THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Myth and Truth in Heidegger’s Lecture Course on Parmenides A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Philosophy Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By John Teepen Schlachter Washington, D.C. 2016 Myth and Truth in Heidegger’s Lecture Course on Parmenides John Teepen Schlachter, Ph.D. Director: Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil. Immediately after his publication of Sein und Zeit (1927), Heidegger began to reframe his approach to the question of being. By his own admission, a principal problem with Sein und Zeit is that it describes the disclosure of Dasein but fails to describe how being discloses itself to Dasein. A recurring observation in Heidegger’s later thought is that, since Plato’s introduction of the forms and Aristotle’s structuring of logic, philosophy has obscured the fundamental question of being (Grundfrage), substituting instead what he calls “the guiding question [Leitfrage],” namely, the inquiry into the “being of beings.” In order to free himself from this alleged obscurity, Heidegger begins an investigation of the Presocratics, and a pivotal moment in this investigation is his lecture course of 1942-43, Parmenides, on the mythical proem of Parmenides’s poem. Many scholars have explored Heidegger’s writings on truth in article-length works; a few, including Bambach and Caputo, have published longer works placing Parmenides in a developmental context, but even these do not make the lecture course their primary focus, and their assessments do not always take Heidegger’s ideas seriously on their own terms. Therefore this dissertation, the first book-length investigation of Parmenides in English, examines the significance of the work in the development of Heidegger’s concept of truth and seriously engages his concepts of being, truth, and myth to determine the value of his claims in Parmenides. I will begin by discussing Heidegger’s explorations of truth in the period prior to Parmenides and considering his interpretations, in texts other than Parmenides, of three Presocratic thinkers: Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides himself. Then I will examine a specific claim in Parmenides, namely, that myth is a mode of speech that discloses truth without regard for logical correctness. Finally, I will examine other prominent interpretations of Heidegger’s thought and, in response, suggest a new approach. While it is true that Heidegger’s conclusions can be dangerous, risking the severing of human concern from inquiry, it is also true that to reject Heidegger’s thought outright is to slip back into the prevailing claims and systems which he has shown are inadequate. This dissertation by John Teepen Schlachter fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in philosophy approved by Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil., as Director, and by John C. McCarthy, Ph.D., and Jean DeGroot, Ph.D., as Readers. __________________________________________ Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil., Director __________________________________________ John C. McCarthy, Ph.D., Reader __________________________________________ Jean DeGroot, Ph.D., Reader ii To Jessie, whose discomfort with standing in life’s clearings has taught me how to be good all over again. iii Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Section 1. Subtending the logical prejudice: interpreting Alētheia as Unverborgenheit 15 Section 2. Subtending the logical prejudice and clarifying the Seinsfrage beyond “Being and Time”: 1927-35 22 Section 3. Subtending the logical prejudice and the response to Nietzsche: 1936-41 48 Chapter 2 Section 4. The identification of Heidegger’s Greeks as inceptive thinkers 70 Section 5. Naming being: poetic disclosure for the Greek inceptive thinker 72 Section 6. Inceptive thought is a specific kind of poetic speech 84 Chapter 3 Section 7. Heidegger’s thesis concerning the reticent speech of Parmenides 93 Section 8. The account of truth, falsity, and the hidden in “Parmenides” 102 Section 9. Heidegger’s central claim that muthos is a special kind of logos 113 Section 10. Plato’s account of muthos and metaphysical thinking in “Parmenides” 121 Section 11. Critical analysis of Heidegger’s approach to inceptive thinking and muthos 134 Chapter 4 Section 12. Heidegger’s project in light of “Parmenides” 143 iv Section 13. The critique of Heidegger as mythmaker or myth propagator 150 Section 14. Conclusions about Heidegger’s muthos and its function in inceptive thought 178 Bibliography 199 v Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have become a reality without the assistance of so many friends, mentors, and colleagues who have kept me attentive to the work at hand. For their thoughtful guidance and generous patience, I especially wish to thank my director, Holger Zaborowski, and my first and second readers, John McCarthy and Jean DeGroot. Where my clarity of expression has been off the mark with regards to making Heidegger’s jargon approachable for the unaccustomed reader, they have dealt with my shortcomings with care. Thanks are also due to Richard Polt, Robert Sokolowski, and Richard Velkley, who provoked my interest in Heidegger and phenomenology during my coursework at Xavier University and The Catholic University of America. I also wish to thank the several men and women who have seen the bits and pieces of this dissertation along the way and offered clarifications, witty responses, and the encouragement only friends can offer. I could not have continued work without monthly meetings with my fellow ABDs: Jordan Watts, Jim Kruggel, Paul Higgins, and Jeremy Geddert. Nourishment for body, mind and soul alike came in the form of intellectual critiques and home-cooked dinners by two of the best young married couples in academia, Steve and Elizabeth-Jane McGuire and David and Therese Cory. To Therese and Paul I owe special thanks for rephrasing things in informative ways and generally being knowledgeable about what I mean. Also, I wish to acknowledge the personal and spiritual advice given to me by three priests, to whom I owe a debt that cannot be repaid. Without the educational guidance of Fr. Kurt Pritzl, O.P., I would not have succeeded in very many things during my time at CUA. Like so vi many of his friends, colleagues and students, I miss him dearly. Additionally, without the challenge to be a better man and thinker that I received from Fr. Arne Panula, I would not have been ready to choose the paths in my writing and in my life that I have. Hearkening to what the world presents you over and against your own aims is hard, and Fr. Arne, whether he knows it or not, was instrumental in leading me through a period of my life when my goals and means of achieving them needed his mentorship. Finally, without Fr. Gabriel Waweru’s willingness to see great possibilities in me, I would have been forever unready to hand this dissertation over to be reviewed. I also thank my wife, Jessica, who put me on a schedule, trimmed down my writing, and graciously loved me anyway. To all of you and the many fine thinkers whom I met during my time in Washington, D.C., I give my warm and heartfelt thanks. vii Introduction This dissertation focuses on interpreting the development of Heidegger’s concept of truth by examining his recourse to the thought of Parmenides in the winter semester of 1942-43 as a heretofore overlooked moment within that development. The course he taught that term, “Parmenides und Heraklit,” was first published as Volume 54 of the Gesamtausgabe in 1982 as Parmenides and subsequently translated into English ten years later. These dates are significant in that, in the thirty years since its first appearance, comparatively little has been written about this particular volume of the Gesamtausgabe.1 The editor of Parmenides, Manfred Frings, explains that he shortened the title used for the lecture course, given that Heidegger does not really address the fragments of Heraclitus during the course. However, Frings also points out that Heidegger reviewed student recorded transcripts of the lectures in comparison with his manuscript while he was preparing the lecture course on Heraclitus he delivered in summer, 1944. That course, along with another on Heraclitus from the summer of 1943, appears as 1 These include: Kenneth Maly, “Parmenides: Circle of Disclosure, Circle of Possibility,” Heidegger Studies 1 (1985): 5-23; Alexandre Lowit, “‘Le principe’ de la lecture heideggerienne de Parménide,” Revue de philosophie ancienne 4 (1986): 163-210; Manfred S. Frings, “Parmenides: Heidegger’s 1942-1943 Lecture Held at Freiburg University,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 19 (1988): 15-33; Carol J. White, “Heidegger and the Beginning of Metaphysics,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 19 (1988): 34-50; Manfred S. Frings, “Heidegger’s Lectures on Parmenides and Heraclitus (1942-1944),” Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 22 (1991): 179-99; Lawrence J. Hatab, “Heidegger and Myth: A Loop in the History of Being,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 22 (1991): 45-64; Véronique M. Foti, “Aletheia and Oblivion’s Field,” in Ethics and Danger, ed. Arleen B. Dallery (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 71-82; Agnes Heller, “Parmenides and the Battle of Stalingrad,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19 (1997): 247-62; Drew Hyland, “Caring for Myth: Heidegger, Plato and the Myth of Cura,” Research in Phenomenology 27 (1997): 90-102; David C. Jacobs, “The Ontological Education of Parmenides,” in The Presocratics after Heidegger, ed. David C. Jacobs (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 185-202; Ivo De Gennaro, “Heidegger und die Griechen,” Heidegger Studies 16 (2000): 87-113; William V. Spanos, “Heidegger’s Parmenides: Greek Modernity and the Classical Legacy,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 19 (2001): 89-115; Peter Warnek, “Saving the Last Word: Heidegger and the Concluding Myth of Plato’s Republic,” Philosophy Today 46 (2002): 255-73; and Günther Neumann, Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung zu den Parmenides-Auslegungen von Emil Angehrn, Günter Dux, Klaus Held und dem frühen Martin Heidegger (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2006).