Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies:
"The Continental Origins of Postmodernism"

Week 3: September 27-October 3

ROGER DONWAY ON HEIDEGGER'S "WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?"

Sent: Sunday, September 26, 1999 10:19 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Heidegger Review - RD

Heidegger's Attempt to Redeem Metaphysics
By Roger Donway


1. I believe that "What Is Metaphysics?" must be read as a polemical
lecture. Specifically, I believe Heidegger is trying to rebut the logical
positivists of his day, who said that man's only true knowledge of the world
is given by the positive sciences and these sciences tell us only what sorts
of things exist. Heidegger wishes to show that there is knowledge beyond
(meta) this knowledge of existent-identities (physika), and that this
knowledge is vital to living a truly human life.

2. I shall try to vindicate Heidegger's argument, as best I can. I shall do
so by following the course of the argument (as best I can) and suggesting
the most charitable possible readings. ("Charitable" from an Objectivist
standpoint.) In an afterword, I will make some comments on the essay as it
relates to Postmodernism and Objectivism.

3. Heidegger's lecture comprises 107 paragraphs, divided into five unequal
sections.
I. Untitled Introduction: §§ 1-2.
II. The Presentation of a Metaphysical Question: §§ 3-18
III. The Development of the Question §§ 19-47
IV. The Answer to the Question §§ 48-88
V. Postscript §§ 89-107


I. Untitled Introduction §§ 1-2

4. Were an Objectivist striving to answer the question "What Is
Metaphysics?" or, "What Does 'Metaphysics' Mean?" he would take a variety of
topics indisputably considered metaphysical, another variety of topics
indisputably considered not metaphysical, and he would employ the
Objectivist method of concept-formation to arrive at an answer. That is not
Heidegger's approach.

5. But at least Heidegger is not on a disastrous track methodologically. We
may applaud him for not setting forth a spectrum of received opinions about
what constitutes metaphysics and then proceeding dialectically to extract an
answer. ("The question leads one to expect a discussion about metaphysics.
Such is not our intention." [§1]) By striving to analyze one metaphysical
inquiry, as a way to understand what metaphysics is, he is at least
proceeding empirically. And, in his own view, he needs only one metaphysical
question, because "every metaphysical question always covers the whole range
of metaphysical problems." (§3) His idea seems to be this: Metaphysics
inquires into the nature of beings just in so far as they are beings. Thus,
there are no truly independent sub-questions because if there were they
would have to focus on some aspect of beings-and then one would not be
discussing beings just in so far as they are beings.

6. Moreover, as far as having a contrast object, we may be presumed to have
in our mental storehouse a wide variety of inquiries that are clearly not
metaphysical. Indeed, it goes to the heart of the polemic here (see my point
1 above) that Heidegger is contrasting metaphysical knowledge with the
knowledge given by the positive sciences.


II. The Presentation of a Metaphysical Question: §§ 3-18

7. Heidegger begins by discussing positive science, which he takes very
broadly to include all of the sciences and humanities. The activity of
scientific inquiry, he finds, has three aspects which he calls "the
world-relationship," "the attitude," and "the irruption." The
world-relationship of the positive sciences is that they "seek what-is in
itself with a view to rendering it . . . an object of investigation and
basic definition." (§7) The attitude of science is "that it and it alone
explicitly allows the object itself the first and last word." (§8) The
"irruption" of science is that it involves existence coming to know
existence. "In this 'pursuit' [science's pursuit of knowledge] what is
happening is nothing less than the irruption of a particular entity called
'Man' into the whole of what-is, in such a way that in and through this
irruption what-is manifests itself as and how it is." (§8)

8. Now the logical positivists in Heidegger's day wanted to insist that the
knowledge provided by the sciences was the only possible knowledge of the
world. In particular, they wanted to insist that all propositions previously
termed "metaphysical" were nonsense. To these assertions, Heidegger now
turns his attention. These philosophers, he observes, declare that we can
talk about the objects of positive science and nothing else. "What is to be
investigated [by science] is what-is-and nothing else; only what-is-and
nothing more; simply and solely what-is-and beyond that, nothing." (§13)
Clearly, Heidegger is tweaking the positivists. "What is this 'nothing' you
are talking about?"

9. But Heidegger then asks the question more seriously. "Is it only an
accident that we speak like that quite naturally?" (§14) Of course, he knows
that the positivists will reply: "Yes. To take that way of speaking as other
than an accident is a verbal error." And Heidegger is prepared to admit the
possibility: "Perhaps this sort of cross-talk is already degenerating into
an empty wrangling about words." (§15) But, he says, let's find out: "In the
course of this argument a question has already presented itself. The
question only requires putting specifically: What about Nothing?" (§18)

10. Here, then, is the acid test for metaphysics: the topic of nothing.
Positivists might be persuaded that talk about essences, or prime matter, or
souls is really talk about some scientific object or relationship among
objects. But to take seriously references to "nothing," they will say, is
inevitably a mistake. Conversely, if we can vindicate serious references to
nothing, we will have put paid to positivism and redeemed the role of
metaphysics.


III. The Development of the Question (§§ 19-47)

11. Notice that in §18, Heidegger puts his question as "What about Nothing?"
As he begins to develop the question, he admits the more natural phrasing
would be "What is Nothing?" (§ 20) But that question posits a Nothing which
is a thing and thus the "no thing" we are seeking disappears. What shall we
do? Shall we accept that: "The commonly cited basic rule of all thinking-the
proposition that contradiction must be avoided-and common 'logic' rule out
the question." (§22) What is the alternative? "Can the law of 'logic' be
assailed?" (§ 24)

12. It is not a genuine dilemma. We shall simply point out that this
so-called logic is assuming Nothing is the negation of everything. It
assumes that the term means "Not this, and not this, and not this . . . "
Heidegger replies, "Nothing is more original than the Not and negation." (§
24) It is something we can "encounter." (§ 26) (Michael Young's comment
forces me to be more precise. Michael writes: "[Heidegger] insists that this
[nothing of negation] is not what we contrast existence with. This
insistence is prior to his treatment of our experience of nothing, but it is
unclear to me that he has given any argument for his claim." Quite right. He
has not. Heidegger says that for him to uphold his claim "We must be able to
encounter it [i.e., Nothing]" He does not actually state that we can
encounter it, but he proceeds as if we can.)

13. "Where shall we seek Nothing? Where shall we find Nothing?" (§27) Though
the "logicians" are wrong about Nothing, they give us a hint about where to
find it when they say "Nothing is the complete negation of the totality of
what-is" (§ 29) We shall find that our encounter with Nothing will emerge
from "the totality of what-is.". [For shorthand, I will occasionally use the
term "Everything"-my term, not Heidegger's-for "the totality of what-is."]

14. Yet how can we, as finite beings, truly grasp "the totality of what-is."
We can talk about it as the logical positivists do: "This, plus this, plus
this . . ." But that is just a notional "Everything" and, as we saw above,
it leads to a notional Nothing, via negation. "In this way we arrive at the
formal concept of an imaginary Nothing, but never Nothing itself." (§32)
What we are looking for is Nothing itself, an "authentic" Nothing.

15. Perhaps I should here bring my reading of Heidegger into conjunction
with Bryan Register's. My point (14) reverses his reading of §32. Bryan
says: "The idea is that 'the nothing' expresses just what we get when we
perform the mental logical act of negation on everything. But then we have
in fact gotten the nothing from a logical act performed on a contentful
mental state. . . . So the logical objections don't work after all." On my
reading of §32, Heidegger is saying: "The logical positivists' "nothing" is
simply the negation of every thing. And, yes, when you try to turn that
notional 'nothing' into the subject of a real search you run into logical
problems. But, as I have said, 'Nothing is more original than the Not and
negation.' (§ 24)"

16. Let us now return to our quest. I suggested in (13) above that our
encounter with Nothing will emerge from an encounter with "the totality of
what-is" We then asked how we might come to a more-than-notional Everything.
Here is an answer: Consider existence as a social get-together. If I immerse
myself in deep conversation with this person, then that person, then those
people, I may be aware of the party, but I will not really grasp it as a
whole. On the other hand, I may grasp it as a whole if I become bored with
talking to people and cease to focus on individuals. If I just let the party
flow over and around me, I may then experience
this-party's-attendees-in-totality and myself as part of it. So, too, in
daily life: We are absorbed with this or that part of the world. Yet, these
fragmentary parts are, in fact, parts of Everything and that Everything
consequently exists on the periphery of our consciousness while we are
focused on one small section of it. When we withdraw our focus from a part
of Everything (not to shift to another part, but just withdraw it from any
and all parts), "this 'wholeness' comes over us." (§ 34) Thus, Heidegger
cites profound boredom as a mode in which we grasp "what-is in totality."

17. Between this Everything and the Nothing we are seeking, some relation
exists. But "we are now less than ever of the opinion that mere negation of
what-is-in-totality as revealed by these moods of ours can in fact lead us
to Nothing." (§ 38) In short, we cannot reach Nothing by negating
Everything. But we may encounter Nothing by finding a mood such as revealed
Everything to us.

18. "Does there ever occur in human existence a mood of this kind, through
which we are brought face to face with Nothing itself?" (§ 39) Yes, says
Heidegger. It is Angst (Anxiety, Dread). Dread is always "about"-it is an
experience of unease directed outward. Yet it is not about this or that
particular. It is not the fear of something. (§ 40) It is, of its essence,
indefinite. (§ 41) So far as I can see, Heidegger does not tell us in this
essay what brings on a sense of dread. But commentators frequently say
something like this: Dread is the mood I experience when I grasp my world
(including my life) as a whole, perceiving that my death is an inevitable
part of that world. Thus, W.T. Jones quotes Being and Time: "That in the
face of which one has anxiety is Being-in-the-world as such." (A History of
Western Philosophy: Volume V, The Twentieth Century to Wittgenstein and
Sartre, p. 308) Michael Inwood says: "What Angst is for is the same as what
it is about: Dasein and being-in-the-world." (A Heidegger Dictionary, p.
97). And Marjorie Grene writes: "Dread is of life as a whole-that is, of
death as end, ground, and boundary of life. Life in its entirety is life
facing death." ("Heidegger" in Paul Edwards's Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Volume 3, p. 460). (Consequently, I do not think Heidegger is making the
argument: "Dread reveals Nothing because it has no object. He says only: It
focuses on no entity-object.)

19. Given the source of dread, in what sense can Heidegger say that it
brings one "face to face with Nothing"? Is that simply to say: In dread, I
am brought face to face with the certainty of my future death? Is it my
death, my non-existence, that constitutes the Nothing? That is not what
Heidegger says in this lecture. Rather, he says, in a state of dread, "all
things, and we with them, sink into a sort of indifference." (§ 42) Note the
parallel with "true boredom," in which we also become indifferent to all
things. In boredom, however, our indifference is lack of special concern for
this or that particular; the indifference then produces a sense of the whole
and ourselves as part of it. In dread, our indifference generates an
"uncanny feeling," and this is very unlike the indifference of boredom. The
word here translated "uncanny" is "unheimlich," "not-at-home."

20. Recall the metaphor of a party. Suppose one suddenly experiences a
profoundly disquieting feeling about the party, such that one has an intense
experience of "not being at home" with these people. One will still be aware
of the party-goers and of oneself amid them. Indeed, one may be more aware
of them than before. But one will be aware of them in a very different
manner. One will feel that they have "slipped away" emotionally, and in
that sense one will feel "indifferent." This slipping away is the act of
noth-ing. (Until point 38, where I undertake to explicate the substantive
"Nothing," I shall explain Heidegger's meaning largely by using the gerund
"Noth-ing," except in direct citation.)

21. Now let us try to make the metaphor literal. When one feels dread, one
feels "not-at-home" in the universe. One is intensely aware of being amid
the world but one is aware of it in a very different way. One feels that
Everything is "slipping away," losing its relationship to oneself. And this
slipping away is felt oppressively. "There is nothing to hold on to." (§42)
Thus, "dread holds us in suspense because it makes what-is-in-totality slip
away from us." (§44) The suspense arises because things seem (increasingly)
to lack relation to us, and unless we perceive our relationships to things
we do not know what to expect.

22. If this reading is correct, noth-ing is in some sense opposed to (though
not the negation of) what-is-in-its-totality, where every thing is seen as
having some relationship to every other thing, including myself. Seen under
the aspect noth-ing, things (increasingly) cease to have relationships to
oneself or to each other, insofar as they related through one's relation to
each. And even oneself, as the person who previously had those relations,
slips away. "Hence we too, as existents in the midst of what-is, slip away
from ourselves." (§44)

23. Suppose we grant that Heidegger has pointed out a genuine phenomenon. We
still may want to ask: "Why should this be dubbed 'Nothing' or 'Noth-ing'"?
Why not "alienation"? So far as I can see Heidegger does not address this
question, but it is a logical question and this is a logical point at which
to answer it. Look at it this way: One common (non-Objectivist) view of
entities is that they have potentialities, some of which are actualized and
some of which are not. That which makes the actualized potentialities actual
is Be-ing. ("[Being] gives every being the warrant to be." [§97])
Conversely, then, that which would render certain actualized potentialities
merely potential we might well call Noth-ing. Thus, noth-ing creates a
"de-actualization" of certain elements in actual existent-identities, and
that is the "slipping away" we grasp in dread. (I could try to make this
more plausible in ordinary-language terms but I could never convince an
Objectivist, so I shall not try.)

24. Now that we have "encountered" Nothing, we may return to our
metaphysical question: "What about Nothing?" (§47) For, as I said above,
Heidegger wants to show not only that there is metaphysical knowledge but
that it is necessary for living a truly human life.


IV. The Answer to the Question. (§ 48 - 88)

25. In the last section, we learned that Nothing is not "detached and apart
from what-is-in-totality." (§49) Indeed, "Nothing shows itself as
essentially belonging to what-is while this is slipping away in totality."
(§50) Put otherwise: Noth-ing is not the annihilation (Vernichtung) of
what-is, but the "nihilation." (Nichtung) of what-is: "the relegation [of
every existent-identity, including myself] to the vanishing
what-is-in-totality." (§53)

26. Let me return to my metaphor of a party. The not-at-home feeling has put
into question one's every possible relationship and therefore every possible
value. Yet this is to the good. (One reason for eschewing the term
"alienation.") If I had not had my experience of being "not at home" with
these people, I would have passed the time exchanging the predictable
small-talk with the predictable people for the usual ends. Only by putting
all that into question, by seeing it under the nihilating aspect of Nothing,
can I re-enter the world that is, go beyond it, and re-make it to my own
purposes. I may ask such simple questions as "What did I hope to get out of
coming here, and what good will it do me anyway? Haven't I got better things
to do?" Or, if my emotional distance is greater, I might ask more improbable
questions. In this connection, I cannot forbear relating the following story
(NYT, 9/17/99): James R. West was a cultural attaché in Warsaw, in 1960,
when the novelist Mary McCarthy came on a tour. After their first dance, he
remarked to her (correctly, as it turned out) that they would marry-although
they were both married at the time. That is nihilation in spades.

27. Now let me be literal: When we look at the world under the aspect of
nihilation, our perspective strips away all the artificial identities and
relationships that have both constituted my world and concealed the world as
such. Why, given the source of dread, should it produce this result? Here is
a suggestion: Young people frequently see their possibilities as a cone
opening out to ever greater breadth. What we realize in the experience of
dread is that our possibilities are a cone that comes to a point at some
(uncertain) future time. The shock of that realization strips away all the
arbitrary identities that we have imposed on ourselves and on the things
around us, arbitrary identities that in turn produce artificial limitations
on our possibilities. Yet without these conventional and familiar
identities, we feel things "slipping away." They seem not to have meaning
anymore but just to be. Alternatively put: Every thing seems meaningless.
And "this disturbing meaninglessness is the 'nothing' that Heidegger wants
to explore. In a way [the logical positivist Rudolf] Carnap is right: the
nothing is nonsense. It is the non-sense that constantly threatens the sense
of the world." (Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction, p. 124)

28. Yet this slipping away of the world also reveals the world "in all its
original overtness." (§54) The word here translated "overtness" is
"Offenheit," which Inwood renders as "openness." In this way, Noth-ing
"brings Da-sein face to face with what-is as such" (§54) - what is, in all
its openness. So we may say: "Only on the basis of the original
manifestation of Nothing can our human Da-sein advance towards and enter
into the world." (§55) And this is what it means to be truly human. "Da-sein
means being projected into Nothing," (§56) living "beyond
what-is-in-totality" (§57). Moreover, "this 'being beyond' what-is we call
Transcendence." (§57) For "without the original manifest character of
Nothing there is no self-hood and no freedom." (§58)

29. Why is there "no self-hood and no freedom"? The two go together. If I am
a wholly determinate being amid a world of wholly determinate beings, what I
do will be determined. But if I strip away the artificial identities of
beings, I can redetermine their identities in accordance with my own
purposes and projects. And it is this free action of determining my world
that makes me a self.

30. "Here we have the answer to our question about Nothing. Nothing is
neither an object nor anything that 'is' at all. Nothing occurs neither by
itself nor 'apart from' what-is, as a sort of adjunct. Nothing is that which
makes the revelation of what-is as such possible for our human existence.
(Emphasis added.) . . . It is in the Being of what-is that the nihilation of
Nothing occurs." (§59)

31. After a digression (§§60-70), Heidegger returns to the question of what
metaphysics is and what good it is: "Metaphysics," he says, relying on
etymology, is an enquiry that goes beyond (meta) what-is,
existent-identities (physika). (§71) And what purpose does such an enquiry
have? That has been shown. Only by grasping facts that go beyond what is can
man enter into his truly human way of being, because the truly human way of
being involves going beyond what-is-in-totality. Incorporating that purpose
into our definition, then we may say: "Metaphysics is an enquiry over and
above what-is, with a view to winning it back again as such and in totality
for our understanding." (§72)


V. Postscript. (§§89-107)

32. In his postscript, Heidegger writes: "The chief misgivings and
misconceptions to which the [preceding] lecture gives rise may be grouped
under three heads." (§93). (1) It says "everything is nothing," implying
that it doesn't matter whether we live or die. (2) It says dread is a key
emotion, and thus devalues courage. (3) It attacks logic and elevates
emotion.

33. But noth-ing is not "the not-existent." It is the slipping away of
what-is, of existent-identities. And the more those identities slip away,
the closer we come to pure Being and its openness to determination.

34. As for devaluing courage, the essay shows that it requires courage to
experience dread, for "readiness for dread is to say 'Yes!' to the
inwardness of things, to fulfil the highest demand which alone touches man
to the quick." (§99) "To the degree that we degrade this essential dread and
the relationship cleared within it for Man to Being, we demean the essence
of courage." (§100)

35. As for "the animus against 'logic,'" Heidegger protests that he is only
demanding human rules not prevent us from speaking about what we experience.
(§101) Let experience determine the rules of knowledge. "Obedient to the
voice of Being, thought seeks the Word through which the truth of Being may
be expressed." (§104)

36. Lastly, let me offer a comment on the final stunning question of the
lecture: "Why is there any Being at all-why not far rather Nothing?" But
before I do so, I must (in effect) re-write all that I have just said, for
the following reason. Most commentaries on Heidegger's thought quite rightly
place their chief dependence on his magnum opus: Being and Time. Yet the
meaning of "nothing" that I found in these commentaries was not the meaning
I found in "What Is Metaphysics?" Worse by far: I could not take the concept
of "nothing" set forth in the commentaries and make it fit with what I read
in "What Is Metaphysics?" For this reason, I was pleased to run across
Marjorie Grene's remark: "Apart from this passage [in the Introduction to
Metaphysics], the Nothingness of Being and Time plays very little part in
the later publications." And Grene specifically identifies the concept
"nothing" employed in "What Is Metaphysics?" as quite different from the
"nothing" employed in Being and Time.

37. Can we state the connection between the meaning of Nothing as specified
by the commentators and the meaning of Nothing as set forth in "What is
Metaphysics?" Yes, the link is not hard to spell out but it is hard to make
sense of. In Being and Time, Nothingness exists only for man and that is how
I have described it in my comments above. In "What is Metaphysics," however,
noth-ing is a fact pertaining to all beings, though of course only man can
grasp it. As Grene puts it, "this second new meaning of nothingness may then
be said to be the ontological offshoot of dread, since, like human being,
Being itself must confront Nothing." (p. 463) How can this be? Isn't this
like describing the phenomenon of romantic love and then remarking: "Oh, by
the way, this concept may apply to any two beings." Yes, it is just like
that. Still, we must try to make sense of what is being said.

38. Here is an attempt. I said above (point 23) that Be-ing actualizes
potentialities and Noth-ing reduces actualities to potentials. In that
light, consider the following remarks from the Postscript. Heidegger writes:
"No matter where and however deeply science investigates what-is it will
never find Being. All it encounters, always, is what-is. . . .But Being is
not an existing quality of what-is. . . This, the purely 'Other' than
everything that 'is,' is that-which-is-not. . . Yet this 'Nothing' [is not]
the non-existent. . . . [Rather, this Nothing] is the vastness of that which
gives every being the warrant to be. That is Being itself." (§97) In short,
Nothing and Being are two different ways of looking at the same thing,
depending upon what they are doing. Insofar as we are looking at the
actualization of potentials, we speak of it as resulting from the activity
of Being. Insofar as we are looking at the de-actualization of actualities,
we speak of it as resulting from the activity of Nothing. But that which
acts is the same in each case.

39. Now for "the question." In "What Is Metaphysics," it is rendered: "Why
is there any Being at all-why not far rather Nothing?" Elsewhere ("Existence
and Being"), Heidegger says that this means: "How did it come about that
beings take precedence everywhere and lay claim to every 'is' while that
which is not a being is understood as Nothing, though it is Being itself?"
Again, observe that Nothing and Being are equated. One must also realize
that Heidegger believes "it is of the truth of Being that Being may be
without what-is, but never what-is without Being." (§97) Thus, if we also
accept that beings-existent-identities-are constantly Noth-ing,
independently of human experience, we may well wonder why there are any
entities at all. And so we may ask: "Why are there beings
(existent-identities)-and not far rather Being that does not take the form
of any what-is; why not far rather that Being which is other than everything
that is, and which (in that sense) might be called Nothing?" The closest
approximation to this question that I can formulate in Objectivist language
is: Why does existence clump into entities?


AFTERWORD

A. HEIDEGGER AND POSTMODERNISM.

The following features of Heidegger's writing, in "What Is Metaphysics?"
seem to me to have some affinities with postmodernists.

1. First and foremost, Heidegger believes "it is of the truth of Being that
Being may be without what-is, but never what-is without Being." (§97) In
short, he separates existence and identity, leaving open the possibility
that people can determine the identities of things in a very radical sense.

2. The converse of #1 is his notion that the identities of things may be
stripped away, in part or (in some sense) whole; that they are to a large
degree artificial creations; and that by a shift of attitude we may remake
them nearer our heart's desire. In this essay, the creation and the
stripping away appear to be personal. In postmodernism, it is done by
interest groups. (Ironically, Heidegger's weird shift toward making noth-ing
a metaphysical process and not a human one renders him less vulnerable to
this charge.)

3. Heidegger tries to justify his opposition to logic by saying that it is
"only one exposition of the nature of thinking." (§101) And because, in his
day, the positivists were the high priests of logic, it is easy to
sympathize. But he himself, in his exposition of scientific thinking
(§§7-8), identified quite accurately and broadly the nature of the
scientific method; he did not identify it with narrow positivistic
techniques. Yet in §101, he speaks of a different type of thinking "which
has its source not in the observation of the objectivity of what-is, but in
the experience of the truth of Being." "Experience of the truth of Being"
that does not conform to "the observation of the objectivity of what-is"
sounds very like mysticism.

4. Mystic or not, Heidegger was certainly a mystagogue of muddy waters. I
realize that he was trying to say something unusual. But that is all the
more reason why he should have spelled out his meaning clearly. Just why he
wrote in convoluted fashion, I shall not judge. Perhaps he did so in order
to seem profound, perhaps to dissuade superficial critics, perhaps for some
other reason. But the fact remains that he employed recondite language
unnecessarily and in this he has been a stylistic progenitor of the
postmoderns.

5. One result of Heidegger's convoluted writing is that it induces the
reader to let him get away with arbitrary assertions. While reading this
essay, I frequently found myself struggling to think of a meaning or
justification for Heidegger's words. Then I would stop and say, "Wait a
minute. Shouldn't I being getting some help from the author? Isn't it his
job to convince me of what he is saying?" In this, too, Heidegger sets a
precedent for postmodernists.

6. A second result of Heidegger's obscurity can be found in the estimable
History of Western Philosophy, by W.T. Jones. Jones suggests that we read
Heidegger as a poet manqué. "Whenever what Heidegger the ontologist says
about Being seems impenetrable, the puzzled reader may find it helpful to
try translating it into the language of religious mysticism." (p. 293) Which
is to say: If you can't make sense of the words, see if you can respond to
them with feelings." The trouble is that we are then applying a double
standard: We are responding to the words of a poet, but we are expected to
treat them as the propositions of a philosopher.

7. Another drawback to accepting Jones's advice is that we get as many valid
readings of Heidegger as there are intelligent readers. Not all readings
will be plausible, and certainly not all readings will be equally plausible.
But obviously we increase greatly the number of plausible readings when we
allow interpreters to say "That's just a metaphor," or "That's just
hyperbole," or "That a reification."

8. Early in my essay, I said that "Heidegger is clearly tweaking the
positivists." It seems a mild discourtesy by today's standards (and it was
heartily reciprocated), but it serves as a precedent for the "ludic"
philosophy of the postmodernists. Let me be clear. Playful writing is
wonderful in its place and I have written satires of philosophy. But there
is a distinction between writing humor that satirizes philosophy and writing
philosophy. Introducing "playfulness" into philosophy, I believe, implies a
disrespect for one's topic, one's reader, and even oneself.


B. HEIDEGGER AND OBJECTIVISM

1. W.T. Jones says flatly: "That moods in general are cognitive follows from
Heidegger's account of understanding," p. 308 Yet in my exposition of
Heidegger's essay, I strove to find charitable interpretations for his
words. One such charitable interpretation was: that emotions-such as boredom
and dread-are not cognitive but paths to cognition. If an emotion is a
psychosomatic value response, then when we feel an emotion we can search for
the evaluation producing it. If we can find that evaluation, then we can
search for the factual beliefs underlying it. Nathaniel Branden made the
relevant point in his book Taking Responsibility: "The importance of
feelings here-and they are important-is that they can reflect perceptions
and integrations taking place outside explicit, verbal consciousness. They
must not be ignored or dismissed. They need to be examined to learn whether
they offer a pathway to valuable information. All of us have felt things
passionately that proved to be mistaken. All of us have felt things
passionately that against all belief to the contrary turned out to be
right." (p. 88) This is also a path to philosophic knowledge. And though it
is admittedly fraught with hazard, it is not therefore a path Objectivist
philosophers must shun. Still, it is probably superior as a path to personal
insight and very much inferior as a mode of public proof.

2. Expositions of Heidegger's thought commonly dwell on the importance of
contemplating one's own death. But this is not well phrased. As Polt writes:
"The word 'death' makes it difficult to distinguish the phenomenon Heidegger
is discussing from what he calls 'demise'-the actual event in which a human
being ceases to function. The word 'mortality' would probably have been more
helpful, if slightly less dramatic., than 'death.'" (p. 86) And yet,
Heidegger's concept of death seems different again from what Ayn Rand had in
mind when she wrote: "There is only one fundamental alternative in the
universe: existence or nonexistence-and it pertains to a single class of
entities: to living organisms." If the human life span were potentially
infinite, man would still face Rand's problem of mortality but not
Heidegger's. What the latter has in mind is something like "the ineluctable
finitude of human life." This is not an idea much discussed in Objectivism
but it might deserve more attention. Should it color one's attitude toward
values? If so, should it do so in one objective way? Or is there a range of
ways it might color one's attitude toward values, consistent with a
benevolent sense of life? I believe the most extended Objectivist meditation
on the finitude of human life is Stephen Hicks's "Would Immortality Be Worth
It?" (Objectivity, Volume 1, Number 4, pp. 81-96.)

3. Heidegger uses a bewildering variety of terms related to the fundamental
phenomenon of existence: Being, beings, existence, what-is,
what-is-in-totality, the world, the real. We could add: the Objectivist
concept of "existence," that which presently exists, identity, the universe,
the intrinsic, and perhaps several more. Metaphysics is not a field that
Objectivists have written much about and perhaps it deserves to be mapped
out better.

4. Meaning and purpose. It is common for Objectivists to say that one's
classification of entities "depends on your purpose." Children correctly
group dogs and cats to form the genus "pet." Biologists correctly group them
to form the concept "carnivore." Heidegger seems to insist that, to a very
radical level, neither classification takes precedence. Is this true or not?
On the one hand, since the purpose of concepts is to understand entities,
one might argue that there is a widest possible context (all existing
knowledge about those entities) that is in some sense preferred. On the
other hand, the purpose of gaining knowledge is to guide action, and so one
might rejoin that certain narrower contexts can actually relate more
essentially to certain purposes.

5. On the ethical level, Heidegger suggests that we live a most truly human
life when we set aside the relationships things happen to bear to us and
recreate them afresh. This will resonate with Objectivists, who claim to
hold an entrepreneurial view of life. But surely it is always going to be a
miniscule undertaking in the context of a general acceptance of things as
they are. Once in his life, a married man may decide to look seriously upon
a married woman as a potential wife, despite conventions. But he cannot
constantly question at the same profound level his relationship to his
country, his family, his friends, his employer, his co-workers, and all his
correspondents. Or can he? And if he can, if all such relationships are
constantly up for question, can a person ever feel "at home" in them? Should
he?

6. Pace Bryan Register I do not find in this essay a significant meditation
on causality and free will, although such may exist elsewhere in Heidegger's
writings. What I find here is a rhetorically overblown foreshadowing of
David Kelley's "I Don't Have To." (IOS Journal, Volume 6, Number 1, April
1996.) And, without suggesting that the pun carries over into German, I find
a weak attempt to generate a doctrine of free will by playing on the two
senses of "have to."

[Roger Donway]


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************