46
PARTISAN REVIEW
The Self as All and Nothing: Heidegger
Heidegger's attempt, despite and against Kant, to re-establish an
ontology led to a far-reaching alteration of the traditional philoso–
phical terminology. For this reason Heidegger always appears on first
glance more revolutionary than Jaspers, and this terminological ap–
pearance has very much interfered with the correct estimate of his
philosophy. He says explicitly that he wishes to found an ontology,
and he can have nothing else in mind than to undo the destruction,
begun with Kant, of the ancient concept of Being. One cannot escape
taking this seriously even if one should arrive at the knowledge that
on the basis of this content, which arises from the revolt against
philosophy, no ontology in the traditional sense can be re-established.*
Heidegger has not really established his ontology, since the second
volume of
Sein und Zeit
has never appeared. To the question con–
cerning the meaning of Being he has given the provisional answer,
in itself u · telli ible, that the meaning of Bein is temporality. With
this he implied , and with his ana ysis of human reality (i.e., of the
Being of Man), which is conditioned by death, he established that the
meaning of Bein is nothin ess. Thus Heidegger's attempt to find a
new foundatiOn for metaphysics ends consistently not with the second
promised volume, which was to determine the meaning of Being
generally on the basis ·of the analysis of human Being, but with a
small brochure
What is Metaphysics?,
in which it is quite consistently
shown, despite all tricks and sophistries of speech, that Being in the
Heideggerian sense is the Nothing.
- -----.
*
Another question worth discussing is whether Heidegger's philosophy
has not generally been taken too seriously, simply because it deals with the most
serious things. In any case, Heidegger has done everything to warn us that we
should take him seriously. As is well known, he entered the Nazi Party in a
very sensational way in 1933-an act which made him stand out pretty much
by himself among colleagues of the same calibre. Further, in his capacity as
Rector of Freiburg University, he forbade Husser!, his teacher and friend, whose
lecture chair he had inherited, to enter the faculty, because Husser! was a
Jew. Finally, it has been rumored that he has placed himself at the disposal of
the French occupational authorities for the re-education of the German people.
In view of the real comedy of this development, and of the no less real low
level of political thought in German universities, one is naturally inclined not
to bother with the whole story. On the other hand, there is the point that this
whole mode of behavior has exact parallels in German Romanticism, so that one
can scarcely believe the coincidence is accidental. Heidegger i;_ in_ fa<;t, the last .
(we hope) romantic-as it were, a tremendously gifted Friedrich Schlegel or
Adam- Mueller, whose complete irresponsibility was attributed partly to the
delusion of genius, partly to desperation.
