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Up Against The Object
Up Against The Object
John Harvey
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
412-352-5332
harveyj@duq.edu
1
Abstract: I examine Heidegger’s attempt in Being and Time to overcome the endemic Western
split between subject and object and conclude, following an examination of passages including
¶7. A. and ¶44 (b) (4), that it fails, even this radical work succumbing to the need for humans to
distinguish their experience from what is “out there.” The posit of the Objective, though cast into
doubt repeatedly by skeptics of varying metaphysical preferences, has proven impossible to
shake off. We can understand this objective imperative not by way of traditional epistemology
but through pragmatism, suggested by Heidegger in such passages as § 43 (b).
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Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time acquires its sense of destiny from its role as a response to a
modern amnesia, the forgetfulness of Being. Though Heidegger would likely repudiate the
Introduction to Metaphysics ([1935] 1959): “forgetfulness of being, which itself falls into
forgetfulness, is the unknown but enduring impetus to metaphysical questioning” (p. 19). This is
precisely the Freudian model of repressed psychic material as the cause of conscious
phenomena.1 Being and Time aims to resurrect the question concerning dem Sinn von Sein (Sein
und Zeit [hereafter S u. Z] H. 1). This phrase is usually translated “the meaning of Being,” but an
alternative which is attractive for various reasons is the rendering “sense of Being” employed,
Beginning with Sein und Zeit, it becomes apparent, though only gradually and indirectly, that
"sense of Being" ("Sinn von Sein") means something much more specific. For here "sense" is
characterized mainly as the final end (das Woraufhin) which makes a thing intelligible ([Sein und
Zeit] p. 151). (Spigelberg 2001, 285)
Certainly, Sinn sometimes means “meaning” in Being and Time, as in “Sinn is that wherein the
intelligibility [Verständlichkeit] of something maintains itself” (H. 151; Heidegger 1962). But at
other points other senses of ‘sense’ are relevant, as in “Sinn is the ‘upon-which’ of a projection
in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something; it gets its structure from a fore-
having, a fore-sight, and a fore-conception” (H. 151; Heidegger 1962; italics in original
German). Here the emphasis on the ‘dimension’ (as Heidegger confusingly calls it2) of the future
The problem
landmark attempt to overcome the split between subject and object that is endemic in Western
philosophy but which has come to be especially associated with the name of Descartes. Walter
Kaufmann paraphrased Heidegger’s admirers as saying “that he is the great anti-Cartesian who
has overcome the fatal bifurcation of matter and mind” (1956, 35). Joan Stambaugh has referred
to “The initial attempt in Being and Time to overcome the subject-object split” (Stambaugh
1995, 209). It is notorious that once one has created a gulf between mind and world, it becomes
epistemologically impossible to get the two back together again, that is, to attain certain
knowledge of what is “out there.” Thus opens an abyss leading to skepticism, relativism,
subjectivism, solipsism.
The view that a major part of the significance of Being and Time is its overcoming of the
subject-object split was inspired by the explicit promise of the work itself. Heidegger introduces
himself places in quotes) seems obvious, the presupposition of it is fatal (verhängnisvolle) “if its
ontological necessity and especially its ontological meaning [Sinn] are to be left in the dark”
(Heidegger 1962).
But although in many passages Heidegger steadfastly refuses to identify his distinctions
with the subject-object split, a case can be made that Being and Time, for all its brilliance, fails to
close the famous gap. In certain key passages related to Schein (semblance, illusion), Heidegger
makes a distinction equivalent to positing an object “out there.” In what follows, I shall support
the above thesis with a comparison of Heidegger’s writings with relevant points from earlier
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Dasein (Heidegger’s term for human being, Being and Time [hereafter BT] H. 11). Two of the
major themes of Heidegger’s chief work are time and disclosure. We have not understood these
themes until we see their intimate involvement: For Heidegger, primordial time is exactly the
disclosure of things out of the future, for the future is the source of things as they emanate
(literally “flow out”) into disclosedness. The Heidegger critic Thomas Sheehan identified
disclosure as “the temporal occurrence of being” (Sheehan 1999). Heidegger himself tells us, “the
present ‘arises’ [entspringt] from or is held by a future that has-been [gewesenden]” (H. 350;
arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is in the process of
having-been [gewesende]) releases the present from itself. We call this unified phenomenon of
the future that makes present in the process of having-been temporality” (B T H. 326; Heidegger
1996, translation modified). Further, Heidegger tells us that Temporality “means temporality
insofar as temporality itself is made into a theme as the condition of the possibility of the
Heidegger seems sometimes to express himself as eloquently with hyphens as with the
characters of the Roman alphabet. His most insistently repeated advertisement of his rejection of
hyphens here tell us that the world is not to be considered an extra, optional, contingent addition
to the subject, but rather a moment (constituent) of the manner of being that humans possess (BT
H. 12). Dasein is not a static thing, it is a project, es je sein Sein als seiniges zu sein hat (BT H.
12), “in each case it has its Being to be, and has it as its own” (Heidegger 1962). A further
indication of Heidegger’s teleology (to resort to the kind of terminology that Heidegger shuns) is
the privileged position he gives to the future among the dimensions of time. His idiosyncratic
ordering of reference “future, past, and present” (see, e.g., note 2 to this paper) is not of course
haphazard but reflects priority in a special sense: “Only in so far as it is futural can Dasein be
authentically as having been. The character of ‘having been’ arises, in a certain way, from the
In Section 7 of Being and Time Heidegger prepares the ground for his chosen method of
phenomenon in its primordial reference (ursprünglichen Bedeutung, H. 29) is “that which shows
itself in itself.” Derived from this, in Heidegger’s ontology, are two related terms.
(“sieht”…“so aus wie…,” H. 28-29; Heidegger 1962, 51). This semblance includes the case of
an entity showing itself as something that the entity is not, which I shall examine in a moment.
2. Appearance (Erscheinung) is a more complex case. “What appears does not show
itself” (H. 29); rather “Appearing is an announcing-itself [das Sich-melden] through something
It is within this framework that Heidegger shows that, for all his promise of overcoming
even possible for an entity [Seiendes] to show itself as something which in itself [an ihm selbst]
it is not.” The phrase an ihm selbst even reminds us of (though it is not identical to) Kant’s Ding
an sich, which created such grief for the next generation of idealists that they felt themselves
obligated to banish it (though some retained the phrase with an ideal meaning). I cannot
meaningfully construe this possibility of a thing appearing as what it is not without employing
(at least implicitly) the distinction between appearance and object. This distinction violates
Husserl’s phenomenology with its e0poxh& or deliberate bracketing of the existence of the
external world; though we cannot say that it violates Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology,
since it occurs in the midst of his exposition of it. 5 I shall return later to further evaluation of
An analytical philosopher might assume that we must believe in external objects before
we can conceive any desires about them. However, this betrays an intellectualist conception of
human life to overthrow which is precisely one of Heidegger’s aims. Dasein is already involved
in projects before there can be any question of consciously conceiving the ends of these projects,
for “Dasein … is nothing but … concerned absorption in the world” (Heidegger 1985, 197).
Heidegger has thoroughly absorbed the reliance on intentionality that he received from Husserl
I turn now to the problem of belief, true and especially false belief, because one of the
chief uses of the notion of objective reality has always been as a normative basis for the
Accounting for error has always been a challenge in epistemology. Some philosophers
work so hard to guarantee that our beliefs about the world are true that they leave one wondering
how we could ever be wrong. Aristotle handles the problem of the origin of error with a simple
distinction. “Regarding the nature of truth, we must maintain that not everything which appears
is true; firstly, because even if sensation — at least of the object peculiar to the sense in question
— is not false, still appearance [h( fantasi/a] is not the same as sensation” (Metaph. 1010 b;
Aristotle 1952, trans. W. D. Ross). He explains to us the relationship between sensation and
fantasi/a by saying that the latter is a movement coming about by an activity of sensation (De
An. 429 a 1-2). Therefore there is room for many a slip between the cup of sensation and the lip
of fantasi/a.
Modernity is characterized by the gulf between consciousness and reality, which provides
a yet ranker possibility of error and delusion. It has been alleged that there was no philosophical
problem of consciousness until Descartes. 6 The Greek word sunei/dhsij has been translated
“consciousness” but seems in Plato and Aristotle mostly to mean rather “conscience.” If
consciousness is thematized only in the 17th century, then we see that there should accordingly
be no radical problem of connecting the subject with the object until that time, and therefore no
serious problem as to whether the external world exists. We should remember in this connection
that Plato did not assert that the world of becoming was unreal, but rather that it was like a
shadow relative to the forms; but shadows have their own being, as anyone searching for a good
the mind, as we enter a state of unprecedentedly inclusive doubt, finding ourselves utterly at sea,
then grasping on to the Cogito and beginning the long struggle again to touch bottom
epistemologically. The student may wonder as we pause in the pit of doubt: How are we ever
going to get out of this? – But further, even when Descartes has established his existence it is by
no means obvious how he will escape solipsism. Now, there are to this day many philosophers
who accept the inference (if such it is 8 ) of the Cogito as valid; but the subsequent turn that the
argument takes, from Descartes’ version of the ontological argument to God’s goodness
guaranteeing the existence of the external world, has struck many readers as multifariously
dubious. Why this resort to questionable reasoning, and why has this episode not prevented
Descartes from being one of the most influential philosophers of the modern period? Because, of
course, both Descartes and his readers must have the world, and neither is very scrupulous as to
how it is obtained. I shall return to the examination of our compulsion to believe in the world.
move designed expressly to keep the foundation of Wissenschaft free from the possibility of
falsehood that may creep into empirical science, be the scientist ever so scrupulous – it is hard to
see how error could ever occur. Error, in a traditional account that Heidegger explicitly rejects, is
seen as the failure of the judgment to conform to the thing, since truth on this account is a
correspondence between intellect and thing, adaequatio intellectus et rei (see Aquinas, De
veritate, q. 1, a. 1 co.9 ). Without this traditional account, in what sense can phenomena
(including the phenomenon of speech) ever be wrong? Yet, pragmatically, is anyone seriously
prepared to accept a view of world and word in which no statement is ever erroneous? Certainly
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none of us conducts our life this way, but rather, if a question is important, we want to get
accurate information and try to avoid misinformation. Heidegger does indeed have a place in his
“Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity
to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error” (Heidegger [1929] 1993, 109-110). Denis
McManus found that for Heidegger “Error arises not at the level of some sort of ‘bare
perception’ but at that of interpretation” (McManus 1996, 562). McManus supported his view
with Heidegger’s statement that something “takes over the possibility of covering up” when it
“no longer takes the form of just letting something be seen, but is always harking back to
something else to which it points, so that it lets something be seen as something” (B T H. 34;
Heidegger 1962). Here we must recall Heidegger’s definition of interpretation to see the intimate
connection between interpretation and the “as”: “The ‘as’ makes up the structure of the
Heidegger 1962).11
Error is not a mere mistake (whatever that would mean) but is a kind of avoidance, akin
to forgetfulness of Being. The human being’s “flight from the mystery toward what is readily
available, onward from one current thing to the next, passing the mystery by – this is erring”
(Heidegger [1961] 1993, 133). This sounds like an account of the hazards of the spiritual path,
and therefore some philosophers might suppose that it has nothing to do with error in the
epistemological sense. But Heidegger, of course, does not analyze the world in the way that
Carnap did. For Heidegger incorrectness of judgments is only the most superficial mode of error
(Heidegger [1961] 1993, 133-134). He seems to be implying that the error of fleeing mystery
lays the groundwork for all erring, even miscalculation (133). 12 A parallel in Christian thought
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would be the doctrine that human error in all its dimensions derives ultimately from our
I may now return to the problem posed earlier concerning semblance in Heidegger.
Though Heidegger takes “that which shows itself in itself” as the primary meaning of
phenomenon, he does not abandon the use of semblance in the development of his own
philosophy, employing it, for example, in the exposition of falling at H. 222. 14 Heidegger states
that semblance is dependent upon phenomenon, since we must have the notion of something
showing itself before we can think of it as showing itself deceptively. However, he does not
mention that (deceptive) semblance is also dependent on the existence of objects independent of
us, since a showing cannot be deceptive unless it fails to correspond (that despised word) to the
real object. This last locution is of the kind that Heidegger and other phenomenologists try to
avoid, but this is my point: anyone living a human life makes assumptions (true or false) about
external objects,15 assumptions that phenomenologists, as human beings, cannot do without, but
‘relation between subject and Object’ – a procedure in which there lurks as much ‘truth’ as
vacuity. But subject and Object do not coincide with Dasein and the world” (H. 60). He realizes
that one may not unify the world by starting conceptually with subject and object and then
declaring them interdependent, for this is trying to build truth on an old faulty ontology. He
concedes that we may maintain the thesis that “every subject is what it is only for an Object” (cf.
Theaetetus 160 a-b), but the formal approach leaves the correlation and its terms indefinite. To
2
know what we are talking about, we must derive the subject-object pair on the basis of Being-in-
the-world (H. 208). Nothing less is at stake than the nature of truth itself: “Truth has by no means
the structure of an agreement between knowing and the object [Gegenstand] in the sense of a
likening of one entity (the subject) to another (the Object [Objekt])” (H. 218-219). “The world is
already presupposed in one’s Being alongside the ready-to-hand concernfully and factically, in
one’s thematizing of the present-at-hand, and in one’s discovering of this latter entity by
Objectification; that is to say, all these are possible only as ways of Being-in-the-world” (H. 365-
I have said that Heidegger’s statement that a thing may show itself as something that in
itself it is not implicitly posits an external object. It might be said that such an object is
presupposed even by the notion of phenomenon itself, for a philosopher of Descartes’ stripe or of
But I wish to be cautious here and to give Heidegger every benefit of the doubt: that is to
say, I do not want to condemn his formulation merely because it differs from the way another
philosopher would present the topic in question. That the rationalist-empiricist tradition wants to
divide the world a certain way does not mean that Heidegger is obliged to do so. He clearly
Heidegger’s dynamic world, where being and becoming have everything to do with one another,
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we need not have first the thing out there and then its appearance as an appended event. In his
interpretation of ancient Greek thought he concludes, “Being means appearing. Appearing is not
something subsequent that sometimes happens to being. Appearing is the very essence of being”
However, by contrast, with the case of an entity showing itself as something that it is not,
we can get no sense out of the notion without the distinction and contrast between the thing and
what it appears as; and in this contrast, the “thing” can be none other than the external object.
This object must be different from the subject, for the false seeming, as false, can only be
subjective.
Heidegger had a complex relationship to pragmatism. Rorty saw the young Heidegger of
Being and Time as pragmatic, viewing sentences as tools; whereas the older Heidegger “decided
his early pragmatism had been a premature surrender to ‘reason [which], glorified for centuries,
is the most stiff-necked adversary of thought’ ” (Heidegger 1977, 112, quoted at Rorty 1991, 52).
Hubert Dreyfus, crediting Gadamer for the idea, suggests that Heidegger was exposed to
American pragmatism through Emil Lask (Dreyfus 1991, 6). 16 Yet, though Heidegger at one
point was willing to dismiss pragmatism as the “most barren Americanism, according to whose
fundamental principle that is true which succeeds" (quoted in Shalin 1992), the early Heidegger
acknowledged that for him the object is intimately associated with pragmatic concerns, as shown
by his discussion of Reality at B T § 43 (b). It is our will, not our intellect, which convinces us of
the existence of a world beyond our experience, as that world both torments us with frustration
and lures us on with the objects of desire (see Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille u. Vorstellung,
3
passim). Since for Heidegger the world is essentially temporal and dynamic, truth is not
approached by a process of abstraction in which one transfers one’s belief from immediate
experience to an impersonal world of physical objects; rather, truth is to be revealed (if at all) in
the very midst of the hurly-burly we call human life. Schelling’s acute analysis attempted to
show that it is the restriction of our original freedom that leads us to believe in objects: “what we
behold in the objective world is not anything present outside us, but merely the inner limitation
of our own free activity. Being as such is merely the expression of an impeded freedom”
(Schelling [1800] 1978, 35). Our involvement with the world convinces us of things beyond
ourselves even in their manifestation as (to employ Heidegger’s terms) das Zuhandene, the
useful thing, tool; but even more so in their manifestation as das Vorhandene, the thing no longer
ready-to-hand because it is broken or unavailable: for it is exactly this frustrating character that
Western philosophers, who since the time of Plato and Aristotle have been taught that the
speculative (qewrhtiko&j) life is the best, are often less able than ordinary folks to see
important non-rational factors in life. 17 When it has been repeatedly discovered that analysis of
experience in itself is insufficient to prove the existence of the external world, philosophers feel
they have three alternatives: (1) denial of the external world, (2) skepticism or (3) the contriving
of a desperate argument to show that the world is there. These unsatisfactory options could be
honestly avoided by frank admission of the central and essential role of will in life. This
admission would allow us to say, “We believe in objects not because sense perception compels
us to, but because we have desires and aims that involve these objects, desires and aims that lie
closer to our hearts than any theoretical speculation.” It is unfortunate that the inevitable
I wish to develop the theme of pragmatism by asking: Why has Berkeley never convinced
anyone? All critics concede his brilliance, and the constant engagement with his ideas on the part
of philosophers since his time is at least implicit acknowledgement of the force of his arguments.
Is there a fatal flaw in his presentations that renders his works unable to gather a following?
More likely, his assumption as to what constitutes an adequate explanation is at odds with what
most Westerners require. Berkeley shows that he cannot find matter in phenomena, but all that
most Westerners require is that the positing of an entity have practical consequences touching on
affairs that interest them. It is enough for us that the assumption that rice, iron and oxygen exist
has consequences for our lives (lives not as passive sequences of experiences but as active
projects). It is pragmatism, not empiricism narrowly construed, that convinces most people that
objects exist.
It is not my contention here that it is useful to call Heidegger a pragmatist in the sense
that one can so call Peirce, James and Dewey. 18 There is too much in Heidegger’s sprawling
oeuvre that would stoutly resist such a classification, such as his discussion of the call of
conscience (see, e.g., BT ¶¶ 56-59) or his repeated insistence on the need for waiting (see
Heidegger 1966, part II, passim). Rather I call attention to pragmatic elements in his thinking in
theoretical considerations that argue for a belief in entities in themselves, apart from appearance.
appears initially to have thrown off not only all concern with empiricism but also all concern
must recall the subtitle to James’ book on pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of
Thinking.) But after his astonishing exposition of the Way of Truth, which Bertrand Russell
called “a monstrous blow to commonsense” (Russell 1959, 28), Parmenides sets out a radically
different portrait of the world, a portrait that he calls “deceptive” (ἀπατηλὸν, VIII. 52), “the
way of Illusion,” and that can best be understood pragmatically, that is, as the sort of thing we
have to assume in order to get on with our lives. In this section of the poem, he deals with the
opposites that are the necessary components of the world of which we are conscious, contrasting
φλογὸς αἰθέριον (VIII. 56), ethereal flame, with νύκτ΄ ἀδαῆ (VIII. 59), unknowing night,
though according to Parmenides’ strict principles the latter should be impossible, since the
unknowing or unthinking cannot be, τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι (III. 1), “for
to think and to be are the same.” 19 Pragmatism as a justification for objective reality makes itself
things-in-themselves. (Even Russell, who never shook off his early idealism as thoroughly as he
imagined, was still trying to avoid this inference with his maxim of substituting construction out
of known entities for inference to unknown entities.) Why do we believe in a world beyond
phenomena? We feel compelled to. Whence this compulsion? I have named as stimuli our desire
for things and our frustration in wrestling with recalcitrant objects. I conclude by suggesting,
without argument, a further motive for our belief in the objective world. This is a yearning
toward the Other. Without a neutral and objective world, there is no theater in which we can
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1
1ENDNOTES
in this paper Macquarrie & Robinson’s convention of designating the pages of the later German [Niemeyer] editions by the
prefix H.)
2 . I say ‘confusingly’ because time itself is usually considered a dimension, with past, present and
future as, say, regions of that dimension. However, Heidegger’s usage is not ignorant or sloppy,
but reasoned: “time represented as a line and parameter and thus one-dimensional is measured
out in terms of numbers. The dimensionality of time, thought as the succession of the sequence
“But prior to all calculation of time and independent of such calculation, what is germane to
the time-space of true time consists in the mutual reaching out and opening up of future, past and
present. Accordingly, what we call dimension and dimensionality in a way easily misconstrued,
belongs to true time and to it alone. Dimensionality consists in a reaching out that opens up, in
which futural approaching brings about what has been, what has been brings about futural
approaching, and the reciprocal relation of both brings about the opening up of openness. Thought
in terms of this threefold giving, true time proves to be three-dimensional. Dimension, we repeat,
is here thought not only as the area of possible measurement, but rather as reaching throughout,
as giving and opening up” (Heidegger [1969] 1972, 14-15). In the view of Ronald Polansky
belief in the completeness of the number three as manifested both in the sequence beginning,
middle and end and in the three dimensions of space (see De caelo 268 a).
3. I employ the typographical distinction between temporality and Temporality used by translators
46. Heidegger proceeds to make distinctions among the meanings of ‘appearance’, which
example, that in order to obtain genuine knowledge, we have to work out our conceptual structure
‘in terms of the things themselves’ ” (Philipse 2001, 581). This seems unfair both to Husserl and to
Heidegger, since Husserl’s Sachen are not instances of objectivity in the usual sense, and
therefore Heidegger is not positing an external object when he urges that Wissenschaft be
grounded in them.
6 . Given the earnest wrangling of Theaetetus and Posterior analytics, the notion that there was no
epistemology until modern times is “too absurd for discussion” (this useful phrase is perhaps most
associated with Shaw, but it goes back at least as far as Daniel Wilson [1816-1892]).
7 . We can see Augustine still struggling with the distinction between shadow and nothingness in
one of his commentaries on Genesis: “So shadows (tenebrae) were on [the deep] …. But there
was not absolutely nothing: there was a certain unshapeliness (informitas) without any form
(specie)” (Conf. 12.3). (At a later period, we find tenebra being used as a singular noun meaning
‘shadow’ by Bonaventure, Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum, Lib. II, Dist. XII, Dub. II,
Resp. For the later history of the discussion, see Marcia L. Colish 1984.)
8. I insert this cautionary clause because various observers, including Hintikka (1962), have
doubted whether the Cogito, despite its form, is truly an inference or is rather an utterance of
another kind.
9 . Thomas gives credit for this definition to Isaac Israeli, but no such definition has been found in
that writer’s works. Some trace the definition back to Carneades (c. 213 – c. 128 BCE); see David
(2005).
10. For Heidegger’s reservations about Weltanschauung in philosophy, see Heidegger (1982, 4-
10). Also in the Beiträge (Heidegger, unpublished, 2) we have “all worldview theories stand
completely outside of philosophy, for they can exist only by denying that Beyng is worthy of
question.” Emad and Maly (Heidegger 1999, 4) translate: “Every manner of scholastic worldview
….”
1212. We find in Nietzsche a thought that is similar to and perhaps the original of Heidegger’s:
“Error (— belief in the ideal —) is not blindness, error is cowardice” (Ecce Homo, foreword § 3,
Nietzsche 1992).
13. So, more narrowly, Augustine tells us that the revolt of the members is due to our larger
1413. Heidegger was still using Schein in the exposition of his own views in Vom Wesen der
Wahrheit, a lecture that has been dated to 1930 and was first published in 1943. See Heidegger
[1943] 1954, § 4. We may also note Heidegger’s use of Schein in his exposition of Nietzsche
(Heidegger 1979, 213-18), though we cannot with certainty extract from this discussion an
1514. By ‘external object’ I mean object “outside” the mind, both words ‘external’ and ‘outside’
being intended not literally (spatially) but metaphorically. It would be difficult even to formulate
1615. Hans Joas asserts, without specific citation, “In a lecture on Aristotle in 1921-22, Heidegger
refers to pragmatism in a manner which could certainly be described as sympathetic” (Joas 1993,
106).
17. Rorty, reviewing the history of philosophy as a comic performance, commented that “we
[philosophers] are making ourselves unable to see things which everybody else can see – things
like increased or decreased suffering – by convincing ourselves that these things are ‘mere
own doctrine ‘pragmaticism’; but scholars are right to classify thinkers not according to the
preference of those classified but to the convenience of the historian and the enlightenment of
readers.
19. I do not adopt Heidegger’s own translation of this verse, found at ([1954] 1968, 240-1).