Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 14:09:13 +0800
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Heidegger on Husserl



>First off, I think its erroneous to charcaterize Husserl's ego as
>"controlling"
>Intending, but not controlling. In Ideas I the prue ego is mostly a pole in
>the intentional relation. It also has no contents, that is reserved for
>consciousness itself.

I'm just following what he says in ITC about an 'ultimate controlling
intentionality' that oversees the general direction of the flux of
consciousness. He assumes that it must be a controlling consciousness and
this theme is taken up in the Ideen as the self-representing Cartesian ego
that can take up for itself the actual phases of the flow as in "as soon as
I look at the flowing life in its actual present and, while doing so,
apprehend myself as the pure subject of this life ... I say unqualifiedly
and necessarily that I am, this life is, I am living: cogito" (Ideen
I)...It's the phenomenology of time that first shows how this Cartesian ego
is itself constituted in the temporal unity of consciousness which is at
its source Zeitlichkeit. On this temporal basis Husserl then goes off on
what might seem to some to be a rather naive Cartesian tangent but he does
this on the basis of a phenomenological (ie temporal) retrieval of the
Cartesian ego. I've concentrated on the LI and ITC as these are the works
Heidegger seems to come from, as you also suggest, and for me the
existential analytic definitely seems to start out from the notion of the
temporality of straightforward perception and its constituted ego process,
except with practical comportments as the 'ultimate controlling
intentionality'...from there Heidegger makes his way to the ecstasis of
care and the fundamental experience of being. Obviously Husserl doesn't
thematize being, in this existential sense, cos his is much more of a
'psychological' or 'pre-scientific' focus as opposed to Heidegger's
practical/historical problem with its theological overtones, but
nonetheless Husserl's notion of Zeitlichkeit is still there at the heart of
existential phenomenology.

>A second thought is that Husserl's first publication of his work on time was
>edited by Martin Heidegger!

The 1929 manuscript on time was actually compiled by Husserl's assistant Dr
Edith Stein over several years up to about 1917...it contains excerpts from
the early lecture on time as well as a jumble of notes and revisions by
Husserl. Heidegger's involvement with the work doesn't seem to amount to
much more than a reshuffle of the pages and sending it on to the publishers
after B&T was published. He received it from Husserl in 1926 in return for
the birthday gift of B&T complete to =A777 and with the dedication. The Boehm
edition of 'inner time consciousness' is much better, it presents the whole
movement of Husserl's thinking in chronological sequence from 1893 through
to 1911.

>It seems to me that Heidegger was obviously familiar with Husserl's work
>on time and that they bith went in a similar direction after that original
>work to focus less on what Brough calls the schematic representation of
>time and to a more *lived* understanding of time.

>Greg Borgerson

That's what seems obvious to me as well, and both phenomenologists tried to
remain faithful to the call 'to the things/matters themselves' in terms of
the problem of Zeitlichkeit. Yet Heidegger was of the opinion that Husserl
lost touch with the matter as soon as he restricted the problem of
intentionality to consciousness and this happens right on the very last
page of Boehm's edition of the ITC, c. 1911, when the ultimate
intentionality is taken as a 'controlling consciousness'.

cheers,

Malcolm Riddoch.









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