The Basic Problems of Phenomenology

by Martin Heidegger, Albert Hofstadter (Translator)

A lecture course that Martin Heidegger gave in 1927, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology continues and extends explorations begun in Being and Time. In this text, Heidegger provides the general outline of his thinking about the fundamental problems of philosophy, which he treats by means of phenomenology, and which he defines and explains as the basic problem of ontology.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, German Literature, Germany, 20th Century, Theory, Psychology

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Michael Ledezma · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who wants to see what the third division of S&Z was supposed to be about. This book contains what was projected to be division iii, where Heidegger was supposed to take a more in depth approach as far as the destruktion of Kantian existence as position, existence as substance as posited by medieval ontology, basic ways of being as dualism between res extensa and res cogitans, and the cupola, or that every being regardless of its being can be talked about in terms of "is." Then the book goes into an incredibly detailed and methodical exposition of Aristotle's time, and finally into Praesens as the ontological horizon of all presence. Basically, there is no "now" outside of me. I am the "now" or my "now," as in the "Da" of my Dasein. The "now" is nothing other than Dasein emphasizing something through enpresenting, or making-present. We, as Dasein, are a temporally existing intentionally structured point of view in the world, that cares, if I'm not mistaken. Heidegger will tell you that there is an ontological difference, and he'll define it for you in saying that it consists in distinguishing Being from beings, yet, he will not tell you (at least not in this book) what exactly the meaning of Being which has been forgotten is. He will, however, do his best to give you a sense of what he means. Hopefully that is enough.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I read this ages ago and wish I still had a copy on my shelf. There is a good chunk available at googlebooks ; check out the ToC.

Basic Problems, a lecture course, belongs with that cluster of Heidegger texts which provide an ergänzung of Sein und Zeit, ie, the main thrust of his thinking prior to the famous Kehre. Among that cluster find also the Kant book and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.

Heidegger is clearer and more fun to read than Husserl.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heidegger clearly wants to sharpen his arguments from ‘B&T’ and does just that in this understandable book. It’s rare to put the words ‘understandable’ and ‘Heidegger’ in the same sentence, but this book is understandable in its own right. I would recommend reading ‘B&T’ before this one. He wants to be understood within these lectures and gets at truth as presence through the unveiling of the present-at-hand resolved by the ontological difference of the Dasein. In ‘B&T’ Heidegger doesn’t explicitly make uncovering of the present-at-hand his standard for truth through the unveiling of the presence. He does that in this book.

Most of what he says in the second half of this book is clearly elaborations of points from ‘B&T’. He actually doesn’t quite yet make his ‘turn’ since he still makes ‘care’ as his ontological foundation for Being through a projection to the future weighted by our past through the lens of our expectations in the now. Though, I only counted him using the word ‘care’ once (he could have done it more than once but he definitely is not making it foundational in this book) and he amplifies most of his other themes from ‘B&T’ but stays away from confusing neologisms as he did with ‘B&T’ as to not confuse the reader. (His ‘turn’ is usually said to come about between the first two Volumes and the last two Volumes on his work on Nietzsche and he will replace ‘care’ with ‘will’ in a similar manner as Nietzsche did. At least Arendt says that when she cites somebody else who says that in her ‘The Life of the Mind’ and Frynsk says it in ‘Heidegger: Thought and Historicity’).

When other writers write about Heidegger and ‘B&T’ they were able to say certain things that just a reading of ‘B&T’ would not necessarily make clear to most readers. This book fills in those blanks; at least I know it did for me. The ‘clearing’ is not flushed out in ‘B&T’, the ontological difference is not either; or ousia, substance, essence and existence; and even the reason why Heidegger uses ‘Dasein’ instead of ‘human’ or ‘man’ is not made explicit within ‘B&T’ until one reads this book. Also, Heidegger really walks away from what Sartre will soon take away from ‘B&T’ on the dread of existence or the authenticity of meaning coming from ‘being-on-to-death’. (Heidegger will later say he is not an Existentialist).


I didn’t really want to mention Sartre but I just read his ‘Transcendence of the Ego’ written 10 years after this book, and both books could be titled ‘Basic Problems in Phenomenology’ in as much as they both leverage off of Husserl and make Phenomenology a central character in both books. Note, that Heidegger dedicated ‘B&T’ to Husserl and works within Husserl’s constructs for making a science for the philosophy of consciousness with a similar bracketing of the world. Husserl will only consider the object itself, Heidegger will consider the world outside of the object and he’ll get at Dasein, and Dasein will always be ahead of itself from its possibilities and needs to ‘transcend’ itself in order to know itself and usually when it is in its ordinary everyday life it is distracted, ambiguously un-resolute, entangled with the they and not authentic. All of that is in ‘B&T’ but this book will make that more explicit, and I’m fairly certain the really good writers of Heidegger’s early thought such as Volume I of Lefebvre’s ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ from 1947 would have used this book as a guide as much as they would ‘B&T’. This book from Heidegger is really a necessary read for students of Heidegger and probably is Heidegger’s easiest to comprehend work if one is familiar with Kant, Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Aquinas, Scotus, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Bergson and the regular cast of other famous Philosophers (and who among us aren't familiar with those characters!). In case for those who need me to complete the thought on Sartre, Sartre would say that there is not a transcendental ego beyond the consciousness itself, the ego must be the consciousness and that’s it and that intentional state are just another name for conscious states.

This book will fill in gaps for what others assume one already knows while discussing Heidegger’s ‘B&T’. Also, I want to note something. As Beiner said in ‘Dangerous Minds’ it’s easy to read ‘B&T’ and realize that Heidegger was a right wing Hegelian (fascist/Nazi). Beiner will say that regarding Division II of ‘B&T’ and I would say it was even easy to notice it from Division I, and anybody who reads Heidegger’s 1931 ‘Intro to Metaphysics’ 1931 will be able to tell he was a Nazi; this book has no indication whatsoever that Heidegger will soon be a Nazi and he doesn’t have any of his ode to the peasant stuff ala Oswald Spengler’s ‘Decline of the West’. (Yes, I really hate Spengler the Fascist since he laid the foundation for all fascist to come after him, and Heidegger definitely fell under his spell but just not in this book).

[Renxiang Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a transcript of the lecture course delivered at University of Marburg, summer 1927, this book is an important supplement to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time which was then just published. First, Part Two (The Fundamental Ontological Question of the Meaning of Being in General), though unfinished, provides an example of going from the revealed horizon of original temporality back to the ontological question (the meaning of being) and further to Dasein's basic comportment. As the editor Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann says, "the course of lectures puts into practice the central theme of the third division of part 1 of Being and Time: the answer to the fundamental-ontological question governing the analytic of Dasein, namely, the question of the meaning of being in general, by reference to 'time' as the horizon of all understanding of being" (p. 332). As this part never appeared in Being and Time itself, this book can be regarded as continuing with the project. After all, Being and Time already reaches, through lengthy investigation on Daseinanalytik and fundamental ontology, the point where the constitutive role of temporality is revealed and a retroactive interpretation of Being from this newly-achieved horizon is in order.

However, this book does not start from here. Instead, Heidegger presents an examination of four theses concerning the meaning of being from the history of philosophy:

1) Kant's thesis that being is not a real predicate (the ontological difference between beings and being);
2) The medieval doctrine that each to being belongs essentia and existentia (the articulation of being into different senses);
3) The Cartesian distinction between res extensa and res cogitans (the distinction of different modes of being);
4) The thesis of logic that being is the copula (the underlying general sense of being and its relation to truth).

These theses themselves follow an intrinsic order of gradual discovery. 1) The ontological difference is the precondition of any genuinely philosophical inquiry. 2) But then being shows itself as merely being (existentia) and being something (essentia). 3) In terms of the essence of beings, and within the horizon of fundamental ontology that gets co-disclosed with the first two theses, a distinction can be made between things that are merely extant (intraworldly, res extensa) and beings that exist (worlding, res cogitans), transcendence. 4) Then, despite this distinction, it has to be shown that all beings have something in common, which is usually grasped by the concept of the copula but actually transcends it.

Throughout these discussions, Heidegger is actually carrying out what he proposed for Part Two of Being and Time, namely the "destroying" of the history of philosophy, except that here Heidegger merely deals with topics most relevant to the fundamental question of ontology, the meaning of being.

Methodologically, Heidegger in each section first presents the thesis and clears up misunderstanding of terms in it, for example the Kantian use of "reality". Then he argues that traditional approaches to the problem are fruitless because they never asked about the meaning of the being of the beings they appealed to. Finally, he gives a positive, phenomenological account which pays adequate attention to ontological question. In this threefold project of destruction - reduction - constitution, the claims of traditional philosophy appear not so much as sheer, unexplainable faults than as "nice tries", as attempts with the right pre-conception but failing because the basic ontological concepts were not yet articulated and brought out of confusion.

A significant theoretical vision that shows itself throughout the book is Heidegger's emphasis on the non-theoretical, or the comportment of production to be precise. For example, Kant's claim that being equals position and existence equals absolute position is interpreted as emerging from the experience of positing the material for production in front of Dasein. Moreover, the material shows resistance in production, which implies that it has a being-in-itself. When conceptualized, this turns into the sense of being as extantness [Vorhandenheit]. While this develops into the notion of existentia, essentia is derived from the form (morphe) that precedes and prefigures production. The emphasis on production practice is in line with the general orientation of Daseinanalytik in Being and Time. However production also bears a close relationship with (theoretical) intuition: the former discloses an ideal - setting-free and letting-be-themselves - that is better fulfilled by the latter; the latter, in its functioning, erases any trace of the former and retroactively mechanizes it. These later developed into Heidegger's view on the relationship between technology and science / metaphysics.

With respect to the third thesis, Heidegger also shows, within the horizon of production, that even Kant did not really make the distinction between the extant and the existent. For Kant, both sides (persons and things) are finite, i.e. produced, beings. Not producers of themselves, they are leveled down in the sense that they produce effects in one another. The whole problematic of discursive knowledge (via phenomena), as well as of affection, stems from this leveling-down. Everything is absorbed in an encompassing system of mutual influences of the same kind, of causality so to speak, no matter what kind of distinction is made between different beings. This leveling-down of beings as produced is the root of modern metaphysics, and it renders any distinction concerning the modes of being superficial.

Now the question remains whether, upon the theses being phenomenologically clarified, it is legitimate for Heidegger to proceed, as he intends, to the interpretation of the meaning of being within the horizon of temporality. For sure, in the constitution step of Part One Heidegger concludes that further clarification is impossible without the horizon of temporality. But this only necessitates such a horizon without establishing it. Consequently, at the beginning of Part Two Heidegger actually has to run another brief introduction to temporality, which even borrows, here and there, from Being and Time directly. But then the role of Part One appears unnecessary. So is the two parts rather an external combination? This question can only be solved by more decisive evidences. For now it suffices to say that more intrinsic connections between the two parts have the be found in order for the integrity of the book to be preserved.

The brief introduction to temporality leans upon a re-interpretation of Aristotle's account of time. There the twofold meaning of the now is revealed. 1) As existence, the now cannot stand on its own, but rather exists precisely by means of becoming something else. This is what we observe in chronological time [Chronos]. 2) As essence, the "what" of the now remains constant, in the sense that it was always already so [Kairos]. Put together, the constancy of Kairos gives rise to the variance in Chronos.

The temporality that constitutes Dasein's transcendence, its comportment towards beings, as well as its understanding of being, is precisely this constant Kairos. It is constant because it is not intratemporal; it is even "prior" to any "prior to" - the apriori proper. From this, Dasein's basic orientation towards beings ready-to-hand, as well as its tendency to understand being as extantness, gets interpreted with regard to a specific mode of the temporalizing of temporality: the praesens. As an ecstatic horizon of projection, the praesens constitutes the beings thus revealed as well as the understanding of the being of such beings. The consequence is that, from ancient Greek philosophy on, being is understood as presence [ousia].

In this way, the ontological foundation of being turns out to be always already undergoing a certain kind of forgetfulness. This is not equivalent to a claim on ontic forgetting (as if there were a time when ontology was not yet forgotten); rather, the forgotten understanding exists in a peculiar temporal mode: that of the always-already-was, that which is ontically most proximate yet ontologically most distant. Accordingly, philosophy cannot intuit, with no effort, the apriori of being. Rather, it has to be engaged in an infinite task of repetition [Wiederholung], and to confront with the risk that whatever it discovers ontologically may, during its circulation, be leveled down as an ontic claim.

Close to the end of the book, Heidegger also touches upon the notion of selfhood, which cannot be too important for understanding his account of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit, being one's self) and inauthenticity (not being one's self while pretending to be). The common misunderstanding of this account depends on the interpretation of the self as some enclosed realm of immanence, out of which one has to reach in order to know "transcendent" objects or other Daseins. To stick to one's self means, then, to be confined in individuality. While Heidegger does speak of "individuation", this shall not be confused with ready-made individuality, for individuation is an infinite process of returning to the null basis of Dasein's existence that can never be fully fulfilled. More importantly, for Heidegger selfhood presupposes Dasein's transcendence, because it manifests itself only via "reflection", i.e. the co-discovery accompanying Dasein's comportment towards worldly beings as a horizon. The self no longer serves, as it does in Cartesianism, as the the starting point of constitution; the certainty assigned to its inner-perception ("reflection" in a derivative sense) is nullified. An isolated self is not even a self. In this sense, the authenticity of Dasein's existence by no means necessitates its seclusion; indeed such seclusion will never be complete as long as the Dasein remains a self.

It now turns out that, given its requirement of lots of preparatory inquiries, the interpretation of the meaning of being within the horizon of temporality can only be carried out, each time, after a very long "introduction", which is the case both for this book and for Being and Time. It is also clear that, at least for Heidegger's approach, such an introduction necessarily contains a fundamental examination of the concept of time, a factical (practice-oriented, one may say) interpretation of Dasein's everyday comportment as opposed to what is dictated traditionally, and a manifesto of the genuine task of phenomenology. How much length each part takes, as well as what ingredients are added, where initially the investigation starts from, or what partial conclusions it makes particularly, differ from work to work though.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this in order to get a sense of how it helps connect Being and Time to the Beitrage --- some folks suggest Basic Problems is B+T Division Three?

Much clearer accounts of temporality than in B+T...more to be said on this later. Also, presumably one of the more important and lucid prefatory statements to the history of Being qua temporalizing of temporarily that will appear in the Beitrage.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is said that Heidegger wrote the same book over and over again. I believe that within certain periods of his life this was really the case. This book is quite similar with “Being and Time”; and both are similar with “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics”, “Logic: The Question of Truth”, “Introduction to Metaphysics”, and “Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics”. Once Heidegger got a grip on Being, there was not much else to write about – as he approached Being from different perspectives and with different arguments. By no means this is a limitation for a reader – the topic is so rich and difficult to comprehend that repetitions with slight variations help a lot.
As with “Being and Time”, the topic here is the interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality and the explication of time as the transcendental horizon for the question of Being. However, the approach here is no longer dictated by the categories and necessities of Being; but instead is historical and connects with specific topics in the traditional philosophy. In this respect and for someone familiar with the main topics in the history of philosophy - this is a more accessible book when compared with “Being and Time”. Moreover, the findings from “Being and Time” are no longer proven in lengthy and complicated arguments - while the reader tends to lose sight of the issue at hand; but are briefly stated by Heidegger in the last part of this book.
The first historical issue is the one regarding Being/existence as a real predicate. Medieval theology used this as a positive statement to construct the so-called “ontological proof of God's existence”; proof denounced by Kant as fundamentally wrong. Related to Kant's negative finding there is the insight that Being itself is not a being; more specifically Heidegger developed his “ontological difference” along these lines of inquiry. The second historical issue started with Aristotle and to the constitution of any being as essence and existence. For Heidegger, this constitution and distinction goes back to the productive comportment of the Dasein. The third historical issue is the classification of beings as nature/res extensa and mind/res cogitans; especially as it was brought into focus by Descartes. For Heidegger this classification is fundamentally wrong; as beings should be classified as ready-to-hand, present-at-hand, or Dasein. Moreover, subject/object distinction should be replaced with Dasein (as being-in-the-world) and with world (that exists in the same way that Dasein exists and that is completely different from nature understood as extant/res extensa). The fourth historical issue is the Being of copula and the truth/falsity of the predicate logic. For Heidegger, all traditional approaches to copula and to truth were not radical enough; to be so, one needs to go back to the exhibitive and letting-be-seen structure of any assertion and to the understanding of truth as unveiledness/Aletheia.
Kant defined Being both negatively and positively: Being/existence is not a real predicate and Being/existence as extantness is absolute position or perception. Heidegger completely agrees with the negative part, but not so much with the positive one. Kant, as the inflection point between medieval and modern ontology uncritically adopted metaphysical concepts like substance, existence as extantness, subject/object, and so on; and further collapsed everything within the subject with his transcendental categories. As such, Being understood as perception by Kant is wrong, but phenomenologically points in the right direction. Only when intentionality along with transcendence are understood as basic constituents of being-in-the-world, when subject and object are replaced with Dasein and world, when beings are rightly classified (i.e. as ready-to-hand, present-at-hand, and Dasein), and more fundamentally when everything is mapped back to temporality – only then Being can be grasped and understood properly. But as Heidegger puts it, these “faulty interpretations” have their reasons and necessity in the history of Being; and his own understanding of Being in the horizon of temporality may/will be proven misleading one day. In the end, there is no preferred path or method; and once a method worked and was successful in disclosing its objects it will inevitably disappear and make room for a new one – as phenomenology with its understanding of Being will wither away for later Heidegger.
Beside the above-mentioned topics there are some additional and great ones in this book. One is the radical new understanding of transcendence (i.e. how the subject goes outside himself/herself and reaches the objects) and intentionality (i.e. how the subject orients himself/herself towards objects); as for Heidegger both are explained by Dasein as being-in-the-world and more fundamentally by the original ecstatic-horizon unity of temporality. Another one is the understanding of the a priori propositions as “earlier” propositions that are time-determined – and this insight goes back not just to Kant, but all the way to Plato and his theory of recollection. Another one is a re-reading of Kant and the dangers to philosophy: world-views, magic, and the positive sciences that have forgotten their own limits. The last one is the explicit statement of the “ontological difference” for the first time and its fundamental implications for Heidegger's entire project; interestingly enough, the “ontological difference” does not appear as such in “Being and Time”.

[Tom Romer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A GOOD'UN

As is usually the case with the German philosophy professor Martin Heidegger, this is a wonderful lecture course.

To be clear, I read Heidegger books for fun and often find tremendous nourishment in Heidegger's idiosyncratic but nonetheless philosophically effective prose and use of language which works in English as well as in German.

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (BPP) deals with similar bread and butter as Being and Time but in a slightly more academic and historical way as Heidegger goes through the philosophies of Kant, Lötze, Hobbes, Mill, not to mention the obligatory Plato and Aristotle, and not forgetting medieval thinkers like Thomas, Augustine, and Suarez, to illuminate the concept of being and of Dasein in contradistinction from what is, i.e. things that are extant.

In particular, much scrutiny is brought to bear on Kant's assertion that being understood as existence is not a real predicate.

A great deal if not all of the lecture consists is philosophical fine-tuning and the phenomenological drawing of distinctions between core philosophical concepts, such as essence, presence, absence, the spannedness of time, and many others, but the effort by Heidegger is so sustained and elaborate that one certainly does come out of it all the wiser, only to quickly forget the argumentative niceties of the text in favour of a firmer grasp of the Dasein which in each case we ourselves are, to use a Heideggerian turn of phrase.

A must-read for Heidegger fans and students of his, BPP does become a bit of a slog after page 250, at least in my personal reckoning with the text, but as others have noted, this book is a very good complement to Being and Time.

I deduct a star out of sheer annoyance with the transliteration of the Greek passages into the Latin alphabet which is a move contrary to the norms of Heideggerian scholarship, and one that offends my taste as a small-time reader of Classical Greek.

The translation itself, however, is excellent.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite Heidegger lecture courses. A solid introduction to Heidegger's thought that touches lightly on Being and Time and the history of metaphisics before beginning the innitial steps towards the leap(Heidegger fanboys will understand).

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, so I haven't officially completed this work yet, but I'm almost finished and have a pretty good idea as to where Heidegger is going to go (currently working through the sections on temporality) - and it's going to be good.

Many people have already stated that this work comprises what would have been Division 3 of BT, and I'm inclined to agree. Heidegger engages in his destruction of the Western philosophical tradition. In doing so he does two things. The first is he argues that many of the problems and concepts of Western philosophy have their roots in antiquity; the second, of course, deals with how Western philosophy has looked over the being-there of the Dasein - and how all these problems and notions have Dasein as their basis. Much of this is the focus of the first section of this book; the second section deals with how temporality is the ground for ontology - and all that comes with it.

I prefer to think of this book more-so as the backbone to BT. Many of the ideas presented in BT, which are roughly articulated and presented in a hasty and messy manner, have their background arguments here. Reading this work can help you get a better understanding of Heidegger's overall project, and why he has arrived at some of the conclusions he has. Insofar as I've read, he hasn't dealt much with attunement, the they, fallenness, etc (but a lot can happen in 40 pages) but more with temporality, disclosure, ontology of difference, and aletheia - which again, comprise the core of BT.

Lastly, since it's a lecture course, this work was intended to be read to an audience, so try to read it as such. You'll find that it is very smooth and very clear. Despite this, I haven't found the work as engaging as some of Heidegger's other works, namely his works on Kant (even though Kant is mentioned very often in this text, and he looks at other aspects of Kant which you won't find in the Kantbuch or lecture).

If you like Being and Time, take the time to read this work too. You'll get a much better grasp as to where to Heidegger is coming from. However, I would not recommend this to a beginner. It is a difficult and rigorous text, and unlike in BT where Heidegger is "cleaning the slate" so to speak, he is definitely NOT doing that here. He is looking closely at the tradition, so do your homework before reading.

But for the beginner...what I would recommend is to read and understand Kant, first. Get a good understanding of Kant (especially the First Critique) and then go read Heidegger. He will make ALOT more sense if you do. The section on the Kantian Thesis will be incomprehensible without a strong background in Kant.

[Chant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will admit that BP is far easier to read than BT however the text is still a challenge to get through as it's assumed you have a steady grounding of western philosophy with you (mainly Kant in this case).

The text is of a course that he gave right around the time of the publication of BT, so this book would be considered early Heidegger, which helps with getting a better footing when trying to tackle BT.

I will return to this text for further study as I know that I haven't gotten the whole of what Heidegger was trying to lay out and I assume this will be the case for some time.

Lastly, I've heard many online say that this could be a substitute to BT, I partially agree with this only on the grounds of it being more understandable than BT but there really isn't any substitute for actually digging into BT.

[Edward Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where newtons laws "true" before Newton? Is the "true" objective,subjective,or neither? What about time? In this book, heidegger goes in depth into aristotle's thoughts on time with some passing remarks on Augustine's thoughts on time before giving his own questions on time. The apriori is not eternal or timeless. Time is the earliest of the early and "earlier" than even the apriori as possibility. Much clearer and in depth than Being and Time. Only place I can think of that has an adequate discussion of "horizon."

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theres some nice history of philosophy. You'll see his influences more at display here, from Kant, Aristotle and his critical discussions of Scholastics and Modern thinkers like Hobbes and Mills

[RA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely clearer than the obscure Hegel, nice approach starting with a historical perspective.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Heidegger addresses the concept of time itself, which I felt he touched upon rather obliquely in his masterwork "Being and Time". Perhaps this is more masterful ?

[Ozifer Eris]

My all-time favorite of Heidegger's books. BPoP is my absolute fav, and second after this one is his FPoM.

[Mills College Library]

142.7 H465p 1988

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Martin Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology is no fun to read. When the book is intelligible, it is perceptive; when the book is unintelligible, I'd much rather experience the pain of getting a tattoo. Take this unintelligible paragraph, for example, when Heidegger gets mired in his own jargon-filled mumbo-jumbo (p. 89):

We must now specify more particularly this distinctio or this compositio that subsists between essentia and existentia in the case of the ens finitum and see how the distinctio is formulated, in order to obtain from this a clearer view of the sense of essence and existence and to see the problems that emerge here. Notice must be taken--we have already touched on this in our presentation of Kant--that the possible, res, quidditas, also has a certain being: to be possible is different from to be actual. If reality and possibile coincide, it is worthy of note than in Kant reality and possibility belong to different classes of categories, quality and modality. Realitas, too, is a specific mode of being of the real, just as actuality is that of the actual.

Look perplexed. Look very perplexed. In general, I think that if it can't be stated clearly, it shouldn't be stated at all.

That said, I do think Heidegger has contributed, albeit in unnecessarily obscure prose, a decent account, only occasionally in this work and more specifically in Being and Time, to a richer understanding of the way human beings' everyday activities are largely non-conscious.

[Lucas Sipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Being & Time, I found this work to be simultaneously brilliant, impenetrable, enlightening, and immobile. As a continuation of Being & Time, Heidegger revisits many of the thematic elements and ideas in original and more penetrating ways. One doesn't need to read Being & Time to really get this work but I highly recommend it. Likewise, being unfamiliar with the principal thinkers Heidegger examines (Kant, Descartes, and the people on the section in logic) also made those sections harder to get. Of course, Heidegger is a brilliant lecturer, so I still gained much from the text. In terms of %, however, maybe only 5-10% of the text I really got so there's much left to mine.

Being raised in a conservative world, Heidegger is a challenge to many of the implicit beliefs/ assumptions within that world. Not a weak, sad challenge but a robust and rich challenge that should guide me towards truth (unveiling to use Heidegger's definition). There's so much to say about this text. Unfortunately, I've never been good at expressing myself; even less so when so much of my understanding is conflicted. You should read this text well. Take notes, take time, and re-read when you have chance.

[Teddee]

partially read?

[Ellis Tawny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful deep dive into some of the problems raised in Being and Time.
Very much enjoyed

[Jacob Sparks]

Hard. Good.

[Erik Lind]

The lecture course The basic problems of phenomenology was held in 1927, the same year that Being and Time was published. While, naturally, it doesn’t present the reader with as encompassing a view of Heidegger’s philosophy as Being and Time does, nevertheless, it expounds some of its central themes, most notably the ”Ontological difference” and temporality as condition of possibility of transcendence. However, while Being and Time only summarily raises the task of a fruitful ”deconstruction” of the concepts of the western philosophical tradition, Heidegger, in this lecture course, goes to great lengths to demonstrate his concerns with the western canon. Above all with Kant and his equation of being with perception:

”What is designated by perception is a phenomenon whose structure is determined by intentionality [...] Intentionality is not an extant relation between an extant subject and an extant object but is constitutive for the relational character of the subject’s comportment as such. As the structure of subject-comportment, it is not something immanent to the subject which would then need supplementation by a transcendence; instead, transcendence, and hence intentionality, belongs to the nature of the entity that comports itself intentionally. Intentionality is neither something objective nor something subjective in the traditional sense (p, 314)”.

Recommended as supplementary material to Being and Time, and as a general introduction to Heidegger.