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3. THE IDEA OF PHENOMENOLOGY AS A DESCRIPTION OF “DIE SACHEN SELBST”IN HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGERPaweł DybelThe well-known motto from Husserl's phenomenology -- zu den Sachen selbst! -- had beenformulated by him, in the first place, to contest the Neo-Kantian tradition that had penetratedGerman philosophy and was altogether dominant in it at the turn of the nineteenthcentury. Its adherents attempted to reinterpret Kant’s philosophy in epistemological terms,thus preoccupying themselves -- according to Husserl -- with abstract conceptual schemesthat have nothing to do with the factual way in which “things as such” present themselvesto the human consciousness.Husserl tried to resist the (Neo-Kantian) philosophical discourse then current by meansof a program of presumptionless phenomenological description that apprehends “things”as they really are, i.e., irrespective of the images that appear in response to an epistemologicalsubject. Yet it became clear to him, in the course of time, that this radical phenomenologicalprogram of describing a thing’s primordial appearance without any presumptioncan, literally, not be realized; that is to say, the thing’s appearance is subject to theparticular intentional structure of the individual consciousness of the one who is describingit.One can detect a clear echo of this, a leading postulate in Husserl’s phenomenology,in Heidegger’s own concept of phenomenological description, as outlined in his Being andTime. According to Heidegger, the main task of the phenomenological method is “to letthat which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself fromitself.” 1This Heidegger-assertion seems to radicalize Husserl’s early program of phenomenology,which had attempted to establish his method as a presumptionless science for describingthings as separate entities. Heidegger goes further still, in this respect, and says that thedescription of things should apprehend them as they appear von ihnen selbst her, that is,from themselves. It seems that it is the one who describes things, who should bend overbackwards and look at them not from his or her “subjective” viewpoint, but from theirsalone.The desired (and also expected) identity between the way in which things appear and theway in which they are seen by the one who describes them, as postulated here, promptsHeidegger to say that “Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible.” 2 According to thispostulate, the description of things by the one who looks at them is identical with the wayin which they appear “from themselves,” thus being the only “measure” that can be appliedto their description.However, Heidegger’s identification of ontology with phenomenology goes well beyondthe traditional understanding of the term “ontology.” In the metaphysical tradition, ontologywas conceived as a theory of Being, which, while investigating the possible structureswithin Being and characterizing their properties, is situated at a different level from Beingas such. On this assumption, any person wishing to engage in ontological reflection doesso by taking up a position that is found to be situated at a distance from Being itself,whereas according to Heidegger, ontology arises directly from Being and should be under-1Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1962), 58. “Das was sich zeigt, wie es sich von ihm selbst zeigt, von ihm selbst her sehenlassen.” Idem, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1972), 34.2Heidegger, Being and Time, 60. “Ontologie ist nur als Phänomenologie möglich.” Idem, Sein undZeit, 34.247