It is very confusing to read of a turn in Heidegger's thinking. Philosophers seem to want to locate it in some work of Heidegger's, whether it be the essay on the essence of truth (Richardson put forward this thesis long ago), the humanism letter (Derrida usually tends to see things turning here) or, more recently the Beiträge zur Philosophie (there is also the Kant book). Theodore Kiesel also has added importantly to a certain consideration (also always there) of a sort of turn towards Being and Time, dividing up Heidegger's thought, then, into three areas. For the turn in Heidegger's thinking, as it is usually put, is one from Being and Time to Seinsgeschichtliche denken or thinking in (or on) the way of the being-historical (i.e. "being-historical thinking," as it is usually translated). This thinking of course found most explicitly in the later works on technology and Ereignis (enowning or event of appropriation). The pre-turn that I spoke of, would be the turn towards an analysis of Dasein from the early writings (but this is of course too felicitous a way to put it: the turn is explicitly talked about as a specific movement of thought by Heidegger and it would be wrong to think of a mere turn towards and away from something in one's thinking as this turn itself).The turn itself is made by moving from an analysis of Dasein towards being via time, to one of how being gets destined or scattered about over history. This second analysis cannot totally be phenomenological in the manner of Being and Time, then.
I will elaborate on this more later, but I think that the more you deliberate this problem of "where," the more you lose yourself in more arbitrary distinctions. The turn needs to be specified really only if you too are trying to be Heidegger, if you too are trying to do the type of analysis he undertakes--and not much even then. With the increasing professionalization of phenomenology (in areas of cognitive science) this indeed might be really necessary--that is, as you elaborate questions of method. But it can easily keep you from the philosophy that this method is trying to articulate--and thus philosophers especially are pretty wrong to keep focusing on it in this way (since they don't even have the tools to do it well, like the scientists). The point itself certainly isn't in a book--one can specify places of the later thought in Being and Time itself (Levinas is particularly good at this, as well as Carol White). It is simply the odd supplement to Being and Time: Being and Time, unless it gets continued in its own manner, slips into a different mode of thinking. The seminars around Being and Time somewhat reflect this. The book itself has its own problematic, and so once you step outside of it, it does not really make sense to locate another book in which this other thinking is located--you are pretty much already in it. This is because what is turned from is so extremely specific, while what is turned to cannot be. The crucial question behind most inquiries into where Heidegger turns is really about what is lost in this gap, in this shift from one perspective to the other.
7 comments:
I think Kisiel himself subscribes Gadamer's opinion on the existence of a Kehre vor der Kehre. Already in 1919 (Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie) appears the expression es weltet, and the worldiness of the worlding world indicates that it is never an issue concerning the mere subjectivity of the subject, what is at stake in Heidegger, but an event much more broad (the Geschick des Seyns).
I agree with you: the Kehre requires a sort of thought which cannot be phenomenological in essence anymore, a meditation (Besinnung). But it is phenomenology which has let to the path of thought. In a way, there is already in Being and Time a broader scope than that of modern idealism (and Husserlian phenomenology) in the sense of the phenomenality of the phenomenon. The expansion of the notion of truth as aletheia, does not lead to Lichtung?
This is so extremely helpful: you've put in words what I've been thinking but couldn't express for such a long time: "the worldiness of the worlding world indicates that it is never an issue concerning the mere subjectivity of the subject." Sometimes I just don't know how to express exactly what Heidegger is getting at though I might know it intuitively, and this sentence is great... that is why I love taking classes on Heidegger. But your point I think in general sums up why I like Dreyfus--it is his insistence on the world as the really interesting thing in S&Z that I love, because it in fact keeps him from getting too far away from the most fundamental insights Heidegger gives us. (By the way, I should say I'm sorry for not responding to the last comment you made--I'm busy writing papers!) Your comment about the phenomenon and Lichtung is great too--the connection is right there in the writings, but it requires some insistence to bring it out before us... In general I agree that it is much better to see these types of continuities than insist on any particular turnings--that is all I guess I was about in this post--and this shows why: it isn't so much how Heidegger breaks with phenomenology as what phenomenology in his somewhat later stuff is actually doing. Everything is pretty mobile. Michael Haar actually talks a lot about this in the great book Song of the Earth--there is a whole chapter on the sort of change going on here, which interprets it precisely through how phenomenology gets extended...
Anyway, thank you again so much! You really grace this blog with all your learned comments on Heidegger! As you see, I've been reading Keisel like you said!
Another book called Song of the Earth is that by Johnathon Bate which as an English grad you would like. Its got a nice chapter on Heidegger that was clearly influential on the whole eco-criticism vibe.
As for the turn I think we need to keep in mind the 'Contributions' where Heidegger [privately] begins to believe that being thinkers through him. Hermann, his son, mentions somewhere, probably in the Safranski biography, that his father would talk about how he could not help himself...as if he was a quasi-medium.
Then again there is no real need to break Heidegger up especially if you are attempting to follow the threads. Its just a useful marker for breaking up chapters.
http://anotherheideggerblog.blogspot.com/
It seems to me, that if one associates the turn with being-historical thinking, then the turn was already there long before Being and Time. In the 1922 "Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle", there is an explicit account given of the first and the other beginning, and philosophy as the activity of retrieve. This isn't to say there are no differences between the account of being's historicity in the early 20s and the late 30s, but it is not as if Being's historicity wasn't already a central issue in the early development of the "theory of care".
It may be that the "turn" isn't a change in what Heidegger saw as the task, but in the difficulty of the task - in '22 Heidegger is still saying we share a common mode of sense and expression with the Greeks. Perhaps the turn towards retrieve as the central function of philosophy only seems to occur because, as our distance from the Greeks increases, the task becomes more and more arduous. But, philosophy was never meant to be easy.
Though I disagree with your last comment, tristan--I think sometimes philosophy is meant to be easy, even for Heidegger--I do like the way you characterize the turn in terms of difficulty: that allows a nice sort of hypothetical spectrum or continuum that makes the question of "where is the turn" seem really irrelevant (which I think it is) or at least inaccurate.
At least for Heidegger, I don't think "philosophy" is ever meant to be easy. However, there are some interesting remarks about how "Other Thinking" is both in a sense easier and more difficult than philosophy.
However, I don't think I'm going out on a limb to differentiate the difficulty of philosophy as the destruktion of the history of metaphysics, and "other thinking" as trying to think beyond metaphysics. Certainly for H one is grounded in the other (or, at least its possibility, its discovery), but this does not mean they are the same exercise.
Great post. Very interesting rethinking about the common critical over-simplification of
Heidegger's "turn."
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