Brentano as a Source of Seinsgeschichte?
(You Will Rethink the Husserl Relation Too)

Hakhamanesh Zangeneh

Introduction

Heidegger’s writings from the 1930s, the period of Seinsgeschichte, have to date been the site of many topical studies focusing on isolated themes. Some of the texts, like the Beiträge, have elicited comprehensive overviews. But among the literature on Seinsgeschichte, there is not much on the Geschichte aspect, on the history that is being written there.¹ This is all the more striking since in volumes such as GA45, 65-76,² the overwhelming bulk of the pages is actually dedicated to writing history, to writing historical narratives. In this paper, I want to take that history more seriously, or at least take one single but important moment of that history into focus. What I will not be doing here is abstractly speculating about the methodological dimensions of Heidegger’s histories – though I have some remarks on the matter set aside in the appendix. Instead, I will focus on Heidegger’s characterization of Modern philosophy, specifically his Descartes interpretation in this period, but then suggest that the position that he describes, while not attributable to Descartes in an obvious way, corresponds very literally to the position advanced explicitly and as such by Brentano. Finally, a quick glance at Husserl’s critique of that Brentanian doctrine will suggest that Heidegger and Husserl were in explicit agreement on at least this one point, their opposition to Brentano’s formulation of intentionality.

Modernity 1: Rectitude and Certitude

Heidegger’s criticisms of Modern philosophy and of Modernity in general, are some of the most familiar and best-understood aspects of his work. We can find mutually compatible and consistent remarks in this vein in all periods and across all genres in the GA, from published works (his Descartes-critique in SZ), to lecture courses (the history of truth in Grundfragen der Philosophie, GA45) to posthumous publications (Beiträge). For example, in a representative text, taken from 1938/39, from the period of Seinsgeschichte, Heidegger characterizes the epoch-making event of Modernity as the change from truth as Richtigkeit to truth as Gewissheit.³ The first German term, Richtigkeit, carries a useful ambiguity, it is Richtigkeit of course as rightness, as correctness, but under Heidegger’s pen it also implies direction and directedness, Richtung and Sichrichten nach.⁴ Both senses are intertwined in the idea of truth as ‘adequation’ of entity and intellect, as expressed in a judgment. The entity/intellect relation contains the directionality and the expression/judgment carries the correctness.⁵ This change in the nature of truth that conjures the Modern, this Wandel im Wesen der Wahrheit, is glossed in his analyses of truth in the Beiträge in the corresponding Latin terms (these are helpful for translating into English) as the transformation of rectitudo into certitudo.⁶ ‘Rectitude’ in English can also connote a direction, as in to erect, or the rectilinear (even the moral sense is synonymous with uprightness). Heidegger thus understands Modern philosophy as the transition from rectitude to certitude.

The broader consequences of this are expounded upon in various texts, but the philosophical-historical implications contained in that change are compactly presented in the materials from the 1938/39 seminar on Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation. According to Heidegger, truth as rectitude is a being-directed-towards, and here, the basic outlines of ‘adequation’ come to mind. What characterizes the Modern departure from Medieval thought is that this directedness-towards now takes its measure from and through the human being. This means that truth, now as certitude, is constituted on the basis of the human being. But this is already to have moved from truth being situated in a relation of the human to the thing, now to truth being seated in the Ego, in the I, in a relation returning to self. This is to shift from a directedness-to into a self-directedness, a directedness-back, a re-directedness as exemplified by reflection and reflexivity.⁷ So, while the Modern is obviously tied to a prominent role attributed to subjectivity, more specifically, it involves the construal of subjectivity on the basis of reflexivity and auto-relation. The transformation of being-related-to into a self-relation is thus a fundamental phenomenon in the history of being, and characterizing the Self on the basis of reflexivity determines the place of Modern metaphysics in Seinsgeschichte.

Now, if the Modern conception of truth as certainty is tied to the emergence of reflexivity, it is also concomitant with the constitution of the Subject as hypokeimenon, as that which persists and is persistently subjacent. Here, the notion of reflexivity opens unto a doubling of the self, of the conscious, cognitive, mind. As Heidegger writes, the subiectum is that which lies already (vorliegt) in every presentation (Vorstellung).⁸ Thus, any presentation presents not just the presented ‘object’ but also the presenter. This insight, this construal of the ‘already lying in,’ occurring here in the midst of Seinsgeschichte, is reminiscent of the formula: ‘every consciousness is self-consciousness.’ In Heidegger’s ductus, tied back to the notion of truth, this becomes: “Certainty is the self-conscious consciousness of the known.” (Die Gewißheit ist das seiner selbst bewußte Bewußtsein vom Gewußtem.⁹) Because consciousness is self-conscious consciousness (of object), because of the doubling of consciousness, Heidegger can show that consciousness always lies before, is persistently subjacent, is hypokeimenon. If consciousness is persistently subjacent, then in every presentation consciousness doubles itself, relates also to itself, and thus produces the structure of reflexivity.

Modernity 2: Descartes and Apperception

With this overarching interpretation of Modern Philosophy in terms of reflection, we would now expect to be able to turn to the texts of a paradigmatically modern thinker and find our historical interpretation instantiated in detail. Heidegger’s most accessible and most developed interpretation of Descartes during the period of Seinsgeschichte is likely the presentation we find in volume two of Nietzsche, GA 6.2.¹⁰ Given Descartes’ prima facie allegiance to certainty throughout his works (Principles, Meditations, Discourse), Heidegger must connect the latter with reflection. And yet Heidegger’s approach to Descartes takes a curious turn at precisely this juncture.

In his interpretation of the cogito, Heidegger argues that for Descartes, every ‘I think’ is an ‘I think myself thinking.’ As he writes:

Descartes sagt: Jedes ego cogito ist cogito me cogitare; jedes »ich stelle etwas vor« stellt zugleich »mich« vor, mich, den Vorstellenden (vor mich, in meinem Vor-stellen).¹¹

Thus, Heidegger’s claim is that the Cartesian cogito reproduces the doubling that was characteristic of subjectivity thought according to the reflection model. Heidegger argues repeatedly that the doubling is present in Descartes “cogito me cogitare.” The crucial word there is the reflexive pronoun me. I think myself thinking. And yet that word, those two letters, occur precisely nowhere in the Discourse, nowhere in the Meditations, and nowhere in the Principles during the presentations of the cogito argument. This curious philological state-of-affairs has not been missed by Descartes scholars. In fact, Jean-Luc Marion, trying to read Heidegger as charitably as he can, asserts that this phrase occurs nowhere in Descartes treatises, but that Heidegger could have referenced a few passages, in minor works, that while not explicitly saying so, could nonetheless be construed as implying the same.¹² Let me call this the postmodern solution to the philological dilemma. Cynically phrased: the truth of the cogito is not in any systematic presentation of the cogito, rather it is in marginal ambiguous remarks not part of the cogito but which could be construed a certain way. More sympathetically put, Heidegger maybe gets the text wrong, but he gets the idea right. Nothing in that response is all that unique or unfamiliar, versions thereof occur in debating many of Heidegger’s readings of the tradition.

But even granting the postmodern solution, I think it is still important to ask where Heidegger comes up with, or what leads Heidegger to affirm that every thinking is a thinking oneself thinking. How and why is Heidegger led to this idea that every consciousness is self-consciousness? (Incidentally, this would be a less textual way of framing the question of my paper – some might say a more phenomenological way) If we approach the question at an informal level where we distinguish between getting a text right and getting an idea right, if we ask loosely what leads Heidegger to the idea, if not to the text and to the actual expression, a plausible candidate could be Kant. One might argue that Heidegger’s repeated, detailed encounters, during his phenomenological decade, with the “Transcendental Deduction” of the first Critique imposed a basically Kantian framework on his Descartes interpretations and that this continues in the phase of the history of being. We might conjecture that he reads Descartes through a fundamentally Kantian lens.¹³ Here, one would draw on the Kantian doctrine of apperception and point to Heidegger’s insistence thereupon throughout his Kant readings. One might contend that despite a whole host of variations and intrinsic differences, his Kant lectures from GA21 onwards always present the same appreciation of Kantian apperception, thus pointing to the latter’s importance.

In fact, in GA24, in 1957 already, which is of course outside the period of Seinsgeschichte, Heidegger makes the connection himself in his discussion of the ‘Modern Thesis on Being.’ At first, he presents his reflection model reading of Descartes, stating the equivalence between thinking and thinking myself thinking. “Cogitare aber ist nach Descartes immer cogito me cogitare… Das >Ich-denke‹, das> mecogitare‹, ist jeweils mitvorgestellet, obzwar nicht eigens und ausdrücklich gemeint.”¹⁴ (One might debate whether this amounts to a full-fledged embrace of a reflection model reading of Descartes, but it is an explicit affirmation of the reflexive pronoun, me.) And then, moves on to identify this description with Kantian apperception as formulated at the outset of the B-Deduction. “…Ich erfasse nicht einfach das Gedachte und Vorgestellte, sondern in allem Denken denke Ich mich mit dazu, Ich perzipiere nicht, sondern apperzepiere das Ich.”¹⁵ So the doubling of the I in thinking (attributed to but not explicitly stated by Descartes) is also to be found in Kant. Or at least, can be said to be implied by Kant in his remarks on apperception.

We might call this the textual-conjectural solution. Clearly the same language is used to describe both the Cartesian cogito and Kantian apperception.¹⁶ But does Kant’s text contain this explicit implication? Does Kant’s theory of apperception dictate that in all thinking, I think myself? Or does it require that I be able to, that I have the possibility of affirming that I think the I in all thinking? The famous phrase by Kant, after all is begleiten können. All my thoughts must be capable of being accompanied by an I think. Kantian apperception does not state all my thoughts are accompanied by…, but rather must be capable of being accompanied by… So the thesis that in all thinking I do think the I is not any more Kantian than it is Cartesian.¹⁷ Again, we fail to find a textual statement of the idea that every I think is an I think myself.

Now, one might object that this is close enough. Again, the thesis is not stated but surely implied, at least sufficiently suggested, to confirm Heidegger’s reading. What is the point of being as pedantic as I am here? One might even ask what more can we do with this type of inquiry than formulate a conjecture about history and texts? I think though, that giving up at this juncture, shows-up a major shortcoming of Anglophone Heidegger studies. It pulls the veil on our collective timidity in face of the history of being. What I mean here is that, in probably no other corner of Heideggeriana would even sympathetic readers deal with his claims so loosely, so casually, so nonchalantly. This is perhaps an object-lesson, or a metalesson in this paper about how Seinsgeschichte is treated in English. This is the corner of Heidegger that Anglophone readers either just tolerate, write-off completely, or just ignore altogether – it is certainly not a dimension of Heideggerian discourse that has benefited from scholarly focus.

It is because we have contented ourselves with vague implication and rough suggestions that many moments of the phenomenological register in Heidegger’s discourse have been missed. It is because the questioning stops here that the connection between the phenomenological context and Heidegger’s material from the 1930s has not been extensively elucidated.

Brentano’s Formulation of Intentionality

The alternative I want to present is not one arrived at from a unique methodological approach, but simply a philological insight. I think its strength is due to its unambiguous clarity. Why do I claim that it is Brentano, as opposed to Kant or Descartes, who gives to Heidegger the idea of the doubling of subjectivity that is employed to describe a prominent juncture in the history of being? Because Brentano literally formulates the idea in as many words. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,¹⁸ Brentano defines the mental (das Psychische) as distinguished from the physical specifically by the former being characterized by intentional inexistence.¹⁹ Half of Brentano’s definition of intentionality is going to be familiar to Husserl readers. For Brentano, every mental phenomenon contains something, which can be called its object (“die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt“). That is the familiar half. The unfamiliar half is what follows. After advancing the idea that every consciousness is consciousness of an object, Brentano also entertains the claim that every mental phenomenon is itself an object of consciousness.

Dass kein psychisches Phänomen bestehe, welches nicht in dem angegebenen Sinne Bewusstsein von einem Objekte ist, haben wir gesehen. Eine andere Frage aber ist die, ob kein psychisches Phänomen besteht, welches nicht Objekt eines Bewusstseins ist.²⁰

This amounts to asking if there can be a mental phenomenon that is not object of a consciousness. If there were, then we would have a case of an unconscious mental phenomenon. We would have the case of an unconscious consciousness. Since Brentano argues against the idea of an unconscious consciousness, he has to embrace the implications of responding negatively to the question. Brentano’s response is thus No, there is no mental phenomenon that is not object of consciousness. The major implication is that every mental phenomenon, every consciousness is the object of consciousness. So when I am conscious of some object X, I must also be conscious of that consciousness of X. When I see the tree, I am conscious of seeing the tree. Casting it as I just did, in terms of visual consciousness and awareness thereof is meant to recall the passage in De Anima where Aristotle presents the same problem. According to Aristotle, we perceive (aisthanomai) that we see (opsomai).²¹ Brentano cites this famous passage from Aristotle and while rejecting the Aristotelian solution, uses it to motivate his view.22 To get to his view we have to push forward to the obvious problem. The obvious problem here is that if I say that in every consciousness I am conscious of myself, the second level of consciousness cannot terminate the affair. The second level of consciousness can be treated like the first consciousness with an object. But then that second consciousness must itself become the object of a third instance of consciousness. This obviously engenders an infinite regress. So, Brentano’s position is that one must either countenance an unconscious consciousness, an infinite regress, or find a third way of exiting the problem. “Nur eine Annahme scheint, wenn es kein unbewusstes Bewusstsein geben soll, der Folgerung einer unendlichen Verwickelung entgehen zu können.”²³ Brentano’s response to this is what has since been named the ‘double-object’ theory of intentionality.²⁴ According to this full Brentanian (and not Husserlian) view of intentionality, every consciousness has two objects, the primary object and itself, the secondary object. Thus there is no second level of consciousness which would be setting-off the infinite regress. That is because the consciousness which has an object is also itself the object of itself – and not of another consciousness. There is no nested phenomenon because consciousness is self-referential.²⁵ So to reiterate, Brentano’s conception of intentionality necessarily has to affirm that every consciousness is consciousness of something and consciousness of itself. In short: every consciousness is self-consciousness. So the positive affirmation that is not stated as such in Descartes, not stated as such in Kant, but plays a defining role in Heidegger’s characterization of Neuzeit, is explicitly stated as such by Franz Brentano.

Here is Heidegger presenting this very idea, from another text in the period of Seinsgeschichte and in the ductus thereof (emphasis added):

Die Subjektivität ist jedoch diese Wahrheit des Seienden, insofern das Subjektum in der Selbstgewißheit des Sichselbstwissens west. Die Wahrheit des Seienden hat den Charakter der Gewißheit. In ihr versammelt sich das sich vorstellende Vorstellen der Gegenstände auf sich zu. Dieses Vorstellen des Subjekts ist Wissen als Ge-wissen (conscientia, conscience).

In the Modern appearing of the being of beings, the Subject is grasped in terms of a certitude of selfknowledge, of reflexive knowledge. In certainty, presenting is a self-presenting.

Zur Subjektivität gehört als erste Wesensbestimmung, daß das vorstellende Subjekt seiner selbst und d.h. stets seines Vor-gestellten als eines solchen sich versichert. Gemäß solcher Versicherung hat die Wahrheit des Seienden als die Gewißheit den Charakter der Sicherheit (certitudo). Das Sich-selbst-wissen, worin die Gewißheit als solche ist, bleibt seinerseits eine Abart des bisherigen Wesens der Wahrheit, nämlich der Richtigkeit (rectitudo) des Vorstellens.²⁶

All of these reflexive expressions, seiner selbst versichern, sich-selbst-wissen, das sich vorstellende Vorstellen, all of these are pointing to the same phenomenon of doubling in the reflection model, they are all attempting to circumscribe the idea – which we do not find in Descartes but do find in Brentano – that every consciousness is a self-consciousness. Importantly in fact, we can now say that Heidegger is here not just finding the idea of the reflexive doubling but that he is pointing to the expression of the reflexive doubling affirmed as such by Brentano. So if Heidegger is here reading Brentano, and not Descartes or Kant, then we can affirm that he gets both the idea right and the text right.

And so this implies that what Heidegger is designating as the defining feature of the Modern, what he is defining as the ontology underpinning certitude, what he is presenting as the defining contribution of Cartesianism…is Brentano’s doctrine of intentionality! Now if this were just a matter of determining the source of some random, marginal feature of Heidegger’s philosophy, one might relegate it to the dustbin or to Dr. Heidegger’s cabinet of curiosities. But what is at stake here is Heidegger’s judgment of Modern philosophy, what is at stake here is Heidegger’s critique of Subjectivity. “Die Besinnung auf die Neuzeit ist Besinnung auf die abendländische Geschichte... Die Besinnung ist geschichtlich, weil sie den Grund der abendländischen Geschichte, die Wahrheit des Seyns, er-denkt und die Entscheidung über das Seyn vorbereitet.”²⁷ Clearly, the question of the Modern is not a merely ornamental or incidental one for Heidegger.

This critique of Subjectivity is not a critique of Descartes, it is not a critique of Kant. It is a critique of Brentanian intentionality. If we think that such a conception represents a position implied by Descartes, implied by Kant, then that is an implication that only becomes legible after Brentano.²⁸

But another way of construing this philological state of affairs would be to emphasize the point I make in my title here. The doctrine that Heidegger used to characterize the Modern philosophy of Subjectivity was actually penned by Brentano. Heidegger borrows from Brentano the locution that he uses to situate Modern philosophy in the history of being. Hence, Brentano is a source for Seinsgeschichte.

Coda: Husserl on Brentano

Now, moving beyond this first step of identifying Brentano’s contribution to Heidegger’s history, we can pursue a few separate directions of inquiry. On the one hand, we can deepen the phenomenological connection – here we would be investigating how Heidegger is related to Husserl in Seinsgeschichte, analogously to how scholars have previously focused on that relation in the early Marburg lectures.²⁹ We would be expanding that dossier into the GA volumes of the 1930s. Separately, we could reflect on what this textual-historical constellation teaches us about Heidegger’s history of being insofar as it is a history. We could now attempt to describe features of this history not abstractly, but from the ground-up as it were, connecting this episode with what could be construed as more methodological statements about the history of being.

I think the first direction is more interesting because it produces a more surprising outcome, but the second set of issues has its own merit. However, for the sake of brevity I am putting the reflection on history into an appendix, in order to proceed to the Husserl-relation.

As for the project of elucidating Heidegger’s relation to phenomenology in the 1930s, we must emphasize the fact that for Heidegger, the Modern is derivative, abkünftig, and that situating Brentanian intentionality here is implicitly a critique of the notion. After all, the doctrine is being tied to the transition from rectitude to certitude. One might then extrapolate that when Heidegger is criticizing Modern philosophy, when Heidegger is criticizing Cartesian philosophy, he is really targeting phenomenology. In other words, we might assume that Heidegger’s critique of Intentionality in his critique of Subjectivity were just a critique of phenomenology. If one were to go in that direction, one might want to then visit Husserl’s work to test this hypothesis. Here, the anti-phenomenological interpretation of Heidegger will be disappointed. For, Husserl too, explicitly comments on this same Brentanian idea in the Logical Investigations, specifically in the fifth investigation.

Recall that Brentanian intentionality was distinguished from Husserlian intentionality. In L.I. V, Husserl develops his version of intentionality by way of a detailed Auseinandersetzung with Brentano’s text. One of Husserl’s criticisms is a critique of consciousness understood as an inner perception, innere Wahrnehmung. As part of that critique, Husserl points to Brentano as struggling with a dissatisfying alternative:

Ich erinnere an den unendlichen Regreß... den Brentano durch die Unterscheidung zwischen primärer und sekundärer Wahrnehmungsrichtung zu lösen versuchte. Man wird künstliche Theorien dieser Art wohl entbehren können...³⁰

And so as it turns out, in Investigation V, Husserl comments specifically on Brentano’s conception of intentionality and specifically criticizes the doctrine of the primary and secondary objects. This doctrine of the dual object, as we have seen, is what binds Brentano to the reflection model of the mind.

Elsewhere in these same pages, when focusing on a criticism of Brentano’s terminology, his misleading expressions, Husserl rejects a fundamental assumption behind Brentano’s line of argumentation. Consciousness is, according to Husserl, not two components next to each other, nor parts and wholes in a relation of containment: “Es sind … nicht zwei Sachen psychisch präsent … sondern nur eine Sache ist präsent, das intentionale Erlebnis, dessen wesentlicher deskriptiver Charakter eben die bezügliche Intention ist.”³¹ In place of Brentano’s two objects, Husserl points to a single Erlebnis that we ‘live through:’ “Aber leben wir sozusagen im betreffenden Akte … so ist von dem Ich als Beziehungspunkt der vollzogenen Akte nichts zu merken.”³² And so Husserl too is critical of Brentanian intentionality’s implication of the doubling of consciousness. It is not just that Husserl and Heidegger criticize different aspects of Brentano’s theory – they criticize the same aspect of Brentano’s theory. Husserl too is critical of the idea that every consciousness is self-consciousness. The way Husserl articulates this criticism is through his notion of Erlebnis and that is substantially different from Heidegger’s approach in Seinsgeschichte.³³ But despite differences, both Husserl and Heidegger would then seem to be equally critical of (what Heidegger calls) Modern Subjectivity.³⁴

In closing then, I think that after the above, we should be able to ask, but now with a new sensitivity to the matter, just how far from phenomenological sources has Heidegger arrived in Seinsgeschichte? In this register of his work where Heidegger seems most removed from phenomenology – how far is he actually?

Appendix: the Geschichte in Seinsgeschichte

Pursuing that second option for extending the inquiry, we might thus ask, what is the significance of Heidegger’s defining Modern philosophy in terms of Brentanian intentionality? What does this show us about Heidegger’s history of being? Here, the obvious inference is close at hand for even the most novice Heidegger reader. Of course it is not a history in that sense, it is not a factual history, it is not a chronological history, it is Geschichte and not Historie.³⁵ After all, Heidegger often repeats ideas like this:

Wird die Neuzeit aus der Geschichte des Seyns und der Wahrheit begriffen, dann reicht sie in ihren Vorläufern bis auf Platon zurück und ist nach vorne noch nicht abgeschlossen. ... das 17. und 18. Jahrhundert sind die Bereitstellung der wesentlichen Gefügeformen der Neuzeit.³⁶

So we should not be surprised by the ana-chronological nature of this historical interpretation of the Modern. Indeed, we might even venture the maximal interpretation according to which any history in the sense of Heidegger’s Seinsgeschichte would have to be at odds with chronological history. Any such history as the history of being should be expected to be ‘ekstatic.’ The temporality of this history is often described by Heidegger in language like the following: “Geschichte ist die Rückgründung in ein Verborgenes und der Vorsprung in ein noch Unentschiedenes.“³⁷ This is language that is not all that far from the vocabulary of SZ. What was called Vorlaufen in the phenomenological phase, is called Vorsprung in the history of being, what was called Wiederholen has morphed into Rückgründen. And as for the contemporary, we find the familiar pathos of proximity and distance: “Der eigene Zeit scheinen wir immer zu nahe zu sein…Trotzdem ist die eigene Zeit – nicht die blosse >Gegenwart< - uns wiederum ferner gerückt...“³⁸ These, and similar textual clues – which I will not pursue further for lack of space – buttress the idea that this history is going to have unexpected, non-linear symmetries.

If the temporality of this history is ecstatic and not chronological then we should not be surprised if Brentano defines the Modern. Our expectation that the history come out otherwise is only an index of our latent commitment to chronologism.

While I want to arrest my inquiry in this direction here, I want to acknowledge that such instances of history – and Heidegger has precursors here – eventually have to confront quite conventional criticisms. The expected reference here would be to Hegel and his histories. But I want to point out that Heidegger’s language here is importantly pre-figured by Kant. In a fragment entitled Of a Philosophizing History of Philosophy, Kant writes the following – and I think the Heideggerian resonance is powerful:

Eine philosophische Geschichte der Philosophie ist selber nicht historisch oder empirisch sondern rational d.i. a priori möglich. Denn ob sie gleich Facta der Vernunft aufstellt so entlehnt sie solche nicht von der Geschichtserzählung sondern sie zieht sie aus der Natur der menschlichen Vernunft als philosophische Archäologie.³⁹

Bibliography

Heidegger

GA 6.2
GA 20
GA 23
GA 24
GA 45
GA 46
GA 65
GA 67
GA 76
GA 88

Additional Literature

F. Brentano, Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt, Meiner, Hamburg, 1973 (originally 1874).

J.-F. Courtine (2007), La cause de la phénoménologie, Paris, PUF, coll. « Épiméthée », 2007.

----------------- (2013), Archéo-Logique. Husserl, Heidegger, Patočka, Paris, PUF, coll. « Épiméthée », 2013.

D. Dahlstrom (2017) “Apperceptive and Non-Apperceptive Consciousness” in Etudes phénoménologiques – Phenomenological Studies, 1 (2017), 167-192.

A. de Libera (2008) “When Did the Modern Subject Emerge?” in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2008, Vol. 82, No. 2.

--------------- (2016) L’archéologie philosophique, Paris, éd. Vrin, 2016.

J.-L. Marion (1973) “Bulletin Cartésien” in Archives de Philosophie, Juillet-Septembre 1973, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 455-459.

--------------- (1975) “Bulletin Cartésien IV” in Archives de Philosophie , Avril-Juin 1975, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 253-264.

--------------- (1991) Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes: analogie, création des vérités éternelles et fondement, PUF, Paris.

--------------- (1999), On Descartes’ metaphysical prism : the constitution and the limits of ontotheology in Cartesian thought, trans. J. Kosky, University of Chicago, Chicago.

D. Moran, (2000) “Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s and Brentano’s Accounts of Intentionality,” Inquiry 43 (2000), pp.39-66.

J. Taminiaux (1989), Lectures de l’ontologie fondamentale. Essais sur Heidegger. Grenoble: Millon (Krisis).

M. Textor (2017), “Brentano on Consciousness” in Uriah Kriegel ed. The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, Routledge, New York, 2017, pp. 49-60.

D. Zahavi (2006), “Two-Takes on a One-Level Account of Consciousness,” Psyche 12 (2), May 2006.

¹ It goes almost without saying that I am reading Seinsgeschichte as History of Being, and not following Sheehan who infamously states that the expression should be translated otherwise. But that issue is also not germane to my discussion.

² Heidegger’s texts are cited as follows. SZ: Sein und Zeit. All other texts are cited from the collected works (Gesamtausgabe) by GA followed by volume number.

³ GA46 162-3. But also GA69 133. The reconstruction that follows in my sections 1 and 2 is heavily indebted to seminars by Alain de Libera.

⁴ GA65 334: “Es bleibt nur als Erstes und Letztes das Sichrichten nach, die rectitudo, und innerhalb dieser Bestimmung muss … eine Erklärung der Richtigkeit gesucht werden…”

⁵ GA45 15. Actually, in this cited passage, the directedness is that of the judgment, while elsewhere (e.g. GA46) it is the directedness of the intellect. Sometimes both construals occur in the same text. Thus, on the one hand we find in GA88 203: “Richtigkeit als Zutreffen der Aussage.” But also, on the other hand, GA88 204: “…Richtigkeit des Vorstellens… d.h. das dem Vorgestellten Entsprechende.“ Such variation notwithstanding, the same transformation in the nature of truth is thematized in GA45, GA46, GA65, GA67 and GA88, as well as GA6.2 (Nietzsche II). The first focuses genealogically on the relation between rectitude and Aristotle. In contrast, the Beiträge thematizes the transformation but places emphasis, on the one hand, on the relation to the first inception of metaphysics, and on the other hand, to the consequences of the transformation. The material related to Nietzsche (GA46, GA88 and GA6.2) contains more detailed explications tied to the broader history of philosophy.

⁶ GA65 334: “Von der rectitudo zur certitudo, Gewisssein einese Zusammenbestehens…” Also GA 67 188 “Das Sich-selbstwissen, worin die Gewissheit als solche ist, bleibt seinerseits eine Abart … der Richtigkeit (rectitudo) des Vorstellens.”

⁷ GA46 162-3.

⁸ GA 6.2 393.

⁹ GA 6.2 385.

¹⁰ Heidegger’s readings of Descartes are not necessarily all mutually compatible, much less identical. Another equally developed account is to be found in GA41, and a sustained interpretation pre-SZ is found in GA17. In GA41 e.g., the Cartesian project is presented as an outgrowth and consequence of natural science. The topic of Heidegger’s interpretation(s) of Descartes has been the subject of a substantial number of studies, not unexpectedly, in French. Some well-known contributors to that literature are J. Taminiaux (1989), J.-L. Marion (various), J.-F. Courtine (2013), A. de Libera (2016). My aim here is not to contribute to that field so much as to take the results thereof into consideration for my larger problem concerning Seinsgeschichte.

¹¹ GA 6.2 153. This equation of thinking and reflexivity occurs elsewhere too of course outside the period of Seinsgeschichte, e.g. in GA23 pp. 14, 81, 158, 197.

¹² First in Jean-Luc Marion, “Bulletin Cartésien” in Archives de Philosophie, Juillet-Septembre 1973, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 455-459, then in “Bulletin Cartésien IV” in Archives de Philosophie, Avril-Juin 1975, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 253-264, and later in On Descartes’ metaphysical prism : the constitution and the limits of ontotheology in Cartesian thought, trans. J. Kosky, University of Chicago, Chicago, 1999, p. 93.

¹³ This is the interpretation suggested by Alain de Libera: “The ‘Cartesian subject’ is the result of a retrospective projection that started with Kant.” See his “When Did the Modern Subject Emerge?” in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2008, Vol. 82, No. 2, p. 194.

¹⁴ GA 24 177. Marion (in Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes: analogie, création des vérités éternelles et fondement, PUF, Paris, 1991, p. 390) misreads the clause “mitvorgestellt, obzwar nicht ... gemeint” as if the verbs were referring to Descartes as their subject. He thus takes Heidegger to be saying that Descartes thinks this but does not state it explicitly. But in that passage Heidegger is not making statements about Descartes’ text, but rather describing the phenomenon, the Sache. As he will elsewhere, Heidegger is arguing that the I is not intended, is not the intentum of an intention, but is co-presented.

¹⁵ GA24 180.

¹⁶ It might be objected that apperception cannot be equated with thinking per se. For the purposes of my analysis, I take the following to be synonymous: the I thinking the I, cogitare, the I presenting the I, Vorstellen, self-consciousness, apperception, reflection. Since I am tracing Heidegger’s usage, this assumption is necessary. One might try to show that despite phenomenological differences, the above are all ontologically one. If one were to start with a project of disambiguating these terms, I think one would have to start with a more primitive level of concepts and ask about those equivalences: mind, das Psychische, consciousness etc. But this would not result in an analysis of Heidegger.

¹⁷ For the reader who surmises that perhaps Leibniz could be a source candidate, we refer to D. Dahlstrom’s “Apperceptive and Non-Apperceptive Consciousness” in Etudes phénoménologiques – Phenomenological Studies, 1 (2017), 167-192. Dahlstrom cites Leibniz to the effect that the soul often lacks apperception, p. 173 note 13.

¹⁸ F. Brentano, Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt, Meiner, Hamburg, 1973 (originally 1874).

¹⁹ Brentano, PE, Buch 2, Kapitel 1, §5, p. 124. “Jedes psychische Phänomen ist durch das charakterisiert, was die Scholastiker des Mittelalters die intentionale (auch wohl mentale) Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes gennant haben.” In GA24, Heidegger notoriously denies that intentio is a notion found in scholastic philosophy. Evidence to the contrary is marshalled by A. de Libera (2016) and by J.-F. Courtine (2007).

²⁰ PE Kapitel 2, Buch 2, §2, p. 143.

²¹ Aristotle, De Anima III, 2 425b12.

²² PE Kapitel 2, Buch 2, §8, p. 179.

²³ PE Kapitel 2, Buch 2, §7, p. 172. My reconstruction of Brentano’s logic is attempting to follow the text of his Psychologie closely. A slightly different organization of the same points, relying on reports and other texts and casting matters in a vernacular more palatable to analytical philosophers is in Mark Textor, “Brentano on Consciousness” in Uriah Kriegel ed. The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, Routledge, New York, 2017, pp. 49-60.

²⁴ Dan Zahavi, “Two-Takes on a One-Level Account of Consciousness,” Psyche 12 (2), May 2006.

²⁵ Zahavi, p. 2. Note that Zahavi claims that Brentano misses an additional infinite regress that still occurs for this solution. He credits Aron Gurwitsch with having first formulated this criticism of an internal infinity.

²⁶ GA67, 187-188.

²⁷ GA76, 96-7.

²⁸ If we go much earlier before Seinsgeschichte, into GA20, Heidegger in fact reads Brentano as employing a sense of the mental that is inherited from Descartes “... weil [Brentano] das Psychische im traditionellen Sinne … des immanent Bewußten (im Sinne der Descartes’schen Theorie) in seine Theorie aufnahm.” (GA20, p. 62)

²⁹ For example in D. Moran, “Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s and Brentano’s Accounts of Intentionality,” Inquiry 43, 2000, pp. 39-66.

³⁰ L.I. V §5, p. 13.

³¹ L.I. V §1, pp. 31-32.

³² L.I. V §12 (b), p. 35.

³³ Heidegger’s earlier work, his Marburg lecture courses GA20-GA26, contain a different critique of (Brentanian) intentionality. This has been studied by scholars, but not yet in relation to what we are articulating as his critique from the period of Seinsgeschichte.

³⁴ Caveat: This rapprochement is obviously being carried out in my paper on the limited textual basis which is Logical Investigation V – first edition. Is this a legitimate basis for claims concerning phenomenology as such? Did not Husserl move away from this position? But then, to this objection I would respond that as far as Heidegger is concerned, Husserl’s move away from the L.I. was precisely not an advance, not progress, but regress.

³⁵ See, e.g. among others GA76, p. 94; but really all of GA76 pp. 79-116.

³⁶ GA76, p. 79-80.

³⁷ GA76, p. 89

³⁸ GA76, p. 90

³⁹ Kant, Handschriftlicher Nachlass, AA XX, p. 141.