Jacob Kountz
Philosophical Report I: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology
24 September 2008
Dr. Davis
Heidegger opens his lecture course, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, by clarifying just what phenomenology is. He claims that it “is not just one philosophical science among others, nor is it the science preparatory to the rest of them; rather the expression ‘phenomenology’ is the name for the method of scientific philosophy in general” (3). What, then, is the subject of the phenomenological method; what is philosophy about? Heidegger argues that “being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy” (11). It is important to note that by ‘being’ Heidegger does not mean beings, or, in Heidegger’s parlance: philosophy is an ontological, not an ontical science. But how can such a vague concept as being be understood in the first place, much less be the subject of all philosophy? According to Heidegger’s ever present thesis, being is always already understood. “We think being just as often as, daily, on innumerable occasions, whether aloud or silently, we say ‘This is such and such,’ ‘That other is not so,’ ‘That was,’ ‘It will be.’ It is because we always already understand being that we can comport ourselves toward beings. Phenomenology will be the method with which Heidegger answers his fundamental question: What is the meaning of being?
Heidegger proposes to look at the basic problems of phenomenology through four traditional theses about being. Roughly, they are: 1. Kant’s thesis: being is not a real predicate; 2. The Aristotelian and Medieval thesis: to beings belong essence and existence; 3. The Modern thesis: the ways of being are res extensa and res cogitans; 4. The thesis of logic: every being can adequately be spoken of by means of the “is”, the copula. Each thesis receives a substantial chapter, a violent interpretation, and many forays into related subjects. But instead of looking at these theses in depth, I have decided to focus on Heidegger’s phenomenology and its basic problems.
What, then, are the four problems Heidegger chooses (the list is not meant to be exhaustive)? First, Heidegger remarks on the distinction between being and beings. He calls this the ontological difference. “This distinction is not arbitrary; rather, it is the one by which the theme of ontology and thus of philosophy itself is first of all attained” (17). Heidegger argues that making this distinction (krinein in Greek) warrants calling his philosophy a critical science, or a transcendental science. Further, making this distinction is part of Dasein’s existential constitution: “Only a soul that can make this distinction has the aptitude…to become the soul of a human being” (319).
The second problem revolves around the difficulty with which we can talk about being and a critical reading of the history of the essence/existence distinction. This is called the problem of the basic articulation of being. Heidegger is very skeptical of traditional conceptions of being here. For example, the distinction between essence and existence cannot properly be made about Dasein, whose mode of being is Existenz. But how are we, then, to talk about what it is?
The third problem starts from the insight that every being has its way-of-being. Heidegger questions whether this “way-of-being has the same character in every being [such as the essence/existence thesis claims]…or whether individual ways-of-being are mutually distinct” (18). What are the ways of being and what is it that holds them together in being? This is called the problem of the possible modifications of being and the unity of being’s variety.
The final problem asks about the relationship of truth and being. If the science of ontology is to proceed, we must have an adequate conception of what counts as a true assertion. Heidegger will argue that disclosedness or uncoveredness of something is truth and that such disclosedness must be given to some being, which turns out to be necessarily Dasein. This receives the name of the problem of the truth-character of being.
In order to investigate these problems Heidegger again brings up the problem of the method he employs in this book—phenomenology. According to Heidegger, phenomenology has nothing in common with any method of the positive sciences, which deal with beings, not with being. That is not to say that ontology is devoid of any content about beings. One being in particular is decisive for the project of ontology and in fact Heidegger goes as far as to say that “ontology has an ontical foundation” (19). This, of course, is Dasein, the being that we are, the being that understands being. Ontology is only possible if it begins with this ontical foundation. “Philosophy must perhaps start from the ‘subject’ and return to the ‘subject’ in its ultimate questions… (155). This preparatory part of Heidegger’s project he calls the analytic of Dasein.
The second point Heidegger makes is to understand what counts as understanding for ontology. Being precedes beings. “The term denoting this character by which being precedes beings is the expression a priori, apriority, being earlier” (20). Therefore, the type of understanding Heidegger hopes to achieve is a priori cognition, which Heidegger often expresses by saying always already. This, in turn, constitutes phenomenology. As a method, phenomenology starts with some being and then “is led away from that being and led back to its being” (21). This leading back is what Heidegger means by the phenomenological reduction. He thus appropriates Husserl’s terminology but redefines it. It is important in general to always remember that Heidegger’s definitions of common and philosophical terms is almost always substantially different from their standard definition.
The reduction, however, is not the fundamental part of Heidegger’s phenomenology. Its impact is only negative in that it leads away from the being under discussion back to the being of the being. To arrive at the being of beings requires that being “be brought to view in a free projection” (22). Projection is a difficult concept of Heidegger’s. By it he roughly means that understanding is always projection on some horizon. Only then can the phenomenon be appropriately viewed, as it were. “This projecting of the antecedently given being [or entity] upon its being and the structures of its being we call phenomenological construction” (22).
The third concept of Heidegger’s phenomenology he calls destruction. As I pointed out earlier, one must allow Heidegger to define his own terms and understand him using these definitions. This is because, according to Heidegger, traditional concepts infect and mislead our contemporary attempts at philosophy. Destruction is “a critical process in which the traditional concepts, which at first must necessarily be employed, are de-constructed down to the sources from which they were drawn” (23). This assures a type of purity for phenomenology, although Heidegger is patently not aiming for an absolutely pure philosophy in the way Husserl did.
Moving forward, I will now focus on Heidegger’s use of intentionality. Dasein is always already in the ‘world’. As being-in-the-world, Dasein comports itself towards beings. This directing-oneself-toward is called intentionality. It is not something said of consciousness, but something said of Dasein’s very constitution. Now, Heidegger distinguishes between the act of comporting-toward—intentio—and the thing toward which we are comported—intentum; in traditional language, we are speaking of immanence and transcendence, or in Husserl’s terms, the object and the subject poles. However, it is decisive to notice that according to Heidegger, intentionality comprises both moments. The two ‘moments’ are always different with each comportment, but intentionality contains them both. Heidegger warns against speaking of intentionality as if it were an extant relation between a psychical and a physical object. This is because “this interpretation takes the intentional relation to be something that at each time accrues to the subject due to the emergence of the extantness of an object” (60). This would erroneously imply that there is an isolated subject that must transcend in order to reach any object. Heidegger wants to say that intentionality, transcendence, or comportment-towards…is a basic ontological characterization of Dasein. It is an existential part of human being, not something that happens when we stand in front of an external object, not a relation of just consciousness. In fact, intentionality is at work even when the ‘object’ comported toward is imaginary. If we reject theory in favor of the phenomenon, Heidegger argues that there is no contradiction between an immanent subject and the transcendent object. Consequently, the traditional concepts of subject and object and the problem of immanence and transcendence are thrown into question. Dasein “is always already immediately dwelling among things…and for the Dasein there is no outside, for which reason it is also absurd to talk about an inside” (66). If taken seriously, this argument is a major contribution to philosophy.
The Basic Problems does not end here. Heidegger calls the work “a new elaboration of division 3 of part 1 of Being and Time” (1). And indeed, he does perform a phenomenological destruction of ontology and explicate time as the transcendental horizon of ontology. The lecture course, however, does not complete its intended goals. Only the first of four intended chapters was completed when the semester ended, the chapter on the ontological difference. Nonetheless, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology is well read in tandem with Being and Time and as a more concentrated explication of Heidegger’s use of phenomenology.