The Genesis of Heidegger's Reading of Kant
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The Genesis of Heidegger’s Reading of Kant By Garrett Zantow Bredeson Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy December, 2014 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Jeffrey Tlumak, Ph.D. Lisa Guenther, Ph.D. Julian Wuerth, Ph.D. Sebastian Luft, Ph.D. for Florence Goodearle Zantow 1921 – 2012 ii Acknowledgements This project was originally conceived in the depths of winter 2008 in Oconto, WI. My interest in Kant had been sparked the year before by Julius Sensat and others at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. My interest in Heidegger is of longer standing, and I thank John Dreher of Lawrence University for having had the patience to put up with me while I insisted on reading the entirety of Being and Time over the course of a tutorial that was not really designed with anything like that in mind. I would like to thank my committee members for the time they have invested in my project, especially my dissertation director, Jeffrey Tlumak, whose understanding and support for me have been extraordinary over the years. I also feel as though I’ve been unusually blessed by having the chance to be a small part of outstanding and supportive communities of graduate students, first at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and then at Vanderbilt University. I’ve learned far more from them than can be put into words. Although this list cannot possibly be exhaustive, let me especially thank for their many conversations over the years R.J. Leland, Nataliya Palatnik, Adam Marushak, Justin Remhof, Nate Sharadin, Stephanie Allen, John Timmers, Patrick Fessenbecker, Rebecca Tuvel, Melinda Charis Hall, Mary Butterfield, Amy McKiernan, Sandy Skene, Sasha Alekseyeva, Thomas Dabay, Alison Suen, Trevor Bibler, Lara Giordano, Chris Wells, and, finally, Jessica Polish, whose singular intellectual energy pushed me further than I ever would have been able to go alone. On a personal note, I would like to thank James Bredeson, Peg Bredeson, and, of course, Amanda Carrico for their love and encouragement through the years. Finally, let take a moment to show my appreciation for the staffs of the libraries without whom none of my work on these topics would have been possible, including the libraries at Vanderbilt University, the University of Colorado, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Lawrence University, and Beloit College, as well as the interlibrary loan operations of countless others. iii Table of Contents List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................................................................. vi Note on Translations ........................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Part One ..................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter I ............................................................................................................................................................. 25 Preliminaries: Cognition and Objectivity ...................................................................................... 29 Judgment as the Clue to All Acts of the Understanding .......................................................... 40 A68/B93: Kant’s “no other use” Claim ........................................................................................... 45 The Act of Judging and the Vermögen zu urteilen ...................................................................... 48 A68/B93: “All bodies are divisible” ................................................................................................. 53 B128-129: The Inner Principle of the Transcendental Deduction .................................... 61 A133/B172: The Power of Judgment ............................................................................................. 67 Judgments of Perception and Judgments of experience ........................................................ 75 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 93 Chapter II ........................................................................................................................................................... 96 On the Very Idea of a Third Critique .............................................................................................. 103 The Transition from Natural to Moral Philosophy ................................................................. 108 The Power of Judgment as the Legislator of the Transition ............................................... 113 Feeling and the Transition from Nature to Morals ................................................................. 126 The Significance of Feeling ................................................................................................................ 135 Herder’s Abuse of Teleology Reconsidered ............................................................................... 140 Philosophy, World, and the Human Being .................................................................................. 144 Part Two .................................................................................................................................................................. 152 Chapter III ........................................................................................................................................................ 160 Phenomenology and Life Philosophy ........................................................................................... 165 Natorp’s Challenge ................................................................................................................................ 173 Philosophy and Method ...................................................................................................................... 186 Formal Indication .................................................................................................................................. 190 Philosophy and Its History ................................................................................................................ 202 Chapter IV ........................................................................................................................................................ 208 Being and Time and the Early Freiburg Years ........................................................................... 212 Being and Time, as Published ........................................................................................................... 221 iv Existence and the Meaning of Being ............................................................................................. 230 Being and Time: Division Two ......................................................................................................... 235 The Unkept Promise of Being and Time ...................................................................................... 242 Heidegger’s Self-Understanding in Being and Time and the Question of Kant ........... 249 Chapter V .......................................................................................................................................................... 256 Taking Kant Back from the Neokantians .................................................................................... 263 Symbolic Form and the Fact of Science ....................................................................................... 271 Davos .......................................................................................................................................................... 279 Heidegger’s Foregrounding of the Transcendental Power of Imagination .................. 284 The Failure and Legacy of Heidegger’s Reading of Kant ...................................................... 297 Goethe’s Room ........................................................................................................................................ 306 Epilogue ..................................................................................................................................................... 311 References ............................................................................................................................................................... 315 Works by Kant ............................................................................................................................................... 315 Works by Heidegger .................................................................................................................................... 317 Other Works ................................................................................................................................................... 320 v List of Abbreviations Parenthetical citations to works by Kant and Heidegger are given according to the standard reference format and in accordance with the abbreviations listed below. In Kant’s case, the standard edition