Thomas Sheehan

A paradigm shift in Heidegger research

The Beiträge zur Philosophie mandates a paradigm shift in Heidegger scholarship. In the face of (1) widespread disarray in the current model, the new paradigm (2) abandons “Sein” as a name for die Sache selbst, (3) understands Welt/Lichtung/Da as that which “gives” being, (4) interprets Dasein as apriori openedness rather than as “being-there,” (5) understands the Kehre as the interface of Geworfenheit and Entwurf, not as a shift in Heideggers thinking, (6) interprets Ereignis as the opening of the Da rather than as “appropriation,” and (7) understands human finitude as what gives all forms of being and all epochs in the history of being. The conclusion alludes to the function of Mitdasein (“co-openness”) as die Sache selbst.

Heidegger’s philosophy of mind

The period after World War Two saw the emergence both of the so-called later Heidegger and of the corresponding problem of the unity of his thought. Although his major work, Sein und Zeit,1927, (= SZ) had announced Heidegger’s intention of working out the meaning of being (Sein), his publications up through 1943, with the exception of the brief Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, presented only his preparatory analysis of human being (Dasein). However, Heidegger’s post-war publications emphasized being itself (the history of being, being as language, pre-Socratic notions of being, the withdrawal of being in the modern world) and indeed almost seemed to hypostasize being into an “other” with a life of its own. This state of affairs, combined with Heidegger’s announcement in 1953 that SZ would be left a torso, gave rise to such questions as whether his later thought was still phenomenological, how it might be continuous with his earlier writings, and how, if indeed at all, it was to be understood.

Heidegger’s Lehrjahre

By July of 1915 the young Dr. Martin Heidegger was ready to apply for a license to teach at Freiburg University.1 Two years earlier, in the summer of 1913, he had obtained the doctorate in philosophy with his inaugural dissertation, The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism. He had then set to work on his qualifying dissertation (Habilitationsschrift), but events had conspired to interrupt him. On August 1, 1914 the First World War broke out, and between August and October Heidegger was in and out of active military service twice, both times with Infantry Reserve Battalion 113, once as a volunteer (ca. August 2–10, 1914) and once as a draftee (October 9–20, 1914). In both cases he was dismissed for reasons of health.2

Rahner’s transcendental project

Karl Rahners accomplishment consisted in putting Catholic philosophy and theology on a transcendental footing. The undertaking spanned some fifty years, from his matriculation in philosophy at Freiburg University in 1934 to his death at Innsbruck in 1984. From beginning to end, the driving force behind the project was the seriousness with which Rahner regarded the transcendental turn in modern philosophy. THE PROGRAM Rahner’s program unfolded in two stages, the first philosophical and the second theological. (Only the former is the focus of this essay.) The first stage occupied him from 1934 to about 1941 and found expression in two works, Geist in Welt (1939) and Hurer des Wortes (1941). The first of those two texts marshaled central elements of the work of Kant, Rousselot, Mare´chal, and Heidegger for the goal of reformulating Thomism – its epistemology, philosophical anthropology, and metaphysics – as transcendental philosophy. In the second stage, which occupied him from the 1940s onward, Rahner used the transcendental Thomism of the first stage as the basis for rewriting Catholic doctrine as transcendental theology .

Let a Hundred Translations Bloom! A modest proposal about Being and Time

In the first place, congratulations to Prof. Joan Stambaugh of Hunter College for the years of arduous work that have now borne fruit in her Being and Time. This noteworthy achievement is every bit at the level of her previous translations of Heidegger, and readers familiar with those will find the present volume a condign culmination to her earlier efforts. Many of us first met this translation some twenty years ago in its then typed format – 690 double-space pages replete with hundreds of handwritten corrections. Now two decades later, a glance at that earlier manuscript reveals that little has changed in the intervening years: The published book is virtually identical to the earliest typed manuscript. So too, the Introduction here (JS 1–35) is the same one that appeared in Basic Writings (1977, 41–89) with only minor changes. One accomplishment of this book is that, with a few exceptions, it manages to include all the German sentences. Unremarkable as that might sound, it is not the case with some other translations of Heidegger. What is Called Thinking omits whole swaths of the German original, six and nine sentences