Background to Being and Time

Background

The following notes relate to the origins of Being and Time. Recent work by Theodore Kisiel (The Genesis of Heidegger's "Being and Time") has shown the intricate evolution of Heidegger's work through an exhaustive analysis of Heidegger's courses and correspondences. This 'introduction' simply serves to locate the most general 'stimulus' for the work.

In the essay "My way to Phenomenology" (1963), Heidegger himself gives us an autobiographical sketch of the manner in which he came to write "Being and Time."

In this essay we can see two decisive influences:

Franz Bentano's dissertation On the Manifold Meaning of Being According to Aristotle. Heidegger came into contact with this text in 1907.

Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900), a pivotal work in phenomenology.

Now, in broad terms, we could say that the first work - with its reflection on the problem of Being - provided Heidegger with the general problem that was to follow him for the rest of his life: problem of Being, the question of Being (die Seinsfrage), while the second work provided him with the method by which he could answer the question viz., the method of Phenomenology.

From this one might be tempted to say that Heidegger simply juxtaposed the 'method of phenomenology' upon the 'question of Being' in order to be able to answer this question--as if Heidegger placed one on top of the other.

Now, I want to say that the connection here is much more intricate, much more reflexive.

One way of seeing this interconnection between the two, between the Nature of Being (i.e. Ontology) and the Method of Phenomenology is in the Logik lectures that Heidegger gave W/S 1925-1926.

At one stage in the lecture, Heidegger is interpreting Husserl's "Prolegomena" to the Logical Investigations. Now this 'prolegomenia' by Husserl was placed before the logical investigations per se and was designed primarily to refute and overcome a certain theory about logic (which was actually an attack against logic) and which went by the name of psychologism.

Put simply, Psychologism is the thesis that the so called "Laws of Logic" (for instance, that two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time or, more formally, that 'A and not-A' is a contradiction) are ultimately reducible to certain 'facts about the human mind' and do not refer to any objective structures in the matters themselves.

Now one immediate result of this is that the laws of logic become relative i.e., if it were possible for a different species to have 'different minds' than ours then they could presumably have a 'different logic' than ours. Things that would hold true for them might not 'hold true' for us and hence a radical relativity would emerge.

It is in light of this 'danger' that Husserl launches his attack against psychologism in the Prolegemena. (What I am interested in is how Heidegger interprets the Husserlian attack against psychologism).

For Husserl the central movement in refuting psychologism is to show (a) that it is self-refuting (if everything is true, then nothing is true--including psychologism i.e., the thesis 'psycholigism is wrong' is true) and (b) that it has failed to draw the proper distinctions necessary to understand the 'laws of logic'.

Now this latter refutation is the key to the Heideggerian problem: For Husserl presupposes, as a real distinction, the distinction between the Real and the ideal.

Psychologism, by looking at the 'facts of the human mind,' has stayed on the level of facts (i.e. 'real things') and has not thought through to the level of the ideal (where the objective, timeless truths of logic adhere)

Logical laws pertain not to 'real occurrence' but to ideality. For example: What the law of contradiction proclaims to be impossible is not a process of the 'psyche', but an objective content (which is ideal in nature).

Now what Heidegger sees in this polemic is not that it is wrong, but rather that the critique has presupposed a distinction i.e., Husserl's distinction rests upon a distinction first worked through in ancient thought viz., the metaphysical distinction between 'the Real' and 'the Ideal.'

The origin of this distinction which Husserl takes for granted is to be found in the ancient distinction between 'sensible being' and 'intelligible, ideal being.'

Which is to say that the problem for Husserl's 'descriptive phenomenology' reverts to a problem of ancient ontology. Or, again, that phenomenological problems are ontological problems or, again, the problems of phenomenology (for example, the problems in the 'Prolegomenia') are fundamentally problems of ontology (of Being)

In the Grundprobleme, Heidegger is explicit about this unity: p. 15 "Being (Sein) is the first and only theme of philosophy," p. 466 "The method of ontology is the gaining of access to Being as such and the working out of its structure. We name this method of ontology, Phenomenology."

And with this we have the precise interconnection between phenomenology and ontology (Being):

Phenomenological problems involve the problems of ontology and phenomenology is the method to be used to resolve the problems of ontology.

Now with this preliminary 'introduction' to Being and Time we can gain the sense of Heidegger's first two introductions and begin the overview of the work as a whole.

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