Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T12:45:37.618Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Heidegger's interpretation of Kant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2011

Stephan Käufer
Affiliation:
Franklin & Marshall College
Daniel O. Dahlstrom
Affiliation:
Boston University
Get access

Summary

When, a few years ago, I studied the Critique of Pure Reason again and read it against the background of Husserl's phenomenology, it was as if the scales fell from my eyes, and Kant became for me an essential confirmation of the correctness of the way I was seeking. (GA 25: 431/PIK 292)

With these words Heidegger closes his 1927/28 lecture course on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. They reveal a lot about Heidegger's work on Kant. Heidegger experienced in Kant the same philosophical originality and insight that makes Being and Time such an enduringly important book. Indeed, Heidegger implies here that he sees substantial overlap between his own work and Kant's. When Heidegger publishes his interpretation of Kant, commentators condemn this overlap. They claim that Heidegger's interpretation distorts Kant and buries his transcendental philosophy under a mound of Heideggerian views. The aging Heidegger himself feels compelled to issue a retraction in a late preface to his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, claiming – with uncharacteristic modesty, and falsely, as it turns out – that he had forced too much of his own thought onto Kant, subjecting the Critique to a reading whose basic terms are foreign to it. This presumption endures, but it is mistaken. Heidegger's Kant-interpretation is important, and it is so deeply intertwined with the existential phenomenology of Being and Time that it is impossible to understand one without the other.

Type
Chapter
Information
Interpreting Heidegger
Critical Essays
, pp. 174 - 196
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cassirer, Ernst, “Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,” Kant-Studien 36 (1931): 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Hermann, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 2nd edn (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1914), 12Google Scholar
Natorp, Paul, Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1910), 276Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×