Abstract
An important shift occurs in Martin Heidegger’s thinking one year after the publication of Being and Time, in the Appendix to the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. The shift is from his project of fundamental ontology—which provides an existential analysis of human existence on an ontological level—to metontology. Metontology is a neologism that refers to the ontic sphere of human experience and to the regional ontologies that were excluded from Being and Time. It is within metontology, Heidegger states, that “the question of ethics may be raised for the first time.” This paper makes explicit both Heidegger’s argument for metontology, and the relation between metontology and ethics. In examining what he means by “the art of existing,” the paper argues that there is an ethical dimension to Heidegger’s thinking that corresponds to a moderate form of moral particularism. In order to justify this position, a comparative analysis is made between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams.
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Notes
The following is a by no means exhaustive list of some of the literature that makes this claim: Löwith (1995), Strauss (1983), Bourdieu (1991), Habermas (1987). Among the second generation of the same camp are Victor Farías (1987), Wolin (1992), Rockmore (1992), Margolis (1992), Wolin (1998), Philipse (1999), and most recently, Faye (2010). In a slightly less extreme group are those who hold Heidegger’s philosophy to be morally weak and therefore to offer no intellectual resistance to fascism: Strauss (1989), Tugendhat (1986), Olafson (1973).
See Levinas (1969, p. 42).
Texts from this time include History of the Concept of Time (HCT), 1925; Being and Time (BT), 1927; Basic Problems of Phenomenology (BPP), 1927; Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (MFL), 1928. With respect to those who have written on ethics in Heidegger’s early thinking, I have in mind: Bernasconi (1993), Greisch (1987), Hatab (2000), McNeill (1992, 1998), Nancy (2000), Olafson (1998), Wood (2005), Vogel (1994).
Heidegger (1992).
Heidegger (1992, p. 157/199). N.B. For all of Heidegger's texts, I will provide the English page numbers followed by the corresponding and German page numbers.
Heidegger (1962, p. 359/311; also see 210/167).
Heidegger (1982, p. 295/419).
Heidegger (1962, p. 364/316, my emphasis). See also Heidegger (1962, p. 332/286, p. 335/289, p. 348/301, p. 350/303, and p. 357/309) for some of the many places where Heidegger’s analysis depends upon the relation that, in the above-cited passage, he seems to disrupt. In a different context, Dahlstrom briefly discusses this problem (2001, p. 272, pp. 280–281).
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her comments regarding this point.
This point echoes a similar point made by Heidegger at the beginning of BT: “[R]oots of existential analysis, for their part, are ultimately existentiell—they are ontic” (1962, 11/13, Heidegger’s emphasis). Also, see 359/312.
Heidegger (1992, p. 157/199).
More accurately, we might say that he puts into question the text as it was developed up to that point, since, as we know, our version of BT was only the first third of what was to be a complete text.
Heidegger (1962, p. 487/436).
Ibid.
Heidegger (1992, p. 19/26).
Heidegger (1982, p. 20/26–27).
Heidegger (1992, p. 156/198).
Ibid., 157/199.
This does not refer to the “mere ontic” of Division I of BT, but rather, to an ontologically informed ontic understanding which presupposes the point to which fundamental ontology has brought us in BT. This interpretation stands in opposition to: Krell (1986), Crowell (2000), Greisch (1987), Pöggeler (1994), Kisiel (2005). In more detail, the aforementioned authors hold that Heidegger’s reversion to a “merely ontic” foundation amounts to an abandonment of fundamental ontology (Crowell 2000); runs the risk of a totalizing ontic thinking (Greisch 1987); that metontology is something like philosophical anthropology (Krell 1986); that it is likened to the Schelerian domain of metanthropology (Pöggeler 1994); that it is a return to a domain of pre-ontological significance (Krell 1986); and that metontology provides us with a stronger way to combat the public “battle of worldviews” that arose in Germany from party politics (Kisiel 2005). None of these positions get metontology exactly right, insofar as they all miss the point of Heidegger’s more nuanced conception of the ontic after the ontological project developed in BT: a position that is markedly different from average everydayness, philosophical anthropology, the formation of world-views, existentialism, or politics. For other accounts of metontology more in keeping with the position I advance, see Bernasconi (1987), McNeill (1992), Wood (1999).
Heidegger (1992, p. 157/199).
Ibid., 157/200.
On a scholarly note, it should be mentioned that in Heim’s English translation he inserts the word “proper” when this word does not appear in the German.
Heidegger (1992, p. 157/199). Heim also inserts “properly” here, even though it does not appear in the German.
See von Hermann (1994, p. 87ff).
Hodge (1995, p. 201). Moreover, as we know, Heidegger considers existing and acting (and being and thinking) together.
Heidegger (2009, p. 123/182).
In its most radical instantiation, moral particularism refers to the claim that “there are no defensible moral principles, that moral thought does not consist in the application of moral principles to cases, and that the morally perfect person should not be conceived as the person of principle (Dancy 2009). A more moderate version of moral particularism—the one that will, for the most part, concern us in this paper—denies the foundational character of moral principles in favor of the view that moral judgment and reasons are sensitive to context (also called holism in the theory of reasons). Although there may be some moral principles, the rationality of moral thought and judgment does not depend upon them. Furthermore, a perfectly moral judge needs more than a mere grasp of an appropriate range of principles and the ability to apply them; she also needs what particularists call seeing or discernment which involves a practical involvement in and moral understanding of situations (see Little 2000, 1995). At best, moral principles are aids, but a morally sensitive person would not depend upon or require them. The particularist’s opponent is the generalist, for whom what is a moral reason in one situation is necessarily the same reason wherever it occurs. It is a version of this view that is also Heidegger’s target in his critique of traditional moral theories.
Here I have in mind, for example, the positions of Bakhurst (2000) and Garfield (2000), which are more moderate than Jonathan Dancy’s extreme moral particularism. Bakhurst joins together the accounts of Dancy and MacIntyre to yield a more satisfying moral picture where the moral person must have certain lingering commitments and concepts without which we could have no account of the structure of moral personality. Garfield claims that if we take certain broadly Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian lessons to which McDowell alludes, then particularism provides a superior account of moral epistemology and moral psychology. On this less extreme account, rules, like moral principles, require experience to learn and judgment to apply and admit of continually increasing forms of expertise. It is interesting to note that in his article, Garfield actually discusses Heidegger, although his concern is mostly with the later Heidegger and his focus is on what he calls Heidegger’s distinction between deictic and apodeictic discourse—terms that were taken from Borgmann (1987). These terms capture Heidegger’s distinction between discourses that point to fundamental values on the one hand, and to horizons and discourses that both characterize phenomena and presuppose those backgrounds and shared values, on the other hand. Garfield uses this distinction to develop another way of seeing the relation between particularist and generalist understandings of moral knowledge where the particularist emphasizes the deictic side of moral discourse and the generalist emphasizes its apodeictic side.
Heidegger (1992, p. 157/201).
For an account of the virtuous person along these lines, see Dancy (1993, p. 50).
My account here has been informed by that of Bakhurst (2000, p. 173).
This is also the view of the moral exemplar held both by McDowell and by Dancy.
It can also have some problems namely, according to whose standards is accomplishment measured? Is there a consensus on what constitutes accomplishment? Does accomplishment have built into it a positive sense? By this I mean the following: What if my sense of accomplishment is to achieve wealth, but I do this by stealing money and cheating people? Clearly, I have accomplished something according to my own standards, but it is doubtful that we would agree that this act is really an accomplishment in the full sense of the word. One way to answer these problems is to understand accomplishment within the context of the discussion of the art of existing, where built into this art is a kind of harmonious existence with others, which I take to include and require integrity, honesty, and care, among other things. If we see the art of existing in this positive sense, then accomplishment must also carry a positive weight.
Freeman (2009).
Dancy (1993, p. 50).
Ibid., 50.
For another elaboration of this point, also see Heidegger (1992, p. 186–187/239–240). There, Heidegger briefly extends his analysis not only to show why and how Dasein is not egoistical, but to show how Dasein is the condition for the possibility of altruism. Also see a comment Heidegger makes in 1921 where he discusses egoism as being “destructive to the ‘general good,’ a dangerous individualism” (Heidegger 2004, p. 180/240). In defending Heidegger against charges of ethical egoism, McNeill discusses the one who understands the art of existing in terms of a special temporal relation to action (1998, pp. 53–64, p. 62).
Heidegger seems to be making a straw man both of Kantian and, as we shall see below, of utilitarian moral theories. Nevertheless, he does seem to capture the central thrust of each position.
McDowell (1997, p. 151).
See Heidegger (2002).
Nussbaum (1990, pp. 71–72).
Dancy (1993, p. 64).
For a discussion of the rejection of such a view by moral particularists, see Dancy (1993, p. 30–32).
For a broader discussion of the skill of moral judgment, see Little’s discussion of a skill model of epistemic justification in Little (2000, p. 297ff).
Heidegger (2002, p. 201/293). The problem with this passage is that it appears to be concerned only with the self, and not with the self’s relation to others, which would seem to undermine the notion of relation that is constitutive of the understanding of ethics with which I am working in this paper. One way to resolve this tension would be to think back to what Heidegger means by the self. Insofar as selfhood is ontologically constituted by its being with (and relation to) others (Mitsein), in attending to the self one is at the same time attending to others.
Also see Heidegger (1982, p. 95/134).
Heidegger (2002, p. 200/293).
Here we are reminded of McNaughteon’s work where principles are abandoned and moral discernment is all that we have. He states: “Moral particularism takes the view that moral principles are at best useless, and at worst a hindrance, in trying to find out which action is the right action. What is required is the correct conception of the particular case in hand, with its unique set of properties. There is thus no substitute for a sensitive and detailed examination of each individual case” (1988, p. 190).
Bakhurst (2000, p. 157).
Dancy (1993, p. 67).
Heidegger (2004, p. 147/200).
Brandom calls this idea the “self adjudicating nature of the social (Mitdasein in a world which is a totality of practical significance)” (1992, p. 62). I am not sure that Brandom gets Heidegger quite right on the issue of being-with since he fails to take seriously the ontological implications of Heidegger’s discussion. It is almost as though Brandom conflates Heidegger’s discussion of Mitsein with Husserl’s claim in Cartesian Meditations that the subject can only be world-experiencing insofar as it is a member of a community.
Aristotle (1999, pp. 1142a13–15). Also see p. 1143b6 where “seem” is taken to be the view that Aristotle is rejecting.
MacIntyre (1984, p. 95, pp. 115–117, pp. 119–120, pp. 194–196).
Aristotle (1999, p. 1142a24).
Aristotle (1999, pp. 1106b16–24).
On the notion of habit in Aristotle, Heidegger writes that “the manner and way of habituation in the case of action is not practice, but retrieval (Wiederholung). Retrieval does not mean the bringing into play of an established skill; it means, rather, acting anew at every moment from out of a corresponding resolve” (Heidegger 2009, p. 128/189). This articulation does not render habit to be something thoughtless or rote, for when this happens in routine operation, Heidegger notes, “the Augenblick is destroyed” (Ibid.). Also see McNeill (2006, p. 93ff).
Respectively, Aristotle (1999, pp. 1142a13–15, p. 1143b10, p. 1143b12).
Aristotle (1999, pp. 1142a23–1143b5). On this point, McDowell writes that even “[i]f one attempted to reduce one’s conception of what virtue requires to a set of rules, then, however, subtle and thoughtful one was in drawing up the code, cases would inevitably turn up in which a mechanical application of the rules would strike one as wrong—and not necessarily because one had changed one’s mind; rather, one’s mind on the matter was not susceptible of capture in any universal formula” (1997, p. 148). Dancy (1993) seems to be following McDowell in arguing that moral competence should be understood as a kind of perceptual capacity to respond to the specific configuration of morally relevant properties that are presented in each case.
Aristotle (1999, p. 1104a3).
Aristotle (1999, pp. 1094b13–14, pp. 11056b1, pp. 1103b.27).
Heidegger (2009, p. 126/186).
Williams (1981, pp. 103–105).
Williams (1985, p. 199).
Ibid., p. 200.
Ibid., p. 200. This position grounds his criticism of both deontology and utilitarianism.
For an excellent argument as to why the solus ipse is not to be interpreted as an epistemologically isolated individual, see Ha (2004).
It is within the context of Heidegger’s descriptive power that Kellner argues that Heidegger's analysis contains a critique of ethical prescriptivism and “puts into question one of the hallowed dogmas of empiricism: the distinction between fact and value and normative and descriptive statements” (1983, p. 162). Kellner continues that Heidegger gives us a new kind of evaluative language that is grounded in a descriptive ontology.
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Freeman, L. Metontology, moral particularism, and the “art of existing:” a dialogue between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams. Cont Philos Rev 43, 545–568 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9156-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9156-3