Lambeth’s thought-provoking book on ‘Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant’ tackles the difficult task of prising apart those aspects of Heidegger’s interpretation that illuminate Kant’s philosophical project from those that do ‘violence’ to the text. Some of its illuminating aspects include Heidegger’s ‘metaphysical reading of Kant’ (and his critique of neo-Kantian epistemological readings), his appreciation for Kant’s insights about the discursivity and finitude of the intellect, and most importantly, his emphasis on Kant’s claim that the three questions, ‘What can I know?’, ‘What ought I to do?’, and ‘What may I hope?’ are in some sense grounded in the fourth question, ‘What is man?’, thus announcing the necessity of something like a ‘foundational ontology’ (i.e. the dependence of the transcendental analytic on an analytic of Dasein). In my comments, I will restrict my attention to Heidegger’s discussion of time and temporality in Kant, where it is particularly important, but also difficult, to distinguish the ‘charity’ and the ‘violence’ in Heidegger’s interpretation.

Lambeth argues that Heidegger is a ‘temporal idealist’. This means that Heidegger agrees with Kant that time is a form of human intuition, and that he ‘deepens Kant’s idealism by arguing that this interpretation of time is created by three temporal capacities that constitute the human being. Thus, Heidegger develops an account explaining how the human being is the source of the a priori conditions framing the experience of beings’ (p. 201). Unlike contemporary realist readings of Heidegger, which make it seem as though Heidegger did not recognize Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy, Lambeth’s Heidegger radicalizes the Copernican revolution. One of the benefits of Heidegger’s radicalization, Lambeth maintains, is that it ‘unifi[es] those capacities that must be unified in order for synthetic a priori judgment to be possible’ (ibid.). (In particular, Heidegger supposedly unifies the three Kantian temporal syntheses through his account of the temporality of Dasein.) I am sceptical of this claim: it seems to me that Heidegger ends up with a bigger problem explaining the unity of time than Kant had (for reasons I’ll explain below).

The main idea behind Heidegger’s view is that Kant merely articulates ordinary or vulgar time, which is, as Heidegger says, ‘the pure succession of the sequence of nows given in pure intuition: now, and now, and now – that is, a constant sequence of nows’ (p. 232). Heidegger is interested in the more primordial, ekstatic conception of time – the temporality (Zeitlichkeit) that is the being of Dasein and that underlies vulgar time. What Heidegger appears to be saying here (although there is not much discussion of this in the book) is that humans exist in time in a very different way from the way a stone in nature exists in time, since we are aware of our death. (One might add that non-human organisms also have their own distinctive way of being in time.) Kant may be right that the manner in which the stone is in time is aptly described as ‘persistence’ – i.e. the being of a substance is ‘constant presence’. But our human way of being in time is different and is fundamentally oriented not towards the present but towards the future. Moreover, Kant himself hints at the dominance of our (human) temporality (original temporality) in his account of the three syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition from the A-deduction. So, as Lambeth says, Kant’s ‘transcendental syntheses articulate the understanding of time as a sequence of nows, but this articulation is enabled by a deeper structure, the structure of temporality, where the temporal modes of past, present, and future are held together’ (p. 139).

First, I want to ask whether Kant’s account of the threefold synthesis really does leave us without an account of the unity of past, present, and future, and how unity enters into Heidegger’s interpretation of them. Second, I wish to raise a few problems for Heidegger’s own account of the dominance of our future-orientation.

Let us start with apprehension. Heidegger says that a manifold of ‘nows’ in temporal awareness ‘would not be represented as such [i.e. as a manifold] if the mind did not distinguish the time in the succession of impressions on one another’ (p. 233; See Kant A99). I take this to be an acknowledgement that times are not given to the mind as a succession of ‘nows’ – they do not present themselves to the mind as a manifold. A manifold of consciousnesses is not the same as consciousness of a manifold. So the mind has to do something – it has to distinguish one now from the next – in order to become conscious – i.e. to apprehend – the manifold of successive times. And in order to do so, it must be a consciousness that stays the same through one representation and its successor. So times are not given to us as ordered in a succession; rather, their ordering – one after another – is the work of a priori syntheses of the imagination which is constant. In Heidegger’s words, ‘the power of imagination … develops [ausbilden] time as a pure succession of nows’ (p. 236).

But not only is consciousness of the manifold of times the work of synthesis; Kant also suggests (in a famous footnote at B161 that has led some interpreters to think that Kant is rewriting the Transcendental Aesthetic) that the whole of time itself ‘presupposes a synthesis’: ‘Through [this synthesis] (as the understanding determines the sensibility) space or time are first given as intuitions’ (B161n.). Since the imagination is the power to synthesize a manifold of sensibility (or to form images) on the canvas of space and time, the synthesis that first gives the unity of space and time as wholes is the same as a synthesis that first constitutes the power of imagination as such. (So I think Kant can agree with Heidegger that the power of imagination just is time itself.) Moreover, Kant says that the ‘transcendental synthesis of the imagination … is an effect of the understanding on sensibility and its first application (and at the same time the ground of all others) to objects of the intuition that is possible for us’ (B152). So the imagination’s acts, not only of representing time itself (as a whole), and thus of representing itself, but also of transcendental apprehension of a manifold in time, are really the effect of the understanding on sensibility. Lambeth presents Heidegger as saying that transcendental syntheses of apprehension are really the work not of the understanding, but of the imagination (and as doing some violence to Kant’s text by saying this). But these passages from the B-edition suggest that the imagination itself is the work of the understanding, its first application to sensibility. So it does not seem to matter, from a Kantian standpoint, whether one says that transcendental apprehension is the work of the imagination or the work of the understanding – because they come down to the same thing. (The B-edition is not revising anything in the A-edition but just spelling out what it means.) It is just important to acknowledge that the understanding is at work not merely in intellectual synthesis, but also in affecting sensibility (hence the synthesis is not ‘intellectual’ but ‘figurative’).

Notice that transcendental apprehension is what enables me to become conscious of a series of ‘nows’. This means that I am already conscious, in apprehension, of the distinction between ‘no longer now’, ‘now’, and ‘not yet now’, or of the distinction between past, present, and future. What, then, could it mean when Heidegger says that apprehension discloses pure time ‘a priori in its now’, and thus as ‘present’ (p. 240)? Lambeth does not seem to offer an interpretation of this statement, but instead merely reports Heidegger’s claim that ‘apprehension and reproduction’ disclose the ‘present and past’, while the synthesis of recognition will ‘disclos[e] the future’ (p. 147).

I think it is significant that Heidegger says that apprehension discloses ‘pure time’ as present – not that it discloses a particular time as present. In other words, the whole of time itself is disclosed as what we might call the ‘eternal present’ – as that which always is present, across all times. The past and the future thus are regarded as dimensions of the present. Thus, already in the syntheses of apprehension, the present is understood as the unity of past and future. Whereas the ‘a priori’ synthesis of apprehension discloses the whole of time as the present – empirical apprehension gives me access to particular ‘nows’ within the present.

Now just as we saw that the mind must do something to apprehend a manifold as a manifold, the mind must also be active in order to represent a present representation as reproducing a past representation. A manifold of the same (of repeated) consciousnesses is not the same as consciousness of the same (of the repetition) in the manifold. Again, the a priori synthesis of reproduction is what first enables empirical reproduction. In the a priori synthesis, the whole of time is represented as always already having been, or as eternally past. The point is not (only) that a past event – such as the perception of a dog – is reproduced in the perception of a present dog. (That is what happens in empirical reproduction, as when I am beginning to associate perceptions of dogs.) Rather, in a priori syntheses of reproduction time itself is disclosed as past. The present and future thus appear as dimensions of the eternal past, i.e. as reproducing what always already has been. Heidegger speaks here of the ‘pure reaching back’ as keeping ‘open the horizon of alreadyness’ (p. 239). Here the past is not that which flees or is over and done with in the present but is that which remains and is eternal; in Heidegger’s words, ‘time as past offers itself immediately – not as the present but immediately as it itself, as past’ (pp. 238-9).

Finally, on Heidegger’s reading of the third a priori syntheses of recognition, I reach ahead, but not to particular times in the future, for instance, anticipating that future dogs will have the features that are gathered in the concept ‘dog’. Rather, the point seems to be that the whole of time itself is represented as the future, and the present and the past are mere dimensions of it. In transcendental syntheses of recognition, I experience the past and the present as exhibiting the unity of the eternal future, that pre-cognition that projects a whole in advance. The eternal future is not to be understood as the not-yet, as the continuation of the present, or as actualizing what is now in potentiality; on the contrary, the present (the now) and the past exhibit what is projected into the future (i.e. they fulfil an expectation).

On this interpretation of what Heidegger is saying, the threefold, a priori syntheses disclose the whole of time as present, past, and future. Or as Heidegger says, they ‘make up the unity of time itself’ (p. 246). I offer this as a friendly addendum to Lambeth’s interpretation of Heidegger on the threefold syntheses. (I don’t think it contradicts what she says, but the book does not fully develop Heidegger’s way of drawing the contrast between the a priori and empirical syntheses as they relate to time.)

Lambeth suggests that what is controversial in Heidegger’s interpretation of the synthesis of recognition is his claim that it ‘is related to time’ (p. 147). But Kant is concerned here not with the merely logical use of concepts, but with their determinate use in relation to a manifold of intuition, so it should not be controversial that Kant thinks of the synthesis of recognition as related to time (indeed, I think the schematism can be read as spelling out the time-determinations that are made possible by the use of the categories as concepts, and thus as articulating the a priori syntheses of recognition in general). What Heidegger himself admits goes beyond Kant’s text is his rejection of the idea that the concept itself (or equivalently, transcendental apperception) is timeless. He writes: the ‘understanding too is basically a time-related activity and is not, as Kant thought, a spontaneity independent of time, ever against pure intuition of time as the faculty of receptivity’ (p. 247). Heidegger suggests that rather than thinking of time as understood through eternity, we must understand eternity through time (through the present, past, and future, as we have seen).

For Heidegger, because Kant pulls apart concept and intuition (or the timeless and the temporal), he ultimately cannot explain their unity; one way to put this would be by saying that Kant cannot explain how the I that affects itself (the I of ‘I think’) is the same as the I that is affected (the I of ‘I exist’). It remains mysterious how timeless thinking bridges the divide between concept and intuition upon entering time through self-affection.

But Heidegger’s solution to this problem seems to be that of making the ‘I’ originally temporal, thus eliminating the gap. This seems too easy, and it is problematic, for several reasons. (Indeed, I think these problems need to be addressed by any sympathetic reading of Heidegger on Kant. It is not clear how the book responds to them.) First, if the self is to be understood as original temporality, then this would mean that it must be understood as existence. Heidegger knew that Kant appreciated that my existence is very unlike the existence of things in nature. Kant says that when I say ‘I exist’, ‘existence’ is not being used as a category. Whereas things in nature always exist as this or as that, my existence is entirely indeterminate: I am mere capacity, and all determinations of my existence are self-determinations. Heidegger reads this as meaning that to exist (for the I) is to go outside of oneself, since a capacity is a capacity for something and thus reaches out towards the future. Existence therefore is nothing more than the ek-static temporality of Dasein (existence is temporality temporalizing itself). That part of Heidegger’s story seems Kantian and in line with what Kant says in the Paralogisms. But Kant maintains that this indeterminacy of my existence is a consequence of the infinite capacity of thinking: like Descartes, he proceeds from ‘I think’ to ‘I exist’. By contrast, it seems that Heidegger must go from ‘I exist’ to ‘I think’; thinking must occur within the context of my existing, i.e. within temporality. But where does this indeterminacy of my existence, and this ability to disclose the whole of time (as present, past, and future) come from, if not from our capacity to think? Where does the unity of time itself come from, if not from the unity of apperception (the ‘I think’)? It seems that Heidegger does not want to answer these questions because he wants to say that I simply am (originally) this disclosing of the temporal ecstasies (i.e. with temporality we reach bedrock). But is this ability to disclose the whole of time just an inexplicable divine gift, the gift of our existence? Why has Heidegger not replaced one mystery (the mystery of the sameness of the I that thinks and the I that exists) with another mystery (the mystery of my existence, or the mystery of the unity of time as such)?

The second problem is one that I think Heidegger fully acknowledges. This is that if there is no priority of the ‘I think’ over the ‘I exist’, i.e. no atemporal act of intellectual synthesis that makes possible the temporal ecstasies, there will be no way to show that the categories are legitimate. If, that is, the categories are originally time-determinations, and do not have a yet ‘higher’ source in reason (or in the ‘I think’), then there would be no task for a transcendental deduction – namely, that of answering the quaestio quid juris by revealing the source of the categories in the understanding (insofar as it makes experience possible), since the understanding or reason in the broad sense is the source of all truth and of all legitimacy. Instead, it seems that we would only be able to answer the quaestio quid facti: where, in fact, do the categories come from? From the human being or Dasein. Thus, Heidegger says that properly understood, ‘the problem of the transcendental deduction as elucidation of the ontological essence of categories is by no means a juridical question of validity. Rather, this problem is basically what we call a fundamental ontological interpretation of Dasein’ (p. 252). But if Heidegger is right, and there is no need for a transcendental deduction in Kant’s sense (i.e. for showing that the categories are legitimate concepts of objects), why are we not led into the position that Kant says ‘the skeptic wishes most’: namely of saying that the categories are simply ‘subjective predispositions for thinking, implanted in us along with our existence by our author’ (B168; B167)? Why does the position Heidegger endorses not divest the categories of the ‘necessity that is essential to their concept’ (B168)?

Finally, I want to end with a problem related to Heidegger’s insistence on ‘recognition’ as revealing the future-orientation of Dasein. Why should we think of the synthesis under concepts not as re-cognition, but as pre-cognition (as Lambeth accurately reports about Heidegger’s reading of it)? Concepts for Kant – as I think Heidegger acknowledges – are not mere tools for classification, but reveal the essence (Wesen) of things. But ‘essences’ or ‘forms’ are traditionally understood as what always already was, as evidenced by Plato’s doctrine of recollection, or by the technical term Aristotle invents for ‘essence’: to ti en enai (which literally translates as ‘what it was to be’). Or as Sartre quotes Hegel, ‘Wesen ist was gewesen ist’ (essence is what has been) (p. 35). To understand something’s essence is to understand what it always already was to be that thing – which of course is also how it will be at future times (i.e. the future will exhibit this eternal past). It is not to create that essence as something new, or as a future projection. It seems to me that the place to find a future orientation in Dasein is not in the theoretical employment of reason – its determination of objects through theoretical concepts – but rather in its practical employment. Indeed, it is in the Religion, where Kant speaks of the ‘revolution’ in one’s way of thinking – the sort of revolution required for moral progress – that we get an account of the sort of future that is not a mere continuation of the present, but is something radically new, the future of the ‘new man’ that I put on when I cast off the ‘old man’. Only through this revolution in my way of thinking can I think of my past and my present as dimensions of my future self, for it enables me to hope that a divine judge will see my true self to be my future self, and will judge my present and my past in the light of my future. (Indeed, this seems to be how Kant interprets divine grace.)

Heidegger likely would reject Kant’s attempt to abstract from the practical employment of reason in his reflections on the theoretical employment of reason. But it is not clear to me that the practical dimension really affects the manner in which we think of theoretical concepts or the essences of things in the world. Why should all essences acquire a future orientation from the practical future orientation of Dasein?

Although I could not find answers to these questions in Lambeth’s book, the book lays out Heidegger’s interpretation in such a clear and graspable way that the reader is inevitably led to think for oneself about how Heidegger himself might respond.