ABSTRACT
It is well-known that Kant considered it “a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfying proof.” 1 And now, it has become no less well-known that for Heidegger “the scandal of philosophy is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.” 2 Kant intended to provide a conclusive proof to solve this problem once and for all and therefore to put the supposed scandal to an end. But the proof given by Kant in the section “Refutation of Idealism,” which was added in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, did not turn out to be conclusive and satisfying enough either. Not only did Kant himself find it not inadmissible to any improvement and try to rectify its shortcomings with a long note in the preface to the second edition, 3 but subsequent philosophers are also far from convinced by Kant’s proof, proposing other solutions to the same problem time and again. 4 Indeed, especially after “the extravagant idealism of Hegel” 5 has given this problem a new edge, if there is any agreement that can be said to be reached after Kant’s treatment of it, it is that the problem not only remains unresolved, but it has become even more muddled and intractable. Heidegger, on the contrary, tried to dissolve rather than solve the problem. Instead of contriving another subtle proof of the “existence of things outside us,” Heidegger tried to show that the problem will dissolve or collapse and the demand for such proof appear absurd and pointless as soon as we get a sufficient understanding of the ontological structure of the very kind of being which poses the question about the existence of things outside, and of which the existence of things is supposed to be independent. Insofar as Heidegger’s treatment of “the problem of reality” (Realitätsproblem) is not only vital to his earlier period of thinking, but is also relevant to a number of hotly debated issues in contemporary philosophy, I propose in this essay to give an account of the history in which Heidegger was involved with this problem. And at the end of it, I will discuss the intensely debated question of whether Heidegger himself can be interpreted as holding either realism or idealism.
