From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Method
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 16:05:06 


Michael Eldred wrote:

>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_).

I have two questions regarding this. First, if logic can be considered a set 
of general rules for gaining knowledge, then methodology in the sense you 
describe above was around long before Descartes, going all the way back go 
Greek philosophy. Or you are referring to rules that are more specific than 
an empty syllogistic form, then there are still at least rules like the 
principle of non-contradiction, which also go all the way back to Greek 
philosophy. Secondly, concerning Heidegger's philosophy, it seems that he 
does have a fundamental methodological rule upon which any further 
phenomenological analysis depends - that Dasein's essence is not any 
specific existent, but simply existence. In other words, for Heidegger, 
phenomenology can only procede if we first suspend any and all assumptions 
that Dasein's essence is some particular kind of existent, such as a soul, 
matter, mind, etc. Why isn't this a fundamental "rule" of procedure, upon 
which the entire rest of his analytic depends?

Anthony Crifasi

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