From: malcolm riddoch[SMTP:riddoch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 28 April 1996 07:36
<<Heidegger apparently was against the publication of most of his 1920's
lectures, referring to them as his 'immature' period, but point taken. And
what is the 1918/9 work that you refer to and how do its terms relate to
the re-orientation of B&T?>>
In the 1920's H. distributed transcripts of his courses and draft texts as
presents. Also students of his - such as Gadamer and arendt identified
these courses - beginning in 1919 as perhaps H.'s most creative and
fruitful preiod - out of which he opened and explored numerous thought
paths and ways of thinking. In addition he refers to the need for, eg, a
right understanding of his relation to Husserl - l961 letter to Poggeler -
'With regard to the relation of my thought to Husserl, some gross errors
have cropped up which can only be removed by careful philological work.'
H. reworked his past - playfully or forgetfully or ironically - so much so
that before the recent work on the critical period 1917-19 there were
numerous analysis of Brentano's 'On the Manifold Sense of Being in
Aristotle' which H. had pointed to as one of the staging points into his
question (and was given to H. in 1907). However there were very few
references to Schleiermacher - whose 'Second Speech on Religion' actually
seems to have been one of H's key influences in breaking through to his
question in the War Emergency Semester (Kriegsnotsemester - KNS) of early
1919.
So, the opening up of these paths of thought actually deepens our
understanding of H's thinking.
Kisiel identifies the KNS as the site of H's break through to his topic.
Not that all his thought is there in seed form - but that it is a decisive
movement -from both neo-scholasticism and neo-kantianism. It concerns the
discovery of the subject matter of philosophy - 'Phenomenology is the
investigation of life in itself' - life in its restlessness, its movement,
what H. soon called its facticity, or the historical I, or the situated I,
or factic life experience, or dasein.
And in his struggle to speak about this 'primal something' H. uses a
variety of terms some of which do not crop up again until the
re-orientation of the B & T project - eg es weltet, es ereignet sich - the
latter especially becoming a key term.
It is this very general way that you might want to say that this
re-orientation is a also re-turn. H's use of Holderlin's line - 'For as you
began so you will remain' - takes on a slightly different complexion than
you might have thought reading his own autobiographical essays (written the
the 50's and 60's).
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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