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American Phenomenology pp 369–373Cite as

Repeating Heidegger’s Question

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Part of the Analecta Husserliana book series (ANHU,volume 26)

Abstract

In the Apology, Socrates explains how he came to understand what it is to love wisdom. Using the Delphic oracle’s surprising reply to his friend, Chaerephon, he describes the discordance he experienced between what the oracle said about him and what he thought he knew about himself. How could it be, he asked, that no one is wiser than I, when I am clearly ignorant of so many things? In the Discourse on Method, Descartes explains how he came to discover genuine knowledge of nature. Recounting his experiences at La Flèche, he describes the discordance he experienced between his initially high educational expectations and his subsequent disappointment with his teachers. How could it be, he asked, that the more instruction I receive concerning “everything useful in life,” the less I seem to know about it?

Date of birth: October 10, 1939.

Place of birth: Chicago, Illinois.

Date and institution of highest degree: Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1970.

Academic appointments: United States Air Force Academy; University of Oklahoma; and University of New Hampshire.

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Notes

  1. See esp., Martial Gueroult, Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, Vol. I, trans, by Roger Ariew (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 3–11. That this same Descartes has no qualms about also presenting his meditative findings “synthetically” and warning Burman not to treat such “introductory” metaphysical material too deeply lest it “draw the mind too far away from... observable things, and make it unfit to study them,” shows him to be (in a manner still insufficiently considered) more of a “philosopher” and less of a “thinker” than Socrates. The warning is in Descartes’ Conversation with Burman, trans, by John Cottingham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 30.

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  2. See Heidegger, “My Way to Phenomenology,” in On Time and Being, pp. 74–82; and, e.g., Otto Poggeler, ed., Hermeneutische Philosophic: Zehn Aufsätze (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1972).

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Authors
  1. Robert C. Scharff
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Florida State University, USA

    Eugene F. Kaelin

  2. Purdue University, USA

    Calvin O. Schrag

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Scharff, R.C. (1989). Repeating Heidegger’s Question. In: Kaelin, E.F., Schrag, C.O. (eds) American Phenomenology. Analecta Husserliana, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2575-5_58

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2575-5_58

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7663-0

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