HEIDEGGERS SEARCH FOR A PHENOMENOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY IN HIS 1919 WS, VIS VIS THE NEO KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY

Y OF VALUES
Panos eodorou

University of Crete e Greek Society for Phenomenological and Hermeneutical Research pantheo@fks.uoc.gr
To the memory of Joseph J. Kockelmans ABSTRACT: It has already been remarked that Heideggers early Kriegsnotsemester of 1919 plays an important role in the development of his project toward a phenomenological Fundamental Ontology, which would elucidate the meaning of Being as such. However, both the reason why this happens and why it eventually fails appear to have been poorly understood. In this paper, I initially present the meaning of Heideggers e ort, in that semester, to build philosophy as a genuinely primordial science. en, I explain the sense in which the neo-Kantian philosophy of values became a crucial constituent of his inspiration. In this direction, Heideggers thought experiment with the African aboriginal is examined and placed at the right position within his overall search for the primal something qua critical formal indication in the search and phenomenologization of Being as such. Finally, I present three serious di culties that make this early attempt by Heidegger phenomenologically awed and probably lead him to the new orientations of Being and Time.

PHENOMENOLOGY 2010, Vol. 3: Selected Essays from the Euro-Mediterranean Area. Edited by Ion Copoeru, Pavlos Kontos, and Agustn Serrano de Haro (Bucharest: Zeta Books / Paris: Arghos-Di usion, 2010).

Heideggers Search 1. Introduction

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It is generally thought that Heideggers project for a Fundamental Ontology, the philosophy that would have Being-as-such as its proper subject-matter, is basically connected with Being and Time. ere are, however, scholars who attempt to locate premature conceptions of this project in Heideggers rst lecture courses in Freiburg, as Husserls assistant, immediately after the end of the rst World-War (1919).1 In their works, the main research revolves around Heideggers notorious and transient concept of formal indication (formale Anzeige) and the famous impersonal expression it worlds (es weltet).2 Indeed, this pair of notions started making its appearance in the so-called Kriegsnotsemester, the WS (January-April) of 1919, and has played an important role in Heideggers preparation for the thinking that found its systematic written expression in BT (1927). Nevertheless, the interpretative di culties and weaknesses in the relevant literature3 prevent us from appreciating both the proper phenomenological core of that double philosophical innovation and the real impact that the lecture had for the development of Heideggers thought towards his BT. e situation becomes even more complex for the following reason. e lecture-course of the 1919 WS contains a critique of key doctrines in the neo-Kantian philosophy of values.4 Given Heideggers well known and stated aversion for the philosophy of values,5 the interpreters tacitly believe that the value-thematic does not contribute essentially to the internal development of his project for a Phenomenological Fundamental Ontology. However, as it will be shown here, it is the entirety of the three thematics mentioned above that may help us arrive at the real aims and possible failure of that early attempt by Heidegger to accomplish the determination of philosophy as primordial science or Fundamental Ontology. In the following sections I will try to bring to the surface some unnoticed details of the signi cance of that lecture for Heideggers larger project that culminates in BT. Contrary to what is generally

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taken for granted, I will show that in this lecture course Heidegger does not exactly reject the value-thematic, but engages in an attempt to re-interpret it into phenomenological terms or to show its internally hidden phenomenological potential. Moreover, and with an eye on Husserls Phenomenology, I will o er an appropriate reading of the highly crucial and generally ignored thought experiment with the African aboriginal that Heidegger uses in that work (GA 56/57, 14). It is only on this broader basis that we can arrive at a proper understanding of the meaning of Heideggers progressive development of the notion of formal indication towards the project that was later called Fundamental Ontology. In the end, nonetheless, I also try to o er some reasons that explain why this rst attempt for a phenomenological philosophy as a primordial science ends up in failure. Here I would also like to merely advance the claim that the difculty which Heidegger faces in his 1919 e ort to remain faithful to the general guidelines of the phenomenological method in fact haunts his analyses even in BT. It is actually this same di culty that, in the long run, will lead Heidegger to abandon the term Phenomenology as a characterization of his philosophizing. 2. e neo-Kantian teleological method of philosophical research

Windelband had suggested that the role of philosophy is to examine the truth of the particular sciences, speci cally as something that has validity and is as such something valuable.6 More speci cally, philosophy, as such a primordial science, as a science before or underneath the sciences, has the task of examining the Ur-sprung of the normative truth contained in the ultimate principles or axioms of the particular sciences. In Windelbands words, philosophy must examine the validity of those representational connections [Vorstellungsverbindungen] which, themselves im-provable, ground all proof with immediate evidence. (cit. on p. 27/32).

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What is, however, the method that such a philosophy has to follow in order to examine the source of the immediate evidence of these valid, ultimate principles or axioms? at is, what is the method for discovering and justifying the sought-after a priori truths that form the foundation of this or that science? Let us see. First of all, the psychic, the means of our gaining knowledge, has, as even Kant had recognized, a double meaning. On the one hand, it is subject to the laws of its particular nature (succession, coexistence, causality, etc.). From this point of view, the psychic is the subject-matter of empirical-inductive Psychology. An examination of the psychic from this point of view leads us to inductive explanatory laws. On the other hand, it is the source or seat of an ought, of a normative law that prescribes a priori rules for the thought processesif the latter are to be sanctioned as valid and true. An examination of the psychic from this point of view leads us to see the psychic as the sphere of evaluations (Beurteilungen). Such evaluative norms include the laws of Logic, the laws of pure understanding, the laws of Pure Physics, and so on. As such these worded laws are the expression of the necessary combinations among representations, which can result in corresponding truthful experiences (knowledge). And there is a principle, an ought, that sets the rule for this necessity. As it can be seen, to the degree that the goal of our thought processes is truth, the ought ruling the psychic is conditioned precisely by that goal, by truth itself. Norms are necessary in regard to the telos of truth. (29/35). Or, as we may put it, norms are the a priori, necessary conditions for the possibility of truth as telos of the transcendental functions of subjective consciousness. ese considerations allow us to see why these neo-Kantians called their philosophical method teleological but also critical.7 And this teleological-critical method is expected identify the axioms or norms by which reason in general (consciousness) functions, though always in reference with the speci cally human experience in its three corresponding regions of the true, the good, and the beautiful (which are achieved by these functions).

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e question of the proper what that should guide teleological research

Heidegger was especially interested in the restriction that the neo-Kantians put on the over-idealistic precursor conception of that method by Fichte: that the teleological-critical method can proceed in its discovery of the ought-like axiomatic validity only by taking into account the truth in its being determined by an objective what in its determining materiality (Sachlichkeit).8 According to the neo-Kantians, history, for instance, shows us that the content of our experience changes. Philosophy as a primordial science, however, wants to seek, behind this multiplicity of historical experience, that which at each time is preserved as absolute validity, though, always over and against some correspondingly confronted matter. Heidegger thinks that here, in this conception, he can nd an indication of a genuine problematic (32/39; tr. mod.). In this philosophical research, we must always have in view the necessary matter or material; this is the sole refuge, if the teleological method is to avoid the trap of speculation (connected to traditional subjective and discursivedeductive metaphysics). According to Heideggers understanding of phenomenological methodology, this genuine methodological spirit is best re ected in Husserls phenomenological principle of all principles.9 However, the following question remains: how is the philosopher supposed to select the relevant material in order to ask reversely for the oughts or axioms that made our experiencewith-its-content possible. In this sense, we see here the necessity for a suitable selection of the most relevant material what. Such a move is, in the end, decisive for the success of a philosophy as primordial science. For, Heidegger asks, isnt it true that when empirical elements come into play, elements that are not [themselves] primordial-scienti c [urwissenschaftlichen], the in-principle danger of methodological deformation threatens the prospect of the sought-after primordial science?10 If the material

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what is not itself primordial-scienti c, then the critical teleological method gets contaminated by unsuitable prejudicial elements and leads philosophy away from its possibility of being ful lled as a genuinely primordial science. 4. Heideggers Phenomenology against the neo-Kantian orientations e neo-Kantians under discussion thought that the proper material for the role of the guiding-thread towards the valid axioms or apriories were the theoretical-scienti c givens of each science; and this because they considered theoretical-scienti c truth as the only truth of experience worthy of its name (objective experience). at is, they started their critical teleological method from a level that was too high in the actual and concrete scale of givenness: from that of the theoretically given. e axioms, then, that they would or could discover could be none other than those of the theoretical consciousness in its various scienti c-disciplinary accomplishments. To this extent, then, the neo-Kantians, despite their transcendental empirical direction, remain focused on subjective abstraction and theoretical conceptualization. at is, they are still over-idealistic.11 From Heideggers point of view, this results from the fact that the neo-Kantian method of arriving at the ought is, after all, based on the method that Kant and Hegel had employed: the essentially discursive, logico-deductive method that, moreover, worked on the prejudice that truth can be found only in theoretical scienti c judgements. e disregard for the phenomena themselves acted as a hindrance that prevented traditional philosophy, even at its best, from discovering its proper essence and its proper subject-matter. is means that if philosophy is to be a genuine primordial science, we must acknowledge that the age-long search for its proper methodology and content nally ledvia the neo-Kantiansto an impasse. Left in neo-Kantian hands, philosophy can only be a discursive re ection on the transcendental-subjective foundations of

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the regional sciences, since it appears incapable of going beyond the subject with its judgments and syllogisms and beyond matters that are not already the objects of the particular sciences. In contrast to this philosophical predicament , the speci cally phenomenological method demands that we should rst seek and recognize, without unexamined preconceptions and prejudices, the subject-matter of our philosophising precisely as a phenomenon,12 i.e., as something that can become intuitionally given according to the phenomenological principle of all principles. is is after all, for Heidegger and for Phenomenology in general, the meaning of the phenomenological principle of all principles compressed into the motto zu den Sachen selbst! In our case, this becomes evident from the wrong direction in which the neo-Kantian search for the value-like valid axioms leads. First, there is an ambiguity latent in the way the neo-Kantians treat the issue: value as something residing on the objective side (truth) and value as something residing on the subjective side (ought). Truth has value and is value-like, but the ought is also value-dictating and value-like. As Heidegger seems to claim here, the neo-Kantians were forceddespite what might seem to be the caseto silently solve this ambiguity by acknowledging a decisive dependence on the subjective side.13 More particularly, they were led to realize that, according to the critical-teleological method, the valid axioms were values discovered on the basis of an ought somehow arising or activated in the truthful thinking (truthful objective experiences) of the subject. As Rickert puts it Whoever strives after truth subordinates himself to an ought, just like the person who ful ls his duty (cit. on p. 38/46). 5. Values are not given in a feeling of ought but in objective value-experiences We may say that from Heideggers perspective, on this point the neo-Kantians commit a double mistake. On the one hand,

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they lapse into a kind of psychologism. For example, Rickert also says that the experience of the ought is some kind of thrust into conscience (cit., on p. 38/45).14 On the other hand, Heidegger attacks their view that value-experience is always the experience of an ought. In the 1919 WS, Heidegger focuses his attack especially on this second line of criticism, and poses an immediate and pivotal question: But is every value given to me as an ought? And his answer is simple and direct: Clearly not. (38/45; emphasis added). From this point on, the lecture course takes a very crucial turn. I experience value-a airs [Ich erlebe Wertverhalte], Heidegger now claims, without the slightest element of ought being given (38/46) therewith. e example Heidegger gives to his students is very revealing of his way of philosophizing. I may wake up in the morning, he says, and upon entering the study room I experience something delightful: the gentle sunlight of the spring morning caresses the surface of my desk, the pages of my open books, the pages with my half- nished research notes e scene somehow bares the value of delightfulness. Obviously, my experiencing delightfulness in this scene, i.e., my experience called delight, has nothing to do with an ought. Delightfulness as such is not given to me in a [subjective] ought-experience. (38/46). I can say that I ought to continue my research or I ought to rethink my research plan. But this is di erent, because it concerns motivations for further actions. e experience of the scenes delightfulness as such cannot be reduced to the ought of these motivations. We can account for this experience of the delightful as such only by accepting the fact that there is, therefore, a kind of lived experience in which the delightful, the valuable [das Werthafte] as such, is given to me. (38/46; tr. mod., emphases added). But there is more. e following must be recognized as a phenomenological fact too.
e value is something in-and-for-itself, it is nothing like an ought and even less is it a being [ein Sein]. e value is not,

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but rather it values (es wertet). It values in an intransitive sense; in value-ception [Wertnehmen] it values for me, for the judging subject. (38-9/46; trns. modi ed, rst and third emphases added).

In value-ception (Wertnehmen), Heidegger continues, we have an originary primordial phenomenon [originres Ursprungsphnomen]; a constituting [Konstituiren] of life in and for itself [i.e., not of a theoretical, subjective I] (40/48). I do not do something with or to the values, but rather the it-values does something to me [tut mir etwas an] (41/49; emphasis added). Value-ception has its own light [Licht], spreads out illumination of its own [er breitet eigene Helligkeit aus]. (41/49; tr. mod.). From this point of view, we may say that, in its valuing, value is totally uncontrollable by me, it is objective and primordial in the sense that it comes and grasps me without me being able to take a stance towards it. If we examine the sort of form of the living-experience in which validity is given, we realize that there is nothing like a subjective experience to which it is given. We see that, in its validity, value (given to our value-ception) is not the result of a subjective position-taking (Stellung-nehmen). I may be in the comportment (Verhalten) of acknowledging a holding or rather valuing value (or rejecting it as not holding or as not valuing), and of adopting the position-taking of approving or disapproving that which holds or values (or does not hold or does not value)something which we may also call value-declaration (Fr-Wert-Erklrung). Nevertheless, the holding or the valuing of the value that I acknowledge is a phenomenon constituted by its own subject-matter [sachkonstituiertes] (42/51; tr. mod., emphasis added). e subjective value-declaration is, in the end, founded upon the originary and objective value-ception (not the other way round).15 More generally put, from Heideggers phenomenological point of view, if the neo-Kantian notion of value is to model our understanding of the a priori qua condition for the possibility of

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my experiencing the true (or the good or the beautiful), we must generally recognize that it has nothing to do with a constituting subjecta subject that projects its constituting a priori forms upon some external matter or material. Broadly seen, the a priori that forms the appearing content of our truthful experience is rather objective, but not as something that is; not as just another being among the beings being experienced. It rather happens out there, transcendently, in the way described above, already and always in an intermingling with the matter it constitutes into an accordingly appearing being, letting it then appear as the phenomenon it is. 6. e phenomenological meaning of the search for the matter that will guide the primordial science

Heideggers investigation must now return to the problem just touched upon (see 3 above). e investigation has to return to the problem regarding the neo-Kantian di culty of selecting the appropriate material guideline in the search of the subject-matter of a philosophy as primordial science.16 Heidegger has shown that if values are to be seen as the constituting a priori of what appears as the content of experience, then his Phenomenology ascertains that it functions only in its valuing interminglement with the valued matter or material (having no need for a projectively constituting subject). But how does this constituting valuing interminglement with the material happen? And what is the most primordial constituting happening that has to become the appropriate subject-matter of philosophy as genuinely primordial science, as a truly rst philosophy or as an authentic Fundamental Ontology? Up to page 44/52, Heidegger focuses on two aspects of the neoKantian theory of values: (a) the importance of their pointing to the necessity of taking into account the factor of material pre-givenness, and (b) the structural problems haunting the dimension of

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the givenness of the ideals or goals of thinking. Before turning to the second part of his lecture course, he begins elaborating the issue connecting (a) and (b). is regards the following.
[It regards the] function of the critically normed selection of the genuine elements of the norm-like thinking [; i.e.,] the critical judgmental evaluating [Beurteilung] of the pre-given material on the basis of ideal-[pre]-givenness. is evaluating judgment, constantly measuring itself against the [given] ideal, selects from the material just those formal elements that constitute the thought corresponding to the ideal. (44-5/53; tr. mod.; last emphasis added).

A further remark, a few lines down, allows us to understand better the meaning of this almost incomprehensible passage.
[T]he material stands under a norm which it ought to ful l. A norm is something that ought to be; a value. e material is a being [ein Sein] [sic!]. (45/54; emphases added)17

How, then, may this search for the material that would ful l a norm, or for a formal being that would t the demands of value, relate to Heideggers endeavour to delineate a philosophy as a primordial science? If philosophy is to be the primordial science, then it eschew the role of a mere assistant to the concrete sciences, of a secondary supplement to them, i.e., the role of a discursive, transcendental-deductive, critical-teleological justi cation of the valid apriories founding theoretical-scienti c (but also aesthetic and ethical) experience. e theoretical sciences (and the other even pre-scienti c regional experiences) have already constituted their objects on the basis of apriories that pertain solely to their own possibility; to the possibility of these sciences (or regional experiences) and to their speci c subject-matters. If philosophy is to be a primordial science in the pregnant sense of the term, then it has to let itself shift back and towards the most primordial intentional experience, that which lets us in front of a pre-theoretical and not-yet-already-regional or a-regional being, i.e. in front of

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a genuinely primordial being. Only such a what can be properly said to constitute the suitable starting point of a primordial science, which will work as the most secure guide towards its corresponding most primordial constituting a priori. More speci cally, it is Phenomenology qua non-speculative, philosophical research-method that will implement the project of a genuine primordial science, because only it can reach and have in view that sought-for primordial being. Accordingly, what Heidegger means is that only Phenomenology can at last arrive at the true Holy Grail of philosophy: Being as such.18 is is the critical moment at which Heidegger attempts the desperateand generally poorly understoodleap towards his ultimate phenomenological aim. For none of the above, laboriously gained, ndings can amount to phenomenologically proper discoveries (i.e., not to merely speculative entia rationis), if he is unable to show us the actual givenness of the necessary phenomenological clues or phenomenological guiding lines. If we want to phenomenologize the ultimate subject-matter of philosophy as a primordial science, that is, if we want to phenomenologize the apriori of the apriories, i.e., Being in general or Being as such, then everything we set out to uncover with regard to it must indeed be uncovered in an intuition that o ers it as phenomenon. Being in general is the apriori of the being in general or ultimate something in general. As the Phenomenology of the LI teaches us, concepts like and, being, etc., are gained in categorial intuition on the basis of the simple experiential givenness of the beings most intimately related with them.19 But where are the beings that can play this role in the search for Being in general? 7. Attempting to phenomenologize the sought-for, ultimate, material guiding thread Heidegger wants to arrive at the givenness of a genuinely primordial, pre-theoretical material, which must of course be pre-theoretical and a-regional contents in corresponding experiences.

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ese contents must be examined via a non-discursive and nonhypothetico-deductive, already theoretic-scienti c methodology.20 is means that the corresponding research will be carried out from the phenomenological point of view, which he thinks must be directly descriptive, i.e. from a point of view thatas the phenomenological principle of all principles would saydoes not tolerate anything that alters or re-forms the subject-matter [die Sachen] (51/61) of our philosophical research. Only then may we disclose the ultimate given without distorting it by theoretical mediation. For, we are in fact seeking the theoretically unmediated; that which the traditionnot knowing any way of appropriating it in the context of conceptual meaningscalled the irrational.21 We must then let ourselves experience the primordial intention of genuine life, the primordial bearing of life-experience [die Urhaltung des Erlebens] and life as such, the absolute sympathy with [pretheoretical] life [Lebenssympathie] (92/110).22
7.a. Preparation: the discovery of the worlding world

A properly performed phenomenological research does not objectify its something and does not premise abstractive genological conceptualizations of it. It just sticks to what shows itself from itself (as Heidegger would later say). us, from the phenomenological point of view, there are no psychic events (Vorgnge) in the sense of natural-scienti c, psychological occurrences, but living-experiences qua appropriations (Er-eignisse) in the sense of meaningful (Bedeutungshafte) happenings.23 On this basis, Phenomenology maintains that what we directly happen to be given in the course of our everyday living experiences is not what science posits in its theories, but always some concrete environmental thing: this chair, this lectern, this classroom, etc. Living always in an environing world, everything experienced therein has always a meaning for me. As Heidegger puts it, every environmental being is world-laden (welthaft). In our pre-theoretical, environmental living we experience a world with its worldly-meaningful beings.

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Now, as the neo-Kantians already maintained, values are not; but, as we have already seen, Heidegger added that to regard values as holding or as being valid (as the neo-Kantians did), does not yet give us the real picture. Phenomenology discovered that values value. From the phenomenological point of view, the world too is not; it worlds (es weltet).24 And it is this worlding of the world that o ers us, in each case, the givenness of an environmental being, e.g., this chair, this desk, this house, etc. In its worlding, the environmental world constitutes the appearing environmental beings; as their condition of possibility, it makes them be what they are in their appearing to uswithout it being one being among them. But, has Heideggers Phenomenology yet found the soughtfor primordial matter or primordial being that will be the guiding thread for reaching the view of the a priori Being in general as proper subject-matter of Primordial Science? Are pre-theoretical environmental beings the sought-after ultimate material? e answer is negative.25 We have found the entrance to the promised land, we have caught sight of it from afar, but we have not yet set foot upon its rm ground.
7.b. e thought experiment with the intercultural transposition

As a preparation before reaching that still elusive being, Heidegger leads us to the following thought-experimental situation. Let us suppose that I stand in front of this thing that I recognize as a lectern. We can now imagine that if we were to go out in the street and ask a layman to come and stand in front of my lectern, he would probably recognize it as the teachers desk or, perhaps, as the professors table, and so on. We can also imagine travelling to an isolated African tribe and transporting one of its members in front of my lectern. He would probably recognize it as a strange piece of wood suitable, however, for covering oneself from hostile arrows, etc.26

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But, let us now ask ourselves the central and speci cally thought-experimental question: is there something like a common ground behind these appearances in the shift from one sub-cultural or cultural experience to the other? Is there some phenomenal unchangeable substratum behind the environmental beings experienced by people coming from di erent cultural backgrounds? Heidegger replies that there are two ways to answer this question.
7.c. Common ground is the mere something in general

First, we may say that behind the speci c cultural being that each person, coming from di erent cultural backgrounds, concretely experiences, there is a mere something in general (etwas berhaupt). Phenomenology, in fact, shows that when I experience something environmental (e.g., the lectern as lectern), I can say that my I27 goes out beyond itself and resonates with [schwingt mit] this seeing and only through this accord [Mitanklangen] do I experience something (62/73) in the worlding world.28 In a theoretical experiencing, on the contrary, there is no such resonance; there is only indi erent, disengaged gazing. en, in this latter sense, my experiencing has the character of processes (Vorgnge), and not that of a resonating and accorded appropriation (Er-eignis).29 Hence, it is in my theoretical, procedural experiencing that I come to discover a mere something in general. at is, the answer to the question regarding the possible common ground of intercultural environmental experiences was given from a theoretical standpoint. More speci cally, Heidegger suggests that theoretization and its accompanying de-vivi cation give us at rst the object-like or object-type something and, at another level, the formalized, utterly empty, formal-logical something in general. It is speci cally the latter that amounts to the theoretical and totally world-less (weltloss) and world-foreign (welt-fremd) something in general.

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To be sure, theory can thematize its subject-matter in a series of judgments moving towards the most general level. For example, if the subject-matter is this concrete lectern, I can theoretically thematize it by judging this lectern is brown, this lectern is wooden, it has this weight, , it is house furniture, etc. ere is also, however, the possibility of theoretically thematizing it simply as (It is) something. Of course, this most abstract general thematization does not necessarily come as a result of a series of theoretizing passing through all the levels of this kind of generalizing experiencing. As such, it is a step, or rather a leap, that is available and possible at every thematizing level. And if we are to be stricter here, we must say that this speci c step is a very particular comportment of ours: it is the theoretically formalizing thematization.30
7.d. Common ground in inter-cultural experience is the primal pre-theoretical something

us, in the text that corresponds to the nal hours of his lecture course, Heidegger maintains that we must see whether there is a second possibility. It seems, he adds, that the formally objective (das formal Gegenstldiche) is not necessarily tied only with the theoretical process. Everything that can be experienced [Erlebbare] at all is a possible something, [i.e., a pre-theoretical formal something] irrespective of its genuine world-character. e meaning of [this] something is just the [pre-theoretical, formally] experienceable as such. (97/115). e something whatsoever (etwas berhaupt) does not necessarily mean an absolute interruption of the life-relation, an easing of de-vivi cation, a theoretical xing and freezing of what can be experienced. It is much more a [pre-theoretical formal] index [Index] for the highest potentiality of life. [ It] has no genuine [particular-] worldly [welthafte] characterization [] It is the not-yet [Noch-nicht], i.e., not yet broken out into [Herausgebrochene] genuine [particular] life, it is the essentially pre-[particular]-worldly [Vorweltliche] [something]. [It] implies the

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moment of out towards [auf zu], of direction towards [Richtung-auf ], into a (particular) [cultural-environmental] world, and indeed in its undiminished vital impetus [ungeschwchten Lebensschwungkraft]. (97/115; rst emphasis added) e theoretical, de-vivi ed something is, in the end, possible as arising from this pre-theoretical, pre-[particular]-worldly something.31 As such, then, this pre-[particular]-worldly something is absolute, whereas the object-like and the theoretical, empty, formallogical something are relative and conditioned (relativ und bedingt).32 We must, then, conclude that it is this primal pre-theoretical something that comprises the core of the formal33 indication as an access to its a priori condition: Being itself.34 Now, as we have already remarked, since Heidegger is doing Phenomenology, he must show us the way towards the intuitional appearing of this pre-[particular]-worldly, pre-theoretical primal something, according to the phenomenological principle of all principles. Otherwise, the thought experiment in question, would be mere speculative argumentation. is something, Heidegger explains, should not be considered as possible of being given in a physiological-genetic examination. Despite this, however, it can be said that it is a basic phenomenon (Grundphnomen) capable of being understandingly35 experienced [das verstehend erlebt werden kann] (97/115; tr. mod., emphasis added). And where or when does this happen?
[It happens in the] experiential situation of gliding from one [particular] experiential world to another genuinely [particular] other such world, or in moments of especially intensive life; seldom, if at all, in those types of experience that are rmly anchored in a [particular] world without reaching, precisely within this world, a much greater life-intensity. (97/115; trnsl. mod.; emphases added)

e question, however, arises whether Phenomenology can indeed show us that there is intuitional evidence regarding the givenness of something like this primal something, elusively manifesting itself either in this gliding from one cultural-environmental

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experience to another, or in this mysteriousnot further specied here (see 8)intensive moments of life. 8. Critical points At least three objections seem to apply here. First, Heidegger seems to think that behind the particular world experiences of the African and the European, we can locate the primal something, a being that is not anymore a desk or shelter, but something phenomenologically undi erentiated. Heidegger cannot even name it: it is something. Phenomenology, however, teaches that the pre-thematic, concrete something cannot be undi erentiated either. On the contrary, it is still a totally recognizable and nameable somethingeven though language does indeed face serious di culties in further phenomeno-logizing it in its constitution.36 But if this primal something is still something concrete, then it is unsuitable for serving as the sought-for guiding thread towards Being as such. At most, it can play the role of a clue for our phenomenologizing a speci c Being, e.g., Being in the sense of Zuhandenheit, etc.37 Homogenization and undi erentiatedness arise out of theoretical comportment (theoretical intentionality), e.g., theoretical conceptualization and formalization, that is, via processes that move us away from concreteness and always distance us from primordial givenness. Heidegger, nevertheless, wants to build a phenomenological and genuinely primordial science. Second, and despite Heideggers assurance that we are here dealing with an experiential situation, his nal estimation is that we discover the primal something in an understandinglike living experience (Erlebnis). is seems to reveal that he has second thoughts regarding the ability of this latter living experience to satisfy something like the following speci cation of the phenomenological principle of all principles: we accept as phenomenologically true not what we can just think about, but only what appears in-person, with evident intuitional givenness. e

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felt di culty to isolate phenomenologically the sought-for pretheoretical and pre-thematic primal something leads Heidegger to attempt an enrichment or a loosening of this phenomenological principle, so as to accommodate the possibility of a discursive ascertainment of truth. is, however, would amount to an unacceptable alteration of the original phenomenological method.38 Finally, even if Heidegger could show that this primal something were somehow concrete and phenomenologizable, he seems to realize that he could not proceed further and phenomenologize also its a priori. For, he seems trapped in his insistence that it should be also pre-worldly. But if there is no being that is constituted without any dependence on some world that would have worlded it, then even the primal something cannot be totally worldless. Nevertheless, even if we are to follow the line delineated above, namely that pre-worldly means preparticular-worldly, i.e., we could read this idea charitably and suppose that Heidegger is trying to introduce the primal something together with its appertaining primal world. en it would seem to me that, tacitly, Heidegger immediately realizes that he has not arrived at an intuitional givenness of this primal world either. us, he also knows that he cannot o er any clear view of this worlds texture or identity, i.e., he cannot proceed further towards the sought-for phenomenological elucidation of Being as such. After all, the very history of Heideggers own development shows that he wasnt satis ed by the phenomenology of this early attempt at building a Fundamental Ontology. For the moment, however, let these three di culties su ce as a brief and partial account of the overall path that leads Heidegger away from the neo-Kantian and Husserlian perspective and towards his maturer views on Phenomenology as Fundamental Ontology (systematically presented in his BT).

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Heideggers lecture course during the WS of 1919 seems to represent one of the most optimistic phases in the development of his thought. Phenomenology can be constituted in the sense of a primordial science that will nally manage to accomplish the age-long task assigned to philosophy: the elucidation of the meaning of Being as such, starting from the undi erentiated concrete being. Both the undi erentiated concrete being and its condition Being-as-such should, nevertheless, be phenomenologizable. And we saw here that this hope is not well supported. us, en route towards Being and Time, Heidegger does not seem to retain his early optimism in its completeness. He seems hesitant with regard to the speci c details of phenomenologizing the pre-theoretical primal something and its a priori. e understandingly experiencing of that elusive, pre-theoretical, primal something does not seem to be identi able with a phenomenologically robust givenness in a well-stabilized intuition. As we remember, in Being and Time the thematic of Being as such has been pushed somehow aside in favour of analyses concerning the givenness of equipment and their speci c-regional and particular, cultural-environmental, worlding worlds. Behind the di erent cultural givens (in BT, it is our western-cultural equipment that plays this role) nothing like the supposedly phenomenologizable pre-theoretical primal something can be located. No account regarding a mythic primal something qua common ground, behind the various theoretical or (pre-theoretical) cultural experiences, is to be found there. us, the question arises: on what basis can Phenomenology arrive at its ultimate subjectmatter, i.e., Being as such? In BT, Heidegger will hesitatingly try to promote another guiding thread: the vanishing of any being, which comes as a result of the intensive moment of life known as the mood of anxiety. In anxiety, beings recede behind or sink under their intra-worldly ontic positions, freeing sight of this special mood for

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the experience of the Nothing qua Being as such. Fundamental Ontology there has no need of a grip onto some ontic primal being. Being stands on its own as a residue in this life-happening. But this is another saga that has its own complications, reversals, and unhappy end. It is however a story that demands its own separate phenomenological narration. Bibliography cited and consulted
Dahlstrom, Daniel (2001). Heideggers Concept of Truth, Cambridge University Press. De Gennaro, Ivo (2008). Why Being itself and not just Being?, e New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Vol. VII, pp. 159-195. Emad, Parvis (1981). Heidegger and the phenomenology of values, Torey Press. Heinz, Marion (2000). Philosophy and Worldview. Heideggers Concept of Philosophy and the Baden School of neo-Kantianism, in Tom Rockmore (ed.), Heidegger, German Idealism and neoKantianism, Prometheus Books. Jung, Matthias (2003). Die frhen Freiburger Vorlessungen und andere Schriften 1919-1923. Aufbau einer eigenen Philosophie im historischen Kontext, in Dieter om (Hrsg.), Heidegger Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung, Verlag J. B. Metzler, pp. 13-22. Kisiel, eodore (1993). e Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time, University of California Press. Kisiel, eodore (1994). Kriegsnotsemester 1919: Heideggers Hermeneutic Breakthrough, in T. J. Stapleton (ed.), e Question of Hermeneutics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 155-208. Kovacs, G. (1994). Philosophy as Primordial Science in Heideggers Courses of 1919, in . Kisiel and J. v. Buren (eds), Reading Heidegger from the Start. Essays on His Earliest ought, State University of New York Press, pp. 91-107. McEwen, Cameron (1995). On Formal Indication: Discussion of e Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time, Research in Phenomenology, 25,pp. 226-239. verenget, Einar (1998). Seeing the Self: Heidegger on Subjectivity, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Streeter, Ryan (1997). Heideggers formal indication: A question of method in Being and Time, Man and World 30, pp. 413430. Taminiaux, J. (1985). Heidegger and Husserls Logical Investigations: In Remembrance of Heideggers Last Seminar (Zhringen, 1973), in J. Taminiaux: Dialectic and Di erence: Finitude in Modern ought, eds/trns: Robert Crease, James T. Decker, Humanities Press, pp. 91-114. Taminiaux, Jacques (1999). Heidegger on Values, in James Risser (ed.), Heidegger toward the Turn: Essays on e Work of the 1930s, State University of New York Press, pp. 225-239. eodorou, Panos (2004). Of the Same in the Di erent. What is Wrong with Kuhns Use of Seeing and Seeing-as, Journal for General Philosophy of Science (Zeitschrift fr allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie) 35, pp. 175-200. eodorou, Panos (2005). Perceptual and Scienti c ing: On Husserls Analysis of Nature- ing in Ideas II, e New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 5, pp. 165-187. eodorou P. (2006). Perception and Action: On the Praxial Structure of Intentional Consciousness, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5, pp. 303-320. Von Hermann, Friedrich-Wilhelm (1993). Being and Time and e Basic Problems of Phenomenology, in John Sallis (ed.), Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, Indiana University Press, pp. 118-135.

Endnotes
1. e text that Heidegger wrote for these university lectures is published in the 56/57 vol. of Heideggers GA. Its English translation by Ted Sadler, Towards the De nition of Philosophy, is the rst part of a volume with the same title (Athlone Press 2000). 2. is is further developed in his WS 19211922 lecturecourse: Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research (GA 61). 3. Cf., e.g., Kisiel 1994; Kovacs 1994; McEwen 1995; Streeter 1997; Heinz 2000; Jung 2003. See also note 34 below. 4. Heidegger continues and extends this criticism during the SS of the same year. e text presented in these latter lectures now forms the second part of GA 56/57. Its English translation, Phenomenology

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and Transcendental Philosophy of Value, is the second part of the volume Towards the De nition of Philosophy (see note 1 above). 5. See BT, 15, 21, 32; Emad 1981; Taminiaux 1999. 6. 27/32 (the rst number refers to the pagination of the English translation of Heideggers 1919 WS, and the second to the German originalsee note 1 above). 7. In fact, this line of thought was not invented by Windelband but was also followed by Lotze, who was in turn inspired by Fichte. In his Wissenschaftslehre project, Fichte was the rst to identify philosophys method with teleology (see 29-30/35-7). For a reading of Husserls version of this idea, see eodorou 2006. 8. See 32/39. Note, here, the contraposition between the subjective norms and the objective factor. See also notes 13, 19 below. 9. is principle is explicitly found in Husserls transcendental Ideas I (1913) (Hua III/1, 24). is, however, does not mean that Heidegger also followed Husserl in his so-called transcendental turn. On the contrary, as is known, Heidegger admired only the Logical Investigations (1900-1901). e principle, though, can also be read as a retrospective realization of what was already at work in the latter breakthrough phenomenological work. See also note 13, below. 10. See 34/41 (emphasis added). is danger for the method of primordial research comes generally from theoretization, which is always accompanied by the cognizing-subject/there-standing-object dichotomy. Heidegger even accuses the Husserlian phenomenological method of re ective description for disturbing and distorting its theme (living-experience). See 19, and especially pp. 85/101, 87/103. For a view against the soundness of Heideggers theoretical reading of Husserls Phenomenology, see eodorou 2005. 11. Cf. 33/40, 38/45-6, 47/56, 49f/59f. 12. is is how we should read Heideggers repetitive and inconclusive thoughts in 10. e situation becomes clear only later (86/102), with the explicit remark that he will thematize the worlding and the environmental being that appears to us in our everyday straightforward experience on the basis of Phenomenology. 13. See 38/46. As will become clear below, when Heidegger considers the positive dynamic of the value thematic, he refers to value as something found on the objective-side. His stance is based on his reading of Husserls Logical Investigations. However, a detailed analysis

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of this would be beyond the scope of the present text. See also note 19, below. 14. is aspect of Heideggers criticism of the neo-Kantians becomes more prominent in the lecture course of the SS of 1919. e point also becomes clearer later, in his Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time (1925) (GA 20). What he means is that the apriori, which the neo-Kantians conceive of as a value-like ought, is not to be sought in the immanence of a transcendental consciousness or subjectivity. See also the conclusion of this section and notes 13, 16 and 19 here. 15. us, expanding on these ndings, Heidegger goes on to suggest that not even the practical subject, practical reason at large, to which Fichte and, following him, the neo-Kantians and even the later Husserl turned, can be the starting point of a philosophy that aspires to become a primordial science. On this, see the very complex and, perhaps, terminologically inconsistent text in pages 42-3/51. 16. In fact, he notes that he will deal with this problem without for the momentany further structural analysis of the act of valuejudgment wherein the given material is put in normative relation to the ideal [of thought] (35/43; tr. mod.; emphasis added). A careful examination of the two lecture courses of 1919 shows that Heidegger would deal with this particular problem in his SS course of that year (see GA 56/57, 121 ). 17. Heidegger, to be sure, accuses the neo-Kantians of not having fully understood this problem of the relation between the material and the norm, i.e., between being and value. ey discovered their separateness but just stood helpless on one of the banks. See 46/55. Later on (1923), Heidegger will, of course, acknowledge that an elaboration of this inter-dependedness requires a special emphasis on the hermeneutic aspects of Phenomenology or even the enrichment of Phenomenology with the ndings of Hermeneutic Philosophy. is is Heideggers rst personal achievement, the discovery of the point where Aristotles inheritance, neo-Kantianism, Husserlian Phenomenology, and Hermeneutics converge in order to give rise to a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Facticity. 18. For a helpful elucidation of the meaning of the di erent determinations or characters of Being in Heidegger (e.g., Being as sense, Being in general, Being as such, etc.) see von Hermann 1993 and De Gennaro 2008.

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19. It is not in the re ection upon judgments nor even upon ful llments of judgments, but rather in these ful llments themselves that we nd the true source of the concepts state of a airs and being (in the copulative sense). It is not in these acts as objects but in the objects of these acts that we nd the abstractive basis for the realization of the concepts in question. (LI, pp. 783-4/LU II/2, 141; emphases added). See also Heideggers GA 20, 59/79. In fact, the whole idea regarding this Husserlian teaching and its in uence on Heideggers Phenomenology is much more complex and not su ciently analyzed in the literature (see, e.g., Taminiaux 1985; Dahlstrom 2001 (esp. 2.1-2); verenget 1998 (esp. ch. 2). For present purposes, though, the brief account in the main text may su ce. 20. See 50 /59 . 21. For this last point see 99/117. 22. See also below, note 34. 23. See 13, and esp. pp. 58-9/69-70. 24. To be sure, Heidegger already wants to somehow keep apart the it worlds from the similar expression it values. What Heidegger explicitly says in this connection is that the problem regarding the interconnection of worlding and valuing belongs to the eidetic genealogy of primary motivations and leads into di cult problem spheres (61/73). is means that he wants to indicate that we are here working at two di erent levels of our intentional life. Structurally, however, they do not di er. With impersonal expressions like these, Heidegger tries to nd a way of bringing into the language the peculiar, intentionally transcendent, sheer objectivityfor himof the phenomenological a priori and above all of the apriori of the apriories: Being itself. (See also notes 13, 14, 19 here.) We return to this below in the main text. 25. See 47 /56 . 26. See 60-1/71-2. 27. Heidegger interestingly calls this I historical (62/74, 72/85, 74/88) and, we may conclude from the context, cultural. 28. At a similar point we read that the environing world does not stand there with a xed index of existence, but oats away in the experiencing [sie im Erleben entschwebt], bearing within it the rhythm [Rythmus] of experience, and can be experienced only in this rhythmic. (83/98; emphases added). Heideggers terminology here comes close to the whole thematic of emotions and moods, which will later surface in

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the terms of Be ndlichkeit. First, and without analyzing it further here, we may note that with this move he brings together the neo-Kantian thematic of values and the Schelerian Phenomenology of emotions qua experiences in which values appear. Second, in this approach he seems to have also in mind the Greek understanding of emotional life as thymikos vios ( ). By thymos () the Greeks mean a turmoil, an ebullition, an excitation and a titillation, that is, a concussion and vibration. To live in an emotion or in a mood, then, means to be capable of a sympathetic, resonating response (see 62/73, 92/110, 83/98) to, accordingly, the appearance of a being that matters for us in this or that way or to the appropriating-attempt (er-eignend) of the at-each-time current happening of the relevant worlding that calls us to vibrate in its frequency, and so forth. 29. On this see also note 28, above. 30. See 96-7/114-5. Based on Husserls analyses in the rst chapter of his Ideas I (1913), we can add here that the theoretical object-type or object-like something seems to arise out of the theoretical thematization of the regionally given being, e.g., of the theoretical object-type physical body out of the thematization that Physics exercises upon theat rst pre-theoretically given, regional being, material being. (For further analyses, see the second reference in note 38 below.) e theoretical formal-logical something arises, then, out of the formalizing abstraction that is exercisable upon any being, irrespectively of region and speci c thematization. e reader may also recall that, from the Husserlian point of view, a more narrowly conceived term for this formal-logical objective something is formal-ontological something (in contraposition to the formal-apophantic something). 31. In the closing lecture of his 1919 WS course, Heidegger also draws on the board a diagram with the distinctionfound in his students notesbetween (1) the pre-theoretical something, divided in the (i) pre-worldly or primal something, belonging to the basic moment of life as such, and (ii) the worldly something belonging to some de nite environmental-cultural experiential sphere (Heidegger adds here aesthetic), and (2) the theoretical something, divided in (i) the formallogical objective something and (ii) the object-type something (see 186/219). In what follows, I will refer to the primal something as preparticular-worldly something. Consult, however, also the third critical point in 8 and note 34 below.

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32. See 97-8/116. e theoretical object-like and theoretical formal-logical something, Heidegger adds, are dependent on the pre[particular]-worldly something and are graspable only in concepts via the process of de-vivi cation (98/116-7). e phenomenological examination of what is described here, however, shows that signi cation and language are not necessarily always already theoretical or connected to the object-like; it is primordially living-experiential (urpsrnglich erlebend) either in its pre-[particular]-worldly or in its particularworldly duties (98/116-7). In both these cases, signifying functions express the characters of the appropriation [Ereignischaractere], i.e., they go together with experience itself [] they are at once pre-ceptive [vorgreifend] and retro-ceptive [rckgreifend] [and not always already con-ceptive <begreifend> (see 98/116)], i.e., they express life in its motivated tendency or tending motivation (99/117). 33. It is formal, but not formal logical. It is formal only in the sense of not belonging to any particular environmental-cultural world. See also note 34 below. 34. As Kisiel sees it, what Heidegger wants to say with the table he presents to his students in the closing hours of his course (pretheoretical and theoretical something and their sub-divisions) concerns the potentially fruitful relation between the pre-theoretical primal something and the theoretical formal-logical objective something, which is motivated in it, and so provides access to it (Kisiel 1994, p. 161). We have already seen that Heidegger is far from indicating such a connection. Heidegger does not seek the primal something in order to gain access to the formal-logical something so as to then build upon it, Phenomenology as a genuine primordial science. e formal-logical something is accessible from any kind or level of our experience through the formalizing leap. In addition, the formal-logical something is in principle world-less and, thus, totally incapable of functioning as the necessary formally-indicative Leitfad for discovering and phenomenologizing Being as such. Cf. also with McEwen 1995, pp. 231, 235. 35. I think that this understanding is not exactly the same as that of the hermeneutical intuition he introduces two pages later (99/117). e latter is related to the retro-ceptive and the pre-ceptive scheme that we know also from BT. Here, though, he does not exactly deal with these directions. e hermeneutic is related with our experiencing a

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being in its world-rhythm, as it were, once we have arrivedeven in the same moveat this being; once we already have it together with its worlding world. e understanding access to the pre-[particular]worldly something refers to the process of our rst discovering or arriving at it, in its character of being originally experienced as a being in its world-rhythm. See also 8, second point. 36. See note 38 below. 37. See note 34 above. 38. is requires an elaborate analysis, but for the moment cf. this line of criticism with Heideggers remarks presented in note 32 above. Elsewhere, I have traced this search for a common ground, behind its possible di erent cultural or thematizing experiences, in another philosophical context, that of the philosophy of science and, more particularly, in Kuhns historistic epistemology built upon the famous notion of the paradigm (see eodorou 2004). In a sense, it is the formidable di culty of this problem that led other philosophers to speak about the so-called Myth of the Given. My view is that Husserls Phenomenology harbors an interesting solution. is legendaryI would sayground, the concrete, primordial, pre-theoretical common basis behind the immediate givens of the particular, historical, culturalenvironmental or paradigmatic lifeworld experiences, lies in the simply perceived nature-thing (see eodorou 2005).