This is a collection of lectures that Heidegger gave, primarily on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, through the winter of 1927. It is dense stuff. It also often strays from the consensus into Heidegger’s own unique interpretations. Heidegger quotes Kant first, “I entitle all knowledge transcendental that is occupied in general not so much with objects as with the kind of knowledge we have of objects, insofar as this is possible a priori.” Heidegger adds, “Hence, transcendental knowledge does not investigate the being itself, but rather the possibility of the preliminary understanding of Being…. The Critique of Pure Reason has nothing to do with a “theory of knowledge.”” He continues, “With the problem of transcendence, a “theory of knowledge” is not set in place of metaphysics, but rather the inner possibility of ontology is questioned…. The transcendental problem of the inner possibility of a priori synthetic knowledge is the question concerning the essence of the truth of ontological transcendence. It is a matter of determining the essence of “transcendental truth, which precedes all empirical truth and makes it possible.””
Kant begins with pure reason, according to Heidegger, “The ground for the source [Quellgrund] for laying the ground for metaphysics is human pure reason, so that it is precisely the humanness of reason, i.e., its finitude, which will be essential for the core of this problematic of ground-laying…. Finitude lies in the essential structure of knowledge itself.” Heidegger continues, “Pure intuition is required as the one essential element of ontological knowledge in which the experience of beings is grounded…. In this way both pure intuitions, space and time, are allotted to two [different] regions of experience.” Kant states, “Time is the formal a priori condition of all appearances whatsoever.” Heidegger explains, “Hence, time has preeminence over space. As universal, pure intuition, it [time] must for this reason become the guiding and supporting essential element of pure knowledge, of the transcendence which forms knowledge…. The object of an intuition, which is always a particular, is nevertheless determined as “such and such” in a “universal representation,” i.e., in the concept. The finitude of thinking intuition is therefore a knowing through concepts; pure knowing is pure intuition through pure concepts…. Ontological knowledge is rightly termed knowledge, however, if it attains truth. But it does not just “have” truth; rather, is is the original truth, which Kant therefore terms “transcendental truth.”… Ontology is none other than the explicit unveiling of the systemic whole of pure knowledge, to the extent that it forms transcendence.”
Kant wants to separate a priori knowledge from the realm of empirics, “Now, because what matters first and foremost to Kant is to make transcendence visible once in order to elucidate on the basis of it the essence of transcendental (ontological) knowledge, that is why the Objective Deduction is “also essential to my purposes. The other seeks to investigate pure understanding itself, according to its possibility and the powers of knowledge upon which it itself rests, and, consequently, seeks to consider it in a more subjective relationship…. The chief question always remains: What and how much can understanding and reason know, free from all experience?””
Heidegger views the subject, the I, as integral to Kant’s metaphysics, “The pure, finite self has, in itself, temporal character. However, if the I, pure reason, is essentially temporal, then it is precisely on the basis of this temporal character that the decisive determination which Kant gives of transcendental apperception first becomes understandable…. Time and the “I think” no longer stand incompatibly and incomparably at odds; they are the same. With his laying of the ground for metaphysics, and through the radicalism with which, for the first time, he transcendentally interpreted both time, always for itself, and the “I think,” always for itself, Kant brought both of them together in their original sameness—without, to be sure, expressly seeing this as such for himself…. Precisely because in its innermost essence the self is originally time itself, that I cannot be grasped as “temporal,” i.e., as within time. Pure sensibility (time) and pure reason are not just of the same type; rather they belong together in the unity of the same essence, which makes possible the finitude of human subjectivity in its wholeness…. Kant’s laying of the ground for metaphysics leads to the transcendental power of imagination. This is the root of both stems, sensibility and understanding. As such, it makes possible the original unity of ontological synthesis. This root, however, is rooted in original time. The original ground which becomes manifest in the ground-laying is time.”
Finally, Heidegger explicitly brings in the concept of Dasein, “The problem of the laying of the ground for metaphysics is rooted in the question concerning Dasein in man, i.e., concerning his innermost ground, concerning the understanding of Being as essentially existent finitude…. Insofar as its essence lies in existence the question concerning the essence of Dasein is the existential question…. The unveiling of the constitution of the Being of Dasein is Ontology. Insofar as the ground for the possibility of metaphysics is found therein—the finitude of Dasein as its fundament—it is called Fundamental Ontology…. The basic fundamental-ontological act of the Metaphysics of Dasein as the laying of the ground for metaphysics is hence a “remembering again.”” Heidegger concludes, “[It is] because the understanding of Being must be projected upon time from out of the ground of the finitude of the Dasein in man, that time, in essential unity with the transcendental power of imagination, attained the central metaphysical function in the Critique of Pure Reason.”
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