Deformalization and Phenomenon in Husserl and Heidegger

Hopkins, Burt C.

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-1649-0_3

Burt C. Hopkins²

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 65))

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Abstract

This study explores the roots of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. First, the attempt is made to address the uniquely hermeneutic manner by which Heidegger grounds the self-showing of the “things themselves” in the dynamic of being’s self-concealment. Second, the essay outlines the radicalization of Heidegger’s concept of phenomenology as occurring through a dialogue with, and yet in contrast to, his mentor, Edmund Husserl.

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Notes

1.
To my knowledge Husserl uses the term “Entformalisierung” in his published corpus only once (Ideen I – see below), defining it “as the filling-out of an empty logical-mathematical form or a formal truth [als ‘Ausfüllung’ einer logisch-mathematischen Leerform, bzw. einer formalen Wahrheit]” (26). What, exactly, is meant by the “Ausfüllung” of a (formalized) logical-mathematical form or truth is not specified by Husserl in this passage (or in any other passage I am aware of), which is limited to “going back to essential intuition [auf die Wesensintuition zurückzugehen]” (27) in order to clarify the logical distinction between “generalization” and “formalization.” The underlying thesis of the discussion to follow, however, is that Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole amounts to the attempt to bring about precisely a “deformalization” of the formalization of cognition initiated (as I will argue below) by modern mathematics with François Vieta and modern philosophy beginning with Descartes. My discussion will therefore employ the terms “formalization” and “deformalization” in the descriptive-phenomenological sense signaled by phenomenology’s motto of “return to the things themselves” and not in the radically different conceptual-logistical sense in which contemporary logic employs these terms. Thus, whereas the contemporary logical sense of both formalization and deformalization signifies conceptual processes possessing an (canonically fixed) exact meaning, their phenomenological sense is descriptive and therefore fixed exclusively by a phenomenological appeal to intuitive evidence. Among other things, this means that the common thread of “deformalization” here identified in Husserl’s works refers not to a universal concept but to the project of restoring the integrity of formal knowledge by retracing its origin back to the immediate givenness of a true content that is pre- and ultimately nonformal.
2.
Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), pp. 250–251. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 176–177.
3.
See Heidegger, Besinnung, GA 66 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1999), p. 308. Mindfulness, trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary (London: Continuum Press, 2006), p. 274.
4.
Parvis Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), p. 141.
5.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, hrsg. P. Janssen (Hua XVII), Den Haag 1974, 42–43, 70.
6.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik (Hua XVII), 70.
7.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik (Hua XVII), 70.
8.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, I, Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, hrsg. Karl Schuhmann (Hua III), Den Haag 1976, 26–27.
9.
Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, ausgearbeitet und hrsg. Ludwig Landgrebe, Hamburg 1985, 435.
10.
See especially Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik (Hua XVII), 42–43.
11.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik, (Hua XVII), 190.
12.
Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, hrsg. Ursula Panzer (Hua XIX/1), Den Haag 1984, 291.
13.
Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (Hua XIX/1), 657.
14.
On this point, see J.N. Mohanty: “Husserl regards ‘object’ [i.e., the formal concept of ‘object in general’] as a purely syntactical category. The object is what is designated by a syntactically nominal expression.... For Husserl, concepts are also objects, so also are relations and functions. His idea of ‘object’ is therefore vacuous.” The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 180.
15.
See Mohanty again: “‘Being’, for Husserl... is not the most general concept, but a formal concept. Husserl’s problem... is how to reconcile this formulation with an intuitionist epistemology” (180).
16.
Edmund Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik, hrsg. L. Eley (Hua XII), Den Haag 1970, 80.
17.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik, (Hua XVII), 276–277.
18.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik, (Hua XVII), 197.
19.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik (Hua XVII), 271–272.
20.
Husserl was well aware of Vieta’s role in the history of mathematics, correctly crediting him with “[t]he genuine discovery of the formal” (Edmund Husserl, Formale und Tranzendentale Logik, (Hua XVII, 70).
21.
Jacob Klein effectively accomplished the desedimentation of Vieta’s invention of modern algebra in his seminal study Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, trans. Eva Brann (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969); reprint: (New York: Dover, 1992). This work was originally published in German as “Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra” in Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, Abteilung B: Studien, vol. 3, no. 1 (Berlin, 1934), 18–105 (Part I); no. 2 (1936), 122–235 (Part II). For a discussion of the relation to Husserl’s thought of Klein’s discussion of Vieta’s role in the origination of formalization, see Burt C. Hopkins, “The Husserlian Context of Klein’s Mathematical Work,” The St. John’s Review 48 (2004): 43–71 and “On the Origin of the ‘Language’ of Formal Mathematics: An Intentional-Historical Investigation of the Discovery of the Formal,” in Meaning and Language: Phenomenological Perspectives, Dordrecht: Filip Mattens, 2008): 149–168.
22.
Heidegger, Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem, GA 56/57 (Frankfurt am Main 1987), p. 68.
23.
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, GA 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), Section 6.
24.
Jacob Klein, “Phenomenology and the History of Science,” in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cambridge, Mass: 1940), pp. 143–163; reprinted in Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott (Annapolis: Zuckerman, 1985), 65–84, here 83.
25.
See Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 57.
26.
See Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 100.
27.
See Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 123.
28.
See Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 109–110.
29.
See Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 210–211.
30.
Heidegger, Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, in Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, GA 60 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), pp. 1–156.
31.
GA 60, p. 58.
32.
GA 60, p. 58.
33.
GA 60, p. 58.
34.
GA 60, p. 58.
35.
GA 60, p. 61.
36.
GA 60, p. 61.
37.
GA 60, p. 61.
38.
GA 60, p. 61.
39.
GA 60, p. 61.
40.
GA 60, p. 61.
41.
GA 60, p. 61. Theodore Kisiel’s reconstruction of a crucial sentence in the lecture course concerning formalized objectivity adds supplemental material from the student transcript of Fritz Neumann (Leuven Archiv) (personal communication from Kisiel) that is relevant to the claim I am advancing here that Heidegger’s account of formalization closely follows Husserl’s. GA 60 printed Oskar Becker’s transcript, which does not contain the crucial words “something... and, or” that Kisiel restores following the Neumann notes, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 167, and which would have found its place in GA 60, p. 59, line 4. These words, of course, are found in Husserl’s account of formalized universality and therefore highlight all the more the proximity of Heidegger’s account of formalization to Husserl’s.
Neumann’s transcript verbatim is as follows, with the omitted sentence (in square brackets) flanked by the sentence before and after to delineate the entire context in which it belongs:
“Das formale Gegenständliche entspringt nicht aus einem Wasgehalt überhaupt, sondern aus dem Bezugssinn des reinen Einstellungsbezuges selbst. [Und erst auf Grund dieses Ausganges können die Bezugssinne selbst als Gegenstände gefaßt werden und weiterhin als formale Kategorien: Etwas, Und.] Der reine Einstellungsbezug muß noch selbst als Vollzug betrachtet werden, um der Ursprung des Theoretischen zu verstehen.”
42.
GA 60, p. 62.
43.
GA 60, p. 62.
44.
GA 60, p. 62.
45.
GA 60, p. 62.
46.
GA 60, p. 62.
47.
GA 60, p. 62.
48.
GA 60, p. 62.
49.
GA 60, p. 62.
50.
GA 60, p. 62.
51.
GA 60, p. 62.
52.
GA 60, p. 62.
53.
Correcting the obvious omission of “nicht” in the text.
54.
GA 60, p. 62.
55.
GA 60, p. 63.
56.
GA 60, p. 63.
57.
GA 60, p. 63.
58.
GA 60, p. 63.
59.
GA 60, p. 63.
60.
GA 60, p. 63.
61.
GA 60, p. 63.
62.
GA 60, p. 63.
63.
GA 60, p. 63.
64.
GA 60, p. 59.
65.
GA 60 p. 59.
66.
GA 60, p. 59.
67.
GA 60, p. 59.
68.
GA 60, p. 59.
69.
GA 60, p. 59.
70.
GA 60, p. 59.
71.
GA 60, p. 59.
72.
GA 60, p. 59.
73.
GA 60, p. 63.
74.
GA 60, p. 61.
75.
GA 60, p. 61.
76.
GA 60, p. 63.
77.
GA 60, p. 63.
78.
GA 60, p. 64.
79.
GA 60, p. 63 f.
80.
GA 60, p. 63.
81.
GA 60, p. 64.
82.
GA 60, p. 64.
83.
GA 60, p. 64.
84.
Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristotles. Einführung in die Phänomenologische Forschung, GA 61 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,1985), p. 33.
85.
Daniel Dahlstrom, for instance, maintains in this connection “that Heidegger’s emphasis on the formality of philosophical concepts is somewhat misleading,” because they “are clearly not understood by him as being so devoid of content that they are unable to preclude errant presumptive determinations of their meaning.” Dahlstrom, “Heidegger’s Method: Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications,” Review of Metaphysics, 47 (June 1994): 775–795, here 785. Steven Crowell, on the other hand, maintains that “Formality here is not the emptiness of logical formality, but rather like Husserl’s ‘empty’ intentions that contain directions for their own fulfillment.” Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), p. 141. Crowell also characterizes the “accomplishment of evidence” that follows the formal indication’s fulfillment as its becoming “deformalized” (ibid.).
86.
GA 61, p. 33.
87.
GA 61, p.134.
88.
GA 61, p.134.
89.
GA 61, p.134.
90.
GA 2, pp. 46–47.
91.
GA 2, pp. 41–42.
92.
GA 2, pp. 41–42.
93.
GA 2, pp. 41–42.
94.
GA 2, pp. 41–42.
95.
GA 2, pp. 46–47.
96.
GA 2, pp. 46–47.
97.
GA 2, pp. 46–47.
98.
GA 2, pp. 46–47.
99.
GA 2, pp. 46–47.
100.
GA 2, pp. 49–50.
101.
GA 2, pp. 49–50.
102.
GA 2, pp. 49–50.
103.
GA 2, pp. 212–213.
104.
GA 2, pp. 82, 480–481.

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Department of Philosophy, Seattle University, Broadway and Madison, Seattle, WA, 98122-4460, USA
Burt C. Hopkins

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Department of Philosophy, University of New Orleans, NEW ORLEANS, 70148-2330, Louisiana, USA
F. Schalow

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I dedicate this paper to my Doktorvater Parvis Emad, who not only taught me how to read Heidegger’s texts, but whose work continues to point my own thinking in the direction of “das Denken” contained therein.

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Hopkins, B.C. (2011). Deformalization and Phenomenon in Husserl and Heidegger. In: Schalow, F. (eds) Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 65. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1649-0_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1649-0_3
Published: 20 August 2011
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