Learning Phenomenology with Heidegger: experiencing the phenomenological ‘starting point’ as the beginning of phenomenological research

Abstract

Phenomenology has been with us for many years, and yet grasping phenomenology remains a difficult task. Heidegger, too, experienced this difficulty and devoted much of his teaching to the challenge of working phenomenologically. This article draws on aspects of Heidegger’s commentary in progressing the teaching and learning of phenomenology, especially as this pertains to research in fields such as education. Central to this task is elucidation of what I believe to be the most important feature of phenomenology—what Heidegger referred to as the ‘starting point’ of phenomenology. I have written this article in the manner of a phenomenological workshop with the intention of inviting the reader to engage experientially with this starting point.

Keywords:

• phenomenology
• Heidegger
• experience
• thinking
• research

Acknowledgments

This article was originally drafted while I was engaged as a visiting lecturer at the University of Marburg in Germany. Many thanks to Martin Lindner, Peter Becker, Martin Vollmar, Ralf Westphal, Teresa Segbers and Jan Wypich for this wonderful opportunity and their insightful discussions regarding Heidegger. My sincere thanks also go to Craig Barrie and Leon Benade, as well as anonymous reviewers, for offering intelligent and thoughtful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Their input has enabled me to improve the article markedly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This difference is explored in Heidegger (1985) §13. This difference is a central issue for phenomenology and offers a way to understand various phenomenologies such as Husserl’s focus on ‘consciousness’ (1983), Heidegger’s on ‘being’, Merleau-Ponty’s on ‘perception’ (1962), etc.

2. For recent commentary on the difficulties experienced with phenomenology beyond philosophy, see Martínková and Parry (2011, 2013), as well as Gallagher and Francesconi (2012).

3. For such discussion, see the significant books by Ihde (1986) and Spiegelberg (1975). These books make important attempts to clarify phenomenology, however, they do not specifically focus on achieving the starting point of phenomenology in an experiential way, which is the aim of this article.

4. Heidegger sometimes recalled Husserl’s phenomenological motto as ‘back to the matters themselves’ (1985, p. 136) to help convey the working of phenomenology. However this is also often translated as ‘back to the things themselves’ (Husserl, 1983, p. 35) which I believe introduces a confusion into the challenge of trying to comprehend phenomenology, especially as I present it here using Heidegger’s notion of ‘thing experience’ (2000, p. 75) to convey a non-phenomenological mode of experience. The notion of a thing has both phenomenological and non-phenomenological interpretations.

5. Heidegger sometimes wrote ‘being [Sein] as “be-ing” [Seyn]’ (1999a, p. 307) to emphasize his experiential intention. I shall continue with this convention, using ‘be-ing’.

6. Hofstadter notes, in his translator’s appendix to Heidegger’s (1982) Basic Problems of Phenomenology, that with Dasein, ‘no English equivalent is quite possible, not being-here, nor being-there, nor being-here-there’ (p. 335). This is because ‘the Da [for Heidegger] is not just a here or a there or a here-there, but rather is the essential disclosure by which here, there and here-there become possible’ (pp. 335–336).

7. It is important to note here that the sciences—although founded on a different starting point concerned primarily with beings—are also (in a phenomenological sense) be-ing. Thinking ontology phenomenologically, Heidegger referred to a ‘fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can originate’ (1996, p. 11). ‘Fundamental ontology is that thinking which moves within the foundation of each ontology’ (2001, p. 191), where ‘each ontology’ refers here to the regional or disciplinary ontology of each of the sciences. In other words, fundamental ontology is phenomenological, not simply a general ontology cast as somehow more foundational. Thus, ‘fundamental ontology’ is only accessible ‘in the crossing’ (1999a, p. 215) of the ontological difference.

8. Heidegger thus calls this ‘the reductive construction of be[-]ing’ (1982, pp. 22–23).

9. For more discussion of such an ethic of care, see Noddings (1984).

10. When reading phenomenological work, ‘the point is not to listen to a series of propositions, but rather to follow the movement of showing’ (Heidegger, 1972b, p. 2). Such showing invites one into having the phenomenological experience described, which requires thinking phenomenologically.