Raffoul (1998:145-149) – transcendência

In the texts and courses dating from the time of Sein and Zeit (particularly, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, and finally, The Essence of Reasons), Heidegger repeatedly insists upon the fact that the “subject” should not be understood as immanent, that it can exist only as transcendence. Against the traditional view, which assigned transcendence exclusively to objects in the world, to “things,” Heidegger holds that only the subject, that is (understood ontologically), the Dasein, transcends. If by transcendence one understands not the terminus of the overstepping, but the overstepping as such, it appears that it is the Self itself which oversteps or passes beyond; the subject itself is the transcendent. In Heidegger’s terms, “Dasein is itself the passage across” (Das Dasein selbst ist der Überschritt) (GA26, 211/165). Indeed, if that was not the case, it would be difficult to understand how, as enclosed as it is in its immanent sphere, the subject could relate to objects, to the “world.” Already in 1925, as we have seen, Heidegger pondered this enigma, namely, how does “knowing, which according to its being is inside, in the subject, come out of its `inner sphere’ into an `other, outer sphere,’ into the world” (GA20, 216/160). Now, to “leave” its immanent sphere means, properly speaking, to transcend it. Here the transcendent character of the subject itself comes to the fore.

How can this ego with its intentional experiences get outside its sphere of experience and assume a relation to the extant world? How can the ego transcend its own sphere and the intentional experiences enclosed within it, and what does this transcendence consist in? (GA24, 86/61)

This question leads Heidegger to reappropriate the concept of transcendence, particularly the 1928 summer course (§1la). Let us briefly reconstruct this reappropriation.

Heidegger begins with an inquiry into the meaning of the concept of transcendence by examining the verbal sense of the term; to transcend means: to surpass (übersteigen), step over (überschreiten) or cross over to (hinüberschreiten zu). Three senses can be distinguished: the passing beyond, or transcendence (die Tranzendenz); that toward which the passage takes place, or the transcendent (das Tranzendente); and the transcendent in the sense of that which does the transcending (das Tranzendierende). The verbal sense thus includes the following: an activity, or “doing” in the broadest sense of the term; a relation, in the formal sense of an overstepping of something toward something else; and, something to be crossed, a limit, a boundary, something that “lies between” (ein Dazwischenliegendes). Furthermore, Heidegger distinguishes from within the metaphysical tradition between two main ways of understanding the concept of transcendence: the first conceives of transcendence in opposition to immanence, the second in opposition to contingency. In general, Heidegger explains, the immanent designates what is inside the subject, what belongs to the soul, and the transcendent that which lies beyond or outside of consciousness. In the first case, transcendence means the crossing-over from an inner sphere (the subject) to an outer sphere (things in general). This conception of transcendence thus supposes an encapsulated self, understood as a kind of “box.” Heidegger calls this conception an epistemological transcendence (GA26, 206/ 161), to the extent that it concerns the possibility (or, in this case, the impossibility) of knowledge. The second interpretation, which Heidegger calls a theological transcendence (GA26, 206/161), defines transcendence as that which exceeds the finite. In this latter case, transcendence no longer signifies the cognitive relation of a subject to an object, of an inner to an outer sphere, but instead the passage from the finite toward the infinite, or, in Kantian terminology, from the conditioned toward the unconditioned. Heidegger adds (clearly with Kant in mind) that these two conceptions can merge into a problematic concerning the possibility or impossibility of gaining knowledge of the unconditioned. In opposition to these two conceptions, Heidegger posits, “in principle” (GA26, 210/165), that transcendence is nor. 1) the crossing of a limit between an inner and an outer sphere, 2) the relation of a subject to an object, 3) that which infinitely exceeds the finite. In short, it is nothing that the tradition had thought it to be. The reappropriation of the concept of transcendence, thus made possible, takes place in several stages.

1) The first step consists in subjectivizing transcendence. Against the thesis according to which it is the things that transcend, Heidegger affirms that, on the contrary, transcendence is “the primordial constitution of the subjectivity of a subject. The subject transcends qua subject…. To be a subject means to transcend” (GA26, 211/165). We find a first attempt at this “subjectivization” of the concept of transcendence in the course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, in the context of a discussion of the concept of intentionality. It is the radicalization of this latter concept that ought to open the way toward the phenomenon of transcendence. Interpreted with regard to perceptual comportment (usually privileged in the phenomenological tradition), intentionality is understood as the relation between an intentio and an intentum, between noesis and noema.

This relation can be misunderstood, in an “objectivist” fashion, as a relation between two present-at-hand entities; in this way, there would only be intentionality because of the physical presence of an object. This conception, explains Heidegger, “takes the intentional relation to be something that at each time accrues to the subject due to the emergence of the presence-at-hand of an object” (GA24, 84/60, trans. modified). Yet, as can be seen, for example, in the case of hallucinations, perception can relate itself to “objects” without their necessarily being given to us.¹ The intentional relation is thus not the result of “the actual presence-at-hand of objects but lies in the perceiving itself” (GA24, 85/60, trans. modified). In this sense, intentionality should rather be understood as a structure of the subject itself.

The “relating” (das Sichbeziehen), explains Heidegger, “belongs to the ontological constitution of the subject itself. To relate itself (and to itself) is implicit in the concept of the subject. In its own self the subject is a being that relatesitself-to. It is then necessary to pose the question about the Being of the subject in such a way that this essential determination of relating-itself-to, intentionality, is thought as a constituent in the concept of the subject” (GA24, 223-224/157). Even if, in the final analysis, Heidegger will reject this subjective characterization of intentionality, he first espouses it in order to exhibit what he calls the a priori of the intentional relation. “This relation, which we signify by intentionality, is the a priori comportmental character of what we call self-comporting (Sichverhalten)” (GA24, 85/61). Only when intentionality is included within subjectivity, only when relating-itself-to is understood as the fundamental constitution of Dasein, can Dasein’s transcendent, or ek-static, character come to light. The subject will be, so to speak, exceeded from within itself, displaced by the very movement of relating-itself-to. Through this move, transcendence is reappropriated into the very heart of the subject, but in a radically non-subjective way: it represents the disclosedness of a world in which entities are uncovered; it is not a faculty of the subject, but the element in which a subject ek-sists. This is why, if a radicalization of intentionality is indeed necessary in order to open up access to transcendence, nevertheless, transcendence can be reached only by a “leap” out of the immanent domain of consciousness, that is, out of a problematic of intentionality. Dasein as transcendence is thus not the mere radicalization of subjectivity understood as intentionality. To reintegrate transcendence into the subject means at once to destroy the concept of the subject. This is why, as Heidegger says in Vom Wesen des Grundes, “transcendence can no longer be defined as a subject-object relation” (GA9, 136/ER, 37).

Thus it now becomes necessary to say that intentionality is “neither objective nor subjective” (GA24, 91/65). This conclusion, however, can only be reached after intentionality has first been reintegrated into the concept of the subject. Heidegger very clearly indicates this “order” of demonstration: “First, against the erroneous objectivizing of intentionality, it must be said that intentionality is not a present-at-hand relation between a present-at-hand subject and object, but a structure that constitutes the compartmental character of the Dasein’s behavior as such. Secondly, in opposition to the erroneous subjectivizing of intentionality, we must hold that the intentional structure of comportments is not something which is immanent to the so-called subject and which would first of all be in need of transcendence …” (GA24, 91/65).

This twofold strategy allows us to understand not only that the subject can no longer be conceived of in the image of a sphere closed upon itself, but also that transcendence is not for the subject just one faculty among others. On the contrary, it permeates and makes possible all of Dasein’s comportments, to such an extent that it is transcendence itself that now appears as the foundation of intentionality. If intentionality is the ratio cognoscendi of transcendence, transcendence “is the ratio essendi of intentionality” (GA24, 91/65). Increasingly, Heidegger will emphasize the primordial character of transcendence and the derived character of intentionality ²: the latter is possible only on the basis of the former and “is neither identical with transcendence nor that which makes transcendence possible” (GA9, 133/ER, 29). In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, returning to his first discussion of intentionality, Heidegger noted that “the sole characterization of intentionality hitherto customary in phenomenology proves to be inadequate and external” (GA24, 230/161). Once intentionality itself has been grasped “more radically,” Heidegger continues, “it will turn out that intentionality is founded in the Dasein’s transcendence and is possible solely for this reason-that transcendence cannot conversely be explained in terms of intentionality” (GA24, 230/162). Intentionality is but a certain mode of transcendence, one limited to a “theoretical” apprehension of beings. Transcendence is the ontological possibility of intentionality. “This primordial transcendence makes possible every intentional relation to beings” (GA26, 170/ 135; trans. modified). Thus ends the first moment of the reappropriation of transcendence, from which two important consequences follow.

2) It appears that in the movement of transcendence, there is not a limit separating an inner and an outer sphere that is crossed; rather, what is initially passed over is some entity, which can subsequently give itself as an object only because it has already been uncovered in the passing beyond proper to transcendence. In transcending, Dasein passes beyond and in this sense first uncovers the entities to which it is then ex-posed.

3) Thirdly, “that toward which” Dasein transcends cannot be some entity (always already overstepped in transcendence), but is rather the world itself.