Abstract
Heidegger thinks that humans enjoy openness to being, an openness that distinguishes them from all other entities, animals included. To safeguard openness to being, Heidegger denies that humans are animals. This position attracts the criticism of Derrida, who denies the difference between humans and animals and with it the human openness to being. In this paper, I argue that human difference and human animality are not mutually exclusive. Heidegger has the conceptual resources in his thought and in the history of philosophy to affirm human animality while safeguarding the human difference. A cause transforms the meaning of a condition. The case of the human hand, an animal appendage that serves our openness to being, illustrates splendidly this transformation. The human hand not only grasps things in its environment but also points things out, makes things, acts, and welcomes others in the world. Humans are animals transformed by openness to being.
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Notes
Politics, trans. B. Jowett, in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984b), 1.2, 1253a9-18.
Plato, Theaetetus, trans. M. J. Levet, rev. Myles Burnyeat, in Complete Works, ed. John Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997c), 174b.Translation modified.
Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Alexander Nehemas and Paul Woodruff, in Complete Works, 249e-250a, 1997b. Translation modified.
Chad Engelland, “Heidegger and the Human Difference,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2015): 175-193.
Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Luise Mallet, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 160.
Derrida, The Animal, 160.
Steven Crowell, ‘We Have Never Been Animals. Heidegger’s Posthumanism,’ Études phénoménologiques—Phenomenological Studies 1 (2017): 217–240.
On the Soul 3.8, 432a1-3.
Chad Engelland, Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014).
‘Brief über den Humanismus,’ in Wegmarken, GA 9, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976); ‘Letter on “Humanism”,’ trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 155/247.
‘Brief,’ 155/247.
‘Brief,’ 157–8/248-9
‘Brief,’ 155-6/247.
‘Brief,’ 157/248.
‘Brief,’ 157/248.
(New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 250.
Kate Wong, ‘Tiny Genetic Differences between Humans and Other Primates Pervade the Genome: Genome comparisons reveal the DNA that distinguishes Homo sapiens from its kin,’ Scientific American, September 1, 2014.
‘Brief,’ 165/254.
On the Soul, 3.4, 429b10-22.
‘Was ist Metaphysik?,’ in Wegmarken, GA 9, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976); “What Is Metaphysics?” trans. David Farrell Krell, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 103/82.
Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, ed. Medard Boss (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987); Zollikon Seminars, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 246/198.
Engelland, “Heidegger and the Human Difference,” 178-186; see also Chad Engelland, Heidegger’s Shadow: Kant, Husserl, and the Transcendental Turn (London: Routledge Press, 2017).
The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 1.
For Heidegger’s most extended treatment of animal life, see Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt—Endlichket—Einsamkeit, GA 29/30, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983); The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). For instructive commentary, see Stuart Elden, ‘Heidegger’s Animals,’ Continental Philosophy Review 39 (2006): 273–291.
Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube, in Complete Works, 98e-99b, 1997a.
Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), I, q. 91, a. 3.
Sein und Wahrheit, GA 36/37, ed. Hartmut Tietjen (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2001); Being and Truth, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 210/160.
Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet, GA 34, ed. Hermann Mörchen (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997); The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus, trans. Ted Sadler (London: Continuum, 2002), 236/169.
Aristotle, Politics, 1.2, 1253a31-37.
‘Brief,’ 157/248.
History of Animals, trans. Thompson, in Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. I, ed. Barnes, 1.6, 491a19, 1984a.
See Chad Engelland, “Unmasking the Person,” International Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2010): 447–460.
Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, The Inner and the Outer 1949–1950, ed. G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and Maximilian A. E. Aue (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 41.
The Big Typescript TS 213, ed. and trans. C. Grant Luckhardt and Maximilian A. E. Aue (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 46.
“Geschlect II: Heidegger’s Hand,” trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., in Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida, ed. John Sallis (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987), 173.
Juan-Carlos Gómez, “Can concepts of intersubjectivity be applied to nonhuman primates?” in Intersubjective Communication and Emotions in Ontogeny: Between Nature, Nurture and Culture, ed. S. Braten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 252.
On the Soul 3.8, 432a1-3.
Sein und Zeit, 18th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001); Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), 105/139-40.
Sein und Zeit, 108/143.
Parmenides, GA 54, ed. Manfred S. Frings (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1982); Parmenides, trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 124/84. Translation modified.
Was Heißt Denken? (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954); What Is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), 153/148–149.Translation modified.
Was Heißt Denken? 18/16.
Parmenides,118/80.
Was Heißt Denken?18-19/16.
See Engelland, Ostension, 202-5.
Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, I, chp. 1; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, chp. 1. A version of this paper was delivered at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley. I am grateful to Justin Gable, OP, Anselm Ramelow, OP, and Purushottama Bilimoria for their comments on that occasion.
References
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Wong, K. Tiny genetic differences between humans and other primates pervade the genome: Genome comparisons reveal the DNA that distinguishes Homo sapiens from its kin. Scientific American, September 1, 2014.
