Abstract
The chapter proposes to consider the phenomenological ontology developed by both Jean Hering and Roman Ingarden as the main reference point to understand Heidegger’s thesis that “the essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (Being and Time, §9). Not only is Heidegger’s own project understood as a criticism of a certain phenomenological ontology, and of a certain conception of the essence-existence distinction; his project should be regarded as part of the very tradition from which he himself intends to depart. For, his own view on Dasein’s essence needs in fact to be construed as a radicalization of some of the theses underlying Hering’s and Ingarden’s theory of ideas.
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Notes
- 1.
See Husserl’s letter to Ingarden from June 20, 1921: “Ihr Bergson ist im Druck, ein Bogen schon in I. Corr. Dr. Heidegger hat das große Opfer gebracht, Ihr Msc. sprachlich auszufeilen” (Husserl, 1968, 19).
- 2.
See Heidegger’s letter to Löwith from January 25, 1921: “Im Jahrbuchband mit Pfänders Logik u.a. erscheint noch die Arbeit von Ingarden über die Gefahr einer Petitio principii in der Erkenntnistheorie. Gesehen hab ich sie nicht. Frl. Stein hat schon wieder ein neues Buch fertig über Staatsphilosophie” (Heidegger & Löwith, 2017, 32).
- 3.
On the relation between the assertion-function and the truth-making principle in Pfänder, see Mulligan, 2014, 45 ff.
- 4.
See Ingarden 1935, 34, for a distinction between existential ontological problems (which bear upon possible modes of existence) and existential metaphysical ones (concerning “the ascertainment of the factual existence of something”).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
On Ingarden’s theory on knowledge, see Chrudzimski, 1999, Chapters 4 and 5.
- 8.
To which Lipps himself had already critically referred in his book of 1927; see Lipps, 1976, 16–17.
- 9.
“Ich bin Ihnen für diesen Brief sehr dankbar. Für den Brief, weil ich aus ihm Ihre Meinung über meine Essentiale Fragen und über meinen Habilitationsvortrag kennengelernt haben (und was die Essentialen Fragen betrifft, war gerade Ihre Meinung für mich von besonderem Interesse, da ich ja doch Probleme behandelte, an denen sie schon vor mir gearbeitet haben, und da sie unter den Phaenomenologen vielleicht der einzigen sind, der meine Behauptungen auf Grund des früher Geschauten kontrollieren konnte” (Ingarden, 1926, 1).
- 10.
- 11.
The expression is also employed, for example, by Reinach in his course of 1913 Introduction to Philosophy (Reinach, 1989, 438) as well as in the 1914 lecture About Phenomenology (Reinach, 1989, 532). But the fact that his notes on Hering’s concept of essence (Reinach, 1989, 382) were taken during the WS of 1912/1913 (see Reinach, 1989, 733) corroborates our hypothesis about Hering being the first to systematically use it to mean the individual essence.
- 12.
It is worth pointing out that Hering uses more often the term “traits” (Züge) to refer to the many elements making up the essence of an individual object, and the expression “property” (Eigenschaft) appears rarely and only towards the end of the essay (Hering, 1921 527). “Property” as Eigenschaft is on the contrary massively employed by Ingarden in his Essential Questions: we are under the impression that Hering’s modal conception, only sketched and never really elaborated upon by his author, is superseded in the work of the Polish phenomenologist by a more traditional view that tends to construe of the essence as a set of properties which the object itself “has.” The situation is slightly different if we look at Ingarden 1935. Here, in fact, Ingarden recognizes that “it belongs to the essence of the object to exist in a certain mode (eine bestimmte Weise),” just as it belongs to the object’s traits (Merkmale) to be in a certain manner (Seinsweise). Hence, the problem arises that consists in clarifying the relation between these two essentially different, yet inseparable “modes of being” (Ingarden, 1935, 52–53; 65 and ff.). However, the idea of the object having (Jeder Gegenstand “hat” Eigenschaften) properties seems to still guide most of Ingarden’s analyses of the formal structure of the individual object (see for example the beginning of §12 in Ingarden, 1935, 54 and ff.).
- 13.
- 14.
Conrad-Martius had already spoken of Zentrum and Bildungswurzel of one’s own personality (Conrad-Martius, 1917, 31 and 55) in a text to which Stein will constantly refer in her works. What they intend to develop, albeit in different ways (Ales Bello, 1992, 2003; Miron, 2021, Part II), is a “centered,” and yet “dynamic” conception of the person.
- 15.
It is noteworthy that in his habilitation of 1928 written under Heidegger, Karl Löwith seems to combine both his master’s existential jargon with Husserl’s ontology. For example, Löwith speaks of the “human individuum” as “an individuum in the mode of being of ‘person’” (Löwith, 2016, 85). A person is an “individuum” (Husserl) having a certain Seinsweise (Heidegger). It is also worth remarking that in a letter from August 1927, Löwith writes to Heidegger that his critical position vis-à-vis the analytics of Being and Time is similar (auf einem analogen Punkt) to the one adopted by the Münchener vis-à-vis Husserl’s constitutive phenomenology (Heidegger & Löwith, 2017, 140).
- 16.
For a commentary on Being and Time, §9, and the notion of So-Sein, see Von Herrmann, 2005, 33–47. Unfortunately, the text entails no reference whatsoever to Hering as a possible source of Heidegger’s discourse.
- 17.
For example, were Agamben to deepen his knowledge of the early phenomenological tradition, he would find out that the modal interpretation of the “fundamental ontology” of Being and Time was already endorsed by Max Beck in the first critical review of the book (Beck, 1928). Beck’s criticism and dismissal of the “fundamental ontology” of Being and Time (whether consistent or not, we shall not decide) is explicitly directed against the reduction of the “material” plurality of the entities to Dasein’s own modes of being (see Beck, 1928, 17 and ff.). This is how we would also read the following remark by Mark Wrathall: “To understand is to be in a certain way, to embody a particular way of existing in the world” (Wrathall, 2013, 180). On Beck and Heidegger, see De Santis, (2023).
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De Santis, D. (2023). Dasein, Determination Judgments and the Essence. In: Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 126. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39590-1_2
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