REASON AND WORLD WERNER MARX REASON AND WORLD BETWEEN TRADITION AND ANOTHER BEGINNING MARTINUS NIJHOFFJTHE HAGUEjI971 Originally published in German under the title VERNUNFT UND WELT in Phaenomenologica (No. 36), © 1970 by Martinus Nijhofl, The Hague © I97I by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN-\3: 978-90-247-5048-1 e-ISBN-\3: 978-94-010-2994-0 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-2994-0 To my associates in the "Philosophisches Seminar 1" 01 the University 01 Freiburg i. Br. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT IX PREFACE XI 1. THE MEANING AND TASK OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMAN IDEALISM I 2. REASON AND LANGUAGE 21 3· REASON AND THE LIFE-WORLD 46 4· THE LIFE-WORLD AND ITS PARTICULAR SUB-WORLDS 62 5· THE MEANING AND TASK OF PHILOSOPHY IN ANOTHER BEGINNING 77 6. THE WORLD IN ANOTHER BEGINNING: POETIC DWELLING AND THE ROLE OF THE POET 97 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The preface and all of the essays in this book were translated from the original publication Vernuft und Welt (Phaenomenologica No. 36) by Thomas V. Yates, an American graduate student at the University of Freiburg, with the exception of "Reason and the Life World," which was translated by R. Geuss, a graduate student at Columbia University. Prof. Joseph P. Fell of Bucknell Uni versity was extremely helpful in proofreading and correcting the manuscripts. PREFACE At a time when the traditional principles of many fields have lost their power and validity, the task of philosophy may well be to look back at these traditional principles and at their inherent determinations and basic problems, while heeding every indi cation of a transition to something new, in order to be critically open for all attempts at "another beginning." A philosophizing which thus sees its proper place "between" tradition and another beginning has grasped its own basic dilemma: It remains in search of the true even though it has no valid concept of truth. A concept of truth grounded solely in transcendental subjectivity convinces it no longer, and the essence of truth as it "occurs" for experiential understanding has not yet been sufficiently determined. A phi losophizing which has understood itself in this way will not want to commit itself one-sidedly to one position or the other. Instead it will consider its task to lie in keeping thought in flux. The present collection of essays may be understood as an ex ample of such a conception of present-day philosophizing. Thus the first essay isolates the guiding thoughts of the traditional philosophy of reason and spirit as they fulfilled themselves in German idealism, in order to make the traditional concept of truth visible and to bring to light those basic determinations formed in certain contemporary philosophical tendencies which are either related to it or altogether new. The second essay pre sents language in its relationship as servant to reason, where reason is conceived in its ultimate fullness of power; it may there by become clear that contemporary philosophy withdraws its recognition of the power of reason in the same measure as it attri butes power to language. The third essay shows how with Hussed a ·philosophizing appeared which first attempted out of critical XII PREFACE responsibility to save the power and purity of reason by means of a method especially developed for this purpose, but which later turned to an everyday life-world not at all constituted from pure reason and considered this life-world to be the realm which is able to "ground" everything which tradition considered to be reason. The fourth essay uses a special problem in Husserl's philosophy as a vehicle for showing how this notion of the life-world leads automatically to the notion of a world which is "primordial" in a broader sense: one which is no longer the world of man but rather the cosmos itself. In Martin Heidegger's later thinking the world becomes a realm in which man might dwell in a creative manner, provided that "another beginning" were to occur - i.e. "another" beginning over against that first beginning which according to Heidegger was founded by pre-Socratic thinking. Thus the fifth essay presents Heidegger's conception of a thinking which, through a new determination of the essence of truth, sees as its task the preparation of the arrival of this world of another be ginning. The concluding essay discusses Heidegger's determi nation of the essence of language and the role which he attributes to the poet in the founding of another beginning; through im manent criticism of the possibility of another beginning of "world" this essay would question whether world could indeed take the place of reason as the "principle" of a future philoso phizing. Philosophisches Seminar I Freiburg im Breisgau September 1970 Werner Marx THE MEANING AND TASK OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMAN IDEALISM I should like to explain at least in a word, why I have chosen German idealism as the topic of my first course of lectures in Germany. German idealism brought under principles not only the utmost possibilities of human knowledge but also, and above all, the ut most possibilities of human morality, and presented them in such a way that they were teachable and learnable for all of humanity. In his first lecture in 1794,1 Fichte already saw as the criterion of the scholar the determination to be an educator of humanity and to bring about its "ennoblement"; according to Fichte, man is here in order to become morally better. Fichte declared with Kant: "As means for his ends, man may utilize things, which are without reason, but not entities possessing reason." This lofty conception of the essence and determination of man is not something which Fichte merely asserted. In the same year, in his Wissenschafts lehre, he attempted to substantiate it in a laborious conceptual work. Ladies and gentlemen: the fact that such words were once spoken in Germany, and the fact that out of the deepest con viction, morality - as the goal of all humanity - was made the content of most profound systems - this fact alone was of greatest importance for many of my generation. As, not too long ago, barbarism ruled in Germany and many persons of German birth here and in emigration despaired of their origin, it was a conso lation and a source of strength and hope that there were such works in which Germans had aspired to the highest morality for all men. I am convinced that you, who are separated from those 1 Einige Vorlesungen fiber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, Siimtliche Werke (Berlin, 1845), VI, 331, 332, 300, 309. 2 PHILOSOPHY IN GERMAN IDEALISM events by only one generation, are eager to join me in paying a debt of thanks to these works, by taking them seriously - not merely reflecting on them in the sense of the history of ideas, but taking up the thoughts themselves from their own beginnings. I Let us begin this attempt immediately, by asking: how did the tenets of German idealism come about? What are its presuppo sitions? Its goal? Its task? The question of the presuppositions can be asked in two ways: First, it can be asked what the philosophers themselves recog nized as the presuppositions, as the impetus, which drove them into philosophizing. But the question can also be asked in another way: What do we see today as the guiding thoughts of this phi losophizing? The first question makes it necessary that we think the problem through right along with the German idealist phi losophers. The second question allows us to assume the distance necessary for criticism. We want to think right along with the German idealists, but at the same time we want to remain free to ask our own questions. Precisely this is what is of the essence for philosophizing. The question of the presuppositions will be asked in both senses, and the question of the goal will be asked at the same time - all in the expectation that the answers will throw light on the presuppo sitions and the goal of our questioning today. The following sentence should stand at the beginning: "When the power of unification disappears from the life of mankind and the opposing moments have lost their living relation and inter action and have gained autonomy, then there arises the require ment of philosophy." 2 It is thus that Hegel expresses himself on the presuppositions, the goal, and the task of his philosophizing. The essay from which this sentence was taken appeared six years before he began the execution of this task by raising the first section of the edifice of his system. This essay served only to provide him with the cer tainty that the foundations on which this edifice was to be raised 2 Di//erenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems de, Philosophie, Werke (Berlin, 1832-40), I, 174.