Table Of ContentHEIDEGGER
Through Phenomenology to Thought
PHAENOMENOLOGICA
COLLECTION PUBLIEE SOUS LE PATRO NAGE DES CENTRES
D' ARCHIVES-HUSSERL
13
WILLIAM J. RICHARDSON, S. J.
HEIDEGGER
Through Phenomenology to Thought
PREFACE BY
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
THIRD EDITION
Comit6 de r6daction de la collection:
Pr6sident: H. L. Van Breda (Louvain);
Membres: M. Farber (Buffalo), E. Fink (Fribourg en Brisgau),
A. Gurwitscht (New York), J. Hyppolitet (Paris), L. Land~ebe
(Cologne), W. Marx (Fribourg en Brisgau), M. Merleau-Ponty (Paris)t,
P. Ricreur (Paris), E. Straker (Cologne), K. H. Volkmann-Schluck
(Cologne), J. Wahl (Paris);
~: J. 'taminiaux (Louvain)
HEIDEGGER
Through Phenomenology to Thought
by
WILLIAM J. RICHARDSON, S. J.
Docteur et Maitre agrege de l'Institut Superieur de Philosophie, Louvain
PREFACE BY
MARTIN HElD EGGER
THIRD EDITION
MARTINUS NIJHOFF I THE HAGUE I I974
First edition I963
Second edition I967
Third edition I974
C I974 by Martinus Nijholl, The Hague, Netherlands
Softcover reprint oft he hardcover 1st edition 1974
All rights rese'I'Ved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
Published with ecclesiastical permission
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1978-1 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1976-7
001: 10.10071978-94-010-1976-7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface by MARTIN HEIDEGGER VIII
Writer's preface xxv
Writer's preface to the third edition xxx
List 01 Symbols Used XXXI
INTRODUCTION 1
PART I: FROM THERE TO BEING 25
Chapter I. Being and Time 27
Chapter II. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics 106
Chapter III. The Essence of Ground 161
Chapter IV. What is Metaphysics? 194
P ART II: REVERSAL 209
Chapter I. On the Essence of Truth 2II
Chapter II. The Self-assertion of the German University 255
Chapter III. Introduction to Metaphysics 259
PART III: FROM BEING TO THERE 299
SECTION A. THE De-VOLUTION OF THOUGHT 299
Chapter I. Plato 301
Chapter II. Aristotle 309
Chapter III. Descartes 321
Chapter IV. Hegel 331
Chapter V. Nietzsche 361
Chapter VI. Logic 383
Chapter VII. Humanism 387
Chapter VIII. Transition: Rilke 391
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION B. THE Re-TRIEVE OF THOUGHT 40I
Chapter I. The Origin of a Work of Art, Holderlin
and the Essence of Poetry 403
Chapter II. The Time of World-as-Picture 4I8
Chapter III. "As when upon a day of rest ... " 423
Chapter IV. Nietzsche's Word "God is dead" 434
Chapter V. "Homecoming," "Recollection" 440
Chapter VI. What is Metaphysics: Epilogue 473
Chapter VII. 'AA1j&CLot 484
Chapter VIII. A6yor:, 490
Chapter IX. Towards an Analysis of Release, Nihilism 502
in Terms of Being-as-history 5IO
Chapter X. The Saying of Anaximander 5I4
Chapter XI. Whereunto the Poet? 527
Chapter XII. Letter on Humanism 530
Chapter XIII. Interlude 553
From the Experience of Thought 553
The Pathway 558
Chapter XIV. What is Metaphysics?: Introduction.
The Essence of Ground: Prologue 562
Chapter XV. The Thing 566
Chapter XVI. Language 577
Chapter XVII. Working, Dwelling, Thinking 583
Chapter XVIII. " ... Poetically doth man dwell ... 588
II
Chapter XIX. What E-vokes Thought? 595
CONCLUSION 62I
Chapter Outlines 643
Appendix: Courses, Seminars and Lectures 01 Martin H eidegger 66I
Bibliography:
I. Heidegger's Works 675
A. Order of Publication 675
B. Order of Composition 679
II. Other Works Cited 683
III. Selective Bibliography 685
IV. English Translations 690
Glossary 693
TABLE OF CONTENTS VII
Indexes:
I. Index of Texts Cited 709
II. Index of Proper Names 730
III. Index of Greek Terms 732
IV. General Index 735
PREFACE
Dear Father Richardson:
It is with some hesitation that I attempt to answer the two
principal questions you posed in your letter of March I, 1962.
The first touches on the initial impetus that determined the
way my thought would gO.l The other looks for information
about the much discussed "reversal" [in my development].
I hesitate with my answers, for they are necessarily no more
than indications [of much more to be said]. The lesson of long
experience leads me to surmise that such indications will not be
taken as directions for the road of independent reflection on the
matter pointed out which each must travel for himself. [Instead
they] will gain notice as though they were an opinion I had ex
pressed, and will be propagated as such. Every effort to bring
what has been thought closer to prevailing modes of (re)presen
tation must assimilate what-is-to-be-thought to those (re)presen
tations and thereby inevitably deform the matter.2
This preamble is not the lament of a man misunderstood; it
is rather the recognition of an almost insurmountable difficulty
in making oneself understood.
The first question in your letter reads: "How are we properly
to understand your first experience of the Being-question in
1 [Translator's note. With regard to the translati~ of Denken, see below, p. 16,
note 43.]
I [Translator's note. For the translation of VorsteUung by "(re)presentation,"
see below, p. 108, note 5.]
VORWORT
Sehr geehrter Herr P. Richardson!
Mit einigem Zogern versuche ich, die beiden Hauptfragen
Ihres Briefes yom I. Marz 1962 zu beantworten. Die eine Frage
betrifft den ersten AnstoB, der meinen Denkweg bestimmt hat.
Die andere Frage verlangt eine Auskunft iiber die vielberedete
Kehre.
Ich zogere mit den Antworten, weil sie -notgedrungen nur Hin
weise bleiben. Durch eine lange Erfahrung belehrt, muB ich ver
muten, daB man die Hinweise nicht als Weisung aufnimmt, sich
seIber auf den Weg zu machen, urn der gewiesenen Sache selh
standig nachzudenken. Man wird die Hinweise als eine von mir
geauBerte Meinung zur Kenntnis nehmen und als so1che weiter
verbreiten. J eder Versuch, Gedachtes der herrschenden Vorstel
lungsweise naherzubringen, muB seIber das zu Denkende diesen
Vorstellungen angleichen und dadurch die Sache notwendig ver
unstalten.
Diese Vorbemerkung ist kein Klagelied eines MiBverstandenen,
sondern die Feststellung einer fast unaufhebbaren Schwierigkeit
der Verstandigung.
Die eine Frage Ihres Briefes lautet:
"Wie ist Ihre erste Erfahrung der Seinsfrage bei Brentano
eigentlich zu verstehen?"
x PREFACE
Brentano?" "In Brentano." You have in mind the fact that the
first philosophical text through which I worked my way, again
and again from 1907 on, was Franz Brentano'sdissertation: On
the Manifold Sense of Being in Aristotle (1862). On the title page
of his work, Brentano quotes Aristotle's phrase: 't'0 av Aey£'t'OtL
TCOAAOtJJllr•: • I translate: •• A being becomes manifest (sc. with regard
to its Being) in many ways." Latent in this phrase is the question
that determined the way of my thought: what is the pervasive,
simple, unified determination of Being that permeates all of its
multiple meanings? This question raised others: What, then, does
Being mean? To what extent (why and how) does the Being
of beings unfold in the four modes which Aristotle constantly
affirms, but whose common origin he leaves undetermined? One
need but run over the names assigned to them in the language of
the philosophical tradition to be struck by the fact that they
seem, at first, irreconcilable: Being as property, Being as pos
sibility and actuality, Being as truth, Being as schema of the
categories. What sense of Being comes to expression in these
four headings? How can they be brought into comprehensible
accord?
This accord can not be grasped without first raising and settling
the question: whence does Being as such (not merely beings
as beings) receive its determination?
Meanwhile a decade went by and a great deal of swerving and
straying through the history of Western philosophy was needed
for the above questions to reach even an initial clarity. To gain
this clarity three insights were decisive, though, to be sure, not
yet sufficient for the venture of analysing the Being-question
as a question about the sense of Being.
Dialogues with HusserI provided the immediate experience of
the phenomenological method that prepared the concept of
phenomenology explained in the Introduction to Being and Time
(§7). In this evolution a normative r61e was played by the re
ference back to fundamental words of Greek thought which I
interpreted accordingly: A6yo~ (to make manifest) and CPOttv£a6OtL
{to show oneself}.
A renewed study of the Aristotelian treatises (especially
Book IX of the MetaPhysics and Book VI of the Nicomachean
Ethics) resulted in the insight into &A1l6£o£Lv as a process of re
vealment, and in the characterisation of truth as non-conceal-
