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Calvin0. Schrag Heidegger on repetition and
historical understanding
that history becomes an irreducible feature of the act of existing. The problem
of history becomes the problem of the historicality of Dasein.
It is thus that the interrogation of the sense of the historical is guided by
the analysis of Dasein. This analysis, from bottom up, is an analysis of human
finitude in which death provides the most decisive index of man's finite
temporality. Human finitude provides the proper context for the under-
standing of history. "The authentic being-unto-death, i.e., the finitude of
temporality, is the hidden ground of the historicality of Dasein."4 It is in-
teresting to note at this juncture that although Heidegger does not take up
Hegel's approach to history, there is one feature at least which remains com-
mon to both. For both Hegel and Heidegger history becomes a problem
through the consciousness of crisis. Historical consciousness is grounded in a
consciousness of crisis. However, whereas for Hegel this historical con-
sciousness of crisis found its occasion in a reflection on external historical
events-more specifically, the French Revolution and its incalculable con-
sequences; for Heidegger it finds its occasion in a reflection on a finite and
estranged Dasein as he encounters his death. The crisis-consciousness of which
Hegel spoke was, if you will, more social in character; that of which Hei-
degger speaks is more individual and personal.
In Heidegger's explication of the sense of the historical as it arises from
this existentialized consciousness of crisis, much turns on the use of the con-
cept of repetition. Repetition, we are told, discloses to Dasein its own history.
How does one render such a claim intelligible? Although an appeal to ordinary
usage is often illuminating in the interpretation of some of Heidegger's more
ponderous notions, in this particular case such an appeal does not appear to be
of much help. In ordinary German usage Wiederholung simply means reitera-
tion or replay. It soon becomes evident that Heidegger intends a more tech-
nical usage, laden with more specific philosophical connotations. We will now
attempt to sort out some of these connotations.
It may be helpful at the outset to approach Heidegger's notion of repetition
through a kind of via negativa, and in this manner achieve some preliminary
clarification. By repetition Heidegger does not mean a recurrence of the factual
historical, a reenactment of incidents in the life of an individual or a society.
There is here no doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same within an
unending cosmic cycle. If one were to understand Nietzsche's highly meta-
phorical notion of die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen as a cosmological
principle, then it would have to be said that this has nothing to do with
Heidegger's concept of repetition. However, Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence"
need not be understood in this way; and indeed it is our contention that it
should not be understood in this way, leaving open the possibility of a con-
4 Ibid., p. 386.
289
5Ibid.,p. 385.
6 "Das Verstehenist, als Entwerfen,die Seinsartdes Daseins,in der es seine Moglich-
keitenals Miglichkeitenist."Ibid.,p. 145.
7 Martin Heidegger and the Pre-Socratics(Lincoln: Universityof NebraskaPress,
1964),p. 122.
290 Schrag
but also provides the basis for the interpretation of a text or the understanding
of a past culture. Yet it should be underscored that this is not a project of
bringing the past back to life, nor is it an empathic identification with the past
so as to make the present coincide with it. No such coincidence of present
with past is possible or even desirable. It is a matter of understanding the
past rather than identifying with it. Historical understanding takes the path
of projecting possibilities through which new meanings within one's past are
released.
The redredging and reclamation of the past in the act of historical under-
standing is at once retentive and anticipative. Repetition, by virtue of the
projective character of the understanding, moves to and fro between past and
future. Indeed, Heidegger would have it oriented primarily toward the future.
"The authentic repetition of a possibility of Existenz that has been . . . is
existentially grounded in anticipatory resolution."8 Repetition is primarily
directed forward rather than backward. My past becomes meaningful in light
of my projection and anticipation of future possibilities. My resolutely chosen
goals and purposes define what my past shall mean. I resolve to appropriate
or take over the possibilities delivered from my past and to affirm these
possibilities in a drive toward creative actualization. My authentically chosen
futural being is the fulfillment of my being as past. The future enters into
the constitution of the meaning of the past. Herein resides, it would seem, the
temporal basis of historicality, the grounding of historicality within the
structure of ecstatic temporality with its interpenetrating modes of future,
past, and present. This would then provide the final intelligibility of Hei-
degger's claim that "the interpretation of Dasein's historicality proves, at
bottom, to be simply a concrete working out of temporality."9
The structure of historical understanding in its reclamation of the past
as possibility is characterized by another distinctive feature-the response or
rejoinder (Erwiderung). Here one needs to be attentive to the interplay of
meanings in the terms "Wiederholung" and "Erwiderung." Wiederholung as
reclamation intercalates with Erwiderung as response. They occasion and
condition each other. Hence, Heidegger can write: "Die Wiederholung
erwidert vielmehr die Moglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz."10 In any case,
one might unpack the intended meaning somewhat as follows. Repetition is
a response to the possibilities within a mode of existence that has been.
Historical understanding involves, if you will, a species of dialogue with the
past. In reclaiming the meaning of a text one engages in a dialogue with the
author and with the text itself. In assessing the significance of a past event
one addresses the various possibilities in working out an interpretive scheme
8 Sein undZeit, p. 385.
9 Ibid.,p. 382.
10Ibid.,p. 386.
291
sistently distinguishes from the lived-through past as that which "has been"
(Gewesenheit). We have already seen that repetition involves a releasement
of new meanings and new perspectives on that which has been. The notion
of counter-claim would seem to be closely allied with this releasement of mean-
ing, or if one prefers, the discovery of meaning. By virtue of the reopening of
the past, that which is currently claimed to be the significance of the past does
not exhaust the possibilities. New or originative meanings can be discovered
in the past. That which is currently accepted as the meaning of the past is to be
tested, and even contested, through the exploration and projection of different
possible perspectives. This, as we have suggested, can properly be understood
as a process of historical discovery-a process which proceeds through the
reformulation of basic questions. Originative meanings concerning the past
are discovered or disclosed when a new inquiry-standpoint (Fragestellung)
is postured. Historical discovery thus becomes a "logic of questioning" rather
than a "logic of propositions." Current propositions and proposals about
what the past means are suspended or bracketed in an effort to have historical
phenomena show themselves through the perspective of a new inquiry-stand-
point.
Through response (Erwiderung) and counter-claim (Widerruf) the
hermeneutical Dasein acknowledges the phenomenon of "historical distance."
We have already seen that historical understanding is not a matter of estab-
lishing a coincidence of the present with the past. It is a process of interpreting
the past rather than reliving it or coinciding with it. This presupposes a
temporalized historical distance, which is not, it should be noted, to be under-
stood as a coefficient of distortion. It is not at all an unfortunate state of
affairs that one is removed from one's personal and social past. Historical
distance allows for the play of possibilities through which new perspectives
can be opened up and new meanings released. It is this play of possibilities
that keeps the past from becoming solidified as a collocation of fixed and
sedimented meanings, and thus rescues it from a metaphysical determinism.
Up to this point we have engaged in a rather dreary technical exercise
of unpacking a special concept used in Heidegger's approach to the question
of history. This does not mean, however, that we have now set forth the
Heideggerian view of historical existence. The elaboration of this would
require not only close attention to Heidegger's novel view on time but also
a rehearsal of the constitutive structures of Dasein which are discussed in
those chapters in Being and Time that precede the chapter on historicality.
But hopefully we have gone far enough to enable us to raise the question as to
the possibility or impossibility of a dialogue between Heidegger and Eastern
thinkers on the subject of history. We will argue, in the concluding pages,
that Heidegger's approach to the historical, or some such approach lile it, is
able to overcome the traditionally accepted dichotomization of Eastern and
WVesternviews on history.
293
The belief that East and West provide disparate views on history is well
known and widely accepted. In Eastern thought, it is claimed, history is
viewed as cyclical, whereas Western thought subscribes to a linear view; the
East sees history as the eternal return of the same, while the West sees history
as a movement from beginning to end, origin to goal; history is viewed in
Eastern thought as an extension of nature and in Western thought as being
separate from nature; Eastern thought devalues history by having recourse to
transhistorical models and archetypes, while Western thought finds meaning
in the historical events themselves. It is in some such manner that the gen-
erally accepted dichotomization of Eastern and Western views proceeds.13Our
suggested approach in dealing with this rather widely held view is that of
interrogating the basic questions that underlie it. What is the nature of the
question that occasions the possible replies, "History is cyclical" or "History
is linear"? After the exploration of this question we will then suggest that
there is another kind of question that can be asked about history which may
indeed be more originative in character.
The question "Is history cyclical or linear?" is a rather distinctively
metaphysical question. It is asked and pursued in the interest of formulating
a speculative philosophy of history. The question constitutes an inquiry into
the overarching pattern of history and into its ultimate meaning or lack of
meaning. On the other hand, the question that Heidegger is asking is designed
to "overcome" metaphysics. This overcoming, as we shall see, is not an
elimination of metaphysics, but a radical reconsideration and assessment of the
primacy of the metaphysical inquiry-standpoint with respect to history. The
Heideggerian question might be formulated: "What is the sense of the
historical?" or "How does the historical become manifest as a feature of
lived experience ?" These are questions which are more phenomenological than
metaphysical and more analytical than speculative.
The initial task is thus that of becoming clear about the meaning of the
historical as a component of experience. This involves an examination and
clarification of the varied senses of history that arise in the ordinary usages
within everyday experience. Heidegger provides such a clarification in section
73 of Being and Time ("The Ordinary Understanding of History and
Dasein's Historizing"). But the task also involves-and this lies at the center
of Heidegger's project-an interrogation of the structure of existence of that
being who is the occasion for the historical. The question about the sense of
the historical is earlier than the question about patterns, causes, and goals
in history; and it is this question that is pursued in Heidegger's analytic of
historicality. The concept of repetition, as we have seen, plays a decisive role
in this analysis.
13 See particularly Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History (New York: Harper & Bros.,
1959), and Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1948), chap. 2.
294 Schrag