Missed Appropriations: Uncovering Heidegger's Debt to Kierkegaard in Being and Time

219 Pages·2017·0.6 MB·English

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies
1-1-2016
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Kenneth David Geter
University of Denver
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Geter, Kenneth David, "Missed Appropriations: Uncovering Heidegger's Debt to Kierkegaard in Being and
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MISSED APPROPRIATIONS:
UNCOVERING HEIDEGGER’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARD
IN BEING AND TIME
A Dissertation
Presented to
the Faculty of the University of Denver and the
Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program
University of Denver
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Kenneth D. Geter
August 2016
Advisor: Jere O’Neill Surber
©Copyright by Kenneth D. Geter 2016
All Rights Reserved
Author: Kenneth D. Geter
Title: MISSED APPROPRIATIONS: UNCOVERING HEIDEGGER’S DEBT TO
KIERKEGAARD IN BEING AND TIME
Advisor: Jere O’Neill Surber
Degree Date: August 2016
Abstract
It is widely held that Martin Heidegger appropriated several existential
concepts from Søren Kierkegaard in his 1927 work, Being and Time. Most scholars
agree that Heidegger did not sufficiently credit Kierkegaard. What was the extent
of the appropriation, and why did Heidegger not duly cite Kierkegaard? This work
will focus on the concept of anxiety which appears throughout Being and Time and
which was influenced by the concept of the same name presented in Kierkegaard’s
1844 work The Concept of Anxiety. It will also be seen how the structure of
Being and Time closely resembles that of Concept of Anxiety given that the first
halves of both works focus on aspects of physical existence while the second halves
concern temporal existence. Anxiety will serve as a starting point that will also
connect Heidegger to Kierkegaard on related concepts such as Heidegger’s concept
of “fallenness” to Kierkegaard’s “objective sin,” and the concepts of “repetition”
and “the moment” that appear in both works. Historical background concerning
Heidegger’s early academic career will also be given in order to gain insight on how
Heidegger was influenced by Kierkegaard’s thought and why Heidegger was reluctant
to disclose this influence. It will be shown that while the background contexts of
Being and Time and Concept of Anxiety differ greatly, the concept of anxiety is
functionally similar between the two works.
ii
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Why Anxiety? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Approach of the Current Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Where to Place this Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
I Propaedeutics 13
Heidegger Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Heidegger and Jaspers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Quoting Kierkegaard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Theologian or Philosopher? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Theology as a Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
The Commensurability Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Kierkegaard Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
The Difficulty of Concept of Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
A Primer on Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
II Anxiety in Division One 40
Dasein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Being-in-the-world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
State-of-Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Three Essential Attributes of States-of-Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Thrownness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Falling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Anxiety and Fleeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Distinction Between Anxiety and Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Anxiety and Indefiniteness/Nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Uncanniness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
The First Footnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
IIIAnxiety in Division Two 83
The Second Footnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Being-towards-death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Anticipation and Expectation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
The Call of Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
iii
Resoluteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Anticipatory Resoluteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
The Temporality of Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
The Third Footnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
IVConcept of Anxiety: the First Synthesis 117
Treating Anxiety Psychologically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
The Dogma of Hereditary Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
The Spheres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Hereditary Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Dogmatics vs. Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Anxiety and Hereditary Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Anxiety as Innocence and Anxiety in Dreaming Spirit . . . . . . . . . 135
Fear of Nothing / Antipathetic Sympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Objective and Subjective Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Objective Anxiety. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Subjective Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
V Concept of Anxiety: the Second Synthesis 156
Anxiety of Lacking Awareness of Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
The Instant/Temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Anxiety & Spiritlessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Anxiety & Fate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Anxiety & Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Anxiety as the Result of the Individual’s Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Anxiety about the Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Anxiety about the Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Anxiety as Saving through Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
VISimilarities and Differences 192
Division One and the First Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Division Two and the Second Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
iv
Introduction
It is generally accepted that Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was influenced
by Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) in his magnum opus Being and Time (1927).
Scholars and commentators range widely on how much influence took place. Some
believe that even though the influence is identifiable, it is slight and Kierkegaard’s
ideas only served as seeds for ideas that Heidegger developed in a different context.
Others claim that Kierkegaard’s ideas appear practically verbatim in Being and
Time without due acknowledgment, and that this amounts to plagiarism. The
latter view is supported by the fact that Heidegger only minimally acknowledged
Kierkegaard in Being and Time, and never stated explicitly that the latter had any
influence on his thought. Why was this the case? It is thought that Heidegger was
attempting to distance himself from the thought of Kierkegaard, who happened to
be in vogue at the time Heidegger was teaching at Freiburg and Marburg. Another
reason might have stemmed from Heidegger’s larger project of separating theology
and metaphysics from philosophy. Since Kierkegaard was viewed as a theologian,
Heidegger did not want to appear to be influenced by him. Regardless, the problem
remains: how much influence did Kierkegaard’s writings have upon Heidegger in
Being and Time? Is it valid to assume that Heidegger simply appropriated several
of Kierkegaard’s concepts without credit to the latter? I will side with those that
1
believe Heidegger did indeed appropriate several Kierkegaardian themes in Being and
Time without enough acknowledgment. I will be focusing on the concept of anxiety
and related themes that Kierkegaard laid out in his 1844 pseudonymous work, The
Concept of Anxiety. I will show that these themes are present and recognizable
and often have a similar function in Being and Time. I will not however, claim
that there is an exact identity between how the themes are presented in Concept of
Anxiety and Being and Time. The former is a work of psychology (according to
the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis), and the latter concerns “the question of the
meaning of Being.” The fields that these works propound to belong dictate the roles
that the ideas within them play. Sometimes anxiety and related themes function in
a similar way between the two works, but there are times when they do not. I will
point out these similarities and differences. From the textual evidence I will point
out, it will become apparent that Being and Time was significantly influenced by
Concept of Anxiety. In addition, from the historical context provided on Heidegger’s
early academic career in Chapter 1, it will be clearer why Heidegger appropriated
themes from Kierkegaard without due acknowledgement.
Why Anxiety?
Anxiety is commonly seen as the primary locus of the the
Kierkegaard/Heidegger connection. This is due to the oft-cited feature in
the Kierkegaard and Heidegger definitions that anxiety is the “fear of nothing.”
This shared characteristic of anxiety is played up in commentaries as the central
2
essential attribute of anxiety common between the concepts of the two men. I will
show that there are several other attributes of anxiety that are equally if not more
important than the “fear of nothing” attribute, and in these areas there is sometimes
a considerable difference between the concepts. The differences have to do mainly
with how Heidegger emphasizes “Being-in-the-world” in the first half of Being and
Time, versus Kierkegaard emphasizing physical embodiment in the first half of
Concept of Anxiety; as well as how Heidegger operates within finite temporality in
the second half of Being and Time while Kierkegaard is focused on the eternal in
the second half of Concept of Anxiety. I will show that this parallel structure of the
development of the concept of anxiety is the most prominent “missed appropriation”
in the literature concerning the Heidegger/Kierkegaard connection to date.
An example of another attribute of anxiety common to both is that it is
associated with the Fall of Adam. In Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety, anxiety is
directly connected with “hereditary sin.” In Being and Time, Heidegger precedes
his discussion of anxiety with a description of his concept of “falling.” He claims
that falling has nothing to do with the Judeo-Christian idea of the fall or original
sin. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see how this point has also caused some
commentators to posit a strong connection between Kierkegaard and Heidegger with
regards to anxiety. It will become apparent that even though certain attributes
of anxiety are shared, these attributes appear in different contexts and may have
different ends. This work will trace the appearances and contexts of anxiety and
related themes in Being and Time and compare those to Kierkegaard’s articulation
3
of anxiety as put forth primarily in Concept of Anxiety. Any of Heidegger’s or
Kierkegaard’s themes which are essential or prior to an understanding of their
concepts of anxiety will be examined as well.
In this work I will be following Dan Magurshak’s view1 that the theme of
anxiety bears the most fruit in the putative Heidegger/Kierkegaard connection in
Being and Time, and that Concept of Anxiety is the best place to look at the
shared concept. Anxiety will serve as a starting point that will further connect
Heidegger and Kierkegaard on several related themes such as authenticity, guilt, and
temporality. While I concur with Magurshak’s assessment that Concept of Anxiety
is the “…cornerstone of the relationship between the two thinkers,”2 I disagree with
Vincent McCarthy’s more extreme statement that “…in Being and Time, Heidegger
followed Kierkegaard nearly step-by-step in the exposition and exploration of
anxiety.”3 The vagueness of “nearly” is at question here. I agree there is a parallel
structure between the development of anxiety in Concept of Anxiety and Being and
Time, but to say the latter follows the former step-by-step is an overstatement.
The other chief reason for focusing on anxiety and specifically looking at
Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety has to do with the three footnotes in Being
1 Dan Magurshak, “The Concept of Anxiety: The Keystone of the Kierkegaard-Heidegger
Relationship,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Concept of Anxiety, ed. Robert
L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), 165.
2 Ibid., 191.
3 Vincent McCarthy, “Heidegger: Kierkegaard’s Influence Hidden and In Full View,” in
Kierkegaard and Existentialism, ed. Jon Stewart (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2011), 106.
4