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The heart in Heidegger’s thought

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Abstract

The notion of the heart is one of the most basic notions in ordinary language. It is central to Heidegger’s notion of thought that he relates to the primordial word Gedanc as underlying attunement that issues forth in emotional phenomena. He plays with all the etymological cognates of that word to zero in on the phenomena involved. The key experience of Erstaunen that grounds the first beginning of philosophy is paralleled by Erschrecken that grounds Heidegger’s “second beginning” and plays counterpoint with the first. Along with Befindlichkeit as one’s basic attunement, these are key phenomena that belong to the heart, not to ‘intellect’ or ‘will.’ Thinking in terms of the intellect is das rechnende Denken¸ thinking in terms of the heart, besinnliche Nachdenken. It is the latter that provides the “poetic-intellectual” experience for both the arts and philosophy in which such “world space” is created that even the ordinary appears extraordinary.

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Notes

  1. Scheler (1972, p. 100).

  2. Scheler (1972, pp. 110–1).

  3. For Scheler’s treatment of the heart, see my “Virtues, Values, and the Heart in the Phenomenology of Scheler and von Hildebrand,” forthcoming in Phenomenology and the Virtues, J. Hemberg and P. Gyllenhammer eds. (London: Continuum). A comparison of Scheler and Heidegger will appear in a projected volume I have in process, Heidegger in Dialogue. It includes thus far Plato, Buber, Sartre, Strasser, Dewey and Ricoeur as well as Scheler. On the theme of the heart, see also my Introduction to my translation of Stephen Strasser's Das Gemüt as Phenomenology of Feeling: An Essay on the Phenomena of the Heart (1977). I was directed to this work by Paul Ricoeur's treatment of the heart in Fallible Man. Ricoeur, who encouraged the translation, wrote the Foreward to it. Finally, the theme of the heart is the center of my Placing Aesthetics (1999).

  4. Heidegger (1968/German 1972). The translation as What Is Called Thinking? could also be rendered as What Calls for Thinking?

  5. Heidegger (1968, p. 144/1972, p. 157).

  6. Heidegger (1968, pp. 139–41/1972, pp. 91–93).

  7. Heidegger (1968, p. 148/1972, p. 195).

  8. Heidegger (1968, p. 145/1972, p. 158).

  9. Heidegger (1968, p. 207/1972, p. 172).

  10. Heidegger (1968, p. 146/1972, p. 159).

  11. “Der Gedank bedeutet: das Gemüt, das Herz, den Herzensgrund, jenes Innerste des Menschen, das am weitesten nach auβen und ins Äuβerste reicht und dies so entschieden, daβ es, recht bedacht, die Vorstellung einer Innen ind Auβsen nicht aufkommen läβt.” Heidegger (1968, p. 144/1972, p. 157).

  12. I find it odd that Heidegger does not exploit this first line for his purposes.

  13. Heidegger (1971b, p. 128).

  14. Heidegger (1962, §2, p. 27/1979, p. 7).

  15. Heidegger (1968, I, §5, p. 139/1979, p. 178).

  16. Heidegger (1977b, p. 19).

  17. Plato (1969, VI, 508E).

  18. Plato (1977, 155C).

  19. Kant (1987, §23–9).

  20. Heidegger (1958, p. 79).

  21. Heidegger (1966, p. 46/1959, p. 13). Heidegger invokes the same distinction in (1969, p. 163/1959, p. 102): he called thinking “in the second sense” logos, but “in the first sense” memory, devotion, and thanks that belongs to the thanc. He refers to the latter as equivalent to Meister Eckhart’s “spark of the soul” (2000b, p. 149/1959, p. 96).

  22. Heidegger (1977a, p. 215/1947, p. 23). See also Heidegger’s lecture course Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. (Heidegger 1988, p. 40).

  23. Descartes (1955, vol. I, p. 211).

  24. Heidegger (1998a, pp. 277–290).

  25. Wahrig (1989, p. 552a).

  26. Marcel (1960, vol. 1, pp. 95–126, 260).

  27. Pascal (1966, p. 309). He is said to have kept that statement sewn in his garments close to his heart.

  28. Heidegger (1968, pp. 138–47/1979, pp. 91–95 and 157–9. The separation of the references in the German text is required because the English translation puts the transition between lectures at the end of each lecture rather than separating them as the German does, placing all of them at the end of the text.

  29. Heidegger (2000a, §§37–8, pp. 54–55/1989, pp. 78–9).

  30. Augustinus (1977, X, §10).

  31. .Ibid. [T]amen amo quandam lucem et quandam vocem et quendam odorem et quendam cibum et quendam amplexum, cum amo deum meum, lucem, vocem, odorem, cibum, aplexum interioris homini mei, ubi fulget animae meae…”

  32. Heidegger (1962, §41, pp. 235ff/1979, pp. 191ff).

  33. Heidegger raises the issue of "formal indication" and illustrates it with his treatment of Karl Jaspers' Psychology of Worldviews (1998b, pp. 25ff).

  34. Heidegger (1977b, p. 28).

  35. Nietzsche (1974, III, §125, pp. 181–182).

  36. Heidegger (1977a, p. 195/1947, p. 6).

  37. Heidegger (1998a, p. 276).

  38. Heidegger (1962, §29, p. 174/1979, p. 135).

  39. Politics, VIII, 5, 1340a, 1ff.

  40. Heidegger (1962, §52, p. 303/1979, p. 259).

  41. Heidegger (1962, §29, pp. 172ff/1979, pp. 134ff).

  42. Sartre (1956a, b, pp. 47–72).

  43. Heidegger (1962, §34, p. 210/1979, p. 166).

  44. Heidegger (2000a, p. 175/1989, p. 258).

  45. Heidegger (1962, §27, p. 163/1979, p. 126).

  46. Heidegger (1962, §§46–53, pp. 279–312/1979, pp, 235–260).

  47. Buber (1965, p. 91).

  48. Heidegger (1971a, p. 149).

  49. Spinoza (1955, Part 3, p. 129).

  50. Pascal (1966, §423, 154). In the Modern Library edition (1941, §277, 95).

  51. The central theme of the Confessions is the “restless heart” that is announced very early in the work (I, §1).

  52. Sartre (1956a, b, p. 291).

  53. I have suggested that Plato’s Line is really the edge of a circle viewed from the side. Since the Good is not only the ground of the intelligible but “the principle of the Whole,” the movement up the Line and out of the Cave must be followed by a movement from the top down to the bottom in the Cave. See Wood (1991, vol. XLIV, pp. 525–547).

  54. Heidegger (1998c, p. 237).

  55. Heidegger (1977a, b, c, pp. 26–7).

  56. Heidegger (1962, §62, p. 352/1979, p. 305).

  57. Heidegger (1991, 98).

  58. Gadamer (1989, p. 429).

  59. The unpublished notes students took at the seminar show that Heidegger was only concerned with an exposition of the text and not with “the things themselves” about which Hegel speaks. He practices little “violence” on the text.

  60. The upshot of the study, of course, was the two volume Nietzsche (1979–1987).

  61. For a comparison of the philosopher and the thinker in Heidegger’s thought, see Wood (1995, pp. 311–33).

  62. Kirk and Raven (1966, pp. 263–85).

  63. Kirk and Raven (1966, §342, p. 266).

  64. Kirk and Raven (1966, §344, p. 269).

  65. Kirk and Raven (1966, §351, p. 276).

  66. Kirk and Raven (1966, §346, p. 271).

  67. Jaeger (1960, pp. 102ff.).

  68. Confessions, XI, §26.

  69. Kirk and Raven (1966, §342, p. 267).

  70. Kirk and Raven (1966, §344, p. 269).

  71. Kirk and Raven (1966, §345, p. 270).

  72. Heidegger (1968, p. 241/1972, p. 147).

  73. Heidegger (1968, p. 223/1972, p. 136).

  74. Heidegger (2000b, p. 150/1966), p. 108. Heidegger suggests an understanding of phusis as logos anthropon echon, as the logos that possesses man (2000b, p. 187/1966, p. 134).

  75. Heidegger (1968, pp. 229–244/1972, pp. 138–49).

  76. Heidegger (1968, pp. 140–1/1972, p. 93).

  77. Heidegger (1968, p. 209/1972, p. 138).

  78. Heidegger (1968, p. 169/1972, 164). In his comments on Trakl, he stresses solitude and the “heavy heart” that arrives at “flaming vision.” Heidegger (1971a, b, c, d, pp. 178–81). The notion of the heart is implicit in his dealing with poetry and with aesthetic matters generally. For example, Heidegger (1971a, b, c, d, pp. 44–5) there is a discussion with a Japanese interlocutor where the aesthetic notion of Iki is described as “the pure delight of the beckoning stillness.” Delight is clearly a matter of the heart, but its alignment with stillness indicates relation to an encompassing.

  79. Heidegger (1966, pp. 58–90/1959, pp. 28–71).

  80. Heidegger (1971b, pp. 91–142/1977, 269–320).

  81. Heidegger (1998c, p. 360).

  82. Heidegger (1998c, p. 134/1971, p. 154).

  83. Heidegger (1971b, p. 127/1977, p. 306).

  84. Heidegger (1971b, p. 132/1977, p. 311).

  85. Heidegger (1971b, p. 132/1977, p. 311).

  86. Heidegger (1971b, p. 124/1977, p. 302).

  87. Heidegger (1977c, p. 132ff).

  88. Heidegger (1971b, p. 120/1977, p. 298).

  89. This is the last line of Rilke’s poem, “The Archaic Torso of Apollo.”

  90. Heidegger (1984, p. 98).

  91. Heidegger (1971b, p. 94/1977, p. 272).

  92. Heidegger (2000b, p. 40/1966, p. 29).

  93. Heidegger (2000b, p. 14/1966, p. 11).

  94. Heidegger (2000b, p. 28/1966, p. 20).

  95. For a development of this theme through select highpoints in the history of philosophy, see Wood (1991).

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    Robert E. Wood

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Wood, R.E. The heart in Heidegger’s thought. Cont Philos Rev 48, 445–462 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-015-9349-x

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