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Ontology: Early Derrida Reading Early Heidegger

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Ontology: Early Derrida Reading Early Heidegger Jake Nabasny ‘Beyond or Within’ Ontology: Early Derrida Reading Early Heidegger 0. Abstract The publication of Jacques Derrida’s 1964–5 seminar on Martin Heidegger marks a significant event. In these lectures, Derrida puts forth a heterodox reading of the project of fundamental ontology, claiming it is not and never was an ontological or metaphysical enterprise. This reading was intended to rescue Heideggerian Destruktion from the metaphysical lens contemporary scholars had placed it under. While this seminar reveals important insights into the origins of Derridian deconstruction, this paper argues that it ultimately gets Heidegger wrong. From a close reading of the Introduction of Being and Time and proximate lecture courses, I argue that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is indebted to a phenomenological method that is thoroughly and explicitly ontological. Apart from setting the record straight about Heidegger, I show that this interpretation of Destruktion is inconsistent with Derrida’s reading of Heidegger before and after these lectures were presented. I conclude by tracing this inconsistency throughout Derrida’s later work and considering why the 1964–5 interpretation stands out. Ultimately, this seminar should be read as a stage in the development of Derrida’s mature thought, specifically in regard to the notion of différance. ‘This is a retroactive justification because these themes are only implicit in Sein und Zeit.’ (Derrida 2016, 73) 1. Introduction As Jacques Derrida’s seminars continue to be edited, translated, and published, interest in his oeuvre is constantly renewed. The latest addition to this collection is the 1964–5 seminar Heidegger: The Question of Being and History. The Derrida Seminars Translation Project originally planned to translate and publish the seminars in reverse chronological order, yet this early seminar has been released after just three volumes of 1 Jake Nabasny late seminars. It marks, therefore, a special event as well as an opportunity to ascertain an intimate glimpse of the origins of deconstruction. The gatherings for these seminars, however, were anything but special. To illustrate this point, we can turn to Benoît Peeters’ exhaustive, 629-page Derrida biography, which includes only one sentence on this particular seminar: ‘In 1964–5, for his first official year as caïman, Derrida gave a set of lectures on “Heidegger and History” that were original enough for him to think he might get them published by Les Éditions de Minuit’ (Peeters 150). Despite Derrida’s high hopes for his own seminar, Peeters notes that Derrida, as well as his students, were preoccupied with other questions at the time. This sentence is quickly followed by a description of Derrida’s participation in Louis Althusser’s ‘Reading Capital’ seminar, his feeling of being silenced in the intellectual milieu of the time, and his relation to Marxism. One of the most intriguing aspects of Peeters’ mention of the seminar is his error regarding the title. Thomas Dutoit, in his Editor’s Note to the 1964–5 seminar, mentions an interview from 1999 in which Derrida misremembers this early seminar in much the same way that Peeters did. He recalls a course from 1965–6 entitled ‘History in Heidegger,’ which he planned to publish under the title The Question of History. In these cases of misnaming, the emphasis is on history while the eponymous ‘question of being’ is entirely forgotten. I would speculate that this is the case for two reasons. First, the majority of the seminar is spent on the question of historicity. While this problem, according to Derrida, is intimately linked to the question of being, it becomes the primarily focus as early as Session Three. Second, the misremembrance highlights how Derrida would quickly jettison his reading of Heidegger’s ‘question of being’ (Seinsfrage) immediately after this early seminar. As I will show, this reading lays the groundwork for Derrida’s later deconstruction of metaphysics. In the first two sessions that cover the question of being, Derrida presents a unique interpretation of the Heideggerian notion of Destruktion. Many commentators at the time and now have understood Destruktion (often simply translated as ‘destruction’) to refer to a critical distance taken up with regard to the history of ontology. Derrida contends that the Destruktion practiced in Being and Time (to which he refers by the German title Sein und Zeit) is explicitly a Destruktion of ontology itself. 2 Jake Nabasny This claim will without a doubt give pause to those familiar with Heidegger’s work, since Heidegger himself explains that he is doing ‘fundamental ontology.’ Thus, as Derrida points out, his interpretation hinges on precisely what is meant by ‘fundamental ontology’ when determining the aim of Destruktion. To assess whether the project of Destruktion takes place beyond or within ontology, it would be best to return to Heidegger himself. While Derrida certainly compares his reading of Sein und Zeit to other Heideggerian texts, he refers to texts that come much later. In order to ground Heidegger’s own understanding of Destruktion and its relation to fundamental ontology, I will compare the discussion in Sein und Zeit to works that immediately precede and succeed it. In addition, it will be fruitful to contrast Derrida’s later interpretation of Heidegger’s project to the one presented in the 1964–5 seminar. As I will show, Derrida’s reading of Heidegger quickly transforms after this seminar into his more mature and well-known critique. Ultimately, I argue that Derrida does not return to or reiterate this reading of Heidegger because it was never a sincere rendering of Heidegger’s early work in the first place. In light of this pursuit, it is first necessary to clarify Derrida’s understanding of Destruktion in the seminar. 2. Destruktion as Deconstruction Session One of the 1964–5 seminar is dedicated to explaining the subtitle of the course (‘The Question of Being and History’). Why, Derrida assumes the audience is wondering, say ‘question of being’ rather than ‘ontology’? After all, ontology is the study of being, it answers the so-called ‘question of being.’ The answer lies in Derrida’s unique reading of Heidegger’s work, which he unequivocally states on the first page of the session: Not only is Heidegger not here undertaking the foundation of an ontology, not even of a new ontology, nor even of an ontology in a radically new sense, not even, in fact the foundation of anything at all, in any sense at all — what is at issue here is rather a Destruktion of ontology. (Derrida 2016, 1) 3 Jake Nabasny Thus, to understand Heidegger, according to Derrida, one must realize that his thought involves the Destruktion of ontology, not the practice of it. The knee-jerk reaction to this claim is to believe that he wants to destroy, quite literally, any metaphysical enterprise. Yet Derrida correctly notes the nuance that Heidegger imbues on this word: it is neither negation nor annihilation at stake, but a radically different form of overcoming (Überwindung). What, then, is entailed in Destruktion? Destruktion is not the naïve negation of the history of ontology, but encompasses the entirety of this history within itself. Heidegger cautions that it is about neither the ‘vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints’ nor the ‘shaking off of the ontological tradition,’ but rather the attempt to ‘stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits’ (1962, 44). In many ways, this project sounds similar to G. W. F. Hegel’s ambitious synthesis of the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, Heidegger (as Derrida mentions) carefully distances himself from Hegel in the Introduction to Sein und Zeit. He goes as far as to say that Hegel’s ‘logic’ is, in fact, merely the culmination of traditional ontology from its inception with the Greeks. Despite the similarity between Heidegger’s Destruktion and Hegel’s project, the difference between these thinkers is crucial for Derrida. As he succinctly notes, ‘the destruction of the history of ontology is also a destruction of Hegelianism’ (Derrida 2016, 9). The miniscule but radical difference between Heidegger and Hegel culminates in Derrida’s own definition of Heideggerian Destruktion: ‘It is a destruction — that is, a deconstruction, a de-structuration, the shaking that is necessary to bring out the structures, the strata, the system of deposits’ (Ibid., 9). The ‘deposits’ in this case are the ‘ontic sedimentations’ (as Derrida frequently calls them) that have settled throughout the history of metaphysics. These sediments are the ontologies that have attempted to define Being (Sein), but have only succeeded in covering up the thing itself. Philosophers have defined Being as parousia, ousia, eidos, Idea, matter, percipi, and noumenon, just to name a few. In each case, Being is reduced to some phenomenal abstraction or intellectual concept, to the beingness (Seinendheit) of an already existent being (Seiende). Derrida’s suggested translation of Destruktion, deconstruction, implies shaking up these sedimented meanings to see them for what they are, and to see what they have covered up all this time. 4 Jake Nabasny Once the debris of beingness is cleared away, it would be possible to take up in earnest the question of being, that is, ontology. One can finally articulate what Being is in itself according to an ‘authentic ontology’ that is ‘outside the tradition or beyond the tradition’ of metaphysics (Ibid., 10). Yet this, Derrida protests, is not Heidegger’s project. He asserts that ‘the destruction of the history of ontology is a destruction of ontology itself’ (Ibid., 11). This formula, which was already suggested at the beginning of the session, will be repeated several times. Derrida insists that Heidegger’s ‘ontological point of view’ does not constitute an ontology, despite whatever ‘public rumor’ or Heidegger himself may say (Ibid., 11).
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