The Different Notions of History in Heidegger's Work

Ingo Farin

While it is uncontroversial that history plays a decisive role throughout Heidegger's work, there is no broad consensus concerning the exact determinations and important changes in Heidegger's conception of history. As so often with key concepts in Heidegger, it is much easier to identify what Heidegger opposes than to delineate the precise contours of what he argues for. To begin with the former, Heidegger consistently rejects a theoretical and objectivist approach to "the historical" insofar as this presupposes a supra-historical standpoint from which the historical realm is constituted or evaluated. According to Heidegger, this approach is bound to miss its subject matter from the start, because historical being is not understood on its own terms if it is subordinated to an extra-historical reality and comprehended through what is foreign to it. For this reason Heidegger holds that neither historicism nor objective historical studies provide genuine and authoritative accounts of the historical.

Being opposed to any objectification of the historical, it is no wonder that Heidegger empathically affirms that history is never without relation to human beings. Yet he also rejects conceptions that narrowly restrict the realm of the historical to res gestae (empirically occurring deeds or actions) only. In contrast to this common focus on great deeds and world-historical events of nations and peoples, Heidegger locates the preeminently historical site or the essence of history elsewhere. His concept of history has nothing to do with simply registered "change" in empirical annals or chronicles. Heidegger inquires into the essence of history, which is not itself something historical like a datable event.

Another constant feature in Heidegger's philosophical thought on history is his insistence that the historical is never something of "the past" only, as if it had nothing more to do with the present and the future. According to Heidegger, the past is always taken up and reinscribed in the future, just as the future lives off the memory of the past. Heidegger understands "history" as the encompassing whole of the interrelated three dimensions or "ex-stases" of temporality, that is, past, present, and future. There is no past "outside" the present and future, and vice versa. In other words, the past is never dead and "gone." Rather, it comes to life in the future; it does not approach the present from "behind," but from the "front." What is historical is always out-side itself, not self-enclosed in either the past, or present, or future. This understanding of the mutual dependence of historical time signifies the origin of Heidegger's hermeneutical orientation. It has its roots in this conception of temporality or history, that is, his view that the historical exists as this interpenetration of past, future, and present at once. There is no finality that can be achieved, as the future reinterprets the past and thus the present. History is hermeneutics in action.

Moreover, it is Heidegger's view that the historical is an inescapable and encompassing ultimate horizon, taking precedence over nature, as well as theoretical and metaphysical objectivity. Because history is this ultimate horizon, it is the philosophical subject matter par excellence. It is not reducible to empirical history in opposition to nature, as the historical encompasses both. Therefore, the early Heidegger states that "in principle the philosophical problematic is motivated by the historical."

History requires historical awareness and in Heidegger this comes with the recognition of Vergänglichkeit — that everything passes away, that time runs out, that we always live an endgame of sorts. As Heidegger states, "One says 'time passes,' but never 'time arises.'" If there is a mood that comes with the historical, it is the more somber feeling of finitude, transitoriness, and death. Feeling is not representational. Heidegger's critique of the predominance of representation is, in part, motivated by the concomitant suppression of the feeling of the passing of time if and when representation rules supreme. However, the sense of time's passing does not preclude, as we have seen already, an understanding of the future and the possibility of historically shaping the future. While Heidegger has a certain fascination for new departures, the "new" or "other beginning," he is always mindful that the condition of history lies in its coming to an end. History is "tragic," directed towards its ultimate end; or, as Heidegger also says, history is "eschatological," in a non-theological sense. The domination of time is absolute. The universality of hermeneutics has its ground in this.

If finitude is one key characteristic of the historical, then singularity is the other. It is far too seldom recognized that Heidegger holds that both Dasein and Being are finite and singular, einzig. This means that Heidegger defines his key subject matter through what is preeminently historical, and it also explains why Heidegger leans toward a hermeneutical approach, if understanding individuality and singularity are the key tasks of hermeneutics. Conversely, we can say that Heidegger's constant criticism of the impact of calculative reason, ordering, reification, theoretism, and so on are rooted in his attempt to do justice to the openness of the historical — "the open region" par excellence. It is on account of its historicity that Heidegger claims that "for being [Seyn] we never find a 'place [Ort]' (for instance as what is 'opposite' to, or 'above' human beings); never can it [i.e., being or Seyn] be integrated into an 'order.'" If there is anything that escapes human calculation, it is history.

Heidegger's turn towards history is directed against the pervasive ahistorical conceptions of philosophy and truth in the Western tradition. In opposition to the flight to supra-historical truths, Heidegger opts for an ever-intensive immersion in the historical, be it "the...