SERIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS EXIST WITH HEIDEGGER

SERIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS EXIST WITH HEIDEGGER

1. HEIDEGGER FALLS VICTIM TO HIS OWN CRITIQUE

Theodore W. Adorno, philosopher, THE JARGON OF AUTHENTICITY, 1973, p. 51.

But the triviality of the simple is not, as Heidegger would like it to be, attributable to the value-blindness of thought that has lost being. Such triviality comes from thinking that is supposedly in tune with being and reveals itself as something supremely noble. Such triviality is the sign of that classifying thought, even in the simplest word, from which Heidegger pretends that he has escaped: namely, abstraction.

Yoko Arisaka, Philosophy Department, University of San Francisco, PHILOSOPHY TODAY, Spring 1996, p. 36.

Thus from the beginning Heidegger had a conception of spatial finitude, but this fundamental insight was undeveloped because of his ambition to carry out the foundational project which favored time. From the 1930's on, as Heidegger abandons the foundational project focusing on temporality, the conception of authentic spatiality comes to the fore. For example, in Discourse on Thinking Heidegger considers the spatial character of Being as "that-which-regions (die Gegnet)". The peculiar expression is a re-conceptualization of the notion of "region" as it appeared in Being and Time. Region is given an active character and defined as the "openness that surrounds us" which "comes to meet us". By giving it an active character, Heidegger wants to emphasize that region is not brought into being by us, but rather exists in its own right, as that which expresses our spatial existence. Heidegger states that "one needs to understand 'resolve' (Entschlossenheit) as it is understood in Being and Time: as the opening of man [Dasein] particularly undertaken by him for openness,...which we think of as that-which-regions". Here Heidegger is asserting an authentic conception of spatiality. The finitude expressed in the notion of Being-in-the-world is thus transformed into an authentic recognition of our finite worldly existence in later writings. The return to the conception of spatial finitude in the later period shows that Heidegger never abandoned the original insight behind his conception of Being-in-the-world. But once committed to this idea, it is hard to justify singling out an aspect of the self--temporality--as the foundation for the rest of the structure. All of the existentiale and zuhanden modes, which constitute the whole of Being-in-the-world, are equiprimordial, each mode articulating different aspects of a unified whole. The preference for temporality as the privileged meaning of existence reflects the Kantian residue in Heidegger's early doctrine which he later rejected as still excessively subjectivistic.
5. HEIDEGGER'S EFFORT AT A "FOUNDATIONAL" PROJECT FAILS

Yoko Arisaka, Philosophy Department, University of San Francisco, PHILOSOPHY TODAY, Spring 1996, p. 36.

Heidegger's abandonment of his early "foundational" project after the Kehre has often been attributed to a general shift in emphasis away from subjectivity toward a fuller conception of Being. It has not yet been shown how that shift might be rooted in specific problems within Being and Time itself. This paper is a critique of Heidegger's "foundational" project in Being and Time. The problem will be discussed by examining a representative case of a foundational relation--one between space and time. In particular, I will evaluate the claim in Section 70 that Dasein's temporality founds spatiality. I will show that his argument fails and that Heidegger cannot successfully carry out his project within his phenomenological framework.

MARXIST CRITIQUE OF HEIDEGGER IS SUPERIOR

1. HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY IS SELF-DEFEATING WITHOUT MARXIST INSIGHTS

Gerry Stahl, Research Professor at the University of Colorado's Institute of Cognitive Science, MARXIAN HERMENEUTICS AND HEIDEGGERIAN SOCIAL THEORY, 1975, http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~gerry/publications/dissertations/philosophy/ch0.html, accessed May 10, 2001.

Significantly, Adorno's social critique of Heidegger is not simply divorced from a philosophical one. Rather, it underscores the philosophical failure of Heidegger's thought: its lack of concern for the very social dimension in which it becomes self-defeating. This particular failure necessitates the confrontation between Heidegger's and Marxist critical theory of society. By determining the social limitations of Heidegger's thought, Adorno does not discard Heidegger, but attunes the strivings of Heidegger's philosophical concepts to their social content, measuring the distance between their claims and their achievements. Only thereby can Marxism interpret Heidegger's insights within the context of Marxism's own method and fruitfully comprehend both the progressive and the reactionary force of Heidegger's socially-situated path of thought.

Gerry Stahl, Research Professor at the University of Colorado's Institute of Cognitive Science, MARXIAN HERMENEUTICS AND HEIDEGGERIAN SOCIAL THEORY, 1975, http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~gerry/publications/dissertations/philosophy/ch0.html, accessed May 10, 2001.

For Heidegger, as for Hegel before him, the developmental process whereby Being, which determines the form of presence of beings, is itself determined takes place solely within the realm of Being-itself. In Marx's theory, on the contrary, the history of Being is the consequence of concrete human history, and its apparent autonomy from human control is an illusion resulting from the complexity of historical mediations within an antagonistically structured society. Marx's ontological essences, above all that of abstract value, are accordingly derived from concrete, historically-specific categories, such as exchange value, comprehended as the form of appearance of the essence. Actual beings are thus not simply objectifications or placeholders of a Being which develops independently; the history of Being is not a mystical intergalactic happening or even a process taking place primarily within the language of a people or the intellectual history of a tradition. That beings are now present as calculable stock, abstracted from their unique context and physical characteristics, is, according to Marx, primarily a result of their being present in relations of exchange. It is these concrete relations of beings to beings as they have developed in social, economic, material history, which equate the forces used in the production of each commodity with all other forces of production, equate each being with every other commodity, equate the human activity involved in any task with labor as such, and thereby abstract from the mortality and situatedness of people.
3. HEIDEGGER IGNORES IMPORTANT FACTS THAT MARXISM DOESN'T

Gerry Stahl, Research Professor at the University of Colorado's Institute of Cognitive Science, MARXIAN HERMENEUTICS AND HEIDEGGERIAN SOCIAL THEORY, 1975, http://www.cs.colorado.edu/

~gerry/publications/dissertations/philosophy/ch0.html, accessed May 10, 2001.

Marx thus understands the prevailing form of presence in relation to the social totality, whose character is essentially conditioned by the prevalent mode of production. For Marx, history progresses through a dialectic of whole and part, of social production and its various products. Heidegger, however, investigating the preconditions of this process, loses sight of the dialectical relationship in favor of a one-sided determination by Being of the form of presence of beings. Where Marx understands the preconditions of one epoch as the conditions of its predecessor, Heidegger accepts the character of an epoch as fatefully given and beyond comprehension. The triviality of Heidegger's social commentary in comparison to Marxian social analysis is thus neither accidental nor is it to be enriched through the addition of concrete details. Being, which determines beings as beings, must itself be shown to be conditioned by beings. The ontological self-interpretation of the world is not divorced from the ontic self-transformation of the world; thought which attempts to comprehend the former cannot ignore its unity with the latter, as Heidegger does.