Gadamer’s Assessment of the Controversy between Husserl and Heidegger

Abstract

Toward the end of situating the results of the present study in terms of the most prevalent tendency cited above, I will single out Gadamer’s eloquent and challenging treatment of the problem. As Mohanty has pointed out, Gadamer is “appreciative of the goal, the inner potentiality, and even the universality of the transcendental-phenomenological research.”I Indeed, Gadamer clearly, and in my view quite correctly, recognizes something which many who are partial to the Heideggerian prerogative of the phenomenological priority of the Seinsfrage do not see, namely, that for Husserl “not all consciousness is consciousness of an object, or better, objectifying consciousness.”² Gadamer is also careful not to fall into the trap of interpreting Husserl’s methodological preoccupations as somehow symptomatic of uncritical adherence to the Cartesian epistemology and its attendant “dogmatism of an immanent consciousness, which must ask: How can we transcend ourselves and make contact with the external world?”³ Again, in my view he rightly sees that “Husserl overcame this by demonstrating that consciousness is exactly intentionality, which means that we are in the matter and not simply enclosed in ourselves.”⁴ And finally, Gadamer is aware that, for Husserl, phenomenologically methodical reflection is not to be confused with traditionally understood “inner-perception,” since it “is not exploring the ‘inner perception’ of a real ‘l’.”⁵