Abstract
In his last seminar, held in Zähringen in 1973, Heidegger emphasizes the importance of Husserl’s concept of categorial intuition for his own approach to the Seinsfrage. Although he denies that there is actually a Seinsfrage for Husserl, he adds that Husserl nevertheless “touches upon, grazes ever so lightly, the question of Being in the sixth chapter of the Sixth Logical Investigation with the notion of categorial intuition.”1 Likewise, in “My Way to Phenomenology”2 he claims that when he started to practice phenomenological seeing, teaching and studying at Husserl’s side in Freiburg, his interest was drawn again to Logical Investigations. This work had played a major role in the young Heidegger’s philosophical development, but what captured his interest this time was mainly the Sixth Investigation of the First Edition. “The difference between sensuous and categorial intuitions, worked out in that Investigation, revealed to me its importance for the determination of the ‘manifold meaning of Being’” (MWP, 78). According to Heidegger, this renewed focus on LI took place as he was experimenting with a new understanding of Aristotle in seminars that were held from the summer semester 1921 through the winter semester 1922–23. This was exactly the period in which Heidegger started to contemplate the ideas that were to emerge as BT.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Heidegger, “Seminar in Zähringen 1973” in Vier Seminare (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 111. Translation from J. Taminiaux” Heidegger and Husserl’s Logical Investigation” in Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought, translated by R. Crease and J. Decker (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1985), 99.
Heidegger, “My Way to Phenomenology,” in On Time and Being, translated by J. Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Hereafter MWP.
‘Intentionality’ is another Husserlian term that Heidegger in HCT considers a decisive discovery but which in BT is mentioned only once, in n. xxiii, 414.
Although it falls beyond the limit of the focus of this study we would like to add that the identity-synthesis that occurs in nominal acts is not without problems. This is due to the fact that, according to Husserl, a name names its object in so far as it means that object and it might be that this meaning involves a prepositional content.
See for instance LI 2 (#7), where Husserl rejects as a metaphysical hypostatization the assumption that species really exist externally to thought.
As Sokolowski puts it: “Not only do we have a thing and its feature presented to us, but we also have the presencing of the thing in its feature presented to us. Presencing is also presented, as well as that which is presented.” R. Sokolowksi, “Husserl’s Concept of Categorial Intuition” Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, vol. 12, 1981, 129.
cf. LI, #48.
See J. Taminiaux, Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought, 105.
cf. LI, #43.
cf. LI, #40.
We return to this theme in the next chapter, Apriorism.
This term was originally coined by W. James, but there is a strong affinity between James’ radical empiricism and Husserlian phenomenology. See for instance R. Stevens, James and Husserl: The Foundations of Meaning (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 10–21.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Øverenget, E. (1998). Categorial Intuition. In: Seeing the Self. Phaenomenologica, vol 149. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9768-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9768-0_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-0259-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-9768-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive