A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher

By Derek Robert Mitchell, £42.50 (25 September, 2001)   Ashgate; Hardcover - 238 pages 
ISBN: 0754613089 

Mitchell juxtaposes early Heidegger's reconceptualising of the problem of the relation between self and world, and the problem of identity, that is to say, the relation of self to time, with the Cartesian based approaches of Hume, Locke, Kant and Sartre - all of which assume a basic separation between self and world through the theoretical attitude of a detached observer. Mitchell suggests that Heidegger reverses the question of personal identity in exactly the same way he reverses the problem of the 'veil of the senses' as: 

'The onus is not on those who wish to show the connection between Being and the world and Being and time but on those who maintain separatedness'. 

 The contrast between this, the involved relational mode of being for Heidegger and the Cartesian tradition, is one of the main strengths of the book. Another is the emphasis on the importance of space and time for a fundamental understanding of early Heidegger's different conception of self, world and truth. Mitchell's text faces these issues head on and emerges with a pithy summary of the problems of knowledge and identity as problems of relation:

 'At a deeper level the problems of knowledge and personal identity are expressed as the questions of the spatiality and temporality of the self. The problem of knowledge is the problem of the relation of the subject to entities that are not-itself'.
Mitchell avoids some of the pitfalls associated with reading early Heidegger. He does not fall into the Sartrean trap of equating Heidegger's Dasein with subjectivity and cautions against prematurely defining Dasein through terms caught in Cartesian assumptions. While emphasising everyday experience as Heidegger's starting point he goes on to acknowledge that Heidegger's conception of Being-towards-death moves towards a phenomenology that 'surpasses' everyday existence.

Nevertheless his reading of early Heidegger is open to numerous criticisms. He constantly treats temporality as a ground ( on pages 84, 86, 157, 164 for example) or foundation (as on page 170) for Dasein, experience and ontology, whereas Heidegger is much more tentative, emphasising authentic temporality as a horizon of possibility, a transcendental horizon for questioning and a provisional incomplete one at that. His identification of 'conscious experience' (pages 83, 84) with Dasein, even if not a Cartesian consciousness, is still an extraneous imposition upon Heidegger's text and amounts to a failure to consider Heidegger's ontological-ontic [er.. surely one 'ont' is enough for anyone - Ed.] distinction between Being and beings. Moreover, Mitchell quotes Heidegger's text Basic Problems of Phenomenology regarding intentionality and transcendence but fails to contextualise these quotes as being with regard to 'ontic transcendence' - whereas ontological transcendence as temporality is seen by early Heidegger as more 'originary' or primordial than intentionality. 

 If the book confined itself to this juxtaposition between Heidegger and the Cartesian tradition, it would be vulnerable to the charge of advocating the suspension of Cartesian criteria for the assessment of 'early' Heidegger's project, that is, criticising Cartesian thinkers according to criteria which they might not necessarily recognise. These include assuming that problems regarding knowledge and identity and so on mean failure or limitations of that tradition. Mitchell goes on to define a 'satisfactory' theory as one: 'that is consistent within itself and with all the aspects of my everyday experience, and which does not generate problems or paradoxes with regard to this experience'. Criticising a tradition for problems it raises is a bias of presence and a foundational assumption that Heidegger himself would also question.

 Unfortunately another juxtaposition dominates Mitchell's book, namely, the tension between R.D Laing's supposed advocacy of a relational self and Max Stirner's isolated ego defended in The Ego and Its Own. (Stirner, recall is a Young Hegelian, together with Feuerbach, Marx and Engels.) The tension between Heidegger and the Cartesian tradition is marshalled into competing battletroops siding with Laing and Stirner respectively. The initial argument (which we subsequently learn only in the concluding sections, was merely a prima facie argument) amounts to the assertion that Laing's case studies of schizophrenic patients revealed a lack of relatedness in their worlds which paralled the detached Cartesian ego and Stirner's isolated ego. 

Laing is then taken to be an advocate of relatedness over isolation, and challenging a Stirnerian/ Cartesian ego. Yet even as a prima facie argument it is unclear whether Mitchell is offering an empirical argument, or a logical/epistemological/ontological argument, an experiential argument or even an ethical argument for the superiority of a relational self over an isolated self: 'It appears, following the unfavourable comparison of Stirner's Unique One with Laing's patients, that Laing's view of the self, as essentially relational, is the more plausible option'.

As an empirical argument it is not only Hume who would turn in his grave as the examples of a few case studies could hardly serve as the basis of an argument by induction for the superiority of relatedness over isolation even if induction itself were to be accepted. 

The logical/epistemological/ontological argument would require preference of relatedness over the isolated schizoid patients only on an equation of happiness with truth - a dubious assumption not only generally, but especially from a Heideggerian perspective of anxiety as authenticity. 

Preferring a relational state to an isolated state on experiential grounds may be a reasonable prima facie argument but taking Laing as advocate of the superiority of this relational state is problematic. Later Laing frequently argues for the superiority of the schizoid state as a more authentic experiential path than the estranged integration of societal normality. He would reject outright Mitchell's characterisation of 'Laing's individual, healthy only if integrated into the society of others'. 

Mitchell's characterisation of schizoid experience as Cartesian/Stirnerian and flawed, would at least need to firmly distinguish the Laing of the Divided Self from later Laing. However, even this does not do justice to the violence done upon the inimitable R.D Laing. Laing highlights how the schizoid state rejects 'false' modes of relation so that the issue is not that of relation or non-relation as Mitchell characterises it - but of quality of relation. The schizoid state is open to interpretation even in early Laing as an intense need for a deeper quality of relation, with isolation as a reaction against the lack of that available relation. 

Moreover, Mitchell's characterisation of Laing as advocating a relational reality over a self-referenced reality ignores the work of Laing and Esterson Sanity, Madness and the Family which highlighted the need for the supposedly schizophrenic person to develop his or her self-referenced reality - as distinct from the reality of the family which suppressed this individual reality. Ego identity and interpersonal levels are presented as alternatives by Mitchell (through attributing opposing positions to Stirner and Laing), whereas few in psychology or psychiatry would deny the importance of both. 

 Criticism of Mitchell's presentation of the isolated ego and a relational self as oppositional alternatives invites focus on an important vacillation in his position regarding the detached Cartesian ego. Frequently the Cartesian subject is described as 'mistaken' and 'misfiring'. Yet elsewhere he recognises that Heidegger criticises Descartes with regard to the goal of uncoverning a more primordial truth - and primordial truth goals do not deny the existence of Cartesian levels of reality and accept them as 'necessary'. 

On this view the detached Cartesian subject is not mistaken, rather it is criticised as not being primordial. If Mitchell applied this view to Stirner's Unique One, this isolated ego would not be seen as mistaken but simply as unprimordial. In fact, the book would have been greatly strengthened if the very conception of primordial truth itself as a goal had been further developed. 

Examination of primordial truth as a possible unity within experience rather than truth totality would have brought the 'ontological-ontic' distinction of Heidegger more to the fore and rejected the oversimplification of Heidegger 'the form of the Being of Dasein is social'. If Being as well as beings are to be equated with the social, what has happened to transcendental temporality which is prior to linear time, what has happened to death as a non-relational potentiality for being and how is Heidegger's rejection of empathy as primordial to be explained ? 

In Mitchell's treatment of early Heidegger, the reduction of 'relation' to 'the social world' spills over into his treatment of Laing - and amounts, at least in the view of this reviewer, to a serious distortion of both.

     Reviewed by Paul Downes