A Study On Heidegger’s Criticism Of Descartes’s Subjectivity

In his powerful work Being and Time(1927),Heidegger devoted himself to the problem of being.He set himself two tasks to clarify the existential problem: one is the "existential analysis of the here and now " and the other is the "deconstruction of existential history".The "existential analysis of the here and now" begins with the reintroduction of the problem of being.In Heidegger’s view,although Western philosophy since Plato has been exploring the existential problem,it has remained "in obscurity".The reason is that,starting from the "metaphysics of presence" of Plato and Aristotle,philosophers have not seen an existential difference between existence and being,and the division between existence and being is obscure,which has led modern Western philosophy inevitably to the metaphysics of the subject and to the dilemma of subjectivity.Therefore,in the process of existential analysis,Plato’s "idea",Aristotle’s"entity",Christianity’s "creator",Descartes’ "extended things" and "thinking things",and Kant’s "a priori unity" are all considered by Heidegger as "metaphysics of presence"."Heidegger deconstructs them as derivatives of the metaphysics of presence.Of course,among these many deconstructions,Heidegger attaches particular importance to the deconstruction of Cartesian subjectivity.Descartes has been the object of criticism in Heidegger’s early thought.In his view,Descartes,as an important philosopher who constructed the world of representation,is the originator of the modern forgetting of existence and the establishment of the subject,and is the founder of the metaphysics of the subject.On the basis of the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle,he transformed the traditional "metaphysics of presence" under the influence of medieval theology,and finally established a system of "metaphysics of the subject".After Descartes,Leibniz,Kant and others continued to promote the concept of "subject" on the basis of "I think",trying to solve the problem of subject-object dichotomy left by Descartes.In Heidegger’s view,this is futile,because what metaphysics really needs is not to conceive of how the subject is,but to "return to being itself",to search for the meaning of being in general.Heidegger’s views directly or indirectly influenced the subsequent philosophical schools,especially the French post-structuralism,represented by Derrida.Derrida took over the banner of deconstructing metaphysics in Heidegger’s hands,and his criticism was directed at the root of the pathology of the metaphysics of the subject--"logocentrism"--and fundamentally destroyed the foundation on which the Cartesian subjectivism was built.