Heidegger’s Shadow: Kant, Husserl, and the Transcendental Turn

Heidegger’s engagement with Kant has long attracted scholarly interest. Heidegger’s interpretive works on Kant – in particular, his 1927–1928 lecture series on the Critique of Pure Reason, his 1929 book that followed, his 1931 lecture series on Kant’s practical philosophy, and his 1935–1936 lecture series reconsidering the first Critique – witness the meeting of two of the most formidable minds in the history of philosophy. In the sea of scholarship on Heidegger’s engagement with Kant, Chad Engelland’s book is remarkable due to its breadth. Engelland treats not only Heidegger’s major works on Kant, composed over the course of his career; he also treats the surrounding works that bear on Heidegger’s reception of Kant though they do not take Kant as their main subject, such as Heidegger’s lecture courses on Schelling and Leibniz, and the Contributions. Despite the breadth of his study, Engelland does not shy away from offering an in-depth account of the key moments of Heidegger’s Kant engagement. Through these analyses, Engelland makes the argument that “the phenomenological Kant remains one of the principal reference points for the variations of Heidegger’s own peculiar ‘transcendental’ and ‘phenomenological’ thinking” (84–85). Engelland’s position stands in stark contrast to the scholarly consensus that the later Heidegger abandons transcendental philosophy, and Kant along with it.

Engelland frames his inquiry in terms of a “problem of motivation” (1f.). Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger aim not to consider beings proper, but to consider their givenness – how we are able to encounter beings by transcending or going beyond them (rather than what we experience). This “change of focus from things to their givenness” (as Engelland later puts it) is the transcendental turn (222). Motivating the transcendental turn in a reader, despite the tendency to focus on beings (evidenced by the Western philosophical tradition), is the problem of motivation. Over the course of his career, the early and late Heidegger offers different answers on how to motivate the transcendental turn. However, the turn continues to be a necessary step into Heidegger’s inquiry – though in the later Heidegger, only a preliminary step to a more fundamental question. Therefore, Kant continues to be an important interlocutor throughout Heidegger’s career, leading “to the threshold of Heidegger’s own later thinking” (125).

The chapters proceed chronologically through Heidegger’s engagement with Kant. The first chapter treats Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time (1927). Engelland suggests that Heidegger aimed in this work to inquire into the givenness of beings in two stages. Heidegger raises a preliminary question about the being of Dasein, who is “open to the being of entities” (57). This question resembles Kant’s own “problem of constitution” (216), though Heidegger suggests that Kant does not fully grasp his own insight into the timeliness of the subject. This preliminary question, Engelland argues, shifts the focus from beings to their givenness (i. e., motivates the transcendental turn) via the concept of authenticity. While the inauthentic researcher loses themselves in their surroundings, “engrossed in the object-pole of experience” (18), the authentic researcher comes to appreciate the existential structures that enable their access to beings – in particular, the prior context from which particular beings emerge.

The preliminary question tells us that Dasein has access to a context; from here, one can transition to a further, grounding question, “only obscurely, if at all, glimpsed by Kant” (31). This question inquires into the interrelationship between Dasein and being: how does Dasein access the context or domain within which beings can be encountered; how does Dasein access a particular meaning of being? Answering this question would offer a deeper explanation for the givenness of beings, beyond the constitution of the subject and to the “opening up of the domain on which the encountering [of beings] takes place” (2). Engelland suggests that Heidegger planned to answer both questions, but Being and Time was never finished, and the second question was left unanswered. However, Heidegger indicates that he intended to undertake a historical inquiry into this interrelationship (40). Heidegger attempted this inquiry in the late 1920s, for example by engaging with Kant. However, Engelland makes the surprising claim that Heidegger’s 1930s work, the Contributions, also fulfills Heidegger’s intention; it inquires into the meanings of being opened over the course of Western history, though with some departures from his earlier framework (55f.).

The second chapter gathers together a wealth of evidence to offer a coherent narrative about Heidegger’s engagement with Kant over the course of his career. With great clarity, Engelland divides Heidegger’s engagement with Kant into four distinct phases. Each phase is framed by Kant’s relationship to Husserl’s phenomenology, as Heidegger perceives a close relationship between the two thinkers. In the first phase (1912–1925), Heidegger exhibits a growing appreciation for Kant’s philosophy; yet Kant is conceived as “non-phenomenological,” only a predecessor to Husserl’s phenomenology, because Heidegger thinks that Kant constructs his account of experience through argument, rather than disclosing it through phenomenology. In the second phase (1925–1927), Heidegger begins to appreciate the phenomenological aspects of Kant’s thinking –Kant does attempt to disclose the structures enabling our transcendence, “anticipat[ing] Husserl” (73) – seeing Kant (along with Husserl) as a “precursor” to Heidegger’s own work in Being and Time. The third phase (1927–1929) marks the most intense and most approving phase of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant, taking Kant as a “collaborator”, and one who “surpasses Husserl” (77). In the fourth phase (1930 onwards), Heidegger takes a step back, recognizing certain flaws in Kant’s philosophy. Kant becomes, again, a precursor to Heidegger’s work – “on par with Husserl” (79) – and one that must be surpassed. The remainder of Chapter 2 fills out the third phase of Heidegger’s Kant engagement, when Heidegger sees in Kant an “anticipation and confirmation of his own project” (104). On Engelland’s account, Heidegger takes Kant to hint at the timeliness of Dasein that allows for beings to be given, though Heidegger suggests that Kant inauthentically retreats from his phenomenological insights in the second edition of the first Critique. I will discuss this phase in more detail below.

The fourth phase is developed over the next three chapters (Chapter 3–5). In this phase, Heidegger attempts to depart from the “problematic subjectivism” found in Kant, as well as in his own early phenomenology (218). The third chapter treats the 1935–1936 lecture series, What is a Thing, Heidegger’s “revised Kant book” (123). Rather than endorsing the Critique of Pure Reason as he did in the late 1920s (or at least, the first edition of it), Engelland suggests that Heidegger takes its legacy to be ambiguous (128). On this rereading, Kant attempts to ground our access to objects in the thinking subject; but in so doing, Kant finds that judgment is “essentially in service to intuition,” providing a revolutionary depiction of thinking (135). Thinking is not sufficient for accessing beings; something further, beyond the subject, is necessary. In particular, Kant’s analysis points to the “original domain” or “pre-objective context” that allows the thinking subject to relate to an intuited object (149–150). Still, Kant’s endeavor affords priority to the subject, for example by formulating principles of understanding that govern our access to objects (149). For this reason, Kant’s inquiry ambiguously paves the way both for German Idealism, which embraces the priority of logic and understanding, and for Heidegger’s later philosophy, which disposes of the priority of logic by focusing on affectivity. Both directions of inquiry develop beyond Kant by incorporating a historical dimension: whereas German Idealism paints history as the progressive development of absolute knowing, Heidegger analyzes history in terms of fundamental dispositions.

The fourth chapter treats Heidegger’s attempt to surpass Kant’s transcendental philosophy in Contributions. Heidegger comes to criticize transcendental philosophy because it asks a question that comes too late, already presupposing a subject differentiated from objects: how can the subject transcend objects? Heidegger is interested in a deeper explanation of the givenness of beings. Heidegger suggests that the “transcendental domain” becomes open to us – such that we access objects, and differentiate subjects from objects – due to a fundamental disposition. Heidegger explores “the history of different domains founded on different fundamental dispositions” (172), suggesting that the givenness of beings is increasingly delimited over the course of history, such that we primarily think of beings as present-at-hand (i. e., in terms of physical, quantifiable properties). In this phase of his thought, Heidegger recognizes that we cannot simply “return to the full wealth of experience” by willing ourselves to be authentic; our historical moment limits our perspective, explaining the shortcomings of philosophers like Kant (224). However, historical reflection itself can provide access to parts of experience that our current historical moment covers over.

In trying to surpass Kant, Engelland suggests, Heidegger attempts to “leap over his own shadow,” as Heidegger himself describes the task of any philosopher. Engelland contends that Kant’s transcendental philosophy continues to play a decisive role in Heidegger’s later work. Only through transcendental philosophy – and through Heidegger’s own starting point in Being and Time – can one arrive at the problems treated in Contributions (171). While discussion of “subjects” and “objects” distorts the pre-theoretical context that Heidegger wishes to explore, and prioritizing the subject gives the subject too much credit for disclosing being, transcendental philosophy provides the vantage point from which we can first appreciate the pre-theoretical context. Kant provides a way into Heidegger’s later question, about how the transcendental domain is historically given.

The fifth and final chapter argues that Heidegger’s later works following the Contributions continue to be ambivalent toward Kant. Engelland also raises a number of objections to Heidegger. He for example suggests that Heidegger’s appeal to history to solve the motivation problem has disappointing results: he calls it “a gross overreach and simplification of every other philosophy that appears dogmatic and therefore off-putting rather than motivating” (219). Engelland argues that Heidegger’s personal path toward the transcendental turn is more effective than his appeals to either authenticity or history: engaging with the thought of Husserl and Kant pushes one to consider the givenness of beings and move beyond the prejudices of past tradition. Nevertheless, Heidegger moves this tradition forward by offering a “post-subjective transcendental philosophy” or an “affective transcendentalism” (223) that offers a deeper explanation for why we can transcend beings (how they are given), going beyond Husserl and Kant: for Heidegger, transcendence “is rooted in affectivity rather than the positing of the transcendental subject” (222).

Engelland’s book will interest scholars of Heidegger – particularly those working on Heidegger’s engagement with Kant, his engagement with Husserl, and the trajectory of his thought over the course of his career. Because Engelland outlines the structure of Heidegger’s works on Kant and reconstructs his key arguments, the book will be especially helpful to scholars grappling with the same source material.

Engelland’s discussion is at its best when he shows how his careful exposition of Heidegger’s arguments coupled with his wide-scope treatment of Heidegger’s corpus challenge the usual reading of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant. In this regard, the second chapter is quite successful. Engelland suggests that his periodization of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant challenges a number of theses, such as the “aberration thesis,” which contends that Heidegger’s remarkably Kantian turn in Being and Time is an aberration in an otherwise consistent philosophical career (67); the earlier and later Heidegger distances himself from Kant’s transcendental philosophy. To the contrary, Engelland suggests that Being and Time (second phase) presents a take on Kant that is largely consistent with Heidegger’s engagement with Kant from 1930 onward (fourth phase); in both phases, Heidegger sees a certain promise in Kant’s thought, while remaining aware of its shortcomings. If anything, Engelland suggests, the late-1920s period following the publication of Being and Time represents an aberration, in its enthusiasm for Kant. In addition to challenging the aberration thesis, Engelland’s account of Heidegger’s fourth-phase ambivalence toward Kant (both criticizing and endorsing) is a crucial component of his challenge to the scholarly consensus that the later Heidegger reject’s transcendental philosophy altogether.

Nevertheless, I would like to trouble Engelland’s depiction of the phases of Heidegger’s engagement, and in particular his challenge to the aberration thesis. In Engelland’s view, the second and fourth phases are largely consistent with one another in that Heidegger sees Kant as a “precursor” to his own work, yet remains critical of Kant. In the third phase – Heidegger’s most intense engagement with Kant’s works, occurring at the end of the 1920s – Heidegger sees Kant as a “collaborator” or “phenomenological partner”, largely endorsing Kant’s project (84). However, the criticism that Engelland takes to mark Heidegger’s fourth phase is already present in the late-1920s works constituting the third phase. If this is so, then it may be the case that Heidegger has a more stable and consistent reception of Kant than Engelland suggests, posing an even starker challenge to the aberration thesis.

In the fourth phase, Engelland argues, Heidegger suggests that Kant neglects the realm of the everyday (82). However, this claim already appears in the third phase – particularly, the 1927–1928 lecture course, when Heidegger references Kant’s “failure to recognize the phenomenon of world” (PIK 14), and suggests that Kant’s inquiry “suffers a significant contraction” since “Kant, following the tradition, identifies beings with what is present-at-hand” (PIK 30).^[1] Engelland also suggests that Heidegger finds Kant to be insufficiently historical in the fourth phase: “By 1930, Heidegger saw that … Kant’s horizon of questioning was geared toward the givenness of the thing and not the historical givenness of intelligibility” (83). Yet Heidegger already acknowledges this shortcoming in 1929, when he criticizes Kant for portraying the human being as a “fixed organon” of ahistorical categories (KPM 162), suggesting instead that “the metaphysics of Dasein” is “rooted historically in factical Dasein” (KPM 163). While Heidegger brushes this problem aside, remarking that he cannot discuss it further, he is clearly aware of it.

The prevalence of such critical statements in the late-1920s works where Heidegger most celebrates Kant brings out the deep ambivalence of Heidegger’s Kant interpretation during this period. One can just as easily say about the third phase what Engelland claims about the fourth: “in some contexts [Kant’s transcendental philosophy] is lauded and in others rejected” (195). In fact, Heidegger suggests in these late-1920s works that Kant “vacillates” (cf. PIK 219–220) and “wavers” (KPM 56), such that the first Critique (indeed, the first edition of the first Critique)^[2] contains a tension – even, a “battle” (PIK 198). Heidegger lauds those moments where Kant offers genuine phenomenological insight, and rejects those moments where Kant, following the tradition, latches on to the features of present-at-hand objects. Because Kant is ambiguous, Heidegger is ambivalent, offering an interpretation that aims to peel Kant’s insights from his errors. This way of interpreting Kant is deeply interesting, and it is something that we miss if we categorize the third phase as a period of endorsement alone.

The evidence I have introduced above challenges Engelland’s periodization, suggesting that one cannot distinguish a third and fourth phase of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant based on Heidegger’s criticism. The fourth phase does not offer new criticism; in fact, this criticism is already present in the third phase. Further, Heidegger’s critical moments are not more prevalent in the fourth phase; they are a thoroughgoing component of his late-1920s analysis. In both phases, Heidegger is ambivalent towards Kant.

Perhaps, then, we could better trace the periodization of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant through the fault lines of Heidegger’s ambivalence – the shifts in what Heidegger finds most productive in Kant, and what he finds most troubling – over the course of his career. Engelland provides a thorough account of the fault lines in Heidegger’s 1930s reading of Kant; developing those of the late 1920s would fill out this alternate, more complex periodization of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant. This alternate periodization might also suggest that Heidegger’s view of philosophy as a “leaping over of one’s shadow” already emerges in his earlier engagement with Kant; in the late 1920s, Heidegger already sees Kant vacillating between his own forward momentum and the backward pull of tradition.

Despite these reservations about Engelland’s characterization of Heidegger’s works in the late 1920s, Engelland’s study makes an important contribution to rethinking Heidegger’s engagement with Kant. Reconsidering Heidegger’s engagement with Kant from the 1930s onward, Engelland provides a convincing case for the continued significance of transcendental philosophy in his later work.