Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 22:59:23 +0800
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Heidegger on Husserl


>It would seem odd if the early Heidegger already had answered the
>question, saying that _Zeitlichkeit_ is the sense of being. He certainly
>does say that it is the sense of authentic care (cf. SuZ 326), as you
>point out. - but does this answer the question?

That's a rather big question...the final section of BT (=A783, p. 486/436) is
interesting in this regard. Heidegger states that Zeitlichkeit is the basis
of Dasein and thus of the sense of the being of care. Temporality is in
this sense the structure of Dasein's 'totality of being', and it is on the
basis of an authentic disclosure of this totality that "something like
'Being' has been disclosed...in a preliminary way, and non-conceptually"
(p. 488/437).

The temporal structure of Dasein is thus a 'point of departure', and the
existential analytic in this sense is still very much a preparatory
analytic whose basic structural theme is nonetheless 'Zeitlichkeit'. He
then goes on to ponder the possibility of whether or not a
conceptualization of being qua being lies in an intensification of the
analysis of the "ecstatical projection of being" which must presumably be
made possible, in some as yet unexplicated sense, by the "way in which
ecstatical temporality temporalizes". I take this to mean that he proposes
to elucidate the sketchy structure of temporality given in the second
division and so we get the last two lines of BT: "Is there a way which
leads from primordial time to the meaning of Being? Does time itself
manifest itself as the horizon of Being?" (p. 488/438).

These questions were worked through in the lecture courses following the
publication of BT, such as the 'Basic problems of phenomenology', the Kant
lectures and the rather disappointing Kantbuch. For me these works promise
a lot but then generally fail to clear a way through to an explication of
Temporalitaet, he seems frustrated at every turning...at least that's the
impression I have got from working through these texts and their
commentaries. Heidegger seems to me to run into a brick wall as far as the
philosophical possibilities of Husserlian and neo-Kantian transcendental
terminology goes. This explains for me in part his turn towards poiesis and
Holderlin and the whole world historical projection of Ereignis etc...

>Or do I miss the point and  are you trying to find a basis in
>Heidegger's early writings for a Husserlian kind of intentionality?
>
>Kindest regards,
>Henk

In a sense then, all I'm doing at the moment is trying to take Heidegger's
initial existential question concerning being and Zeitlichkeit back to
Husserl rather than forwards towards the Kehre. The preliminary,
non-conceptual sense of being is fine with me, which is why I prefer the
structural analyses of BT to the more poetic style of his later writings.
I'm not really interested in conceptually defining being, which the
transcendental analyses failed to do anyways, but I still prefer the
descriptive style of Husserl and early Heidegger to the poetic call of our
world historical destining...

So yeh, I'm just interested in how Husserl's rather complex writings on the
temporal structure of perception fit into Heidegger's existential
interpretation of phenomenology and the rather brief sections on the
ecstatic structure of temporality. And the latter asks an interesting
question in that final section regarding the 'being of consciousness' which
cannot be regarded as an existent thing..."What positive structure does the
Being of 'consciousness' (bewusstsein) have, if reification remains
innappropriate to it?" (p. 487/437). Heidegger engages here with Husserl's
basic question coming out of the sixth investigation and into the
phenomenology of time, a question founded in what the latter called the
originary flux of consciousness, or 'Zeitlichkeit'. Heidegger points out
that such questions must first be based on a clarification of the
existential meaning of being but he does not seem to discount the problem
of consciousness as such. It does seem to have its place with respect to
the existential analytic in that it is subordinate to the question of the
sense of being and Dasein's transcendence. Nonetheless, I think it is more
than possible that the structure of transcendental temporality that Husserl
worked out in the phenomenology of time informs much of what Heidegger is
attempting in the authentic projection of the temporality of Dasein.

thanks,

Malcolm Riddoch

=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83=83

The following interpretation would not have been possible if the ground
[Boden] had not been prepared by Edmund Husserl, with whose Logische
Untersuchungen phenomenology first appeared.... what is essential in it
does not lie in its actuality as a philosophical 'movement'. Higher than
actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology only by
seizing it as a possibility  (Heidegger, B&T, p.  62-63/38).









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