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 Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2019 by Robert C. Scharff All rights reserved. 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Printed in the United States of America 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.