The Meaning of Heidegger: A Critical Study of an Existentialist Phenomenology

252 Pages·1959·17.297 MB·English

by  Thomas Langan

The Meaning
of Heidegger
A CRITICAL STUDY
OF AN EXISTENTIALIST
PHENOMENOLOGY
by
THOMAS LANGAN
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Columbia University Press
This Edition first published
in the United States 1959
by Columbia University Press
New York
COLUMBIA PAPERBACK EDITION 1961
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To My Parents and Janine
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
INTRODUCTORY
HEIDEGGER'S LIFE AND WORKS 3
THE TWOFOLD TASK 10
PART I
THE EXISTENTIAL ANALYTIC
I BEING AND TIME 21
Dasein's Modes of Standing-in 21
Dasein as Being-toward-Death 31
Dasein and Temporality 41
Mundane and Intermundane Time and the Origin
of the Popular Conception of Time 51
The Historicity of the Dasein 56
II KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS 6g
III THE ESSENCE OF FUNDAMENT 86
Founding a World 89
Dasein as Transcendent Horizon 91
IV THE POSITIVE ACCENT OF A NEGATIVE
DOCTRINE 96
The Nothing as the Unfathomable 97
Originative Thinking as the Act of Freedom 98
Anguish as the Ultimate Intentionality 104
V ORIGINATIVE THINKING AS ESSENTIAL
THOUGHT AND POETIZING 107
Denken and Dichten
109
Essential Thinking 119
VI THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH '130
CONTENTS
PART II
RECALLING THE HISTORICAL DESTINY
OF THE WESTERN TRADITION
VII THE EPOCHAL AND ESCHATOLOGICAL
NATURE OF BEING 143
VIII THE BEGINNING OF THE DE~TRUCTION 152
The Greeks
The Middle Ages
IX MODERN TIMES
X THE CONSUMMATION OF METAPHYSICS 176
FIegel 176
Nietzsche 1 82
XI THE NOTION OF TECHNIQ,UE 191
XII THE SURPASSING OF METAPHYSICS 201
XUI HEIDEGGER'S EXISTENTIAL PHENOM-
ENOLOGY 215
No Philosophy without Presupposition 215
The Absence of the Other as Other
227
Metaphysics Not Surpassed
235
BIBLIOGRAPHY 239
INDEX 241
Acknowledgements
I
to thank the Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tiibingen, for
WISH
permission to quote from the German edition of Sein und
Zeit, and Professor Edward Schouten Robinson for permission
to use my own translation of Sein und Zeit, since the translation
which he is preparing of this work was not yet ready for use
at the time my work was being completed. Professor Walter
Kaufmann has kindly allowed me to base my own modified
translation on his translated excerpt from Was ist Metaphysic?
published in his book of readings, Existentialism from Dostoievsky
to Sartre. The Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am
Main, graciously consented to my citing the German of this
essay, as well as Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Vom Wesen
der Wahrheit and Holzwege. The Verlag GUnther Neske,
PfUllingen, has consented to my citing Vortriige und Aufsatze.
Monseigneur van Steenberghen consented on behalf of the
Louvain press to my citing De Waelhens' La Philosophie de
A/artin Heidegger.
INTRODUCTORY
To emphasize the root sense of the word Elcsisten;:,
(existence) as "standing-out," Heidegger frequently
uses a hyphenated form: EIc-sistenz; he uses similarly
the word which expresses the "standing-out" dimen
sions of time: EIc-stasis. Occasionally in this study the
hyphenated form is retained in order that the reader
will meditate on the root sense of the "standing-out."
Where this special attention is not the purpose of the
context, however, the words are rendered by the
normal English form "existence" (existent), and by
the English-sounding neologism "exstasis" (exstatic).
The word Dasein also is hyphenated (Da-sein) at
times to underscore the root meaning, the Being-there
of the existent. Because of the rich and very particular
meaning Heidegger builds about this word it is taken
over, without translation, as a technical term to
stress Heideggerian overtones that go beyond the
normal connotations of the English word "existent."
Heidegger's Life and Works
ALTHOUGH the philosophy of Martin Heidegger has had a
fi great influence on Protestant theology, on philology and
on literary and philosophical history and criticism in Europe,
knowledge of his work remains limited in America. Wherever
interest in the existential revolution arises, and whenever
awareness of the new methods of phenomenology begins to
come alive, the American encounters the difficult conceptions
of this most systematic of existentialists, and most enigmatic of
phenomenologists. But a formidable language barrier blocks
the path of the serious student who would see for himself this
great philosophy at work-a language barrier that stems from
more than a mere accidental lack of translations from the
German. Heidegger recreates the German language as he
writes. His deeply poetical, utterly original language challenges
the literate German-to say nothing of what it does to one
who knows the language only from the outside looking in.
Translating a philosophy that lives deep in the darkest genius
of its language is no easier than translating Holderlin, Goethe,
or Rilke. When Walter Biemel and Alphonse DeWaelhens
very competently rethought in French Heidegger's little essay
on the essence of truth they found it necessary to wrestle with
the key terms literally for months, and in some cases they still
found themselves coining neologisms for which they could
only feel apologetic. None of the other existentialists' works
have posed problems quite this grave. The American reader
can find long works of Sartre, Marcel, and Jaspers translated,
while Heidegger is still represented only by a handful of essays
gathered by Werner Brock under the title Existence and Being
and a few fragments elsewhere-material that is almost in-
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