Heidegger, Basic Writings

Jessica Rugh
Dr. Duane Davis
Phil 352
22 October 2008

Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. D. F. Krell. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1977.

This book is a collection of essays and excerpts from the major works of Martin Heidegger. The introduction to Being and Time is also included. Before each selection Krell provides a brief exposition of the context of the piece and its place among Heidegger’s other works. In the introduction to the collection Krell provides a basic exploration of the question of being, in the sense of Being and, in a way, of the being Martin Heidegger. The introduction is simultaneously a brief history of Heidegger’s life and career, an exposition of Heidegger’s major works (with a particular focus on Being and Time and its place in Heidegger’s thought development), an analysis of the progression of Heidegger’s thought during his career, and an offering of differing opinions on the influence of Heidegger’s ideas. The introduction itself was easy to read, fairly concise, and helpful in its straightforward explanation of Heidegger’s interpretation of key terms (such as Dasein, alētheia, etc.). “Basic writings”, however, may be a slightly misleading title.
There are ten selections provided in this text, plus the introduction to Being and Time. As I was unable to read them all, I will report on those I did and only list the others.

1. Being and Time: Introduction
This is the first introduction to Being and Time, as translated by Joan Stambaugh. Please see my précis for a summary and analysis of this selection.

2. What is Metaphysics?
This selection seeks to confront the question “what is metaphysics?” It is divided into three sections in which Heidegger breaks down the metaphysical question in order to give it “the proper occasion to introduce itself” (p.93). In the first section he examines “the unfolding of a metaphysical inquiry” and decides that “the metaphysical inquiry must be posed as a whole and from the essential position of the existence [Dasein] that questions” (p.93-94). He proposes to do this by examining being and nothing. Krell defines nothing to be a name for mysterious aspects of existence and also as “the openness of Being as such” (p.91). The next section elaborates on “how it is with the nothing” (p.96). Herein Heidegger defines the nothing as “the negation of the totality of beings” and as “nonbeing pure and simple” (p.97). He then claims that the nothing is not the same as negation and describes the relationship between the nothing, negation, and the intellect. Heidegger examines feelings and moods, primarily the differences between anxiety and fear (as we encountered in Being and Time), and he shows that anxiety reveals the nothing. The last section responds to the question of metaphysics in the context of Dasein’s relationship to the nothing. Heidegger says, “Dasein in anxiety is the essence of the nothing” or “nihilation” (p.103). Dasein relates itself to beings by “holding itself out into the nothing” and “pure being and pure nothing are the same” (p.108). On this note, Heidegger concludes by claiming that “as long as man exists, philosophizing of some sort occurs.”
This selection (a lecture from 1929) was fairly easy to read and could serve as an interesting supplement to a deeper understanding of Being and Time as it provides an expansion of the stage of development of Heidegger’s thought as presented in Being and Time, particularly on the role of anxiety in Dasein.

3. On the Essence of Truth
In this selection Heidegger is looking at “the one thing that in general distinguishes every ‘truth’ as truth” (p.115). He does not want to look at truth in a particular sense, however, such as truths of scientific research or economic calculation. He begins with an exploration of the “ordinary understanding” of truth. For example, a usual understanding of truth is such as is used in the distinguishing of true gold from false gold (p.117). True in this sense has the connotation of genuine or “being in accord”. He points out that truth has an opposite: untruth.
Heidegger then performs a deeper examination of accordance and its connection to “correctness” (p.120-123). This, of course, warrants a deeper look at correctness. He says, “the openness of comportment as the inner condition of the possibility of correctness is grounded in freedom” and therefore, “the essence of truth is freedom” (p.123). Next he seeks to uncover the essence of freedom. “Freedom reveals itself as letting beings be” (p.125). Heidegger then introduces his interpretation of the Greek word alētheia as “unconcealment” instead of “truth” and argues that this interpretation demands a rethinking of truth as it connects to the concepts of correctness and disclosedness. A dense testimony of the relationship between freedom, truth, “letting be” and disclosedness follows, until Heidegger claims that we can now say something about the essence of truth: that it “reveals itself as freedom” (p.128). He revisits untruth and shows how it can be understood to be concealing and errancy. He concludes by maintaining that “the question of the essence of truth arises from the question of the truth of essence” (p.137).
This selection was particularly difficult for me in that the connotations carried by various words in different contexts seemed to play a big role in Heidegger’s interpretation of them and therefore in the reader’s correct understanding of the text. Perhaps this problem is why the fact that words carry varying contexts was the focus of this essay. In any case, this would be an interesting piece for anyone wishing for a deeper understanding of Heidegger’s interpretation of specific words or for someone interested in Heideggarian etymology.

4. The Origin of the Work of Art

5. Letter on Humanism

6. Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics
This selection is Heidegger’s attempt to define the mathematical and its place in his metaphysics. He begins by comparing and contrasting ancient and modern conceptions of the mathematical. He believes that both ancient and modern approaches deal with both facts and conceptions and exposes some common ideas of what ancient and medieval sciences did in the realm of mathematics. For Heidegger, modern science is mathematical (p.273) and he further claims that the essence of the mathematical is “the fundamental presupposition of the knowledge of things” (p.278).
So what is mathematics? He provides an account of traditional Greek identifications of the mathematical, including an examination of etymology. For example, the word mathēsis means learning, and mathēmata signifies the learnable. For Heidegger, then, mathēmata can be interpreted as “that ‘about’ things which we really know” (p.275). The next section concerns in what sense the foundation of modern thought and knowledge is mathematical. Heidegger describes Newton’s first law of motion and how it contributed to the mathematical foundation of modern science. He then provides an in-depth comparison of Greek and modern approaches to science. This includes: 1) an analysis of Aristotle versus Newton’s conceptions of nature; 2) Aristotle’s conception of motion; and 3) Newton on motion, which is namely a revisiting of the first law of motion. Within each of these sections he touches on their connection to modern science.
Heidegger then adds Galileo’s experiments to his project of understanding of the mathematical. In doing so he discovers that “there unfolds the entire realm of posing questions and experiments, establishing laws, and disclosing new regions of beings” which in turn open up further questions (p.293). Such questions include “whether motion is sufficiently formulated by the designation ‘change of location’” and the like (p.293). One of these questions is also concerning “the justification and limits of mathematical formalism in contrast to the demand for an immediate return to intuitively given nature” (p.294).
The last section is a look “at the metaphysical meaning of the mathematical” wherein Heidegger examines the association of Dasein to the mathematical. He divides this question into 1) “what new fundamental position of Dasein shows itself in this rise of the dominance of the mathematical?”; and 2) “how does the mathematical…drive toward an ascent to a metaphysical determination of Dasein” (p.295). He glosses over the first question by answering that “the mathematical strives out of itself to establish its own essence as the ground of itself and thus of all knowledge” and moves on to the second question, which he considers more important (p.296). In other words, he wants to know “in what way does modern metaphysics arise out of the spirit of the mathematical?” (p.296). Heidegger begins the answering of this question with a brief outline of the history of scientific philosophical work and an analysis of Descartes’ conception of “I”, such as it is in the idea “cogito ergo sum”. He concludes by claiming that the “I-principle” and the principle of contradiction [between subject and object, as reversed in the cogito] become metaphysics, wherein “the question about the thing is now anchored in pure reason, i.e., in the mathematical unfolding of its principles” (p.305).
This selection may be useful for someone studying Heidegger’s thought as it differs from previous schools of thought, or for someone who likes math. It could even be useful for someone desiring a deeper understanding of Descartes’ ideas.

7. The Question Concerning Technology

8. Building Dwelling Thinking
This piece was, in my opinion, very out of the ordinary for Heidegger. Its style was extremely different from the style that we have encountered in Being and Time and from the other pieces in this collection. Perhaps the most amazing characteristic of “Building Dwelling Thinking” is that, at least in relation to other works by Heidegger, it was actually pleasant to read. At the same time it was difficult and unclear, for the flowery, poetic technique was still incredibly dense if this piece is supposed to be taken as an asset to understanding Heidegger’s philosophy.
“Building Dwelling Thinking”, one component of a three part lecture from 1951, exhibits Heidegger’s interest in technology. Technology, for Heidegger, according to Kwell, “opposes…the place where the truth of Being, disclosedness, happens” (p.344). In this piece Heidegger seeks to expose the relationship of building to dwelling and their relationship to thinking. Heidegger says his goal is “to think about dwelling and building” (p.347). To do so, he asks two questions: 1) What is it to dwell?; and 2) how does building belong to dwelling? In the answering of the first question Heidegger traces different interpretations and definitions of words. For example, bauen means “to dwell” in Old High German, and in Old Saxon the word wuon similarly means “to stay in a place” (p.349-350). Heidegger plays with the cultural distinctions of these words and the connotations that they have evolved to possess. He then shifts gears to the connection between earth and sky and the beings therein, namely divinities and mortals. He targets “the fourfold”—earth and sky, divinities and mortals—as having a “primal oneness” that is contained in any interpretation of dwelling. He continues:
Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising up into plant and animal…The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing, moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the year's seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether…The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the holy sway of the godhead, the god appears in his presence or withdraws into his concealment…The mortals are the human beings. They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies, and indeed continually, as long as remains on earth, under the sky, before the divinities.

Each part of the fourfold also implies that when we speak of one “we are already thinking of the other three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four” (p.351-352).
The second question, on the relation of building to dwelling, is written in the same symbolic, poetic language. Heidegger relates objects such as bridges to the earth, perpetuating the idea of the fourfold in our understanding of the world, and includes more etymology. By the conclusion, he generally succeeds in explaining that there is a deep connection between dwelling and building and that dwelling “is the basic character of Being” (p.362).

9. What Calls for Thinking?

10. The Way to Language

11. The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking

Overall, I think Basic Writings is an interesting collection of Heidegger’s works. It was certainly helpful for a deeper understanding of Heidegger’s thought development and provided a useful clarification of his terminology and true meaning of words and concepts in Being and Time. The topics of each selection were greatly varied and as such can appeal to people of a variety of interests and backgrounds, which was, according to his introduction, one of Kwell’s reasons for including them together, but collectively they are clearly interrelated and enable one to grasp a more insightful perspective on the scope of Heidegger’s work as a whole. If nothing else, you should read “Building Dwelling Thinking” for a change of pace as it may be even more entertaining and thought-provoking than Being and Time itself.