INTRODUCTION
PART I – ARISTOTLE AND THE RECEPTION OF HIS PHILOSOPHY
A. What Are Studies in the History of Philosophy?
-* A region within the history of the spirit as Objective, factual research?
-* The historiological can be grasped only in philosophizing; both originally one
-* Not a presupposition, but instead a pre-possession of the factical in questionability; not Objective
-* The history of philosophy in these pages: Greeks and the Christian West
B. The Reception of Aristotle’s Philosophy
a) Middle Ages and modernity
-* High esteem in the Middle Ages; for Neo-Kantians: uncritical metaphysics
-* Then again: Aristotle a realist
b) Antecedent Greekanizing of the Christian life-consciousness
The Middle Ages and Protestant theology lay the ground for German idealism
c) Philological-historiological research
-* Critical edition of Aristotle’s collected works
-* Influence on the emergence of phenomenology
PART II WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
Aim and Method of the Following Investigation
CHAPTER ONE – The Task of Definition
-* Its underestimation and overestimation
-* The twofold underestimation: the task brushed aside: 1. following the example of the other sciences; 2. because philosophy can only be “lived”
-* The twofold overestimation: tendency toward 1. a universal definition, 2. a rigorous definition
-* Genuine intention in both errors; in the overestimation; in the underestimation
A. The Twofold Error in the Overestimation
a) The uncritical idea of definition
-* From traditional logic
-* The definition of phenomenology
-* “Possessing” the object is a claim, a pre-possession
-* The formal sense of definition
-* Formal indication
-* Decisive: how the object becomes accessible
-* Task: the radical problematic of logic
b) The mistaking of the sense of “principle”
-* The principle the universal?
-* The definition at the level of principle points toward that for which the object of the definition is a principle
-* Basic mistake: philosophy taken, in the preconception, as a matter of fact
B. The Underestimation of the Task of Definition
a) The decision in favor of “concrete work”
-* According to the ideal of the concrete sciences
-* Even the concrete sciences have once made a decision of principle
-* The concrete must be encountered in the definition of principle
-* The definition is indicative, provides a directedness toward the sense
-* The “formal” indication: direction of approach, not determinations of the object
-* The “formal”
-* Evidence and questionability
-* The evidence-situation
b) Philosophy as “lived experience”
-* Fanatical spirit
-* Situation of the primal decision not a fixed ground, but a leap
-* Misunderstandings
c) Concept of philosophy
CHAPTER TWO The Appropriation of the Situation in Which Understanding Is Rooted
A. Preconception from a Turn of Speech
The turn of speech actualizes a situation in which understanding is rooted
a) Philosophy is philosophizing
-* “Philosophy is worldview?”
-* Note concerning the only possible use of the expression “scientific philosophy” in these considerations
-* Sciences originating out of philosophy
-* Philosophy and art
b) Plato on philosophizing
-* Philosophy a mode of self-comportment
-* An independent comportment: its object determines the comportment, and the comportment, in its actualization, determines its object
B. Comportment
Sense of relation, sense of actualization, sense of maturation, sense of holdings in comportment
a) Philosophizing, according to its sense of relation, is cognitive comportment.
-* The definition interprets the sense of cognition
-* The definition delimits for the sciences their region
b) The definition of philosophy at the level of principle Philosophy has no “region” as do the sciences
-* Its object is the universal, the highest, the principle
-* The principle of beings: the sense of Being
-* Object of the definition-object of philosophy
-* Object of the definition (content) decisive for the possession of the object (actualization)
-* The formally indicative definition of philosophy at the level of principle
C. The Situation of Access: the University
-* The access to the understanding is a moment of the definition
-* Our situation: the university
-* The difficulty is our historiological consciousness
-* Objections against taking the university as the situation of access
a) First objection: is philosophy university-philosophy?
There is no such thing as philosophy in general but only in the concrete, in its own place
b) Second objection: can the accidental situation of the university be normative for philosophy?
-* Reform of the university?
-* Guidelines for philosophizing
-* Do they contradict the relevance of the situation?
-* “Situation” not there “without further ado”
-* The method of an Objective evaluation of the situation of the university
c) The tradition
-* Historiological consciousness
-* Spengler: expression of the spirit of the times
-* The claim of the tradition to normativity
-* Question of the tradition rooted in the question of factical life
-* Recapitulation. The Objective method to an evaluation of the university resolves itself on its own
PART III FACTICAL LIFE
-* The basic phenomenological categories
-* Modern life-philosophy. Rickert
-* “Life” ambiguous, vague
CHAPTER ONE – The Basic Categories of Life
-* Life as: 1. extension, 2. possibilities, 3. fate
-* Prevailing sense: living = being
A. Life and World
-* “World” the content-sense of life
-* “Category” (phenomeno-logically) interpretive, alive in life itself
-* Universal validity. Haziness, circuitousness. Repetition
B. Relational Sense of Life: Caring
a) Character of the world in caring: meaningfulness
-* Encounter, experience, reality, value
-* The ordinary theories reverse the nexus of grounding, rooted in Greek philosophy
-* Movedness of factical life: unrest (Pascal)
b) Directions of caring
-* Surrounding world, shared world, one’s own world
-* One’s own world does not = Ego
-* Not explicit, not standing out in relief
-* Not self-reflection, psychology
-* Not epistemology
-* Categories alive in facticity
-* Extrinsic criticism senseless
C. The Categories of the Relationality of Life
a) Inclination
-* Proclivity impels life into its world
-* “Metaphysics”? Dispersion; self-satisfaction
b) Distance (and abolition of distance)
-* The principle the universal?
-* The definition at the level of principle points toward that for which the object of the definition is a principle
-* Basic mistake: philosophy taken, in the preconception, as a matter of fact
B. The Underestimation of the Task of Definition
a) The decision in favor of “concrete work”
-* According to the ideal of the concrete sciences
-* Even the concrete sciences have once made a decision of principle
-* The concrete must be encountered in the definition of principle
-* The definition is indicative, provides a directedness toward the sense
-* The “formal” indication: direction of approach, not determinations of the object
-* The “formal”
-* Evidence and questionability
-* The evidence-situation
b) Philosophy as “lived experience”
-* Fanatical spirit
-* Situation of the primal decision not a fixed ground, but a leap
-* Misunderstandings
c) Concept of philosophy
CHAPTER TWO The Appropriation of the Situation in Which Understanding Is Rooted
A. Preconception from a Turn of Speech
The turn of speech actualizes a situation in which understanding is rooted
a) Philosophy is philosophizing
-* “Philosophy is worldview?”
-* Note concerning the only possible use of the expression “scientific philosophy” in these considerations
-* Sciences originating out of philosophy
-* Philosophy and art
b) Plato on philosophizing
-* Philosophy a mode of self-comportment
-* An independent comportment: its object determines the comportment, and the comportment, in its actualization, determines its object
B. Comportment
Sense of relation, sense of actualization, sense of maturation, sense of holdings in comportment
a) Philosophizing, according to its sense of relation, is cognitive comportment.
-* The definition interprets the sense of cognition
-* The definition delimits for the sciences their region
b) The definition of philosophy at the level of principle Philosophy has no “region” as do the sciences
-* Its object is the universal, the highest, the principle
-* The principle of beings: the sense of Being
-* Object of the definition-object of philosophy
-* Object ol the definition (content) decisive for the possession of the object (actualization)
-* The formally indicative definition of philosophy at the level of principle
C. The Situation of Access: the University
-* The access to the understanding is a moment of the definition
-* Our situation: the university
-* The difficulty is our historiological
a) Heightened care: apprehension
-* Caring takes itself into care
-* Clarification fallen into ruinance, ambiguity
b) Chairological characters
-* How life announces itself in ruinance, “feelings”; the “Being-to-me”
-* The historiological. Time not a framework but a mode of movedness
-* Aggravation of ruinance: abolition of time
B. Four Formal-Indicational Characters of Ruinance
a) Prohibiting function of the formal indication
-* Characters of ruinance not properties
-* They appear already in caring, in its categories of movedness
b) The “whereto” of ruinance: nothingness
-* Direction primarily not a spatial concept
-* The “whereto” is the nothingness of factical life
-* Formal nothingness
-* Dialectic
-* The nothingness of factical life not (fall-breaking) emptiness but “nullification”
-* The non-occurrence of factical life itself, brought to maturation by itself, in ruinant existence
c) Objectivity
-* The immediacy of the experience of the world a maturation of tactically ruinant life
-* Proper immediacy of questionability. Dialectical mediation (Hegel)
d) Questionability
-* Dialogue of immediate life with itself
-* Philosophical interpretation is counter-ruinant movedness in the mode of access of questionability, in a struggle against its own ruinance
-* Confrontation of factical life with its past. The temptative
-* In ruinance privation becomes validated: that something is lacking to factical life
-* Privation an Objective state?
APPENDIX I PRESUPPOSITION
-* Presupposition
-* Methodological reflection is a way in movedness
-* “Pre-” and “sup-position”
1. How “Sciences” Have Their Presupposition
Original presuppositions overlooked, reflection rejected
2. Sense of Movedness in the Phenomenological Interpretation of Philosophizing
-* Philosophizing counter-ruinant: radical appropriation of the presupposition
-* Appropriation of the situation: a mode of factical life
-* Situation not simply present, in the latest appearances, etc.
3. The Conditionality of the Interpretation
-* The interpretation is not to be taken dogmatically
-* Therefore “relativism,” “skepticism”? These concepts, just like that of the “absolute,” originate in a determine preconception of knowledge: Objectivity
-* “Absolute truth”
-* Law of non-contradiction
-* The absolute system of moral values
-* It is not demonstrability but the envitalizing of the object that is decisive in philosophy
-* The basic phenomenological stance
4. A Way to the Object of Philosophy
-* Man; three sets of alternatives for consideration
-* Philosophy penetrates to the roots of one’s own life
-* Important to understand the beginning (the Greeks)
-* Questioning concerns the ontological sense, not a mere pre-given conceptuality!
5. The Direction of Philosophical Questioning
-* Preconception of the object of philosophy is the actualization of this object’s own tendency: to be in the mode of self-possession
-* Not self-observation, Ego-metaphysics; but in each case on the basis of the lived life-world
-* In the question of the “I am,” the “am” is decisive, not the “I”
-* Descartes’ preconception of Being as the indubitable
-* The question of the “I am” actualizes itself as the question “Am I?” Thereby the “I” is undetermined
6. The Ontological Sense of the “Am”
-* The ontological sense of the “am” first comes to maturation in questioning; i.e., factical life properly exists in its temporality
-* Proper character of resistance; not “absolute,” i.e., immutable
-* Philosophical interpretation counter-ruinant; preservation of its results covering up, ruinant
-* Phenomenological interpretation of the basic experiences in the preconception
7. The Problematic of the Preconception and the Possible Discussion
-* Concerning, and Critique of, the “Objectivity” of Philosophical Interpretation
-* Appropriate critique possible only on the ground of the preconception of existence
APPENDIX II LOOSE PAGES
Page 1. Motto, along with a grateful indication of the source. Kierkegaard, Luther
Page 2. Organization of the introduction to phenomenological research Introduction: preparatory consideration for the interpretation of Aristotle, existentiell logic; movement and countermovement of philosophy; the historiological; preconception
Page 3. Connection
(Overview of p. 99 ff.)
Page 4. Caring-waiting
“Waiting” provides the basic sense of facticity: waiting for something is a way of relating to the world-and is, at the same time, privation
Page 5. Clarification and caring
Care-full clarification is “deliberation”
Page 6. What is at issue
At issue is the actualization of a new understanding, not new concepts; confrontation with the ruinance of the concept
Page 7. The genuine beginning
To begin genuinely: to seek the access, which becomes lost ever and again
Page 8. Way of interpretation
Interpretation of facticity on the basis of the (concealing) circumstances; university: possibility of philosophical life, the existence of a being. No reform prior to accomplishments
Page 9. Introduction to phenomenological research
Phenomenological hermeneutics as radical research in science, on the basis of facticity. Degenerate philosophy
Page 10. Initiation into phenomenological research
Its object comes to maturation in the proximity of the “genuine” way of dealing with it: life; at the same time unfamiliar and well known. Research is questioning. The circumstances in science: cowardice, docility, convenience
Page 11. Phenomenological research, “university-philosophy,” and “doctrine of worldviews”
Preface to a “text.” Not at all a program; merely points in a direction; to grasp is to participate
Page 12. Disputation
No idle talk about the book! There are no serious reviews. Phenomenology is knowledge, not worldview
Page 13. For philosophy to say what is new
Not the aim of philosophy to say what is new; to understand the old! Guidelines pointing toward the mode of maturation, the mode of existence. Intentionality
Page 14. Questionability
Questioning and curiosity, two basic comportments. Philosophy is atheistic as a matter of principle
Page 15. Skepticism
On Lotze. Genuine preconception decisive, but formal laws of thought still no guarantee of access to a region of knowledge
Page 16. On the introduction
Genuine skepsis: proper stance within questioning. Philosophy a-theistic, even if a philosopher can also be a religious person. Asceticism of scientific life
Page 17. Clarification and facticity
On Ebbinghaus, Fundamentals of Hegel’s Philosophy