Systematicity and Temporality in Being and Time

References

• Cf. esp. Sein und Zeit (17th ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993) 336–69. I will cite Sein und Zeit as SZ and volumes of the Gesamtausgabe as GA plus the volume number. I follow the Macquarrie and Robinson translation of Sein und Zeit (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1962), making silent changes. All other translations are my own.
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• Cf. esp. SZ 255–67,335–39.
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• Cf. esp. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (ed.Klaus Held. 2nd ed. Gesamtausgabe 26. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1990) secs. 11–14. Also Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (ed.Walter Biemel. 2nd ed. Gesamtausgabe 21. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1995) secs. 27–37.
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• Blattner, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 254. For Heidegger's most pithy statements of the thesis see SZ 1, 17, 437.
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• Important books by these authors that Heidegger studied closely are Cassirer, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff: Untersuchung über die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik (Berlin, 1910. Reprint ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980); Cohen, Logik der Reinen Erkenntnis (2nd ed. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1914); Natorp, Die Logischen Grundlagen der Exakten Wissenschaften (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1910). Other key neo-Kantian works that Heidegger studied intensely include Rickert's Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung and Emil Lask's Die Lehre vom Urteil and Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre.
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• Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science (trans, and ed. Gary Hatfield. Cambridge UP, 1997), sec. 14.
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• This conception of philosophy as the elaboration of the logical constituents of natural science carries over into logical empiricism. There is an interesting historical link between these neo-Kantian works and the rise of logical empiricism. Cf. Michael Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism, Cambridge UP, 1999. Also Friedman, A Parting of the Ways, Chicago: Open Court, 2000.
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• “Gegenstand überhaupt,” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A290.
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• Other neo-Kantians differ from the Marburgers primarily on this central claim.
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• In his “Thesen zum System der Philosophie,” (in Neukantianismus, ed.Hans-Ludwig Ollig. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982, 147f.) Heinrich Rickert summarizes these organizing principles as follows: Philosophy strives for a “thought-structure that brings the intuitively unsurveyable multiplicity of the world under a surveyable nexus of concepts…. Such a nexus of concepts is called a system. As Wissenschaft, therefore, philosophy necessarily takes the form of the system.”
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• This term is inspired by Heidegger's own description of the systematic presuppositions of the Marburg school. Heidegger criticizes its “Panlogismus”, and goes on to replace it with a form of pan-hermeneuticism which I discuss below. (Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, ed.Bernd Heimbüchel. Gesamtausgabe 56/57. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987, 108f.)
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• Because of the prominence of this metaphor, Cohen's logical system became known as Ursprungslogik.
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• Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus (1913) and Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus (1915). Cf. also the essay Neuere Forschungen über Logik (1912). All in Frühe Schriften (ed.Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Gesamtausgabe 1. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1978).
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• Most of the actual writing took place between semesters in the Black Forest.
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• For expressions of Heidegger's disdain of his colleagues at Marburg cf. his letters to Jaspers of 18 June 1924, and 23 September 1925, in Heidegger, Martin and Karl Jaspers. Briefwechsel 1920–1963. (ed.Walter Biemel and Hans Saner. Munich: Piper, 1992) 48f., 54f.
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• Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (ed.Petra Jaeger. 3rd ed. Gesamtausgabe 20. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994) and GA 21. See Blattner (1999, xiv–xvii) for an argument against overestimating the importance of these lecture courses for interpreting Being and Time. The lecture courses are inferior in precision and thoughtfulness to the formulations of Being and Time: they are useful, however, in revealing the source of the questions and concerns that appear in the published work.
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• Concern for neo-Kantian logical foundations of science links Being and Time to Carnap's early work. See Michael Friedman (2000).
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• SZ 69. The phrase “more originary” (ursprünglicher), means both “more fundamental” and “more familiar”; I return to this notion below.
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• This is why the book is subtitled “The interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality, and the explication of time as the transcendental horizon for the question of being”. SZ 41.
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• Cf. e.g. “Das Worinnen des primären Selbstverständnisses hat die Seinsart des Daseins. Dieses ist existierend seine Welt.” SZ 364. Also: “Wenn kein Dasein existiert, ist auch keine Welt'da’.” SZ 365.
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• Heidegger uses two distinct German terms: “Auslegung” in the ordinary case, “Interpretation” in the reflective, philosophical sense. Dasein's quotidian comportment toward entities is an Auslegung, inexplicit and unreflective. Heidegger's philosophical explications of Dasein are Interpretationen, explicit and reflective. That care is the structure of Dasein is an Interpretation, and that time is the sense of care is also an Interpretation. In this paper I am concerned with Interpretationen. The two are closely related though: philosophy takes the form of Interpretationen (i.e. is hermeneutic) because Dasein's transcendence consists of Auslegungen.
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• This way of understanding the condition of possibility-relation in Heidegger is suggested by Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).
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• Here is an example of this premise at work: When Heidegger considers the relation between Dilthey's notion of history and his own ontology, he asks: “How are we to get historicality into our grasp…and distinguish it from the ontical…except by bringing both the ontical and the historical into a more originary unity” (403). This argument is typical of Being and Time.
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• Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (ed.Ingtraud Görland. Gesamtausgabe 25. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1977), 78. The neo- Kantian influence is not only evident in its monism, but also in the relation that the monistic origin bears to experience: the origin is operative in every experience. This is why Heidegger's argument, cannot be seen as directly based on the monistic systems of post-Kantian idealism of Reinhold, Fichte, or Hegel.
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• This concern arises primarily in passages where Heidegger reflects on the architecture of the overall argument. Cf. secs. 39, 41, 45, 61, 63, 78.
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• Presuming that the hierarchy of interpretations is not infinitely deep. This follows from the finitude of Dasein. In the neo-Kantian case the analogous claim follows from the discursivity of human understanding.
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• I adopt the terms “pragmatic temporality” and “existential temporality” from William Blattner, “Existential Temporality in Being and Time.” (in Heidegger: A Critical Reader. ed.Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992. 99–129). Below I point out how my treatment of these different modes of temporality connects to his.
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• On the resulting incompleteness of Heidegger's system, see Blattner (1999), 254–261.
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• SeeDreyfus (1995), 91–99 for a more detailed analysis of this purposive structure of the world.
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• For a more detailed treatment of pragmatic temporality see Blattner, (1999) 102–12.
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• SZ sec. 81.
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• This was the plan for the unwritten third division of the book. Heidegger attempts to develop versions of this claim in Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (ed.Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. 2nd ed. Gesamtausgabe 24. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989) and much later in “Zeit und Sein” (in Zur Sache des Denkens. 3rd ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988. 1–25. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. On Time and Being. New York: Harper, 1972. 1–24). However, neither of these texts fulfills the promise of a complete system; originary temporality is never explained.
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• “Eine ursprüngliche ontologische Interpretation […] muß sich ausdrücklich dessen versichern, ob sie das Ganze des thematischen Seienden in die Vorhabe gebracht hat.” SZ 232. Cf. “[…] wir jetzt die Frage stellen, der die vorbereitende Fundamentalanalyse des Daseins überhaupt zustrebt: wie ist existenzial-ontologisch die Ganzheit des aufgezeigten Strukturganzen zu bestimmen?” SZ 180f. The second criterion for originariness of an interpretation is its unity. I discuss the unity of originary temporality below.
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• Blattner (1992) uses the phrase “existential temporality” to indicate that the so-called “existentialist” themes in Being and Time are integral to the claims about temporality. I adopt it to name the revised model of the temporality of care that takes death and guilt into account. Blattner argues against Mark Okrent, Heidegger's Pragmatism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988) and Frederick Olafson, Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987) that the existentialist topics are “indispensable to the account of temporality” that Heidegger begins to develop later in Division Two. My argument confirms Blattner's claim. From the systematic point of view, the chapter on death and guilt establishes the completeness of Heidegger's interpretation. The interpretation of temporality is supposed to be originary. Originariness presumes completeness, and Heidegger's interpretation of temporality, therefore, has to incorporate the completeness claim.
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• I take it that in the following quote Heidegger avers the basic necessity of anticipation for any Dasein: “Being-towards-death is the anticipation of a potentiality-for-Being of that entity whose kind of Being is anticipation itself. [Das Sein zum Tode ist Vorlaufen in ein Seinkönnen des Seienden, dessen Seinsart das Vorlaufen selbst ist.]” SZ 262. The entity in question, here, is Dasein tout court, and anticipation is its kind of being. I take it that “Vorlaufen selbst,” here, names an ontological structure of Dasein that conditions both existentiell modes: authentic anticipation and inauthentic awaiting. Of these two modes, anticipation unveils the ontological structure, while awaiting covers it up.
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• This claim seems to disagree with some of Heidegger's statements, because Heidegger reserves the term “anticipation” for the strictly authentic Dasein; he does not have a term for the anticipatory work of the One. It is clear, however, that the One is the author of an inauthentic agent's possibilities. Cf. e.g. SZ 264, 337. The anticipatory work of the One is, I suggest, part of the pragmatic projection into the future.
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• Blattner (1992, 101; 1999, 98–102) argues for the modal indifference of originary temporality, i.e. that originary temporality is neither inauthentic nor authentic, but the condition of the possibility of both modes of existence. It follows from principle monism that Blattner's modal indifference claim must be correct. Both modes of existence are conditioned by the same originary interpretation of Dasein, i.e. by originary temporality. Modal indifference also follows from the claim that pragmatic temporality is either a subcase of existential temporality, or an imprecise statement of it. Whatever temporality makes authentic existence possible, also makes inauthentic existence possible. Further, it seems to me that the contrary claim doesn't make sense. Temporality cannot be authentic or inauthentic; these are existentiell modes and cannot be used to qualify an ontological structure. Originary temporality is ontological.
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• As Blattner points out, there are many passages in Being and Time in which Heidegger's language conjoins originary temporality and authentic existence (esp. sec. 65). These passages should be read in light of the methodological concern for completeness: authentic Dasein can be interpreted as a whole, and therefore is the proper object of an originary interpretation. Originary temporality shows itself in this interpretandum. Clearly, existential temporality is not the same as originary temporality; Heidegger explains the former in sec. 65 of Being and Time, but he never explains the latter. The difference is that existential temporality has the completeness of originary temporality, but not its unity.
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• In GA26 Heidegger interprets this originary ecstatic unity as a “free swinging” (“freie Schwingung,” 268–69). He depicts this free swinging, in which temporality temporalizes itself, as a metaphysical self-causing first cause. Heidegger calls it the “originary fact in the metaphysical sense” (“Urfaktum im metaphysischen Sinne,” 270), the ground of “world-entrance” (“Welteingang”), and the “nihil originarium” (272). The self-grounding structure, the attempt to explain the transition from nothing to something, and the metaphor of origin, here, are once again suggestively analogous to neo-Kantian logics, above all to Cohen's Ursprunslogik. To the best of my knowledge, this is as close as Heidegger gets to explaining the nature of originary temporality.
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• Letter to Jaspers of 26 December 1926, (Heidegger and Jaspers, 1992, 71).
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• I am grateful to Lanier Anderson and Taylor Carman for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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