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Introduction to Phenomenological Research (Studies in Continental Thought)

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Introduction to Phenomenological Research is Heidegger's lecture notes for a course he gave at the University of Marburg in the winter semester of 1923-24. Let me get right to Heidegger's argument. He begins by noting how the term "phenomenology" is constructed from the Greek words "phenomenon" and "logos." Phenomena show themselves. For Heidegger, worldhood implies that something is manifest, that we have access to the existence of beings: disclosure. But for something to be manifest, for it to be able to arise in the first place, it needs a certain context in which it can be what it is. But what supplies the context for things so that they can manifest themselves and, in Heidegger's view, exist (be there)? Surely things must be taken together with other things, but it is our own existence that supplies the necessary context, the precondition, for phenomena. Phenomena don't just appear; they appear TO us. They turn up in our lives. Now if something can show itself, it can also be covered over and not show itself. Therefore truth is not the mere agreement between our judgment and an objective state of affairs; rather, truth and falsity (as well as ambiguity) arise from the interplay of concealing and revealing, of disclosing and covering over. Our own existence essentially offers the possibility that anything (true or otherwise) can show itself at all. The essence of our existence is to reveal a world, of BEING that disclosure of world. But here we must understand that, for Heidegger, worldhood is CONSTITUTED by this disclosure. It is not as if there is a world before it is disclosed. Revelation is a prerequisite for worldhood. Subject and object get subsumed into a pre-existing context which always includes our being in the world as a precondition. Without the self's being there, nothing shows itself, there are no phenomena, and -- since worldhood is a phenomenon -- consequently no world. But just as there can be no world without the self, there can be no self without a world (context, situation) in which that self can be what it is AS being in the world. As Heidegger points out in Being and Time, being-in-the-world (our existence and the world's) is a whole structure. Hence the self is not an ego that should be posited seperately from its world. Descartes is in error when he makes such an ego the unshakable ground of his philosophy.

The pretheoretical context provides the basis of the logos. Pointed out by word, a phenomenon can be explicitly treated as a theme for discussion. Once we treat something explicitly, however, it changes its aspect and is no longer seen in its prethematic primordiality, which requires that we NOT turn it into the object of an investigation, that the phenomenon NOT draw attention to itself as a mere object that we poke, prod, measure, calculate, and "study." Phenomenology is the articulation (logos) of the coming "to the light of day" of entities in the implicitly thematic language of ontology. As you might have guessed, the difficulty of phenomenology is that it has to speak formally of what is primordial, of what resists formulation. In his interpretation of "phenomenon," Heidegger explores the ambiguity that the word has had since the ancient Greeks. Originally a synonym for reality, it also means illusion, mere appearance. Phenomenology isn't after the sun's "actual" size as determined by objective measurement; it's about how the sun (or anything else) is revealed to us unthematically in our pre-scientific comportment and circumspection. Phenomenally, it is not a mere appearance or illusion that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Science revealed that the earth rotates around the sun, but this does not negate the phenomenal fact that the sun rises and sets.

Phenomenology is existence's inquiry into its being in the world. However, phenomenology (<<qua>> fundamental ontology) should not be confused with scientific explanations of sensory perception. Phenomenology deals with the life context in which things exist not as the mere objects of scientific investigation but as significant entities that are there for us in our involvements with them in everyday life. Initially, phenomena do not reveal themselves as neutral objects of physical perception, nor are they first revealed to one's objective or scientific comportment. Our subjective experience is not "added" to an initially objectively given substance. Rather, phenomena are first revealed within a hermeneutical "as structure" to a fundamental human comportment that Heidegger describes as "significance" (the meaning of things in the context of caring for my own existence). The insight that things are not initially neutral objects on which we stick subjective meanings and value predicates (good, useful, beautiful) but that things are actually signifiers has revolutionized philosophy.

According to Heidegger, phenomena are not bare objects but inherently significant signifiers in a context of references (indications, meanings, signs). The world is not made up of objects; rather, each entity brings with it a whole implied context of meaning, a whole situation. It is this referential context, the inherently meaningful context in which things manifest themselves, that actually makes up the world. Things turn up (are there for me) within the situation offered by my own existence/predicament of being alive. The significance of my own life provides the "there" in which things make sense and have meaning, in which they are what they are. Objectivity is a modification of this primordial significance. Science erroneously posits objects first, and only then believes that our subjective experience of them is somehow added to the bare, pre-existing object. But for Heidegger the whole point of things is to be there FOR, reveal themselves TO understanding -- and always to reveal themselves AS something. We don't hear soundwaves; we hear rustling, the car speeding down the street, the patter of rain. To be there, the world must disclose itself to a being, a self, who supplies a "there" in which things can reveal themselves as what they are. Without this "there" (this clearing) supplied by our own being-there, there can be no existential space for things to show up in, no significance, and therefore no existence. In fact, physical space could not properly exist unless there is this prior existential space (a context of meaning and significance) in which physical space can show up and reveal itself AS physical space. In order to BE, the world must be revealed. But this implies a being TO WHOM it IS revealed. The primordial manifestation of phenomena involves the necessity of things being in the totality of relevance constituted by the self's being in the world and in an actual situation. But, along with my being, my not-being (mortal finitude) is also given. Since the self cares about its existence, things are primordially discovered by (they are there for) care. Care does not initially discover "objects" but an entire existential context IN WHICH particular significant things "signify" to care. My own "there" is the situation of relevance, the context of signifiers, in which and for which things manifest themselves. This primordial care -- and not its objective modification -- is what constitutes the world. The world is originally there for (that is, it is disclosed and thus given to) care.

Existence is not a substance. Physical things are disclosed, surely, but they should not be confused with the disclosure that discloses them. The disclosure of the material is itself not a material entity. Any explanation of the mechanism of perception here would miss the point, since it would have objectified everything from the outset and adopted the wrong attitude and methodology toward the phenomena we are studying.

So -- phenomena are there (although not explicitly) as care encounters them in interactions. For instance, what is a fork in its BEING? Care does not encounter a pronged, shiny, metallic object with an exactly determined weight and size; neither does it encounter some object made of elements, atoms, particles, or anything of the kind. When care encounters the utensil called a "fork," the latter's primordial being lies not in its object-character or material composition, but in some care-determined purpose. The fork as phenomenon is primordially encountered not when I look at it objectively, but when it is set in a situation -- for instance, when I use it at meal time (which involves a whole referential context of equipment and people, all of which aren't bits that I must put together but are together as a whole from the outset, a whole which can't be reconstructed by trying to add my subjective experience to the objects involved, or even by turning myself into an object and adding up all objects). The forkness of the fork is distinct from its mere objecthood since it is most properly a fork only when it is being used AS a fork, and not when it is viewed as an object to observe, examine, or study. The objective, theoretical context supplied or imposed on things by science is not the primordial context in which things appear. The less I analyze the utensil objectively, and the more I use it for some care-determined purpose such as eating, the more it is there for me in its essence.

Existence cares about itself, its being there. Yet, according to Heidegger, existence evades and obscures itself not only in daily life but in the mathematical and natural sciences, whose methods and concepts are totally inadequate for exhibiting existential structures. These sciences do not operate in a phenomenologically appropriate manner. This is not a deficiency in them, but a reflection of the fact that they necessarily limit their scope, as do all disciplines qua disciplines. Heidegger argues that the tradition of classical Western philosophy has tended to treat Being as though it were a thing. Because it has this fundamental quality of evading itself, existence isn't immediately accessible to itself, nor is it accessible to the theoretical framework imparted to Western thought by the ancient Greeks. The Greeks, however, had the wherewithal to ask about being, whereas modern philosophy takes being for granted as something that has been theoretically settled as objective presence, such that the question "What is Being?" is no longer posed by philosophers. Even--indeed, particularly--in everyday life, existence's way of being is to evade itself and get distracted with "things." Since it refuses to face itself, existence identifies itself with the things with which it is preoccupied. In this self-interpretation, existence misunderstands itself as something material, whereas Heidegger argues that what is material exists only in so far as it is there for what he calls There-being, which ultimately cannot be objectified or turned into a mere substance, or be explained away mechanistically.

This lecture course is designed by Heidegger to teach the way of letting existence announce itself without objectification. We must destruct theoretical formulations such as the subject-object framework traditionally employed by science and epistemology. The preliminary work entails dismantling the history of philosophy in order to see how traditional methods and concepts obscure existence, and how they do so on the basis of the primordial self-evasion and self-obfuscation of it in our everyday life. According to Heidegger, existence cannot be explained rationally (in the traditional sense of the term), it even defies logical categorization, so the analysis of existence must find a more primordial footing than theoretical knowledge or logic.

Heidegger deconstructs the fundamental temporal division imposed by Platonic metaphysics (or at least by its posterity), which posits, on the one hand, a timeless realm of verities and, on the other, a factical here-and-now in which the universally valid truths manifest themselves in particular instances. Since, as temporal, the here-and-now is finite and mutable, passing away and vanishing, Western metaphysics has traditionally considered the mutable as having less importance than the immutable verities that are eternally binding. Traditionally, it is the immutable truths that are considered real. Precisely existence is taken to be of little, or only circumstantial, importance, getting brushed aside as a mere temporal and subjective inflection of non-temporal, objective "reality." What matters to theory are the timeless, objective propositions, which, taken as eternally binding, serve as the conceptual framework within which mathematics and logic interpret reality. Heidegger argues that there is a neglect here. What gets neglected (through objectification and theorizing) is precisely what needs to be discovered phenomenologically: existence itself. Since the objectification of reality accomplished by theoretical thinking distorts the phenomenon of existence from the start, Heidegger goes beyond theory (metaphysics) to establish a new beginning for philosophy. Heidegger believes that philosophy, as traditionally developed, is at an end. A new horizon confronts thinking.

Existence evades itself, be it by real or ideal means. Existence anxiously looks to be reassured and tranquilized about its existence, which is primordially strange to it and uncanny. Mathematics and the natural sciences keep the uncanniness of existence safely at bay so that, as objective endeavors, they can go about the constructive work that belongs to them as disciplines. Existence is what these disciplines take for granted, what they constantly presuppose, not what they take as their subject matter. Since the authentic self is subverted by the scientific method, it is foolhardy to classify history, theology, or philosophy as objective endeavors. By objectifying existence, the very "stuff" of history and philosophy is lost sight of. History and philosophy are to be reinterpreted.

Since science, despite all its positive work, is a way in which existence evades itself, Heidegger challenges traditional notions of truth. Truth has long been defined as the agreement of subject and object, between a judgment and the state of affairs about which it judges. Supposedly, truth happens when the judgment (the subject) agrees with the objective state of affairs. And this correspondence IS one aspect of truth, but it is not the most primordial aspect. Truth as correspondence is founded upon truth as disclosure. Because the main characteristic of existence is that it cares about its existence, Heidegger rejects the notion that existence could ever be successfully posited in judgments or propositions. The objective methods of science strip away care from reality. By objectifying reality and stripping away "subjective" care, math and natural science obviate the very phenomenon that is crucial to understanding existence. Care is what discloses the world. It opens up a cosmos that would otherwise be closed to itself. Phenomenology asks about the being there FOR us of phenomena in the disclosure of one's own existence, in the "there" of one's life, which is determined by care. To see what things are primordially, we must focus not on material composition or quantity, but on how things are disclosed (and not disclosed, since revealing implies a simultaneous concealing) to care.

By evading itself, existence ensnares itself in fallenness, in things, in known quantities. Because it has this self-evading structure, existence avoids itself unless it is forced to confront itself, such as through existential anxiety in the face of death. Being finds itself "uncanny" because of the finitude of its being here in the world, in THIS life. This, in turn, is phenomenally linked to the underlying, suppressed shock that existence feels in the face of the fact that it -- and indeed anything -- IS at all, that it should find itself in its predicament, held out into the Nothing. Along with this comes the awe that things are disclosed to us essentially because of this finitude. When existence is made to confront the possibility of not being t/here, it comes much more sharply into focus.

It's a university course, so there's an implied reading list. Heidegger's analysis of Descartes is perhaps even more trenchant here than in Being and Time. Heidegger traces Cartesianism back to Scholasticism, whose wellspring is Aristotle. The book is barely two-hundred and fifty pages long, but it is super dense. His analyses of philosophical texts are rigorous. Dahlstrom does a tremendous job rendering Heidegger into English. Knowledge of Greek and Latin is helpful, but not necessary. The claim that this book is "not all in English" is misleading.

The Early Heidegger & Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken

This is one of the few, or otherwise none, of the books translated into English dealing with Thomas Aquinas as well as Descartes and Aristotle and Husserl in detail, all of whom are very important to Heidegger, and to others trying to understand him. Hans Kung once noted that Descartes kept a copy of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA near him till the day he died in Sweden. Heidegger tries to show Aquinas started the twist to modernity in philosophy as reflected in Descartes. Unfortunately, the English translation is so garbled - with foreign terms translated into English in such a way that the train of thought is almost always broken, and is always so distorted you cannot possibly understand what the translator was trying to convey. I have found rewriting the most promising sentences out into clear English - all the intrusions of foreign terms in Dahlstrom's way breaking up the flow of the sentence may not be entirely necessary - but, of course, one runs the risk of distorting the thought one's own way simply to be able to understand it clearly. It is a clash of normal English versus academia. One is forced to translate the translator. But, on the other hand, he does provide a very important peek at Heidegger's real relation to Aquinas with whose thought he was personally and deeply involved.

I am using the phenomenological model of research for my dissertation and I was disappointed to open up this book and find it was not fully translated. It is useful but I am betting more so if it was entirely translated in English