Heidegger's Critique of Cartesianism

Heidegger is one of the few Western thinkers to have succeeded in going beyond t
he Western philosophic tradition. Because his radical criticism is believed to h
ave fractured the foundations of modern philosophy, his thinking is usually at t
he center of the controversy between the defenders of the tradition and those wh
o wish to break with it and start afresh. In the heat of this debate, the questi
on of Heidegger's place in relation to that tradition in general and to Cartesia
nism in particular has been neglected. I wish to address the question by focusin
g on the major aspects of Heidegger's critique of Cartesian philosophy and the m
odern tradition. I will first show that the strength of his criticism lies in it
s all-encompassing penetration of the foundations of modern philosophy, running
through both the ontological and epistemological channels. Ontologically, Heideg
ger presents a critique of subjectivism; epistemologically, he discredits the co
rrespondence conception of truth and its underlying visual metaphor. I will then
look at his view of history and the meaning of his concept of "overcoming" in o
rder to show that his aim is not to destroy the tradition, but to provide a wide
r basis for it by rescuing forgotten elements imbedded in the tradition itself.
Finally, I will show that in this process of "overcoming," Heidegger did not rea
lly depart from the tradition, but absorbed some of its basic tenets, as his con
cept of death echoes major elements of Cartesian doubt.
1. The Critique of Subjectivism
One of the major features of Heidegger's thinking is his criticism of Cartesian
subjectivity. According to Heidegger, in regarding the ego cogito as the guarant
or of its own continuing existence and as the basis of all things, Descartes red
uces all entities to ideas or representations whose validity is determined by th
e rules imposed on them by the subject ego.
An examination of Heidegger's main writings reveals that for him these shortcomi
ngs of the subjectivistic view were not limited to Descartes. As Heidegger sees
it, the subjectivistic view was adopted by the most prominent figures in modern
philosophy and, in fact, formed the axis of the modern philosophic tradition.
Heidegger commentators recognize the centrality of the issue of subjectivity in
his thinking. But the problem for Heidegger is not only the anthropocentric view
itself. The main problem is that Descartes' position, which posits the human be
ing as the ontological center, leads all modern philosophy into subjectivism. He
idegger sees modern philosophy as an attempt to establish the existence of the s
ubject without discussing the more fundamental question of what makes such a sub
ject possible. Here 'subject' not only denotes the human being, but is considere
d in the broad sense of subjectum and hypokeimenon. Thus sujectivism not only le
aves the nature of man unquestioned, but blocks all further ontological inquiry
and brings philosophy to a dead end.
Heidegger's efforts to free philosophy from its subjectivism can be seen by care
fully following his phenomenological analysis in Being and Time and the less sys
tematic writings of his later period. This reveals that he avoids positing any b
eing whatsoever as a fixed, Archimedean point for ontology, any point that is bo
th the basis of itself and the basis of everything else.
Let us take a brief look at his paradigmatic writings. As is well known, in his
seminal Being and Time Heidegger raises the question of the meaning of Being and
claims that the possibility of raising this question presupposes the existence
of an entity that raises it. Heidegger names that entity "Dasein". The term "Das
ein" refers to the human structure to which the inquiry on Being is essential. D
asein is the place of ontological clarification, the place where Being is reveal
ed.

In positing Dasein as the starting point, Heidegger shows that it is possible to

build the philosophical edifice on a foundation other that the Cartesian subjec
t. This is a stronger foundation, for it contains no presuppositions at all abou
t man and reality other than the possibility of ontology itself: the possibility
of raising the question of Being.