Abstract
This chapter begins by retracing the relationship between the early Heidegger and Edmund Husserl during the period when Heidegger’s thought was still closely aligned with Husserl’s phenomenological project. It then shows how a fundamental difference emerged over the question of what the ultimate grounds for action. When Heidegger says that Husserl has failed to address the real question about the meaning of Being, he is referring to the meaning of Dasein. Whereas Husserl maintains that willing and action must remain grounded in the intention/fulfillment structure of reason, Heidegger comes to the view that Dasein must resolutely accept its calling as the groundless ground of significance that is ultimate source of meaning in the world.
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- 1.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1972), abbreviated in the following as SZ. All citations will be listed according to the page numbers in the Niemeyer edition, which are also listed in the margins of both of the published English translations.
- 2.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch, Husserliana, Band III (den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976). References to Husserl’s works will be cited using the volume number from the Husserliana series in roman numerals followed by the page number in Arabic numbers. These page numbers are normally listed in the margins of translations into other languages, including English.
- 3.
Edmund Husserl,Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch, Husserliana, Band IV (den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952).
- 4.
Martin Heidegger,Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (Wintersemester 1919/20), ed. H.-H. Gander, Gesamtausgabe, Band 58 (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann Verlag,1992). References to Heidegger’s works other than Sein und Zeit will be cited according to the Gesamtausgabe, listing the volume number, followed by the page number. The English translations of the lecture courses list these page numbers in the headers of the translation text.
- 5.
As reported in his own account of his life from the Foreword to his Frühe Schriften from 1972 (GA 1, 56).
- 6.
Edmund Husserl, Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919, Husserliana. Materialien. Band IV (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002).
- 7.
The 1914 work contains what is probably his earliest reference to Husserl’s Ideen I in a footnote to the section on “The Negative Judgment” (GA 1, 181). Other references to the Ideas I there include a distinction between simpler forms of knowledge and knowledge that takes the form of a judgment, (GA 1, 268) positive appropriations of his conception of the “noematic,” (GA 1, 282 and 310) and a footnote that cites “the valuable statements by E. Husserl regard ‘pure consciousness’ … that provide a decisive insight into the richness of ‘consciousness’ ….” (GA 1, 405)—all of which show that he worked through Ideen I soon after it appeared.
- 8.
Namely §§138–39 (Hua III, 321–24).
- 9.
If one wants to try to identify a “turning point” in this gradual development, a good candidate would be the lectures on Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens (GA 60) in which the guiding model is the early Christian issue of the “conversion” to a whole different dimension of temporality—the time of eternal life versus the time of mundane existence—as articulated in the Pauline epistles. See on this issue Ted Kiesel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 176–227.
- 10.
GA 56/57, 165.
- 11.
Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920/1925, Husserliana Band XXXVII,ed. Henning Peucker (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004).
- 12.
Francois Raffoul, “Heidegger and Ethics,” Selected Essays from North America. Phenomenology 2005, Volume 5, eds. Lester Embree and Thomas Nenon (Bucharest: Zeta Books 2006), pp. 501–22.
- 13.
I have attempted to document and describe these commonalities in more detail in Nenon, “Husserl’s and Heidegger’s Conceptions of the Umwelt,” Hermeneutical Heidegger, eds. Ingo Farin and Michael Bowler (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming 2013).
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Nenon, T.J. (2013). Martin Heidegger and Grounding of Ethics. In: Embree, L., Nenon, T. (eds) Husserl’s Ideen. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_11
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