Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomenality (2014) (original) (raw)

2014, Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomenality

This PhD thesis is an extended critical investigation of Martin Heidegger’s influential account of the problem of phenomenality, i.e., of how things show up as meaningful phenomena in our experience. As such, it is also a study of his effort to develop and probe the question of phenomenology, i.e., what it means to see, understand, and articulate such phenomena. The aim of the thesis is both historical and systematic. On the one hand, it offers a unified interpretation of how Heidegger’s struggle with the problem of phenomenality unfolds during the main stages of his philosophical development, from the early Freiburg lecture courses 1919-1923, over the Marburg years and the publication of Being and Time in 1927, up to his later thinking stretching from the mid 1930s to the early 1970s. It is argued that the problem of phenomenality constitutes one of the core problems that Heidegger is concerned with from beginning to end, and that focusing on this problem allows us to shed new light on the philosophical logic and motives behind the main changes that his thinking undergoes along the way. On the other hand, the thesis examines both the philosophical power and the problems and ambiguities of Heidegger’s consecutive attempts to account for the structure and dynamics of phenomenality. In particular, it critically interrogates Heidegger's basic idea that our experience of meaningful phenomena is determined by our prior understanding of the historical contexts of meaning in which we always already live. A central argument of the thesis is that Heidegger’s conception of the historical structure of phenomenality raises the decisive question of how to distinguish between historical prejudice and primordial understanding, and that Heidegger’s inability to answer this question in Being and Time generates a deep ambiguity between his program of historical-destructive thinking and his employment of a Husserlian intuition-based phenomenological method in his concrete investigation. Moreover, it is argued that Heidegger’s later thinking of the clearing/event of being is centrally motivated by the effort to answer precisely this question by showing how a historical world can arise and give itself as a binding destiny. Ultimately, however, the thesis suggests – elaborating on the criticisms previously presented by, e.g., Ernst Tugendhat and Emmanuel Levinas – that Heidegger’s radical historicization of phenomenality makes him unable to account either for the truth of our understanding or for the ethical-existential significance of other persons.