The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

Volume 12

Burt Hopkins, John Drummond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781844655410
• eBook ISBN: 9781317401230
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

Three Levels of Historical Analysis in Early Heidegger

Ingo Farin¹
University of Tasmania
[email protected]

Abstract: In this paper I distinguish and analyze three distinct levels of historical analysis in early Heidegger’s work. In the wake of Dilthey and Yorck, Heidegger develops an ontology of “historical being” that focuses on Dasein’s always already given immersion in and dependency on the encompassing intergenerational history or tradition. But Heidegger also develops a phenomenological–existential account of the original sense of history, which identifies the true origin of “history” not in tradition, but in the interiority of the existing singular self outside all societal significations. A third strand in early Heidegger stems from his analysis of Paul’s understanding of living historically in the face of the end of time. In a brief conclusion I show that these three levels of analysis are not consistent wiTheach other, and that, therefore, Heidegger’s account of history in Being and Time, which draws on the three different levels, is inherently unstable.

Keywords: Martin Heidegger, history, historicity, Wilhelm Dilthey, Yorck von Wartenburg

Introduction

At the center of early Heidegger’s philosophy (1919–25) stands the problem of factical life or facticity.² In stark contrast to the metaphysically and/or biologically colored life philosophies of his time (Bergson, Nietzsche, and Simmel), Heidegger’s notion of factical life is characterized by its intrinsic historicity.³ Heidegger writes that the concept of facticity “becomes intelligible only through the concept of ‘the historical’”⁴ (GA 60: 9).⁵ For all practical purposes, early Heidegger uses “factical life” and “historical life” interchangeably. Put differently, the underlying problematic that the word “facticity” indicates is “history” and/or “historical existence.” Early Heidegger’s fundamental question is: What does it mean to exist historically or to have a historical perspective? Heidegger asks after “the meaning of historical being”⁶ or “the meaning of the historical in itself” (GA 60: 39; also GA 64: 3).

Early Heidegger approaches this problematic of “the historical” on three different levels. First, consciously appropriating Dilthey’s and Yorck von Wartenburg’s contributions towards understanding “historicity” (“Geschichtlichkeit”; GA 64: 3), early Heidegger develops what one may call a historical methodology for philosophy, issuing in the claim that philosophy is “historical knowing” (GA 64: 103). This understanding, however, is based on history as an inter-generational, real, world-historical process. Second, in working through the problem of historical being, Heidegger also turns to phenomenology (WD: 158; GA 56/57: 165). He arrives at a phenomenological–existential concept of history that is anchored in the interiority of intentionality; that is to say, intentionality’s historical self (GA 59: 43–86). Third, Heidegger also explores early Christianity, in particular Paul’s Letters, in order to explicate what it means to live historically (GA 60: 67–156). The last two approaches have a very strong tendency to fix exclusively “the historical” in the interiority of self or Dasein alone, thus “reducing” the domain of history to that of the individual self and its inward historical continuity throughout its individual lifespan. By contrast, the first approach, critically continuing Dilthey and Yorck, locates “the historical” in the reality of a shared tradition, a common historical situation, and the overarching reality of generative human life.

I. Inter-generational History

My aim in this section is very limited and geared towards the clarification of just one point: early Heidegger’s appropriation and transformation of the concept of “historicity” that he inherited from Dilthey and Yorck.⁷ What exactly did Heidegger find in Dilthey and Yorck?

Three things stand out. First, historical life is taken as “a reality sui generis;” it is not something “constructed” out of a sensible manifold (as in Rickert, Windelband, and Simmel). For instance, Dilthey writes: “The language, in which I think, has come into being in time. My concepts have evolved in it. I am, down to the inscrutable inner cells of my being, a historical creature.”⁸ Second, history cannot be reduced to “nature.” More specifically, history is not just the ephemeral play on the surface of an ever stable sameness of things. History is the kind of reality which is never the same. Therefore, it resists categorization by generic concepts. Third, acknowledgement of the sui-generis reality of history implies that philosophy is historical too, since it is the expression of historical life. The demands of objectivity developed in relation to coping with the sameness of nature (cosmos) cannot dictate the standards for understanding historical life and historical experience and, a fortiori, philosophy as a product of human life. Yorck tends to be much more adamant about the last two points than Dilthey, in effect taking a line that is very close to Heidegger’s.

For Heidegger, these three points constitute the lasting result of the breakthrough to “historical consciousness” or the “historical worldview.” Heidegger fully embraces the results of this position, even though he finds fault with Dilthey’s own particular philosophical justification and disagrees with Dilthey’s later reformulations and changes.

Unlike Dilthey, who remains ambivalent about the final prospects and ultimate benefits of the historical consciousness, early Heidegger emphatically and unconditionally accepts it as a universal breakthrough to the historical nature of “all facts of the mind” (GA 56/57: 164), leaving no loophole open for any theoretical position “outside” history. For Heidegger, historical consciousness is emancipation tout court. The historical point of view emancipates from the shackles of theory and metaphysics, as well as from the interpretive predominance of the natural sciences (GA 56/57: 164). Of course, all of this is also a key aspect in Dilthey’s own perspective. For Dilthey, however, the emancipation of the historical worldview is overshadowed by the accompanying problem of “relativism” and the “anarchy of systems” (GS V: 9). Heidegger does not see any such dangers.⁹ Using Dilthey’s own stipulated difference between the natural sciences and the humanities, Heidegger holds that the criterion of science—universal and objective knowledge—is not a standard applicable to historical life as a lived reality, which means that the problem of “relativism” is nothing but a “sham problem.” Instead, Heidegger pushes for a view that accentuates and intensifies the historical reality in human life as a fundamental and inescapable fact beyond which one cannot go.

But this “fact” is not an “objective” fact “of” history, nor a fact “about” history, let alone an occurring fact “in” history. Rather, it is the fact that humans cannot exist but historically (=facticity). For Heidegger, living historically implies the conscious, self-reflective seizing of the particular historical situation in which we live. Instead of fleeing from the historical altogether or keeping it at arm’s length through theoretical externalization (for instance, through historiography, epistemology of history, the worry of relativism, etc.), Heidegger holds that we have to accept history as an immanent reality in human life. Just as deaThis nothing external, let alone “objective,” so history is nothing “outside” human life. History is constitutive of human life; it is within, not without. What Dilthey calls our “being-in” (“Darinnensein”; GS VIII: 99)—that is, our immersion in life at a particular historical time—becomes the defining characteristic of Dasein for Heidegger. And Heidegger accentuates, perhaps more than Dilthey, that to live historically means to live in a particular historical “situation” (GA 56/57: 205). This situation is opened up only through a self-reflexive grasp of the future that is possible from within the historically grown contemporary situation. To be historical means to act and to project oneself into the future from within a historically delimited, but not determined, historical situation, which itself is the product of the past.

In contrast to Dilthey’s epistemological and much more contemplative approach to historical consciousness,¹⁰ Heidegger tends to emphasize the practical implications of historical consciousness. For Heidegger, historical consciousness means that one cannot reflect oneself out of history. The spell of theory or metaphysics is broken by the historical worldview. Self-reflective historical consciousness enhances and sharpens the awareness of the fact that one is implicated in the historical situation in which one lives, whether one wants it or not. It draws one into history and demands that one seizes the historical moment. It is diametrically opposed to a metaphysical consciousness, which attempts to understand human life from a supra-historical standpoint. Thus Heidegger writes:

Only if history is seen in such a way that one’s own effective reality [Wirklichkeit] is seen within this historical connection, can we say that life knows about the history in which it stands, knows the reality of historical consciousness. One’s own epoch is [then] experienced as a situation, in which the present itself has its place, not only in relation to the past, but also as a situation in which the future will be shaped or has been shaped. Hence, the rise and the vigilance of historical awareness is not a matter of course; it does not come with life as such. Rather, it is a task to develop it. (WD, 145)

The “task” announced here accurately describes the impetus driving Heidegger’s work during the early 1920s. “Destruktion” of the predominance of theory and metaphysics, and the contestation of the pretensions of the natural sciences to define reality as such—all these issues Heidegger prosecutes from the perspective of the supreme reality of historical life. Whereas “nature” does not have a historical “situation,” humans are directly implicated and involved in the historical situation in which they live and shape future historical developments, carrying on with what they consider the legacy or heritage that has been handed down to them. Being-in-the-world is being-in-history. For Heidegger, historical awareness or experience and historical agency are inseparably linked together, as they define the fundamental characteristic of human life. It is this self-reflexive, practical, involved historical-existence-in-a-situation that Heidegger calls “historicity” (“Geschichtlichkeit”).¹¹ Historicity is the historical stance that grasps that one exists “historically;” this stance is only, if and when it is actualized in historical engagement in a historical situation.

While Dilthey and Heidegger share the view that “history” must be seen “as a reality sui generis,” which defines human life (WD: 145), only Heidegger recognizes that this is just the starting point for a proper “ontology of ‘the historical’” (GA 64: 14). This defines the crucial difference between Dilthey and Heidegger.¹² In fact, in thinking through “the historical” as an ontological problem, outside the confines of the project of a “Fourth Critique,” Heidegger would develop the main thematic lines in his magnum opus Being and Time, incidentally by formulating arguments that show a close affinity to critical objections Count Yorck von Wartenburg had raised in his correspondence with Dilthey.¹³

Like Heidegger, Yorck has not much interest in the historical sciences per se, nor the epistemology of historiography.¹⁴ Unlike Dilthey, Yorck eschews external reflections about relativism and absolute knowledge. Instead, he is keen on understanding the ontological dimension of history. And, like Heidegger, Yorck grasps that man’s historical existence puts a premium on action and praxis over contemplation and theory. Just like Heidegger, Yorck thinks that Dilthey gives too much room to epistemological questions concerning what we can know about history and how historical knowledge affects our lives. In a letter from 1888, Yorck articulates his ontological take on the problem of history by noting that “just as much as I am nature, I am history” (BW: 71; my emphasis). In contrast to Dilthey, who approaches history through its objective productions, institutions, and ideas, in which life expresses itself, namely via a consciousness that intends history as an objectivity from which it is different as consciousness (GS VIII: 226), Yorck takes history as something immanent to our lives. History is what we live. We are history. We are not just “in” history. To be historical in this sense must not be confused with studying historical events. It is not the sa...

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