H, BPP, INT.1

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology

Paul Thompson, The Unique Kite Invented by a Berlin Man Named Weichert, n.d.

Introduction

1. Exposition and General Division of a Theme


1.1 The Overall purpose of the Course

The stated overall purpose of the course is to pose, elaborate, and to go some way toward solving, the basic problems of phenomenology. This "fundamental illumination"  is aimed at the "inherent content" and "inner systematic relationships" of the basic problems.

Phenomenology is defined by what it thematizes, and how it investigates its object.

From the outset several of prominent Heideggarian themes are notable: first, the modest endpoint of a beginning - the unfolding of the question itself, the sighting of the problem. Also, we see the two ontological interrogatives - what and how, which, when responded to, reveal phenomenology's essence. Finally, there is the internal connection between the particular intentional comportment (ie, phenom) and it's object (the basic problems). This will later be referred to as the unity between the intentio and the intentum (58). Just how an object determines an appropriate mode of access, and how a particular mode of access uncovers or discloses a realm, is an instance of the hermenetic circle: neither concept is fundamental or provides an absolute starting point. Instead of foundation and grounding we have a relationship of provisionality and reciprocality.

More will be made of this in this introductory section, and of course, beyond. But I want to note at the outset of this project that while H's efforts are often contrasted with the foundationalist efforts of Descartes, it is important to see the fundamental continuity between the two thinkers. While H has given up the search for philosophical bedrock, he is just as concerned about finding the right starting point for thinking truth. In a way, moreover, he goes beyond Descartes, in that he sees how all foundation laying has a pre-sighted goal end in view, that the goal is, as it were, laid before the foundation. A 'goal' can show up in the first place only because we have some kind of access to it; but the appropriateness of the access is in turn determined by goal. So in philosophy, neither a fully achieved method (the how) nor a complete understanding of truth (the what) could precede the other - only a complete definition of the goal of inquiry could determine the appropriate method; yet only a wholly appropriate method could reveal just what our goal is.

We do not end in a skeptical abyss; we have a dim understanding of what we're after, and a dim understanding of how to get it. We can provisionally hold fixed one term of the equation while solving for the other - and then reciprocate the process, giving us the hermeneutic circle. But how do we know we've entered the circle at the right point? For, even if we admit that the hermeneutic circle is not inherently vicious and indeed characterizes all understanding, so too we should admit the possibility that some circles are vicious. How do we know that this whole enterprise is a vicious circling? Here I suppose H would resort to another metaphor - that of the woodpath: "paths that mostly wind along until they end quite suddenly in an impenetrable thicket". Any such circling is at the same time a wood path, and there is simply no way of knowing whether or not one is progresssing toward an "impenetrable thicket". It seems then we have to admit the difficulty of the undertaking of philosophy, and the odds stacked against it - it's setting off without knowing its own what or how, shot through with provisionality. There must, for all this, be some thing invaluable at stake. But this claim too - this glimmer of a glimpsed goal, is too, on the way of a woodpath.

1.2 What this purpose is not

Heidegger presents two misunderstandings of what it may mean to take phenomenology as our goal - each refining the inadequacies of the prior understanding.

(1) The purpose is to acquire historical knowledge about a modern philosophical movement, phenomenology.

This is perhaps the view that the intellectual historian would take towards 'phenomenology'. This approach remains thoroughly outside of phenom, looking at it in terms of historical causes and contexts, as well as individual thinkers and biographical information. Moreover, H's conception of phenomenology is more universal than a mere movement, and much older than a merely modern occurrence. Furthermore, this goes far afield, but H is probably also using the expression "acquire knowledge" critically too: philosophy, as we will eventually see, does not produce results; so it is inappropriate to expect knowledge in the form of something one could acquire and, as such, possess and recall. Philosophical knowledge will be, for H, something more Socratically negative, and something that can lose its original, disclosive context: it is not some set of facts that one learns once and for all, but rather timely events of discourse and silence which remove us from our acquired, everyday "knowledge" and as such expose us to "something" at the limit of our existence.  But even so, the real issue with this is that it is a historian's approach, not a philosophers.

(2) The purpose is to take phenomenology as a subject, but to report about what phenomenology itself deals with.

Here the misstep is contained in the word 'report' - again, the working metaphor is one of remaining too distant from the problems, in the sense that a mere report - one imagines reciting by rote a phenomenologist's manifesto - does not involve an adequate amount of intimacy with the problems. Much in the way one might report the problems that medieval theologians took as their problems, so too in reporting we still have not taken the right approach - the right how - to get at the problems - the what.

(3) The purpose is not to take phenomenology as our subject, nor merely to report what phenomenology takes as its subject, but to be able to do phenomenology.

The crucial distinction is between gaining knowledge "about" phenomenology (whether in the misunderstood sense of (1) or (2)) and being able to do phenomenology, to be able to philosophize. We can rephrase this all in the terms introduced above: the failings of the first two approaches consists in their taking the goal of the course as a what - an historical account, or a reportable enumeration of some well-defined questions. The goal of the course is rather a how, an ability, or a method. The goal of the course is to be able to philosophize. And, the paragraph closes, "An introduction to the basic problems could lead to that end."

We can expand on this with what was said above: being able to philosophize consists here in posing, elaborating and going some way toward solving the basic problems. Conversely, we can say that merely 'reporting' the thus posed, elaborated problems would be a failure. This distinction is important, and is made much of in the lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and as well in the opening pages of the Introduction to Metaphysics. This amounts to a caution to all students of philosophy - it is quite possible to seem to be philosophizing, when one is merely reciting philosophy.

1.3, 1.4 How shall we arrive at these basic problems?

H raises the epistemological worry (without, of course, using that term) - how do we know we are indeed discussing the basic problems?  He rhetorically asks whether we are to take the basic problems he will introduce "on trust", and as such implies a contrasting way of gaining insight into the legitimacy of the chosen problems.  I suppose the working distinction here is between taking something on faith and seeing something 'for oneself'. Though favoring too much the latter will tend to leave one with an epistemology that begins with self-evident beliefs and experiences and proceeds by uncontravertible inferences to derived beliefs, it is clear from what has been said above that H does not believe that philosophical method can or should aspire to this model. However, this distinction is still very much at the heart of H's thought: there is still a publically shared, but ultimately false understanding of things - the buried over, average, exchangeable 'truth' - and the uncovering of original meaning that is gained by the authentic individual who becomes receptive again to being instead of what is said about it.

H distinguishes between a 'direct' approach, which presumably would have the disadvantage of leaving our epistemological worries unanswered, and a 'roundabout' way, which again evokes the metaphor of the circle: (1) First, we will discuss certain individual problems, and only then (2) will we be in a position to "sift out" the basic problems and "determine their systematic interconnection." (3) Finally, having this understanding of the BP will "yield insight into the degree to which philosophy as a science is necessarily demanded by them".

Phase (3) seems to me to come rather out of nowhere. After all, if the goal of the course is to achieve "fundamental illumination" of the BP, why is there this more ultimate goal of determining how much philosophy is demanded by the problems. Although it isn't entirely clear, I suspect that he means to say that understanding the problems will furnish understanding of the way towards solving the problems, i.e., understanding of the essence of philosophy, or the appropriate method of philosophy. So he divides the course into three parts:

(1) The individual problems (IP) or "concrete" problems leading to the basic problems.
(2) The basic problems (BP) in their "systematic order and foundation"
(3) The scientific way of treating these problems and the idea of phenomenology

1.5 How shall we arrive at the individual problems?

In order for H's circumscription of the problems not to feel arbitrary of random, he requires of himself an introduction "leading up to" the IP. Really, then, there is a step before (1). At this point, however, H will stop the regression and start to move forward. Or, he just about is.

1.6 The Individual Problems and the idea of Phenomenology

(1) H suggests that the IP may be derived from the concept of phenomenology, much as individual problems might be derived from the concepts of geometry of physics. But as we have just seen, the concept of phenom is first to be gained at the end of the course if at all, and as such it is not available to ground the IP.
(2) Next he considers that we start from the "familiar" usage of the term. The problem here is that there isn't a single, univocal definition of phenom in familiar usage.
(3) He then moves on to an "averaged" usage - one which perhaps takes what it can from most and leaves out the outliers, what we might call the 'lowest common denominator' usage. H objects to this because this would only be valid if phenom today had "reached the center of philosophy's problems, and defined its nature by way of their possibilities." And as "we shall see this is not the case".

Much of the reasoning here is resonates with themes found elsewhere in Heidegger, and indeed could be expanded upon in a discussion of those themes, but simply put, here phenom is characterized as 'inauthentic'; it has not defined itself by way of its ownmost possibilities. Instead, one defines it, or attempts to, in a familiar and average way, and as such phenom (philosophy) remains alienated from its own essense.

The issue here of course is that phenom's alienation - the inaccessibility of the IP by way of the concept of phenom - ultimately rests on the claim that phenon has not yet reached the center of philosophy's problems, ie, presumably the claim that phenomenology has not yet come to understand it's own basic problems. Of course, this claim in turn rests on H's own prior understanding of the BP - which, in line with our attempt to not take things 'on trust' - are not available to play a role as epistemic support. Perhaps we will be doing this all on trust after all. But if so, why all the argumentation? 

Reading: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Introductory Section

I begin my readings of Heidegger's primary texts not with Being and Time but rather with the Basic Problems because I find the latter to act as something of a key to unlocking the former. BP is typically taken as containing some of the ideas that would complete the unfinished and prematurely published BT -  in particular the intended sections on the destruction of the history of philosophy. However in several ways it is simply more readable than BT and as such, it serves as a better starting point for a close reading of H, assuming, of course, at least some familiarity with the aims and designs of BT. As many have observed, H seems to be a more lucid lecturer than writer. BP does not contain the sentence long definitions of the structures of existence; nor does it contain the large scale repetitions of chapters at the deeper, and often more obscure, level. This is largely due to the fact that BP is focused on historical figures and their own ontological struggles, rather than an attempt at original ontology, which, for related reasons, had to invent a new nomenclature and, where this was not possible, to trend carefully.

As such, H's thought - what he means by certain basic concepts - is refracted through the more familiar and approachable thought of recognizable historical figures and the more familiar language in which they chose to speak about being. This contextualizing of his own thought within the tradition is augmented by his contrasting his own concept of philosophy with that of the "world-view" philosophy - philosophy conceived as producing a stance toward beings and an attitude toward life. Again, in his critical dealings with others, I often find H more reveling of himself than when he intentionally tries to be so. This is perhaps because the 'traditional language of metaphysics' that H is forced to use to present others often acts as a bridge between traditional, familiar notions and Heidegger's appropriated usages. This also fits with H's often expressed admonition against a purely historical treatment of philosophy - we should not seek to merely accumulate knowledge of what past philosophers thought as such, but we revisit the past so that we ourselves are able to philosophize. This holds true not only of H's relationship to the tradition he scrutinizes in BP, but also to us, as we begin to read H.

The goal of the lectures given in BP is quite literally the basic problems of phenomenology. The "illumination" of the problems themselves, not the solutions, are the end point. Heidegger, as well as Husserl, often sets himself such preliminary tasks, which as often recede in a kafkaesque manner: at a faster rate than the progress is made toward them (e.g., the gulf that opens between the final destination, viz., the meaning of being, and the proximate goal of the conditions of the possibility of understanding the meaning of being, ie, the meaning of truth). Still, H sets himself the prior task of legitimating his demarcation of the problems: since we get to the basic problems by looking at (or past) particular "individual problems", how do we choose these initial problems?

Since any study is understood by understanding the things it investigates - it's basic problematic, that is - we might think that we are able to derive these basic problems from the concept of phenomenology we already possess. This fails not only because we possess no such precise concept but also because the "familiar" concept of phenomenology is neither equivocal nor beyond reproach. In particular, H is unsatisfied with phenomenology conceived as one style of philosophy among others, or as preparatory science - laying the groundwork for the "proper philosophical disciplines of logic, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion" (3).

H's move at this point is something of a leap: "Does not phenomenology contain within itself the possibility of reversing the alienation of philosophy into these disciplines and of revitalizing and reappropriating in its basic tendencies the great tradition of philosophy with its essential answers?" (3). To deny phenom's status as one method among others or as a preparatory philosophy is, for H, to claim it as "the method of scientific philosophy in general". At this point this tells us very little of what phenomenology is; we then seem no closer to legitimizing H's choice of the "individual problems".
 
But H will persist in this negative definition of phenom by giving a negative definition of "scientific" philosophy: it is differentiated (spuriously - as it turns out) from philosophy as worldview ie:

"...philosophy is supposed not only, and not in the first place, to be a theoretical science, but to give practical guidance to our view of things and their interconnection and our attitudes toward them, and to regulate and direct our interpretation of existence and its meaning. Philosophy is wisdom of the world and of life" (4)
 "...a self-realized, productive as well as conscious way of apprehending and interpreting the universe of beings." (5)
"...a conception of the contexture of natural things but at the same time an interpretation of the sense and purpose of human Dasein and hence of history"


As such, a world-view always is taking a stand toward some particular beings, at a particular time and place. And accordingly:

"To determine whether philosophy succeeds or fails [in the construction of a scientific world-view] its history is examined for unequivocal confirmation that it deals knowingly with the ultimate questions" (7)

Of course, H will take issue with the appraisal of the efforts of philosophy on the same scale as those of science. Much of modern philosophy can be seen as a soul-searching in response to a perceived inadequacy in the face of the progress of science toward convergence and consensus, as well as its practical results. My understanding of H has him not only reject these from the purpose of philosophy, but moreover to set them - the need for univocality and results - positively against the true essence of philosophy. But what H really rejects is the idea that philosophy could most basically concern itself with a factical, historical position taken toward particular beings. Philosophy concerns itself with and only with being as such - which we can say, roughly, means that which we must already understand if we are to comport ourselves toward beings.

Here H's rejection of world-view formation from philosophy seems to rest partially on the idea of the priority of our understanding of being to our encounter with this or that being. If there is any non-blind, non-random, understanding-differentiation between things that are and things that are in no way whatsoever (ie, nothing), or between the actual and the non-actual, the real and the un-real, between the living and the un-living (which seems indisputably to be the case)  then there must be a prior understanding of what it is for anything to be, or to be actual, real, living, etc. "Philosophy is the theoretical conceptual interpretation of being, of being's structure and its possibilities.

Do we have to grant this priority? Could we speak, not in terms of priority, but in terms of granting pride of place to contentfulnesss, so that while being may be, in H's sense, 'prior' to beings, we might find it a more important fact that some concrete individual being is more contentful than the barest, most abstract property it bears. And as such, couldn't we argue that the further we move away from the contentful, the more meaningless our concepts become, so that being is, in a way derivative of individual beings? Couldn't abstraction be posterior to the concrete? Many of these worries H will sidestep by claiming that we've already presupposed too much with our terms - but certainly he is not immune from this same response. And even if we agree that there is this priority, it is still a leap to the claims of exclusivity, and basicness.

I think at this point where argumentation stops. In fact, if you thought that H was going to lead you down a path by ruling out all other possibilities, you'd be disappointed. There comes a point in reading H where argumentation stops (or reveals itself to be something other than argumentation) and 'going along with' begins. This is probably one reason that Heideggerians tend to be such a dogmatic bunch - those unwilling to follow never got past the first few pages. As far as I can tell, at this point H claims that a discussion of the basic problems will substantiate the claim that philosophy is the science of being as such. Here we see for the first time the so called Hermeneutic circle. Only upon reaching the final destination will we be able to see the appropriateness of the starting point. "Philosophy must legitimate by its own resources its claim to be universal ontology." In the meantime, however, the statement that philosophy is the science of being remains a pure assertion. Correspondingly, the elimination of world-view formation from the range of philosophical tasks has not yet been warranted." Have we made any progress? If so, how?

Still, what is at stake has at least been sketched out - pursuing this line of thought we can anticipate to see why phenom is not a preparatory to a fragmented philosophical field of study, nor the formation of one's "own philosophy". Finally, H considers a further claim that the 'is' is too meaningless to study - which is in effect a response to anglo-american philosophy. Again, the response is a question - not an argument, but the provocation to consider a possibility: while the analytic tradition has dismissed being as a philosophical red herring, reducible to quantification or the copula, in turn reducible to predication, and as such the simplest and most self-evident concept, H asks what if it is in fact the most complex and obscure concept? What if instead of being a mere 'matter of course', the question of being is the most urgent of all questions? In BT H gives some prestige to this question by showing how Plato too was compelled by it. And indeed much of what follows will be an attempt to invoke a sense of mystery when it comes to our understanding of being, which is, according to H, the only way philosophy can properly get started anyhow, no matter how much introductory argumentation about the proper starting point is offered. And indeed, too, the only way to truly settle the question of the significance of the seinsfrage is to pose the question and pursue it to the end.

The Domain of the Will

Davis, H&W

RE The will as a faculty of the subject

"...if we are to pursue Heidegger's path of rethinking the will, we must more radically call into question the traditional assumption that the will is simply a "faculty of the subject." To begin with, what if it were the case that something akin to the opposite were true--that subjectivity is rather, as it were, a "faculty of the will"? What is the will underlies the subject, and not vice versa...that thinking in terms of a subject who possesses faculties, a subject who wills, already involves a particularly willful mode of being-in-the-world?...if the very ontology which sets up a subject who stands over against a world of objects, to which it then reaches out by means of faculties, powers of representational thought and volitional action, is itself determined by a willful manner of being and thinking?" 6

RE the will as "Fundamental (Dis)attunement

"A fundamental attunement would be "fundamental" in the sense that it first opens (one) up (to) a world, prior to the determination of "who" is opened up to "what"...A willful fundamental attunement first determines the ontology wherein a subject is open to a world of objects in such a manner that the "open to" of this relation is distorted (constricted) into the representation of objects present-at-hand, if not indeed into the securing of a totality of materials ready for willful manipulation" 8

"The will...involves precisely not being a-tuned to an other...The will, of necessity, draws its being from a relation with an otherness or exteriority which exceeds its domain, while at the same time denying or disguising this ordinary dispossession of itself. In this sense, the fundamental attunement of the will would be an inauthentic fundamental (dis) attunement...the will is a comportment of the subject that attempts to close off, to forget, his originary ecstatic openness to what lies beyond his grasp." 14

RE the Will's appropriation

H: "he who wills stations himself abroad among beings in order to keep them firmly within his field of action"

"In willing, we exceed ourselves to bring this excess back into the self...the ekstasis of willing is thus always incorporated back into the domain of the subject; the will's movement of self-overcoming is always in the name of an expansion of the subject, an increase in his territory, his power. Willing is, in short, "being-master-out-beyond-oneself" 9

"The will, in willing itself, reaches out to the world as something it posits and represents as a means for its movement of power-enhancement and hence power-preservation, or power-preservation and hence power-enhancement" 12

RE Representation
H: "Representation inspects everything encountering it from out of itself and in reference to itself" In representing the world, one brings it into one's sphere of knowing and acting, and thus the world is reduced to an environment pivoting on one's will. Ultimately, Heidegger attempts to show, representation reduces the things of the world to objects and finally to "standing-reserve" fro willful technological manipulation" 13

RE Metaphysics
"The dilemma endemic to metaphysics as such lies in the fact that its "will to ground and found", its will to submit beings to the shadowless light of the principle of calculative reason, or the will to posit the human subject himself as the ground, hinders an originary experience of the granting-in-withdrawal of being which lets beings be in their presencing and absencing" 13

RE Levinas and the Will
"THe will is a movement of reducing otherness to sameness, difference to identity, even when paradoxically when this has the effect of solidifying dichotomies...The will wants the impossible: to possess others as others; but the moment it succeeds in possessing them, they are stripped of their otherness. The will therefore fails even when it succeeds, and its movement of restless self-expansion must continue without end" 10

The Will and Gelassenheit - Introductory Remarks

Davis, H&W

Introduction

"Heidegger reads the history of metaphysics as a series of epochs linked together by a narrative of the rise of willful subjectivity, a story that culminates in the technological "will to will." It is thought to be this will to will that drives today's globalizing "world civilization," displacing the various peoples of the earth from their traditional contexts of dwelling and replacing them in a Euro-Americanocentric system of economic and technological manipulation." xxiv

"The Brockhaus encyclopedia currently defines Gelassenheit as "the comportment, attained by way of letting go of one's own wishes and cares, the comportment of a calm mental preparedness to willingly accept fateful dispensations of every kind" xxvi