Reviewed by: Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments by Simon Truwant Hans-Jörg Rheinberger TRUWANT, Simon. Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 288 pp. Cloth, $99.99 The legendary debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in Davos, where the two philosophers met and exchanged views on the occasion of the second Davoser Hochschultage in 1929, has been investigated and commented upon many times. The general tenor of these assessments was, as Simon Truwant states, to conclude either that the young Heidegger won out over his elder contemporary Cassirer, or that in fact they talked past each other, that is, that there was no real debate at all. Truwant sets out to contest both of these conclusions, and he fully succeeds in doing so. What may appear as an unnecessary rehearsal at the beginning reveals itself as a balanced and in-depth assessment of the two philosophical projects of the mature Cassirer and the early Heidegger from within and, more broadly speaking, as the expression of a "parting of the ways" (Michael Friedman) in early twentieth-century Western philosophy. Truwant identifies three core topics in the dispute between the two thinkers: first, their assessment of the core of Kant's transcendental philosophy; second, their stance on the human condition; and third, their position toward the proper task of philosophy. Accordingly, the book with its altogether ten chapters is meaningfully divided into three parts. In each part devoted to each of the three topics, a meticulous and close reading of Cassirer's philosophy of human culture qua philosophy of symbolic forms and Heidegger's existential ontology toward being and time is carried out. As the debate advances from an assessment of Kant's critical project, as exposed in his Critique of Pure Reason, to their takes on the essence of the human condition, and finally to the proper task of philosophy, their respective positions more and more appear to become incompatible. This is to be expected, Truwant argues, since each one's stance toward the task of philosophy determines his view on the human condition and, in turn, his interpretation of Kant's transcendental philosophy. This short review is not the place to enter into the carefully exposed argumentative details of Cassirer and Heidegger's views. Suffice it to say that Truwant successfully demonstrates that neither of the above-mentioned standard accounts of the Davos debate can be substantiated. Heidegger did not outmatch Cassirer. Both philosophers argued from an internally consistent position. Cassirer saw the task of his philosophy of symbolic forms as a cosmopolitan one that ultimately strives toward a self-understanding of human culture in all of its facets. He looked at the [End Page 562] human condition from the perspective of mankind as a species of living beings capable of creating a multiplicity of symbolic forms, from myth to language to science, from religion to economy to politics, and he saw the essence of human culture in precisely this irreducible multiplicity that offered the human being a route to transcend its finiteness. At the same time, he shared with Kant the idea that the sciences offer a privileged perspective for the assessment of man's proliferating symbolic capacities, and he held with Kant that our takes on the world are never immediate but always, and necessarily so, mediated by the means with which we approach it. Heidegger, on the other hand, saw the task of his existential ontology to recuperate the fundamental meaning of the being of beings (das Sein des Seienden) that tended to be forgotten (Seinsvergessenheit) both in the course of the history of philosophy and in the busyness of everyday life. He looked at the human condition as being fundamentally finite, and he articulated the necessity to come to terms with its finitude. Finally, he approached Kant's transcendental philosophy as an attempt to have glimpsed, although it was ultimately eschewed, the unavoidability of such a fundamental ontology. In one respect, however, both philosophers shared a common ground, and it is this common ground that lets their controversy appear as a real dispute in an originary sense. In the introduction to his book, Truwant formulates...
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Apr 13, 2023
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