Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual

There have been two prominent ways of thinking about the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism: the first and more traditional way, in continuity with Husserl’s critique of psychologism, exhibits the incompatibility of phenomenology with all forms of naturalism and positivism; the second and more recent interpretive strategy attempts to naturalize phenomenology and make it consistent with current scientific accounts of consciousness and intentionality. In this paper I argue that despite the fact that Heidegger followed the first path and remained critical of naturalism and positivism throughout his career, there are important moments in the late twenties where his project of a phenomenological ontology is challenged by problems pertaining to naturalism. I show how the question of determining the essence of life and animality as well as the overturning of ontology into metontology offer significant methodological hurdles for Heidegger’s fundamental ontology.

Kierkegaard’s treatment of death has a great deal in common with Heidegger’s notion of “authentic Being-towards-death.” Most importantly, both thinkers argue that an individual’s death, rather than simply annihilating an individual’s life, meaningfully impacts this life while it is still being lived. Heidegger, like Kierkegaard before him, provides an anti-Epicurean account in which life and death are co-present. Despite this kinship, there have been numerous efforts from both the Kierkegaardian camp and from Heidegger himself to distinguish sharply the one from the other. While Heidegger makes several somewhat condescending comments about Kierkegaard’s endeavors, many Kierkegaardians are wary of associating him too closely with Heidegger (and his ample baggage). After a brief description of their largely shared philosophy of death, I would like to consider what I take to be the most significant complaint from each side and suggest a more nuanced understanding of their relationship.

This paper agrees with Thomas Sheehan that Heidegger inquires into the source of meaning in finite human existence. The paper argues, however, that Sheehan’s paradigm for interpreting Heidegger should be expanded: Heidegger is also concerned with “excess” (encounters with what eludes meaning or is other than meaning) and “event” (the founding of the “there” within which meaning is possible). Excess and event are crucial to being and history, as Heidegger understands them.

The paper studies Heidegger's reading of the poet Stefan George (1868-1933), particularly of his poem "Das Wort" (1928), in the context of Heidegger's narrative of the history of metaphysics. Heidegger reads George's poem as expressing certain experiences with language. First, it voices an experience of the constitutive role of language, of naming and discursive determination, in granting things stable identities. Second, it expresses an encounter with the unnameable and indeterminable character of language itself as a meaning-constituting process, and a subsequent insight into the human being's dependency on language and her incapacity to master it subjectively. Heidegger characterizes these experiences as "transitional" (übergänglich). It is shown that in Heidegger's historical narrative, this places George's poem within the framework of the ongoing transition (Übergang) from the Hegelian and Nietzschean end of metaphysics to a forthcoming "other beginning" of thinking.