The Unique Role of Logic in the Development of Heidegger's Dialogue with Kant

The Unique Role of Logic in the Development of Heidegger's Dialogue with Kant FRANK SCHALOW IN KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS, Heidegger maintains that the crux of his radical reinterpretation of transcendental philosophy centers on revamping Kant's most decisive innovation, the Copernican Revolution in philosophy . According to Heidegger, Kant's attempt to shift the focus of metaphysics from a concern for the nature of the object to the finite conditions that make possible our relation to it amounts to showing that any comportment toward beings presupposes the preunderstanding of being. 1It is precisely the simplicity of Heidegger's first step in the Kant book that I wish to call into question. Specifically, I intend to argue that Heidegger does not merely substitute his own emphasis on the question of being for Kant's critical endeavor to circumscribe the boundaries of reason. Rather, I will show that Heidegger approaches transcendental philosophy as providing a further inroad into the attempt to unfold the roots of our basic patterns of thought, and thereby as suggesting a topography to chart the deeper unity of logic and ontology which had become noticeably separated in modern philosophy. Heidegger's attempt in the Kant book to uncover the origin of truth in Dasein's finite transcendence can be appreciated only by showing its prefigurement in his earlier lectures, which begin to uproot the priority of the assertion as the definitive locus of truth. The breakthrough that Heidegger accomplishes in the Kant book is not an isolated event; it instead presupposes Heidegger, Kant und das ProblemderMetaphysik, Gesamtausgabe3 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio KIostermann, 1951), 13, 15--16; Kant i~ndthe Problem ofMetaphysics, tr. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 199o), 8, lo. Hereafter, all references to the Gesamtamgabewillincludethe abbreviationGA followed by the volume number, German pagination,and the corresponding page number in the English translation (i.e., tr.), where applicable. [los] lO 4 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:1 JANUARY i994 a move in which he redefines knowledge in terms of our comportment toward beings, and locates the site for determining meaning within the referential structure of the worm rather than more narrowly within judgment. The overturning of the preeminence of the "as" of assertion by the "hermeneutical as" provides the key to the transformation of logic which forms the cornerstone of the Kant book. From the beginning of his career Heidegger had been familiar with Kant's writings, and had been influenced by the dominant school of German philosophy at that time, neo-Kantianism.' But it was not until he abrupdy changed the oudine of his lecture course Logik: Die Frage nachder Wo.hrheit, at the close of the winter semester of ~995, that he seized upon the brilliance of Kant's insight into the temporal formation of the categories through schematism.s The direction taken by these ~925-96 lectures becomes important by first marking the differences between Heidegger's own task and Kant's. It is the gradual dissolution of these barriers which makes the emerging parallels--the key themes of finitude, temporality, and transcendence--prove particularly compelling. Because of its detailed treatment of these motifs, the Kant book has provided the paradigm for understanding Heidegger's interpretation of transcendental philosophy. Few scholars have paused to consider why Heidegger should turn suddenly to Kant's doctrine of schematism as providing an entirely new angle from which to formulate the question of being. To be sure, we could continue to affirm the centrality of this doctrine due to its temporal focus and thereby assume the plausibility of Heidegger's decision to vault Kant into the forefront of his own ontological inquiry. Yet it might be more rewarding instead to distinguish the gulf initially separating the two thinkers, the very overcoming of which creates the d/a/og/ca/space in which the provocative analyses comprising the Kant book already move.~ Specifically, I wish to ask how Heidegger can overcome the limited applicability of schematism for determining the orderliness of natural events, and redefine more broadly its temporal 'Cs Heidegger's discussion of the neo-Kanfian Windelband's view of judgment in Zur BezZimraungder Philoso~, GA 56/57: 151ft. Much of Heidegger's early...