Book Review: Heidegger

The present volume is a deft survey of the thought of Martin Heidegger, whose work compelled traditional psychiatry to recall its foundations in the natural sciences and provided the theoretical basis of an existential-phenomenological psychology. It is a streamlined introduction to Heidegger's philosophy that can be recommended for the beginning student of existential psychotherapy. Lacking the interpretive cynicism of many recent accounts of Heidegger's life and philosophy, Michael Inwood's book bears favorable comparison with George Steiner's synopsis (1978) for its clarity and fairness.

Without Heidegger and his elucidation of the structure of possibilities in terms of which a human life can unfold, there would be no existential analysis. First recognized for its importance to psychiatry by Ludwig Binswanger (whose reading of Being and Time Heidegger eventually rejected) and ultimately translated for psychiatrists by Heidegger and Medard Boss during a series of colloquia they held in Zurich over a period of many years, Heidegger's thought is ordinarily divided into two phases. The first phase, which culminated with Being and Time, was dominated by an interest in the ontology of the human sort of be-ing (Seiende), which Heidegger termed Da-sein. The second phase, which stretched form the mid 1930s to the end of his life, was marked by a sustained interest in the be[-ing] (Sein) of that and any other sort of be-ing and the origin of be[-ing] itself.

The early Heidegger was decisive for its general influence on professional psychiatry, while the later Heidegger's work with Boss in the "Zollikon seminars" just mentioned (which will soon be published in an English translation) led to the emancipation of psychology as a humanistic and existential art from the natural and social sciences, represented, one the one hand, by psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and by behaviorism, on the other. Only then was clinical psychology recognized, first, as a humanistic or human science (Geisteswissenschaft) and, later, as a form of existential praxis that broke down the barrier between the (adult) expert and the (inevitably childlike) patient.

There is not much about psychology as such in Inwood's summary of Heidegger's thought, except his note (p. 25) that, given Heidegger's fundamental ontology of existence, which brings to light our original position in the world, the very possibility of psychology as a natural science is precluded. Briefly, traditional psychology is simply not about existence. Its object of study bears no resemblance to who you and I are in our ambiguous, ever-changing singularity. The static object of psychology is seen to be a fiction, when one realizes that the human sort of be-ing never is, but only ever exists. This is because we ourselves are the origin of the temporality in which any sort of be-ing (including ourselves) turns up. We are not in time, where an item of scientific analysis must reside, but, as Heidegger wrote in 1924, in "The Concept of Time," "time is in us." In other words, the polar duality of subject and object, observer and observed, required for psychological research is ruled out by what it means to exist, and that being the case, traditional psychology cannot in principle reach the starting point it requires.

The first nine sections of the book are devoted to the early Heidegger, chiefly Being and Time (1927). There are important references throughout these parts to earlier and contemporary lecture courses, which are only now being published and translated, that help us understand the dense exposition of Heidegger's magnum opus. Only one theme of the later Heidegger is treated in any detail by Inwood and that is Heidegger's thoughts about art (including poetry), which was the focus of the later Heidegger's thought. Inwood concludes, suggestively: "The early Heidegger is perhaps the Homeric epic from which develop the tragedies and temples of the later Heidegger" (p. 116).

The exposition of Heidegger's thought is framed by an opening chapter on "Heidegger's Life" and "St Martin of Messkirch?," with which the book ends. Here we are reminded of the philosopher's rural upbringing and early Catholicism, his great effectiveness as a classroom teacher, and the consequences of his notorious misapprehension of the motives and means of National Socialism. There is no mention, however, of Heidegger's own suffering and breakdown (or breakthrough!) in the 1940s following his banishment from teaching at Freiburg University, where he had been a student and where he taught for most of his adult life. It is known that he was briefly treated as an inpatient by Viktor von Gebsattel during this time, but we may surmise that his later relationship with Boss was mutual in a unique way, with Heidegger serving Boss as his Socrates and Boss serving Heidegger, on occasion, as his Hippocrates.

Like most expositors and translators of Heidegger's thought, Inwood faces the perennial problem of how to render Heidegger's basic terms. He is not alone is merely adopting the word 'being' for both Sein and Seiende, but, in doing so, the crucial distinction that Heidegger makes between any sort of be-ing (Seiende) and the sense (Sinn) of be[-ing] (Sein) that is common to them is lost. This is what Heidegger terms the ontological difference. Nor is Inwood prepared to translate the word Dasein, which means existence. Like other philosophers who interpret Heidegger, he may be reluctant to do so because of Heidegger's use of the closely related term Existenz, which is his name for the unique quality of the human kind of be-ing that makes it stand out among other kinds of be-ing. Close consideration of Heidegger's language in the numerous passages in Being and Time and elsewhere in which he uses these terms shows that Existenz refers to the unique life any of us is, one which is always mine and mine alone (the singularity of existence), always understood as a place of disclosure where things confront me (the truth revealing character of existence). To add to the confusion, the distinction between a life (Existenz) and life as such (historical and social Leben as distinguished from other forms of animate be-ing, first discussed by Dilthey in his Lebensphilosophie) is still somewhat fuzzy for the Heidegger of Being and Time. As we know, he gradually abandoned the language of Being and Time and turned to a study of language as he had experienced it in writing Being and Time and in general. In the end, perhaps the residues of uncertainty in the early Heidegger are the source of the terminological and substantive problems that remain in translating his thought from that period.

As with any book about Heidegger or translation of his texts, Michael Inwood's Heidegger should not be taken for more than a guide back to the original German sources. A bibliography of Heidegger's works (keyed to the German Collected Edition) at the beginning of Heidegger and the author's concluding bibliographic note and glossary are helpful for this.

Miles Groth