Levinas, Kant and the Problematic of

Temporality 1st Edition Adonis

Frangeskou
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/levinas-kant-and-the-problematic-of-temporality-1st-e
dition-adonis-frangeskou/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Kant and the Problem of Nothingness Ernesto Mayz

Vallenilla

https://ebookmass.com/product/kant-and-the-problem-of-
nothingness-ernesto-mayz-vallenilla/

Kant and the Law of War Arthur Ripstein

https://ebookmass.com/product/kant-and-the-law-of-war-arthur-
ripstein/

Digital Timescapes: Technology, Temporality and Society

1st Edition Rob Kitchin

https://ebookmass.com/product/digital-timescapes-technology-
temporality-and-society-1st-edition-rob-kitchin/

The Temporality of Determinacy: Functional Relations in

Metaphysics and Science Conor Husbands

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-temporality-of-determinacy-
functional-relations-in-metaphysics-and-science-conor-husbands/
Kant and the Transformation of Natural History Andrew
Cooper

https://ebookmass.com/product/kant-and-the-transformation-of-
natural-history-andrew-cooper/

KANT and the Transformation of Natural History Andrew

Cooper

https://ebookmass.com/product/kant-and-the-transformation-of-
natural-history-andrew-cooper-2/

Agents of Change : The problematic Landscape of

Pakistan's K-12 Education and the People Leading the
Change Amjad Noorani

https://ebookmass.com/product/agents-of-change-the-problematic-
landscape-of-pakistans-k-12-education-and-the-people-leading-the-
change-amjad-noorani/

Kant On Morality, Humanity, And Legality: Practical

Dimensions Of Normativity 1st Edition Edition Ansgar
Lyssy

https://ebookmass.com/product/kant-on-morality-humanity-and-
legality-practical-dimensions-of-normativity-1st-edition-edition-
ansgar-lyssy/

Kant and the Naturalistic Turn of 18th Century

Philosophy Catherine Wilson

https://ebookmass.com/product/kant-and-the-naturalistic-turn-
of-18th-century-philosophy-catherine-wilson/
L E V I N A S , KA N T
A N D T H E P R O B L E M AT I C
O F T E M P O R A L I TY
A D O N I S F R A N G E S KO U
Levinas, Kant and the Problematic
of Temporality
 Adonis Frangeskou

Levinas, Kant
and the Problematic
of Temporality
Adonis Frangeskou
Alexander College
Larnaca, Cyprus

ISBN 978-1-137-59794-6 ISBN 978-1-137-59795-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59795-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945818

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein
or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover Illustration: Marilyn Nieves/Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
FOR HARVEY
 Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank Douglas Burnham, William Large, and David
Webb, who have aided me considerably by their philosophical expertise
and by their understanding of the problematic of Temporality. I would
also like to express my gratitude to my mother Maria Frangeskou, and
to Ann McGoun, for their continued guidance and support. Finally, I
wish to tell Lee Michael Badger how much his faithful friendship and
his example of intellectual integrity have sustained me in this difficult
enterprise called philosophy.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism 17

3 The Ground-Laying of Metaphysica Generalis

as Temporality of Dasein 47

4 Time, Temporality and the Opening up of Presence 77

5 From Presence to Absolute Presence: The Supreme

Diachronism 109

6 The Ground-Laying of Metaphysica Specialis

as Temporality of Being-for-the-Other 135

Bibliography 207

Index 211

ix
 Abbreviations

The list below provides the abbreviations of all primary texts cited in the
main body and endnotes of this book. The pages of the original language
versions will be referenced along with their corresponding English trans-
lations where this is possible. Those English translations that have occa-
sionally been modified and interpolated will be marked ‘mod.’ Successive
citations of the same text will exclude its abbreviation.

Texts by Heidegger
The original language texts are those numbered volumes of Heidegger’s
Gesamtausgabe [G] published in Frankfurt am Main by Vittorio
Klostermann. An exception is made for Sein und Zeit [SZ], which is
cited following the seventh edition published in Tübingen by Max
Niemeyer Verlag.

G3 1991. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik./Richard Taft, trans.

1990. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.

xi
xii   Abbreviations

G5 1977. Holzwege./Julian Young & Kenneth Haynes, eds. 2002. Off

the Beaten Track. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
G9 1976. Wegmarken./William McNeill, ed. 1998. Pathmarks.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
G14 2007. Zur Sache des Denkens./Joan Stambaugh, trans. 1972. On
Time and Being. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.
G15 1986. Seminare./Andrew Mitchell & Francois Raffoul, trans. 2003.
Four Seminars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
G21 1976. Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit./Thomas Sheehan, trans.
2010. Logic: The Question of Truth. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
G24 1975. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie./Albert Hofstadter,
trans. 1982. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
G25 1977. Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der
reinen Vernunft./Parvis Emad & Kenneth Maly, trans. 1997.
Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
G26 1978. Metaphysiche Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von
Leibniz./Michael Heim, trans. 1984. The Metaphysical Foundations of
Logic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
G31 1982. Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die
Philosophie./Ted Sadler, trans. 2002. The Essence of Human Freedom:
An Introduction to Philosophy. London: Continuum.
G32 1980. Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes./Parvis Emad & Kenneth
Maly, trans. 1994. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Bloomington &
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
G41 1984. Die Frage nach dem Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von der transcen-
dentalen Grundsätzen./W.B. Barton, Jr. & Vera Deutsch, trans. 1967.
What is a Thing? Chicago: Henry Regency Company.
G42 1988. Schelling: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit./Joan
Stambaugh, trans. 1985. Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human
Freedom. Athens: Ohio University Press.
G64 2004. Der Begriff der Zeit./William McNeill, trans. 1992. The
Concept of Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
SZ 1967. Sein und Zeit./John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, trans.
1962. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
 Abbreviations   xiii

Texts by Levinas
The original language texts marked with an asterix* refer to Le Livre de
Poche versions of those texts.

AEAE 1978. Autrement qu’être ou au-delá de l’essence. The Hague:

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers*./Alphonso Lingis, trans. 1991. Otherwise
than Being or Beyond Essence. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
AT 1995. Altérité et Transcendance. Saint Clement: Fata Morgana*./
Michael B. Smith, trans. 1999. Alterity and Transcendence. London:
The Athlone Press Ltd.
BI 1983. ‘Beyond Intentionality.’ Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin
in Philosophy in France Today, edited by Alan Montefiori. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 100-15. Reproduced in 2002. The
Phenomenology Reader. Edited by Dermot Moran & Timothy
Mooney. London: Routledge, 529–39.
BPW 1996. Basic Philosophical Writings. Edited by Adriaan T. Peperzak,
Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
CPP 1998. Collected Philosophical Papers. Alphonso Lingis, trans.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
DEL 1984. ‘Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas.’ Translated by Richard
Kearney in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The
Phenomenological Heritage, edited by Richard Kearney. Manchester:
Manchester University Press. Reproduced in 1986. Face to Face with
Levinas. Edited by Richard Cohen. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 13–33.
DMT 1993. Dieu, la mort et le temps. Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle*./
Bettina Bergo, trans. 2000. God, Death, and Time. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
DVI 1982. De Dieu qui vient á l’idée. Paris: Librairie Philosophique
J. VRIN./Bettina Bergo, trans, 1998. Of God Who Comes to Mind.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
EE 1998. De l’existence a l’existant. Paris: Librairie Philosophique
J. VRIN./Alphonso Lingis, trans. 2001. Existence and Existents.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
xiv   Abbreviations

EI 1981. Éthique et Infini. Librairie Arthème Fayard et Radio-France*./

Richard A. Cohen, trans. 1985. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press.
EN 1991. Entre Nous: Essais sur le penser-á-l’autre, Paris: Grasset &
Fasquelle*./Michael B. Smith & Barbara Harshav, trans. 1998. Entre
Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other, London: The Athlone Press Ltd.
HAH 1972. Humanisme de l’autre homme. Montpellier: Fata Morgana./
Nidra Poller, trans. 2003. Humanism of the Other. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press.
HS 1987. Hors Sujet. Saint Clement: Fata Morgana*./Michael B. Smith,
trans. 1993. Outside the Subject. London: The Athlone Press Ltd.
IRB 2001. Is it Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas.
Edited by Jill Robbins. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
ITN 2007. In the Time of the Nations. Translated by Michael B. Smith.
London: Continuum.
ON 1982. ‘The Old and the New.’ Translated by Richard A. Cohen for
the English publication of Time and the Other. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press.
PPR 1994. ‘The Primacy of Pure Practical Reason.’ Translated by Blake
Billings in Man and World, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1994), 445–53.
TA 1979. Le temps et l’autre. Montpellier: Fata Morgana./Richard
A. Cohen, trans. 1987. Time and the Other. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press.
TI 1961. Totalité et Infini. Essais sur l’extériorité. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers*./Alphonso Lingis, trans. 1969. Totality and
Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press.

Texts by Kant
Citations of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason will be listed convention-
ally according to the pagination of both A and B editions, as pre-
sented in Immanuel Kant: Werke, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vols. 3 &
 Abbreviations   xv

4. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft./Werner S. Pluhar,

trans. 1996. Critique of Pure Reason, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company Inc.
References to Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will
Be Able to Come Forward as Science will be cited according to the vol-
ume and page number of Immanuel Kant: Werke, Prolegomena zu einer
jeden kunftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können,
Vol. 5. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft [KW5], followed
by the English pagination in Gary Hatfield, trans. 2004. Prolegomena to
Any Future Metaphysics. With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 1
Introduction

The following book aims to introduce Levinas’s notion of ‘the Other’

into the very heart of the Kantian doctrine of the schematism, and
therefore of the Heideggerian problematic of Temporality. In this sense,
it will render possible an ethical interpretation of the Critique of Pure
Reason which departs substantially from Heidegger’s own ontologi-
cal interpretation of that text in his Kantbook (Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics) of 1929. More specifically, the book intends to establish
the historical connection between the retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality in the philosophies of Heidegger and Levinas on the one
hand, and the laying of the ground for metaphysics in the schematism
of Kant’s critical philosophy on the other. It intends to show that this
connection is not simply to be established in the way that Heidegger,
who destroyed the doctrine of the schematism on the grounds of the
existential temporality of Dasein, establishes it. His destruction of
the doctrine of the schematism remains overly committed to a reso-
lute ontological interpretation of the Kantian ground-laying. Drawing
on Levinas’s ethical critique of the Heideggerian retrieval of the prob-
lematic of Temporality together with his destructive proposal to carry
out the deformalization of the Kantian notion of time in a manner

© The Author(s) 2017 1

A. Frangeskou, Levinas, Kant and the Problematic of Temporality,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59795-3_1
2   A. Frangeskou

consistent with Rosenzweig’s philosophy, I will argue that the connec-

tion should be established at the point where Kant determines the ethi-
cal status of the schematism according to the regulative schemas of the
ideas of pure reason (God, man and world), and not, as in Heidegger’s
ontological destruction, at the point of his determination of the sensible
schemas of the pure concepts of understanding (the categories). For it
can almost certainly be argued that the destruction of the schematism
accomplished by Heidegger in 1929 remains extraordinarily limited
in its application, and for two reasons: first, because it limits the sche-
matism to the sensible schemas of the pure concepts of understanding
alone, so as to effectively restrict the Kantian doctrine of the schema-
tism as such; and then, above all, because it thereby retrieves the exis-
tential ground of Dasein’s temporality. Does not Heidegger’s historical
exhibition of Dasein’s existential temporality reveal to us the extreme
limitation that he imposes, and necessarily must impose, on the retrieval
of the problematic of Temporality from out of Kant’s 1st Critique? Does
not Heidegger’s historical clarification of the existential temporality
of Dasein allow us to call into question the projected task of his own
retrieval of the problematic of Temporality—that of destroying Kant’s
doctrine of the schematism? For it is by no means a foregone conclu-
sion that the Kantian doctrine of the schematism can be limited to the
sensible schemas of the pure concepts of understanding, and therefore
that it be destroyed only on the grounds of the existential temporality of
Dasein.
It will therefore be shown, with the aid of Levinas’s ethical
philosophy, that the retrieval of the problematic of Temporality
can no longer be limited to its previous task of destroying the doc-
trine of the schematism on the grounds of the existential temporality
of Dasein. The question raised by this book can thus be posed as fol-
lows: Does the task of destroying the doctrine of the schematism
retrieve the existential grounds of temporality or does it retrieve the
diachronic grounds of temporality? In other words, does the destruc-
tion of the doctrine of the schematism operate according to its retrieval
of the existential temporality of Dasein or according to its retrieval of
the diachronic temporality of ‘Being-for-the-Other’? [IRB 114]. It is
not only a matter here of renewing the retrieval of the problematic of
 1 Introduction    
3

Temporality, but much more originally of establishing whether and to

what extent the diachronic temporality of Being-for-the-Other oper-
ates another destruction of the Kantian schematism as such. For Levinas
doubtless did not accomplish what he nevertheless rendered possible
for destroying the doctrine of the schematism on the grounds of the
diachronic temporality of Being-for-the-Other. There are at least three
reasons that explain why this is the case: first, because Levinas’s under-
standing of the 1st Critique, and of the Kantian schematism in particu-
lar, is too often guided by a Heideggerian pre-understanding; second,
because the diachronic temporality of Being-for-the-Other, even in
the traditional form of the regulative schemas of the ideas of pure rea-
son, never even comes close to unveiling itself; and finally, because the
retrieval of the problematic of Temporality required for this unveil-
ing, never gets beyond either its preparatory status or its contradictory
formulation. But if, in spite of all this, the diachronic temporality of
Being-for-the-Other can indeed be shown to be fully operative within
the 1st Critique, then Heidegger’s ontological retrieval of the prob-
lematic of Temporality would have to concede—somewhat contradic-
torily—that its task of destroying the doctrine of the schematism can
no longer be limited to retrieving the existential temporality of Dasein.
There is every indication that Levinas has at least opened up the pos-
sibility of pursuing this alternative retrieval: the destruction of the
schematism—and therefore, of the regulative schemas of the ideas of
pure reason—rests solely on an ethical retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality, beyond both the sensible schemas of the pure concepts
of understanding and the existential temporality of Dasein.
In this book, then, I will endeavour to accomplish the ethical
retrieval of the problematic of Temporality in the 1st Critique, and
thus to carry out the task of destroying the doctrine of the schematism
by releasing this task from its fundamental ontological commitments.
If in Levinas’s claim that ethics is first philosophy, which is to say, in
his claim to oppose the project of fundamental ontology, the retrieval
of the problematic of Temporality can be shown to surpass the exis-
tential temporality of Dasein, then it becomes necessary to drive this
ethical retrieval forward to the point of exceeding the ontological
destruction of the schematism previously carried out by Heidegger. But
4   A. Frangeskou

in doing so, one is equally compelled to renew the Heideggerian task of

destruction by carrying it out ethically, equally bound to that uniquely
ethical task of destruction which exceeds the limits of fundamental
ontology. It is in conceiving of this ethical destruction of the schema-
tism that this book justifies its claim to offer an ethical interpretation of
the Critique of Pure Reason.
It is therefore an essential argument of this book that in claiming
ethics to be first philosophy, Levinas not only maintains the philo-
sophical priority of ethics over that of fundamental ontology, but also
renews its related task of destruction and of destroying the history of
ontology. To claim, as Levinas does, that ethics is first philosophy, is
not only to maintain that within philosophy ethics ‘signifies a certain
priority […] that ethics is,’ philosophically speaking, ‘before ontology’
[DVI 143/90].1 It is also to maintain the priority of ethics within the
history of ontology itself. In other words, it maintains a certain prior-
ity of ethics within the philosophical task of destroying the history of
ontology (to play on a title of Heidegger’s). Thus, to claim that ethics is
first philosophy is to maintain the historical priority of ethics in addi-
tion to its philosophical priority.2 For ‘it is at this level’ of priority—
the level of what Derrida, whom I have already begun to cite here, calls
‘the worldwide historico-philosophical situation’—‘that the thought of
Emmanuel Levinas can make us tremble. At the heart of the desert, in
the growing wasteland, this thought, which fundamentally no longer
seeks to be a thought of Being […] makes us dream of an inconceiv-
able process of dismantling and dispossession.’3 Derrida then qualifies
this oneiric process of dismantling the thought of Being by describing
it as ‘a necessity’ that will ‘finally impose itself upon Levinas,’ namely,
‘the necessity of lodging oneself in traditional conceptuality in order
to destroy it.’4 It is therefore Levinas himself who, when necessarily
lodged in this way, will enable me to establish the historical connection
between the laying of the ground for metaphysics in the schematism of
Kant’s 1st Critique on the one hand, and the retrieval of the problem-
atic of Temporality in his ethical thought on the other. It is he alone
who, when imposed upon by this necessity, will enable me to argue that
the destruction of the doctrine of the schematism leads to an ethical
retrieval of the problematic of Temporality, and thus renders possible an
 1 Introduction    
5

ethical interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason. For it is by virtue of

its own historico-philosophical situation that Levinas’s ethical thought
is compelled to lead—through an almost inconceivable and necessary
process of its destruction—the doctrine of the schematism toward an
alternative retrieval of its temporal problematic, that of the diachronic
temporality of Being-for-the-Other.5 A more expansive ‘phenomenon
of a ‘transcendental determination of time’ in its own structure’ unveils
itself within this ethical retrieval than within Heidegger’s own ontologi-
cal retrieval of the existential temporality of Dasein [SZ 24/45]. This
more expansive phenomenon is no longer limited to a transcendental
determination of time which Heidegger destroyed on the grounds of
the existential temporality of Dasein, and which he therefore grounded
in the existential structures of temporality. I will show that Levinas’s
ethical thought renders possible an interpretation of the 1st Critique
which relieves the task of destruction from grounding the phenomenon
of a transcendental determination of time in the existential structures
of temporality alone. This ethical interpretation of the 1st Critique
destroys the phenomenon of a transcendental determination of time by
grounding it ultimately in the more expansive diachronic structures of
temporality. Destroyed on the grounds of the diachronic temporality of
Being-for-the-Other, the phenomenon of a transcendental determina-
tion of time therefore becomes conceivable in such a way as to free up a
strictly ethical interpretation of the 1st Critique.
The account of Levinas’s relation to Kant proposed here is natu-
rally very different from the more traditional accounts of this relation.
Given that Levinas prioritises ethics over ontology, and given that, as
Heidegger has shown, Kant’s 1st Critique originally unfolds as a project
of fundamental ontology, it is far from obvious how his ethical thought
could be utilised effectively in an interpretation—or indeed reinterpre-
tation—of the 1st Critique. Here it would be germane to recall a recent
argument made by Richard Cohen that: ‘While Heidegger’s “funda-
mental ontology” effects an ontological revision of Kant’s epistemologi-
cal account of the imagination in the Critique of Pure Reason, Levinas’s
intersubjective ethics effects a revision and unification of Kant’s account
of the ethical subject in the Critique of Practical Reason and the role of
religion in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.’6 Those traditional
6   A. Frangeskou

accounts which, in line with Cohen’s argument, simply neglect the

importance of Levinas’s ethical thought for interpreting the 1st Critique
usually insist on its relation to Kant’s 2nd Critique alone. Such insist-
ence is clearly evident in an earlier essay written by Paul Davies. In
attempting to clarify ‘the relation to Kant and Kantianism staged in
and by Levinas’s phenomenological project,’ Davies finds textual evi-
dence in the lecture courses God, Death, and Time and elsewhere to
support the general claim that Levinas affirms the necessity of such a
relation.7 He then suggests that ‘the Levinasian call for ‘ethics as first
philosophy’ [cannot] fail to bring to mind that earlier insistence on
the primacy of practical reason which crucially centred around the
description of reason’s being affected by the moral law, laid low by its
own imperative.’8 In other words, Levinas’s phenomenological project
stages the relation to Kant in and through the relation to the primacy
of practical reason, i.e., in and through the description of the moral
imperative. Consequently, on Davies’s account, the relation to Kant that
Levinas affirms in God, Death, and Time invites ‘us to begin to find in
Kant’s practical philosophy and in the announcement that the critical
philosophy is not limited to the conditions of theoretical knowledge,
something of a genuine ‘outside,’’ i.e., it invites us to begin to find in
Kant’s 2nd Critique something of that ‘sense of the subject ‘outside’
ontology’ and ‘the knowledge […] of any being whatsoever.’9
Catherine Chalier provides what is perhaps the most impressive
instance of this type of account. She understands Levinas’s relation
to Kant primarily in terms of ‘a shared admiration for practical rea-
son’s aptitude to exceed the bounds of speculative reason.’10 With this
in mind, she contends that ‘Levinas recognizes his proximity to that
[i.e., Kant’s practical] philosophy, since, “beside the theoretical access
to the being of the phenomenon,” Kant’s reflections examine how the
implications of moral action can be explained by the existence of a
reasonable subject “without becoming the object of any knowledge of
being.” That view corroborates his preoccupation with an ethics that
is not based on an ontology.’11 This ethical proximity to Kant, Chalier
argues, therefore makes it necessary for us to compare ‘these two phi-
losophies of the moral subject’ so as ‘to examine their common inter-
est in conceiving of a moral obligation beyond any possible theoretical
 1 Introduction    
7

knowledge [of being],’ and thus, beyond any possible ontology of the
subject.12 There are many interpreters who follow Chalier’s understand-
ing of what Levinas’s relation to Kant amounts to—i.e., their shared
admiration for the primacy of practical reason over theoretical rea-
son—and who also agree that Levinas maintains such a relation. Diane
Perpich, for instance, points out that: ‘In Kant’s insistence on the pri-
macy of pure practical reason, Levinas finds a parallel to his own philo-
sophical project, which he often sums up in the claim that ethics is “first
philosophy.”’13 This point is more fully developed by Peter Atterton,
who states that: ‘In his only essay dedicated entirely to Kant, pub-
lished in 1971 under the title “The Primacy of Pure Practical Reason,”
Levinas applauded the “great novelty” of Kant’s practical philosophy.’14
For Atterton, there can be no doubt that ‘the practical philosophy of
Kant stands closest to his [i.e., Levinas’s] own thinking in ethics,’ since
‘Levinas finds in Kant’s practical philosophy “un sens” (meaning, sense,
direction) that is irreducible to ontology.’15 Indeed: ‘By subordinat-
ing the interests of theoretical reason to those of practical reason […]
Kant’s doctrine of primacy signifies for Levinas a reversal of philosophy’s
traditional vocation to ground thought and action in knowledge and
truth. The ontological problematic […] is in this instance subordinated
to ethics as an independent and preliminary praxis.’16
John Llewelyn, however, has managed to situate Levinas’s relation to
Kant in a quite different context. For just as it cannot be doubted that
Levinas’s own ethical thinking stands closest to Kant’s practical philoso-
phy, and thus to the 2nd Critique, so too one can hardly avoid seeing
that it also stands equally close to Kant’s theoretical philosophy, and
in particular, to ‘those few pages of the Critique of Pure Reason where
he writes of imagination as schematization.’17 The main argument that
Llewelyn hazards here no doubt comes from his attempt to interpret
‘the ethicality of face-to-face saying’ as precisely ‘that moment of imag-
ination when it is surprised by its own radical exteriority,’ a uniquely
ethical moment of imagination which Llewelyn goes on to describe as
‘a moment where the synchronizable and recuperable time of memory
and the Critical imagination that synthesizes what it analyses is crossed
by the unsychronizable time of being hypoCritically addressed […] by
the other.’18 It therefore becomes necessary to argue, as Llewelyn does,
8   A. Frangeskou

that ‘the Kantian account of the imagination must be reinterpreted

phenomenologically […] by going back through Kant, through a
Critical doctrine of the imagination catastrophized by the hypoCriti-
cal ethicality of what Levinas calls the face-to-face.’19 As for the ethical
moment of schematization, it is always a matter of ‘what Levinas calls
[…] the face,’ such as it is developed not only by taking the ‘French
word ‘figure’ […] to mean ‘face’,’ but also by ‘taking it back to the fig-
ura that are the diagrams that Kant calls the schemata of the imagina-
tion in the Critique of Pure Reason.’20 Without confusing the “figure” or
face of the other with the “figura” or schemata of the imagination, it is
nevertheless a matter of undertaking ‘a programme by which the hypo-
Critical responsibility that is Levinas’s great thought may welcome as its
recipients everything in space and time, including things that, on his
account of my welcoming the other into my home, get what ethical rel-
evance they have only by being donanda, that is to say […] as things to
be given to my guest.’21 According to this remarkable undertaking, not
only does Llewelyn accept the face of the other as perhaps the ultimate
figure or schema of space and time in the 1st Critique, but above all
even the recourse to responsibility, that is, to the great idea of Levinas’s
ethical thought, does not pass beyond that schema, but reinforces it by
“welcoming” those things received in space and time as things to be
given to the other.
In a certain respect, this book undertakes a similar programme by
which to situate Levinas’s ethical thought. It will assert that an ethical
reinterpretation of imagination as schematization is utterly indispensa-
ble to clarifying his relation to Kant. In opposition to those traditional
accounts which claim that Levinas’s ethical thought stands closest to
the 2nd Critique, my own account of this thought will argue in favour
of its equally close proximity to the 1st Critique. My own account of
Levinas will show that these traditional accounts neglect an idea of cru-
cial importance in his ethical thought, one that arises primarily from
out of his temporal explication of Rosenzweig. I am speaking of the
proposal announced in the final remarks to the interview ‘The Other,
Utopia, and Justice’, to carry out the deformalization of the notion of
time in the 1st Critique so as to unveil concretely those privileged situ-
ations or circumstances of ecstatic-horizonal temporality in which this
 1 Introduction    
9

notion of time is constituted. The historical development of this idea

in Levinas’s ethical thought strongly indicates a unique philosophi-
cal equivalence between the destruction of the Kantian schematism
in Heidegger’s retrieval of the problematic of Temporality on the one
hand, and the deformalization of the Kantian notion of time in his tem-
poral explication of Rosenzweig on the other. This equivalence will lead
me to advance a new notion (much more expansive than the ontologi-
cal notion) of the Kantian schematism—understood no longer as the
phenomenon of a transcendental determination of time by the catego-
ries of ontology, but as the phenomenon of a transcendental determina-
tion of time by the ideas of God, man and world. This ethical expansion
of the phenomenon of transcendental time-determination (from the
categories to the ideas) is precisely what motivates the present book to
work out and unveil an ideal notion of the schematism in Levinas’s tem-
poral explication of Rosenzweig. It then becomes necessary to reinter-
pret the notion of the Kantian schematism: Can it be unveiled as an
order of time according to a schema of ideas, and thus no longer as an
order of time according to a schema of categories? Confronted with
this ideal notion of the schematism, shouldn’t we distinguish essentially
between the phenomenon of a transcendental determination of time by
the ideas of God, man and world, and the phenomenon of a transcen-
dental determination of time by the categories of ontology? Here, an
essential question is posed about the possibility of unveiling the ideal
schemas of time concretely within Rosenzweig’s ecstatic-horizonal tem-
porality of the religious human being, and thus, within an ecstatic-hori-
zonal temporality that remains strictly irreducible to that of Heidegger’s
Dasein. Now, it is precisely in this first advance that the development of
an ethical destruction of the Kantian schematism also becomes equally
necessary: Is it still legitimate to carry out the task of destroying the
Kantian schematism by unveiling the schemas of time concretely in the
privileged circumstances of the human Dasein’s ecstatic-horizonal tem-
porality (from the perspective of the categories of ontology)? Could it
not be carried out instead by unveiling the schemas of time concretely
in the privileged circumstances of the ecstatic-horizonal temporality of
the religious human being (from the perspective of the ideas of God,
man and world)? I will therefore demonstrate that the development of
10   A. Frangeskou

an ethical destruction of the Kantian schematism in Levinas’s temporal

explication of Rosenzweig permits one to work out a phenomenon of tran-
scendental time-determination that clearly moves beyond that which was
worked out or unveiled by Heidegger’s ontological destruction, because
it unveils it concretely in the purely biblical—and thus, radically non-
ontological—circumstances of ecstatic-horizonal temporality. Moreover, a
destruction of the schematism that can be understood ethically is one
that succeeds in the task of unveiling concretely another phenomenon
of transcendental time-determination than that to which Heidegger,
and to a certain extent Rosenzweig, limited themselves: one that
becomes unveiled concretely in the privileged ethical circumstances
of the ecstatic-horizonal temporality of Being-for-the-Other. Finally,
the concrete unveiling of the phenomenon of transcendental time-
determination, if indeed it does exceed both the privileged ontological
and biblical circumstances of ecstatic-horizonal temporality, nonethe-
less always remains faithful to the ideal—and hence, non-ontological—
trajectory of Rosenzweig’s biblical conception of temporality. What
ideal notion of the schematism comes to be unveiled concretely after
Levinas’s temporal explication of Rosenzweig? Levinas refers to it
implicitly in his reading of the regulative use of the ideas in Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason, an ideal notion of the Kantian schematism that
can actually be destroyed or deformalized, and thus, unveiled concretely
within the ethical temporality of Being-for-the-Other.
In short, Levinas’s proposed deformalization of the notion of time
in the 1st Critique is shown to be equivalent to the destruction of an
ideal notion of the Kantian schematism, and for this reason is absolutely
essential to clarifying Levinas’s relation to Kant.22 I shall therefore argue
that the relation to Kant and Kantianism in Levinas’s ethical thought
is not only staged in and through the description of the moral impera-
tive, as per the traditional accounts, but is also staged in and through
the doctrine of the schematism.23 In Levinas’s thought, everything tran-
spires as if there were indeed an ethical retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality that necessitated its own unique destruction of the doc-
trine of the schematism. Such an ethical retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality therefore invites those traditional interpreters who neglect
the importance of Levinas’s thought for interpreting the 1st Critique,
 1 Introduction    
11

to at least consider the possibility of interpreting that text from the

point of view of this thought, i.e., from the point of view of ethics as
first philosophy.
This ethical interpretation of Kant’s 1st Critique will be unfolded in
five chapters (Chaps. 2–6).
Chapters 2 and 3 endeavour to provide a detailed account of
Heidegger’s interpretation of the 1st Critique in his Kantbook of 1929.
Chapter 2 begins with Heidegger’s preparatory statement that: ‘The
following investigation is devoted to the task of interpreting Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason as a laying of the ground for metaphysics and
thus of placing the problem of metaphysics before us as a funda-
mental ontology’ [G3 1/1]. It then proceeds with an account of this
strictly ontological interpretation of the Kantian ground-laying itself
in terms of the schematism of the categories of Metaphysica Generalis.
Supplementing Heidegger’s Kantbook with relevant material taken from
his own 1927 lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, I then
outline in Chap. 3 a distinctively existential account of this text, thus
showing how Heidegger’s ontological interpretation of the 1st Critique
is already complicit with a certain retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality. Accordingly, I detail precisely how that which Heidegger
considers to be essential to the Kantian ground-laying of Metaphysica
Generalis, namely, the pure synthesis of imagination, can itself be
unveiled originally as the existential temporality of Dasein.
Chapters 4 and 5 seek to develop Levinas’s ethical thought on tem-
porality such as he presents this thought in his later texts. Both these
chapters are geared towards establishing the temporal grounds for an
ethical—as opposed to a strictly ontological—interpretation of the 1st
Critique. The later texts are historically and philosophically situated
within Heidegger’s own conception of time in the terms of temporal-
ity, and thus, within a conception of the opening up of time as such.
Chapter 4 intends to explore the ontological conception of temporality
as unveiled by Heidegger and then the ethical displacement of this tem-
porality as initiated by Levinas. The entire exploration in this chapter is
therefore unfolded as a successive commentary on the existential tem-
porality of Dasein which opens up the time of presence, and the dia-
chronic temporality of Being-for-the-Other which, in its displacement
12   A. Frangeskou

of the first opening, opens up the time of non-presence or absolute

presence. Chapter 5 then develops this commentary further in order
to explore how Levinas’s ethical thought alters the ecstatic-horizonal
constitution of temporality. As that which opens up the time of non-
presence and absolute presence, the diachronic temporality of Being-
for-the-Other already requires an ecstatic-horizonal constitution—since
the ecstatic-horizonal constitution of temporality bears above all on the
opening up of time itself. Henceforth, the ecstatic-horizonal constitu-
tion of temporality can no longer be conceived according to an opening
up of time in the existential temporality of Dasein, but far more origi-
nally, according to an opening up of time in the diachronic temporality
of Being-for-the-Other.
Chapter 6 aims to establish the historical connection between the
laying of the ground for metaphysics in the schematism of Kant’s
1st Critique on the one hand, and the retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality in Levinas’s ethical thought on the other. Having devel-
oped Levinas’s historical and philosophical situation within Heidegger’s
conception of temporality in the previous two chapters, Chap. 6
raises a question which Levinas himself did not ask, but which he
nevertheless anticipated to some extent in his destructive proposal to
carry out the deformalization of the Kantian notion of time in a man-
ner consistent with Rosenzweig’s philosophy. That question is the fol-
lowing: On the grounds of which problematic of Temporality can
the Kantian ground-laying of metaphysics in terms of the schema-
tism itself be originally unveiled? Can the problematic of Temporality
only be unveiled in the ontological terms of a schematism of the
categories of Metaphysica Generalis, or can it move beyond the limits
of this first unveiling so as to be unveiled more originally in the ethi-
cal terms of a schematism of the ideas of Metaphysica Specialis? Having
explored Levinas’s alteration of the ecstatic-horizonal constitution of
temporality as an opening up of time in Chap. 5, I show in Chap. 6
how this altered constitution accomplishes an ethical—as opposed to
Heidegger’s strictly ontological—interpretation of the 1st Critique.
Consequently, the interpretative task of unveiling the Kantian ground-
laying of metaphysics according to the problematic of Temporality no
longer consists in unveiling the pure synthesis of imagination as the
 1 Introduction    
13

existential temporality of Dasein, but rather, in unveiling it according

to its own essential negation by the differentiation of reason, and thus,
in unveiling it more originally as the diachronic temporality of Being-
for-the-Other. In this way, the question which Levinas himself antici-
pated is answered successfully, and the retrieval of the problematic of
Temporality is deployed ethically so as to unveil the Kantian ground-
laying of Metaphysica Specialis according to the diachronic temporality
of Being-for-the-Other. I conclude the book at the close of this final
chapter by reasserting that Levinas’s ethical retrieval of the problem-
atic of Temporality does indeed accomplish an ethical destruction of
the doctrine of the schematism, one that moves beyond the ontologi-
cal limits of Heidegger’s own destruction. I then end my conclusion
with a brief reflection on the significance of this destructive retrieval for
unveiling the diachronic ground of infinite time.

Notes
1. For an excellent discussion of the philosophical priority of eth-
ics over ontology, see Jean Griesch, ‘Ethics and Ontology: some
Hypocritical Reflections’, Irish Philosophical Journal, Vol. 4, Nos. 1−2
(1987), 64−75.
2. That ethics could have, in the last analysis, a historical priority equal
to that of its philosophical priority, that is, a priority within the his-
tory of ontology, is what Jacques Derrida does not fail to consider—
I shall come to this in a moment. What he does not fail to consider
is ‘whether history itself does not begin with this relationship to the
other which Levinas places beyond history.’ Jacques Derrida, ‘Violence
and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas’ in
Writing and Difference (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1978),
116.
3. Ibid., 101.
4. Ibid., 139. Interestingly enough, it was during the course of a discus-
sion held with Salomon Malka on the subject of Levinas’s antagonism
towards Heidegger, that Paul Ricoeur also highlighted the endur-
ing necessity of destruction in Levinas’s ethical thought. ‘Did you
notice,’ he asks, ‘that the last published series of lectures is the one on
14   A. Frangeskou

death [Ricoeur has in mind here of course the lectures entitled God,
Death, and Time], where Levinas is still confronting Heidegger? He
never stopped explaining himself in terms of Heidegger.’ He contin-
ues: ‘Because he was the closest stranger. This was an ontology with-
out ethics. And the problem, for Levinas, was to exit ontology and to
make ethics the first philosophy. To do that, it was always necessary,
as I have said, to continually deconstruct the hegemonic pretences of
Heideggerian ontology.’ Paul Ricoeur in Salomon Malka, Emmanuel
Levinas: His Life and Legacy (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
2006), 198.
5. Jill Robbins alludes to the possibility of this ethical destruction when,
in her introduction to the English publication of a series of interviews
with Levinas, she states that: ‘Although nowhere do we find in Levinas
a systematic destruction in the Heideggerian style of the history of phi-
losophy from the vantage point of the forgetting of the ethical, we can
perhaps begin to envision—especially with regard to […] Kant—what
a “Levinasian” critical retrieval would look like’ [IRB 9].
6. Richard A. Cohen, Levinasian Meditations: Ethics, Philosophy, and
Religion (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2010), 29.
7. Paul Davies, ‘Sincerity and the end of theodicy: three remarks on
Levinas and Kant’ in Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi (eds.), The
Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 162.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 168 & 165 respectively.
10. Catherine Chalier, What Ought I to Do? Morality in Kant and Levinas,
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 4–5.
11. Ibid., 5.
12. Ibid., The quotations in Chalier’s text are taken from DMT 75/64.
13. Diane Perpich, ‘Freedom Called into Question: Levinas’s Defence of
Heteronomy’ in Melvyn New with Robert Bernasconi & Richard A.
Cohen (eds.), In Proximity: Emmanuel Levinas and the 18th Century,
(Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2001), 303.
14. Peter Atterton, ‘From Transcendental Freedom to the Other: Levinas
and Kant’ in In Proximity: Emmanuel Levinas and the 18th Century,
327. The essay referred to here is PPR. The quoted phrase is taken from
p. 451.
15. Ibid., 328 & 347 respectively.
 1 Introduction    
15

16. Ibid., 347.

17. John Llewelyn, The HypoCritical Imagination: Between Kant and Levinas
(London: Routledge, 2000), 3.
18. Ibid., 7 & 200 respectively.
19. Ibid., 219.
20. Ibid., 218. Llewelyn is referring here implicitly to Heidegger’s own
interpretive account of the term ‘figura’ in his 1927–28 lecture course
on Kant’s 1st Critique. Thus, as Heidegger writes: ‘In the Critique,
Kant specifies the function of the power of imagination as follows:
“…imagination has to bring the manifold of intuition into the form
of an image.” Thus pure power of imagination must bring the pure
manifold of time into the form of a pure image. Productive synthesis
forms into “an image”; it offers productively a figura. Hence Kant also
calls productive synthesis “figurative synthesis”’ [G25 414–15/281].
See also A120 & B151-2.
21. Ibid., 218–19.
22. In the final chapter to his comprehensive examination of Levinas’s
ethical thinking of time, Eric Severson discusses various hitherto unex-
plored possibilities for its advancement. For Severson, two such pos-
sibilities would include exploring his proposed ‘deformalization of
time, which Levinas saw underway in Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger,
and Rosenzweig,’ as well as his increased ‘engagements of philosophi-
cal history’ in various later texts, thus ‘aligning Levinas’s diachrony
with understandings of time in Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and
many others.’ The question, raised in the present book, is whether or
not the deformalization of time is already equivalent to a destructive
engagement of philosophical history, that is, to a destruction of Kant’s
purely formalized notion of time in the schematism, as stated previ-
ously in reference to the philosophical equivalence between Heidegger’s
retrieval of the temporal problematic of the schematism and Levinas’s
renewal of this temporal problematic in his explication of Rosenzweig.
The attempt, proposed here, to show such an equivalence would then
suggest one possible avenue of exploration into ‘what it means to fur-
ther deformalize time’ in Levinas’s ethical thought. See Eric Severson,
Levinas’s Philosophy of Time: Gift, Responsibility, Diachrony, Hope
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2013), 267, 268, 337 n4 &
247 respectively.
16   A. Frangeskou

23. This argument is also characteristic of an essay written by Jere Paul

Surber. The difference, however, between his own destructive staging
of this relation to the Kantian schematism and the one I am propos-
ing here—to say this in the very briefest of terms—is that for Surber,
Levinas’s ethical thought of the Other is staged in and through the
categorial schemas of its otherness (and more specifically, according
to Kant’s categorial schematization of the nothing in ‘The Amphiboly
of the Concepts of Reflection’), whereas for me, the ethical thought of
the Other can only be staged in and through the ideal schemas of its
otherness (according to Kant’s ideal expansion of this schematization
contained within ‘The Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason’).
See Jere Paul Surber, ‘Kant, Levinas, and the Thought of the “Other”’,
Philosophy Today, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1994), 294–316.
 2
The Ontological Destruction
of the Schematism

Two Readings of the 1st Critique

‘The following investigation is devoted to the task of interpreting Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason as a laying of the ground for metaphysics and
thus of placing the problem of metaphysics before us as a fundamental
ontology’ [G3 1/1]. This is the opening statement to Heidegger’s 1929
interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason, one that clearly announces
its utter devotion to the task of destroying this text. In 1927 Heidegger
published Being and Time, and if he interprets the 1st Critique in its
fundamental metaphysical significance, he nevertheless does so from the
vantage point of the newly disclosed ‘ontological analytic of Dasein,’
the metaphysical ground of the 1st Critique forever ruined in the wake
of this disclosure [1/1]. By 1929 Kant’s own laying of the ground for
metaphysics had already been destroyed by that which it rendered pos-
sible. Hence ‘the violence’ that does not cease to dominate Heidegger’s
interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason [xvii/xx]: the Kantian
ground-laying of metaphysics is placed before us as merely a harbin-
ger for his already accomplished fundamental ontology of Dasein.1
This violent appropriation of Kant can only be understood in the last

© The Author(s) 2017 17

A. Frangeskou, Levinas, Kant and the Problematic of Temporality,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59795-3_2
18   A. Frangeskou

instance as a historical confrontation—in the form of a destruction of

the history of ontology—with what the ground-laying of 1781 failed
to open up.2 However, this should not detract from the importance
of having to work out exactly what the stakes of the Kantian ground-
laying of metaphysics signified for the fundamental ontological move-
ment of Heidegger’s own thinking. ‘Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”’ in
the 1st Critique can receive its ‘true […] metaphysical sense’ only from
an engagement that is itself sensitive to the essential problematic of the
entire enterprise therein [12/8]. With regard to Levinas’s confrontation
with Heidegger two interpretations of this problematic become appar-
ent and reveal the stakes of the metaphysical ground-laying in question.
In light of this confrontation it would appear that Heidegger’s ontologi-
cal destruction radicalises the metaphysical sense of Kant’s revolution-
ary text to the point of obscuring what is truly at issue. How? In his
concerted effort to prioritise the Transcendental Analytic Heidegger
diminishes the potential of the Transcendental Dialectic to chart an
interpretive direction in the Kantian ground-laying that takes us beyond
the problem of Being, one that Kant himself had foreseen, but a direc-
tion which Heidegger’s own interpretation conceals from us. In this
way Heidegger reaches in his Kant lecture courses, and especially in the
1929 Kantbook, the schematism of the pure concepts of understand-
ing.3 He therefore removes himself, and Kant along with him, from the
supra-temporal excesses of traditional metaphysics which characterise
‘the discipline of Metaphysica Specialis’ [9/6] in order to open himself
to an interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason as a historical out-
let for the ‘further clarification’ of fundamental ontology presented in
Being and Time [xvi/xix]. As Heidegger comments in the ‘Preface to the
Fourth Edition’ of the Kantbook, it was ‘the chapter on Schematism’
that led him ‘to interpret the Critique of Pure Reason from within the
horizon of […] Being and Time,’ because it was this chapter of the 1st
Critique which first uncovered the ‘connection between the problem of
Categories, that is, the problem of Being in traditional Metaphysics and
the phenomenon of time,’ a schematic connection of Being and time
that until then had remained buried within the metaphysical tradition
[xiv/xvii–xviii]. Through the schematism chapter of the 1st Critique,
Kant lays the ground for the discipline of ‘Metaphysica Generalis
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
19

(Ontology)’ and anticipates the temporal problematic of fundamen-

tal ontology in Being and Time [9/6]. In his ‘projection of the inner
possibility of metaphysics,’ in his ‘setting-free of the essential ground’
of Metaphysica Generalis [2/2], Kant came across the problematic of
Temporality as such, and he did so by leading this projection back
beyond the timelessness of the ideas of pure reason toward the schema-
tism of the pure concepts of understanding because he allowed himself
to be drawn there ‘by the coercion of the phenomena themselves’ [SZ
23/45].4 To be sure, Kant ultimately fails to uncover the temporal prob-
lem of Being radically enough. However, in spite of this, once accom-
plished, the ground-laying does allow one to project the problem of
Being, of the inner possibility of traditional metaphysics, more directly
upon the phenomenon of time. Hence the historical connection which
Heidegger explicitly recounts in Being and Time and which he cease-
lessly suggests in 1929 between, on the one hand, the Critique of Pure
Reason, which in the Transcendental Analytic leads to the ground-laying
of metaphysics ‘in its originality’ such as to free it from the timeless play
of concepts alone—that is, from the purely rational ideas of Metaphysica
Specialis—and, on the other hand, the task of a fundamental ontology
of Dasein which interprets this ground-laying of Metaphysica Generalis
‘in a retrieval’ of the problematic of Temporality [G3 3/2]. The origi-
nality of the ground-laying of 1781 anticipates both the destruction of
traditional metaphysics as well as the need to establish a temporal ontol-
ogy of Being without having to resort to an ontic knowledge of supra-
temporal beings: Kant’s ground-laying leads away from the timelessness
of traditional metaphysics by allowing for the development of a funda-
mental ontology of Dasein’s temporality.
The alternative approach—which belongs to Levinas in princi-
ple, even though he failed to outline it in fact—completely overturns
Heidegger’s ontological directive for reading the 1st Critique. The
ground-laying of metaphysics certainly does consist in freeing up the
categories in their connection to the phenomenon of time. But far from
advancing his reading toward the dialectical expansion of these connec-
tions in the hands of the ideas, Heidegger would have unreservedly led
Kant’s metaphysics back to the schematism of the pure concepts alone,
thereby imprisoning the problematic of Temporality within the problem
20   A. Frangeskou

of Being. Thus, Heidegger’s reading of the 1st Critique would perpetu-

ate, even against the author’s original intention to re-establish the meta-
physical value of the ideas of pure reason, the primacy of fundamental
ontology at the expense of ethics as first philosophy. In short, the adher-
ence of Heidegger’s Kant-interpretation to the categories of traditional
ontology would betray, by recourse to the unquestioned primacy
accorded to the schematism of the pure concepts of understanding,
those concepts that ‘break’ with—or ‘break up’—the ontological phe-
nomenon of time. To overcome Heidegger’s directive for the ground-
laying of metaphysics would require that one overcome fundamental
ontology, by revealing against its appropriation of Kant’s theoretical
philosophy, a possibility that had been passed over as early as 1927—
of playing the ideas of God, man and world, those concepts foreign
to all ontology, against the ontological concepts traditionally endowed
with the title of categories and which connect to a phenomenon of
time appropriate to Metaphysica Generalis. Within this topic, accord-
ing to the development of a schematism of the ideas that will eventu-
ally lead it to the temporality of Being-for-the-Other, the 1st Critique
of 1781 attempts to restore the ethical primacy of Metaphysica Specialis
by expanding the phenomenon of time beyond the ontological primacy
of the Transcendental Analytic. Kant’s ground-laying therefore does not
lead away from the timelessness of traditional metaphysics but leads
back into it by compelling the Transcendental Dialectic to reveal the
ethical expansion of time by the supra-temporal ideas of pure reason.
The conflict of these two interpretations situates the Critique of
Pure Reason in two opposing directions: Either, reading it on the basis
of the Transcendental Analytic, one can retrieve the temporal status of
the traditional ontological concepts of metaphysics (the categories),
and it then becomes possible to move on to fundamental ontology
by carrying out the ground-laying of Metaphysica Generalis accord-
ing to the temporality of Dasein. Or else, reading it on the basis of the
Transcendental Dialectic, one reveals the conceptual primacy of the
ideas of pure reason, which becomes all the more clear insofar as they
expand the phenomenon of time in its connection to the categories of
the understanding; it then becomes necessary to move on to ethics as
first philosophy, in order to work out the ground-laying of Metaphysica
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
21

Specialis according to the temporality of Being-for-the-Other. This con-

flict, which for the purposes of this study becomes unavoidable, gives
rise to a host of difficult questions. According to Heidegger’s Kantbook,
and thus in strict accordance with the newly disclosed ontological ana-
lytic of Being and Time, in what did the ground-laying of metaphysics
consist exactly? Does Kant’s motive for the ground-laying really concern
the temporality of Dasein as newly disclosed by the project of funda-
mental ontology? Heidegger retrieves the temporal status of the catego-
ries; Levinas, in allowing us to begin stigmatising this approach, permits
us to reveal the ethical expansion of the temporal by the ideas of God,
man and world. Supposing that this distinction is supported by Kant’s
text, would it not offer a definitive range of material sufficient for us to
present the conflict between the two readings in a more elaborate way?
In other words, if it is a matter of situating the 1st Critique ontologi-
cally on the temporal ground of the schematism in the Transcendental
Analytic, then is there not already, in support of the Levinasian read-
ing of the 1st Critique we are proposing, an ethical expansion of this
ground in the Transcendental Dialectic? An examination of these ques-
tions will not be easy, yet must be conducted if we are ever to reveal the
conflicting motivations—both ontological and ethical—for the ground-
laying of metaphysics in the 1st Critique.

Destroying the Doctrine of the Schematism

If ‘the obscurity of his doctrine of the schematism’ effectively ‘closed off’
the problematic of Temporality to Kant in 1781, Heidegger immedi-
ately recognises the ultimate reason for this in 1927: ‘Kant could never
achieve an insight into the problematic of Temporality […] [because]
his analysis of it remained oriented towards the traditional way in which
time had been ordinarily understood; in the long run this kept him
from working out the phenomenon of a ‘transcendental determina-
tion of time’ in its own structure and function’ [SZ 23-4/45mod]. Such
blockages by the tradition necessitate that one not take the Kantian
ground-laying of metaphysics as completely genuine, but instead bring
to light those ‘primordial ‘sources’’ that remain concealed beneath it,
22   A. Frangeskou

and from out of which it is ‘in part quite genuinely drawn’ [21/43]. The
doctrine of the schematism is not to be taken traditionally as something
self-evident, but rather, is that which Kant himself is unable to render
problematic and which therefore requires a certain task of ‘destruction’
[23/44]5; namely, the task of retrieving the original possibilities of the
Kantian ground-laying, those “primordial sources” which elude Kant,
but at the same time, enable him to return to the tradition of ontol-
ogy in a positive manner and make it productive for working out the
problematic of Temporality.6 Like Kant, who in a characteristic destruc-
tion of his own, led the categories—which are perhaps in themselves
employed only timelessly—back to the phenomenon of their tran-
scendental determination of time, one must lead the schematism itself
and as a whole back toward its sources in the structure and function
of Dasein’s ‘temporality [Zeitlichkeit ]’ [17/38]. Indeed, ‘those very phe-
nomena which will be exhibited under the heading of ‘Temporality’ in
our analysis, are precisely those most covert judgements of the ‘common
reason’ for which Kant says it is the ‘business of philosophers’ to provide
an analytic’ [23/45]. The destruction of the doctrine of the schema-
tism already implies the identification of that obscure doctrine with the
failure to exhibit the phenomena of Temporality, and in return: ‘Only
when we have established the problematic of Temporality [Problematik
der Temporalität ], can we succeed in casting light on the obscurity of his
[i.e., Kant’s] doctrine of the schematism. But this will also show us why
this area is one which had to remain closed off to him in its real dimen-
sions and its central ontological function’ [23/45mod].
That the problematic of Temporality should have remained closed
off to Kant is due to the fact that the phenomenon of a transcenden-
tal determination of time is governed principally by his own deductive
use of the categories, those concepts of traditional ontology which for
Heidegger are primarily responsible for the concealment of the dimen-
sions of temporality. The retrieval of the problematic of Temporality
therefore requires the task of destruction to reveal the extent to which
‘the chapter on the schematism and the Kantian doctrine of time’ oper-
ates with the concepts that the ontological tradition had laid out for
it, so as to then be able to reveal the newly established temporality of
Dasein that this chapter invariably conceals from us by its employment
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
23

of these concepts [24/45]. It then becomes incumbent upon the task of

destruction to ‘stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and
this always means keeping it within its limits; these in turn are given fac-
tically in the way the question is formulated at the time, and in the way
the possible field of investigation is bounded off’ [22/44]. The destruc-
tion of the doctrine of the schematism in terms of its retrieval of the
problematic of Temporality has force only if it is a matter of bringing
to light what, given the factical limitations imposed upon the Kantian
doctrine of time, precisely conceals itself from view; a concealment that
arises from out of its unquestioning appropriation of the traditional cat-
egories and concepts of ontology.
As these early passages of Being and Time confirm, Heidegger can
retrieve the temporal problematic inherent in the Kantian ground-lay-
ing of metaphysics only by carrying out this task of destruction. For
only: ‘The destruction of the history of ontology [can] […] raise the
question whether and to what extent the interpretation of Being and
the phenomenon of time have been brought together in the course of
the history of ontology, and whether the problematic of Temporality
required for this has ever been worked out in principle or ever could
have been’ [23/44-5mod]. One must carry out a destruction of the
doctrine of the schematism because one must lead Kant’s metaphysical
enterprise in the 1st Critique back to the interpretive task of destroy-
ing its own historical limitations, which have hitherto prevented him,
and us, from working out the principle ontological requirements of
the problematic of Temporality. Only then can what remains essential
to Kant’s own investigation of this temporal problematic come to light.
Even the later Kantbook does not deviate from the importance of this
initial intention, offering itself ‘as a “historical” introduction of sorts
to clarify the problematic treated in the first half of Being and Time ’
[G3 xvi/xix], one that Heidegger insists must be taken in the strictest
sense as a ‘“confrontation” [“Auseinandersetzung ”]’ with the 1st Critique
which aims ultimately at its destruction [249/175mod].7 We therefore
conclude with Heidegger: the fundamental significance of the Kantian
ground-laying of metaphysics in the 1st Critique has to do with the
elevation of time as determined transcendentally by the categories, to
the level of a complete ontological destruction of the phenomenon that
24   A. Frangeskou

was initially worked out in the doctrine of the schematism, that is, to
the absolutely decisive role the problematic of Temporality plays with
respect to the phenomenon of a transcendental determination of time.
The initial projection and the final completion of the ground-laying of
metaphysics come into an immediate historical connection: Kant’s met-
aphysical—and indeed, ontological—enterprise is identified as such by
leading everything that the schematism claims to be worked out as a
phenomenon of transcendental time-determination back to the funda-
mental ontology of Dasein’s temporality. This conclusion gives rise to
two arguments, which Heidegger delivers in 1929.
First, Heidegger argues that the constitutive ‘problem of the essence
of a priori synthetic judgements’ formulated in the Critique of Pure
Reason orients Kant’s metaphysical enterprise in no other direction
than toward ‘the question concerning the possibility of ontological
knowledge,’ and thus in no way contradicts the Copernican injunction
to establish the genuine limits of pure reason [14/9]. In fact, Part 1 of
Heidegger’s interpretation does not hesitate to recognise that the 1st
Critique, insofar as it admits of being a theory of knowledge ‘adjusts
itself to the ontological,’ that is, to the determination of ‘the essence
of “transcendental truth, which precedes all empirical truth and makes
it possible”’ [17/11].8 This revolutionary moment is carried out and
acknowledged as such when one realises that for Kant ‘the unveiling
of […] ontological knowledge’ turns on ‘an elucidation’ of the a priori
synthesis which, as common to all synthetic a priori judgements, first
makes this unveiling possible [14/9]. In short, Kant’s laying of the
ground for metaphysics consists in a ‘bringing-forth of the determi-
nation of the Being of the being [as] a preliminary self-relating to the
being. This pure “relation-to…” (synthesis) forms first and foremost the
that-upon-which [das Worauf ] and the horizon within which the being
in itself becomes experienceable […]. It is now a question of elucidat-
ing the possibility of this a priori synthesis’ [15/10mod]. This a priori
sense of the Copernican revolution augments the ontological direc-
tion of the 1st Critique all the more insofar as Kant himself explicitly
includes it: ‘Kant calls an investigation concerning the essence of this
synthesis a transcendental investigation. “I entitle all knowledge tran-
scendental that is occupied in general not so much with objects as with
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
25

the kind of knowledge we have of objects, insofar as this is possible a

priori.” Hence, transcendental knowledge does not investigate the being
itself, but rather the possibility of the preliminary understanding of
Being, i.e., at one and the same time: the constitution of the Being of
the being. It concerns the stepping-over (transcendence) of pure reason
to the being, so that it can first and foremost be adequate to its possible
object’ [15-16/10].9
For Heidegger at least, the Kantian problem of a transcendental
elucidation of all synthetic a priori judgements belonging to the dis-
cipline of metaphysics does not deviate from the question concern-
ing the possibility of ontological knowledge, but rather constitutes its
accomplishment and truth: ‘To make the possibility of ontology into
a problem means: to inquire as to the possibility, i.e., as to the essence
of this transcendence which characterizes the understanding of Being,
to philosophize transcendentally. This is why Kant uses the designa-
tion “Transcendental Philosophy” for Metaphysica Generalis (Ontologia)
in order to make the problematic of traditional ontology discerna-
ble’ [16/10-11]. An interpretation of the 1st Critique must take as its
starting point Kant’s reduction of the understanding of Being to the
problem of transcendence, i.e., to the question concerning the inner
possibility or grounding of ontological truth, which in the first instance
characterises the synthesis inherent in all ‘a priori synthetic knowledge’
[17/11]. Only then can we understand how ‘with this revolution Kant
forces the problem of ontology to centre stage,’ and on that basis, begin
to inscribe the Critique of Pure Reason into the ontological problematic
passed down to us by the tradition [17/11]. Indeed, when one consid-
ers, as Heidegger does, that the whole of the 1st Critique was under-
taken for the sake of developing this problem of a priori synthesis,10
then by implication, any interpretation of Kant’s transcendental philos-
ophy as a laying of the ground for Metaphysica Generalis ‘must pursue
the a priori synthesis exclusively in itself, pursue it to the seed [Keim ]
which provides its ground and which allows that synthesis to develop
into what it is (allows it to be possible in essence). […] Thus, the task
then arises of showing how this development of the possibility of ontol-
ogy from its seeds is to be carried out’ [17-18/12].
26   A. Frangeskou

With this task, we embark upon the second of Heidegger’s argu-

ments. It begins with a clear statement of destruction that opens the
second part of the book: ‘In order to project the inner possibility of
ontological knowledge, we must first have opened up a view into the
dimension of going back [Dimension des Rückgangs ] to the ground
which supports the possibility of what we are seeking in its essential
constitution’ [19/13]. What is most certain for Heidegger, what the
Kantbook names the ground of a priori synthesis, and which alone ren-
ders possible Kant’s projection of the inner possibility of metaphysics
in the 1st Critique, has to do with this: the inner possibility of onto-
logical knowledge, such as it becomes reduced to the constitutive prob-
lem of grounding all synthetic a priori judgements, is supported by an
essential constitution, one whose primacy must be secured in advance
and which guides Kant’s own ontological insights from the ground up.
Any interpretation that refuses to go back to the ground of Kant’s meta-
physical projection in the 1st Critique, cannot hope to secure what is
most proper or essential to this constitution since any such interpreta-
tion excludes itself from ‘an explicit, systematic uprooting and mark-
ing of the field’ upon which an adequate interpretation of the Kantian
ground-laying of metaphysics becomes possible [19/13]. Consequently,
if Kant’s projection of the ground in his ground-laying of metaphys-
ics is ignored, if the knowledge of the origin of pure reason which the
1st Critique requires remains undetermined, then the ‘original directive
force of the projecting,’ that is, the essential constitution of the a priori
synthesis which plays such a pivotal role in the ground-laying of meta-
physics as Kant projects it, will remain concealed [19/13].
Two requirements then become necessary to the success of return-
ing to the ground in question: The first of these is a preliminary ‘char-
acterization of the field of origin’ of this a priori synthesis, one which
concentrates ‘on the clarification of the essence of the finitude of human
knowledge’ [21/15]. It demands that one ensure the return to ‘the essen-
tial structure of knowledge itself ’ by means of a thorough appraisal of
intuition [21/15]: ‘In order to understand the Critique of Pure Reason
this point must be hammered in, so to speak: Knowing is primarily intu-
iting. From this it at once becomes clear that […] thinking is merely in
the service of intuition’ [21-2/15], and that ‘both intuition and thinking
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
27

must have a certain inherent relationship that allows their unification,’

a unification or synthesis that moreover opens itself up as the ground
of ‘Representation in general (repraesentatio )’ [22/16]. It is the ground-
ing of the two sources of knowledge that, above all else, characterises
the development of the a priori synthesis that Heidegger is seeking to
return to, a ‘characterization of the finitude of human knowledge’ which
at the same time provides ‘a clearer indication of the direction which the
[process of ] going back to the source of the inner possibility of ontology
has to take’ [35/24].11 Now, this “‘springing-forth” [Entspringen ] of our
knowledge’ into two basic sources cannot itself be a ‘mere juxtaposition’
of elements, since it is not ‘a subsequent result of the collision of these
elements,’ but is, in terms of the synthesis that unites them, what allows
these ‘elements in their belonging-together and their oneness [to] spring
forth’ [36/25mod]. Such oneness of the basic sources of pure knowledge
combines what each of them represents of the Being of the being; as the
unknown root of sensibility (which represents the Being of the being in
accordance with pure intuition) and understanding (which represents
the Being of the being represented in pure intuition by representing it
in pure concepts) this pure ‘veritative synthesis’ precedes them in their
capacity for ontological knowledge [29/20], perhaps in the sense that
here, according to Heidegger, ‘something essential arises for the general
character of the Kantian laying of the ground for metaphysics’ [37/26].
It remains the case that in order to take on the projective function of
the ground-laying, the pure veritative synthesis must be irreducible
to either of ‘the pure elements of pure knowledge’ which spring forth
from it [39/27], and thus ‘goes into and points consciously toward the
unknown […] ground for Philosophy’ [37/26].
The second requirement is concerned with the manner of unveiling
this unknown ground of the pure veritative synthesis, as well as an indi-
cation of the method for confronting what becomes unveiled there.12
Both are geared toward rescuing pure synthesis from an ‘ambiguous
indeterminacy’ [29/20] by requiring us to return to ‘the inner pos-
sibility of the essential unity of a pure veritative synthesis,’ one that
‘pushes us even further back to the clarification of the original ground
for the inner possibility of this synthesis’ [39/27]. The clarification of
28   A. Frangeskou

this original ground of the pure veritative synthesis, or quite simply, of

‘ontological synthesis,’ becomes the principal recourse for every elabo-
ration Heidegger ever makes regarding Kant’s distinctive contribution
to the ground-laying of metaphysics in the 1st Critique by being the
first and last thing to undergo the fundamental ontological retrieval, in
this case by becoming unveiled as ‘pure synthesis’ in the deepest sense
that Kant gives to this term [39/27]. Hence, the ontological destruc-
tion of the Kantian notion of pure synthesis, merely proposed in Being
and Time as a destruction of the doctrine of the schematism, is now
attempted by the investigation of 1929; as early as §8, it announces that
the ‘provisional characterization of the essential structure [Wesensbaues ]
of finite knowledge has already revealed a wealth of structures
[Strukturen ] which belong inherently to synthesis’ [40/28]. And yet, the
Kantbook will hold back from fulfilling the destructive promise of Being
and Time until near the end of the third part. Part Two, which ‘runs
through [the] five stages’ of the Kantian ground-laying of metaphys-
ics, does not enter into the ultimate confrontation—namely with the
Kantian ground-laying in its originality—but sets about unveiling the
ground upon which the ultimate possibility of destruction must play
itself out [39/27mod]. Heidegger himself will confirm as much in the
opening paragraph to Part Three when he states that ‘what the ground
itself is, as already established in the ground-laying, must be clearly
delimited’ [126/89].13 In fact one will have to wait until §33, explic-
itly dedicated to ‘the working-out of the inner temporal character of the
three modes of synthesis’ [178/124], for Heidegger’s complete unveil-
ing of this synthesis, and thus for its retrieval as the ‘original time’ of
Dasein’s temporality [177/124].
If one recognises the guiding thread of pure synthesis throughout
each of its stages of development, then the immediate historical con-
nection between the Critique of Pure Reason and the ontological ana-
lytic of Dasein becomes clear. But what of the method for unveiling this
ground? Heidegger posits as ‘a general indication of the fundamental
character of the procedure for this laying of the ground for metaphys-
ics’ the ‘type of investigation [which] can be understood as “analytic”
in the broadest sense. It concerns finite pure reason with a view to
how, on the grounds of its essence, it makes something like ontological
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
29

synthesis possible’ [41/29mod]. In short, Kant’s Transcendental Analytic

in the 1st Critique is, in contradistinction to “‘Psychology” and “Logic”’
[41/28], a ‘revealing of the essence of human Dasein’ [41/29]. A seman-
tic reading of the term ‘analytic’ immediately follows: Analytic means
‘a freeing which loosens the seeds [Keime ] of ontology. It unveils those
conditions from which an ontology as a whole is allowed to sprout
[aufkeimen ] according to its inner possibility’ [41-2/29].14 We should
especially not lose sight here of the root meaning of this ‘freeing’ as the
‘making fluid [Flüssigmachen ]’ or ‘bringing into flux [Fluß-bringen ]’
of the ‘Origin,’ since it coincides with a certain wholly irremovable
determination that defines the entire procedure of the Transcendental
Analytic [41/29]: the very same inner temporal character of ontological
synthesis which lies at the origin of the two sources of pure knowledge
and which ‘at the same time determines [its] construction’ [42/29mod].
The inner temporal character of this construction ‘thus becomes a
letting-be-seen [Sehenlassen ] of the genesis of the essence of finite pure
reason from its proper ground. In such an analytic, therefore, lies the
projecting anticipation of the entire inner essence of finite pure reason.
Only in the thorough development of this essence does the essential
structure of ontology become visible’ [42/29]. Now that is a remark-
able equation: the analytic unveiling of the pure synthesis supporting
the essential unity of pure knowledge contains within itself an inner
temporal character. Temporality not only ‘brings metaphysics to the
ground and soil [Grund und Boden ] in which it is rooted as a “haunt-
ing” of human nature,’ i.e., as the essence of human Dasein, but also
more importantly, characterises its fundamental mode of procedure as
an anticipatory projection of that ground [42/29].
We can therefore give an initial response to the first of our earlier
questions: the ground-laying of metaphysics in the 1st Critique consists
in leading the pure concepts of understanding and the pure intuition
of sensibility back to the hidden ground of their pure veritative syn-
thesis as defined in the doctrine of the schematism, and thus in radi-
cally deepening the ontological sense of this synthesis itself. The inner
temporal construction of ontological synthesis implies that the Kantian
doctrine of the schematism lets out far more to be seen, at least more to
be seen than an unveiling that limits itself to a traditional ontological
30   A. Frangeskou

understanding of the schematism alone. In other words, because the

schematism occupies the central place of what Kant understands uni-
versally by the term ‘pure synthesis,’ there is more to be seen than what
has traditionally been seen in the ground-laying of metaphysics; namely,
exactly as much as the schematism allows to be seen in a fundamental
ontological unveiling.

The Kantian Ground-Laying of

Metaphysics—Five Stages
But what does the schematism allow to be seen with respect to the
inner temporal construction of ontological synthesis? This remains to be
answered, but a quick response to this consequence of the first question
will allow us to conceive exactly how far the Kantian notion of ‘pure syn-
thesis,’ and therefore also the laying of the ground for metaphysics, pro-
ceeds according to the five stages that Heidegger outlines in 1929.15 In
the opening paragraph to his analysis of these stages, Heidegger reiterates
what he considers to be the primary aspect of the ground-laying; namely
the ‘problem of the possibility of Ontology’ according to the ‘problem of
the transcendental, i.e., of the synthesis’ which essentially grounds—or
‘constitutes’—‘the transcendence of the preliminary understanding of
Being’ [42-3/30]. In fact, in 1929, it is a matter of understanding how
‘finite human Dasein’ [42/30] or ‘the finite being that we call “human
being” [must] be according to its innermost essence so that in general it
can be open to a being that it itself is not and that therefore must be able
to show itself from itself ’ [43/30mod]. In order to attain the ontologi-
cal orientation that is demanded by Kant’s transcendental philosophy,
it is obligatory to review those key stages of the 1st Critique individu-
ally and to ‘follow the inner movement of the Kantian ground-laying’ on
that basis [43/30]. Here it is first necessary ‘to assess the appropriateness,
the validity, and the limits of the external architectonic of the Critique
of Pure Reason based on the most original understanding of the inner
course of the ground-laying’ [43/30]; and it is necessary to note above
all that the Kantian ground-laying leads beyond the limits of its own
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
31

enterprise in order to reach the temporality of Dasein. Moreover, in an

earlier lecture course conducted in 1927, and which we offer in support
of what he is now saying here in 1929, Heidegger states the following:
‘In Kant, the […] decisive thing remains obscure, namely that in assert-
ing existence […] some being is always intended, but the […] under-
standing in the assertion of being looks toward something else which,
however, is already understood precisely in commerce with beings and
in access to them. Expressed in Temporal language, the enpresenting
of something has, as such, a reference to beings; but this means that as
ecstasis it lets that for which it is open be encountered in the light of
its own—the enpresenting’s—horizon’ [G24 451/317].16 It is therefore
necessary to understand that to begin with, Kant’s external architectonic
of the ground-laying works in favour of an unveiling of the ecstatic-hori-
zonal temporality of Dasein concealed within it.
The ontological analytic of Dasein is opposed to the schematism
alone according to which the time of pure intuition is determined tran-
scendentally by the categories of pure thought. It is therefore a matter of
submitting the highest synthetic principles of reason to a fundamental
ontological destruction. It is a matter of discovering that the synthesis
governing this pure transcendental determination of time allows for a
deeper clarification, and therefore that this pure synthesis is unveiled
according to a temporal figure of unity that far exceeds the schema-
image of a category, that is, that far exceeds the pure sensible limits
imposed by Kant himself upon the traditional concepts of ontology.
The unfolding of the Kantian limitation is accomplished in five stages;
each of these stages progressively unveil the pure synthesis of the sche-
matism in such a way as to retrieve its fundamental ontological signifi-
cance, and with the result that the Kantian schema-image is revealed by
Heidegger to be the product of an ecstatic-horizonal construction.
1. In his Introduction to the Transcendental Logic, Kant famously
states that intuition would remain utterly blind if there were no con-
cepts of thought to unify it, and that these same conceptual unities
of thought would remain completely empty if there was no intuition
to fulfil them. Heidegger uses this statement as a reason to posit that
the ‘finitude of knowledge directly demonstrates a peculiar inner
dependency of thinking upon intuition, or conversely: a need for the
32   A. Frangeskou

determination of the latter by the former’ [G3 58/41]. This pecu-

liar attraction ‘of the elements toward one another indicates that their
unity […] must have applied to them “earlier” and must have laid the
ground for them’ [58/41]. Hence, the pure form of intuition—namely
time—would not have any validity unless it had already been unified
conceptually by the categories of pure thinking; the function of pure
intuition is a requirement on its part to ‘be gone through in a certain
way, taken up, and bound together in order to produce knowledge’ [61-
2/43]. Conversely, pure thinking must be ‘viewed with regard to its own
essence, i.e., its pure relatedness to intuition’ [57/40], which character-
ises the unveiling of ‘the origin of the categories’ in their capacity to
take up time and bind it together ontologically [56/40]. In this way,
Kant sets about unveiling ‘the essence and the idea of the category in
general’ [56/40].
The unity that is presupposed by each of these elements, and which
is earlier in a metaphysical sense, is none other than the unity that Kant
himself announces ‘by naming it “synthesis”’ [60/42]. They can presup-
pose it only if ‘the essential unity of ontological knowledge […] revolves
around the pure Veritative Synthesis’ [60/42]. The fundamental task of
the 1st Critique is to ask about ‘the original union of pure, universal intu-
ition (time) and pure thinking (the notions)’ [60/42], such that the ‘prob-
lem of the pure veritative or ontological synthesis must hence be brought
to the question’ of how ‘the original (veritative) “synthesis”’ can appear in
its capacity to unify such things as time and the categories [60-1/43]: that
is, to the question of unveiling the inner possibility of ontological truth
which lays the ground for the discipline of Metaphysica Generalis.
2. This ontological synthesis is itself unveiled in the veritative mode
of what Heidegger provisionally calls a ‘reciprocal preparing-themselves-
for-each-other’ of the elements of pure knowledge, ‘the pure manifold
of time’ and ‘pure thinking’ [62/44], for ‘it must share the basic charac-
ter of the two elements, i.e., it must be a representing’ [62-3/44]. Now,
‘“Synthesis in general,”’ as Kant himself tells us, ‘“is the mere result of
the power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul
without which we would have no knowledge whatever, but of which
we are seldom conscious even once”’ [63/44].17 This means that the 1st
Critique delivers two parts that whilst being irreducible to one another,
 2 The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism    
33

are seen to belong to a ‘joining-into-one’ which is exhibited for Kant

in ‘the sticking-together [Syn-haften ] of intuition and the understand-
ing’ [64/45]. From here it becomes ‘evident that there are three parts
belonging to the full essence of pure knowledge’ [63/45], and that ‘the
pure synthesis of the power of imagination holds the central position’
[64/45].
But how does this pure synthesis of imagination appear at the out-
set? Upon what ground must the destruction of the Kantian ground-
laying of metaphysics deploy itself? Provisionally we can say that the
pure synthesis of imagination appears in two ways simultaneously: On
the one hand, it appears as ‘the pure Synopsis’ ‘in intuition’ [60/43]
which ‘“demands”’ that the pure manifold of time be ‘gathered from
dispersion’ by already being made ‘to fit [fugt ] with thinking itself, i.e.,
fit with it as a conceptual determining’ [62/44]. On the other hand, it
appears as ‘the pure reflecting (predicative) synthesis’ of pure thinking
[61/43], which requires that the demand for gathering the pure mani-
fold of time in pure synopsis be guided in advance by being ‘brought
to the concept which itself gives it unity. Thus pure synthesis [of imagi-
nation] acts purely synoptically in pure intuition and at the same time
purely reflectively in pure thinking’ [62/45mod]. We shall elaborate fur-
ther on these important points in a moment, but already from his out-
line of the two ways of its appearance it is clear that Heidegger assesses
the pure synthesis of imagination ‘as one having a truly superior charac-
ter’ due to its power ‘to unite such things which in themselves already
demonstrate synthetic structure’ [61/43].18 The power of imagination
therefore appears in its ontological superiority as the pure synthesis of
intuition and understanding, anticipating the doctrine of the schema-
tism, and it does so, above all, ‘in such a way that it shows how it is able
to unify time and notion’ [69/49].
It is therefore necessary to understand that in the 1st Critique, the
two parts of ontological knowledge give way to ‘the exhibition’ of the
power of the imagination to unify the categories and time, an exhi-
bition that the imagination itself carries out in ‘what Kant calls the
“Transcendental Deduction of the Categories”’ [69/49]. Thus, for
Heidegger, the ‘basic intention of the “Deduction”’ is to provide an
imaginative exhibition of the category of pure thinking in its unity with
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
the other side, there were murmurs among the well-to-do, who were
deprived of their favourite beverages unless they could obtain a
doctor’s certificate of ill-health, which did not, however, seem difficult
to arrange. I was asked more than once whether King George was
about to follow the lead given by the Tsar, Russians not being very
clear as to the limitations of a constitutional monarchy.
Soldiers were to be seen everywhere, sometimes drilling near the
great red Winter Palace, sometimes as reservists, with numbers
chalked upon their backs, or again as small parties of wounded in
charge of kind-faced hospital nurses. I heard pathetic accounts of
the extreme poverty of the men who were being nursed back to
health in the English Hospital directed by Lady Georgina Buchanan,
who had had the kindly thought of fitting them out when they were
dismissed to their peasant homes; the totally disabled being trained
in basket-making. Both at Petrograd and at Moscow, our next
halting-place, those actively engaged in nursing spoke highly of the
courage and gratitude of their patients. In the latter city an English
girl of only nineteen and a Russian lady of the same age, neither of
whom had had any training in nursing, were in charge of a hospital
containing forty-five wounded soldiers. They did all the bandaging
themselves, assisted at every operation, and supervised the peasant
women who performed the more menial share of the work. My
devoted compatriot told me that the men called her “Little Sister,”
and were marvellously brave when operated upon, saying that her
presence gave them courage. Owing to the absence of the great
majority of the trained nurses at the front, these capable amateurs
were of the utmost service. We heard that the Russian medical
faculty disapproved of inoculation for typhoid, giving the somewhat
inadequate reason that “there were so many worse diseases,” and
consequently the soldiers suffered terribly from this scourge.
My brother and I did the sights of Petrograd, with its many gold-
covered domes, cupolas and spires, but I will refrain from describing
the gorgeous interior of St. Isaak, the pictures of the Hermitage, or
even the deeply interesting house in which Peter the Great lived
while building his “window opening to the West.”
Moscow, with its hundreds of gilt-domed or purple or blue or green
cupolas, that bizarre orgy of colour and fantastic design called the
Church of Ivan the Terrible, and the ancient Kremlin built to resist
Tartar inroads, gave me, as indeed it does to most travellers, the
impression of a semi-Oriental city.
We were in the very heart of Russia, and no one could fail to be
struck by the intense devotion—I refrain from calling it superstition—
of the people. In the dim magnificence of the small but lofty
Coronation Chapel, which has its walls literally encrusted with
jewelled icons, crowds were kissing the hands and feet of the sacred
pictures all day long, in defiance of every hygienic principle. Long-
haired priests in embroidered copes were chanting services, and as
the body of a saint, dead centuries ago, had just been exhumed, it
was confidently expected that many miracles of healing would be
wrought by the remains. Gilded and jewelled banners to be carried in
procession stood in the ornate chapels, which had gorgeous doors
through which no woman might pass. On the great day of his
coronation the Tsar passed through these portals, anointed and
crowned himself, then issued forth, the Father of his people, to
perform the same ceremony on the Tsaritsa.
The monarch, in common with the humblest of his subjects,
uncovers himself as he passes under one of the entrances to the
Kremlin, above which stands a particularly holy icon. Indeed in every
room of every Russian house, even in the hotels, hangs some
pictured saint with a little lamp in front of him, while the railway
stations and waiting-rooms are all provided with sacred guardians.
To these people the War was then a holy one. The chambermaid of
our hotel, who spoke German—a language it is forbidden to use in
public—told me with tears that her only son had been killed at the
front, that his father had died of grief when the news reached them,
and that her daughter, working at a hospital, had had no news of her
soldier-husband for three months and naturally feared the worst. “But
we must not grumble,” she ended bravely; “it is terrible for all of us,
but with God’s help our Tsar will conquer his enemies and we shall
have peace once more.”
Russians struck us as being somewhat silent in the streets, and we
never heard any one whistle. It was explained that they have the
same superstition about whistling as have the Persians, and look
upon it as “devilish speech.” In connection with this we were told that
on one occasion an American bishop and his chaplain were visiting a
monastery in Moscow, and to the horror of the monks the chaplain
kept on bursting into snatches of whistling. But one of the holy men
was equal to the occasion and, walking close behind the
unconscious offender, made the sign of the cross repeatedly in order
to avert any evil consequences!
The lack of efficiency in Russia was very noticeable. For example, to
cash our letters of credit in a bank was a tedious business, the
money being slowly counted with the aid of an abacus. The
shopkeepers also depend greatly on these aids to arithmetic. It was
moreover a land of tips. In every private house the servant who
helped you on and off with your fur coat and galoshes expected a
pourboire, and on leaving a hotel we were surrounded by a throng of
waiters, porters of different grades, and a bevy of small boys, all
intent on fees.
During the next section of our journey to Tashkent the trains were by
no means as comfortable as before. Our only light was a guttering
candle in a lantern placed high above the carriage door, and, what
was worse, the double windows were screwed up for the winter, all
the air we breathed passing through most inadequate ventilators in
the roof. After some thirty hours of semi-suffocation it was a relief
when the train stopped at Samara, and its great bridge over the
Volga. Before we crossed, soldiers with fixed bayonets filed into the
corridors and lined the train, and henceforward sentries stood with
fixed bayonets on all the platforms. Instead of going through to
Tashkent, our train stopped for eighteen hours, so we drove perforce
to the best hotel in the place. There I was ushered into a bedroom
which had only a mattress on the bedstead; but a cheery maid soon
produced sheets, pillows and towels, these articles from now onward
being charged separately in the bill: she also filled up the water-tank
which discharged itself into the basin by a kind of squirt, liable to
drench the unwary. A hot bath is an expensive luxury in Russia,
costing from three to five shillings; but I never appreciated it at its
proper value. The bath, filled with water too hot for me to plunge my
hand into, was invariably taken in a tiny room without ventilation in
which a stove was fiercely burning, and the attendant, armed with a
thermometer, was always greatly astonished when I demanded a
copious admixture of cold water. Half the room would be occupied by
a divan covered with a sheet on which to repose after the bath, and
once or twice I had some difficulty in getting rid of the maid, so
anxious was she to wrap me in a second sheet, with which Russians
drape themselves before they step into the water.
Samara is an important provincial town, but the whole place looked
poor and shabby, partly because the coloured plaster coating of the
houses was dropping off in unsightly patches. The wide streets
radiated from a small public garden in which stood a statue of
Alexander II., the Liberator, and, as it was Sunday, all the world was
promenading in its best clothes along the slush-covered pavements,
the thaw having set in. The peasants looked picturesque in short
sheepskin coats, worn with the wool inside, fur caps with lappets to
protect the ears, long leather riding-boots, putties tied up with string
and thick leather gloves. The shaggy hats of black or white
sheepskin made their wearers look like brigands in opera, and
beside them the women, in long black coats much kilted at the waist,
with their heads tied up in woollen shawls, appeared decidedly tame.
We made our way down to the Volga and walked on the frozen river,
which was a mile wide, watching the drinking-water of the town being
drawn from various holes in the ice.
At the railway station that evening we found a large crowd on the
platform assembled to give a hearty send-off to a trainload of
soldiers evidently hailing from the neighbourhood. The men were
travelling to the front in horse-boxes, and leant over the wooden
barriers wildly cheering and waving their caps, full of health and
spirits, and one could hardly bear to think that many would never
return, or, sadder still, would come home incapacitated for the rest of
their days.
Owing to the War there were no restaurant-cars attached to the
trains, and as the time-tables were unaltered we had halts of only ten
or twelve minutes three or four times a day, when the passengers
made a frenzied rush to get what they could at the inferior station
buffets. We usually bought something in the way of meat, cheese
and bread, and carried it back with us to our carriage, after we had
gulped down plates of the excellent cabbage soups called stchee or
borsch. The only long halt we made—one of forty minutes—was at a
station with no buffet whatever. The farther east we went the less
food could we procure: sometimes packets of inferior Russian
biscuits were the only stock-in-trade of the buffet, and if it had not
been for our soup-packets we should have been half-starved. As it
was, we were often unpleasantly hungry, hot water being the only
thing that we could be sure of obtaining.
In spite of this the journey was full of interest. We were travelling
across limitless steppes, and the melting of the snow in patches
showed that spring was at hand, when the sun would break forth
from the grey, lowering skies. Near Orenburg we noticed many tons
of hay ready to be despatched to the front, and as we halted at
Alexis I suddenly saw the ungainly forms of camels. Nearer and
nearer they came, padding across the snow, drawing sleighs laden
with hay, and with a leap of the heart I realized that we were once
again in the East, that Europe was left behind, and that we had
entered that vast mysterious continent of Asia, cradle of the human
race and birthplace of its great religions.
The following day we passed the Sea of Aral, with masted ships
riding at anchor in its port; and by now all traces of snow had gone,
and the sandy steppe was scantily dotted with coarse grasses.
Sometimes we traversed stretches of salt-encrusted ground, and in
places the rolling sand-dunes were planted and bound together with
rushes in order to prevent them from encroaching upon the railway,
or long lines of fencing answered the same purpose for the
snowdrifts.
We saw few signs of life, and the loneliness of the steppe made me
realize something of those vast empty spaces of Asia which from
lack of water will for ever be dreary wastes forsaken by mankind. Yet
a picturesque crowd was usually assembled at the stations. Hairless-
faced men with high cheek-bones were clad in long padded coats
reaching to their heels, or wore sheepskins, their rope or straw-soled
shoes being tied with leather thongs criss-cross from knee to ankle
over thick woollen stockings. Among a variety of headgear the
quaintest resembled early Victorian coal-scuttle bonnets tied under
the chin. They were made of brightly coloured velvet, with broad fur-
lined brims, a fur-lined flap behind and lappets over the ears, and
looked most comical when worn by brawny Kirghiz, who strode up
and down the platforms trailing long whips in their hands.
The warm weather was now beginning, and the Russian women who
sold tea and hot water from big brass samovars had discarded their
winter clothes and appeared in flowered cotton dresses with gaily
coloured handkerchiefs over their heads. Their children were running
about barefoot, and I was amused at watching an encounter
between a lightly clad urchin and a smart little boy who was travelling
in our overheated train. This latter, who had a long fur-lined coat, a
fur cap and galoshes over his boots, held up his foot for the
admiration of the platform youngster, who laughed good-humouredly,
and stretched out his dusty toes in response.
In spite of the warm sunshine, ours were the only windows open in
the whole train, and when, after leaving Samara, my brother had
obtained fresh air by freely tipping a most reluctant conductor, an
official higher in rank came to enquire whether it was not a mistake
and whether after all we did not wish to be screwed up again! I could
not imagine why our fellow-passengers did not follow our example,
because, before we reached Tashkent, the sun flamed down from a
cloudless blue sky; the hoopoe, harbinger of spring, chased its mate;
the crested larks sang, and the children offered big bunches of the
little mauve iris. Ploughing was visible in places, and a faint green
flush was spreading over the vast plain, which near Tashkent gave
way to grassy downs on which cattle grazed.
At the imposing-looking station of Turkestan we made enquiries
respecting the flags that we noticed hanging out on all the platforms,
and to our joy were told that they were in honour of the taking of
Przemyzl. An officer of military police with whom my brother talked,
said that this victory had come at an opportune moment, as there
was considerable unrest among the native population.
We were sorry not to see the tomb erected by Tamerlane in the old
city of Turkestan to the memory of a Kirghiz saint, for M. Romanoff,
an authority on Mohamedan art, who has visited a large proportion of
the mosques and shrines of Central Asia, considers this splendid
building to be a masterpiece.
 CHAPTER II
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN TO KASHGAR
Farghana is a country of small extent, but abounding in grain and fruits;
and it is surrounded with hills on all sides except on the west.... Andijan is
the capital. The district abounds in birds and beasts of game. Its
pheasants are so fat that the report goes that four persons may dine on
the broth of one of them and not be able to finish it.—Memoirs of Baber.

After three days and nights in the train it was pleasant to make a
halt at Tashkent, the capital of Russian Turkestan, though the
sudden change of climate was somewhat exhausting. It was towards
the end of March, and the whole town, famous for its fruit trees, was
embowered in pink and white blossom, and the avenues of
magnificent poplars, willows and beautiful Turkestan elms were
shaking out their fresh green leaves.
The Russians, under General Kaufmann, took Tashkent about fifty
years ago, and have laid out the new town with broad roads planted
with fine trees that are watered by irrigation. There are churches,
public parks, tram-lines and imposing-looking shops, the
considerable Russian population appearing to mix freely with the
Sarts, as the inhabitants are termed by the dominant race. In India a
white woman of whatever class has a position with the natives, but
here the ordinary Russian woman is seemingly on an equality with
them, and not infrequently marries them. In the best confectioner’s
shop, served by Russian girls, natives came in and bought and ate
cakes and sweets on the premises, side by side with smart officers
or elegant ladies evidently belonging to the upper circles of Tashkent
society.
Even in this remote part of the Russian Empire the War was brought
home to the inhabitants by the presence of fifteen thousand
prisoners, Germans and Austrians. The latter, who were mostly
Slavs, had the privilege of shopping in the town, and we heard that
they were on excellent terms with their captors, whereas the
Germans were permitted no such relaxation of their captivity.
A long narrow street led from the Russian city straight into the native
town with its mud-built houses, its little stalls of food and clothing, its
mosques and shrines, and above all its gaily clad populace. But for
the people I could have imagined myself to be in a Persian city; but
here, instead of men in dingily coloured frock-coats and tall
astrakhan hats, and women shrouded in black from head to foot, the
inhabitants of both sexes revelled in colour. All wore smart velvet or
embroidered caps, round which the greybeards swathed snowy
turbans. The men had striped coats of many colours, the brighter the
better, the little girls rivalling them with bold contrasts, such as a
short, gold-laced magenta velvet jacket worn above a flowered,
scarlet cotton skirt, or a coat of emerald green with a vivid blue
under-garment. For the most part they were pretty, rosy-cheeked,
velvet-eyed maidens, with their hair hanging down their backs in a
dozen plaits, and I felt sorry to think that all their charm would shortly
have to disappear behind the long cloak, beautifully embroidered
though it might be, and the hideous black horsehair veil affected by
their mothers.
One fascinating little figure adorned with big earrings and bracelets
came dancing down an alley into the street, holding out the ends of a
scarlet veil which she had thrown over her head, her cotton dress
and trousers being in two shades of rose. She pirouetted up to a tall
man in a rainbow-coloured silk coat who was carrying a tin can, and
had paused at the steps of the mosque to let the children gather
round him. To my surprise he began to dole out ice-cream in little
glasses, and boys and girls had delicious “licks” in exchange for
small coins. I remembered how envious I had felt in early youth
when I saw English street urchins partaking of what seemed to me to
be food fit for the gods, although my nurse allowed me no chance of
sampling it, and in a moment the East and the West seemed to
come very near, the ice-cream man acting as the bridge across the
gulf.
After leaving Tashkent we travelled through a rich alluvial country
watered by the Sir Daria, the classical Jaxartes, and halted on our
way to Andijan at the ancient city of Khokand. As at Tashkent, the
Russian and native towns are separate, and we hired a moon-faced,
beardless Sart, attired in a long red and blue striped coat and with an
embroidered skull-cap perched on his shaven head, to drive us
round.
He raced his wiry little ponies at a great pace along a wide tree-
planted avenue ending in a church of preternatural ugliness set in a
public garden. Near by were Russian houses and shops, while small
victorias containing grey-uniformed officers or turbaned Sarts
dashed past, and native carts laden with bales of cotton creaked
slowly by. Many of these carts had big tilts, the wooden framework
inside being gaudily painted, and the horses themselves were
decked with handsome brass trappings.
The old town, with its high mud walls, flat-roofed squalid dwellings, a
bazar closely resembling those to be found in any Asiatic city, and
comparatively modern mosques, had little of interest, though a well-
known traveller speaks of its thirty-five theological colleges: its roads,
as usual, were bad and narrow, and must be rivers of mud in wet
weather.
Many women were unveiled, others wore the ghoul-like horsehair
face coverings, and some of their embroidered coats were so
charming in design and colouring that I longed to do a “deal” with the
wearers. Many of the people were squatting, eating melons which
they store during the winter, or drinking tea, a Russian woman being
evidently a member of one family group. We had one or two narrow
shaves of colliding with other carriages, as our coachman threaded
his way far too fast for safety and exchanged abusive epithets with
his brother Jehus, among whom were Russians in black, sleeveless,
cassock-like garments worn over scarlet cotton blouses. The
harness of the little horses was adorned with many tufts of coloured
wools, giving a pretty effect as these tassels nearly swept the ground
or waved in the air. The life on the roads, the spring sunshine, the
fresh green leaves, the white and pink of the blossom, and the orgy
of colour furnished by the inhabitants, made the drive an
unforgettable experience.
A few hours later we reached Andijan, where the railway ended, and
here we had our last clean resting-place until we arrived at Kashgar.
I noticed that the native women wore long grey burnouses with black
borders ending in two tails that were always trailing in the dust, and
all hid their faces in the mask-like horsehair veils. It was the day
before Palm Sunday, and as we strolled in the evening up the
cobbled street of the town a large congregation was issuing from the
church, every one carrying a small branch and a little candle, which
each had lit in the sanctuary. In the darkness the scores of tiny lights
looked like fire-flies, and I observed how carefully the sacred flame
was sheltered from any draught, as it is considered most important
to convey it home unextinguished. Our hotel was fairly good, but I
was not pleased on retiring to find that my door did not lock, and that
my window, opening on to a public balcony, had no fastening. To
supplement these casual arrangements I made various “booby-
traps” by which I should be awakened if any robber entered my
room, but luckily slept undisturbed.
It may give some idea of the vast extent of the plains of Russia
which we had crossed by train, when I mention that there was not a
single tunnel on the hundreds of miles of rail between Petrograd and
Andijan.
It was the end of March when we set out to drive the thirty miles from
Andijan to Osh. We packed ourselves, our suit-cases and the lunch-
basket into a little victoria, while Achmet, the Russian Tartar cook we
had engaged at Tashkent, accompanied our heavy baggage in the
diligence. The sky was overcast with heavy clouds, so there was no
glare from the sun, and the rain of the previous night had laid the
dust on the broad road full of ruts and holes. Ploughing was in full
swing, barley some inches high in the fields, fruit blossom
everywhere, and the poplars and willows planted along the countless
irrigation channels made a delicate veil of pale green. Beyond the
cultivation lay bare rolling hills, behind which rose the lofty mountain
ranges which we must cross before we could reach our destination.
The whole country seemed thickly populated, and we passed
through village after village teeming with life, the source of which is
the river, which ran at this time of year in a surprisingly narrow
stream in its broad pebbled bed, and was so shallow that men on
foot or on donkey-back were perpetually crossing it. Tortoises were
emerging from their winter seclusion, the croak of the frog filled the
land, hoopoes and the pretty doves which are semi-sacred and
never molested flew about, and the ringing cry of quail and partridge
sounded from cages in which the birds were kept as pets.
The men, if not busied with agriculture, were usually fast asleep or
drinking tea on the mud platforms in front of their dwellings, and the
gaily clad women slipped furtively from house to house, or, if riding,
sat on a pillion behind the men. In fine contrast to her veiled sisters
was a handsome Kirghiz lady following her husband on horseback
through the Osh bazar, and making a striking figure in a long green
coat, her head and chin wrapped in folds of white that left her
massive earrings exposed to view. She rode astride every whit as
well as the man did, exchanged remarks freely with him, and was
moreover holding her child before her on the saddle. Other women
were carrying cradles which must have made riding difficult, and
often a child stood behind, clinging to its mother’s shoulders. On
entering the native town of Osh, mentioned in Baber’s Memoirs as
being unsurpassed for healthiness and beauty of situation, we
passed a mosque with such a badly constructed mud dome that it
looked like a turnip, and made our way along a broad tree-planted
Russian road to the nomera. This was a house with “furnished
apartments to let,” and the small rooms, by no means overclean,
were supplied with beds, tables and chairs. We set to work to
unpack our camp things, and sent Achmet out to buy bread, butter,
meat, eggs, etc., for our two hundred and sixty mile ride to Kashgar.
Our host made no pretensions to supply food, but exactly opposite
our lodgings was the officers’ mess; with true Russian hospitality its
members invited us to take our meals there, and next day at lunch
we met a dozen officers, with their jovial, long-haired chaplain in
black cassock with a broad silver chain and crucifix round his neck.
Luckily for me there were a couple of officers who spoke German,
though the others threatened them with heavy fines for daring to
converse in the language of the Huns. In spite of the Tsar’s edict,
vodka and wine flowed freely (the doctor had evidently given medical
certificates liberally to the mess) and numerous toasts were drunk,
every one clinking his glass with my brother’s and mine as the health
of King George, the Tsar, our journey, and so on were given. All were
most kind, though I could have wished Russian entertainments were
not so long—that luncheon lasted over three hours—and we left in a
chorus of good wishes for our ride to Kashgar.
We were roused early next morning by the arrival of our caravan of
small ponies, and with much quarrelling on the part of their drivers
the loads were at last adjusted. We had our saddles put on a couple
of ill-fed animals and started off beside the rushing river on our first
stage of twenty miles. The ponies were very inferior to the fine mules
with which we had travelled in Persia, and our particular steeds
would certainly have broken down long before we reached Kashgar
if we had not dismounted and walked at frequent intervals
throughout the whole journey.
At first the road was excellent as we left pretty little Osh nestling
under Baber’s “mountain of a beautiful figure,” and made our way up
a highly cultivated valley towards the distant snowy peaks. We were
escorted by a fine-looking Ming Bashi or “Commander of a
Thousand,” who had a broad velvet belt set with bosses and clasps
of handsome Bokhara silver-work. He wore the characteristic Kirghiz
headgear, a conical white felt with a turned-up black brim, and four
black stripes, from the back to the front and from side to side of the
brim, meeting at the top and finishing off with a black tassel. We
were to see this headgear constantly during the next eight months,
as it is worn throughout Chinese Turkestan and the Pamirs. Owing to
the presence of these Ming Bashis we met with extreme
consideration, village Begs and their servants escorting us at every
stage and securing the right of way for us with caravans. This was a
privilege that for my part I keenly appreciated, as the track, when it
skirted the flanks of the mountains, was hardly ever wide enough for
one animal to pass another, and I had no wish to be pushed out of
my saddle over the precipice by the great bales of cotton that formed
the load of most of the ponies we met. These officials usually
secured some garden or field, a place of trees and running water,
where we could lunch and rest at mid-day, and often they brought a
silken cushion which they offered to my brother. They were surprised
when he handed it on to me, for in Mohamedan countries the woman
is considered last—if at all.
In the Osh district horses, camels, donkeys, cows, goats and sheep
were in abundance, the sheep having the dumba or big bunch of fat
as a tail, which nourishes the animal when grass runs short during
the winter months. They had long hair like goats and rabbit-like ears,
were coloured black, white, brown, grey or buff, and looked far larger
in proportion than the undersized cattle and ponies. On the road we
saw many of the characteristic carts that had immensely high wheels
with prominent hubs. The driver sat on a saddle on the horse’s back,
supporting his feet on the shafts, thereby depriving the animal of half
its strength for pulling the load and proving that this nation of born
riders has not grasped the elementary principles of driving. These
carts had no sides, but carried their loads in a curious receptacle of
trellis-work, as shown in the illustration.

CART USED IN THE OSH DISTRICT.

Page 26.
We reached our first night’s lodging about four o’clock, and I was
glad to dismount, as riding at a foot pace on an animal that is a slow
walker is a tedious business. All these halting-places in Russian
territory were much alike—a couple of small plastered rooms, often
with bedsteads, table and stools, sometimes looking into a courtyard
where the ponies were tied for the night, but often with no shelter for
the animals and their drivers. Jafar Bai, the chuprassi from the
Kashgar Consulate sent to escort us, was of the utmost service to us
on the road. I noticed that many of the men we passed saluted him
by throwing their whips from right to left across their chests, and their
deference made me realize the high esteem in which he was held.
He put up our camp beds, tables and chairs, and found water for our
folding baths. It was usually cold at night, and besides warm
underclothing I had a sleeping sack, rugs and my fur-lined coat. We
always got up at 5.30 a.m., and I did a hasty toilette in the dark with
the aid of my torchlight, Achmet producing coffee, eggs, bread,
butter and jam for our early breakfast, while Jafar Bai packed our
bedding.
Once or twice we were accommodated in the house of a village Beg,
and found the floors covered with felts and carpets, and a table
spread with bread, sweets, raisins, almonds and pistachios. One of
our hosts kept his treasures in a wonderful gilt, red and black chest,
from which he produced a handsome watch given him by the
Russians. This chest emitted a loud musical note when opened or
shut, in order, I presume, to warn the owner if thieves attempted to
rifle it. At night his servants removed his bedding of Bokhara silken
quilts, but with touching confidence left the box in our charge!
Our second day’s march found us approaching the mountains, and
we rode to the top of a low pass where hills slashed with scarlet,
crimson and yellow rose one behind another, to be dominated by the
glorious snow-covered Tian Shan peaks clear cut against a superb
blue sky. Walking down the passes was certainly preferable to sitting
on a stumbling pony, but I found it rather hard work, as the track was
usually very steep and littered with loose stones, on which one could
easily twist an ankle or tumble headlong. Every now and again it
looked as if we had reached the bottom, when lo, after turning a
corner, the track zigzagged down beneath our feet seemingly longer
and steeper than ever.
During this march we passed a party of Chinese bound for Kashgar,
consisting of an official and a rich merchant with their retinues. The
ladies of the party travelled in four mat-covered palanquins, each
drawn by two ponies, one leading and one behind, and I pitied them
having to descend these steep places in such swaying conveyances.
They were attended by a crowd of servants in short black coats, tight
trousers and black caps with hanging lappets lined with fur, the
leaders being old men clad in brocades and wearing velvet shoes
and quaint straw hats. As seems usual with upper-class Chinese,
they were very indifferent horsemen, and sat on bundles of silk
quilts, not attempting to guide their ponies in any way, but letting the
burly Kirghiz lead them by the halters. In striking contrast to them
was a fine-looking man in a long green and purple striped coat, from
the handsome girdle of which hung a silver-sheathed knife. His
boldly cut aquiline features were surmounted by a black fur cap, and
as he rode down the pass on a beautiful Badakshani horse the pair
made a delightful picture.
Caravans laden with bales of cotton toiled uphill towards us, and
sometimes we met a string of camels; but ponies did most of the
work here, their small heads peering out from between their bulky
loads. They had bells hung round their necks, enabling the approach
of a pack-train to be heard at a considerable distance, and specially
favoured animals wore collars of blue beads to avert the evil eye.
Besides caravans we met gangs of Kashgaris going to work at Osh
or Andijan during the summer, in order to earn the money on which
they live throughout the winter. They were sturdy men, their white
teeth flashing in faces tanned almost black by the sun, and they
wore long padded cotton coats of all colours, the most usual being
scarlet, faded to delicious tints. As these coats were turned back to
enable them to walk more freely, we had the contrast of a bright
turquoise blue, or an emerald green or a purple lining. Some walked
barefoot, others in long leather riding-boots or felt leggings, and all
had leather caps edged with fur. Each man carried a bundle of his
belongings, out of which cooking-pots often peeped, and some one
in the gang was certain to have a tar, a kind of mandoline, with which
to amuse the party, or perhaps a bagpipe or a small native drum; it
was pleasant to come across a group of these wayfarers beguiling
their long march by listening to the music that has so strong a
fascination for Orientals.
The farther we left Osh behind us the more barren became the
country, until we marvelled how the flocks and herds could support
life on the scanty vegetation. At one point the hills were a bright
scarlet and it was strange to see a red mud-built village with sheep
grazing in this brilliantly coloured setting. We crossed rivers and
streams many times, but they were not deep, for the mountain snow
had not yet melted, and we found the bridges formed of rough poplar
stems, with big holes into which boulders were stuck, far more
dangerous than the water. It was during this march that my pony
nearly ended our joint careers by backing with me to the edge of a
precipice. We were passing a donkey laden with brushwood, an
ordinary sight, of which my brother’s horse on ahead had not taken
the smallest notice, when my animal made a big shy, and if Jafar Bai
had not seized the rein I held out to him and hauled at it manfully
while I urged my mount with whip and voice, we should both have
fallen into the river rushing far below.
The crux of our journey was the crossing of the Terek Dawan or
Pass, 12,000 feet high, and the night before we lodged in akhois, at
its foot, in place of the usual rest-house.
It was my first experience of the bee-hive like homes of the Kirghiz
—“a dome of laths and o’er it felts were spread”—and, as we had
ridden through heavy rain and hail the last part of the way, I was
extremely thankful to pass behind a felt curtain and find myself in a
snug circular room lined with felts and embroideries. A fire was lit on
the ground in the centre, the smoke escaping from a large hole in the
roof, and by squatting on the floor we could more or less avoid the
acrid smoke that made our eyes water.
In the morning we started at seven o’clock, anxious to reach the top
of the pass before the sun, now hot during the day, could melt the
snow. To our intense relief it was a superb day, a few fleecy clouds
sailing across a deep turquoise sky. I was clad in a mixture of arctic
and tropical attire, wearing a leather coat under my thick tweed habit,
woollen putties and fur-lined gloves, along with a pith hat, blue
glasses and gauze veil. We soon came to the snow and zigzagged
upwards on a narrow track moving in single file, any animal trying to
pass another being liable to fall headlong in the soft deep snow on
either side, a fate that befell two of our party early in the day. After a
while, as we advanced, the great peaks towered on all sides, sharply
silhouetted against their blue background—nothing but white as far
as eye could reach; and here and there skeletons sticking out of the
snow bore eloquent witness to the terrible annual toll paid by the
hundreds of horses and donkeys that have to cross this cruel pass. I
could hardly believe that it was possible to ride over these
mountains, so steeply did they rise above us; and at the worst part of
the ascent some sturdy Kashgaris coming down towards us had
much ado to keep their feet, even though they carried long staves,
one man falling headlong and rolling a considerable distance. The
last pull to the crest is almost perpendicular, and is noted for
accidents—here my brother’s pony nearly went over—but finally,
caravan and all, we reached the summit of the pass in safety, and
dismounted to enjoy the fine view. Before us lay the great Alai
Range, peak towering above peak of boldly serrated mountains.
Over us hovered a huge vulture, and as I looked down the track in
front where the snow was partly melted, hideous heaps of bones
were revealed, and I felt that the ill-omened bird knew that it would
never lack food so long as Russia did nothing to improve this
execrable road.
In books of travel the writer frequently “swings down” such places,
but my experience was very different, as we crept down the worst
parts on foot. The snow on the farther side was rotten, and our feet
broke through it to water running underneath and big boulders. It
was the kind of path on which one could easily break a leg, and for a
loaded pony was a cruel ordeal, if not almost impossible. Even
where the snow had entirely melted near the foot of the pass the way
lay through a mass of boulders and slippery mud most trying to any
baggage animal.
For ourselves we had nothing to complain of, and a march of seven
hours found us at the little rest-house enjoying some lunch; but our
caravan fared very differently. The distance was only twelve miles,
but so bad was the going that the ponies, though lightly laden, were
about thirteen hours on the road, and four poor animals stayed out
all night. We had no evening meal till nine o’clock, and our hold-alls
when they arrived were encrusted with ice that had made its way
inside and soaked our bedding. We had no means of drying it in the
serai, and so were obliged to sleep in our clothes. We were too
thankful to be safely over the pass to heed such minor discomforts,
and were indeed most fortunate; for the road was closed for some
days after our journey in order that a fresh track might be trampled
down by driving unloaded animals across it.
On the morrow our caravan had a much-needed rest till mid-day,
while we unpacked our boxes and dried our wet belongings in the
sun. I was concerned about my face, as in spite of all my precautions
I found that my cheeks, nose and lips were terribly swollen, and
besides being burnt a bright scarlet, all my skin was coming off in
patches, making me most unsightly in appearance. On my
mentioning this experience not long ago to an eminent geographer
and traveller, he assured me that, if I had thickly powdered my
unlucky visage before encountering sun and snow, it would have got
off scot-free, and I insert the hint for the benefit of future travellers.
Our next stage was Irkeshtam, situated at the junction of the Osh-
Kashgar and Alai routes. In the time of Ptolemy it was an important
centre on the great trade route which ran from Rome across Asia to
China, the “Stone Tower” mentioned by the Greek geographer being
either here or in the vicinity. To-day it consists of a small fort
garrisoned by Cossacks, with customs and telegraph offices all set
down in hopelessly barren surroundings.
We were hospitably welcomed by the customs official’s wife and
sister, but were sorry to find that our host was ill. After the nine
o’clock supper we retired, my brother sleeping in some outhouse,
and I in a little room which my hostess’s sister had kindly vacated for
me, where I had a queer experience. As the window was
hermetically sealed up for the winter, and the stove was lit, I had
perforce to leave the door open in order to escape partial
suffocation. A large carpet was suspended from the ceiling above
the bedstead, across which it was carried, and hung down to the
floor, and upon the bed were a sheet, a velvet bedspread and a
couple of lace-covered pillows. Slipping into my rugs I put out the
lamp, and as I was composing myself for slumber I became aware of
a stirring under the bed, and a breathing. Thinking it must proceed
from the dog or cat, with both of which I had made friends, I tapped
the carpet and said “Ssh!” reflecting that if I troubled to drive the
animal out it would be sure to return again by the open door, and as
all was quiet I thought no more about the matter and went to sleep.
Some time in the middle of the night I was suddenly roused by
feeling the bed violently jolted and to my horror heard loud and
unmistakably human snores proceeding from under it. Considerably
startled, I sat up in the pitch darkness and listened to heavy
breathing while I summed up the situation. The intruder could not be
a burglar, as there was nothing to steal, and of course I was in no
danger, as I could rouse the house in a moment, my door being
open. I felt it would be wrong to make a disturbance as our host was
so ill; I could not communicate with my brother, for I had no idea
where he was, and it would have been impossible to leave the house
and search for him in the wind and darkness, with savage dogs
roaming about. Another alternative would have been to light the lamp
and turn out the intruder myself; but I feared that my lack of Russian
and Turki would make this difficult, and it would certainly rouse the
establishment. All things considered, I decided to lie and watch for
daylight, my matches being to my hand. After the unknown had
turned over again I heard the regular breathing of deep slumber, and
soon, contrary to my intention, I dropped off to sleep myself.
When I woke about seven o’clock it was quite light. Examining my
bed with some trepidation, I found a space between it and the wall at
each end. Behind my pillows was a heavy red felt, and pulling this up
I came upon a makeshift bed with pillow and bedding underneath
mine. The occupant had gone, and I discovered the place at the end
of the bed where “it” must have crept out noiselessly through the
open door!