Martin Heidegger's Critiques of Metaphysics

Martin Heidegger’s Critiques of Metaphysics and Humanist-Political Critiques of Heidegger introduces the reader to the work and controversies of renowned German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). The dissertation aims to situate the critique of Heidegger in his writings as well the impactful meaning of his original and widely acknowledged contribution to philosophy. Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics is of the linear-temporal-causality of metaphysical-doctrinal mindsets denoting an undynamic thinking of the spatial-temporal, all too narrowly conceiving the ontological question resulting in a templated use of force which is violent nihilistic, abrupt, and impacts all spheres of life: philosophical-cultural-social-political.

Heidegger took part in the political nihilism of his day. The thinking of the abrupt-end as well as the political crisis of his time also led Heidegger to radicalize the meaning of Unter-gang as thinking the tragic-ruin, nihilistic desolation, an apocalyptic end. Heidegger sought to think anew, ‘telos’ and ‘peras’ as casual-ends-and enclosed-limits, key-core terms that structure metaphysical thought. Heidegger names the event of appropriation: [Ereignis], in the realm of the immediate, as the eschatological utter-most-point-limit-edged-stand, a “step-back” [Schritt zurück], a new thinking of phronesis, an embodied intuitive thinking.

As an original contribution, the dissertation offers a dynamic engagement with Heidegger through a new body-rhythm thinking hermeneutic-phenomenology with the following: Unter-scheidung (as separating or dissociating), a re-orientation of directionality by Wider-spruch (opposite in nature, direction in meaning), towards a Grund-mittle-punkt (ground negotiated, as a medium-middle-range-as point hold-footing), rethinking the subject in space-time. The dissertation offers an original perspective on Heidegger’s reading of the German Idealist poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymn “The Ister.” The dissertation reviews intertwinings of Heidegger and ancient East-Asian thinking: Heidegger’s one-stroke-folding-resonance with East-Asian calligraphy. The dissertation reviews thinkers who were influenced by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical enclosures and the phenomenological meaning of otherness, outlining critiques of metaphysics and of Heidegger by a humanist-person-centered approach. The notable thinkers are Herbert Marcuse, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and Jacques Lacan. The work of these thinkers, the dissertation concludes, lead to the unthought terrain of peripheral thinking, a corporeal engagement, rethinking locality-temporality as situated-otherness, as a new praxis.