Heidegger Selections (Essentials)

Author: Heidegger
Translator: Sun Zhouxing
Editor-in-Chief: Ni Weiguo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: Martin Heidegger (1889—1976) was one of the most captivating thinkers of the 20th century. He devoted over half a century to philosophical inquiry, leaving behind a vast body of work. In his early years, Heidegger studied theology and philosophy at the University of Freiburg. In 1923, he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg. In 1928, he succeeded his teacher, the founder of phenomenology Edmund Husserl, as a professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger was an original and influential thinker in the history of Western philosophy. His most important work is Being and Time, through which he is regarded as a developer of the phenomenological school and the founder of existentialist philosophy.
Excerpt: In the following discussion, we take metaphysics as the truth of the whole of beings as beings, rather than as the doctrine of a particular philosopher. Every thinker has a fundamental philosophical stance in metaphysics. Therefore, we can name a certain metaphysics after his name. However, according to the essence of metaphysics as we conceive it here, this by no means implies that all metaphysics is the achievement and property of the outstanding thinkers as prominent figures within the public sphere of cultural creation. At every stage of metaphysics, a segment of a path becomes evident, and this path is one that the destiny of being has opened up for itself in the perilous times of the truth of beings. Nietzsche himself explained the course of Western history in a metaphysical way and presented it as the rise and development of nihilism. An in-depth reflection on Nietzsche's metaphysics becomes a meditation on the situation and position of modern man, whose fate, however, is rarely experienced in its truth. But any such meditation, if it is not merely an empty parrot-like report, goes beyond what is to be meditated upon. This going beyond is not an elevation, or even a surpassing, nor is it a overcoming. To say that we are to meditate on Nietzsche's metaphysics does not mean that, in addition to considering his ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics, we must and must first consider his metaphysics; it merely means that we attempt to take Nietzsche seriously as a thinker. And for Nietzsche, thinking is: representing the beings as beings. All metaphysical thinking is ontology, or it is nothing at all. For the meditation attempted here, the key is to prepare a simple and unadorned step of thought. The essence of this preparatory thought lies in revealing the operational space within which being itself can re-include humans in an original relationship in terms of their essence. To prepare is the very essence of such thought. This essential, hence universally preparatory thought operates unobtrusively from any perspective. Here, any co-thinking (Mit-denken), however clumsy and tentative it may appear, is a fundamental help. Co-thinking becomes an unobtrusive, unverifiable sowing, the seeds of which may never see sprouts or fruits, never knowing the harvest. These seeds are used for sowing, and even more so, they are used for the preparatory thought of sowing. Before sowing, one must plow the field. It is to cultivate that field, that field which, due to the inescapable dominance of the metaphysical land, must necessarily remain in the unknown. What is crucial now is to first conjecture this field, then to seek this field, and then to cultivate this field. What is crucial is to make a preliminary advance toward this field. There are many paths in the unknown of the field. But for each thinker, he is always assigned only one path, his path; the thinker must always repeatedly walk back and forth along the traces of this path, aiming ultimately to follow this path as his path (but never as a path belonging to him) and to articulate what can be experienced on this path. Perhaps the title Being and Time is a signpost for such a path. According to the essential, metaphysically required, and always repeatedly sought-after intertwining of metaphysics with the various sciences (which are the offspring of metaphysics), preparatory thought must sometimes also operate within the bounds of the sciences; for the sciences always demand in diverse forms the prior giving of the basic forms of knowledge and knowability, whether consciously or in the way of the effects of the sciences. The more the sciences pursue their predetermined technical essence and its external manifestations nakedly, the more clearly they clarify the question of the possibility of knowledge required in technology, the question of the characteristics, boundaries, and legitimacy of this possibility.