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sense: My own life, at its origin, is never understood as a “what,” in the way the objectsof particular sciences are. It’s not a “what” we could observe or ponder on. That is whyin 1919 Heidegger wrote that originary science did not set its sights on the object ofknowledge, but rather in the knowledge of the object. 47 Heidegger makes a similar remarkin a letter sent to Jaspers in 1922: “There are objects that one does not have, whichrather ‘are’: furthermore, the ‘what’ of such objects lies in their ‘being something.’ 48That the “object” of the pre-theoretical, originary research is not a sorting or theoreticaldiscipline indicates that this ought to be understood in a quite different way. That’s whyKovacs shows that originary science is unveiled as a ‘way of opening.’ Life, at its origin,is always originally opened in a determined way. 49 In this light, originary science aimsat the manner in which life is unveiled, and not at life understood as a theoretic-cognitiveobject. That is why originary science should be understood as a method of researchdetermined by that very “object.” Is this not an in probando circle, even if a completedevelopment of philosophy takes place, grounded on that yet to be discovered realm? Howcan the object of originary science become accessible, given that its unveiling as a methodof opening is already determined by its own realm of research?The circle that shows itself here doesn’t refer to a drawback or flaw in philosophy; itrather constitutes a unique feature of the philosophical method, as Heidegger would laterstate. Circularity refers to two aspects: Firstly, the method is not an external procedure,it is instead tightly bound to its object. In other words, it is borne “out of a particularproblem within an object-realm.” 50 That’s why Husserl stated that the method consistsin clearing up problems. 51 The philosophical method is thus not a technical means ortool; it’s rather made possible by including the object to be researched. Strictly speaking,the method is determined by its own object. We have, however, already pointed out thatthe “object” isn’t a “what,” and therefore cannot be given in a theoretic-cognitive way.The realm of research must be earned. 52 Borrowing from Aristotle, Heidegger wrote in1922 that “the apprehended being, within its many ‘possibilities’ of being ‘determined as47GA56/57, 235. We mustn’t mistake this for Rickert’s principle. Indeed, Rickert set his sight onboth of his “roads to knowledge,” seeking to actually know the object. However, we ought not to forgetthat, in his view, knowledge of an object consists in building a bridge to connect the gap between thetranscendental validity of truth and the immanent being of a statement. Rickert attempted, by returningto a view of knowledge, not to go back to an originary opening of the object, but instead just to ensurehis own approach to the theory of value. That is why Heidegger wrote that, for Rickert, knowingsomething is to value something, instead of merely seeing something. Ibid., 193.48We shall further see that the object of philosophy is empty. See GA61, 33. Also see Th. C. W.Oudemans, “Heideggers Logische Untersuchungen,” Heidegger Studies 6 (1990): 87ff.; J. F. Courtine,Heidegger et la Phénoménologie, 172.49G. Kovacs, “Philosophy as a primordial Science (Urwissenschaft) in the Early Heidegger,” Journalof the British Society for Phenomenology 21-2, 1990: 121-35. Kovacs grounds his principle on Heidegger’sstatement that “instead of adjusting myself to the object of knowledge, I can set to the knowledge of theobject.” GA56-7, 28. That is why Kovacs writes that “the idea of philosophy as a primordial science doesnot stand for a set of teachings, but for a way of knowing; it is not the content of some new discipline,but a method of disclosure.” Ibid., 125. See also Manfred Riedel, “Die Urstiftung der phänomenologischenHermeneutik,” in Christoph Jamme and Otto Pöggeler, ed. Phänomenologie im Widerstreit (Frankfurt a.M.:Suhrkamp, 1999), 215-233. Riedel interprets the scientific aspect of originary science as an attitude orbehavior, that is, “the way in which the human Dasein behaves towards himself and towards the world.”Ibid., 216; Istvan Fehér, “Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Lebensphilosophie: Heidegger’s confrontationwith Husserl, Dilthey and Jaspers,” in Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren, ed. Reading Heidegger fromthe Start (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 1994), 78-89; regarding primordial and originary science see 82.50GA58, 4.5152PhSW, 297; GA17, 71.See GA58, 29.283