Getting the Subject back into the World: Heidegger's Version

Abstract

In a footnote to the preface to the second edition of hisCritique of Pure Reason(1787) Kant remarked that ‘it still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence [Dasein] of things outside us … must be accepted onfaith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof’ (B XL). InBeing and Time(1927) Heidegger remarks, somewhat less famously, that the scandal of philosophy, far from being the continuing absence of philosophically satisfactory proof of the existence of the world outside human subjectivity, is rather-the-very idea that such proof need be sought at all: ‘IfDaseinis understood correctly, it defies such proofs, because, in its being, it alreadyiswhat subsequent proofs deem necessary to demonstrate for it’ (BT, 205).