Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

by Martin Heidegger, Richard Taft

Since its original publication in 1929, Martin Heidegger's provocative book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has attracted much attention both as an important contribution to twentieth-century Kant scholarship and as a pivotal work in Heidegger's own development after Being and Time. This fifth, enlarged edition includes marginal notations made by Heidegger in his personal copy of the book and four new appendices―Heidegger's postpublication notes on the book, his review of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Heidegger's response to reviews by rudolf Odebrecht and Cassirer, and an essay "On the History of the Philosophical Chair since 1866." The work is significant not only for its illuminating assessment of Kant's thought but also for its elaboration of themes first broached in Being and Time, especially the problem of how Heidegger proposed to enact his destruction of the metaphysical tradition and the role that his reading of Kant would play therein.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics, Nonfiction, 20th Century, Theory, German Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among Heidegger's books, this one about Kant’s Critique is a unique and strange one - as it stays almost completely within metaphysics. Kant himself referred to his “Critique of Pure Reason” as a “metaphysics of metaphysics”. This is strange because Heidegger made a radical point in all his other books to totally denounce metaphysics in all its forms and contents; yet here he is fully using metaphysics to show Being. Heidegger probably thought that the Kantian and metaphysical Germany of that time was not yet ready for his “Being and Time”, but will accept this meta-meta-physical approach to Being. As such, this book abounds in metaphysical concepts that Heidegger directly took from Kant and positively used here like: finitude, transcendence, pure, subject-object, subjectivity-objectivity, intuition-understanding-reason, ascent, representation, imagination, and so on. Eventually Heidegger will realize his mistake and will never attempt to use metaphysics again; even at the risk of no one understanding him again.



Original 2022 review:

This is the promised continuation of “Being and Time” and the beginning of Heidegger's direct engagement with major figures from the history of philosophy. Later Heidegger will dissociate himself more or less from this book.
The question is: what is the background that makes possible the a priori synthetic judgments; or alternatively, what is that brings together sense and reason or content and form in Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason”. In the first version of the Critique, Kant named the “transcendental imagination” as this background. In the second version of the Critique, Kant stepped back from such an abysmal foundation; bowed before the emerging German Idealism, Reason, and Logic; and dismissed the fundamental status of imagination. Heidegger identifies “transcendental imagination” with time as defined by him in “Being and Time”; and agrees with Kant's original project.
The book is amazing in engaging the issue of human finitude; as opposed to absolute or God's infinity. The question is how such a finite and limited creature as a human being can have access to knowledge. The domain of possible answers to this question are necessarily related to: metaphysical foundations and projections, ontology and theology, human nature and Dasein, and eventually with Being and Time.

[Nicolas Calfas · Rating 5 out of 5]

De "und" in de titel toont al aan dat het hier veeleer gaat om het probleem van de metafysica (o.a. hoe zijn die synthetisch a priori oordelen toch mogelijk) dan een waarheidsgetrouwe weergave van Kant, wat Heidegger zelf ook toegeeft. Hij verzet zich tegen de neo-kantiaanse traditie, die in Kants eerste Kritiek voornamelijk een kennistheoretisch project zag die trachte de grenzen van het mathematisch-natuurwetenschappelijke domein te duiden. Daartegenin stelt hij dat Kants opzet fundamenteel metafysisch van aard is, en dat Kant op zoek ging, al tastend in het donker, naar de mogelijkheid van een metaphysica generalis, een metafysica van de metafysica, met als leidende vraag: "Wat is de mens?". Misschien herinner je je de befaamde drie die er uit volgen:

- Wat kan ik kennen?
- Wat zou ik moeten doen?
- Wat mag ik hopen?

Mogen we Heidegger geloven, wijzen ze alle vier op ons eindigheid, of eerder, komen ze als vragen eruit voort.

Mij goed, laat DE Kant maar gezocht worden door DE Kantfilologen. Laat Heidegger maar in alle oprechtheid van het filosoferen de zaak zelf belangrijker achten dan het voorzichtig trachten te nuanceren van het geweld die onvermijdelijk aangedaan wordt bij het bieden van een intepretatie (want zo lees je er ook veel). De "und" is dus om meer redenen belangrijk, net zoals bij Sein und Zeit.

Met de juiste blik naar het boek toe verschijnt er dan ook veel interessants. Hoe dieper je graaft, des te meer SuZ begint door te klinken; des te meer Tijd en Tijd en Tijd en hier en daar eens een Zijn je leest. Op het einde kom je ook een beschrijving tegen van het uiteindelijke einddoel van dit boek: de opzet en invulling van een Fundamentalontologie die de metafysica van het Erzijn vormt, en diens eindigheid in zijn volle oorspronkelijkheid terug het daglicht in loodst. Zolang je dan weet dat het niet langer over Kant gaat, is het prachtig om te lezen. Kortom, een mooie inleiding en/of terugblik op SuZ, mits je de Kritiek gelezen hebt.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heidegger explains Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ better than Kant explains it himself and this text will lay out what is going on and why it is important.

Imagine for a second that the world was a movie with frames at 32 frames per second. The frames we see are the experiences we have and imagine the frames show a man walking into the building with a bomb and so on until the building blew up in the last frame. The ‘narrative’ we create to explain the building blow up is what Kant will call the ‘transcendental deduction’ and Kant thinks it must be real while Heidegger believes it can be misleading. For Kant under his thought to be perfect Newtonian framework that narrative is objective and correct and the science he knew at that time (1789) must be absolute. It was so absolute that some (such as Ernst Mach a hundred years latter) would say that F=ma was a tautology (Kantian language would say ‘an analytical’ truth) and therefore could not possibly be wrong. Kant puts the nexus of truth inside us with his Copernican Revolution of the mind. Truth does not lie outside of us but within us, under a Kantian framework.

Kant knows it’s the ‘I think about I think’ never just the ‘I think’. Descartes’ cogito separates us from who we are and the world. Kant wants to put us back into the world by re-centering Truth's origins within the faculties of knowledge (i.e. brain) and uses Locke (and Hume) and Berkeley (and Leibniz) by bridging the physical with the mental and creates a ‘Copernican Revolution’ of the mind in the process.

Heidegger up until the very end doesn’t make this book about himself as he usually seems to with his other books. He makes it about Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ and why it’s so important and what it means. In the last 20 pages or so, Heidegger does make it about him and relates everything he has been saying to his favorite book ‘Being and Time’. He actually explains ‘Being and Time’ better than Dreyfus does in ‘Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I’ and he does that all in one short chapter.

Heidegger seems to want to be understood in this book and he doesn’t seem to have an excessive amount of esoteric specially created vocabulary floating around as he did with his ‘Being and Time’. Using Kantian language Heidegger will explain Kant when he says, we live within a ‘transcendental deduction’ and pure absolutes gives us our reality, and our finitude gives us our determination from the indeterminate. He’ll explain each within his own framework (ontology) while never straying too far from Kant’s own beliefs.

Kant will take truth out from above us and puts it back into us for its origin. The thing and the thing-in-itself (phenomena and noumena) differ by the removal of space, time and causality and give us our pure absolute. The big picture is that the nexus for understanding is no longer taken in a Cartesian way, but within us according to Kant, and Heidegger doesn’t fully accept that, but prefers Kant to Descartes. ‘Every determination is a negation’ as Spinoza says, Hegel beats to death and Sartre grabs on to. It’s a way of saying that the finite (Dasein, the thing that takes a stand on its own understanding) is the source of meaning.

In ‘Being and Time’ Heidegger assumes Being thus giving it meaning. He will make Being (both ‘essent’ and Dasein) into Time and then he’ll make Time finite. Our meaning will come from our choices because we have no claim to infinity. Even though, Heidegger claims he is not an existentialist one can see the connections between him and the existentialists. Heidegger can work within the framework of Kant and get away from the tradition of ‘Being as Truth or Being as presence’ and lead towards ‘Being as unconcealing’. Hegel gives Heidegger a chance to put ‘historicity’ into Kant and thus leading more towards his overall philosophical project. Kant’s pure interpretations are static across time, space and culture (or context). Hegel will allow Heidegger to add the unfolding of history through culture (or nations) to bring the ‘being-in-the-world’ in to the equation to explain our existence (dasein), facticity (das Man, the ‘they’), and ‘falling towards’ all of which lead us away from our ‘authentic’ self. (Since it’s not obvious, the first is ‘now’, the second is past and the third is future).

This book is a must for those who enjoy Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ and Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ and understand why Nietzsche and Kierkegaard bemoan the atomization of the world and how philosophy made a wrong turn with Descartes. Yes, I understand fully how Heidegger is a Nazi and how he can be subsumed by present day fascist as illustrated in ‘Dangerous Minds’ by Ronald Beiner (probably my favorite book so far this year!), but overall today’s fascist don’t read him since they can’t understand anything but their own hate. Today’s fascist and republican’s who think ‘both sides are to blame’ when neo-Nazis drive their car into innocent people protesting fascist in Charlottesville would be able to firm up their intolerant views by reading Heidegger (and Nietzsche), but overall they don’t since for those whose first principles derive from hate of others prefer to have no ground for their hate except the hate itself.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is Martin Heidegger's "over-interpretation" of Kant, as Heidegger himself described Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Heidegger argues that Kant was able to circumscribe the domain of metaphysics, questions about the underlying nature of reality, to what it would be possible for a human being to experience. Heidegger gives a close reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason throughout much of the work, and still some novel ideas emerge.

One of the most novel ideas of Heidegger's work is that there is one mental faculty in particular that is the key to Kant's thinking in the Critique, and that is the faculty of the Imagination. For Kant, there are at least three mental faculties: the Sensibility, the Understanding, and Reason. Sensibility is the faculty that received the data or information from the outside. The Understanding is the faculty that shapes that raw data, and which allows us to think about that information conceptually. This is done initially non-consciously, like, allowing us to see a chair as a chair, for example. But this faculty also allows us to think about objects and events in the world under more complicated concepts as well. The faculty of Reason has two roles, only one of which Kant emphasizes. The first role is to create a system out of all of our experiences. It can do this at the commonsensical level and at the scientific level, the latter which allows us to construct elaborate theories about the way the world works. The second role of Reason is to ask philosophical questions there's no answer to. These are questions about the existence of God, the existence of the soul, the existence of free will, and so on. And all these faculties are at work in daily lives, and while we are thinking about something deeply and scientifically.

Sometimes, however, Kant writes as though these three faculties are not the only faculties, but that there is at least still one more faculty, the Imagination. The Imagination is that faculty which synthesizes at the various levels of the other faculties. So while the faculty of the Sensibility receives the sensory information, the Imagination makes the information coherent and ready to be processed at the level of the Understanding, that faculty which thinks about the world conceptually. Then the Imagination makes that information further available for the faculty of Reason, to allow Reason and, by extension us, to think about the world as a commonsense or scientific system. When Kant sometimes writes this way, it seems as though the most fundamental faculty is the faculty of Imagination, and not only that, it seems to be the most important.

I think Heidegger's work is great at pointing up this aspect of Kant's Critique. It is true, however, that Kant only wrote of the faculty of Imagination in any serious sense in one chunk of the Critique, and after that wrote as if it were not a faculty, let alone an important one. But Heidegger was definitely on to something to pick this aspect out and highlight it as an important concept in the work. Whether the Imagination does what Heidegger thinks it does in matters that are relevant to Heidegger's own work is another matter. Maybe, maybe not. I'm agnostic on that issue.

[Buck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enlightening book, even you disagree with Heideggers project, this book is a wonderful and relatively short read that is Heidegger at its clearest with regards to the main preoccupations that guide his work. The horizon most present here being the centrality of finitude as constitutive of the possibility of any comprehensive comportment to a world of meaning and correspondence.

[TL]

"I attempted to show that it is not at all self-evident to start from a concept of logos, but instead that the question of the possibility of metaphysics demands a metaphysics of Dasein itself as possibility of the fundament of a question of metaphysics. In this way, the question of what man is must be answered not so much in the sense of an anthropological system, but instead it must first be properly clarified with regard to the perspective from within which it wants to be posed."

"I believe that what I describe by Dasein does not allow translation into a concept of Cassirer's. Should one say consciousness, that is precisely what I rejected. What I call Dasein is essentially codetermined—not just through what we describe as spirit, and not just through what we call living. Rather, what it depends on is the original unity and the immanent structure of the relatedness of a human being which to a certain extent has been fettered in a body and which, in the fetteredness of the body, stands in a particular condition of being bound up with beings.

In the midst of this it finds itself, not in the sense of a spirit which looks down on it, but rather in the sense that Dasein, thrown into the midst of beings, as free, carries out an incursion into the being which is always spiritual and, in the ultimate sense, accidental. [It is] so accidental that the highest form of the existence of Dasein is only allowed to lead back to very few and rare glimpses of Dasein's duration between living and death. [It is] so accidental that man exists only in very few glimpses of the pinnacle of his own possibility, but otherwise moves in the midst of beings."

"In the entirety of my philosophical efforts, I left completely undecided the traditional shape and division of the philosophical disciplines, because I believe that the orientation to these is the greatest misfortune in the sense that we no longer come back to the inner problematic of philosophy. To an equal degree, neither Plato nor Aristotle could have known of such a division of philosophy. A division of this sort was the concern of the schools, i.e., of a philosophy that has lost the inner problematic of its questioning; and it requires exertion to break through these disciplines.

What is more, that is why if we pass through the disciplines of aesthetics, etc., we again come back to the specific metaphysical mode of Being of the region concerned. Art is not just a form of consciousness which shapes itself; rather, art itself has a metaphysical sense within the basic occurrence of Dasein itself."

"It turns out that Being itself has been dispersed in a multiplicity and that a central problem exists therein, namely, to attain the foundation in order to understand the inner multiplicity of the ways of Being based on the idea of Being. For my part, I am anxious to establish this sense of Being in general as central. Accordingly, the only trouble for my investigations has been judged to be [the need] to attain the horizon for the question concerning Being, its structure and multiplicity."

"The question concerning the essence of human beings is not to be understood in the sense that we study human beings empirically as given objects, nor is it to be understood in such a way that I project an anthropology of man. Rather, the question concerning the essence of human beings only makes sense and is only justifiable insofar as it derives its motivation from philosophy's central problematic itself, which leads man back beyond himself and into the totality of beings in order to make manifest to him there, with all his freedom, the nothingness of his Dasein.

This nothingness is not the occasion for pessimism and melancholy. Instead, it is the occasion for understanding that authentic activity takes place only where there is opposition and that philosophy has the task of throwing man back, so to speak, into the hardness of his fate from the shallow aspect of a man who merely uses the work of the spirit."

"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 transcendence of Dasein itself radical, i.e., it succeeds in making the inner possibility of this finite creature comport itself with respect to beings as a whole.

...because freedom is not an object of theoretical apprehending but is instead an object of philosophizing, this can mean nothing other than the fact that freedom only is and can only be in the setting-free. The sole, adequate relation to freedom in man is the self-freeing of freedom in man.

In order to get into this dimension of philosophizing, which is not a matter for a learned discussion but is rather a matter about which the individual philosopher knows nothing, and which is a task to which the philosopher has submitted himself—this setting-free of the Dasein in man must be the sole and central [thing] which philosophy as philosophizing can perform."

"To what extent does philosophy have as its task to be allowed to become free from anxiety? Or does it not have as its task to surrender man, even radically, to anxiety?"

[Lindsay Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to go back and read this book that I had originally encountered in 1980 when I was in graduate school.
During this last month I have studied Kant's Critique of Pure Reason more carefully than ever before, and I see how thoroughly he did establish the truth of metaphysics, and most particularly ontology (the study of Being-itself).
Often misunderstood as mere epistemology, Kant's work, especially as explicated by Heidegger herein, accomplished more than he could have realized in his lifetime.
Heidegger used this work to put a grounding under his earlier work, Being and Time, and its does make you want to read Being and Time again, but more importantly, for me, it refreshes my clarity in my work on the epistemology of higher consciousness.
For Heidegger, this book articulated the all-determining role of the transcendental imagination in grounding both sensory knowledge (intuition) and conceptual knowledge or the understanding. But, for me, it underscores the profound purpose of meditation in overcoming conceptual/scientific thinking and opens the door to a higher realization of the nature of the ground of our being.

[Alexandru Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

heidegger tries here to make kant seem like an ally in his project of fundamental ontology.
basically, he takes kant's first critique as NOT being theory of knowledge, but metaphysics / ontology.
and the main subject of the critique of pure reason to be finitude.
and he forces kant's text to say that intuition and thought spring from a common root - transcendental imagination - which basically is time / time-forming (thus, kant is read as a proto-heideggerian).

for me, the most important passage was paragraph 34, where he speaks about time as self-affection (identifying time with subjectivity) - this seems to be one of the main sources of michel henry's explorations of self-affectivity.

of course, this is not kant a la lettre.
and probably kant turned in his grave when this book was published :)

but, still, it is a very rewarding and stimulating (and clear) text - which expresses (one of) the heideggerian reading(s) of kant.

now, back to reading kant himself :)

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three years ago, when I started mentally hacking my way through Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, I had an inflated opinion of my ability to parse philosophical concepts. Today, as I finish this complex compendium of lectures from Martin Heidegger, all of the helium has escaped from the balloon of my nescient over-confidence. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to see Martin Heidegger’s summary and analysis of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, one world-famous philosopher critiquing another, in the former’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. In his systematic process, Heidegger first attempts to demonstrate Kant’s foundation for espousing a metaphysic. It certainly seems reasonable when Heidegger reduces that foundation to this epistemological tenet: “The factual limitation of reason is a consequence of its essence.” (p. 27) Where Kant uses “intuition” to express the innate knowledge possessed by a human being, Heidegger frames Kant’s understanding of intuition as cognition expressed in representation (p. 28) with such “intuition” deemed superior to empirical knowledge’s limitations (p. 29)

Kant’s epistemology enables him to set the idea of the Absolute (i.e. “divine”) separate from sensual cognition because “it” does not need to conform to any “essent.” (p. 36) Here, Heidegger observes that Kant was the first philosopher to assert “non-sensuous” cognition (p. 32). In that regard, Kant says that “appearances” aren’t mere illusions but present in the essent in itself but the essent does not require a manifestation in order to be itself. So, this relation between something in itself and its appearance corresponds to the relationship between finite knowledge and infinite knowledge with the former corresponding to the thing itself (e-ject) and the latter suggesting the thing’s perceived reality as an object. In summary, “because the appearance gives the essent only as object, it is basically impossible for it to let the essent be seen as e-ject.” (p. 38) So, Kant posits not two tiers of reality but two tiers of perceiving reality.

One thing Heidegger picks up on in the conclusion [Do I need to give a spoiler alert for a philosophy book derived from lectures given in 1928?] of the book is the idea of “primordial comprehension.” Kant uses time understood as a succession of mental states (p. 51) as opposed to sensual apprehension of outer appearances (p. 52). Indeed, it seemed to me that Kant seems to mean the pattern-making tendency of humanity when he writes of “primordial comprehension” (my words, Kant’s concept—p. 57). When one puts together this “primordial comprehension” with “the organizing of the total unity of the intrinsic, essential transcendence” (p. 75) in a synthesis, that unity can be presented as a rule (for Kant, a universal rule—p. 78). Those who have read Kant’s ideas on ethics should recognize the importance of the idea of universal rules (categorical imperatives—even though the term isn’t used in this discussion).

Heidegger notes that Kant tries to put the awareness of the transcendent into the imagination itself.
In turn, the imagination itself consists of connections, patterns, and relations (p. 87). Hence, in a pure synthesis both logic and aesthetic lead one beyond the knowledge of both logic and aesthetic in the need or transcendence (p. 143). Indeed, on page 180, Kant circles back to the primacy of “time” when he discusses the threefold aspect of “imagination:” facultas formandi (using images as representations) which is an activity of the present, facultas imaginandi,/i> (reproducing images which represent the past), and facultas praevendi (anticipating images which represent the future). “The abiding and unchanging ‘I’ (pure apperception) forms the correlate of all our representations.” (p. 197).

Heidegger will eventually undercut all the arguments of Kant that he carefully explains in the primary section of the book. Where Kant equates the transcendent quality of time with “primordial comprehension,” Heidegger insists that the ego (the “I” cited above) only forms its identity when it identifies the transcendence of time through comprehending one’s finitude (p. 198). So, he can argue, “Only because the transcendental imagination is rooted in time can it be the root of transcendence.” (p. 202) If I could be so bold as to paraphrase, it is only through the awareness of our deaths that we can perceive of something truly beyond ourselves.

Kant sums up his philosophy with three questions, which lead to an interrelated fourth: “1) What can I know? 2) What should I do? 3) What may I hope? 4) What is man?” (p. 214) Heidegger insists that the first three questions come down to power, duty, and hope. If one has to ask what one can do, even if that means knowing, that reveals one’s finitude (power—p. 223). If one is primarily concerned with duty, it reveals a sense that one has “not-yet” fulfilled something, hence an incompleteness which equals finitude (duty). If one hopes, one is filled with an expectation (p. 223). Since all expectation reveals a privation, this reveals finitude since one is concerned with what one does not have (pp. 223-224).

Heidegger finally moves into his finishing moves. “The assertion of every proposition, e.g., ‘Today is a holiday,’ implies an understanding of the ‘is’ and, hence, a certain comprehension of Being.” (p. 234) Using time as the general paradigm and specific knowledge of modes of being as subservient to time, he asserts that “We have, therefore, an understanding of Being even though the concept is lacking.” (p. 234) He suggests, “…the explication of the essence of finitude required for the establishment of metaphysics must itself always be basically finite and never absolute.” (p. 245) Then, he circles back to time as indicative of transcendence in the act of pure self-affection (pp. 251-252).

As I noted at the beginning of this “review” (more like a summary of concepts I think I’ve gleaned from the book) that I don’t think of myself as being nearly as intellectually nimble after reading Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics as I did before I read it. I also can’t really claim to have enjoyed the book, though I think I benefited from the challenge. Even if one can take issue (and one probably can) with my brief description of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, I feel like I’ve gained from it.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I expected, but Heidegger is still wrong re: Kant. He more or less gives a classic Hegelian critique of Kant, asserting that the teleological unity of cognition is only possible by an antecedent primordial unity or common root of its origin. This, of course, is illegitimate from the Kantian perspective: first, we must use the conditions of the possibility of cognition in the process of cognition, so it is impossible to cognise those conditions without first using those conditions. Second, there is no phenomenal unity of concept and intuition for our cognitive processes to cognise their identity (in my opinion anyway). Heidegger doesn't let this get in the way of his critique of Kant though, and there are some interesting comments here and there.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s kind of a terrible read. Heidegger doesn’t exactly follow a line of argument: he just circles around the idea that you need an intermediary synthesis (the imagination’s) to breach the gap between the synthesis of the intuition (that deals with the diversity of the sensory given) and that of thought (that shapes that content in a unified conceptual form). That���s a great idea, and Heidegger also provides some illuminating insight into the function of schematism in all this and eventually connects the aims of Kant’s Critique with his own “fundamental ontology” of the Dasein. But it’s just a bitch to read and kind of repetitive hence the harsh rating.

[saml · Rating 3 out of 5]

my favourite of the heidegger i have read, simply because the jargon of kant, in which i feel somewhat at home, necessarily delimits heidegger's, even as his buggery makes each familiar word alien. it still has all the arcane mystery of heidegger, which i would rather miss. still, i like ontological readings of kant

[Pierre E. Loignon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce livre n’a rien à voir avec Kant.
En effet, la violence de l’interprétation heideggérienne est si forte qu’on pourrait la comparer à un individu qui voudrait fixer une assiette de porcelaine sur un mur à l’aide d’un pistolet à clous de 4 pouces de diamètre. À la fin, il ne reste qu’un énorme clou inébranlablement planté dans un mur tout craquelé où aucune porcelaine n’est restée sauf quelques éclats enfoncés avec le clou.
Par contre, si on y apprend rien sur Kant, l’ouvrage constitue une étape importante du cheminement de pensée heideggérien. À mon sens, c’est effectivement l’horizon ontologico-métaphysique de SZ qui s’y auto-détruit et ce de manière si évidente que je suis porté à croire que cela se fait consciemment.
Aussi, lorsque Heidegger y revient une vingtaine d’années plus tard, pour son avant propos de la deuxième édition de 1950, il ne peut que reconnaître l’inanité absolue de ce travail du point de vue de la philologie historique. D’autre part, comme l’horizon de la philosophie qui était le sien au moment de l’écriture de ce travail est devenu incommensurable à celui qu’a pris sa philosophie après le tournant d’après, guerre, il ne se sent pas capable de rien y changer sans avoir à reprendre tout l’ouvrage, d’où son invitation au lecteur à s’instruire de ses défauts. (p.55)

[Edward Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is transcendental imagination as time as the root and unity of understanding and sensibility.

[Andrés · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kant quería ser Heidegger, pero no se atrevió. Ése es más o menos el resumen, pero no lo digo en tono irónico. Creo que Heidegger está absolutamente en lo cierto en sus apreciaciones sobre Kant y sobre la relación de la "imaginación" con la "finitud".

En general, el libro es recomendable sólo para lectores muy familiarizados con Kant. En mi caso, yo estoy muy familiarizado con Heidegger, pero menos con Kant, y la lectura de los primeros capítulos se hizo bastante dura.

Como curiosidad, para intentar entender esos capítulos sobre Kant, que Heidegger desmenuza con la meticulosidad de un entomólogo, tuve primero que releer los capítulos que Copleston dedicó a Kant y, para mi sorpresa, en mi libro de Copleston, cuando se habla de la Imaginación como mediadora entre la Sensibilidad y el Entendimiento, yo ya dejé allí varias notas del tipo "esto recuerda a Heidegger", "esto parece sacado de Ser y Tiempo", etc.

Como suele pasar con Heidegger, hubiera ganado mucho si hubiera leído este libro al revés, del capítulo último hasta el primero, y así lo haré en posibles futuras relecturas.

Una visión de conjunto de la tesis principal del libro se da en la p. 172, copiado a continuación, y con esto concluyo está reseña.


"La fundamentación kantiana de la metafísica conduce hacia la imaginación trascendental. Esta última es la raíz de ambas ramas: sensibilidad y entendimiento. La imaginación trascendental como tal posibilita la unidad originaria de la síntesis ontológica. Esta raíz está arraigada en el tiempo originario. El fundamento originario que se revela en la fundamentación es el tiempo. La fundamentación kantiana de la metafísica parte de la metaphysica generalis y se convierte en la pregunta acerca de la posibilidad de la ontología en general. Esta plantea el problema de la esencia de la constitución ontológica, es decir, el problema del ser en general.

La fundamentación de la metafísica se funda en el tiempo. La pregunta por el ser, pregunta fundamental de la fundamentación de la metafísica, es el problema de "Ser y Tiempo".

Este título encierra la idea que dirige la presente interpretación de la Crítica de la Razón Pura como fundamentación de la metafísica. Esta idea, comprobada ahora por la interpretación, proporciona el esquema del problema de una ontología fundamental. Esta no debe comprenderse como una pretendida "novedad" frente a algo supuestamente "antiguo". Es, al contrario, la expresión del intento de apropiarse originariamente de lo esencial de una fundamentación de la metafísica, ayudando a esta fundamentación a alcanzar su posibilidad más propia y originaria a través de una repetición."

[Ozge · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Metafiziğin temellendirilmesinin kaynak temeli, saf insan aklıdır. Öyle ki, söz konusu temellendirme problematiğinin temel çekirdeği olarak tam da aklın insaniliği, yani onun sonluluğu özsel olmaktadır. Bu yüzden köken sahasının karakterizasyonu, insani bilişin sonluluğunun özünü açığa çıkartma üzerine odaklanmalıdır. Aklın söz konusu sonluluğu, yalnızca ve öncelikle insani bilişin kalımsızlık ve kesinliksizlik ve yanılgı gibi pek çok kusura sahip olmasından ileri gelmemekte, bilişin bizatihi öz-yapısında yatmaktadır. Bilginin olgusal sınırlılığı, onun bu özünün bir sonucu olmaktadır.

(…)

İnsan aklı, söz konusu üç soruyu [1. Ne bilebilirim? (olabilirlik), 2. Ne yapmalıyım? (gereklilik), 3. Neyi umut edebilirim? (yapabilirlik)] sorduğu için sonlu değildir yalnızca, bilakis tersine: İnsan aklı, sonlu olduğu için bu soruları sorar. İnsan aklı öylesine sonludur ki, kendi akıl-olmaklığı içinde bu sonsuzluğu bizatihi mesele eder. Bu üç soru, söz konusu tek bir soruyu, yani sonluluk sorusunu sorguladığı içindir ki dördüncüsüyle, yani “insan nedir”le ilintilenebilmektedir.

(…)

İnsan, varolanların orta yerinde var olan bir varolandır. Öyle ki kendisi olmadığı ve kendisi olarak varolduğu varolan, bu sırada zaten hep aşikâr olmaktadır. İnsanın bu varlık türüne biz varoluş diyoruz. Varoluş yalnızca varlık anlayışı temeli üzerinde olanaklıdır.”

“İnsan o kadar geniş, renkli, çok katmanlı bir şeydir ki, tüm tanımlar ona kıyasla biraz kısa kalır.” Max Scheler

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult read but pretty essential if you want to see what comes next after the end of Being and Time. If you don't have a good mastery of Kant you will be lost.

Sheehan and others have observed that this text covers topics initially planned for the unwritten portions of B+T, following Heidegger's own outlines for the entirety of that work.

As with many of H's 1920s output, his ultimate goal in the work only becomes clear well into it. And he does end up in a place quite removed from where he started. About the last half or third of the book focuses on temporality, giving an alternate but complementary account to that of B+T. This book also provides the broadest look at how H understands the concept of imagination.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

HEIDEGGER USES KANT’S “CRITIQUE” AS A STARTING POINT FOR HIS OWN IDEAS

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was an influential and controversial German philosopher, primarily concerned with Being, and phenomenology---who was widely (perhaps incorrectly) also perceived as an Existentialist. His relationship with the Nazi party in Germany has been the subject of widespread controversy and debate [e.g., 'Heidegger and Nazism,'' Heidegger and the Nazis,' 'Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany,' 'Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism,' etc.] .

Heidegger wrote in the Preface to the original (1929) edition: “In its essentials, the following interpretation was first presented in a four-hour course held during the winter semester of 1925-1926. It was later repeated in lectures and series of lectures (at the Herder Institute in Riga in September, 1928, and in connection with the university courses held at Davos in March, 1929). This interpretation of the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ arose in the course of the elaboration of the second part of [Being and Time].”

He comments, “The instance capable of establishing the legitimacy of these material judgments concerning the Being of the essent cannot be found in experience, for experience of the essent is itself always guided by the ontological comprehension of the essent, which last becomes accessible through experience according to a determinate perspective. Ontological knowledge, then, is judgment according to principles which must be brought forth without recourse to experience.” (Pg. 18-19)

He observes, “We say, for example, that this house which we perceive reveals how a house appears in general, consequently that which we represent in the concept ‘house.’ But in what way does the aspect of this house reveal the HOW of the appearance of a house in general? The house itself, indeed, presents a definite aspect. But we do not have to lose ourselves in this particular house in order to know exactly how it appears. On the contrary, this particular house is revealed as such that, in order to be a house, it need not necessarily appear as, in fact, it does appear. It reveals to us ‘only’ the ‘how’ of the possible appearance of a house.” (Pg. 99)

He points out, “The interpretation of the laying of the foundation of metaphysics has revealed that the transcendental imagination is not merely an external bond which fastens two extremities together. It is originally unifying, i.e., it is the specific faculty which forms the unity of the other two, which faculties themselves have an essential structural relation to it. Is it possible that this originally unifying… center is that ‘unknown, common root’ of both stems? Is it accidental that with the first introduction of the imagination Kant says that ‘we are scarcely ever conscious’ of its existence?” (Pg. 144)

He states, “Reason can now no longer be taken as a ‘higher’ faculty… But thought and intuition, though distinct, are not separated from one another like two totally different things. On the contrary, as species of representation, both belong to the same genus of re-presentation in general. Both are representations of modes of… An insight into the primordially representational character of thought is not less important than is an exact comprehension of the sensible character of the imagination. An original disclosure of the understanding must take account of its innermost essence, namely, its dependence on intuition. This being-dependent-on is the being-as-understanding of the understanding.” (Pg. 154)

He says, “The pure finite self has in itself a temporal character. Therefore, if the ego, i.e., pure reason, is essentially temporal, the fundamental determination which Kant provides for transcendental apperception must first become intelligible through this temporal character. Time and the ‘I think’ are no longer opposed to one another as unlike and incompatible; they are the same… [Kant] succeeded in bringing them together in their primordial identity---without, to be sure, having seen this identity expressly as such.” (Pg. 197)

He concludes, “In every mood wherein ‘things are this or that way’ with us, our own Dasein is manifest to us. We have, therefore, an understanding of Being even though the concept is lacking… This comprehension of Being, such as we have briefly sketched it, remains on the level of the purest, most assured and most naïve patency… and yet if this comprehension of Being did not occur, man could never be the essent that he is, no matter how wonderful his faculties. Man is an essent in the midst of other essents in such a way that the essent that he is and the essent that he is not are always already manifest in him. We call this mode of being EXISTENCE, and only on the basis of the comprehension of Being is existence possible.” (Pg. 234-235)

He adds, “The problem of the laying of the foundation of metaphysics is rooted in the question of the Dasein in man, i.e., in the question of his ultimate ground, which is the comprehension of Being as an essentially existent finitude… Insofar as the Being of this essent lies in existence, the question as to the essence of Dasein is an existential one… Hence, the laying of the foundations of metaphysics is based upon a metaphysics of Dasein. But is it at all surprising a laying of the foundations of metaphysics should itself be a form of metaphysics, and that in a pre-eminent sense?” (Pg. 238)

This book is a much better exposition of Heidegger’s ideas, than of Kant’s, perhaps; but its proximity to Heidegger’s writing of 'Being and Time' make this book a very useful companion to that book (which is Heidegger’s most influential).

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book a couple of tries, but I did not find it to be insightful in relation to Kant's philosophy. I have read many books on Kant, and read much of Kant's own work sometimes multiple times, and what Heidegger is saying about Kant, just does not resonate with what I have gleaned from Kant at all.
He massively underplays Kant's close relationship to the science of his era, and seems to focus on a reading of Kant that is seen heavily through the lens of Hegel, ignoring the rationalist/empiricist debate into which Kant placed himself, and taking for granted some sort of consensus on an achievement of Kantian transcendental philosophy that just doesn't exist.

[Milo Galiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

La Biblia para mucha gente. En otra vida habría sido también la mía.
Está dentro de lo que se busca cuando piensas en un libro sobre Kant desde Heidegger. De hecho, más allá de lo que sea Heidegger y su lectura particular para encajarlo en su proyecto, es muy buen análisis sobre Kant. Esta gente que dedicaba tantas horas para aprender y de repente te sueltan esta movida super construida y super loca, pero luego no es ni uno de sus libros paradigmáticos... No tiene sentido si me preguntan

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely good and cool. Fun as a reading of Kant for all the stuff on freedom and limitation, fun as a Heidegger book bc he kind of shows how you get being and time out of the chapter on the schematism (the ecstases). I personally love that he praises the A-deduction as a better path, bc it is a more honest substantial look at finitude.

[J.R. González · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complejo y un desafiante, debes tener algo de bagaje filosofíco antes de leerlo.

[Chant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heidegger is best known for being very brief and concise. Kant's metaphysics stood no chance against Heidegger's hammer of analysis.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Either very deep or very shallow

[pedro gabriel b. · Rating 4 out of 5]

nao terminei de verdade!!!!

[Benjamin]

Ok, I've pretty much read it, left only with the last chapter. I've spent a while familiarizing myself with Kant from secondary sources and online lectures before diving into this. For me the book's follow-able.

In certain respects, you don't have to have the whole of the first critique under your belt. This is because Heidegger doesn't deal with material from the Transcendental Dialectic onwards. It's mainly the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic (which forms less than half of the first critique).

As long as you're familiar with Kant's architectonic and jargon in these sections, you should do ok. Or at least, I hope I did ok.

There's however, a particular term "letting-stand-against" which I don't completely grasp. I'm guessing it has something to do with sensibility and empirical reality, but I don't think it's that simple.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Snorefest.