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Work #1615 · Early-to-middle

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Martin Heidegger
1929 · German
Philosophical monograph · Heideggerian phenomenology / Kant interpretation / fundamental ontology

Heidegger's 1929 'Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics' — radical-phenomenological reading of the First Critique as fundamental ontology

Attribute Fingerprint

Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.

Attribute Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Early-to-middle)
Time · Extent Finite
Time · Ontological Status Substantival
Time · Grain Continuous
Time · Freedom Non-Deterministic
Time · Traversability Linear
Time · Dimensionality One
Time · Direction Uni-directional
Space · Extent Finite
Space · Ontological Status Relational
Space · Curvature Flat
Space · Dimensionality Three
Space · Locality Local
Matter · Extent Finite
Matter · Ontological Status Emergent
Matter · Conservation Conserved
Matter · Dimensionality Three
Matter · Locality Local
Observer · Time Instance Single
Observer · Space Instance Single
Observer · Knowledge Extent Immediate
Observer · Knowledge Retainment Partial
Observer · Physicality Both
Observer · Agency Active
Observer · Number Plural
Observer · Metaphysical Agency Impersonal
Observer · Moral Authority Reason
Observer · Theological Method
Energy · Extent Finite
Energy · Ontological Status Emergent
Energy · Conservation Conserved
Energy · Dispersibility Irreversible
Information · Ontological Status Relational
Information · Cosmic Conservation Conserved
Information · Personal Conservation Non-conserved
Information · Granularity Continuous

Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence

What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.

Time

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

1929. The Davos University Conference (the famous Heidegger-Cassirer disputation) had taken place in March-April 1929; the Kant book was published later that year.

Space

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Freiburg — Heidegger had returned from Marburg to take Husserl's chair at Freiburg in 1928. The text was written during the immediate post-Being-and-Time period.

Matter

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Single monograph (~200 pages). Form is sustained close reading of Kant's First Critique structured around four main sections plus methodological apparatus.

Observer

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Early-to-middle Heidegger. The observer-philosopher is at the height of his post-Being-and-Time confidence, applying the existential-phenomenological framework of Sein und Zeit to a canonical figure in the history of philosophy.

Energy

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Post-Being-and-Time energies. The Kant book is Heidegger's working-out of how the categories of Sein und Zeit can be applied to a major historical figure; it is also Heidegger's response to the Cassirer-Cohen-Natorp neo-Kantian tradition that had dominated German Kant interpretation since the 1870s.

Information

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Single book with three later appendices added in the 1965 third edition. The 1929 first edition is the philosophically purest text; the later appendices reflect Heidegger's post-Kehre re-readings.

Internal Tensions

Where each work's argument pulls against itself.

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Major post-Being-and-Time Heidegger work; the locus classicus of his Kant interpretation. The Davos disputation between Heidegger and Cassirer has been read as the symbolic confrontation of the two competing twentieth-century inheritances of Kant: the existential-phenomenological (Heidegger) and the cultural-philosophical (Cassirer). Subsequent French phenomenology (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas) generally followed Heidegger's reading.