Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 8, 2008

Phenomenology and Literature

Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Memory

My analysis in the following paper will focus on a subtle develop­ment in Heidegger’s interpretation of the theme of memory, from the period of his early Freiburg lectures to Being and Time and then in the works of the late 1920s. There is in this period an apparent shift in Heidegger’s understanding of this theme, which comes to light above all in his way of examining memory in the 1921 Freiburg course lectures Augustine and Neo-Platonism, then in Being and Time (1927) and finally in the 1928 lectures on the metaphysical foundations of logic (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz) and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929). This shift is of interest, as I will argue, not only in indicating an internal development of Heidegger’s thinking, but above all in regard to the problem of the finitude of memory which Heidegger brings into focus and which I will interpret in my concluding remarks.