Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 21:27:40 +0800
From: Malcolm Riddoch <gezeugt-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: method


>Malcolm wrote "...But then of course Heidegger also envisaged his 
>own fundamental
>ontology as a 'how to', a method of disclosure so it's already 
>'methodologised' as a phenomenology."
>
>True enough, but it's an ontological 'methogology' rather than epistemic, so
>does not importing this into the realm of the knower thus making it into a
>'how to know something', undermine Heidegger's intentions or could it be
>seen as an authentic response from a discipline/disciplines concieved of as
>having the character of Dasein?
>
>Just a thought...
>
>Steve

It's an ontological method yes, but why should that undermine 
Heidegger's intentions? Or first can we even agree on what those 
intentions were? For me his ontology set out to describe the 
ontological structure of Dasein as a preliminary approach to the 
problem of being as such, and I don't see how this ontological aim is 
undermined by setting out a method for the description of those 
structures. But then others have a problem even with the word 
'description' or accepting that early Heidegger's ontology may have 
been a descriptive phenomenology, so where do we start?

I don't have a problem with characterising existential phenomenology 
as a descriptive methodology, but I agree that it should be qualified 
by his notions of 'formal indication' from his earlier lectures and 
is distinct from descriptive methods in the sciences. He described 
what he saw as the structure of Dasein, always in this case his own, 
and attempted to set out the authentic method of its disclosure.

Demonstration, description, formal indication and disclosure are all 
a part of his early phenomenological  method, not a 'how to think' or 
an objectivisation' of being etc., but still a method for describing 
something rather simple, or so self-evidently simple and close to us 
that it is very hard to see.

As Heidegger states in Being and Time, p. 51/34-35:

"'Phenomenology' neither designates the object of its researches, nor 
characterizes the subject-matter thus comprised. The word merely 
informs us of the "how" with which
what is to be treated in this science gets exhibited and handled. To 
have a science 'of' phenomena means to grasp its objects in such a 
way that everything about them which is up for discussion must be 
treated by exhibiting it directly and demonstrating it directly.l The 
expression 'descriptive phenomenology', which is at bottom 
tautological, has the same meaning. Here "description" [deskription] 
does not signify such a procedure as we find, let us say, in botanical
morphology; the term has rather the sense of a prohibition - the 
avoidance of characterizing anything without such demonstration. The 
character of this description itself, the specific meaning of the
logos, can be established first of all in terms of the 'thinghood' 
["Sachheit"] of what is to be 'described' - that is to say, of what 
is to be given scientific definiteness as we encounter it 
phenomenally. The signification of "phenomenon", as conceived both 
formally and in the ordinary manner, is such that any
exhibiting of an entity as it shows itself in itself, may be called 
"phenomenology" with formal justification".

So again Michael, I see we're at opposite sides of the Kehre:

>Only the caveat has to be added: (Heidegger's) thinking cannot be
>methodologized. Methodology in the sense of general rules for gaining
>knowledge is only possible within the Cartesian casting of being (cf.
>Descartes'  _Regulae_).

For me there are plenty of caveats, and I probably agree that his 
later poietic thinking shouldn't be methodologised, but there are 
many Heidegger's stretching over a long career and his early 
phenomenological approach is definitely a methodological one, albeit 
with the caveat that it isn't a methodology in the sense of general 
rules for 'gaining knowledge which is only possible within the 
Cartesian casting of being', which would include the sciences for 
instance.

Cheers,

Malcolm


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