International Phenomenological Society

Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics?"

Author(s): S. J. Paluch
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Jun., 1970), pp. 603-608
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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 DISCUSSION

HEIDEGGER'S "WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?"

Dread reveals Nothing. "Dread" is the name of a mood. We neither

perceive, conceive, nor imagine Nothing. In dread we are brought face
to face with Nothing.
The mood of dread has a peculiar intentional character. When I think,
I think of something; when I am afraid, I am afraid of something. But
in Heidegger's use: "although 'dread' is always 'dread of,' it is not dread
of this or that.... The indefiniteness of what we dread is not just lack
of definition: it represents the essential impossibility of defining the
'what." 1
We see, in the above, that Heidegger appears to accept the intentional
character of dread and yet - in his succeeding remarks - appears to
deny that dread has an intentional character: "'Nothing' is revealed in
dread, but not as something that 'is.' Neither can it be taken as an
object." 2 But if dread is always dread of, it would seem obvious that
some "object" must be the target of dread. What might this target be?
Heidegger has, seemingly, eliminated all of the candidates. I think we
are forced to conclude that Heidegger both denies and affirms that dread
is intentional (i.e., that "dread" is always "dread of" with the "of"
requiring a complement): moving from "In 'dread' there is nothing one
has dread of' to "In dread one has dread of (the) Nothing." He denies
the intentionality of dread in denying that dread has a target-object. H
affirms the intentionality by treating the lack of a target-object as a
target.
Oskar Kraus 3 and Rudolf Carnap 4 criticized Heidegger for his strange

Martin Heidegger, "What is Metaphysics?," in Existence and Being, ed.

W. Brock (Henry Regnery'Co., Chicago, 1949), pp. 325-349. The first quotation
is from page, 335. Heidegger's, essay, under the title "Was ist Metaphysik?" was
first delivered as a lecture at the University of Freiburg in 1929. It was put into
print in the same year.
2 Ibid., p. 337.
3 Oskar Kraus, "tVber Alles und Nichts," Philosophische Hefte, ed. by M. Beck,
Vol. 3, 1930, pp. 140-146. See, especially, p. 146 for a direct citation from "Was
ist Metaphysik?" which is clearly, throughout the article, one of Kraus' targets.
4 Rudolf Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis
of Language," in Logical Positivism, ed. by A. J. Ayer (The Free Press, Glencoe,
Ill., 1959), pp. 60-81. Pages 69-72 make special reference to Heidegger's lecture.
Carnap's article originally appeared in German in Erkenntnis, Vol. 2, 1932.

603

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604 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

use (or misuse) of "nothing" but neither said anything about Heidegger's
peculiar way with dread and dread of. It is my thesis that Heidegger's
famous rejection of "logic" (including "logistics") stems from his phe-
nomenological, or pseudophenomenological, analysis of dread. It is that
analysis which seems to require that intentionality be both asserted and
denied in connection with dread, and it is the assertion and denial which
lead to the ambiguous use of "nothing" noted by Carnap in which
"nothing" functions as both noun and logical particle.
It is only by using "nothing" as - to follow Carnap - "a logical
particle that serves for the formulation of a negative existential state-
ment" that Heidegger can distinguish his dread from, say, anxiety. It is
only by using "nothing' as the target of dread that Heidegger can make
his mood significant. (For if "Dread reveals nothing" meant only "There
is not anything which dread reveals" or - "Dread does not reveal
anything" there would be nothing to talk about.)
But Heidegger is free to reply that the mood of dread, as an undeni-
able datum of experience, justifies the ambiguous use of "nothing." It
is clear that an attack on Heidegger's lecture, if it is to be forceful,
cannot simply start with the fact that Heidegger misuses "nothing" or
makes up sentences (such as Das Nichts selbst nichtet) which Carnap
cannot symbolize. There is no doubt, as Heidegger is the first to insist,
that - by all ordinary criteria - he misuses "nothing" and goes against
logic. However, if Heidegger's analysis of dread is in order it is so much
the worse for ordinary language and logic.
The first question to ask is: Is Heidegger right about dread? Is there
(could there be) such a mood? What Kraus and Carnap say about the
"Nothing" may be taken as an indirect proof that there is no such mood
but indirect proofs are as suspicious in philosophy as they are to the
intuitionist philosopher of mathematics.
For Heidegger himself the consequences of his analysis of dread lead
him to suppose that logic itself has been put in question - not the mood
of dread. He certainly has sympathizers on this score.5 It may even be
claimed (turning the tables on Carnap) that Heidegger is a really pure
empiricist who will not allow logic to stand in the way of things as they
actually are experienced. After all, an indirect proof works only if one

5 See, for example, William Barrett's very interesting "Negation, Finitude, and
the Nature of Man," in his well-known Irrational Man (Doubleday Anchor Books,
Garden City, N.Y., 1962), pp. 283-292; H. Kuhn, "Existentialism and Meta-
physics," Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 37-60; G. A. Schrader,
"Heidegger's Ontology of Human Existence," Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 10,
No. 1, pp. 35-56; John Wild, The Challenge of Existentialism (Indiana U.P.,
Bloomington, 1955).

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 HEIDEGGER'S "WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?" 605

is willing to accept certain principles of logic. If a mystic really does

experience 3 = 1 he will not worry about the consequences for arithmetic.
To emulate Heidegger: what about this dread? Must we take the first
step which leads to the repudiation of logic? Is there, after all, such a
mood as the Heideggerian dread? It must be admitted that a great many
people seem to encounter Nothingness. Can this experience of the dread
revealing the Nothing be denied? I think it can be.
First, we must make a distinction between an experience and the
description of that experience. To deny the legitimacy or adequacy of
a description of an experience is not necessarily to deny the experience
itself. It is possible that Heidegger's paradoxes follow not from the fact
of a rare mood but from his incorrect description of it.
If we consider that description we find ourselves, at the very begin-
ning, confronted with the undefended thesis that moods reveal.6 But
there are obvious counterinstances to this: "Jones is afraid of Smith and
doesn't know it" is neither absurd nor implausible, yet "afraid" is clearly
intentional in this sentence. Jones may very well know that he is afraid
(be victim to the mood of fear) and yet not know the object of his fear.
The mood itself cannot be said to reveal its own object. Heidegger moves
from the plausible, if debatable thesis, that moods relate to matters
beyond themselves and the person undergoing them to the inference that
moods reveal that which they are "of" or "intend."
It is clear from Heidegger's own description of dread that it is
Heidegger who draws out the implication that dread reveals the Nothing.
It is Heidegger, and not the one undergoing dread, who discovers that
dread reveals the Nothing by a reflection on the description of dread
Heidegger has provided. We may question either the description or the
reflection without calling into doubt the experience of dread itself. In
fact, Heidegger says, "We ourselves confirm that dread reveals Nothing
-when we have got over our dread." 7 It is after the mood that one
discovers that nothing was revealed. It is true that Heidegger also says,
"The fact that when we are caught in the uncanniness of dread we often
try to break the empty silence by words spoken at random, only proves
the presence of dread." 8 And one might take this to mean that the
Nothing is immediately revealed in dread. But even if we bypass the odd
picture of this mood in which, very often, words are spoken at random
we can hardly ignore the use of prove. Prove cannot correctly function
as reveal. If dread announces itself it does not prove itself. We do not

6 Existence and Being, pp. 333-335.

7 Ibid., p. 336.
8 Op. cit., p. 336.

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606 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

prove the existence of that with which we are immediately confronted.

(And what applies to dread applies, in turn, to whatever dread may be
said to reveal.) Clearly, in Heidegger's remarks, "proves" functions as
inferable from the datum. And, moreover, not inferable from the datum
as given but from the datum as described. We are several moves from
the datum itself before we reach Heidegger's paradoxical- conclusions.9
This is not to deny (nor to affirm!) that all moods may be intentional
and, in a manner of speaking, "reveal." For my moods may lead me to
ask questions but this hardly means that they reveal the answers. Still,
it may be said that whatever Heidegger's questionable assumptions about
moods in general, dread is a very special case in which a revelation does
take place; and furthermore, we must not suppose in advance that a
description of this mood is either impossible or undesirable. We might
suppose that the mood gives us an intuitive knowledge which reflection
converts - via description - into conceptual knowledge.
The odd thing is that none of the conceptual knowledge alleged to
be gained from a reflection on dread reveals any breakdown in "logic"
or "logistics" - with the significant exception of the thesis that since
the target of dread is neither this nor that its target must be the nothing.
Furthermore, we do not need that exception to distinguish dread from
anxiety. Consider - and here I compress a good deal of discussion on
the topic of dread - typical candidates for what dread is alleged to
reveal:

Dread reveals the radical contingency of the universe (Sartre),10 dread reveals
the breakdown or possible breakdown of the principle of sufficient reason (the
well-known existential "absurd"), dread reveals the inevitable fact that I am
going to die. Dread reveals that it is up to me to let the world of beings-in-
the-world be or let the world 'world,'" dread reveals that my world is going
to vanish, dread forces me to ask why I am here or why anything at all is
here (or both), dread reveals the importance of the future and the need for
me to have the courage to be, dread reveals that I am condemned to be free,
dread reveals all of the above.

9 In recent articles E. T. Gendlin and G. A. Schrader have defended, from

different standpoints, Heidegger's general way of dealing with moods or emotio
as intentional and epistemologically significant. Neither, however, deals with "W
is Metaphysics?" Gendlin, in particular, raises some objections against the ph
nomenological method which Heidegger - at least in the period up through 19
may be supposed to have been using and attempts to answer these objections.
E. T. Gendlin, "Expressive Meanings," An Invitation to Phenomenology, ed. Ja
M. Edie (Quadrangle Books, Inc., Chicago, 1965), pp. 240-251 and G. A. Schrad
"The Structure of Emotion," An Invitation to Phenomenology, Op. Cit., pp. 252-
10 See Sartre's interesting discussion of Heidegger in Being and Nothingness (
losophical Library, New York, 1965), pp. 16-21.
11 I think there is here a connection between "What is Metaphysics?" and Vom
Wesen des Grundes (V. Klostermann, Frankfort A. M., 5th ed., 1965). See p
43-44. I am not quoting directly.

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 HEIDEGGER'S "WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?" 607

There are two things to be noted about these candidates (taken sepa-
rately) for the conceptual product of what is primordially given or "in-
tuited" in dread. Firstly, it is hard to see how anyone could, for example,
know that the world is radically contingent if he did not already possess
the concepts "necessity" and "contingency" and have reason to suppose
that, say, "There is a world" is not a necessary truth. Neither Heidegger
nor, so far as I can see, any other phenomenologist of existentialist
leanings does anything at all to; show that the mood of dread is the
source rather than the result of information about the world (or, more
precisely, the result or emotional offshoot of what is taken to be infor-
mation about the world). Is it dread that reveals to me that I am going
to die, or is it my knowledge that I am going to die which, at least
partially, accounts for my dread? There is no need to multiply ques-
tions here so I will turn to the second point I wish to, note.
None of these revelations goes against logic. Logic "tells" one anything
but that the world is necessary, that my world can go on without me, or
that my existence is necessary. Logic has nothing to say about any of
this and none of this has anything to say against logic. None of the
candidates for dread reveals the truth of a logical contradiction.
It may well be true to say that some of them reveal implications drawn
from the study of logic (as in the analytic-synthetic distinction) and
implications drawn from various areas of knowledge and belief. But this
returns us to my first point: is it at all unlikely that dread reflects knowl-
edge and belief rather than producing belief?
Perhaps I have left out a candidate which really does go against
"logic" (and, therefore, by implication what usually counts as knowl-
edge). Certainly I have left out the famous "Das Nichts selbst nichtet"
(given in Brock's collection as "Nothing nihilates, of itself" - page 339 -
and which I would prefer to translate as "The Nothing itself nots") but
here Heidegger is investigating the separate question of the essence of
Nothing and his famous statement comes so late in the essay that
I am not sure that he holds that dread reveals the essence of Nothing
(or The Nothing). But even if "Das Nichts selbst nichtet" were admitted
as a candidate I do not know what it would mean to understand this
proposition against all logic. What I make out of it (and this implies
what I - assuming the role of a phenomenologist -would make out
of my reflections on dread if I took it that, in dread, I somehow intuited
a noting nothing) is simply that in dread the fact that the world need
not be is strongly impressed upon me. The fact refers to a potentiality
of the world: not-being or Nothing. The "noting" refers to the impressing
of this fact which, as a potentiality, is not given in any ordinary way.
If "Das Nichts selbst nichtet" must refer to a logical impossibility

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608 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

which is nonetheless realized we are back where we started with the

shift in the use of "nothing" which Heidegger supposes to follow from
a correct analysis of dread. In short, the question is begged. (This should
not be taken to imply that my suggested analysis of a "nonabsurd"
"Das Nichts selbst nichtet" is particularly satisfactory. I simply used my
analysis as an illustration of making sense out of nonstandard sentences.)
It is naturally arguable (as "Das Nichts selbst nichtet" serves to
emphasize) that Heidegger's dread - or the dread to which he refers -
cannot be described in any language (and this may be used to account
for the neologisms in "What is Metaphysics?"). In this event, Heidegger
would be - as Schlick supposed was true of all metaphysicians -
attempting to communicate the incommunicable.'2 But if he is doin
he must - of course - fail and what he has to say cannot form part
of philosophy although what he says - perhaps as an example of mysti
cism - may serve as a datum for philosophy.'3 Or, more positively, we
may say that Heidegger is, in effect, pointing towards things beyond the
categorizing powers (and necessities) of language. 14 But even on this
view there is no reason to suppose that Heidegger's pointing would point
to a logical impossibility as a truth. wrung from the things themselves
or our deepest experience.
S. J. PALUCH.
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO.

12 See Moritz Schlick, "Form and Content," in Gesammelte Aufsdtze (Gerold

and Co., Vienna, 1938), pp. 151-217. In particular, pp. 196-197. It may be noted
that Schlick's theory about the nature of metaphysics is quite different from that
of Carnap although both, of course, reject metaphysical expressions as "meaning-
less" or "pseudosentences."
13 H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, Vol. 1 (M. Nijhoff, The
Hague, 1960), pp. 271(354. Especially, pp. 290-291 and pp. 351-352.
14 See Stanley Cavell's extremely interesting and suggestive article, "Existentialism
and Analytical Philosophy," in Daedalus, Vol. 93, pp. 946-974. Cavell remarks on
Heidegger only very briefly in a footnote to his article but remarks on the limi-
tations, or seeming limitations, of language for serving to say what Heidegger has
to say.

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