From: Laurence Paul Hemming[SMTP:llh21@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 28 April 1996 09:07
<<We then begin to ask questions like "who is the real Heidegger", and
begin to construct narratives that make "sense" of the "textual" and
"philosophical" Heidegger. This is a rich vein in Heidegger scholarship,
quarrying verbs, nouns and "historical" "facts" from the seams of the
Gesamtausgabe. It places Heidegger neatly at our disposal. If one pursues
this path, one might well make one's academic career out of one's many
"innovative" insights into Heidegger (renewing him in the debate, whenever
the previous hermeneutic looks in danger of becoming "worn out" or worse
yet, unfashionably "old hat") but one would not be "thinking", simply
engaging in the "business" of "scholarship".
The "turn" is essential to this "method" of thinking, which is no "method"
at all because it denies there is a path across which thinking might
travel, but rather more like the wheel of a treadmill which, in one's
moving of it, always returns one to the place from which one started,
whilst at the same time demanding the most almighty - and increasing -
effort to continue to move it (recognise the Will to Power in this - the
connection Heidegger makes between the spinning of a wheel in a machine and
the Will to Power?).>>
Hi,
This is all pretty heady stuff - Will to Power! I'd like to try to ground
it a little - what Kisiel in particular has seen his task as is to to write
a detailed story of the composition of B & T. This has involved archival
research into the courses that preceeded B & T. In this way he has
re-opened in a concrete manner these courses as 'ways - not works' - as
possibilities for thoughtful encounter.
By the 50's and 60's H. himself did not approve of this. (Though at the
time he delivered them he was sufficiently proud of them that he gave
transcripts of the courses as presents to friends and colleagues). However
by the 50/60's he misrepresented (not necessarily deliberately - playfully,
forgetfully - who knows) his past in the variety of autobiographical
writings he penned in his period. Just to give one example:
The 1954 composed - Dialogue on Language - H. in this quasi fictional
conversation takes the chance to survey his biographical/philosophical
development in the 1910's and 20's. But Kisiel's researches have shown that
the course he alludes to - is misrecollected - both as to title and to
specific content. Crucially - what might be called the 'hermeneutic
breakthough' occurs not in 1923 ( as H. recollects) but in the KNS of 1919.
In addition H. explains this breakthrough (if you will) with reference to
the fact he was still 'at home in theology' due to his studies at seminary
1909 - 11. In fact, as we now know, this breakthrough coincided with a
break from Catholicism, and a turning to the personal, experiental
Christainity he found in Schleiermacher and Dilthey's philosophy of lived
experience.
This effects a shift in understanding of H's first opening of his question
- one that would not have been gleaned from his own autobiographical
musings. It clearly opens paths of thinking.
Indeed in one critical respect it is actually the Heiddeger industry (if
you want it call it that) that has developed a clear view of the 'real'
Heidegger. The whole 'last hand' basis of the Gesamtausgabe reeks of this
as Kisiel and others (eg Derrida) have noted. Kisiel's work opens up the
paths, the ways of H's thinking.
(I note you quote another of H's autobiographical statements from the 60's
- the letter to Wiliam Richardson. Another - of course is the 1966 Der
Spiegel interview, and then the Abraham a Sancta Clara address - of 1964).
There is good reason for interpeting all of these with care.
Perhaps, if we want to discuss what followed Being and Time, it would be
more profitable to actually turn to the courses of the late 20's and early
30's, as Kisiel and others have done. To genuinely engage upon - ways, not
works.
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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