Abstract
Emmanuel Levinas argues that Heidegger's ontology, and the ethics it entails, fall short because while Dasein relates to the Other as being, Dasein fails to care for the Other as a “pure individual.” Heidegger's preoccupation with Being, Levinas thinks, diverts Heidegger's attention from the empirical, ethical claim made by the Other. On the political front, some argue that Heidegger's preoccupation with Being gives rise to political forces of nationalism and totalitarian politics. I argue that Heidegger's philosophy prepares the way for an alternative approach to ethics. Expressed in the way that Dasein comes-to-presence are the ontological relationships that reveal Dasein's ethical being-with-one-another. However, I contend that Heidegger's ontology becomes ethically complete when Derrida's notion of differance is added to the analysis. On my reading, Derrida's differance does not efface Heidegger's existential analytic of Dasein, but rather differance furthers the ethical insight revealed in Dasein's disclosure through the process of presencing–absencing. Interpreting differance in light of Heidegger's understanding of presencing–absencing reveals the ethical significance in language, extends ethical responsibility to the Other, and deepens Heidegger's notion of dwelling. In addition, such a reading helps guard against the pernicious political possibilities some find in Heidegger's philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Philosophy Today 33 (1989): 124–26.
Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989).
Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998).
Karl Lowith, “The Political Implications of Heidegger's Existentialism,” in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998).
Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” 30.
Wolin, “Over the Line: Reflections on Heidegger and National Socialism,” in The Heidegger Controversy, 4.
Fred Dallmayr, “Heidegger and Politics: Some Lessons,” in The Heidegger Case, ed. Thomas Rockmore and Joseph Margolis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 284.
Lowith, “The Political Implications of Heidegger's Existenitialism,” 170.
Lowith, “The Political Implications of Heidegger's Existentialism,” 170.
Echoing Lowith, Pierre Bourdieu notes, the goal of authenticity is to “re-root” oneself in the essence of one's being. Pierre Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, trans. Peter Collier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 8.
Lowith, “The Political Implications of Heidegger's existentialism,” 173.
Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? trans. J. Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 89.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1977), 255.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 51. In addition to the ontological status of dwelling, it is important to recognize the connection between dwelling and space—what Heidegger calls nearness and distance. It is important, therefore, to clarify Heidegger's existential understanding of space. For Heidegger, all spatial dimensions are first opened through the expression of care for, and involvement with, the world. The expression of our care towards others and things opens the dimension of space, establishing the phenomenon of near and far, and constituting the grounds of actual measurement. What is near and far is not first a function of measured space. Measured space becomes possible due to the awareness of and involvement with objects, and their placement in a larger context of meaningful significance. Spatiality, then, is an existential attribute of Dasein's being. Only after existential care has been reawakened, can space in both the ethical and calculative sense be ontologically clarified (Heidegger, Being and Time, 103). The ethical dimension of Dasein's spatiality concerns the way in which others are brought near and cared for. From the point of view of existential concern, near and far do not signify spatial opposites, but rather function as related points in a playing back and forth along a continuum of care towards others. The ethical dimension of nearness concerns the cultivation of an alternative mode of subjectivity, one that releases itself from the inclination to bring all things, as well as others, under the dominion of rational and technical manipulation.
Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper Row, 1971), 147.
Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” 146.
Leslie Paul Thiele, Timely Meditations: Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 180–81.
Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” 148.
While Heidegger's notion of dwelling remains constant throughout his life, his approach to thinking about it undergoes an important change. This change entails the difference between what, in Being and Time, Heidegger considered the question of the meaning of Being, to what he later thought of as the truth of Being. In Being and Time, Heidegger sought the meaning of Being by interrogating that being (Dasein) for whom Being itself is an issue. In this context, Heidegger's interrogation of metaphysics is intended to peel away the layers of metaphysical language and subjectivity that have shrouded the meaning of Being. The purpose of Being and Time is to provide an ever more refined interpretation of Dasein's existence in order to recover the forgotten meaning of Being. In his later works, the focus shifts from a concern with recovering the meaning of Being to a meditation on the truth of Being. Here the truth of Being is understood as an interdependent and mutually disclosive relationship between Being and Dasein, and the implications such reflection carries for ethical co-being. From an ethico-ontological point of view, the shift is important. In Being and Time, the search for the meaning of Being entailed an overly subjective stance by Dasein toward Being, leading Dasein to will its resoluteness in the face of death. Such willful choice is what Heidegger means by Dasein's authenticity, or ability to choose its own path. In his later writings, Heidegger lets go of the emphasis on individual decision as the mark of a good life, and turns to a meditation on the more passive nature of the relationship between Being and Dasein. It is in this mode of abiding in the opening of Being that Heidegger's notion of “letting-be” becomes ethically relevant. See: Martin Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schumer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 178; Discourse on Thinking, trans. J. Anderson and E. Fruend (New York: Harper Row, 1966), 60–61; and “Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, trans. D. Krell and F. Capuzi (New York: Harper Row, 1975), 40–41.
Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” 147.
Young, Heidegger's Later Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 64.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 256.
Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” 149, and “Letter on Humanism,” 260.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 220.
Martin Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” 50.
Young, Heidegger's Later Philosophy, 23.
Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” 40.
Young, Heidegger's Later Philosophy, 23.
This is one of the central motifs of Derrida's articulation of differance. In Derrida's language, the “absent–present” trace of linguistic meaning and identity refers to that element of meaning or identity which, due to the differential structure of meaning and identity, is irreducibly related to the proper meaning of a word or to the identity of the proper name before such isolation is possible. Absence refers to those elements of differential possibility, transcendental differance, that are essential to the singular appropriation of any term or identity. On Heidegger and Derrida's reading, absence is structurally constitutive of the conditions of possibility for anything; and cannot be (as metaphysics attempts), and should not be (as most forms of ethical theory attempt), forgotten or dissolved. In fact, deconstruction is made possible by the impossibility of the proper name, whether this is understood in terms of meaning or identity. The “absent–present” trace always frustrates the attempt at transparent meaning and autonomous identity precisely because relational difference always-already presupposes singularity. Singularity and meaning are always isolated out of differance and a thrown context of meaningful involvement, what is unrecoverable in this transcendental movement is the “absent–present” trace. What is necessary is to recover the significance that absence plays in this ontic-ontological happening. The work of Heidegger and Derrida, as well as the way in which I read a possible rapprochement between the two, differs from other postmodern thinking in how it understands the role and significance of absence. As constitutive of the conditions of meaning and possibility, absence represents an alternative form of connectedness and sharing.
Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” 26; and Basic Questions of Philosophy, 178.
Thiele, Timely Meditations, 73.
Heidegger, “What Calls for Thinking?” in Basic Writings, 374.
Heidegger, “What Calls for Thinking?” 374.
Heidegger, “What Calls for Thinking?” 374.
Heidegger, “What Calls for Thinking?” 374.
Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 181.
Fred Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
White, Political Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” 41; Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, 108.
Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” 26.
Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 178.
Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, 111.
Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 179.
It is precisely the absence of a metaphysical ground that is timeless that gives rise to the possibility that “the ground of humanity must therefore be grounded through humanity as ground” (Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 179).
Thiele, Timely Meditations, 181.
White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 58.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 229–31. Heidegger makes the claim that only Dasein dies because he believes that Dasein is that being for whom its Being is an issue. It is precisely because my being is an issue for me, and that my being is finite, that no considerations of existence and ethics can ignore the question of death.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 215–16 and 219–20.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 226, 231.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 242.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 274.
White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 67.
Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, 151.
Jacques Derrida, “Differance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 11.
Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 9.
Jacques Derrida, “Interview with Richard Kearney,” in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 117.
It is important to note that Derrida is not denying the empirical fact, nor the significance of, our subjectivity. As Derrida insists:
I have never said that the subject should be dispensed with. Only that it should be deconstructed. To deconstruct the subject does not mean to deny its existence. There are subjects, ‘operations’ or ‘effects’ of subjectivity. This is an incontrovertible fact. To acknowledge this does not mean, however, that the subject is what it says it is. The subject is not some meta-linguistic substance or identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always inscribed in language. My work does not…destroy the subject; it simply tries to resituate it. [Derrida, “Interview with Kearney,” 124]
With respect to the facticity of the subject, and Derrida's claim that the subject may not be what it thinks, we can see the parallels to Heidegger's claim in Being and Time regarding the mode of inauthenticity that each Dasein assumes by virtue of its thrownness into the world. It is not the case, for Heidegger or Derrida, that critical questioning of the nature of human existence constitutes a denial of the subject. Rather than reading deconstruction as a leveling assault on subjectivity per se, I argue that we interpret deconstruction from the point of view of the full phenomenology of presencing–absencing, disclosure-withdrawal, and nearness-distance as it relates to ethical co-being. For Derrida, like Heidegger, the ethical opening to the other is found in recognizing the limits of the possible and releasing oneself from the desire to foreclose the play of presencing–absencing.
White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 67.
Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (New York: Verso, 1997), 231–32.
Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, 232.
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 217.
Thiele, Timely Meditation, 161.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 79.
Martin Heidegger, Existence and Being (Washington DC: Regnery Gateway, 1949), 307.
Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” 149.
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford University Press, 2000), 77.
Derrida, Of Hospitality, 77.
Derrida, Of Hospitality, 77.
Ed Mendel, “Bill would let Illegal Immigrants get Licenses,” San Diego Union-Tribune, April 2, 2003.
Derrida, Of Hospitality, 135.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
I thank the former and current editors, referees, and staff of Polity for their thoughtful assistance in the preparation of this essay. Special thanks also go to James Mitchell and my colleagues at CSUN—your support has been invaluable. Last, I also thank Peter Digeser, Thomas Schrock, and Lea for their unending care.
Translated literally as there-being, Dasein is Heidegger's attempt to avoid the many metaphysical concepts—subjectivity, ego, consciousness, spirit, soul, etc.—that have been used to express the nature of human beings. “This designation Dasein… does not signify a what. The entity is not distinguished by its what, like a chair in contrast to a house. Rather, this designation in its own way expresses the way to be”: Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, trans. T. Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 153. Dasein is distinguished from other things that exist by virtue of its special way of being, which is to raise the question of its Being in and through its existence. In Dasein, Heidegger attempts to overcome the often-sharp metaphysical distinction between the subject and object, and seeks to capture both the empirically factual and ontological dimensions of our Being in a single concept.