Reading Heidegger's language

A few days ago I got an email from someone reading the blog here. It asked some general questions about reading Heidegger's "The Thing," saying the following:

I am a little handicapped with Heidegger (I think) because I do not speak German. "The Thing" is probably the easiest Heidegger essay to parody, especially since one spends so much time reading about the thingliness of the thing and the thing's thingness. So - here's what I am wondering. What are the connotations and the denotations to the words Heidegger uses in this essay in German? I am assuming that Heidegger is using "Sache" for "thing" as this is the most direct translation. But I wonder if Heidegger is using other words for "thing" in this essay that I don't know of because of my language barrier. FYI - I am reading the Albert Hofstadter translation in Poetry, Language, Thought.

Now, this I think is a series of great questions. Moreover the way they are asked outlines a particular orientation towards Heidegger that many people, I think, have (I certainly did): it is the orientation that prescribes really wondering what is going on with the words Heidegger is using and why they are so funny, in a way--one could generally say the "style" (but of course this is not how Heidegger would exactly put it), or perhaps the "approach" of Heidegger. Why is it so hard to make sense of? And--and here is the crucial question--does going back to the particular valences of the words he is using help? My answer was no: one really has to try and see the phenomenon Heidegger is getting at before one tries to look at the twists and turns of the language, and especially before one looks at connotations. This risks making a totally denotative Heidegger (I'd say Dreyfus is a bit too far in this direction, at least in his thinking and teaching Heidegger--not so much in his writing), but I would say that this is more profitable than a connotative Heidegger at the stage when you are getting to be familiar with him (reading texts for the first or second time), because the phenomenon is brought to light (especially in its structure) that way. Now, this does not mean the phenomenon is separable--by any means--from the words and their connotations: what usually happens is that there is a path of thought being pushed through by each sentence and word, and one has to respond by altering the phenomenon accordingly to bring it further and further to light.
The example of the jug in "The Thing" is a good one. Think of the jug first. Then bring it out bit by bit following the path of the words and their interrelation. Now, this does not mean "picture" a jug, and alter the picture. It means intending towards it, feeling yourself as you would feel about the jug if you were attending to it, that is, attuning oneself to the attending to the jug, and then look at the words and how they reflect this attending and bring out or separate the intention from it. "Reflect," here, of course, is the key word here: it is what makes this an approach focused more on denotation. One has to, in a sense, reduce Heidegger's language to reflection or mere representation of the phenomenon. That is, one has to reduce Heidegger's language to a discourse about the phenomenon. He warns against this himself in What is Called Thinking? where thinking itself is the phenomenon:

The question "What is called thinking?" can never be answered by proposing a definition of the concept thinking, and then diligently explaining what is contained in that definition. In what follows, we shall not think about what thinking is. We remain outside that mere reflection which makes thinking its object. Great thinkers, first Kant and and then Hegel, have understood the fruitlessness of such reflection. That is why they had to attempt to reflect their way out of such reflection.
-What is Called Thinking?, 21

I am recommending this against Heidegger, then. But I am also convinced that one can then correct this reduction of the language precisely by resubmerging it back into the path of thinking that the phenomenology (the alteration of the phenomenon in its exposition, from what is formally indicated to what is essential) demands. This, at least, is a good way to begin to approach Heidegger, I think, even though it risks setting up a dialectic of sorts. But I think it stays true to what Heidegger has to say about the path of thought:

When thinking attempts to go after a matter that has claimed it, it may happen that on the way it undergoes a wandering. It is advisable, therefore, in what follows to mind the path of thought rather than its content. To dwell properly upon the content would simply block the going-forward of the talk.
-"The Principle of Identity," in Identity and Difference, 23, translation heavily modified

In short, this means thinking on the "matter" (Sache) that gives thought. One can see that looking for connotations here doesn't and wouldn't add anything unless this is done beforehand. This was what I was trying to get at in my (impromptu) response, below: what "Sache" means and why it is what, in the thing, requires or asks for thinking. Here is what Heidegger has to say about this Sache in "The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics:"

This seminar [which this essay concluded] made an attempt to begin a conversation with Hegel. A conversation with a thinker can be concerned only with the matter of thinking. [...] The matter of thinking presses upon thinking in such a way that only thus does it bring thinking to the heart of the matter and from there to thinking itself.
-"The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics," (in the same volume as above), 42

The German is more interesting and more elucidating. Stambaugh, however, precisely because she thinks connotations mean too much here, does not translate the whole of it in the above passage (she thinks these connotations are untranslatable):

Dieses Seminar versuchte, ein Gespräch mit Hegel zu beginnen. Das Gespräch mit einem Denker kann nur von der Sache des Denkens handeln. "Sache" meint nach der gegebenen Bestimmung den Streitfall, das Strittige, das einzig für das Denken der Fall ist, der das Denken angeht. Der Streit aber dieses Strittigen wird keineswegs erst durch das Denken gleichsam vom Zaun gebrochen. Die sache des Denkens ist das in such Strittige eines Streites. Unser Word Streit (ahd. strit) meint vornehmlich nicht die Zwietracht sondern die Bedrängnis. Die Sache des Denkens bedrängt des Denken in der Weise, daß sie das Denken erst zu seiner Sache und von dieser her zu ihm selbst bringt.
-"Die Onto-theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik," 107

I'll see what I can do here to resist Stambaugh and bring it out, as it bears upon precisely what we mean by "matter:"

This seminar sought to begin a conversation with Hegel. A conversation with a thinker can be concerned only with the matter of thinking. "Matter" means according to the given determination of the point of contention--that contention that alone is, for thinking, the point that thinking tackles. The contending or contention however is not by any means only broken into by thinking, as it were, like picking a fight. The matter of thinking is the contention in a point of contention. Our word contending [Streit] (Old High German strit) means primarily not a confrontation [between two things] but a conflict. The matter of thinking makes thinking conflict in such a way that only thus does it bring thinking to the matter and from there to thinking itself.

Better translations are very possible. Bedrängnis is tough for me here and so I decided to play with the word "conflict" as both a noun and a verb (thus the "makes" in the last sentence--though that is way too causal for Heidegger): I hoped it thereby retains some of its affinity with "affliction." Regardless, the point (which I hope to be proving by example) is that if you got the phenomenon here, then the "play" on the words, their connotations, is more of the matter for the translator than the person who is thinking through and with Heidegger. And that the "Sache" itself is what is important: as this passage makes clear, it is what is at the essence of a point, what besets thinking and calls out for it (the Latin root of contention is contestare: to call out for a witness to testimony). It is that which does not make thinking stand over and against what is to be thought (another thinker's thought, for example), as if to confront it and struggle with it that way. It is that which is singular or one in any such engagement with what is to be thought: that which brings thinking to other thinking, that in which both have their being such that any confrontation between them is only possible in this one essential conflict. Insofar as language enters into this, it will be only to open up that essential conflict. That means that one doesn't really dispute with another thinker, for example, by quibbling over connotations--or at least this only happens after the essential has been touched.
In the end, it was interesting to even think again about the difference between Sache and Ding: I think if you were too immersed with Heidegger you wouldn't even think again about the fact that the two have serious affinity connotatively in German. I certainly was too immersed here--a bit too dogmatic as I say at the end. But you see that language here is precisely coming in for me when I already think I have a clear sense of the phenomenon. I guess this means that, in short, language in Heidegger should, ideally, act more as a corrective to the phenomenology than as something that communicates it. This would be true, then, for both newcomers and those to whom Heidegger is familiar. Anyway, here is the response:

To my knowledge, the word Heidegger is usually using is "das Ding" for thing, not "Sache." You're not wrong though: in German one can use either word for "thing." But for Heidegger, the reason it's not the latter is because "Sache" ususally means "the matter" or "the issue," not something more like an object, a stuff, an item, which is closer to what Ding means. Heidegger generally seperates the two because the first, in its more broad scope, is closer to what phenomenology tries to get at: "die Sachen selbst" is what Husserl says one has to go towards when looking at the phenomenon. In this sense, "Sachen" here means not what it is usually translated as ("the things themselves"), but something closer to "the matter at hand" or "for thought"--in short, and in Husserlian terms, the essence of whatever is concerning the phenomenologist, what it is as it is, that is, what it means for whatever to be what it is as such. This is different from it being a Ding--so different, in fact, that what Heidegger is doing in "The Thing" is precisely looking at das Ding so as to discern what about it makes it a Sachen for thinking, a matter for thinking or thought, that is, his type of phenomenology (different, of course, from Husserl's). In this sense, what is the Sachen here about the Ding is precisely its "thingliness," that is, what makes it, as a thing, be a thing--what makes it a thing as such. The odd words here--"thinghood" "thingliness"--are trying to refer to the thing in its being, that is, the thing in what makes it what it is, its as such, its essence (although one has to understand essence differently than with Husserl--but that's another issue somewhat).
The only other word Heidegger will be using repeatedly here for "thing" is Objekt: but this will only be translated as "object," never as "thing," precisely because, as you know, the essay is trying to get at the bottom of the difference between Ding and Objekt, and see the thing underneath, as it were, the object--the object being an ob-ject, what stands-apart-or-against us, as Heidegger says (taking ob- as the latin prefix for "standing-apart"). The point is to see the table, for example, or the jug, as something I can pick up and use, not as a set of points in Cartesian space--as I'm sure you know.
All this said, I don't think hunting around in the German is really worth your time: Hoftstader is usually pretty good at translating and Heidegger himself isn't usually trying to deceive you or play on words in a way that would repay this. What he does when he plays on words is groups together cognates, so as to show you an affinity between them: thus he'll gather together a whole bunch of words that start with über- or Ab-, or have -schick- in them (a word in itself meaning something, for Heidegger, like destination, which, if you grant Heidegger the affinities he is trying to piece together, makes up Geschehen, history, and Schicksal, fate, etc.)--but all of this is trying to work out the phenomenon, to show you certain things are part of its structure and are so because they are related to how we attend to them and other phenomena (which we might not expect the same attention to reside within). And if you haven't got a sense of this (for example, in "The Thing," the sense of a negative space inside the jug, that at once is and isn't space because it is meant only to contain, to lack, to hold in, and never to push out, like a wall would), you're going to be lost no matter how much German you look at. Frankly, my German isn't that good. You just pick up on the crucial distinctions (like that between Sache and Ding for Heidegger) by reading enough Heidegger--glancing at the German only occasionally when Heidegger draws attention to it or uses a phrase continually ("proximally and for the most part," for example, in Being and Time: the only reason I know the German is cause I got curious and was like, I wonder what the hell that phrase is after all! and looked it up.).
And, one more thing: Heidegger will always be easy to parody. Only when you got a sense of what he's getting at under his funny language does the drive to imitate him get serious--and often then, you're probably too serious about whatever Heidegger is talking about. If you want to look at the origin of that language and the necessity for its use, you really have to just ground Heidegger back in phenomenology. Otherwise he just looks ridiculous and obsessed with certain "intrinsic" aspects of German. And while this latter thing might be true, insisting on it doesn't get you anywhere when you are trying to understand him: it is said that Merleau-Ponty remarked that he didn't like the later Heidegger precisely because of this linguistic factor or obsession, and focused on his early work only for this reason. While Merleau-Ponty is on some level right (the workings of the language are a layer to phenomenality that is not exactly obvious or by any means traditional--though Husserl himself, it can be argued, insisted on similar things), it shouldn't just make you put down a bunch of the work: you have to keep yourself from doing that. I would say, though, that it is a healthy impulse, and it shouldn't be gotten rid of in principle: it's surprising how far Heidegger can take you away from what you are familiar with, even if you aren't suspecting him of anything, and you actually do feel repulsed at particular points by whatever he is saying. Keep that up: without it, you end up a little too dogmatic and you end up not understanding, I think, the operations of uncovering that Heidegger is really getting at.

Praise for Rorty's Heidegger

I know it isn't a popular opinion, but I think there is much to be said for Rorty's pragmatist interpretation of Heidegger. Why? Well, it makes the claims that Hubert Dreyfus' interpretation of Heidegger is pragmatist sound absolutely foolish. Dreyfus isn't a pragmatist. He is a phenomenologist. And if people are going to accuse his phenomenology of being too pragmatic, too unconcerned in the more "transcendental" issues Heidegger is bringing up, well, they should probably not call Heidegger a phenomenologist then. And if they do that, they miss precisely what Heidegger was doing with phenomenology even in the introduction to Being and Time. In other words, they should probably think of him as a Kantian, which is just as absurd as not calling him a phenomenologist.
Rorty, then, shows what a real pragmatist interpretation of Heidegger would have to be. And he does so precisely by taking Heidegger's more "transcendental" remarks seriously. If he is errs in his interpretation, it is precisely in not considering Heidegger's phenomenology in the way Dreyfus does--in short, by considering only his more "Kantian" transcendental statements (for what it is worth, he errs in the opposite direction with Derrida and Nietzsche, by not considering these claims enough). In short, Dreyfus, far from being a pragmatist, actually combats the position of Rorty continuously, in my view.
And this already is how Rorty can be extremely useful, as I said. But he is most useful in this manner when he interprets (quite rigorously, I might add) the claims Heidegger makes regarding truth, particularly in "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit" but also in Being and Time. While one may disagree with his conclusions about the correspondence theory of truth in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, in considering Heidegger he has to flesh out exactly what a sort of non-correspondence theory of truth would have to be. If one can get past his statements that sound like relativism--which they are not, because they are pragmatist (Rorty I think enjoys or finds useful--like Derrida--being scandalous [I later took this word back, cf. my comment below] and always makes his pragmatist claims sound as relativist as possible, while always opposing relativism--perhaps to show, quite nobly I think, that pragmatism can oppose relativism right at the limit where the two might come together)--Rorty is exactly right in saying that a non-correspondence theory of truth in Heidegger is an attempt to get outside the power struggles that correspondence theories of truth since Plato have made us enter into. On Rorty's reading, then, one can see in a different way why Heidegger would so vigorously oppose Nietzsche. It is not because of a sort of leveling-down of all things into expressions of objectivity that Heidegger is opposing primarily but the fact that in Nietzsche truth is always a form of dominance. Eliminating or toning-down this dominance-structure in truth is Heidegger's objective--or is at least one of them. This is a hard thought for many Heideggerians to think, I think. But it is extremely rewarding, because one doesn't then have to disclaim that non-correspondence truth is just an other type of truth that, as it were, supervenes upon the truth that is correspondence, as Dreyfus tends to do in order to make Heidegger a bit more palatable there. Indeed, in the end, Dreyfus is right that Heidegger isn't calling for something totally different than the correspondence theory of truth to all of a sudden take over our dealings with truth. Correspondence has a particular role to play still. And so Rorty I think is ultimately wrong when it comes to what Heidegger is claiming, precisely because he does not see this role other than as a mere means that pragmatists' non-correspondence dealings with truth will employ. But he is extremely useful for going a little beyond Dreyfus to flesh out the possibilities that are there.
Of course, someone who thinks Dreyfus is full of it to begin with for not dealing with Division II (an inane criticism, since he is always dealing with it) and more "transcendental" statements  (again, which he always does) will not learn anything from Rorty in this respect. And thus one can see why their being closed-off to this interpretation, thinking that they are really "going beyond" the supposedly watered-down Anglo-American Heidegger, is mere self-righteousness. One should emphasize that Stiegler and Derrida (and, now that I think about it, John Sallis and Jean-Luc Nancy) are some examples of thinkers who did remain open to this Heidegger, and one can see by the amazing nature of their interpretation that it is quite profitable to do so. If they break with Heidegger on certain issues, one could make the case that they are precisely breaking with this effort of Heidegger to remove power from truth: they assert that power is still around even in Heidegger's truth, and this is why they keep calling themselves more Nietzschian than Heideggerian (Derrida goes so far as to call for the rescue of Nietzsche from a Heideggerian interpretation--cf. the opening pages of Of Grammatology).

"Good news, everybody!"

Could it be true? Hubert Farnsworth of Futurama is based on Hubert Dreyfus of Berkeley's philosophy department?

Apparently an early writer for the show gave Farnsworth the first name Hubert because he took Dreyfus' courses. But, beyond this particular fact, aren't most of Farnsworth's mannerisms quite similar to those of Bert Dreyfus'?

One sees quite the parallel between Dreyfus' wonderful belief in the merits of phenomenology--not to mention the powerful analyses regarding motility and being in the world in general that he is able to elaborate with its help or through it--and the fun Farnsworth has with his Smell-o-scope. Also, they actually do look pretty similar, now that I think about it...

Here is a great interview with Dreyfus, where he talks about coming from the sciences to philosophy, the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, and teaching (his amazing comments there are in fact probably the least Farnsworthian, who likes to shut himself up in his lab).

Here is a wonderful paper of Dreyfus' on phenomenology in contrast to the (equally wonderful) work of Searle.

And here is a great paper on tele-presence: indeed, if Dreyfus were to go more in this direction, push his thought there, he would end up thinking things similar to Derrida. Cf. his reflections on tele-psychoanalysis in Psyche, volume I, Echographies, and elsewhere. Then again, if you put on anyone's thought you end up with Derrida. Sam Weber (the Derridian) is actually closer to the mark of what Dreyfus there elaborates.

And just for fun is a great picture of Michel Foucault (pictured with students from his philosophy seminar at UC Berkeley, October 1983: the students gave Foucault the cowboy hat as a gift), in an article in which Dreyfus talks about Foucault's visits to Berkeley.

Some remarks on Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus, and Derrida

Derrida's quite formulaic comments in On Touching--Jean Luc Nancy on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty would add something to current general readings of Merleau-Ponty here in the US. These can be represented generally (and only generally) by Hubert Dreyfus' work on Merleau-Ponty and skill acquisition (which are summed up quite nicely in a paper he gives here). Dreyfus makes much about the anti-representationalist or bodily nature of perception that Merleau-Ponty employs as an alternative to the more "representationalist" theories of the mind--especially found in computational models. These representationalist theories of mind would require a perception to be registered not necessarily consciously, but by the system or network of input/output relations that constitute the functional mind. Merleau-Ponty places the impression a perception makes beyond our outside these sites of registration, as Dreyfus quotes Merleau-Ponty as saying:

An impression can never by itself be associated with another impression. Nor has it the power to arouse others. It does so only provided that it is already understood in the light of the past experience in which it co-existed with those which we are concerned to arouse.

This pre-representational precomprehension would structure experience beyond any computational model and even (or, as Merleau-Ponty constantly reminds us in his Phenomenology of Perception) beyond any Kantian transcendental structure, situating it in a network of relations that are lived spatially and temporally in the purity of a gap or space between the world and the mind or self that lives. This space (and time) is the body, and it is only on the basis of this body, this pre-understanding of the possibility of a perceptual impression to mean or to have value (we are speaking loosely and too quickly here) that we then can have an impression at all and associate it with another--that is, come forth or be represented and related explicitly with the other--as the computational or representationalist model of the mind would have it. The gap in between the "source" of the perception (the world) and "destination" that receives it as an impression (the mind--again, speaking very loosely) is the space and time in which there would exist a contingent (thus not transcendental or ideal or Kantian) comportment that structures the possibility of these two, and in fact is possibility itself: the unique fabric or intertwining of the world and the self that juts into time and space as an intention. It is here that we must look for phenomena like skill-acquisition, learning, decision, etc. etc.--and Dreyfus outlines quite clearly all the possibilities of this.

Now, Derrida considers this space and time itself divided or dispersed--that is, this gap across which stretches an intention is itself a gap, a space and time, and so on and so on. But not because the body or the intentional network that structures our experience just has at its center an irreducible gap, that every intention is itself never fully able to be bridged and grasp (Dreyfus looks closely at grasping) what it wants to get at or accomplish itself except arbitrarily (by fantasy) or by starting over (compulsion): rather, it is because for there to be an intention, for this intentional space prior to representation to be contingent and not ideal, to be fully worldly, that is, indeterminate and yet (as intention) finite, there would have to exist infinite contingency, the possibility of complete indetermination. In other words, the pre-representational body of intention (my prior worldly understanding that juts through space and time and accomplishes) only accomplishes what it does because at its heart, it is completely the carrying out of what, outside this intention, is capable of being represented fully. In other words, the computational model is what is at the heart of this pre-computational intention: it has to be able to be represented by this model to such an extent that it is, in its accomplishing of the intention, exactly indistinguishable from it. The space of intentional precomprehension is, therefore, precisely in its contingency, absolutely ideal.

So the tendency to grasp, for example. This is often used as the expression of the preunderstanding or comprehension of a bodily subjectivity that makes possible and comprehensible any subjectivity, any decision that comes to mind consciously: it is only on the basis of a tendency to grasp that one can grasp and also think to themselves that they want to grasp whatever they grasp. How would Derrida look at this? Well, the body, as the intentional structure that really is the locus where the grasping is made possible, is itself rent apart as a space of intention. So my grasping would not be able to be traced as taking place there, in the bodily subjectivity. At the same time, it would still not be in the mind as represented. The tendency, in other words, would give us nothing to look at: there is no ground or basis on which one could represent to oneself the possibility of grasping--where in Merleau-Ponty (that is, Dreyfus' Merleau-Ponty, mainly) it is only on this basis that there is this representation. The tendency is empty: it is itself totally other than a tendency, a consistency, a structure of itself prior to what is structured. Rather, the tendency to grasp would be "caused" or based only on the possibility that it could be the action of someone who could say to themselves "I want to grasp this" and thereby carry it out. The carrying out of the tendency to grasp would be only possible if it is impossible as a tendency, if it were, as a tendency, already completely other to itself in its non-being, in its functioning. In fact, it would have to be precisely this representation, this saying, in order to be a tendency: in short, the intentional must be the computational or representational in order to be intentional.

This isn't some basic playing with concepts: in fact, every act would be structured and actually accomplished this way, for Derrida. In the space of the lived body, there is already division that makes it determined by the possibility of what it makes possible (representation)--thus making it impossible: this is how every intention finds its fulfillment--that is, impossibly. This means that it is always radically contingent to the extent that it looks like it could merely be calculated by a computer, merely associated. This constitutes his whole objection to the reading of Husserl that Merleau-Ponty engages in: where Merleau-Ponty is quick to see a gap where the body would play or function, Derrida sees total play, unreserved play, total functioning, to the extent that it breaks with this functioning. To put it in the language of the quote of Dreyfus: it is only on the basis of the fact that every impression is associated with every other that there could be a space prior to this which, as the understanding that makes them possible, brings them about and in so doing brings nothing about or renders itself impossible. I'll post more on this later, but hopefully these sketches will do some good.

Division II, baby

Ohh yeah... get ready for it: Classes start soon at Berkeley, and Hubert Dreyfus' lectures on Division II of Being and Time are going to be downloadable.

They're amazing lectures, and a really great way to begin to learn what Heidegger is talking about. It's interesting: you see that many people are critical of Dreyfus for being too pragmatist, leaning too much on Division I and not pursuing paths, very much present in Being and Time, that open up so easily into his later work--all this you hear, but I think Dreyfus' interpretations have held up for so long despite the changes in Heidegger scholarship over the years because he has a real sense of what he continually refers to as "the phenomenon:" Dreyfus thinks extremely hard about the sort of happening, the sort of taking place, the phenomenology that Heidegger is doing when he is doing phenomenological ontology and that can be overlooked quite easily, because he just has so much to say about ontology! This doesn't mean Dreyfus interprets Heidegger like he is Husserl or something, or even like Merleau-Ponty... it just means that he gives you such a solid foundation from which you can either take off from or ground yourself within in order to deal with Heidegger, because he gives you a vivid sense of the moment of the phenomenon taking place--the point of its withdrawal. You really see that this aspect of what Heidegger is doing is almost indispensable for some of his larger claims: the interpretation of time as futural must show up in worldhood somehow, and show up in a definite phenomenon that we can sort of see every day... this "must," this necessity, is the mark of Dreyfus' rigor--getting you to see it like this is his job, and he does it wonderfully. I think that one thing that he said during last semester's course is absolutely true: that in this sense Division I is more expansive and anything said in Division II. Whether Dreyfus thinks this is because Division II is less worked out and a more rough draft than Division I, or because it constitutes less of an interpretation and working out of Aristotle, or anything else, I think that this claim remains legitimate if only because you can see how much mileage Dreyfus himself is able to make of it. That is (sorry for these fragmented comments, they'll have to do for now, given that I'm traveling a lot and writing papers), I think Division I is more expansive because it is making a claim about the merits of ontology in its exposition that is unprecedented and sets the tone, so to speak, for anything that could follow from it. More than the courses, or even the Contributions to Philosophy, the first division of Being and Time is such a sustained effort of an argument about ontology that it colors everything that will follow. It is the struggle with the attempt to think beyond or before "values" or "experiences" and to bring them back to a "how," a reason or a structure that runs deeper than any particular way you can specify that structure--any "what." It is that amazingly creative leap Heidegger makes away from Husserl and back towards Aristotle, that one can see in his early lecture notes.

The Davos "Arbeitsgemeinschaft" and some helpful quotes on Being and Time

I just finished reading the amazing Davos disputation (called, euphemistically as it can only appear now, an "Arbeitsgemeinschaft" or "workgroup" while the event was being held--I should just mention now that anyone interested in it should consult Peter Eli Gordon's fascinating account of the conflict in Modern Intellectual History, 1, 2 [2004], pp. 219–248) between Heidegger and Cassirer that took place in the little Alpine city in early March 1929 (pictured, as it probably looked in March). Heidegger in his rebellious ski-clothes (I've tried to evoke how strange Heidegger looked at the time by including this picture from 1921 of him, on the right, with Gadamer chopping wood) walked in, pissed off at what he thought were Cassirer's misreadings of Being and Time, which still was extremely new on the philosophical scene (has anyone yet digested Badiou's sequel to Being and Event, Logiques des mondes? This philosophical atmosphere probably has the same relationship to 1929's and its familiarity, especially with Kantians like Cassirer, with Being and Time--in fact I think we can appreciate how penetrating Cassirer's reading is, especially with regard to truth, given this atmosphere), and proceeded to bulldoze him with a series of amazingly penetrating responses. By "bulldozed," I mean mostly that in general Heidegger just rudely talked over him: I don't think Heidegger made himself look any better by doing this, except to the hoarde of his spiritual followers in the audience. Nor is it clear that he presented a better case about Kant than Cassirer, in the end. But something (and you can see from the vehemence that this something is very much tied into his Nazism) impelled him to be impolite and indirect to one of the most amazing minds of the early twentieth century. If we can rationalize it, I think he was angry that people were not able to see and appreciate what he had been developing through his teaching and writing at Freiburg for more than a decade--the ideas that made up and were condensed into Being and Time. But obviously there is more to it than that, and this "more" precisely what becomes and what always was ugly, barbaric, romantic, naively Wagnerian and in the end unbelievably stupid in Heidegger. Regardless, any scholar of Heidegger gets some very direct statements out of this "bulldozing," this disturbing performance there in front of Cassirer, regarding what Being and Time was frankly trying to get at, not to mention some more direct statements on Heidegger's interpretation of Kant. From Cassirer, we also get an elucidation of the importance he accords to the symbol and its relationship to freedom, which Heidegger to a certain extent sees (inanely) as unimportant in pushing Cassirer into a definition of what freedom is and how it relates to time. In the end, what I'm saying is that Heidegger brings it to this debate. That said, the quotes we see below should really help anyone reading Being and Time:

On Time:
Every page in this book was written solely with a view to the fact that since antiquity the problem of being was interpreted on the basis of time in a wholly incomprehensible sense and that time always announced the subject (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Fifth Edition, Appendix IV, 198). Notice "every page:" this means Division I, too (Heidegger somewhere says this of Division I explicitly in the discussion, but I can't find it).

What, then, does the eternal actually mean here? From where, then, do we know of this eternity? Is this eternity not just permanence in the sense of the aei [the "always," the "forever," the "everlasting"] of time? Is this eternality not just that which is possible on the grounds of an inner transcendence [my emphasis, mj] of time? ...that [is,] time is not just what makes transcendence possible, but that time itself has in itself a horizonal character; that in a futural process of having been as a comportment [my interpretation of what the transcribers of the debate probably misconstrued, mj] I always have at the same time a horizon with respect to the present, futurity, and having-been [or what the transcribers misconstrue as "pastness", mj] in general; that a transcendental, ontological determination of time is found here, within which something like the permanence of the substance [the phenomenon of the aei] is constituted for the first time (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Fifth Edition, Appendix IV, 198).

On "Anxiety:"
This whole problematic in Being and Time, which treats Dasein in man, is no philosophical anthropology... the task is: to bring out the temporality of Dasein with reference to the possibility of the understanding of Being... The analysis of death has the function of bringing out the radical futurity of Dasein, but not of producing an altogether final and metaphysical thesis concering the essence of death (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Fifth Edition, Appendix IV, 199). This quote (and the next) seems absolutely indispensible for anyone who is reading Heidegger on anxiety and death, or indeed any one of the "ontical possibilities of Dasein" that Heidegger looks at throughout the work, because it shows a bit clearer than in Being and Time what the role of this ontical possibility is playing in the work. It also shows you that Dasein in general is not a being or entity which man always is, but rather is "in man." In other words, it is a kind or way of manifestation of being, like Vorhanden or Zuhanden. If one thinks the relationship of man to Dasein in this way, you reading Being and Time becomes a lot easier (even though, as Derrida constantly reminds us, this relationship is confused and constantly re-thought in Heidegger, and, in fact, never sufficiently resolved). In the end, what I'm getting at is that you can see the genius of the simplicity in the way Hubert Dreyfus presents his account of what Dasein is (that it is just one of these kinds of being that man can, in a sense, enter into and step out of--even though man never can properly or "own-mostly" be something other than Dasein), and that it gets its justification in the most forthright passages of Heidegger like these.

On the grounds of which metaphysical sense of Dasein itself is it possible that the human being in general can have been placed before something like the Nothing? In answer to this question, the analysis of anxiety was provided so that the possibility of theNothing is thought of only as an idea which has also been grounded in this determination of the disposition of anxiety. It is only possible for me to understand Being if I understand the Nothing or anxiety. Being is incomprehensible if the Nothing is incomprehensible (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Fifth Edition, Appendix IV, 199).

Etc.
I would misunderstand myself if I said that I gave a philosophy free of points of view. And here a problem is expressed: that of the relationship between philosophy and world-view. Philosophy does not have the task of giving world-view, although, again, world-view is the presupposition of philosophizing. And the world-view which the philosopher gives is not a direct one in the sense of a doctrine or in the sense of an influencing. Rather, the world-view which the philosopher gives rests in the fact that in the philosophizing, it succeeds in making the inner possibility of this finite creature comport itself with respect to beings as a whole (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Fifth Edition, Appendix IV, 200). Here Heidegger resignifies the role of "world-view" in his work in opposition to Cassirer (or really any humanist philosopher--Cassirer really has just become a straw-man for Heidegger at this point): world-view is a "setting free of the Dasein in man," not an opening out of philosophy into "cultural philsophy," which Heidegger, rashly, characterizes Cassirer's work as.

Foucault and Hegel

In my big Marx, Hegel, Feuerbach post I try and describe Hegel's conception of Geist by saying it is a lot like Foucault's notion of discourse. Looking through Foucault's candidacy presentation to the Collège de France, I found he himself also obliquely makes this comparison:

To the extent that, in a given period, [knowledge] has clearly specified forms and domains, it can be broken down into several systems of thought. Obviously, it is by no means a matter of determining the system of thought of a particular epoch, or something like its "world-view." Rather, it is a matter of identifying the different ensembles that are each bearers of a quite particular type of knowledge...
-in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 9

Foucault is suggesting that Hegel is so abstract that he approximates the "sprit of the time"-type analysis, but at the same time he is suggesting a kinship between them, in that they are looking for a level of knowledge that is not localized within specific fields (biology, math, etc.) nor in the mere objective institutions that constitute these subjective domains (prisons, universities, police... etc). That is, Foucault to an extent engages Hegel in engaging a fundamental theoretical problem:

...the theoretical problem of the constitution of a science when one aims to analyse it not in transcendental terms but in terms of history.
-in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 8

This is a good way to take Hegel most of the time, even though he is engaged in a transcendental project. In the end, the following definition of discourse in Foucault's seminar on the "will to truth" comes, therefore, surprisingly close to a concrete sense of Hegelian Geist as it is active in history:

Discursive practices are characterized by the demarcation of a field of objects, by the definition of a legitimate perspective for a subject of knowledge, by the setting of norms for elaborating concepts and theories. Hence, each of them presupposes a play of prescriptions that govern exclusions and selections.
-in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 11

This language of exclusion and prescription is the underlying concrete sense of what Hegel often says. In final analysis, the conclusion we are suggesting here is that Spirit is like discourse minus the (incredibly significant, for Foucault) imbrication of discourse with the Nietzschian concept of power. It should be noted that the inclusion of this language brings discourse closer to Heidegger's "understanding"--to the point where it can even be said (and Hubert Dreyfus indeed does say this) that they are almost identical concepts.
But in the end it remains a matter of thought whether we've levelled off both what Foucault and Hegel have said to the point it no longer carries any meaning. I would suggest in the end that thinking of Geist as discourse is useful as a conceptual reference, to give some concreteness to what Hegel is talking about, but never to reduce it completely to discourse or even think that they are near identical. But we should note that this comparison isn't all unfounded as regards the inner essence of the projects of the two thinkers. What we're saying here indeed takes advantage of Spirit and discourse's profound commonality in being elaborations of the Greek concept of logos (in the sense of legein, gathering together, as well in the sense that logos gives noein, intuition), and in that sense this does not remain a mere exercise for thinking Hegel concretely.

Dreyfus on sources in Heidegger

Here is an amazing article by Hubert Dreyfus that confirms what I was sketching out in my post on the sources in Heidegger, and brings out how to take these sources and their combination. I might comment on this more later.