Tyler Klaskow

The problem with communicating the findings of phenomenological researches is a consequence of the disclosive character of phenomenological descriptions.  Phenomenological descriptions are supposed to be revelatory, coincide with the self-showing of the things themselves, and do no violence to the self-showing of the phenomena.  These features of phenomenological descriptions lead to the peculiar character of their expression.  The peculiarity of descriptions’ expression has the effect of making them more difficult to communicate, not less so.  Because of the peculiarity of phenomenological descriptions they are often listened to dubiously: since phenomenological descriptions use language idiosyncratically, even the most charitable interlocutors can doubt that they mean anything.  This may be a problem for philosophy in general but it is a particularly acute problem for a descriptive philosophy.  If we are not relying upon deductive argumentation––which can force the assent of the listener––we need to be sure we have a way of overcoming the listener’s doubts.  In this essay I elucidate how phenomenological descriptions can be communicated and be persuasive.  I argue that phenomenological descriptions are communicated as emptily intended expressions and because of this the listener can also be persuaded of their truth.  To make the case I show that Heidegger’s method of formal indication is a form of philosophical communication designed to deal with the problems of sharing phenomenological findings.

In the Introduction to Being and Time Heidegger calls ‘To the things themselves’ the “maxim” of phenomenology.  I argue that Heidegger recognized the maxim’s normativity but thought that Husserl’s understanding of it made it an inadequate guide for the phenomenological method.  I show that Heidegger revised the maxim in his Marburg years with a focus on its role as a principle.  The revised maxim specifies how to engage in phenomenological inquiry by calling the phenomenologist’s attention to the violence our fore-conceptions can do to the way phenomena show themselves.  With this revised maxim in mind I reconsider the grounds of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl in the Marburg years, and explain his conclusion that Husserl’s phenomenology was unphenomenological.  Finally, I show that Heidegger’s attempts to abide by his more rigorous maxim appear to fail.

Equiprimordiality [Gleichursprunglichkeit ] is a central—but overlooked—concept in Heidegger’s Being and Time.  The meaning of this term seems obvious: it describes the relation between Dasein’s constitutive parts, i.e, the parts of the care structure.  On closer examination however, this term loses much of its prima facie clarity.  Heidegger makes several kinds of statements about the equiprimordial relationship as such and these claims leave us wondering just what ‘equiprimordial’ means.  In this paper I examine five different kinds of claims Heidegger makes regarding this relationship and argue that we can make sense of them in terms of Husserl’s logic of wholes and parts.  Since we can make good sense of otherwise intractable claims using this logic, we can infer that it is operative in Heidegger’s understanding of the equiprimordial relationship.  Furthermore, since this logic guides Husserl’s eidetics by determining the rules of imaginative variation, the role of this logic in Heidegger’s ontology suggests that it is a kind of eidetics.  Ultimately, my argument shows that Being and Time is more logically rigorous than it is often taken to be.     

Keywords:Equiprimordiality; Heidegger; logic of wholes and parts; Husserl; eidetics