File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0304, message 38


Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 05:38:47 +0800
Subject: Re: Being and Time-section 2
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>



On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 11:53  PM, Michael Eldred wrote:

> I like that formulation:"...it's the analyst's own lived experience of
> phenomena that's in
> question."
> It's not like in the social sciences, where observations have to be 
> made,
> data gathered and statistically analyzed.
>
> Michael

No, unless you're doing something with an ethnological bias to it I 
guess. Phenomenology is directly related to empirical method in that 
Husserl wanted to observe the regularities of understanding belonging 
to the objective facts uncovered by the analyst. Husserl sets this up 
in his Prolegomena, and specifically in relation to Wundt's late 19th 
century empirical psychology, with whom Husserl studied for a time. 
Heidegger notes Husserl's 'phenomenological empiricism' in BT, and in 
the LI this involves something of a 'step back' from empirical analytic 
thinking in that:

"there must be ideal elements and laws even in the field of empirical 
thinking, in the sphere of probabilities. In these the possibility of 
empirical science in general, of the probable knowledge of the real, 
has its a priori basis" (Husserl, LI vol I, p. 247/257).

An analysis of empirical thinking will necessarily entail, for Husserl, 
an immanent description of the phenomena that are given to the 
empiricist and that are theorized as subjective or objective facts:

"Facts are originally 'given' to us only in the sense of being 
perceived (and likewise in the sense of being remembered). In 
perception things and events themselves putatively confront us, seen 
and grasped, so to say, without intervening partition. And what we see 
before us, we utter in judgements of perception: these are the 
immediate 'given facts' of science"
(Husserl, LI vol I, p. 246-247/256).

It's an analysis of analysis, and it leads to constant questioning as a 
method, the critical dismantling of traditional subject/object 
philosophies, and the notion of originary temporality as a fundamental, 
constitutive, ontological structure of human understanding. I think 
it's where Heidegger gets his wonderfully positive scientific focus and 
style in this early period of his.

Cheers,

Malcolm

PS - How's things in Deutschland Michael? Australia is an increasingly 
reactive inward looking xenophobic place to be, and the blatant 
hypocrisy and apathy of politicians and mainstream voters are still 
amazing me even after 7 years conservative rule. The current estimates 
for this insane war of conquest in Iraq are about $AUS 1 billion which 
is going to come out of public welfare, health and education as usual, 
which means yet another round of severe cuts and corporatisation of the 
universities. Pity there are no Heideggerean business studies programs 
I could teach in, as it is I'm an electronic arts lecturer at the 
moment... leaves me time to write though.



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