Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to The Later Heidegger ‘A highly instructive and engaging guide through Heidegger’s later writings, written in a lucid and accessible manner.’ Keith Ansell Pearson, University of Warwick ‘... a lively, clear and engaging overview of the key ideas in Heidegger’s later writings.’ Charles Guignon, University of Vermont This Routledge Philosophy GuideBook guides the reader through the complexities of Heidegger’s later works. The book offers a clear introduction to the main themes that preoccupied Heidegger in the second part of his career: technology, art, the history of philosophy and the exploration of a new post- technological way of thinking. George Pattison explores many aspects of the later Heidegger, including the massive controversy surrounding his Nazism, as well as his readings of Nietzsche, the Presocratics and Hölderlin. Pattison also carefully investigates the difficult question of the nature of Heidegger’s thought, together with its significance for philosophy today. The Later Heidegger is essential reading for all students coming to Heidegger’s later works for the first time. George Pattison is Dean of King’s College, Cambridge. Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks Edited by Tim Crane and Jonathan Wolff University College London The Later Heidegger George Pattison Hegel on History Joseph McCarney Hume on Morality James Baillie Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason Sebastian Gardner Mill on Liberty Jonathan Riley Mill on Utilitarianism Roger Crisp Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations Marie McGinn Plato and the Republic Nickolas Pappas Locke on Government D.A. Lloyd Thomas Locke on Human Understanding E.J. Lowe Spinoza and the Ethics Genevieve Lloyd LONDON AND NEW YORK ROUTLEDGE Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to The Later Heidegger n George Pattison First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 2000 George Pattison All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pattison, George, 1950– Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to The Later Heidegger / George Pattison. (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks) 1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. I.Title: Later Heidegger. II.Title. III. Series. B3279.H49 P39 2000 193–dc21 00-020572 ISBN 0–415–20196–9 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–20197–7 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-13127-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17964-1 (Glassbook Format) Who laud and magnify with made, mutable and beg- garly elements the unmade immutable beginnings and precessions of fair-height, with halting sequences and unresolved rhythms, searchingly, with what’s to hand, under the inconstant lights that hover world-flats, that bright by fit and start the tangle of world-wood, rift- ing the dark drifts for the wanderers that wind the world-meander, who seek hidden grammar to give back anathema its first benignity. Gathering all things in, twining each bruised stem to the swaying trellis of the dance, the dance about the sawn lode-stake on the hill where the hidden still- ness is at the core of struggle ... (From David Jones, The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments) Contents Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii 1 Is there a later Heidegger? 1 2 1933 and after 25 3 Technology 47 4 Seeing things 75 5 Nietzsche 105 6 The first and second beginnings of philosophy 129 7 Hölderlin 159 8 What kind of thinker? 187 Notes 217 Bibliography 223 Index 227 vii Foreword The text that follows explains itself, I hope. However, there is one point I should comment on. Different English renderings of Heidegger adopt different strategies with regard to capitalising the English ‘Being’ as a translation of Heidegger’s German ‘Sein’. The advantage of giving the lower-case ‘being’ is that it brings out the verbal aspect of the term and avoids misreading it as a hypostatised metaphysical concept. On the other hand, this could on occasion lead to it being read simply as a present participle and not as a distinctive philosophical term. In any case, the German word is a nominalisation of the infinitive, not the present participle ‘seiend’ (the nominal form of which, ‘Seiendes’, is usually translated ‘beings’ or ‘entities’). Where I have quoted English translations that follow a different practice, I have, of course, kept to their usage. Some measure of interpretation is unavoidable here, both on my part and on that of the reader. Perhaps, in the light of Heidegger’s own comments on philosophy and translation, the best we can do is to remember to hear the German ‘Sein’ in the English ‘Being’. ix Acknowledgments I have received help of various kinds from many friends and colleagues in preparing this volume, including those who have lent me books, discussed the argument as it developed and read the manuscripts. These include Don Cupitt, Istvan Hont, Clare Carlisle, Ulrich Knappe, Melissa Lane, Neil Pattison, Mike Weston and Espen Hammer. The genesis of the book owes a lot to Ulrich Fentzloff. I am particularly grateful to Utta Vinzent for her research on the reception of Van Gogh in the Nazi era. I was able to try out some of the ideas in a number of talks and seminars, and I would like to thank those who invited me: Simon Etheridge (Bishop’s Stortford High School), Michael Wilcockson (Eton College), Brian Hebblethwaite (the ‘D’ Society, Cambridge Divinity School), John Lippitt (University of Hertfordshire) and Martin Kusch (‘Philosopher King’s’ – the philosophy society of King’s College, Cambridge). Thanks also to Sue Needham. I am grateful to HarperCollins for permission to reprint extracts from What is Called Thinking? and Poetry, Language, Thought, and to the Trustees of xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS the David Jones Estate for permission to reprint an extract from David Jones, The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments. And, chiefly, to Hilary. xii Abbreviations used in the text BT Being and Time, followed by section and page number, giving the pagination in the German edition used by the translators EGT Early Greek Thinking GA Gesamtausgabe (1978–), followed by volume and page number HCT History of the Concept of Time N Nietzsche (followed by volume number) PLT Poetry, Language, Thought QT The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays WT What is a Thing? WCT What is Called Thinking? For full details of these titles, see the Bibliography. xiii Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Is there a later Heidegger? The danger and the turning In December 1949 Martin Heidegger, banned from lecturing in the University of Freiburg on account of his involvement with Nazism, gave a series of four addresses to ‘The Club’ in Bremen, a gathering of business and professional people who, for the most part, had no great interest in or understanding of philoso- phy, but who were happy to turn out to hear a man known as their country’s most influential living philosopher. In these lec- tures Heidegger spoke of the danger hanging over the present age. This was already the era of the Atomic Bomb and the be- ginning of the Cold War, in which the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear exchange was a continuous threat to the peoples of the world, and especially to those of Central Europe. Perhaps Heidegger’s non-philosophical auditors may have heard in his words a reference to that situation, and perhaps he was himself happy to use the rhetorical force of such an allusion to win a hearing for his argument, but the danger with which Heidegger 1 IS THERE A LATER HEIDEGGER? was chiefly concerned operated on another level altogether. This danger was neither Russian Communism, nor American capitalism, nor the prospect of all-out war between them, but, in Heidegger’s own formulation ‘The coming to presence of Enframing is the danger.’ (QT: 41) What did he mean? In order to answer this question, let us look, firstly, at what Heidegger means by the odd-sounding term ‘enframing’. ‘Enframing’, in Heidegger’s sense of the word, is not unconnected with the world of technology for whose darker possibilities the Atomic Bomb was, at that time, the most potent symbol. Nevertheless, as Heidegger many times insists, enframing is not itself anything technological. Very provisionally, we may say that it is something like the mind-set underlying modern technology. However, ‘enframing’ is not only manifested in such things as atomic bombs, televisions or washing-machines, but is equally present in culture and every- day life. When we talk of ‘the culture industry’ or ‘quality time’ or of being ‘consumers of the countryside’ we are revealing the influence of enframing on our way of thinking. And, quite apart from such threats as nuclear war and environmental degradation, the ‘danger’ of which Heidegger spoke would still, in his terms, remain. For the danger is in enframing itself, not in the success or failure of the technology that it sustains or in the malign application of that technology. As the mind-set that underlies the rise of technology and that permeates our daily habits of speech and thought, enframing is Heidegger’s term for a way of objectifying our world and our experience (including our experience of ourselves) in such a way as to make what is enframed available for our use, manipulable and transformable in the service of designated goals and purposes.