Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volume 15, Issue 1, Fall 2010

Kant, Heidegger, and the Circularity of Transcendental Inquiry

While in Being and Time Heidegger criticizes Kant for presupposing the very objects that he then goes on to examine, in his 1935–1936 lecture course What Is a Thing? he argues that the differentiation of subject and object with which Kant begins enables him to point to the temporal nature of thought. In following Kant’s own description of his project, Heidegger deems the presupposition of the objects of experience not detrimental to the inquiry, but determinative of its circular method. In this paper I investigate whether such circularity offers an entrance to Heidegger’s own hermeneutic circle.