Title: Martin Heidegger and the problem of historical meaning
First published: 1982
Description: *Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning* explores the central role of historical thought in the writings of Martin Heidegger, both in the earlier period of his work that culminated with the publication of *Being and Time* in 1927 and after the so-called "reversal" or *Kehre* that inaugurated his later thought.  The author analyzes Heidegger's writings in relation to a key unifying theme:  the problem of historical meaning, involving the threat of historical relativism, which emerged with particular acuity in 19th century Germany.  Following the decline of German Idealism and, in particular, of Hegel's attempt to anchor the radical historicity of human understanding in an absolute foundation, this problem threatened to undermine any theoretical attempt to attain coherent criteria of truth.  Indeed, if human understanding itself is subject to radical modification in different historical periods, on what basis might the truths asserted in any given period claim more than a relative validity, limited to the period in which they arise and doomed to be superseded (but not necessarily comprehended) by the different perspective that comes to predominance in a later historical period?  Given the radical modifications to which human understanding is subject, on what basis might one claim to attain an overarching unity among the different historical expressions of truth upon which the coherence, and thus the universality, of the criteria of judgment depend?

	By the late 19th century this problem of historical meaning had become a topic of intense theoretical reflection in philosophy, as in theology and in the human sciences.  After having fueled profound investigations by the most noted philosophers and theoreticians whose work established the foundations of the human sciences - such as Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Ernst Troeltsch, Wilhelm Dilthey and Edmund Husserl - this problem became a seminal topic of investigation in the thought of the young Martin Heidegger.  Following the completion his habilitation thesis, written under the direction of Heinrich Rickert, Heidegger, in the years just following the First World War, turned his attention to this problem and attempted to overcome the aporias that his predecessors had faced.  

	The originality of the present work lies in its identification of a profound affinity in the interpretations of the problem of historical meaning which, beginning in the late 19th century, united the concerns of philosophers, on one hand, and theologians, on the other.  The young Heidegger was acutely aware of this affinity and, as demonstrated by his early Freiburg lectures, first published in 1995 under the title Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, his early preoccupation with the problem of historical meaning involved him in a double-edged critique both of the critical theories of predecessors such as Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert or, in a different sense, Wilhelm Dilthey, as of liberal theologians such as Ernst Troeltsch.  According to the argument pursued in the present work, it is in light of Heidegger's double-edged critique of philosophical and theological attempts to resolve the problem of historical meaning that the deeper implications of his historical reflection may be set in relief.  From this standpoint the author clarifies Heidegger's philosophical relation to Karl Jaspers, his critique of the historical prognosis advanced in Oswald Spengler's *Decline of the West*, and his early enthusiasm for dialectical theology, involving him in an important collaboration with Rudolf Bultmann in the 1920s.  It is in this light, as well, that the author analyzes the significance of Heidegger's interpretation of the finite ontological ground of historicity in *Being and Time*.  As is suggested in this second augmented and revised edition of the book, in which Heidegger's published and unpublished course lectures of the 1930s are drawn into the investigation, Heidegger's reflection on historicity also sheds important light on his political conceptions in this period.

	After analysis of Heidegger's debates with his predecessors and contemporaries, setting in relief the theological and philosophical roots of Heidegger's historical thought in *Being and Time*, the second part of the book turns to Heidegger's historical reflection following the so-called "reversal" of the 1930s.  In this period, Heidegger shifted the focus of his analysis from the ontology of finite Dasein to the epochs of the History of Being.  In the second part of this work, the author attempts to demonstrate that the problem of historical meaning that haunted Heidegger's predecessors and which he attempted to resolve in *Being and Time* reemerged once again, albeit in a different context and with different implications, in his later writings following the *Kehre*.
Subjects: Philosophy, History, historicism, relativism, ontology, Contributions in philosophy of history, Philosophy, modern, 20th century, Philosophy of history
Places: Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany)
People: Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Troeltsch, Heinrich Rickert, Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), R. Bultmann
Time periods: 20th century