Heidegger's 'Dasein' and patricide

Heidegger’s Dasein and patricide

A philological genealogy of the notion ‘Dasein’

φίλος μὲν Πλάτων, φιλτέρα δὲ ἡ ἀλήθεια – Heidegger and Husserl in 1921

The genealogy of the analytic of Dasein

• The genealogy of the notion of “Dasein” as a problem: the first impulses in which Heidegger initially employs Dasein in his early phenomenological analyses (before it culminates in a fully-fledged analytic of Dasein in Sein und Zeit)

• The issue cannot be exhausted here. We have to be schematic and can only highlight certain critical moments from a philological angle, that indicate a way into the hypothesis. This is more an invitation to re-read.

Hypothesis: Heidegger contra Husserl

• Thesis: In adopting the notion of Dasein Heidegger effectively responds to the restricted way Husserl uses, understands, and employs it. Heidegger appropriates, i.e. actively inherits, the notion from Husserl, and radicalizes it in a way that pushes Husserlian phenomenology to an ontological area that was previously “out of reach”, the Sein of Da-Sein.

Possible counter-arguments

• First counter-argument: Heidegger simply picks out the notion of Dasein from everyday German discourse, in a casual way, something that is consistent with the phenomenological method.

• Thus, a simple common word of vernacular German attains a technical philosophical meaning, without mediation from the philosophical tradition (Husserl or German idealism).

• Second counter-argument: We cannot argue that Heidegger’s appropriation of the notion of “Dasein” concerns Heidegger’s relation to Husserl: the notion itself has a long history in philosophy, particularly in German Idealism. For example, it is widely used in Kant, and it is a category in Hegel’s Logik. It is also widely used by Jaspers. How can we decide whom he is “taking it” from? Why not from Kant, for example?

Response to counter-arguments via a clarification

• It is indeed impossible to maintain that Heidegger’s adoption of the notion of ‘Dasein’ pertains exclusively to the relation to Husserl. That is not what I am submitting. What I am submitting is that the most immediate philosopher that informs Heidegger’s phenomenological turn to the notion “Dasein” is Husserl. Husserl’s restricted usage of the term is important to be highlighted.

• A minimalist version of my thesis is: at least, Heidegger was conscious of the way Husserl employed the notion of “Dasein”, and how it negatively affected the ontological aspect of the phenomenological project.

A surprise• It is surprising that Heideggerian scholarship has completely missed the way “Dasein” is part of the most central programmatic formulations concerning the phenomenological project, and the canonical definitions of eidetic seeing and the epochē. A connection is missed.

The scandal of not recognizing patricide

• The scandal: it is a bit of a scandal not to have Husserl’s notion of “Dasein” appear at all in a genealogical account of how the word is used by Heidegger.

• The patricide: Heidegger’s appropriation of the notion “Dasein” constitutes a sort of “patricide” (Husser being the “father”). A conscious patricide: not same as Oedipus’ (who did not know he was killing his father while he was doing it). Heidegger’s adoption of ‘Dasein’ is consciously “anti-Husserlian”

• But it is not exactly a patricide. There is a remainder: the dedication of Sein und Zeit to Husserl. Heidegger reappropriates and expands the notion of “Dasein”, and thus indeed phenomenology and ontology itself.

A schema of twelve points

• I will offer twelve crucial points that would constitute the spine of the narrative. The thread connecting the points still needs to be worked out and alas must remain implicit at this stage. (You must also excuse me for sometimes failing to offer the entire original German; but in all cases the important words are, of course, given in German, in brackets).

First point• In his 1911 programmatic essay entitled “Philosophy as Rigorous Science”, Husserl says that pure phenomenology can only be an investigation of essence, and not at all investigation of Dasein. He understands Dasein as “existential positing” and thus as carrying the stigma of naturalism.

Second and third point• In Ideen I, Husserl reiterates what he wrote in Philosophy as Rigorous Science in §3: Dasein is synonymous to Existenz and corresponds to “Tatsache”; Essence corresponds to “Eidos”. And phenomenology will be about the intuition of Eidos

• In §4 Husserl explains how eidetic judgments posit nothing about Dasein

Fourth and fifth point• In §31 Husserl associates “Dasein” with the natural attitude: Dasein is the way the natural attitude posits existence. It is associated with “Wirklichkeit”

• In §32, the phenomenological ἐποχή is precisely defined in terms of a shutting out of (zeitliches) Dasein

Sixth point• Heidegger’s most obvious early criticisms against Husserl concern the problem of the beginning (which, for Husserl, is the change of attitude, the instituting of the epochē) (It is crucial to remember that Heidegger had not yet adopted the notion ‘Dasein’ at this point: he was using “Selbstwelt”): In the 1919/20 lecture Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, he says that we need to begin factically and not “reflect” on the beginning. Remember: these are the moments that Husserl names. That’s when Dasein is referred to as that which is to be shut out. Starting from the Dasein constitutes a certain “critical reversal” of the starting point, the way into, phenomenology, undermining the very reflective character of Husserlian phenomenology that Heidegger finds problematic.

Seventh point• Again, in the lecture Grundprobleme der

Phänomenologie, Heidegger speaks against Husserl, without naming him: a certain patricide takes place. He says that phenomenology must go against phenomenology itself, must go against the “master” (i.e. Husserl)

• In ‘My Way into Phenomenology’, a late text, in which it is confirmed that Heidegger at the time saw/called Husserl as the “master”

Eighth point• In the same lecture course Heidegger tries to radicalize the phenomenological method: scientific research tendencies are not about reflecting on the beginning (in the way that Husserl did through the epochē), but scientific researching tendencies are a letting-open-up [Offen-Lassen] of perspectives and of constantly commencing anew. Heidegger doesn’t name Dasein here as he still had not settled for using the notion of Dasein. But the “letting-open-up” [Offen-Lassen], a precursor of Gelassenheit (I think), will be Heidegger’s alternative to Husserl’s epochē (i.e. the “suspension of Dasein”)

Ninth point• In §22 in the Fundamental Concepts of

Metaphysics, when Dasein has reached full conceptual maturity in Heidegger’s phenomenology, Heidegger says how phenomenology must avoid an “artificial change of attitude”. Rather phenomenologists must release ourselves [Gelassenheit] and start right from the everyday Dasein. He doesn’t name Husserl, again, as he never explicitly does. But Husserl is the target. It’s a patricide.

Tenth Point• Heidegger’s massive problem was particularly with some aspects of Ideas (where the epochē, as starting point, takes place). It sometimes turns into hatred against that work. After having conducted a seminar on Husserl’s Ideen in the winter semester of 1922/3, Martin Heidegger wrote to his student Karl Löwith that “he burned the book” and that the approach that that book takes, showed that Husserl “was never really a philosopher”

Eleventh Point• Heidegger wants to go back to the Logical Investigations; Husserl doesn’t. While Husserl resisted publication of the Sixth Investigation of the Logical Investigations, Heidegger was working on that precise part, despite Husserl’s “disapproval”. But it is through the re-reading of the Sixth Investigation that Heidegger will reach back to Aristotle, discover a self-manifesting originof phenomena in thinking and existence [Dasein] as aletheia, as the unconcealment of what-is present.

Twelfth Point• Husserl’s reaction to the usage of ‘Dasein’ as the phenomenological entry point is telling. In his marginal remarks in his personal copy of Sein und Zeit he sees an incompatibility between his project and Heidegger’s project, confirming the hypothesis that Husserl’s understanding of Dasein was too narrow: it is “anthropological” and ultimately connected to “naturalism”.

First point- text• Excerpt from the 1911 programmatic essay of Husserl entitled

“Philosophy as Rigorous Science” [Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft]: Pure phenomenology as science, so long as it is pure and makes no use of existentially positing nature, can only be essence investigation, and not at all investigation of being-there; all “introspection” and every judgment based on such “experience” falls outside its framework. The particular can in its immanence be posited only as this – this disappearing perception, recollection, etc. – and if need be, can be brought under the strict essential concepts resulting from essential analysis. For the individual is not essence, it is true, but it “has” an essence, which can be said of it with evident validity. To fix this essence as an individual, however, to give it a position in a “world” of individual being-there, is something that such a mere subsumption under essential concepts cannot accomplish. For phenomenology, the singular is eternally the apeiron. Phenomenology can recognize with objective validity only essences and essential relations, and thereby it can accomplish and decisively accomplish whatever is necessary for a correct understanding of all empirical cognition whatsoever: the clarification of the “origin” of all formal-logical and natural-logical principles (and whatever other guiding “principles” there may be) and of all the problems involved in correlating “being” (being of nature, being of value, etc.) and consciousness, problems intimately connected with the aforementioned principles.”

• Excerpt from the 1911 programmatic essay of Husserl entitled “Philosophy as Rigorous Science”: Reine Phänomenologie als Wissenschaft kann, solange sie rein ist und von der existenzialen Setzung der Natur keinen Gebrauch macht,  nur  Wesensforschung und gar nicht Daseinsforschung sein, jede "Selbstbeobachtung" und jedes Urteil aufgrund einer solchen "Erfahrung" fällt außerhalb ihres Rahmens. Das Einzelne in seiner Immanenz kann nur als dies da! - diese dahinfließende Wahrnehmung, Erinnerung und dgl. - gesetzt un allenfalls unter die der Wesensanalyse verdankten strengen Wesensbegriff gebracht werden. Denn das Individuum  ist  zwar nicht Wesen, aber es  "hat"  ein Wesen, das von ihm evidentgültig aussagbar ist. Es aber als Individuum fixieren, ihm eine Stellung einer "Welt" individuellen Daseins geben, das kann eine solche bloße Subsumtion offenbar nicht leisten. Für sie ist das Singuläre ewig das  apeiron  [Unfaßbare - wp]. Objektiv gültig kann sie nur Wesen und Wesensbeziehungen erkennen und damit alles leisten und endgültig leisten, was zum aufklärenden Verständnis aller empirischen Erkenntnis und aller Erkenntnis überhaupt nötig ist: die Aufklärung des "Ursprungs" aller formal-logisch und natur-logisch uns sonst irgendwie leitenden "Prinzipien" und aller damit innig zusammenhängenden Probleme der Korrelation von "Sein" (Natursein, Wertsein, etc.) und "Bewußtsein".

Second point- text• Ideen I, §3: There are two types of intuition that are essentially different: intuition of essence and intuition of existence. Existence= individual Dasein, Tatsache. Essence= Eidos. “Den Wesensunterschieden der Anschauungen korrespondieren die Wesensbeziehungen zwischen »Existenz« (hier offenbar im Sinne von individuell Daseiendem) und »Essenz«, zwischen Tatsache und Eidos. We can start the eidetic seeing from experiencing intuitions but equally well from non-experiencing intuitions which do not seize upon factual existence but which are instead merely imaginative [ebenwohl aber auch von nicht-erfahrenden, nicht-daseinerfassenden, vielmehr “bloß einbildenden” Anschauungen].

Third point - text• Ideen I, §4: Eidetic judgments posit no individual Dasein even when they judge—with purely eidetic universality—about something individual. [Damit hängt wesentlich zusammen, Setzung und zunächst anschauende Erfassung von Wesen impliziert nicht das mindeste von Setzung irgendeines individuellen Daseins; reine Wesenswahrheiten enthalten nicht die mindeste Behauptung über Tatsachen, also ist auch aus ihnen allein nicht die geringsügigste Tatsachenwahrheit zu erschließen]

Fourth point - text• Ideen I, §31: “Instead of remaining in this attitude [Einstellung], we propose to alter it radically”. The natural attitude involves the general positing that the real surrounding world is “a factually existing “actuality” [daseiende Wirklichkeit]”.

Fifth point - text• Ideen I, §32: The phenomenological ἐποχή: I am not negating the world or doubting its factual being [zeitliches Dasein], but I fully “shut out” every judgment about temporal being: Die zum Wesen der natürlichen Einstellung gehörige Generalthesis setzen wir außer Aktion, alles und jedes, was sie in ontiscber Hinsicht umspannt, setzen wir in Klammern: also diese ganze natürliche Welt, die beständig »für uns da«, »vorhanden« ist, und die immerfort dableiben wird als bewußtseinsmäßige »Wirklichkeit«, wenn es uns auch beliebt, sie einzuklammern. Tue ich so, wie es meine volle Freiheit ist, dann negiere ich diese »Welt« also nich, als wäre ich Sophist, ich bezweifle ihr Dasein nicht, als wäre ich Skeptiker; aber ich übe die »phänomenologische« ἐποχή, die mir jedes Urteil über räumlich-zeitliches Dasein völlig verschließt.”

Sixth point - text• GA 58 1919/20 Wintersemester “Grundprobleme der Phaenomenologie”: [On the method of the phenomenological science]: “Das Problem der Anfang”: “Schwierigkeiten Nur aus der Objektivierung des Anfangs in der objektiven Zeit und an einem objektivierten gegenständlichen Was gelegen! Reflektieren wir doch nicht über das Anfangen, sondern fangen faktisch an!”. [Indeed, we should not reflect on the beginning, but rather factically begin!] (p. 4, Eng).

Seventh point - text• GA 58, p. 5 (Eng.): The genuine actualization of phenomenology [echten Vollzug] lies in its radicalism in questioning and critique. And this “radicalism of phenomenology needs to operate in the most radical way against phenomenology itself and against everything that speaks out as phenomenological cognition. There is no iurare in verba magistri [swearing to the words of a master] within scientific research. The essence of a genuine generation of researchers and of subsequent generations lies in its not losing itself on the fringe of special questions, but rather to return in a new and genuine way to the primal sources of the problems, and to take them deeper.”

The “master” reference in My way To Phenomenology

• “As I myself practiced phenomenological seeing, teaching and learning in Husserl's proximity after 1919 and at the same time tried out a transformed understanding of Aristotle in a seminar, my interest leaned anew toward the Logical Investigations, above all the sixth investigation in the first edition. The distinction which is worked out there between sensuous and categorial intuition revealed itself to me in its scope for the determination of the "manifold meaning of being.” For this reason we -friends and pupils- begged the master again and again to republish the sixth investigation which was then difficult to obtain.” (‘My Way into Phenomenology’, J. Stambaugh, p. 78) [Darum baten wir –Freunde und Schüler- immer wieder den Meister…]

Eighth point - text• GA 58, p. 21 (Eng.): The primacy of scientific

researching tendencies is in itself a letting-open-up [Offen-Lassen] of perspectives and of constantly-commencing-anew. All “completion” is relative, which means that it is only absolute when it is seen in a particular genuine problem-tendency, one that has grown together with other “original” problem-tendencies.” “Dieser Primat der wissenschaftlich forschenden Tendenz ist in ihr selbst ein Offen-Lassen der Perspektive und des ständig Neu-Ansetzens. Alle »Erledigung« ist relativ, d.h. absolut nur, Wenn gesehen in einer bestimmten echten, aber mit anderen »ursprünglich« verwachsenen Problemtendenz” (pp. 25-26, German).

Ninth point - text• Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit,

Einsamkeit, §22: “Es kommt gerade nicht darauf an, eine Region von Erlebnissen zurechtzupräparieren, uns in eine Schicht von Bewußtseinszusammenhängen hineinzuarbeiten. Wir müssen gerade vermeiden, uns in eine künstlich zurechtgelegte oder aus fest verhärteten überlieferten Blickrichtungen aufgezwungene besondere Sphäre zu verlieren, statt die Unmittelbarkeit des alltäglichen Daseins zu erhalten und festzuhalten. Es gilt nicht die Anstrengung, uns in eine besondere Einstellung hineinzuarbeiten, sondern umgekehrt, es gilt die Gelassenheit des alltäglichen freien Blickes – frei von psychologischen und sonstigen Theorien von Bewußtsein, Erlebnisstrom und dergleichen.”

Tenth point - text“In the final hour of the seminar, I publicly burned and destroyed the Ideen to such an extent that I dare say that the essential foundations for the whole [of my work] are now cleanly laid out. Looking back from this vantage to the Logische Untersuchungen, I am now convinced that Husserl was never a philosopher, not even for one second in his life. He becomes ever more ludicrous.” (See Overgaard’s ‘Heidegger’s Early Critique of Husserl’)

Eleventh point - text• “Niemeyer published the last chapter of the Logical

Investigations again in 1922. Husserl notes in the preface: ‘As things stand, I had to give in to the wishes of the friends of this work and decide to make its last chapter available again in its old form.’ With the phrase ‘the friends of this work,’ Husserl also wanted to say that he himself could not quite get close to the Logical Investigations after the publication of the Ideas. At the new place of his academic activity, the passion and effort of his thought turned toward the systematic development of the plan presented in the Ideas more than ever. Thus Husserl could write in the preface mentioned to the sixth investigation: ‘My teaching activity in Freiburg, too, furthered the direction of my interest toward general problems and the system.’

Thus Husserl watched me in a generous fashion, but at the bottom in disagreement, as I worked on the Logical Investigations every week in special seminars with advanced students in addition to my lectures and regular seminars. Especially the preparation for this work was fruitful for me. There I learned one thing-at first rather led by surmise than guided by founded insight: What occurs for the phenomenology of the acts of consciousness as the self-manifestation of phenomena is thought more originally by Aristotle and in all Greek thinking and existence [Dasein] as aletheia, as the unconcealedness of what-is present, its being revealed, its showing itself.” (See, J. Stambaugh, p. 79)

Twelfth Point – Text• A marginal remark from Husserl‘s personal copy of SuZ confirms that Husserl saw Heidegger‘s usage of Dasein as incompatible with phenomenology: "Heidegger transponiert oder transversiert die konstitutiv-phänomenologische Klärung aller Regionen des Seienden und Universalen, der totalen Region Welt ins Anthropologische; die ganze Problematik ist Überträgung, dem Ego entspricht Dasein etc. Dabei wird alles tiefsinnig unklar und philosophisch verliert es seinen Wert.” (See Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik", edited by Roland Breeur, in Husserl Studies, vol. 11 (1994), No. 1-2, p. 13. Thanks to Jasper van de Vijver, Antwerp University, for feedback, and bringing this to my attention)