From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Heidegger and Kant
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:13:51 +0100


-----Original Message-----
From: AUDRAN JEROME <jaudran-AT-club-internet.fr>
To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
<heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, June 30, 1998 19:14
Subject: Re: Heidegger and Kant


>Stuart Elden wrote:
>>
>> Any thoughts on what might be worth reading as secondary material on
>> Heidegger's reading of Kant - particularly on the Transcendental
Aesthetic?
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that there is a real difficulty in Heidegger's lecture of Kant's
"Transcendental Aesthetic". In Heidegger's interpretation, the time must be
understood as the being of the phenomena. That is clear. But in the
"subjective deduction" of the "Transcendental Dialectic" Kant explains that
the concept is temporalized in the subject - that is the schematism. But if
the temporalisation of the categories of the understanding takes place in
the subject - I mean in the understanding - the a priori forms of
sensibility - here, the time - could not be the being of the phenomena.
> In my opinion if you follow Heidegger's interpretation of the
>"Transcendental Aesthetic" you can no more understand the "subjective
>deduction".
> I'm sorry for my very bad english.
>
> JEROME.
>


Jerome,

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I have spent some time reading
Kant und das Probleme der Metaphysik, along with the useful lecture course
from 1927-8 on the first Critique (GA25). I think your reading is
essentially correct, but it needs to be understood in terms of H's overall
project in his reading of Kant.

I would suggest that the central distinction between Heidegger’s
interpretation of Kant and Kant himself (or at least the interpretation
prevalent at the time) is the shift of emphasis in the Critique from
epistemology to ontology. To take the example of time, in Kant we intuit
through time, in Heidegger temporality is the basic constitution of that
which intuits (GA25, 368).

Heidegger notes, “already in the Transcendental Aesthetic there comes to
light a peculiar priority of time over space. And in subsequent and more
decisive sections of the Critique time emerges again and again at the centre
piece of the transcendental, viz. ontological, problematic” (GA25, 111-2).
Heidegger reads this problematic in a way that certainly furthers his own
project, if not Kant scholarship generally. Time is not a feature of
physical objects in an immediate sense, but when represented to us, they
become temporal in a mediated way. Because then both the external world and
the internal world are dependent on the temporality of the perceiver, time
is the formal condition of outer, spatial appearances, and therefore has
priority over space (GA25, 148).

This hierarchical ranking is continued throughout Heidegger’s early work. We
can now perhaps understand Heidegger’s suggestion that “Dasein’s spatiality
is ‘embraced’ by temporality in the sense of being existentially founded
upon it… [but this] is also different from the priority of time over space
in Kant’s sense” (SuZ, p 367). For Kant time has priority over space as it
is the formal requirement for the experience of all objects; for Heidegger
temporality is the basic constitution of Dasein and therefore spatiality is
founded upon it. Not withstanding this difference, Heidegger has perpetuated
the primacy of time over space found in, amongst others, Kant.

This is part, though of Heidegger's central argument. If Kant is
radicalised, and the Critique is seen as ontology not epistemology, then
this reading holds. Heidegger's interpretation aims to dispute that of the
Marburg school - cf KPM, GA25 and especially the Davos Disputation with
Cassirer (now in GA3). Heidegger suggests that if we radicalise the question
of the first Critique - how are synthetic a priori judgements possible? - we
get the question of the ontological difference. The fact that Dasein is
essentially temporal means that humans have unique access into this
question.

I hope this is clear, but I realise I am still finding my way in this area.
Any thoughts, comments or criticisms would be most welcome.

Best wishes

Stuart

Stuart Elden
Department of Government
Brunel University, UK

stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk






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