Heidegger on Repetition and Historical Understanding

Author(s): Calvin O. Schrag

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 20, No. 3, (Jul., 1970), pp. 287-295
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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Calvin0. Schrag Heidegger on repetition and
historical understanding

'Repetition' is a common word in everyday usage. Its technical usage as an

interpretive concept is less common. Kierkegaard, to a large extent, was re-
sponsible for the introduction of repetition as an interpretive concept into
modern philosophy. The importance which he attached to this concept is at
least in part indicated by the fact that he titled one of his books Repetition:
An Essay in Experimental Psychology.l It should thus come as no great sur-
prise that subsequent philosophers of existence were ready to appropriate the
concept and use it in their varied projects. Heidegger, in particular, has placed
considerable philosophical weight on the use of repetition in his hermeneutic
of Dasein. In his book Being and Time, the sense of the historical as it pertains
to the authentic existence of Dasein turns on the phenomenon of repetition.
"Repetition first discloses to Dasein its own history.'"2A great deal of what
Heidegger means to say about history is packed into the above assertion and
others similar to it.3 The main task of our present essay is to unpack the
manifest and latent meanings of these assertions. We shall also, in conclusion,
offer some brief suggestions regarding a possible reformulation of the tradi-
tional bifurcation of Western and Eastern approaches to the problem of history
in the hope of opening a dialogue between East and West on this important
topic.
On the face of it, it would seem that our topic has to do with a special
problem in the general area of philosophy of history. This could be quite mis-
leading. Such a definition of the topic would, at least from Heidegger's point
of view, conceal more than it would reveal. History becomes a problem for
Heidegger in a special way. Heidegger, at least within the confines of the
project of Being and Time, has no interest in formulating a speculative view on
the origin and goal of the historical process, the nature of its development, and
the unified meaning of its cultural contents. Heidegger offers no philosophy of
history in the speculative genre characteristic of the philosophies of Hegel,
Spengler, or even Marx. Nor is Heidegger interested in a scientific analysis of
the nature of the historian's craft, which would investigate principles of selec-
tion, procedures in dating, distinctions between narrative and chronicle, and
problems of induction and verification. It is not that these questions, either of
the speculative or scientific variety, are in some way a priori excluded or con-
sidered to be unworthy of attention. It is rather that Heidegger projects a dif-
ferent task, one which is in certain respects propaedeutic to the speculative and
scientific inquiry standpoints. This is the task of becoming clear about the sense
of the historical as a feature of human existence. For Heidegger the problem of
history is coextensive with the problem of human existence. In his Daseins-
analytik he carries through an analysis of the being of man in such a way
1 Trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946).
2 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 7th ed. (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1953), p. 386.
3 Ibid., pp. 339, 343, and particularly382-387.
 288 Schrag

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

sonance of meaning in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger on this issue.

Such a comparison itself might prove illuminating, but it would lead us beyond
the specific concerns of this essay. At this point in our analysis we are in-
terested simply in negating two possible interpretations of repetition. It is
neither a recurrence in the sense of a reenactment of that which previously
happened, nor does it have to do with factual incidents or datable events.
Proceeding to a more positive and direct explication of what is at stake in
Heidegger's use of the notion of repetition, we wish to suggest that repetition
is a matter of reclamation rather than recurrence, and what is reclaimed are
possibilities rather than factual historical incidents. "Repetition is the handing-
over and appropriation (Uberlieferung)-that is to say, a going back to the
possibilities of the Dasein that has-been-there."5Repetition is the handing-over
and appropriation of possibilities. It is an appropriation through which the
past is reclaimed as possibility. Repetition thus occasions a reopening of the
past by translating that which has been into possibilities to be chosen time
and again. The point at issue could be stated another way, which might con-
tribute more clarity. Repetition hands over the past as a past with a meaning
or sense. Without repetition the past would simply be a collection of isolated
facts and would remain without meaning or sense.
Possibility is for Heidegger a structure of meaning. This requires further
elucidation. Through repetition the past takes on meaning; the past becomes
understood. In the last analysis repetition is for Heidegger closely linked with
existential understanding (Verstehen). This existential understanding pro-
vides the specific topic of discussion in sections 31 and 32 of Being and Time.
In these sections understanding is elucidated as a mode of disclosure through
which Dasein's possibilities of being are uncovered. This understanding as a
mode of disclosure has the character of a project (Entwurf), whereby it is
oriented toward the possibilities of Dasein's becoming.6 In the section on
historicality this existential or projective understanding is linked with repeti-
tion in such a manner that repetition becomes essentially a project of historical
understanding. Repetition enables one to achieve an understanding of one's
personal past, as well as of the tradition out of which the personal past itself
emerges. George J. Seidel, interpreting Heidegger, suggests that we think of
repetition as a kind of "redredging" through which one uncovers and brings
to the surface hidden and original meanings that have remained embedded in
one's tradition.7 Through this redredging the past is brought to light and
understood. This grounds not only the project of Dasein's self-understanding,

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

or even a theory of explanation. What is not explicitly stated by Heidegger,

but what would seem to be quite evident, is the presupposition that not all
possibilities of interpretation of the past have been exhausted or actualized.
The meaning of the past is profuse and superabundant, and hence the past
needs to be addressed and interpreted time and again.
That which strikes us as being of implicatory significance in Heidegger's
introduction of the phenomenon of response as an element in the structure of
historical understanding is the acknowledgment of the communal character
of historical interpretation. Admittedly the point of departure for historical
understanding remains the finitely temporalized Dasein. The question about
history still has its source in the question about human existence. This re-
mains the distinguishing characteristic of Heidegger's "existential historicism."
Yet by virtue of his incorporation of the element of response into the structure
of historical understanding Heidegger does open the avenue to considerations
pertinent to the wider cultural life of man and the development of communal
historicality. There is a suggestion here of what Ricoeur has called the "will
for encounter" in the understanding of history."l Yet one may question
whether this theme of communal historicality is introduced at this juncture
only to remain arrested. Is his ontology of finite human existence, in which
the occasion of historical consciousness is the crisis of my own personal
Dasein confronting my inevitable death, indeed adequate to the purpose of
rendering explicit the communal character of existence? Can an ontology
take its point of departure from a singular Dasein uniquely my own, and then
arrive at an adequate sense of the communal; or are the traces of historical
community, the significations of shared experiences, and the dialogic en-
counter of man with man already to be taken into account by the point of
departure?
There is another implication that travels with Heidegger's concept of
repetition. This is bound up with his notion of "counter-claim" (Widerruf).
"The response to the possibilities in resolution is however at the same time,
as something of the opportune moment (als augenblickliche), a counter-claim
of that which is currently working itself out as the 'past'."'2 This is probably
the most troublesome passage in Heidegger's discussion of repetition and
historicality. What is one to make of the notion of counter-claim? How does
one render it intelligible? How can one counter that which is currently work-
ing itself out as the "past"? Must one not simply recognize that which is
currently working itself out as the "past," and be done with it? Much will
depend here on a proper understanding of the usage of "past." What is
countered is the objectified past (Vergangenheit), which Heidegger con-
11 Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1965), p. 29.
12 Sein und Zeit, p. 386.
292 Schrag

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

It soon becomes evident that Heidegger is not at all doing philosophy of

history as it has been done by such different thinkers as Hegel, Marx,
Spengler, and Croce. Traditional philosophy of history has been basically a
metaphysical project. It has taken as its theme the entire scope of the history
of man and has sought to provide some sort of explanation as to why things
happened as they did and thus fix the meaning and purpose of the whole
historical process. In the speculative designs of some philosophers of history-
notably Hegel-the underlying interest is to provide a theodicy, a rationale
for the existence of evil, and consequently the philosophy of history is
subordinated to the designs of a theo-metaphysics. Admittedly, some philos-
ophers who have dealt with the problem of history have been less bold in their
application of metaphysical principles of explanation. Dilthey, Burckhardt,
and Collingwood, for example, come to mind. But even in these thinkers there
is a certain indebtedness to an inquiry-standpoint that looks for historical
causality and underlying substrates. This inquiry-standpoint is discernible even
in those who, like Burckhardt, protest against the "philosophy of history"
from the viewpoint of art and aesthetics. Heidegger's questioning leads to a
relocation of this inquiry-standpoint. His main interest, not only in Being and
Time but also in his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, resides in the
attempt to "destroy" metaphysics. This destruction, it must be emphasized, is
not to be understood as an obliteration or elimination of metaphysics but
rather as a project of loosening up a tradition that has become sedimented and
rigid so as to disclose the originative questioning about being which first
occasioned its rise. This originative questioning leads Heidegger to the
foundation of an ontology which "takes its departure from the hermeneutic
of Dasein as an analytic of existence."l4 Historicality, it turns out, is a con-
stitutive structure of this Dasein. Hence, in the final analysis, it is not that
Dasein is in history as a nonhistorical or natural substance inserted into a
flow of events; rather Dasein is itself historical. Historicality is seen as a
determinant of Dasein's being-in-the-world.
Would it be possible to destroy the history of Eastern metaphysics, with its
cosmological categories and cyclical archetypes, in a manner similar to Hei-
degger's proposed destruction of the history of Western metaphysics? If such
a destruction were carried through, what would be the comparative results? It
could well turn out that the originative questioning to which such projects of
destruction lead would be remarkably similar in the two traditions. Even
such an unsympathetic interpreter of existentialism as Mircea Eliade has
conceded that Eastern thought "too sets out from a sort of 'existentialism'
(i.e., from acknowledging suffering as the situation of any possible cosmic
condition)."'5 One needs but to recall the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism

14 Sein und Zeit, p. 38.

15 Cosmos and History, p. 158.
295

to recognize the weight of this suggestion. Admittedly, the development of

Buddhism did not remain immune to the metaphysical inquiry-standpoint and
categorical schemes of traditional Eastern thought, but in the teachings of
Buddha in particular there is a persisting urge to think beyond and live
above the metaphysics of the tradition.
This critical confrontation with the metaphysical mode of inquiry becomes
particularly intensified in Zen Buddhism. Zen, in its drive toward a radical
concreteness, transcends not only metaphysics but formal philosophy itself.
In the Zen experience the cherished and for the most part bogus dichotomies
of mind and matter, reason and sensation, subject and object, are undercut.
In all this one can discern an attitude and approach that is not at all dissimilar
from that illustrated in the thought of Heidegger and, one might say, ex-
istentialism more generally. It is said that after having read one of D. T.
Suzuki's books Heidegger remarked: "If I understand this man correctly, this
is what-I have been trying to say in all my writings."16 This remark, if ac-
curate, may have been somewhat of an exaggeration. Yet it might well be
indicative of a common inquiry-standpoint in the method of Zen and the
project of Heidegger. Were a Zen master to engage Heidegger on the theme
of the historical as a mode of human existence it is not at all inconceivable that
a significant degree of communication would be achieved.
Every schoolboy has learned Kipling's famous couplet, "East is East, and
West is West / And never the twain shall meet." Our analysis has not brought
us to the point where we can refute Kipling's claim, but it has brought us to
the point where we can discern good reasons for suspending the claim so as
to explore the originative questions that lie at the foundations of the two
traditions.

16William Barrett, ed., Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki (Garden

City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956), p. xi.