Hamburg, A Cassirer-Heidegger Seminar

International Phenomenological Society

A Cassirer-Heidegger SeminarAuthor(s): Carl H. HamburgSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Dec., 1964), pp. 208-222Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105394 .

Accessed: 11/07/2014 09:06

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.205.136.30 on Fri, 11 Jul 2014 09:06:22 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ips

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105394?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


DISCUSSION

A CASSIRER-HEIDEGGER SEMINAR

I. While there is no special secret about the fact that Cassirer and Heidegger met, not only for hours but for weeks, it is only recently that, through microfilms and privately printed materials,' we have some knowledge of the substance of their audience-exciting encounter at Davos between March 17 and April 6 in 1929. By far the most important document is a Protokoll on the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Cassirer-Heidegger," recorded by Ritter and Bollnow 2 who attended the seminar-series. I am not sure whether this Protokoll significantly advances our knowledge of each thinker taken separately. Yet, by its mostly verbatim presentation of some of the give-and-take between these two unlikely disputants, it is both a philosophical miniature, attractive on its own account, and a unique documentation of how both assessed each other's as well as their own contributions with regard to where philosophical work must start and at what it is to aim.

I allow that other readers, with perhaps no burning interest in either philosopher, may find no more than another example of failure in philosophical communication across some lines. True enough, neither party got the other around to thinking like himself but, since this was probably not the purpose of their encounter, they could hardly be said to have failed in what was never attempted. Yet there can be no doubt that it took rare philosophical courage for Cassirer to face the kingpin of a most uncongenial philosophical movement in front of a definitely "post- Kantian" audience, swelled by "pre-pro-Nazis," drawn by Heidegger's presence. It- also reveals Heidegger's familiar seriousness of purpose, as well as his less frequently reported traits of chivalry and an operative respect, shown in justifying his own thinking as well as fighting for the comprehension of an opponent who, at least initially, stood for idealism, thus for intellectualism and thus for all that seemed "passe" to an audience which preferred Scheler to Schelling, Husserl to Hegel, and probably Heidegger to Husserl.

1 Kindly sent to me by Dr. G. Schieeberger from Bern, Switzerland. 2 In Schneeberger's Ergaenzungen zu einer Heidegger-Bibliographie, Bern, 1960;

pp. 17-27.

208



A CASSIRER-HEIDEGGER SEMINAR 209

As the late Mrs. Cassirer remembers it: "I knew in 1929 that there was to be a discussion between Ernst and the most severe critic of his Kant-interpretation, the philosopher from Freiburg, Martin Heidegger. It was to be at Davos, and part of a series of international university- seminars. Before we left, Ernst had familiarized himself with Heidegger's writings... (whose) 'abstruse' terminology was uncongenial to him; but he soon learned the new language and, even though he had to reject it in principle, he had esteem for Heidegger's work... We had been briefed on Heidegger's peculiar appearance; we knew of his contempt for the conventionalities of polite societies; and of his hostility to the Neo-Kantians in general and to Herman Cohen (their Marburg-school leader; CHH) in particular. We also were not unaware of his antisemitic inclinations. Since I was as ignorant as usual of the philosophical problems that were to be discussed, I made up my mind to study Heidegger's legendary personality. (Mrs. Cassirer was to sit next to him at the opening dinner for the seminar-participants. CHH) Everybody was in evening dress, the men in cutaways. Heidegger was expected to be late... (Towards the end of the dinner) the door opened and a quite unimposing little man, shy as a peasant-boy who had been pushed through the portals of a mansion, entered... His black hair and those piercingly dark eyes at once reminded me of some journeyman from Austria perhaps, or Bavaria, an impression only strengthened by his manner of speech. He was dressed in an unfashionable suit and, after a brief introduction, he took his seat next to me." 3

If this suggests an ominous opening, further aggravated by a severe influenza which, after a first lecture, laid Cassirer low for several days, we have Mrs. Cassirer's word for it that the Heidegger-Mrs. Cassirer meetings continued, twice daily over the dinner table, and that she made the most of it. Heidegger was filled in on the private lives of his philosophic adversaries; on Herman Cohen and the shabby treatment accorded this outstanding Jewish thinker who, in the end, was laid in his grave without a single member of the Berlin University faculty attending. By the time Cassirer could rejoin the lectures and seminar-discussions, the edge of personal and political prejudices seems to have been softened. Various student and newspaper reports leave no doubt that the "great encounter" was a bigger success than anyone dared hope.

As one of them writes: "The most impressive illustration of the continuous and personally serious concern of the various lecturers and symposiasts was this congeniality (Abgestimmtsein) between Heidegger

3 Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer, p. 165.



210 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

and Cassirer. It was extraordinary how Heidegger, during Cassirer's illness, continued lecturing as if with reluctance, clearly missing the other, and how he communicated to Cassirer the content of each lecture to keep him abreast. This marvelous collegiality. rare at conventions, made a deep impression on US.. .4

The discussion between Cassirer and Heidegger had not just intellec- tual consequences. We also came to know them personally: this short, dark-brown man, this fine skier and sportsman with his energetic and indisturbable expression who, in imposing solitude, lived for the problems he had raised; and, by contrast, that other one, with his silvery hair, this "Olympian" by appearance as well as by his wide-ranging dimensions of thought, his comprehensive problem-formulations, his cheerful face and kind openness to others, his vitality, elasticity, and distinguished aristocratic bearing." 5

It looks, therefore, as if this meeting of apparently unbridgeable philosophies, far from a failure, was a remarkable success in commu- nicative courage, all but absent in our day. It is also probable that, to some extent, it achieved what is as rare as it is fruitful, namely: a) a recognition of some value to the work of each other; b) a recognition that, beyond their own positions, there are (were and will be) philosophic problems common to both; and c) a new sensitivity of each thinker to the possible relevance of the alternative approach. This last point is not easily documented. We do have a Heidegger-appreciative footnote, in- serted probably after the Davos-seminars, into the proofs of the third volume of Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.

Taking up almost half of a page. (Yale Univ. Press, p. 163), its first sentence is crucial: "The following chapter (on The Perception of Time) was written before we had the most recent and, in many respects,

4 Different people appear to have remembered differently. Hendrik J. Pos, in his Recollections of Ernst Cassirer (in Schilpp's (edit.) Philosophy of Ernst Cas- sirer; Northwestern Univ. Press, 1949, p. 69) remembers that "the conclusion (of their talks) was not without human symbolism; the magnanimous man offered his hand to his opponent; but it was not accepted." M. Gaudillac, on the other hand, who also attended the meeting, recalls in his Entretiens avec Martin Heidegger (Les Temps Modernes, Jan. 1946, p. 714) that when he reminded Heidegger of the Davos-days, the latter opened a drawer from which he brought out a faded photo- graph reminiscent of "ces temps innocents" when he did not hesitate to shake the hands of Cassirer, Brunsvicg, and others. Perhaps both Pos and Heidegger remem- ber different occasions.

5 Dr. Ludwig Englert, Inst. for History of Medicine, Univ. of Leipzig, in: Schneeberger: Nachlass zu einer Heidegger-Bibliographie, Bern, 1962, 1.




pioneering analysis of 'time' and 'temporality' in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit." 6

Given Cassirer's "unfamiliarity" with Heidegger prior to the Davos- meeting, it is also improbable that he either would have read his book on Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Bonn, 1929) or read it well enough to write a 26-page essay on it 7), which, however critical, granted much of Heidegger's insistence that Kant had larger than the usually emphasized epistemological concerns.

With regard to Heidegger's response, we know that he left Cassirer's objections to his Kant book unchallenged and that he never came out with his projected critique of Cassirer's "third volume."

In Cassirer's words: 8 "He confessed that he had labored (sich abge- quaelt) for a long time on a review of my third volume but that he was still not sure how he was going to go about it." We also know that Heidegger invited Cassirer to lecture in Freiburg. He accepted and reported that a capacity audience attended and that, among others, he had "pleasant personal contacts with Heidegger" that day; that he saw him again on the following morning and, "contrary to all rumors," found him "very open and positively friendly."

Whether their debates left any appreciable impact on Heidegger's later writings is another matter. His pre-Davos Sein und Zeit strikes me as just as iconoclastic as his later Holzwege and Nietzsche appear to be concerned with being convincing to the historian of ideas. But, if Heidegger scholars raise eyebrows, I shall not insist. At any rate, and this is just one of the attractions of the "Seminar," there were some strange turnabouts in the style of the two thinkers. Never before do we find Cassirer talking the existentialist theme of Angst or Heidegger admit that he is not sure. It is Heidegger, not Cassirer, who here makes the most of the history of philosophy and it is Cassirer, not Heidegger, who makes a personal, if not confessional, case for his way of thinking. It is

6 The footnote continues: . . which in many respects points to entirely new roads... The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms does not question this temporality which Heidegger discloses as the ultimate foundation of existentiality and attempts to explain in its diverse factors. But our inquiry begins beyond this sphere, at precisely the point where a transition is effected from this existential temporality to the form of time. It aspires to show the conditions under which this form is possible, the conditions for the postulation of a "being" which goes beyond the existentiality of "being-there."

7 Published in Kant-Studien, Vol 36, 1931 under the title: ,,Bemerkungen zu Martin Heidegger's Kant-Interpretation."

8 Translated from a letter to Mrs. Cassirer, quoted in her Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer, 1950, p. 167.




Heidegger who sounds a return to the classics, and it is Cassirer who points to the future. It is Heidegger, for a change, who, trying to put Cassirer into the context of "philosophical works," makes the concilia- tory gesture; and it is the usually all-accomodating Cassirer who, noting the uselessness of pursuing some issue any further, advocates his own view rather than interpreting another.

Finally, and regardless of how much effect they had upon each other, there can be no question of their impact upon their listeners and the participants. Where brief and sporadic conventions leave matters much as they were, continuous exposure over several weeks appears to have made a difference. With the struggle lasting long enough, the lightning bolts of the antagonists eventually broke through some of the drawn Venetian blinds of comfortable classifications. There is evidence of this in mostly enthusiastic student reports which I desist from translating9 not only out of consideration for my more serious colleagues, but also because it is hard to be sure just how representative they are. The unimpressed, after all, don't sound off; and I did come across some indications that (some?) medical students were not satisfied that either Cassirer or Heidegger had gotten down to a level concrete enough to assess the relevance of their differences concerning man's "finite nature" for their purposes. A Russell-Nagel debate on the "nature of perception" may have similar effects on physiology students.

A few words about this English version of the German transcript of Ritter and Bollnow. In the interest of intelligibility, one cannot really stay always "close to the actual text." To say that I stayed "as close as possible," while safe, would be less than enlightening. I have changed idiomatic expressions and sentence constructions only when readability would otherwise have been impaired. As is perhaps needless to confess, I have not aimed at replacing the original flavor of the debate with a smooth and elegant exchange of ideas which never took place. Wherever I was not sure, the original expression was left (in brackets).

Since I have done nothing to fill in the occasional lapses in continuity (the Protokoll surely telescopes several meetings into one), I shall con- clude my introductory remarks to this translation with a brief sketch of the context in which the exchange took place. The theme being "human nature" and the audience composed of both philosophy and medical students, Cassirer (as several times before and after the Seminar) departed from Uexkuell's biological investigations into the "action-spaces" of

9 In Schneeberger's: Nachlese, Bern, 1962.




animals, developed the concept of a "human" (symbolical) space by contrast and in its various mythical, aesthetic, common sensical, mathematical, and physical differentiations. It is language in particular and the capacity to symbolize in general which make intelligible man's peculiar existence, not only in the action-space of organisms, but in the space of meaningful objectivities in which he defines himself as well as his world. Faced with Heidegger's insistence on the Daseins-minding and death- anticipating finitude of man, Cassirer both accepted the case for this dimension and denied its sufficiency for understanding man, who, only to the extent that he gains distance from the world of his minding concern, can progress to the dimensions of his symbolic form-world in which there can be that measure of autonomy and freedom which, experienced in man's actual world, also points beyond it. Heidegger's strategy, in turn, was to both accept the insufficiency of a merely empirical study of man and to deny that Cassirer's culture-definition of man could in effect go beyond it. More specifically, since the debate occurred in the period between Cassirer's book on myth (1925) and his Phenomenology of Knowledge (1929), Heidegger may have come to it as an ambivalent adversary, both admiring "Cassirer (who) has recently made the Dasein of myth a theme for philosophical interpretation... of far-reaching importance. . ." (Being and Time, Robinson transl. Footnote xi, p. 490; SCM Press, 1962) and yet convinced that "the interpretation of Dasein in its everydayness, however, is not identical with the describing of some primitive stage of Dasein with which we can become acquainted empirically through the medium of anthropology" (ibid. p. 76). This desidera- tum, in Heidegger's words: "to work out the idea of a natural conception of the world" (ibid.), however, was exactly what Cassirer thought he had been doing since 1925 and was ready to deliver later in 1929. The debate, as it now follows, was bound therefore to reflect their different conceptions as to how concrete one can become about existence and yet do philosophy, and also to foreshadow the growing estrangement between existentialists and other philosophers. The time for resuming communications may be at hand.

II. Translation

C: What does Heidegger mean by "Neo-Kantianism?" To whom does he actually address himself? One ought to think of Neo-Kantianism in functional terms and not as a substantial entity. What matters is not philosophy as a doctrinal system but as a certain way of asking philosophical questions.




H: If I am to name names, I will say: Cohen, Windelband, Rickert, Erdmann, Riehi. One can understand the common feature of Neo- Kantianism only by reflecting on its origin. This origin is the embarass- ment of philosophy when faced with the question of what is left to do for it in the total body of knowledge. All that seemed to remain was just this knowledge of science rather than of what there is. This perspective determined the entire "Back-to-Kant" movement. Kant was seen as the theoretician of a mathematico-physical epistemology. Yet Kant never meant to offer a theory of the physicals sciences. What he meant to indicate was the problem of metaphysics as ontology. What concerns me is to integrate constructively this positive nucleus of his Critique of Pure Reason with such an ontology. Because of my ontological interpretation of Kant's "Dialectic," I think I can show that the problem of "being" is actually a positive problem in the "Transcendental Logic," even though it seems to occur there only in a negative form.

C: One understands Cohen aright only if one sees him historically, i.e., not merely as an epistemologist. I do not look upon my own devel- opment as a defection from Cohen. The status of the mathematical sciences of nature is only a paradigm for me and not the philosophical problem in its entirety. There is one point, though, on which both Heidegger and I do agree and that is the central importance of the productive imagination for Kant. I was led to this insight by my work on the symbolic (forms). Imagination is the relation of all thought to intuition (Anschauung), a "synthesis speciosa." Synthesis is the basic power of all pure thought. Kant is concerned with that synthesis which applies to the species. (All this ultimately takes us to the very core of the culture- and symbol-concepts!). Kant's main problem is: how is freedom possible? He asserts that we can comprehend only the incom- prehensibility of freedom. Yet, there is also Kantian ethics! The Cate- gorial Imperative is to be such that its law holds not only for man but for rational creatures as such. Thus ethics transcends the realm of phenomena. We have here a breakthrough to the "mundus intelligibilis." In ethics, we get to a point which is not relative anymore to the finitude of theoretical man. All this ties in with Heidegger. One cannot overesti- mate -the extraordinary importance of (Kant's) schematism. Yet, in ethics Kant disallows the schematism. In his own words: our freedom concepts (etc.) are intuitional insights (Einsichten) and not knowledge and thus are not to be schematized any further. At best there is a typology, and not a schematism, of practical reason. For Kant, the schematism is a terminus a quo and not a terminus ad quem. He did indeed start from the sort of problem raised by Heidegger. But he went beyond it. Heidegger has emphasized that our cognitive powers are finite. They are




relative and limited. Yet, how could a finite creature such as man ever attain to knowledge, reason, or truth? Heidegger once raised the issue of truth by saying: regarding truths as such, or eternal verities, there is no such thing; truths are always relative to existence (Dasein). By contrast, Kant's problem was precisely this: how, given this human finitude, could there ever be truths which are both necessary and universal? How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? Kant has illustrated this problem with regard to mathematics... Heidegger has said that Kant never explained the possibility of mathematics. Yet, this exactly is the problem of the Prolegomena. And we must come to some understanding of that purely theoretical question, namely, how a finite creature can achieve a conception of entities which, by definition, are not finite themselves. Thus my question: is Heidegger going to renounce altogether this type of objectivity and "absoluteness" which was represented by Kant in the fields of ethics and the Critique of Judgment.?

H: To start with the question of the mathematical sciences of nature. For Kant, "nature" is not the object of the mathematico-physical sciences, but the totality of what there is and can be encountered. (Das Ganze des Seienden im Sinne des Vorhandenen.) Kant is concerned with "being as such" and not with any single and limited area of being. What I want to show is that his Analytic is not an ontology of nature, conceived as the object of the natural sciences, but a general ontology, i.e., a criti- cally established metaphysical generalis. Kant himself says that the problem of the Prolegomena is not his central concern. Rather, it is the problem of the possibility of a metaphysical generalis or of how to establish one. Cassirer also wants to show that in his ethical writings Kant transcends the finite. There is something in the categorical imperative which transcends all finite creatures. Yet the very idea of an "imperative" betrays its inner relationship to a finite creature. Even this transcendence remains thus within the bounds of the finite. For Kant, man's reason is autonomous and self-contained; it cannot escape either into the world of the absolute and eternal or into the world of things. This "in-between-ness" is typical of practical reason. One misunderstands Kant's ethics if one fails to recognize this inner function of law for existence. True enough, there is something about the law which goes beyond the senses. Yet the question remains: what is the inner structure of existence itself, is it finite or infinite? This is the question which goes to the heart of the problem. It is precisely in what one takes to con- stitute infinity that the character of the finite is revealed. Kant calls the imagination of the schematism an exhibition originaria, and this "origina- tion," while in one sense it is a creative capacity, is also an exhibition and thus dependent upon what it receives. (Angewiesenheit auf ein Hin-




nehmen). Thus man is never absolute and infinite in the creativeness of being itself, but only in so far as he is engaged in comprehending it. This infinite of the ontological is essentially tied to the experience of the ontic. One has to put it therefore the other way around: the kind of infinity which makes its breakthrough in the imagination is itself the strongest argument for the finite. Ontology is an index of finitude; there is none for God. What then about Cassirer's question about the concept of truth? Truth is itself most profoundly at one with the structure of transcendence, because to exist is to exist as a being which is open to others as well as to itself. We are beings who keep themselves uncon- cealed from (other) beings. To thus keep oneself in the openness of being is what I call "to be in truth." And I go further: because of the finitude of this way of man's "being-in-truth," it is also a "not-being-in-truth." Untruth belongs most profoundly to existence. It is here that I believe to have found the root and metaphysical reason for what Kant used to call "metaphysical illusion." (metaphysischer Schein). Now, as regards Cassirer's question about universally valid truths. When I say that truth is relative to existence, I am not making any ontic assertions such that "true" is always only what an individual can think. I am expressing a metaphysical proposition; truth can be truth only if there is existence. Only if there is such a thing as existence can truth come about. Now, what about the validity and eternality of truth? This issue is usually raised in terms of the validity of propositions. Yet our problem must be approached differently. Truth is relative to existence. The transsubjec- tivity of truth, its reach beyond the individual, all this means that "to be in truth" means to be open for what there is. What may be detachable here as objective knowledge has, according to the respectively different actual existences, a truth-content which asserts something about what there is. This, however, is not well understood if it is to mean that, along- side the flux of lived experience, there is also something else which is permanent and eternal, namely, meanings and concepts. By contrast, my question is: what is really meant here by "eternal?" Is this "eternal not merely the "permanent" in the sense of the aei of time, is it not possible only because of an inner transcendence of time itself? What is the point of all those metaphysical expressions, of the a priori, the aei on, the ousia? All of them are both possible and intelligible only because time itself has this horizonal character in which, by anticipation and recollection, I always have an horizon of presence, future and past, all at once. This points to a transcendental-ontological conception of time which is itself constitutive of the permanency of substance. My whole interpretation of temporality is to be understood in this manner. The entire problem- context of Sein und Zeit, having to do with man's existence, is not a philosophical anthropology. It is much too narrow and provisional for




that. What is presented (in Sein und Zeit) concerns the type of problem such as has never as yet been touched upon. If to understand "what there is" (von Seiendem) is based on the understanding of what it means "to be" (des Seins) and if, furthermore, this understanding, being ontological, is in some sense oriented with respect to time, then our problem must be to establish the temporality of existence with regard to the intelligibility of Being. This is the crucial turning point. The analysis of death (in Sein und Zeit) was meant in just this one sense, namely, to emphasize the radical futurity of existence; it was not offered as a final metaphysical thesis on the essence of death. The analysis of anxiety has the single purpose to prepare for the question: on the basis of which metaphysical sense of existence is it possible at all that man can confront such a thing as "Nothingness?" Only if I grasp the meaning of "Nothing- ness" or of anxiety can I possibly understand "Being." Unless I can understand "Being" and "Nothing" as one, there cannot arise the question about the origin of the "Why?". There is no problem more elemen- tary and concrete than that of Being, Nothing, and Why? The entire analysis of existence is based upon them. And I am asking another methodological question: how is one to start off with a metaphysics of existence? Does it not presuppose a definite world-view (Weltanschauung)? Is it not the business of philosophy to deliver world-views? Yet, they are presupposed by any and all philosophizing. The philosopher does not offer a world-view directly and by way of a doctrine. Rather is it the case that it may become possible, in the process of philosophizing, to realize radically the transcendence of existence itself, i.e., the inner possibility of this finite creature to confront being as such. "How is freedom possible?" is a nonsense question because freedom is not just another object to be confronted by theoretical knowledge. It can be confronted only in philosophizing. All this can only mean that there is not, and cannot be, any liberty except in acts of liberation. The only and proper way for man to grasp freedom is this liberation of freedom in man.

Questions (by unidentified students) to Cassirer:

(1) Which road to infinity is open to man? How can man have a share in it? (2) Is infinity to be understood as a limitation of the finite or does it have its own dimension? (3) In which sense does philosophy have the task to deliver man from anxiety, or is its function, on the contrary, to radically open man up to it?




Cassirer:

Ad (1): Only through the medium of form. Just this is the function of form that, as existence takes on form, man can experience it as an objective Gestalt. Only thus does he rascally liberate himself; not from his finite point of departure (which, after all, is still wrapped up with his own finitude) but, while his experience grows out of the finite, it also points beyond itself and towards something new. This is an immanent infinity. Man cannot very well jump out of his finitude into a realistically conceived infinity. But he can and must possess the "metabasis" which takes him from the immediacy of his existence into the region of pure form. It is only in the realm of such forms that man is infinite. (Goethe's, Aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches stroemt ihm die Unendlichkeit) This "realm of the spirit" is not a metaphysical realm of spirits; it is but the spiritual world which he has created himself. It is the very hallmark of his infinity that he could, and can, build it up. Ad (2) The infinite is not just negatively determined by the finite. It does have its own significance. But it does not signify a realm which can be reached only after struggling with the world of finite things. Instead, it is just this totality, the perfect fulfilment of the finite itself. The infinite is constituted by this fulfilment of the finite. In Goethe's words: "Is the infinite your aspiration? Traverse all the finite's configurations!" (Willst Du ins Unendliche schreiten? Geh' nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten!") Ad (3) This is a quite radical question, and it can hardly be answered except by a personal confession. Philosophy can free man only in so far as he can be freed. Thus, she surely frees him radically from fear as a mere feeling-state. The ultimate aim, however, is freedom in another sense, namely, to rid oneself of all fear of the actual world. (Goethe's: "Werft die Angst des Irdischen von Euch!") This is the position of idealism from which I have never wavered.

Heidegger:

In his first lecture, Cassirer used the expression terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. One could say that the terminus ad quem covers the sum total of a philosophy of culture in the sense of a clarification of the totality of a form-creative consciousness. The terminus a quo is altogether problematic for Cassirer. My own position is a diametrically opposed one. The terminus a quo is my central problem. But is my terminus ad quem equally clear? For me, it does not designate the whole of a philosophy of culture, but rather the question: ti to on? It is with this question that there has opened up for me the problem of a metaphysics of existence. Or, to revert once more to the core of our Kant- interpretations: I tried to show that it is by no means obvious that one




must start out with the Logos-concept. The question "How is metaphysics possible?" is itself not independent from a metaphysics of existence. The question "What is man?" must therefore be answered not so much by way of an anthropological system but rather by an elucidation of the very perspective within which it is to be raised. Do the terms terminus a quo and terminus ad quem stand for a purely heuristic problem approach, or are they of the essence of philosophy? This sort of question does not seem to me to be clearly grasped by Cassirer. What matters to Cassirer is, first of all, to discriminate the various modes of (cultural) forms, in order to push on from there (and post factum, so to speak) to determinate dimension of the various formative powers. Now, one might say that this dimension is basically the same as that which I call existence (Dasein),. This would be erroneous, however. Our different concepts of freedom make this quite clear. I have spoken earlier of "liberation," to the effect that liberation of the inner transcendence of existence constitutes the very character of philosophy. Here the proper meaning of liberation is exactly to become free for the finitude of existence and to enter into the Geworfenheit (thrown into existence). While I have not given this freedom to myself, I can become myself only because of it. This "myself" is not to be understood, to be sure, as an indifferent entity of explanation. Rather: it is existence, as, the really basic fact, in which man's existence and all problems of his existence in turn become what they essentially are. I believe that what I call Dasein (existence) is not translatable into Cassirer's vocabulary. Instead of just being determined in its essence by what is called "spirit" and "life," it is the original unity and structure of the immanent commitment of man who, bound to his body, is thereby bound to "what there is" (Seiendem) in the sense that existence (being thrown into what there is) breaks through to it. Such breakthroughs, being ultimately contingent and accidental, it is only at rare moments during his existence between life and death that man can exist at the very heights of his own possibilities. In all my philosophical work I have not bothered with the traditional forms and classifications of the various philosophical disciplines. I have not done so because I believe that, in remaining bound by them, one tragically fails to return to the inner problematic of philosophy itself. Neither Plato nor Aristotle knew of any such divisions. That was the business of the various. philosophical schools. One has to make an effort to break through all these disciplines and to renew one's contacts with the characteristically metaphysical modes of being of all these areas. Art, e.g., is not just a form of a self-creative consciousness, but it has its own metaphysical significance within the basic dynamic of existence itself. I am emphasizing these differences for good reasons. We don't really get much done by playing them down. For the sake of clarity,




I would like, once more, to place our entire discussion within the meaning-context of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and to focus again on the central question: "What is man?" Such a question ought not to be asked merely as an anthropological one. Instead, one ought to show that man, being the creature which is transcendent, i.e., open to being as a whole and to himself, is placed, by virtue of this eccentricity, into the whole of being as such. It is both the task and the idea of a philosophical anthropology to be concerned with man, not as an empirically given entity but, rooted in the basic problematic of philosophy itself, to turn him beyond himself and back to being in its wholeness; thus revealing to him, despite his freedom, the nothingness (Nichtigkeit) of his existence. This "nothingness" is no cause for pessimism or sadness. It only helps to realize that there can be real productivity only where there is resistance, and that it is up to philosophy to turn man around, from the passive (faulen) preoccupation with the products of the spirit back to the hard severity of his destiny.

Cassirer:

It has already become clearer, I think, where we differ. But no purpose is served by re-emphasizing this again and again. We have come to a point where little can be accomplished by sheer logical argument. Here at least we seem to be condemned to some kind of relativity. Yet, let us not be satisfied with a relativity which would concern only empirical man. Heidegger's last point was indeed an important one. His position also cannot be anthropocentric. And so I ask: where, after all, is that area of agreement in our disagreement? There is no need to search for it, because we have it exactly because there is a common objective and a common human world in which individual differences are not so much eliminated as (symbolically) bridged from one individual to another. This is always brought out for me by the (Ur-) phenomenon of language. We all speak our own language, and yet we understand each other through the medium of language. There is such a thing as "Lan- guage," something like the unity of the infinite variety of languages. This is decisive for me. It is for this reason that I start with the objectivity of symbolic forms because, with them, we possess in fact what, in thought, seems impossible. It is this which I call the "world of the objective spirit." There is no other way, from one individual existence to another, except through this form-world. Without it, I would not know how there could be such a thing as one man understanding another. Knowledge itself is thus but one illustration of this thesis. It certainly formulates "objective" statements which are not concerned with the "subjectivity" of the individual who makes them. Heidegger is quite




right in saying that the basic question of his metaphysic is that of Plato and Aristotle, the quest for "what is that which is?" He went on to say that Kant returned to this fundamental issue of all metaphysic. Yet it is at this point that what Kant called his "Copernican turningpoint" appears to make a very real difference. This turning point, to be sure, does not signal a complete elimination of the ontological problem but it does give it a considerably more complex form. How so? The problem of the nature of the objective world is preceded by the problem of the nature of objectivity as such. What makes this a new way of doing philosophy is that, instead of presupposing a single ontological structure, we now recognize a variety of them, each one having its own aprioristic presup- positions. Kant has shown how these different forms are the conditions of different "objective" worlds. The problem of "objectification" thus takes on a new complexity. Old dogmatic metaphysics becomes new Kantian metaphysics. Traditional metaphysics operated with "substance" as the one basic sort of being. Modern metaphysic, I would say, is not concerned anymore with the being of substance so much as with a being which is constituted by a variety of functional determinations and meanings. Here my position is essentially different from Heidegger's. I remain within Kant's basic methodological version of the transcendental. What is important about the transcendental method is that it takes its departure from what is actual fact. Thus, I ask how the fact of language is possible. How can it be made intelligible that we can commu- nicate through this medium from one individual existence to another? Or: how is it possible that we can as much as grasp an object of art as something which is objectively there and structured? It is such questions which must be answered. Maybe not all questions in philosophy can be asked this way, but, I think, it is only after having asked them that one can proceed to Heidegger's problems.

Heidegger: To repeat Plato's question cannot mean to withdraw to the answers of the Greeks. Being as such is split up and the big problem is to comprehend this inner multitude of modes of being from an idea of being. Mere mediating attempts can never help us to get on. It is of the essence of philosophy, as a finite concern of man, that it is also con- fined to this finitude of man. Philosophy, being concerned with all of man as well as with his highest aspirations, is bound to reveal this finitude most profoundly. What matters to me is that you, Prof. Cassirer, take with you from this -debate this one thing, namely, that you may have felt somehow (and quite aside from the diversity of positions of differently philosophizing men) that once again we are on the way to




take seriously the fundamental questions of metaphysics. What you have seen here, writ small, namely, the differences between philosophers within the one-ness of a problem, suggests, however modestly, what is so essential and writ large in the controversies in the history of philosophy: the realization that the discerning of its different standpoints goes to the very root of all philosophical work.

CARL H. HAMBURG.

TULANE UNIVERSITY.



Documents

Hamburg, A Cassirer-Heidegger Seminar