discursive living • gary e. davis • berkeley: Cartesian sensibility vs. hermeneutical sensibility

February 7, 2025

Standard readings of Heidegger look for a fundamental philosophy (essentially “Heidegger”-ian conceptuality) rather than accurately discerning that Heid-
egger is fundamentally oriented toward evincing others’ emancipatory thinking, and his conceptuality is occasioned by his topic, not secretly ontologistic, then applied. Of course, the reader would deny secret ontologism projected into “Heidegger.”

I would argue that Cartesian implicature in reading causes regard of Heid-
egger’s interactions as supplements to reader-unclarified fundamentalist thinking about “Heidegger.” Ironically, recognition that Heidegger is striving
to work beyond ontologism may have newly-ontologistic implicature which is given to “Heidegger.” Scholars looking for a hidden internality mirror their turn away from the interpersonal venue (discursive, pedagogical character) of every-
thing Heidegger writes. In particular, therebeing (Dasein) is interactive in conception, not ego-istic (though Cartesian history understands existence egoistically, which Heidegger seeks to undo through conceptual analysis).

Regarding interaction as supplementary (instrumental) to some trans-temporal (Transcendentalist?) conceptual fundamentality conceals the primacy of Heidegger’s hermeneutical (other-oriented) teaching, which seeks others’ enowning of emancipatory thinking. His events of appropriation (essays, lectures, courses) are not applications of some essentially-Heideggerian philosophy.

The essentialist mind believes that thinking has a conceptual core which scholars are to disclose. That was credible for the history of philosophy, given its metaphysicalist aspirations for determining Deep Structure. That’s com-
monly expressed with the implicitly Transcendentalist reading of Heidegger.

But there is no essentially Heideggerian philosophy. There are ways of others’ thinking which unwittingly call (to Heidegger) for disclosure of their mythical essentialism through emancipatory teaching. Ultimately, we are in an openness which is ultimately open. Though Heidegger doesn’t prospect Our Openness specifically, It’s an evolvability which is Itself evolving. (A link at the end here carries that kind of thinking beyond Heidegger.)

Searching for the depths of “Heidegger” will always disclose (mirror) one’s
own era of conceptuality. But that doesn’t imply that Heidegger is essentially
a “Rorschach” for others’ conceptuality. Rather, the topic-centered engagement of his teaching is missed, such that one’s own era of conceptuality is found as “Heidegger’s.”

So, that would apply to me? Am I in error about Heidegger’s edificational motives—his emancipatory motives, his evincive motives which have no ontologistic implicature?

No. I am not in error. In particular, the above applies to the so-called “Heidegger controversy." After decades of following that controversy,
I’m confident that good-faith reading of Heidegger can counter, through evidentiary argument, the association of Heidegger with nazism: Prosecution mirrors the prosecutor’s way of reading, not a valid case against Heidegger.

Bad-faith reading of Heidegger continues. Inability to read how Heidegger had no sympathy for nazism shows newly in the January 31, 2025, revision of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Heidegger, by Michael Wheeler. He continues the invalid association of Heidegger with nazism.

But I have no desire to dwell with yet another synopsis of Heidegger’s career which embeds him in the 1930s as culpable for not being “political” (or rather: being inevitably political because the times were chaotic, and he’s accountable to the future for preferring to survive.)

A common tactic for scholars is to accept a false association of Heidegger with nazism (not as false, of course), then move on, back and forward to the good Heidegger. There’s posited a disabled (bad-minded) Heidegger and the able Heidegger (genuinely “philosophical”).

But the contradiction isn’t resolved: (1) how Heidegger lives in suppressed guilty conscience (allegedly) after becoming so well-known for a call to conscience in Being and Time; (2) how Heidegger’s academic work gives no credibility to an association with sympathy for nazism, while his accounts of administrative time are congruent with hermeneutical interests.

Very likely though, the scholar has a problem of reading which is being dis-
placed. I could show that with Wheeler’s Cartesian reading, but why bother?

Generally, scholars who are so possessed by nazism show their inability to avoid bad-faith reading by missing (unwittingly concealing) Heidegger’s emancipatory aims of teaching, which were transposed by him into administrative hopes, briefly, then move on to critical phenomenology (Mindfulness, and notebooks which backgrounded that project).

The nazism-obsessed scholars (so determined to hold Heidegger accountable to them for surviving the period) are also, apparently, inexperienced with how phenomenology may work to become ideology critique (Mindfulness) for the sake of formulating post-ideological teaching (“Origin of the Work of Art,” Contributions to Philosophy: from enowning, On Inception, and other unpublished work; and post-war transitions out of critique into conceptual prospecting: Identity and Difference, Poetry, Language, Thought, On the Way to Language, On Time and Being).

But my general comments here don’t intend to be convincing. I’m merely reacting to yet another scholarly narrative on “Heidegger” which continues to keep misreading institutional. I’m not interested in giving more time to such “idle chatter.”

But I am interested generally in understanding how Heidegger’s texts are read, yet much less so than prospecting evolving evolvability. (Sorry for the too-small font; expand by fingers.)