c. m. sherover's heidegger, kant and time

SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY WINTER, 1973

REVIEW:

C. M. SHEROVER’S HEIDEGGER, KANT AND TIME

Parvis Emad

DePaul University

Part of the task of understanding Heidegger’s philosophy consists in dealing with his numerous interpretations of the thinkers of the past. Next to his works on Nietzsche, Heidegger has written more about Kant than any other philosopher. Sherover’s book Heidegger, Kant and Time* must be welcomed as a serious effort to introduce the reader to Heidegger’s thought on Kant. This book is written in a clear style, the argumentations offered are vivid and impressive and, as a whole it presents a significant departure from the persistent prejudice to dismiss Heidegger’s Kant-interpretation as “bad Kant”.

To make sense, a clarificatory exposition of Heidegger’s views on the Critical Philosophy must see its foremost task as relating his interpretive works on Kant to Heidegger’s comprehensive philosophical position. Approaching Sherover’s book in this light, however, I find that his effort is not nearly as successful as it should be. I maintain that Sherover’s treatment of Heidegger’s thought on Kant does not adequately account for Heidegger’s comprehensive philosophical position. To support this stand, I shall have to relate Heidegger’s works on Kant to his comprehensive philosophical position, and to indicate to what extent Sherover is indifferent to, and deviates from, this position.

I shall have to limit myself and, therefore, I do not examine Sherover’s grasp of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason nor his understanding of the other aspects of the Critical Philosophy. Furthermore, I presuppose that throughout the following discussion the presubjective, non-objective character of Heidegger’s conception of Being, is constantly kept in mind. Finally, the question concerning the possibility of a straight historico- philosophical exegesis of Kantian texts, as distinguished from a hermeneutical approach to his writings, is not going to be dealt with here. My prime objective is to examine Sherover’s exposition of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant. (Throughout the discussion, I use the following abbreviations to refer to Heidegger’s works: For Being and Time B&T, for Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics KM and for What is a Thing wr).

One way of characterizing Heidegger’s examinations of Kant’s thought is to say that it is radically different from such commentaries as Paton’s Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience (1936) or Grayeff s Deutung und Darstellung der theoretischen Philosophie Kants (1951). Unlike these works, Heidegger’s effort is rooted in a conception of interpretation which in turn is nourished by a comprehensive philosophical position. Heidegger’s numerous writings on Kant bring to mind Hegel’s account of Kant’s philosophy, since like Hegel, he too understands and evaluates Kantian questions from out of his own comprehensive philosophical position. Just as, any treatment of Hegel’s criticism of Kant must take into account the philosophy of Spirit, so also any treatment of Heidegger’s studies on Kant must consider his thought on Being, which up to 1930 centers on an analysis of Dasein and since then on the various epochs of the history of metaphysics conceived as history of Being. These two notions, the analysis of Dasein and

Parvis Emad is Associate Professor o f Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the University o f Vienna in AustriP in 1966 and has contributed extensively to s c h d r l y burnals here and abroad. He is on the editorial staff of Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger.

*Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1971, xxvii. 322 pp. $13.95.

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SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY WINTER. 1973

the history of Being, mark out the focal points of Heidegger’s early and later thought; showing the continuity of these two as well as their difference.

In three works, i.e., in KM, WT and Kant’s Thesis on Being, Heidegger has expounded on the Kantian thought. Here, we are going to examine the relation of each of these works to Heidegger’s philosophical position by first dealing with KM, then reviewing the shift of emphasis in his thought around 1930, concluding with a brief outline of WT as well as Kant’s Thesis on Being.

I

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, published in 1929 bears all the characteristics of Heidegger’s earlier thought, in fact as will be seen presently, it is a continuation of B&T. Yet in his book, Sherover claims that KM

has given us an alternate approach

to Heidegger’s doctrine, that here he

has made it clear that the phenomenological approach embodied in his magnum opus does not and “cannot claim to be the only one possible”.l

As further confirmations of these claims, Sherover states that if Richardson’s thesis is accurate then

this Kant-book was conceived before his major work, [suggesting] a more original source of his thinking.2

On the contrary, it is maintained in this paper, that KM does not provide an alternate approach to Heidegger’s doctrine, that in this work he has not rejected the phenomenological method of his major work, and that the idea of his first Kant-book being conceived prior to B&T is to be discarded. To substantiate these theses, I have to discuss the following questions.

In what sense is KM related to B&F To answer this question we have to deal with the chronology of Heidegger’s writings as well as the thought that links B&T to KM. Let us begin with the latter question.

In the projected second part of B&T, Heidegger intended to present the basic features of a phenomenological destruction of the hstory of ontology, by taking the problematic of temporality as a clue.3 Kant’s doctrine of schematism and his conception of time were to occupy the major portion of this enterprise. Apparently, part two of B&T never was finished, although, as Heidegger indicated, he worked on this part at the same time as he was working on KM. The latter work, however, presents a detailed treatment of Kant’s conception of time as well as the doctrine of schematism. Various remarks, spread over B&Tabout Kant’s conception of time and his theory of schematism, are to be understood as related to the “destruction of the history of ontology, with the problematic of temporality as a clue.” Sherover, on the other hand, does not examine Heidegger’s treatment of Kantian thought in the context of the destruction of the history of ontology. In fact, he never discusses this most important project. This discrepancy calls for a careful examination of this and other related issues.

What in B&T is called “destruction of the history of ontology” must not be mistaken for a negative approach to the tradition of western thought. On the contrary, the aim of the destruction is positive. Here Heidegger starts with the assumption that “Dasein has

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grown up both into and in a traditional way of interpreting i t ~ e l f . ” ~ He regards this basic historicality of Dasein as the source of ontological thinking, which in the course of its history, is covered up and made rigid. Far from having the negative aim of shaking off the tradition, the destruction strives to loosen up (Auflockerung) what has been made rigid in this tradition. More specifically, destruction presents an attempt to gain access to the original experiences which underly ontological theses. In this sense, destruction is a more general term for a very specific activity called retrieve, when it is directed at loosening up one particular problem thereby revitalizing it. Destruction and retrieve, then, are funda- mentally different from a mere repetition of the problems, although the persistent translation of “Wiederholung” in KM as repetition may make such a misconception possible. Furthermore, retrieve cannot be conceived apart from the destruction of the history of ontology. Sherover, however, discusses retrieve without any reference to the destruction of the history of ontology.

This brief discussion of the themes of “destruction” and “retrieve” is given with the explicit intention of pointing out the continuity of Heidegger’s thought from B&T to KM. By following uncritically Richardson’s statement that KM was written prior to B&T, Sherover confirms his thesis on the former work as presenting an alternate approach to Heidegger’s thought. However, a closer examination of Richardson’s statement and its source, reveals that the view that KM was “conceived” prior to B&T is unacceptable. To support his utilization of the fourth section of KM as a means of introduction to B&T, Richardson maintains, somewhat ambiguously, that KM was

published subsequently to SZ (1929), ... conceived beforehand (1925-26) and intended as the first section of SZ, Part IIS

and he refers the reader to p. 7 of Heidegger’s first book on Kant. On this page, (in the preface to the first edition), Heidegger states that the essential ideas of KM were presented in a course during the winter semester of 1925-26, and that the interpretation of the first Critique originated in connection with a preliminary elaboration on the second part of B&T. In his own words:

Das Wesentliche der folgenden Interpretation wurde erstmals in einer vierstundigen Vorlesung des W.S. 1925-26. . . mitgeteilt. Die Auslegung der “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” erwuchs im Zusammenhang einer ersten Ausarbeitung des zweiten Teils von “Sein und Zeit”.6

Nothing that Heidegger says here allows for a conclusion that KM was “conceived” prior to B&T. It is true that B&T was published in 1927. It is also true that KM was presented in university lectures in 1925-26. But it is equally true that Heidegger, as he explicitly states, presented B&T in many of his university lectures as early as the winter semester of 1919-20.7 One has to distinguish between the time when certain problems are dealt with in a lecture course and the time when these problems are presented to the public as a book. It is a matter of no contention that before he published B&T, Heidegger was working on its second part in connection with which the interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason originated.

In order to attend to Sherover’s more significant assertion that in KM Heidegger has made it clear that the phenomenological approach of B&T “cannot claim to be the only one possible” we must examine the passage in KM from which he quotes. In this passage (p. 245 KM) Heidegger indicates that the elaboration on finitude (itself a finite under- taking) can have no claim to absoluteness of its results. He points out, further, that the nature of finitude becomes manifest when we raise the fundamental question of

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metaphysics. Finally, he indicates that “this manner of approach to finitude cannot be the only one possible.” Heidegger makes the latter point quite clear when he says:

Es bleibt vielmehr nur die Ausarbeitung der Problematik der Endlichkeit als solcher, die sich ihrem eigensten Wesen nach offenbart, wenn sie durch einen unentwegt von der urspriinglich begriffenen Grundfrage der Metaphysik geleiteten Einsatz zuganglich gemacht wird, der freilich nie als der einzig mogliche beansprucht werden kann .*

It can be seen clearly that this passage does not contain any statement about the “phenomenological method” of B&T but only a reassertion of a common theme of B&T as well as of KM, namely that one way for finitude to become manifest for us is by raising the fundamental question of metaphysics. It must be pointed out, of course, that the rendition of the term “Einsafz” by “method” in the English version of KM can mislead the reader into believing that this passage has some bearing on the problem of method. By reading the passage in German there should remain no doubt as to what constitutes the main issue here: Far from rejecting the phenomenological approach of B&T, this passage reaffirms a basic relationship between finitude and the fundamental question of metaphysics in both Heidegger’s major work and KM. B&T and KM both explore the relation between the fundamental question of metaphysics and finitude; the former by working out the finitude of that entity which asks the fundamental question of metaphysics, the latter, by interpreting the Critique of Pure Reason as grounded already in an understanding of the finitude of man.

It would have been more accurate in translating the above-given sentence to steer clear of expressions such as “method of approach”. To see the difference that would then result, let us retranslate this sentence:

It is by elaborating on the problematic of finitude as such that its intrinsic naturc becomes manifest, granted that finitude is approached via the fundamental question of metaphysics when conceived primordially. This manner of approach to finitude, of course, cannot be the only one possible.

As we can see, KM is a work directly related to the conception of a destruction of the history of ontology, i.e., an objective that the second part of B&T was intended to achieve. Therefore, it is a continuation of B&T and it does not present a break from it.

The essence of KM consists in Heidegger’s conception of the transcendental imagination as a formative center, which by being spontaneous and receptive gives rise to understanding and sensibility. Heidegger developes this conception of the transcendental imagination by confining himself to Edition A of the first Critique and Sherover points out quite accurately that

Heidegger’s insistence on the A Edition is an insistence on the empirical originality of the Kantian Critique and a protest against the B Edition’s “revision” to rationalism.9

Although, Sherover treats the threefold synthesis with adequate philosphical care, one wishes that he were not so dependent on empirical concepts and examples for discussion of transcendental questions. If, however, he would have regarded KM as a continuation of the project of destruction in B&T, he would have seen and utilized an approach more akm to Heidegger’s problems. To demonstrate the transcendental imagination as the formative center of the sponteneity of understanding and the receptivity of sensibility,

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one may first elaborate on the temporalization of temporality in B&T and then try to work out the various implications that the Kantian treatment of the triune synthesis have for this temporalization. This explication would have been possible, if Sherover could have differentiated what is truly Heidegger’s and what is really Kant’s. If he had made this distinction he would not have dismissed Heidegger’s earlier thought as “basically Kantian” thereby holding firmly to the claim concerning

both the derivation of Heidegger’s conception of time from the Critique and his temporal analysis as grounding it.10

Had he seen clearly what had brought Heidegger initially to the discovery of the authentic temporality, i.e., the existential analysis of death; he would not have been mislead into thinking that Heidegger found the priority of futurity buried in Kant’s work.11

Heidegger’s second book on Kant, WT published in 1962 presents the course of a lecture he gave in 1935-36 under the title of “Basic Questions of Metaphysics.” It carries the subtitle, left out in the English translation, “On Kant’s Transcendental Principles”. This work clearly bears the characteristics of Heidegger’s later thought, in that it is dominated in its entirety by a discussion of what Heidegger calls dus Muthemfische. This notion can be understood only in terms of the history of metaphysics as the history of the “mittences” of Being. The Mathematical, dus Muthcmafische, is such a “mittence”. Together with KM, his second book on Kant presents, in an astonishingly clear fashion, the continuity between Heidegger’s early and later thought as well as the unmistakeable difference between these two phases of his creativity. If one takes Heidegger’s whole thought as being “essentially Kantian”, overlooking thereby what connects B&T to KM, and if one assumes that Heidegger’s later thought is of no significance for an understanding of his philosophical position, then one has to overlook his thought on the Mathematical entirely. This is precisely what Sherover does: he does not discuss or even once mention this term in his book.

Since WT in its entirety is dominated by the notion of the Mathematical (as distinguished from the mathematics), we have to discuss the following issues in order to arrive at a clear conception of Heidegger’s second Kant-interpretation.

The significance of the thought on the Mathematical will be realized when we keep in mind that after 1930 Heidegger’s efforts were increasingly directed at a thinking of Being and no longer devoted to an analysis of the structures involved in the understanding of Being. This shift from understanding of Being to Being, however, is neither a change in standpoint, nor does it present a break in Heidegger’s thought, since after 1930, as before this date, Dasein and Being belong together. To assume a radical separation between Dasein and Being is, therefore, untenable. W. Schulz puts the matter succinctly when he says:

it is plainly absurd to think Being and Dasein in such a way as if they were two distinct magnitudes with a commerckm prevailing between them.12

Therefore, the belonging-together of Being and Dasein remains unaltered, but after 1930, it is the “historical” or “mittent-character” of Being that Heidegger tries more and more to articulate. In this way, historicality is no longer limited to a constitutive element in the structure of Dasein. Rather, it is Being’s way of granting itself to Dasein which now is said to be thoroughly historical. By giving the first half of his second Kantbook to a detailed

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analysis of the various ways of questioning about the thing, Heidegger intends to point at the intricate relation existing between Dasein’s basic positions (taken in accordance with Being’s historical character) and its particular conception of what a thing is. He says here

the answer to the question “what is a thing” is different in character. It is not a proposition but a transformed basic position. . .a change of questioning and evalua- tion. . . in short, of the being-there (Dasein) in the midst of what is.l

When Sherover takes Heidegger’s second study of Kant to be “something of a postscript”l4 to the first, which faces only the task of examining the specification of the temporalized categories, he reduces drastically the importance of WT for an understanding of Heidegger’s thought on Kant.

If we are to understand Heidegger’s position on Kant after 1930, we have to bear in mind the following points. First, according to Heidegger the Critique of Pure Reason pins down

the “mathematical” feature of modern metaphysics, namely to determine in advance out of principles the being of what is.15

Moreover, studying the first Critique we do not

become familiar with a book which a professor once wrote in the eighteenth cen- tury, but we enter a few steps into a historical-intellectual basic position which carries and determines us today.16

Finally, we have to account for what Heidegger calls the Mathematical. It is this “mittence” of Being which institutes the limitation and restriction of “thing” to ‘‘natural thing” (Naturding). Being occupied with determining axiomatically and in advance our encounter with the thing, thinking altogether at the service of this “mittence” of Being, Kant overlooked the “Errance” to which all mittences of Being are subjected:

Kant.. .disregarded what is manifest. He did not inquire into and determine in its own essence that whch encounters us prior to an objectification. . .”I7

This has been due to no shortcoming of Kant but only due to the nature of truth as the process of con cealment-unconcealment. Sherover’s work does not touch any of these questions. On the contrary he states flatly that WT “requires no expository clarification”.l8

Heidegger’s first Kant book is oriented towards the temporalization of temporality in Dasein and, therefore, in keeping with his early thought, it does not inquire into the thingly character of things. This limitation of KM should have striken Sherover as obvious in that the discussion of the transcendental principles in WT are set in the broader context of “Various Ways of Questioning About the Thing”.l9 The general discussion of “what is a thing” which takes the first half of this book is not an exercise in philosophical verbosity. If sets the stage for working out the transcendental principles as they form the modern conception of thing. I t would have been an instructive addition to the Heideggerian literature if Sherover would have shown how an impoverishment of the Aristotelian thought on PHYSIS lead to the Newtonian thing-concept and finally to Kant’s mathematical, axiomatic and apriori determination of this concept, a lengthy discussion of which runs from P. 49 to 92 of Heidegger’s work (English trans. P. 66-1 12).

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Prior to a first hand experience of what is called a thing, its being is drived from certain principles and is, hence, no longer a matter of lived-experience but of an axiomatic knowledge. Kant’s accomplishment, according to WT, lies in the clear expression he gives to the Mathematical as it shapes the modern thought; since to him

what is a thing must be decided in advance from the highest principles of all principles and propositions, i.e., from pure reason.20

Seen in this light, WT is more than a “postscript” to KM, and must be dealt with as a convenient point of entry into Heidegger’s later thought.

While the emphasis in KM and WT is respectively on transcendental esthetic and transcendental analytic of the first Critique, in Kant’s Thesis on Being, (published in 1962) Heidegger discusses, in some detail, a significant theme of the transcendental dialectic, i.e., Kant’s explicit assertions on Being. Considering Sherover’s indifference to Heidegger’s later thought, it is not surprising to see this work being altogether ignored except for occasional footnote reference to points it has in common with KM.

Characteristic of Sherover’s attitude to Heidegger’s later thought is the thesis that “it is an open question” whether his later “inquiries have been fruitful”.-21 His understanding of these inquiries, however, leaves much to be desired when he takes “Ereiflis” (the crucial notion in these inquiries) to mean “event”22 instead of “appropriation”. It is on the basis of such a misconception that he criticizes in a dozen or so pages, Heidegger’s later thought on Time by lumping it together with questions such as Hegelian Idealism and Kant’s conception of possibility. Had he been cautious enough to avoid hasty con- clusions, and had he taken into consideration that after 1930, for Heidegger “Errance” (not to be mistaken with error) as mystery prevails in the process of truth, he would have not complained about being

left with the mystery, not only of the nature of Being which can only appear in terms of time, but with the nature of Time itself which is requisite for the appearing of Being.23

In conclusion, let me readily acknowledge that notwithstanding its shortcomings, Sherover’s book must be credited with having at least opened up the long overdue discussion in America on Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant. If future scholarship in this area turns out to be thorough, cautious and reserved, it surely will be due to the work that Sherover has begun.

Notes

k M . Sherover, Heidegger, Kant & Time, Indiana University Press, 1971, p. 5. 2fbid, p. 5. 3Cf., M. Heidegger, Being and Time (hereafter B&T) trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson,

41bid p. 20. SWilliam J. Richardson, Heidegger, Through Phenomenology to Thought, Martinus Nijhoff, 1967,

6M. Heidegger, Kant und &s t?oblem der Metuphysik, Klostermann, 1965, p. 7. 7Cf. M. Heidegger, B&T, p. 102, footnote i. See further, Heidegger’s recent statement in On Time

and Being, trans. by J. Stambaugh, 1972 p. 80, about B&T being ready for publication in winter semester of 1925-26.

Harper & Row, 1962, p. 63.

p. 28.

8M. Heidegger, Kant und das Roblem derhletuphysik, Klostermann, 1965, p. 213. 37 3


9C.M. Sherover, op. cit. p. 176-177. l'lbid., p. 188.

k f . /bid., p. 199. 12''Es ist schlechthin widersinnig, ueber das Sein und das Dasein so zu reflektieren, a l s waren sie

zwei Croessen, zwischen denen ein cornrnerciurn waltete.", W. Schulz in, 0. Poeggeler, Ed. Heideggel, Perspektiven zur Deutung seines Werkes, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969, p. 118.

13M. Heidegger, What is a Thing, (hereafter WT) trans. by W. B. Barton & Vera Deutsch, H. Regnery, 1969, p. 50.

14C.M. Sherover, op. cit., p. 213. 15M. Heidegger, WT, p. 122. 161bid., p. 56. I7/bid., p. 141. 18C.M. Sherover, op. cit., p. 121. 19Cf. M. Heidegger, WT, p. 111. 20/bid., p. 11 1. 21C.M. Sherover, op cit., p. 219. 22/bid., p, 281. 23/bid., p. 282.

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c. m. sherover's heidegger, kant and time

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