Subject: Historical Ontology 
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 10:18:05 +0100


John

Thanks for this mail. Sorry not to have replied earlier, but i am moving
house this week and things are a little hectic. But a brief reply for now,
and hopefully more discussion can follow. My use of the term historical
ontology is related to Heidegger. Quickly put, my argument is that
Heidegger's work moves from an ahistorical analytic of Dasein and being, to
a history of being. I guess this would have been evident had he published
the whole of Being and Time in the 20s, as it is it appears to be a move [I
wonder if this is part of the true meaning of the Kehre] between Being and
Time and the later works (see for example An Introduction to Metaphysics,
and the Hoelderlin and Nietzsche lectures). So, Being and Time is an
exercise in fundamental ontology, the later works attempt a history of
ontology, or a historical ontology. Given that this shift is framed round an
engagement with Kant (B&T is, to my mind, very Kantian; the later Kant and
the Problem of Metaphysics and the Gesamtausgabe lecture on Kant show the
start of the shift; the later What is a Thing? course, the distancing),
where Heidegger asks not what are the conditions of possibility, but how
have the conditions of possibility changed... this puts him in a similar
position to Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, paragraph 11, where he says
the crucial point is not how are synthetic a priori judgements possible, but
why are they necessary. I think this paragraph is the best explanation of
what Nietzschean genealogy is all about.

Now Foucauldian genealogy is obviously Nietzschean, but i argue at length in
my PhD/future book that Foucault's reading of Nietzsche is often read
through Heidegger. On this point I would think that this is the case -
genealogy can be seen as historical ontology, a historical investigation
into the conditions of possibility. The Archaeology of Knowledge is not
simply investigating the foundation of knowledges, but of knowledge. I think
Foucault's connaissance/savoir distinction is the epistemological parallel
to Heidegger's ontic/ontological distinction. (And, given that Heidegger
reads Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as a book on ontology rather than
epistemology, we can see the potential for reading AK in the same way).

Interestingly, Foucault talks of historical ontology in his Kant lectures on
What is Enlightenment? I can't remember the exact references, my notes and
books are being packed. I intend to develop this line of argument over the
next couple of months, as this was discussed within the PhD but not
explicitly made a challenge to the general (?) understanding of what
genealogy is all about.

Sorry this is rather sketchy, but i lack references to hand. I'm not nearly
as familiar with Hegel as i should be, so perhaps you could come back on
that point in the light of what I've said. Comments would be very welcome.

Best wishes

Stuart