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.
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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)
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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.
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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). Given the fact that Heidegger says that he is doing ‘fundamental ontology’ and that many interpreters assent to this claim,1 why should we accept Derrida’s counter-proposal? In other words, what reason is there to think that the Destruktion of the history of ontology is always already the Destruktion of ontology? To begin, Derrida rightly points out that Heidegger soon becomes suspicious of the word ‘ontology’ after Sein und Zeit. He suspects that ‘ontology,’ the word and the practice, is inextricable from the history of metaphysics. So, after Sein und Zeit, but just how long after we will have to investigate later, Heidegger progressively abandons the notion of ontology. Derrida points to three reference points, or texts, in which this is the case. First, Derrida gestures toward Heidegger’s proximity to Edmund Husserl in §3 of Sein und Zeit.2 Husserl is interested in finding the ontological foundation of the positive sciences. Likewise, Heidegger contends that the sciences are blind insofar as they have not answered the fundamental question of being. This is not so say that their work is frivolous, but that they lack a solid foundation to ground their truth claims. In agreement with Husserl, Heidegger continues to call this enterprise ‘ontology.’ Derrida explains that this is only temporarily the case. Furthermore, he argues that ontology is here already referred to the greater authority of the question of being, thus already handled with caution. While it is well-known that Heidegger will soon abandon the word ‘ontology,’ it is important to elucidate his relationship to it in Sein und Zeit. In claiming that ontology is being discarded in favor of thinking the question of being, Derrida points to a specific sentence in §3:
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Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task. (Heidegger 1962, 31)
This quote is dropped at the end of the discussion of the first reference point without any further clarification. Yet the context is paramount for understanding Heidegger’s claim in this highly polemical statement. It concludes a discussion of ontology in its most general sense, understood simply as the science of being. In the quoted passage, Heidegger asserts the mutual necessity of the question of being alongside ontology. He goes on to say that a proper understanding of this question requires ontology to make it a priority. There is never, as Derrida seems to think, a mutually exclusive opposition between ontology and the question of being. Thus, it is necessary to leave open, until the next section, the issue of how ontology factors into Heidegger’s methodology. The second reference point comes eight years later in Introduction to Metaphysics (1935) where one finds an explicit move beyond ontology. Once again, Derrida closes his remark with a quotation that is not followed by any explanation. In the quote, Heidegger insists that ontology, understood in its broadest sense, is not practiced by contemporary academic scholarship, which prefers traditional ontology (Heidegger 2000, 43-4). For this reason, he argues that it would be best for his own enterprise to forgo use of the term ‘ontology’ altogether. If this argument sounds identical to the first reference point (§3 of Sein und Zeit), that is because it is virtually identical. Heidegger includes a parenthetical reference to Sein und Zeit which points to the exact passage quoted by Derrida. The audience is meant to understand that Heidegger is now, eight years later, casting off any remaining ties to ontology. The message is that ‘ontology,’ which was always suspect, will be now completely eclipsed by the question of being. And yet this reference point, like the one before it, requires a more delicate reading. While Heidegger does indeed dispense with the word ‘ontology,’ it is only because of the misunderstanding that this word cultivates. There is still a more general form of ontology that Heidegger has in mind which is worth pursuing, one that must first answer
6 Jake Nabasny the question of being.3 Therefore, his later departure from the term ‘ontology’ is not sufficient evidence for a permanent commitment to the Destruktion of ontology. Derrida links the third and final reference point to a lecture from 1943 on Nietzsche.4 This lecture comes sixteen years after Sein und Zeit. In this case, Heidegger does provide an argument against ontology as such insofar as it remains chained to the history of metaphysics. After the ‘turn’ (Kehre), Heidegger’s thought radically departs from its former optimism about Dasein as a site of access to Being. Due to this transition, he loses faith in the phenomenological method and, thus, ontology. In light of this change, one should not be surprised to find Heidegger promoting the Destruktion of ontology itself. To reiterate, the three reference points are intended by Derrida to demonstrate that Heidegger progressively abandons the notion of ontology, starting with Sein und Zeit. Furthermore, they are meant to show how the project of Destruktion is directed at ontology itself, not just the history of ontology, despite Heidegger’s own claim to a ‘fundamental ontology.’ Upon further scrutiny, we can see how Derrida misses the double sense of ‘ontology’ employed by Heidegger within the passages he cites. Hence, a preliminary reason for doubt exists in regard to Derrida’s core thesis. To offer a full response to Derrida’s interpretation of Destruktion, it will be necessary to return to Sein und Zeit and other works from around that period to grasp how Heidegger himself articulates the project of Destruktion and its relation to ontology.
3. Destruktion as Fundamental Ontology
The Destruktion of the history of ontology is first formally announced and demonstrated in §6 of Sein und Zeit. Although Derrida chooses this section as a focal point for understanding Destruktion, it must be situated within the larger gesture of the Introduction as a whole. Lecture courses from before and after Sein und Zeit reveal that this project is neither immediately abandoned nor antithetical to ontology. In fact, it would be a couple years before ontology is abandoned as such. To elucidate this movement in Heidegger’s thought, I will utilize three basic registers: context, orientation, and methodology.
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The context of Sein und Zeit is paramount for comprehending its purpose, which can be gleaned from Heidegger’s two prefaces. In the preface to the seventh German edition, it is noted that the book was originally published in Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung, a journal of phenomenology. This particular issue was edited by Edmund Husserl, Heidegger’s mentor. Since the content of Sein und Zeit exists exactly as it did when it was published in the journal, it must be considered a phenomenological text. This consideration is later confirmed by Heidegger’s methodology.5 The orientation of Sein und Zeit as much as the context is committed to a theoretico-phenomenological approach. This approach characteristically privileges light and proximity. In Husserlian phenomenology, visible, illuminated objects offer a more optimal display of the intentional object. The relation between light and truth, emphasized from Plato to Enlightenment thinkers and beyond, is not lost on Derrida either. Proximity, in a similar vein, is imperative to phenomenological practice. Husserl’s transcendental reduction is exactly the process by which one moves from what is most proximate and certain to that which is universal. It is these motifs that Heidegger will adopt from his teacher in Sein und Zeit. The project announced in Sein und Zeit is characterized as a process of illumination. Being (Sein) is the ‘darkest concept’ and must, along with time, be brought to light (Ibid., 23, 39). The question of being must be made ‘visible’ and ‘transparent,’ otherwise any attempt at ontology will remain ‘blind’ (Ibid., 24, 31). Moreover, the entire realm of beings that Heidegger investigates are mediated by light in that he etymologically situates the term ‘phenomenon’ in its original Greek meaning of ‘bringing to light’ (Ibid., 51). This style of interpretation is realized by focusing on what is most proximate (zunächst). The closest phenomena are, in a certain sense, the ‘brightest.’ They are the ones most easily grasped by the questioning being known as Dasein since Dasein fundamentally dwells in everyday life. Although the existential analytic of Dasein aspires to articulate ontological structures, it must begin with the ontic ‘everydayness’ of Dasein. The context and orientation of Sein und Zeit reveal a deep commitment to phenomenology. At this one may wonder how phenomenology relates to ontology. Derrida’s claim, after all, is about
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Heidegger’s relation to ontology, not phenomenology. As we will see, however, this relationship is crucial for thinking through the meaning of Destruktion. By and large, Derrida’s account of Destruktion as it pertains to the history of ontology is correct. Destruktion is heralded as a response to tradition. With the question of being already laid out and the existential analytic of Dasein suggested as a kind of response, Heidegger’s project is threatened by two obstacles. First is the everydayness of the world and the reassertion of ontic knowledge. Second is the lengthy history already saturated with answers to the question of being, which is predominantly derived from Greek ontology (Ibid., 43). These answers regard existentielle structures alone, thus failing to attain the ontological insight that the analytic seeks. To overcome these obstacles, Heidegger suggests Destruktion, which involves destroying the ‘traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being’ (Ibid., 44). Above it was shown that Derrida takes Destruktion to be a positive project, not just the annihilation of old ways of thinking. While this is absolutely correct, it is important to clarify just what the positive project entails. Heidegger mentions that it involves a return to ‘primordial experiences.’ The Destruktion of the tradition and history of ontology is as much the overcoming of conventional philosophical concepts as it is a fresh start at answering the question of being. In no uncertain terms, Heidegger tells us that the analytic of Dasein which is meant to answer this question does so by way of a ‘fundamental ontology’ (Ibid., 34-5). It is also clear that ‘fundamental ontology’ truly means doing ontology, just not how it has been practiced historically (Ibid., 49). Exactly what ‘fundamental ontology’ means in practice is explained in §7, where Heidegger provides a detailed explanation of his methodology.6 The primary failure of traditional ontology was to define a region of beings as Being without first asking about the Being of those beings. The pre-definition of Being covered up its actual meaning. In this respect, the question of being requires an approach that does not preordain its theme or object of analysis. Heidegger asserts that phenomenology, precisely because it lacks a theme, is the appropriate method to answer this question. It is true that phenomenology is the study of phenomena, but phenomena are interrogated only according to their form, namely, how
9 Jake Nabasny they appear, not why. Therefore, any adequate response to the question must be arrived at phenomenologically (Ibid., 50). At this point, a substantial complicity is formed between the concepts Destruktion, fundamental ontology, and phenomenology. Any appropriate response to the question of being requires the Destruktion of traditional ontology. Traditional ontology must be replaced with a fundamental ontology that seeks to answer the question through the philosophically adequate existential analytic of Dasein. This new ontology, in order to avoid the trappings of traditional ones, must focus on the formal characteristics of how beings appear rather than what kinds of beings appear. As such, fundamental ontology is phenomenology, and Heidegger says this explicitly: ‘Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible’ (Ibid., 60-1). In fact, the very existence of Heidegger’s investigation is credited to Husserl’s early phenomenology, which laid the ground for it (Ibid., 62). Insofar as Destruktion is thoroughly phenomenological, it is thoroughly ontological. At this juncture, Derrida’s core thesis is untenable. Heidegger was committed to practicing ontology, especially in Sein und Zeit. This fact is compounded by how Heidegger positions his project in his lecture courses. The lecture courses from before and after Sein und Zeit in large part reiterate, at times verbatim, the fundamental outlook found in its Introduction. In courses from the early 1920s, Heidegger is still explicitly committed to phenomenology and, in this moment, begins articulating the project of Destruktion. Prior to Destruktion, however, Heidegger calls for a ‘dismantling’ (Abbauens) of traditional ontological concepts. In Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity (1923), he links the process of dismantling to a critical reappropriation of traditional ontology by means of the ‘phenomenon’:
philosophy today still moves within the tradition. As a thematic category for the stance of accessing the object and the preparedness for dealing with it, ‘phenomenon’ means a constant preparation of the path to be traveled. This thematic category has the function of a critical cautionary guidance of seeing in a regress along a path of dismantling critically detected instances of covering up. (Heidegger 1999, 60)
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Phenomenology, in this context, provides merely a ‘mode of research’ for reactivating what has been hidden by ontology since Aristotle (Ibid., 56). Its strength lies precisely in its being only a mode and not a fully articulated discipline with a designated theme. Yet even here, very early on in Heidegger’s career, the dismantling process instantiated by phenomenology does not negate or replace ontology. The preliminary remarks of this lecture course must be read very closely since they develop the appropriate relationship between phenomenology and, our primary interest, ontology. In them, Heidegger lays out the various meanings of ontology. Above all, he asserts, ontology has failed as a ‘doctrine of being’ if one takes it in the traditional or modern senses. Ontology in its proper sense is neither, for example, Aristotle’s Metaphysics nor materialist critiques of Kant. It is rather ontology in its broadest sense that must be vigilantly maintained if one wishes to answer its fundamental question. (Recall that it was this very distinction that Derrida overlooked in his presentation of the three reference points.) Preserving ontology in this general mode requires the method of phenomenology, which is ontology’s only means of survival (Ibid., 2). Not long after the Ontology lectures, Heidegger introduces the term Destruktion alongside ‘dismantling’ in Introduction to Phenomenological Research (1923–4). Here it is still tied to the self- liberation from Greek thought, but now Destruktion, which becomes the more dominant term, is seen as a project in itself. Specifically, it is characterized as a ‘battle with the past’ and, in this sense, takes on a positive role (Heidegger 2005, 88). Heidegger proceeds to lay out four ‘points of view’ that qualify Destruktion: (1) a concrete, productive path of research, (2) a critique of the present-day so as to resurrect a ‘primordial past,’ (3) a form of historical knowledge, and (4) a practice of disclosure, not refutation (Ibid., 85-6). These points from the early lecture courses, as we have seen, are repeated in the Introduction to Sein und Zeit. The lecture courses demonstrate that Heidegger’s commitment to phenomenological ontology and its complicity with Destruktion predates and establishes the ground for the analytic of Dasein in Sein und Zeit. Lectures given during and after 1927 force us to reconsider just how quickly ontology is abandoned as such. The Basic Problems of
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Phenomenology (1927), considered the ‘designed and designated sequel’ to Sein und Zeit, maintains the significance of ontology and its linkage to phenomenology (Hofstadter 1982, xi). If anything, the role of ontology is expanded in that it becomes the sole aim of all philosophy (Heidegger 1982, 12). With the confluence of ontology and philosophy, Destruktion, intended to be the first step toward fundamental ontology, is now the only path toward ontology’s self-assurance: ‘Only by means of this destruction [Destruktion] can ontology fully assure itself in a phenomenological way of the genuine character of its concepts’ (Ibid., 23). In this way, Destruktion works in unison with ontology, even directly after Sein und Zeit. From 1927–8, Heidegger presents lectures on the ‘Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,’ which were later published unrevised under the title Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929). In many ways this book picks up where Sein und Zeit left off. Not only was an interpretation of Kant promised to be included in Part Two of Sein und Zeit, but also Heidegger remarks that it is a ‘fitting supplement’ to his earlier project (Heidegger 1997, xix).7 At the time it was written, the ‘Kantbook,’ as Heidegger called it, was thought to be a genuine rendering of the groundbreaking philosophy developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. In Kant, Heidegger saw an ‘advocate for the question of Being’ (Ibid., xvii). He goes on to read the Kantian project of critique precisely in these terms, that is, in the language of Destruktion. The ‘Kantbook’ opens with a definition of fundamental ontology: ‘the metaphysics of human Dasein which is required for metaphysics to be made possible’ (Ibid., 1). Heidegger can be seen reappropriating the term ‘metaphysics’ in part because he believes it can be recuperated through a Kantian perspective. Metaphysics’ primary task is to lay the ground for its very own operation and to delimit the boundaries of its practice. One half of this project is responding to the metaphysical tradition and returning to old metaphysical tasks with the goal of transforming them for use today (Ibid., 2). While Heidegger does not mention Destruktion in this text, ‘metaphysics’ is clearly fulfilling that role under the aegis of Kantian Critique. The other half of the project involves connecting ‘metaphysics’ (conceived in the way just mentioned) to fundamental ontology. Dasein is still portrayed as the primary access point for the question of being.
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Metaphysics, in laying the ground, unveils the constitution of the Being of Dasein. In other words, metaphysics answers the fundamental ontological question and, as such, is ontology. Yet the kind of ontology that allows metaphysics to ground itself is fundamental; this process does not include the detailed working out of the positive sciences or ontical modes of metaphysical inquiry. It does, however, provide the foundation for these later tasks (Ibid., 163). Heidegger would later retract this reading of Kant in the Preface to the Third Edition by insisting on the double sense of the ‘problem of metaphysics.’ The primordial problem of all metaphysics, that on which its enterprise must be grounded, is the question of being. First and foremost, metaphysics must answer this question before it can legitimately move on to determine anything about beings (Seiendes). Yet the ‘problem’ can be understood in another sense, namely, that metaphysics itself is problematic. Metaphysics, as it has been practiced by ancients as well as moderns, fails the get beyond ontical knowledge of being; it only knows beings in their beingness. By the time Heidegger has written the Preface in question (1965), he is already extremely suspicious of any attempt to revive the metaphysical tradition. It is this second sense, then, that is expressed with increasing urgency in Heidegger’s work after the 1920s. This is as far as we can track, without a doubt, Heidegger’s commitment to ontology. Others have wished to go further. Joanna Hodge, for example, suggests that Heidegger’s ‘ontology’ may still be committed to Husserlian transcendental phenomenology as late as the 1940s (2010, 40). However, Heidegger’s doubts soon become explicit in his lecture courses after the ‘Kantbook’ is published. The lecture entitled The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude was given during the winter semester from 1929–30 (published in 1938).8 There, Heidegger begins to assert the inextricability of ontology and theology (under the heading ‘ontotheology’). He no longer believes in a pure or rigorous practice of ontology that does not fall back into ontical modes of analysis circumscribed by an essential beingness or Supreme Being. So, in contrast to Derrida’s claims, Heidegger is committed to ontology, albeit a novel form of fundamental ontology practiced as Husserlian phenomenology.9 Destruktion is an imperative first step in this ontological pursuit. Moreover, it is not the case that Heidegger gives up on
13 Jake Nabasny ontology immediately after Sein und Zeit. Fundamental ontology remains a serious and sincere commitment throughout the 1920s. The turn against ontology cannot be dated any earlier than late 1929. According to Derrida, it is necessarily to focus on Heidegger’s terminology rather than his thought (2016, 11), yet even his terminology (especially Destruktion, ontology, phenomenology) suggests a much longer and more genuine commitment to ontology than Derrida portrays. In the next section, I will briefly consider reasons for Derrida’s heterodox reading of Heidegger, specifically in the context of Derrida’s other works. This particular reading may disclose more about Derrida than it does Heidegger.
4. Beyond or Within?
One must concede at this point that Heidegger’s notion of Destruktion, put into practice via fundamental ontology, remains a vestige of ontology at least until late 1929. Derrida’s dream of a Destruktion that is always already the deconstruction of ontology itself does not bear out against Heidegger’s own statements. Yet why is it that Derrida, a notoriously close and astute reader, would misrepresent Heidegger in such an explicit way? The only likely answer is that Derrida’s reading of Heidegger was in anticipation of his own notion of deconstruction. Thus, it served a greater purpose than simply a faithful explication of Heideggerian thought. To grasp this greater purpose, it is first necessary to see how Derrida wavers in his claims about Heideggerian Destruktion. His interpretation contains numerous inconsistences not only across his oeuvre but also within the 1964–65 seminar itself. The key claim, that the Destruktion of the history of ontology is the Destruktion of ontology itself, manifests in conflicting modalities at various times. The abandonment of ontology is said to occur in three different places: (1) already in §6 of Sein und Zeit, (2) immediately after Sein und Zeit, and (3) in Introduction to Metaphysics (Derrida 2016, 1, 11, 13). These three different turning-points are further complicated by three contradictory orientations that Derrida ascribes to Destruktion. He inconsistently contends that (1) the Destruktion of ontology was only ‘announced’ in §3 of Sein und Zeit, (2) that the goal was the Destruktion of ontology from the very beginning, and (3) that Destruktion pertained only to the history of ontology, but was the
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Destruktion of ontology ‘explicitly’ (Ibid., 13, 16, 19). And this confusion only gets deeper when viewed from the context of Derrida’s other work. A couple months before the first session of the seminar on 16 November 1964, Derrida’s essay ‘Violence et métaphysique: Essai sur la pensée d'Emmanuel Levinas’ was published in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. He writes in a footnote that Heidegger wanted to restore ‘the properly ontological intention dormant within metaphysics’ by awakening ‘the “fundamental ontology” beneath “metaphysical ontology,”’ which was not abandoned until Introduction to Metaphysics (1964, 324n1; 1978, 311n3). In this note, Derrida maintains the very view that he denies in the 1964–65 seminar, that is, Heidegger was at one point committed to ontology. Perhaps in the time between this publication and the first seminar he had reevaluated his interpretation? This possibility is ruled out when one looks at Derrida’s work that came after. Immediately after the seminar in question (or at least with more immediacy than that with which Heidegger supposedly abandons ontology), in 1966, Derrida presents ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ at Johns Hopkins University. The essay is famous for its radical critique of structuralism, yet even more radical is the shift in Derrida’s treatment of Heidegger. Only a year and a half after the final 1964–65 seminar, Derrida repeats his original interpretation found in the 1964 essay on Levinas. Once again, Heidegger appears to be trapped in metaphysics. Along with Nietzsche and Freud, ‘Heideggerean destruction’ is thought to be one of the ‘destructive discourses’ that is trapped in a ‘circle’ and cannot escape metaphysics (1978, 280).10 And this comes after Derrida painstakingly demonstrates in Session Four of the seminar that Heidegger’s thought is not circular. After 1966, Derrida’s interpretation enters a zone of indistinction. A year later in Of Grammatology, it is argued that Heidegger is ‘at once contained within it [metaphysics] and transgresses it’ (1997, 22). Five years more, Derrida continues to maintain this double gesture in ‘Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time.’ Of Sein und Zeit, he argues that it ‘constitutes a decisive step beyond or within metaphysics’ (1982, 47). The ‘beyond or within,’ from this point on, will haunt Derrida’s formulation of deconstruction and the Heideggerian motivations it inherited. How can it be both beyond and within? According to what logic or perspective can such a claim be made? Regardless of how these
15 Jake Nabasny questions are answered, if they can ever be, this much is clear: Derrida no longer believes that Destruktion has successfully extricated itself from metaphysical ontology. In fact, the ‘extraordinary trembling’ exercised by Destruktion and, with it, the entire epoch of Sein und Zeit remains within, not beyond, the ‘grammar and lexicon of metaphysics’ (1982, 48, 62-3). What, then, is beyond? From where does the indeterminacy of the ‘or’ in ‘beyond or within’ arise? The answer, hinted at in the conclusion of ‘Ousia and Grammē,’ is différance. That is, Heidegger himself, according to Derrida after 1966, could not escape ontology, but his project of Destruktion provided a clue for a successful way out. Différance would allow for a form of thinking beyond ontology (Derrida 1982, 67). Yet this is not a wholly new concept, but one deeply indebted to Heideggerian Destruktion. In his essay ‘Différance’, Derrida shows how this notion is closely linked to the ontological difference articulated by Heidegger. Later, in ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, Derrida admits that différance stems from a certain Heideggerian schema, but is not simply a repetition of Destruktion or Abbau; rather, it is notion that has been adapted for his own ends (2008, 2, 5).11 It is not possible here to fully examine the origins of différance or compare every text that Derrida has written on Heidegger after the seminar.12 Nevertheless, one can potentially understand the ‘beyond’ as an anticipation of Derrida’s turn away from Heidegger, which can be roughly designated as a transition from Destruktion to différance. This transition, despite never being fully explicit, accounts for the exceptional reading of Heidegger found in the 1964–5 seminar. Textual evidence demonstrates that this reading was a significant anomaly in the development of Derrida’s thought. Yet it is significant, I argue, precisely because it gives us an insight into the genesis of Derrida’s later thought. Perhaps it is for this reason that Derrida, at one point in the seminar, admits that his reading is a ‘retroactive justification’ of ‘implicit’ themes in Sein und Zeit (2016, 73). These implicit themes would eventually become the inspiration for a radically new way of thinking ontological difference as différance.
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5. Conclusion
In the beginning it was noted that Derrida and his biographer, Peeters, both failed to recall the actual title of the 1964–5 seminar on Heidegger. It is true that the majority of the seminar is dedicated to the problem of ‘historicity’ (Geschichtlichkeit) in Heidegger and that many commentators have written on the Heideggerian conception of temporality that is taken up by Derrida. It is, however, Derrida’s interpretation of Destruktion that is truly unique and exceptional in these seminars. The fundamental claim is that the Destruktion of the history of ontology is also a Destruktion of ontology. Derrida argues that this is true of Heidegger’s project as early as Sein und Zeit, if not earlier. To prove that this gesture is made very early by Heidegger, Derrida directs his audience to ‘reference points’ that actually come much later than Sein und Zeit. This hermeneutical hiccup is compounded by Derrida’s wavering commitment to exactly when Heidegger seeks to destroy ontology itself. It is said to occur in, immediately after, and progressively after Sein und Zeit. These issues forced us to reconsider Heidegger’s framing of Destruktion in his own works. A close examination of the Introduction to Sein und Zeit and lecture courses from before and after its publication revealed Heidegger did not explicitly or implicitly turn against ontology until the very end of 1929. It is rather the case that his method, according to both self- admission and practice, is indubitably phenomenological ontology. This form of phenomenology, which was utilized in Sein und Zeit, was intended to be an interpretation of the ontologico-fundamental problem of metaphysics, also known as the question of being. Yet this return to Heidegger had not solved the riddle of why Derrida had interpreted Destruktion in such a way. With a summary glance at texts written by Derrida immediately before, after, and beyond the 1964–65 seminar, the unique and exceptional nature of Derrida’s interpretation of Destruktion in the seminar was revealed. Not only was this argument not repeated in Derrida’s work, but it was replaced by a critical reception of Heidegger, one that sought to go beyond the now-apparent failures of Destruktion. One potential path toward this ‘beyond’ was suggested with the notion of différance. While this notion was intended to evade the faults of Destruktion, it was also
17 Jake Nabasny deeply indebted to the Heideggerian project. In this way, the 1964–5 seminar should be read as a stage in the development of Derrida’s mature thought.
18 19
References
Derrida, Jacques (1964), "Violence et métaphysique: Essai sur la pensée d'Emmanuel Levinas," Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 69:3, pp. 322-54. —— (1978), Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— (1982), Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— (1997), Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. —— (2008), Psyche: Inventions of the Other, trans. Ruben Bevezdivin and Elizabeth Rottenberg, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —— (2016), Heidegger: The Question of Being and History, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, Martin (1962), Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York, NY: Harper & Row. —— (1982), The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. —— (1997), Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. —— (1999), Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity, trans. John Van Buren, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. —— (2000), Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. —— (2005), Introduction to Phenomenological Research, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Bloomington, IN: Indiana Press University. Hodge, Joanna (2010), "Otherwise than Ontology: Derrida, Levinas, Heidegger," Derrida Today, 3:1, pp. 37-56. Hofstadter, Albert (1982), "Translator's Preface," in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, pp. xi-xiii. Hoy, David Couzens (1979), "Forgetting the Text: Derrida's Critique of Heidegger," boundary 2, 8:1, pp. 223-36. Krell, David Farrell (2015), Ecstasy, Catastrophe: Heidegger from Being and Time to the Black Notebooks, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 20
Moran, Dermot (1994), "The Destruction of the Destruction: Heidegger's Versions of the History of Philosophy," in Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, and Technology, eds. Karsten Harries and Christoph Jamme, New York, NY, Holmes & Meier, pp. 175-96. Peeters, Benoît (2013), Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown, Cambridge: Polity. Taminiaux, Jacques (1991), Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. Michael Gendre, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 1 For Derrida’s assessment of contemporary French Heidegger scholars, see Derrida 2016, 17. 2 This proximity is a ‘reference’ that is ‘almost explicit’ (Derrida 2016, 12). Yet Derrida fails to mention the reference to Husserl that is explicit at the very end of the Introduction to Sein und Zeit. This omission will have to be considered in full within the next section. 3 Around the 1930s or 1940s, Heidegger makes clear in a note on his Kant book that metaphysics and the question of being are not mutually exclusive. Rather, he opts for a strong affinity between the two: ‘But the question is: the Problem of Metaphysics, and that means – the Question of Being’ (Heidegger 1997, 175). Here Heidegger highlights a central thesis of the Kant book, namely, metaphysics is problematic until one answers the foundational question of being. This topology will be explored further in the following section. 4 In the following session, Derrida suggests that the ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1947) could be a possible fourth reference point (2016, 19). 5 The original preface describes the intention of the work: ‘Our provisional aim is the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understand whatsoever of Being’ (Heidegger 1962, 19). It is crucial to distinguish in this statement the word Interpretation (Interpretation) from another word found frequently in Sein und Zeit that has roughly the same meaning (Auslegung). Interpretation has a strictly theoretical denotation, such as when a person ‘interprets’ the Bible. Auslegung, on the other hand, refers to a looser understanding of statements or behaviors. For example, one may interpret a certain gesture to be inviting, aggressive, noncommittal, and so on. Etymologically, it can also mean unfolding or opening up something to reveal its hidden layers of meaning. Heidegger will always use Interpretation to describe his philosophical enterprise because it involves the systematic investigation of Dasein as the privileged access point to Being. In a fatal error, Derrida misreads Interpretation as Auslegung (2016, 79). He mismatches the denotation of Interpretation with that of Auslegung and contends that Heidegger’s aim is an Auslegung of Being. At this point in Derrida’s exegesis of Sein und Zeit, he has claimed already that Heidegger’s attempt at ‘reading’ Being is metaphorical, since Being cannot be literally read as a text. Auslegung, later in Sein und Zeit, is characterized as a cognitive power that can interpret certain things as other things (Heidegger 1962, 188-9). In other words, and in the sense that Derrida wishes, it constitutes metaphors. While there is not space here to follow Derrida’s mismatching of technical terms further, the primary point is unequivocally clear: Heidegger’s interrogation of Dasein is of the order of Interpretation, not Auslegung. To mistake the two is to misconceive the context in which Heidegger inscribes his project. 6 Derrida does not comment on this section of Sein und Zeit in the seminar. 7 Derrida offers a unique reading of the place of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in Heidegger’s oeuvre (2016, 180-4). For him, the lectures represent a warning sign of Heidegger’s eventual ‘running out of breath’ at the end of Sein und Zeit, where ontology is supposedly abandoned for good in favor of other paths. A detailed response to Derrida on this topic would take us too far afield, and would be primarily redundant with statements that have already been made. 8 To be precise, Heidegger’s inaugural lecture at Freiburg University in July of 1929, titled ‘What is Metaphysics?’, gives a hint that the turn against ontology is on the horizon. This lecture can be considered a sort of prelude to the more explicit turn away from ontology later in that year. 9 While it is quite clear in a general way that Heidegger remains committed to ontology, how this affects the detailed investigations of Sein und Zeit is a topic that cannot be broached here. I refer the reader to David Farrell Krell’s recent work that demonstrates how the Heideggerian notions of self and inheritance remain untouched by Destruktion and preserve a positive ontological value (2015, 11, 52). 10 It is interesting to note that although Derrida suggests many translations of Destruktion in the seminar, the French word he uses most often there (la destruction) is also invoked in this context. It would seem, then, that he is referring to the same concept. 11 I wish to highlight a profound affinity between Destruktion and différance, but it is also important to keep in mind the differences, on which much has already been written. Most importantly, I believe, for Derrida’s own purposes, one must recognize a difference in movement between these two concepts. It has been noted that Destruktion involves a kind of (Husserlian) reduction that returns to primordial experiences of Being, and that this return to the originary is prescribed by Heidegger’s project (Hoy 1979, 224; Moran 1994, 187). Différance, by contrast, relies on ‘semantic dispersion’ to uncover texts as ultimately ‘undecipherable’ (Taminiaux 1991, 68). In other words, différance does not hope to return to anything and finds nothing behind or beyond its own dismantling procedure. 12 Although, one can find fairly easily in Derrida’s later works evidence of his turn against Heidegger. In ‘Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference’ (1983), for example, Derrida affirms that Heidegger’s project, as late as 1928, is ‘above all, a metaphysical ontology of Dasein’ (2008, 21).