The Basic Problems of Phenomenology
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?
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| 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?
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