Being and Truth Chair of the Philosophy Depart- Lectures Given at the Rise Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger Ment at Suffolk University
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P h i l o s o P h y Being Being GReGoRy FRIed is Professor and being and truth Chair of the Philosophy depart- Lectures given at the rise Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger ment at Suffolk University. He is of National Socialism translated by author of Heidegger’s Polemos: Gregory Fried and Richard Polt From Being to Politics and editor and (with Richard Polt) of A Compan- these lectures, delivered ion to Heidegger’s Introduction to “Fried and Polt’s translation of Martin being and In in 1933–1934 while he Metaphysics. truth was Rector of the University of Heidegger’s Being and Truth is a well- Freiburg and an active supporter RICHaRd PolT is Professor and truth of the national Socialist regime, Chair of the Philosophy depart- crafted and careful rendering of an Martin Heidegger addresses the ment at Xavier University. He is translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt history of metaphysics and the author of The Emergency of Be- important and demanding volume of the notion of truth from Heraclitus to ing: On Heidegger’s Contributions Complete Works.” Hegel. First published in German to Philosophy and Heidegger: An in 2001, these two lecture courses Introduction. —andReW Mitchell, EmoRy UnIversity offer a sustained encounter with Martin Heidegger Heidegger’s thinking during a StudieS in Continental period when he attempted to give thouGht expression to his highest ambitions John Sallis, editor for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger’s views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and INDIANA activity. University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis Jacket illustration: www.iupress.indiana.edu Martin Heidegger, 1933. 1-800-842-6796 INDIANA Being and Truth Jkt. MECH.indd 1 6/25/10 11:07 AM Being and Truth Studies in Continental Thought EDITOR JOHN SALLIS CONSULTING EDITORS Robert Bernasconi William L. McBride Rudolf Bernet J. N. Mohanty John D. Caputo Mary Rawlinson David Carr Tom Rockmore Edward S. Casey Calvin O. Schrag Hubert L. Dreyfus †Reiner Schürmann Don Ihde Charles E. Scott David Farrell Krell Thomas Sheehan Lenore Langsdorf Robert Sokolowski Alphonso Lingis Bruce W. Wilshire David Wood Martin Heidegger Being and Truth Translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA www.iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] Published in German as Martin Heidegger, Sein und Wahrheit © 2001 German edition by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main © 2010 English edition by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any informa- tion storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions consti- tutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. [Sein und Wahrheit. English] Being and truth / Martin Heidegger ; translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt. p. cm. — (Studies in continental thought) ISBN 978–0–253–35511–9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Ontology. 2. Truth. I. Title. B3279.H48S3713 2010 193—dc22 2010005841 1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10 BEING AND TRUTH Contents Translators’ Foreword xv THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY Summer Semester 1933 Introduction The Fundamental Question of Philosophy and the Fundamental Happening of Our History 3 §1. The spiritual-political mission as a decision for the fundamental question 3 §2. The Greek questioning in poetry and thought and the inception of philosophy. Philosophy as the incessant, historical, questioning struggle over the essence and Being of beings 5 §3. What philosophy is not. Rejection of inadequate attempts to define it 7 §4. The fundamental question of philosophy and the confrontation with the history of the Western spirit in its highest position: Hegel 10 Main PA R T The Fundamental Question and Metaphysics: Preparation for a Confrontation with Hegel Chapter One The Development, Transformation, and Christianization of Traditional Metaphysics 15 §5. Considerations for the confrontation with Hegel 15 §6. The concept of metaphysics and its transformation up to the time of classical modern metaphysics 17 a) The origin of the concept of metaphysics as a bibliographical title for particular Aristotelian writings (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά) 17 b) From the bibliographical title to the substantive concept. The Christian transformation of the concept of metaphysics: knowledge of the supersensible (trans physicam) 18 §7. Kant’s critical question regarding the possibility of metaphysical cognition and the classical division of metaphysics 20 a) On the influence of the Christianization of the concept of metaphysics 20 b) The three rational disciplines of modern metaphysics and Kant’s question regarding the inner possibility and limits of metaphysical cognition as cognition on the basis of pure reason 21 v vi Contents Chapter Two The System of Modern Metaphysics and the First of Its Primary Determining Grounds: The Mathematical 23 §8. Preliminary remarks on the concept and meaning of the mathematical in metaphysics 23 a) The task: a historical return to the turning points in the concept of metaphysics 23 b) The Greek concept of the teachable and learnable (τὰ μαθήματα) and the inner connection between the “mathematical” and the “methodological” 25 §9. The precedence of the mathematical and its advance decision regarding the content of modern philosophy: the possible idea of knowability and truth 29 §10. Modern metaphysics in its illusory new inception with Descartes and its errors 30 a) The usual picture of Descartes: the rigorous new grounding of philosophy on the basis of radical doubt 30 b) The illusion of radicalism and the new grounding in Descartes under the predominance of the mathematical conception of method 31 α) Methodical doubt as the way to what is ultimately indubitable. The simplest and most perspicuous as fundamentum 32 β) The process of doubt as an illusion. The substantive advance ruling in favor of something indubitable that has the character of the present-at-hand 33 γ) The fundamentum as the I 33 δ) The I as self. Self-reflection as a delusion 33 ε) The essence of the I (self) as consciousness 34 ζ) The self as I and the I as “subject.” The transformation of the concept of the subject 34 c) The substantive consequence of the predominance of the mathematical conception of method: the failure to reach the authentic self of man and the failure of the fundamental question of philosophy. The advance decision of mathematical certainty regarding truth and Being 35 §11. The predominance of the mathematical conception of method in the formation of metaphysical systems in the eighteenth century 37 §12. Introductory concepts from Wolff’s Ontology. The point of departure: the philosophical principles of all human cognition 38 Chapter Three Determination by Christianity and the Concept of Mathematical-Methodological Grounding in the Metaphysical Systems of Modernity 41 §13. The two main tasks that frame modern metaphysics: the grounding of the essence of Being in general and the proof of the essence and existence of God 41 Contents vii §14. The mathematical character of the system at the basis of Baumgarten’s metaphysics 42 a) The concept of veritas metaphysica: the agreement of what is with the most universal principles 42 b) Preliminary considerations on the principial character of the principle by which the ens in communi is supposed to be determined 43 §15. Baumgarten’s starting point as the possibile (what can be) and the logical principle of contradiction as the absolutely first principle of metaphysics 44 §16. Remarks on the grounding of the principium primum. The principle of contradiction and human Dasein: the preservation of the selfsameness of the selfsame 45 §17. The mathematical-logical determination of the starting point, goal, and deductive method in Baumgarten’s metaphysical system 48 a) The summum ens as perfectissimum. The belonging of the perfectum to the concept of Being and its suitability as leading to the highest being 49 b) The main steps in the construction of the metaphysical system 50 α) Beginning with what is thinkable in thought as judgment (assertion) and the principle of sufficient reason 50 β) The logical delimitation of the ens. Possibilitas as essentia (what-Being): compatibility of the internal and simple determinations 51 γ) The relatio ad unum of essentia as perfectum. The mathematical sense of the concord of the perfectum 52 δ) The suitability of the perfectum as leading to the summum ens: the mathematically-logically necessary capacity of the perfectum to be increased to the perfectissimum 53 ε) The summum ens as perfectissimum and the inherent determinations of its Being 53 Chapter Four Hegel: The Completion of Metaphysics as Theo-logic 55 §18. Transition to Hegel 55 §19. The fundamental character of Hegelian metaphysics. Metaphysics as theo-logic 56 a) Hegel’s metaphysics as logic 57 α) The science of logic as authentic metaphysics 57 β) Metaphysics as logic in its higher form. The logic of the logos as logic of the pure essentialities 57 γ) The higher logic as logic of reason 59 αα) The essence of reason as self-conscious knowing 59 ββ) The truth (the self-knowledge) of reason as absolute spirit 59 b) Logic as the system of the absolute self-consciousness of God: theo-logic 60 viii Contents §20.