Abstract
In one of the few explicit references to Husserl’s notion of apriori in BT Heidegger makes the following claim:
Edmund Husserl has not only enabled us to understand once more the meaning of any genuine philosophical empiricism; he has also given us the necessary tools. ‘A-priorism is the method of every scientific philosophy which understands itself. (BT, 75n)
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These comments reflects an interpretation of Kant with which we do not entirely agree. We shall, however, confine our comments on Kant to one section in the following chapter. There we attempt to show that there are reasons to believe that Kant in fact holds the position Heidegger advocates.
Kisiel’s translation of ‘Gliedern’ as ‘articulation’ is probably motivated by the necessity of distancing Heidegger’s phenomenology from idealism. That motivation is also operative in our approach to Heidegger and, indeed, in Heidegger’s own approach. Nevertheless, Heidegger chooses to use the term ‘Gliedern’ in this context, and it is a matter of fact that this term is more accurately translated by ‘structuring,’ ‘organizing,’ or ‘classifying.’ Hence, this term seems to indicate a more active participation on the part of the subject than what is captured by ‘articulation.’ Does Heidegger thereby disturb the balance between the subjective and the objective domain? Or contention is that he does not. Rather, he underscores this balance by emphasizing that both domains partake in the descriptive enterprise.
Cf. HCT, 64.
Here Heidegger quotes the following passage from Husserl: “Consciousness and its object reflection and act as object of reflection form an individual unity produced purely through lived experiences.” Ideas I, 79; Heidegger’s insertion.
Heidegger quotes this passage from Husserl, Ideas I, 80; Heidegger’s insertion.
The quote inside this passage is from Ideas I, 80.
Again Heidegger utilizes the insights of Husserl’s theory of wholes and parts in order to approach the nature of consciousness. He says: “The unity of a whole is after all only one by way of the particular essence of its parts” (HCT, 97).
Recall Heidegger’s quotation of Husserl: “It is not in the reflection upon judgments nor even upon fulfillments of judgments but rather in these fulfillments themselves that we find the true source of the concepts State of Affairs and Being (in the copulative sense). Not in these acts as objects, but in the objects of these acts, do we have the abstractive basis which enables us to realize the concepts in question.” (HCT, 59/LI, VI, #44)
Hence, this notion of consciousness as absolute in the sense of constituting brings us back to the notion of apriori discussed in the first section. The question still remains: consciousness is apriori in the sense that it constitutes objectivity, but in what sense is it prior to objectivity? In this passage Heidegger seems to give Husserl less credit on the topic of the apriori than he did when he developed his own understanding of this concept. Recall our discussion of Heidegger’s analysis of the phenomenological sense of the apriori and compare it to the passage above. On the one hand, Heidegger credits Husserl with the introduction of the original sense of the apriori on which his own project is grounded. On the other hand, he suggests that Husserl interprets consciousness as apriori in the tradition of Descartes and Kant, which is exactly the tradition Heidegger claims had abandoned the original sense of the apriori. In other words, Husserl violated fundamental phenomenological principles or, at best, did not realize the full scope of his own discoveries. The latter view characterizes Heidegger’s approach to Husserl on several fundamental phenomenological issues.
Also bear in mind that the aim of the published part of BT is an inquiry into the essence of Dasein. Although this essence is existence, it refers to a structure that everyone that is Dasein shares.
Heidegger, “The Way Back Into the Ground of Metaphysics” in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, edited by W.Kaufmann (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 270–1. The reason we mention this passage is the fact that it is often quoted by scholars who seek to underscore the fundamental difference between Husserl and Heidegger. See for instance Dreyfus Being-in-the-world, 13.
Cf. BT, 89.
Cf. BT, 150.
Heidegger often uses the term consciousness in order to refer to a worldless res cogitans, see BT, 75, 246, 251.
However, one should remember that the passage in question came along almost 20 years after was BT written and that Heidegger at this point had gone through a lot of changes. It falls beyond our thesis to discuss the development of Heidegger’s thinking from 1926 to 1943 but our point is that this quote does not necessarily indicate that every concept of consciousness is incompatible with the term Dasein in BT.
Cf. HCT, 59, and Heidegger’s reference to Husserl’s LI, VI, #44.
In Chapter V we challenge this interpretation of Kant.
Not only is the basic state of Dasein apriori, it is, Heidegger says, necessary apriori. “Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein which is necessary apriori” (BT, 79).
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© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Øverenget, E. (1998). Apriorism. In: Seeing the Self. Phaenomenologica, vol 149. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9768-0_4
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