CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY

IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY

Volume 35

Editor:

John J. Drummond, Mount Saint Mary's College

Editorial Board:

Elizabeth A. Behnke
David Carr, Emory University
Stephen Crowell, Rice University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
7. Claude Evans, Washington University
Jose Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz
Gail Sojfer, New School for Social Research, New York
Elisabeth Ströker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universität Köln
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University

Scope

The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy through
creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in culture generally,
offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that call for creative responses.
Although the work of several generations of thinkers has provided phenomenology with many results
with which to approach these challenges, a truly successful response to them will require building on
this work with new analyses and methodological innovations.
HEIDEGGER AND LEIBNIZ
Reason and the Path

by

RENATO CRISTIN
University of Trieste,
Italy

With a Foreword by Hans Georg Gadamer

Translated by Gerald Parks

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 0-7923-5137-1

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©1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by H.G. Gadamer Page vii

Vorwort von H.G. Gadamer xi

Preface xvii

Bibliographical Note xxi

PART ONE: THE FOUNDATION

1. Topology of the Foundation 3

2. The Foundation as Fire and "Logos" 17
3. "Erörterung" of the Foundation: the Place, the End 33
4. The Path: from the Foundation to the Abyss 43

PART TWO: THOUGHT

5. On the Way Towards Thought 55

6. The Abacus and the Mirror 57
7. "As If We Were Children..." 97
8. The Path: from the Principle of Reason
to Meditating Thought 109

Index 131
 FOREWORD

by Hans Georg Gadamer

For any thinker of our time, Leibniz is both enigmatic and i m p o r t a n t .

Leibniz's immense output is still only partly accessible despite t h e
efforts of Dilthey, thanks to whom the first edition prepared by Hegel's
student Johann Eduard Erdmann has over time been supplemented b y
new editions. However, the preparation of a historical-critical edition of
the imposing legacy left by Leibniz which can meet modern needs is
such a gigantic enterprise that only a few first steps have been t a k e n
towards achieving it, and even these already run to many volumes. But
this is not the only thing that makes Leibniz both unknown and
attractive. Above all else, our attraction is due to his position m i d w a y
between the beginnings of modern science and the great tradition of
Aristotelian metaphysics. This was the life theme that was m o s t
peculiarly his own, and it was to have repercussions in each of t h e s e
areas, both on British empiricism and, in the form of idealism, on
Romantic and post-Romantic thought in Germany and its n e i g h b o u r i n g
countries.
In the period of neo-Kantianism this tension could still be r a t h e r
balanced, as the example of the young Cassirer shows. But later on a
further, peculiar speculative energy of thought and a marked power of
synthesis were needed, such as perhaps only bold and i n d e p e n d e n t
thinkers like Whitehead and, particularly, Heidegger possessed. In a n y
case, it is fascinating to undertake a thorough analysis of the revival of
Leibniz's spirit in Heidegger and Heidegger's strenuous effort to come to
grips with Leibniz's thought, also in view of the historical interest in t h e
influence exerted by Leibniz on contemporary thought.
The author of this book, Renato Cristin, has already shown that he is
a careful scholar of these problems. His vast knowledge of Heidegger's
writings and his accurate working method have achieved results in this
book, which I was able to see in manuscript, that will arouse interest not
only among Heidegger's German and Italian successors, but even in t h e
English-speaking world.
We must go even further if we are to evaluate correctly t h e
exceptional nature of the revisiting of Leibniz's thought and its
ambivalence in Heidegger's thought. It seems the destiny of m o d e r n i t y
that the subject of Leibniz's entire life still looms before us as an
insoluble problem: viz., the reconciliation of the vision of the world of
modern science with our metaphysical heritage, which fulfills o u r
Vlll Foreword

speculative needs. These seem to be two separate worlds that a r e

difficult to bring together, yet they both belong to the same world; and
our reason is constantly driven to seek the unity between these two
worlds in all their multiplicity and diversity: the one expressing itself in
mathematical formulas, the other taking shape in the endless dialogue of
human beings.
Cristin traces the documented phases of Heidegger's reflections on
Leibniz and analyzes them in a way that recalls the doctrine of the t h r e e
realms of Joachim of Fiore as well as the three phases in Hegel's thought.
I cite: Cristin distinguishes three phases: (1st phase) destruction as
liberation of the foundation of metaphysics; (2nd phase) the passing
beyond metaphysics, i.e., beyond the forgetfulness of Being; and ( 3 r d
phase) the other thought, in which metaphysics is overcome. The b r o a d
perspective that comes out of the confrontation that Heidegger
establishes with Leibniz becomes clear especially in the chapters of t h e
second volume of his work on Nietzsche. In this connection, let me q u o t e
Cristin's text (p. 5): "a merciless analysis, without any concessions to
humanism, of the dangers generated by man himself, who is now
understood only in an ontological and destiny-ridden sense, stripped of
all romanticism or existentialism."
The era of metaphysics is seen from the perspective of the history of
Being, or even from the history of the forgetfulness of Being. This m a y
also have been a reason for criticizing Heidegger's rash enterprise, w h e n
he formulated the question of Being in a new way. The question w a s
asked, however, as if the metaphysics of Aristotle and its elaboration in
Plato and Aristotle himself had not tangibly inaugurated the v e r y
problem of Being. Now it is precisely this metaphysics and onto-theology
that is designated by Heidegger as the beginning of the forgetfulness of
Being. But take note: it is not at all the disintegration of the m e t a p h y s i c s
of the Middle Ages into the nominalism of its later period that, along
with the birth of modern science, in the end repudiates as dogmatic
metaphysics in the classical Aristotelian sense. Although objections can
be raised also against the bold statement that the forgetfulness of Being
begins with the birth of metaphysics, history shows that Heidegger is
right. The West begins with early Greek thought and with t h e
development of logic based on declarative propositions. Inquiring
retrospectively into this founding of metaphysics, returning to t h e
"beginning," to Parmenides and Heraclitus and the first physiologein,
Heidegger tried to discover in logos something different from t h e
beginning of metaphysics as founded by Plato and Aristotle. Cristin
traces the bold interpretations that Heidegger makes of the enigmatic
fragments of Heraclitus and recalls that Heraclitus himself thinks of
logos and fire as being the same thing.
 Hans Georg Gadamer ix

In any case, this retrospective inquiry regarding the logos of

utterances is an important contribution to the research on Heidegger. 11
is curious to note that from this starting-point Cristin goes on to t h r o w
new light on Heidegger's ambivalent attitude towards Leibniz.
The clue to understanding this book's formulation of the question is
naturally the principle of reason. Here Heidegger has dared to state t h e
provocatory paradox that the principle "nihil est sine ragione" actually
means that nothingness has being, and is indeed without ratio, w i t h o u t
foundation. Thus, for thought, the truth of being becomes the abyss. By
making explicit, as Cristin does so convincingly, Heidegger's bold
conceptions regarding logos, Being, place, the foundation and the abyss,
research on Heidegger will certainly receive great impetus. Hence t h e
author deduces the nature of thought as a path. This is not a t h o u g h t
that grasps and takes possession. At times Heidegger calls it
"remembering thought." His is a distant echo of Hegel's attempt to weave
closely together Christianity and philosophy, and to reconcile t h e m
totally, but it does not tend toward any synthesis, such as t h a t
developed by Hegel.
Now, we may ask, from this perspective of non-calculating thought,
are we not led extremely far away from Leibniz? Leibniz's ideas a n d
work on the ars combinatoria and on the calculus have even given h i m
the status of a forerunner of cybernetics, as Wiener, the founder of
cybernetics, was well aware. By thinking through Heidegger's reflections
about logos, the foundation, reason and Being to their essence, can w e
see Leibniz in a new light? It is opportune to turn to Leibniz's criticism
of Descartes and to his reformulation of the question of metaphysics b y
means of the concept of "monad." Moreover, Heidegger, especially in t h e
appendix to his work on Nietzsche, has interpreted the definitions of
conatus and appetitus and the enigmatic function of the monad, i.e., t h e
function of being a mirror of the universe, as a deeper view of t h e
selfsame concept of being. It was a particularly felicitous intuition w i t h
respect to Leibniz to discover in the concept of existiturire, the thirst for
Being, the authentic definition of Being. In this way the Cartesian
dualism between extensio and res cogitans is effectively left behind. If,
then, we re-examine the Aristotelian tradition of the concept of
energeia, that tradition that already in the Renaissance was m a k i n g
heard its first new coinings of the concept of energeia in the sense of
this dynamics and this voluntarism of Leibniz's within the framework of
being, we may receive a foretaste of the constant ambivalence w i t h
which Heidegger has carried on his dialogue with metaphysics and its
beginnings, so that even the ambiguity in his view of Leibniz may b e
recognized as a furtherance of his grappling with metaphysics. Leibniz,
the great logician and creator of the calculus, is also a mystic, as Baruzi
and other students of his work have already pointed out. One may t h u s
X Foreword

more than ever realize the significance and importance of Heidegger's

seminal writings for later thinkers. Leibniz, the great logician, was also a
great theologian of mysticism.
Consequently, we finally achieve a better understanding of w h a t
Heidegger was aiming at with his audacious conversion of so clear and
univocal a principle as "nihil est sine rationed transforming it into a
hinting and ambiguous utterance. He deliberately turned this principle
inside out, giving it the meaning that for the "not" of nothing there is no
ratio. This is a turning towards negative theology and towards a n e w
dimension of the problem of Being and the intimate connection between
Being and nothingness. Heidegger sought for this dimension in the early
Greeks, though in the end he constantly had to acknowledge that t h e
ambivalence of the Greek philosophy of logos consists precisely in
embracing both poles: on the one hand, the interpretation (finally
completed in the Latinization of the concept) of logos on the basis of t h e
principle of judgment; and on the other, the echo of an experience of
Being that is more profound than anything that was ever explicitly
conceived of in the principles of the Greek philosophical tradition. But in
the dominant working of language, which is both polysemantic and full
of mystery, Heidegger can find ideas of confirmation and clarification
that are indebted to the texts. One could set beside Heidegger's
interpretation of the ambivalence of Leibniz also his interpretation of
Aristotle; he does not interpret the survival of Aristotelian m e t a p h y s i c s
in theological dogmatics as being the true Aristotle, but rather he finds
it in the way Aristotle thought about the changeability of Being. These
are views that, as I believe, bring Aristotle into a greater proximity with
the later consequences of Plato's dialectic, to which I have devoted much
of my work on Plato.
I would hope that these introductory words to Renato Cristin's book
may show that his speculative analysis of the figure of Leibniz and of
Heidegger's interpretation of him provides much occasion for thought.