Derrida’s “Deconstruction” and Heidegger’s Reception in America

Dastur, Françoise

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-05817-2_2

Françoise Dastur²⁹

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 119))

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Abstract

In a short but quite informative text on the reception of Heidegger’s phenomenology in North America, Thomas Sheehan, a well-known philosopher and commentator of Heidegger’s works, underlines that, in opposition to Husserl, Heidegger “was late arriving in America” since it was only in the 1960s that “the true nature of Heidegger’s project became clear to American scholars”. Only a few of Heidegger’s texts had been translated into English until then, among them What is Metaphysics?, On the Essence of Truth, in the 1940s, Heidegger’s 1935 course on The Introduction to Metaphysics in the late 1950s, and Identity and Difference and The Question of Being in 1960s. During this period, the reading of Heidegger’s works was dominated by what Thomas Sheehan names “the existentialist paradigm” which focused on the thematic of human existence. But things changed after the publication of the English translation of Sein und Zeit, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit and Brief über den Humanismus in 1962, since the emphasis was now put on being itself and no longer on human being.

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Notes

1.
Thomas Sheehan (born in 1941), professor at the Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University, has dedicated many of his publications and lectures to Heidegger and Roman Catholicism. He is the translator of M. Heidegger, Logic.The Question of Truth, Indiana University Press, 2010.
2.
Thomas Sheehan, « The Reception of Heidegger’s phenomenology in the United States », Forthcoming in The Reception of phenomenology in North America, ed. Michela Beatrice Ferri, Cham, Dordrecht, New York, Springer, 2016, on line, p. 1.
3.
Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, London: SCM Press, 1962; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. by James S. Churchill, Bloomington, University of Indiana, 1962. “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth. Letter on Humanism”, trans. by J. Barow and E. Lohner, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. W. Barrett and H. D. Aiken, New York, Random House,1962, pp. 251–302.
4.
William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought. Preface by Martin Heidegger. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963.
5.
Thomas Sheehan, « The Reception of Heidegger’s phenomenology in the United States », op.cit., p. 5.
6.
Cf. M. Heidegger, Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique? Suivi d’extraits sur l’être et le temps et d’une conférence sur Hölderlin, trad. Par Henry Corbin, Paris, Gallimard, 1938
7.
M. Heidegger, L’Etre et le temps, trad. Par Rudolf Boehm et Alphonse de Waehlens, Paris, Gallimard, 1964. Two full French translations of Sein und Zeit were published only in 1985 and 1986.
8.
M. Heidegger, Acheminement vers la parole, trad. François Fédier, Paris, Gallimard, 1976.
9.
Th. Sheehan, Making Sense of Heidegger. A Paradigm Shift, London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, p. 185.
10.
Ibid., p. 237.
11.
Ibid., p. 235.
12.
Ibid., p. 11, 26, 99, 251.
13.
Ibid., p. 236.
14.
See Ingo Farin, “A response to Sheehan‘s attempted paradigm shift in Heidegger studies “, https://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia26/parrhesia26_farin.pdf, and Sheehan’s answer to it “Which Heidegger?” (on line). Ingo Farin, who completed his PhD at Indiana University in 2004, is lecturer of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania. He has published many articles on Heidegger and is the translator of M. Heidegger, The Concept of Time, Continuum, 2011.
15.
Th. Sheehan, “The Reception of Heidegger’s phenomenology in the United States”, op. cit., p. 2.
16.
J. Derrida, De la grammatologie, Paris, 1968, p. 21. See F. Dastur, Déconstruction et phénoménologie. Derrida en débat avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris, Hermann, 2016, pp. 68–72, and also F. Dastur, “Derrida’s reading of Heidegger”’, Interpreting Heidegger, Critical Essays, ed. by D. Dahlstrom, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 273–298
17.
M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1963, § 6, p. 19.
18.
See E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, Hamburg, Claassen & Goverts, 1948, § 6, p. 21.
19.
Ibid., § 11, p. 46..
20.
M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, State University of New York Press, 1996, § 6, p. 20.
21.
J. Derrida, “Lettre à un ami japonais”, Psyché, Paris, Galilée, 1987, p. 390–391.
22.
See Th. Sheehan, « Derrida and Heidegger », Hermeneutics and Deconstruction, Hugh Silvermann & Don Ihde (eds), New York: Stat University of New York Press, 1985, pp. 201–218, on line p. 139–157.
23.
Ibid., p. 149.
24.
Ibid., p. 140.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid., p. 141.
28.
Ibid., p. 153.
29.
Ibid.
30.
See “No one can jump over his own shadow”, Richard Polt and Gregory Fried in conversation with Thomas Sheehan, first published in 3:AM Magazine: Monday, December eighth, 2014 (on line).
31.
R. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting. From Principles to Anarchy, trans. by C.-M. Gros, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987. Reiner Schürmann (1941–1993) was from 1976 to 1993 Professor in the department of philosophy of the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. Born in Amsterdam of German parents, Reiner Schürmann wrote all his major published works in French.
32.
R. Schürmann, Des Hégémonies brisées, Mauvezin, T.R.R., 1996; Broken Hegemonies, trans. by Reginald Lilly, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003. See G. Granel, Postface to R. Schürmann, Les Origines. Récit, Toulouse, Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2003, pp. 217–238.
33.
R. Schürmann, Hégémonies brisées, op. cit., p. 782.
34.
See Joeri Schrijveers, “Anarchistic Tendencies in Continental Philosophy. Reiner Schürmann and the Hybris of Philosophy, Research in Phenomenology, July 2007, p. 429.
35.
J. Derrida, Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl, Paris, PUF, 1990, « Avertissement », p. VI. See F. Dastur, Preface to Les origines, op. cit.
36.
Hégémonies brisées, op. cit., p. 50.
37.
See R. Schürmann, Le principe d’anarchie. Heidegger et la question de l’agir, Paris, Seuil, 1992, note3, p. 266, where it is said that the inclusion by Derrida of Heidegger in the era of logocentrism is “unjustified”.
38.
See on this Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott’s excellent article “Anarchy as the Closure of Metaphysics: Historicity and Deconstruction in the Work of Reiner Schürmann”, Política común, Volume 11, 2017 (on line).
39.
Le principe d’anarchie, op. cit., p. 224, note 1.
40.
J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. by A. Bass, University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 135.
41.
Hégémonies brisées, op. cit. p. 769, note 89.
42.
R. Schürmann, “What Must I Do?” at the End of Metaphysics: Ethical Norms and the Hypothesis of a Historical Closure”. Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context. Eds. William L. McBride, and Calvin O. Schrag. New York: State U of New York P, 1983: 49–64.
43.
Jacques Derrida, “History of the Lie: Prolegomena” in “In Memoriam Reiner Schürmann” special issue, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19:2–20:1 (1997), pp. 129–61.
44.
D. Wood, Thinking after Heidegger, Polity Press, 2002. David Wood (born 1946) is Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and also the author in of Darrida. A Critical Reader, Blackwell, 1992.
45.
D. Wood, The Step Back. Ethics and Politics after Deconstruction, Albany (N.Y.), State University of New York Press, 2005.
46.
D. Wood, “Heidegger after Derrida”, Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 17 (1987), pp. 103–116.
47.
See J. Sallis Delimitations. Phenomenology and the End of Metaphysics, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986 (Délimitations, La phénoménologie et la fin de la métaphysique, trans. by M. de Beistegui, Paris, Aubier, 1990) and D. F. Krell, Intimations of Mortality. Time, Truth and Finitude in Heidegger’s Thinking of Being, University Park and London, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.
48.
Intimations of Mortality. Time, Truth and Finitude in Heidegger’s Thinking of Being, op.cit., p. 151.
49.
Passage quoted by D. Krell, Ibid., p. 143.
50.
Ibid. p. 145.
51.
Ibid., p. 6.
52.
Ibid., p. 145.
53.
Ibid. p. 151.
54.
Ibid. Note 9, p. 182
55.
J. Salllis, Delimitations, op. cit. p. 141–142.
56.
Ibid., p. 145.
57.
Ibid., p. 146.
58.
Ibid., p. 149.
59.
Ibid., p. 150.
60.
Ibid.

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Department of Philosophy, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Saint Pons, France
Françoise Dastur

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Ecole normale supérieure, Archives Husserl de Paris, Paris, France
John Rogove
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Pietro D’Oriano

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Dastur, F. (2022). Derrida’s “Deconstruction” and Heidegger’s Reception in America. In: Rogove, J., D’Oriano, P. (eds) Heidegger and his Anglo-American Reception. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05817-2_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05817-2_2
Published: 10 September 2022
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