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Phenomenological Philosophy
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a German philosopher who was
born in Prossnitz, Moravia. He taught philosophy at the
universities of Halle, Gttingen, and Freiburg. Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976) was among his students and succeeded him as
professor of philosophy at Freiburg after his retirement. Husserl
had an important influence on Heidegger, on existential
phenomenology, and on the philosophy of mind.
Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1931) defines
phenomenology as a descriptive analysis of the essence of pure
consciousness. Husserl defines pure or transcendental
phenomenology as an a priori (or eidectic) science (a science of
essential being). He distinguishes between pure phenomenology
and empirical psychology (and between transcendental and
psychological subjectivity), saying that phenomenology is a
science of essences, while psychology is a science of the facts of
experience. He criticizes "psychologism" (the theory that
psychological analysis may be used as a method of resolving
philosophical problems), and he says that only an a priori science
can define the essential nature of being.
The Ideas are divided into four sections: (1) "The Nature and
Knowledge of Essential Being," (2) "The Fundamental
Phenomenological Outlook," (3) "Procedure of Pure
Phenomenology In Respect of Methods and Problems," and (4)
"Reason and Reality." The first section describes how the realm of
essence differs from the realm of facts. The second section
describes how phenomenological reduction may be used as a
method of philosophical inquiry. The third section describes how
noesis and noema may be defined as phases of intentionality. The
fourth section describes the relation between consciousness and
noematic meaning.
Husserl distinguishes between phenomenology as a science of pure
consciousness and psychology as a science of empirical facts. For
Husserl, the realm of pure consciousness is distinct from the realm
of real experience. Husserl explains that phenomenology is a
theory of pure phenomena, and that it is not a theory of actual
experiences (or of actual facts or realities).
According to Husserl, essential being must be distinguished from
actual existence, just as the pure ego must be distinguished from
the psychological ego. Essences are non-real, while facts are real.
The realm of transcendentally reduced phenomena is non-real,
while the realm of actual experience is real. Thus,
phenomenological reduction leads from knowledge of the
essentially real to knowledge of the essentially non-real.
Phenomenological reduction is a process of defining the pure
essence of a psychological phenomenon. It is a process whereby
empirical subjectivity is suspended, so that pure consciousness
may be defined in its essential and absolute being. This is
accomplished by a method of "bracketing" empirical data away
from consideration. "Bracketing" empirical data away from further
investigation leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the
pure ego as the residue of phenomenological reduction.
Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing
empirical intuitions away from philosophical inquiry, by refraining
from making judgments upon them. Husserl uses the term
epoche(Greek, for "a cessation") to refer to this suspension of
judgment regarding the true nature of reality. Bracketed judgment
is an epoche or suspension of inquiry, which places in brackets
whatever facts belong to essential being.
Bracketing is also a neutralization of belief. "Doxic positing" (the
positing of belief) may be actual or potential. Doxic positing may
occur in every kind of consciousness, because every consciousness
may actually or potentially posit something about being.
Facts or realities are the objective data of empirical intution, says
Husserl, but essences are the objective data of essential intuition.
Empirical intuition may lead to essential intuition (or essential
insight), which may be adequate or inadequate in terms of its
clearness and distinctness. Empirical or non-empirical objects may
have varying degrees of intuitability, and empirical or non-
empirical intuitions may vary in their clearness and distinctness.
Non-empirical intuitions may apprehend objects that are produced
by fantasy or imagination.
Husserl describes consciousness as intentional insofar as it refers
to, or is directed at, an object. Intentionality is a property of
directedness toward an object. Consciousness may have intentional
and non-intentional phases, but intentionality is the property that
gives consciousness its objective meaning.
The cogito ("I think") is the principle of the pure ego. The pure ego
performs acts of consciousness (cogitations) that may be
immanently or transcendently directed. Immanently directed acts
of consciousness refer to objects that are within the same ego or
that belong to the same stream of consciousness. Transcendently
directed acts of consciousness refer to objects that are outside the
ego or that belong to a different stream of consciousness. The
objects of consciousness (cogitata) are the embodied or
unembodied things that are perceived and consciously experienced.
The difference between immanent and transcendent perception
reflects the difference between being as experience and being as
thing.1 Things as they exist in themselves cannot be perceived
immanently, and they can only be perceived transcendently. The
difference between immanent and transcendent perception also
reflects the difference in the way in which things are given and
presented to consciousness. Givenness may be adequate or
inadequate in terms of its clearness and distinctness, and in terms
of its intuitability.
Immanently perceived objects have an absolute being insofar as
their existence is logically necessary. The existence of
transcendently perceived objects is not logically necessary, insofar
as their existence is not proved by the being of conciousness itself.
Consciousness itself is absolute being, but the spatial-temporal
world is merely phenomenal being.
Husserl emphasizes that phenomenology is concerned with the
essence of whatever is immanent in consciousness, and that it is
concerned with describing immanent essences. To confuse the
essences of things with the mental representations of those
essences is to confuse the aims of phenomenology and psychology.
Phenomenology is a descriptive analysis of being as consciousness,
while psychology is a descriptive analysis of being as reality. The
difference between being as consciousness and being as reality is
also the difference between transcendental and transcendent being.
Every actual cogito has an intentional object (and is a mode of
thinking about something). The cogito itself may become a
cogitatum if the principle that "I think" becomes an object of
consciousness. Thus, in the cogito, the act of thinking may become
an intentional object. However, in contrast to the Cartesian
principle that "I think, therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum), the
phenomenologically reduced cogito is a suspension of judgment
about whether "I am" or whether "I exist." The
phenomenologically reduced cogito is a suspension of judgment
about the question of whether thinking implies existence. Thus,
phenomenology examines the cogito as a pure intuition, and as an
act of pure consciousness.
Husserl describes noesis and noema as two phases of intentionality.
Noesis is the process of cogitation, while the noemata (or cogitata)
are that which is cogitated. Every intentional experience has a
noetic (real) phase and a noematic (non-real) phase. Every noetic
phase of consciousness corresponds to a noematic phase of
consciousness. Noesis is a process of reasoning that assigns
meaning to intentional objects. Both noesis and noema may be
sources of objective meaning. The noetic meaning of transcendent
objects is discoverable by reason, while the noematic meaning of
immanent objects is discoverable by pure intuition. Noetic
meaning is transcendent, while noematic meaning is immanent.
Thus, noesis and noema correspond respectively to experience and
essence.
FOOTNOTES
1Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (London:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1931), p. 133.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. London:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1931.
...................
What is Existential-Phenomenology?
What is Phenomenology?
"As good a place to begin as any is the meaning of the term
phenomenology itself. It is derived from the two Greek words:
phainomenon (an "appearance") and logos ("reason" or "word,"
hence a "reasoned inquiry"). Phenomenology is indeed a reasoned
inquiry which discovers the inherent essences of appearances. But
what is an appearance? The answer to this question leads to one of
the major themes of phenomenology: an appearance is anything of
which one is conscious. Anything at all which appears to
consciousness is a legitimate area of philosophical investigation.
Moreover, an appearance is a manifestation of the essence of that
of which it is the appearance. Surprising as it may sound, other
philosophic points of view have refused to make this move."
--David Stewart & Algis Mickunas, Exploring Phenomenology, p.
3
"...one can characterize phenomenological philosophy as centering
on the following basic themes: a return to the traditional tasks of
philosophy, the search for a philosophy without presuppositions,
the intentionality of consciousness, and the refusal of the subject-
object dichotomy."
--David Stewart & Algis Mickunas, Exploring Phenomenology, p.
5
"For Husserl, phenomenology was a discipline that attempts to
describe what is given to us in experience without obscuring
preconceptions or hypothetical speculations; his motto was 'to the
things themselves'--rather than to the prefabricated conceptions we
put in their place. As Husserl saw it, this attempt offered the only
way out of the impasse into which philosophy had run at the end of
the nineteenth century when the realists, who affirmed the
independent existence of the object, and the idealists, who affirmed
the priority of the subject, had settled down into a stalemated war.
Instead of making intellectual speculations about the whole of
reality, philosophy must turn, Husserl declared, to a pure
description of what is. In taking this position Husserl became the
most influential force not only upon Heidegger but upon the whole
generation of German philosophers who came to maturity about
the time of the First World War."
--William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential
Philosophy, pp. 190-191
"...Husserl's logic is one bound to the immediacy of all experience
itself insofar as phenomena are understood as givens in their
immediate and irreducible presentative force. Most simply, Husserl
is after the formal qualities of the concrete reality which human
beings recognize as their experience, but from here means the
essential immanent in the particular: the truth of the given. The
history of Husserl's development as a philosopher supports the
thesis that throughout his life he was, at various levels, searching
for an architectonic of thought . . . which would express and
uncover the specificity of the world. If the term 'logic' be
understood in its philosophic sense as a grounding discipline for all
reflection, then phenomenology as a logic treats the genesis and
development of phenomena from their most primordial roots in
prereflective consciousness to their most reflectively sophisticated
exemplification in science."
--Maurice Natanson, "Phenomenology and the Social Sciences," In
M. Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences,
Volume 1, pp. 4-5
"Phenomenology is a science of 'beginnings.' The genuine beginner
is an adept, not a novice. To begin, in this sense, is to start from the
primordial grounds of evidence, from onself as the center (not the
sum) of philosophical experience. Such self-centeredness is the
opposite of philosophic hubris; it is a confession of humility: the
admission that, unless the inquirer has turned to himself in full
awareness of his life, he cannot claim to have sought, let alone
found, the truth. . .
The genuine beginner is, then, the most sophisticated of all
thinkers, for, beyond honoring the Socratic injunction, he is
unwilling to admit as taken for granted that which impinges most
heavily on his outlook as a man in the world: the root assumption
that, though we may be ignorant of philosophic truth, we are, after
all, beings in a real world in which philosophic doubt emerges as
something worth bothering about."
--Maurice Natanson, "Phenomenology and the Social Sciences," In
M. Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences,
Volume 1, p. 6-8
". . .one learned what phenomenology is step by step, through
reading, discussion, and reflection ... What is needed is rather
simple: to learn what is mean by the natural attitude, to
practiceepoche, to attempt descriptions of presentations without
prejudicing the results by taking for granted the history, causality,
intersubjectivity, and value we ordinarily associate with our
experience, and to examine with absolute care the fabric of the
world of daily life so that we may grasp its source and its
direction . . .
There is a legitimate sense in which it is necesary to say that one
must become a phenomenologist in order to comprehend
phenomenology."
--Maurice Natanson, "Phenomenology and the Social Sciences," In
M. Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences,
Volume 1, pp. p. 8
". . . at the end of his career, Husserl admitted that the first result of
reflection is to bring us back into the presence of the world as wel
lived it before our reflection began (Lebenswelt)."
--Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenology and the Sciences of
Man," In M. Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social
Sciences, Volume 1, p. 54
"During the whole career of Husserl . . . the struggle is on two
fronts. On the one hand it is a struggle against psychologism and
historicism, in so far as they reduce the life of man to a mere result
of external conditions acting on him and see the philosophizing
person as entirely determined from the outside, lacking any contact
with his own thought and therefore destined to skepticism. But on
the other hand, it is also a struggle against logicism, in so far as
this is attempting to arrange for us an access to the truth lacking
any contact with contingent experience. Husserl is seeking to
reaffirm rationality at the level of experience, without sacrificing
the vast variety that it includes and accepting all the processes of
conditioning which psychology, sociology, and history reveal. It is
a question of finding a method which will enable us to think at the
same time of the externality which is the principle of the sciences
of man and of the internality which is the condition of philosophy,
of the contingencies without which there is no situation as well as
of the rational certainty without which there is no knowledge."
--Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenology and the Sciences of
Man," In M. Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social
Sciences, Volume 1, p. 57
"The first step in phenomenological philosophy is reflection on the
meaning or essence of the experience of consciousness.
'Phenomenological positivism' beings with the facts of experience
and is followed by reflection, intuition, and description of the
phenomena of consciousness. Husserl sought by the study of the
phenomena of consciousness to find the roots of reason in our
human experience. So understood, phenomenology as a philosophy
is the science of the sciences, providing the principles which
validate, a priori, all the sciences.
The concept of the 'intentionality of consciousness' is the
foundation of phenomenological philosophy . . . Husserl adopted
Brentano's notion of intentionality and refined it.
Husserl distinguished between the act of knowing (noesis) from the
object (noema), whether existent or imaginary. To be conscious is
to experience an act of knowing in which the subject is aware of an
object. A conscious act is an act of awareness in which the subject
is presented with an object.
Husserl distinguishes further between perception and intuition.
One may perceive and be conscious of the fact that one perceives
an object without understanding its essence, what it is, its principle
of being and identity. Intuition of the essence of an object is the
source of meaning and intelligibility of the particular phenomena.
Eidetic intuition (Wessenschau) is insight into essences through the
experiencing of exemplifying particulars. Such particulars may be
given in either perception or imagination."
--David Bidney, "Phenomenological Method and the
Anthropological Science of the Cultural Life-World," In M.
Natanson (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, Volume
1, p. 57
"There are two fundamental moments in Husserl's
phenomenological epoche which, although they are correlated, can
be distinguished: 1) the reduction to the sphere of immanence, and
2) the movement from fact to essence. The first of these . . .
requires suspension of the natural attitude and placing in abeyance
all belief in the existence of the transcendent world. The second,
sometimes call the eidetic reduction, requires a shift to consider
things not as realities but as instances of idealities, as pure
possibilities rather than actualities. For Husserl, this second
reduction is necessary to fuflill the conditions for genuinely
rigorous science. Those conditions, already announced by
Descartes under the heaing of clarity and distinctness, already are
apodicticity (that is, the certainty that requires absolute
transparency) and univocity (that is, absence of ambiguity). When
science is conceived this way, its objects are no longer worldly
things, but rather essences: meanings, categories, ideal types, and
laws. For Husserl, rigorous science operates exclusively within the
sphere of ideality--and must do so in order to meet the standards of
atemporality embodied in what he conceives as the very idea of
science. Although it is not identified as such by Husserl, this is an
ancient idea which is generally attributed to Parmenides: only that
can be known which is, and that which genuinely is excludes
coming into being and passing away. The objects of rigorous
science must be atemporal essences whose atemporality is ensured
by their ideality.
This Eleatic strain in Husserl's thought culminates in the standpoint
that meaning (Sinn) in general is timeless and ideal. The ancient
question of how atemporal meanings become instantiated in the
flux of everyday actuality can be addressed by calling upon a
central distinction in Husserl's theory of intentionality: the
distinction between the act of intending (noesis) and the meaning-
content (noema) of the object intended. The noetic act is real in the
sense that it is a temporal even in which hyletic data (or "sensory
contents") are synthesized and apprehended by consciousness as an
intentional object. The noema, on the other hand, is ideal: it
conveys the atemporal meaning which provides the form (morphe)
according to which consciousness synthesizes its mattery or
sensory data (hyle). Thus, every intentional act (noesis) is an
actualization or realization of a timeless meaning."
--M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, p. 71
Summary:
Phenomenology, beginning with Edmund Husserl, urges that the
world of immediate or "lived" experience takes precendence over
the objectified and abstract world of the "natural attitude" of
natural science. Science as such, thus, is secondary to the world of
concrete, lived experience. Phenomenology, therefore, engages in a
process known as "bracketing" in which the "natural attitude" is
placed aside such that the researcher may begin with "the things
themselves," as Husserl said or, in other words, in the
phenomena as they show themselves in experience. In Heidegger's
terminology, phenomenology involves letting things "show
themselves from themselves in the very way in which they show
themselves from themselves." By definition, phenomenology never
begins with a theory, but, instead, always begins anew with the
phenomena under consideration. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's famous
description of phenomenology is quite instructive; as he writes, the
phenomenologist returns "to the world which precedes (scientific
description), (the world) of which science always speaks, and in
relation to which every scientific characterization is an abstract and
derivative sign language, as is geography in relation to the
countryside."
In Husserlian phenomenology, consciousness is understood as
fundamentally intentional. In this sense, Husserl is, in part,
indebted to Franz Brentano's "Act psychology," which held that all
mental acts are characterized by "intentionality." Consciousness as
an act, that is, is always positing a world; in other words, it is
always "of" or "about" something. Following Brentano, Husserl
holds that consciousness is never directed toward itself, but, rather,
is always directed toward phenomena in the world. It follows,
therefore, that any abstraction is ultimately based on phenomena in
the world, and, thus, are secondary to the primary lived experience
of phenomena as they "show themselves."
Husserl brings to this understanding something unique, his
phenomenological method, which is characterized by Husserl's
"epoche." As mentioned previously, "epoche" is a "bracketing" of
the "natural attitude" so that one can attend to a phenomenon as it
shows itself. Once the "natural attitude" is "bracketed," one can
then attend to what, according to Husserl, are the two poles of
experience, noema and noesis. Noesis is the act of perceiving,
while noema is that which is perceived. Through this method, for
Husserl, one can perform an "eidetic reduction." Noema can be
reduced to their essential form or "essence." Husserl's
phenomenology, in this sense, is a form of idealism, since it aims
toward discovering the ideal form of phenomena, the essence or
Eideia(such as with Plato and Hegel). Further, Husserl shares with
the idealist a tendency to stress a priori conditions of knowledge
(such as with Plato and Kant).
What is Existentialism?
"Existentialism is well known in this country both as a literary and
philosophical movement, but its roots in phenomenology are not as
widely understood. Historically, the roots of existential philosophy
can be traced to the nineteenth-century writings of Soren
Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Central to the work of this figures was an emphasis on the existing
individual, and a call for a consideration of man in his concrete
situation, including his culture, history, relations with others, and
above all, the meaning of personal existence."
--David Stewart & Algis Mickunas, Exploring Phenomenology, p.
63
"The very notion that existentialism is something that can be
defined in a catch phrase, orthat one can merely know about it
without understanding it from within, has made it, for some people,
into an intellectual fad and robbed it of its proper seriousness. Yet
existentialism is not merely a fad any more than it is a single, well-
defined movement within philosophy. It is a powerful stream,
welling up from underground sources, converging and diverging,
but flowing forward and carrying with it many of the most
important intellectual tendencies and literary and cultural
manifestations of our day. . .
'Existentialism' is not a philosophy but a mood embracing a
number of disparate philosophies; the differences among them are
more basic than the temper which unites them. This temper can be
described as a reaction against the static, the abstract, the purely
rational, the merely irrational, in favor of the dynmaic and
concrete, personal involvement and 'engagement,' action, choice
and commitment, the distinction between 'authentic' and
'inauthentic' existence, and the actual situation of the existential
subject as the starting point of thought. Beyond this the so-called
existentialists divide according to their views on such matters as
phenomenological analysis, the existential subject, the
intersubjective relation between selves, religion, and the
implications of existentialism for psychotherapy. . .
Insofar as one can define existentialism, it is a movement from the
abstract and the general to the particular and the concrete. . .
The root of 'existentialism' is, of course, 'existence.' That might
seem to include just about everything, and by the same token to say
nothing, were it not for the traditions in the history of religion and
the history of philosophy which have tended to look away from the
'passing flux' of existence to a realm of pure 'Being,' unchanging
and eternal, a world of ideal essences or a formless absolute
beyond these essences, in comparison with which the particulars of
our earthly life are seen as merely phenomena--the shadows in
Plato's cave which at best reflect in wavering and unsteady fashion,
and more usually obscure, that essential reality which is not
directly accessible to man through 'the life of the senses' . . .
Insofar as any philosopher has turned away from the tendency to
locate the really real in a separate metaphysical sphere of essences
in favor of the greater reality of personal existence in the here and
now, he stands for an existentialist trend within the history of
philosophy . . .
It is in [the] emphasis upon the existential subject that the crucial
distinction is found between existentialm and the various brands of
empiricism, positivism, and instrumentalism that also emphasize
the particular, the concrete, and the here and now. For these latter
the particular is still seen from without, from the standpoint of the
detached observer, rather than from within, from the standpoint of
lived life."
--Maurice Friedman, The Worlds of Existentialism: A Critical
Reader, pp. 3-9
Summary:
The origin of existentialism is typically attributed to the work of
Kierkegaard. However, the precursory thinkers who influenced this
school of thought are varied, including Pascal, Hegel,Nietzsche,
and Dostoyevsky, to name a few. One can just as well point back to
the Greeks as influences, since Heidegger emphasized a return to
the central themes in philosophy questions pertaining to Being
(the ontological) as opposed to beings (the ontic). Nevertheless, it
is generally agreed that Kierkegaard is the "father" of
existentialism.
Kierkegaard was a critic of the Christian churches of his day,
which he felt had contributed to a forgetfulness of "existence." By
"existence," Kierkegaard meant the particular form of human
existence which is unique. Each "individual" human being is cast
into the world unfinished and finite, yet, nevertheless, must take
responsibility for his or her choices. Responsibility as such is the
result of the "individual's" free choice, yet, characteristic of human
beings, these choices are always made in the face of the unknown,
our finititude, and, therefore, they lead to "dread." "Dread," in this
sense, is the recognition that one's choices our one's own, despite
the fact that one can never know for certain whether these choices
will bear out in the end. Kierkegaard held great contempt for those
who relied on the "crowd" to take responsibility for individual
choice. For Kierkegaard, one must answer to God as an individual,
naked and apart from the "crowd." Thus, ultimately, our faith must
involve a "leap," since the human being is precluded from finality
and certitude.
Existentialism, as such, is actually a 20th century movement,
despite its roots in Kierkegaard and others. While Kierkegaard
philosophized existentially, which influenced the existentialists of
the 20th century, he did not hold to the existential axiom that
"existence precedes essence," as Sartre asserted. With all of the
existentialist thinkers of the 20th century, there are common
themes, despite great diversity. Whether one looks to Heidegger,
Sartre, Buber, Merleau-Ponty, or De Beauvoir, to name a few, one
finds a basic attitude, despite the major differences among these
thinkers. These commonalites, which bind these theorists together,
can be flushed out and this, in essence, is what one may call
"existentialism." There is some justifiable irony in the fact that
most of these thinkers rejected the term "existentialism." This
tendency to reject any simple definition is descriptive of
existentialism as a whole, since existentialism, as a movement,
resists simplistic categories and abstraction. For the existentialist,
truth' is found "in-the-world" and, thereby, always begins with the
concrete; that is, in existence. And grounded in existence as such,
this means that one's thought must necessarily be perspectival and
limited. Despite these limitations, the common themes of
existentialism include:
1. The human being is a "being-in-the-world." That is, the human
kind of being is always already involved in meaningful projects
with others and alongside things. As Heidegger would say, the
human being is "there being" (Dasein) -- meaning that the human
being exists as the projection of possibilities which open up as a
world. In this sense, the human being is not "in the world" like a
match is in a matchbox. Rather, the human being is "in-the-world"
in the sense that one is in trouble' or in a relationship.'
2. As "being-in-the world," the human being is "thrown" into that
"world" such that she finds herself in the midst of the givens' of
existence. One does not choose one's parents, the place of one's
birth or the fact that one will die, yet, despite these circumstances,
the human being is faced with the freedom to respond to these
givens' of existence. In this sense, human beings can be said to be
response-able.'
3. As "being-in-the-world," the human being is always "with
others." Even being alone can be said to be a mode of being-with-
others, since one cannot be alone unless this is first understood
secondarily as a being-away-from-others. Moreover, our being-
with-others is always as a relationship of some sort, and, being so,
we are both shaped by others and shape those others with whom
we relate.
4. Human beings are always "in-the-world" alongside things.
Things, in terms of existence, are not mere extension in space.
Rather, things exist as meaningful entities which, in one form or
another, call to the human being as significant in terms of the
human being's projection of possibilities. A thing is a thing when it
matters to me in one form or another when, as a thing, it enters
into the clearing by which I am either helped or hindered on my
way toward realizing my projects "in-the-world."
5. Human beings are not things. A thing does not exist as a "being-
in-the-world," since, as a thing, it has no world. For a thing,
nothing matters. Things can only matter for a human being, since it
is only in the world of the human being that things can have
meaning. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to treat human beings
as things,' such as with biology. To provide an example: A corpse
is a thing. A dead person is not a thing, but rather a human being
who no longer lives. One can treat a corpse like a thing, but not a
dead person. This is clear in terms of our relating to others. When I
am with another human being, I fully recongize that I exist as an
other to the other person. However, with a thing, say a rock, I do
not exist for it for I fully recognize that the rock does not exist
in the sense that a human being exists. The rock is not "in-the-
world."
6. Human beings are finite. As a "being-in-the-world," we
recognize that death is a "not-to-be-outstripped" (inevitable)
possibility. Death as such is the possibility of the end of all
possibilities. Existence, therefore, is not limitless, but inevitably
must face up to the mystery of the "nothingness," that which lies
beyond what can be known as a "being-in-the-world." As a "being-
towards-death," as Heidegger would say, the human being becomes
aware that she cannot have all the possibilities. Faced with the
recognition of one's finitude, one also recognizes that one is always
faced with choices. In making a choice, I simultaneously eliminate
thousands of other possible choices. And, yet, making such a
choice, I can never know with absolute certainty that I have made
the right' choice. With this freedom to choose, I am faced with the
responsibility for my own existence.
7. Faced with such freedom, responsibility and finitude, I am
confronted with anxiety and guilt. I am anxious in the face of the
fact that my choice may render a death to my world. Further, in
recognition that with my choice I eliminate other choices, I am
guilty.'
8. Immediate experience has priority over theoretical assumptions.
9. All experience is both physical and mental: How this is so varies
greatly from thinker to thinker.
What is Existential-Phenomenology?
"Failure to see [the] intimate connection between phenomenology
and existentialism will result in thinking of existentialism as only a
subjective reaction against systematic thinnking and not as a
philosophic movmenet with its own set of problems and methods."
--David Stewart & Algis Mickunas, Exploring Phenomenology, p.
63
"Whereas Husserl saw the task of transcendental phenomenology
to be that o describing the lived world from the viewpoint of a
detached observer, existential phenomenology insists that the
observer cannot separate himself from the world. Existential
phenomenologists followed out more rigorously the implications of
the doctrine of intentionality of consciousness. Since
consciousness is always consciousness of . . ., the world is not only
the correlate of consciousness but that without which there would
be no consciousness. Consequently, for existential phenomenology,
the modalities of conscious experience are also the ways one is in
the world. This shift of the notion of the Lebenswelt (lived-world)
to the emphasis upon being-in-the-world expanded
phenomenology in a way that allowed it to consider the totality of
human relationships in the world in terms of the individual's
concrete existence.
The very terminology itself, being-in-the-world, is existentialism's
attempt to avoid reference to human reality in terms either of a
thinking substance or a perceiving subject closed in upon itself
facing physical objects which may or may not be knowable. Being-
in-the-world refers exclusively to human reality in contrast to
nonhuman reality, and although the specific terminology has varied
among existentialists, common to all is the insistence that human
reality is situated in a concrete world-context. In short, man is only
man as a result of his actions which are worked out in the world.
But there is still the reciprocal relationship that phenomenology
insists on: The total ensemble of human actions--including
thoughts, moods, efforts, emotions, and so forth--define the context
in which man situates himself. But, in turn, the world-context
defines and sets limits to human action.
Also central to an understanding of being-in-the-world is the
existentialist insistence that this is not a concept that arises only in
reflection. Even prior to reflection upon one's awareness of being-
in-the-world there is already a prereflective grasp of the basic
modalities which are his ways of being-in-the-world. In
prereflective experience, the subject and world are not distinct;
they are rather the givens of concrete experience which can only be
separated by a process of abstraction. Any reflection--whether
theoretical or practical--already assumes man's prereflective
experience of the world and his activity in the world. The word
existence is usually used by existentialists to refer only to human
reality, for what it means to exist is to be always engaged in tasks
in the world."
--David Stewart & Algis Mickunas, Exploring Phenomenology, pp.
64-65
"Soren Kierkegaard is the founder of existentialism, but one could
hardly call him a phenomenologist. Husserl launched
phenomenology, but was not an existentialist. Thus there was a
time when a distinction needed to be made between existentialism
and phenomenology. Today, however, we also speak of existential
phenomenology or phenomenological existentialism. So the
question may be asked: what is the difference between
existentialism and phenomenology, and how did the unified
movement of existential-phenomenological thinking arise?
Let us point out first of all that there exists a certain harmony
between Husserl and Kierkegaard. It manifests itself in their
common resistance to the atomistic way of looking at man and
things human. Man is not more or less like an atom. The way in
which Kierkegaard and Husserl resisted that view differs:
Kierkegaard speaks of man, while Husserl practically limits
himself to consciousness or knowledge. Kierkegaard conceived
man as 'existence,' as a subject-in-relationship-to-God. Man is not
a self-sufficient spiritual 'atom' but, as a subject, is only
authentically himself in his relationship to the God of revelation.
According to Kierkegaard, 'existence' is absolutely original and
irrepeatable, radically personal and unique. His emphasis on the
uniqueness of 'existence' implies that a thinker's assertions are
applicable only to the thinker himself: in principle, they do not
claim validity for others. Thus, Kierkegaard's position is
deliberately anti-'scientific': it cannot do justice to the dimension of
universality claimed by any 'science' (we do not use the term here
in the sense of positive science). As a matter of principle,
Kierkegaard's way of thinkiing cannot go beyond monologue, the
'solitary meditation.'
Kierkegaard's followers resolutely countered the reproach of being
'unscientific' by saying that existentialism may not be a 'science.'
Their objection to being called 'scientific' appeared to be largely
based on a particular sense of the term 'scientific' as used with
respect to man. In scientism and in the philosophy of Hegel--man
was 'scientifically' discussed in such a way that the original and
unique character of human subjectivity simply disappeared under
verbiage. Yet this kind of speaking was supposed to be 'scientific'
par excellence. The need to reject a particular conception of
'scientific' thinking, however, does not entitle anyone to claim that
philosophical thinking about man must not be 'scientific' in any
sense whatsoever. The philosopher can hardly avoid the use of
universal and necessary judgments to indicate the universal and
necessary structures of man. In this sense he is 'scientific.'
This difficulty hardly existed for Husserl. Originally a
mathematician and physicist, Husserl, like Descartes, was
disturbed ty the confusion of language and the welter of opinions
existing in philosophy. Clearly, philosophy was 'not yet a science,'
and this made Husserl launch his phenomenology as an attempt to
make philosophy also a 'rigorous science.' He was clever enough to
avoid the trap of ascribing to philosophy the same scientific
character as belongs to the positive sciences. Philosophy cannot
allow physics or any other positive science to dictate its methods,
for the simple reason that philosophy is not a positive science. It
has to become scientific in its own way in its expression of
intersubjective and objectively general truth.
To realize this ambitious plan, Husserl investigated man's
consciousness or knowledge. He conceived consciousness as
intentional, oriented to something other than itself. Whereas
Husserl addressed himself to problems in the theory of knowledge,
Kierkegaard tried to answer theological-anthropological questions.
The distinction between existentialism and phenomenology
consisted primarily in the different directions of their concern.
The two streams of thought merged in Heidegger's Being and
Time, where they served as the foundation of the philosophy now
known as 'existential phenomenology.' Heidegger's philosophy of
man does not lapse into the illusions of either idealism or
positivism. Influenced by the phenomenological theory of
knowledge, existentialism gave up its anti-scientific attitude.
Phenomenology, on the other hand, enriched itself and developed
into a philosophy of man by borrowing many topics from
Kierkegaard's existentialism. In this way there arose the unified
movement of existential-phenomenological thinking of which
Heidegger, Sartre--though not in every respect--Merleau-Ponty and
the Higher Institute of Philosophy of Louvain are the principal
exponents."
--William A. Luijpen & Henry J. Koren, A First Introduction to
Existential Phenomenology, pp. 18-21
"Heidegger accepts Husserl's definition of phenomenology: he will
attempt to describe, he says, without any obscuring preconceptions,
what human existence is. But his imagination could not let the
matter go at this, for he noted that the world 'phenomenon' comes
from the Greek. The etymologies of words, particularly of Greek
words, are a passion with Heidegger; in his pursuit of them he has
been accused of playing with words, but when one realizes what
deposits of truth mankind has let slip into its language as it
evolves, Heidegger's perpetual digging at words to get at their
hidden nuggets of meaning is one of his most exciting facets. In the
matter of Greek particularly--a dead language, whose whole
history is now spread out before us--we can see how certain truths
are embedded in the language itself: truths that the Greek race later
came to forget in its thinking. The world "phenomenon"--a word in
ordinary usage, by this time, in all modern European languages--
means in Greek 'that which reveals itself.' Phenomenology
therefore means for Heidegger the attempt to let the thing speak for
itself. It will reveal itself to us, he says, only if we do not attempt
to coerce it into one of our read-made conceptual strait-jackets.
Here we get the beginning of his rejoinder to the Nietzscean view
that knowledge is in the end an expression of the Will to Power:
according to Heidegger we do not know the object by conquering
and subduing it but rather by letting it be what it is and, in letting it
be, allowing it to reveal itself as what it is. And our own human
existence too, in its most immediate, internal nuances, will reveal
itself if we have ears to hear it."
--William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential
Philosophy, pp. 191-192
Summary:
In ways that, perhaps, are already clear to the reader, existentialism
and phenomenology lend themselves to one another quite nicely.
With Heidegger, phenomenology, as the study of mental acts
(noesis) and their intentional correlates (noemata), becomes
grounded in his ontological analysis of Dasein (the human kind of
being) as a "being-in-the-world." Ultimately, Heidegger breaks
from the Cartesian, subject-object split, still operative in Husserl's
thought; as Macann (1993) writes:
"In place of the Husserlian procedure which moves from the world
of the natural attitude up to a higher, transcendental plane with a
view to bring to light the transcendental structures constitutive of
the objectivity of the entities encountered in the natural attitude, we
find an alternative procedure which moves from the ontic level
down to a deeper, ontological plane with a view to bringing to light
the ontological structures constitutive of the being of the entities in
question." (From Macann's (1993) Four Phenomenological
Philosophers, p. 63).
Heidegger, like Husserl, begins with the human being's pre-
reflective, pre-ontological, lived understanding of the world, but,
rather than seeking the essence of the phenomona, like Husserl,
Heidegger is concerned with the ontological ground of the
phenomena; that is, what makes the phenomena possible. With this
methodology, Heidegger aims to ask the question of Being,
theontological, though he must begin with beings, the ontic.
Heidegger's method, therefore, is hermeneutic rather than
transcendental. He holds that the human being always already
understand the meaning of Being, yet this has been forgotten or
"covered over." Beginning with the pre-ontological, Heidegger
aims to discover what the human being already knows pre-
reflectively, yet which must be made explicit through the method
of phenomenology.
What is the relationship between hermeneutics and existential-
phenomenology?
"Hermeneutics [is] the art or theory of interpretation, as well as a
type of philosophy that starts with questions or interpretation.
Originally concerned more narrowly with interpreting sacred texts,
the term acquired a much broader significance in its historical
development and finally beame a philosophical position in 20th
century German philosophy. There are two competing positions in
hermeneutics: whereas the first follows Wilhelm Dilthey and sees
interpretation or Verstehen as a method for the historical and
human sciences, the second follows Heidegger and sees it as an
'ontological event,' an interaction between interpreter and text that
is part of the history of what is understood. Providing rules or
criteria for understanding what an author or native 'really' meant is
the typical problem for the first approiach. The interpretation of the
law provides an example for the second view, since the process of
applying the law inevitably transforms it."
--Robert Audi (Ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, p.
323
Methodological hermeneutics:
Methodological hermeneutics refers to hermeneutics as a human
science, originating in the work of Schleiermacher and Dilthey.
"Schleiermacher's analysis of understand and expression related to
texts and speech marks the beginning of hermeneutics in the
modern sense of a scientific methodology. This emphasis on
methodology continues in 19th century historicism and culminates
in Dilthey's attempt to ground the human sciences in a theory of
interpretation, understood as the imaginative but publicly verifiable
reenactment of the subjective experiences of others. Such a method
of interpretation reveals the possibility of an objective knowledge
of human beings not accessible to empiricst inquiry and thus of a
distinct methodology for the human sciences. One result of the
analysis of interpretation in the 19th century was the recognition of
"the hermeneutic circle," first developed by Schleiermacher. The
circularity of interpretation concerns the relation of parts to the
whole: the interpretation of each part is dependent on the
interpretation of the whole. But interpretation is circular in a
stronger sense: if every interpretation is itself based on
interpretation, then the circle of interpretation, even if it is not
vicious, cannot be escaped."
--Robert Audi (Ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, pp.
323-324
Ontological hermeneutics:
Ontological hermeneutics finds its expression in the existential-
phenomenological work of Martin Heidegger, and is elaborated on
by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer.
"In Being and Time, Heidegger attacked Dilthey's view that
hermeneutics is one among a variety of methods. In Heidegger's
philosophy hermeneutics is constitutive of human being (Dasien).
'The phenomenology of Dasein is hermeneutic in the primordial
significatiuon of this word" (Heidegger, 1962, p. 62). Or as Charles
Guignon (1983) has put it:
In our everyday lives we grasp entitites in terms of a tacit
understanding of what it is to be, and we are constantly driven to
make that understanding explicit and revise it on the basis of
passing encounters and collisions. The hermeneutic approach to
fundamental ontology, far from being a technique for uncovering
meanings in an alient text, is just a more rigorous and explicit
version of the kind of movmenet toward clarity and depth which
makes up life itself. (p. 71)
. . . In the course of the existential analytic of Dasein, Heidegger
(1962) advanced the thesis that scientific activity takes place
within a context of preunderstanding that derives from a certain
situatedness in the life-world and from participation in various
activities that include practical dealings with tools and implements.
Such practical dealings and understandings are achieved in the
course of various customary, everyday transactions with the
environment. These occur within a taken-for-granted cultural and
historical background that consists of practices, habits, and skills,
but cannot be spelled out explicitly and comprehended because it is
so pervasive that we cannot make it an object of inquiry. This is the
lived-world of what Heidegger called 'Everydayness.'
Heidegger argued that the fundamental mode of human existence--
that on the basis of which all other modes must be understood--is
not detached knowing but rather, engaged activity. In his view
other modes of experience, like the disinterested contemplation of
the scientist or the phenomenologist, are preceded, both temporally
and logically, by everyday situations of involvement with the
world. Thus, for Heidegger everydayness is not just a possible
mode of existence; it is a primordial foundation from which other
modes derive. And, according to him, a careful, unprejudiced
investigation of a typical everyday situation of activity shows the
untenability of certain philosophical assumptions that have
pervaded Western philosophy at least since the time of Descartes,
and have persisted, albiet in disguised form, in the transcendental
(as opposed to hermeneutic) phenomenology of the philosopher
Husserl. One of Heidegger's standard illustrations of everydayness
is the situation of a carpenter hammering a nail.
For Heidegger, the paradigmatic object in the human world is
something like the carpenter's hammer--that is, not a mere physical
thing or a sensation or an idea contemplated from a position of
scientific or philosophical detachment (as the empiricist
philosophers would have it), but a tool that is used. Such a tool
seems to occupy a kind of middle realm that defies the traditional
Cartesian and Platonic polarities. That is, it cannot be equated with
either the 'subject' or the 'object' of Cartesian philosophy, nor with
the 'quality' or 'substance' of Platonic philosophy. Such objects of
equipment are termed by Heidegger ready-to-hand. An entirely
different ontology is involved here. An object of equipment that is
ready-to-hand is the locus of both subject and object, self and
world, quality and substance. Thus, a hammer is not a 'hammer' by
virtue of its place in the human world. Nor is its quality of
'hammerness' something that comes from some subjective inner
space and gets 'projected' onto a material or sensory substrate.
Thus, in Heidegger's account both the subject-object distinction
and the distinction between quality (or meaning) and substance (be
it material or sensory) turns out to be misleading. In the lifeworld
of engaged human activity, according to Heidegger, the hammer's
'hammerness' is experienced as out there in the world, inseparable
from the substance it imbues, and the external world is 'always
already' imbued with human purpose and meaning. The ready-to-
hand mode is contrasted with another form that Heidegger called
present-at-hand. An object that is present-at-hand is not in a
unified, integrated, field-like relation with a subject, but rather
corresponds to the isolated perceptual object that is studied by a
detached, uninvolved observer.
Just as the unity of subject and object is crucial to readiness-to-
hand, so too is the quality of complete interrelatedness. Heidegger
emphasizes that a particular item of equipment can never be
understood in isolation from other objects that are ready-to-hand,
since it only exists as such in a purpose-imbued context of other
equipment and their respective uses. Thus, Heidegger emphasizes
that the objects in one's world are not separate entities but
constituents of a unified field, a field that is itself constituted by the
essential unity of subject and object: A hammer is what it is
because it fills a slot in the 'equipmental context' of the human
lifeworld.
In Heidegger's view, then, human being [Dasein] involves what
might be called an implicitly sensed 'ground,' 'horizon,' or
'clearing,' which is the context or totality within which experience
occurs. This horizon, which undercuts the Cartesian opposition of
subject and object, is in a sense the most important aspect of
human existence, for it is the very condition or possibility of
anything at all appearing or being known. Moreover, it is the only
place where the being of either 'man' or 'world' is disclosed.
The Heideggerian view of human existence is, at its deepest level,
opposite to that of the early Dilthey, who took for granted the
essential self-transparency or intelligibility of consciousness. In the
Heideggerian view, the conscious experience of another person or
culture cannot be ascertained in any objective sense. The horizonal
character of Dasein makes it impossible to retain faith in the
transparency and certitude of phenomenological description.
Dasien can known its own being only in an approximate, tentative,
and indirect way--not by taking its own ordinary self-
understanding at face value, nor through some quasi-scientific
method of direct intuition with access to certain and foundational
data. For on this view experinece is a kind of text-analogue that
needs to be interpreted (hence, Heidegger's is a hermeneutic
phenomenology), an intrinsically obscure object with which one
must adopt an approximate and metaphoric, rather than quasi-
scientific mode of description."
--Robert L. Woolfolk, Louis A. Sass, & Stanley B. Messer,
"Introduction to Hermeneutics," In Messer, Sass & Woolfolk
(Eds.), Hermeneutics and Psychological Theory, pp. 12-18
What is the relationship between ontology and existential-
phenomenology?
In his 1941 lecture, Grundbegriffe (Basic Concepts), Heidegger
discusses the "ontological difference" that is central to his thought.
Here it is summarized by Ernesto Grassi:
"Heidegger explains the essential difference between Being (Sein)
and beings (Seiendes). This is what is referred to as the 'ontological
difference.' He demonstrates this essential difference by pointing
out the impossibility of speaking about Being (Sein) in the form of
a being (Seiendes) (in the sense of some object). Every attempt to
define Being in this way leads to contradictions.
An initial definition of Being, Heidegger observes, must maintain
that Being is that which is most 'empty' since it is predicated of all
beings and, hence, is what is most common to all things. The Being
of each being is asserted with the verb 'is.' We say of a stone that it
'is,' of an animal, of a house, and of an attitude that it 'is.' Only by
virtue of such an 'emptiness' is it possible for us to find Being in
everything there is. Being does without any particular distinction in
order to appear within every being. In contrdiction to this initial
definition of Being as empty and common to everything, we are
also forced to recognize that Being can be defined in the opposite
way, that is, as 'singular and one.' For we are concerned only with
the 'Being' of all the many different things that are. Each such thing
is to be understood in terms of 'Being.' Hence, instead of
characterizing Being as common the way we did before, Being is
also the opposite of this, namely singular, because Being is
everywhere, among beings, 'the same.'
A second definition of Being, according to Heidegger, purports that
Being is 'what is most understandable' of all to us because it is only
upon the basis of Being that beings can be conceived of or spoken
about at all. Wherever and whenever beings are experienced, we
also take account of Being because Being is connected with our
understanding of beings everywhere and at every moment. In this
way Being proves to be what is most readily understood. But here
too we are faced with a contradiction because we must confront
this definition with the fact that Being is also waht is 'most hidden
or concealed' (das Verborgenste). Every attempt to say what Being
is forces us to define it as a being among other beings which means
that we necesarily fail to say what is is asBeing. Being remains
hidden as Being and this 'staying hidden' belongs to Being itself.
Heidegger's third definition of Being is directed to the insight that
Being is what can be 'most relied upon' (das Verlaeslichte). For
how are we even to doubt particular beings in any way, if it is not
already certain that we can rely on what it means to be? We refer
most frequently to Being since it is named in every noun, adjective,
and verb. This expression of what is, is not an expression of an
agreement (Zu-sage) to each particular situation, but rather
something that 'must already be given before' (Vorgabe) because it
is only by virtue of this expression that it is possible to name
beings.
This definition of Being is also connected to the opposite insight
that Being is what is most abysmal (das Abruendigste) and as such
is 'waht is least of all reliable' (das Unverlaesslkichtste). Every
attempt to define Being--and so to logically fixate it--fails. Being,
therefore, does not stand firmly as something upon which we can
build. Moreover, Being is what is 'most silent' (das
Verschwiegenste). Every assertion about Being goes astray
becuase, by the very process of assertaion, Being is relegated to the
status of 'a being.' This going astray is unavoidable. On the other
hand, Being is what is 'most often expressed' in language since, in
every assertion about beings, Being is also spoken about. It is
therefore the wod that breaks the silence.
According to Heidegger's fifth definition of Being, it is what has
been 'most of all forgotten,' because the questions that man has
raised are directed to beings and not to Being, that is, they are
directed to nature, man, and all of those things that affect us
directly and urge themselves upon us. But even this definition is
contradicted insofar as Being is actually that which is 'most of all
remembered.' For if Being were completely eradicated from our
recollection, then beings could neither be met with nor asserted as
Being. That urgent necessity that we meet with in the experience of
things is rooted in the claim that Beings make upon us (in
language: Anspruch des Seins).
Finally, Being turns out to be involved in one last contradiction, for
it proves to be simultaneously 'what is most necessitating'
(Noetigendste) as well as what is 'most liberating' (Befreiendste); it
is only by virtue of the claim of Being (Anspruch) that the Being of
beings is revealed. Since the subject and object are both beings,
they therefore confront each other only through the liberation of
Being, that is, through the freedom of Being. More specifically,
man comes to himself as a subject in relationship to an object
through the liberating action of Being."
--Ernesto Grassi, Heidegger and Renaissance Humanism, pp. 31-
35
What is the difference between Heidegger's "ontological
difference" and negative theology?
"The essential different between Heidegger's philosophy of
unhiddenness and negative theology as found in Dionysius and
John of the Cross consists in tehir completely different starting
points. They understand divine Being as a Being in and for itself,
outside of history, so that it emerges primarily through the
theophany of a mystic. Heidegger, however, claims that Being
emerges through the 'clearing' of different, purely historical spaces
in which particular gods, institutions, and arts appear historically.
For negative theology, as well as for Heidegger, Being (God) is
'sublime,' but in a fundamentally different sense. In negative
theology the sublime and elevated nature of God is defined in the
sense that it finally can be made visible only by relinquishing those
capacities (rational knowledge, memory and will) that make
possible the 'day' of rational life.
For Heidegger, too, Being is not exhausted by beings and so Being
is sublime and elevated in this sense for him. It remains hidden in
its essence in its revelation of beings. But for Heidegger the
rational process of thought remains necessary in the sphere of
beings--where Being reveals itself--insofar as this process 'fixes'
the order of beings. The giving of grounds establishes and defines
beings as the particular things found here and now that announce
Being. Beings belong to the revelation of Being and must be 'held
to' in their particular historical form, but always in the sign of the
'opening' of Being. Only by remembering Being is the way to the
'new' open, the way to hope.
Our success or failure to hold ourselves open to the new gives us
the possibilities for beginning or ending historical process. 'When
the unhiddenness of Being does not present itself, it dismisses the
slow disappearance of all that can offer healing to beings. This
disappearance of what heals takes with it the openness of the holy.
The closed nature of the holy darkens the luminescence of the
divine' (Heidegger, Nietzsche, pt. 1, p. 394)."
--Ernesto Grassi, Heidegger and Renaissance Humanism, pp. 90-
91
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References used:
The bottom line first: I believe that the words 'departure' and 'turn'
do not necessarily reflect the true nature of the penomenological
perspectives on phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger in their
final form. The word may be more reflective of the natural need to
differentiate and label in order to avoid complexity.
HTH,
Ronnen
Jul 9, 2013
ALL ANSWERS (27)
Mathew Cohen
Mathew Cohen The University of Calgary
Because Husserl makes no claims to existence and starts with what
we know, how is it possible that anyone - namely Heidegger/Sartre
- can refute this position? After all, isn't any claim or knowledge
about existence-of-being presuppose one to abide by the 'logic' that
Husserl is uncovering? To refute anything that Husserl says by
ontological reasoning one first has to show how one is able to
arrive at said 'knowledge' from a sound base? Husserl's sound base
is Descarte's "I think therefore I am" for any doubting of this claim
presupposes the very claim it means to object hence rendering
itself to contradiction and thus false.
it's a pity, but those differences (and differances too) were not
explicitly stated nor by Husserl nor by Heidegger (imho)
Jul 4, 2013
Mathew Cohen
Mathew Cohen The University of Calgary
Right, but by the very admission that you and Arten der
Gegenbenheiten indicate that the difference can be made by sorts
of givenness, is parallel to the very noema that Husserl talks about
as arising out of its noetic correlate. In other words, whatever
meaning that is given from a particular phenomena is based on a
particular, or a set of particular, noetic phases that allow it to be
meant as 'such and such'. Each 'givenness' has its manner in which
it is given. So while one may say that Husserl is making an
existential claim as to the relationship between the noetic and
noema, I believe Husserl would say that they only exist insofar as
they are built upon other noetic and noematic relationships that
ultimately can be deconstructed to ego cogito ego sum and the
manner which this is experienced.
And while I agree that Husserl does not explicitly state these
ontilogical differences between physics and metaphysics (from my
preliminary assessments of reading L.I, Ideas I, and Cart Med, and
Phantasy, Image Cons, and Memory - I have yet to read his other
books) I feel it is because he has to spend the bulk of his time like
Moses "mapping out the desert" so to speak, and is unable to
precisely to lead us into the "promised land". So much time is
spent defending and articulating what he means that he fails to
make progress in bringing us to the familiar terrain of philosophy
and empirical sciences.
All in all, I guess, I make the argument: that anything that bases
itself on a metaphysical premise cannot be considered to be a
phenomenology (as by Husserl's standards). And I am looking for
either affirmation or criticism regarding this because I believe my
entire understanding on Husserlian thought rests on this. And as I
get sucked into more of my own world and ways I would like to
know if I have been navigating the terrain accurately or if I am way
off course. Much thanks to all of your contributions so far. I look
forward to reading more.
Jul 4, 2013
Anatoli Tchoussov
Anatoli Tchoussov Lomonosov Moscow State University
@Mathew: m.b., in a development of a Rickert's direction, the
early Heidegger (1915) had distinguished 3 realms of being (such
ideas routed also in L.I. (1900-1901) but are more explicitly made
in L.I.(1912));
... not to sound to repetitive, but for those who wish to continue to
contribute to this discussion please do, but know that i have two
other threads now as well.
Jul 7, 2013
William Springer
William Springer University of Texas at El Paso
I would comment as follows: Question (1): What is the point of
Husserl's epoche? how is it supposed to accomplish this?
The bottom line first: I believe that the words 'departure' and 'turn'
do not necessarily reflect the true nature of the penomenological
perspectives on phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger in their
final form. The word may be more reflective of the natural need to
differentiate and label in order to avoid complexity.
HTH,
Ronnen
Jul 9, 2013
Cj Nev
Cj Nev Northwestern University
Useful and excellent synopsis, Ronnen, thank you. What I believe
would simplify your/the admittedly "inhumanly complex
structures," would be (under publication in 2014) the very self-
referential or iteration, fractal structure of nature or of all (yet-to-be
proven) phenomena, for which Husserl has laid the groundwork on
the method, drawing transcendentally from both the sciences and
philosophy as no one ever has before or since. Further expounded
upon, a fractal approach would then allow for a valid, even
concrete/tangible, so-called entry point (again to be published in
2014), which I have found Heidegger has unfortunately only
naysayed and then unoriginally redundantly in merely a scholarly
fashion gone off (setting back I am sorry to say) in the usual self-
fulfilling vicious circles with no entry point to add.
Jul 9, 2013
Mathew Cohen
Mathew Cohen The University of Calgary
Ronnen,
Thank you for your analysis, and recommended readings. I had
Fink in mind for my next reading, but also Husserls Arithmetic.
And I have Crisis on my shelf but will do as you recommend and
read it afterwards.
And with that said, CJ, I'm quite fascinated with fractals for
perhaps similar purposes. Can you recommend any readings by
any chance?
(e) Lastly, for a primary source I should not fail to mention Benoit
Mandelbrot's "Fractals and Chaos"
Ronnen
Jul 10, 2013
Cj Nev
Cj Nev Northwestern University
Dear Ronnen, Refreshing to hear your derivation of Husserl's
work, which will prove helpful to me and I will use (print and
place with Husserl's 'stuff') when I return to include him in
construction of a publication I am working on presently, due out in
2014. Thank you as well for pointing out Husserl's efforts
concerning time that I will also incorporate as I go, corresponding
fractals with, as you well explain, Husserl's third level of
phenomena: "The natural attitude (superposition of all lifeworlds in
specific distinctive aggregate of sociocultural networks)." Thanks
also for your reference to the notes of Schutz and for
appreciating/your interest and encouragement in the possible
connection between fractals and Husserl's I consider breakthrough
work. The "fractal theory" would not stop there, it is merely a
viable means that supports concrete/tangible unification of many in
fact all seemingly dichotomous phenomena.
Jul 14, 2013
Germn Bula
Germn Bula Universidad de La Salle
Very briefly: for Heidegger, being is as it appears, therefore
phenomenology is the same as ontology. For Husserl, the
correlation between phenomena and reality is a problem that does
not exist for Heidegger. It is not true that Husserl merely describes
the contents of consciousness: he brackets the natural attitude that
adscribes an external correlation to phenomena and hopes to regain
the outside through a study of pure phenomena (eg, The Idea of
Phenomenology); therefore Husserl does have ontological aims.
Both Husserl and Heidegger have ontological aims, and have a
radical disagreement on whether being=phenomena.
Apr 21, 2014
Rachel Anne Kornhaber
Rachel Anne Kornhaber University of Tasmania, Rozelle Campus
Nazism and Heidegger did influence the state of play during Nazi
Germany and the role that the University of Freiburg played in anti
Jewish sentiment and what influence this played in
phenomenology.
May 7, 2014
Carlos Eduardo Maldonado
Carlos Eduardo Maldonado Universidad del Rosario
Well, certainly Heidegger is strongly inclined to metaphysics -
something that is already clear since his doctoral dissertation and
almost immediately afterwards with his habilitation thesis (on
Duns Scoto).
However, the real turn away from Husserl was "discovered" later
when in 1979 were first published his "Prolegomena zur
Geschcihte des Zeitbegriffs", a seminar Heidegger gave in 1925
(summer semester). Only then was it clear that it was exactly the
interest on time what created a distance between Heidegger and
Husserl.
(I shall not mention that Husserl gave Heidegger his text: "Zur
Phnomenologie des Zeitbewusstseins" (from 1905) in order to be
published and Heidegger kept it for himself for a long while before
he published it, eventually).
I worked for five years on these subjects while being in Leuven (at
the Husserl Archives), some years ago...
Jun 18, 2014
Gordon Gates
Gordon Gates
Thank you for your wonderful post, Carlos; it brings philosophy to
life.
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Related
Solicitation, Dasein and World
Fink!
Descartes, World, Vor- and Zu-handenheitIn "Heidegger"
Posted in Heidegger, Husserl | 5 Comments
5 Responses
on October 11, 2007 at 1:33 pm | Reply noah37
Im unclear on precisely how Heideggers conception of
phenomena differs from a Husserlian one; and I assume this is an
important site of Heideggers departure from Husserl.
Partly, this uncertainty is because Im not sure that I fully
understand what Heidegger means in claiming that phenomena
show or dont show themselves to us. The language makes it
sound as if phenomena not only have some degree of autonomy in
and of themselves, but also that they have a certain agency or even
agenda to allow or not allow themselves to be seen. (If this is what
Heidegger claimsthough Im not convinced it isthen it seems
quite counter-intuitive to me.)
Would it be correct to say that Husserl, on the other hand, doesnt
give such a degree of autonomy to phenomenon? But how does he
account for them? Does this have to do with the inseparability of
fact/essence? Does Husserl want to say that a phenomenon is
merely constituted by its fact/essence relationship, and thus the
phenomenon cannot be conceived of as autonomous from our
bestowal of sense upon it? But then doesnt his concept of Noema
bestow some autonomy on objects/phenomenon (are these
synonyms?): the object is one thing that can be thought of in many
different ways and that persists amidst our noetic changes (to
quote from Jonathans 10/4 post)?
2014.07.35
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Husserl
Conclusion
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Transcendental phenomenology
Basic themes of transcendental phenomenology are
intentionality, eidetic reduction, and constitution of
meaning.
Introduction
Martin Heidegger was one of the most influential philosophers of
the 20th century. His work, firmly in what has come to be called
the Continental tradition, is intriguing both because of its
intellectual content and the manner in which it is presented. This
essay is by no means a thorough treatment of Heideggers work. I
intend merely to give an introduction to phenomenology and
Heideggers variant of it and to make some suggestions about what
his project might inspire us to do with our lives.
Husserls Phenomenology
Martin Heidegger was a student of Edmund Husserl, the founder of
phenomenology as a philosophical (as opposed to a merely
psychological) discipline. The goal of Husserl's phenomenology
was to describe as exactly as possible the phenomena and
structures of conscious experience without appeal to philosophical
or scientific preconceptions about their nature, origin, or cause.1
Phenomenology is the act of examining one's own experience
reflectively and without bias. The investigator inspects his or her
own experience directly instead of, for instance, using intermediary
channels such as an electroencephalograph to measure brain
waves. It is called "reflective" because it is analogous to how one
sees oneself in a mirror. The object being examined is, in some
sense, oneself, just as the image in a mirror is.
The bias that phenomenologists try to avoid is the naive belief that
the objects of our experience actually exist independently of our
experiencing them. The phenomenologist does not deny their
existence. He or she merely attempts to avoid letting that naive
belief influence the investigation. By bracketing, or putting aside,
our instinctive belief in a real world, we can perceive things that
have been in our experience all along but to which we paid no
attention. The phenomenology of visual perception, for instance,
investigates the mental structures that are present in an act of
seeing something: things like the implicit belief that what we are
seeing has another side, hidden from us; that it has persisted
through the past and is expected to persist into the future; that
others like us will see it in much the same way; that it has certain
uses; and so forth. We do not normally pay attention to all this
cognition. Instead we just pay attention to whatever we are looking
at. But the cognition is there nonetheless, and can be noticed with
sufficient attention to the process of perceiving. Buddhist
meditators and phenomenological investigators share some
similarity in this regard: both just pay attention to what is present
in experience, without interpreting it as anything else. It is a
radically first-person point of view.
If you are still puzzled, consider two experiences: (1) seeing a
small black dog, and (2) hallucinating that you see a small black
dog. Until you know that the second case is a hallucination, the
experiences are exactly the same. In both cases you see a small
black dog. The dog is present in your experience. And in both
cases there is a great deal of cognition, mental processing, that is
present in the dog-as-perceived. The dog-as-perceived has
elements that are just given its shape, color and sound and
elements that are contributed by the perceiver the recognition
that it is a dog, the tacit knowledge of what dogs do and hence
certain expectations of the dog, and so forth. Together what is
given and what we add constitute the dog-as-perceived. The
elements contributed by the perceiver are present in every act of
perception, although they are most often overlooked. Using the
phenomenological method, Husserl investigated the experience of
a great number of things, including physical objects, mental
constructs such as mathematics, the internal experience of the
passage of time, and much more.
Heideggers Phenomenology
But this is not about Husserl's phenomenology of perception,
interesting as that may be. It is about Heidegger's extension of it.
Heidegger took that same stance a radical first-person point of
view and applied it not to experience of specific types of objects
but to life as a whole, the life-world (in German, die Lebensweld, a
term that Husserl introduced a few years after Heidegger published
Being and Time). Husserl's insight was that every experience is an
experience of something. We never have experience without there
being something present in the experience. Heidegger's insight was
that same principle applies to our life. We always find ourselves in
a world, engaged in it. The fundamental structure of human life is
Being-in-the-world (in German, In-der-Welt-sein). We are never
isolated subjects, cogitating about things from which we are
essentially separate. We cannot properly be taken into account
except as existing in the midst of a world among other people and
things. "Being-in-the-world" is hyphenated into one word to
indicate that categorical distinctions such as subject and object,
consciousness and world, are interpretations that are secondary, not
foundational. The original experience, which we can understand
only by stepping back from it and reflecting on it without bias, is a
unitary phenomenon.
Immersed in the first-person point of view, Heidegger employs
unusual, idiosyncratic terms. "Being-in-the-world" is one such
term, as is the famous Dasein (being-there), which means human
being. To be human is "to be there" and "there" is the world.
A Phenomenological Observation
To understand the phenomenological attitude, consider two other
unusual phrases of Heideggers, ready-to-hand and present-at-
hand. In Being and Time, Heidegger contrasts two ways of
dealing with or relating to objects in the world. As a
phenomenologist he describes them, not in objective, scientific
terms, nor in terms of how we feel or behave toward the objects,
but in terms of how the objects appear to us. He calls these two
modes of appearance Readiness-to-hand (in German,
Zuhandenheit) and Presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit). That which
is ready-to-hand (zuhanden) is usable and useful, like a hammer
that is close by when we want to nail something. That which is
merely present-at-hand (vorhanden) is just there with no immediate
relevance, like some other tool, a set of wrenches say, that is in the
vicinity when we have no need of it because what we want to do is
nail something, not turn a bolt. The wrenches have no bearing on
what we are concerned with at the moment, unlike the hammer,
which does. The wrenches and the hammer appear to us quite
differently.
I say "merely present-at-hand" because for Heidegger being
present-at-hand is a deficient mode of being. Readiness-to-hand is
more primordial. In our original experience, before we do a lot of
thinking about it, our world is mostly composed of things that are
ready-to-hand. They stand out against a background of what is just
there. We do not perceive everything as being of equal importance.
Heidegger says
"The kind of dealing which is closest to us is ... not a bare
perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which
manipulates things and puts them to use."2
As evidenced by the title of his book, Heidegger is making an
assertion about what really is, what actually exists. According to
him, some things are ready-to-hand and others arent; they are just
there.
This is not what a scientific analysis would tell us. If you took
photographs of a workbench, measured and weighed all the objects
on it, and carefully plotted their spatial locations and distances
from each other, you would find no readiness-to-hand and no
presence-at-hand. In a sense, I suppose, the objects would all be
present-at-hand, just there; but with nothing ready-to-hand to
contrast them with, they would not even have that quality.
The question of the ontological status of qualities has a long
philosophical history. Is the redness that we see when looking at an
apple or a rose something "out there" in the object? Or is it "in
here," solely in our experience of the object? Or does it arise only
when someone sees the object? A scientific approach would say
that light of a certain wavelength is there whether or not anybody
is looking. But the redness itself, where is that?
Similarly, where is readiness-to-hand? Not in the object alone, nor
in the person alone, but in the relationship. Heidegger's strength
and unique contribution is to insist that wherever it is, readiness-to-
hand is real; it has its own being; it actually exists.
Authenticity
Heidegger calls the mode of existence dictated by the they,
derisively, inauthentic. At root, authentic means my own (in
German, eigentlich.) So the authentic self is the self that is our
own, that leads a life that is owned by us ourselves, that is to say
by each one of us individually, whereas the inauthentic self is the
self lost to the they.4
What does it mean to be authentic, to own your life? Heidegger
thinks it has something to do with facing up to your own death,
living in the knowledge that you will die, facing the anxiety that
accompanies that realization, and in that knowledge resolutely
taking responsibility for your own existence.5 Im not going to
follow that train of thought, however, because it is not clear
whether Heideggers assessment of death is something essential
and common to all humans or merely something idiosyncratic to
himself.6 (To find out, we would each have to examine our own
life experience and see what we find.)
The problem with being inauthentic is that it mostly doesnt lead to
happiness and fulfillment. Going along with the they works to a
degree, particularly if we live in a stable society in which roles and
expectations are well-known and constant over generations. But it
doesn't work if our world is changing rapidly and the old tried-and-
true approaches to life don't produce useful results. It doesn't work
for those of us with talents and interests outside the norms. It
doesn't work if just doing the same old thing that we have always
done will result in ecological destruction and loss of shelter, food
and water. It doesn't work if just blindly obeying the political
authorities, or even getting excited and working passionately for
one political party or another, will do nothing to change the
fundamental economic circumstances of our lives. It doesn't work
if, thinking we are merely meaningless collections of atoms,
destined to live for a time and then disperse, we miss out on the
deep satisfaction of knowing that we are part of something much
vaster and more beautiful, and deliberately directing our efforts to
be in harmony with that greater pattern.
(Before continuing I want to note that there is a sense in which the
they is not so bad as I am making out here. We all live with
others, and in fact we could not live without them. Humans have
been called (by others, not by Heidegger) ultrasocial7 and
obligatorily gregarious.8 Without others of our kind we could
not survive. Heidegger, from his phenomenological perspective,
calls this feature of human life Being-with (Mitsein), and says it
is essential to being human.9 We are inauthentic when we fail to
recognize how much and in what ways how we think of ourselves
and how we habitually behave is influenced by our social
surroundings. We are authentic when we pay attention to that
influence and decide for ourselves whether to go along with it or
not. Living entirely without such influence, however, is not an
option.)
Excellence
So what shall we do instead of going along with the they? My
answer goes back to Aristotle, who was a major influence on
Heideggers thinking. Aristotle claimed that happiness and
fulfillment have a lot to do with how well we function.10
Functioning well means doing what we are good at and doing it in
a good way, a way that promotes and enhances our ability to do it.
When we function well we experience what the Greeks
calledeudaimonia, often translated as happiness or flourishing.11
And how do we find out what functioning well means for us? By
carefully examining our own life experience; in other words, by
doing a sort of phenomenology.
There are things that some of us are good at and others are not.
Some have special talents for sports, for instance, or mathematics
or music, but not everyone does. On an individual level, each of us
needs to find out what he or she is good at personally, or
idiosyncratically, and pursue and develop those talents. Thats
where phenomenological examination of our own life world comes
in. Each of us can ask: What am I really good at? What really gives
me deep nourishment and satisfaction? Others, your culture and
your family and peer group, will tell you, but only you can
determine whether what they say is true for you.
Looking at ourselves individually is not enough, though. We need
to know something about humans in general, not just our own
experience. There are also things that everybody is good at, by
virtue of being a human being.
Im summarizing quite a bit here, but my research tells me that the
uniquely human function is our capacity for second-order thinking.
By second order, I mean the ability to take ourselves as objects
of thought. The first order is to think about things and people in the
world external to us. Other animals do that; they can think about
the world and communicate with each other about it. But only we
can think about ourselves. Our ability to pay attention and think
about ourselves as well as the world we live in, is what
distinguishes us from other animals. Heidegger alludes to this
characteristic of being human when he says
Dasein [the human being] is an entity which does not just occur
among other entities. Rather ... in its very Being, that Being is an
issue for it.12
I prefer to speak of human excellence instead of authenticity. Only
if we exercise the uniquely human function of self-reflection do we
operate at our full capacity and have the best chance to find our
place in the world and live there harmoniously. Doing so means
finding out things like how cognition and emotion work, how
morality and religion function to bind individuals together in
groups and cause conflict between groups, and many more such
facts about humans generally. And it means discovering how each
of us in particular thinks and acts; what gets in the way of our clear
thinking and how to overcome such obstacles.
The oracle at Delphi said "Know thyself." The phenomenologist
says "Know your experience. Pay attention to your own being." To
do so might be uncomfortable. It might cause us to question what
they tell us and require courage and determination to stay true to
the quest for real confidence in what we have learned for ourselves
and seen with our own eyes. But the rewards will be great. The
potential is there for us to experience the happiness and fulfillment
of the truly excellent human being. What that means is something
each of us needs to find out for him- or herself.
References
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, I.7 1097b, pp. 22-29. Tr. W.D.
Ross. Introduction to Aristotle, Ed. Richard McKeon. New York:
Random House Modern Library, 1947, p 318. Available online at
http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/nicomachaen.html.
Encyclopdia Britannica Online, s. v. "Martin Heidegger." Online
publication
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/259513/Martin-
Heidegger as of 5 March, 2014.
de Waal, Frans. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality
Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth
in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Tr., John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.
Hornsby, Roy. "What Heidegger Means by Being-in-the-World."
On-line publication http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/dasein.html
as of 19 April 2011.
Wheeler, Michael. Martin Heidegger. The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). On-
line publicationhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/ as of 5
March 2014.
Wikipedia. "Being and Time." Online publication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Time as of 5 March 2014.
Wikipedia. Eudaimonia. Online publication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia as of 16 December 2008.
Wikipedia. Eudaimonism. Online publication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonism as of 16 December
2008.
Wikipedia. "Heideggerian terminology". Online publication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology as of 12
March 2010.
Wikipedia. Lifeworld. Online publication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeworld as of 5 March 2014.
Wikipedia. Martin Heidegger. Online publication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger as of 5 March
2014.
Revision History
Version Date Author Change
1 5 March 2014 Bill Meacham First draft
2 15 March 2014 Bill Meacham Add parenthetical comment
about Being-with. Other minor corrections.
2.11 July 2014 Bill Meacham Fixed minor typo.
1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Martin Heidegger.
2 Being and Time, p.95.
3 Being and Time, p. 220.
4 Wheeler, Martin Heidegger.
5 Wikipedia, Martin Heidegger.
6 A danger of the first-person point of view is that in looking at our
own experience we might find things that we mistakenly think are
common to everyone or even essential to being human, but in fact
are true only of our own life. The danger is even greater if we, like
many Continental philosophers, use impressive sounding
neologisms or use words in strikingly different ways from their
ordinary usage to talk about what we find. The reader might be
inclined to believe what we say uncritically, just because it sounds
extraordinary or dramatic. If so, the reader would be succumbing
to the they.
7 Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, pp. 47 ff.
8 de Waal, Primates and Philosophers, p. 4.
9 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 156.
10 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, I.7 1097b 22-29
11 Wikipedia, Eudaimonia and Eudaimonism.
12 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 32.