Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 18:02:51 +0100
Subject: Re:  Heidegger on Husserl
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 02 March 1998

Malcolm Riddoch schrieb:
> >Malcolm ... There is no such thing as an
> >“intentionality of care”, nor is there such a thing as “intentionality as
> >Verhalten”, since Dasein as such is not intentional at all.
>
> Well you might see things differently with a careful reading of the
> 'History of the concept of time' lecture course c.1925;  

Malcolm, thank you for your long and careful exposition of the line of 
questioning you are pursuing. I agree in large part with what you say, and will 
concentrate here only on the differences between us. In the passage you quote 
from my last post the emphasis is on the “as such” i.e. Dasein as such is not 
intentional at all, for Dasein as such it is the opening to the self-disclosure 
of being which is fundamental. 

> Also interesting is the
> 'Basic problems of phenomenology' lecture course following on the
> publication of B&T. In these works care is quite specifically given as the
> ground of intentionality or Dasein's directedness towards beings as a
> whole, and this directedness involves not only perceptions and objective
> being (in HCT) but also of course practical comportments (Verhalten).

I heartily agree with the formulation “care is quite specifically given as the 
ground of intentionality”; that is spot on. This means that intentionality is 
taken back (in thinking) into its ground, which is care (the ontological 
structure of Dasein’s being-in-the-world). Put another way: care is the 
condition of possibility of intentionality, whether it be the intentionality of 
perception or practical comportment. 

My claim that Verhalten is not intentional is not tenable in the form I said it 
in my last post. Rather, it has to be seen that and how Verhalten is grounded in 
Dasein as such (i.e. in Dasein’s understanding of being in its self-disclosure 
-- i.e. the understanding of being itself has to be understood as an eventuation 
of the truth of being). 

> "I do not first need to ask how the immanent intentional experience
> [Erlebnis] acquires transcendent validity, it is precisely intentionality
> and nothing else in which transcendence consists" (Basic problems of
> phenomenology, p. 63/89). That is, intentionality in general, as an
> openness to the factical world within which consciousness can perceive
> things, shifts the problem of transcendence from the ego process and
> objective being to the being of Dasein, ie., towards the openness belonging
> to practical comportments.

Malcolm, this and other passages in your post give me the impression that you 
are balking at the fundamental insight. It is as if in your view Heidegger 
merely broadens the scope from the perception of objects to practical 
comportments (and thus to the social and historical world), i.e. it is as if 
in your view the phenomenological gaze were simply becoming more ontically 
encompassing. But the shift is much more radical than that, 
for Heidegger goes further back into the ground that enables practical 
comportments (and world) in the first place. In fact, the focus on practical 
comportment is only a way of getting at Dasein as such, to wit, its openness to 
the openness of being. 

Thus you also write: 
> Intentionality and the problem of
> transcendence, ie how the sense of everydayness is constituted, thus moves
> from perception and objective being to an openness to the equipmental world
> and the sense of being within which perceptions can make sense...

It is not just the “sense of being” or “making sense of...” but the 
understanding of being given in being’s self-disclosure, i.e. the opening of 
being ueberhaupt. The point about “practical comportment” is that it is only 
possible on the basis of an understanding of being. The world is only open to 
Dasein in its everyday life _as_ a self-disclosure of being, i.e. as a happening 
of truth. 

> Not quite, for Husserl the intentionality belonging to the flow of
> consciousness is first constituted in Zeitlichkeit and it is on this basis
> that the unity of both the transcendental ego and of objects is
> constituted. According to the phenomenology of time transcendence is
> grounded in Zeitlichkeit, and there is in no sense whatsoever an ego-thing
> that constitutes sense for itself.

I agree that Heidegger and Husserl come extremely close in the thinking of 
Zeitlichkeit, which could perhaps be termed their point of tangential contact -- 
and departure from each other. 

> and yet temporality remains central to the
> problematic as a whole (from 'Being and time' through the 'Beitraege' to
> 'On time and being').

I agree that “temporality remains central”, albeit with the qualification that 
“temporality is the preliminary name for the truth (self-disclosure) of being”, 
as I cited in a previous post. 

ME:
> >Heidegger radicalizes the understanding of transcendence to
> >being-in-the-world.
>
> Yes, and so Dasein's self-projection remains open to a factical world
> already set up in terms of the ready-to-hand totality. But this
> self-projection still has the temporal structure of Husserl's
> transcendental subject...and yet of course Husserl tried to solve the
> problem of transcendence only in terms of the intentionality of this
> subject as temporal process and neglected the practical world of care
> within which it lives.

This is another point at which you seem to shy away from the brink. But it also 
makes it clearer how easily Heidegger and Husserl can be conflated. After all, 
the transcendental method of SuZ owes as much to Husserl as it does to Kant. And 
yet: transcendence means something essentially different. If the emphasis is 
placed on “Dasein's self-projection”, this is still very close to the “ego”, the 
“subject”, and the assimilation of Heidegger to Husserl is relatively easy to 
achieve with a couple of sleights-of-hand. But “Dasein's self-projection” is 
itself only possible within the open dimensionality of temporality. And 
temporality itself? For the thinking of the period of SuZ: “Die Zeitlichkeit 
ermoeglicht aufgrund der zu ihrer ekstatischen Einheit gehoerigen Einheit der 
horizontalen Schemata das Verstaendnis von Sein, so dass es sich erst im Lichte 
dieses Verstaendnisses von Sein zu sich selbst, zu Anderen als Seienden und zu 
Vorhandenem als Seiendem verhalten kann.” (GA24:453 _Basic Problems of 
Phenomenology_ Sect. 22 Being and beings. The Ontological Difference) “On the 
basis of the unity of the horizonal schemata belonging to its ek-static unity, 
temporality enables the understanding of being so that it [Dasein] can only 
comport itself towards itself, towards others as beings and towards things 
present-to-hand as beings in the light of this understanding of being.” (notice 
the occurrence of the apophantic _as_)

Heidegger goes on:
“Weil die Zeitlichkeit die Grundverfassung des Seienden ausmacht, das wir Dasein 
nennen, zu welchem Seienden als Bestimmung seiner Existenz das Seinsverstaendnis 
gehoert, und weil die Zeit den urspruenglichen Selbstentwurf schlechthin 
ausmacht, ist in jedem faktischen Dasein, wenn anders es existiert, je schon 
Sein enthuellt, und das heisst: Seiendes erschlossen bzw. entdeckt.” (ibid.)

“Because temporality constitutes the basic structural constitution of the being 
which we call Dasein, for which the understanding of being is an essential 
determination of its existence, and because time constitutes the originary 
self-projection (self-casting) _par excellence_, being is always already 
un-covered in every factical Dasein so long as it exists, and that means: beings 
are opened up or discovered.”

Notice the eventuation of the truth of being that is being emphasized here. 

Even though Dasein does not have to “expressly distinguish the thus understood 
being of beings from beings” (ibid.) in order to comport itself towards beings 
as such, “it understands, if it exists at all, being and comports itself towards 
beings” (op. cit. 454) “The [ontological] difference _is there_, i.e. it has the 
mode of being of Dasein, it belongs to existence. Existence means so to speak 
‘to be in the execution [Vollzug; also performance; consummation] of the 
difference’. Only a soul that can make this difference has the appropriate 
property [Eignung] to become, beyond the soul of an animal, the soul of a human. 
The _difference between being and beings is brought forth [gezeitigt] in the 
Zeitigung of Zeitlichkeit.” (ibid.) 

Dasein is the performative consummation of the ontological difference. 

This is the point at which the gulf that separates Heidegger from Husserl 
becomes plain. Nevertheless, the ‘turn’ in Heidegger’s thinking is still 
required to put the self-disclosure of being into focus at the outset and thus 
avoid thinking Dasein (mistakenly) as a kind of subject. Zeitlichkeit thereby 
also loses its fundamental status, since it does not ground the truth of being. 

> If you mean that what is needed here is good Heidegger scholarship then
> obviously how else might one gain a 'well-founded insight into the
> ontological
> difference'? If by that you mean we must restrict ourselves to restating
> Heidegger's system as if it were some sort of gospel handed down from on
> high then if that works for you, fine. Heidegger's pedagogical tendencies,
> however, don't particularly interest me. And beyond this initial foray into
> the problem of intentionality I think you are still relying too much on an
> appeal to the supposed incommensurability of the question of being that *in
> some sense* exceeds all other philosophy. It's that incommensurability that
> for me is always in question, and I don't think we should just accept
> Heidegger's word on the matter.

I agree that we cannot “just accept Heidegger's word”, but we have to think 
these things through for ourselves without degenerating into being simply 
Heidegger-quotation machines. So it’s more than a matter of “scholarship” (i.e. 
knowing the texts inside out), but above all an issue for thinking _with the 
phenomena in view_. A propos: I clearly gain the impression that Heidegger is 
floundering at the end of his lectures in GA24 to make a plausible distinction 
between Zeitlichkeit and Temporalitaet (which is supposed to become the sense of 
being itself). Aren't we witnessing here the dead-end character of SuZ? If 
temporality does indeed mark the Holzweg-character of SuZ, this is so because 
Heidegger still puts the analysis of Dasein at the centre of attention, as a 
bridge to the Seinsfrage. He realizes in the end that there is no bridge, no 
mediation from Dasein to the self-disclosure of being, not even through 
temporality.

My insistence does not come from an appeal to a “gospel”, nor 
to a supposed “system”. (Recall the phenomenon of “ambiguity” is SuZ.) By all 
means, make the question of “incommensurability of the question of being” with 
all thinking before Heidegger into a question. I am not trying to shove it down 
your throat! Just being insistent in opening the question and trying to keep it 
open. Thought always has to be rethought to _be_ thought. Once one has a clear 
insight into _alaetheia_, every phenomenon appears in a new light and thus has 
to be rethought. We are only just learning to see that.

Are you familiar with the poem “Insistence” in Heidegger’s Gelassenheit-text? It 
has puzzled me for years, but is today a little clearer. The second 
half of this peculiar poem reads:

	Call the thinking heart
	Into the simple forbearance
	Of the unique magnanimity
	Of noble recollection.

Regards,
Michael
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