The Metaphysics of German Idealism. Martin Heidegger

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The Metaphysics of German Idealism

      A New Interpretation of Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and the Matters Connected Therewith (1809)

      Martin Heidegger

      Translated by Ian Alexander Moore and Rodrigo Therezo

      polity

      First published in German as GA vol. 49, Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus. Zur erneuten Auslegung von Schelling: Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände (1809) © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 1991. 2nd, revised edition 2006.

      This English translation © Polity Press, 2021

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      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4012-9

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976, author. | Moore, Ian Alexander, translator. | Therezo, Rodrigo, translator. | Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus.

      Title: The metaphysics of German idealism : a new interpretation of Schelling’s Philosophical investigations into the essence of human freedom and the matters connected therewith (1809) / Martin Heidegger ; translated by Ian Alexander Moore and Rodrigo Therezo.

      Other titles: Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus. English

      Description: Cambridge ; Medford : Polity Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A major work by one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, published here in English for the first time” – Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2020057294 (print) | LCCN 2020057295 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509540105 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509540129 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775–1854. | Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775–1854. Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. | Idealism, German.

      Classification: LCC B2898 .H4513 2021 (print) | LCC B2898 (ebook) | DDC 193–dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057294 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057295

      The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

      Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Translators’ Introduction

      The decision to translate Heidegger into English is in many respects a difficult one. Not simply because Heidegger’s thought remains irreducibly tied to language and to a certain artisanal craft of writing – a “Hand-werk der Schrift,” as he calls it in “The Letter on ‘Humanism’”¹ – but also because English, to all appearances, at least, was not a language Heidegger particularly esteemed. This would be philosophically irrelevant were it not for the utmost significance Heidegger himself ascribes to “the essential danger” that the “English-American” language poses, a threat to nothing less than the “shrine” of being in which “the essence of the human is held in store.”² It is difficult to overlook, then, a certain irony at the heart of any English translation of Heidegger, particularly of a Heidegger text, such as The Metaphysics of German Idealism, dating back to the early 1940s, when Heidegger’s most explicit condemnation of English takes place. Would it not be an ontological disaster to translate the thinker of this ontological disaster precisely into the language in which this disaster is supposed to unfold?

      Yet we maintain that such an undertaking is nevertheless in keeping with another Heidegger, more open to a non-Greek other and capable of writing – in 1946 – that “in the most diverse ways, being speaks everywhere and always, through all language,” even, dare we say, the English language?³

Translated here in its entirety for the first time is volume forty-nine of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe or “Collected Works,” a volume comprised of a lecture course delivered at the University of Freiburg in the first trimester of 1941 and of material for a seminar held there in the summer semester of that year. Previously, excerpts from this volume, occasionally