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What Is a Thing?

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Why is this out of print? That it is, and has been for a long time, is a lamentable shame. In this relatively short book (the translation could do with a bit of revision) Heidegger provides one of the best and clearest introductions to Kant's First Critique available in any language. Almost nothing in the English-language secondary literature on Kant makes clear what Kant means by "synthetic judgment", and since the stated theme of the First Critique is "how are synthetic judgments a priori possible?", this makes for a lot of useless English language secondary literature. Much of the fault for this situation lies with Norman Kemp-Smith, whose translation of Kant's text was the one used by most English-speaking readers for a long time. Interestingly, the structure of synthetic judgements, fudged and rendered incoherent by Kemp-Smith, is the first thing Heidegger zeroes in on in explaining what Kant's about. I would steer anyone who wants to read Kant first to this book, for an explanation of the basic terms of the First Critique, and then to Deleuze's little book on Kant, to get an overview, taking in all three of the Critiques, of Kant's philosophy in general.

As a further bonus, this book's introductory sections provide a very enlightening and provocative discussion of the theme of mathesis in early modern philosophy and science.

One further point that should be made: In this book Heidegger says virtually nothing about his view of what things are, or about things in general. A Heideggerian discussion of the thing would start from his discussion of the distinction between things as ready-to-hand and things as present-at-hand, as most famously articulated in the discussion of the hammer in Being And Time. In this book, right at the start, Heidegger explicitly states that he is going to discuss the thing solely considered as present-at-hand. So he very consciously chooses not to discuss his own position in these lectures. He's writing pureley as a historian of philosophy here. So, don't look here for any insight into what Heidegger thinks a thing is. This is Heidegger showing how modern philosophy's strict identification of being with presence-at-hand played itself out in the theme of mathesis in early modern philosophy, followed by a detailed examination of how it came to be elaborated in Kant's first Critique.

The best guide to this book is the contents, pages iii-iv, which have topic titles for every few pages that probably won't mean a thing the first time you read them. If you are serious about this book, you will pay attention to those titles. Unless you speak German or Latin, or have a fantastic memory of why an expert like Heidegger would mention conglomerating thinkers like Hegel, the titles in the Contents will be the best guide you will have to figuring out what you are already supposed to know, when it finally matters. You won't get such help again, when you finally reach long sections on judgment (pp. 153-181), synthetic judgments (pp. 181-184), and the final section of:

II. The Question About the Thing in Kant's Main Work . . .

7. Systematic representation of all the synthetic principles of pure understanding (pp. 184-244).

If there was ever a question that Martin Heidegger could use to demonstrate his knowledge of philosophy as a distinctly human outlook on what anyone might encounter, the book WHAT IS A THING? puts that question in the title. Most of the book is a discussion of Kant's philosophical project, as seen from a far more modern perspective. A short Preface by Martin Heidegger, dated April, 1962, states:

This work presents the text of a lecture which was held in the winter semester, 1935-36, at the University of Freiburg. The lecture was entitled "Basic Questions of Metaphysics."

The English translation by W. B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch is followed by an analysis by Eugene T. Gendlin of the University of Chicago, as published in 1967. The Contents has detailed titles for the sections at the beginning of the book, including 12 items and an enumerated "13. Summary" on "A. Various Ways of Questioning About the Thing" before getting to the main topic, "B. Kant's Manner of Asking About the Thing." I was puzzled by the opening remarks, but the Analysis points out, "Although written as a simple common-sense discussion, it contains all of Heidegger's major points." (p. 247). Most of the Analysis sticks to English, but four pages are referred to as supporting the idea, "An object in German is a Gegenstand, literally a standing-against." (p.260). There is an index of German Terms in which ten pages of Heidegger's lecture are listed for the term Gegenstand, one page for Gegenheit, another page for Gegenstandlichkeit, another for Gegenstehen, a few for Gegenstehenlassen, and even one for Gegen-uns-stehenden. (p. 302). I don't know German well enough to know if this is getting too personal for you, but something bipolar seems to be an aspect of WHAT IS A THING?

The indices are of Names, German Terms, Latin Terms, and Greek Terms. The topics listed in the Contents manage to be in English for Part A., but the first word in B. I. 4. is in Greek characters, which I believe can be transliterated as Logos. Heidegger is close to the ancient Greek beginnings of philosophy, the problems encountered in Plato and the attempt at scientific determinations which Aristotle wrote about extensively. The concern with Latin in this book seems to be derived from the work of Sir Isaac Newton, whose Principia in Latin was published in 1686-87. A major topic in Heidegger's lectures seems to spring from the shift in philosophy from Aristotle through Newton to Kant:

"Five years after the publication of the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, exactly one hundred years after Newton's PRINCIPIA, Kant published an essay entitled THE METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL SCIENCE (1786). On the basis of the position reached in the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON it is a conscious supplement and counterpart to Newton's work. At the conclusion of the preface to his piece Kant expressly refers to Newton's work." (p. 77).

Greek terms for mathematics can be found on pages 69-75 and 91. Latin terms for universal mathematics and common mathematics appear on page 101. On the pages in between (77, 92), the Latin phrase `axiomata sive leges motus' this title of a section of Newton's work "in which he presents the fundamental determinations about things as moved" (p. 92) is almost translated as "The project is axiomatic. Insofar as every science and cognition is expressed in propositions, the cognition which is taken and posited in the mathematical project is of such a kind as to set things upon their foundation in advance." (p. 92). Trying to put Heidegger's point in a Latin phrase and basic German words:

"1. The mathematical is, as mente concipere, a project (Entwarf) of thingness (Dingheit) which, as it were, skips over the things. The project first opens a domain (Spielraum) where things--i.e., facts--show themselves." (p. 92).

Some people who read reviews don't like to have the ending of a book spoiled by an explanation which ruins the suspense. Only a few philosophers are mentioned in this book, and much more attention is devoted to philosophy before Kant than to the few philosophers whose work was a reaction to Kant's thinking. This is really a book about how people think about things, and those who adopted Heidegger's approach to how a philosopher sees basic questions arising in any ambiguous situation have been successful in the field of philosophy, far more than those who lacked some guide to the complexities involved in this kind of study. The gap between thinking and engaging in activities might be dismissed by those who don't think in German terms like `Entgegenstehenlassen.' If you react adversely to words like that, perhaps this book would be a bitter lesson to you, more than anything else. Don't try to read it unless you would be interested in what might happen on that level, Heidegger having been what he was, primarily a philosopher, as he definitely is in this book.

Kant never effectively addressed the question of the independent reality of "things" (thing in itself). He supplied an outline of the epistemologic structure of human thinking that, based as it was on forms and concepts that were transcendental i.e. universal and necessary and therefore a priori, gave as close as he believed we could get to objective "truth". Because we are hardwired to apply the pure forms of intuition (space and time) and the schematized pure concepts of the understanding (rules by which we make judgments, in conjunction with the pure forms of intuition and empiric intuitions and concepts from sensibility) to "experience" our world, we are able to engage in a meaningful discourse with others of our type who share the same hard wiring.

This means that space and time and the schematized pure concepts, such as cause and effect, may have no independent reality. We can never know since we can never travel beyond the limitations our minds impose upon us. Of course this means that "things", as they really are, are closed off to knowing. So how does Heidegger make use of Kant to come to what is a "thing"?

In fact Heidegger would be much like a transcendental idealist if he were concerned with the term. It is his orientation that is different. For Heidegger the issue is not the epistemic makeup of humans but the ontological structure of human Being (Dasein). If Kant is simply turned upside down he is the perfect compliment. Kant is describing the structure of Dasein's knowing, and is saying that we have access to this, through logic and the necessary character of the transcendental forms and concepts, that we can never have to the external world (one can argue whether the pure forms of intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding are really "things" in themselves and if so why can we know them). Kant is therefore describing an aspect of Dasein's ontologic structure.

This same privileged access to self knowledge is what Heidegger would like to say about Dasein's exploration of its Being. We have an immediate access to it that we cannot necessarily have to other things. The "things" of the world take their importance and relevance, for us, from their relationships to Dasein's projects. Their independent reality is not as important or is not knowable. The importance of "things in themselves" lies in their importance to Dasein- not in their reality independent of Dasein. This finishes the circle then. Kant says we can know the truth of the basic epistemic structure of human Being (one of its ontologic characteristics) but not the truth of other beings. Heidegger says we can know other ontologic aspects of human Being and that the importance of other beings is settled in what they say about Dasein and not in themselves.

This book gives a fair picture of Kant's basic theory from the Critique of Pure Reason, but through a Heideggerian lens. I personally would not read it to understand Kant, it is at once too simplified and too eccentric in its view. Its importance is in demonstrating how the thinking of the two philosophers meshes when their emphasis is so far apart.