The Problem of Being: Kant and Heidegger
- DOI
- 10.5922/0207-6918-2022-3-2
- Pages
- 42-75
Abstract
My task is to demonstrate substantial differences in the views of Kant and Heidegger on being. To this end I analyse Heidegger’s work Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics which Heidegger was writing intermittently during the period from 1927 to 1964. It deals not only with the ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason but also with Kant’s pre-critical work, The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), in which Kant explicitly addressed the question of being for the first time. Heidegger focuses on the transcendental power of imagination not only as the “common root” of sensibility and understanding, but also as the fundamental faculty of ontological cognition. He links it with the phenomenon of time, arguing that the object of knowledge as such is also linked with this phenomenon. True, for Heidegger what matters is not a singular empirical object, but the universal noumenal object, including being. Consequently, Heidegger draws a distinction between empirics and sensibility: all empirics is sensible, but not all sensibility is empirical. A triangle in general, a dog in general, etc. have an image, but it is not a singular image, but a schema. Heidegger argues that time as pure intuition is the “field” in which the imagination faculty draws its image schemas. This field is the horizon of objectness, i.e. the possibility of emergence of non-empirical objects, including being. Being, then, is not a Kantian noumenon, not an X, but a sensible, albeit non-empirical, object created by the power of imagination, a correlate of everything cognisable. So understood, being is created by the human, therefore it is not transcendent but immanent to him/her. I also note that in characterising being Heidegger gradually moves from “time” to “work of art” in the frame of which the power of imagination does not simply reflect reality, but creates multiple diverse worlds.
Reference
Banham, G., 2005. Kant’s Transcendental Imagination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bibler, V. S., 1991. Ot naukoucheniya k logike kul’tury [From Science to the Logic of Culture]. Moscow: Nauka. (In Rus.)
Chernyak, L. S., 2014. Vechnost’ i vremya: vozvrashchenie zabytoj temy [Eternity and Time: The Return of a Forgotten Theme]. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya. (In Rus.)
Dlugach, T. B., 2002. Problema bytia v nemetskoi filosofii i sovremennost’ [The Problem of Being in German Philosophy and the Present]. Moscow: Institute of Philosophy RAS.
Enskat, R., 2020. Kant über Sein und Zeit und Denken und Sein. Selbsterkenntnis durch Selbstaffektion. Kantian Journal, 39(3), pp. 7-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.5922/0207-6918-2020-3-1
Falev, E.V., 2008. Germenevtika Hajdeggera [Hermeneutics of Heidegger]. St. Petersburg: Aleteya. (In Rus.)
Gadamer, H. -G., 1994. Heidegger’s Ways. Translated by J. W. Stanley. New York: State University of New York Press.
Heidegger, M., 2002. The Origin of the Work of Art. In: M. Heidegger, 2002. Off the Beaten Track. Edited and translated by J. Young and K. Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-56.
Heidegger, M., 1977. Gesamtausgabe Band 5: Holzwege. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
Heidegger, M., 1982. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by A. Hofstadter. Bloomingron, Indianopolis: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M., 1997. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Translated by R. Taft. Bloomingron, Indianopolis: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M., 1998. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Translated by T. Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M., 1998, Kant’s Thesis about Being. In: M. Heidegger, 1998. Pathmarks. Edited by W. McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 337-363.
Heidegger, M., 2014. Ponderings II-VI. Black Notebooks 1931-1938. Translated by R. Rojcewicz. Bloomingron, Indianopolis: Indiana University Press.
Erdmann, B., ed. 1881. Nachträge zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Aus Kants Nachlass. Kiel: Lipsius & Tischer.
Kant, I., 1992a. Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy. In: I. Kant, 1992. Theoretical philosophy, 1755-1770. Translated and edited by D. Walford and R. Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 203-242.
Kant, I., 1992b. The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In: I. Kant, 1992. Theoretical philosophy, 1755-1770. Translated and edited by D. Walford and R. Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107-202.
Kant, I., 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited by and Translated by P. Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I., 2011. Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality. In: I. Kant, 2011. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings. Edited by P. Frierson and P. Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 221-250.
Klenk, G.F., 1953. Heidegger und Kant. Gregorianum, 34(1), pp. 56-71.
Lehmann, G., 1955. Einleitung. In: Kant’s gesammelte Schriften hrsg. von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Bd. XXIII, 3. Abt.: Handschriftlicher Nachlaß, Bd. X: Vorarbeiten und Nachträge. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 505-518.
Mikhailov, A. V., 2008. Instead of an Introduction. In: M. Heidegger, 2002. Istok khudozhestvennogo tvoreniya [The Origin of the Work of Art]. Moscow: Akademicheskii proekt, pp. 5-75. (In Rus.)
Taminiaux, I., 1991. Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology. Translated and edited by M. Gendre. New York: SUNY Press.
Trappe, T., 2000. Heidegger und die Phantasie. Phänomenologische Forschungen. Neue Folge, 5(2), pp. 165-179.