Customer Reviews

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Studies in Continental Thought)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Intended to be part of `Being and Time', but published separately and after BT. Heidegger's intention for `Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics' is straight forward; that is, Rational-Cognitive subjectivity (as presented in Kant's `Critique of Pure Reason') is not a tenable basis for metaphysics. Why? Because `time' alone can provide a foundation for metaphysics; thereby, dispensing with Reason, subjectivity and the rest of Kant's transcendental machinery. Heidegger claims to have `found Kant out'; that is, earlier editions of Kant's Critique has time as a much more important notion. Heidegger accuses Kant of recoiling from the primacy of time, and goes on to demonstrate that time is the basis of any possible metaphysics; to be carried out as a fundamental ontology via `Being and Time'.

Watch out for Heidegger's own recoil regarding spatiality and its relation to time.

This is perhaps the second most important text from Heidegger behind the monumental Being and Time. Where Being and Time ends abruptly without venturing into the destruction of the history of western ontology, the "Kant book" appears to be a sketch of the possible direction of Heidegger's fundamental ontology.

Surprisingly enough, Heidegger offers a rather faithful exegesis of Kant's discussion of the schematism from the Critique of Pure Reason. This is a close and careful reading of Kant which demonstrates Heidegger's skill at reconstruction of an existing text. The short Part One of this book is a work of art as Heidegger clearly defines Kant's project as a groundwork for metaphysics, that is, as ontology, by tracing the initial remarks by Kant to their Greek and scholastic origins. Therefore, Heidegger argues that the Kant of the First Critique does not bring forth a theory of knowledge (and against the Prolegomena that Kant is making a foundation for science), but rather, that the real project is a critique of metaphysics by returning to ontology as the groundwork for metaphysics. Thus, this project runs straight into Heidegger's own concerns of the possibility of anthropology.

Included in this edition is a transcript of the historical (and highly entertaining) debate between Heidegger and Ernst Cassier from the Davos lectures. Along with this, the editors have included other illuminating notes, drafts, and forwards.

Whether for or against Heidegger, this book clearly demonstrates the enormous philosophical skills of Martin Heidegger.

It is primarily and for the most part a readable translation of some very difficult to translate, much less understand and appropriate, esoteric thought. An absolute must read for any would-be Heideggerians, and not a bad place to get some insight into Kant at the same time.

A masterpiece in its own right.

This is absolutely the worst book I've ever read about Kant, it has nothing to do with his doctrine, and it falls in deliberated distortions about the essence of critical thought. The main task of Heidegger is embodied in a struggle against german idealism (specifically advanced enlightenment), so the main purpose for this book will be to dissolve heterogeneity (superiority) of understanding (over) and sense, appealing on a famous Kantian passage that more or less says "there exist two logs of knowledge, the ones are coming probably from a common root, but unknown for us" (KrV B 29). In his pretension, Heidegger claims to discover this "common root" (considered in german idealism as the last unity of a dialectical process, then, a rational one) in time, specifically, in the doctrine of the self-affection as it is exposed in the transcendental aesthetics (KrV B 67), so, his main thesis can be found in paragraph n° 34, there, Heidegger says: "Time, and the 'I think', doesn't confront themselves now as incompatibles and heterogeneous, nevertheless, they are the same", and further he adds "pure sensibility (time) and pure reason not only are homogeneous, moreover they own to the unity of the same essence". All the book is ever enclosing to this thesis (as it was offered in Being and Time, not in the KrV), of course on different ways, as for example, in his treating on the concepts of ontology, intuitus originaria, metaphysica generalis, finiteness of human knowledge, schematism, etc... And this thesis was far before offered to us by Erich Adickes and the realistic interpretations.

But the fact is that this has nothing to do with Kantian philosophy, and Heidegger never notice to the reader where Kant stops and Heidegger start. Thus, in front of this thesis Kant already expressed in his time that "understanding and sensibility become brothers, in spite of their heterogeneity, to engender our knowledge, AS IF one faculty had its origin in the other, or AS IF both of 'em had a common origin, THOUGH IT CAN NOT BE, or at least it is not-understandable that the heterogeneous get engendered from a common root" (Kant, Anthropology, par. 31), and he also warned us from this misleading in his transcendental deduction (1787), concerning the same topic treated in relation to this in the aesthetics (inner sense), but now, obviously accurated, in KrV B 152 - B 159. But Heidegger intentionally doesn't consider the second edition deduction.

Why then, an acknowledged philosopher ignores this basic start point? It is there a hidden purpose? Probably in its more surfaced task, yes. But the historical context may clarify us the fact that such a kind of interpretations are engaged to struggle against modernity and its methods, trying to replace `em both by a new dark age through an ad auctoritas interpretandi method. Against this, Kant also said "in philosophy, there is no classic author" (Answer to Eberhard, 1st, secc. Part 3) The book, in relation to Heidegger's rhetoric, can be useful and "clarifying", but in relation to Kant and modern philosophy, it can be reduced to "nothing". The not-understandable that Kant names in the passage above means a type of nothingness (nihil negativum, KrV B 348, like saying "squared circle"), and it was remembered to us how is present in this kind of interpretations by T. W. Adorno, in his Negative Dialectics: "the doctrine of the being hide and exploit dialectics that makes mix up pure particularization and pure universality, both equally undetermined; emptiness becomes a mythic cuirass".

Don't buy this piece of trash, unless you want to impress a fooled girl in the faculty with this "technical nothingness".

Nicolás Guzmán Grez.