “thrownness” (Geworfenheit) or “thrown-openness” (der geworfener Entwurf). Metaphorically speaking, as thrown-open (i.e., appropriated),human being is the “open space” or clearing within which the meaningful presence of things can occur. (The previous sentence is Heidegger’s philosophyin a nutshell.) In Heidegger’s lexicon the following terms (and there are yetothers) are simply different names for the same he thrown-open realmthe essence of human beingthe clearingthe appropriated clearingthe openEreignisGeworfenheitder geworfene Entwurfder EntwurfbereichExistenz or Da-seindie Lichtungdie ereignete Lichtungdas Offene
xviForewordThey all name ex aequo what the formally indicative phrases “being itself,”“being as such,” or “the essence of being” formally indicate: that which accounts for the “being”/meaningful presence of things in the human world.Therefore, after chapter 1, I will avoid as much as possible the phrase “beingitself.” Instead, I will represent the heuristic term das Sein selbst (or likewiseSein or Seyn when Heidegger carelessly uses them as equivalent to Sein selbst)by some of the terms listed above. I will do this without notice, even in theEnglish translations of Heidegger’s texts.To concretize the previous paragraphs: We may restate Heidegger’s mainquestion (Grundfrage) in phenomenological rather than ontological terms:1. the Befragtes: The subject matter—but not the goal—of h
3. Greek Grammar and “Is-as-Having-Been” 305 Bibliographies 1. Heidegger’s German Texts and Their English Translations 307 A. Texts within the Gesamtausgabe 307 B. Texts outside the Gesamtausgabe 328 2. Other Texts Cited 330 Index of German, English, and Latin Terms 337 Index of Greek Terms 347
Heidegger on Ontotheology : Technology and the Politics of Education, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 78 ff., esp. p. 84. CAPUTO suggests yet another meaning of the “turn” in Heidegger, namely the turn as revolution, Heidegger as radical. Demythologizing Heidegger, Bloomington, Indiana University
Chapter Two: Martin Heidegger and the Ontological Politics of Disablement 45 Introduction 45 Being and Time and the Early Heidegger 48 The “Letter on Humanism” 60 “The Question Concerning Technology” 64 Science and ‘the mathematical’ 68 Heidegger and the Body 71 Embodied Times and Spaces since Heidegger 73
0. Heidegger and Aristotle Martin Heidegger and his postmodernist' followers describe past, Western phi-losophy as the tradition'. Heidegger's project was to rethink the origins of this tradition and to destroy' its conceptual scheme (Heidegger 1962, 41 49), so as to uncover phenomenologically what of our elemental way of being has been
18 Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 93-118, 144-177. 19 Ibid., 178ff. 20 Martin Heidegger, Being and 1ime, 67. 21 Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, 22 "The Thing" in Martin Heidegger, "The Origin
HB Martin Heidegger, Elisabeth Blochmann, Briefwechsel . study holds that the question of Heidegger’s politics has produced so much dis-cussion quite simply because there remains something still very much at issue for us in the “Heidegger case.” At issue, and unresolved—and not just for aca- .
Heidegger s politics. Heidegger s politics and the thought of community The suggestion that one might think together Martin Heidegger s thought and the future of political community might be met with surprise, at best, and recoiling horror, at worst. This is because such a proposal necessarily takes place within a still-
Martin Heidegger: A Political Life; and Hans Sluga’s . Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany. 3 . In chapter 3 (the longest chapter of the thesis) the focus is on Heidegger's concern regarding the status and interrelationships of the sciences, the university, and the community.
Martin Heidegger INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis www.iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 translated by Thomas Sheehan Martin Heidegger INDIANA Studies in Continental Thought LOGIC John Sallis, editor PhiloSoP hy Martin Heidegger’s 1925–26 lectures on truth and time pro
