Between Appropriation and Transmission: The Romantic Thread in Heidegger’s Existential Notion of Understanding

Vandevelde, Pol

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53567-4_26

Pol Vandevelde³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism ((PHGI))

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Abstract

Vandevelde examines the place of Martin Heidegger in the reception and transmission of the ideas of early German Romanticism. He uses the key notion of “understanding” and brings out three points of contact between Heidegger and the romantics, which can be supported by textual evidence: (1) understanding as an ontological historical condition; (2) understanding as the element in which work, author, and interpreter find their identity; and (3) understanding as a carving out of the world into specific entities. In addition, he shows how the romantic ideas fill an explanatory gap in Heidegger’s development, making us understand more clearly how the philosophy of life of the early Heidegger could become an analytic of existence in Being and Time and a “history of being” in the 1930s.

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Notes

1.
See, among Pöggeler’s works, Heidegger und die hermeneutische Philosophie (Freiburg: Karl Alber. 1983).
2.
The Heidegger Concordance, by François Jaran and Christophe Perrin (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
3.
Among recent sources, see Ian Alexander Moore, “Homesickness, Interdisciplinarity, and the Absolute: Heidegger’s Relation to Schlegel and Novalis,” in A Companion to Early German Romantic Philosophy, ed. Elizabeth Millán and Judith Norman (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 280–310.
4.
Beiträge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis), GA 65, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989), 496; English translation: Contributions to Philosophy, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), 349.
5.
GA 65, 497; Contributions, 349.
6.
Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken,” GA 52, ed. Curd Ochwadt (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann,1982), 84.
7.
As, for example, in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, L’absolu littéraire: Théorie de la littérature dans le romantisme allemand (Paris: Éditions du Seuil,1978).
8.
Hölderlins Hymnen Germanien und Der Rhein, GA 39, ed. Susanne Ziegler (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1980), 85.
9.
Andrew Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory (New York: Routledge, 1996), 167.
10.
“What is Existential Philosophy,” in Essays in Understanding 1930–1954. Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohm (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 163–187 (p. 187). See also Pöggeler, Heidegger und die hermeneutische Philosophie, 31.
11.
Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, GA 60, ed. Matthias Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann); English translation, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004).
12.
Phänomenolgie des religiösen Lebens, 319. In Schleiermacher’s words, “religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling” (On Religion: Speeches to its Cultural Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 22).
13.
On Religion, 31–32.
14.
“Wilhelm Diltheys Forschungsarbeit und der gegenwärtige Kampf um eine historische Weltanschauung (16.–21. April 1925),” in Vorträge, Part 1 1915–1932, GA 80.1, ed. Günther Neumann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2016), 103–158.
15.
On Heidegger’s use of “enactment” (Vollzug), see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutics between History and Philosophy, The Selected Writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Volume 1, ed. and trans. Pol Vandevelde and Arun Iyer (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 115.
16.
GA 60, 82; The Phenomenology of Religious Life, 57.
17.
Theodore Kisiel considers that “kairology” is part of “the most essential, but largely unspoken, core of BT itself” (The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1993), 152). On the connection between the early Heidegger and early Christianity, see also Dermot Moran, “Choosing a Hero: Heidegger’s Conception of Authentic Life in Relation to Early Christianity,” in A Companion to Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religious Life, ed. Andrzej Wiercinski and Sean McGrath (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), 349–375.
18.
GA 60, 116–117; The Phenomenology of Religious Life, 83. Heidegger explains: “Enactment and enacting [Vollzug und Vollziehen] are an event [Geschehen]. Connections of lived experiences [Erlebniszusammenhänge] enact themselves” (GA 59, 147).
19.
GA 60, 111; The Phenomenology of Religious Life, 78.
20.
Sein und Zeit, (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 15th. ed., 1984), 273; Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 317.
21.
Sein und Zeit, 188; Being and Time, 233.
22.
Sein und Zeit 324; Being and Time, 371.
23.
Heraklit, GA 55, ed. Mandfred Frings (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1987), 55.
24.
GA 55, 55.
25.
GA 60, 125; The Phenomenology of Religious Life, 89. Translation modified.
26.
Sein und Wahrheit. 1. Die Grundfrage der Philosophie 2. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, GA 37/37, ed. Hartmut Tietjen (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2001), 167. Although he speaks of poetry, it arguably holds true for all texts.
27.
GA 65, 253.
28.
Sein und Zeit, 311; Being and Time, 359.
29.
Sein und Zeit, 150; Being and Time, 191.
30.
See Werner Hamacher, Premises: Essays on Philosophy and Literature from Kant to Celan. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 244–5.
31.
KFSA 2, 140.
32.
KFSA 2, 140.
33.
Jacques Derrida, Was ist Dichtung? Qu’est-ce que la poésie? What is Poetry? (Berlin: Blinkmann und Bose, 1990).
34.
KFSA 2, 197, n. 206.
35.
“Afterword,” in Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc, ed. Gerald Graff (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 111–160 (p. 136).
36.
This aspect was eminently brought to the fore by Walter Benjamin in “Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik,” ed. Uwe Steinmer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008).
37.
Novalis, Schriften, vol. II, Das philosophsiche Werk I, ed. Richard Samuel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960), 470.
38.
As Aristotle says, “to every potentiality of this kind actuality [energeia] is prior, both in the notion and in the essence [logō kai tē ousia]” (Metaphysics IX, 1049b10, trans. Hugh Tredennick. Loeb Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980, 454. Translation modified).
39.
Philosophische Lehrjahre (1796–1806), ed. Ernst Behler, KFSA 18 (München/Paderborn/Wien: Ferdinand Schöningh; Zürich: Thomas-Verlag 1963), 55, n. 362.
40.
KFSA 18, 106, n. 927.
41.
Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), 1992), 107–8.
For a reading of Schlegel’s review of Wilhelm Meister, see Elizabeth Millán, Friedrich Schlegel and the Emergence of Romantic Philosophy (New York: SUNY, 2007), 50–58.
42.
Novalis, Schriften II, 545, n. 105; English translation: Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Margaret Mahony Stoljar (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 60, n. 66. Translation modified.
43.
See Frederick Beiser, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 23.
44.
KFSA 2, 183.
45.
KFSA 18 49, n. 308.
46.
Hermeneutik und Kritik, ed. Manfred Frank (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977), 325; English translation: Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts, trans. James Duke and Jack Forstman (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986), 69.
47.
Hermeneutik und Kritik, 94.
48.
Hermeneutics, 112.
49.
Truth and Method, 2nd ed., translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1998), 297. Manfred Frank interprets Schleiermacher’s “understanding better” on Gadamerian lines, claiming that “understanding ‘better’ cannot mean understanding more truly or correctly but only differently and more richly” (Frank 1997, 40). While Frank is right in protecting Schleiermacher from a psychological interpretation, there is another alternative than an “understanding differently.” In other words, the fact that “better” is indeed not to be understood merely psychologically as meliorative does not entail that the alternative to the meliorative is a mere Gadamerian “otherwise.”
50.
Hans Eichner, “Einleitung,” in Schlegel KFSA II, xii-lxxii. (p. xcviii).
51.
KFSA 2, 370; “On Incomprehensibility (1800),” in J.M. Bernstein (ed.), Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 297–307 (p. 305).
52.
KFSA 19, 216. See Bärbel Frischmann, Vom transzendentalem zum frühromantischen Idealismus: J.G. Fichte und Fr. Schlegel (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2005), 355.
53.
KFSA 18, 140.
54.
KFSA 18, 129, n. 89.
55.
KFSA 2, 401.
56.
Sein und Zeit, 393; Being and Time, 343.
57.
Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie, GA 31, ed. Hartmut Tietjen (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1982), 124.
58.
KFSA 18, 284, n. 1055.
59.
GA 52, 177.
60.
KFSA11, 112–13.
61.
KFSA 16, 160, n. 883.
62.
KFSA 11, 125.
63.
See Beiser, The Romantic Imperative, 15.
64.
Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989. 2nd ed.), 244.
65.
Paul Ricoeur, La métaphore vive (Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, 1975), 387–88.
66.
KFSA 18 421, n. 1222; KFSA 12, 42.
67.
KFSA 18, 453, n. 234.
68.
KFSA 12, 42.
69.
KFSA 2, 285.
70.
Novalis, Schriften II, 536, n. 50; Philosophical Writings, 57, n. 44. Translation modified.
71.
KFSA 12, 105.
72.
Novalis, Schriften II, 545, n. 105; Philosophical Writings, 60, n. 66. Translation modified.
73.
Novalis, Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia: Das allgemeine Brouillon, ed. and trans. David W. Wood (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007), 209–210, n. 67.
74.
Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet, GA 34, ed. Hermann Mörchen (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1988), 64.
75.
GA 65, 293; Contributions to Philosophy, 207.
76.
GA 52, 40.
77.
GA 52, 40.
78.
GA 34, 33.
79.
Sein und Wahrheit. 1. Die Grundfrage der Philosophie 2. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, GA 36/37, ed. Hartmut Tietjen (Franfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2001), 137.
80.
GA 34, 33.
81.
GA 34, 33.
82.
GA 34, 33.
83.
Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 1982), 15.
84.
KFSA 12, 337.
85.
KFSA 12, 350.
86.
KFSA 12, 376.
87.
KFSA 12, 376.
88.
KFSA 12, 350–51; See Frischmann, Vom transzendentalem zum frühromantischen Idealismus, 2005, 281; Ernst Behler and Ursula Struc-Oppenberg, “Einleitung,” in Schlegel KFSA 8, xv–ccxxxii. (p. cxxxiv).
89.
Schleiermacher, On Religion, 38.
90.
Zollikon Seminars. Protocols—Conversations—Letters, ed. Medard Boss, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 190.
Marcia sá Cavalcante Schuback list the different works in which Heidegger mentions love in “Heideggerian Love” (See Phenomenology of Eros, eds. Jonna Bornemar and Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012), 129–152 (p. 138). https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:524777/FULLTEXT01.pdf accessed 11/14/2018).
91.
Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (1919/20), GA 58, ed. Hand-Helmuth Gander (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1993), 168. He also notes: “Love as motivation ground of phenomenological understanding. Necessarily co-given in its enactment sense [Vollzugssinn]” (GA 58, 185).
92.
Besinnung, GA 66, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1997), 63. See Schuback, 151.
93.
In the “Letter on Humanism” Heidegger writes: “To embrace a thing or a person in its essence means to love it, to favor it. Thought in a more original way such favoring (Mögen) means to bestow essence as a gift.” He equates this favoring or loving with a letting be (Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 213–165 (p. 220).
94.
The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 180–81.

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Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Pol Vandevelde

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Correspondence to Pol Vandevelde .

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Department of Philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA
Elizabeth Millán Brusslan

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Vandevelde, P. (2020). Between Appropriation and Transmission: The Romantic Thread in Heidegger’s Existential Notion of Understanding. In: Millán Brusslan, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53567-4_26

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53567-4_26
Published: 16 December 2020
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