Heidegger wasn't mystical • gary e. davis • berkeley



		Heidegger was not a “mystical” philosopher. though some scholars misleadingly think otherwise gary e. davis		April 5, 2025
		I commented to the editor of a new collection of essays on Heidegger, coming in September, 2025, The Mystery of Being, which has the following misleading description.

This book…[is] delving into the inquiry of the mystical essence inherent in Heidegger's thought. Rather than confining "mystery" to the conventional realm of mysticism, separate from philosophy, the book investigates how the mystery of Being is integral to philosophy itself, shaping its performative and transformative nature. The book's central inquiry asks whether this mystical element is essential to Heidegger's thought and how it relates to traditional notions of mysticism. At its core, however, it questions the very essence of philosophy—its transformative potential—engaging with numerous themes in Heidegger's work while remaining attuned to the centrality and significance of the mystery of Being.

There’s no good reason to capitalize ‘being’. The common practice by Heidegger scholars mystifies what Heidegger is doing. His calling was kindred with asking: What is the meaning (the significance, the meaningfulness) of being alive?—alive being of oneSelf as a person being well, being True to one’s potential for being?

That can be quite a mystery. But it’s resolvable, person by person, without supernaturalism.

Of course, questions of meaningfulness can scale to any horizon of interest, though beginning immanently was Heidegger's idea.

But I didn’t go that way in my response. I wrote:

There is no mysticism in Heidegger’s thinking. He sometimes attends to writers who are mystical, but for phenomenological (conceptual) reasons.

And who confines “mystery” to mysticism except mystics? So, apparently the editor wants to draw mystics into philosophy.

The book would, then, be an inquiry (not “the” inquiry) into “mystical essence” mirrored in readings, i.e., readers’ issues with mysticism, working that out relative to Heideggerian terms of interest in mysteries of being.

Certainly, “the mystery of being is integral to philosophy itself,” but mysticism is not “inherent in Heidegger’s thought.” Mystification of mystery is integral to what Heidegger sought to deconstruct.

The “performative and transformative nature” of philosophy is educational, better understood as no longer oriented by transcendentalist longings. In particular here, philosophy seeks to de-mystify mysteries: enabling others to understand the conceptual, epistemic, ethical, and aesthetic features of mysteries.

Looking at the Table of Contents, the book is certainly about writers’ issues with mysticism, much in the spirit of [John] Caputo’s theologicist career. [Caputo writes the Fore word of the new book.] It’s useful for writers to consider “the mystical element” in their thinking, relative to Heidegger’s deconstructive interests.

But the results should bring one’s thinking back into realities, developmental and conceptually historical. To my mind, these realities are about understanding conceptualities (individual, cultural, social, and political), culminating in facing the open mystery of our evolving conceivability so far.

The editor, Eric Kuravsky, responded:

I agree that Heidegger is not a mystic in the traditional sense and the book is not meant to prove the opposite. If you look closer at the content, most of the essays engage with the mystery rather than with mysticism. Heidegger is clear that mystery is central to his thinking. This is a fact irrespective of how you interpret what he tries to do. Moreover, simple judgements such as Heidegger is X and not Y hardly fit the complexity and depth of Heidegger' thinking. One of the "results" of his thinking is, for example, an understanding that there are more than one meaning to "mysticism" and the most profound one is beyond this traditional label and is more directly connected to the realities you mention than what is normally meant by the "conceptual".

I am replying at length here (rather than at the Heidegger forum) to assert a stance which I humbly believe is important for appropriately understanding Heidegger’s deconstructive interests:

Thanks for your comments.

Since the contents of the book aren’t available, one has only the book description to think with.

The topic is evocative! I look forward to the book’s availability five months away. My comments entail your topic’s importance. Demystifying mysteries is very important to me.

So, I’m glad to read that “most of the essays engage with the mystery rather than with mysticism.” Certainly, “mystery is central to his thinking.” I wouldn’t intend to connote otherwise. And I’m certainly averse to “simple judgments.”

There is no “profound” meaning of ‘mystical’ (mysticism: an approach to what’s mystical). Its valid meaning is a post-supernaturalist (post-spiritualist) figure of speech for mystery. But spiritualist notions of mysticality have been profoundly influential in mythical, historical, cultural, social, and political life, like so many prevailing conceptions and ideologies.

“Spiritually” mystical understanding can be dissolved into real mysteries of one’s phen-
omenal life, culture, and conceivability, which can be phenomenally fascinating.

But Heidegger’s interest in mystical pretenses doesn’t imply that his understanding is spiritualist, of course. (Developing a critique of ideology doesn’t imply subscribing to it. Dispassionate journalism isn’t endorsing its often-absurd phenomena which are merely described and events merely narrated. This is profoundly pertinent to accurately not reading Heidegger as mystically Germanist, thereby antisemitic [actually framing how German ideologists narrate]; or thereby sympathetic to Hitlerism.)

So, in some sense, there is mysticism “in” Heidegger’s work, i.e., in the thinking of those whom he examines (and, by the way, there’s displaced mysticism in the thinking of readers who find him mysteriously culpable for surviving Hitlerized times).

But his thinking isn’t mystical in any sense of ‘mystical’ other than figurative for others’ feeling of mystery in the way he narrates.

I want to understand “mysticism” for what it is (always in quote marks): associating to historically mythical senses of mystery (usually supernaturalist).

Honest inquiry wants to dwell with mysteries, but undressed of spiritualist pretenses. Mystical thinking about Heidegger can be unconcealed as what it is: displacement of the reader’s “spiritual” reading where their “Heidegger” is a conceptual mirror. (Cf. “mirrorplay” in his lecture “The Thing,” where the “jug” can be a metaphor of phenomenal space we share through the lecture, now text, as well as there being that exemplary phenomenon personified: as if itself “granting” and “bearing” too, like reading: belonging in/with the thing of dwelling through a textual space, implying its textuality containing what belongs to the dwelling, such that “we”—enstancing reader and authorship—may “belong together in the same” (“Principle of Identity,” Identity and Difference) narrative pathing thereby enowned in an event of Appropriation.)

Understanding that Contributions to Philosophy is not “mystical” is important, if you’re a serious partner with Heidegger’s ways.. On Inception is not mystical. “Time and Being” is not mystical. Etc. (Heidegger rhetorically rejects the reading of his waymaking as mystical in “The End of Philosophy,” On Time and Being, p. 53, where ‘mystical’ is merely “an act of illumination.” No, he says, it’s “the entrance into dwelling in Appropriation,” i.e., enowning his discursive curriculum.)

Supernaturalist pretenses are phenomenlogically accessible as senses of undertanding which are psychological (especially for psychoanalytical interest), cultural, etc., implying interests and investments in the appeal of what’s not yet understood, but which compels one’s want of understanding—draws sensibility into advancing thought.

Accordingly, phenomenology is a kind of conceptual analysis of lifeworldly understanding which is always (in principle) on a way to better understanding. What is “normally meant by the ‘conceptual’” pertains to ordinary (status quo) attitudes which, to an analyst, are proximal for entering into better understanding: Conceptuality is always in one’s developmentality, where learning possibly never ends.

Thus, understanding the psychological, cultural, conceptual, social, and political characteristics of “mystical” notions and its phony warranting of very real preferences can be important for emancipating one’s thinking from antique pretenses.

Readers’ distinctively “mystical” interest in Heidegger’s thinking mirrors one’s current issues of understanding. Mystifying Heidegger mirrors one’s stage of conceivability.

Heidegger wanted mystical perspectives unconcealed as symptomatic. No wonder, then, that the only time after the mid-1920s in which Being and Time was an occasion for detailed discussion by him was with a group of psychiatrists.


		Be fair. © 2025, g. e. davis.