Such remarks muld very well be dismissed were it not for the

wide meamre of acceptance they have received.

Discussion Between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, A. Translated by Fr. Slade. In: N. Langiulli (ed.), The Existential Tradition: Selected Writings. New York: Doubleday, 1971. (1929e) 1971. (1929e)

A Disczcssion Between Emst Cassiret

and Martin Heidegger"
Ttmzslated by Francis Slade
[P. 17.1 CASSIRER: does Heidegget understand by Ne6 U?lnt Kantianism? Who is the opponent whom Heidegger has i n mind? T h e concept "NedCantianism"must not he defined s b u stantially, but functionally. What is a t issue is not the character of that philosophy as a dogmatic doctrinal system, but a way of
formulating the question.

HEIDECCER:I If
1The

am to begin by naminn names,

I will men-

following piece is a translatian of "ArMtsgerneinsehaft CassimHeideggcrV'(printed i Guido Scbneeberger, E r g Z m ~ g e n n rrc em Heideggdikliaglraphie, Bern, 1960, pp. r7-27) and i s a i record of the discussion betwem C a d @ and Heidegger which tmk place a t Dams, Switzerland, i March 1929 during the semn,d n Da~asec Hochscbulkurse. Since this record was made by ~ W O auditors of the discussian, the statements contained in what is here translated under the title "A Discussion Between Ernst Csslrer and Martin Heidegger" do not represent the written statements either of Cassirer or of Heidegger. However, thev do not contradict the known and a c h m 1 d g e d views o dtha o t h e philosophers. Contrasting f f accounts of this encounter between Cassim and Heidegger a n be found i Hendrick J. Pos, "RecoIleaions of Ernst Caszirer" in The n Philosophy of E m Cdrer, &tied by Paul A. Sehilpp, New York, 1949, pp. 67-69 and i n Straus, uKurr Riezler: In hkrnm5am" i What I s Polirieal: PhiIosqhy# Glencoe (Illinois), ~ g b o ,pp. 245n
246. Also of interest is the account gimn i T Cassim, Aus winem n . Lehm m i t E m Carsirer, New York, 1950, 167-167.

m.

T h e tmaslator wishes to thank Joseph Carpino and Thomas Pmkr for their many comments and suggestions during the course of the
prepmeion of this transladon. H e would also like to acknowledge the generodty of U7illi Schmidt who read parts of this tanslation and made suggestions for its improvement.

tion M e n , Windelband, Rickert, Erdrnann, Riehl. Whs t i s common to every form of Neo-Kantianisrn can only be understood i terms of i t s origin. This is the embarrassing dilemma of n philosophy before the question of what still really remains to it [as a field of inquiry12 within the totality of knowledge. There appeared to remain only the knowledge about science, not of "that-which-is" [das Seiende]. It w a s this paint of view that def i n d the movement back to Kant. Kant was seen as the theoretician of the mathematico-physical theory of knowledge. Kan t, however, did not wish to provide a theory of natural science, but to show the problematic of metaphysics, more specifically of ontology. My intention is to wmk this essential content of the positive basis of the Critique of Pure Reason into ontology. B y reason of my interpretation of the Dialectic as ontology, I believe that the problem of Being [Sein] in the Transcendental Logic, seemingly only negative i Kant, i s really a positive problem. n C A S ~ ~ RCohen is only undefstcmd correctly if he is underER: stood historically, not simply as an epistemologist. I do not conceive o my own development as a defection from Gohen. The f positioning of the mathematical sciences of nature is for me only a paradigm, not the whole of the problem.-Heidegger and I are i agreement on one point: for Kant the ~roductive n imaginadon is of central significance. I have been led to this through my work on the symbolic. T h e imagination is the relation of all thinking to intuition, synthesis speciosa. The synthesis i s the thought. W h a t matters far Kant i s fundamental power of the synthesis which makes use of the species. [P.r8J And this leads t the heart of the image-concept: of the ~ymbolancept. o -Kant's major problem is h w is freedom pmsiile. Kant says that we conceive only that freedom is inconceivable. And yet t 1 a m is the Kanrian ethics. T h e categorical imperative ought to be such that the moral law holds not only fur men, but for all rational beings in general. The moral as such leads beyond the
e n c l d within b r a c k ~ ~] has bem insated by the [ transkitor. Material enclosed within pammthe~es ) appears in paren( theses i the German tart. Page numbers in brackets an the page n numbers of the German t a t . a Reading "Bildbegriffos" far "BBdmgbe~iffe"as emended by Guido Schneeberga in a letter to the editor of th;s anthology.
2 Material

194

MART'IN HEmEIGGER

wmld of appeatances. 'What is a t snke here is the break-through to the mundus intelligibilis. In the ethical m!m a point is reached which is no longer relative to the finitude of the cagnizing being.-And this ties i with what Heidegger has done. T h e n extraordinary importance of the schematisrn cannot be overestimated. Yet in tbe ethical realm Kant suppresses the schematism. Far he sy our concepts are "senses o a f [Einsicbten] (not cognitions), Usen- of . which can na longer be schema" tized. There i s at most a typology, not a schematism, of Practical Reason. For Kent the schematism i s a tminus a quo, not a t m i m ~ q m . Kanis point of departure i s the problem ad posed by Heidegger. However* this citcle widened for Kant. Heidegger has made the p i n t that our cognitive power is finite. It is relative and confined. But haw does such a finite being attain howledge, reason, truth?-Heidgget formulates the prob Iem of truth and says there cannot be any truths in themselves, or eternal truths, but truths are always relative to Dasein. For Kant, on the other hand, this was exactly the prablm. Cmnted this finitude, how can there be rncesary and universal truths? Now are synthetic judgmen~ picri a possible? 'That i s the problem which Kant exemplifies with mathematics. Finite copition hvolves itself with truth, but this relationship again works into a " m d y " [i.e., is qualified] (?) H e i d e w has said that Kant has given no demonstration of tbe possibility of mathematics. But this problem is posed in the Pmtegomena. Once more, then, this pure theoretical question, how does a finite being come to a determination of objects which as such are not limited by finitude, must fint of all be clarified.-My question now is this: Does Heidegger wish t renounce this complete objectivity, this o fonn of absoluteness, which Kant has s d far i the realms n of the ethical and the theoretical and in the CMqw of Judg

..

. ."

mmt?

H m ~ ~ c o r T~ : ro begin with the q u d o n of the mathematical sciences of nature* [P. 1 . In Kant nature does not mean an 91 object d the mathematical science o nature, but rather the tof tality OF "thatwhich-iS in f i e sense OF the presenwt-hand [das G m e des Seienden im Sinm des Vorhmrdenen]. Kant means
"that-which-is" as mch without limimtim to s determinate area of "that-which-is." W h a t I want to show is that the Analytic is

not an ontology of nature ss object of natural science, but a general ontology, that i5 a mitically hsed metaphysics generalis. Kant himseIf saps that the problematic of she P~olegomenais not the centraI theme. This is, rather, the question concerning the possibility of a mziaphyk generalis, more exactly, of its =ahation.-Cslsh wants to &OW further that fmitade is tmnxended in the ethical writings. There is something in the cat* gon'ca1 imperative which exceeds the finite being. Yet precisely the concept of the imperative displays in itself the inner relation to a finite being. Even this transcendence still remains within finitude. For Kant human reason is completely dependent u p itself and cannot escape from i ~ l into an eternal and ahlute f nor into the world of things. Thk "In-between"is the essence of practical zeason. One goes astray i the interpretation. of the n KaTatian ethics if m e does not see the inner E u n d ~ n the Law of for Dasein. Certainly there is something in the m d law which goes beyond sensibility. However, the question is, what i s the character of the jnner structure of itseIf? Is this S~IU~~U.E finite or infinite? There lies i this question a redly centcaI p n b lem. Just i that which one puts forward as constitutive infinity, n the character of the h i t e comes to light. Kant designates the imagination of the schemarim as exhibitkt o r i g i h . This power of origination is, i t is true, i a certain way, a creative power n there, but as exhibitiu it m o t dispense with receptivity. Man is rm infinite and a h l u t e in the matian of "that-which-is" a itself [des Seienden ~eIb~t], he ir infinite i the sene of but n the understanding d Being [des Seins]. This infinity of the ontobgical js by its very nature bound to ontic experience, so that one must say just the opposite: this i n h i t p which breaks forth in the imagination is precisely the most acute argument for finitude, Ontology is an index of finitude. Cod does not have it. [i.e., ontoIogy1-The~upon CaJsirer's next question with reference to the concept of truth axis*At tbe most profound level truth itself is at one with ihe mucture o tmmcendence & m g h f the fact that D s i is "something-which-is" which i s open to a en other "things-which-sre" and to itself. W e are "something which-is" thst keeps itselE in the unhiddenness o "thatf which-is." [P. zo.] T keep oneself in this way in the o openness of "thatwhich-is" is what I cell Beingin-the-truth

of its finitude man's Being-in-thetruth is a t the same time a Being-inthe-untruth. Untruth belongs to the inmost core of D ~ e i n . I believe &at I have found only here the root which estab lishes a metaphysical explanation for what Kant called "metaphysical illusion."-To take Cassirer's question concerning universalIy valid eternal truths. When J say truth is relative to Dasein, that is no ontic statement in the sense that what is m e is always only what the individual man thinks. T h e proposition is metaphysical. Truth as such can only be as truth if Dasein exists. Only with tbe existence of something such as Dasein does tnrth first come about But n w to the question: o What about tbe validity, the etemitp OF truth? O n e commonly formulates this question i terms of the problem of validity, i.e., n i terms of the asserted proposition. The problem must be n broached differently. Truth is relative to Dasein. T h e transsubjectivity of truth, this breaking-out of truth beyond the individual, signifies that ~eing-in-the-truth means to be given aver to end to be taken up with "thatwhich-is." W h a t can here be separated as objective knowledge, taking into account the particular matted-fact individual existence, has a truth content which says something about "that-which-%."T h i s is, however, badly interpreted if it is said that over against the flow of experience there i s something permanent, the eternal, the meaning and concept. At this point, then, I pose the question: W h a t does eternal really mean here7 Is this eternity not merely permanence i the sense of the aei [the "forevern] OF time? Is i t n possible only by r e a m of an inner transcendence of time itself? What do a11 those expressions of transcendental metaphysics, a prim+, aei on, ow&$ mean? They are only to be undmtood end are only possible through the fact that time itself has the character of horizon, so that I have always conjointly in an anticipatory remembering stance, s horizon of present, EUturi~, and pastmess, and, consequently, there is given a transcendentalontological time determination dthin which alone something mch as the permanence of substance is constituted.-My entire interpretation of temporality f to be understood from this point of view. The whole problematic in Sein und Zeit, which treats of the Dasein of man, is no philosophical snthropalogy. It is

[In-dm-Wahrheitsein]. And

I go further. Because

DISCUSSXON BETWEEN CASSIRBR AND HETDEGGER

19 17

much tao limited and much too sketchy for that. Here there is a problematic which has not as such hitherto been broached. T h e question [of Sein tlnd Zeit] i s this: if the possibility of the understanding of "that-which-is" i s based on an understanding of Being, and if this ontological understanding is in some sense in terms of time [P. 211,then the task i s to expose the t e m p rality af Dasein in terms of the possibility of the understanding of Being. And all problems [in Sein 1md Zeit] are in terms of this. The analysis of death i s intended to expose in one direction Dasein's radical futurity, and not to furnish a final and meaphysical teaching concerning the essence of death. The analysis o dread [Angst] has the sole function of preparing the quesf tion: On she basis of what metaphysical meaning of Dasein itself is it possible that man as such can be put before such a thing as Nothjng [das Nichts]? Only if I understand Nothing or Dread do I have the possibility of understanding Being. Only in the unity of the understanding of Being and Nothing does the question of the origin of the ' W y " suddenly arise. This central problem of Being, o Nothing, and of the Why, i s the most f elementary, the most concrete problem. T h e entire Analytic of Dusein is directed toward this. At the same time I pose a further question of method. In what way must a metaphysics of Das& be initiated? Is there not a definite wer-all view of life [Weltanschm~.~g] its basis? It is not the task of philosaphy at to provide such an over-all view of life, though certainly such a is already the presupposition of the activity of philosophizing. The over-all view of life which the philosopher provides is not a direct m e in the sense of a doctrine, but rests i this, that n in the act of philosophizing it comes about that the transcendence of Dmein itself, i.e., the inner possibility gossessed by this finite being to be in relation to "that-which-is" i its t t l t , i s n oaiy

made radical. The question, how is h d possible, dws not e m make sense because freedom is not an object of theoretical comprehension, but an object of the act of philosophizing. That can mean nothing else than that freedom is, and can only be, i the n ace of freeing. The sole adequate relation which man has to free dam is [ n terms of] the act by which freedom sets itself free in i
man.

1 9 ~

MARTIN FtEIQEGGRR

Q d m Add~ese~l Cassirer (by a student of philosophy): to

I.

What way can man find

to infinity? In what fashion can

man participate ia infinity? Z. Is infinity M be achieved as a privative determination of finitude, or is i t a domain in its own right?

[P.2. 23
be the task of philosophy to eFfect a liberation from dread, or is it its task to hand man wer quite radically to dread?
3.

T what extent should it o

CASSIRER: Ad r. In no other way than through the medium of F m . The function of Fonn is such that man, while he
changes his existence [ h e i n ] in to Form, i.e., while he has to transform everything which is i him as experience into some n kind of objective structure, does not, it i true, thereby b m e s radically freed from the finitude of the point af departure (For this is still definitely related to his finitude), but i s fat as his n o wistmce develops out of finitude, his existence leads finitude out of itself into something new, immanent infinity. Man cannot make the jump out of his own finitude into a realistically understood infinity. Howmr, he can have, and must have, a metnbaris which leads him from the immdacy o his own f existence into the region of pure F m . H e possesses his infinity excIusivcly i this Form. Tram the chalice of this realm n o spirits, infinity pours forth for him." The reah o spirits is f f not a metaphysical realm of spirits. T h e realm of spirits is just that spiritual m l d which he h h s l has created. That he i i e mm f could create it is the seal of his infinity,-Ad 2. It i s not only a privative determinatim, but is a domain i its own right. Not, n however, a domain that i s won only i inflict with finitude, but n rather infinity is precisely the totality, the p e r k t fulfillment of finitude itself. And this fulfinment o finitude is just what conf stitutes infinitg. Thus Coethe's 'Wouldst thou stride into the
The h n text reads: #Aus d m Ke'lche diem Ckistmeiches strtht ihm die Unmdlichkeit*"Cf. Schiller's poem "Die Freundshaft," lines 5 e o ; and Hegel's Phiinamenulagic dcr Geirtes, concluding lines.
4

infinite, thou hast but to go in the finite i every direction."' n Ad 3. That i a question which goes right to the mots, and one s can answer it only with a kind of pmksion of faith. Philosophy has allowed man to become free just x, far as he can become free. Thereby i t frees him radically, to be sure, from dread as a pure state of feeling. T h e aim i s liberation i this sense: *Cast n the anxiety of the terrestrial from yourselves." That is the position of Idedirm which I have myself always p f d .

HEIDHOCER:his first lecture Cassirer has used the expres In $ions tennixus a qm md tmmhw ad q m . One could that the terminus ad quem is a complete Philosophy OF Culture i the s n of a dadicalpjon of h e wholeness of the Fom of a n as
structure-cteating cansciouwess. T h e fxm~i+l*; qw h Cassirer a [P. 23.1 My podtion is the op is completely posite: the minzrr a quo i s my central problematic The que+ tion i s whether the terminus ad quem is just as clear for me. This, I hdd, consists not in a mmp1ete Philosophy of Culture, but in rbe question: ti to on? T h e problematic of a metaphysics of Dasein, for me, grows out of this question. O ,to come once r again to the heart of the Kant interpretation, I attempted to show that to staa from a concept of the logos is not quite such an obvious p d u but, on the mntrary, that the question of ~ the pmsibihty of metaphysics requixes a metaphysics of D d n itself, in such a way that the question, what man is, doem't have to be a n m d 50 much in h sense of an anthropological e system, but that this question must f i s t of all be d l y clarified with mipet to the perspective i which it will be posed. A= the n concepts tenninzcs a quo and t m m i m s ad qum only a heuristic formulation of the question o are they based in rbe essence o f r philosophy itself? This problematic does not seem to me to bc clearly worked out in Cassirer's philosophy up till now. What matters first of all for Csssirer i to expose the diEennt Forms OF s the fom-giving activity and then, subsequendy, to push h d fTom there into a certain dimension of the b m a t a t i n g p e themselves. Now one muld say i t follows that this dimension is stiIl basically the same as that which I call Dasein.
6"Gott, Gemtit

und Welt," Sprikhe In Rcimtm

This would be wrong, however. T h e difference appean most clearly i the concept of freedom. I have spoken of an act of n freeing in the sense that the setting free of the inner transcendence of Dasein is the very character of the act of philosophizing. And h a the real meaning o this act of freeing consists i bef n coming free for the finitude of Dmeis entering directly into the thrownness [Gworfenheit] of Dasein. I have not given f d o m to m y d f although I can be the self that Iam only through being free. The self that I am, however, now not in the sense of a n undiRerentiated ground of explanation, but i n the sense that Dasein is the really fundamental event i which n o f the act of exisring of man, and with that, every existence as such essentially comes about.-I believe that what I designate with the term D s n cannot be translated by one of nd Caniret's concepts. W h a t I call D&n i s e m t i a l l y charac terizcd not only through that which is designated as "spirit," or as "life; b rather i t is the original unity and the immanent t s ~ ~ c t u ofe the relatedness of a man who, i his shackledness r n to the body, stands i a special boundness with 'that-which-is" n [P.241, in the sense that Dasein as bee, thrown in the midst of "thatulhich-is:' effects a breaking-into "thatuvhich-is," a breaking-into which is always historically in the final sense fortuitous; x, fortuitous that man exists at the highhest point of bis own pwibility only i a wry faK moments of Dwa'fi's duration n between life and death.-ln all my philosophical work I have completely left out of consideration the traditional form and division of the philosophical disciplines, because I believe that orienting oneself in terms of these constitutes the greatest snare i the way of getting hck to the inner pbIemstic af philoson phy. Neid~a Plato nor Aristode knew anything about such a division i phikmphy. This was an affair of the Schools. EfFoa n is required to break through these disciplines and to come back again to the @tally metaphysical mode of Being of the r e spective areas [underlying these disciplines]. Art is not merely a Form of the fomenting consciousness, rather art has itself a metaphysical sense within the fundamental event that Dasdn itself- i s . 4 have intentionally stressed these differences. T h e work that really has to be done i not helped by smoothing them s over. For h e sake of clarity I would like K, place o u r entire

divrussion once more under the sign oE Ksnt's Critique of Pzue Rmm, and once more to f upon the question, what man is, m as the central question. This question need not be put anthmpocentrically, but it must be shown, &rough the fact that man is the being who transcends, i.e., i s open to "that-which-is" in its totality and to himself, that by means of this eccentric character man i s also at the same time put into the totality of "thatwhich-is" as such. The question and the idea of a philosophical an&mp10~ has this meaning. not that o investigating man f empiricalIy as a given object. Rather it has to be motivated out o the central problematic of philosophy itself which must lead f man back beyond himself into the whole of "that-which-is," in

order to make manifet to him, for all his freedom, the nothingness of his Dmei7t. T h i s nothingness is not an inducement to p~simirmand dejection, but to the understanding of this, namely, that there is genuine activity only where there is opps sition aad that philosophy has the task of thrct*g man back into the h a d n s of his fate from out u# the sofmess of one who merely lives off the work of the spirit. [P.25.1 CASSWR: believe it has already herome dearer i I n what the opposition m i s t s . It i , howeverpnot fruitful to s h e s s this opposition repeatedly. We ere a t a point where little is to be gained through purely logical arpmtmts. It seems, then, we are condemned here to some sort of relativity. Howwer, w may e not persist i this relativity which would place empirical man n in the center, What Heidegger said st the end was most important. His position cannot be a n t h m ~ a i either. And then, c I ask, where now lies the common center in our opposition? We do not need to look for this. For w have this center, and we e have it indeed because there i s one ccnnmcm objective human world i which, although the differences of individuals are in n no way cancelled, a bridge is built from individual to indiridusl. T h a t I 6nd again and again i the primal phenomenon of lann guage. Everyone speaks his own language, and yet we understand one another through the medium of language. There is something such as the language, something such as a unity over and above the endlessly different ways of speaking. Thesein lies the decisive pdint for me. And therefore I s t a d f*orm the objectivity of the symbolic Form because here "the inmnceivabIe

262

M A R T I N FIEIDEGGER

is schieved,"fl That is what I should like to a the world OF 1 1 objective spirit. There is no other way from one existence [Dasein] to another existence [DmeinJ than through this world of Form. If it did not exist, then I would not h a w how such a thing as a common understanding could be. Cognition, too, is therefore simpfy only a basic instance of this position, because an objective assertion is formulated which no longer takes into consideration the subjectivity of the particular individual.-Heidegger has correctly said that the fundaments1 question of his metaphysics i s the same one which formed Plata and Aristotle: VVhat is, "bat-which-is*? And he has a i d fu&m that Kant once again took up with this question. However, here an essential difference seems to me to obtain, which i s in fact what Kant called the Copernican revolution. The question of being seems to me, I admit, to be i no way eliminated as a result of this n revolution. However, the question of being acquires a much more complicated form. In what daes that rmolurion consist? The question of how objects are determined is preceded by a question about the constitution of the being of a n objectivity as such. W h a t is new i this revolution seems to me to lie in this, n that there is now no longer r single such structure of being, .but rather that we have completely different structures of being. [P.2 . Each new struetue of. being has new a priori p r e 61 suppositions. Kant shms how levmy kind OF new Form always bean upon a new world of objectivities. In that way a whole new multiplicity enters into the problem of the object as such. By that means rhe old dogmatic metaphysics becomes the new Kantian metaphysia Tbe being o the old metaphysics was f substance, that onc which underlies. In the new metaphysics being is in my language no longer the being o a substance, f but the being that proceeds from n manifold of bctimal d e terminations and meanings. Arid here appears to me to lie the essential point of distinction of my position in opposition to Heidegger.-I hoId to the Kantian formulation of the question of the transmdenta1. The essential of the trarascendentd
a'rlle German text, i quotation marks here, reads: W d him n

ndr ha ' Unbegr&#liche getmr* ist, It seems intended to recall "Dm Unberehrcibliehe, Him ist cr gemM F a t , Part IL in

DISCUSSION B&TWT!EN CASSIRER kND HEIDEGGEIR

203

methad lies in this, that i t begins with s given. T h u s X inquire into the possibility of the given called 'language." How is it nmceivable that w as one existence [Dasein] to another can undere stend each other in this medium? Or, how js it possible that we are able to see at all a work of a n as an objective determinate thing? This question must be solved. Perhaps not all questions i philosophy are to be solved an this basis. I believe that only n if one has posed this question does he gain access to Heideg ger's formulation of the question.

HB~BGGER:repeat Plato's question cannot mean that we TO fall back upan the answer of the Creeks. Being itself i s splintered
into a multiplicity, and a central problem consists in gaining a position from which to understand the inner diversity of the ways of Being out of the idea of Being.-Just reconciling &Eerences will never be reaIly producthe. It is the eaence of philosophy, as a finite affair of man, that it is limited within the finitude of man. Since philosophy is concerned with the whole of man and the highest i man, this finitude must show itself n i n m a completely radical manner+-What matters to me is that you retain this one thing Emm our confrontation: don't fasten on our differences as the disagffements of individuals engaged i philosophy, but rather come to feel that we are n once again on the way towards taking seriously the cenml question of metaphysics. W h a t you see bere on a small scale, the difference of individuals engaged i philosophy within the n unity of the pblIematic, i s also to be found, though quite differently, on e large scaIe [P.271; and that is just the essential thing in canfronting the history of philosophy, to see how i t i s precisely the differentiating of standpoints which is the m of t philosophical work.