Thinking of Being

Man and World 30: 533, 1997.
5
c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Husserls debate with Heidegger in the margins of Kant and the

Problem of Metaphysics
RICHARD E. PALMER
Department of Philosophy, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, IL 62650, USA
Abstract. Husserl received from Martin Heidegger a copy of his Kant and the Problem
of Metaphysics in the summer of 1929 not long before Husserl had determined to reread
Heideggers writings in order to arrive at a definitive position on Heideggers philosophy. With
this in view, Husserl reread and made extensive marginal comments in Being and Time and
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. This essay by the translator of the remarks in KPM
offers some historical background and comment on the importance of the remarks in KPM and
attempts to describe Husserls counterposition to Heidegger on six issues that divided the two
major twentieth century philosophers.
One of the saddest stories in twentieth century philosophy, with dimensions

of betrayal and tragedy, is that of the breakdown of the Husserl-Heidegger
relationship. The break became clear to Husserl only after Heidegger had
been elected with Husserls support to succeed Husserl at Freiburg in
1928. After Heideggers desertion of phenomenology became inescapably
evident to Husserl, he determined that he must devote several weeks to an
intensive review of Heideggers position as soon as possible: right after he
finished preparing his Formale und transcendentale Logik for publication.
The main text in this project was Sein und Zeit (1927), of course, but also
Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929), which had appeared only a
few weeks before. Reading these two works and possibly other offprints,
Husserl made extensive comments (in his Gabelsberger shorthand) in the
margins. When Husserls manuscripts and other effects were smuggled out
of Germany by Father van Breda in the late 1930s, these volumes came with
them and have been preserved in the Husserl Archives at Louvain, Belgium. In
the over fifty years since that time these volumes with their marginal remarks
in Husserls shorthand have rested peacefully untranscribed and unpublished
in the Husserl Archives at Louvain, Belgium. It was thus an event of some
importance in Husserl scholarship when they appeared in 1993 in French
translation.1 And in 1994 the original German text as transcribed by Steven
Part of this article will appear in the authors translation (in Edmund Husserl Collect-
ed Works), Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with
Heidegger, to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, forthcoming.
6 RICHARD E. PALMER
Spileers and introduced by Roland Breeur, both on the staff of the Archives
from which the French translation was made was published in Husserl
Studies.2 Now these marginal remarks have been translated into English by
Thomas F. Sheehan (those in SZ) and myself (those in KPM).3 The English
translation places the relevant sentence or sentences in the Heideggerian
text alongside Husserls remark, which the Husserl Studies publication of
them simply indicated by giving the page and line number in the Heidegger
text where the remark appeared. The present essay was originally written to
serve as an introduction to its authors translation of Husserls remarks in
KPM to be published in a volume titled Psychological and Transcendental
Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger, but essay grew far too
long for a subsidiary introduction in that volume. By Husserl Archive orders
the introduction had to be cut to ten manuscript pages plus notes, about one-
fourth of its original length. Man and World, however, has arranged to offer its
readers the original introduction here as a more fully annotated prolegomenon
to Husserls marginal remarks in KPM.
Admittedly, Husserls marginal remarks in KPM do not reflect the same
intense effort to penetrate Heideggers thought that one finds in his marginal
notes in SZ.4 In terms of length, Husserls comments in the German text as
published in Husserl Studies occupy only one-third the number of pages.5 In
addition, pages 15, 43121, and 125167 contain no reading marks or notes
by Husserl at all over half of the 236 pages of KPM. This suggests that
Husserl either read these pages with no intention of returning to the text, or
that he skipped large parts of the middle of the text altogether.6
Nevertheless, we will in the first major part of the present essay attempt to
show that Husserls marginal remarks in KPM are of continuing importance
for several reasons. First, many of Husserls notations respond substantively
and at length to Heideggers text and dispute his statements, articulating a clear
counterposition to that of Heidegger on many points. Second, they are impor-
tant because of the place in which they appear, for the content of KPM was to
have served as a further part of SZ, but shortly after publishing it Heidegger
abandoned altogether the project of a fundamental ontology,7 although he
did not abandon the quest for the meaning of Being. Published on the heels
of his famous Davos Lectures with Ernst Cassirer, KPM represents at least
a certain closure in Heideggers public dialogue with NeoKantianism, and
by extension also in relation to the NeoKantian tendencies in Husserls phe-
nomenology after the Logical Investigations. Third, the remarks in KPM are
important because Kant is a key figure for both Husserl and Heidegger. This
essay cannot do justice to an elaboration of the two relationships to Kant,
but it will offer some remarks on it and refer the reader to primary and sec-
ondary sources in which the two relationships are explored.8 Fourth, KPM is
HUSSERLS DEBATE WITH HEIDEGGER 7
important as an example indeed, a prime example of Heideggers method
of Destruktion or deconstruction. In KPM Heidegger is deconstructing
Kants First Critique. This raises in Husserls mind (and in a few others also)
the issue of violence in text interpretation. Unfolding these four dimensions
of significance will provide the organizational structure of part one.
The second major part of the present essay will sort out several points of
Husserls counterposition in the margins of KPM. Six themes in the debate
will be discussed. Readers who wish to do so may skip the first part and
read only part two. But readers who wish an annotated discussion of the
importance of the marginalia that goes into the historical and philosophical
background may find part one of interest. Prefacing both discussions we offer
some notes on when the texts in question were written.
Heidegger probably gave KPM to Husserl shortly after its publication in late
June or early July of 1929. No exact date is included with the inscription, Mit
herzlichem Gru. M. Heidegger [With heartfelt greetings. M. Heidegger],
but in a letter from Karl Jaspers to Heidegger dated July 14, Jaspers thanks
him for sending the Kant book and also acknowledges receiving his rather
flowery encomium of April 8, celebrating Husserls 70th birthday.9 About the
speech Jaspers remarks that he has a few impertinent questions, presumably
about the sincerity of Heideggers lavish praise of Husserl.10 In any case, since
we know Jaspers received his copy of KPM during the week or so before July
14, we can assume that Husserl also received his copy about the same time
i.e., middle to late June or early July, 1929.11
It cannot be known with any certainty when Husserl wrote his marginal
remarks in KPM. However, Husserl states in his letter to Pfander of January 6,
1931, that he decided he must in 1929 arrive at a sober and definitive position
on Heideggerian philosophy, so when he finished readying his Formal and
Transcendental Logic for publication that year, he devoted two months of
his summer vacation to the study of Being and Time as well as the recent
writings.12 It would seem reasonable to assume that the recent writings
to which Husserl refers in this letter would have included KPM, that had
appeared just a month or so before, and also Heideggers essay, Vom Wesen
des Grundes, which was included in the Festschrift Heidegger presented to
Husserl on April 8, earlier that year, celebrating his 70th birthday. On the
other hand, Heideggers inaugural address in Freiburg, published as Was ist
Metaphysik?, was given on July 29, and not published until December 1929,
so it was probably not among the recent writings to which Husserl refers.13
In any case, Was ist Metaphysik?, the topic Heidegger chose for his inaugural
address, had absolutely nothing to do with Husserls phenomenology. Indeed,
Heideggers choice of subject was a glaring insult to Husserl.14
8 RICHARD E. PALMER
We do know with certainty where a good number of the notations, especially

those in SZ, were written: Tremezzo, a resort on Lake Como in Italy where
Husserl vacationed from mid-August to early September, 1929.15 Of course,
it is quite possible that some of the notations in KPM and in SZ were made
after Husserls return to Freiburg, but given the publication of KPM just
before Husserl left for Italy, and given the importance of the content of this
book in relation to Husserls thought, it seems likely that at least some and
probably most of the notations date from Husserls Italian vacation in August
and September of 1929, or shortly thereafter.
We can date Heideggers final three weeks of work on KPM with greater
certainty. From several sources we know that he addressed himself to this
task shortly after returning from the Davos Lectures with Ernst Cassirer.16
This specially arranged lecture course was offered during the period from
March 17 to April 6.17 In a letter of April 12 to Elisabeth Blochman after he
returned to Freiburg, Heidegger said that after returning from Davos he slept
for two days. After that, he continues, there was Easter with Elfride and the
children, which included a fine hike to the Schluchsee, and from there up
to the hut.18 So the dating is pretty clear: a few days after returning from
Davos, approximately April 12, Heidegger moved up to his hut and devoted
three weeks or so to preparing for publication his lecture-course on Kants
Critique of Pure Reason from the winter semester of 19271928.19
1. Husserl and Heidegger: background factors
Husserls marginal comments in KPM are important, as we have indicated,

first, because they give us an intimate glimpse into Husserls reaction to Hei-
deggers interpretation of Kant at a key time in their relationship. They were
not intended for public viewing, so Husserl was speaking his mind. Although
large portions of KPM are without markings or remarks, one still finds a good
number of substantive comments in it, in a few cases at considerable length.
These alone make the marginalia of interest to readers of Husserl. But mar-
ginalia gain additional significance because they are placed in a turning-point
document in the development of Heideggers early thought.
KPM is important, we recall, because the analysis of Kants Critique of Pure
Reason presented in it was to have been a continuation of Being and Time: Part
I. Part I was to have had three divisions, of which only two were completed.
Part II was to have consisted of three divisions: 1) Kants schematism and
the doctrine of time; 2) Descartes cogito sum, and 3) Aristotles treatises on
time. KPM, then, would have provided the substance of the first division of
Part II. Heidegger himself explicitly relates KPM to the project of SZ in the
preface to the fourth edition (1973):
In preparing the lecture course on Kants Critique of Pure Reason, my

attention was drawn to the chapter on Schematism, and I glimpsed therein
a connection between the problem of Categories, that is, the problem of
Being in traditional Metaphysics and the phenomenon of time. In this
way the manner of questioning from Being and Time came into play as an
anticipation of my attempted interpretation of Kant. Kants text became a
refuge, as I sought in Kant an advocate for the question of Being which I
posed. (Page xv in Robert Tafts English translation of KPM.)
Towards the end of this same preface, Heidegger states: The Kant book
remains an introduction . . . to the further questionability which persists
concerning the question of Being as set forth in Being and Time. Then, in
a gesture characteristic of the later Heidegger, he adds toward the end of the
preface, The growing and unacknowledged anxiety in the face of thinking
no longer allows insight into the forgetfulness of Being which determines the
age.20 So it is quite clear that KPM was to have been a continuation of the
project of SZ.
There are other links of KPM to SZ. The substance of the Kant book
took shape just after SZ was published in the semester lecture course
during the winter of 19271928. Heideggers statement of the theme of
the investigation both in the table of contents and on the opening page of
the text: The Unfolding of the Idea of a Fundamental Ontology through
the Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason as a Laying of the Ground
for Metaphysics explicitly links it with SZ because the goal of KPM, like
that of SZ, was a fundamental ontology.21 Yet Heidegger chose not to wait
and make this highly original and controversial interpretation of Kant part of
his projected continuation of SZ; rather, right after the Davos lectures, and
perhaps even because of them,22 to publish it immediately as a separate work.
KPM basically marks his last major effort in the whole general approach to
the meaning of Being that was undertaken in SZ. A comment written by
Heidegger in his own copy of KPM during the 1930s reads: Ganz ruckfallig
in die transzendentale Fragestellung [This] falls back completely into the
transcendental standpoint.23 Heidegger was about to desert even his own
effort to come to terms with transcendental philosophy. Historically, then,
KPM marks a certain point of closure in the project of SZ at least in the
form in which it pursued the question of Being in that volume.24
KPM is important, however, not just because it constitutes a continuation of
SZ, and indeed marks the virtual closure of that project, but also because KPM
focuses on Kant. This is our next major point. Both Husserl and Heidegger
relate importantly to Kant, so a contrast of their relationship to Kant sheds
light on the Husserl-Heidegger relationship and its breakdown. An exhaustive
10 RICHARD E. PALMER
and detailed study of Husserls relation to Kant is offered in Iso Kerns lengthy
study, Husserl und Kant.25 Given this study, we will only make a few general
observations. First, for Husserl, it was Descartes rather than Kant who was
the truly revolutionary figure in modern philosophy. Kant failed to live up
to the promise of his philosophy, and it is precisely the failures of Kant
that Husserl seeks to remedy with his phenomenology. Thus, even Husserls
rapprochement with the NeoKantians in his middle period remains basically
a tactical effort to interest them in phenomenology. In the Krisis, however,
Husserl is quite frank about the shortcomings of Kant.
Heideggers evolving grasp of Kant is also relevant in this connection
because KPM represents an effort by Heidegger to come to terms with Kantian
philosophy. This complex story cannot be adequately rehearsed here, but we
will discuss a few major factors and refer the reader to some key sources. The
posthumously published lectures of Heidegger during the Marburg period (to
be discussed subsequently) and books by Theodore Kisiel, John van Buren,
and others now give us a far full picture of Heideggers relation to Kant. Also,
in his preface to the fourth edition of KPM Heidegger himself refers us to the
detailed article by Hansgeorg Hoppe on his evolving relation to Kant.26
While Husserl viewed his phenomenology as going beyond both Kantian
and NeoKantian philosophy, indeed as a breakthrough, Heidegger saw
Husserls philosophy, especially after Ideas I (1913) as falling back into
NeoKantianism. Heideggers interpretation of Kant, for its part, is an excel-
lent illustration of his interpretive violence and Destruktion (deconstruction).
For Heidegger, Kant represents a position in the history of the Western meta-
physics that he is trying to dismantle and reconstruct or deconstruct in
developing his own project of a fundamental ontology. In keeping with this
strategy, Heidegger here carefully goes inside the Kantian text and analyzes
the inner workings of the schematism. At the Davos debate with Cassir-
er which just preceded his publication of KPM, he went so minutely into
Kant that Cassirer professed not to understand where Heidegger diverged
from NeoKantianism. Cassirer asserted there: I have found a neo-Kantian
here in Heidegger!27 Cassirer then asked Heidegger: Who are the Neo-
Kantians?28 Heidegger, after listing a number of obvious names, explicit-
ly said: In a certain sense, Husserl himself fell into the clutches of neo-
Kantianism between 1900 and 1910.29 This shows that Heideggers effort to
take a definitive position on Kant within the horizon of his own ontological
philosophy is also taking a position on Husserls perceived NeoKantianism.
It is of interest that at the end of his Kant lectures (in GA 25 but not in
KPM itself in GA 3), Heidegger asserts that his study of Kant had confirmed
for him the correctness of the path he had chosen the way of grasping
phenomenology hermeneutically and preliminarily arriving at an ontological
conceptuality through formal indications of the lifeworld.30 Otto Poggeler
reminds us that Husserl also played a role in Heideggers relation to Kant.
The formally indicating [formal anzeigende] hermeneutic, says Poggeler,
could become a schematization because Husserl had stimulated Heideg-
ger to a temporal interpretation of the component moments of the Kantian
power of the imagination and thus directed him to Kants doctrine of the
schematism.31 So, against his previous plans, Heidegger in his 19251926
lectures on logic, went into Kant and showed how the three Ekstasen of time
are related to the schemata.32
Yet in spite of his debts to Kant, Heidegger was also critical of him, but
in a distinctive way. In keeping with his method of Destruktion, he argued
in KPM that Kant himself wanted to overcome the metaphysics of idealism
but did not have the means, the conceptual tools die Mittel. Which is to
say, he did not have a metaphysics of metaphysics. In ontological terms,
Kant did not explore the Being of Being [das Sein des Seins] but only the
being of existent beings [das Sein des Seienden]; this fundamental ontology
had to wait for SZ. Heideggers later public account of why he deserted
Husserls phenomenology involved Kant, also. He stated: Phenomenology
in the Husserlian sense was developed into a position prescribed by Descartes,
Kant, and Fichte.33 That is to say, it became a transcendental and idealist
philosophy that took human subjectivity as its starting point and sought to
uncover the intentional structure of the transcendental ego.
But already in SZ Heidegger had been attempting to avoid the traditional
language of subjectivity and consciousness which had led Husserl to take
a form of transcendental psychology as the propaedeutic to transcendental
phenomenology. Even the Husserlian slogan, Zur Sachen selbst! which
Heidegger reinterpreted in SZ still entailed, in Heideggers view of Husserl,
that things themselves were objects of consciousness and thus Husserl retreat-
ed to the standpoint of Kantian idealism.34 Instead of using such terms as
consciousness and transcendental subjectivity, Heidegger employed an onto-
logical terminology centered on the being of Dasein human being-there] and
its finite, temporal, caring, future-oriented being-in-the-world. Like Husserl,
Heidegger returned to the unobtrusive life-world, but this is an ontologically
defined life-world. And it is in terms of the ontological project in SZ that Hei-
degger interpreted Kant with a deconstructive violence that drew widespread
protest.35
Today, with the posthumous publication of Heideggers early lectures from
the Marburg period in the Gesamtausgabe, it becomes possible to gain a more
nuanced picture of Heideggers Auseinandersetzung not only with Kant but
also with Husserl in the Marburg years.36 Franco Volpi, in an extensive and
illuminating article on this latter topic, finds in these early Marburg lectures a
double relation to Husserlian phenomenology: a repetition of phenomenology

and at the same time a radicalizing of Husserls project.37 The ambivalence
Heidegger felt toward traditional philosophy, Valpi argues, he also felt toward
Husserl insofar as Husserl continued that tradition; yet Volpi insists: even
where Heideggers critical tone becomes louder and more insistent, the explic-
it acknowledgement of the greatness of his teacher as well as other great
strugglers, Scheler above all is never omitted.38
Also, Volpi notes, Heideggers project in the Marburg lectures is always pre-
sented as an ontological transformation of the phenomenological approach.
For instance, when his 1925 summer semester lectures were offered, they
were titled Prolegomena to a Phenomenology of History and Nature of
the Concept of Time.39 In these lectures Heidegger dedicates the extensive
preparatory portion to Husserls phenomenological breakthrough beyond
Brentano, referring to the three great discoveries of intentionality, categor-
ial intuition, and the function of the apriori.40 Yet each of these discoveries,
Heidegger argues in the lectures, must be more radically interpreted per-
haps we might say demythologized or interpreted deconstructively, so
as to separate the breakthrough insights from the metaphysical presuppo-
sitions of their proponent. Brentano, says Heidegger, based his thinking on
the essential character of the psychical (or mind) which distinguishes
humans from other beings, but he failed to go into a closer determination of
the ontological manner of being of the psychical.41 Heidegger traces this fail-
ure back to the Cartesianism of Brentano, and finds both Husserl and Scheler
entrapped in a traditional metaphysics of the psychical, a metaphysics based
on substance and conscious subjectivity. In these Marburg lectures of 1925,
Heidegger explicitly asserts that intentionality in Husserl has fallen back
into traditional concepts just when he was expecting phenomenology, with
a new concept of intentionality, to go beyond them. Today, too, he says,
intentionality is simply grasped as a structure of consciousness or a structure
of acts of the person, and thus again these two realities, of which intention-
ality is supposed to be the structure, are taken up in a very traditional way.
One seeks in phenomenology, Heidegger continues, whether that of Husserl
or Scheler who move in two quite different directions to get beyond the
psychical character of intentionality: Husserl, in that
he grasps intentionality as universal structure of reason (reason not as

psychical, differentiated from the physical), and Scheler, in that he takes
intentionality as structure of spirit or person, distinguishing it from the
physical. But we will see that because of what they mean by reason,
spirit, or anima, the approach with which these theories work is not over-
come. I refer to these because we will see how phenomenology requires
that this determination of intentionality be placed within a more radi-
cal development.42 Instead of deconstructing Kant, now Heidegger is
deconstructing Brentano, Husserl, and Scheler!
Like intentionality, categorial intuition and the apriori the two other great
discoveries and anchors of Husserlian phenomenology have also been
covered over, Heidegger argues, with traditional concepts and need to be
liberated. Categorial acts, he argues in these lectures, constitute a new
objectivity, which is always to be understood intentionally and certainly does
not mean that you just somehow let things arise.43 That is to say: to constitute
does not mean constructing as making and getting ready but the entity allowing
itself to be seen in its being as an object.44 Volpi shows Heidegger in the
Marburg years working through and transforming Husserlian insights and
terminology but always with a show of respect, treating Husserl as a classical
philosophical thinker to whom he is deeply indebted.
In his discussion of the apriori in the 1925 Marburg lectures, Heidegger
again formally maintains the Husserlian and Kantian term while transforming
its context and its meaning. He discusses the threefold presentation of the
apriori in a phenomenological context in terms of the following dimensions:
First, its universal breadth and indifference over against subjectivity, sec-
ond, the access to it (simple grasp, originary intuition), and third, the
preparatory determination of the structure of the apriori as a character
of the being of beings and not of beings themselves discloses to us the
originary meaning of the apriori, and this is of essential significance, that
it in part depends on the clear grasp of ideation, i.e., on the discovery of
the authentic sense of intentionality. (GA 20: 102103)
In these lectures Heidegger presents his work in phenomenology as a matter

of redefining, even purifying, terms like intentionality, categorial intuition,
and the apriori, in ways that recover their essential insight but at the same
time pare away the encrustations of traditional concepts. This deconstruc-
tive approach, applied here to Husserl himself, but presenting its critique
as appreciative analysis, contrasts with Husserls more direct expression of
dissatisfaction with Kant on behalf of his own phenomenology. Certainly at
that time Husserl himself saw no special need to revise the basic terms of
phenomenology, yet in his self-doubt, to which he refers in his January 6,
1931, letter to Pfander, he says he had hoped that the popular and charismatic
Heidegger would be able to carry his phenomenology to new heights.
A number of relatively recent articles by Hans-Georg Gadamer, who
served as Heideggers assistant in the Marburg years, also explore the issues
that divided Husserl and Heidegger in the Marburg period.45 According to

Gadamer, the essential issue at stake was the need for an ultimate grounding
in consciousness and transcendental subjectivity.46 Husserls insistence on
the terminology and assumptions of subjectivity and consciousness, and his
frequent references to psychology in the Britannica Article and the Ams-
terdam Lectures, posed for Heidegger an insurmountable barrier. Indeed,
Gadamer asserts: The destruction of the concept of consciousness was
[for Heidegger] necessary to regain the question of Being.47 This assertion
makes it clear that Husserls very vocabulary of science and psychology and
his goal of an ultimate grounding [Letztbegrundung] for knowledge stood
totally at cross-purposes to Heideggers quest for the meaning of Being.
Thus, Husserls dream that Heidegger would carry forward his version of phe-
nomenology eventually became an obstacle in Heideggers quest a quest
that eventually took him into explorations of the origin of the artwork,
Nietzsche, Holderlins poetry, the embracing of Gelassenheit and rejection
of humanism, and, in general, down unscientific forest paths [Holzwege]
in search of a form of thinking that did not make subjectivity either
transcendental or psychological its starting point.
2. Themes of Husserls counterposition in KPM
What do we learn from these marginal notations on Heideggers interpretation

of Kant in KPM? For one thing, we find that at this point Husserl has clear-
ly given up on seeking a reconciliation with Heideggers general position.
Rather, he is sharply taking issue with Heideggers reading of Kant. We find
in the margins an abundant sprinkling of question-marks, exclamation points,
and nota bene [NB] marks, not to mention comments and counter-arguments.
These may seem to the casual reader to be quite fragmentary, yet on closer
examination they show themselves not to be an inconsistent set of fragmen-
tary remarks but a coherent counterposition on assertions made by Heidegger
in KPM.
We will focus on six major themes. They by no means represent all the
topics in Husserls marginal notations, but they will suffice to set forth a fairly
consistent counterposition, which we will formulate as a series of questions.
First, on the issue of Heideggers general approach to Kant: Is Kant to be
considered as an epistemologist or as a philosopher laying a new foundation
for metaphysics? Second, what is the significance of the finitude of human
knowledge? Is it necessary for Heidegger to posit what Gods knowledge
must be like, and indeed can one really do this? Third, what does Heidegger
mean by the ontological synthesis and is it needed? Fourth, how is the
transcendental self to be conceived? Fifth, is Heideggers interpretive violence
justified in relation to this text of Kant? Sixth is Heideggers question: What
should be the foundation for a new transcendental metaphysics? Should it be
philosophical anthropology or a finite Daseins preconceptual comprehension
of Being or neither of these?
First, the question of Heideggers general approach to Kant. Heideggers
approach to Kant clearly represents a challenge to the NeoKantian interpre-
tation of him as an epistemologist.48 Indeed, Heideggers final step before
revising the manuscript for publication in 1929 was his debate with the
NeoKantian philosopher, Ernst Cassirer, at Davos. For Cassirer and NeoKan-
tians generally, the First Critique represented the philosophical foundation
of a modern epistemology that freed itself of the problematic philosophical
limitations of both rationalism and empiricism. As we have noted, for Husserl
it was Descartes more than Kant who marks the great turning point in modern
philosophy. Important as Kants move beyond the aporiae of rationalism and
empiricism may have been, Kants great accomplishment was compromised,
according to Husserl, because he did not rigorously carry through the implica-
tions of his own transcendental philosophy. For Husserl and the NeoKantians,
however, Kant was to be seen as an epistemologist, not a metaphysician.
Heidegger, however, had other fish to fry. He makes the general approach
of his Kant book unambiguously clear in the preface to the first edition: This
investigation is devoted to interpreting Kants Critique of Pure Reason as lay-
ing the ground for metaphysics, and thus placing the problem of metaphysics
before us as fundamental ontology.49 Heidegger goes so far as to assert,
in contrast to the NeoKantian interpretation of Kant, that the First Critique
has nothing to do with a theory of knowledge (KPM 16), and much later
he even cites Kants own words in a letter in which Kant refers to the First
Critique as a metaphysics of metaphysics. This, Heidegger says, should
strike down every effort to search for a theory of knowledge in the Critique
of Pure Reason (KPM 221).
Jumping back to the beginning of KPM, we also find Heidegger asserting
that Kants grounding of metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason disclos-
es the nature of ontology (14). It is clear here that Heideggers reinterpreta-
tion of Kants Critique is continuing the project of SZ and further developing
the project of a fundamental ontology. Going back now to Husserls very
first marginal remark in KPM we find him picking up on Heideggers use of
the term Seinsplan (Plan of Being) and writing in the margin Seinsplan?
(10). He is here clearly taking note of Heideggers seeming transformation of
Kants First Critique into a work on fundamental ontology. Two pages later
(12), Husserl writes in the margin, What does Seinsverfassung [constitution
of Being] mean? And when Heidegger, attempting to establish at the outset
that Kant was really not doing epistemology but metaphysics, refers to
Kants prize-winning essay of 1791 on the progress of metaphysics in Ger-

many since Leibniz and Wolff, Husserl writes in the margin, But one must
glean Kants meaning! There I read a quite different meaning! (11). Later,
midway through the book, when Heidegger asserts that Kant wants to replace
ontology with transcendental philosophy, Husserl writes, So do I (118).
Here it would seem that Husserl wants to make Kants transcendental turn
a forerunner of his own transcendental phenomenology while continuing to
view Kant as an epistemologist, while Heidegger wants to view Kant as an
anticipation of his fundamental ontology. Husserl finds Heideggers ontolo-
gizing of Kant the epistemologist to be strange. From the first comments of
Husserl, we see him continuing to see Kant as an epistemologist in opposition
to Heideggers view of Kant as an ontologist.
A second area of disagreement arises as Husserl responds to Heideggers
discussion of the finitude of human knowledge in section 5. Here Husserl
fills the margins with well over a dozen comments. Since intuition is a major
topic for Husserl and the focus of section 5 is on the process of intuition in
relation to thought, it is not surprising that he pays intense critical attention
to Heideggers exposition at this point. Heideggers opening sentence in the
section notes that human knowledge stands in contrast to divine knowledge:
First of all, we can put the matter negatively by saying: finite knowledge
is not creative intuition (KPM 23). Human knowledge, rather, is receptive,
receiving intuitively something whose nature it does not create. Kant calls this
intuition an intuitus derivativus. On the other hand, for Kant Gods knowing
as Creator is original and creative. It is an intuitus originarius. There is in
man, Heidegger notes, an echo of Gods creativity, of activity rather than
mere passivity, as thought actively categorizes the bodily givenness of the
individual object such that it can be shared with other people. So the process
of an object becoming manifest, combined with understanding what the object
is, involves a synthesis of thought and intuition. Later Heidegger also notes
that insofar as knowing gains access to something other than itself, i.e.,
something not resident in its prior knowledge, something it did not create,
this knowing by use of apriori processes and the human senses transcends
the self; it becomes a form of finite transcendence. But in Kants text the
focus is primarily on the veritative synthesis, the synthesis of intuition and
thought by which a thing becomes manifest as what it is. What Heidegger is
finding in Kants close analysis is a much more nuanced description of what
he described in SZ in such general terms as the ontological comprehension of
Being, phenomenology as the letting something appear from itself, and the
hermeneutical as. Small wonder, then, that William Richardson in his major
book on Heidegger devotes a lengthy chapter to the Kantbook, a length which
itself suggests the importance of KPM in Heideggers thought. Here he asserts
that Heideggers effort at a retrieve [Wiederholung] of Kants fundamental
problematic really gives us the most authoritative interpretation of SZ, and
the final section of KPM serves as the best propaedeutic to SZ.50
Husserl sprinkles just the second page of section 5 with half a dozen mar-
ginal comments. He underlines and puts a question mark next to Heideggers
reference to a concept of sensibility which is ontological rather than sen-
sualistic (KPM 24, italicized emphasis added; hereinafter indicated simply
with e.a.), and puts the rather quizzical remark in the margin: not related to
the sense organs. And alongside the next sentence (24), which asserts that it
follows [from such a concept] that if empirically affective intuition of beings
need not coincide with sensibility, then the possibility of a nonempirical
sensibility remains open, Husserl writes, Does it follow? Alongside the
sentence, Knowledge is primarily intuition, i.e., a representing that imme-
diately represents the being itself (24, e.a.), Husserl writes, Is this Kant?
and also, Das Ding an sich? Next to Heideggers sentence stating that finite
creatures also must be able to share what they have intuited with others [thus
the need for thinking in addition to receptive sensing of the object], Husserl
again writes, Is this Kant? One has to answer: No, this is not Kant but
Heideggers story of what Kant is doing, a story that stands in the context of
Heideggers account of the ontological synthesis.
When Heidegger develops the contrast between the divine intuition and
human intuition as the difference between an intuition that creates and an
intuition that receives, Husserl writes in the bottom margin: Better: God
needs no explication through intuition, no step-by-step getting to know things
and bring them back to himself, no apperceptive transference or fixation in
language, etc. but such a God is an absurdity! (26). Husserl continues at
the top of the next page, What is infinity over against finitude? Why talk at
all of finitude rather than receptivity, the grasping of the thing-as-it-gives-
self in anticipation, a relative self-giving depending on the ever new? On the
other hand, absolutely adequate intuition, etc. . . . is an absurdity (26, e. a.).
For Husserl, the contrast with an infinite creative intuition is unnecessary, and
Heideggers effort to unfold the terms of infinite knowledge is phenomeno-
logically impossible as well as unnecessary. Alongside Heideggers remark
that the finitude of understanding in its active mode shows us the nature
of absolute knowledge as originating intuition, Husserl writes, Finitude is
not absolute, and after the words absolute knowledge, he writes non-
sense (27). Next to Heideggers assertion that absolute knowing discloses
the being in its letting-stand-forth and possesses it in every case only as that
which stands forth in the letting-stand-forth (28), Husserl puts a question
mark and writes an absurdity. This is the third time he has used this term in
this section, but not the last. His final remark in the section is: This matter
is and remains absurd! (31). For Husserl, Heideggers speculations about

divine intuition and absolute knowledge, and about how, for God, the being-
in-the-appearance is the same being as the being-in-itself and this alone (28),
an assertion next to which he puts a question-mark, do not transform Kants
basically epistemological analysis into fundamental ontology; rather, they
show us that Heidegger is going beyond even his own ontology and falling
into speculative theology.
The third issue, which we formulated as What is the ontological synthesis
and is it really needed? is answered quite differently in the margins. For
Heidegger the ontological synthesis is the crucial next step in his transforma-
tion of Kantian metaphysics into the terms of SZs fundamental ontology. The
vertative synthesis of sensory intuition and thought is for Heidegger an ontic
process, but as he puts it in the opening sentence of the second of the four
major divisions of the book a division titled Stages in Carrying Through
the Project of [Unfolding] the Inner Possibility of Ontology the issue Hei-
degger is now inquiring into is the essential possibility [Wesensmoglichkeit]
of the ontological synthesis (38, e.a.). Not surprisingly, Husserl underlines
ontological synthesis and replies at great length in the bottom margin.
Before we consider Husserls reply, let us note what Heidegger has in mind
by the term ontological synthesis, a crucial point in his argument. A little
before the passage on the ontological synthesis on which Husserl makes his
lengthy comments (KPM 38), Heidegger asserts that knowledge of beings
is only possible on the basis of a prior knowledge, free of experience, of the
constitution of the being of beings. . . . If finite knowledge of beings is to be
possible, then it must be grounded in a knowing of the being of beings prior
to all intake (KPM 34, e.a.). In the margin next to these sentences Husserl
had put a question-mark. What Husserl is questioning here is a key premise in
SZ, that Dasein has a knowledge of the being of beings that is prior to all its
acts of cognition and doing things in the world, a comprehension of being that
makes Heideggers effort at unfolding the meaning of Being possible. The
ontological synthesis, then, bridges the gap between the being of the knower
and the whatness of the being of the thing known, and thus is the vehicle of
a finite transcendence by which one goes beyond oneself to a being that is
beyond oneself. Heidegger puts this in ontological terminology as follows:
How can a finite creature [endliches Wesen], which as such is given over to
being and directed by its perception of these beings, know, i.e., intuit, prior
to all instances of taking-in, without being their creator? In other words, how
must this finite creature itself be constituted with regard to its being [seiner
eigenen Seinsverfassung nach] such that it is able to bring forth the way a
being is constituted that is out there in the world, which is to say, how is an
ontological synthesis possible? (35). There are further elaborations of the
ontological synthesis, but since it is these two instances to which Husserl is
responding, they will suffice for our purposes here.
Next to Heideggers pregnant sentence, We are inquiring into the essential
possibility of the ontological synthesis (38, e.a.), Husserl attempts to reframe
the discussion, saying that he would define the ontological synthesis as the
constituting of the invariant structural form of the pre-given world. Then he
adds: One need not begin with traditional ontology; one can pose the question
as Hume did before Kant. One does not need the problem of finitude either
Hume did not consider this at all (38, e.a.). As Heidegger continues his
exposition, saying, What is at issue is the essential possibility of ontological
synthesis: How can finite human Dasein transcend beings and things . . . when
it has not created these things and beings but must be directed toward them to
exist as Dasein? (39), Husserl underlines in order to exist as Dasein and
asks:
But is this the right way to pose the question philosophically? Isnt here
an entity already presupposed whereby the presupposed Being already
presupposes subjectivity? Is not man himself already pre-given, etc.? . . .
This is already Heidegger (39, e.a.)
As Husserl sees it, Heidegger is really arguing in a circle, relying on his own
presuppositions. One does not need to posit infinite knowledge to understand
and describe perception phenomenologically, nor does one need traditional
ontology; and human existence does not require an ontological synthesis
to enable it to take place. It may seem to Husserl, who elsewhere reproaches
Heidegger and Scheler with anthropologizing, that a certain anthropologizing
lurks behind the reference to something that Dasein requires in order to exist
as Dasein.
The fourth issue has to do with the nature of the transcendental self: How
is the transcendental self to be conceived? Here we should go back to Hei-
deggers objection in SZ that Kant failed to grasp the transcendental ego as a
factical, essentially temporal existing entity; rather, while it was not thought
of as substance, it was described in substance-based terms as something
vorhanden [on hand], and as an abiding, unchanging entity. In this regard,
Kant made the same mistake as Descartes, who did not think the I am in
an originary way but rather with the tradition of the metaphysics of presence.
Thus, according to Heidegger, both Descartes and Kant failed to think the
temporality of the self in an originary way. In Husserl, however, the transcen-
dental ego becomes not just the center of the self but the ultimate anchor for
his phenomenology. Heidegger recognized that Husserl had already taken a
step beyond such a Kantian transcendental ego in his 1907 lectures on inter-
nal time-consciousness in making time a definitive factor in consciousness.

Just for this reason Heidegger had urged Husserl to publish these lectures
and indeed eventually edited them for publication in 1928, but seemingly put
little genuine effort into the project, leaving the notes pretty much as he found
them. In any case, it is not surprising that Husserl, considering the importance
to him of transcendental subjectivity and the role of time in perception, would
pay special attention to section 34, titled Time as Pure Self-Affection and the
Temporal Character of the Self. Here and in the later part of the Kantbook,
Heidegger makes temporality the essence of the metaphysics of Dasein. In
the margins of the eight pages of this section, there are two dozen notations
or remarks by Husserl. To understand the two sides, we will need to go into
Heideggers argument at this point.
In the two sections leading up to section 34, Heidegger explores the rela-
tionship of the transcendental imagination to time. Because time is the basis of
pure sensory intuition by the transcendental imagination, it only takes a single
further step, Heidegger notes, to see that time is definitive for the transcen-
dental imagination (KPM 165). Heidegger next argues that the transcendental
imagination is the ontological basis of the metaphysics of Dasein. Because
Kant was a child of the Enlightenment, according to Heidegger, he held him-
self back from the implications of making the transcendental imagination the
source of both reason and sensory intuition; so he changed the first Kritik in
its second edition. Following the metaphysical tradition, Kant labelled pure
thought the ego, and interpreted time as something standing and abiding
[stehend und bleibend]; so like Descartes, Kant accepted the traditional view
of being as static presence and defined the pure ego according to the
reigning interpretation as outside all temporality and standing over against all
time (164, last paragraph of x31). Thus Heidegger finds that the first edition
of the Critique is much more supportive of his effort to put time at the core
of his new metaphysics of Dasein. With some creative interpreting of the first
edition, Heidegger is able to retrieve the almost lost temporality of the self
that can be found in the transcendental imagination.
So in his Kantbook Heidegger works from the 1st edition of the Critique
when he is exploring the transcendental imagination as the root of both
intuition and thought. And time in Heideggers interpretation is the essence
of the shaping that takes place in the imagination. Says Heidegger, Since
the shaping power of the imagination is in itself temporal, it must first of all
shape time itself. . . . Time as pure intuition is the intuition shaping that which
is intuited. Only when we realize this do we have a full concept of time (167,
e.a.). In the next section (33), Heidegger finds that the three modes of intuition
parallel the threefold unity of time as present, past, and future (169), and he
goes through an elaborate analysis to prove his point. Interestingly, we find
not any marks from Husserl in these two sections; he holds his fire for section
34.
Space only permits us to give a few of the points Husserl makes in his
extensive comments on this section. Time as such is the first theme in section
34, and after that the theme is temporality as the essential character of subjec-
tivity. Husserls first notations seem simply to be going along with Heidegger,
restating the point in Husserlian terms. Still, he does complain about such
Heideggerianisms as letting-stand-against, and alongside the key assertion,
Time as pure self-affection forms the essential structure of subjectivity,
Husserl puts two question marks. Is he perhaps surprised that Heidegger is
using the term subjectivity? When Heidegger makes his point more explicit
by saying that time and Descartes I think now no longer stand incompatibly
and incomparably at odds with each other; they are the same (183), Husserl
underlines time and I think and also they are the same, and places an
NB in the margin, as if to ask how the abstract concept, time, could be the
same as the concrete thinking self.
As if replying to this question, Heidegger on the next page asks whether it
follows from Kants assertion that neither the ego nor time are within time,
and that they are not temporal in their essence. On the contrary, he answers,
what this means is that the ego is so very temporal that it is time itself and
only as this itself does it become possible in its ownmost essential nature
(184). Alongside this, Husserl reformulates Heideggers point into a question,
perhaps to himself, perhaps to Heidegger: Is the ego the immanent time in
which objective time temporalizes itself? Husserl would seem here to be
preserving the concept of an objective time that Heidegger does not con-
sider when he locates time in the essential nature of the self, leaving Husserl
at least space for other determinations of what the transcendental ego is in
its essence. The contrast Heidegger is making here is between a radically
temporal transcendental subjectivity and the traditional Cartesian concept of
the ego as a static structure of apriori possibilities, an essentially timeless,
unchanging structure. In this case, Husserl, having himself also sought to
describe internal time consciousness phenomenologically, seems to be inch-
ing along with Heidegger by conceding that objective time temporalizes itself
as the immanent time of the ego.
We stand here before a key issue for both Husserl and Heidegger: the
nature of the temporality of the transcendental self. Heidegger asserts that
if the temporality versus the timelessness of the ego is to be decided, then
we must be guided by the original essence of time as pure self-affection
(185, emphasis indicates Husserls underlining). Here Heidegger seems to be
arguing in a circle by going back to his own definition of time in order to
decide the issue. Husserl quite justifiably underlines the original essence
and asks in the margin: What does original essence mean? He wants to
know how one could know what the original nature of time was. When
Heidegger asserts that it is contradictory to want to determine the essence of
what time itself is originally with the help of a product derived from it (187),
Husserl writes in the margin, The origin of time is not original time. Is
this a critical rephrasing of Heideggers point or a counterassertion? It seems
more like the latter. The following sentence of Heidegger asserts, Because
the self in its innermost essence is time itself, the ego cannot be conceived as
something temporal, that is to say, within time (187), so one is wont to ask
for the difference between innermost essence and original essence. Next to
this sentence Husserl seems to be offering his alternative formulation when
he writes, The immanent life of the ego as, rather, originally temporalizing.
Earlier in the margins, Husserl had remarked that for Kant, on anthropological
grounds, everything whatsoever is within time. Still, Husserl, as he writes
that an immanent temporal horizon is necessary, seems to be agreeing
with Heidegger. What Husserl seems to be saying here is that of course
time is a component of the transcendental ego; what bothers Husserl is all
this talk about what time is primordially. The question of the primordial
essence of time seems unnecessary to him. Why is it so important here, he
wonders. Heidegger seems to answer this question in the next section when
he asserts that primordial time makes possible the transcendental power of
the imagination (188, e.a.), but Husserl underlines makes possible and
asks in the margin: What does this makes possible [ermoglich] mean?
Perhaps Heidegger is using it in a Kantian transcendental sense as being that
which makes something possible. In any case, for Husserl, Heidegger is not
describing the experience of time phenomenologically, or even accounting for
it philosophically, but rather doing metaphysics right along with Kant. Yes, of
course there is an immanent temporal horizon for transcendental subjectivity,
but that does not make the transcendental ego time itself! Whether time
makes possible the transcendental power of the imagination would seem to
depend on what makes possible means. If Heidegger only means that it is
the condition for the possibility of the transcendental imagination, yes. But
Heidegger seems here to be claiming more than this. He seems to be making
claims about the metaphysical nature of Dasein. This brings us to the question
of the nature of man: anthropology, a topic we have reserved for the sixth and
final question.
The fifth question raises the issue of Heideggers interpretive method: Is
Heideggers interpretive violence justified in relation to this text of Kant?
Responding to strong objections, Heidegger in 1950 still defends his inter-
pretive violence in the forward to the second edition of KPM, which he
explains he is republishing unchanged. He acknowledges that readers have
constantly taken offense at the violence of my interpretations, but he argues
that such violence is unavoidable in a thinking conversation between think-
ers (all citations of the preface are from GA 3: xvii). A thinking dialogue
[Zwiesprache], he says there, must operate under quite different rules than
those governing historical philology. After all, philology has a different task,
and in the adventurousness of a thinking dialogue, the risks of going astray
are greater, and the errors are more common. Of course, between 1929 and
1950 a lot had happened in terms of mistakes and going astray, perhaps more
blatantly on his political path than on the forest paths of his adventurous
thinking. Philosophically, his thought had taken a turn, a turn away from
metaphysics, and he seemingly scrapped his whole project of a fundamen-
tal ontology that was begun in SZ and continued in KPM as having gone
astray. This assertion applies specifically to KPM is clear from his statement
in that preface: The errors and going astray have in the meantime become
so clear to me that I refuse to make this writing into some kind of patchwork
by supplements, appendixes, and postscripts. This writing was not like a
scientific or even philosophical treatise that could be added to and patched
here and there. By then, KPM was more an historic record of his thought than
a foundation to build on. His concluding sentence in the second preface is
very Heideggerian: Thinkers learn from their errors to be more persevering.
Yes, thinking is a risky business, and Heidegger more than others came to
know this.
But Heidegger did not wait until 1950 to defend his interpretive violence.
Already in Division Three of the Kantbook Heidegger offered a pragmatic
justification of interpretive violence: Certainly every interpretation, if it
wants to wring from what the words say what they want to say, must use
violence. Such violence, however, cannot simply be a roving arbitrariness. The
power of an idea that sheds advance light must drive and lead the explication
(KPM 193194).51 Next to this assertion Husserl underlines the words every
interpretation must use violence and in the margin he puts three exclamation
points followed by three question marks. This is very rare among his markings.
Clearly Husserl is astonished that Heidegger would make such a provocative
statement. We may note that Heidegger himself hastens to qualify it in the
next sentence, cited above. Husserl comments in the margin, I differentiate
between what they [the words] wanted to say and what they ultimately aimed
at and wanted to say as they were said (193). But this falls far short of
Heideggers requirements. Heidegger feels that in KPM, the light that his
ontologizing interpretation sheds on the fundamental ontology of SZ justifies
his interpretive violence. Needless to say, wringing from a text what it
really wanted to say but could not do so because it was constrained by the
thought-forms of the time is more than a little risky. The idea that a text
can want to say [in French, vouloir dire is translated as means, a usage
possibly on the side of Heidegger] something but be constrained by the
thought-forms of the time, such that it has to wait more than a century in
order to be understood in the context of an existential ontology of Dasein
must have seemed strange to Husserl. Still such a view would seem to find
support in the Habermasian concept of a speaking that is distorted by a false
consciousness, or even such Freudian concepts of censorship and repression.
In this case, interpretation becomes a bit like psychoanalysis, a discovering
not of what the patient intended consciously to say but repressed; rather it
ferrets out what the text unconsciously wanted to say. But as Heidegger points
out, the thinking dialogue between thinkers is a risky business. And it gets
more risky when one is willing to use interpretive violence.
The larger issue is Heideggers whole project of Destruktion, of finding
what has been covered over, of saying what a thinker admittedly did not say
but might have said if only he or she lived two hundred years or twenty-five
hundred years later. It is hard enough to grasp what a thinker did say, or what
he or she intended to say, but to grasp what a thinker did not say and could not
say because of the thought-forms of the times but was on the way towards
saying certainly requires the extraordinary art of a thoughtful conversation
between thinkers. And, as Heidegger rightly says, in this risky business
of thinking one can go astray and make mistakes. Still, if it sheds light on
the forgotten question of the meaning of Being, he holds, such thinking is
justified. Husserl can only be shocked at such leaps of thought.
The sixth issue concerns Heideggers reference to philosophical anthropol-
ogy and his characterization of finite Dasein as possessing a preconcep-
tual understanding of the being of beings. Philosophical anthropology is
a bone of contention between Heidegger and Husserl and the issue is com-
plicated by Heideggers close friend Schelers advocacy of a philosophical
anthropology.52 Without this, one has the impression Heidegger might have
taken a different position in relation to it. Heideggers discussion of philo-
sophical anthropology occurs in the fourth and final division of KPM, and it
provokes a major response from Husserl. About half of Husserls comments,
in terms of total number of words, occur in Part Four, although it occupies
only the last forty pages of the volume (pp. 296336). In these pages, Hei-
degger, having retrieved in Part Three the ontological synthesis implied in
the transcendental imagination, now turns to Kants assertion that the first
three of his famous four questions What can I know? What ought I do?
What may I hope? What is man? are summed up in the fourth. For Hei-
degger, What is man? raises the issue of a philosophical anthropology and
whether a philosophical anthropology can be the foundation of metaphysics,
or whether metaphysics should serve as the foundation of anthropology. In
briefest terms, for Heidegger the answer is no, if the anthropology is an
empirical anthropology of the usual sort. What is needed is a thinking that is
rooted in the finitude of Dasein and its comprehension of the being of beings.
But perhaps this is a kind of philosophical anthropology? To explore this
line of thought, Heideggers three sections of Part Four are devoted first to
the question of whether and in what way, in his retrieve of the problematic
of Kant, metaphysics could be grounded in man; second, the significance of
the finitude of man in relation to the metaphysics of Dasein; and third, the
metaphysics of Dasein as fundamental ontology. To understand Heideggers
argument, we will need to go into section 37, The Idea of a Philosophical
Anthropology.
In section 37, Heidegger basically follows Husserl in rejecting an empirical
anthropology in favor of a transcendental position. Still, some of his analysis
further confirms Husserls suspicion, long held, that Heidegger and Scheler
do not really understand the transcendental reduction. For instance, when
Heidegger says that anthropology describes a fundamental tendency of mans
contemporary position with respect to himself and the totality of beings
(KPM 199), Husserl underlines these words and writes in the margin: In
other words, it is the prejudgment of Scheler, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the
whole anthropological Richtung [direction, line of thought]. But Heidegger
himself later acknowledges that perhaps there is a difficulty in the very
concept itself (201). Husserl again underlines these words and puts NB in
the margin. Husserl seems to be noting that even Heidegger recognizes the
problems in this concept. When Heidegger goes on to assert, If the goal of
philosophy lies in the working out of a world-view, then an anthropology
will have to delimit the place of man in the cosmos (the title of a well-
known book by Scheler), Husserl writes scornfully in the margin above it,
The goal of philosophy as the working out of a worldview. What Husserl is
implying is that is the sort of philosophy one can expect within the horizon
of a philosophical anthropology.
Of course, Husserl knows very well that neither he nor Heidegger wants to
be lured into the perspectivism of a philosophy interpreted simply as a quest
for a worldview. Heidegger goes on to observe that now and again the temp-
tations of an anthropology do attract philosophers, and after all Kant himself
found all his questions leading back to the fundamental question, What is
man? Thus, when Heidegger asks (and Husserl underlines the words here
italicized) the following question, If anthropology in a certain sense gathers
into itself all the central questions of philosophy, why do these allow us to
follow them back to the question of what man is? (203), Husserl asserts in the
margin: It is just this that is not correct. But in the end, Heidegger cannot
base his thought on an anthropology. He himself concludes that the indeter-
minate character (204) of a philosophical anthropology means that we lack

a basis and framework for a fundamental questioning as to its essential nature
(204). To this, Husserl adds in the margin that the same applies for funda-
mental questioning with regard to all positive science. Presumably Husserls
phenomenology, in his own view, offers such a framework for fundamental
questioning, but Heidegger had already rejected this. In any case, we may
say that for Heidegger, Kants famous fourth question and Schelers focus on
man both offer a measure of support for his use of a Dasein-based ontology,
but they do not mean that philosophical anthropology can be a foundation for
metaphysics. Heideggers analysis of Dasein in SZ had been interpreted by
Husserl, at least up to their parting of the ways, as a regional area within phe-
nomenology. Heideggers focus on Dasein, facticity, and human finitude as
the basis for authentic philosophizing only showed Husserl that Heidegger
did not understand the transcendental reduction correctly, and his description
of Dasein, for all its subtlety and brilliance, remained dangerously close to a
philosophical anthropology.
Heidegger opens his next discussion, that of finitude, by emphasizing its
central importance, saying that he undertook the interpretation of the Critique
in order to bring to light the question of human finitude in laying the ground-
work for a metaphysics (209, e.a.). Next to this sentence, Husserl merely
puts an NB, but his resistance to Heideggers emphasis on finitude is evident
throughout this section and in earlier remarks. Heidegger asserts that Kant,
too, presupposed the finitude of human knowledge (209), and a little later
says that just naming at random any human imperfection [Unvollkommen-
heit, incompleteness] is sufficient to indicate this finitude (210). But Husserl
asks in the margin, How does imperfection enter into this? Later, when
Heidegger acknowledges that an essential relation [of the question of Being]
to the finitude of human beings is not evident [ersichtlich] (216), Husserl put
a yes in the margin. He could not agree more. This brings us to our final
point: the preconceptual understanding of Being.
Husserls comments peak in the final section of KPM, x41, where Hei-
degger makes the key link between Dasein and Seinsverstandnis. Next to
Heideggers sentence, When I ask about the possibility of grasping some-
thing like Being . . . I am asking about the possibility of grasping that which
we all as human beings already and constantly understand (216), Husserl
has a lengthy comment: We already experience the world, we already make
claims about the world, the worldly, and eventually with evidence; and as we
do so, we experience ourselves as humans in the world and we grasp ourselves
as human beings who inquire in this manner. But we get bogged down in diffi-
culties through subjective reflection. Husserl certainly grants that there is an
inconspicuous, pregiven world for each person and that we need to describe
that world, but we should practice an epoche on our experience of that world
instead of falling into a merely subjective reflection about it.
The key issue, of course, is Heideggers inclusion in this pregiven world of
a preconceptual understanding of Being. When Heidegger asserts that the
question of Being arises from the preconceptual understanding of Being
(216, e.a.), Husserl writes in the margin, Not by pursuing the possibility
of the concept of Being, but rather the possibility of doing away with the
bewilderments in which the world as world for us has entangled us and also
every entity whatever as entity for us. And when Heidegger emphasizes this
phrase with wide spacing (not indicated in GA, here indicated with italics),
The Being-question arises on its side from our preconceptual understanding
of Being (216), Husserl comes forth with a lengthy, exasperated, top-and-
bottom-margin-filling alternative position statement:
Yes, we obtain all our concepts of entities in a primordial, self-given way

from the grasping activity of our minds on the basis of preconceptual
experience, even the concepts we have of Being. . . . What is at issue here,
however, is not the possibility, essence, or concept of Being, but rather
the psychological and . . . transcendental possibility of an entity as such
also being an entity for us. That is to say, with the not yet conceptually
grasped, the not yet systematically investigated constituting subjectivity,
and also the essential unity of that which has arisen out of naive, lived, but
unthematized constitution, [i.e.,] which is simply and exclusively there
for us existing beings with transcendentally functioning subjectivity. And
on the basis of this, of a concrete, full grasp of the essence of the being or
thing, a grasp which leaves open no question of essence for beings-as-such
and for the entity with world . . . (e.a.).
And then on the next page, alongside Heideggers assertion that with the
question of Being as such, we venture to the brink of total darkness, (e.a.)
Husserl writes:
Not the understanding of Being but rather of understanding, of experi-

ence, of otherwise having awareness of being and things. The obscurity of
the meaning of Seiendem [the being or thing] is really the unclarity about
how the essence of the being or thing is to be held free of the incongruities
which stem from subjective reflection (217, e.a.).
For Husserl, Heideggers talk about the being of beings is elusive and
obscure. It does not make the transcendental reduction. It is not the product of
careful phenomenological and transcendental reductions and description at all
but of subjective reflection. Thus it creates rather than eliminates obscurity.
It is therefore not surprising that, when Heidegger says, We understand Being

but as yet we lack the concept, Husserl exclaims, We lack it? When would
we need it?
We conclude our review of six topics in Husserls marginal remarks, and
our remarks, with a glance at two of the last three comments he makes in
the book this time very short ones. First, next to Heideggers sentence, If
the essence of transcendence is grounded in the imagination, then the very
idea of a transcendental logic is a nonconcept (233, e.a. to indicate words
Husserls underlined), Husserl simply puts a ? Of course, he had just finished
preparing his Formal and Transcendental Logic for publication shortly before
turning to this reading of KPM, so he is presumably unimpressed with the
idea that a transcendental logic is a nonconcept.
Finally, to Heideggers question, or is there not within our own endeavors
. . . also in the end a hidden sidestepping of something which we and not
accidentally no longer see? (235, e.a.), Husserl simply answers Yes.
But this is a yes pregnant with meaning and finality. The sidestepping
Heidegger alludes to here is not what Husserl has in mind when he writes
his final Yes. And Husserls yes closes the door on a relationship initially
filled with hope and promise but doomed to end in disappointment and despair.
Acknowledgement
I want to thank Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer for his personal recollections

of the Husserl-Heidegger religionship and Dominic Kaegi, also at the Univer-
sity of Heidelberg, Germany, for helpful comments on my interpretations and
for suggesting many sources on which to check. I also thank Jean Grondin on
Montreal University, Canada, as well as Sam IJsseling and Roland Breeur of
the Husserl Archives at Louvain for suggestions and corrections of this essay.
My student assistant, Lisa Gilmore, also made valuable corrections of the
final draft. Finally, I deeply appreciate the Fulbright Fellowship and Sabbat-
ical Leave from MacMurray College that enabled me to study in Heidelberg
during the 19951996 academic year using the Philosophy Seminar Library,
whose resources made possible many of the references to German articles
and books in the notes below.
Notes
1. The book that contains the French translation of the marginal remarks in [Sein und Zeit]
and [Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik] Edmund Husserl, Notes sur Heidegger
(Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1993) also offers translations of the three earlier drafts of
the Britannica article and an interpretive essay by Denise Souche-Dagues, La lecture
husserlienne de Sein und Zeit, pp. 119152.
2. See Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit and Kant und das Problem
der Metaphysik in Husserl Studies 11, 12 (1994): pp. 363.
3. Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confronta-
tion with Heidegger: The Encyclopedia Britannica Article, The Amsterdam Lectures,
Phenomenology and Anthropology, and Husserls Marginal Notes in Being and Time
and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, translated and introduced by Thomas F. Sheehan
and Richard E. Palmer. Husserl in English series. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press,
1997.
4. For discussion of Husserls remarks in SZ see Sheehans introduction in the work just
cited.
5. As presented in Husserl Studies (see note 2 above) Husserls marginal remarks on SZ
occupy pages 948, while the marginalia in KPM take up only pages 4963.
6. Roland Beeurs Einleitung for the Randbemerkungen as they are presented in Husserl
Studies cited above, pp. 38, notes that we have no way of knowing whether Husserl ever
read these other parts of the text. Breeur helpfully divides Husserls remarks in SZ and
KPM into three categories: the first of these is basically index words to tag the content of
a passage for future reference. He notes that there are very few notes of this type in KPM
but quite a few in SZ, suggesting that Husserl read SZ much more analytically than KPM.
Page references in this introduction will be to the original edition, since that is the edition
in which the remarks appear. My translation of the marginal notes gives the corresponding
pages in GA 3 and in the recent English translation by Richard Taft.
7. Ironically, Heidegger states in the preface to its fourth edition (1973) that he undertook
KPM precisely because by 1929 he saw that the Being-question as put forward in SZ
was misunderstood. Later in the same preface he says that the Being-question was also
misunderstood as it appeared in KPM, so he abandoned the project of a reinterpretation of
traditional metaphysics as a means profiling the question of Being.
8. A detailed tracing of Heideggers changing relation to and interpretation of Kant can be
found in Hansgeorg Hoppe, Wandlungen in der Kant-Auffasung Heideggers, pp. 284
317 in Durchblicke: Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. V. Klostermann. Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1970.
9. This speech has some substance and anticipates the later Rektoratsrede. A penetrating
analysis of Heideggers ethics in this speech and ethics in Heidegger in general may
be found in Christoph von Wolzogens Die eigentliche metaphysische St orung: Zu den
Quellen der Ethik bei Heidegger und Levinas, in Zur Grundlegung einer integrativen
Ethik: Fur Hans Kramer, ed. Martin Endre (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1995),
pp. 130154, esp. 137138. For Heideggers speech itself see his Edmund Husserl zum
70. Geburtstag, Akademische Mitteilungen, die Organ gesamten Interessen der Studen-
tenschaft an der Albert Ludwigs-Universitat, Freiburg im Br., 4th volume, 9th Semester,
Nr. 3 (14 May, 1929), p. 47.
10. Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel: 19201963, ed. Walter Biemel and Hans
Saner (Frankfurt: Klostermann/Zurich: Piper, 1990), letter of July 14, 1929. Editors Biemel
and Saner suggest that Jaspers, because of his strong anti-scientific understanding of
philosophy, would have strongly disagreed with Heideggers praise of Husserl. Private,
disparaging remarks about Husserl on both sides occur in their correspondence during this
period.
11. Professor Gadamer referred me to a lengthy unpublished letter from Heidegger to Hannah
Arendt, dating from before this final period, in which Heidegger expresses to her at length
his excitement as he works on the Critique of Pure Reason. This would be an important
document in future research on this topic. The translator did not have access to this letter,
and could not verify its present existence.
12. See Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, vol. 2: Die Munchener Phanomenologen (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1994). This volume is part of a scrupulously edited magnificent edition of Husserls
voluminous correspondence: Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel. 10 volumes. Edited by Karl
Schumann in cooperation with Elisabeth Schumann (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 19931994). A
translation of this letter appears in the appendix of our volume containing the English
translations of the marginalia.
13. Sheehan states in note 44 of his introduction to Edmund Husserl, Psychological and
Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger, cited in note 3
above, that in any case there are only two insignificant marginal notations in Was ist
Metaphysik?
14. Karl Schuhmann notes this in his extensive essay on the Husserl-Heidegger relationship,
Zu Heideggers Spiegel-Gesprach uber Husserl, Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forschung
32 (1978): 602, article 591612. See especially section 3: Die Entwicklung der Differen-
zen bis 1931, pp. 595603. It was shortly after hearing this inaugural lecture that Husserl
undertook to come to a definitive position on Heideggerian philosophy. Cf. his letters to
Ingarden (2.12.29) and Misch (8.3.29).
15. In a letter dated December 2, 1929, from Malvine Husserl to Roman Ingarden, Malvine
wrote that in our summer vacation on Lake Como, he carefully worked through Heideg-
gers book [SZ ]. Briefwechsel, vol. 3. Also, Boyce Gibson in a letter dated September
10 of that year, refers to several weeks am Comersee (Tremezzo) from mid-August
to early September (Briefwechsel, vol. 6), and we know that Husserls stay at Tremezzo
ended about September 5. The availability of Husserls voluminous correspondence makes
the process of dating events in Husserls life much easier and also makes available many
more of Husserls later comments on Heidegger. For a lively collection of these sometimes
frank and salty comments in Husserls correspondence, see the Einleitung to the German
publication of the marginalia in Husserl Studies.
16. Davos is not a famous university but rather an international health spa and sport center
in the Swiss Alps. A Swiss doctor, Peter Muller, arranged and sponsored this special
Hochschule lecture course. The Davos Lectures were a series of seven lectures given at
Davos, four by Cassirer and three by Heidegger, plus questions and answers each addressed
to the other.
17. A summary of the lectures and a transcript of the important disputation between Heidegger
and Cassirer, derived from notes taken at the time, appears as an appendix in the 4th edition
of KPM (1973) and this is included in its English translation by Richard Taft, Kant and
the Problem of Metaphysics (Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp.
169185. These and also other relevant documents are contained in a 68 page appendix
in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, GA 3 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1991). They
include: Aufzeichnungen zum Kantbuch, pp. 249255; Heideggers review of the second
volume of Cassirers three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Cassirer also reviewed
KPM in Kant Studien 1931), pp. 255270; Heideggers reply to reviews by Cassirer and
Odebrecht, pp. 297303; and also a short article from 1927 that describes (according
to the Nachwort, p. 316) the rise, development, influence, and transformation of the
NeoKantianism of the Marburg School to which Cassirer belonged: Zur Geschichte des
philosophischen Lehrstuhles seit 1866, pp. 304311. GA 3, of course, closely parallels
the lecture course in GA 25: Phanomenologische Interpretationen von Kants Kritik der
reinen Vernunft: Marburger Vorlesung WS 19271928, ed. Ingtraud Gorland (Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1977).
18. Martin Heidegger/Elisabeth Blochmann Briefwechsel: 19181969 (Marbach am Neckar:
Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1989), letter of April 12, 1929. Also, he mentions in this
letter that Husserls birthday was very worthily celebrated on April 8: Elfride had
arranged among the admirers and friends of Husserl to buy a bust of Husserl that the
young Rickert [the son of philosopher Heinrich Rickert] had sculpted a number of years
ago. Husserl was pleased and surprised. Finally, I presented a Festschrift volume to him
[a surprise], with a little speech which you will receive. And now [April 12] I am sitting
down to the final working out of the manuscript for my Kant interpretation, which will be
printed in May by Cohen in Bonn.
19. See Heideggers letter to Jaspers (in the Heidegger-Jaspers Briefwechsel) of April 14,
1929, also, written from the schonen Haus am Lande, which states that they must put
off a visit because he must finish preparing KPM by the end of April. We also know
that on May 14 Heidegger was writing the preface, so by that time the manuscript had
probably already been transmitted to his publisher Cohen in Bonn. See Tom Sheehans
general introduction, cited in note 3 above.
20. Ibid, p. xvi.
21. GA 3: vii and 5. For an extensive summary and discussion of KPM, see Richardsons
Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, pp. 106160, and for a less extensive but
still enlightening discussion, see Otto Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 2nd,
revised edition (Pfullingen: Neske, 1983 [3rd ed. 1990]), pp. 8087, [Martin Heideggers
Path of Thinking, trans. Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press, 1987)].
22. The Preface to the fourth edition suggests this. Whether the Kantbook itself was written
against Cassirer is an open question, according to Iso Kern in Husserl und Kant: Eine
Untersuchung uber Husserls Verhaltnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1964), p. 198, footnote 4. See also pp. 188191. This 448-page volume is a
valuable resource on the Husserl-Kant relationship.
23. Cited by Gadamer in Der Weg in die Kehre, GW 3 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1987), p. 279.
Gadamer borrowed Heideggers copy of KPM in 1940 (his own was lost) and noticed this
sentence written in it. Also, a luminous sentence in a letter from Heidegger written to
Hans-Georg Gadamer in Marburg in the early 1930s reads: Es kommt alles in Rutschen
Everything is on the skids. (cited in Die Kehre des Weges, Gadamer, Gesammelte
Werke 10 [Tubingen: Mohr, 1995]: 74.) This and many other letters of Heidegger to
Gadamer remain unpublished. When I asked him (in an interview in Heidelberg, October
23, 1995) to explain this remark, Gadamer said, Heidegger meant that everything he held
before was sliding. Nothing was firm anymore a clear mark of the turn.
24. It would be tempting to say that Heidegger was also through with Kant, but he did
later publish two other works on Kant. The first was GA 41 Die Frage nach dem
Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsatzen. Edited by Petra Jaeger.
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1984. 254pp. (written 19351936, published 1962). The second
was Kants These uber das Sein. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1963. 36pp. (written 1961,
published 1963), and also published in the GA 9: Wegmarken, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von
Herrmann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976).
25. See note 22.
26. Wandlungen in der Kant-Auffassung Heideggers, in Durchblicke (1970), pp. 284317
cited above. In English, see the volumes on the early Heidegger by Theodore Kisiel and
John Van Buren cited in footnote 37 below.
27. See Cassirers opening salvo, Appendix IV to GA 3: 274 p. 171 in the English translation.
28. Heidegger was well equipped to answer this particular question because he had published
an article in 1927 on the history of the Marburg Neo-Kantians, Zur Geschichte des
philosophischen Lehrstuhles seit 1866, in Die Philipps-Universitat zu Marburg 1527
1927 (Marburg: N.G. Elwersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1927), pp. 681687. This article
is included in the appendix to GA 3: 304311.
29. See KPM, pp. 246247; Eng. trans., p. 172, and GA 3: 275. For an extensive and well
documented critical analysis of the Heidegger-Cassirer encounter, see Massimo Ferrari,
Cassirer e Heidegger, in margine ad alcune recenti pubblicazioni, Revista di storia della
filosofia, 2 (1992): 409440. Andreas Graeser, in his Ernst Cassirer (Munich: Verlag C.H.
Beck, 1994), says that Cassirer and even more Cassirers wife, felt that Cassirer had gotten
the best of Heidegger in the debate. Also, Gadamer mentioned to me (in a tape-recorded
conversation of May, 1992) that Heidegger was caught off guard by Cassirers extending
the debate beyond the First Critique into the issue of freedom, and later Heidegger even
(in Die Frage nach dem Ding lectures) tacitly acknowledged that Cassirer was right.
30. See Otto Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, rev. ed., p. 176.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid. Poggeler points out that Heideggers own path, which is to unfold a hermeneutic
oriented to formal indications from the doctrine of the schemata, is not worked out in
KPM but reserved for the Logic lectures. He also goes into why KPM is dedicated to
Scheler (p. 182).
33. In Heideggers Letter to Richardson, which serves as the preface to Richardsons Heideg-
ger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, pp. xivxv. My italics.
34. See Martin Heidegger, Uber das Prinzip Zu den Sachen selbst, a recently published
fragment dating from the 1950s, in Heidegger Studies, vol. 11 (1995): 57. Here he asserts
that this principle in Husserl leaves nothing undetermined, for die Sache selbst is what
consciousness holds; it is a consciously having in consciousness, and this consciousness
is that of a knowing ego. Heidegger then turns to the Greeks for his answer to what
is really die Sache selbst. At the end of this remarkable fragment, Heidegger lists 5
factors that for him made a break with Husserls form of philosophizing unavoidable
[unumganglich]:
a) because in (Kantian?) transcendental philosophy what is at stake [die Sache]
consciousness is less and less permitted to be worthy of questioning [frag-wurdig];
b) because in this way the principle [to the things themselves] is as such made rigid
[erstarrt, made stiff, ossified] and its possibilities silenced;
c) above all, precisely because with the stimulus of this principle the claim of Seyn itself
in the forgottenness of its difference was lighted up;
d) because Seyn itself goes through and beyond all basic positions [Grundstellungen];
e) on both sides however different [there is] a personal denial [Versagen] of the
existence of this break, which is something other than a mere break.
35. He indirectly acknowledged this protest in defending himself against it in the preface to
the third edition (1949).
36. For a lengthy and detailed assessment see Walter Biemel, Heideggers Stellung zur
Phanomenologie in der Marburger Zeit, in Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger in der Sicht
neuer Quellen, ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth, contributions by Gerd Brand, Manfred S. Frings,
and W. Biemel. Phanomenologische Forschungen Series, nos. 67 (Freiburg/Munich: Karl
Alber, 1978), pp. 141223.
37. Heidegger in Marburg: Die Auseinandersetzung mit Husserl, Philosophischer Literatu-
ranzeiger 37 (1984), pp. 4869. This is the first of a series of three essays on Heidegger
in Marburg in the same journal. The other two are dedicated to Die Auseinandersetzung
mit Aristoteles and Die Auseinandersetzung mit Kant. See also the substantial books
on the early Heidegger by Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Being and Time (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993) and John van Burens The Young Heidegger: Rumor
of a Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), as well as the collection
edited by Thomas Sheehan, Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (Chicago: Precedent
Publishing, 1981), especially Sheehans biographical sketch of the early Heidegger which
introduces the volume.
38. Volpi, p. 55.
39. But the term phenomenology was dropped when the lectures appeared in GA 20 titled
Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979). Translated
by Theodore Kisiel as History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986). My italics.
40. See Heideggers extensive review of Husserlian phenomenology in GA 20. Also see Volpi,
op. cit., for extensive discussion of this and other aspects in Heideggers relation to Husserl
during this period.
41. GA 20, p. 62. Cited in Volpi, p. 57.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 58.
44. Ibid. . . . das Sehenlassen des Seienden in seiner Gegestandlichkeit, the letting be
seen of the entity in its objectivity. My italics.
45. See in his GW 10, Hermeneutik in Ruckblick (Tubingen: Mohr, 1995): Subjektivitat und
Intersubjektivitat, Subjekt und Person (1975), pp. 8799, Phanomenologie, Hermeneu-
tik, Metaphysik (1983), pp. 100109, Erinnerungen an Heideggers Anfange" (1986), pp.
313, Heidegger und die Griechen (1990), pp. 3145, Die Kehre des Weges (1985),
pp. 7175. See also Der Weg in die Kehre (1979), in GW 3 (1987): 271284.
46. Subjektivitat und Intersubjektivitat, Subjekt und Person, ibid., GW 10: pp. 8799.
47. Gadamer, Heidegger und die Sprache, GW 10: p. 25.
48. Otto Poggeler in Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, makes this point in his valuable
discussion of the Husserl-Heidegger relationship, pp. 8087.
49. The page references to KPM in the following discussion are to the first edition, since those
are the pages on which they appear in Husserls copy of KPM, but in my translation of
the complete marginal remarks, the corresponding pages of the Heidegger text in the fifth
edition and GA 3 are also given. For reasons of space they are omitted here.
50. The chapter occupies pp. 106160 in Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought
x
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963). The citation is from p. 106.
51. Also, on the violence of phenomenological encounter, see also SZ 7c.
52. Note on Heidegger and Scheler:
Heideggers dedication of KPM to the late Max Scheler also represents a significant
move in relation to Husserl, since Husserl viewed Scheler as a dangerous influence in
phenomenology. In a letter to Georg Misch of August 3, 1929 (Rriefwechsel 6), for
instance, Husserl begs Misch not to understand phenomenology in this letter according to
Scheler but as in my Ideas. Gadamer has noted that Husserl regarded both Heidegger and
Scheler as two uncontrollable geniuses and dangerous corruptors of phenomenology. (See
Gadamers commemorative article, Max Scheler der Verschwender, in Max Scheler
im Gegenwartsgeschehen der Philosophie, ed. Paul Good [Bern/Munich: Franke, 1975],
pp. 1213.)
On the other hand, Heidegger found in the effusive Scheler a true dialogical partner,
with whom in December 1927 he had day-long, night-long Auseinandersetzungen and
struggles. (Cf. In memoriam Max Scheler, in Metaphysiche Anfangsgrunde der Logik
im Ausgang von Leibniz, GA 26 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978], p. 63.) In a recent article
on the Heidegger-Scheler relationship, Otto Poggeler goes so far as to assert that the
dialogue between Heidegger and Scheler entailed a turn in phenomenological philosophy
that went decisively beyond its form in Husserl. (Cf. Otto Poggeler, Ausgleich und
anderer Anfang: Scheler und Heidegger, in Studien zur Philosophie von Max Scheler, ed.
Ernst Wolfgang Orth and Gerhard Pfafferott. Phanomenologische Forschungen series, no.
28/29. Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1994, pp. 169.) Indeed, according to Poggeler, the new
encounter with Scheler transformed Heideggers thinking and pushed it off the old tracks
(ibid., p. 181). It was Scheler, one may recall, who caused Heidegger to offer a seminar on
Schellings concept of freedom in 1928. Certainly Scheler sharply criticized Heidegger for
his solipsism in Being and Time, saying the first absolute astonishment of philosophy is
not [astonishment] at the Dasein of solus ipse but at the fact that there is something at
all and not nothing. (Max Scheler, Spate Schriften, ed. Manfred S. Frings. Bern/Munich:
Franke, 1976, p. 261.) Scheler also criticized the dominance of Angst in Dasein: its lack
of relationship to nature or other persons, and its lack of eros.
Heidegger criticized Scheler and Husserl for reducing the problem of time to Sinnlichkeit
[sensory experience], but he and Scheler had the highest respect for each other. Indeed, at
Schelers death in May, 1928, Heidegger placed Scheler at the pinnacle of contemporary
philosophy, characterizing him not Husserl as the strongest philosophical power in
todays Germany, no, in todays Europe even in todays philosophy as such. (Cf. In
memoriam Max Scheler, GA 26: pp. 6264, citation 63.) After Schelers death, Heidegger
began editing Schelers Nachlass [unpublished writings]. So Scheler would appear to be
an important factor in Heideggers desertion of Husserls phenomenology and in his new
beginning in the early 1930s. On this, see especially Poggeler, Ausgleich und anderer
Anfang: Scheler und Heidegger, cited above.

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Man and World 30: 533, 1997.

Husserls debate with Heidegger in the margins of Kant and the

One of the saddest stories in twentieth century philosophy, with dimensions

We do know with certainty where a good number of the notations, especially

1. Husserl and Heidegger: background factors

Husserls marginal comments in KPM are important, as we have indicated,

In preparing the lecture course on Kants Critique of Pure Reason, my

double relation to Husserlian phenomenology: a repetition of phenomenology

he grasps intentionality as universal structure of reason (reason not as

In these lectures Heidegger presents his work in phenomenology as a matter

that divided Husserl and Heidegger in the Marburg period.45 According to

2. Themes of Husserls counterposition in KPM

What do we learn from these marginal notations on Heideggers interpretation

Kants prize-winning essay of 1791 on the progress of metaphysics in Ger-

is and remains absurd! (31). For Husserl, Heideggers speculations about

nal time-consciousness in making time a definitive factor in consciousness.

minate character (204) of a philosophical anthropology means that we lack

Yes, we obtain all our concepts of entities in a primordial, self-given way

Not the understanding of Being but rather of understanding, of experi-

It is therefore not surprising that, when Heidegger says, We understand Being

I want to thank Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer for his personal recollections

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