Kosiksheideggerianmarxim Zimmerman Marchone

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T H E P H I L O S O P H I C A L F O R U MVolume XV, No, 3, Spring 1984

Karel Kosik's Heideggerian MarxismMICHAEL E ZIMMERMAN

In this essay, I examine how Karel Kosik appropriates themes fromHeidegger's ontology to develop an alternative to the mechanical version oMarxism prevalent in Eastern Europe in the early 196O's, ' According tKosik, M arx 's though t particularly his concept of total i ty w as smisinterpreted by mechanical Marxism that the result has not been humaliberation but new forms of human bondage. The state socialism supporteby mechanical Marxism overemphasizes the importance of social structurat the expense of individual responsibility and freedom, on the one handand humanity's philosophical calling, on the other. While agreeing with thMarxist notion that collective praxis is necessary for establishing and maintaining a genuine human community, Kosik adds that two other kinds opraxis, individual ( existen tial ) and philosophical are also necessaryBoth of these latter notions of praxis are drawn in part from Heidegger'thought: existential praxis from his early concept of authenticity; philosophical praxis from his later notion that human existence is fulfilled b lettin g beings b e . Kosik rejuvenates the philosoph ical dimension oMarxism by reinterpreting Marx's idea of totalitya reinterpretation that iinfluenced by what Heidegger means by B ei n g . In Dialectics of thConcrete Kosik asserts that philosophy is not merely a reflection or byprod uct of socio-economic con dit ions, but a fundam ental and indispen sable activity of m a n k in d . . . (D C , 4).^ Philosoph y provides insight into whweare and into our place in the cosmos. Such self-understanding is neede


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tation of nature for human ends. Eor Kosik, human existence is fulfilledonly when it transcends the confines of anthropocentric subjectivism andgives voice to the absolute total ity of nature . While supporting Heideg-ger's critique of subjectivism and the dom ination of natu re, Kosik neverthe-less opposes the later Heidegger's view that only a change in the destiny ofBeing can enable a change in the human condition. Kosik insists tha thumanity itself is capable of and responsible for acting to fulfill its individ-ual, social, and philosophical potential. Kosik thus seeks to reconcileMarx's activist humanism with Heidegger's notion that humans are obli-gated not only to fulfill themselves by establishing an authentic human com-munity, but within that community to give expression to the cosmic totalitythat transcends the human community.At this point, it would be helpful to remind ourselves of some basicaspects of Heidegger's thought so that we can see more clearly how it is atwork in Kosik'sDialecticsoftheConcrete Heidegger's major concern wasalways the question of Being, though he approached this question some-what differently in the earlier and later phases of his thought. One of theproblems involved in interpreting Kosik is that he does not discuss the dif-ferences between Heidegger's early and later work, even though Kosikmakes use of themes from both phases in his attempt to rejuvenate Marx-ism. The so-called tu rn {Kehre or change in Heidegger's thought, whichoccurred during the 193O's, was not an abrupt shift, but instead a maturingor deepening of insights already present in some form in his earlier writings.In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger approached the question of Being byanalyzing human Dasein, the being who understands Being. Influenced byKant's transcendental thinking, Dilthey's historicism, and Husserl'sphenomenology, the young Heidegger's work involves a humanistic andeven an anthropocentric dimension that he left behind later on. Taking hiscue from Kant, Heidegger claimed that human temporality constitutes thecondition necessary for any experience whatsoever of the Being of beings,hence the titleBeingand Time Hum an temporality opens up the horizon ofclearing in which beings can reveal themselves or b e . W ithout thetemporal openness of human Dasein, beings cannot b e because they can-not manifest or present themselves.

Heidegger maintains that human Dasein exists either authentically orinauthentically. As inauthentic, Dasein understands itself as a kind of thing ,


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sibility for the finite possibilities that are uniquely one's own. Whiemphasizing the individual struggle for authenticity, Heidegger also claimth at individua ls becom e fully auth entic only when struggling in concert witothers to fulfill the destiny of their community. Authenticity is linked to thhistorical development of communal human possibilities. Kosik uses ththeme of the individual struggle for authenticity to counter mechanicaMarxism's overemphasis on communal revolutionary praxis, though he atimes unfairly suggests that Heidegger ignores the importance of such communal praxis .

After the turn in his thought, Heidegger no longer speaks about Being irelat ion to the transcendental structures of human understanding. Regarding this early view as mired in the language of metaphysics and subjectivism, he comes to speak of Being as the self-revelation of beings that occurthrou gh language, which is not a hu m an possession. T o b e now mean to be manifested throu gh lang ua ge . Fu ndam ental changes in languaginitiate profound changes in Western history. In his later works, Heideggespeaks less of personal au th en tici ty , or abo ut the com m unal struggle texist in line with destiny. Instead, he maintains that cultural epochs argoverned by the destin y of Be ing {Seinsgeschick , which defines the wayin which people can understand what things are. Abandoning the voluntaristic-humanistic flavor found in many of his early writings, the lateHeidegger speaks of the need for hu m anity to be re lea se d from the technological will to pow er so tha t we can let beings b e . In letting beings bein giving voice to the presencing of beings, humanity attains its highest possibility. For Heidegger, humanity is fulfilled by serving a higher goal thahuman power, security, and self-aggrandizement.

Tow ard the end oi Dialectics of the Concrete, Kosik introduces the themof letting beings b e un der the guise of cosmic-ontological prax is. Thitype of praxis is different bo th from the com m una l praxis familiar to Marxists and from the individual praxis found in Heidegger's early notion oauthen ticity. L ettin g beings b e refers to the highest possibihty of hu m aexistence: bearing witness to the cosmic totality. Aristotle, of great importance for Marx as well as for Heidegger, claimed that human life is fulfillethrough theoria, the active contemplation of the highest aspects of realityPolitical and personal matters are intrinsically important, but are alsmeans to the end of contemplation, which transcends the merely huma


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Kosik's attempt to reconcile Heidegger and Marx. Marx is a humanist whobelieves that humanity has shaped and can therefore change history. In hisearly writings, Heidegger at times spoke as if history involved the struggleof human Dasein to take charge of its own destiny and possibilities. Butlater on, Heidegger insisted that humanity isnot in control of history, butthat instead human history is governed by movements within the destinyof Being . Eor Heidegger, attempts to take control of history are symptomsof anthropocentrism and humanistic arrogance, while for Marx talk ofhistory being out of human control is a sign of a relapse into Hegelian ideal-ism. On this point, I do not beheve Marx and Heidegger can be successfullyreconciled. Yet Kosik goes a long way toward showing the shortcomings ofMarx's thought, as well as the hmitations of Heidegger's, and manages topoint the way toward an understanding of human existence that takes intoaccount two of the crucial thinkers of our age.Part one of this essay offers a preliminary account of the relation betweenKosik's to ta h ty and Heidegger's B eing . Both thinkers explain theirrespective phenomena in light of an analysis of the superficiality andpseudo-concreteness of everyday life. Part two shows that for both Kosikand for the early Heidegger, individual decision and commitment are neces-sary to end the inauthenticity of everyday life. Kosik argues, however, thatHeidegger's concept of authenticity overemphasizes individual praxis andminimizes the concomitant need for collective praxis. In part three, we learnthat both Kosik and Heidegger claim that successful individual and collec-tive praxis requires a change in everyday temporality and history. Yet whileKosik maintains that human labor produces temporality and history,Heidegger contends that human activity can only occur within the temporal-historical openness that humans do not create. Einally, in part four wediscover that the abso lute totality for Kosik is not simply the humancommunity, but the Being of beings, the expression of which is the highestpossibility of human existence. The t losof human life, then, involves let-ting beings manifest themselves in ways other than merely as instrumentsfor hum an self-actualization. Here Kosik leads Marxism beyond its an thro-pocentric tendencies, while yet attempting to provide a crucial role forhuman action in realizing our cosmic-ontological potential.

In what follows, I have quoted frequently and sometimes at length fromKosik as well as from Heidegger. Although I know that such citations can


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K A REL K O SIK 'S H EID EG G ERIA N MA RX ISM

Since then , he has been a n o n p er so n in Czechoslovakia. His courageouthinking continues to be a challenge not only to mechanical Marxists, bualso to more sophisticated Marxists and neo-Marxists as well. Moreover, healso has something important to say to those Heideggereans who neglect theneed for human action in transforming the historical situation. ThaKosik's thought is not readily acceptable either to orthodox Marxists or tostrict-observance Heideggereans suggests that he is a man capable othinking for himself

PART ONE: THE DISCLOSURE OE TOTALITY AND BEINGTH RO UG H TH E ANALYSIS OE EVERYDAY LIFE.Kosik's work is largely an attempt to rejuvenate Marx's concept oftotality an d to rescue it from m isinterpretations that have had serious consequences. In the socialist world, those consequences include: over-emphasion socio-political structures at the expense of personal responsibility andfreedom; the pretense tha t the w h o le is a higher reality than the phe

no m ena of everyday hfe; the rise of the soc ial ph ysic s that treats hu m anlife as a scientific object; the reduction of art, philosophy, religion, andculture to mere manifestations of underlying economic conditions; and theconcealment of the truth about reali ty and about humankind's role in thedisclosure of that reality. Kosik insists that totality must be reinterpreted inlight of Marx's original intention.^ Totality is not the sum of all facts, buinstead the con cep tion o f reality as concretenes s, as a whole tha t is structu re d. . . that evo lves. . . and that is in the process of fo rm in g .. . (DC , 19)Things take on meaning within the context of this self-evolving totality(DC, 23). M ar x ado pted this dialectical concept scoured of its ideologicamystification and turned its new form into one of the central concepts om aterialist diale ctic s (D C , 17). Because totality describes the na tur e oreality, totality is an ontological concept, not merely a methodological oepistemological one. Kosik suggests that Marx's original ontological intention was forgotten when his work was applied politically:

The main modification of the concept of totality has been its reductioto a methodological precep t, a m ethodo logical rule for investigatin


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only after having materialistically answered the first question, can it bean epistemological principle and a methodological precept. (DC, 17-18)Just as Kosik asserts the primacy of the ontological over the epistemologi-cal, so too Heidegger attacked the neo-Kantians at the University ofMarburg in the 1920s for having trivialized Kant's first Critique by seeing itas epistemology instead of as ontology. For both Heidegger and Kosik,reality (totality or Being) is not constructed or constituted by the humansubject. Instead, reality includes a kind of beingthe human beingthrough which reality can complete itself by revealing itself Realityprecedes our knowing of it, though human cognition and labor do alter theways in which beings can disclose themselves. We are always in danger,however, of assuming that we can do what we want with reality, whileforgetting that our highest human possibility is to let beings be what theyare.Genuine letting b e is compatible with the formation of an authentichuman community, but not with the exploitation of nature.Along with turning to ta h ty into a methodological concept, anothergrave mistake of certain Marxists was to hy po sta tize it as a thing that

transcends and is more important than the phenomena of everyday life.Such a false to tahty subordinates concrete reahty to supposedlyautonomous structures or conditions (DC, 27). Kosik argues, however, that Totality is not a ready-made whole, later filled with a content and withproperties and relations of parts; rather, totahty concretizesitself in theprocess of forming its whole as w ell as its content (DC, 29). In falsetotality, The subject vanishes, or more precisely, the place of the realsubject, i.e., of man as an objective-practical subject, is taken by a subjectthat has been mythologized, reified and fetishised: by the autonomousmovement of struc tures (DC, 31). Just as Marx revealed the fetishism ofcapitalism, according to which human beings are subject to the ostensiblyautonomous laws of the marketplace, so Kosik discloses the fetishism of adegenerate form of Marxism, according to which human beings are expres-sions of sociahst economic-pohtical structures.To reveal the ontological meaning of totality and to describe the threemodes of praxis needed to express and complete that totality, Kosik

bypasses the offlcially-approved interpretations of Marx and insteadreturns to th e things themselves, i.e., the phenomena of everyday life.


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world through his very existence, and this relationship is already therebefore he ever starts contemplating it, before he turns it into an objectof investigation, and before he practically or intellectually affirms ornegates it. (DC, 133)

Heidegger maintains that our everyday Being-in-the world is governed byan average, pre- theoretical unders tanding of Being. U nd ers tan din g heredoes not mean the cognitive activity of a subject, but instead the temporal-historical ope nness in which beings can man ifest themselves. Eor H eidegger t o b e mea ns to be manifest or to be present. H um an existence constitutethe openness in which that presencing can occur. Eor the most part, we areopen to things in a narrow, utilitarian way; hence, things can only reveathemselves to us as objects to be m anip ulated . U sually, we are unaw are thawe always already have such an understanding of things. EollowingHeidegger, Kosik remarks that

One always has a certain understanding of reality that precedes explica-tion. Itself an elementary layer of consciousness, this pre-theoreticaunderstanding is the basis for thepossibility of the culture and the cultivation through which one ascends from a preliminary to a conceptuacognition of reality. (DC, 36)Every particular thing upon which man focuses his view, attention,action, or evaluation, emerges from a certain whole that envelops it andwhich man perceives as an indistinct background or as a dimly intuitedimaginary context . . . . [Man] always perceives [individual] things in ahorizon of a certain whole, which is usually unexpressed and not per-ceived explicitly. (DC, 11-12)Totality is this cer tain w ho le in light of which we und erstand w hathings are. By examining our everyday, pre-theoretical understanding of thetotality, we gain a deeper understanding of it . In turn, such understandinggives further insight into everyday life, the starting point of the analysis. In

Being and Time Heidegg er calls this spiral of interp reta tion the he rmeneutic circle. ' By following the hermeneutic circle, by moving from apreliminary to an even deeper understanding of everyday life, Kosik showsthat totality not only illuminates what things are in everyday life but also inprofound philosophical inquiry. Great art, philosophy, and science com


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Kosik's analysis of everyday life, an analysis that eventually leads to an anthropo-cosm ic conception of humanity, revolves around the phenom -enon of ca re . In eingand Time Heidegger defined care as the Being ofhuman Dasein. At first, however, Kosik uses the term to refer to alienatedlabor, the utilitarian procuring and manipulating that go on in the ready-made everyday world. Care or procuring is the phenomenal aspect of ab-stract labor, arising from specialization and its attendant depersonaliza-tion (DC, 38). Despite this initial interpretation of care as alienated labor,Kosik retains Heidegger's notion that care refers to an ontological dimen-sion of humanity. Care, then, cannot be reduced to alienated labor, for ascare m an is .. . outsidehimself aiming at something else, transcending issubjectivity (DC, 38). Humanity transcends the limitations of subjectivityand opens up to the totality in light of which the distinction between subjectand object can first arise. Kosik starts out with a negative evaluation of careto reflect, in some ways, the common Marxist objection that Heidegger'sanalysis of care inBeing and Timemakes use of the example of a workmanin his workshop. Supposedly, Heidegger here displayed ignorance of thefact that modern labor occurs not in workshops, where laborers retain somecontrol over their labor, but in giant factories and offices, where laborersare functions of autonomous systems.' In a footnote, however, Kosik sug-gests that he does not really mean to intend care with the inauthentic activityof procuring and manipulating:

The critique that sees inBeing and Timethe patriarchal world of back-ward Germany has fallen for the mystification of Heidegger's exam-ples. Heidegger, however, is describing problems of the modern twen-tieth century capitalist world which he exemplifiesquite in the spiritof romantic disguising and concealingby the blacksmith and forging.This chapter is not an analysis of Heidegger's philosophy but of ca rewhich represents the reified movement ofpraxis,as does the econom icfactor and the hom o-oeco nom icus. (DC, 86)

What Kosik calls ca re resembles closely what Heidegger describes asthe inauthentic everyday life of das Man the depersonalized existence inwhich people conform to pre-established routines in order to avoid respon-sibility for creating and maintaining the human world. Kosik agrees withHeidegger that modern people find themselves in


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even his protest against banality. The anonymity of the everyday,expressed in the subject of this anonymity, that is in the someone/no-one,has its counterpart in the anonymity of historical actors describedas history m akers . Historical events consequently appear as thework of no-one and thus of all, as the result of anonymity shared bothby the everyday and by History. (DC, 46)

Kosik uses Heidegger's insight about everyday life to call atten tion to thealienated everyday life in socialist as well as capitalist society. People arealienated in part because they fail to see that they themselves are responsiblefor founding and maintaining their historical world. For Kosik, the abdica-tion of responsibility that leads to the anonymity of everyday life cannot beended merely by a change in social structure; indeed, a genuine change insocial structure requires personal responsibility on the part of those peoplewho constitute the community. In Heidegger's existential ontology, Kosikfound support for his conviction that individuals must cooperate in theirown liberation by gaining a deeper understanding of who they are.Just asfor Heidegger the Being of beings can reveal itself only through authenticindividuals, so too for Kosik the social and the cosmic (absolute) totalitycan only disclose itself through individuals who have taken responsibilityfor their own lives.

PART TWO. THE ROLE OF EXISTENTIAL PRAXISIN SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION.As opposed to those Marxists who overemphasize social structure at the

expense of the individual, Kosik insists that Every individual has to appro-priate his own culture and lead his own lifeby himself andnonvicariously(DC,8). Yet while insisting on the importance of personal responsibility, heavoids the elitist-heroic doctrine of authenticity that he ascribes toHeidegger. Kosik suggests that for Heidegger there are only two ways that aperson can exist: 1) as a heroic-romantic individual, or 2) in terms of theeveryday, ahenated life of procuring and manipulating, i.e., the religion ofthe workaday. As I have shown elsewhere, however, Heidegger maintainsthat everyday life can be either authentic or inauthentic: ''Authenticexistence is not something which floats above falling everydayness; existen-


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terminology of existentiahsm is frequently an ideahst-romantic, i .e., a con-cealing and dramatizing, transcription of revolutionary-materialist con-cep ts (DC , 87).According to Heidegger, there are two possible modes of everyday hfe:authentic and inauthentic. In the latter mode, an individual flees fromresponsibility for his or her own life, including participating in the forma-tion and maintenance of society; in the former mode, an individual takesresponsibility for acting within his or her concrete life-situation.Heidegger's inauthentic everydayness is what Kosik means by pr o cu rin g :the religion of the w ork ad ay in which individuals neglect their personal andsocial responsibility. At times, Kosik seems to follow Heidegger in dis-tinguishing between inauthentic and authentic everydayness. Kosik knowsfrom first-hand experience that a change in social structures is not a suffi-cient condition to end alienation in everyday hfe; individual commitmentand chang e is also needed : T h e shift from the inauth entic to the authenticis an historical process which is realized by mankind (a class, a society) andby the individual (DC, 48my emphasis). The following dramatic passagereveals Kosik's perplexity about how to formulate the relation betweencommunal struggle to change society and the individual struggle needed tochange oneself along with society:Man wants to live authentically and to realize authenticity. An individ-ual cannot by himself effect a revolutionary change in conditions anderad icate evil Ca n he live an au the ntic life in a world tha t is in-authen tic? Does there exist one single trans-personal and trans-individual authenticity, or is there a permanent choice, accessible toanyone and to all? In the existential modification, the subject of theindividual aw akens to his ow n possibilities and elects them . H e changesnot theworld but his attitude toward it. The existential modification isnot a revolutionary transformation of the world but the drama of anindividual in the world Cho osing authen ticity sub specie mortisleads to aristocratic rom antic stoicism or is reahzed in choosingdea th . This form of existential modification is, however, not the onlyway, or even the most frequent or the most adequate way for an indi-vid ua l 's authe ntic realization . It , to o, is only an historical choice with aquite precise social and class content. (DC, 49)


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change in theoretical attitude, but instead a transformation of one's modeof existing. Authenticity means becoming open and committed to one's ownpossibilities within the limits of one's own historical situation.Resoluteness, as authentic Being one s-self, does not detach Daseinfrom its world, nor does it isolate it so that it becomes a free-floating" I . " And how should it, when resoluteness as authentic disclosedness[of Being] isauthenticallynothing else than Being-in-the-world? Reso-luteness brings the self right into concernful Being-alongside what isready-to-hand, and pushes it into solicitous Being with others.'

Heidegger's notion of authenticity is drawn in part from Aristotle'sconcept of phronesisor " practical wisdo m." Eor Aristotle, thephronemosis one who knows what his or her own limits are, and who knows what thelimits of the situation are so that he or she is always able to do what iscalled for by the situation.' Yet even for Heidegger, authenticity is notmerely a matter for individuals, but also of a people engaged in the collec-tive struggle to change the world:Our fates have already been guided in advance, in our Being with oneanother in the same world and in our resoluteness for definite possibil-ities. Only in communicating and in struggling does the power ofdestiny become free. Dasein's fateful destiny in and with its "genera-tion" goes to make up the full authentic historizing of Dasein."

On the basis of such statements by Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse argued in1928 that Being and Timeprovides the ontological foundation for Marx'stheory of history Marcuse remarks that[Heidegger's] phenomenological analysis has shown human Dasein asessentially historical, and has recognized praxis as its primordial kindof behavior In the mom ent when praxis gets recognized as thebehavior of human Dasein that decisively and authentically createsreality, and when the given historical situation is grasped as the "realityof inhuman existence" in its historical fallennessin this moment,praxis as "revolutionary praxis" fulfills historical necessity.'^


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Standing of them. From this point of view, authenticity means becomingactively engaged in constructing one's everyday life, while inauthenticitymeans ignoring one's responsibility for being the finite, active agent thatone already is . Authenticity occurs in the appropriation of the everyday, asopposed to the flight from it. Yet even if Kosik were to grant that Heideg-ger's distinction between authentic and inauthentic everydayness is possible,he would still object that Heidegger does not adequately explain the socio-historical origins of that everydayness (DC, 45-46). For Heidegger,inauthentic-alienated everyday life cannot be explained solely in terms ofexploitative social structures; instead, such structures must themselves beunderstood in light as humankind's intrinsic tendency toward concealment(falling) and as the result of the ontologic al-historical destiny that transcen dshuman deeds. For Marx, however, alienated everyday life results fromhu m an actions tha t can be changed by hum an a ctions. Kosik hopes to recon-cile Ma rx's hum anism with Heide gger 's claim tha t hu m an existence is not ul-timately in control of its own destiny but is instead in the service of the cos-mic event of the disclosure of beings.

P A R T T H R E E : I N A U T H E N T I C E V E R Y D A Y N E S S ,T E M P O R A L I T Y , A N D T R A N S C E N D E N C E .Kosik accuses Heidegger of failing to explain how the inauthentic every-dayness of procuring is possible (DC, 45-46). Yet both Kosik and Heideggerargue that inauthentic everydayness stems from an inadequate understand-ing of the Being of self and world. Such inadequate understanding arises, inturn, from an inauthentic experience of temporality and history. Yet Kosikdefines temporality not as the transcendental horizon in which beingspresent or manifest themselves (Heidegger), but instead as the temporal-historical world produced by human labor (Marx). By remaining true toMarx's humanis t ic doctr ine that man produces himself Kosik apparentlyrejects Heidegger's notion that our temporal existence is a gift, not a humanproduct. Let us consider for a moment Heidegger 's explanation of howinauthentic temporality leads to inauthentic everydayness.Heidegger maintains that human existence is constituted by three-dimen sional tem porality tha t open s up a clearing in which beings can reveal


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of human aims. Eor the most part, temporality generates itself inauthentically; on occasion, however, it generates itself authentically. On such occasions,we can either accept or resist this change. Often we resist the changbecause becoming more fully open for the Being of beings means becominaware of our mortahty as well. We readily flee from such awareness anescape into social roles that let us abdicate responsibihty for taking chargof our own lives. In his early work, Heidegger suggested that inauthentisocial structures result in part from individuals who refuse to accept thtruth about their mortality, freedom, and responsibility. In his latewritings, he maintained that alienation in the technological world arises noso much because of individual weakness, but because of the destiny oBeing Seinsgeschick) that lets beings appear only as objects for domintion by the human subject. No one can d o anything about this destinyany more than an individual can demand that his or her temporality generate itself in an authentic way. Just as an individual can only prepare himself or herself for the possible advent of anxiety and, hence, a change itemporality, so too modern humanity can only prepare itself for thpossibility of a paradigm shift that will enable beings to appear as othethan mere objects.'^Kosik, who agrees that the structures of alienated everyday life are determined by temporality and history, insists tha t Marxist theory has tiniti te the analysis [of inauthentic everydayness] by asking why wepeople aware of their own time precisely in these categories, and wh t kinof timedo people find reflected in th em (DC, 7). It is necessary to expla the internal connection between the times and the ideas (DC, 7). LikHeidegger, Kosik wants to explain the internal relation between the mode otemporality and the corresponding understanding of the Being of beings.According to Kosik, procuring or inauthentic everydayness occurs whewe experience time in the mode of the future, when we yearn for things ancannot dwell in the here-and-now. Because Heidegger says that authenticitrequires anticipation of one's own death, Kosik labels such authenticity abeing an escape into the future and a denial of the present. Yet for Heidegger, anticipation of death is precisely what enables us to enter fully into oupresent situation. If we do not anticipate our mortality, we interpret ouselves as immortal egos who have all the time in the world to do anything wplease. As egos, we exist as the inauthentic temporality that lets beings di


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Kosik himself proposes as his view of authenticity the one that actuallycomes from Heidegger:In care [the Heideggerean concept that Kosik redefines as procuring],the individual is always already in the future and turns the present intoa m eans or a tool for the realization of projects The individualappraises the present and the past by the practical projects he lives for,by his plans, hopes, fears, expectations and goals. Since care is antici-pation, it invalidates the present and fastens onto the future which h snot ha pp ened [Because] it is ahe ad of the pres ent, care considers thepresent no t as the auth entic existence, as closeness to B ein g, butrathe r as a flight.... T o live in the fu tu re , t o an tic ip ate in a sensedenies life; the individ ual as care lives no t his presen t bu t his futu re, andsince he neglects that which is and anticipates that which is not, his lifeoccurs in nothingness, i.e., in inauthenticity, while he himself staggersbetween bhn d reso luten ess and resigned w ait i ng . M ontaigneknew this form of alienation well. (DC, 42)

Not only Montaigne, but Heidegger as weU knew this kind of alienation.The latter maintained that alienation or inauthenticity could only be endedby a radical change in temporality that lets one become engaged in thepresent situation. What Heidegger meant by anticipating one's own deathwas becoming aware of one's own mortality and finitude, so that one wouldthen resolve to live in the present instead of escaping into the infinite,romantic future. Authenticity means letting beings manifest themselves inways other than as objects for our purposes; authenticity means doing whatthe situation calls for. Only by letting go of the desire for security can webecome open for what is and for what is called for. And only in being soopen d o we give tha nk s for th e gift of existence. Fo r Kosik, ho wever, aw are-ness of mortality and finitude do not make possible the authentic engage-ment that produces a community; instead, such awareness follows from theconstruction of civilization (DC, 137).

By affirming humanity's dependence and finitude, Heidegger opposesMarx's contention that humankind produces itself Though agreeing withHeidegger that temporality and history are essential to human existence,Kosik adopts the Marxist view that human beings produce time and are not


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The same act of mediation in which animaUty begets humanity and inwhich animal craving is transformed into humanized craving, into thecraving for being craved, i.e., the craving for recognition, also formsthethree dimensionalityof human time:only a being which transcendsthe nihilism of its animal craving in labor will in the act of harnessing itscraving uncover a future as a dimension of its being. Through work,mancontrolstime (whereas the beast is exclusively controlled by time),because the being that can resist immediate satiation of its craving andcan active ly harness it forms a present as a function of the future,while making use of the past. In its doing it uncovers the three-dimensionality of time as a dimension of itsown Being.(DC, 121)According to the Marxist view, human beings can make objects only bytransforming the results of past labor in accordance with future aims: Thethree-dimensionality of time and the temporality of man are based onobjectification. Withoutobjectification thereisno temporality (DC, 122).Heidegger claims just the reverse: without temporality there is no objectifi-cation.The ontological openness in light of which hum an beings can trans-form natural beings into artifacts or objects is constituted by temporality.And human beings do not produce time; they dwell within it. Time providesthe no-thingness, openness, or absence in which beings can be present.Following Marx and opposing Heidegger, Kosik holds that humanity'sopenness for Being is a result of praxis(DC , 101).Yet at times Kosik vergeson agreeing with Heidegger's claim that time is not a human product.Hence, Kosik suggests that labor unc ov ers time as a dimension of theBeing of humanity (DC, 121).Uncovering an ontological aspect of humanexistence seems different fromproducing that aspect through some human

activity. To remain true to Marx's doctrine that man is the only root forman, however, Kosik concludes that human objectification producestemporality.At one point, Kosik accuses Heidegger of saying that objectiflcation is aform of inauthenticity, a flight from Being-towards-death (DC, 123). Byobjectication, however, Heidegger does not mean the forming of a humanworld by transforming natural things into objects, but instead the reductionof all beings to the status of mere objects for the human subject. There is,according to Heidegger, an authentic way of working with natural beings, a


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vating himself to the status of God, Western humanity unites the doctrineof human self-creation with the doctrine of humanity as the pinnacle ofreality. Despite his commitment to socialist principles, Kosik resists thehubristic subjectivism that can be found at times in Marx's thinking.Th oug h Kosik affirms tha t hum anity does in some sense createitself it doesso only wit in the natural order that transcends humanity (DC, 7). He iscritical of the M ach iav ellian ism and sc ien tism that reduces all beingsto tools or instruments for human aims (DC, 135). Hence, he citesapprovingly from a Russian Marxist who shares his view:Reducing the relationship between man and nature to that of a pro-ducer and his raw material would infinitely impoverish human life.Such a reduction would indicate that the esthetic aspects of human lifeand of man's relation with the world have been uprootedand more;the loss of nature as something created neither by men nor by anyoneelse, as something eternal and uncreated, would be coupled with theloss of the awareness that man is part of a greater whole: comparedwith it, man becomes aware both of his smallness and of his greatness.(D C , 4 1 ; cf. also DC , 152)'

Kosik shares Heidegger's conviction that it is dangerous to define mansolely in terms of his capacity to produce objects in his own image. Thedanger lies not only in the fact that humanity may end by turning the planetinto one giant factory, but also in the fact that thereby humanity under-mines its deepest calling: to bear witness to the Being of beings. Eor Kosik,along with the collective and individual praxis needed to found and main-tain an authentic community, there is an even more important mode ofpraxis: openness toward the Being of beings. Such openness lets beingspresent themselves as they are, not merely as commodities. In the final partof this essay, we will see whether Kosik can reconcile the Heideggerian-inspired notion of cosmic-ontological praxis with M arx 's activist hum anism .

P A R T E O U R : O V E R C O M I N G S U B J E C T I V I S M T H R O U G HO P EN N ES S EO R TH E A B S O LU TE TO TA LI TY .


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MICHAELE.ZIMMERMAN

from philosophy into social theory, it too degenerates into another form ofsubjectivism: in state socialism, all things are reduced to objects for the col-lective human subject. Under mechanical Marxism, Kosik explains,man is imprisoned in his subjectivity: for if all concepts are in essencesocio-economic categories, and express only the social being of man,then they turn into forms of man's self-expression, and every form ofobjectivation is only a variety of re ification .... [Hence], praxis ceasesto be the sphere of humanizing man, the process of forming a socio-human reality as well as man'sopenness toward Being and toward thetruth of objects; it turns into a closedness: socialness is a cave in whichman is walled in. (DC, 106)

Those walled into socialness cannot understand the true goal of life asrevealed by philosophy. They assume that philosophy is a bourgeoisenterprise undertaken by alienated thinkers who either express hope forhuman freedom, or else provide ideological justification for exploitativeeconomic systems. Socialist revolution supposedly realized the aim offreedom contained in bourgeois philosophy. Hence, in many socialist states philosophy is vulgarly conceived as a manifestation of conditions, ratherthan as the truth of rea lity (DC, 102). Addressing those who think thatthere is no longer any need for critical thinking about humankind and itsplace in the cosmos, Kosik asks:Who is to judge, and who will judge in the future, whether indeedre sonhas been realized through abolishing philosophy and whethersociety is indeed reasonable? Which level of human consciousness willrecognize whether reality has not merely been rationalized and whetherreason is not again being realized intheform of unreason? (DC, 103)

Kosik's questions call to mind the third of M arx 's Theses onFeuerbach :The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances andupbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other cir-cumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change


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KAREL KOS IK 'S HEIDEGGERIAN MARXIS M

this view when he says that the alienated or pseudo-concrete world is notnatura l ,but the p r o j ec t i o n of petrified historical conditions(DC, 5). Yetpseudo-concreteness characterizes everyday lifenot only under capitalism,but under state sociahsm as well. Pseudo-concreteness results not merelyfrom the fact that socialism fails to understand Marx's original intention.The fact is, in Kosik's view, that gaining accessto the truth has beenandalways will be a problem for humanity. Sounding much like Heidegger,Kosik says th attheessenceorBeingofthings tendstoconceal itself (D C ,3);things don't show themselves directlyto us; thinking moves spontaneouslycounter to reality(DC, 5); man must always takea detour to arriveat thetruth(DC, 4); man's practical dealings with the world are inherently (notmerely historically) one-sided. Kosik notes that

human consciousness is at once a ref lec t ion and a p r o j e c t , itregistersaswellasconstructsandplans ,itboth reflectsandanticipates,is both receptive and active.To let the th ing itself express itself, toadd nothing and just let things be s they rethis requires a specialactivity. (DC, 12my emphasis)This special ac tivity , which Kosik later calls ope nne ss tow ard B eing(DC, 139),is thethirdandmost impor tant m odeofhum an praxis. We recallthat the other two modes arecollective and individual praxis. The notionthat human existence involves these three modes of praxisis one way ofanswering Kant's question, Who is m a n ? (DC, 149-50). In 1929,Heidegger observed that this question wasKant ' sway of summarizingthethree questions forming the basis for his three cr it iques: W ha t can I

k n o w ? , W h a t o u gh tI do? , and W h a tcan I hope fo r? . Accord ingto Kosik, humankind can know the world by transforming it collectivelyintoaworld su itablefor theneedsof the community. Each person ought tostruggle to realize his or her own humani ty . And humanity can hope tofulfill its telos by becoming open not only for human reality, but for thenatural realm that t ranscends humanityand its history. Without ontologi-cal-cosmic praxis, i.e., without openness for the Being of the beings thatconstitutethecosmos , comm unalandindividual praxis rem ains unfulfilled.Kosik insists that man is not merely a natura l or anthropological being.Instead,man isdisclosedto theunderstandingof Beingon thebasisof his


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Initsessenceand generality, praxisis theexposureof themysteryofman as an onto-formative being, as a being that forms the (socio-human) realityand thereforealso graspsandinterprets it (i.e., realityboth human and extra-human, realityin its totahty). Man's praxisisnot practical activity as opposedtotheorizing;itisthedeterminationofhuman beingas theprocessof forming reality.(DC, 137)

The praxis that formsthehuman world createsanopennessforreality,oran understandingof Being. Such openness transcends theidolof social-ness and social subjectivity (DC, 139). Through philosophy or dia lectics, humanity revealsthe thing itself :

Butthe thingitself is noordinary thing; actuallyit is not athingatall.The thingitself that philosophy deals withis man and hisplaceintheuniverseor, in different words:it is thetotalityof theworldun-coveredinhistory by man,andman existinginthe totalityofthe world.(DC, 152-53)Humankindnotonly reproduces itself and its social order,butalso spir-itually reproduces reality in its totality (DC, 152).Kosik is now in apositiontoclarify the vagueorpre-theoretical understandingoftotality thatguides everyday life. Humanity always alreadyhassome graspof its ownBeingand of itsplacein thecosmos;inlightofsuch understanding, socialstructures arise.The dimmer theunderstanding, the less satisfactory thesocial structures to which it gives rise. Human understanding alwaysex-tends beyond the human or social to include the absolute totality ofnatureor thecosmos. Humanity fulfills itself whenitachievesafull under-standingofthe Beingofbeingsand ofhum anity's own roleingiving expres-sionto andcompleting that Being.

Without man realityis notauthentic, justas it is not(only)arealityofman. Realityis arealityofnatureas theabsolute totality, independentof man's consciousnessbutalsoof hisexistence.It is arealityof manwhoas one of nature's components forms in nature a socio-humanreality that transcends nature, and who through history defines his


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Here Kosik sounds much l ike Hegel, for whom humani ty is the self-consciousness of theuniverse. In the moment of complete self-awareness,the universe becomes theabsolute , the totality that is fully presentto andthrough itself. ForHeidegger, too, humanity's telosis to let beings presentthemselves other than merelyas raw material. Letting the absolute totalitybe revealed requires something other than industry and technology; itrequires instead great philosophy and art, insubst i tutable and irreplace-able ...[and] inal ienable modesof praxis that help openup theworld inwhich collectiveand individual praxiscanoccur (DC, 73). Thetotalityofthe world includes man, with hisrelation of a finite being to infinity, andwithhis openness toward Being. Upon this isbased the very possibilityoflanguage and poetry, of questioning and know i ng (DC, 140). In sayingthat languageandpoetryism ade p ossiblebym an 's openness toward Being,Kosik comes closeto agreeing with Heidegger's contention thatwe do notuse language, but that instead language usesus to give expression to whati s . In hisessay , Th eO r ig ino f theW o r k o f Art (1936), Heidegger arguesthat the artist is destined to bring forth a work of art tha t in turn bringsforth aworldfor hispeople. '* Heidegger describeshow aGreek temple,forexample, opensup the historical realm in which human actions and deedstakeonmeaning,and inwhichthenatu ral ordercanreveal itselfin itsinde-pendent power and diversity. Kosik echoes such a view when he says that

Reality discloses itselfto man ingre at a r t . . . . T rueart and true philos-ophy reveal the t ruth of history: they confront mankind withits ownreality.The Greek temple,themed ieval cathedraland theRen aissance palaceall express reality but they also simultaneously form i t . . . . As perfectworks of art the reality they formis one that transcendsthe historicityof their respect ive worlds. . . .[Thework of art] forms a world insofarasit disclosesthet ruthof reality, insofar asreality speaks out throughthe work of art. In a work of art reality addressesman. (DC,74myemphasis)

Mechanical Marxism, whose viewisco nstrictedby theidealofsocialness,regards philosophy asuselessand art as a tool for furthering the develop-mentof socialness.Yet bybehttlingart andphilosophy, keyexpressionsof


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which, in Heidegger's view, is symptomatic of a boundless will to will.When humanity forgets that it is only an element within the absolutetotality, though an element that helps complete and give expression to thattotality, humanity oversteps its proper limits. Kosik's aim is, in part, to re-mind us of the limits and obligations, as well as the possibilities, tha t accrueto us by virtue of our own Being and of our place within the cosmos. GajoPetrovic is another Eastern European Marxist who thinks that it is possibleto discern such a cosmic-ontological perspective in Marx's thought. In aFestschrift for Heidegger, he remarks that

If Marx considers man as a free, creative being of praxis, this does notmean that Being is sunk to mere material or the product of this creativeactivity. Man is really man not insofar as he is alienated from N at ure , but since in him N atu re (in the sense o physis. Seinworks, and indeed such that in man it surpasses its mere natu ra li ty .Although sympathetic to Marx's views on alienation and history^',Heidegger concludes that Marx's thought remains anthropocentric and sub-

jectivistic. The notion that man rep rodu ces and crea tes himself is, forHeidegger, hubristic. Moreover, in commenting on Marx's thesis that manis the highest being for m an, Heidegger claims that This thesis meansnothing else than that, in the doctrine which announces explicitly that manis the highest Being[das esen] for man, is grounded and justified finallythat Being as Being is nothing {nihil for m an . Marxism is the mostextreme form of nihilism, we are told, because it is the most extremehumanism. Erom Heidegger's point of view, Marx's notion of totality leadsto the subjugation of all beings by self-centered hum ankind. Hence, M arx'shumanism is the culmination of the history of metaphysics, the understand-ing of eingthat leads to the age of planetary technology.Only if such meta-physical understanding of Being gives way to an alternative, Heideggerproclaims, will humanity be released from the compulsive productivity thatconstricts humanity's unique openness for the Being of beings. It goeswithout saying, of course, that the drive for power and secu rity by capi-tahst and socialist states threatens not only the spiritual-ontological life ofhumanity, but the whole life on earth as well. While Marx urged humanbeings to act to change the course of history, Heidegger claims that such


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of Being, though he offers little reason for hope that such a shift will occurin our needy time. Meanwhile, he adds, we need to act as best we can toimprove and sustain the historical world made possible by the metaphysicalunderstanding of Being.

The merit of Kosik's work lies in its attempt to find a place forhumanity's cosmic-philosophical calling, while also making it clear thatonly human deeds can open up and sustain the social world in which thatcalling can be heeded. While many Marxists might disagree with the notionthat the highest form of praxis lies in expressing the absolute (natural)totality as well as the social totality, many Heideggerians would caU intoquestion Kosik's emphasis on human action in the formation (and re-for-mation) of the social world. Heidegger scholars would also ask whetherKosik adequately distinguishes between realityunderstood as the absolutetotality, nature, cosmosand Beingunderstood as the self-manifesting orself-presencing of beings. Has Kosik fully grasped the ontological differ-ence between Being and beings? If one reads some parts o Dialectics of theConcrete, one would give an affirmative answer to this question; but if onereads other parts, a negative answer would be forthcoming. Kosik'sontology is not entirely consistent, in part because he was attempting to dowhat some consider to be impossible, namely, to reconcile Marx's human-ism with Heidegger's notion that humanity is in the service of Being.

Yet Kosik raises once again the crucial philosophical question, who arewe? He suggests that humanity is called on to transcend its merely sociallimits to give expression to extra -hu m an reality whether this re al ity isunderstood in the metaphysical sense as the totality of the natural world, orin Heidegger's sense as the self-disclosure or unconcealment {aletheia ofbeings. Kosik adds, however, that such transcendence occurs only withinthe context provided by an authentic human community. Yet such a com-munity cannot arise merely by building factories and constructing houses.G uidance for such activity can be provided only by the philosop hical insightor the work of art that issues from someone who has stepped beyond his orher social conditions and discovered a deeper truth. Human existence botharises from and gives expression to the cosmos. Since this process ofcoming-forth and letting-be is a dynamic-historical one, no final form ordefinition can be given to it . Both Marx and Heidegger, each in his ownway, recognized that human existence must always remain an issue for


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M I C H A E L E . Z I M M E R M A N

managed to do something more important: to raise the philosophical ques-tion about human existence in a provocative and illuminatingway.Eor this,we can all be grateful.Newcomb ollege of Tulane University

EOOTNOTES1 For a discussion of mech anical or vulgar Marxism , cf. Michael H arrin gto n, The Twitight of

Capitatism (New York; Simon and Schuster, 1976).2 Karel Kosik, Dialectics of the Concrete, trans. Karel Kovanda with James Schmidt, Vol.LII of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W.Wartofsky (Dordrecht/Boston; D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1976). References topassages from this book will take the following form; DC, plus the page number. In some

qu otatio ns, I have taken the liberty of capitalizing the word B ei ng to reflect the conven-tion that applies in Heidegger-scholarship. Although Kosik's influence is considerable inEuropean circles, not much has been written about his work in the United States. A helpfulexception is Jame s Sch mid t 's essay, Pr ax is and Tem porality; Karel Ko sik's PoliticalT h e o r y , Telos, 33 (Fall, 1977), 70-84.3 Kosik's notion of totality is influenced by that of Georg Lukacs, especially as found in his

History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cam bridge; M IT Press ,1971). On Kosik 's relat ion to Lukac s, cf. Jan Pato cka , Heideg ger vom anderen U fer,Durchblicke: Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag (Frankfurt a. M.; Vittorio Kloster-mann, 1970).

4 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Kant a nd the Problem of Metaphysics, tra ns . Jam es S. Churchill(Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 1968).5 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (NewYork; Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 62, 194-95, 358-64.6 Ibid. p. 165.7 Ibid. p. 164.8 Ibid. p. 224. Cf. my essay, O n Discriminating Everyd ayness, Un ow nedn ess, and Fallingin Being and Time, Research in Phenom enology, V (1975), 109-27; cf. also my bo okEclipse of the Self: The Developmen t of Heidegger's Concept of Authenticity (Athens-Ohio University Press, 1981), pp. 43-68.9 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 436.


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12 Herb ert M arcuse, Beitrge zur Phnom enolog ie des Historischen M aterialismus,Philosophische Hefte (Berlin), N o. 1 (1928), 68 . Cf. also H erbert Marcu se, b er konk retePhilosophie , Archiv fr So zialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (T binge n), 62 (1929),111-28.Cf. my essay, H eid eg ge ran d Marcuse: Technology as Ideology, Philosophy an dTechnology, II (1978), ed. Paul T. Durbin and C arl Mitcham (Greenwich, CT: Jai Press,1978).13 For further discussion of the notio n of the des tiny of Be ing , cf. chapters seven and eightof Eclipse of theSelf. On the notion that a paradigm shift is needed to lead us out of thecurrent planetary crisis, cf. Morris Berman, The Reenchantm ent of the World (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1981).14 S. L. Rubinstein, Printsipi i Put'i Razvit'ia Psikhologii (Mo scow: 1959), p. 204.15 Karl M arx, Theses on Feu erb ach , The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (NewYork: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. , 1972), p. 108. My emphasis. For an excellentaccount of the problem of changing individual character at the same time one is trying tochange social structures, cf. Bruce Brown,Marx, Freud and the Critique of Everyday Life(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).16 Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.17 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Hebel: Der Hausfreund (Pfullingen: G nther Nesk e, 1958), p . 34: Authentically, language speaks, not man. Man only speaks insofar as he co-responds tolanguage.18 Martin Heidegger, T he Origin of the Wo rk of A rt , Poetry, Language, Thought, trans.Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

19 Cf. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977). Heidegger's view that instrumental rationality is inherentlyexploitative of nature is shared by members of the Frankfurt School such as HerbertMarcuse , Theod ore Ado rno, and Max Horkheim er. Cf. M artin Jay, The Dialectical Imagi-nation (New York: Little, Brown, 1974); William Leiss, The Dom ination of N ature(Boston: Beacon Press, 1974); Albrecht Wellmer, The Critical Theory of Society, trans.Joh n C umm ing (New York: Herder & He rder, 1971); Trent Schroyer, The Critique ofDomination (Bosto n: Beacon Press, 1973); Alfred Schm idt, The Concept of Nature inMarx, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: NLB, 1971).20 Gajo Petrovic, D er Spruch des H eid egg ers ' , Durchblicke, p. 432.21 Cf. M artin Heidegger, Le tter on H um an ism , tran s. Frank A. Capuzzi in collaborationwith J. Glenn Gray, in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row,1977).


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