Phenomenon (Phänomen), 28-31, (§ 7a), 34-37, 58-68, 131-134, 153-156, 158-162, 179-185, 188-191, 248-250, 268-271, 289-292, 302-305, 316-318, 359-360, 433, et passim (BT)
But then the history of the concept of time is the history of the discovery of time and the history of its conceptual interpretation. In other words, it is the history of the question of the being of entities, the history of the attempts to uncover entities in their being, borne by the particular understanding of time, by the particular level of conceptual elaboration of the PHENOMENON of time. Hence, in the end, the history of the concept of time is more accurately the history of the decline and the history of the distortion of the basic question of scientific research into the being of entities. It is the history of the incapacity to pose the question of being in a radically new way and to work out its first fundaments anew—an incapacity which is grounded in the being of Dasein. But over against this wholly external characterization of the fundamental role of the concept of time we will in the course of our considerations be confronted with the question: What after all makes time and the concept of time, the comprehending regard to time, appropriate for this peculiar function, hitherto always assumed as self-evident, of characterizing and dividing the domains of reality—temporal, extratemporal, supratemporal reality? GA20EN §2
Commensurate with the fundamental significance of time and its concept, the history [Geschichte] of the concept of time is in turn no arbitrary historiological [historische] reflection. This distinction in turn suggests the manner of this fundamental reflection on the history of the concept of time. The historiology of the time concept could be carried out as a gathering of opinions about time and a summary of its conceptual formulations. Through such a doxographical survey of the concept of time, one might expect to obtain an understanding of time itself and thus the basis for characterizing the special temporal realities ‘history’ and ‘nature.’ But even the most meticulous collections of opinions remain blind so long as one does not first have a clear idea of just what is constantly being sought in gathering such information. The understanding of time itself will never be obtained from the historiology of the time concept. Instead, it is precisely the understanding of the PHENOMENON of time, worked out in advance, which first permits us to understand earlier concepts of time. GA20EN §2
But at first we shall proceed in the traditional manner [and utilize the separation which we now regard as a purely didactic device]. The historiological clarification of the history of the concept of time is only didactically separated from the [systematic] analysis of the PHENOMENON of time. The latter in turn is the preparation for the possibility of historiological understanding. GA20EN §2
To summarize: the basic question of the reality of history and nature is the basic question of the reality of a particular domain of being. For the question of being, the concept of time is our guide. Accordingly, the question of the being of entities, if it is to be regarded as radical, is tied to a discussion of the PHENOMENON of time. This discussion of the PHENOMENON of time is neither systematic in the traditional sense nor historiological, but phenomenological. This results in the following outline for the entire course, which is divided into three parts. GA20EN §3
First Part: Analysis of the PHENOMENON of time and derivation of the concept of time. GA20EN §3
The First Part, “The Analysis of the PHENOMENON of Time and the Determination of the Concept of Time,” is divided into three divisions: GA20EN §3
First Division: The preparatory description of the field in which the PHENOMENON of time becomes manifest. GA20EN §3
Intentio is a Scholastic expression which means directing itself toward. Brentano speaks of the intentional inexistence of the object. Each lived experience directs itself toward something in a way which varies according to the distinctive character of the experience. To represent something after the manner of representing is a different self-directing than to judge something after the manner of judging. Brentano expressly emphasizes that Aristotle already made this point of view the basis for his treatment of psychic phenomena, and that the Scholastics took over this PHENOMENON of intentionality. GA20EN §4
Using this basic division of psychic experiences as a guide, Brentano seeks to exhibit the basic structure of representing, judging, and emotions. Regarding the relationship of these phenomena, Brentano laid down the following basic thesis: Every psychic PHENOMENON is itself either a representation or is based upon representations. “This representing forms the basis of judging just as it does of desiring and every other psychic act. Nothing can be judged, but also nothing can be desired, nothing can be hoped or feared, if it is not represented.” Hence the simple having of something assumes the function of a basic comportment. Judging and taking an interest are possible only if something is represented, which gets judged, in which an interest is taken. Brentano operates not only in mere description but tries to set off this division from the traditional one in a critical examination which we will not pursue any further. GA20EN §4
We want to consider intentionality first, precisely because contemporary philosophy then and even now actually finds this PHENOMENON offensive, because intentionality is precisely what prevents an immediate and unprejudiced reception of what phenomenology wants to do. Intentionality was already alluded to in our account of how Brentano sought to classify the totality of psychic phenomena in strict accord with it. Brentano discerned in intentionality the structure which constitutes the true nature of a psychic PHENOMENON. Intentionality thus became for him the criterion for the distinction of psychic from physical phenomena. But at the same time this structure is the criterion and principle of a natural division among psychic phenomena themselves, inasmuch as it is already found in the essence which appears in these phenomena. Brentano expressly emphasizes that he is only taking up what Aristotle and the Scholastics were already acquainted with. It was through Brentano that Husserl learned to see intentionality. GA20EN §5
In the reception of intentionality as well as in the way in which Brentano was interpreted and developed, everyone saw not so much the exposition of this composition of the structure of lived experience as what they suspected in Brentano: metaphysical dogmas. The decisive thing about Husserl was that he did not look to the dogmas and presuppositions, so far as these were there, but to the PHENOMENON itself, that perceiving is a directing-itself-toward. But now this structure cannot be disregarded in the other forms of comportment as well. Rickert makes this the basis of his argument and disputes seeing such a thing in these comportments. He reserves intentionality for the comportment relating to judgment but drops it for representing. He says representing is not knowing. He comes to this because he is trapped in dogmas, in this case the dogma that my representing involves no transcendence, that it does not get out to the object. Descartes in fact said that representing (perceptio) remains in the consciousness. And Rickert thinks that the transcendence of judging, whose object he specifies as a value, is less puzzling than the transcendence which is in representing, understood as getting out to a real thing. He comes to this view because he thinks that in judgment something is acknowledged which has the character of value and so does not exist in reality. He identifies it with the mental which consciousness itself is, and thinks that value is something immanent. When I acknowledge a value, I do not go outside of consciousness. GA20EN §5
These two concepts of truth and the corresponding two concepts of being were established in the initial elaboration of phenomenology and have persisted in further developments. This is important to keep in mind since we shall later raise the fundamental question of the sense of being and thus come to face the question of whether the concept of being can really be originally drawn in this context of being-true and the corresponding being-real, and whether truth is primarily a PHENOMENON which is to be originally conceived in the context of assertions or, in the broader sense, of objectifying acts. GA20EN §6
If I want to form the concept of aggregate, I find this PHENOMENON of aggregate not by reflecting upon the psychic process of bringing together a + b + c + d . . . but by referring to what is presumed in this act of assembling, not in the direction of the act but of what the act gives. Likewise, I find the categorial of identity not in the reflection upon consciousness and the subject as a process of ideating comportment, but in reference to what is intended in this comportment as such. GA20EN §6
Categorial intuition as intentional comportment was deliberately given only second place in the series of discoveries. With regard to our understanding of the first discovery, categorial intuition is just a concretion of the basic constitution of intentionality announced there. As categorial intuition is possible only on the basis of the PHENOMENON of intentionality having been seen before it, so the third discovery to be discussed now is intelligible only on the basis of the second and accordingly on the basis of the first. It is first in this way that the sequence of discoveries accounts for itself, and the first manifests its fundamental significance step by step. GA20EN §6
The name ‘phenomenology’ has two components, ‘PHENOMENON’ and ‘-logy.’ The latter phrase is familiar from such usages as theology, biology, physiology, sociology, and is commonly translated as ‘science of’: theology, science of God; biology, science of life, of organic nature; sociology, science of the community. Accordingly, phenomenology is the science of phenomena. ‘Logy,’ science of, varies in its character according to the thematic matter, which is logically and formally undefined. In our case, it is defined by what PHENOMENON stands for. So, to begin with, the first part of the name must be clarified [in order to see what this particular —logy stands for]. GA20EN §9
Both parts refer back to Greek expressions, PHENOMENON to phainomenon, —logy to logos. Phainomenon is the participle of phainesthai, the middle voice which means to show itself; phainomenon is accordingly that which shows itself. The middle voice phainesthai is a form of phaino: to bring something to light, to make it visible in itself, to put it in a bright light. Phaino has the stem pha—phos, light, brightness, that wherein something can be manifest, visible in itself. We shall adhere to this meaning of PHENOMENON: phainomenon, that which shows itself. The phainomena form the totality of that which shows itself, what the Greeks also simply identified with ta onta, entities. GA20EN §9
Now an entity can show itself in itself from itself in various ways, depending in each case on the kind of access we have to it. There is the noteworthy possibility that an entity may show itself as something which it nevertheless is not. We do not call such an entity a PHENOMENON, something which shows itself in the authentic sense, but a semblance [Schein]. The expression phainomenon thus receives a modification in meaning: instead of the agathon we speak of a phainomenon agathon, a good which only looks good but actually is not, it only ‘appears’ good. Everything now depends upon seeing the connection between the basic meaning of phainomenon, the manifest, and the second meaning, semblance. Phainomenon can mean semblance only because semblance is a modification of phainomenon in the first sense. Formulated more pointedly, only because phainesthai means “showing itself” can it also mean “merely showing itself as,” “only looking like.” Only insofar as something in its sense makes a pretense of showing itself can it pass itself off as . . . ; only what makes a pretense to be manifest can be a semblance. In fact, that is the sense of semblance: pretension to be manifest but not really being it. Phainomenon as semblance thus serves to show that the sense of PHENOMENON is the entity itself manifest in itself. Semblance, on the other hand, is a pretended self-showing. PHENOMENON is therefore a mode of encounter of entities in themselves such that they show themselves. GA20EN §9
We must adhere to this genuine sense of phainomenon employed by the Greeks. But we must also see that at first it has absolutely nothing to do with our term ‘appearance’ or still less ‘mere appearance.’ Probably no word has caused as much havoc and confusion in philosophy as this one. We cannot trace the history of these errors here. We shall only try to give the main differences of the authentic and original meaning of PHENOMENON as semblance in contrast to appearance. GA20EN §9
We use the term ‘appearances,’ for example, in the German expression Krankheitserscheinungen, “symptoms” [literally, “appearances of a disease”]. In a thing, processes and properties show themselves through which the thing represents itself as this and that. Appearances are themselves occurrences which refer back to other occurrences from which we can infer something else which does not make an appearance. Appearances are appearances of something which is not given as an appearance, something which refers to another entity. Appearance has the distinguishing feature of reference. What distinguishes reference is precisely this: that to which the appearance refers does not show itself in itself but merely represents, intimates by way of mediation, indirectly indicates. The term appearance therefore means a kind of reference of something to something which does not show itself in itself. More precisely, not only does it not show itself in itself, but according to its very sense it does not even pretend to show itself but instead pretends to represent itself. The characteristic feature of the referential function in appearance, in appearing, is the function of indicating, of the indication or announcement of something. Indicating something by means of another, however, means precisely not to show it in itself but to represent it indirectly, mediately, symbolically. We have here then, with what we mean by appearance, a very different connection. In the case of the PHENOMENON, we do not really have a referential connection; the structure peculiar to it is instead that of self-showing. It is now important for us to elucidate the inner connection between PHENOMENON in this genuine sense and appearance, but in the process we must also differentiate appearance from semblance. GA20EN §9
Semblance is a modification of the manifest, of something manifest which it pretends to be but is not. Semblance is not PHENOMENON in this privative sense; it has the characteristic of showing itself, but that which shows itself does not show itself as what it is, while appearance is precisely the representation of something which is essentially not really manifest. Semblance thus always goes back to something manifest and includes the idea of the manifest. But now it is also becoming clear that an appearance, a symptom, can only be what it is, namely, reference to something else which does not show itself, through the self-showing of that which appears. In short, that which gives itself as a symptom is a PHENOMENON. The possibility of appearance as reference of something to something rests on having that something which does the referring show itself in itself. To put it another way, the possibility of appearance as reference is founded in the authentic PHENOMENON, in self-showing. The structure of appearance as reference already intrinsically presupposes the more original structure of self-showing, the authentic sense of PHENOMENON. Something can be referential only as a self-showing something. GA20EN §9
The concept of appearance now also gets the name of PHENOMENON. Or PHENOMENON is defined as the appearance of something which does not appear; it is defined in terms of a state of affairs which already presupposes the sense of PHENOMENON but which on its part cannot define it. But in addition, appearance implies something which appears and, at the opposite pole, something which does not appear. So there are two entities and it is then maintained that appearances are something and behind them is something else, that of which they are appearances. By and large, we do not learn from philosophy what this standing behind the scenes really means. But in any event this is included in the concept of appearance, so that now appearance and the referential connection included in it are taken ontically, in terms of entities, and the connection between appearance and thing in itself is then a relation of being: one stands behind the other. Add to this the move whereby that which stays in the background and does not show itself but only announces itself in the appearance is now labelled ontically as the real and true entity; this naturally leads to the move of designating that which does appear, the appearance itself, as mere appearance. Thus, within the ontic referential context a distinction in grades of being is made between that which shows itself and that which only appears in the sense of announcing itself in the former. We thus come across a double possibility: appearance purely as a referential connection without first conceiving it ontically in any particular way, and then appearance as the name for an ontic connection of reference between phainomenon and noymenon, between essence and appearance in the ontic sense. If we now take this degraded entity, the appearance versus the essence in this sense of mere appearance, then this mere appearance is called semblance. Confusion is then carried to extremes. But traditional epistemology and metaphysics live off this confusion. GA20EN §9
By way of summary, the following must be made clear: There are two basic meanings of ‘PHENOMENON’; first the manifest, that which shows itself, and second that which presents itself as something manifest but which only gives itself [out] in this way—semblance. For the most part, we are not at all familiar with the original meaning of PHENOMENON and dispense with the task of making clear to ourselves what it does mean. We simply call something a ‘PHENOMENON’ which here has been identified as ‘appearance’ and analyzed as such. When phenomenology is criticized, the critic simply takes the concept of ‘appearance,’ which is convenient for his purposes [but has nothing to do with phenomenology], and uses this word to criticize a research endeavor oriented to the matters themselves. This should suffice for the clarification of the first component part of the term ‘phenomenology.’ GA20EN §9
The objects of philosophical research have the character of the PHENOMENON. In brief, such research deals with phenomena and only with phenomena. Phenomenology in its original and initial meaning, which is captured in the expression ‘phenomenology’, signifies a way of encountering something. It is in fact the outstanding way: showing itself in itself. The expression phenomenology names the way something has to be there through and for legein, for conceptual exposition and interpretation. As our preceding discussion has shown, phenomenology deals with intentionality in its apriori. The structures of intentionality in its apriori are the phenomena. In other words, the structures of intentionality in its apriori circumscribe the objects which are to be made present in themselves in this research and explicated in this presence. The term ‘PHENOMENON’ however says nothing about the being of the objects under study, but refers only to the way they are encountered. The phenomenal is accordingly everything which becomes visible in this kind of encounter and belongs in this structural context of intentionality. We therefore speak of ‘phenomenal structures’ as of what is seen, specified and examined in this kind of research. Phenomenological signifies everything that belongs to such a way of exhibiting phenomena and phenomenal structures, everything that becomes thematic in this kind of research. The unphenomenological would be everything that does not satisfy this kind of research, its conceptuality and its methods of demonstration. GA20EN §9
Phenomenology as the science of the apriori phenomena of intentionality thus never has anything to do with appearances and even less with mere appearances. It is phenomenologically absurd to speak of the PHENOMENON as if it were something behind which there would be something else of which it would be a PHENOMENON in the sense of the appearance which represents and expresses [this something else]. A PHENOMENON is nothing behind which there would be something else. More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something behind the PHENOMENON at all, since what the PHENOMENON gives is precisely that something in itself. Admittedly, what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up. What is in itself visible and in its very sense is accessible only as a PHENOMENON does not necessarily need to be so already in fact. What a PHENOMENON is as a possibility is not directly given as a PHENOMENON but must first be given. As research work, phenomenology is precisely the work of laying open and letting be seen, understood as the methodologically directed dismantling of concealments. GA20EN §9
Being-covered-up is the counterconcept to PHENOMENON, and such concealments are really the immediate theme of phenomenological reflection. What can be a PHENOMENON is first and foremost covered up, or known in a tentative form. The concealment can assume various guises. First, a PHENOMENON can be covered up in the sense that it is still quite undiscovered, so that there is no knowledge or clue to its existence. Second, a PHENOMENON can be buried. This means that it was discovered before but once again got covered up. This is not a total concealment. What was discovered before is still visible, though only as a semblance. But so much semblance—so much being; this concealment understood as disguise is the most frequent and most dangerous kind, for here the possibilities of deceiving and misleading are especially great. The originally seen phenomena are uprooted, torn from their ground, and are no longer understood in their origins, in their “extraction” from their roots in a particular subject matter. GA20EN §9
The reason why genuinely phenomenological work is difficult is that it must be especially critical of itself in a positive way. The sort of encounter involved in the mode of PHENOMENON must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenological research. This means that the characteristic mode of apprehending phenomena—originarily apprehending interpreting—implies not one iota of an immediate apprehension in the sense in which it can be said that phenomenology is a straightforward seeing which requires absolutely no methodological preparation. Precisely the opposite is the case, which is also why the expressness of the maxim is so essential. Because the PHENOMENON must first be won, scrutinizing the point of departure for access to the PHENOMENON and clearing the passage through the concealments already demand a high degree of methodological preparation so that we may be guided and determined by what the phenomenal givenness of intentionality in each instance implies. The demand for an ultimate direct givenness of the phenomena carries no implication of the comfort of an immediate beholding. There can be no disclosure or deduction of essence from essence, apriori from apriori, one from the other. Rather, each and every one of these must come to demonstrative vision. Accordingly, the way to go in each instance begins with the individual phenomenal correlations and varies according to the degree to which the apriori has been uncovered and the tradition has buried it, as well as the kind of obfuscation involved. Since every structure must ultimately be exhibited in itself, phenomenology’s way of research at first assumes the character or the aspect of what is called a picture-book phenomenology. It gives greater prominence to the exhibition of individual structures which are perhaps very useful for a systematic philosophy, even though the exhibition can only be provisional. As a result, there is a tendency to give philosophical sanction to the prominent displays of particular phenomenological considerations by finding a place for them in some sort of dialectic or the like. Against this tendency, it must be stated that at first nothing at all is to be made of the interconnections of the structures of intentionality. Rather, the interconnection of the apriori is always determined only from the subject matter which is to be explored in its phenomenal structure. Furthermore, at first we need not concern ourselves with these considerations, since they will always remain fruitless as long as the concrete aspect of phenomena is not clear. GA20EN §9
Rickert’s critique is based on his understanding of the word “appearance.” He states that the word “appearance” has, in its sense as appearance of something, the orientation toward something which is not appearance, which is therefore not immediately given. And since appearance is always appearance of something which is behind it, the immediate cannot be apprehended, so that we are always dealing with something already mediated. Phenomenology is accordingly unsuited to be the basic science of philosophy. It is apparent first that the concept of appearance, PHENOMENON, is merely taken up without any attempt to see what PHENOMENON originally means and in phenomenology truly means. Instead, the traditional concept of appearance, an empty verbal concept, is taken as a basis for criticizing the concrete labor of a research effort. It is unnecessary to go any further into this article, since nothing of relevance to our topic would be dredged up by such a critique and since it is in fact no great feat to criticize such an objection. It has to be mentioned, however, since Rickert in this essay gives voice to what is otherwise typical in philosophy and in its attitude toward phenomenology. I stress this not to save phenomenology but to make clear how such an interpretation not only deforms the sense of the phenomenological endeavor but above all loses the instinct for sticking to the topic in philosophizing. GA20EN §9
This reflection will be directed toward the original, that is, phenomenologically basic, determination of the thematic field, namely, the fundamental determination of intentionality and of what is already given with it. In the light of this new task of securing the thematic field originally, as it is prefigured in the PHENOMENON of intentionality, the account of the cultivation and development of phenomenological research will also shift its ground. We shall examine the growing elaboration of the thematic field, its determination, and the outlining of the working horizons as they emerge from this determination of the field. In point of fact, we shall pursue this theme in the double orientation of the work of the two leading researchers in phenomenology today, Husserl and Scheler. GA20EN §9
These problems of Husserl and Scheler just enumerated serve to define the actual development of phenomenology and the more detailed explication of the problem of demarcating and founding the thematic field of phenomenology. Accordingly, the analysis of the later basic studies will have to keep to these two spheres of problems. Within this concrete development of the phenomenological endeavor, the working horizons were at first also fixed by the purely traditional disciplines of logic, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, and philosophy of law. The horizons of inquiry remained the same as in traditional philosophy. In addition, on the basis of the orientation to the PHENOMENON of intentionality, which is phenomenologically distinguished into intentio, intentum, and the correlation between the two, there arose three directions of work which always reciprocally require one another: phenomenology of the act, phenomenology of the subject matter, and the correlation between the two. The same separation is found in Husserl in the terms noesis, the specific structure of directing-itself-toward, and noema, the subject matter insofar as it is intended in the intention. For Husserl there is no special correlation, since it is given with noema and noesis and included in them. GA20EN §10
There was a tendency in logic to take the laws of thought as laws of the psychic processes of thought, of the psychic occurrence of thought. In opposition to this misunderstanding, Husserl, like Brentano, showed that the laws of thought are not the laws of the psychic course of thinking but laws of what is thought; that one must distinguish between the psychic process of judgment, the act in the broadest sense, and what is judged in these acts. Distinction is made between the real intake of the acts, the judging as such, and the ideal, the content of the judgment. This distinction between real performance and ideal content provides the basis for the fundamental rejection of psychologism. To the extent that phenomenology works in this direction in logic against psychologism or naturalism, it was from the beginning safeguarded from the naturalistic misunderstanding. However, it must be noted that in this demarcation in the PHENOMENON of judgment—judged content as ideal being or valid being on the one hand and real being or the act of judgment on the other—the distinction between the real and the ideal being of judgment is indeed confronted, but that precisely the reality of this real aspect of acts is left undetermined. The being of the judgment, its being an act, that is, the being of the intentional, is left unquestioned, so that there is always the possibility of conceiving this reality in terms of psychic processes of nature. The discovery, or better the rediscovery of the ideal exerted a fascination, cast a spell, as it were, while on the other side, the acts and processes were relegated to psychology. The elaboration of the pure field here simply led once again to norms, as we saw, without raising the central question. GA20EN §13
This essay is important in several respects: first as a transition stage from the Logical Investigations to the Ideas; then in regard to the concept of reduction: the relation between the eidetic and the transcendental reduction is still left unclarified; further, on account of the concept of PHENOMENON and the psychic, and the lack of clarity on the ‘noematic’ and ‘noetic’; above all, however, in its second part it typifies Husserl’s position toward the problem of history, a position which must be described as impossible, rightly evoking Dilthey’s dismay. But this problem does not interest us now. Our sole problem is the extent to which this treatise exhibits tendencies toward a personalistic psychology, and whether it gets beyond its initial naturalistic approach. GA20EN §13
We already noted that inherent in the PHENOMENON is the possibility of pretending-to-be: semblance. Put positively, this at the same time means: so much seeming, so much being. This means that wherever something passes itself off as this or that, what passes itself off retains the possibility of becoming manifest in itself and thus receiving definition. Accordingly, wherever semblance is identified, wherever semblance is apprehended and understood, there one already finds the allusion to something positive of which the seeming is the semblance. This ‘of which’ is not something ‘behind’ the experience but shines forth in the semblance itself. This precisely is the essence of seeming. GA20EN §14
When we now take up the question of being, we shall in the course of these considerations come across the PHENOMENON ‘time’ and in accord with our question be led to an explication of time. The first portion of our actual considerations is accordingly the exposition of the question of being. Let us recall the outline given earlier: GA20EN §14
The First Part (that is, the Main Part) has as its theme The Analysis of the PHENOMENON of Time: 1) The preparatory description of the field in which the PHENOMENON of time becomes manifest. This is nothing other than what the critical deliberations have now revealed as necessary—the exposition of the question of being. 2) The exposition of time itself. 3) The conceptual interpretation. GA20EN §14
We now proceed to the First Division of the Main Part: Preparatory Description of the Field in Which the PHENOMENON of Time Becomes Manifest. We shall confront this task more accurately under the heading which points to its material connection to the previous considerations: The Elaboration of the Question of Being in Terms of an Initial Explication of Dasein. GA20EN §14
The more authentically and purely this entity of questioning, experiencing, and conceiving is worked out in its being, the more radically will the answer to the question of being be given. This entity will be more purely elaborated, the more originally it is experienced, the more adequately it is conceptually determined, the more authentically the relationship of being to it is secured and conceived. Such a relationship will be secured more genuinely, when prejudices and opinions about it play a less decisive role, be these ever so obvious and generally recognized; and the more it can show itself from out of itself, the more it becomes definable as a PHENOMENON. GA20EN §17
Working out the articulation of the question is the preliminary experience and explication of the questioning entity itself, of the Dasein which we ourselves are. It is a matter of an entity to which we have this distinctive, at any rate noteworthy, relationship of being: we are it itself—an entity which is only insofar as I am it. It is a matter of an entity which to us is the nearest. But is it also what is first given to us, that is, the immediately given? In this respect it is perhaps the farthest. Thus it happens that when we ask about it as such, when this entity is defined, it tends not to be defined at all from an originary apprehension of itself. This entity which we ourselves are and which in respect to its givenness is the farthest from us is to be defined phenomenologically, brought to the level of PHENOMENON, that is, experienced in such a way that it shows itself in itself, so that we draw out of this phenomenal givenness of Dasein certain basic structures which are sufficient to make the concrete question of being into a transparent question. That we with good reason or almost of necessity first ask about this entity, the Dasein, in such a way that we exhibit it provisionally, that we necessarily begin with it, will be established from our growing knowledge of the structure of the being of this very entity. It will be shown that the necessity in the question of being to start from the clarification of questioning as an entity is demanded by this entity itself, by the questioning. This entity, the questioner, itself makes use of a particular sense of being, just the sense which, as we already noted, maintains itself in a certain lack of understanding, a lack which must be defined. Our next task is now the explication of Dasein as the entity whose way of being is questioning itself. GA20EN §17
Dasein in its everydayness, a highly complicated PHENOMENON, regards and defines it more authentically when a life is more differentiated. When we analyze Dasein in its everydayness and its being in everydayness, this should not be construed as saying also that we want to derive the remaining possibilities of the being of Dasein from everydayness, that we want to carry out a genetic consideration on the assumption that every other possibility of the being of Dasein could be derived from everydayness. Everydayness persists everywhere and always every day; each is a witness as to how Dasein has to be and how it is in everydayness, even though in a different way. It is easy to foresee that everydayness is a specific concept of time. GA20EN §18
Though this basic constitution becomes the theme of the analysis according to three aspects, it is still always wholly there as itself in each particular consideration. What the aspects bring out in each case are not pieces, detachable moments out of which the whole may first be assembled. Bringing out the individual structural moments is a purely thematic accentuation and as such always only an actual apprehension of the whole structure in itself. In order to indicate at the outset that this highlighting is a thematic accentuation, that in regarding the first, the in-the-world, we also always already co-intend the second and the third, we shall anticipate the comprehensive analysis of the first PHENOMENON, in-the-world, by an account orienting us to the last phenomenal constituent to be mentioned, in-being as such. GA20EN §19
The declaration of the genuine meaning of in-being does not also already guarantee seeing the PHENOMENON which it expresses. But at the same time it is also more than a mere verbal definition; it fixes our line of sight above all prohibitively, it indicates where we do not have to look. But from our account of the fundamental character we already know that, to demonstrate all the determinations of being under discussion, we should look to the entity which in each instance we are, to the extent that and as we are it. Dasein, insofar as it is at all, is in the way of being of in-being. This means that in-being in the sense already defined is not a ‘property’ of the entity called Dasein, not a property which it has or does not have, which devolves upon it or which it might add to itself, without which it could be just as well as with it, so that at first one could conceive the being of Dasein otherwise, to some extent without in-being. In-being is rather the constitution of the being of Dasein, in which every way of being of this entity is grounded. In-being is not merely something thrown into the bargain for an entity which even without this constitutive state would be Dasein, as if the world, in which every Dasein as Dasein always already is, were at times first added to this entity (or conversely this entity to it) so that this entity then could at its leisure enter into a ‘relation’ with the world. Such entering into relations with the world is altogether possible only insofar as Dasein already is being-in-the-world on the basis of its being-involved-with. . . . GA20EN §19
This characteristic PHENOMENON of in-being and its characteristic of defining Dasein in its very being must be made perfectly clear from the outset and kept in view as an apriori of every particular relationship to the world. I shall therefore try to make this clear in a roundabout way, inasmuch as this structure of in-being was in a certain way always already seen wherever Dasein was examined. It would even be incomprehensible if such a basic PHENOMENON of Dasein had been totally overlooked. It is another question whether it is experienced and apprehended so that its authentic structure shows itself and thereby presents the possibility of determining the being of the entity so structured in a phenomenally suitable way. GA20EN §19
In such an approach to the question of knowing, a relation between two entities which are on hand is assumed beforehand, explicitly or otherwise. This relationship of two things on hand is now applied more specifically to the determination of a relation between inner and outer when one asks: How is this relation of being between the two entities, subject and object, possible? This is asked, presumably in compliance with the facts of the case of knowing, without having even in the least determined the sense of being of this knowing, the sense of being of this relationship between subject and object, without having clarified the sense of being of the subject and delimited it from that of the object. To be sure, we are assured that the inside and this ‘inner sphere’ of the subject is not actually spatial; it is certainly not a ‘box’ or anything like a receptacle. But we do not learn what its positive meaning is, what this immanence after all is in which knowing finds itself enclosed, and how the being of the subject is to be understood if, as primarily immanent, it is only with itself. No matter how such an ‘inside’ and the sense of this inner sphere may be defined, as soon as the question is raised as to how knowing gets ‘out of’ it to . . . , then the way of dealing with the PHENOMENON of knowing has turned out to be one founded upon a semblance. But in the whole approach to this question, even when it is embedded in an epistemological problematic, one is blind to what is thus asserted about Dasein when knowing taken as a mode of being is attributed to it. This says nothing more and nothing less than: knowing the world is a mode of being of Dasein such that this mode is ontically founded in its basic constitution, in being-in-the-world. GA20EN §20
What Augustine identifies as love and hate and only in certain contexts specifies as Dasein’s truly cognitive mode of being we shall later have to take as an original PHENOMENON of Dasein, though not in this one-sided restriction to just this comportment. Rather, we shall first learn to understand, from the more refined apprehension of the modes of being of Dasein within which knowledge is possible at all, that knowledge as such cannot even be grasped if we do not from the outset see the specific context of being in which knowing as such is possible. When this is truly understood, it will always appear grotesque to explain knowledge in terms of itself by way of an epistemology. And it remains absurd to approach this entity, which as Dasein is constituted in its being as being-in-the-world, without regard to its world. This involves approaching it in such a way that its basic constitution is after a fashion taken away from it; this denatured Dasein is then approached as a subject, which amounts to a complete inversion of its being. It now becomes the source of a problem of explaining how a relation of being between this fantastically conceived entity and another entity called world might be possible. To explain knowing on this basis which is no longer a basis, that is, to make sense of manifest nonsense, naturally calls for a theory and metaphysical hypotheses. GA20EN §20
Before proceeding to this analysis, the PHENOMENON may be clarified by an analogy which itself is not too far removed from the matter at issue, inasmuch as this analogy is concerned with an entity to which we must likewise attribute, in a formal way, the kind of being which belongs to Dasein—‘life.’ GA20EN §20
We have oriented the question of in-being in particular toward the relation of knowing because this mode of being of Dasein traditionally has priority in the philosophical determination of the relation of the ego (the subject) to the world; and yet this mode of being is still not originally conceived but instead remains the source of all sorts of confusion as a result of this indeterminacy in regard to its being. The so-called epistemological positions of idealism and realism and their varieties and mixtures are all possible only on the basis of a lack of clarity of the PHENOMENON of in-being, about which they formulate theories without having exposed it in advance. Idealism and realism both let the relationship of being between subject and object first emerge. Indeed, in idealism this leads to the assertion (in quite distinct ways, depending on whether it is logical or psychological idealism) that it is the subject which first of all creates the relation of being to the object. Realism, which goes along with the same absurdity, in contrary fashion says that it is the object which through causal relations first effects the relations of being to the subject. In opposition to these basically equivalent positions, there is a third position which presupposes the relationship of being between subject and object from the start, for example, that of Avenarius: between subject and object there is what is called a ‘principal coordination,’ and subject and object must from the start be regarded as standing in a relationship of being. But this relationship is in its mode of being left undefined, as is the mode of being implied in subject and object. A position which wants to stand on this side of idealism and realism because it does not let the relationship first emerge, but which at the same time stands on the far side of idealism and realism because it tries to preserve and yet sublate both positions in their own rights, which they really do not have, is a position whose sense is always oriented to this theory. What has been said in our present consideration about knowing as a mode of being of in-being and suggested as a task of a phenomenology of knowing stands neither on this side nor on the far side of idealism and realism, nor is it either one of the two positions. Instead it stands wholly outside of an orientation to them and their ways of formulating questions. GA20EN §20
Our further considerations will not only explicate the genuine sense of knowing more clearly. Above all, their aim is to show that knowing in its being is grounded upon more original structures of Dasein, that, for example, knowing can be true—can have truth as a distinctive predicate—only because truth is not so much a property of knowing but is rather a character of the being of Dasein itself. This may suffice as a provisional account of the PHENOMENON of in-being. GA20EN §20
We now wish to proceed just as we did earlier by first trying to limit the phenomenal horizon prohibitively, defensively, which means to suspend the direction of vision which does not lead us to the authentic PHENOMENON. It is especially important in this analysis of the world in its worldhood, since the question of the structure of the being of the world was always formulated as the question of the structure of the being of nature, not only today and since modern science but in a certain sense already with the Greeks. Thus the entire constellation of concepts which we have at our disposal in characterizing the being of the world in a primary way comes from this way of considering the world as nature. In an original analysis of the world, which does not regard nature as primary, we are therefore at a total loss for concepts and even more for expression. GA20EN §22
Descartes is aware that his definition of body really excludes force or, in today’s terms, energy. And this is the PHENOMENON which later provided Leibniz with the opening, in the context of introducing vis into his system, to subject Descartes’ determination of the being of nature to a fundamental critique. GA20EN §22
It is thus in Descartes that we see most clearly and simply that a whole chain of presuppositions deviates from the true PHENOMENON of the world. We saw how Descartes tries to reduce all the determinations of corporeal being, what British empiricism, precisely in conjunction with him, later called the secondary qualities of sensation as opposed to the primary qualities, to the basic determination of res extensa, to extensio, in order to enable a knowledge of the world which in its degree of certainty is no different from the knowledge of res cogitans. But it is also already evident that the being of the world, which on the basis of certain judgments is first conceived as nature, cannot even be obtained by a theoretical reconstruction which goes from the res extensa back to the sensory thing and then to the value-laden thing, but that by doing so the specific theoretical objectification is retained and the analysis is led astray even further. The world would remain deprived of its worldhood, since the primary exhibition of the authentic reality of the world should be referred to the original task of an analysis of reality itself, which would first have to disregard every specifically theoretical objectification. The course of the scientific inquiry into reality shows, however, that the original mode of encounter of the environing world is always already given up in favor of the established view of the world as the reality of nature, so that we may interpret the specific phenomena of the world in terms of its theoretical knowledge of the objectivity of nature. GA20EN §22
If we consider this work of Descartes in relation to the constitution of the mathematical sciences of nature and to the elaboration of mathematical physics in particular, these considerations then naturally assume a fundamentally positive significance. But if they are regarded in the context of a general theory of the reality of the world, it then becomes apparent that from this point on the fateful constriction of the inquiry into reality sets in, which to the present day has not yet been overcome. This constriction dominates the entire past tradition of philosophy. It was in a way prepared by Greek philosophy, not in the extreme sense of mathematization but in accord with a natural tendency of knowing. The world was experienced as pragmata, as the “with which of having to do with it”; and yet it was not understood ontologically in this sense, but instead in the broadest sense as a thing of nature. That the question of the reality of the world continues to be oriented primarily to the world as nature also serves to show, however, that the original way of encountering the environing world evidently cannot even be directly grasped, that this PHENOMENON is instead typically passed over. This is no accident, inasmuch as Dasein as being-in-the-world in the sense of concern is absorbed in its world in which it is preoccupied, is so to speak exhausted by that world, so that precisely in the most natural and the most immediate being-in-the-world the world in its worldhood is not experienced thematically at all. The world is experienced expressly only when it is apprehended in some sort of theoretical intention. The world thus encountered in theoretical intention becomes thematic when we inquire into its being theoretically. GA20EN §22
This peculiar fact, that the primary PHENOMENON of the world is passed over, along with the stubbornness and the constant pressure and intrusion of the kind of apprehension involved in the theoretical apprehension and determination of a thing, can itself be explained only by reference to Dasein’s essential kind of being. When this happens, when the kind of being involved in this specific theoretical apprehension and its precedence is itself understood, only then is this persistent prejudice rendered harmless for the primary analysis of the world. GA20EN §22
These steps serve to clarify four questions about the tradition: 1) why the authentic structure of the being of the world, [what we have called] primary worldhood, was from the start and has ever since been passed over in philosophy; 2) why this structure of being, even when a replacement PHENOMENON equipped with value predicates is brought in for it, is still held to be in need of explanation and derivation; 3) why it is explained by being clarified and founded in a fundamental stratum of reality; 4) why this founding reality is conceived as the being of nature and that in terms of the objectivity of mathematical physics. GA20EN §23
It thus becomes clear that the references are precisely the involvements [Wobei] in which the concernful occupation dwells; it does not dwell among isolated things of the environing world and certainly not among thematically or theoretically perceived objects. Rather things constantly step back into the referential totality or, more properly stated, in the immediacy of everyday occupation they never even first step out of it. That they do not step out of the referential totality, which itself is encountered primarily in the form of familiarity: this PHENOMENON characterizes the obviousness and unobtrusiveness of the reality of the environing world. Things recede into relations, they do not obtrude themselves, in order thus to be there for concern. These primary phenomena of encounter: reference, referential totality, the closed character of the referential context, familiarity of the referential whole, things not stepping out of referential relations, are of course seen only if the original phenomenological direction of vision is assumed and above all seen to its conclusion, which means letting the world be encountered in concern. This PHENOMENON is really passed over when the world is from the start approached as given for observation or, as is by and large the case even in phenomenology, when the world is approached just as it shows itself in an isolated, so-called sense perception of a thing, and this isolated free-floating perception of a thing is now interrogated on the specific kind of givenness belonging to its object. There is here a basic deception for phenomenology which is peculiarly frequent and persistent. It consists in having the theme determined by the way it is phenomenologically investigated. For inasmuch as phenomenological investigation is itself theoretical, the investigator is easily motivated to make a specifically theoretical comportment to the world his theme. Thus a specifically theoretical apprehension of the thing is put forward as an exemplary mode of being-in-the-world, instead of phenomenologically placing oneself directly in the current and the continuity of access of the everyday preoccupation with things, which is inconspicuous enough, and phenomenally recording what is encountered in it. It is precisely this inconspicuousness of comportment and of its corresponding way of having the world which must be secured in order to see in it the specific presence of the world. GA20EN §23
This is manifest even more clearly in the PHENOMENON in which some surroundings, especially the most familiar ones, become a compelling presence when something is missing in them. Because the specific presence of the environing world lies precisely in the familiar totality of references, missing something can allow us to encounter the inconspicuous extant thing. And to be missing always implies an absence of a something belonging-here within the closed context of references. The absence of something within the world of concern, absence as a breach of reference, as a disturbance of familiarity, thus has a distinctive function in encountering the environing world. We could put this in a very extreme form by asserting that the specific handiness of the environing world of equipment as the world of concern is constituted in the absence of handiness, in not being handy. But we do not wish to stop at such a perhaps somewhat paradoxical formulation. We want to understand its positive sense, namely, that this specific absence points to what underlies it as its possibility, that is, the always-already-there of a familiar continuity of references which is disturbed because something is missing, and which stands out through this specific absence. GA20EN §23
What is of concern [Besorgtheit]—that for the sake of which concern is concerned—that which is primarily placed under care, lets us encounter everything around it toward which it is oriented, the referential connections of serviceability, usability, conduciveness, and these references in turn then let us encounter what stands in them. What all this means: ‘to place under care,’ ‘to stand in a reference,’ and to be encountered from it, can only be clarified later, specifically only by the PHENOMENON of time. GA20EN §23
Against this analysis of the founded sense of bodily presence, which is founded in handiness, which in turn is founded in the non-emergence of referential relations, and in turn again in the intimate presence of what is of concern, it can be objected that one can nonetheless let a pure thing be encountered at any time and directly in its naked bodily presence. One does not first need the performance of an initially unreflective concern. In other words, the founding connection is not at all necessary. This objection, that bodily presence is not a founded PHENOMENON since one does not have to run through the individual steps of founding it, is no objection at all, but perhaps only the unbiased confirmation of the phenomenal state of affairs which grounded our assertion that bodily presence is founded. In order to see this, it should be noted that the explicitness and the awareness of the modes of being and their ontological foundation in the course of being do not decide on what belongs to the phenomenal composition of a structure of being. The fact that I know nothing about a particular founding connection in the enactment of a way of being cannot be taken as justification for the conclusion that this founding connection is not constitutive for that way of being. Explicitness and awareness do not decide on these matters. Rather, the very lack of explicitness in traversing this course, the very lack of an awareness of going along with the founding steps is characteristic of all concerned being-in-the-world, inasmuch as we define it as absorption in the world, being drawn in by it. For why can I let a pure thing of the world be encountered at all in bodily presence? Only because the world is already there in thus letting it be encountered, because letting-it-be-encountered is but a particular mode of my being-in-the-world and because world means nothing other than what is always already present for the entity in it. I can see a natural thing in its bodily presence only on the basis of this being-in-the-world. I can means that I have this possibility at my disposal, and this possibility is of course nothing other than the basic constitution of my Dasein, of my I of which I am capable, to wit, that I am in the world. It is utterly unthinkable how something, a natural thing, could be encountered in its pure bodily presence, if not on the basis of the prior presence of world. Otherwise, in encountering this thing, not only would it have to show itself in its presence but all in all something like presence as such first of all would have had to arise. But why presence arises not for the Dasein but is itself with the Dasein which is in its world, this we understand only by reference to time, to this namely, that Dasein itself—as we shall later see—is time. GA20EN §23
The founding of the proximally present handy entity in the always already present extant-on-hand, primarily the founding of these characters of being of handiness and extantness in the presence of what is of concern, has provided us with an initial phenomenological insight into the structure of encounter in worldhood. The function of encounter belonging to this presence of what is of concern has thus shown itself to us in a remarkable priority. If fundamental characters are exhibited in this way, further phenomenological interpretation of this presence must bring about a more transparent categorial understanding of worldhood. It is thus that the constitutive function of familiarity, which was expressly specified as a factor of worldhood, will then become clear. We shall later specify this moment in greater detail in conjunction with a closer determination of the presence of what is of concern, in particular, of the work-world. But now, this analysis of the structure of encounter belonging to the environing world is still in need of a fundamental clarification in the direction of the PHENOMENON which we simply introduced without further specification at the beginning of our analysis. There we said that environmental things are encountered in references in the character of ‘serving to,’ ‘useful for,’ ‘conducive to,’ and the like; worldhood is constituted in references, and these references themselves stand in referential correlations, referential totalities, which ultimately refer back to the presence of the work-world. It is not things but references which have the primary function in the structure of encounter belonging to the world, not substances but functions, to express this state of affairs by a formula of the ‘Marburg School.’ GA20EN §23
In fact, the analysis we have given of the structure of the environing world could be explained in terms of this particular epistemology of the Marburg School, but this would also spoil our understanding of the PHENOMENON. To be sure, the contrast between the concepts of substance and function, to which the epistemology of the Marburg School attaches particular importance, has without question permitted us to see something significant, but in the first place only in the investigation of the objectivity of nature as object of the mathematical sciences of nature. This contrast was found right in this context, precisely in the orientation in which the specific determination of the objectivity of the world as nature proceeds by specification of spatio-temporal relations expressed in mathematical functional relationships. Accordingly, the authentic reality of nature is constituted in these functional relations expressed, for example, by a set of differential equations of mathematical physics. This is where the objectivity of nature and so the being of nature is given as valid knowledge. Therefore, the concept of function, the mathematical in the broadest sense, has a primary prerogative in the constitution of the world when compared to the concept of substance. In this context, this distinction is obtained solely by orientation to the scientific knowledge of nature. GA20EN §23
Second, however, along with this restriction to a derivative level of reality, the contrast of substance and function is itself not made clear. Substance is not understood in its structure and genesis nor is function in its phenomenal genesis itself derived from a more original PHENOMENON. Function is simply posited as given with thinking itself and the thought process. GA20EN §23
If we now wish to get a clearer sense of the structure of the world-hood of the environing world in the direction of referential correlations, to the extent that this is possible at the present stage of our considerations, then obviously the PHENOMENON of reference must be characterized in more detail. The term ‘reference’ refers to a formal concept; deformalized, there are different senses of reference. The reference which we have in mind as a part of the structure of encounter belonging to world, we shall now more accurately designate as ‘to mean’ [bedeuten]. The structure of encounter thus specified in references as meaning we shall call ‘meaningfulness’ [Bedeutsamkeit]. GA20EN §23
Inasmuch as we are introducing meaningfulness formally through reference, a misunderstanding is thereby averted to which this expression is again and again readily prone, namely, that the term ‘meaningfulness’ says something along these lines: The environmental things, whose being is said to reside in meaningfulness, are not only natural things but also have a meaning, they have a certain rank and value. In ordinary language, ‘to mean’ and ‘meaningfulness’ are in fact so understood, and perhaps something of this sense also recurs in the terminological sense of the expression. The only question is, does this interpretation of a natural thing laden with predicates of value fit the PHENOMENON we have identified, or does it just distort it? The question is whether what is called value is an original PHENOMENON at all; or is it perhaps not something which again developed under the presupposition of that ontology which we identified as a specific ontology of nature, under the assumption that the things are first of all things of nature and then have something like a value, where value is taken ontologically in a specific reference bac