Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning

Martin Heidegger, Jeffrey D. Gower, Joydeep Bagchee

Description

Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning is a key text for the origins of Martin Heidegger's concept of "facticity." Originally submitted as a postdoctoral thesis in 1915, it focuses on the 13th-century philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus.

Heidegger first analyzes Scotus's doctrine of categories, then offers a meticulous explanation of the Grammatica Speculativa, a work of medieval grammar now known to be authored by the Modist grammarian Thomas of Erfurt. Taken together, these investigations represent an early foray into Heidegger's lifelong philosophical concerns, "the question of being in the guise of the problem of categories and the question of language in the guise of the doctrine of meaning."

This new and unique translation of one of Heidegger's earliest works offers an important look at his early thinking before the question of being became his central concern and will appeal to readers exploring Heidegger's philosophical development, medieval philosophy, phenomenological interpretations of the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of language.

Translator's Preface
Acknowledgments
Foreword to the First Edition of Frühe Schriften (1972)
Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning Foreword
Introduction: The Necessity of Examining Scholasticism from the Perspective of the History of Problems
Part I: The Doctrine of Categories
First Chapter: The Unum: Mathematical, Natural, and Metaphysical Reality
Second Chapter: The Verum: Logical and Psychic Reality
Third Chapter: Linguistic Form and Linguistic Content: The Domain of Meaning
Part II: The Doctrine of Meaning
First Chapter: Meaning and Meaning Function: Principles of the Doctrine of Meaning
Second Chapter: The Doctrine of the Forms of Meanings
Conclusion: The Problem of Categories
Author's Notice
Bibliographical References
Editor's Afterword
English-German Glossary
German-English Glossary
Index of Names
Subject Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Métaphysique
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Philosophie médiévale, scolastique
• Movements
• Medieval
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Juan Duns Scoto
• Edad Media
• Duns Scotus
• Phenomenology
• Modistae
• Metaphysics
• Middle Ages
• Jean Duns Scot

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253062666
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

DUNS SCOTUS S DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES AND MEANING
STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
John Sallis, editor
DUNS SCOTUS S DOCTRINE OF CATEGORIES AND MEANING

MARTIN HEIDEGGER
TRANSLATED BY
JOYDEEP BAGCHEE AND JEFFREY D. GOWER
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
Published in German as Martin Heidegger: Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus taken from Gesamtausgabe 1: Fr he Schriften
Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 1978.
English translation 2022 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06264-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06265-9 (ebook)
Heinrich Rickert
in grateful veneration
CONTENTS
Translators Preface
Acknowledgments
Foreword to the First Edition of Fr he Schriften (1972)
Foreword to Duns Scotus s Doctrine of Categories and Meaning
Introduction: The Necessity of Examining Scholasticism from the Perspective of the History of Problems
PART I: The Doctrine of Categories: Systematic Foundation of an Understanding of the Doctrine of Meaning
1. The Unum: Mathematical, Natural, and Metaphysical Reality
2. The Verum: Logical and Psychic Reality
3. Linguistic Form and Linguistic Content: The Domain of Meaning
PART II: The Doctrine of Meaning
1. Meaning and Meaning Function: The Principles of the Doctrine of Meaning
2. The Doctrine of the Forms of Meanings
Conclusion: The Problem of Categories
Author s Notice
Bibliographical References
Editor s Afterword
English-German Glossary
German-English Glossary
Index of Names
Subject Index
TRANSLATORS PREFACE
HEIDEGGER S HABILITATIONSSCHRIFT OR POSTDOCTORAL THESIS, titled Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus ( Duns Scotus s Doctrine of Categories and Meaning ), was submitted to the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in the spring of 1915. 1 Completed under Heinrich Rickert, an exponent of the Southwestern or Baden school of neo-Kantianism, the text consists of two parts. 2 Part 1, titled The Doctrine of Categories, offers a treatment of John Duns Scotus s doctrine of the categories (primarily referencing Duns Scotus s Opus Oxoniense and the commentaries on Porphyry s Isagoge and Aristotle s Categories and Sophistic Refutations ), 3 whereas part 2, titled The Doctrine of Meaning, is a meticulous exegesis of the Grammatica speculativa (full title, De modis significandi sive grammatica speculativa ). 4 This work in medieval grammar is now known to have been authored by the Modist grammarian Thomas of Erfurt. 5 Heidegger s thesis was originally published in 1916 by J. C. B. Mohr with the addition of a conclusion composed specially for the occasion. 6
Editions and Translations- The present translation is based on the text of volume 1 of Heidegger s Gesamtausgabe (complete edition; henceforth GA 1), first published in 1978 (with reprints in 1981, 1987, 2003, and 2018). An earlier edition of the text was published in 1972, also under the title Fr he Schriften , though not as part of the Gesamtausgabe and with a smaller selection of Heidegger s early writings (for details of the additions made in GA 1, see Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann s editor s afterword, also translated in this edition). The present edition includes the translation of Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus and the foreword Heidegger composed for the 1972 edition of Fr he Schriften . The index of names and the subject index are both based on von Herrmann s indexes in GA 1. This translators preface and the English-German and German-English glossaries are the only additions.
Heidegger s postdoctoral thesis has been translated into English previously, in whole and in part. A complete translation is available in Harold J. Robbins s PhD dissertation at DePaul University, 7 and three partial translations (of the conclusion) have been published, in Man and World , Supplements , and Becoming Heidegger . 8 The last two also translate the Selbstanzeige or author s notice from the postdoctoral thesis. Despite Robbins s valuable introduction to the text, the translation has several shortcomings, necessitating a retranslation. John van Buren s and Aaron Bunch s translations of the conclusion are both based on Roderick Stewart s, which they variously modify. Finally, we also referred to Hans Seigfried s translation of Heidegger s inaugural address to the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, which Heidegger quotes in extenso in his foreword. 9 We gratefully acknowledge these previous efforts at translation: we consulted them and, where appropriate, also drew from them.
Glossaries, Indexes, and Apparatus- Although the glossaries provide a guide to our word choices, a few require clarification. Notably, we translate Bedeutung and its compounds such as Bedeutungsmodi , Bedeutungsakt , et cetera consistently with meaning (hence, modes of meaning, act of meaning, et cetera). 10 Although this diverges from the standard English translation of Thomas s Grammatica speculativa (which renders modi significandi as modes of signifying ), we felt it was more important to maintain consistency with the title and independent usages of Bedeutung . Because Heidegger is concerned with establishing the relationship between the modi essendi (the modes of being) and the modi intelligendi (modes of understanding), which in turn demands an investigation into the structure of the meanings through which these objects can be meant ( modi significandi ), 11 modes of meaning seemed preferable to varying between meaning and signifying (or signification ). Meaning also preserves the relationship to intentionality, which is crucial to Heidegger s project of mediating between phenomenology and medieval thought.
Three other challenging terms may be mentioned: Bewandtnis , Inhalt , and Gegenstandsverhalt .
1. Bewandtnis , a seldomly used word, is typically encountered only in expressions such as mit jmdm., etw. hat es seine besondere, seine eigene Bewandtnis . It means something like, there is a specific background with regard to someone or something, matters stand thus ( W rterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache , s.v. Bewandtnis ). Heidegger s use of Bewandtnis is idiosyncratic, and Theodore Kisiel has rightly called it the most difficult of the early Heidegger s words for the translator. 12 We have chosen relational context and are aware that no English word really conveys the sense of the German idiom.
2. Although Inhalt is straightforwardly content, English lacks a corresponding adjective for the German inhaltlich . The Oxford English Dictionary lists contentual, but this word is clearly a new coinage resorted to by translators of German ( OED , s.v. contentual ). We render inhaltlich either with phrases centered on the noun content or by conceptual / substantive. The latter should be taken to imply neither the metaphysical concept of substance nor the grammatical substantive, which Heidegger also discusses. This also applies to our translation of Sachhaltigkeit as substantiality.
3. Gegenstandsverhalt occurs four times in the text, in the context of a discussion of the meaning function of the verb. 13 Along with Gegenstand , it reproduces Thomas s distinction between modus entis and modus esse . Whereas the modus entis is the mode or form of habit and permanence of things; the modus esse is the mode of flux and succession. 14 Bursill-Hall translates modus entis and modus esse as mode of an entity and mode of being, respectively. Although we could have retained Bursill-Hall s expressions, because Heidegger uses Gegenstand and Gegenstandsverhalt to gloss this very passage, 15 we felt it was more important to maintain fidelity to the semantics and morphology of the German term. 16 We have thus chosen to render Gegenstandsverhalt as (an or the) object s way of comporting itself. 17 By contrast, Heidegger s hyphenated compound Gegenstands-Sachverhalt is simply rendered as (an or the) object s state of affairs. 18
As noted earlier, the index of names and the subject index are based on their respective counterparts in GA 1. The subject index retains the terms and the arrangement of the GA 1 index while updating its page references. Translating its entries into English and reorganizing the index around these new terms would have fragmented the unity of the page references that fall under a given concept, besides replacing individual German entries with a potentially unwieldy mass of equivalents. However, because the glossaries list all of the German terms in the subject index, it is relatively easy to cross-reference the text with the latter, either by first locating the term of interest in the English-German glossary and then consulting its German equivalent in the index or, for readers with a knowledge of German, by first looking up a term in the index to identify its occurrences and then consulting the German-English glossary to find the English translation(s) we have adopted. These translations can then be found on the pages listed in the index.
Quotations of works in languages other than Latin are from the standard English editions of these works; we note whenever these translations are modified. Where standard editions were unavailable, the translations are our own. Latin quotations are not tr