Abstract
Even in the relatively recent literature on the issue of the philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger, some scholars recognize that despite a large number of very good accounts, the darkness surrounding the matter has not yet been totally lifted. In particular, we still lack a complete account of the exact influence that Husserl’s Phenomenology exerted on Heidegger’s project of a Fundamental Ontology. To use, e.g., Dahlstrom’s wording, until now, the available works on this subject “merely provide points of departure for an explanation of the relation between the two phenomenologists” (Dahlstrom 2001, 142 n. 103; emphasis added).
All the available textual evidence, then, makes clear that Heidegger considered the doctrine of categorial intuition, developed in the sixth LI, as the most decisive influence from Husserl on his own thought (with intentionality and the phenomenological a priori following closely). Now, what precisely is the meaning of this influence? How might that Husserlian doctrine have helped Heidegger shape the way in which he treated the sole concern of his entire philosophical career, namely the question of Being (Seinsfrage)?
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
PHCT, 121/168.
- 3.
BT, e.g., [MR] 62/38, [MR] 490 n. x/50 n. 1.
- 4.
See for example, Taminiaux 1985, 93.
- 5.
See Taminiaux 1985, 95.
- 6.
Taminiaux accepts these points of Heidegger’s (see Taminiaux 1985, 96–7). I must, of course, remind the reader at this point of the relevant analyses of these issues, developed in the previous chapters of the present book.
- 7.
Taminiaux 1985, 97–8.
- 8.
One may of course wonder how Heidegger’s insistence (intended not as a criticism of Husserl’s Phenomenology, but, rather, as a supposedly faithful reconstruction of his teacher’s thought) could be coherently combined with his other claim—to be found also in his PHCT—that Husserl’s Phenomenology is still caught in the web of traditional subjective metaphysics. The answer is that Heidegger recognizes all these positive elements only within the context of Husserl’s pre-transcendental Phenomenology, i.e., in the latter’s LI. With his Ideas I, Husserl supposedly relapses into some kind of traditional subjectivism.
- 9.
Analogous results are found with regard to categorial acts of ideation, in which we intuit not the thematically synthesizing categorial forms, but the universals (of both the pre-thematically intuited beings and the pure categorial forms). On this, see also Chap. 2, §2.6.1 here.
- 10.
This, however, as we saw earlier (Chap. 7, §7.5) is not the whole story of the meaning of Husserl’s discovery of categorial intuition. This story lacks the correlational perspective that Husserl tried to establish after his realization of the epistemological shortcomings of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. We will say more on this point in §8.8.1 below.
- 11.
See Taminiaux 1985, 99.
- 12.
For all these, see FS, 64–5, and Taminiaux 1985, 99.
- 13.
Ibid. I think, however, that with regard to the issues bothering us here, the more accurate reference to the LI is given only in BT (406–7 n. 34/218 n. 1).
- 14.
- 15.
See §8.8.1, where I analyse Heidegger’s objectivist obsession—stemming from his understanding of the famous passage of LI—“it is not in these acts as objects …” (LI, 783-4/141)—with the non-subjective source of the categorial in Husserl and of the ontological a priori in his thought.
- 16.
Note here that as we saw in Chap. 7, Heidegger does not exactly think that in Husserl we first have a conscious experience of the sensory perceptual appearance of a thing with the mere application of the category “substance” upon the merely lived-through sensory contents. How could this application be possible anyway? Substance would be applicable to something that remains constant throughout some change (to rely here tentatively on a basic explanation of that category). This does not apply to ‘single’ sensory contents (all of them are in flux), but only to a ‘common denominator of a cluster’ of them—but in what sense of the latter? Here is the crux of the matter. We saw in Chaps. 4, 5, and 6 how this could be meant in Husserl’s theory of simple perception. In Heidegger’s interpretation of Husserl, though, something gets constituted for the first time as ‘substance’ as soon as a judgmental-predicative form has articulated the lived-through sensory contents in a constant whole. This is why perception supposedly made the appearance of its object possible for the first time by being through and through categorial. So, in this context, “substance” means (or presupposes) at the same time “copula,” i.e., the categorial form of predicative synthesis.
- 17.
See also FS, 66.
- 18.
Taminiaux thinks that this transition from the thematic of substance to the thematic of Being is opaque, and thus problematic in Heidegger’s explanation (see also 1985, 109). See, however, also the second remark in the closing paragraphs of this subsection.
- 19.
- 20.
Taminiaux 1985, 94ff., 110ff. Of course, other commentators, such as Dahlstrom, think that Husserl never freed himself from the spell of the logical prejudice, i.e., from the traditional epistemological view that truth pertains only to the sphere of predicative judgments. This fact shows very clearly the confusion in the literature about the philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger.
- 21.
See Taminiaux 1985, 108.
- 22.
See FS, 67.
- 23.
See also Taminiaux 1985, 109ff.
- 24.
In his reading of Husserl, Heidegger equates these two seemingly different things, substance qua category and Being (qua category); he attributes this substantial-categorial conception of Being to Husserl (to the Husserl of both the LI and the Ideas I). Substance, i.e., οὐσία (ousia), is the way traditional metaphysics understood Being, that is, with the meaning of a being’s constant presence. Thus, with respect to what he thinks he found in Husserl, Heidegger is quite ‘clear and in-discreet’ at this point. The question, of course, is how this supposed conception of the categorial in Husserl worked as an inspiration for Heidegger’s radically non-metaphysical-categorial conception of Being. We will deal with this in the forthcoming sections.
- 25.
This situation is to be found also in Heidegger’s analyses concerning the role perceivedness plays in the possibility of a Husserlian perceptual experience in his BPP. Characteristically articulated, Heidegger’s idea is that “With respect to its possibility, perceivedness is grounded in the understanding of presence-at-hand. [Die Wahrgenommenheit gründet hinsichtlich ihrer Möglichkeit im Verstehen von Vorhandenheit]” (BBP, 71/101; trnsl. md.). See also, e.g., BBP 67-8/94-5, 70-1/99. This means that what Heidegger acknowledges as perception in Husserl should bring with it everything that Heidegger had connected Vorhandenheit with, i.e., the full package of “theoreticity.” See Chap. 7 of the present book.
- 26.
By the way, if Heidegger indeed wanted to thus limit the content of the influence of Husserl’s idea of the categorial intuition in terms of the Überschuß that the category “substance” in the Kantian sense represents, and especially as signifying the meaning “Vorhandenheit,” then he should have spoken not of the (Kantianly) relational category “substance,” but of the modal category “actuality” (Wirklichkeit). A careful reading of the schematization of the respective categories shows why. The category “substance” has a synthetic-formative function in Kant, and this function is expressed not by the meaning of Vorhandenheit, but by its organizing the sensory manifold in a represent-able manner, i.e., according to the semantic terms subject and predicate (or the metaphysical terms substance and properties). This is the meaning of the fact that “substance” is a relational category. In the context of that category, the synthesis of the manifold is achieved in time and in a representational manner. The way the experiencing subject comes to understand the thus synthesized being in the context of the forms of intuition, i.e., in space and basically in time, with reference to himself only, is determined by the modal category of actuality.
- 27.
- 28.
Øverenget 1998, 36 ff.
- 29.
Øverenget 1998, 40, 42.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
PHCT, 53. Cf. Chap. 7, §7.7.4 in this book, especially the closing paragraph.
- 33.
PHCT, 53–4.
- 34.
PHCT, 54.
- 35.
PHCT, 55. For the complications in Heidegger’s combined views on truth in Husserl, see Chap. 7.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
Øverenget 1998, 61.
- 39.
Øverenget 1998, 68.
- 40.
See Øverenget 1998, 63.
- 41.
Øverenget 1998, 63. This is interesting. On the one hand, in Chap. 7 we established that the possibility here excluded by Øverenget is in fact absolutely valid in Husserl. On the other hand, the problem that this creates does not actually threaten Heidegger’s project. We will see below that Heidegger’s (pre-theoretical and pre-logical) constitutive a priori “Being” cannot only be elucidated by Husserl’s logical categories (substance and copula), even though this is openly acknowledged by Heidegger as the first inspiration for his Seinsfrage. As a suppressed and unconfessed (or at least eluded) second and deeper source for a questioning after Being in Heidegger’s sense, we can take Husserl’s equally pre-theoretical and pre-logical constitutive a priori, as disclosed in his analysis of the primordial givenness of the simply perceived thing (as presented here in Chaps. 4, 5, and 6). Especially in Chap. 4, the original praxial sense of this a priori (in its temporal groundling) was particularly stressed.
- 42.
Øverenget 1998, 70.
- 43.
Øverenget 1998, 39, 59, 172ff. The point remains essentially unexploited there. We will see below, however, how Husserl’s mereology does indeed underpin Heidegger’s project.
- 44.
It may indeed be admitted that, roughly put, in his PHCT Heidegger understands the importance of the discovery of categorial intuition in the following way. “[I]n categorial intuition we can come to see that the objectivity of an entity is really not exhausted by this narrow definition of reality, that objectivity in its broadest sense is much richer than the reality of a thing, and what is more, that the reality of a thing is comprehensible in its structure only on the basis of the full objectivity of the simply experienced entity” (PHCT, 89; emphases added). Dahlstrom registers this passage, but does not elaborate on the meaning of the emphasised phrase. As will become clear, however, it is precisely the meaning of this phrase that is crucial.
- 45.
Dahlstrom also refers us to Heidegger’s last seminar at Zähringen, where he said that “In order for the question of the sense of Being to be able to unfold at all, Being would first have to be [itself] given” (FS, 67/378). Dahlstrom proposes that according to Heidegger, “Husserl’s accomplishment […] lies precisely in showing, by means of his doctrine of categorial intuition, how being is given (‘phenomenally present in the category’)” (2001, 96). However, Dahlstrom does not elaborate further upon this. He does not turn to the problem of what it means that Husserl makes Being present by means of his doctrine of categorial intuition and of what “phenomenally present in the category” might mean. Instead, he just continues in the spirit of the “pre-thematicality” (which we have repeatedly met in him) (see 2001, 97). This analysis does not really get us any further than the idea of a pre-thematic categoriality, tacitly inherent even in perception. This is an idea that, as we saw in Chap. 7, has its own problems, since it actually misses the trace of the distinction between monothetic and polythetic acts.
- 46.
- 47.
See Chap. 7 of the present book with regard to the problem of deciphering the actual meaning of Husserl’s idea concerning truth in monothetic acts.
- 48.
On this, see especially Taminiaux 1985 and Watanabe 1993.
- 49.
See especially Dahlstrom 2001.
- 50.
See especially Øverenget 1996.
- 51.
This is probably the result also of Heidegger’s own move of referring his audiences and readers, e.g., in his Zähringen talks (1973) and in his “My Way …” (1963), exclusively to Chap. 6 of the sixth LI, but not also to Chap. 5 of the same work. As we can see from a careful reading of Chap. 5 of the LI, Husserl there advances his idea concerning truth in the sense of being, which can indeed be approached as an elementary exposition of something like Heidegger’s notion of ontological difference. Moreover, and more interestingly, this idea is presented mainly in the context of what we know as pre-theoretical and pre-predicative intentionality, that of non-relational or monothetic acts, normally represented by acts of perception. On the contrary, in Chap. 6 of the sixth LI, we find Husserl’s analysis concerning the problem of truth stated exclusively with respect to predicative intentionality.
- 52.
- 53.
For Heidegger’s full (albeit not fully consistent) account of this, see Chap. 7. The following must be noted too. We can call this appropriation of the categorical (i.e., of “categorial merely as supersensuous”) “minimal.” This, however, cannot do full justice to what is at play in Phenomenology and in the line of influence that leads from Husserl to Heidegger. In this chapter, we are seeking the deeper dimensions of this issue and of the story behind this Wirkungsgeschichte.
- 54.
Øverenget (1998) combines Husserl’s analysis of “is” in the sense of the copula and in the existential sense. For example, we read: “The objective correlate of ‘being’ in ‘The car is red’ is not a being the way car is. It refers instead to the being of an object: the car’s being red” (1998, 40). However, the ‘is’ not being a being (like a car is a being), the car’s being-red, and the car’s being a being, are totally different things. The same problem can be detected also in Taminiaux (1985). This is their way of simplifying and shortening the road leading from Husserl’s categorial intuition to Heidegger’s question of Being. Nevertheless, this ‘short-circuit’ causes an undesirable black-out to the whole issue.
- 55.
Husserl’s original conception of a truth in the sense of being (existence) clearly means two things: (i) appearing and givenness of a being that is constituted on the basis of its a priori possibility, i.e., its constituting sense, and (ii) appearing and givenness of this very possibility or condition, which does not itself necessarily appear in the same way and in the same move as the appearance and givenness of the being that was thus made possible and actual. This conception of truth lies, of course, in the opposite direction of what Heidegger tried to convey with regard to the meaning of truth and being in Husserl’s Phenomenology. In the latter, “truth” does not necessarily mean correctness or correspondence, whereas “being” in no way exclusively means constant presence (Vorhandenheit).
- 56.
See also Chap. 4.
- 57.
For more on this, see Theodorou 2010b.
- 58.
- 59.
On this, see Heidegger’s own later indication in GA 1, 55 (1972). At the same time, and in his effort to further develop his questioning along the lines of Husserl’s second LI, he asked about the Being of the species, i.e., of the universal, and more specifically about the Being of “meaning” or of “sense.”
- 60.
It is generally known that Heidegger remained silent with regard to the problem that haunted his project for a Fundamental Ontology (ala BT), and which led him to abandon it (see, e.g., Taminiaux 1991, xxii). Taminiaux thinks that the problem can be solved with reference to Heidegger’s own remark, in his fourth volume on Nietzsche, that BT was dangerously close to reaffirming subjectivity (ibid., xxii). In Chaps. 9 and 10, however, the different view that is being presented in outline here (and is related to the problem of the phenomenologizability of Being) will be further developed.
- 61.
See the relevant references above, from Heidegger’s Zähringen seminar (also Taminiaux 1985, 107ff.).
- 62.
“It has long been known that Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle was essential to his entire life’s work. […] It was in those early Freiburg and Marburg lectures that Heidegger tried out what he called ‘a transformed understanding of Aristotle,’ which was his basis for his eventual break with Husserl. […] And Aristotle’s influence continued to work even on the later Heidegger. […] But if the influence of Aristotle on Heidegger is undeniable, the manner and degree of it remain among Heidegger’s best-kept secrets” (Sheehan 1983, 133, 134, 135).
- 63.
“There are many indications which, in my opinion, speak in favour of the hypothesis that Heidegger arrived at an Aristotelian determination of praxis while trying to solve the problems that Husserlian phenomenology had raised but which, in his view, the Husserlian understanding of subjectivity had left open rather than resolved. […] Heidegger, however, distances himself from Husserl because the Husserlian determination of transcendental subjectivity seems to him to have been won, predominantly and unilaterally, on the basis of a theoretical consideration of the acts of the life of consciousness” (Volpi 1992, 102–3).
- 64.
A very important presentation of this episode in Heidegger’s pursuit of the question of Being, together with the first clues as to the maturing of his existential understanding of it, can be found in his first two 1919 courses, now published under the title Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie as GA 56/57. See also Theodorou 2010a.
- 65.
On this, see, e.g., Marx 1971, 191; Philipse 1998, 6; Capobianco 2010, 7ff. Of course, every attempt to elucidate what Heidegger had in mind with “Being” has to overcome various difficulties, hesitations, silences, and suppressions. Heidegger himself, at the age of 80, claimed in a TV interview that our inability to understand Being is inherent, since in our time Being is itself in a state of withdrawal (Entzug)—whatever this might, after all, mean for a phenomenologist. In the sections that follow, and in Chap. 9, I will try to disentangle some of the ideas just mentioned.
- 66.
On this, see Chap. 9.
- 67.
BT, 59/63. And this, since as we read in the phenomenological BT, “Being is always the Being of a being” (BT, 7/9).
- 68.
BT, e.g., 67-8/72, 77/83.
- 69.
BT, 60-1/64-5.
- 70.
For all these, see BT, 64/68-9.
- 71.
For all these, see BT, 65/69.
- 72.
BT, 69/74.
- 73.
BT, 69/74.
- 74.
BT, 70/75.
- 75.
“Relation,” we read, is not the genus of the species “reference,” which has as its subspecies signal, symbolic, expressional, and significative reference. Thus, if we were to conduct our analyses in terms of relations, everything phenomenologically crucial would be lost. Relation itself has its ontological origin in reference, not the other way round; and this is because of the formal universal character of relation. That is, the latter is simply the result of a formalizing abstraction on the former, or the remnant of a formalizing privation of it. See BT, 72-3/77-8, 82/88. What Heidegger wants to claim here is that a formal analysis of Being, be it of the regional beings “equipment” or even Being as such (i.e., in the end, a Formal Ontology like that designed by Husserl) could never have the potential to serve as a Fundamental Ontology. Cf. above, with regard to Heidegger’s early understanding of Being. This is not yet clear in the relevant bibliography.
- 76.
See BT, 73/79.
- 77.
BT, 74/79.
- 78.
BT, 74/79.
- 79.
See BT, 78/83.
- 80.
See BT, 78/84.
- 81.
See BT, 79/84-5.
- 82.
See BT, 80/85-6.
- 83.
I use this expression in absolute deliberation, in order to make an overt allusion to the parallel thematic found in Husserl’s Ideas II (1912–1913), in the context of his analysis of the constitution of perceptual beings on the basis of our embodied consciousness. I presented this thematic in Chaps. 4 and 5. It is important to bear to mind that Heidegger studied the manuscript of that book intensely sometime before his course “Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time” (1925), in which he seems to have formed the final plan for his BT.
- 84.
See BT, 81/87.
- 85.
See BT, 139/148-9.
- 86.
See BT, 142/152. In Chap. 9, we will return to the issue of the relation between Being as sense and Being as such or itself.
- 87.
Note here (as well as a few lines earlier) the use of the suffix “existential”; this marks a necessary contrast to the formal-logical and formal-ontological.
- 88.
See Øverenget 1998, 172, 171.
- 89.
See Dreyfus 1991, 100.
- 90.
In the present context, I will take it for granted that in Husserl’s doctrine regarding the objective source of the categorial concepts, there is nothing more than what is found in Heidegger’s and in the relevant literature’s parallel idea regarding the ‘objectivity’ of Being. For my reading of what Husserl meant with his idea regarding the ‘objective’ basis for the origin of the fundamental concepts of science and philosophy, though, see below §8.8.1.
- 91.
- 92.
We dealt with this in Chap. 4 of the present book.
- 93.
Remember how Heidegger referred his audience at Zähringen to the category “substance” as possibly influenced by Husserl’s discovery concerning categorial intuition. Heidegger, in fact, says that the Husserlian categorial is tantamount to the “Kantian forms” (FS, 66/114). Nevertheless, this reference wasn’t found to be satisfactory after all, either by that audience or on the basis of the criticism provided here.
- 94.
Thus, a problem arises: what exactly is that which Being constitutively “forms” and lets be and appear, especially for the first time? In Heidegger, there is no account of the inner constitution of the being (equipment). They are what they are only within the context of significance or jointness with other such beings, but we lack clear evidence of what is thusly jointed. This, then, created the paradox of the reversed intentional founding of the perceptual upon the equipmental. We dealt with this in Chap. 6 of the present book.
- 95.
For an adequate solution to the problem, we would naturally need a definition of “object.” Nevertheless, the question “what is an object?” is notoriously difficult to answer. The same holds in Phenomenology. Husserl’s mereology in the third LI attempts to delimit the question of what a whole is, and does not exactly suffice in deciding what an object is. We know, moreover, that for Kant the ego is not an object, and that for Husserl we cannot have adequate evidence of the ego (although we do have apodictic evidence that it is). See also Chap. 10 of the present book.
- 96.
Øverenget (1998), who is faithful to Heidegger’s account, says something like this.
- 97.
We have already seen above that Øverenget (1998) nicely thematizes it, but does not fully elaborate on its crucial—for our purposes—details.
- 98.
See, e.g., BT, §§12, 17, 18, 28. As we saw, Øverenget (and Dahlstrom) present the syntheticity of the predicatively constituted state of affairs in terms of a mere relation. For example, Øverenget writes that “the car’s being red […] is a relation within the thing itself, a state of affairs” (1998, 42; emphasis added). As will be evident, what is of crucial importance here is not this flat relationality, the mere state of affairs; it is a kind of ‘directionality’ and ‘orientationality’ that is found in these syntheses. Of course, in Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontological analyses proper, dealing with Being in general or Being as Being, the case is not exactly the same as when dealing with, e.g., Zuhandenheit. This, however, is not an issue that can be adequately treated here. At this point, we are only dealing with the first decisive steps in Heidegger’s questioning after Being: his understanding of the primordially disclosed Being as sense in its (constitutive) letting equipment be and be what it is. For more, see Chaps. 9 and 10 of this book.
- 99.
In connection with this point, see also Kant on the schema of a triangle (CPR, A140-1/B180-1).
- 100.
To my knowledge, this connection (between Husserl’s noematic sense and Kant’s schema, especially in their controlling the appearing of the object of knowledge in intuition) has not been yet made in the literature.
- 101.
See PHCT 40/52, and especially 43/58, 60/81-2; BPP §9.c. At the beginning of PHCT §6.b.α.β, Heidegger gives us an account of the perceptual thing’s constitution in which this thing is considered as the identical totality of an adumbration series accomplished in an one-level act. Soon after this, however, the scene changes toward the implicit/explicit scheme. In fact, there is a story of how one should have proceeded from this perceivedness in the givenness of the perceived, i.e., from the very adumbrative constitution of the perceived toward another dimension of Heidegger’s inspiration regarding how to deal with the question of Being in BT. It is the story that Heidegger seems to suppress in his reconstructions of Husserl’s Phenomenology and of his development on the basis of it; the same story that we are trying to bring to the surface in this sub-section.
- 102.
- 103.
On this, see §8.6 above. These characteristics can also be traced in the case of the sense regulating the constitution of the predicative state of affairs appearing in the corresponding categorial intuition, i.e., in the sense which amounts to the categorial form “X is Y” (note the difference from the undifferentiated “… is …”), i.e., to the copulative “is,” in the objectities of the sort “S is p.”
- 104.
See also FTL §§3–4; Ideas I, 295/286.
- 105.
- 106.
Ideas I, 111/118, 333/344, 332/343, 347/357, 346/358; Ideas II, 86/91, 33/29. See also APAS, 5.
- 107.
Hua X, 116–7; PP, 137-8/179. Cf. Heidegger’s phrase that “Strictly speaking, there ‘is’ no such thing as a useful thing [Ein Zeug ‘ist’ strenggenommen nie]” (BT, 64/68).
- 108.
Another definition that Husserl gives of noematic sense is more widely known. “The ‘sense,’ of which we speak repeatedly, is this noematic ‘object in the how,’ with all that which the description characterized above is able to find evidently in it and to express conceptually” (Ideas I, 314-5/303). On the noematic sense generally, see also Ideas I, 217-8/206-7, 309-17/297-305.
- 109.
See Ideas I, 128-9/120, 112/106, 113/107; CM 8/49, 89-91/122-3, 93-4/125-6, 136/163, 151/177, 136-7/164; Hua IX, 329.
- 110.
- 111.
See the close of §8.6 above. See also BT [MR], 370-1/324. To this effect, especially interesting are also Husserl’s marginalia to his own copy of BT at the points SZ 324.1-5, 324.22-32, which indicate that in Heidegger’s explication of sense, the former recognizes his analyses of intentional correlation (see PTP, 381–2).
- 112.
It is an irony, of course, that Heidegger himself calls his sought for ‘Grail’ “Sein überhaupt” or, in English, “Being in general!” In the marginal note on p. 37 of his personal original copy of BT, however, he is quite self-critical of this choice: “Sein—keine Gattung, nicht das Sein für das Seiende im allgemeinen; das ‘überhaupt’ = καθόλου [not ‘ἐν γένει’] = im ganzen von: Sein des Seinden; Sinn der Differenz.”
- 113.
See also §8.8.2 below.
- 114.
Heidegger also adds here the concepts “being” (as a category), “this,” “and,” “or,” “one,” “several,” “aggregate,” etc. See 59/79.
- 115.
Øverenget somehow bypasses the impact that this clue has for Heidegger’s mature posing and understanding of the question of Being, both in comparison and in contradistinction to Husserl’s own idea. He concludes that its importance for Heidegger lies only in the latter’s realization that “Although ‘being’ does not belong to the [immanent] psychological sphere, it is nonetheless subjective in the sense that it appears to the subjective perspective. Being is a [‘subjectively’ appearing objective] correlate of an act of consciousness. […] [A]lthough non-sensory and ideal concepts express something which cannot be found perceptually, they are ‘nothing like consciousness, nothing psychic, but a special kind of objectivity’ ” (1998, 57). Øverenget reads Husserl’s notion in the usual sense, which is to be found also in Heidegger’s reading. See, however, below (in the main text), with reference to Husserl’s notion of Bedeutungstinktion. Even though the sound categorial could not be merely something designed at will in a self-enclosed subjective immanence, it would still be a mistake to think that the categorial can be freed from any dependence on the side of some experiencing and thinking consciousness. This would amount to a surprisingly strong anthropic principle. See also Chap. 10.
- 116.
Øverenget, on the contrary, interprets this point in the vein indicated by Heidegger: categoriality is not added to the categorial objectities by us, but is always already a moment in intentional objectity and, first of all, in perception (1998, 44ff). The most curious thing here, though, is that Øverenget refuses to accept that even the categorially (predicative) syntheses are the result of our active intentional projection (of the correlational sort, to be sure). This, however, comes as a natural result of his espousal of Heidegger’s claim that, in Husserl, even simple perception is always already categorially shaped.
- 117.
See Husserl’s Introduction to the second LI.
- 118.
Let me add only this last remark on this ‘objectivism’ issue. My hypothesis is that all analogous forms of traditional ‘objectivism’ that do not recognize in humans the possibility to constitute/re-constitute or otherwise ontologically ‘shape’/re-‘shape’ objects (especially at the most primordial level of givenness) can be traced back to manifest, disguised, or secularized theological prejudices. In a nutshell, such a human-initiatory intervention and radical re-arrangement of the worldly setting would either make God or universe’s logos lose track of its creation, or make us lose track of God’s or universe’s logos great plan for our return to a celestial or mundane Eden. I really doubt, however, that this is a sound worry. For more, see Chap. 10.
- 119.
- 120.
Phenomenology, we have seen, needs a given a foothold in order to let synthetic or universal structures that make this given possible appear in their making it possible or actual. Husserl generally called this foothold Leitfaden. In his early maturation, Heidegger sometimes confusingly called it formale Anzeige (in fact, it can be anything but formal). The specific change of perspective in Heidegger’s research into Being, which leads to this view, is depicted in Theodorou 2010a. See also Chaps. 9 and 10 of this book.
- 121.
His “Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles” (1921) and his so-called “Natorp-Bericht” (1922) are in fact his first elaborations of this new research perspective, regarding Being as such through key-thematics of the Aristotelian philosophy. In that period, Heidegger struggled to bring together the fundamental insight we are here trying to delineate with the thematics of poiesis and praxis, with techne and phronesis, and with phusis and historical living. The vexing inner complexities that still bother Heidegger’s interpreters will not however trouble us here any further. A picture of the problems may, though, be gained by a survey of, e.g., Bernasconi 1986, 1989; Brogan 1989, 1994, 2005; Sheehan 1981, 1983; Taminiaux 1987, 1991; Volpi 1992.
- 122.
- 123.
- 124.
See, e.g., Sheehan’s Introduction to PTP (edited) and especially pp. 26ff. See also Chap. 4, §4.10.2, in the present book.
- 125.
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Theodorou, P. (2015). Husserl’s Doctrine of “Categorial Intuition” and Heidegger’s Seinsfrage . In: Husserl and Heidegger on Reduction, Primordiality, and the Categorial. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 83. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16622-3_8
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