Heidegger Becoming Phenomenological: Interpreting Husserl through Dilthey, 1916–1925

215 Pages·2019·4.862 MB·English

by  Robert C. Scharff

Heidegger Becoming
Phenomenological
NEW HEIDEGGER RESEARCH
Series Editors:
Gregory Fried, professor of philosophy, Suffolk University, USA
Richard Polt, professor of philosophy, Xavier University, USA
The New Heidegger Research series promotes informed and critical dialogue
that breaks new philosophical ground by taking into account the full range of
Heidegger’s thought, as well as the enduring questions raised by his work.
Titles in the Series:
After Heidegger?, edited by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt
Correspondence 1949–1975, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, translated by
Timothy Quinn
Existential Medicine, edited by Kevin Aho
Heidegger and Jewish Thought, edited by Micha Brumlik and Elad Lapidot
Heidegger and the Environment, Casey Rentmeester
Heidegger and the Global Age, edited by Antonio Cerella and Louiza Odysseos
Heidegger Becoming Phenomenological: Interpreting Husserl through Dilthey,
1916–1925, Robert C. Scharff
Heidegger in Russia and Eastern Europe, edited by Jeff Love
Heidegger’s Gods: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Susanne Claxton
Making Sense of Heidegger, Thomas Sheehan
Proto-Phenomenology and the Nature of Language, Lawrence J. Hatab
Heidegger Becoming
Phenomenological

Interpreting Husserl through
Dilthey, 1916–1925

Robert C. Scharff
New York • London
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Copyright © 2019 by Robert C. Scharff
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Notes on Frequent Citations xi
Preface xiii
1 Introduction—Preparing to “Be” Phenomenological 1
Heidegger’s “Preliminary” Question 2
Destructively Retrieving Husserl 4
Destructively Retrieving Dilthey 7
Retrieving Dilthey for Our Sake 12
PART ONE 21
2 From Dilthey to Heidegger: Recasting the Erklären-Verstehen
Debate 23
Two Kinds of Science? What Is at Stake 24
Dilthey’s Experience-Based Defense of Verstehen 27
Dilthey on the Standpoint of Life 31
Husserl’s Phenomenological Replacement of Dilthey’s
Standpoint 36
3 Heidegger’s Destructive Retrieval of Dilthey’s “Standpoint of Life” 49
On Phenomenology: Dilthey before Husserl 50
Appropriating Diltheyan “Intuitions” 57
Appropriating What Is Formally Indicated 62
Where and How Appropriation Ends 69
v
vi Contents
PART TWO 85
4 From Dilthey to Husserl 87
“Genuine” Phenomenology 88
“Ambiguity” in Husserl’s Writings 89
Husserl’s “Theoretical” Defense of Phenomenology 91
Husserl’s Opposition to Naturalism and Historicism 96
Phenomenology’s Special Version of Philosophy’s “Problem of
Method” 99
5 Heidegger’s Diltheyian Retrieval of Husserl’s Two Sides 111
The “Rigor” of Genuine Phenomenology 111
Turn toward Rigor or Return to Life 115
Bracketing versus “Rejoining” Lifeworld Experience 119
Natorp’s “Subjectification” of Erlebnis 122
Reading Natorp through Dilthey 126
From Dilthey to Achieving Phenomenology’s “Basic Attitude” 129
Sustaining Phenomenology’s Basic Attitude 133
6 Conclusion—Continuously “Becoming” Phenomenological 147
Giving Dilthey His Due 149
Becoming Phenomenological, Never Being Phenomenological 153
Phenomenology, Not Just Phenomenological Scholarship 157
References 165
Index 177
Acknowledgments
Regarding Heidegger’s “phenomenology,” the two main interpretative options
have always been that he is either a revisionist Husserlian or a radically revi-
sionist Husserlian. The basic idea promoted in this book is that both options
are wrong. The voice coming from Being and Time is not that of someone
coming “after” Husserl. It is the independent voice of someone whose sense
of gaining proper access to the things themselves has been shaped elsewhere.
It is Dilthey, not Husserl, says Heidegger in SS 1925, who “was the first to
understand the aims of phenomenology,” and he did so by recognizing that a
genuine phenomenology must try “to philosophize strictly out of the matters
themselves” and not follow the guidance of previously established method
(GA 20: 161–62/117–18).

Two friends, Calvin Schrag and Eugene Gendlin, urged me to treat these
unorthodox thoughts kindly, at a time when I saw no clear way forward from
these thoughts, and the young Heidegger’s lecture courses were unavail-
able. Thanks to them, although I turned to other things, I shelved rather than
abandoned these thoughts, and I went back to them when the early courses
became available (especially GA 56/57–GA 63). Of course, I had help. Lots
of it. And as always, I am painfully aware that given the way our experience
works, I can never properly thank all those friends, colleagues, and skeptical
acquaintances who deserve it. In addition, some people who know me well
will see many signs in these pages of our discussions and arguments, which
have meant so much to me. Robert Crease, Daniel Dahlstrom, Theodore
Kisiel, David Stone, and Kenneth Westphal have all made this a much better
book than my ideas alone could ever have. I should add that I consider this
work to be standing in the shadow of Ted Kisiel, to whom all students of the
early Heidegger owe an enormous debt. And Rudolf Makkreel, whose superb
work on Dilthey was among the earliest I studied, has routinely offered
vii
viii Acknowledgments
friendly support for my Heideggerian appropriations, not all of them to his
liking. That he turned out to be one of the readers for the present study is my
great good fortune.

I also very happily thank fellow members of the Heidegger Circle for
countless conversations and for numerous chances to try out preliminary
versions of ideas developed here. Among them are/were Babette Babich,
David Crownfield (†), Walter Biemel (†), Scott Campbell, Véronique Fóti,
Gregory Fried, Trish Glazebrook, Lawrence Hatab, Julia Ireland, Andrew
Mitchell, Natalie Nenadic, Richard Palmer (†), Richard Polt, William
Richardson (†), Thomas Sheehan, and Joan Stambaugh (†). In addition, for
their contributions and encouragement at important moments, I am grateful
to Rebecca Longtin, Dermot Moran, Anne O’Byrne, Hans Ruin, Joseph
Rouse, Anthony Steinbock, Claudius Strube, David Weberman, and Donn
Welton. To the departments and universities both here and in Europe where
I gave portions of this study to lively and welcoming groups of faculty and
students, I offer this feeble, blanket acknowledgment. I cannot imagine this
book without them, but there are too many to list here.

Finally, I am grateful to my readers for the press, one anonymous, the
other self-identified (Makkreel). In addition to helping me sharpen my focus
regarding the advantages and limitations of my treatments of Dilthey and
Husserl in this volume, their suggestions about further references and avoid-
able pitfalls improved many pages of the original draft. All authors should
have readers as receptive, responsive, and intellectually independent as mine.
The editors of the New Heidegger Research series, Gregory Fried and Richard
Polt, should really be considered my third and fourth readers. To them, as well
as my editor at Rowman & Littlefield, Sarah Campbell, her editorial assistant,
Rebecca Anastasi, and my production editor, Lisa Whittington, I offer my
completely inadequate thank-yous for constant encouragement, professional
assistance, and unusual patience concerning deadlines.

The following sources have generously allowed me to draw on material
originally published in their journals and collections:

“Heidegger: Hermeneutics as ‘Preparation’ for Thinking,” in Hermeneutic
Philosophies of Social Science, edited by Babette Babich. Berlin: De Gruyter,
2017, 373–86.

“Becoming Hermeneutical Before Being Philosophical: Starting Again After
Heidegger,” in After Heidegger? edited by Richard Polt and Gregory Fried.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, 143–55.

“Becoming a Philosopher: What Heidegger Learned from Dilthey, 1919–25,” British
Journal for the History of Philosophy 21/1 (2013): 122–42.

“Heidegger’s ‘Appropriation’ of Dilthey before Being and Time,” Journal of the
History of Philosophy 35/1 (1997): 105–28.
Acknowledgments ix
“After Dilthey and Heidegger: Gendlin’s Experiential Hermeneutics,” in Language
Beyond Postmodernism: Saying, Thinking, and Experiencing in Gendlin’s
Philosophy, edited by David M. Levin. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 1997, 190–226.

“Non-Analytic, Unspeculative Philosophy of History: The Legacy of Wilhelm
Dilthey,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 3/3 (1976): 295–330.

Finally, I am once again eager to say that my greatest debts by far are to my
family, all three generations of them. For their love, support, encouragement,
and sometimes high-spirited and playful insistence that this overly engaged
scholar come down from the den for meaningful periods of human inter-
action, I have no adequate words. It is because of them, not because of my
work, that life makes sense. At the center of this life is Dr. Judith Lutzhoff
Scharff, whose love, support, understanding, and intellectual kinship I have
had the blessing of enjoying these many decades, and to whom I owe what is
hopelessly beyond repayment.