PHILOSOPHY Graham Harman More and more philosophers now recognize Martin Heidegger as the most important philoso- pher of the past hundred years. And more than any other recent philosopher, Heidegger has a Heidegger Explained following outside philosophy, among artists, architects, literary theorists, psychologists, and computer scientists. From Phenomenon to Thing OPENCOURT Heidegger Explained is the clearest exposition of Heidegger yet written. It describes his con- troversial life and career, his relations with contemporaries, the evolution of his thought, and the pathways of his influence. “Graham Harman has done for Heidegger what Terry Eagleton and Jonathan Culler did for post- Harman structuralist literary theory in the 1980s: like them, he makes a powerful body of work accessible to a broader humanities audience in a witty, precise, and unapologetically engaged way.” —MICHAEL WITMORE, author of Shakespearean Metaphysics “Without a knowledge of Heidegger, it is impossible to understand some of the most important social and philosophical trends of the twentieth century: existentialism, phenomenology, deconstruction. Harman’s book makes understanding Heidegger not only possible for non-specialists but compulsory for anyone with an interest in contemporary intellectual history. With the publication of Heidegger Heidegger Explained Explained, there is no longer any excuse for not grappling with the legacy of this controversial thinker.” —KELLIE ROBERTSON, author of The Laborer’s Two Bodies “This is a very clear, lively introduction to the whole range of Heidegger’s work. Harman does an ex- cellent job of cutting through Heidegger’s often confusing terminology to reveal the central philo- sophical themes of his work.” —ANTHONY RUDD, author of Expressing the World “In a surprisingly plain style, Graham Harman brings Heidegger’s thought to life. He doesn’t step back from Heidegger’s relationship with Nazi Germany, but shows how his unique understanding of Being goes beyond those constraints and lays the groundwork for much of twentieth-century philosophy.” —BYRON KEITH HAWK, George Mason University Graham Harman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University in Cairo, has been acclaimed both as a lucid interpreter of Heidegger and as an original philosophical mind. He is the author of Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (2002) and Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (2005), and translator of Niklaus Largier’s Graham Harman In Praise of the Whip. He supported himself Photo by Chantal Latour through part of graduate school as a Chicago sportswriter, interviewing such fig- ures as Sammy Sosa and Bobby Knight. Cover design: Randy A. Martinaitis OPEN COURT Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page i Heidegger Explained Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page ii Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page iii IDEAS EXPLAINED™ Hans-Georg Moeller, Daoism Explained Joan Weiner, Frege Explained Hans-Georg Moeller, Luhmann Explained Graham Harman, Heidegger Explained IN PREPARATION David Detmer, Sartre Explained Rondo Keele, Ockham Explained Paul Voice, Rawls Explained David Detmer, Phenomenology Explained David Ramsay Steele, Atheism Explained Rohit Dalvi, Deleuze and Guattari Explained Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page iv MARTIN HEIDEGGER Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page v Heidegger Explained From Phenomenon to Thing GRAHAM HARMAN OPEN COURT Chicago and La Salle, Illinois Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page vi Volume 4 in the Ideas Explained™ Series To order books from Open Court, call toll-free 1-800-815-2280, or visit www.opencourtbooks.com. Open Court Publishing Company is a division of Carus Publishing Company. Copyright ©2007 by Carus Publishing Company First printing 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Open Court Publishing Company, 315 Fifth Street, P.O. Box 300, Peru, Illinois 61354. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harman, Graham, 1968- Heidegger explained : from phenomenon to thing / Graham Harman. p. cm. — (Ideas explained ; v. 4) Summary: “Presents a summary of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and gives an account of Heidegger's life and career” — Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8126-9617-2 (trade paper : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8126-9617-4 (trade paper : alk. paper) 1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. I. Title. `B3279.H49H274 2007 193—dc22 2007005899 Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page vii Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 1. BIOGRAPHY 5 Early Life 5 Rising Star 7 The Hitler Era 10 Life after WWII 11 Appearance and Character 13 2. A RADICAL PHENOMENOLOGIST 15 Husserl’s Phenomenology 16 1919: Heidegger’s Breakthrough 20 1920–21: Facticity and Time 24 1921–22: The Triple Structure of Life 28 1923: Being in the Public World 32 3. MARBURG 37 1925: The Dragon Emerges 38 1927: Temporality and Being 44 1928: Human Transcendence 50 4. BEING AND TIME 55 The Question of Being 57 Tools and Broken Tools 60 Fallenness and Care 66 Death, Conscience, and Resoluteness 71 Dasein’s Temporality 73 vii Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page viii viii Contents 5. FREIBURG BEFORE THE RECTORATE 79 1929: Nothingness 80 1929–30: On Boredom and Animals 84 1930: Veiling and Unveiling 91 6. A NAZI PHILOSOPHER 95 1933: The Rectoral Address 97 1933–34: Actions as Rector 100 7. HERMIT IN THE REICH 105 1935: Inner Truth and Greatness 106 1935: Earth and World in the Artwork 109 1936: The Echo of Hölderlin 112 1936–38: The Other Beginning 117 1940: The Metaphysics of Nietzsche 123 8. STRANGE MASTERPIECE IN BREMEN 127 The Thing 129 The Enframing 135 The Danger 138 The Turn 139 9. THE TASK OF THINKING 143 1950: Language Speaks 143 1951–52: We Are Still Not Thinking 146 1955: Releasement 149 1963–64: The End of Philosophy 151 10. HEIDEGGER’S LEGACY 157 His Legacy Now 157 Looking Ahead 160 Suggestions for Further Reading 165 Glossary 173 Appendix: Heidegger’s Numerology 179 Index 185 Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page ix Preface This book explains the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in clear and simple terms, without footnotes or excessive use of technical language. The goal of this Open Court series is to present difficult philosophers in a way that any intelligent reader can understand. But even while aiming at clarity for a general audience, a book of this kind can do something more: by avoiding professional jargon and the usual family quarrels of scholars, it can bring Heidegger’s philosophy back to life as a series of problems relevant to every- one. Since Heidegger is probably the most recent great philoso- pher in the Western tradition, to present his ideas to general readers means inviting them to witness the emerging drama of twenty-first century philosophy. It is typical of great thinkers that they transcend their own backgrounds, political views, and historical eras, appealing even to those who do not share these factors. This is clearly true in Heidegger’s case. Although he was a German steeped in local cus- toms and folklore, his greatest influence has been abroad, in such places as the United States, Japan, the Arab world, and especially France. A committed Nazi who paid open tribute to Hitler, he still finds numerous admirers among communists and liberal democ- rats, and some of his greatest interpreters have been Jewish philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas. And although Heidegger’s works can be viewed as arising from the general anxiety and antirationalist atti- tude in Germany following World War I, his ideas show no signs of losing their freshness even in the twenty-first century. While Heidegger did not publish widely during his lifetime, he was a prolific writer, producing the equivalent of at least one book per semester throughout his academic career. The Complete ix Heidegger Explained 2/19/11 2:23 AM Page x x Preface Edition of Heidegger’s works, still being published by the firm Vittorio Klostermann in Frankfurt, is now projected to reach 102 volumes, and will probably go far beyond that number. Due to the vast number of Heidegger’s works, I have sometimes had to make cruel decisions about what to exclude from the present book. As a general rule, I have left out most of Heidegger’s detailed com- mentaries on past philosophers. There are two reasons for this. First, since the books in this series can assume no wide philosoph- ical background among readers, it seemed unwise to devote many pages to explaining the philosophies of Plato, Leibniz, or Kant in a book on Heidegger that is short enough already. Second, I tend to agree with a small minority of commentators who find Heidegger somewhat overrated as a historian of philosophy. It is my view that Heidegger’s readings of past philosophers are mostly of interest for what they tell us about Heidegger himself, and not for their historical value. I have made only two exceptions, since they are so central to Heidegger’s career that it would be a distor- tion to omit them: namely, his readings from the 1930s of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. If you are about to make your first encounter with Heidegger’s philosophy, I envy you this moment, and would like this book to be a helpful guide that spares as many wrong turns as possible. For me, as for countless admirers of Heidegger’s works, it is difficult to imagine how I would see the world today if he had never existed.