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No One Can Jump Over His Own Shadow

Thomas Sheehan in conversation with Richard Polt and Gregory Fried. 3:AM Magazine published online 8 December 2014 http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/no-one-can-jump-over-his-own-shadow/

* * * Richard Polt and Gregory Fried have collaborated on translations of Heideggers Introduction to Metaphysics and Nature, History, State. They co-edited A Companion to Heideggers Introduction to Metaphysics and are the editors of the series New Heidegger Research, published by Rowman & Littlefield International. Below they interview Professor Thomas Sheehan, the author of the first title published in the series, Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift.

Richard Polt & Gregory Fried: In your view, what have been the predominant paradigms in Heidegger research so far? Thomas Sheehan: I understand a paradigm of Heidegger research as (1) a scholarly explana- ation of the whole of Heideggers oeuvre, at least as it is known at the time, and (2) one that is accepted by a significant number of Heidegger scholarsin short, a holistic interpretation that garners a significant scholarly following. On this reading, therefore, insofar as they meet the second criterion but not the first, the works of Hubert Dreyfus, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty do not constitute paradigms of Heidegger scholarship.

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From the mid-1940s through the 1950s, few of Heideggers works were available in the Anglo-phone world, either in German or in translation, and he was understood largely as an existentialist who had exerted notable influence on Jean-Paul Sartre. Within this existentialist paradigm one of the better analyses in English was Thomas Langans The Meaning of Heidegger: A Critical Study of an Existentialist Philosophy (1959). The years 1962-64 marked a critical turning point in Heidegger scholarship. His signature work Sein und Zeit (1927) was finally translated into English (Being and Time, 1962). The following year William J. Richardson published his majestic work, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (1963), which covered Heideggers publications through 1958 and established what I call the classical paradigm that has dominated the scholarship for over fifty years. Richardsons reading was confirmed that same year by Otto Pggelers Martin Heideggers Path of Thinking (1963; ET 1987), and in the following year by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmanns Die Selbstinterpretation Martin Heideggers (Martin Heideggers Self-Interpretation, 1964). These three texts interpreted Heidegger not as an existentialist focused on human being alone (Dasein) but rather as a phenomenological ontologist focused ultimately on the meaning of being. RP & GF: Briefly, how does your own paradigm differ from the classical paradigm? TS: Making Sense of Heidegger builds on and yet moves beyond the classical paradigm, in part because the book takes into account all of Heideggers published work up through the first half of 2014. First, the book argues that Heidegger was a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is not about the being of things (i.e., the fact that they exist out there in the world and have a traditional essence). Rather, phenomenology is about the meaningful presence (Anwesen) of things within contexts of human concerns and interests. Secondly, the book argues that the final focus of Heideggers work was not the meaningful presence (aka being) of things. Ratherand thirdlyhis final focus was on the structure of human being that requires us to deal with things only discursively and thus only in terms of such meaningful presence. He called this structure thrown-openness or, in his later work, appropri-ation. Finally, the book argues that (1) the classical paradigm got it wrong on both appropriation and the so-called turn in Heideggers thinking; (2) Heideggers so-called history of being is utterly inadequate to explain the condition of the modern world; and (3) Heideggers reflections on technology are among the least convincing texts in his oeuvre. The book also and importantly retranslates key terms in Heideggers lexicon, for example: ex-sistence for Da-sein and appropriation for Ereignis. In the latter case, ap-propri-ation refers to the fact that ex-sistence is a priori thrown into its proper condition of being, the openness that makes meaning possible and necessary.

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RP & GF: Why wouldnt a focus on the structure of human being amount to an anthro-pocentrism that Heidegger rejected? TS: If the anthropos part of anthropo-centrism refers to ex-sistence as the essence of human being, Heidegger is anthropocentric. Pace Heideggerian fundamentalists, Heidegger never got beyond the essence of human being as ex-sistence. Our ex-sistence consists in our being made to stand out ahead of ourselves as a groundless openness or clearing. Within this openness we can synthesize this object here with that meaning there and thus understand the things current being, i.e., what it currently is for us or better, how it is meaningfully present to us. Thus our essence as ex-sistence is what allows for all forms of being; and this is the answer to Heideggers basic question: Whence the being of things? However, if the anthropos refers to human beingseither singularly or as a wholein disre- gard of their essence qua ex-sistence, then that is the kind of anthropocentrism that Heidegger rejected. To take a specific case of anthropocentrism: Marx asserts that the root of man is man (Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right). Would Heidegger agree with that? Yes and no. In the most general terms, yes: Marx was claiming that human beings do indeed have an essence. But specifically, no: Heidegger and Marx disagree on what the essence of a human being is. RP & GF: What do you make of this well-known statement from the 1946 Letter on Human-ism? The human being is thrown by being itself into the truth of being, so that ex-sisting in this fashion he might guard the truth of being . The human being is the shepherd of being (Pathmarks, p. 252). TS: Heideggers post-war language is an idiosyncratic and often obscure restatement of what he had already established in Being and Time (1927) and in texts up to the end of 1930. The sen- tences you cite require some translation into less obfuscating English. From a close reading of Heideggers own texts, Making Sense of Heidegger establishes the following: RP & GF: What about Heideggers statement against Sartres existentialist humanism: Pr-cisment nous sommes sur un plan o il y a principalement ltre [We are precisely in a situation where principally there is being] (Pathmarks, p. 254). TS: Heidegger was a bad reader of Sartre (and remember, it was Jean Beaufret who interpreted Sartre for him) when he claimed that the difference between them was that for Sartre We are in a situation where there are only human beings, whereas for Heidegger We are in a situation where there is principally being. First of all, Sartres words are taken out of context. In that paragraph Sartre is discussing the source of meaning and values after the death of God, Heidegger would agree with Sartre that phenomenologically one cannot responsibly appeal to Gods divine ideas as the source of truth or to Gods divine will as the source of value. Rather, in such matters both Heidegger and Sartre are emphatically in a situation where there are only human beings. Second, the contrast (if it is that) between Sartre and Heidegger is not between man and be-ing. What Heidegger means by being in the passage above is not the being of things but being

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itself. However, that phrase is only a heuristic term, one that stands in for the thrown-open clearing. But the thrown-open clearing is the essence of human being. To say, as Heidegger does, that we are in a situation where there is principally being is to say that we cannotat least phenomenologicallyget deeper or higher than ex-sistence. It is precisely the thrown-open clearing that makes possible (or gives, in Heideggers language) all forms of the being of things. Thus he says: Ex-sistence is the individualized X that gives being, that makes being possible. It is the X-that-gives [das es gibt] (GA 73, 1: 642.2829). Heidegger even says that the open-ness which is ex-sistence belongs to being itself, is being itself, and for that reason is called Da-sein (GA 6, 2: 323.14-15). In short, ex-sistence in its fullness is the one and only topic of Heideggers thought. So, Heidegger should have actually read Sartre instead of getting him secondhand from Beaufret. RP & GF: What about the famous turn in Heideggers thinking in the 1930s? TS: The book argues that there was no such turn in the 1930s. The technical term turn (Kehre) has at least four distinct meanings in Heideggers philosophy, and this fact has thrown off the scholarship for the last seventy-five years. Usuallyand incorrectlythe turn is taken to mean that in the 1930s Heidegger changed the orientation of his work from a focus on ex-sistence (Dasein) to a concentration on being (Sein). However, Heidegger himself insisted that the primary and proper sense of the Kehre is not some such change in orientation but rather what he called the oscillating sameness of ex-sistence and the clearing-for-meaning. In other words, the Kehre in its proper sense is the very thing itself, the core topic, of Heideggers philosophy and not a change in the direction of his thinking. Nonethelessand this is typical of many of his terms, including the word beingit must be said that he himself did not always make this clear in his writings. Could Heidegger have been less obscure and more straightforward, both in his philosophy in general and in his terminology? Answer: Is the Pope a Catholic?

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RP & GF: What is Heideggers so-called history of being (Seinsgeschichte)? TS: Heideggers history of being is in fact five distinct things. First of all it is a straightforward historical account of what being (Sein) has meant and how it has functioned in a dozen philo- sophers from the pre-Socratics through Nietzsche. Second, it argues that these philosophers either did not question (in the case of the pre-Socratics) or overlooked and forgot (from Plato to Husserl) the appropriation of ex-sistence that makes all forms of being possible. As such, the history of being is also a history of forgetting, but it is the philosophical forgetting not of being but of the appropriation of ex-sistence, its a priori status as the openness that makes possible all forms of meaning, aka being. Third, the history of being is an argument that appropriation gives or sends the various historical configurations of the clearing-for-meaning to the philosophers who comprise Heideg- gers history, even as those philosophers overlook the source of such sendings. Fourthly, Heideggers history of (a) the overlooking of appropriation, coupled with (b) the sending of configurations of the clearing-for-meaning becomes a narrative of the devolution of Western culture, a downfall that is due precisely to the overlooking of appropriation. This alleged concatenation of ever-increasing stages of obliviousnesswhat Heidegger discusses as metaphysicsculminates, in his story, in the contemporary global modus vivendi that is characterized by widespread techno-think and techno-do, such that any inkling of appropriation is obliterated, with disastrous consequences. Fifth and finally, Heidegger claims one can get free of this history of beingthis meta- physics and its current depredationsby personally (a) recovering an awareness of ones status as the appropriated clearing and (b) living ones life in terms of that finite and mortal clearing, which in fact is ones nature or essence. RP & GF: Where do you think Heidegger went wrong in his history of being? TS: It is in the fourth sense of the history of being that Heidegger overreached and went far beyond his competence. I argue that the first sense of the history of being is a notable contribution to philosophy; the second sense can indeed be argued coherently and even convincingly; the third sense is the later Heideggers rearticulation in historical terms of what his early work had already established in existential terms; the fourth sense is a philosophically ungrounded and ungroundable claimi.e., here is where Heidegger went wrong; and the fifth sense is only a laterand not entirely clearrestatement of what Being and Time has already established under the rubric of resolve and authenticity.

RP & GF: If he did go wrong, as you suggest, why did he? TS: From very early on, Heidegger held a mostly negative view of modernityeconomic, social, and politicaland of its philosophical turn to the subject from Descartes to his own day.

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The roots of that view may lie in the conservative Catholicism of his youth; in his idealization of rural life in late nineteenth-century Germany; in his discomfort at the flourishing of German sci- ence and technology after 1860; in his resistance to the rationalization of the lifeworld; and in his shock at the horrors of the Great War and his countrys abject defeat. Heidegger once said that no one can jump over his own shadow (GA 41: 153.24) and he liked to cite Hlderlins verse, As you began, so will you remain, (GA 12: 88.25, citing Der Rhein, line 48). These texts may offer clues to Heideggers own approach to modernity. We may won-der whether his own shadowhis limited personal and cultural experience, his pinched world-view, his deep anti-modern conservatismrestricted his ability to understand and properly engage past history and present events. Heidegger viewed all of Western history sub specie metaphysicae. He claimed that metaphysics is the essential ground of Western history (GA 76: 56.18), and his later work, with its top-down philosophical worldview, is bereft of any sophisticated or even competent awareness of the concrete economic, social, and political grounds of the twentieth-century world. RP & GF: The three volumes of Black Notebooks published last spring (and there are more to come) leave no reasonable doubt that Heidegger had anti-Semitic attitudes. And his public statements, even into the 1940s, indicated that he supported, with whatever qualifications, the Nazi regime and its war efforts. How do you see this affecting his philosophy? TS: Heideggers attempt to launder his cultural pessimism and revanchist nationalism through his metaphysical history of the downfall of the West is a complete failure and should be recognized as such. This includes, most saliently and infamously, his undeniable anti-Semitism and Nazism. In my opinion, the attempts of Heideggerians to explain his anti-Semitism via exculpatory qualifications (e.g., he wasnt a biological anti-Semite like the Nazis) are strategies of abject avoidance, a desperate refusal to accept the obvious. The question, rather, is whether his deep cultural anti-Semitism, along with his craven allegiance to Hitler, hemorrhages into the core of his philosophy. Some, like the indefatigable but philosophically challenged Emmanuel Faye, insist that Heideg-ger was a Nazi even before he was born and that his philosophy from beginning to end was no-thing but an effortin Fayes wordsto introduce Nazism into philosophy. I argueadmittedly against mainstream scholarshipthat the essential core of Heideggers philosophy was in place by the end of 1930 and that it is in no way tainted by his later Nazism or his abiding anti-Semitism. However, when it comes to his work from the 1930s into the 1950s, one must carefully and critically pick and choose between what is infected and what is not. As far as I can see (and barring further revelations) his public work after 1960 is free of Nazism and anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, it is still contaminated by his uninformed and narrow-minded anti-modernism. RP & GF: Those same Black Notebooks also show that he developed an increasingly vehe-ment critique of Nazi metaphysics as a form of modern subjectivism and will to power. Do you think this critique is useful, or is it compromised by what you think is his misreading of moder-nity more generally?

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TS: Yes, those volumes do express Heideggers critique of Nazi metaphysicsbut thats the problem: Heidegger approached Nazism in the same way that he approached everything elsethe World War and the Holocaust includednamely as a metaphysical problem. What planet was Heidegger living on between 1933 and 1945? Yes, he was a philosopher, but that in no way absolved him from investigating the specific economic, social, and political roots of modernity. Instead, what we get from him is a top-down philosophical narrative about the Wests abiding ignorance of Ereignis, with its disastrous consequences, along with a Solzhenitsyn-like jeremiad against modernity and its intrusions on rural life. And all of this is topped off with the lovely thought that only a god can save us. Surely we can do better than that.

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Notes on the contributors follow on page 8.

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ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE

Thomas Sheehan is Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, he specializes in contemporary European philosophy and its relation to religious questions, with particular interests in Heidegger and Roman Catholicism. As well as Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift (2015), his books include: Martin Heidegger, Logic: The Question of Truth (trans., 2007); Becoming Heideg-ger (2007); Edmund Husserl: Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the En-counter with Heidegger (1997); Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations (1987); The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (1986); and Heidegger, the Man and the Thinker (1981). ABOUT THE INTERVIEWERS

Richard Polt is professor of philosophy at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He is the author of Heidegger: An Introduction and The Emergency of Being: On Heideggers Contri-butions to Philosophy.

Gregory Fried is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Suffolk University in Boston. Together with Richard Polt, he is the series editor of New Heidegger Research, with Rowman and Littlefield international. He is the author of Heideggers Polemos: From Being to Politics and has written numerous articles on Heidegger.

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