De Mul’s central thesis is that Dilthey’s Critique of Historical Reason can be understood as a radicalization of Kant’s recognition of the contingency and finitude of human reason

Stolorow, Robert D.

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1 23Human StudiesA Journal for Philosophy and the SocialSciences ISSN 0163-8548Volume 35Number 1 Hum Stud (2012) 35:131-135DOI 10.1007/s10746-011-9207-8The Historicity of the A PrioriRobert D. Stolorow1 23Your article is protected by copyright andall rights are held exclusively by SpringerScience+Business Media B.V.. This e-offprintis for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If youwish to self-archive your work, please use theaccepted author’s version for posting to yourown website or your institution’s repository.You may further deposit the accepted author’sversion on a funder’s repository at a funder’srequest, provided it is not made publiclyavailable until 12 months after publication.BOOK REVIEWThe Historicity of the A PrioriJos de Mul: The Tragedy of Finitude: Dilthey’s Hermeneuticsof Life, Trans. Tony Burrett, Yale University Press,New Haven & London, 2004, $52.00, xviii + 412 pp + indexRobert D. StolorowPublished online: 4 January 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011The contemporary analysis of human existence fills us all with a sense offragility, with the power of dark instincts, with the suffering caused bymysteries and illusions, and with the finitude shown by all that is living, evenwhere the highest creations of communal life arise from it.—Wilhelm DiltheyBrowsing in a used bookstore in Berkeley, California around the time my closecollaborator, George Atwood, and I had begun working on an ambitious projecttentatively entitled ‘‘The Tragic and the Metaphysical,’’ I happened upon de Mul’s(2004) book, The Tragedy of Finitude: Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life—a chanceencounter that proved to be highly relevant to our nascent project. This chanceencounter and its relevance provide an example of what is perhaps the central themein de Mul’s interpretation of Dilthey’s philosophy—the radical finitude and facticalcontingency of human life and of the philosophies that seek to comprehend it.In The Tragedy of Finitude, de Mul seeks to reconstruct Wilhelm Dilthey’s lifeproject, his uncompleted Critique of Historical Reason, from texts appearing in hisCollective Writings, published more than six decades after his death in 1911. In theprocess, de Mul both explicates centrally important though little-known aspects ofDilthey’s hermeneutics of human life and shows how these aspects presage laterideas in hermeneutic phenomenology, including especially those developed byHeidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida. De Mul, in my view, succeeds admirably in hisaim, and his book is a magnificent, invaluable piece of philosophical and historicalscholarship.De Mul takes Kant’s (1998/1781 and 1787) Critique of Pure Reason as thestarting point for his elucidation of Dithey’s philosophy. Indeed, de Mul’s centralthesis is that Dilthey’s Critique of Historical Reason can be understood as aR. D. Stolorow (&)Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, CA, USAe-mail: robertdstolorow@gmail.com123Hum Stud (2012) 35:131–135DOI 10.1007/s10746-011-9207-8Author's personal copyradicalization of Kant’s recognition of the contingency and finitude of humanreason. Kant claims that human knowledge of the world is contingent on the a prioriforms of perception and categories of cognition, but he also holds that these a prioristructures are timeless. Dilthey’s Critique of Historical Reason, by contrast, wouldemphasize that even these a priori structures are historically contingent, a claimholding monumental implications for hermeneutic philosophy. In this essay, I willfocus on de Mul’s account of Dilthey’s transcendental-historical life philosophy (asde Mul 2004, p. 158, aptly calls it) and omit any consideration of Dilthey’sdescriptive psychology, which to me is less important philosophically.De Mul captures succinctly Dilthey’s radicalization of Kant’s transcendentalphilosophy: ‘‘Against Kant’s timeless a priori he sets a historical a priori, andagainst Kant’s intellectualistic approach he sets an approach that is based on thetotality of life’’ (de Mul 2004, pp. 140–141), i.e., the whole human being. Thus,instead of the transcendental apperception of Kant, the intellectual ‘‘I think’’ thataccompanies every representation, Dilthey argues for a coherent ‘‘I think, I want, Ifeel’’ being constitutive of every human experience. In replacing Kantian formalcategories with ‘‘real categories’’ or ‘‘life categories,’’ Dilthey, like Nietzsche,Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, places himself in opposition to the cognitivistphilosophical tradition that seeks to separate thought from life—a tradition that mycollaborators and I (Atwood et al. 2011) have characterized as a Cartesian madness.Anticipating Heidegger’s (1962/1927) formulation of Being-in-the-world, Diltheyalso contends that primordial lived experience entails an experience of self andworld in which the bifurcation of subject and object does not yet appear. Thesubject-object distinction, according to Dilthey, is a theoretical fiction.The historicity of the a priori, according to de Mul, is already contained inDilthey’s transformation of the Kantian formal categories of reason into the realcategories of life, because their historicity is inherent to the nature of the lifecategories. Dilthey unrelentingly adheres to the Kantian presupposition of aconstitutive transcendental structure that precedes and is the condition of thepossibility of the phenomenal world, while at the same time claiming that thesea priori structures of intelligibility develop over the course of a living historicalprocess. Foreshadowing Heidegger’s (1982/1961) ‘‘history of Being,’’ Dilthey wentso far as to claim that each historical age exhibits its own distinctive transcendentalstructure. Dilthey, in de Mul’s account, proposes no less than a historization of theontological structure of life, and investigation of the historical development of thesestructures of intelligibility becomes for Dilthey a task for genetic inquiry.In assessing Dilthey’s ‘‘advancement on Kant,’’ de Mul makes a valuabledistinction between a transcendental presupposition and particular transcendentalstructures. Dilthey’s principal transcendental presupposition is that of a constitutivetranscendental structure for experience that is continuously in development. Thespecific forms of this transcendental experiential structure—the specific structuresof intelligibility that disclose reality in a particular way—are, according to Dilthey,fashioned over the course of history. De Mul notes that even the most fundamentaltranscendental presupposition is itself subject to historical development. Thus thereis a tragic dimension to historical consciousness, in that it brings out the ‘‘tragiccontradiction between the philosophical desire for universal validity [the132 R. D. Stolorow123Author's personal copymetaphysical impulse] and the realization of the fundamental finitude of everyattempt to satisfy that desire’’ (de Mul 2004, p. 154). Dilthey’s recognition of thistragic contradiction leads him, according to de Mul’s account, to elaborate ahermeneutic phenomenology of metaphysics.Dilthey’s historical reconstruction of the development of metaphysics aims at noless than its ‘‘euthanasia’’. Although he holds that metaphysical desire is inherent tohuman nature, what he seeks to unmask are the illusions that this ubiquitous desirecreates. Metaphysical illusion, according to Dilthey, transforms historicallycontingent nexuses of intelligibility—worldviews, as he eventually calls them—into timeless forms of reality. Again anticipating Heidegger, Dilthey holds thatevery worldview is grounded in a mood regarding the tragic realization of thefinitude of life. The metaphysicalization of worldviews transforms the unbearablefragility and transience of all things human into an enduring, permanent, changelessreality, an illusory world of eternal truths.De Mul gives a compelling narrative describing the development of hermeneuticsfrom Dilthey to Heidegger to Gadamer to Derrida as consisting in successiveradicalizations of the realization of the finitude of human understanding. Here I wishonly to elaborate on de Mul’s view of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology asan original appropriation and radicalization of Dilthey’s hermeneutic lifephilosophy.We have already seen how aspects of Dilthey’s transcendental-historical lifephilosophy foreshadow important themes in Heidegger’s (1962/1927) existentialanalytic. The constitutive transcendental structures of experience emphasized byboth Kant and Dilthey show up in Heidegger’s conception of the ‘‘ontologicaldifference’’ and the Being of beings—the intelligibility of entities as the entitiesthey are for us. As Being-in-the-world, we are always already intelligible toourselves as embedded in a context of human significance and meaningfulness. LikeDilthey’s conception of life, our factical existence for Heidegger is historicalthrough and through, and our ‘‘thrownness’’ into our historical situatedness isdisclosed in our moods. Like Dilthey, Heidegger emphasizes our thrownness intotemporal finitude, our ‘‘Being-toward-death’’. And in a manner reminiscent ofDilthey’s unmasking of the ubiquity of metaphysical desire and illusion, Heideggerunveils the manifold ways in which we evade the Angst of authentic Being-toward-death by fleeing into the illusions of conventional everyday interpretedness and the‘‘idle talk’’ of das Man.Dilthey’s anticipation of some central themes in the later Heidgger is even morestriking to me. Paralleling Dilthey’s earlier emphasis on the historicity of thea priori, the later Heidegger puts forth a ‘‘history of Being’’ (Heidegger 1982/1961),which is essentially a genealogical deconstruction of Western metaphysics:[M]etaphysics determines the history of the Western era. Western humankind,in all its relations with beings, and even to itself, is in every respect sustainedand guided by metaphysics. (p. 205).Metaphysics grounds an age, in that through a specific interpretation of what isand through a specific comprehension of truth it gives to that age the basisThe Historicity of the A Priori 133123Author's personal copyupon which it is essentially formed. This basis holds complete dominion overall the phenomena that distinguish the age. (Heidegger 1977/1938: 115).As is masterfully outlined by Thomson (2005), Heidegger seeks to illuminate thegreat metaphysical systems of Western philosophy as objectifications of epochs inthe historical unfolding of Being (Sein), of the intelligibility of entities as theentities they are for us. In this vision, the foundationalist systems offered by Plato,Aristotle, Augustine, and Descartes reify the way entities showed up in theirparticular historical epochs of intelligibility, as manifestations, respectively, of theeternal immaterial ideas, of primary and secondary substance, of the thoughts ofGod, and of the subject-object bifurcation. In Heidegger’s (1984/1954) interpre-tation, Nietzsche was the last Western metaphysician, whose doctrine of the eternalreturn of the same captures the way entities as a whole are intelligible in ourtechnological era as meaningless resources to be calculated, stored, and optimized inthe quest to conquer the earth. The metaphysical impulse is grasped by the laterHeidegger as a relentless tendency to transform the experience of the real—howentities are intelligible to us—into a reified vision of the REALLY real. He pictureshimself as the initiator of a post-metaphysical ‘‘second beginning’’ in the history ofBeing, in which hypostatized metaphysical entities would be expunged, and heformulates Being as such (Seyn) as an inexhaustible and unknowable source of allintelligibility (Thomson 2011) reminiscent of Dilthey’s characterizations of theunfathomability of life. But in his postulation of an inexhaustible source, do we notsee Heidegger himself succumbing to a seemingly irresistible desire for metaphys-ical illusion in the face of radical finitude, the inevitable succumbing that Diltheycontends is inherent to human nature?Returning to de Mul’s book, the concluding chapter is devoted to ‘‘the topicalityof Dilthey’s hermeneutics,’’ conceived in terms of three interrelated themes thatpervade the entire text. The first de Mul calls ambivalence—the eternal tensionbetween the affirmation of human finitude and the longing to overcome it throughmetaphysical illusion. The second is contingency—the historicity of all humanexperience and understanding that necessitates an attitude of ontological pluralismand epistemic humility. And third and overarchingly is finitude—the spatial andtemporal limitedness of human life itself, along with the unbearable feelings ofinsignificance and groundlessness that accompany an owning-up to this limitedness.In my view, these Diltheyan themes, especially that of radical finitude andgroundlessness, are particularly topical in our current historical era. I (Stolorow2009) characterize our era as an Age of Trauma because the tranquilizing illusionsof our everyday world seem in our time to be severely threatened from all sides—byglobal diminution of natural resources, by global warming, by global nuclearproliferation, by global terrorism, and by global economic collapse. These are formsof collective trauma in that they threaten to obliterate the basic framework withwhich we as members of our particular society have made sense out of ourexistence. As Lear (2006) puts it:We live at a time of a heightened sense that civilizations are themselvesvulnerable. Events around the world … have left us with an uncanny sense of134 R. D. Stolorow123Author's personal copymenace. We seem to be aware of a shared vulnerability that we cannot quitename…. It is [an existential] vulnerability that we all share in virtue of beinghuman (Lear 2006: 7–8).In an era of heightened existential vulnerability and awareness of finitude there isa correspondingly heightened need for new contexts of human understanding. Herewe owe an enormous debt of gratitude to de Mul for providing us with a superbexplication of the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, whose precocious insights into thefinitude and historical contingency of human understanding promise to contributeimmeasurably to the widening of its horizons.ReferencesAtwood, G. E., Stolorow, R. D., & Orange, D. M. (2011). The madness and genius of post-Cartesianphilosophy: A distant mirror. Psychoanalytic Review, 98, 263–285.de Mul, J. (2004). The tragedy of finitude: Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life (T. Burrett, Trans.). New Haven& London, UK: Yale University Press.Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper andRow (Original work published 1927).Heidegger, M. (1977). The age of the world picture. In W. Lovitt (Ed.), The question concerningtechnology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.) (pp. 115–154). New York: Harper and Row(Original work published 1938).Heidegger, M. (1982). In D. Krell (Ed.), Nietzsche, volume IV: Nihilism (F. Capuzzi, Trans.). New York:Harper and Row (Original work published 1961).Heidegger, M. (1984). Nietzsche, Vol. II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same (D. Krell, Trans.). NewYork: Harper and Row (Original work published 1954).Kant, I. (1998). In P. Guyer & A. Wood (Eds.), Critique of pure reason (P. Guyer & A. Wood, Trans.).Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (Original work published 1781 and 1787).Lear, J. (2006). Radical hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation. Cambridge, MA & London, UK:Harvard University Press.Stolorow, R. D. (2009). Identity and resurrective ideology in an age of trauma. PsychoanalyticPsychology, 26, 206–209.Thomson, I. D. (2005). Heidegger on ontotheology: Technology and the politics of education. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.Thomson, I. D. (2011). Heidegger, art, and postmodernity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.The Historicity of the A Priori 135123Author's personal copy

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