Reflection Essay On Heidegger And Husserl

Heidegger And Husserl Reflection Essay

Martin Heidegger is extensively recognized as one of the most significant and original 20th century philosophers. He has managed to remain in the rank of the most controversial philosophers too (Korab-Karpowicz np). His thinking has added to the fields of existentialism, theology, political theory, psychology, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. Heidegger became a junior partner of Edmund Husserl in 1916 when the latter joined Freiburg faculty. Husserl was a German philosopher and although he was not the first to invent the term, it remains uncontroversial to imply that the philosopher is the "father” of phenomenology (Schacht 294).

Phenomenology is a technique utilized by and later by Heidegger to conduct philosophy but the approach they both used was completely different. According to Husserl, there is a need to start philosophy from a firm base without conjectures; from there we can then achieve common knowledge. Husserl focused more on epistemology (Schacht 296). To comprehend Heidegger’s philosophy prior to "the turn”, it is important to reflect first on his indebtedness to Husserl. Heidegger was engrossed in Husserl from his student years at Freiburg University when he first led Logical Investigations. Later Heidegger became Husserl assistant, when Husserl accepted an appointment at Freiburg (Pietersma 194). Therefore, Heidegger debt to Husserl cannot be disregarded. Not only does Heidegger acknowledge in Being and Time that it could have been impossible to conduct his own investigation without Husserl’s phenomenology he also dedicated it to him (Guignon 49). By "phenomenology”, Husserl had constantly meant the consciousness of science and its objects; this foundation of sense permeates the growth of this conception as eidetic, constructive, or transcendental throughout his works. The process of bracketing is crucial to Husserl’s phenomenological reduction (Husserl 19). The practical procedure that we are guided from the innate stance, that we are implicated in the real world and its affairs, to phenomenological attitude that the study and separate depiction of the substance of consciousness is possible (Husserl 20). Phenomenological reduction aids us to liberate ourselves from injustices and secure the limpidness of our impassiveness as spectators, so that we can come across objects, as they really are in themselves independent of any conjectures. For Husserl, the objective of phenomenology is then an expressive, separate evaluation of consciousness that objects, as it compares, are constituted (Husserl 21).
In daily German speech, the word "Dasein” defines existence or life. Other German philosophers use the noun to symbolize the being of any entity. Conversely, Heidegger breaks the term down to its constituents "Da” and "Sein,” and creates  a special meaning with it  which is relates to the answer he offered in regard to the question of who a human being is. According to him, this question should relate to the "being” question (Korab-Karpowicz np). That being that is we are and that, which Heidegger refers to as Dasein, is differentiated from other beings by the reality that it makes concern of its own being. It stands out to being. As Da-sein, it is the site, "Da”, for the disclosure of being, "Sein” (Korab-Karpowicz np)
Heidegger’s elementary evaluation of Dasein from Being and Time focuses to temporality, as the elemental definition of Dasein’s being which is fundamentally sequential. Its sequential character is a derivative of the tripartite ontological formation: fallenness, thrownness, and existence, which describes Dasein’s being (Korab-Karpowicz np). The existence means that the ability-for-being of Dasein. It schemes its being upon a variety of possibilities. Therefore existence signifies the future phenomenon. As thrownness, Dasein always locates itself already in a definite material and spiritual, historically habituated environment. This symbolizes the past phenomenon as having-been. Lastly, as fallenness, Dasein live in the middle of beings that are both not Dasein and Dasein (Korab-Karpowicz np).
Heidegger does not subject Husserl to direct denigration in his work. However, Being and Time is a powerful critique of Husserl’s phenomenology. He concentrates in many dissimilar forms in which we encounter objects and exist (Guignon 141-143). He evaluates the structures that constitute things not only as they occur in the separate, theoretical mind-set of consciousness, but also in every day life as utensils or in exceptional moods, particularly in anxiety. In addition, he demonstrates that there the compositions that are constitutive of a particular type of being which is the human and which he refers to as Dasein (Schacht 304). For Him, it is not chaste consciousness that beings are originally composed of. The beginning of philosophy for him is Dasein in its being and not consciousness. This represents the primordial phenomenon of the present.
The fundamental problem for Husserl is the dilemma of constitution: How is the globe as phenomenon composed in our consciousness? Heidegger drives the Husserlian predicament a step further (Korab-Karpowicz np). Instead of questioning how something should be given in consciousness to be constituted, he poses the question: "What is the form of being of that being in which the earth constitutes itself?” In a written letter to Husserl, on October 27, 1927, he affirmed that the subject of Dasein’s being could not be evaded, as far as the predicament of constitution is concerned (Korab-Karpowicz np). According to Heidegger, Dasein is that being that any being is constituted. In addition, the subject of Dasein’s being guides him to the predicament of being in general. The "common predicament of being,” he states in the same letter, "refers to that which is constituted and to that which constitutes” (Korab-Karpowicz np). While far from being reliant upon Husserl, Heidegger locates in his reflection an inspiration guiding him to the theme that has persistently drawn his interest since his early years, which was the question of the significance of being (Dreyfus and Wrathall 49).
To this regard, Phenomenology receives a new meaning in relation to Heidegger. He envisages it more extensively, and more etymologically, than his predecessor and teacher Husserl, as "letting what demonstrates itself to be viewed from itself, just as it demonstrates from itself”. Husserl relates phenomenology to an entire philosophy (Dreyfus and Wrathall 55). Heidegger guides it rather to delegate a method. While in Being and Time philosophy is depicted as ontology and being is used as its theme, it cannot espouse its technique from any of the definite sciences. According to Heidegger phenomenology is the technique of ontology. He states that phenomenology "is the way of entrance to what is to become the theme of ontology (Korab-Karpowicz np).” Being is to be clasped by way of the phenomenological technique. Conversely, being is constantly the being of a being; also consequently, it becomes reachable only circuitously through some entity that already exists (Dreyfus and Wrathall 49). As a result, phenomenological reduction is crucial. One must lead oneself towards an entity, however in such a means that its being is thus brought out. Heidegger selects Dasein as the finicky entity to access being (Guignon 151). Therefore, as the central constituent of his phenomenology, he adopts the phenomenological reduction, which is a Husserlian process, but provides it with an entirely different meaning.
Conclusion
Heidegger trusts that ontology is more elementary in evaluating things-in-themselves and being first. As defined earlier, Phenomenology encompasses the study of the phenomena origin in our lived experience. Husserl believes that we have the abilities of being unbiased, impartial, and neutral when we evaluate and study things. Heidegger thinks that this to be impossible. Because, humans constantly have a concern, already words carry a planet of meaning, and therefore we are constantly in a context. Heidegger does not foot his philosophy on consciousness like Husserl did. The theoretical or phenomenological attitude of consciousness for Heidegger, which Husserl formulate  as the nucleus of his doctrine, is one possible form of that which is more essential, namely, Dasein’s being. Even though he consents with Husserl that transcendental establishment of the globe cannot be revealed by physical or naturalistic explanations, in his analysis it is not an expressive evaluation of consciousness that guides to this conclusion, but the evaluation of Dasein. For Heidegger Phenomenology is not an expressive, separate evaluation of consciousness. It is a technique of entrance to being. Being and Time, philosophy for Heidegger is phenomenological ontology that takes its exit from the evaluation of Dasein.
References
Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Mark A. Wrathall. A Companion to Heidegger. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
Guignon, Charles B. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Husserl, Edmund G. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Pietersma, H. "Husserl and Heidegger." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 .2 (1979): 194-211.
Schacht, Richard. "Husserlian and Heideggerian Phenomenology." Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 23. 5 (1972): 293-314.