History, Natality, Ecstasy: Derrida’s First Seminar on Heidegger, 1964–1965

Abstract

The article, based on a course taught at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in 2015, has three sections: 1) Derrida’s first major seminar on Heidegger (“Heidegger: The Question of Being and History”), taught in 1964–65, asks whether the language of Sein is ontological or mere “ontic metaphor”; 2) Derrida notes that the first paragraphs on historicity in Being and Time (section 72) offer an intriguing interpretation of birth as “the other end of Dasein”; 3) Derrida focuses on the theme of the past as an ekstasis, which is literally “une sortie hors de soi.”