Religion, Theology, and Philosophy on the Way to Being and Time ...

I. M. Fehér / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 99–131 105
While Heidegger’s remarks on phenomenology in his academic writings
scarcely amount to more than a faithful recapitulation, exposition, or adherence
to its basic tenets, the postwar observations display a tendency toward
a comprehensive confrontation of its basic concepts <strong>and</strong> theoretical fundaments.
WS 1919/20, bearing the title Th e Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology,
begins with the following characteristic statement: “For phenomenology,
the fundamental problem of phenomenology—its most acute problem, a problem
that can never be extinguished, its most original <strong>and</strong> decisive problem—is
phenomenology itself.” 9 Phenomenology should, for Heidegger, not just occasionally
be concerned with itself. On the contrary: if it is to be radical enough,
it should bring to bear its criticism also upon itself—indeed, primarily against
itself (see GA 58: 6, 145, 237).
Heideggger heartily welcomed the innermost eff ort of phenomenology, the
proclamation of returning to “the things themselves” as well as what it implied:
the suspending of traditional philosophical strategies, the dismissal of the
authorities, the preference of description over construction, in short: the eff ort
to bring out the phenomena by going back to the original sources of intuition
conceived of in terms of the only legitimizing instance for philosophical statements
<strong>and</strong> theories. Indeed, phenomenology, thus conceived, became for
Heidegger identical with philosophy. From the earliest postwar period up to
his latest years he repeatedly maintained that phenomenology was not just a
philosophical “trend,” one “st<strong>and</strong>point” among many possible others, but was
equivalent with the innermost possibility of philosophy itself. 10 It is important
to see that phenomenology, for Heidegger, was a possibility rather than an
actuality, that he thereby sharply distinguished between phenomenology as a
way of doing philosophical research <strong>and</strong> phenomenology as this particular
research became concretized in the form Husserl gave it in his work. Th is is
one of the reasons why he claimed in Being <strong>and</strong> Time: “Higher than actuality
st<strong>and</strong>s possibility. We can underst<strong>and</strong> phenomenology only by seizing upon it as
a possibility.” 11
9) GA 58: 1. See also GA 9: 36.
10) See GA 56/57: 110; GA 61: 187; GA 63: 72; “Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles
(Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation),” ed. H.-U. Lessing, in vol. 6 of Dilthey Jahrbuch
für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften, ed. F. Rodi (Göttingen: V<strong>and</strong>enhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1989), 247 (hereafter: PIA); GA 20: 184; GA 21: 32, 279f.; SZ 38; GA 24: 3;
GA 29/30: 534; US 95; Zur Sache des Denkens, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976; hereafter:
SD) 90.
11) Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979), 38, hereafter SZ. Italics in original. See
already in the early lecture courses, e.g., GA 63: 107; GA 17: 263.