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distraction and self-forgetfulness of human subjectivity. 61 By reading history in terms of“intention” and “fulfillment,” Husserl does not need to attribute the numerous imperfectionsand shortcomings of human life to an original principle of “evil.” Inside transcendentalphenomenology, “evil” has no name other than that of a provisional inadequacybetween the present state of human consciousness and its foreshadowed, but never actuallyfulfilled, intention. This “de-cosmologization” of evil, however, does in no way diminishits phenomenological reality and ethical impact. Whatever abyss may be observablebetween factual human behavior and the transcendental ideal of human reason, its origincomes within the limits of the sphere of subjectivity itself, and apart from the insufficienttranscendental élan of human consciousness, there is no one, or nothing that could beblamed by human conscience.Telos and Kairos: History of Thought and History of Humanityin the Later Philosophies of Husserl and HeideggerAt this point in our reflections on Husserl’s phenomenological reading of history, wewould like to conclude with remarking on a few of the resemblances and differencesbetween his approach and the later Heidegger’s conception of the “history of Being,”whose possible gnostic dimension -- given the posthumous publication of the correspondingHeidegger manuscripts -- could not be commented upon by Jonas himself.Having dedicated himself, in Being and Time, to the destruction of the fundamentalconcepts of the ontological and metaphysical tradition, the Heidegger of the late 1930s isno longer committed to reading the history of occidental philosophy as the history of themanifold forms of a “forgetfulness of Being,” within the different relevant Schools ofPhilosophy or Philosophical movements. The very fact of philosophy having forgotten thequestion of “Being itself” is no longer considered to be a matter of subjective, philosophicalshortcomings, in fact the history of occidental metaphysics is even accorded somesort of inherent “truth,” insofar as its different approaches to thinking the “Being ofbeings” -- or ‘Being’, in a merely functional, onto-theo-logical, key -- is recognized as anadequate answer to Being’s way of giving itself to thought in the shape of a “withdrawal”(Seinsverlassenheit). 62 By attributing the guiding impulse for, or motor of, history, notto the development of philosophy itself, but to an apparently “hidden” 63 principle, wefind that philosophical rationality has not constituted itself, and Heidegger does what hecan -- or so it seems -- to justify après coup the charge of latent Gnosticism, asformulated by Jonas. Indeed, the problem is no longer limited to showing a structuraldualism with respect to Dasein’s ontological status, rather, it concerns the possibility ofa radical elimination of human responsibility in the name of the global principle of whatis hidden and nevertheless compelling (das verborgen Zwingende). 6461See (for instance in: Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922-1937), 4) Husserl’s disapproval of thefatalistic reading of history as found in Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (München:Beck, 1917); (English) idem, The Decline of the West (London: G. Allen & Jawin, 1961).62See Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA65, 2d ed. (Frankfurt a.M.:Klostermann, 1994), 114.63See ibid., 134.64Ibid., 10.233