Heideggers

I've been thinking about a recent post on the different Heideggers out there, and wondering which one is my own. I think I first read him in my sophomore year of college--a few essays in Basic Writings (intro to Being and Time, "Origin of the Work of Art," and, strangely, I remember reading "The End of Philosophy"). Then I got into philosophy of mind, which is what really led me to phenomenology. I then took a great course with Arthur Melnick on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, and I think really started getting interested in him there. Melnick writes a lot on Kant, but he's into phenomenology, so I had a very good introduction. But, of course, Heidegger the first time through is never enough to get him: right now I think there are many, many things I don't get, and I never quite understand people who dismiss him quickly. He's not one of those writers you can get by just understanding a few "moves:" even though he'll get repetitive sometimes, what's at stake in the best works is certainly deep, rich thinking about all sorts of things that need in turn to be thought through more as problems than as indifferent content. Regardless, the year after college (having graduated early to save money) I reread Being and Time and that was when I really got some sense of it and moreover got really into it. Melnick had focused a lot on the second part of the book, actually, so I was in a good position to grasp a lot of that stuff. But I think at that time I also read the Introduction to Metaphysics, and for some reason (I think I was also reading Aristotle more seriously than I did in school, maybe that was why) that really got me going. I think I then reread the first part once more. Then I did some later things:  the writings on technics, the lectures on identity and time and being, but also the great books on Nietzsche, What Is Called Thinking… After that, I was on my way, picking up some of the earlier seminars as I went.

Reflecting on it, I don't quite know how to categorize this Heidegger. It is certainly not a theory-Heidegger. Though I've always been interested in Derrida, I was always more interested in him through the phenomenological tradition, I think, and I am only now actually figuring out how that has even given me quite a different Derrida than is usually found near literature departments (with some important exceptions like Spivak and Butler, who understand him to be much more political, like I do)--let alone Heidegger. With the latter, I've never really been into either his language for its own sake or his writings on art (or language--I'm actually only getting around to the stuff on language now), though I do think Derrida's attention to the actual language is great and useful. That attention alone is probably not a good way into Heidegger (certainly Derrida didn't just use that, though some of his lit-dept. buddies conveniently forget this fact), or is probably only a good way into several general issues (death, everydayness, dwellings) that end in an overpoliticized dismissal that makes Zizek's consideration seem quite thorough (though it isn't so bad). Then again, there are good considerations out there in less de Manian literary theoretical work (it isn't good to speak as if the majority of people involved in literary or critical theory in the US were deconstructionist--or even that the majority of people in literature departments even had or have theoretical interests).

If anything, I might have a more "American" sort of Heidegger. Certainly it isn't quite as "practice"-oriented as Dreyfus, though I don't at all understand the sort of anathema Dreyfus provokes in some people: except for the fact that he produces followers with very narrow conceptions of what might be going on in the works, I don't find anything really too egregious in his interpretation itself.  I shouldn't downplay the effect of the interpretation though: it's a real problem (as is clear if you have ever talked to a real follower of Dreyfus, as I did in college) given that the state of Heidegger scholarship in America was so sketchy for so long, and he and a few others were so dominant in it. But overall I find Dreyfus helpful, if you take his work as an interpretation and really set it beside the rest of Heidegger's stuff (starting with Division II of Being and Time). Furthermore I find it really helpful in countering some of that overzealousness (or whatever you want to call it) we find amongst some Heideggerians, who overestimate works like the Contributions to Philosophy (I love that Graham Harman continually insists that it's really not that great of a work--because it isn't).

Back to the point though, which was that I never quite went as far as Dreyfus myself, even though my Heidegger was more "American," partly because Melnick in particular really did approach Being and Time with Kantian questions in mind about space and time, translated into Husserlian concerns. My first view on the thing ended up having a weird sort of Husserlian flavor to it, then (even though I had read only a little Husserl and would only really read him after college--and still, like many many people, haven't done enough, though I like him a lot), and I think that's stuck with me. That's not entirely enough to get me near the base-line Continental reading, even--and there's no way that puts me in any position to even try and figure out the fourfold. But it has kept my mind open and I think makes me see what Dreyfus does as a very good and very patient illustration of Heidegger--along with a series of knockdown considerations of AI and a great opening up of cognitive questions and questions about motility which are still dear to me.

I'm still trying to think of someone's work with a Heidegger that is much closer to mine. I was tempted to cite Jonathan Lear's book on Radical Hope, which I think is just one of the most interesting, well-written, and fascinating pieces of philosophy that has been produced in recent years (it's a breeze to read, you should check it out if you haven't). Though my main concerns were never ethical (indeed I always try to avoid ethics whenever I can--except Lear's work is always so fascinating I had to pick this up), this appropriation of Heidegger is still interested in worldhood in a serious way. And even though Lear is concerned mostly about what gives practices their coherence, the main question of the book--what happens in when a culture is facing destruction and is destroyed--places this on a background that is still a bit more global than Dreyfus.

That's still not right though: these Division II issues aren't quite at all like the late stuff--there's something qualitatively different about a focus that remains on the latter (or really grasps the latter) and the one that sticks with the former, even though they are of course all related (I'm don't mean to give any significance to any "turn"). I can't think of other figures though without going too far the other way. I guess I can just conclude that at bottom my Heidegger is quite American, though not irredeemably so (I actually enjoy the Heidegger of someone like Bernard Stiegler too--I think it's the history of being that is probably where my focus lies, with my eye on practices). But then again this isn't entirely a fault--though it should indeed be accounted for. Indeed, the whole reason I brought this up was because the underlying point (Paul's underlying point, in the post that got me thinking about this stuff) is actually the most important thing: you'll get a different Heidegger depending on who you learned it from and how you studied him. There are a few very distinct Heideggers out there, and it is actually quite hard to get around any one take on him that you have inherited. This is partly because, of course, the material is difficult, and partly because of fashion. But mostly it is because Heidegger isn't just messing around: he's got a lot of very deep issues he's bringing up and you have to return to him again and again to work them out. Once you do, it's easy to coast. But what's really interesting is precisely then coming back and trying to work through those issues differently, and if you're more cognizant of what Heidegger you have, this will be easier and probably much more surprising, fascinating, enlightening.