I have been using the term ‘condition’ as it corresponds to transcendental idealism, which has sought to account for the appearance of phenomena by way of ‘necessary conditions’ that precede that phenomena. The basic question asks: ‘What makes X possible?’8 The problem that this methodology raises surrounds the status of these conditions. Can a ‘condition’ be said to ‘ground’
a series of causal events or phenomena of the mind? If a condition can serve as a ground, then origins can be accounted for and a fundamental philosophical difficulty has been overcome. Transcendental idealism debates this question through the work of Kant, Jacobi, Maimon, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; we will concentrate on how Heidegger develops the problem and the criticisms that his solutions draw.
One of Heidegger’s former students, Ernst Tugendhat, observes that transcendental philosophy changes the location and essence of truth:
All beings are questioned with regard to the condition of the possibility in so far as this condition can be known to be true, and the first and most original principle to which this question leads back is not so much an absolute being as rather something which is given with absolute certainty.9
The transcendental method, in its Kantian form, limits questions of know-ledge and truth to what can be known to be true, that is, that which can be presented before the human mind as evidence for the production of know-ledge. Within this methodology empirical evidence holds truth but so does the dictate of reason. If some definite thing or structure exists in the world as pre-sented to the human mind, then it is reasonable to inquire into the conditions
that necessarily precede that thing. We are asked to extend our enquiry into what is not presented to us as such but what is deemed necessary for that thing or event to take place. As Tugendhat argues, this process changes the nature of truth as we no longer assign confidence to an absolute being (or first cause/
prime mover) that may be the origin of all things, although we may trust the rational enquiry as far as it extends into the unknown but necessary world of prior conditions. Nevertheless, while the transcendental standpoint liberates philosophy from engaging with an absolute being it also destroys the ground-ing function that an absolute beground-ing or first cause embraces. God or prime mover no longer guarantees truth. Without God grounding world or phenom-ena, the confidence in ground is gradually eroded. Grounding operations are replaced by the ‘certainty’ of conditions or principles.
In spite of this, philosophers such as Nietzsche, Derrida and Rorty see the Kantian account of possible experience as a residue of a theologically inspired metaphysics. Kant’s reduction of reason to the realm of human experience was taken at the cost of a distinction between phenomena and noumena: representa-tions and ‘things in themselves’. A strong distinction between the known and unknown founded upon the qualitative distinction between mind and nature or understanding and sensibility creates a dualism that was originally the target of his critique. The dualism is reduced in form to that of an interior-exterior partition. However, the problem is retained in the various ways that metaphysics seeks to distance itself from the world of ‘causal reality’, ‘nature’ or ‘history’.
Rorty, in particular, views the use of conditions of possibility as an ‘escape’ from
‘temporal actuality’ into ‘atemporal possibility’.10 Plato’s Forms are likewise described as methods of escape. According to Rorty, the philosophical sin that these descriptions share is that they attempt to account for empirical objects through recourse to metaphysical objects that go before them and condition their appearance.11 The metaphysical objects are intended to prevent further questioning which asks after their origin: metaphysical objects are conditions and as such do not require, but rather account for, origins. They are considered to be eternal, timeless or simply necessary. The question then follows, if the metaphysical objects are not required to account for themselves, then why do empirical objects require a final account? Rorty restates the criticism that ditions of possibility cannot stand as grounds for empirical objects. The con-templation of origins or conditions is then evaded by reading the conditioning elements as being identical with final grounds. Final grounds are derelict as they fail in their responsibility to describe the origin of beings. This allows Rorty to eliminate final grounds and the basis on which these inquires were initiated, which was to explain how things are known or how things come into being.
As final grounds cannot provide an account for themselves they are rejected together with the rationale for the inquiry. The inquiry into origins and condi-tions is abandoned. There is a powerful element to Rorty’s critique; however, to my knowledge Rorty does not perform the parallel procedure of rejecting empirical objects for a similar reason; if final grounds are renounced because
they cannot account for themselves, then presumably empirical objects are also candidates for refutation because they too cannot be justified.
Rorty’s argument illustrates the aversion some philosophers have to the problem of transition. The metaphysical objects are treated with suspicion because they appear to eviscerate worldly objects through supplying an ‘ex ternal condition’ for that object. Consequently, the ‘ground’ or ‘meaning’ (a term which still requires clarification) of an object is other to the object itself. The transcendental inquiry into conditions reasserts a dualistic account of worldly things, which again reveals the problem of transition. This outcome is appropri-ately judged problematic. However, Rorty’s riposte, ‘if the metaphysical objects are not required to account for themselves, then why do the empirical objects require a final account?’ has a long philosophical history. It distils a Spinozist response to the problem of transition through abolishing the alleged external cause of things and placing causes immanent to the object and then asking:
‘Why not?’ In essence, the world is judged to be either the ground of itself or to exist in groundlessness. Despite the attempt to overcome metaphysics (which also reasons that things require origins rather than existing eternally12) the solution is deeply indebted to post-enlightenment rational thought, which requires a standard of truth or evidence to be presentable before a reasoned consciousness. What Rorty is not offering us at this juncture is an account of his standard of truth that supplies him with his tools for criticism. All standards of truth appear to be questionable because they cannot supply a ground or justifi-cation for themselves.13 After the abandonment of an absolute being, this attack serves to destabilize metaphysical reliance upon conditions of possibility, whereby all philosophical knowledge becomes problematic.
How does Heidegger fit into this discussion? I have been arguing that Heidegger’s methodology owes a great deal to German transcendental idealism and he also appears to be critical of rational explanations that end in immanent accounts of ground for the sake of consistency. The use of conditions in Heidegger’s ontological inquiry into being appears to be fundamental. One envisages that the only way to arrive at the condition for beings is through a retracing of steps backward to being: the condition that provides for the thing or event.14 Hence Heidegger accepts the replacement of the absolute being of metaphysics by the transcendental condition. Tugendhat, therefore, argues that, in Being and Time, Heidegger holds on to a ‘first and most original principle’
and, to this extent, he is read as a metaphysical thinker.15 To link Heidegger with metaphysics is to attempt to denigrate his philosophy or at least its ground-ing in beground-ing. However, I would dispute that this is a simple case of metaphysical substitution. Heidegger has been trying to maintain a strong distinction, the ontological distinction between being and beings, and has been attempting to show that this distinction is fundamental for the emergence of beings, the self and thought. That distinction is often thought through what Okrent describes as ‘quasi-transcendental arguments’.16 However, both Tugendhat and Okrent agree that Heidegger has extended this categorization through recourse to an
ontological horizon. In Tugendhat’s case it is the horizon of world historic Dasein, and in Okrent’s it is the ‘truth of being’. Tugendhat states that Heidegger begins with a transcendental standpoint which he then broadens to the ‘transcendental in general’, or what is described as an ontological horizon.
To begin with a transcendental standpoint is to accept Kantian limits regarding knowledge and an absolute being. How would an ontological horizon over-come the transcendental position?
Tugendhat accepts that the standpoint is transformed through the ‘ecstatic temporality of Dasein’. Dasein and ‘its world as history’ provides a ‘precursory openness’ whereby ‘the transcendental (thesis) is surpassed’.17 It is neither the subject nor the certitude of rationality that provide a foundation for beings and thought; what provides the ground is the ‘pre-givenness’ of Dasein and its world. It is this notion of givenness that constitutes a horizon. The pre-givenness acts as a broadening movement by being inexpressible in the sense that the world is already open and already of concern. It is what is required in order to exist or state any problem concerning the status of the world. The world is the background to all problems and therefore acts as a unifying horizon that overcomes the dualistic division between subject and object.
In order to make the world a problem in itself one has to ‘disengage’ from it and retreat into a reified perspective. According to Tugendhat, this represents the earlier variant of Heidegger’s description of truth: truth is disclosed thor-ough an ecstatic horizon, yet this horizon is the being and disclosing activity of Dasein as a being-in-the-world. The condition has a prior ontological status but it is related to the world of existence that resists a transcendental standpoint in the subject.
Okrent distinguishes between two senses of being in Heidegger’s work:
First ‘Being’ is the Being of beings, what each being is thought to need so that it is, rather than nothing. That is, ‘Being’ in this first sense refers to that which each being involves simply and solely in so far as it is at all. The science which studies Being in this sense is metaphysics, the science of Being qua Being. Equally, metaphysics, as the science of Being qua Being, increasingly comes to see Being in this sense, i.e. the Being of beings, as the ground of beings itself.18
To begin with, Heidegger is metaphysical in the sense that part of his enquiry involves the being of beings and the condition that grounds beings: the condi-tion that ‘supplies’ ground and ‘demands’ participacondi-tion. Within Okrent’s description we can see a Heideggerian play between donating and necessitating activities of being: the most general attribute of things and also the provider of ground. Metaphysics first treats being as the most universal attribute and then thinks that attribute as the prior condition that grounds the beings that it is describing. Heidegger is thinking being in a manner that utilizes and criticizes this early thought on being. Heidegger’s distinction between being and beings
at an ontological level is what constitutes a qualified breakthrough. However, if being, as an ontological horizon, is allowed to acquire a reified status and be read as a (supra) being, then dualism follows and we accept a certain kind of metaphysical thinking. Nevertheless, in Being and Time, the radical nature of ontological horizons concerns their temporal or ‘ecstatic’ nature, and Okrent’s second description of being hones in on the development of the temporal aspect of being which is described through aletheia, the truth of being.19 Consequently, Okrent agrees that Heidegger is using transcendental structures to investigate prior relations; however, those structures undergo modifications, not only concerning the extension/deconstruction of subjectivity in relation to world, but also with regards to the temporal nature of conditions and ground. This point illustrates the problems interpreters have when dealing with Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger’s thought is concerned with the temporal-ity of philosophical terms and structures even when he is not specifically indicating the temporal character of those terms and structures. If the pre-given is understood in atemporal terms it resembles quite closely an atemporal metaphysical condition; Heidegger is attempting to characterize basic relations as temporal or dynamic conditions that relate to truth as disclosure. However, the question remains: How does a temporal condition constitute a horizon and, secondly, can a temporal horizon stand as a ground for beings?