(b) the direction of a serious engagement with the methodology of Husserl's "phenomenology". From the outset I did not endorse the basic philosophical positions that in fact were adopted by this phenomenology, that is, Cartesianism and Neo-Kantianism. My own pathway led me to a mindfulness of history, to a dissociating exposition of Dilthey and the determination of "life* as basic actuality.
[G413] But "phenomenology" brought to my own work a confident manner of proceeding and questioning that became fruitful for my historical interpretations.
In the years 1920-23, all the up to then attempted inquiries that touched upon truth, categories, language, time and history came together in the plan for an "ontology of human Dasein". However, this ontology was not thought as a "regional" discussion of the inquiry into man, but as the laying of the foundation for the inquiry into beings as such — simultaneously as a dissociating exposition of the beginning of Occidental metaphysics with the Greeks.
5. Sein und Zeit5 of 1927. As an initial pathway, this attempt originated in the years 1922-26 for possibly rendering discernible — from the ground up and through an actual enactment — the question of being in a manner that fundamentally leads beyond all the hitherto inquiries and nevertheless simultaneously leads back to a dissociating exposition of the Greeks and the Occidental philosophy. (On this point, see the Laufenden Anmerkungen zu Sein und Zeit6 of 1936.)
Operating in this attempt is at the same time the striving — through a new approach and with a renewed honing of the gaze — for rendering major inquiries within the history of metaphysics the master of this attempt.
However, in the first presentation of Sein und Zeit, the actual "systematic" section on "Time and Being" proved to be inadequate, while external circumstances (such as the enlargement of the volume of [Husserl's] Yearbook) fortunately hindered the publication of this section in which, considering its inadequacy, I had placed little confidence. This section was destroyed, but it was
5 GA 2, ed. F.-W. v. Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: 1977) .
6 To appear in Zu eigenen Veröffentlichungen, GA 82.