Karl Kraatz

This commentary on Christian Damböck’s article “Carnap and Heidegger” (DZPhil 2024; 72(5): 656–671) examines the validity of claims regarding the alleged antiscientific and antirational nature of Heidegger’s philosophy. By contrasting the predominantly negative reception of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks in Germany with their more varied international reception, this commentary argues that the Notebooks reveal the distinctive rationality of Heidegger’s thought, challenging entrenched biases about its supposed irrationality. It cautions against one-sided interpretations that perpetuate unsubstantiated assumptions about Heidegger’s philosophy, while recognising the value of Damböck’s and Carnap’s critical perspectives, provided they engage rigorously with his texts.

Martin Heidegger’s philosophy has always been criticized for its lack of ethics or its decidedly unethical character. This criticism can be divided into two categories: one critique is aimed at the subjectivism of Heidegger’s philos‑ ophy and the other is a criticism of the displacement of ethics by ontology, claiming that the question of being excludes the questions of ethics. This criti‑ cism is particularly important because it is often directly linked to Heidegger’s commitment to National Socialism. In this paper, I will show how Heidegger could react to this twofold critique by referring to the method of formal indi‑ cation. The main argument is that the formality of Heidegger’s originary ethics is both its advantage and its distinguishing feature compared to modern ethics. This advantage of Heidegger’s originary ethics is that it makes possible an originally moral behaviour.

This paper examines the methodological significance of feelings and moods in Heidegger’s philosophy, challenging the modern philosophical view that prioritizes cognition over feelings in acquiring knowledge. Heidegger argues that by exploring the disclosive and disruptive qualities of feelings, philosophy can provide “philosophical knowledge,” which he considers superior to scientific knowledge as it entails knowledge about the world from which science originates. Heidegger’s assertion of the primacy of feelings is based on the notion that only feelings can reveal essential and yet concealed aspects of the correlation between humans and beings, and that these aspects are crucial for our understanding of the world. This paper will explore these claims by engaging with the strongest critics of Heidegger’s position, namely philosophers of the Neo-Kantian tradition, who claim that he has abandoned philosophy to the arbitrariness and irrationality of mere feelings.

Heideggers Philosophie wird seit Jahrzehnten von berühmten Philosophen dafür kritisiert, dass ihr alles Wirkliche der einen Frage nach dem Sein untergeordnet werde. Die alleinige Thematisierung des Seins ließe blind werden für das Seiende – für das Hier und Jetzt der gegenwärtigen Lage. Unterstellt wird dabei, dass das Sein keinen Bezug zum Seienden habe. In diesem Artikel wird mit Blick auf das, was Heidegger die „konkrete Allgemeinheit“ des Seinsbegriffes nennt, gezeigt, dass die Kritik unberechtigt ist. Die zu prüfende These lautet, dass das Fragen nach dem Sein als Konkretisierung des Seienden verstanden werden müsse. Zur Aufklärung und Widerlegung der Kritik an Heidegger muss dafür auf Heideggers Verständnis der konkreten Allgemeinheit des Seinsbegriffes eingegangen werden. Gezeigt wird, dass Heidegger von einer notwendigen Vermittlung zwischen der Allgemeinheit der Begriffe und der Konkretheit des philosophierenden Vollzuges ausgeht. Philosophie ist für Heidegger zugleich Begriffsarbeit und existenzieller Einsatz.

Eine der grundlegenden Fragen der Philosophie ist die Frage, wie sich die Sprache zur Wirklichkeit verhält. Was steht bei dieser Frage auf dem Spiel? Es geht darum, wie wir über unsere Erfahrungen sprechen und sie anderen Menschen mitteilen können. So mitteilen, dass die Anderen das Gesagte nachvollziehen und verstehen können. Es geht dabei auch um die Frage, ob das, was wir sagen, dem Worüber unserer Rede angemessen ist. Was Martin Heidegger die "formale Anzeige" nennt, ist für ihn die Art und Weise, wie sich die Philosophie mitteilen muss. Nur mithilfe der formalen Anzeige könne das, worüber diese Philosophie spricht, als es selbst unverdeckt in den Blick gebracht werden. Für Heidegger zählt dabei primär das, was etwas ist: dessen Sein. Dieses Sein könne nur formalanzeigend zur Sprache gebracht werden. Heidegger würde sogar behaupten, dass vom Verständnis der formalen Anzeige auch das Verständnis der Philosophie abhinge. Heideggers formale Anzeige wurde deshalb auch als "Geheimwaffe", als "Schlüssel" zum Verständnis Heideggers Philosophie (Kisiel) und als etwas "für sein ganzes Denken Gültiges" (Gadamer) beschrieben. In diesem Buch wird geklärt, was die formale Anzeige ist und wie sie funktioniert. Gefragt wird nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Wort und Sache.

AI’s new ability to create artworks is seen as a major challenge to today’s understanding of art. There is a strong tension between people who predict that AI will replace artists and critics who claim that AI art will never be art. Furthermore, recent studies have documented a negative bias towards AI art. This paper provides a philosophical explanation for this negative bias, based on our shared understanding of the ontological differences between objects. We argue that our perception of art depends on our understanding of the context of its creation: human-made art is experienced as an interplay between the artist and nature. In AI-generated art, this interplay is either absent or minimised. We conclude that the displacement of the “human factor” in art will not lead to an evolution of art, but to the end of art.

The function of the formal indication is the mediation between concept and thing. This mediation is the concretization of the concept. I show that the formality of formal indications is the specific generality (Allgemeinheitscharakter) of philosophical concepts. This formality is their principality (Prinzipialität). Accordingly, a formally indicating concept would be a concept which gives the direction for the concretion as principally as possible. A principality which secures the repeatability and comprehensibility of philosophical insights. Looking at Heidegger’s lecture of the winter semester 1921/22, it is shown that 1) Heidegger understands the principality as the Being of beings, 2) that philosophical language is about the mediation between the principality of concepts and the concreteness of things; and 3) that this principality is identified with the formality of the formal indication. This early lecture is decisive for Heidegger’s whole philosophy because it lays bare the necessary relation between ontology and philosophy of language.

I argue that one of the central concepts of the second part of Being and Time – resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) – represents a new way of doing philosophy and should therefore be understood as a philosophical method. Resoluteness is a specific way of comporting oneself towards things and is methodologically necessary to uncover these things as what they are. I draw on insights from the recently published On My Own Publications, in which Heidegger points to resoluteness as a crucial step towards his later methodological stance. In doing so, I illuminate important aspects of Being and Time and contribute to ongoing debates about Heidegger’s philosophical method. I demonstrate that it is Heidegger’s critique of transcendental philosophy and of the inquiry into possibility conditions that is meant to be overcome by developing the idea of resoluteness as a philosophical method.

This book gives a systematic account of Martin Heidegger’s methodology. Contrary to the widespread conception that Heidegger’s (late) philosophy is lacking any kind of verifiable, provable insights, the author shows that a rejection of the scientific method does not imply a rejection of methodological, rigorous thinking. In fact, it can be shown that the method of Heidegger’s philosophy is more rigorous, more strict and more radical than the scientific method. But because the scientific method is conceived of as the non-plus-ultra even within philosophy, in order to outline Heidegger’s methodology we have to give an account of his criticism of the scientific method. By showing the limitations of modern science, we can unfold the possibilities of philosophy. The book consists of four parts: The first part is about Heidegger’s concept of subjectivity and his criticism of the Cartesian subject-object-dichotomy. The main argument of the first part is that the ‘subject’, inasmuch as it is understood ontologically, is essential for philosophy. We outline this – following Steven G. Crowell – as the philosophical significance of the first-person-perspective (Heidegger’s early philosophy between 1919 and 1927). The second part is about what we call an ontological theory of constitution: A radicalization of the Kantian transcendental philosophy which does not orbit around transcendental subjectivity, but rather around concrete subjectivity (Dasein vs. the transcendental ego). We take a closer look on what Heidegger has written between 1927 and 1930. The third part is about Heidegger’s late philosophy. The main topic of this third part is Heidegger’s “seynsgeschichtliche Besinnung auf das machenschaftliche Wesen der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft“ – which is in essence a closer look on what modern science is, on its relation to technology, and on its very own historicality. We discuss the most famous published texts and lectures between 1930 and 1976, but focus on Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures and his second magnus opus: the Contributions to Philosophy. This criticism of modern science is the stepping stone for the fourth and final part, in which we take all the pieces and put them together by giving a systematic account of Heidegger’s methodology. In this final part we take a step back from Heidegger’s texts (and from his language) and confront Heidegger with the most famous criticism by Carl Friedrich Gethmann and Jürgen Habermas. This allows us to give an account of the central concepts of Heidegger’s methodology: truth, knowledge and validity. We also talk about the status of philosophical concepts and in general: philosophical language, about Heidegger’s theory of philosophical conceptualization, which is known as the method of formal indication and about the possibility of an ontological foundation of modern science and epistemology. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GERMAN------------------------------------------------- Der methodische Status insbesondere der Spätphilosophie Heideggers ist ein Problem: Mit den Mitteln der traditionellen Methodenlehre können die Aussagen dieser Philosophie nicht ausgewiesen und auch nicht begründet werden. Mit der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft und ihrer Methode hat sie nichts mehr gemein. Aber muss dies heißen, dass diese Philosophie ihre Erkenntnisse überhaupt nicht mehr ausweisen kann? Ich habe in dieser Arbeit versucht zu zeigen, dass auch die späte Philosophie Heideggers Methode hat. Auch wenn Heidegger in fast an den Mythos erinnernder Art und Weise über die Verbergung und das Sich-entziehen des Seyns spricht, handelt es sich um methodisch überprüfbare, ausweisbare Aussagen. Nur wird in Heideggers Methodologie Ernst gemacht mit dem Gedanken, dass die Philosophie eine eigene Methode braucht und sich nicht wie blind an der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft orientieren dürfe. Eine Methode, die sie zum Teil für sich erst entwickeln muss. Die Grundbegriffe dieser ‚neuen Methodologie‘ zu klären, war das Hauptanliegen dieser Arbeit. Es ging um den Wahrheits-, Erkenntnis- und Geltungsanspruch dieser Philosophie. Dafür habe ich einen Blick geworfen insb. auf die frühe Philosophie Heideggers (1. Teil: 1919-1927), auf die wichtigen Texte und Vorträge im Kontext von Sein und Zeit (2. Teil: 1927-1930) und auf die Texte zu Nietzsche, zu den Beiträgen und zu Wissenschaft und Technik (3. Teil: 1930-1976). In einem vierten Teil habe ich die Grundzüge dieser Methodologie skizziert. Ich habe mich dabei an der Kritik von Jürgen Habermas orientiert, der am bekanntesten und am stärksten die These vertreten hat, dass die Spätphilosophie Heideggers irrational sei. Auch hier kam ich zu dem Schluss, dass Heideggers Kritik an dem okzidentalen Rationalismus nicht in die Irrationalität führen muss, wie Habermas nahelegt, sondern dass dadurch ein kritisches Verständnis von Rationalität möglich wird.

In 2018 On My Own Publications was published as volume 82 of Heidegger’s collected works. Its content includes roughly 400 pages in which Heidegger himself reflects on Being and Time. A central theme in these pages, and the one to which this article is devoted, is Heidegger’s criticism of the way that the question of Being (Seinsfrage) is conceived there as the question of the understanding of Being (Seinsverständnisfrage). More specifically, the author aims to demonstrate the importance of these criticisms – which include matters of both style and content – for understanding Being and Time itself and the general development of Heidegger’s thought. Though many critics already seized on what they took to be the inadequacy of starting with the understanding of Being, we can now see in detail how Heidegger himself conceived its inadequacy and how he specifically sought to address it in his later thought.

Heidegger’s criticism of the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Husserl is primarily leveled at its underlying understanding of the transcendental subject. Heidegger argues that in order to give an adequate account of the intelligibility of the world, the transcendental subject must be factical. By discussing central aspects of Heidegger’s criticism, this paper shows that his notion of a factical transcendental subject is a necessary step out of aporias of transcendental philosophy. I argue that Heidegger’s emphasis on the facticity of the human being must be understood not as an abandonment of the transcendental standpoint, but as a radicalization of its central ideas. Heidegger is thereby transforming transcendental philosophy into a transcendental ontology. I demonstrate that this allows Heidegger to reconceptualize the constitution of the world as social and historical without having to jettison the role of the transcendental subject.