Being There: Heidegger's Formally Indicative Concept of Dasein (original) (raw)

Revisiting Husserl’s Transcendental Ego: Existence and Praxis

2019

My purpose in this occasion is to play down two views that characterized the mainstream reception of Husserl's work, based mostly on what he published during his lifetime. On the one hand, that his method and phenomenological philosophy remained dependent of the Cartesian paradigm and the models of theoretical sciences; on the other hand, that his eidetic method and phenomenology, were caught in a "logicism of essences." The publication of his 1936 Crisis and, later on, the careful historical-critical George Heffernan (2015/2016) has pointed out two phenomenological "schisms" surrounding the reception of Husserl's transcendental turn during the first decades of the 20 th century. Both were intimately related, not only in their content-in that they dealt with Husserl's 1913 publication of Ideas I-but also in their continuity, despite the temporal gap between them. He contends that the second, "Phenomenological-Existential Schism," between 1927-1933, triggered by Heidegger's Being and Time, could not have taken place without the first "Great Phenomenological Schism," between 1905-1913. Indeed, the early München and Göttingen schools of phenomenology, inspired by Husserl's 1900-1901 Logical Investigations, slowly perceived a change in the master's courses and correspondence. None seemed to understand Husserl's doubts concerning his Logical Investigations' account of the correlation between immanence and transcendence since 1903, which finally lead him to introduce as early as 1904/05 the phenomenological reduction. 2 This move was interpreted by his early followers as abandoning his earlier "realism of essences" compatible with a theory of knowledge founded on phenomenology as descriptive psychology. Thus his "transcendental idealism," "developed during the decisive years from 1903 to 1910" (Kern 1964: 180), was interpreted as a relapse into a sort of subjective relativism. Heidegger-also "fascinated" by Husserl's Logical Investigations (Heidegger 1969: 82)-already took distance with Husserl since 1913, and thus shared with Scheler, Pfänder, Stein, Ingarden, Reinach, and others, the same "perplexity" "at the perceived primacy of theory over practice, reflection over action, logic over ethics, essence over existence, eternity over history, science over life, objects over things, or, in a word, Bewusstsein over Dasein" (Heffernan 2016: 236). Yet the first external sign of the estrangement between Husserl and Heidegger was their "failed attempt (…) to compose together an article on phenomenology for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1927-1928)" (Heffernan 2016: 238). Heidegger's 1925 Marburg lectures on the History of the Concept of Time, highlights not only the virtues of the Logical Investigations (also acknowledged by Dilthey) (GA 20: 30) but also of Ideas I's third and fourth parts as an "essential advance beyond all the obscurities prevalent in the tradition of logic and epistemology" (GA 20: 67). Yet he carries out in the same lectures a demolishing "immanent critique" of Ideas

Husserl, Heidegger, and the Transcendental Dimension of Phenomenology

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 2007

Understanding phenomenology as a philosophical approach in which human-world relationships are analysed, as well as the constitution of subjectivity and objectivity within these relationships, this paper addresses some issues related to the transcendental dimension in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. An attempt is also made to re-address some issues related to phenomenology and its transcendental dimension as understood by adherents of hermeneutical phenomenology such as Paul Ricoeur. In essence, the focus of the paper is on exploring the following issues: what is this transcendental turn in Husserl's philosophy? Is this an 'unfortunate turn' toward a neo-Kantian brand of transcendental idealism? What is the significance of this transcendental dimension in Husserl's phenomenology? Is there any distinctive phenomenological programme that, despite their differences, is common to both Husserl and Heidegger? This line of questioning proceeds from the observations made by Paul Ricoeur that, "with the development of his 'hermeneutics of facticity', Heidegger rejected Husserl's neo-Kantian brand of transcendental phenomenology in favour of a de-transcendental and historicized way of doing philosophy, that Heidegger understood the subject to be 'factic', in contrast to Husserl's pure ego as the source of the world constitution"(Hahn, 1995). Ultimately, however, the thrust of this exploration is towards understanding the transcendental way of doing philosophy and the so-called historicized way of philosophizing as two distinct ways to reach one common goal, the transcendental dimension of meaning.

An Examination of the Constitutive Function of Ego in Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology

Epistemological Investigations (Print ISSN: 2423-4982), 2013

The major part of Husserl's attempts to describe the mode of consciousness has been devoted to Ego and its constitutive application. The purpose of this paper is first to review the role of Ego in Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and its central place as the core of consciousness and second to examine it. Through the study of development of the concept of Ego in Husserl's thought, and by describing and analysing his view regarding the role and application of Ego, and its constitutive feature will be discussed. The central contention of this paper is that although Husserl regards himself as a cartesian, he criticizes the concept of Descartes concerning Ego. This criticism indicates the distinction between the transcendental phenomenology and the transcendental realism. At the end of this paper, it will be concluded that Husserl by moving from the essential attitute to the transcendental attitute through the constitutive application of Ego, achieves the transcendental subjectivity as the origin of any meaning and to form the real universe. From Husserl's point of view, the transcendental Ego is the origin of one's customs, beliefs and normative behaviour and considers it as the only condition for perceiving universe.

Transcendental Subjectivity and the Human Being

2014

This article addresses an ambiguity in Edmund Husserl’s account of the human being. On the one hand, Husserl often characterizes the human being in natural scientific terms as a psychophysical unity. On the other hand, Husserl also describes how we experience ourselves as embodied persons that experience and communicate with others within a socio-historical world. The main aim of this article is to show that if one overlooks this ambiguity then one will misunderstand the relation between the subject that constitutes a world (and that Husserl terms transcendental) and the human being within the world. Specifically, I argue that we can understand self-constitution in two different ways (naturalistically or personalistically) because Husserl has a dual conception of the human being. In his major works, Husserl usually describes how the transcendental subject constitutes itself as a human being in naturalistic terms—that is, a psychophysical entity. However, as I aim to show, the constitution of oneself as a psychophysical entity in nature presupposes a more fundamental and primary constitution of oneself as an embodied person in the world. What is more, it is only when we restore the primacy of this personalistic form of self-constitution that it becomes clear that the subject that is for the world and that Husserl terms transcendental is indeed an embodied, personal, and historical subject in the world.

Dasein and World: Heidegger’s Reconceiving of the Transcendental After Husserl

Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, 2020

The following examines Heidegger’s analysis of world and Dasein from a transcendental perspective. It is argued that Heidegger’s reflections on the interconnected themes of world and Dasein reveal the tensions that exist between the transcendental claims before and after Being and Time and the analysis of worldliness. It begins by looking at Heidegger’s early analysis of Husserl’s critique of psychologism and naturalism, assessing what this tells us about Heidegger’s analysis of world and nature. It subsequently addresses Heidegger’s transformation of Husserlian phenomenology, and intentionality in particular, arguing against interpreters who claim Heidegger’s interconnected concepts of Dasein and world are reducible to one another and hence phenomenologically problematic. In order to respond to this reading, the article examines the twin themes of, on the one hand, transcendental constitutive analysis in Heidegger’s work, Dasein as disclosive and ‘world entering’, and, on the other...

Edmund Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology

We remember Edmund Husserl as a philosopher who had a great influence on known phenomenologists like Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, among others. These abovementioned followers acknowledged their indebtedness to Husserl despite their being unrecognized by Husserl himself. In fact, Stein, as Husserl's "secretary," was treated like a slave. Husserl considered Scheler's phenomenology as fool's gold. And not only that, Scheler and Heidegger were referred to as antipodes. Husserl created an opening to Continental philosophy. This opening is called phenomenology-a work that would eventually take philosophy beyond the older, tired alternatives of psychologism and formalism, realism and idealism, objectivism and subjectivism. 1 In this paper, I shall attempt to critically expose Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and explore some implications to real-life situations.