International Phenomenological Society

Heidegger and the Phenomenological ReductionAuthor(s): Francis F. SeeburgerSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Dec., 1975), pp. 212-221Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107054 .Accessed: 11/06/2011 21:51

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HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION

The explications of the preliminary conception of phenomenology point out that what is essential to phenomenology does not lie in its being actual as a philo- sophical "direction." Higher than actuality stands possibility. The understand- ing of phenomenology lies solely in comprehending it as possibility.1

Ever since the appearance of Sein und Zeit, the question of Mar- tin Heidegger's relationship to the phenomenology of Edmund Hus- serl has remained open. Heidegger's own statements on the subject, both in Sein und Zeit and in his later writings, are ambiguous. Per- haps the greatest difficulty surrounds the notion of the "phenomeno- logical reduction."

The reduction occupies a central place in Husserl's developed conception of phenomenology, and the problem of formulating the nature and consequences of the reduction as clearly as possible occu- pied Husserl to the end of his life. Husserl maintained that the re- duction was the only way in which the "natural standpoint" could be overcome in order to reveal the intentional structures of experi- ence. Only through the reduction, according to him, could philosophy cease to be naive.

On the other hand, references to the phenomenological reduction in Heidegger's writings are conspicuously lacking. Indeed, after Sein und Zeit, Heidegger rarely uses even the terms "phenomenology" and "phenomenological." Those two terms, to be sure, are used centrally in Sein und Zeit itself; but then there is Husserl's own judgment that Sein und Zeit never leaves the natural standpoint and is, therefore, still philosophically naive.

What, then, is Heidegger's relationship to Husserl's phenomenol- ogy? Is Heidegger simply not a phenomenologist, in any sense which is significantly related to Husserl's formulations of phenomenology? Has Heidegger failed to grasp the very starting point of phenomenol- ogy, the reduction? Does he, as Husserl thought, remain caught in the prephenomenological natural standpoint? Is he, therefore, a regressive influence within phenomenology?

One of the few primary sources for Heidegger's views of the phenomenological reduction is a letter which Heidegger wrote to Husserl in connection with their collaboration on the preparation of Husserl's Encyclopedia Brittannica article on phenomenology.2 The

1 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1927, p. 38. (All translations from Heidegger are my own.)

2 This letter is published in an appendix to Edmund Husserl, Phanomenologische Psychologie, Husserliana Band IX. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968, p. 600 ff.

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HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 213

issue is "transcendental consciousness" and its relationship to the world. Heidegger maintains that the phenomenological reduction is misunderstood if it is interpreted, as Husserl appears to interpret it, as being a philosophical technique which makes possible the dis- closure of a pure, absolute transcendental consciousness which re- quires no relationship to the world in order to be. He argues that man, the being through whom the transcendental constitution of meaning occurs, is inescapably in the world, and that the truly im- portant point for phenomenology concerns the nature of this "being- in." Man, writes Heidegger, is not "in" the world as one object present at hand among other objects, but is "in" the world precisely as that being through which the world first comes to be disclosed as world. Thus, the phenomenological reduction should not be inter- preted to mean that the "suspension" or "bracketing" (the "reduc- tion") of the world reveals a pure, nonworldly transcendental con- sciousness. The "world" as a collection of objects present at hand together is, indeed, to be suspended; but the result is not the revela- tion of worldless subjectivity. The phenomenological reduction is, rather, a step back from presence at hand to a more primordial, founding mode of being, through which presence at hand must first come to be "constituted" in experience. This founding mode of being is no worldless subjectivity, but is the being (Sein) of the world itself, as opposed to the manner of being appropriate to beings with- in the world. Thus, far from revealing a realm of transcendental con- sciousness wholly independent of the world, the phenomenological reduction is the philosophical operation which first makes the world itself available for phenomenological description.

It would be a mistake to conclude from Heidegger's criticism that, since Husserl's phenomenological reduction is a "suspension" of the being of the world, and since, for Heidegger, the point of phenomenology is precisely to reveal the being of the world, Heideg- ger cannot give the reduction any place in his own thought. In terms of such a mistaken conclusion, Husserl's characterization of phenom- enology as "transcendental idealism" would be apt for his own philo- sophy, but totally inaccurate for Heidegger's, which would be, in- stead, a "phenomenological realism." In fact, this distinction between "phenomenological realism" and "phenomenological idealism" only obscures the real issues involved.

The disagreement between Heidegger and Husserl does not, at this point, concern the possibility or even the "necessity" of the phenomenological reduction, but concerns the meaning of the reduc-

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tion. There are differences between Heidegger and Husserl here, but those differences cannot be grasped through a quick contrast of "idealism" and "realism." Heidegger's supposed "realism" is much closer to Husserl's professed "idealism" than either is close to any traditional idealism or realism. The real differences between Hei- degger and Husserl appear only against a shared rejection of both traditional positions. To clarify these differences, it will be useful to discuss briefly Husserl's reduction as a "suspension" of the world.

Basically, Husserl uses the term "world" to designate the totality of the "real." Since, for him, the notion of an "absolute reality" is a contradiction in terms,3 philosophers, if they are ever to clarify the sense of what is called the "real," must suspend their uncritical acceptance of the "reality" of the world and must inquire into the transcendental constitution of that meaning or sense which we desig- nate by the term "reality." The reality of the world is not thereby either affirmed or denied. At issue is not yet whether the world is real, but rather the sense or meaning of this "reality" which is to be affirmed or denied of the world and of objects within the world. That is, the sense "reality itself" must become a phenomenon avail- able for description; and that can occur only if the phenomenologist puts his own everyday acceptance of, and dealings with, the "real" out of play. He must step back from his own involvement in the "real world," in order for that involvement and its intentional corre- late (the real world itself) explicitly to emerge as phenomena.

To this point, there is no significant disagreement between Hei- degger and Husserl. There is, at roost, only a terminological disagree- ment. Husserl uses the term "world" to designate the totality of beings. Heidegger makes (at least in Sein und Zeit) the same use of the same term, only enclosed within quotation marks.4 Both insist that the phenomenologist must disengage himself from his involve- ment with the world conceived as the totality of beings. Both insist that "reality" must be put out of play.

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger argues that by "reality" we have come to mean the totality of what is present at hand, and that pres- ence at hand is not a primordial, but a founded, way of being. Accord- ingly, the task for phenomenology is to lay bare the more primordial manners of being upon which -the being-sense "presence at hand" is founded. That is, to use Husserl's terminology, reality must be "brac- keted," "suspended," "put out of play," or "reduced."

3 See Husserl, Ideen I, Husserliana Band III, p. 134. 4 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 65.

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For both Husserl and Heidegger reality must be put out of play, precisely because the phenomenological desideratum is to reveal the phenomenal being-sense of reality itself. The disagreement, to repeat, is not about whether reality can be suspended in this way, but about the meaning and consequences of such suspension; and the point of Heidegger's criticism of Husserl's formulations is that the pheno- menological reduction should not be interpreted as a philosophical operation which yields access to a pure, worldless, constituting sub- jectivity. Instead, according to Heidegger, the reduction is to be re- garded as an attempt to interpret the relationship of man to his world from within that relationship itself. To use the language of Sein und Zeit, the "world" (the totality of the present at hand) must be put out of play, so that the world (i.e., the foundation for the being-sense of the "world"-what Heidegger calls "die Weltlichkeit der Welt," "the worldhood of the world")5 itself can become a pheno- menon available for description. If man is always "in" the world (in the sense explained above), then no reduction will ever make it possible for man to step outside his own relationship to the world, into some worldless subjectivity. To step back from reality is not *to withdraw beyond the world, but to step back from one relation- ship to the world into another, more foundational relationship.

For these reasons, Heidegger emphasizes in Sein und Zeit that phenomenology should be understood as "hermeneutics." That is, phenomenology cannot be philosophy "without presuppositions," since all philosophy, as a way in which man develops his relationship to the world, "presupposes" man's definitive involvement "in" the world. Phenomenology can be only the self-explication of man's own being in the world; phenomenology can never escape the "hermeneu- tical circle."6 Accordingly, insofar as Husserl claims to provide a "presuppositionless" philosophy through the phenomenological de- scription of the "absolute being" of pure, transcendental, worldless subjectivity, Heidegger must part company with him.

For Husserl, pure transcendental consciousness is the ineluctable context for the emergence of all meaning. For Heidegger, because he rejects the possibility of basing phenomenology on any worldless subjectivity, that context must be provided by man's being in the world itself. All of Heidegger's descriptions of phenomenal structures must be understood in terms of that context.

5 Ibid. 6 See Ibid., p. 7 f., 37 f., 310 ff.

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As Heidegger argues in Sein und Zeit, man (Dasein) is that being for which its own being (Sein) is an issue. Correlatively, man is that being which always already has an "understanding of being" ("Seins- verstdndnis"), whether that understanding is expressly taken up as a theme, or left in the background as the foundation for the emergence of whatever else does explicitly occupy man. Therefore, phenomenol- ogy, as hermeneutics, is no more than the thematic development of an understanding which is already definitive of man himself. Fur- thermore, the act whereby the phenomenologist puts the totality of beings out of play, in order that the being of beings -may be revealed for description (the act which Husserl calls the "phenomenological reduction"), is nothing but the making explicit of the fundamental concern of man, insofar as man is that being for whom there can first be a world and beings within the world.7

On this point, at least, Heidegger is very close to the position taken by Max Scheler towards the end of his life. Scheler maintained that the uniqueness of man lies in his capacity to oppose reality with "an emphatic 'No.' " Man, he held, is the being who can "de-actual- ize" or "de-realize" reality; and such "de-realization" is the necessary condition for the appearance of "objects" ("Gegenstdnde") which stand opposite man himself. Thus, the "de-realization" of reality is what first makes possible the emergence of objective truth, science, philosophy, culture, and whatever else is distinctively human.8

Viewed from such a perspective, Husserl's phenomenologicall reduction" is no new philosophical "technique," but is the definitive event in the history of man. Mqn emerges only through the event whereby reality is "de-realized," and phenomenology is nothing but the express attempt to explicate that event. To return to Heidegger's terminology, phenomenology is the hermeneutics of being in the world.

Through man's being in the world, the context of significance which is the world itself (as "worldhood") is first disclosed; and whatever comes to be manifest in experience must occur within context. Furthermore, since man's way of being is precisely being in the world, the hermeneutics of man is already also the hermeneu- tics of the being both of the world, and of innerworldly beings. That is why Heidegger, from Sein und Zeit on, insists that the "question of being" ("Seinsf rage") is always already the question of man, that

7 See Ibid., p. 32 ff., 61 f. 8 See Max Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, trans. Hans Meyerhoff. Boston: Beacon

Press, 1961, pp. 52 ff.

HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 217

the question of man is always already the question of being, and that to talk of either being or man is always already to talk about the relationship of being to man, man to being. Indeed, the phenomenon proper to phenomenology, the real issue for thought (what Heidegger in some of his later writings calls "die Sache des Denkens") is pre- cisely being (Sein) as this relationship, wherein the world is dis- closed, providing the context of significance within which inner- worldly beings come to be manifest.

A difficulty arises at this point in Heidegger's thought. It is essentially the same difficulty which Sartre mentions towards the end of The Transcendence of the Ego. Sartre argues that the pheno- menological reduction, insofar as it is a specific action performed by the phenomenologist, can never be "pure." All actions occur, accord- ing to him, at the reflective level of experience, the only level at which it becomes possible to speak of purposive, motivated behavior. Yet the goal of phenomenology is nothing less than to reveal, through the reduction, the structures of prereflective intentional experience. Insofar as the reduction is an action which the phenomenologist him- self performs for complex, philosophically technical, but nevertheless specific reasons, these reasons and motives will always color and distort any phenomenological descriptions. Therefore, the reduction, as a motivated action, can never be pure. Sartre remarks that the reduction could be pure if it ceased to be a specific action on the phenomenologist's part and became, instead, an event which hap- pened to him. The reduction could be pure only if it occurred spon- taneously, absolutely without motivation.9

According to Heidegger, phenomenology aims at describing from within man's relationship to the world. The initial, self-conscious motivation behind such description is the desire to disclose the foun- dation upon which all of man's worldly activities, including, especial- ly, those activities which constitute science and philosophy them- selves, rest. To accomplish this task, the phenomenologist must dis- engage himself from his own worldly activities. Such disengagement, however, remains motivated by the phenomenologist's own involve- ment in the world; and all attempts at disengagement and descrip- tion remain colored by that involvement. Thus, the phenomenologist. who sets out to provide a description of the foundation for all world- ly activity, finds his descriptions always partially vitiated by his own worldly motivations.

9 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, trans. William Kirkpatrick and Forrest Williams. New York: Noonday Press, 1957, pp. 91 f.

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If, however, the phenomenologist begins seriously to consider the nature and limitations of phenomenology itself, he also begins to comprehend that his own phenomenological purposes, motives, and actions rest on the very same foundation which he aims to reveal as the meaning-context for all other worldly'purposes, motives, and actions. Accordingly, the phenomenological reduction and phenomen- ological description can stand revealed as concrete possibilities for man only insofar as something in man's contemporary being in the world calls for such phenomenological responses from man. The self-conscious attempt to perform the- phenomenological reduction is founded upon, and derives its sense from, that aspect of man's relationship to the world which elicits such an attempt.

A phenomenological response, in turn, can be elicited only if some basic change in man's prephenomenological being in the world has already announced itself. As early as Sein und Zeit, Heidegger was concerned to point out that, in order for any philosophical ques- tions even to arise, man's concernful preoccupation with his every- day affairs must somehow be broken. Some event within such every- day involvement in the world must bring man up short, casting him out of the familiar context of his concerns.10 So, also, if philosophy is today to become phenomenology, if any phenomenological ques- tions are even to arise some event within the circuit of man's con- temporary involvement in the world-an involvement inseparable from the always more or less explicit background provided in large part by philosophy itself-must break that circuit, again casting man into an unfamiliar context.

Heidegger himself has observed that there is a "turn" in his thought ("eine Wendung in meinem Denken"), but he has also insist- ed that this "turn" does not involve any -change.of "standpoint," or any rejection of his earlier thinking. Rather, he maintains, the turn in his thought is a response to a fundamental turn in the very issue (Sache) of thinking itself.'1 Hopefully, the sense of this remark can now be clarified, at least with regard to the phenomenological reduc- tion and the meaning of phenomenology.

Pursuing the goal of phenomenology through the reduction, the phenomenologist eventually becomes aware of a reversal in his understanding of phenomenology and its task. Initially, the reduction appears tobe a specific technique employed by the philosopher in order to lay bare, in a supposedly unadulterated fashion, an other-

10 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 72 ff. 11 Heidegger, "Vorwort" to William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenome-

nology to Thought. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. xvii ff.

HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 219

wise unavailable dimension for philosophical description-the dimen- sion of pure phenomenality. However, as the meaning and the conse- quences of the application of this technique become clear, and as the phenomenologist becomes aware of the essentially historical deter- minants of his own phenomenological endeavors, it also becomes increasingly apparent that the phenomenological technique of reduc- tion is itself a response to, and, in effect, at the service of, an already emergent change in man's relationship to the world. Accordingly, phenomenology can no longer be defined in terms of the reduction as a self-consciously applied technique, but must instead be defined in terms of the relationship of phenomenology to this change in man's being in the world, a change which is not brought about by phenomenology itself, but which precedes any explicit application of phenomenologicAl techniques and elicits such application in order to work itself out through phenomenology. An analogy may be helpful here.

Galileo and the other fathers of modern science certainly did not pursue their work in order to provide the foundation for con- temporary technology. Nevertheless, their work did provide that foundation. The mathematical projection of nature which modern science accomplished and which first made possible the development of modern technology was the working out of a change in man's relationship to nature herself. Galileo and the other classical scien- tists, however, were no more aware of, and expressly aiming at, that change, that they were aware of, and aiming at, modern technology, through which that change was eventually to work itself out. Galileo and the whole of modern science and technology derive meaning from, and are at the service of, a "turn" in man's being in the world."2

It is of basic significance that in one of his most explicit criti- cisms of Husserl, Heidegger does not refer to the phenomenological reduction or even to "transcendental idealism," but takes Husserl to task for failing to recognize what is essentially historical in being ("die Wesentlichkeit des Geschichtlichen im Sein" ).13 That is, Hei- degger accuses Husserl of overlooking the most important conse- quence of Husserl's own phenomenology: the consequence that philo- sophy can no longer lay legitimate claim to any absolute knowledge, any "truth in itself," any "being in itself" independent of the con- crete, historical disclosure of being (Sein) through man.

12 See Heidegger, Die Technik und die Kehre. Pfullingen: Neske, 1962, p. 21 ff. 13 See Heidegger, Wegmarken. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1967, p. 170.

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Since Husserl fails to see the importance of history (Geschichte) and characterizes phenomenology in terms of the discovery of abso- lute, constituting, transcendental subjectivity, he continues, as Hei- degger sees it,' to make the same fundamental mistake which has been made since the beginning of Western philosophy: He confuses being with beings, insofar as he clings to the assumption that the structures of being (Sein) must be grounded in some being (Seien- des). It is because of this that Heidegger must reject Husserl's talk of "transcendental idealism" (and not, to repeat a point made earli- er, because Heidegger opts for some form of "realism"). Since Hus- serl attempts to ground all structures of meaning and being (Sein) in transcendental subjectivity, which remains, after all, a being (ein Seiendes), he does, indeed, deserve to be classified as an "idealist," for he shares the fundamental confusion which is at the root of all traditional idealism (as well as all traditional realism).

It is reasonable, therefore, for Heidegger to attempt to avoid misunderstandings by granting the legitimacy of Husserl's prior claim to the title "phenomenology" and by letting his own thought remain "nameless."114 Heidegger does not thereby reject either phenomenology or his own phenomenological basis. Indeed, as was pointed out above, Heidegger's criticism of Husserl boils down to the claim that Husserl himself did not clearly see the consequences of his own thought, and that Heidegger's own apparent "revisions" of phenomenology are really clarifications or just those consequences. Thus, besides Husserl's obvious prior right to the term "phenomenol- ogy," there is a deeper, substantive reason for Heidegger's ceasing to use that term for his own thought: The further Heidegger pushed into phenomenological territory, the more apparent it became to him that the very meaning of phenomenology had altered. This alteration, this "turn" in the "thing itself," is the real key to Heidegger's rela- tionship to phenomenology and, in particular to the phenomenologi- cal reduction.

- To the extent that, as Husserl himself repeatedly insisted, phe- nomenology must be 'self-critical, it must come to recognize that its own meaning as possibility lies not in the reduction conceived as a self-consciously, purposively implemented technique, but in an event within man's being in the world, an event which is prior to, and first reveals the possibility of, any actual phenomenological activity. This event which bestows meaning on phenomenology is ultimately noth-

14 See Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfu]lingen: Neske, 1959, p. 121.

HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 221

ing less than the "pure," "unmotivated" reduction which Sartre mentions. Just for that reason, this event is no longer properly called a "reduction," since, as Sartre saw, this term applies to actions, which are motivated, purposive responses.

Just as, whether they were aware of it or not, Galileo and the other early modern scientists responded to an emerging change'in man's relationship to the world and thereby prepared the ground for the eventual unfolding of that change, so, according to Heidegger, the phenomenologist, whether he is aware of it or not, is responding to a new emerging change, for the eventual unfolding of which he is preparing the ground. What the details or even the outlines of the world which will develop are, the phenomenologist can no more know in advance than Galileo could have known in advance that his work would help pave the way for the development of modern tech- nology; Nor can the phenomenologist, thinking, perhaps, that he can see some of the features of the future world, decide to plan out his activities in such a way as to force events either to confirm or to negate his vision. Man may hold sway over things he encounters within the world, and he may be able to dispose of such things as he pleases; but he can never hold sway over, or dispose of, his own being in the world, since that being itself is the indisposable founda- tion for all human activity aimed at controlling or ordering what appears within the world. Nevertheless, the unfolding of a change in man's relationship to the world does not occur over his head, or behind his back, or at all "despite" man's activity. It works itself out through the activities of men, endowing those activities with mean- ing.

The meaning of phenomenology, for Heidegger, does not lie in the consciousness of the phenomenologist himself, but in the "thing itself": the turn in man's relationship to things, others, and himself; and, finally, this "turn" itself is nothing "new," but is, as Heidegger puts it, "the oldest of the old.""5 The turn in man's being in the world is man's return to himself, in that the definitive event through which both man and world emerge is precisely the "de-realization," "sus- pension," or "stepping-back" which, in phenomenology, becomes an explicit concern.

FRANCIS F. SEEBURGER. UNIVERSITY OF DENVER.

15 Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens. TUbingen: Niemeyer, 1969, p. 25.