Abstract
What we have in view is the hermeneutic of Der Satz vom Grund. However, in a text composed two years earlier (1954), Heidegger responds to the observation that he no longer uses the term ‘hermeneutic’, saying
I have left an earlier standpoint, not in order to become ensconced in another one, rather because even the previous position was a station in being under way. What remains in thinking is the way. (US 98f.)1
And it demands a new accuracy for language rather than the invention of new terms, as I once thought; on the contrary, it demands a return to the original contents of our own constantly decaying language. Heidegger
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The following abbreviations will be used in our text to indicate works of Heidegger: US = Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske Verlag, 1957); SZ = Sein und Zeit (Tubingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 14th ed., 1977); SvG = Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske Verlag. 5th ed., 1978); MAL = Gesamtausgabe, vol. 26: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe im Ausgang von Leibniz (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978); GP = Gesamtausgabe, vol. 24: Die Grundprobleme der Phänomonologie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975); L = Gesamtausgabe, vol. 21: Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976); WG = Vom Wesen des Grundes (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 6th ed., 1973); KPM = Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1951). All translations by the author.
The essential relation between fundamental ontology and ontology can be seen in the fact that at times Heidegger sees fundamental ontology as including ontology (the science of Being as such) (viz. MAL) and sometimes he sees the exposition of the science of Being as distinguishable from fundamental ontology (viz. GP). For the sake of precision, we will distinguish between fundamental ontology, ontology, and meta-ontology, though of course what is of utmost importance is their essential relation. We shall return to this below.
Cf. SZ p. 50, note 1. ‘Apriorism’ is the method of every scientific philosophy that understands itself’. This is only one of many instances in which Heidegger invokes the classical framework of transcendental philosophy. For further discussion of this issue, see Carl Friedrich Geth-mann’s Verstehen und Auslegung: Das Methodenproblem in der Philosophie Martin Heideggers. (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1974); also Joseph Kockelmans’ ‘Destructive Retrieve and Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Being and Time’ in Research in Phenomenology, vol. 7 (1977). pp. 106–37.; and Ingeborg Koza’s Das Problem des Grundes in Heideggers Auseinandersetzung mit Kant (Ratingen bei Düsseldorf: A. Henn Verlag, 1967).
On the theme of categorical-ontological and transcendental-ontological elements in SZ see Gethmann’s Verstehen, pp. 31–41; also Kockelmans’ ‘Destructive Retrieve’, pp. 114–16.
Even, and perhaps especially, the nature of this privilege has gone unquestioned, though it harbors an understanding of Being. See, for example, Heidegger’s discussion of the potius quam in his MAL, pp. 135–45 and WG, especially the third part.
Cf. G. Moneta, On Identity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), especially the chapter ‘Transcendental Identity’, pp. 30–36. Also p. 99.
Gethmann, Verstehen, p. 48.
Gethmann, Verstehen, p. 51.
To characterize the standpoint complementary to the transcendental, Manfred Brelage has coined the term ‘Cizscendenz’. See his Transzendentalphilosophie und konkrete Subjektivität: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964) pp. 72–253. See also Gethmann, Verstehen, pp. 279f.
The word in Heidegger’s text is ‘ablesen’. For an exposition of the problematic of SZ as one of textuality, see Thomas J. Wilson’s Sein als Text (München: Alber Verlag, 1981).
Here we glimpse the regressus in infinitum that always threatens metaphysics.
Cf. Gethmann, Verstehen, pp. 121–24. See also GP p. §13b.
SZ, p. 5. ‘Seinsverständnis ist ein Faktum’.
Gethmann, Verstehen, pp. 50f.
Here we glimpse the inner relation between the hermeneutic of facticity and the deconstructive retrieval of the history of philosophy.
With the term ‘appearing’ we are compressing Heidegger’s discussion of Schein and Erscheinung.
In commenting on the passage to which we are referring (SZ p. 33, 1. 30–41), Thomas J. Wilson makes the following observation: However we must note that ‘true’ always stands in quotation marks, and that noein can remain an agnoein. By this procedure he wants to bring Aristotle’s doctrine into accord with his own theory of truth in which the place of truth is to be found neither in sensible perception nor in judgment. The perception of colors can remain an unsuitable means of access to the given. Taken by itself it must remain so. Only when it is taken up into state-of-mind understanding [das befindliche Verstehen] can it provide such an access. That perception has always already occurred is to be understood as an a priori. Wilson, Sein als Text, p. 199. This means that the apophantical ‘as’ is always already the
hermeneutical ‘as’.
Here we see that there must be something like an a priori discourse, one which occurs ‘prior to’ any particular ‘pointing out’ and ‘being under discussion’. Hermeneutics is such an a priori discourse, as we shall see.
Kockelmans, ‘Destructive Retrieve’, p. 129.
Heidegger accounts for this disjunction or lacunae in terms drawn from his later thought where there is no disjunction between Being and language. This disjunction is the default of Being, a default which is likewise the failure of a work to name the relation between Being and language. Because the meditation on language and Being determined my path of thinking from early on, their situating discussion therefore remains as much as possible in the background. Perhaps it is the fundamental deficiency of the book Being and Time that I ventured too much too soon. (...) Nevertheless, nearly a decade has passed until I am able to say what I thought — the appropriate word is today still lacking. (US 93). See also Joseph Kockelmans’ ‘Ontological Difference, Hermeneutics, and Language’ in On Heidegger and Language (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), p. 210 and footnote 38.
Gethmann, Verstehen, pp. 229–30.
Here we see that Heidegger’s retrieval of the history of metaphysics is concerned to show how and to what extent previous ontologies have failed to complete their task.
For a sketch of the general problem of the Umschlag, see my ‘Umschläge: Nietzsche and Heidegger at the End of Philosophy’, in Research in Phenomenology, vol. 15 (1985), especially pp. 99f.
Terms like ‘essential tendency’, ‘essential possibility’, ‘immer schon vollzogene Möglichkeit’ must be understood as necessities. What sort they may be is the problem of meta-ontology and the metaphysics of truth, i.e., logic.
Clearly Heidegger’s use of the term ‘metaphysics’ means to stress, through the notion of ‘meta’, the movement from out of the ontic to the ontological and its meta-ontological recoil. As such metaphysics would be a philosophical path one must take to establish ontology, i.e., scientific philosophy.
Cf. Gethmann, Verstehen, pp. 285f. Here we must point out that Krell’s advocacy of a hermeneutic of Dasein or mortals stands in need of a clarification of the term ‘hermeneutic’. This constitutes our general task. See Krell’s Intimations, pp. 43f.
We can see how, once Heidegger came to focus on this recoil, hermeneutics as a word and ‘discipline’ disappeared from his works in being absorbed or displaced by the more comprehensive concern of a metaphysics of truth, logic.
Though he does not use the term double origin, Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussion of hermeneutics and interpretation in Heidegger focuses on the ambiguity of origin and is complementary to what we have in view here. See his Le partage des voix (Paris: Galilee, 1983).
This surely is Heidegger’s position in SvG.
By connecting Being with understanding as we do in this clause, we recognize the full force of the principle of sufficient reason.
Heidegger seems to try to take this tact when he renames the schemata of Temporalität ‘Ekstemata’ (MAL 269–70).
Recourse cannot be simply taken to the world or its worlding to establish this unity for the unity of the horizons of temporality is the condition for the possibility of world (MAL 269–70). For a discussion of temporality, its schemata, and transcendence, see John Sallis’ ‘Imagination and the Meaning of Being’, section 3, in Heidegger et l’idée de la phénomènologie, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1988.
This understanding, to avoid an infinite regression, would seem to not be projective, but immediate, noetic.
For an analysis of the change in Heidegger’s view of the principle of sufficient reason see John Caputo’s ‘The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Study of Heideggerian Self-Criticism’, in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13 (Winter 1975), pp. 419–25.
This is the position of structuralists and even post-structuralists such as Derrida, Foucault, and Ricoeur. The later Heidegger would be counted among their ranks.
See H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 4th ed., 1975). pp. 368–71. For Gadamer this self-alienation only occurs in writing, not speech. He does not, however, adequately explain how the transition from speech to writing is an essential transformation of words.
The possibilities for a retrieval of traditional hermeneutical question opened up by the restitution of meaning to words have been partially explored by Jean Greisch in his ‘Les mots et les roses’ in Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques, vol. 57 (1973), pp. 433–55.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lilly, R. (1988). Toward the Hermeneutic of Der Satz Vom Grund . In: Sallis, J.C., Moneta, G., Taminiaux, J. (eds) The Collegium Phaenomenologicum, The First Ten Years. Phaenomenologica, vol 105. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2805-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2805-3_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7762-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2805-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive