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stood “from itself.” As a result, the very understanding of Being then seems to exemplifya unity with the appearance (the showing) of Being as such.And yet, how is it possible to “describe” Being? How is phenomenology possible atall, if what it describes is meant to be identical with what is described? How is it supposedto be possible for the gaze of the person describing things to change its directionin such a way that it looks at things as though with their own eyes?To answer these questions, let us dwell for a moment on how description as a conceptfunctions in Husserl’s early program of phenomenology. According to him, descriptionis the basic procedure used within phenomenology, consisting in a perspicacious andprecise grasp of how things are given over to consciousness:If phenomenology, then, is to be entirely a science within the limits of mere immediateIntuition, a purely “descriptive” eidetic science, then what is universal of its procedureis already given as something obvious. It must expose to its view events of pure consciousnessas examples [and] make them perfectly clear; within the limits of thisquality it must analyze and seize upon their essences, trace with insight the essentialinterconnections, formulate what is beheld in faithful conceptual expressions whichallow their sense to be prescribed purely by what is beheld or generically seen; and soforth. 3This concept of description presumes an adequate rendering of the thing described bythe one who describes it, which implies the total absorption of the very description intothe described thing. Yet, although the basic characteristic of consciousness is “intentionality,”i.e., its direct, a priori orientation to things as they appear in its visual field, onecan always differentiate between the “subjective,” noetic side of description (the foundingintentional structures of consciousness) and its “objective,” noematic side (the foundedthings themselves as they appear in consciousness), which need to be coordinated witheach other. This distinction gives to the Husserlian phenomenological method a particulardynamic, since, to reach the ideal of an adequate apprehension of the things described, thephenomenologist advances in disclosing the founding intentional structures of consciousnessagain and again. One could say then, that it is precisely because the phenomenologistis not placed on the side of the described things (but describes them from the subjectiveviewpoint of his or her own intentional consciousness) that he or she can make progressin the “making clear” (erhellen) of the conditions of possibility of the “givenness” (dieGegebenheit) of things described.When compared with Husserl’s early program of phenomenology as a descriptivescience, the radicalized Heideggerian concept of description encourages one to have somebasic doubts about this matter. Does not the author of Being and Time -- by postulatinga change-over from the phenomenologist’s viewpoint to that of the things described --3Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy,trans. Frederick Kersten (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), 150. “Will sie nun gar eine Wissenschaft imRahmen bloßer unmittelbarer Intuition sein, eine rein “deskriptive” Wesenswissenschaft, so ist das Allgemeineihres Verfahrens vorgegeben als ein ganz Selbstverständliches. Sie hat sich reine Bewußtseinsvorkommnisseexemplarisch vor Augen zu stellen, sie zu vollkommener Klarheit zu bringen, an ihneninnerhalb dieser Klarheit Analyse und Wesenserfassung zu üben, den einsichtigen Wesenszusammenhängennachzugehen, das jeweils Geschaute in getreu begriffliche Ausdrücke zu fassen, die sich ihren Sinn reindurch das Geschaute, bzw. generell Eingesehene vorschreiben lassen usw.” Idem, Ideen zu einer reinenPhänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, ed. Elisabeth Ströker (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1976),153.248