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Abstract
The history of the early phenomenological movement involves a tale of two schisms. The Great Phenomenological Schism originated between 1905 and 1913, as many of his contemporaries, for example, Pfänder, Scheler, Reinach, Stein, and Ingarden, rejected Husserl’s transformation of phenomenology from the descriptive psychology of his Logical Investigations (1900/19011) into the transcendental idealism of his Ideas I (1913). The Phenomenological-Existential Schism started between 1927 and 1933, as with Being and Time (1927) Heidegger moved away from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology of consciousness toward an ontological analytic of existence. Yet these schisms were not unrelated developments. Closely following the documentary evidence to determine the exemplary nature of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s move into transcendental idealism, this essay establishes the inextricable linkage between the Great Phenomenological Schism and the Phenomenological-Existential Schism.
Acknowledgement
This is the revised version of a paper that was presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of the North American Society for Early Phenomenology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico, June 3, 2015. I am grateful to Gregory Fried for his comments on the earlier version. An anonymous reviewer also contributed comments.
Notes
References to Husserl’s works are to Edmund Husserl: Gesammelte Werke or Husserliana (HUA), vols. 1–42 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950–1987/Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988–2004/Dordrecht: Springer, 2004–). References to Husserl’s correspondence are to Edmund Husserl: Briefwechsel (BW), vols. 1–10, ed. Karl Schuhmann with Elisabeth Schuhmann (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994). References to Heidegger’s works are to Martin Heidegger: Gesamtausgabe (GA), vols. 1–102 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977–). All translations are the author’s.
1 Husserl, HUA, 10.237–68, esp. 238, 253; HUA, 2.6–7, 9–12, 44–45, 48, 55–58, 60, 72.
2 Husserl, Transzendentaler Idealismus: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1921) (HUA, 36), ed. Robin Rollinger with Rochus Sowa (Dordrecht: Springer, 2003).
3 Husserl, “Correspondence with Alexander Pfänder,” BW, 2.129–86.
4 Husserl to Pfänder, 6 January 1931, BW, 2.178–86.
5 Husserl, “Correspondence with Adolf Reinach,” BW, 2.187–208.
6 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Halle-an-der-Saale/Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1927/197714), § 2. Sein und Zeit is in GA, 2, but the more reliable text is that of Niemeyer.
7 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 27.
8 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 35.
9 Karl Löwith, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht (orig. 1940), ed. Frank-Rutger Hausmann (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1986/20072), 35.
10 Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1926–1969, ed. Lotte Köhler and Hans Saner (Munich: Piper, 1985), 79, 84, 99, 732. The exchange, clarifying a misunderstanding, is from 1946.
11 Heidegger, “Mein Weg in die Phänomenologie,” in Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 19883), 81–90 (GA, 14.91–102). Page references to “Mein Weg” (“My Way”) are given in parentheses in the text.
12 Heidegger, “Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten” (Interview of 23 September 1966), Der Spiegel 23 (31 May 1976): 193–219; Karl Schuhmann, “Zu Heideggers Spiegel-Gespräch über Husserl,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 32 (1978): 591–612; Lutz Hachmeister, Heideggers Testament: Der Philosoph, der “Spiegel” und die SS (Berlin: Propyläen/Ullstein, 20142), 7–60, 283–310.
13 Franz Brentano (1838–1917), Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1862).
14 Carl Braig (1852–1923), Vom Sein: Abriß der Ontologie (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1896).
15 E.g., Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis: Einführung in die Transzendentalphilosophie (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1895/19153).
16 E.g., Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre: Eine Studie über den Herrschaftsbereich der logischen Form (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1911) and Die Lehre vom Urteil (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1912).
17 Heidegger, Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus: Ein kritisch-positiver Beitrag zur Logik, GA, 1.1–129.
18 Heidegger, GA, 1.5–6.
19 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (orig. 1900/19132) (HUA, 18), ed. Elmar Holenstein (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975).
20 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil und Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (orig. 1901/19132/19212) (HUA, 19/1–2), ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984).
21 Husserl repudiated the charge of a “relapse into psychologism.” Cf. “Entwurf einer ‘Vorrede’ zu den Logischen Untersuchungen” (orig. 1913), HUA, 20/1.279–80.
22 Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (HUA, 3/1–2), ed. Karl Schuhmann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976).
23 Husserl, HUA, 18.8–16.
24 Husserl, HUA, 19/2.533–36.
25 Heidegger associates Husserl’s anti-Dilthey-ian “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” (“Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” [orig. 1911]: HUA, 25.3–62) not with the Investigations but with Ideas. Cf. “Mein Weg,” 84–85.
26 Heidegger’s last early lecture at Freiburg, in the Summer Semester of 1923, was “Ontology: Hermeneutics of Facticity”: GA, 63 (Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizität).
27 Heidegger says that the year was 1922, but that was the year in which the complete Logical Investigations were first published in the Second Edition. In the Foreword to the Second Edition of the Sixth Investigation (this Foreword was composed in 1920 and published in 1921) Husserl concedes that he was not able to fulfill his intention, which he had announced in the Foreword to the Second Edition of the Logical Investigations (this Foreword was composed and published in 1913), to raise at least the last investigation to the level of Ideas I. Cf. HUA, 18.8–15, esp. 11 and 15, and 19/2.533–34.
28 Husserl, HUA, 19/2.534.
29 Heidegger held Saturday morning private seminars on Husserl’s Logical Investigations V and VI at Freiburg from the Winter Semester of 1920/1921 to the Summer Semester of 1923: GA, 17.328–29.
30 Heidegger held his first Freiburg lecture on Aristotle, “Phenomenological Interpretations on Aristotle: Introduction to Phenomenological Research,” in the Winter Semester of 1921/1922 (GA, 61: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung). He continued with a Freiburg lecture of the same title in the Summer Semester of 1922 (GA, 62: Phänomenologische Interpretation ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zu Ontologie und Logik/Im Anhang: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles). Seeking a position, Heidegger submitted his interpretations of Aristotle at Marburg in the fall of 1922. Having obtained the position at Marburg in 1923, Heidegger held his first Marburg lecture on Aristotle, “Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy,” in the Summer Semester of 1924 (GA, 18: Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie).
31 Heidegger to Karl Löwith, 8 May 1923, in Heidegger-Handbuch: Leben–Werk–Wirkung, ed. Dieter Thomä (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 20132), 40.
32 Heidegger, GA, 61.79–155.
33 Heidegger, GA, 62.364–65. Cf. Husserl, HUA, 18.8, and 19/1.5–29.
34 Heidegger, GA, 62.341–419.
35 Heidegger, GA, 62.365.
36 Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch, 13–21 (Matthias Jung’s study of Heidegger’s Freiburg Lectures and other writings 1919–1923).
37 Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch, 25–35 (Franco Volpi’s study of Heidegger’s recourse to the Greeks in the 1920s). Heidegger says he learned from Braig (1) the relevance of speculative theology for ontology and metaphysics and (2) the importance of Classical German idealism (Schelling and Hegel) as an alternative to Scholasticism. Cf. “Mein Weg,” 81–82.
38 Heidegger, Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus, GA, 1.131–353.
39 Heidegger thought that De modis significandi was by Duns Scotus, but Martin Grabmann showed that it was by Thomas of Erfurt. Cf. HUA, 17.54, where Husserl points this out.
40 The best study of the composition of Sein und Zeit is by Theodore Kisiel: The Genesis of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
41 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 7.
42 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 38, 47, 77, 166, 218, 363.
43 Roland Breeur, ed., “Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,” Husserl Studies 11 (1994): 3–63 (here 30–31).
44 Otto Pöggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 19832), 67–80.
45 Husserl was named ordinarius on February 9 and moved to Freiburg on April 1, 1916. Cf. Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 199–200. The first correspondence between Husserl and Heidegger dates to May, 1916, and their first encounter to July 23, 1916. Cf. Husserl, BW, 4.127. The Husserl-Heidegger correspondence is in BW, 4.127–61.
46 Heidegger to Elfride, 27 May 1917, in “Mein liebes Seelchen!” Briefe Martin Heideggers an seine Frau Elfride (1915–1970), ed. Gertrud Heidegger (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005), 57.
47 Heidegger, “Brief Martin Heideggers an Elisabeth Husserl,” 24 April 1919, aut aut 223–224 (1988): 6–11.
48 Heidegger to Elfride, 30 August 1919, in “Mein liebes Seelchen!”, 95–96.
49 Heidegger to Elfride, 4 January 1920, in “Mein liebes Seelchen!”, 103–4.
50 Pöggeler, Der Denkweg Heideggers, 67–80.
51 Heidegger to Löwith, 20 February 1923, in Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch, 40.
52 Heidegger to Jaspers, 14 July 1923, in Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers: Briefwechsel 1920–1963, ed. Walter Biemel and Hans Saner (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1990), 42.
53 Heidegger to Jaspers, 24 May 1926, in Heidegger/Jaspers: Briefwechsel, 64.
54 Heidegger to Jaspers, 26 December 1926, in Heidegger/Jaspers: Briefwechsel, 71.
55 Husserl, “Der Encyclopaedia Britannica Artikel” (1927–1928), HUA, 9.237–301.
56 Heidegger to Husserl, 22 October 1927, and Husserl to Heidegger, 8 December 1927, BW, 4.144–49; Husserl, HUA, 9.274–75; Walter Biemel, “Husserls Encyclopaedia-Britannica-Artikel und Heideggers Anmerkungen dazu,” Tijdschrift voor Philosophie 12 (1950): 246–80; Heidegger to Löwith, 19 September 1921, in Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch, 546.
57 Husserl to Roman Ingarden, 19 November 1927, BW, 3.234.
58 Thus Husserl to Dietrich Mahnke, 4/5 May 1933, BW, 3.491–502, esp. 493.
59 Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 349.
60 And after hearing Heidegger’s Inaugural Lecture at Freiburg, “Was ist Metaphysik?” (24 July 1929), GA, 9.103–22.
61 Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (orig. 1929), GA, 3.1–318.
62 Breeur, “Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,” 3–63.
63 Husserl to Pfänder, 6 January 1931, BW, 2.180–84. Aside from Husserl to Mahnke, 4/5 May 1933 (BW, 3.491–502), this is the most important source for Husserl’s view of the break with Heidegger.
64 Husserl to Pfänder, 6 January 1931, BW, 2.184.
65 Husserl, “Nachwort zu meinen Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,” HUA, 5.138–62, esp. 151–52, 154–55, 161.
66 Husserl, HUA, 5.138, 140.
67 In Neue Wege der Philosophie: Geist–Leben–Existenz: Eine Einführung in die Philosophie der Gegenwart (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1929), Fritz Heinemann characterized Heidegger as the “Hermeneutiker der Existenz” and his philosophy as “Phänomenologie der Existenz,” a kind of “Existenzphilosophie” (370–91). “Philosophy of existence” is evident in Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, Zweiter Band: Existenzerhellung (Berlin: Springer, 1932). For a time, it was common to regard both Jaspers and Heidegger as engaging in philosophy of existence. Cf., e.g., Johannes Pfeiffer, Existenzphilosophie: Einführung in Heidegger und Jaspers (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1933).
68 Husserl, “Phänomenologie und Anthropologie,” HUA, 27.164–81. Husserl presented the lecture in June, 1931, at the Kantgesellschaften in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Halle.
69 Husserl, HUA, 27.164 (Dilthey), 180 (Scheler, Dilthey).
70 Heidegger, “Spiegel-Gespräch” (September, 1966), 199. Heidegger learned of the contents of the lectures in part from newspaper reports. In GA, 97 (Anmerkungen I–V [Schwarze Hefte 1942–1948]), 462, Heidegger says that in public lectures in “1930/31” Husserl “took a position against [him] and rejected [his] work as un-philosophy,” and adds that Husserl did the same in the “Afterword to Ideas” of “1930/31.”
71 Heidegger, “Brief über den Humanismus” (orig. 1945) (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1949/201011) (cf. GA, 9.313–64); GA, 27.374; GA, 32.18; GA, 49, § 11b; Heidegger to Elisabeth Blochmann (1947), in Martin Heidegger/Elisabeth Blochmann: Briefwechsel 1918–1969, ed. Joachim Storck (Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1989), 93; Jaspers to Heidegger, 6 February 1949, in Heidegger/Jaspers: Briefwechsel, 168–71, 276–78; Helmuth Vetter, Grundriss Heidegger: Ein Handbuch zu Leben und Werk (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2014), 265–66. The designation of Heidegger’s philosophy as “existentialism” (“existentialisme”) is found in Jean-Paul Sartre’s “L’existentialisme est un humanisme” (orig. 1946), ed. Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 26, 29; that of it as “philosophy of existence” (“Existenzphilosophie”) is traceable to Heinemann’s works.
72 Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931), ed. Thomas Sheehan and Richard Palmer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 1–32; Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch, 35–44.
73 Husserl to Mahnke, 4/5 May 1933, BW, 3.491–502.
74 Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 428.
75 Husserl to Gustav Albrecht, 1 July 1933, BW, 9.92.
76 Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 429, 433.
77 Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 472.
78 Elfride Heidegger to Malvine Husserl, 29 April 1933 (BW, 4.160–61), is no exception to the rule. Yet it is false that Rector Heidegger forbade Husserl entry to the University of Freiburg. Cf. Heidegger, “Letter to the Editor of Der Spiegel,” 22 February 1966, GA, 16.639 (also GA, 97.462).
79 Husserl to Mahnke, 4 May 1933, BW, 3.493.
80 Husserl to Mahnke, 4 May 1933, BW, 3.493.
81 Heidegger to Malvine Husserl, 6 March 1950, GA, 16.443; Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1988), 167–68.
82 Husserl to Ingarden, 24 December 1921, BW, 3.215.
83 Husserl to Mahnke, 25 November 1925, BW, 3.451.
84 Husserl to Pfänder, 6 January 1931, BW, 2.181; Husserl to Ingarden, 19 November 1927, BW, 3.234.
85 Husserl to Fritz Kaufmann, 20 April 1926, BW, 3.347.
86 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, v, 38.
87 Heidegger to Husserl, 22 October 1927, and Husserl to Heidegger, 8 December 1927, BW, 4.144, 148.
88 Husserl, Recommendation (draft), January (end), 1928, BW, 8.194–95.
89 Husserl to Heidegger, 21 January 1928, BW, 4.151; also BW, 3.457, 4.142.
90 Malvine Husserl to Elisabeth Rosenberg, 22 June 1930, and 25 January 1933, BW, 9.378, 416.
91 Heidegger, “Was ist das Sein selbst?” (12 September 1946), GA, 16.423 (emphasis added).
92 Heidegger, GA, 12.91.
93 Husserl to Paul Natorp, 1 February 1922, BW, 5.150.
94 Heidegger, “Schwarze Hefte,” GA, 94–97.
95 Heidegger, GA, 97.442. The remarks on Husserl date from 1942–1948.
96 Heidegger, GA, 97.442; Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” (orig. 1911), HUA, 25.3–62; “Nachwort zu meinen Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie” (orig. 1930), HUA, 5.138–62.
97 Heidegger, GA, 97.442.
98 Heidegger, GA, 97.443.
99 Heidegger, GA, 97.443.
100 Heidegger, GA, 97.442.
101 Heidegger, GA, 97.462–63.
102 Heidegger, GA, 97.463.
103 Heidegger, GA, 97.463.
104 Heidegger, GA, 97.463.
105 Heidegger, GA, 56/57.73, 75, 87, 117.
106 Heidegger, GA, 58 (Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie: not Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Summer Semester Lectures at Marburg in 1927 [GA, 24]), 141.
107 Heidegger, GA, 60.31–65.
108 Heidegger, GA, 61.79–155.
109 Heidegger, GA, 63.16, 77.
110 Heidegger, GA, 17 (Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung), 256, 267, 274–75.
111 Heidegger, GA, 20, § 4.
112 Heidegger, GA, 21.54, 58; Sein und Zeit, § 44.
113 Reinach, “Vortrag über Phänomenologie,” in Adolf Reinach: Sämtliche Werke 1, ed. Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith (Munich: Philosophia, 1989), 531–50.
114 Pfänder, Logik, in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 4, 139–494e.
115 Scheler, “Idealismus-Realismus,” in Max Scheler: Gesammelte Werke 9 (Bern: Francke, 1976), 183–342.
116 Ingarden, “Bemerkungen zum Problem ‘Idealismus-Realismus’,” in Festschrift E. Husserl zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet (Ergänzungsband zum Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 10 [1929]), 159–90.
117 Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins, in Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe 11/12 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 20132), 3–441.
118 Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung, ESG 5 (20102), 1–136.
119 Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, MSGW 9, 7–72.
120 Pfänder, Die Seele des Menschen (Halle-an-der-Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1933).
121 Stein, “Husserls transzendentale Phänomenologie” (orig. 1931), ESG 9 (2014), 159–61, and “Martin Heideggers Existenzphilosophie” (orig. 1937), ESG 11/12 (20132), 445–99.
122 On the term Grenzprobleme cf. Husserl, HUA, 39.875–76; HUA, 42.xix–cxv, xix, fn. 1.
123 HUA 42 contains a text, No. 18 (1934?), in which Husserl mentions Existenzphilosophie but does not criticize it (228–35).
124 Husserl, HUA, 6.4; HUA, 29.104.
125 Heidegger to Husserl, 22 October 1927, and Husserl to Heidegger, 8 December 1927, BW, 4.144–49.
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