In the winter semester of 1935/1936, Martin Heidegger delivered a course of lectures at the University of Freiburg entitled “Basic Questions of Metaphysics.” Heidegger published a version of the lecture course with the title The Question Concerning the Thing: On Kant’s Doctrine of the Transcendental Principles (Max Niemeyer Verlag) in 1962. A lightly corrected version of The Question Concerning the Thing was published in 1984 as Volume 41 (hereafter GA 41) of the Gesamtausgabe (Collected Edition).
What follows is a complete English translation of Die Frage nach dem Ding as it appears in the Collected Edition, including the Editor’s After-word and, as an Appendix, five supplementary reflections from Heidegger’s own hand.1
Petra Jaeger notes in her afterword that the text she was charged with the task of editing came in highly polished form, leaving her with the modest task of correcting a few mistakes in the 1962 text and furnishing a few references left open in the earlier edition. We have followed her lead closely. She does not specify the corrections she saw fit to make, but we have compared GA 41 with Die Frage nach dem Ding and have detected only a few minor differences. On a few occasions we have broken up unduly long paragraphs into shorter ones, but only when this promised to clarify Heidegger’s train of thought. For the convenience of the reader with access to GA 41, we have provided corresponding page numbers in the Collected Edition in square brackets. The translators are responsible for all footnotes, as well as occasional expansions or clarifications of Heidegger’s meaning in square brackets.
The Question Concerning the Thing is in large measure a book about a book, namely, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. But Heidegger also quotes from Kant’s other works, including the correspondence and the various Reflexionen published after Kant’s death in the Gesammelte Schriften. We employ translations from Kant as they appear in the Cambridge edition of Kant’s chief works, except when Heidegger’s own distinctive reading of Kant forces a departure from standard practice or in cases where Heidegger quotes from material not included in the Cambridge series. Heidegger conforms to the standard practice to referring to the Critique of Pure Reason by giving page numbers in both the first (A) and second (B) editions of 1781 and 1787, respectively (e.g., A150/B189). We follow suit in what follows. Translations of the first Critique generally follow the edition of Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). References to Kant are otherwise to the Academy Edition (Ak.), followed by volume and page number (e.g., Ak. 6:24).
Readers with some access to the German language are encouraged to consult the German-English glossary for, at the very least and (unfortunately) without argument or explanation, the translators’ decisions on how to render important terms that recur throughout the volume. Where Heidegger’s language involves plays on words not readily captured in English, we have provided the German in square brackets.
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The idea of collaborating on a translation of Heidegger was formed during a meeting in the high desert of the Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy. We are indebted to Iain Thomson for bringing the two of us together in that arid but fertile setting and so for making this project materially possible.
A first draft of the translation was prepared by Reid. Crowe read the entire manuscript closely, checked it against the German, and offered corrections and helpful suggestions at every step along the way. Crowe is largely responsible for the preparation of the German-English glossary. Reid is the author of the present Preface. The final product is the work of both Reid and Crowe, and the translators take joint responsibility for any errors in the translation to follow.
Above all, we owe thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a generous grant that made most of the work on the present translation possible. Reid would also like to thank the Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado, USA, for sabbatical leave, during which much of the initial translation work was completed, and Joan Foster and Vicki Golich for making work on the project materially possible.
We would like to thank our editors at Rowman & Littlefield, Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, for expert editorial advice; Caleb Cohoe for help with the Greek text; Daniel Dahlstrom for advice on a few points of Heideggerian philology; and Candace R. Craig for sage editorial input and for proofreading and formatting the manuscript during her holiday interim from teaching.
James D. Reid would like to dedicate this translation to Doris Reid (1930– 2017). Despite our differences, disputes, and ancient quarrels, we discovered, before it was too late, the truth of Hölderlin’s ein Gespräch sind wir.
Manitou Springs, Breckenridge, and Boston, December 2017
1 Readers interested in the history of Heidegger’s life-long engagement with questions concerning things are invited to consult James D. Reid’s entry on “Ding” in Cambridge University Press’s forthcoming Heidegger Lexicon, edited by Mark Wrathall.