Heidegger Circle Proceedings

This paper traces the theoretical background to the split between function and meaning in the modernity theories of Marx, Lukács, Weber and Marcuse. It then discusses attempts to overcome the split in the recent philosophies of technology of Simpson and Borgmann. These attempts fail but help to focus the issue. A discussion of contemporary struggles over information technology offers a more hopeful perspective on a possible resolution of the split and suggests a new look at Heidegger’s phenomenology of action. The conclusion of the paper shows that Heidegger offers resources for addressing the relation of function and meaning which he himself did not develop.

This paper examines Heidegger’s concept of facticity in his writings from the 1920s. The sudden ‘discovery’ of facticity in these writings and Heidegger’s subsequent engagement with Aristotle are related to a decision to rethink existence in terms of Luther’s and Paul’s interpretation of early Christianity. Central to this interpretation is the experience of the καιρός and the awaiting of the παρουσία. Heidegger argues that this primordial Christian experience (urchristliche Erfahrung) constitutes a fundamental experience (Grunderfahrung) of factical life and undertakes a destruction of Scholastic theology and the ancient and especially, Aristotelian, ontology upon which it is based.3 Heidegger’s philosophical project thus centers in the recovery of this fundamental experience of facticity through a destructive appropriation of the tradition. In this paper, I argue that one of Heidegger’s key strategies in turning to Aristotle is to exclude cyclical temporality - whether thought of as transmigration of the soul (Plato) or as eternal recurrence (Nietzsche) – which is incompatible with this Christian experience.

The paper studies the notion of the unique singularity (Einzigkeit, Einmaligkeit) of Being in Heidegger’s work, first and foremost in Contributions to Philosophy. I argue that whereas the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition regards Being as the most universal or “transcendental” notion that comprehends all instances of “to be,” Heidegger, by contrast, addresses Being in a “postmetaphysical” sense as the singularization of each meaningful situation into a unique configuration of a multidimensional meaning-context. I show that the theme of singularity was present in Heidegger’s thinking all the way from his 1915 dissertation on Duns Scotus and the notion of the singular instant (Augenblick) in Being and Time. Finally, I suggest an interpretation of the fourfold (Geviert) as Heidegger’s most developed articulation of the structure of this context-specific singularity of meaningfulness.