Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics
Heidegger's 1929 'Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik' — radical-phenomenological reading of the Critique of Pure Reason
Tradition: 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
Published in 1929 (after the dramatic 1928 Davos disputation with Ernst Cassirer over the proper interpretation of Kant), 'Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik' is Heidegger's most sustained engagement with Kant. The book argues that Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' (1781/1787), properly read, is not an epistemology (the standard neo-Kantian reading championed by Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer) but a fundamental ontology — laying the ground of metaphysics in finite human Dasein. Heidegger's central interpretive move: the 'transcendental imagination' (Einbildungskraft) is the temporal-finite root from which understanding and sensibility both grow. Where the second edition of the Critique (1787) plays down the imagination's foundational role (the so-called 'B Deduction' is widely thought less radical than the A Deduction of 1781), Heidegger argues that Kant in effect retreated from his own deepest insight: the first-edition Critique discloses the temporal-finite ground of human cognition; the second-edition retreats to a more conventional architectonic. The book is divided into four sections plus a methodological introduction: I. The Starting Point of the Laying of the Ground for Metaphysics; II. The Carrying Out of the Laying of the Ground for Metaphysics; III. The Originality of the Laid Ground for Metaphysics; IV. The Repetition of the Laying of the Ground for Metaphysics. The book provoked sharp neo-Kantian replies (notably from Cassirer in the published Davos record) and became a standard text in twentieth-century Kant interpretation, especially through the readings of Otto Pöggeler, Walter Schulz, and the post-war Heideggerians.
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Editions cited
- Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Friedrich Cohen / Bouvier, Bonn, 1929; 2nd ed. 1951 with new preface; 3rd ed. 1965 with three further appendices; 4th ed. Klostermann 1973 in the Gesamtausgabe)
- Gesamtausgabe Bd. 3 (Klostermann, 1991)
- English trans. James S. Churchill, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Indiana University Press, 1962)
- Revised English trans. Richard Taft (5th ed., Indiana, 1997) — the standard scholarly edition
- Commentary: William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (Nijhoff, 1963); Frank Schalow, The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue (SUNY, 1992)
School Embodiments
Defining Heideggerian-phenomenological Kant interpretation.
"Kant's Critique, properly read, is a laying of the ground of metaphysics in finite Dasein." (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, introduction)
Existentialist-phenomenological reading.
"Finite Dasein as the ground." (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics)
Major engagement with Kant's First Critique.
"The transcendental imagination as the common root." (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, §§31-35)
Continuing post-Kantian-idealist tradition, transformed.
"Beyond Neo-Kantianism: the phenomenological-existential reading." (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics)
Strong historicist-philosophical hermeneutics of Kant.
"Reading Kant in his philosophical situation." (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics)
Continental-philosophical tradition.
Internal Tensions
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.
I. Time
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.
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II. Space
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.
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III. Matter
Single monograph (~200 pages). Form is sustained close reading of Kant's First Critique structured around four main sections plus methodological apparatus.
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IV. Observer
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.
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V. Energy
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.
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VI. Information
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.
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How Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics resolves each dilemma
31 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 6 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 26 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.