Introduction to Phenomenological Research

Contents

Translator’s Foreword

PRELIMINARY REMARK

The task of the lectures and the passion for questioning genuinely and rightly

PART ONE
ΦΑΙΝΟΜΕΝΟΝ AND ΛΟΓΟΣ IN ARISTOTLE
AND
HUSSERL'S SELF-INTERPRETATION OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Chapter One
Elucidation of the expression "phenomenology" by going back to Aristotle

§ 1. Clarification of φαινόμενον on the basis of the Aristotelian analysis of perceiving the world by way of seeing

a) Φαινομενον as a distinctive manner of an entity's presence: existence during the day

b) Φαινομενον as anything that of itself shows itself in daylight or darkness

§ 2 The Aristotelian determination of λόγος

a) Talk (λόγος) as a voice that means something (φωνὴ σημαντική); ὄνομα and ῥῆμα.

b) The ostensive talk (λόγος ἀποφαντικός) that reveals (ἀληθεύειν) or conceals (ψεύδεσθαι) the existing world in affirming (κατάφασις) and denying (ἀπόφασις); the ὁρισμός

c) The possibility of deception, the λόγος ἀποφαντικός and the αἴσθησις

d) The three aspects of ψεῦδος. The factical existence of speaking as an authentic source of deception. Circumstantiality and elusiveness of the world

e) Speaking and the world in its possibilities of deception. The shift of the meaning of φαινόμενον into illusion

f) Σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις as the realm of the possibilities of the true and the false

Chapter Two
Present-day phenomenology in Husserl's self-interpretation

§ 3. Recapitulation of the facts of the matter gathered from the interpretation of Aristotle. Anticipation of the predominance of care about the idea of certainty and evidence over freeing up possibilities of encountering fundamental facts of the matter

§ 4. Consciousness as the theme of present-day phenomenology

a) Greek philosophy without a concept of consciousness

b) Phenomenology's breakthrough in Husserl's Logical Investigations and their basic tendency

c) The orientation of Greek philosophy and the question of its reversal

§ 5. The theme of "consciousness" in the Logical Investigations

a) The Logical Investigations between a traditional orientation and primordial questioning

b) Ideal meaning and acts of meaning; emptily meaning something and meaning-fulfillment; consciousness as the region of experiences; intentional experiences as acts; consciousness as inner perception

§ 6. The care about already known knowledge, in which consciousness stands

a) Care and its possibilities of disclosing, holding onto, and shaping what it takes care of; its commitment to and loss of itself in what it takes care of

b) Care about already known knowledge

§ 7. Husserl's polemic with contemporary philosophy in the essay "Philosophy as Rigorous Science" and the care about already known knowledge at work in it. The general aim of this essay

§ 8. Husserl's critique of naturalism

a) Naturalization of consciousness

b) Naturalization of ideas

c) Nature's being as experimental psychology's horizon

d) The peculiar being of consciousness as the true object of philosophy and the method of discerning essences to acquire universally binding sentences

§ 9. Clarification of the problems as purification and radicalization of their bias. The care about securing and justifying an absolute scientific status

§ 10. Clarification of problems

a) The question and its structures

b) The problem and the factors of its being: clarifying the problem as a matter of co-deciding on what is to be interrogated, what it is asked, the regard in question, and the tendency of the answer

c) Husserl's clarification of the tendency of the problem of naturalism through transcendental and eidetic purification of consciousness. Absolute Validity and evidence

§ 11. Order of the inquiry and clue to the explication of the structure of all experiential connections

a) Orientation toward connections among disciplines: philosophy as a science of norms and values

b) Theoretical knowing as the clue

§ 12. Characteristic factors of care about already known knowledge in Husserl's critique of naturalism: back-flash, falling-prey, pre-constructing, ensnarement, neglect

§ 13. Husserl's critique of historicism

a) The different basis of this critique

b) The neglect of human existence, in the deficient care, care about absolute, normative lawfulness

§ 14. Critique of historicism on the path of the clarification of problems

a) Husserl's critique of Dilthey

b) Historical existence as the object of neglect

c) Origin and legitimacy of the contrast between matter of factness and validity

d) The reproach of skepticism and the care revealing itself therein, care about already known knowledge as anxiety in the face of existence

e) The preconceptions about existence at work in this care

§ 15. Making more precise what care about already known knowledge is

a) Care about justified knowledge, about a universally binding character that is evident

b) "To the matters themselves": care about matters prefigured by a universally binding character

c) Care about the rigor of science as derivative seriousness; the mathematical idea of rigor, uncritically set up as an absolute norm

§ 16. Disclosing the thematic field of "consciousness" through the care about already known knowledge. Return to the historical, concrete instance of the care

a) Care's circumspection and aim

b) Descartes' research as a factically-historical, concrete instance of the care in its disclosing of the thematic field of "consciousness"

PART TWO
RETURN TO DESCARTES
AND
THE SCHOLASTIC ONTOLOGY THAT DETERMINES HIM

Chapter One
Making sense of the return to Descartes by recalling what has been elaborated up to this point

§ 17. The hermeneutic situation of the investigations up to this point and of those standing before us

§ 18. Becoming free from the discipline and traditional possibilities as a way of becoming free for existence. Investigation as destruction in the ontological investigation of existence

§ 19. Return to the genuine being of care about already known knowledge in its primordial past as a return to Descartes

§ 20. Destruction as the path of the interpretation of existence. Three tasks for the explication of how, in its being, care about already known knowledge is disclosive. The question of the sense of the truth of knowledge in Descartes

Chapter Two
Descartes. The how and the what of the being-qua-disclosing of care about knowledge already known

§ 21. Determinations of "truth"

§ 22. Three possibilities of care about already known knowledge: curiosity, certitude, being binding

Chapter Three
Descartes' determination of falsum and verum

§ 23. Preview of the context of the question

§ 24. The cogito sum, the clara et distincta perceptio, and the task of securing, in keeping with being, the criterion of truth

§ 25. Descartes' classification of the variety of cogitationes. The judicium as the place for the verum and falsum

§ 26. The distinction between the idea as repraesentans aliquid and its repraesentatum; realitas objectiva and realitas formalis sive actualis [the distinction between the idea as representing something and what it represents; objective reality and formal or actual reality

§ 27. The question of the being of the falsum and error

a) The constitution of error: intellectus and voluntas as libertas; Descartes' two concepts of freedom

b) The concursus of intellectus and voluntas [the concurrence of the intellect and the will] as the being of error. Theological problems as the foundation of both concepts of freedom

§ 28. The sense of being of error: error as res and as privatio, as detrimental to the genuine being of the created human being (creatum esse). Perceptum esse and creatum esse as basic determinations of the esse of the res cogitans

Chapter Four
Going back to Scholastic ontology: the verum esse in Thomas Aquinas

§ 29. The connection of the verum and the ens: being-true as a mode of being (De veritate, q. 1, art. 1)

§ 30. The genuine being of the verum as convenientia in intellectus (De veritate, q. 1, art. 1-3)

§ 31. In what sense the verum is in the intellectus (De veritate, q. 1, art. 9)

§ 32. The grounding of verum's genuine being in the primordial truth of God (De veritate, q. 1, art. 4 and 8)

§ 33. The ways of being able to determine God's being from the perspective of Aristotelian ontology (Summa theologica, vol. 1, q. 2-3)

Chapter Five
The care of knowledge in Descartes

§ 34. Descartes' determination of knowing's manner of being as judging, against the horizon of being as creatum esse

§ 35. The regimentation of judging: clara et distincta perceptio as a universal rule of knowing

§ 36. The origin of clarity and distinctness. Descartes' idea of science and the rules for the direction of the mind

§ 37. The care of knowing as care about certainty, as mistaking oneself

§ 38. The care that tranquilizes. Descartes' interpretation of the verum as certum while retaining Scholastic ontology

Chapter Six
The character of being of the res cogitans, of consciousness

§ 39. The certum aliquid as what is sought by the care of knowing

§ 40. The caring search as dubitare, remotio and suppositio falsi

§ 41. The path of the caring dubitatio in the First Meditation subject to the regula generalis: the being of the searcher (ego sum) as the first thing found

§ 42. The caring search in the Second Meditation for what the ego sum is under the guidance of the regula generalis: the ego cogito

§ 43. What is found by the care about certainty: a valid, universally binding proposition

PART THREE
DEMONSTRATING THE NEGLECT OF THE QUESTION OF BEING AS A WAY OF POINTING TO EXISTENCE

Chapter One
Misplacing the question of the res cogitans' specific being through care about certainty

§ 44. Descartes' perversion of "having-oneself-with" into a formally-ontological proposition

§ 45. Summary characterization of the res cogitans found by Descartes: misplacing the possibility of access to the res cogitans' genuine being

Chapter Two
Descartes' inquiry into res cogitans' being-certain and the lack of specification of the character of being of consciousness as the thematic field of Busserl's phenomenology

§ 46. Descartes and Husserl: fundamental differences

a) Descartes' way of doubt (remotio) and Husserl's reduction

b) Descartes' cogito and Husserl's consciousness

c) The absolutum of Descartes' res cogitans and the absoluteness of Husserl's pure consciousness

d) Descartes' res cogitans as ens creatum and Husserl's pure consciousness as ens regionale

e) The connection that ultimately motivates Descartes' research and the tendencies that are ultimately decisive for Husserl's phenomenology

§ 47. Husserl and Descartes: connection and uniform basic tendency in the care about certainty

a) Undiscussed appropriation of the cogito sum

b) Explicitly laying claim to the certitudo for the absolute region of being

c) The uprooting that occurs in taking over the cogito sum as the certum for the process of setting up consciousness' absolute self-evidence as the nucleus

d) Care about certainty as care about the formation of science

Chapter Three
Husserl's more primordial neglect of the question of being, opposite the thematic field of phenomenology, and the task of seeing and explicating existence in its being

§ 48. Husserl's mangling of phenomenological finds through the care, derived from Descartes, about certainty

a) Intentionality as specific, theoretical. behavior

b) Evidence as theoretical knowing's evidence in grasping and determining

c) Eidetic reduction of pure consciousness under the guidance of ontological determinations alien to consciousness

§ 49. Investigation of the history of the origin of the categories as a presupposition for seeing and determining existence

§ 50. Retrieval of the characteristics of the care of knowing that have been run through and pointing to existence itself in terms of some fundamental determinations

a) Three groups of characters of care about already known knowledge and their determination as a unity

α) Overstepping oneself, mistaking-oneself, tranquilizing, and masking as remoteness from being

β) Misplacing, rise of needlessness, and falling prey as the absence of existence's temporality

γ) Obstructing and diverting as leveling being

b) Flight of existence in the face of itself and the uncoveredness of its being-in-a-world, burying any possibility of encountering it, distorting as a basic movement of existence

c) Facticity, threat, eeriness, everydayness

APPENDIX

Supplements to the lectures from the lecture notes of
Helene Weiß and Herbert Marcuse

Supplement 1 (to p. 4)

Supplement 2 (to p. 6)

Supplement 3 (to p. 21)

Supplement 4 (to p. 22)

Supplement 5 (to p. 30)

Supplement 6 (to p. 36)

Supplement 7 (to p. 41)

Supplement 8 (to p. 52)

Supplement 9 (to p. 65)

Supplement 10 (to p. 69)

Supplement 11 (to p. 69)

Supplement 12 (to p. 74)

Supplement 13 (to p. 74)

Supplement 14 (to p. 77)

Supplement 15 (to p. 79)

Supplement 16 (to p. 93)

Supplement 17 (to p. 98)

Supplement 18 (to p. 106)

Supplement 19 (to p. 107)

Supplement 20 (to p. 112)

Supplement 21 (to p. 116)

Supplement 22 (to p. 123)

Supplement 23 (to p. 152)

Supplement 24 (to p. 160)

Supplement 25 (to p. 189)

Supplement 26 (to p. 197)

Supplement 27 (to p. 207)

Supplement 28 (to p. 208)

Supplement 29 (to p. 210)

Supplement 30 (to p. 221)

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Editor’s afterword

Introduction to Phenomenological Research (GA 17) [GA App]

Ereignis