William Blattner

It is argued that Heidegger should be seen as something of a Kantian Idealist. Like Kant, Heidegger distinguishes two standpoints (transcendental and empirical) which we can occupy when we ask the question whether natural things depend on us. He agrees with Kant that from the empirical or human standpoint we are justified in saying that natural things do not depend on us. But in contrast with Kant, Heidegger argues that from the transcendental standpoint we can say neither that natural things do depend on us, nor that they do not. His reasons for saying this, however, represent an attempt to rework both Kant's temporal idealism and his temporal interpretation of the concept of an object (which shows up in Heidegger as a temporal interpretation of being). Heidegger suggests that Kant was led astray into a transcendental idealism about natural entities, because he did not understand the implications of transcendental idealism about being

I offer a revised interpretation of Heidegger's ontological idealism, his thesis that being, but not entities, depends on Dasein ? as well as its relationship to Kant's transcendental idealism. I build from my earlier efforts on this topic by modifying them and defending my basic line of interpretation against criticisms advanced by Cerbone, Philipse, and Carman. In essence, my reading of Heidegger goes like this: what it means to say that "being" depends on Dasein is that the criteria and standards that determine what it is to be, and hence whether an item (or anything at all) is, are conceptually interwoven with, and hence conceptually dependent upon, a structure that could not obtain without Dasein (namely, time). For this reason, to ask whether entities (e.g., nature) would exist, even if we (Dasein) did not, is either to ask an empirical question with an obvious negative answer (viz., According to our best current theories, does everything depend causally upon us?), or to ask a meaningless question with no answer (viz., If we suspend or discount the standards and criteria that determine whether anything is, does anything exist?). In short, Heidegger is an empirical realist, but neither a transcendental idealist nor realist.

This book is a systematic reconstruction of Heidegger's account of time and temporality in Being and Time. The author locates Heidegger in a tradition of 'temporal idealism' with its sources in Plotinus, Leibniz, and Kant. For Heidegger, time can only be explained in terms of 'originary temporality', a concept integral to his ontology. Blattner sets out not only the foundations of Heidegger's ontology, but also his phenomenology of the experience of time. Focusing on a neglected but central aspect of Being and Time, this book will be of considerable interest to all students of Heidegger both inside and outside philosophy.

Early in Being and Time Heidegger announces that the primary concept by means of which he aims to understand Dasein is the concept to which he gives the name ‘existence.’ But what is existence? Existence is, roughly, that feature of Dasein that its self-understanding is constitutive of its being what or who it is. In an important sense, this concept embodies Heidegger’s existentialism. At the center of existentialism lies the claim that humans are given their content neither by an ahistorical, transcultural essence, nor by nature. Rather, Dasein itself determines this content in its act of self-understanding. Kierkegaard expressed this in his famous formulation that “The self is that which relates itself to itself;” Ortega in his catchy phrase, “Man has no nature;” and Sartre in his notorious proposition, “Existence comes before essence.” All of these dicta articulate the same idea.

Pippin's accusation that Heidegger's account of modernity and the History of Being are pre?Critical or dogmatic can be rebutted by understanding Heidegger's later writings more thoroughly in terms of his earlier and by requiring Heidegger to modify the texture, though not the philosophy, of his narrative. Heidegger's thesis that epochal transitions in the History of Being are contingent and inexplicable can be rendered consistent with Critical epistemology, whose central thrust is to deny the Myth of the Given, by understanding the inexplicability involved to be rational inexplicability, not hermeneutic. To explain this suggestion, it is necessary to turn to some of the conceptual resources of Being and Time. The History of Being can thus be seen as both hermeneutically intelligible and contingent. For this to be possible, however, Heidegger's tendency to present that History as a series of monolithic shifts that cannot be bridged by any account of the motivations that drive history forward must be resisted. Heidegger's narrative of modernity is too abstract, but not pre?Critical. Pippin's argument that it is dogmatic is based on an undefended, rationalist assumption

In her excellent Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure Cristina Lafont urges a fresh way of looking at the issue: she argues that cognition and assertion are dependent not upon precognitive, engaged practice, but rather upon language as a holistic phenomenon. Being-in-the-world is at its core the disclosure of a symbolically mediated world in terms of which anything that we can experience, judge, or talk about is given its place and parameters. Entities and states of affairs are accessible to us in terms of meaning, and meaning is itself made accessible to us through understanding. Understanding is, however, always essentially “discursive,” or symbolically mediated, so that our access to the world around us, and anything that might show up within that world, is structured by language. The difference between Lafont’s approach and its practice-oriented rival is especially clear vis-à-vis the “fore-structure of interpretation.” According to Lafont, cognition is grounded in what Heidegger calls “forehaving,” because forehaving is the disclosure of the whole of linguistic meaning available to the cognizer. According to a practice-oriented approach, by “forehaving” Heidegger means the holistic set of precognitive practices in which whatever we are currently doing is domiciled.

Philipse argues that in place of a coherent ontological theory, Heidegger weaves together five “leitmotifs.” There is a meta-Aristotelian theme: philosophy aims at discovering the unity of being beyond its diversification into subordinate categories. In the early thought, the diversity of being is spelled out in a phenomenological-hermeneutic leitmotif: we access being through a series of regional ontologies that expose the holistic patterns of unity within various domains of entity, such as nature and Dasein. This “diversity pole” is complemented by a transcendental “unity pole:” the unity of being is uncovered through a regional ontology of the human, which simultaneously serves as an investigation of the possibility of the understanding of being in general. After Being and Time the transcendental unity for which Heidegger strove gets historicized, yielding a neo-Hegelian deep history: Western culture is grounded in a series of global epochs of being, each of which makes possible a distinctive, transcendental sort of being. This “diversity pole” is then itself complemented by a postmonotheist mythology: each epoch of being is a dispensation of Being as a transcendent, concealed non-phenomenon, from which Western culture has been falling away since the time of the presocratics and for a second coming of which we must prepare ourselves by way of a radical, non-rational form of “thinking.”

Early in Being and Time Heidegger announces that the primary concept by means of which he aims to understand Dasein is the concept to which he gives the name ‘existence.’ But what is existence? Existence is, roughly, that feature of Dasein that its self-understanding is constitutive of its being what or who it is. In an important sense, this concept embodies Heidegger’s existentialism. At the center of existentialism lies the claim that humans are given their content neither by an ahistorical, transcultural essence, nor by nature. Rather, Dasein itself determines this content in its act of self-understanding. Kierkegaard expressed this in his famous formulation that “The self is that which relates itself to itself;” Ortega in his catchy phrase, “Man has no nature;” and Sartre in his notorious proposition, “Existence comes before essence.” All of these dicta articulate the same idea.