Consciousness and Existence: Remarks on the Relation between Husserl and Heidegger

Abstract

In the philosophical dialogue that ensued, within the phenomenological school, upon the appearance of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, the crucial issues centred around the opposition between the concepts of “consciousness” and “existence.” One of these issues concerned priority or transcendentality. If in the jargon of the school, the transcendental is the constituting and the mundane is the constituted — and in this both the Husserlians and the Heideggerians seemed to agree — what divided the school was the question: is the true transcendental a universal pure subjectivity understood as consciousness, or an entity with a mode of being other than the mode of being of all that is a positive matter of fact (thing or tool)? In a letter to Husserl, dated October 22, 1927, Heidegger expresses his agreement with Husserl that the transcendental constitution of the world, as understood by Husserl, cannot be clarified by taking recourse to a being of exactly the same mode of being as that of entities belonging to the world. However, he adds, that does not imply that the locus of the transcendental is not a being at all. On the contrary, the problem precisely is, for Heidegger, “What is the mode of being of that entity in which the “world” constitutes itself?”

Originally appeared in Man and World 11 (1978), pp. 324–335. Reprinted with permission.