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Abstract
The Question Concerning the Thing presents a full English translation of a lecture course first delivered by Heidegger at Freiburg University during the Winter Semester of 1935-36 (originally published in German as volume 41 of the Gesamtausgabe).
The text presents with particular clarity Heidegger’s distinctive approach to issues of general philosophical interest. Heidegger shows how a litany of classical metaphysical problems flow from the basic question ‘what is a thing?’, revealing the historicity of these problems and, thus, the ways in which they implicate further issues of cultural significance. He examines issues regarding the history and philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and logic that are still debated today. Moreover, the lecture course as a whole is framed by questions regarding the nature of philosophy itself. Along the way, Heidegger provides sensitive and often provocative discussions of historically significant figures, in particular Kant.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher and one of the most important European thinkers of the twentieth century.
James D. Reid is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Benjamin D. Crowe is Lecturer in Philosophy at Boston University.
This superb translation by two experts in Heidegger studies will be a most welcome addition for students of Heidegger’s development, as it marks his burgeoning interest in what a thing is, his continued reflections on modern scientific thought, and his final sustained foray into Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University
The magician from Messkirch at the height of his early pedagogical powers, spellbindingly deconstructing the history of Western metaphysics and reconstructing Kant’s first Critique, the most important philosophical work since Plato’s Republic. Long quietly influential on both Heidegger and Kant scholarship, Heidegger’s fascinating work is finally available in a clear and compelling English translation that does justice to the original, thanks to the meticulous efforts of Reid and Crowe.
Iain Thomson, University of New Mexico
This lecture course marks a crucial step in Heidegger’s thinking of things. Focusing on modern metaphysics, Heidegger powerfully details the shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics, close reads Kant on the nature of the thing, and concludes with a provocative interpretation of transcendentalism that informs Heidegger’s own thinking. The new translation is crisp and fresh, bringing Heidegger’s profound thoughts to a new audience.
Andrew J. Mitchell, Winship Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, Emory University
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Question Concerning the Thing | Cover | ||
| Contents | v | ||
| Translators’ Preface | ix | ||
| PREPARATORY PART | 1 | ||
| Various Ways to Ask about the Thing | 1 | ||
| §1. Philosophical and Scientific Questioning | 1 | ||
| §2. The Ambiguous Discourse about the Thing | 3 | ||
| §3. The Strangeness of the Question Concerning Thingness in Contrast with Scientific and Technical Methods | 5 | ||
| §4. Everyday and Scientific Experiences of the Thing: The Question Concerning Their Truth | 7 | ||
| §5. Particularity and In-Each-Case-Thisness: Space and Time as Thing-Determinations | 10 | ||
| §6. The Thing as “In Each Case This” | 16 | ||
| §7. Subjective-Objective. The Question Concerning Truth | 17 | ||
| §8. The Thing as Bearer of Properties | 21 | ||
| §9. The Essential Construction of Truth, the Thing, and the Proposition | 23 | ||
| §10. The Historicity of the Definition of the Thing | 25 | ||
| §11. Truth—Proposition (Assertion)—Thing | 29 | ||
| §12. Historicity and Decision | 32 | ||
| §13. Summary | 35 | ||
| MAIN PART | 37 | ||
| Kant’s Way of Asking about the Thing | 37 | ||
| Chapter 1 | 37 | ||
| The Historical Basis of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason | 37 | ||
| §14. The Reception of Kant’s Work during His Lifetime; Neo-Kantianism | 38 | ||
| §15. The Title of Kant’s Chief Work | 41 | ||
| §16. The Categories as Modes of Assertedness | 42 | ||
| §17. Λόγος—Ratio—Reason | 43 | ||
| §18. Modern Mathematical Natural Science and the Emergence of a Critique of Pure Reason | 44 | ||
| a) Characterization of Modern Natural Science in Contrast to Ancient and Medieval Science | 45 | ||
| b) The Mathematical, μάθησις | 47 | ||
| c) The Mathematical Character of Modern Science: Newton’s First Law of Motion | 52 | ||
| d) Setting the Greek Experience of Nature into\r Relief against the Modern | 55 | ||
| α) The Experience of Nature in Aristotle and Newton | 55 | ||
| ß) The Theory of Motion in Aristotle | 56 | ||
| γ) The Theory of Motion in Newton | 58 | ||
| e) The Essence of Mathematical Projection (Galileo’s Freefall Experiment) | 61 | ||
| f) The Metaphysical Sense of the Mathematical | 65 | ||
| α) The Principles: Modern Freedom, Self-Binding, and Self-Grounding | 65 | ||
| ß) Descartes: cogito sum; the I as subiectum par excellence | 67 | ||
| γ) Reason as Highest Ground: Principle of the I, Principle of Contradiction | 72 | ||
| §19. History of the Question Concerning the Thing: Summary”? | 73 | ||
| §20. Rational Metaphysics (Wolff, Baumgarten) | 76 | ||
| Chapter 2 | 83 | ||
| The Question of the Thing in Kant’s Chief Work | 83 | ||
| §21. What Does Kant Mean by “Critique”? | 83 | ||
| §22. The Relation between the “Critique” of Pure Reason and the “System of All Principles of the Pure Understanding” | 85 | ||
| §23. Interpretation of the Second Chapter of the [Second Book of the] Transcendental Analytic: “System of All Principles of Pure Understanding” | 86 | ||
| a) Kant’s Concept of Experience | 88 | ||
| b) The Thing as Thing of Nature | 89 | ||
| c) The Threefold Division of the Chapter on the System of Principles | 91 | ||
| §24. On the Highest Principle of All Analytic Judgments. Cognition and Object (A150ff./B190ff.) | 92 | ||
| a) Cognition as Human Cognition | 93 | ||
| b) Intuition and Thought as the Two Components of Cognition | 94 | ||
| c) The Twofold Determination of the Object in Kant | 96 | ||
| d) Sensibility and Understanding: Receptivity and Spontaneity | 98 | ||
| e) The Apparent Priority of Thought; Pure Understanding in Relation to Pure Intuition | 100 | ||
| f) Logic and Judgment in Kant | 103 | ||
| §25. Kant’s Essential Definition of Judgment | 106 | ||
| a) The Traditional Doctrine of Judgment | 106 | ||
| b) The Insufficiency of the Traditional Doctrine; Logicism [Logistik] | 108 | ||
| c) The Relatedness of the Judgment to the Object and to Intuition; Apperception | 109 | ||
| d) Kant’s Distinction between Analytic and\r Synthetic Judgments | 111 | ||
| e) A Priori—A Posteriori | 115 | ||
| f) How Are Synthetic Judgments A Priori Possible? | 116 | ||
| g) The Principle of Contradiction as the Negative Condition of the Truth of Judgment | 118 | ||
| h) The Principle of Contradiction as Negative Formulation of the Principle of Identity | 120 | ||
| i) Kant’s Transcendental Reflection: General and Transcendental Logic | 121 | ||
| j) Synthetic Judgments A Priori Necessarily Lie at the Basis of All Cognition | 124 | ||
| §26. On the Supreme Principle of All Synthetic Judgments | 126 | ||
| §27. Systematic Representation of All Synthetic Principles of Pure Understanding | 127 | ||
| a) The Principles Make Possible the Objectivity of the Object: Demonstrability of the Principles | 127 | ||
| b) Pure Understanding as Source and Faculty of Rules: Unity, Categories | 128 | ||
| c) The Mathematical and Dynamical Principles as Metaphysical Propositions | 131 | ||
| d) The Axioms of Intuition | 134 | ||
| α) Quantum and Quantitas | 134 | ||
| ß) Space and Time as Quanta, as Forms of Pure Intuition | 135 | ||
| γ) The Proof of the First Principle; All Principles Are Grounded in the Supreme Principle of All Synthetic Judgments | 138 | ||
| e) The Anticipations of Perception | 141 | ||
| α) Ambiguity of the Word “Sensation”; the Doctrine of Sensation and Modern Natural Science | 142 | ||
| ß) Kant’s Concept of Reality: Intensive Magnitudes | 145 | ||
| γ) Sensation in Kant in the Transcendental Sense; Proof of the Second Principle | 148 | ||
| δ) The Strangeness of the Anticipations: Reality and Sensation | 151 | ||
| ε) Mathematical Principles and the Supreme Principle: The Circularity of the Proofs | 152 | ||
| f) The Analogies of Experience | 154 | ||
| α) Analogy as Correspondence, as Relation of Relations, as Determination of Thatness [Daßseins] | 154 | ||
| ß) The Analogies as Rules of Universal Time-Determination | 156 | ||
| γ) The First Analogy and Its Proof; Substance as Time-Determination | 159 | ||
| g) The Postulates of Empirical Thought | 161 | ||
| α) Objective Reality of the Categories: the Modalities as Subjective Synthetic Principles | 161 | ||
| ß) The Postulates Correspond to the Essence of Experience: The Modalities Are Related to Experience, No Longer to Conceivability | 163 | ||
| γ) Being as the Being of Objects of Experience: Modalities in Relation to the Cognitive Power | 164 | ||
| δ) The Circularity of the Proofs and Elucidations | 165 | ||
| h) The Supreme Principle of All Synthetic Judgments: the Between | 166 | ||
| Conclusion | 169 | ||
| Appendix | 171 | ||
| Editor’s Afterword | 177 | ||
| German-English Glossary | 179 |