Husserl-Heidegger Debate on Kant

Man and World 30: 5–33, 1997. 5c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Husserl’s debate with Heidegger in the margins of Kant and theProblem of Metaphysics �

RICHARD E. PALMERDepartment of Philosophy, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, IL 62650, USA

Abstract. Husserl received from Martin Heidegger a copy of his Kant and the Problemof Metaphysics in the summer of 1929 not long before Husserl had determined to rereadHeidegger’s writings in order to arrive at a definitive position on Heidegger’s philosophy. Withthis in view, Husserl reread and made extensive marginal comments in Being and Time andKant and the Problem of Metaphysics. This essay by the translator of the remarks in KPMoffers some historical background and comment on the importance of the remarks in KPM andattempts to describe Husserl’s counterposition to Heidegger on six issues that divided the twomajor twentieth century philosophers.

One of the saddest stories in twentieth century philosophy, with dimensionsof betrayal and tragedy, is that of the breakdown of the Husserl-Heideggerrelationship. The break became clear to Husserl only after Heidegger hadbeen elected – with Husserl’s support – to succeed Husserl at Freiburg in1928. After Heidegger’s “desertion” of phenomenology became inescapablyevident to Husserl, he determined that he must devote several weeks to anintensive review of Heidegger’s position as soon as possible: right after hefinished preparing his Formale und transcendentale Logik for publication.The main text in this project was Sein und Zeit (1927), of course, but alsoKant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929), which had appeared only afew weeks before. Reading these two works and possibly other offprints,Husserl made extensive comments (in his Gabelsberger shorthand) in themargins. When Husserl’s manuscripts and other effects were smuggled outof Germany by Father van Breda in the late 1930s, these volumes came withthem and have been preserved in the Husserl Archives at Louvain, Belgium. Inthe over fifty years since that time these volumes with their marginal remarksin Husserl’s shorthand have rested peacefully untranscribed and unpublishedin the Husserl Archives at Louvain, Belgium. It was thus an event of someimportance in Husserl scholarship when they appeared in 1993 in Frenchtranslation.1 And in 1994 the original German text – as transcribed by Steven

� Part of this article will appear in the author’s translation (in Edmund Husserl Collect-ed Works), Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation withHeidegger, to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, forthcoming.

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Spileers and introduced by Roland Breeur, both on the staff of the Archives– from which the French translation was made was published in HusserlStudies.2 Now these marginal remarks have been translated into English byThomas F. Sheehan (those in SZ) and myself (those in KPM).3 The Englishtranslation places the relevant sentence or sentences in the Heideggeriantext alongside Husserl’s remark, which the Husserl Studies publication ofthem simply indicated by giving the page and line number in the Heideggertext where the remark appeared. The present essay was originally written toserve as an introduction to its author’s translation of Husserl’s remarks inKPM to be published in a volume titled Psychological and TranscendentalPhenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger, but essay grew far toolong for a subsidiary introduction in that volume. By Husserl Archive ordersthe introduction had to be cut to ten manuscript pages plus notes, about one-fourth of its original length. Man and World, however, has arranged to offer itsreaders the original introduction here as a more fully annotated prolegomenonto Husserl’s marginal remarks in KPM.

Admittedly, Husserl’s marginal remarks in KPM do not reflect the sameintense effort to penetrate Heidegger’s thought that one finds in his marginalnotes in SZ.4 In terms of length, Husserl’s comments in the German text aspublished in Husserl Studies occupy only one-third the number of pages.5 Inaddition, pages 1–5, 43–121, and 125–167 contain no reading marks or notesby Husserl at all – over half of the 236 pages of KPM. This suggests thatHusserl either read these pages with no intention of returning to the text, orthat he skipped large parts of the middle of the text altogether.6

Nevertheless, we will in the first major part of the present essay attempt toshow that Husserl’s marginal remarks in KPM are of continuing importancefor several reasons. First, many of Husserl’s notations respond substantivelyand at length to Heidegger’s text and dispute his statements, articulating a clearcounterposition to that of Heidegger on many points. Second, they are impor-tant because of the place in which they appear, for the content of KPM was tohave served as a further part of SZ, but shortly after publishing it Heideggerabandoned altogether the project of a “fundamental ontology,”7 although hedid not abandon the quest for the “meaning of Being.” Published on the heelsof his famous “Davos Lectures” with Ernst Cassirer, KPM represents at leasta certain closure in Heidegger’s public dialogue with NeoKantianism, andby extension also in relation to the NeoKantian tendencies in Husserl’s phe-nomenology after the Logical Investigations. Third, the remarks in KPM areimportant because Kant is a key figure for both Husserl and Heidegger. Thisessay cannot do justice to an elaboration of the two relationships to Kant,but it will offer some remarks on it and refer the reader to primary and sec-ondary sources in which the two relationships are explored.8 Fourth, KPM is

HUSSERL’S DEBATE WITH HEIDEGGER 7

important as an example – indeed, a prime example – of Heidegger’s methodof Destruktion or “deconstruction.” In KPM Heidegger is “deconstructing”Kant’s First Critique. This raises in Husserl’s mind (and in a few others’ also)the issue of violence in text interpretation. Unfolding these four dimensionsof significance will provide the organizational structure of part one.

The second major part of the present essay will sort out several points ofHusserl’s counterposition in the margins of KPM. Six themes in the “debate”will be discussed. Readers who wish to do so may skip the first part andread only part two. But readers who wish an annotated discussion of theimportance of the marginalia that goes into the historical and philosophicalbackground may find part one of interest. Prefacing both discussions we offersome notes on when the texts in question were written.

Heidegger probably gave KPM to Husserl shortly after its publication in lateJune or early July of 1929. No exact date is included with the inscription, “Mitherzlichem Gruß. M. Heidegger” [“With heartfelt greetings. M. Heidegger”],but in a letter from Karl Jaspers to Heidegger dated July 14, Jaspers thankshim for sending the Kant book and also acknowledges receiving his ratherflowery encomium of April 8, celebrating Husserl’s 70th birthday.9 About thespeech Jaspers remarks that he has a few “impertinent questions,” presumablyabout the sincerity of Heidegger’s lavish praise of Husserl.10 In any case, sincewe know Jaspers received his copy of KPM during the week or so before July14, we can assume that Husserl also received his copy about the same time –i.e., middle to late June or early July, 1929.11

It cannot be known with any certainty when Husserl wrote his marginalremarks in KPM. However, Husserl states in his letter to Pfander of January 6,1931, that he decided he must in 1929 arrive at “a sober and definitive positionon Heideggerian philosophy,” so when he finished readying his Formal andTranscendental Logic for publication that year, he devoted two months ofhis summer vacation “to the study of Being and Time as well as the recentwritings.”12 It would seem reasonable to assume that the “recent writings”to which Husserl refers in this letter would have included KPM, that hadappeared just a month or so before, and also Heidegger’s essay, “Vom Wesendes Grundes,” which was included in the Festschrift Heidegger presented toHusserl on April 8, earlier that year, celebrating his 70th birthday. On theother hand, Heidegger’s inaugural address in Freiburg, published as Was istMetaphysik?, was given on July 29, and not published until December 1929,so it was probably not among the “recent writings” to which Husserl refers.13

In any case, Was ist Metaphysik?, the topic Heidegger chose for his inauguraladdress, had absolutely nothing to do with Husserl’s phenomenology. Indeed,Heidegger’s choice of subject was a glaring insult to Husserl.14

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We do know with certainty where a good number of the notations, especiallythose in SZ, were written: Tremezzo, a resort on Lake Como in Italy whereHusserl vacationed from mid-August to early September, 1929.15 Of course,it is quite possible that some of the notations in KPM and in SZ were madeafter Husserl’s return to Freiburg, but given the publication of KPM justbefore Husserl left for Italy, and given the importance of the content of thisbook in relation to Husserl’s thought, it seems likely that at least some andprobably most of the notations date from Husserl’s Italian vacation in Augustand September of 1929, or shortly thereafter.

We can date Heidegger’s final three weeks of work on KPM with greatercertainty. From several sources we know that he addressed himself to thistask shortly after returning from the “Davos Lectures” with Ernst Cassirer.16

This specially arranged “lecture course” was offered during the period fromMarch 17 to April 6.17 In a letter of April 12 to Elisabeth Blochman after hereturned to Freiburg, Heidegger said that after returning from Davos he “sleptfor two days.” After that, he continues, there was Easter with Elfride and thechildren, which included “a fine hike to the Schluchsee, and from there upto the hut.”18 So the dating is pretty clear: a few days after returning fromDavos, approximately April 12, Heidegger moved up to his hut and devotedthree weeks or so to preparing for publication his lecture-course on Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason from the winter semester of 1927–1928.19

1. Husserl and Heidegger: background factors

Husserl’s marginal comments in KPM are important, as we have indicated,first, because they give us an intimate glimpse into Husserl’s reaction to Hei-degger’s interpretation of Kant at a key time in their relationship. They werenot intended for public viewing, so Husserl was speaking his mind. Althoughlarge portions of KPM are without markings or remarks, one still finds a goodnumber of substantive comments in it, in a few cases at considerable length.These alone make the marginalia of interest to readers of Husserl. But mar-ginalia gain additional significance because they are placed in a turning-pointdocument in the development of Heidegger’s early thought.

KPM is important, we recall, because the analysis of Kant’s Critique of PureReason presented in it was to have been a continuation of Being and Time: PartI. Part I was to have had three divisions, of which only two were completed.Part II was to have consisted of three divisions: 1) Kant’s schematism andthe doctrine of time; 2) Descartes’ cogito sum, and 3) Aristotle’s treatises ontime. KPM, then, would have provided the substance of the first division ofPart II. Heidegger himself explicitly relates KPM to the project of SZ in thepreface to the fourth edition (1973):


In preparing the lecture course on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, myattention was drawn to the chapter on Schematism, and I glimpsed thereina connection between the problem of Categories, that is, the problem ofBeing in traditional Metaphysics and the phenomenon of time. In thisway the manner of questioning from Being and Time came into play as ananticipation of my attempted interpretation of Kant. Kant’s text became arefuge, as I sought in Kant an advocate for the question of Being which Iposed. (Page xv in Robert Taft’s English translation of KPM.)

Towards the end of this same preface, Heidegger states: “The Kant bookremains an introduction . . . to the further questionability which persistsconcerning the question of Being as set forth in Being and Time.” Then, ina gesture characteristic of the later Heidegger, he adds toward the end of thepreface, “The growing and unacknowledged anxiety in the face of thinkingno longer allows insight into the forgetfulness of Being which determines theage.”20 So it is quite clear that KPM was to have been a continuation of theproject of SZ.

There are other links of KPM to SZ. The substance of the Kant booktook shape just after SZ was published – in the semester lecture courseduring the winter of 1927–1928. Heidegger’s statement of the “theme” ofthe investigation both in the table of contents and on the opening page ofthe text: “The Unfolding of the Idea of a Fundamental Ontology throughthe Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason as a Laying of the Groundfor Metaphysics” explicitly links it with SZ because the goal of KPM, likethat of SZ, was a fundamental ontology.21 Yet Heidegger chose not to waitand make this highly original and controversial interpretation of Kant part ofhis projected continuation of SZ; rather, right after the Davos lectures, andperhaps even because of them,22 to publish it immediately as a separate work.KPM basically marks his last major effort in the whole general approach tothe “meaning of Being” that was undertaken in SZ. A comment written byHeidegger in his own copy of KPM during the 1930s reads: “Ganz ruckfalligin die transzendentale Fragestellung” – “[This] falls back completely into thetranscendental standpoint.”23 Heidegger was about to desert even his owneffort to come to terms with transcendental philosophy. Historically, then,KPM marks a certain point of closure in the project of SZ – at least in theform in which it pursued the question of Being in that volume.24

KPM is important, however, not just because it constitutes a continuation ofSZ, and indeed marks the virtual closure of that project, but also because KPMfocuses on Kant. This is our next major point. Both Husserl and Heideggerrelate importantly to Kant, so a contrast of their relationship to Kant shedslight on the Husserl-Heidegger relationship and its breakdown. An exhaustive

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and detailed study of Husserl’s relation to Kant is offered in Iso Kern’s lengthystudy, Husserl und Kant.25 Given this study, we will only make a few generalobservations. First, for Husserl, it was Descartes rather than Kant who wasthe truly revolutionary figure in modern philosophy. Kant failed to live upto the promise of his philosophy, and it is precisely the failures of Kantthat Husserl seeks to remedy with his phenomenology. Thus, even Husserl’srapprochement with the NeoKantians in his middle period remains basicallya tactical effort to interest them in phenomenology. In the Krisis, however,Husserl is quite frank about the shortcomings of Kant.

Heidegger’s evolving grasp of Kant is also relevant in this connectionbecause KPM represents an effort by Heidegger to come to terms with Kantianphilosophy. This complex story cannot be adequately rehearsed here, but wewill discuss a few major factors and refer the reader to some key sources. Theposthumously published lectures of Heidegger during the Marburg period (tobe discussed subsequently) and books by Theodore Kisiel, John van Buren,and others now give us a far full picture of Heidegger’s relation to Kant. Also,in his preface to the fourth edition of KPM Heidegger himself refers us to thedetailed article by Hansgeorg Hoppe on his evolving relation to Kant.26

While Husserl viewed his phenomenology as going beyond both Kantianand NeoKantian philosophy, indeed as a “breakthrough,” Heidegger sawHusserl’s philosophy, especially after Ideas I (1913) as falling back intoNeoKantianism. Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant, for its part, is an excel-lent illustration of his interpretive violence and Destruktion (deconstruction).For Heidegger, Kant represents a position in the history of the Western meta-physics that he is trying to dismantle and reconstruct – or “deconstruct” – indeveloping his own project of a fundamental ontology. In keeping with thisstrategy, Heidegger here carefully goes inside the Kantian text and analyzesthe inner workings of the schematism. At the Davos debate with Cassir-er which just preceded his publication of KPM, he went so minutely intoKant that Cassirer professed not to understand where Heidegger divergedfrom NeoKantianism. Cassirer asserted there: “I have found a neo-Kantianhere in Heidegger!”27 Cassirer then asked Heidegger: “Who are the Neo-Kantians?”28 Heidegger, after listing a number of obvious names, explicit-ly said: “In a certain sense, Husserl himself fell into the clutches of neo-Kantianism between 1900 and 1910.”29 This shows that Heidegger’s effort totake a definitive position on Kant within the horizon of his own ontologicalphilosophy is also taking a position on Husserl’s perceived NeoKantianism.

It is of interest that at the end of his Kant lectures (in GA 25 but not inKPM itself in GA 3), Heidegger asserts that his study of Kant “had confirmedfor him the correctness of the path he had chosen” – the way of graspingphenomenology hermeneutically and preliminarily arriving at an ontological


conceptuality through “formal indications” of the lifeworld.30 Otto Poggelerreminds us that Husserl also played a role in Heidegger’s relation to Kant.“The formally indicating [formal anzeigende] hermeneutic,” says Poggeler,“could become a schematization because Husserl had stimulated Heideg-ger to a temporal interpretation of the component moments of the Kantian‘power of the imagination’ and thus directed him to Kant’s doctrine of theschematism.”31 So, against his previous plans, Heidegger in his 1925–1926lectures on logic, “went into Kant and showed how the three Ekstasen of timeare related to the schemata.”32

Yet in spite of his debts to Kant, Heidegger was also critical of him, butin a distinctive way. In keeping with his method of Destruktion, he arguedin KPM that Kant himself wanted to overcome the metaphysics of idealismbut did not have the means, the conceptual tools – die Mittel. Which is tosay, he did not have a “metaphysics of metaphysics.” In ontological terms,Kant did not explore the Being of Being [das Sein des Seins] but only thebeing of existent beings [das Sein des Seienden]; this “fundamental ontology”had to wait for SZ. Heidegger’s later public account of why he desertedHusserl’s phenomenology involved Kant, also. He stated: “Phenomenologyin the Husserlian sense was developed into a position prescribed by Descartes,Kant, and Fichte.”33 That is to say, it became a transcendental and idealistphilosophy that took human subjectivity as its starting point and sought touncover the intentional structure of the transcendental ego.

But already in SZ Heidegger had been attempting to avoid the traditionallanguage of subjectivity and consciousness which had led Husserl to takea form of transcendental psychology as the propaedeutic to transcendentalphenomenology. Even the Husserlian slogan, “Zur Sachen selbst!” – whichHeidegger reinterpreted in SZ – still entailed, in Heidegger’s view of Husserl,that things themselves were objects of consciousness and thus Husserl retreat-ed to the standpoint of Kantian idealism.34 Instead of using such terms asconsciousness and transcendental subjectivity, Heidegger employed an onto-logical terminology centered on the being of Dasein human being-there] andits finite, temporal, caring, future-oriented being-in-the-world. Like Husserl,Heidegger returned to the unobtrusive life-world, but this is an ontologicallydefined life-world. And it is in terms of the ontological project in SZ that Hei-degger interpreted Kant with a deconstructive violence that drew widespreadprotest.35

Today, with the posthumous publication of Heidegger’s early lectures fromthe Marburg period in the Gesamtausgabe, it becomes possible to gain a morenuanced picture of Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung not only with Kant butalso with Husserl in the Marburg years.36 Franco Volpi, in an extensive andilluminating article on this latter topic, finds in these early Marburg lectures a


double relation to Husserlian phenomenology: a repetition of phenomenologyand at the same time a radicalizing of Husserl’s project.37 The ambivalenceHeidegger felt toward traditional philosophy, Valpi argues, he also felt towardHusserl insofar as Husserl continued that tradition; yet Volpi insists: “evenwhere Heidegger’s critical tone becomes louder and more insistent, the explic-it acknowledgement of the greatness of his teacher – as well as other greatstrugglers, Scheler above all – is never omitted.”38

Also, Volpi notes, Heidegger’s project in the Marburg lectures is always pre-sented as an ontological transformation of the phenomenological approach.For instance, when his 1925 summer semester lectures were offered, theywere titled “Prolegomena to a Phenomenology of History and Nature ofthe Concept of Time.”39 In these lectures Heidegger dedicates the extensive“preparatory portion” to Husserl’s “phenomenological breakthrough” beyondBrentano, referring to the “three great discoveries” of intentionality, categor-ial intuition, and the function of the apriori.40 Yet each of these discoveries,Heidegger argues in the lectures, must be more radically interpreted – per-haps we might say “demythologized” or “interpreted deconstructively,” soas to separate the breakthrough insights from the “metaphysical” presuppo-sitions of their proponent. Brentano, says Heidegger, based his thinking onthe essential character of the “psychical” (or “mind”) which distinguisheshumans from other beings, but he failed to go into “a closer determination ofthe ontological manner of being of the psychical.”41 Heidegger traces this fail-ure back to the Cartesianism of Brentano, and finds both Husserl and Schelerentrapped in a traditional metaphysics of the psychical, a metaphysics basedon substance and conscious subjectivity. In these Marburg lectures of 1925,Heidegger explicitly asserts that “intentionality” in Husserl has fallen backinto traditional concepts just when he was expecting phenomenology, witha new concept of intentionality, to go beyond them. “Today, too,” he says,“intentionality is simply grasped as a structure of consciousness or a structureof acts of the person, and thus again these two realities, of which intention-ality is supposed to be the structure, are taken up in a very traditional way.”One seeks in phenomenology, Heidegger continues, whether that of Husserlor Scheler – who move in two quite different directions – “to get beyond thepsychical character of intentionality: Husserl, in that

he grasps intentionality as universal structure of reason (reason not aspsychical, differentiated from the physical), and Scheler, in that he takesintentionality as structure of spirit or person, distinguishing it from thephysical. But we will see that because of what they mean by reason,spirit, or anima, the approach with which these theories work is not over-come. I refer to these because we will see how phenomenology requires


that this determination of intentionality be placed within a more radi-cal development.”42 Instead of deconstructing Kant, now Heidegger isdeconstructing Brentano, Husserl, and Scheler!

Like intentionality, categorial intuition and the apriori – the two other great“discoveries” and anchors of Husserlian phenomenology – have also been“covered over,” Heidegger argues, with traditional concepts and need to beliberated. “Categorial acts,” he argues in these lectures, “constitute a newobjectivity, which is always to be understood intentionally and certainly doesnot mean that you just somehow let things arise.”43 That is to say: “to constitutedoes not mean constructing as making and getting ready but the entity allowingitself to be seen in its being as an object.”44 Volpi shows Heidegger in theMarburg years working through and transforming Husserlian insights andterminology but always with a show of respect, treating Husserl as a classicalphilosophical thinker to whom he is deeply indebted.

In his discussion of “the apriori” in the 1925 Marburg lectures, Heideggeragain formally maintains the Husserlian and Kantian term while transformingits context and its meaning. He discusses “the threefold presentation of theapriori” in a phenomenological context in terms of the following dimensions:

First, its universal breadth and indifference over against subjectivity, sec-ond, the access to it (simple grasp, originary intuition), and third, thepreparatory determination of the structure of the apriori as a characterof the being of beings and not of beings themselves – discloses to us theoriginary meaning of the apriori, and this is of essential significance, thatit in part depends on the clear grasp of ideation, i.e., on the discovery ofthe authentic sense of intentionality. (GA 20: 102–103)

In these lectures Heidegger presents his work in phenomenology as a matterof redefining, even purifying, terms like intentionality, categorial intuition,and the apriori, in ways that recover their essential insight but at the sametime pare away the encrustations of “traditional concepts.” This deconstruc-tive approach, applied here to Husserl himself, but presenting its critiqueas appreciative analysis, contrasts with Husserl’s more direct expression ofdissatisfaction with Kant on behalf of his own phenomenology. Certainly atthat time Husserl himself saw no special need to revise the basic terms ofphenomenology, yet in his self-doubt, to which he refers in his January 6,1931, letter to Pfander, he says he had hoped that the popular and charismaticHeidegger would be able to carry his phenomenology to new heights.

A number of relatively recent articles by Hans-Georg Gadamer, whoserved as Heidegger’s assistant in the Marburg years, also explore the issues


that divided Husserl and Heidegger in the Marburg period.45 According toGadamer, the essential issue at stake was the need for an ultimate groundingin consciousness and transcendental subjectivity.46 Husserl’s insistence onthe terminology and assumptions of subjectivity and consciousness, and hisfrequent references to psychology in the Britannica Article and the Ams-terdam Lectures, posed for Heidegger an “insurmountable barrier.” Indeed,Gadamer asserts: “The ‘destruction’ of the concept of ‘consciousness’ was[for Heidegger] necessary to regain the question of Being.”47 This assertionmakes it clear that Husserl’s very vocabulary of science and psychology andhis goal of an ultimate grounding [Letztbegrundung] for knowledge stoodtotally at cross-purposes to Heidegger’s quest for the “meaning of Being.”Thus, Husserl’s dream that Heidegger would carry forward his version of phe-nomenology eventually became an obstacle in Heidegger’s quest – a questthat eventually took him into explorations of the “origin of the artwork,”Nietzsche, Holderlin’s poetry, the embracing of Gelassenheit and rejectionof “humanism,” and, in general, down unscientific “forest paths” [Holzwege]in search of a form of thinking that did not make “subjectivity” – eithertranscendental or psychological – its starting point.

2. Themes of Husserl’s counterposition in KPM

What do we learn from these marginal notations on Heidegger’s interpretationof Kant in KPM? For one thing, we find that at this point Husserl has clear-ly given up on seeking a reconciliation with Heidegger’s general position.Rather, he is sharply taking issue with Heidegger’s reading of Kant. We findin the margins an abundant sprinkling of question-marks, exclamation points,and nota bene [NB] marks, not to mention comments and counter-arguments.These may seem to the casual reader to be quite fragmentary, yet on closerexamination they show themselves not to be an inconsistent set of fragmen-tary remarks but a coherent counterposition on assertions made by Heideggerin KPM.

We will focus on six major themes. They by no means represent all thetopics in Husserl’s marginal notations, but they will suffice to set forth a fairlyconsistent counterposition, which we will formulate as a series of questions.First, on the issue of Heidegger’s general approach to Kant: Is Kant to beconsidered as an epistemologist or as a philosopher laying a new foundationfor metaphysics? Second, what is the significance of the finitude of humanknowledge? Is it necessary for Heidegger to posit what God’s knowledgemust be like, and indeed can one really do this? Third, what does Heideggermean by the “ontological synthesis” and is it needed? Fourth, how is thetranscendental self to be conceived? Fifth, is Heidegger’s interpretive violence


justified in relation to this text of Kant? Sixth is Heidegger’s question: “Whatshould be the foundation for a new transcendental metaphysics?” Should it bephilosophical anthropology or a finite Dasein’s preconceptual comprehensionof Being – or neither of these?

First, the question of Heidegger’s general approach to Kant. Heidegger’sapproach to Kant clearly represents a challenge to the NeoKantian interpre-tation of him as an epistemologist.48 Indeed, Heidegger’s final step beforerevising the manuscript for publication in 1929 was his debate with theNeoKantian philosopher, Ernst Cassirer, at Davos. For Cassirer and NeoKan-tians generally, the First Critique represented the philosophical foundationof a modern epistemology that freed itself of the problematic philosophicallimitations of both rationalism and empiricism. As we have noted, for Husserlit was Descartes more than Kant who marks the great turning point in modernphilosophy. Important as Kant’s move beyond the aporiae of rationalism andempiricism may have been, Kant’s great accomplishment was compromised,according to Husserl, because he did not rigorously carry through the implica-tions of his own transcendental philosophy. For Husserl and the NeoKantians,however, Kant was to be seen as an epistemologist, not a metaphysician.

Heidegger, however, had other fish to fry. He makes the general approachof his Kant book unambiguously clear in the preface to the first edition: “Thisinvestigation is devoted to interpreting Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as lay-ing the ground for metaphysics, and thus placing the problem of metaphysicsbefore us as fundamental ontology.”49 Heidegger goes so far as to assert,in contrast to the NeoKantian interpretation of Kant, that the First Critique“has nothing to do with a ‘theory of knowledge”’ (KPM 16), and much laterhe even cites Kant’s own words in a letter in which Kant refers to the FirstCritique as a “metaphysics of metaphysics.” This, Heidegger says, should“strike down every effort to search for a theory of knowledge in the Critiqueof Pure Reason” (KPM 221).

Jumping back to the beginning of KPM, we also find Heidegger assertingthat “Kant’s grounding of metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason disclos-es the nature of ontology” (14). It is clear here that Heidegger’s reinterpreta-tion of Kant’s Critique is continuing the project of SZ and further developingthe project of a fundamental ontology. Going back now to Husserl’s veryfirst marginal remark in KPM we find him picking up on Heidegger’s use ofthe term Seinsplan (Plan of Being) and writing in the margin “Seinsplan?”(10). He is here clearly taking note of Heidegger’s seeming transformation ofKant’s First Critique into a work on fundamental ontology. Two pages later(12), Husserl writes in the margin, “What does Seinsverfassung [constitutionof Being] mean?” And when Heidegger, attempting to establish at the outsetthat Kant was really not doing epistemology but metaphysics, refers to


Kant’s prize-winning essay of 1791 on the progress of metaphysics in Ger-many since Leibniz and Wolff, Husserl writes in the margin, “But one mustglean Kant’s meaning! There I read a quite different meaning!” (11). Later,midway through the book, when Heidegger asserts that Kant wants to replaceontology with transcendental philosophy, Husserl writes, “So do I” (118).Here it would seem that Husserl wants to make Kant’s transcendental turna forerunner of his own transcendental phenomenology while continuing toview Kant as an epistemologist, while Heidegger wants to view Kant as ananticipation of his fundamental ontology. Husserl finds Heidegger’s ontolo-gizing of Kant the epistemologist to be strange. From the first comments ofHusserl, we see him continuing to see Kant as an epistemologist in oppositionto Heidegger’s view of Kant as an ontologist.

A second area of disagreement arises as Husserl responds to Heidegger’sdiscussion of the finitude of human knowledge in section 5. Here Husserlfills the margins with well over a dozen comments. Since intuition is a majortopic for Husserl and the focus of section 5 is on the process of intuition inrelation to thought, it is not surprising that he pays intense critical attentionto Heidegger’s exposition at this point. Heidegger’s opening sentence in thesection notes that human knowledge stands in contrast to divine knowledge:“First of all, we can put the matter negatively by saying: finite knowledgeis not creative intuition” (KPM 23). Human knowledge, rather, is receptive,receiving intuitively something whose nature it does not create. Kant calls thisintuition an intuitus derivativus. On the other hand, for Kant God’s knowingas Creator is original and creative. It is an intuitus originarius. There is inman, Heidegger notes, an echo of God’s creativity, of activity rather thanmere passivity, as thought actively categorizes the bodily givenness of theindividual object such that it can be shared with other people. So the processof an object becoming manifest, combined with understanding what the objectis, involves a synthesis of thought and intuition. Later Heidegger also notesthat insofar as knowing gains access to something other than itself, i.e.,something not resident in its prior knowledge, something it did not create,this knowing by use of apriori processes and the human senses transcendsthe self; it becomes a form of “finite transcendence.” But in Kant’s text thefocus is primarily on the “veritative synthesis,” the synthesis of intuition andthought by which a thing becomes “manifest” as what it is. What Heidegger isfinding in Kant’s close analysis is a much more nuanced description of whathe described in SZ in such general terms as “the ontological comprehension ofBeing,” phenomenology as the “letting something appear from itself,” and the“hermeneutical as.” Small wonder, then, that William Richardson in his majorbook on Heidegger devotes a lengthy chapter to the Kantbook, a length whichitself suggests the importance of KPM in Heidegger’s thought. Here he asserts


that Heidegger’s effort at a “retrieve” [Wiederholung] of Kant’s fundamentalproblematic really gives us “the most authoritative interpretation of SZ,” andthe final section of KPM serves as “the best propaedeutic to SZ.”50

Husserl sprinkles just the second page of section 5 with half a dozen mar-ginal comments. He underlines and puts a question mark next to Heidegger’sreference to “a concept of sensibility which is ontological rather than sen-sualistic” (KPM 24, italicized emphasis added; hereinafter indicated simplywith e.a.), and puts the rather quizzical remark in the margin: “not related tothe sense organs.” And alongside the next sentence (24), which asserts that “itfollows [from such a concept] that if empirically affective intuition of beingsneed not coincide with ‘sensibility,’ then the possibility of a nonempiricalsensibility remains open,” Husserl writes, “Does it follow?” Alongside thesentence, “Knowledge is primarily intuition, i.e., a representing that imme-diately represents the being itself” (24, e.a.), Husserl writes, “Is this Kant?”and also, “Das Ding an sich?” Next to Heidegger’s sentence stating that finitecreatures also must be able to share what they have intuited with others [thusthe need for thinking in addition to receptive sensing of the object], Husserlagain writes, “Is this Kant?” One has to answer: No, this is not Kant butHeidegger’s story of what Kant is doing, a story that stands in the context ofHeidegger’s account of “the ontological synthesis.”

When Heidegger develops the contrast between the divine intuition andhuman intuition as the difference between an intuition that creates and anintuition that receives, Husserl writes in the bottom margin: “Better: Godneeds no explication through intuition, no step-by-step getting to know thingsand bring them back to himself, no apperceptive transference or fixation inlanguage, etc. – but such a God is an absurdity!” (26). Husserl continues atthe top of the next page, “What is infinity over against finitude? Why talk atall of finitude rather than receptivity, the grasping of the thing-as-it-gives-self in anticipation, a relative self-giving depending on the ever new? On theother hand, absolutely adequate intuition, etc. . . . is an absurdity” (26, e. a.).For Husserl, the contrast with an infinite creative intuition is unnecessary, andHeidegger’s effort to unfold the terms of infinite knowledge is phenomeno-logically impossible as well as unnecessary. Alongside Heidegger’s remarkthat the finitude of understanding in its active mode shows us the natureof absolute knowledge as originating intuition, Husserl writes, “Finitude isnot absolute,” and after the words “absolute knowledge,” he writes “non-sense” (27). Next to Heidegger’s assertion that “absolute knowing disclosesthe being in its letting-stand-forth and possesses it in every case only as thatwhich stands forth in the letting-stand-forth” (28), Husserl puts a questionmark and writes “an absurdity.” This is the third time he has used this term inthis section, but not the last. His final remark in the section is: “This matter


is and remains absurd!” (31). For Husserl, Heidegger’s speculations aboutdivine intuition and absolute knowledge, and about how, for God, “the being-in-the-appearance is the same being as the being-in-itself and this alone” (28),an assertion next to which he puts a question-mark, do not transform Kant’sbasically epistemological analysis into fundamental ontology; rather, theyshow us that Heidegger is going beyond even his own ontology and fallinginto speculative theology.

The third issue, which we formulated as “What is the ontological synthesisand is it really needed?” is answered quite differently in the margins. ForHeidegger the ontological synthesis is the crucial next step in his transforma-tion of Kantian metaphysics into the terms of SZ’s fundamental ontology. Thevertative synthesis of sensory intuition and thought is for Heidegger an onticprocess, but as he puts it in the opening sentence of the second of the fourmajor divisions of the book – a division titled “Stages in Carrying Throughthe Project of [Unfolding] the Inner Possibility of Ontology” – the issue Hei-degger is now inquiring into is “the essential possibility [Wesensmoglichkeit]of the ontological synthesis” (38, e.a.). Not surprisingly, Husserl underlines“ontological synthesis” and replies at great length in the bottom margin.

Before we consider Husserl’s reply, let us note what Heidegger has in mindby the term “ontological synthesis,” a crucial point in his argument. A littlebefore the passage on the ontological synthesis on which Husserl makes hislengthy comments (KPM 38), Heidegger asserts that “knowledge of beingsis only possible on the basis of a prior knowledge, free of experience, of theconstitution of the being of beings. . . . If finite knowledge of beings is to bepossible, then it must be grounded in a knowing of the being of beings priorto all intake” (KPM 34, e.a.). In the margin next to these sentences Husserlhad put a question-mark. What Husserl is questioning here is a key premise inSZ, that Dasein has a “knowledge of the being of beings” that is prior to all itsacts of cognition and doing things in the world, a comprehension of being thatmakes Heidegger’s effort at unfolding the meaning of Being possible. Theontological synthesis, then, bridges the gap between the being of the knowerand the whatness of the being of the thing known, and thus is the vehicle ofa finite transcendence by which one goes beyond oneself to a being that isbeyond oneself. Heidegger puts this in ontological terminology as follows:“How can a finite creature [endliches Wesen], which as such is given over tobeing and directed by its perception of these beings, know, i.e., intuit, priorto all instances of taking-in, without being their creator? In other words, howmust this finite creature itself be constituted with regard to its being [seinereigenen Seinsverfassung nach] such that it is able to bring forth the way abeing is constituted that is out there in the world, which is to say, how is anontological synthesis possible?” (35). There are further elaborations of the


ontological synthesis, but since it is these two instances to which Husserl isresponding, they will suffice for our purposes here.

Next to Heidegger’s pregnant sentence, “We are inquiring into the essentialpossibility of the ontological synthesis” (38, e.a.), Husserl attempts to reframethe discussion, saying that he would define the ontological synthesis as “theconstituting of the invariant structural form of the pre-given world.” Then headds: “One need not begin with traditional ontology; one can pose the questionas Hume did before Kant. One does not need the problem of finitude either– Hume did not consider this at all” (38, e.a.). As Heidegger continues hisexposition, saying, “What is at issue is the essential possibility of ontologicalsynthesis: How can finite human Dasein transcend beings and things . . . whenit has not created these things and beings but must be directed toward them toexist as Dasein?” (39), Husserl underlines “in order to exist as Dasein” andasks:

But is this the right way to pose the question philosophically? Isn’t herean entity already presupposed whereby the presupposed Being alreadypresupposes subjectivity? Is not man himself already pre-given, etc.? . . .This is already Heidegger (39, e.a.)

As Husserl sees it, Heidegger is really arguing in a circle, relying on his ownpresuppositions. One does not need to posit infinite knowledge to understandand describe perception phenomenologically, nor does one need traditionalontology; and human existence does not require an “ontological synthesis”to enable it to take place. It may seem to Husserl, who elsewhere reproachesHeidegger and Scheler with anthropologizing, that a certain anthropologizinglurks behind the reference to something that Dasein requires “in order to existas Dasein.”

The fourth issue has to do with the nature of the transcendental self: Howis the transcendental self to be conceived? Here we should go back to Hei-degger’s objection in SZ that Kant failed to grasp the transcendental ego as afactical, essentially temporal existing entity; rather, while it was not thoughtof as substance, it was described in substance-based terms as somethingvorhanden [on hand], and as an abiding, unchanging entity. In this regard,Kant made the same mistake as Descartes, who did not think the “I am” inan originary way but rather with the tradition of the metaphysics of presence.Thus, according to Heidegger, both Descartes and Kant failed to think thetemporality of the self in an originary way. In Husserl, however, the transcen-dental ego becomes not just the center of the self but the ultimate anchor forhis phenomenology. Heidegger recognized that Husserl had already taken astep beyond such a Kantian transcendental ego in his 1907 lectures on inter-


nal time-consciousness in making time a definitive factor in consciousness.Just for this reason Heidegger had urged Husserl to publish these lecturesand indeed eventually edited them for publication in 1928, but seemingly putlittle genuine effort into the project, leaving the notes pretty much as he foundthem. In any case, it is not surprising that Husserl, considering the importanceto him of transcendental subjectivity and the role of time in perception, wouldpay special attention to section 34, titled “Time as Pure Self-Affection and theTemporal Character of the Self.” Here and in the later part of the Kantbook,Heidegger makes temporality the essence of the “metaphysics of Dasein.” Inthe margins of the eight pages of this section, there are two dozen notationsor remarks by Husserl. To understand the two sides, we will need to go intoHeidegger’s argument at this point.

In the two sections leading up to section 34, Heidegger explores the rela-tionship of the transcendental imagination to time. Because time is the basis ofpure sensory intuition by the transcendental imagination, it only takes a singlefurther step, Heidegger notes, to see that time is definitive for the transcen-dental imagination (KPM 165). Heidegger next argues that the transcendentalimagination is the “ontological basis of the metaphysics of Dasein.” BecauseKant was a child of the Enlightenment, according to Heidegger, he held him-self back from the implications of making the transcendental imagination thesource of both reason and sensory intuition; so he changed the first Kritik inits second edition. Following the metaphysical tradition, Kant labelled purethought the ego, and interpreted time as something “standing and abiding”[stehend und bleibend]; so like Descartes, Kant accepted the traditional viewof being as “static presence” and defined the pure ego “according to thereigning interpretation as outside all temporality and standing over against alltime” (164, last paragraph of x31). Thus Heidegger finds that the first editionof the Critique is much more supportive of his effort to put time at the coreof his new metaphysics of Dasein. With some creative interpreting of the firstedition, Heidegger is able to “retrieve” the almost lost temporality of the selfthat can be found in the transcendental imagination.

So in his Kantbook Heidegger works from the 1st edition of the Critiquewhen he is exploring the transcendental imagination as the root of bothintuition and thought. And time in Heidegger’s interpretation is the essenceof the shaping that takes place in the imagination. Says Heidegger, “Sincethe shaping power of the imagination is in itself temporal, it must first of allshape time itself. . . . Time as pure intuition is the intuition shaping that whichis intuited. Only when we realize this do we have a full concept of time” (167,e.a.). In the next section (33), Heidegger finds that the three modes of intuitionparallel “the threefold unity of time as present, past, and future” (169), and hegoes through an elaborate analysis to prove his point. Interestingly, we find


not any marks from Husserl in these two sections; he holds his fire for section34.

Space only permits us to give a few of the points Husserl makes in hisextensive comments on this section. Time as such is the first theme in section34, and after that the theme is temporality as the essential character of subjec-tivity. Husserl’s first notations seem simply to be going along with Heidegger,restating the point in Husserlian terms. Still, he does complain about suchHeideggerianisms as “letting-stand-against,” and alongside the key assertion,“Time as pure self-affection forms the essential structure of subjectivity,”Husserl puts two question marks. Is he perhaps surprised that Heidegger isusing the term subjectivity? When Heidegger makes his point more explicitby saying that time and Descartes’ I think now “no longer stand incompatiblyand incomparably at odds with each other; they are the same” (183), Husserlunderlines “time” and “I think” and also “they are the same,” and places anNB in the margin, as if to ask how the abstract concept, “time,” could be “thesame as” the concrete thinking self.

As if replying to this question, Heidegger on the next page asks whether itfollows from Kant’s assertion that neither the ego nor time are within time,and that they are not temporal in their essence. On the contrary, he answers,what this means is that “the ego is so very ‘temporal’ that it is time itself andonly as this itself does it become possible in its ownmost essential nature”(184). Alongside this, Husserl reformulates Heidegger’s point into a question,perhaps to himself, perhaps to Heidegger: “Is the ego the immanent time inwhich objective time temporalizes itself?” Husserl would seem here to bepreserving the concept of an “objective” time that Heidegger does not con-sider when he locates time in the essential nature of the self, leaving Husserlat least space for other determinations of what the transcendental ego is inits essence. The contrast Heidegger is making here is between a radicallytemporal transcendental subjectivity and the traditional Cartesian concept ofthe ego as a static structure of apriori possibilities, an essentially timeless,unchanging structure. In this case, Husserl, having himself also sought todescribe internal time consciousness phenomenologically, seems to be inch-ing along with Heidegger by conceding that objective time temporalizes itselfas the immanent time of the ego.

We stand here before a key issue for both Husserl and Heidegger: thenature of the temporality of the transcendental self. Heidegger asserts that“if the ‘temporality’ versus the timelessness of the ego is to be decided, thenwe must be guided by the original essence of time as pure self-affection”(185, emphasis indicates Husserl’s underlining). Here Heidegger seems to bearguing in a circle by going back to his own definition of time in order todecide the issue. Husserl quite justifiably underlines “the original essence”


and asks in the margin: “What does ‘original essence’ mean?” He wants toknow how one could know what the “original” nature of time was. WhenHeidegger asserts that “it is contradictory to want to determine the essence ofwhat time itself is originally with the help of a product derived from it” (187),Husserl writes in the margin, “The origin of time is not original time.” Isthis a critical rephrasing of Heidegger’s point or a counterassertion? It seemsmore like the latter. The following sentence of Heidegger asserts, “Becausethe self in its innermost essence is time itself, the ego cannot be conceived assomething temporal, that is to say, within time” (187), so one is wont to askfor the difference between innermost essence and original essence. Next tothis sentence Husserl seems to be offering his alternative formulation whenhe writes, “The immanent life of the ego as, rather, originally temporalizing.”Earlier in the margins, Husserl had remarked that for Kant, on anthropologicalgrounds, everything whatsoever is within time. Still, Husserl, as he writesthat “an immanent temporal horizon is necessary,” seems to be agreeingwith Heidegger. What Husserl seems to be saying here is that of coursetime is a component of the transcendental ego; what bothers Husserl is allthis talk about what time is primordially. The question of the “primordialessence” of time seems unnecessary to him. Why is it so important here, hewonders. Heidegger seems to answer this question in the next section whenhe asserts that “primordial time makes possible the transcendental power ofthe imagination” (188, e.a.), but Husserl underlines “makes possible” andasks in the margin: “What does this ‘makes possible’ [ermoglich] mean?”Perhaps Heidegger is using it in a Kantian transcendental sense as being thatwhich makes something possible. In any case, for Husserl, Heidegger is notdescribing the experience of time phenomenologically, or even accounting forit philosophically, but rather doing metaphysics right along with Kant. Yes, ofcourse there is an immanent temporal horizon for transcendental subjectivity,but that does not make the transcendental ego “time itself”! Whether timemakes possible the transcendental power of the imagination would seem todepend on what “makes possible” means. If Heidegger only means that it isthe “condition for the possibility” of the transcendental imagination, yes. ButHeidegger seems here to be claiming more than this. He seems to be makingclaims about the metaphysical nature of Dasein. This brings us to the questionof the nature of man: anthropology, a topic we have reserved for the sixth andfinal question.

The fifth question raises the issue of Heidegger’s interpretive method: IsHeidegger’s interpretive violence justified in relation to this text of Kant?Responding to strong objections, Heidegger in 1950 still defends his inter-pretive violence in the forward to the second edition of KPM, which heexplains he is republishing unchanged. He acknowledges that readers have


“constantly taken offense at the violence of my interpretations,” but he arguesthat such violence is unavoidable “in a thinking conversation between think-ers” (all citations of the preface are from GA 3: xvii). A “thinking dialogue”[Zwiesprache], he says there, must operate “under quite different rules thanthose governing historical philology.” After all, philology has a different task,and in the adventurousness of a thinking dialogue, “the risks of going astrayare greater, and the errors are more common.” Of course, between 1929 and1950 a lot had happened in terms of mistakes and going astray, perhaps moreblatantly on his political path than on the forest paths of his adventurousthinking. Philosophically, his thought had taken a “turn,” a turn away frommetaphysics, and he seemingly scrapped his whole project of a “fundamen-tal ontology” that was begun in SZ and continued in KPM as having “goneastray.” This assertion applies specifically to KPM is clear from his statementin that preface: “The errors and going astray have in the meantime becomeso clear to me that I refuse to make this writing into some kind of patchworkby supplements, appendixes, and postscripts.” This writing was not like ascientific or even philosophical treatise that could be added to and patchedhere and there. By then, KPM was more an historic record of his thought thana foundation to build on. His concluding sentence in the second preface isvery Heideggerian: “Thinkers learn from their errors to be more persevering.”Yes, thinking is a risky business, and Heidegger more than others came toknow this.

But Heidegger did not wait until 1950 to defend his interpretive violence.Already in Division Three of the Kantbook Heidegger offered a pragmaticjustification of interpretive violence: “Certainly every interpretation, if itwants to wring from what the words say what they want to say, must useviolence. Such violence, however, cannot simply be a roving arbitrariness. Thepower of an idea that sheds advance light must drive and lead the explication”(KPM 193–194).51 Next to this assertion Husserl underlines the words “everyinterpretation must use violence” and in the margin he puts three exclamationpoints followed by three question marks. This is very rare among his markings.Clearly Husserl is astonished that Heidegger would make such a provocativestatement. We may note that Heidegger himself hastens to qualify it in thenext sentence, cited above. Husserl comments in the margin, “I differentiatebetween what they [the words] wanted to say and what they ultimately aimedat and wanted to say as they were said” (193). But this falls far short ofHeidegger’s requirements. Heidegger feels that in KPM, the light that hisontologizing interpretation sheds on the fundamental ontology of SZ justifieshis interpretive violence. Needless to say, “wringing” from a text what itreally wanted to say but could not do so because it was constrained by thethought-forms of the time is more than a little risky. The idea that a text


can “want to say” [in French, vouloir dire is translated as “means,” a usagepossibly on the side of Heidegger] something but be “constrained” by thethought-forms of the time, such that it has to wait more than a century inorder to be understood in the context of an existential ontology of Daseinmust have seemed strange to Husserl. Still such a view would seem to findsupport in the Habermasian concept of a speaking that is distorted by a “falseconsciousness,” or even such Freudian concepts of censorship and repression.In this case, interpretation becomes a bit like psychoanalysis, a discoveringnot of what the patient intended consciously to say but repressed; rather itferrets out what the text unconsciously wanted to say. But as Heidegger pointsout, the thinking dialogue between thinkers is a risky business. And it getsmore risky when one is willing to use interpretive violence.

The larger issue is Heidegger’s whole project of Destruktion, of findingwhat has been “covered over,” of saying what a thinker admittedly did not saybut might have said if only he or she lived two hundred years or twenty-fivehundred years later. It is hard enough to grasp what a thinker did say, or whathe or she intended to say, but to grasp what a thinker did not say and could notsay because of the thought-forms of the times – but was “on the way” towardssaying – certainly requires the extraordinary art of “a thoughtful conversationbetween thinkers.” And, as Heidegger rightly says, in this risky businessof thinking one can go astray and make mistakes. Still, if it sheds light onthe forgotten question of the meaning of Being, he holds, such thinking isjustified. Husserl can only be shocked at such leaps of thought.

The sixth issue concerns Heidegger’s reference to philosophical anthropol-ogy and his characterization of “finite” Dasein as possessing a preconcep-tual understanding of the “being of beings.” Philosophical anthropology isa bone of contention between Heidegger and Husserl and the issue is com-plicated by Heidegger’s close friend Scheler’s advocacy of a philosophicalanthropology.52 Without this, one has the impression Heidegger might havetaken a different position in relation to it. Heidegger’s discussion of philo-sophical anthropology occurs in the fourth and final division of KPM, and itprovokes a major response from Husserl. About half of Husserl’s comments,in terms of total number of words, occur in Part Four, although it occupiesonly the last forty pages of the volume (pp. 296–336). In these pages, Hei-degger, having “retrieved” in Part Three the ontological synthesis implied inthe transcendental imagination, now turns to Kant’s assertion that the firstthree of his famous four questions – What can I know? What ought I do?What may I hope? What is man? – are summed up in the fourth. For Hei-degger, “What is man?” raises the issue of a philosophical anthropology andwhether a philosophical anthropology can be the foundation of metaphysics,or whether metaphysics should serve as the foundation of anthropology. In


briefest terms, for Heidegger the answer is no, if the anthropology is anempirical anthropology of the usual sort. What is needed is a thinking that isrooted in the finitude of Dasein and its comprehension of the being of beings.But perhaps this is a kind of philosophical anthropology? To explore thisline of thought, Heidegger’s three sections of Part Four are devoted first tothe question of whether and in what way, in his retrieve of the problematicof Kant, metaphysics could be grounded in man; second, the significance ofthe finitude of man in relation to the metaphysics of Dasein; and third, “themetaphysics of Dasein as fundamental ontology.” To understand Heidegger’sargument, we will need to go into section 37, “The Idea of a PhilosophicalAnthropology.”

In section 37, Heidegger basically follows Husserl in rejecting an empiricalanthropology in favor of a transcendental position. Still, some of his analysisfurther confirms Husserl’s suspicion, long held, that Heidegger and Schelerdo not really understand the transcendental reduction. For instance, whenHeidegger says that anthropology “describes a fundamental tendency of man’scontemporary position with respect to himself and the totality of beings”(KPM 199), Husserl underlines these words and writes in the margin: “Inother words, it is the prejudgment of Scheler, Heidegger, Dilthey, and thewhole anthropological Richtung [direction, line of thought].” But Heideggerhimself later acknowledges that “perhaps there is a difficulty in the veryconcept itself” (201). Husserl again underlines these words and puts NB inthe margin. Husserl seems to be noting that even Heidegger recognizes theproblems in this concept. When Heidegger goes on to assert, “If the goal ofphilosophy lies in the working out of a world-view, then an anthropologywill have to delimit the ‘place of man in the cosmos ’ ” (the title of a well-known book by Scheler), Husserl writes scornfully in the margin above it,“The goal of philosophy as the working out of a worldview.” What Husserl isimplying is that is the sort of philosophy one can expect within the horizonof a philosophical anthropology.

Of course, Husserl knows very well that neither he nor Heidegger wants tobe lured into the perspectivism of a philosophy interpreted simply as a questfor a worldview. Heidegger goes on to observe that now and again the temp-tations of an anthropology do attract philosophers, and after all Kant himselffound all his questions leading back to the fundamental question, “What isman?” Thus, when Heidegger asks (and Husserl underlines the words hereitalicized) the following question, “If anthropology in a certain sense gathersinto itself all the central questions of philosophy, why do these allow us tofollow them back to the question of what man is?” (203), Husserl asserts in themargin: “It is just this that is not correct.” But in the end, Heidegger cannotbase his thought on an anthropology. He himself concludes that the “indeter-


minate character” (204) of a philosophical anthropology means that “we lacka basis and framework for a fundamental questioning as to its essential nature”(204). To this, Husserl adds in the margin that the same applies “for funda-mental questioning with regard to all positive science.” Presumably Husserl’sphenomenology, in his own view, offers such a “framework for fundamentalquestioning,” but Heidegger had already rejected this. In any case, we maysay that for Heidegger, Kant’s famous fourth question and Scheler’s focus onman both offer a measure of support for his use of a Dasein-based ontology,but they do not mean that philosophical anthropology can be a foundation formetaphysics. Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein in SZ had been interpreted byHusserl, at least up to their parting of the ways, as a regional area within phe-nomenology. Heidegger’s focus on Dasein, facticity, and “human finitude” asthe basis for authentic philosophizing only showed Husserl that Heideggerdid not understand the transcendental reduction correctly, and his descriptionof Dasein, for all its subtlety and brilliance, remained dangerously close to aphilosophical anthropology.

Heidegger opens his next discussion, that of finitude, by emphasizing itscentral importance, saying that he undertook the interpretation of the Critiquein order to bring to light the question of human finitude in laying the ground-work for a metaphysics (209, e.a.). Next to this sentence, Husserl merelyputs an NB, but his resistance to Heidegger’s emphasis on finitude is evidentthroughout this section and in earlier remarks. Heidegger asserts that Kant,too, presupposed the finitude of human knowledge (209), and a little latersays that just naming at random any human imperfection [Unvollkommen-heit, incompleteness] is sufficient to indicate this finitude (210). But Husserlasks in the margin, “How does imperfection enter into this?” Later, whenHeidegger acknowledges that “an essential relation [of the question of Being]to the finitude of human beings is not evident [ersichtlich]” (216), Husserl puta “yes” in the margin. He could not agree more. This brings us to our finalpoint: the preconceptual understanding of Being.

Husserl’s comments peak in the final section of KPM, x41, where Hei-degger makes the key link between Dasein and Seinsverstandnis. Next toHeidegger’s sentence, “When I ask about the possibility of grasping some-thing like Being . . . I am asking about the possibility of grasping that whichwe all as human beings already and constantly understand” (216), Husserlhas a lengthy comment: “We already experience the world, we already makeclaims about the world, the worldly, and eventually with evidence; and as wedo so, we experience ourselves as humans in the world and we grasp ourselvesas human beings who inquire in this manner. But we get bogged down in diffi-culties through subjective reflection.” Husserl certainly grants that there is aninconspicuous, pregiven world for each person and that we need to describe


that world, but we should practice an epoche on our experience of that worldinstead of falling into a merely “subjective reflection” about it.

The key issue, of course, is Heidegger’s inclusion in this pregiven world of“a preconceptual understanding of Being.” When Heidegger asserts that “thequestion of Being arises from the preconceptual understanding of Being”(216, e.a.), Husserl writes in the margin, “Not by pursuing the possibilityof the concept of Being, but rather the possibility of doing away with thebewilderments in which the world as ‘world for us’ has entangled us and alsoevery entity whatever as entity for us.” And when Heidegger emphasizes thisphrase with wide spacing (not indicated in GA, here indicated with italics),“The Being-question arises on its side from our preconceptual understandingof Being” (216), Husserl comes forth with a lengthy, exasperated, top-and-bottom-margin-filling alternative position statement:

Yes, we obtain all our concepts of entities in a primordial, self-given wayfrom the grasping activity of our minds on the basis of preconceptualexperience, even the concepts we have of Being. . . . What is at issue here,however, is not the possibility, essence, or concept of Being, but ratherthe psychological and . . . transcendental possibility of an entity as suchalso being an entity for us. That is to say, with the not yet conceptuallygrasped, the not yet systematically investigated constituting subjectivity,and also the essential unity of that which has arisen out of naive, lived, butunthematized constitution, [i.e.,] which is simply and exclusively therefor us existing beings with transcendentally functioning subjectivity. Andon the basis of this, of a concrete, full grasp of the essence of the being orthing, a grasp which leaves open no question of essence for beings-as-suchand for the entity with world . . .” (e.a.).

And then on the next page, alongside Heidegger’s assertion that “with thequestion of Being as such, we venture to the brink of total darkness,” (e.a.)Husserl writes:

Not the understanding of ‘Being’ but rather of understanding, of experi-ence, of otherwise having awareness of being and things. The obscurity ofthe meaning of Seiendem [the being or thing] is really the unclarity abouthow the essence of the being or thing is to be held free of the incongruitieswhich stem from subjective reflection” (217, e.a.).

For Husserl, Heidegger’s talk about the “being of beings” is elusive andobscure. It does not make the transcendental reduction. It is not the product ofcareful phenomenological and transcendental reductions and description at allbut of “subjective reflection.” Thus it creates rather than eliminates obscurity.


It is therefore not surprising that, when Heidegger says, “We understand Beingbut as yet we lack the concept,” Husserl exclaims, “We lack it? When wouldwe need it?”

We conclude our review of six topics in Husserl’s marginal remarks, andour remarks, with a glance at two of the last three comments he makes inthe book – this time very short ones. First, next to Heidegger’s sentence, “Ifthe essence of transcendence is grounded in the imagination, then the veryidea of a ‘transcendental logic’ is a nonconcept” (233, e.a. to indicate wordsHusserl’s underlined), Husserl simply puts a “?” Of course, he had just finishedpreparing his Formal and Transcendental Logic for publication shortly beforeturning to this reading of KPM, so he is presumably unimpressed with theidea that a transcendental logic is a “nonconcept.”

Finally, to Heidegger’s question, “ – or is there not within our own endeavors. . . also in the end a hidden sidestepping of something which we – and notaccidentally – no longer see?” (235, e.a.), Husserl simply answers “Yes.”But this is a “yes” pregnant with meaning – and finality. The sidesteppingHeidegger alludes to here is not what Husserl has in mind when he writeshis final “Yes.” And Husserl’s “yes” closes the door on a relationship initiallyfilled with hope and promise but doomed to end in disappointment and despair.

Acknowledgement

I want to thank Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer for his personal recollectionsof the Husserl-Heidegger religionship and Dominic Kaegi, also at the Univer-sity of Heidelberg, Germany, for helpful comments on my interpretations andfor suggesting many sources on which to check. I also thank Jean Grondin onMontreal University, Canada, as well as Sam IJsseling and Roland Breeur ofthe Husserl Archives at Louvain for suggestions and corrections of this essay.My student assistant, Lisa Gilmore, also made valuable corrections of thefinal draft. Finally, I deeply appreciate the Fulbright Fellowship and Sabbat-ical Leave from MacMurray College that enabled me to study in Heidelbergduring the 1995–1996 academic year using the Philosophy Seminar Library,whose resources made possible many of the references to German articlesand books in the notes below.

Notes

1. The book that contains the French translation of the marginal remarks in [Sein und Zeit]and [Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik] – Edmund Husserl, Notes sur Heidegger(Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1993) – also offers translations of the three earlier drafts ofthe Britannica article and an interpretive essay by Denise Souche-Dagues, “La lecturehusserlienne de Sein und Zeit,” pp. 119–152.


2. See “Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit and Kant und das Problemder Metaphysik” in Husserl Studies 11, 1–2 (1994): pp. 3–63.

3. Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confronta-tion with Heidegger: The Encyclopedia Britannica Article, The Amsterdam Lectures,“Phenomenology and Anthropology,” and Husserl’s Marginal Notes in Being and Timeand Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, translated and introduced by Thomas F. Sheehanand Richard E. Palmer. “Husserl in English” series. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press,1997.

4. For discussion of Husserl’s remarks in SZ see Sheehan’s introduction in the work justcited.

5. As presented in Husserl Studies (see note 2 above) Husserl’s marginal remarks on SZoccupy pages 9–48, while the marginalia in KPM take up only pages 49–63.

6. Roland Beeur’s “Einleitung” for the “Randbemerkungen” as they are presented in HusserlStudies cited above, pp. 3–8, notes that we have no way of knowing whether Husserl everread these other parts of the text. Breeur helpfully divides Husserl’s remarks in SZ andKPM into three categories: the first of these is basically index words to tag the content ofa passage for future reference. He notes that there are very few notes of this type in KPMbut quite a few in SZ, suggesting that Husserl read SZ much more analytically than KPM.Page references in this introduction will be to the original edition, since that is the editionin which the remarks appear. My translation of the marginal notes gives the correspondingpages in GA 3 and in the recent English translation by Richard Taft.

7. Ironically, Heidegger states in the preface to its fourth edition (1973) that he undertookKPM precisely because by 1929 he saw that the Being-question as put forward in SZwas misunderstood. Later in the same preface he says that the Being-question was alsomisunderstood as it appeared in KPM, so he abandoned the project of a reinterpretation oftraditional metaphysics as a means profiling the question of Being.

8. A detailed tracing of Heidegger’s changing relation to and interpretation of Kant can befound in Hansgeorg Hoppe, “Wandlungen in der Kant-Auffasung Heideggers,” pp. 284–317 in Durchblicke: Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. V. Klostermann. Frankfurt:Klostermann, 1970.

9. This speech has some substance and anticipates the later Rektoratsrede. A penetratinganalysis of Heidegger’s “ethics” in this speech – and ethics in Heidegger in general – maybe found in Christoph von Wolzogen’s “Die eigentliche metaphysische Storung: Zu denQuellen der Ethik bei Heidegger und Levinas,” in Zur Grundlegung einer integrativenEthik: Fur Hans Kramer, ed. Martin Endreß (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1995),pp. 130–154, esp. 137–138. For Heidegger’s speech itself see his “Edmund Husserl zum70. Geburtstag,” Akademische Mitteilungen, die Organ gesamten Interessen der Studen-tenschaft an der Albert Ludwigs-Universitat, Freiburg im Br., 4th volume, 9th Semester,Nr. 3 (14 May, 1929), p. 47.

10. Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel: 1920–1963, ed. Walter Biemel and HansSaner (Frankfurt: Klostermann/Zurich: Piper, 1990), letter of July 14, 1929. Editors Biemeland Saner suggest that Jaspers, because of his strong anti-scientific understanding ofphilosophy, would have strongly disagreed with Heidegger’s praise of Husserl. Private,disparaging remarks about Husserl on both sides occur in their correspondence during thisperiod.

11. Professor Gadamer referred me to a lengthy unpublished letter from Heidegger to HannahArendt, dating from before this final period, in which Heidegger expresses to her at lengthhis excitement as he works on the Critique of Pure Reason. This would be an importantdocument in future research on this topic. The translator did not have access to this letter,and could not verify its present existence.

12. See Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, vol. 2: Die Munchener Phanomenologen (Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1994). This volume is part of a scrupulously edited magnificent edition of Husserl’svoluminous correspondence: Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel. 10 volumes. Edited by KarlSchumann in cooperation with Elisabeth Schumann (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993–1994). A


translation of this letter appears in the appendix of our volume containing the Englishtranslations of the marginalia.

13. Sheehan states in note 44 of his introduction to Edmund Husserl, Psychological andTranscendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger, cited in note 3above, that in any case there are only two “insignificant” marginal notations in Was istMetaphysik?

14. Karl Schuhmann notes this in his extensive essay on the Husserl-Heidegger relationship,“Zu Heideggers Spiegel-Gesprach uber Husserl,” Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forschung32 (1978): 602, article 591–612. See especially section 3: “Die Entwicklung der Differen-zen bis 1931,” pp. 595–603. It was shortly after hearing this inaugural lecture that Husserlundertook to come to a definitive position on Heideggerian philosophy. Cf. his letters toIngarden (2.12.29) and Misch (8.3.29).

15. In a letter dated December 2, 1929, from Malvine Husserl to Roman Ingarden, Malvinewrote that “in our summer vacation on Lake Como, he carefully worked through Heideg-ger’s book [SZ ].” Briefwechsel, vol. 3. Also, Boyce Gibson in a letter dated September10 of that year, refers to several weeks “am Comersee (Tremezzo)” from mid-Augustto early September (Briefwechsel, vol. 6), and we know that Husserl’s stay at Tremezzoended about September 5. The availability of Husserl’s voluminous correspondence makesthe process of dating events in Husserl’s life much easier and also makes available manymore of Husserl’s later comments on Heidegger. For a lively collection of these sometimesfrank and salty comments in Husserl’s correspondence, see the “Einleitung” to the Germanpublication of the marginalia in Husserl Studies.

16. Davos is not a famous university but rather an international health spa and sport centerin the Swiss Alps. A Swiss doctor, Peter Muller, arranged and sponsored this special“Hochschule” lecture course. The Davos Lectures were a series of seven lectures given atDavos, four by Cassirer and three by Heidegger, plus questions and answers each addressedto the other.

17. A summary of the lectures and a transcript of the important disputation between Heideggerand Cassirer, derived from notes taken at the time, appears as an appendix in the 4th editionof KPM (1973) and this is included in its English translation by Richard Taft, Kant andthe Problem of Metaphysics (Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp.169–185. These and also other relevant documents are contained in a 68 page appendixin Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, GA 3 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1991). Theyinclude: “Aufzeichnungen zum Kantbuch,” pp. 249–255; Heidegger’s review of the secondvolume of Cassirer’s three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Cassirer also reviewedKPM in Kant Studien 1931), pp. 255–270; Heidegger’s reply to reviews by Cassirer andOdebrecht, pp. 297–303; and also a short article from 1927 that describes (accordingto the “Nachwort,” p. 316) “the rise, development, influence, and transformation of theNeoKantianism of the Marburg School to which Cassirer belonged”: “Zur Geschichte desphilosophischen Lehrstuhles seit 1866,” pp. 304–311. GA 3, of course, closely parallelsthe lecture course in GA 25: Phanomenologische Interpretationen von Kant’s Kritik derreinen Vernunft: Marburger Vorlesung WS 1927–1928, ed. Ingtraud Gorland (Frankfurt:Klostermann, 1977).

18. Martin Heidegger/Elisabeth Blochmann Briefwechsel: 1918–1969 (Marbach am Neckar:Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1989), letter of April 12, 1929. Also, he mentions in thisletter that Husserl’s birthday was “very worthily celebrated” on April 8: “Elfride hadarranged among the admirers and friends of Husserl to buy a bust of Husserl that theyoung Rickert [the son of philosopher Heinrich Rickert] had sculpted a number of yearsago. Husserl was pleased and surprised. Finally, I presented a Festschrift volume to him[a surprise], with a little speech which you will receive. And now [April 12] I am sittingdown to the final working out of the manuscript for my Kant interpretation, which will beprinted in May by Cohen in Bonn.”

19. See Heidegger’s letter to Jaspers (in the Heidegger-Jaspers Briefwechsel) of April 14,1929, also, written from the “schonen Haus am Lande,” which states that they must put


off a visit because he must finish preparing KPM “by the end of April.” We also knowthat on May 14 Heidegger was writing the preface, so by that time the manuscript hadprobably already been transmitted to his publisher Cohen in Bonn. See Tom Sheehan’sgeneral introduction, cited in note 3 above.

20. Ibid, p. xvi.21. GA 3: vii and 5. For an extensive summary and discussion of KPM, see Richardson’s

Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, pp. 106–160, and for a less extensive butstill enlightening discussion, see Otto Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 2nd,revised edition (Pfullingen: Neske, 1983 [3rd ed. 1990]), pp. 80–87, [Martin Heidegger’sPath of Thinking, trans. Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:Humanities Press, 1987)].

22. The Preface to the fourth edition suggests this. Whether the Kantbook itself was writtenagainst Cassirer is an “open question,” according to Iso Kern in Husserl und Kant: EineUntersuchung uber Husserls Verhaltnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus (The Hague:Nijhoff, 1964), p. 198, footnote 4. See also pp. 188–191. This 448-page volume is avaluable resource on the Husserl-Kant relationship.

23. Cited by Gadamer in “Der Weg in die Kehre,” GW 3 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1987), p. 279.Gadamer borrowed Heidegger’s copy of KPM in 1940 (his own was lost) and noticed thissentence written in it. Also, a luminous sentence in a letter from Heidegger written toHans-Georg Gadamer in Marburg in the early 1930s reads: “Es kommt alles in Rutschen”– “Everything is on the skids.” (cited in “Die Kehre des Weges,” Gadamer, GesammelteWerke 10 [Tubingen: Mohr, 1995]: 74.) This and many other letters of Heidegger toGadamer remain unpublished. When I asked him (in an interview in Heidelberg, October23, 1995) to explain this remark, Gadamer said, “Heidegger meant that everything he heldbefore was sliding. Nothing was firm anymore – a clear mark of the turn.”

24. It would be tempting to say that Heidegger was also through with Kant, but he didlater publish two other works on Kant. The first was GA 41 – Die Frage nach demDing: Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsatzen. Edited by Petra Jaeger.Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1984. 254pp. (written 1935–1936, published 1962). The secondwas Kants These uber das Sein. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1963. 36pp. (written 1961,published 1963), and also published in the GA 9: Wegmarken, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm vonHerrmann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976).

25. See note 22.26. “Wandlungen in der Kant-Auffassung Heideggers,” in Durchblicke (1970), pp. 284–317

cited above. In English, see the volumes on the early Heidegger by Theodore Kisiel andJohn Van Buren cited in footnote 37 below.

27. See Cassirer’s opening salvo, Appendix IV to GA 3: 274 – p. 171 in the English translation.28. Heidegger was well equipped to answer this particular question because he had published

an article in 1927 on the history of the Marburg Neo-Kantians, “Zur Geschichte desphilosophischen Lehrstuhles seit 1866,” in Die Philipps-Universitat zu Marburg 1527–1927 (Marburg: N.G. Elwer’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1927), pp. 681–687. This articleis included in the appendix to GA 3: 304–311.

29. See KPM, pp. 246–247; Eng. trans., p. 172, and GA 3: 275. For an extensive and welldocumented critical analysis of the Heidegger-Cassirer encounter, see Massimo Ferrari,“Cassirer e Heidegger, in margine ad alcune recenti pubblicazioni,” Revista di storia dellafilosofia, 2 (1992): 409–440. Andreas Graeser, in his Ernst Cassirer (Munich: Verlag C.H.Beck, 1994), says that Cassirer and even more Cassirer’s wife, felt that Cassirer had gottenthe best of Heidegger in the debate. Also, Gadamer mentioned to me (in a tape-recordedconversation of May, 1992) that Heidegger was caught off guard by Cassirer’s extendingthe debate beyond the First Critique into the issue of freedom, and later Heidegger even(in Die Frage nach dem Ding lectures) tacitly acknowledged that Cassirer was right.

30. See Otto Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, rev. ed., p. 176.31. Ibid.


32. Ibid. Poggeler points out that Heidegger’s own path, which is to unfold a hermeneuticoriented to “formal indications” from the doctrine of the schemata, is not worked out inKPM but reserved for the Logic lectures. He also goes into why KPM is dedicated toScheler (p. 182).

33. In Heidegger’s Letter to Richardson, which serves as the preface to Richardson’s Heideg-ger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, pp. xiv–xv. My italics.

34. See Martin Heidegger, “Uber das Prinzip ’Zu den Sachen selbst’, “a recently publishedfragment dating from the 1950’s, in Heidegger Studies, vol. 11 (1995): 5–7. Here he assertsthat this principle in Husserl “leaves nothing undetermined, for ‘die Sache selbst’ is whatconsciousness holds; it is a consciously having in consciousness, and this consciousnessis that of a knowing ‘ego. ’’ Heidegger then turns to the Greeks for his answer to whatis really “die Sache selbst.” At the end of this remarkable fragment, Heidegger lists 5factors that for him made a break with Husserl’s form of philosophizing “unavoidable”[unumganglich]:a) because in (“Kantian”?) transcendental philosophy “what is at stake” [die Sache] –

“consciousness” – is less and less permitted to be worthy of questioning [frag-wurdig];b) because in this way the principle [“to the things themselves”] is as such made rigid

[erstarrt, made stiff, ossified] and its possibilities silenced;c) above all, precisely because with the stimulus of this principle the claim of Seyn itself

in the forgottenness of its difference was lighted up;d) because Seyn itself goes through and beyond all basic positions [Grundstellungen];e) on both sides – however different – [there is] a personal denial [Versagen] of the

existence of this break, which is something other than a mere break.35. He indirectly acknowledged this protest in defending himself against it in the preface to

the third edition (1949).36. For a lengthy and detailed assessment see Walter Biemel, “Heideggers Stellung zur

Phanomenologie in der Marburger Zeit,” in Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger in der Sichtneuer Quellen, ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth, contributions by Gerd Brand, Manfred S. Frings,and W. Biemel. Phanomenologische Forschungen Series, nos. 6–7 (Freiburg/Munich: KarlAlber, 1978), pp. 141–223.

37. “Heidegger in Marburg: Die Auseinandersetzung mit Husserl,” Philosophischer Literatu-ranzeiger 37 (1984), pp. 48–69. This is the first of a series of three essays on “Heideggerin Marburg” in the same journal. The other two are dedicated to “Die Auseinandersetzungmit Aristoteles” and “Die Auseinandersetzung mit Kant.” See also the substantial bookson the early Heidegger by Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of ‘Being and Time’ (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1993) and John van Buren’s The Young Heidegger: Rumorof a Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), as well as the collectionedited by Thomas Sheehan, Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (Chicago: PrecedentPublishing, 1981), especially Sheehan’s biographical sketch of the early Heidegger whichintroduces the volume.

38. Volpi, p. 55.39. But the term “phenomenology” was dropped when the lectures appeared in GA 20 titled

Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979). Translatedby Theodore Kisiel as History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1986). My italics.

40. See Heidegger’s extensive review of Husserlian phenomenology in GA 20. Also see Volpi,op. cit., for extensive discussion of this and other aspects in Heidegger’s relation to Husserlduring this period.

41. GA 20, p. 62. Cited in Volpi, p. 57.42. Ibid.43. Ibid., p. 58.44. Ibid. “ . . . das Sehenlassen des Seienden in seiner Gegestandlichkeit,” – “the letting be

seen of the entity in its objectivity.” My italics.


45. See in his GW 10, Hermeneutik in Ruckblick (Tubingen: Mohr, 1995): “Subjektivitat undIntersubjektivitat, Subjekt und Person” (1975), pp. 87–99, “Phanomenologie, Hermeneu-tik, Metaphysik” (1983), pp. 100–109, “Erinnerungen an Heideggers Anfange" (1986), pp.3–13, “Heidegger und die Griechen” (1990), pp. 31–45, “Die Kehre des Weges” (1985),pp. 71–75. See also “Der Weg in die Kehre” (1979), in GW 3 (1987): 271–284.

46. “Subjektivitat und Intersubjektivitat, Subjekt und Person,” ibid., GW 10: pp. 87–99.47. Gadamer, “Heidegger und die Sprache,” GW 10: p. 25.48. Otto Poggeler in Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, makes this point in his valuable

discussion of the Husserl-Heidegger relationship, pp. 80–87.49. The page references to KPM in the following discussion are to the first edition, since those

are the pages on which they appear in Husserl’s copy of KPM, but in my translation ofthe complete marginal remarks, the corresponding pages of the Heidegger text in the fifthedition and GA 3 are also given. For reasons of space they are omitted here.

50. The chapter occupies pp. 106–160 in Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963). The citation is from p. 106.

51. Also, on the “violence” of phenomenological encounter, see also SZ x7c.52. Note on Heidegger and Scheler:

Heidegger’s dedication of KPM to the late Max Scheler also represents a significantmove in relation to Husserl, since Husserl viewed Scheler as a dangerous influence inphenomenology. In a letter to Georg Misch of August 3, 1929 (Rriefwechsel 6), forinstance, Husserl begs Misch “not to understand phenomenology in this letter according toScheler but as in my Ideas.” Gadamer has noted that Husserl regarded both Heidegger andScheler as two uncontrollable geniuses and dangerous corruptors of phenomenology. (SeeGadamer’s commemorative article, “Max Scheler – der Verschwender,” in Max Schelerim Gegenwartsgeschehen der Philosophie, ed. Paul Good [Bern/Munich: Franke, 1975],pp. 12–13.)

On the other hand, Heidegger found in the effusive Scheler a true dialogical partner,with whom in December 1927 he had “day-long, night-long Auseinandersetzungen andstruggles.” (Cf. “In memoriam Max Scheler,” in Metaphysiche Anfangsgrunde der Logikim Ausgang von Leibniz, GA 26 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978], p. 63.) In a recent articleon the Heidegger-Scheler relationship, Otto Poggeler goes so far as to assert that thedialogue between Heidegger and Scheler entailed “a turn in phenomenological philosophythat went decisively beyond its form in Husserl.” (Cf. Otto Poggeler, “Ausgleich undanderer Anfang: Scheler und Heidegger,” in Studien zur Philosophie von Max Scheler, ed.Ernst Wolfgang Orth and Gerhard Pfafferott. Phanomenologische Forschungen series, no.28/29. Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1994, pp. 169.) Indeed, according to Poggeler, “the newencounter with Scheler transformed Heidegger’s thinking and pushed it off the old tracks”(ibid., p. 181). It was Scheler, one may recall, who caused Heidegger to offer a seminar onSchelling’s concept of freedom in 1928. Certainly Scheler sharply criticized Heidegger forhis “solipsism” in Being and Time, saying the first absolute astonishment of philosophy is“not [astonishment] at the Dasein of solus ipse” but at the fact “that there is something atall and not nothing.” (Max Scheler, Spate Schriften, ed. Manfred S. Frings. Bern/Munich:Franke, 1976, p. 261.) Scheler also criticized the dominance of Angst in Dasein: its lackof relationship to nature or other persons, and its lack of eros.

Heidegger criticized Scheler and Husserl for reducing the problem of time to Sinnlichkeit[sensory experience], but he and Scheler had the highest respect for each other. Indeed, atScheler’s death in May, 1928, Heidegger placed Scheler at the pinnacle of contemporaryphilosophy, characterizing him – not Husserl – as “the strongest philosophical power intoday’s Germany, no, in today’s Europe – even in today’s philosophy as such.” (Cf. “Inmemoriam Max Scheler,” GA 26: pp. 62–64, citation 63.) After Scheler’s death, Heideggerbegan editing Scheler’s Nachlass [unpublished writings]. So Scheler would appear to bean important factor in Heidegger’s desertion of Husserl’s phenomenology and in his “newbeginning” in the early 1930s. On this, see especially Poggeler, “Ausgleich und andererAnfang: Scheler und Heidegger,” cited above.

Documents

Husserl-Heidegger Debate on Kant