The Judgment and What Lies Beneath It

From Heidegger’s Interpretation of Leibniz to the Human Encounter in Social Work

I am reading volume 26 of Martin Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz. This was Heidegger’s final lecture course at Marburg, delivered in the summer of 1928, one year after the publication of Being and Time. The title may be translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Beginning with Leibniz.

As I work my way through Heidegger’s demanding interpretation of Leibniz, I realise that the question leads not only backwards into the history of philosophy, but also back to my own work with people and to the judgments that we, as professionals, so readily make about them:

He is unmotivated.

She lacks the will to change.

He does not take responsibility for his own life.

These, too, are logical judgments. A subject is connected to a predicate. But what happens when the predicate no longer describes something the person does and instead becomes a definition of who that person is?

A judgment is never merely a judgment.

The Logical Judgment

The first part of Heidegger’s lecture course has a demanding title: Destruktion der Leibnizschen Urteilslehre auf die metaphysischen Grundprobleme. Heidegger intends to undertake a “destruction” of Leibniz’s doctrine of judgment by tracing it back to its fundamental metaphysical problems.

For Leibniz, a true judgment is characterised by the fact that the predicate is, in some sense, already contained within the concept of the subject: praedicatum inest subjecto. The predicate lies concealed within the subject, rather as what is to grow lies concealed within the seed.

When we say that Socrates is mortal, we connect the subject “Socrates” with the predicate “mortal.” According to Leibniz, the statement is true because mortality is already included within the complete concept of Socrates. In every true affirmative judgment, the predicate is contained within the subject.

At first, this may appear to be a purely logical theory. Heidegger, however, asks what must already have been presupposed for reality to be understood in this way.

If the predicate is already contained within the concept of the subject, then what exists must be understood as something that carries its properties and possibilities within itself. The logical form of subject and predicate therefore points back to a particular metaphysical understanding of reality. Heidegger finds this understanding in Leibniz’s monad: the unity that represents the world from its own perspective and unfolds its inner possibilities.

The relationship between logic and metaphysics is thereby reversed. Logic does not first determine how reality must be understood. The logical judgment is itself possible because a particular understanding of reality is already at work.

Logic rests upon a metaphysics.

Opening the Tradition

Heidegger’s Destruktion does not mean destruction in the ordinary sense. He does not wish to discard Leibniz or prove that his philosophy is wrong. Destruction is, rather, a dismantling. Heidegger takes the doctrine of judgment apart, layer by layer, in order to examine what supports it.

From judgment, he proceeds to truth. From truth, he moves to the principles of identity, non-contradiction, and sufficient reason. From there, he continues to knowledge, the monad, and the question of what it means to be. He moves from the visible statement to its invisible presuppositions.

This is also the method we recognise from Being and Time. Tradition is not to be thrown away. It must be worked through. Concepts have a history, and that history has become sedimented in language. Gradually, the concepts begin to appear natural and self-evident. We forget the questions they once attempted to answer.

Destruction is meant to release those questions once again.

Jacques Derrida’s term déconstruction has a direct connection with Heidegger’s concepts of Destruktion and Abbau. Derrida, too, seeks to dismantle concepts from within and to show how a text depends upon presuppositions, oppositions, and hierarchies that it does not fully control.

But Derrida carries the movement further. Heidegger often seeks to return to a more originary experience of Being. Derrida asks whether such an originary ground can ever become fully present. The words “origin,” “ground,” and “Being” also have histories. They come to us through language, differences, and traces of other concepts.

Heidegger asks what understanding of Being lies concealed beneath the judgment. Derrida asks whether that understanding can itself be established as a final ground.

Deconstruction, therefore, does not mean tearing a text down. It requires us to read slowly and carefully. We follow the concepts to the point where they begin to move, contradict one another, or reveal more than the author was able to control.

Caputo and Unfinished Understanding

John D. Caputo’s radical hermeneutics emerges in the space between Heidegger and Derrida. In Radical Hermeneutics, he seeks to read Heidegger more radically and Derrida more hermeneutically.

From Heidegger, Caputo takes the understanding that we always already find ourselves in an interpreted world. There is no neutral vantage point outside history, language, and life. From Derrida, he takes the suspicion directed towards the idea that interpretation can be traced back to a final and secure ground.

Hermeneutics becomes radical when it no longer promises that the final interpretation will one day be found. This does not mean that all interpretations are equally sound, or that nothing is true. It means that understanding must remain open to being tested again. It must be capable of correction by the text, by experience, and by the other person.

We must be able to interpret again.

Caputo connects this with movement—kinesis. Understanding is not a state at which we finally arrive. We return to the same text, the same street, or the same person, but neither the text, the street, the person, nor the reader is any longer quite the same.

Here Caputo approaches Kierkegaard’s understanding of repetition. Repetition is not the mechanical return of what has already been. It moves forwards. The same returns, but it returns as a new possibility.

Human life is not completed. It is repeated.

The Professional Judgment

The distance between Leibniz’s doctrine of judgment and the practice of social work may appear considerable. Yet the language of both the social worker and the therapist also consists of judgments.

“He is unmotivated.”

“She resists treatment.”

“He lacks insight.”

“She is unable to put the past behind her.”

Such statements may be intended as provisional professional descriptions. Nevertheless, the predicate can gradually attach itself to the person. Being unmotivated becomes something he is. Resistance becomes something she carries within herself. The record remembers the formulation, and the next helper encounters not only the person, but also the judgment that has already been written.

A Heideggerian destruction of such statements would ask what view of the human being makes them possible. What counts as motivation? Who has determined the purpose of change? How quickly must a person change before we recognise the movement as real?

The professional judgment also rests upon a metaphysics.

A Derridean deconstruction would examine the oppositions that support the judgment: motivated or unmotivated, development or stagnation, responsible or irresponsible, helper or client. These oppositions are rarely as pure as they appear. The person who refuses treatment may also be trying to preserve a remnant of self-determination. What is described as resistance may also be protection. The person who returns to the same street may be moving in a way that the helping system does not recognise.

Deconstruction does not tell us in advance which interpretation is correct. It reminds us that our categories both reveal and conceal. They help us to see, but at the same time they determine what becomes visible.

When Movement Is Almost Invisible

During my work at the Incest Centre and as a therapist, I met people who returned to the same memories and the same stories. From the outside, it could appear that the conversation was going in circles. The same things were said once again. The pain remained. The past could not be left behind.

Yet the repetition was never quite the same.

Movement might appear in a pause that was allowed to last a little longer this time. A person might speak about what had happened without immediately withdrawing the words. Their gaze might remain for a moment instead of turning away. A sentence might change its form: from “it happened” to “he did it.” They were only a few words, but responsibility had shifted. Shame had begun to loosen its hold on the person who had been violated and to return to the one who had violated them.

No scale of measurement would necessarily have registered this. Yet the entire story might have been beginning to change.

Street outreach workers may likewise encounter the same people who use drugs over a period of twenty years. They see them on the same street corner and perhaps with the same problems. From the outside, it is easy to say that nothing is happening. Yet these people move every day. They find shelter, warmth, companionship, and places where they can be left in peace. The street is not merely somewhere they remain. It may have become part of the way they survive.

Can a person move when they continually return to the same place?

Kierkegaard’s repetition helps us to see that returning does not necessarily mean standing still. Caputo’s radical hermeneutics helps us to understand that the encounter must also be repeated. The social worker does not simply meet the same person again. Both have lived since the previous encounter. Something may have happened that is not visible in the record. What matters may not appear as a great transformation, but in a moment when the old judgment is no longer permitted to determine the entire encounter.

The Judgment Must Remain Open

Heidegger’s reading of Leibniz shows that a judgment is not innocent. Beneath its logical form lies an understanding of truth, the human being, and reality. Derrida shows that this underlying understanding cannot itself be made into a final ground. Caputo transforms this unease into a hermeneutic responsibility.

We cannot refrain from making judgments. The social worker must assess, decide, and sometimes intervene. The therapist must listen, interpret, and accept that understanding remains provisional. But the judgment must not be allowed to imprison the person within the predicate we have assigned to them.

“He is unmotivated” cannot be the final sentence.

Deconstruction does not release us from responsibility. It intensifies responsibility by reminding us that every judgment rests upon presuppositions we do not fully control. The judgment must therefore remain open to examination, dismantling, and renewed interpretation.

They may still move, even when we cannot see the movement. The helper, too, may move and discover that the understanding they brought with them is no longer adequate.

The street finds them. The street finds the helpers. The road found me.

And interpretation must begin again.