PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION IN HEIDEGGER AND FINK

ON THE PROBLEM OF THE WAY BACK FROM THE TRANSCENDENTAL TO THE MUNDANE SPHERE

James McGuirk

From the time of his earliest phenomeno-logical writings, Edmund Husserl took the taskof grounding the natural and human sciencesto be one of his leading missions. While oppo-sition to naturalism and psychologism spurredhis thinking, this in no way implied an anti-sci-entific strand in his philosophy. Rather,Husserl felt that the sciences fell into incoher-ence when they attempted to understand them-selves in terms of their own positivity such thatthey failed to bring out the issue of meaning-constitution which is a sine qua non of theirvery existence. Whether it be through the no-tion of intentionality simpliciter or the notionof lifeworld, Husserl’s whole philosophic ca-reer can be seen as the attempt to mine the ori-gins of the production of scientific knowing. Inthe context of this attempt, Husserl’sphenomenological reduction is to be under-stood as seeking to trace and lay bare the con-stituting sources that make the scientific en-deavor meaningful such as will providescience and scientists with a coherent sense ofthe true import of their endeavors. As such,while Husserl certainly understood hisphenomenological insights as relativizing (bygrounding) the mundane sciences, he also un-derstood this relativization as heralding a newEnlightenment that was as much for the benefitof scientists as philosophers. Husserl’s faith inthe capacity of phenomenological insight toenter and positively transform the mundanesphere was not one shared by all of his follow-ers however.1 In what follows, I wish to explorethis matter in relation to the treatment of thephenomenological reduction in the thought ofEugen Fink and Martin Heidegger.

On the face of it, there could not be twomore different interpretat ions of thephenomenological reduction than those foundin Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation,2 on theone hand and Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit,3 onthe other. While Fink claims that a thoroughunfolding of the reduction leads back to a “re-gion” of pre-being (Vor-sein) in which all hu-man possibilities, including those of knowing

and speaking, are ultimately constituted,Heidegger insists that, at bottom, the reductiondiscloses Dasein’s Being-in-the-world as theground behind which it is impossible to in-quire. Thus, while Heidegger insists that theperformance of the reduction must ultimatelybe understood as a human possibility, Finkwants to claim that the entire sphere of humanpossibilities and all concern with the meaningof being is to be understood against the horizonof the pre-being to which transcendental sub-jectivity ultimately refers. And yet, I wouldsuggest that there is at least one point of con-tact between Heidegger and Fink which has todo with the capacity for communication be-tween the phenomenological and mundanespheres. I will argue that while Heidegger in noway wishes to endorse Fink’s radical break be-tween the transcendental and mundanespheres—in fact he attempts precisely to bringthem closer to one another by avoiding all talkof a constituting ego pole—his version of thereduction as explored in the phenomenon ofanxiety leads to a disruption in which theinsights garnered from the transcendentalsphere struggle to be heard in the sphere ofmundane existing.

Phenomenological Reduction and the Split

in Transcendental Life

Let us begin with a brief consideration ofFink’s text and its implications for continuitybetween the transcendental and mundanespheres. The Sixth Cartesian Meditation waswritten as part of a much greater co-operativeproject between Fink and Husserl in which theCartesian Meditations, delivered as lectures inParis in 1929, were to be reworked as a morecomprehensive introduction to Husserlianphenomenology.4 The text itself, described as“a sketch of a transcendental theory ofmethod” sets itself the task of bringing to lightproblems that are “latent in Husserl’s phenom-enology” (SCM 1). Specifically, Fink is afterthe development of a “phenomenology of phe-

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nomenology” (SCM 8) as an investigation intothe horizon against which the very activity ofphenomenologizing is to be understood. In anarticle written one year after the drafting of theSixth Cartesian Meditation, Fink frames thisdiscussion in terms of a defense of Husserliantranscendental subjectivity against its misrep-resentation in neo-Kantian circles.5 The cen-tral thrust of this discussion comprises a clari-fication of certain unclear positions presentedin the first book of Husserl’s Ideas—partlyHusserl’s own fault according to Fink (SCM101, 108)—that lead to the impression thatHusserl’s phenomenological reduction is es-sentially an “absolutization” of the imma-nence of consciousness. Fink’s defense pro-ceeds through a thorough discussion of thetrue terminus of the unfolding of the reduction.In the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, the debatewith neo-Kantianism is sidelined but the gen-eral thrust is the same; namely, to raise thequestion of how transcendental subjectivityand the reduction itself is to be understoodphenomenologically.

The most serious of the problems latent inHusserl’s phenomenology, according to Fink,is the absence, in Husserl’s published writings,of a constructive phenomenology. The notionof constructive phenomenology is contrastedhere with a regressive phenomenology whilethe two of these together comprise the fullscope of the phenomenological reduction.While a regressive phenomenology is an in-quiry into the constituting structures of tran-scendental life, including discrete acts as wellas deeper strata such as temporality and em-bodiment, that are responsible for world con-stitution, constructive phenomenology refersto “the totality of all phenomenological theo-ries that in motivated constructions go beyondthe reductive givenness of transcendental life”(SCM 11). Thus, while Husserl’s own writingsare replete with examples of regressive analy-ses into intentional constitution, they are des-perately lacking in investigations into “tran-scendental questions about the ‘beginning’and ‘end’ of world-constitution, bothegological and intersubjective” (SCM 11).Constructive phenomenology, as StevenCrowell has noted, entails, then, the attempt tomove beyond the priority of intuitivegivenness as found in the “principle of all prin-ciples” of Ideas I in order to engage with the

type of speculative questions that are sug-gested by the practice of phenomenology butwhich cannot be answered from within thatpractice.6

But if we are to lay bare these constructivequestions of phenomenology, we must makethe transcendentally constituting subject itselfthe theme of an investigation rather than sim-ply its action of world-constitution (SCM 13).Only thus can phenomenology complete orcome back to itself. In pursuit of this task, Finkmaintains that the splitting of the ego(Ichspaltung) that is featured in Husserl’s writ-ings between its natural attitude and the tran-scendentally constituting instantiations willnot suffice. Fink suggests, then, a three-waysplitting of the ego7 as (1) the ego captivated bythe world of the natural attitude, (2) the ego asconstituting the world transcendentally, and(3) the ego as phenomenologizing onlookerwhose focus rests on the activity of transcen-dental constitution.8 His transcendental theoryof method or phenomenology of phenomenol-ogy takes place from the point of view of thethird of these egos and is concerned not withworld-constitution itself but of the being to-gether of transcendental subjectivity andworld-constitution as a whole. And again, thisis not understood as a new reduction but onlyas a proper unfolding of the reduction (SCM 6)or a leading back through transcendental life tothe origins of world-belief.9 Essentially whatoccurs here is that mundane existing and tran-scendental world-constitution are thought to-gether and placed under epoché from a thirdposition (the phenomenologizing onlooker)that is suggested but never discussed inHusserl’s theory of the reduction.

One of the most noteworthy aspects ofFink’s enterprise is the meaning of this leadingback for the question of being. Picking up on asuggestion from Husserl himself, Fink main-tains that the phenomenological reduction,properly understood, leads beyond the scopeof the question of being to where being itself isconstituted.10 In his dismay at the directiontaken in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Husserlsought to clarify the meaning of thephenomenological reduction by insisting thateven the sense “human being” is transcenden-tally constituted such that Heidegger’s funda-mental starting point in Dasein’s Being-in-the-

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world is a naïve anthropology that has not yetentered into the reduction.11

This claim is unfortunate both because it in-troduces an unnecessary ambiguity into thesense of what it means to be human and alsobecause inasmuch as Husserl intends the sense“human being” to refer to the empirical, mun-dane ego, it represents a deep misunderstand-ing of what Heidegger intended in the use ofthe word Dasein. Regardless, Fink seizes uponthis line of thought in Husserl to make it thecornerstone of his own meontology. The pointof this is to stress the separation between thetranscendental and mundane spheres. If theIdeas gave the impression of an “absolutiza-tion” of the immanence of consciousness, thenit could easily be misinterpreted as making anessentially psychological point about the na-ture of mental activity. As such, it could beread as asserting a new psychologism that de-rived meaning from the mental processes ofthe thinking subject living in the natural world.Fink, though, like Husserl, wants to stress thattranscendental subjectivity is precisely not inthe world because it is world-constituting. Butthis implies, in a way that Husserl did not al-ways give due attention to, that “being” is to beconceived as the positing of what is existentsuch that it is meaningful only in the context ofworld-constitution itself. Since the point ofview of the phenomenological onlooker liesoutside of this entire process, it cannot bemeaningfully discussed in the language of be-ing. As such, a reduction of the very idea of be-ing is called for according to Fink (SCM 71). Itis precisely here that Fink goes beyond the let-ter of the Husserlian corpus in order, he thinks,to fulfill its spirit. He insists that thetranscendental subject cannot be considered“existent” since what is existent is what isconstituted. Thus,

The theoret ical exper ience of the

phenomenological onlooker ontifies the “pre-

existent” life-processes of transcendental sub-

jectivity . . . (by lifting) the constitutive con-

struction-processes out of the condition of pre-

being (Vor-sein) proper to them and for the very

first time objectivates them. (SCM 76)

Thus, in the phenomenology of phenomenol-ogy, we must speak of the transcendental sub-ject as though it were existent since the lan-

guage of being constituted anonymously in themundane realm before the performance of thereduction is the only language that is availableto us.

This “as though” structure leads inevitablyto the conclusion that natural language or thelanguage of the everyday is fundamentally in-capable of expressing transcendental insightsbecause natural language knows only the vo-cabulary of being. Thus, along with its encom-passing of the idea of being, the reduction mustalso extend over language (SCM 93) andknowing (SCM 139). The situation of tran-scendental subjectivity cannot be expressedliterally or even by analogy since analogy toooperates within the realm of the ontic and socannot reach beyond itself to capture the “non-ontic” meanings of the transcendental (SCM90). The best we can hope for, in fact, is arather peculiar analogy between transcenden-tal meaning and the analogy that holds in natu-ral language (SCM 91) but even here, tran-scendental meaning is in constant rebellion(SCM 89) against the form of its expressionwhich causes it inevitably and always to fail toexpress what it intends. As Fink notes,

Phenomenological sentences can therefore

only be understood if the situation of the giving

of sense to the transcendental sentence is always

repeated, that is, if the predicatively explicative

terms are always verified by phenomenologiz-

ing intuition. (SCM 92)

Phenomenological insight, that is, cannot bereported but must be enacted. This has impor-tant consequences for both the possibility ofself-understanding of the phenomenologistand also for the possibility of communicativere-entry into the mundane sphere after the per-formance of the reduction.

12Fink discusses the

problem of communication under the headingof the secondary enworlding of transcendentalsubject ivi ty (SCM 99). The primaryenworlding is, of course, the world-constitut-ing action that takes place as the formation ofthe natural attitude which proceeds anony-mously until it is rescued and disclosed to itselfin the phenomenological reduction. By con-trast, secondary enworlding refers to the ne-cessity of re-entry into the mundane sphere inwhich the phenomenologist must express him-self in the natural community of life in which

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he stands (SCM 99). Not unlike the prisonerreleased from his shackles in Plato’s Republic,the transcendental phenomenologist is con-fronted with the daunting task of announcingand communicating transcendental insights inthe mundane sphere (SCM 101) in a way thatwill be both intelligible to non-phenomenolo-gists and adequate to these insights them-selves. This proves, of course, to be an impos-sible task because upon re-entry thephenomenologist enters again the horizon ofhuman possibilities in which everyday en-gagements as well as mundane sciences holdsway (SCM 104). But this entire horizon of thehumanly possible is precisely constituted bytranscendental subjectivity. The reduction isan “unhumanizing” (SCM 120) process inwhich the human subject itself is shown not tobe the phenomenological subject but a consti-tuted meaning within the field of transcenden-tal subjectivity such that the truths acquired inthe reduction are untranslatable into themundane sphere.

There are two important points worthstressing here. The first is simply that there is,of course, no question of an actual re-entry intothe mundane sphere in the way Fink discussesit here. That is not the point. The point is ratherthat the proper unfolding of the reduction hasrevealed a deeper stratum of subjectivity thatresists integration into our ordinary self-un-derstanding as reflecting human beings. Be-yond the notions of what is constituted and actsof constituting, the “phenomenologizing on-looker” is suggestive of a dimension of subjec-tivity that observes world constitution butwithout any active interest in it. And since this“onlooker” stratum lies outside of the realm inwhich ordinary senses of language and beingare operative, it cannot be understood by re-turning to these senses, even in modified form.The second point, which is crucial, has to dowith the ambiguous sense of the word “mun-dane” in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation. Atone level, there is something enormously un-controversial about Fink’s claim that transcen-dental insight cannot be expressed in mundanelanguage since this is entirely in accord withHusserl’s notion that transcendental phenom-enology is a foundational science that lies be-hind the mundane sciences as the condition oftheir possibility. In other words, phenomenol-ogy is concerned with the acts and structures

that accomplish what is objectivated in themundane sciences. From a different perspec-tive, this is also Heidegger’s point about thedistinction between ontic and ontologicalsenses in which the former are only possiblethrough the latter. Both are concerned with thediscovery of a ground in subjectivity that con-ditions the possibility of the manifestation ofworldly objects or states of affairs such thatthey stress that the dynamism of subjectivitymust not be reified or inscribed into the termsof that which it enables or we risk losing thesense of what subjectivity most essentially is.Yet, when Fink speaks of the impossibility ofexpressing transcendental insight in the mun-dane sphere he means something more thanthis. He means that transcendental subjectivitycannot be thought of as a res to be sure but he isalso suggesting that what is uncovered by thereduction at its most searching level is anaspect of subjectivity that is at odds with anyand all sense of the meaning of humanexistence.

The “mundane” as such denotes not onlythe epistemological sphere of human knowingbut also the existential sphere of human being.Fink even goes so far as to say thatphenomenologizing is not a human possibility(SCM 118) which is to say that phenomeno-logizing is not, in any sense, a perspective thatis available to the human scientist. In second-ary enworlding, the insights gained in the re-duction must by necessity take on the appear-ance of a human attitude (SCM 113) such thatthey appear to represent a contribution to thediscussion of the origins of meaning. But thisappearance is in fact a perversion of the true es-sence of phenomenological insight insofar asit means appearing as a part of that which, as awhole, it has constituted (i.e., the domain ofthe human). As Fink puts it,

Performing the reduction means for man to rise

beyond (transcend) himself, it means to rise be-

yond himself in all his human possibilities. To

express it paradoxically, when man performs

the phenomenological reduction (un-human-

izes himself), he carries out an action that “he”

just cannot carry out, that does not lie in the

range of his possibilities (SCM 120).

Fink insists on placing every understandingof being, the use of language and all that is or

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can be an object of knowledge in the domain ofthe constituted with the result that the reduc-tion that discloses the being-together of consti-tuted and constituting must lead us into “thedarkness of something unknown, somethingwith which we have not been previously famil-iarized in terms of its formal style of being.”13

It leads us into the “monstrous solitude of tran-scendental existence” (SCM 99) which, inas-much as it constitutes all forms of human dis-course, simultaneously shuts off all possibilityof human communication about what isdiscovered here.

This construal of the reduction in terms ofthe “onlooker” consciousness and the sense ofthe term “mundane,” marks a development ofthe Husserlian project that is, at the same time,a break with that very project. This can be seenin the fact that, while largely supportive ofFink’s enterprise,14 Husserl seems very un-comfortable with Fink’s conclusions, espe-cially concerning the purported “unhumanity”of phenomenologizing. Thus, in the footnotesto the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl in-sists that the reduction must not be understoodas a break with the human but as that which en-ables “a new, higher humanity” (SCM 130).Thus, the reduction breaks through the dogma-tism of the natural attitude but in such a waythat it provides “a new worldly sense” which“gives (the phenomenologist) as man in theworld new tasks” (SCM 130). Steven Crowellis surely right, then, to describe Fink’s as agnostic phenomenology insofar as it seems toentail a knowing that cannot really know or, atleast, can never say what it knows. AndCrowell’s suspicion is largely confirmed bythe fact that Fink ends the Sixth CartesianMeditation with a (Hegelian) meditation onthe terminus of phenomenological inquiry asthe Absolute which is subject, object and styleof knowing of phenomenological research(SCM 133ff.).15

Through his development of constructivephenomenology, Fink has insisted upon the es-sential irreality of the transcendental subjectbecause the world of the everyday down to itsgrammatical and ontological architecture isplaced on the constituting/constituted side ofthe transcendental phenomenological equa-tion while the “onlooker” stratum of subjectiv-ity, to which the reduction finally points, liesbeneath or beyond the mutually implicative

structure of the constituted and constituting.The phenomenological reduction, as such, ispresented as an “awakening” from “the age-old sleep of being-outside-itself” (SCM 113)of transcendental subjectivity. All of thisleaves the reader of the Sixth Cartesian Medi-tation with a powerful sense of the unreality ofthe everyday world which takes on the flavorof a dream world whose constitution can bewitnessed by a subjectivity that can never ap-pear within the world but which yet seesthrough its illusions. There is no question ofphenomenological insights re-entering themundane sphere in order to illuminate, as therealization of a human self-understandingbased on a higher transcendental level of re-flection, since the self-understanding gainedby the reduction is one that places subjectivityfinally outside of the domain of the human. Assuch there are only two possibilities for thecommunication between phenomenologistand non-phenomenologist: (1) that thephenomenologist express his insights as “ap-pearance truths” within the realm of mundanescience and knowing such that they radicallyfail to express what they really intend; or (2)that he leads the non-phenomenologist intoperformance of the reduction which, to besure, offers genuine insight but only at the costof permanently divesting the everyday of itsreality.

Facticity or Meontology?

According to Steven Crowell, Heidegger’sown phenomenology developed partlythrough a skepticism concerning the meontictendency that while full-blown in Fink’s text,was often suggested in the writings ofHusserl.16 From the earliest appearance of thereduction in 190717 through to later texts,Husserl persistently understands the reductionand the epoché that precedes it as acquiring“my pure living, with all the pure subjectiveprocesses making this up, and everythingmeant in them, purely as meant.”18 Crucially,the field of givenness of this pure living in-cludes the ego’s apperception of itself as hu-man being living in the world and this as a con-stituted sense. Thus, while we have seen thatHusserl was skeptical of some of the conclu-sions drawn in Fink’s unfolding of the reduc-tion, it remains true that in presenting the “hu-

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man” as a constituted sense, Fink wasdeveloping a Husserlian position. This ques-tion of the transcendental subject’s existencein the world as phenomenological datum be-came, famously, the breaking point in the rela-tionship between Husserl and Heidegger.19 ForHeidegger it was senseless to speak of humanbeing as a constituted sense, as a thing amongthings in the world when, in fact, phenomenol-ogy was properly understood as the way inwhich factically existing Dasein raises and ex-plores the question of meaning and thereforeof Being that defines its own way of being (SZ§7). As is well known, then, Heidegger consid-ered the existing Being-in-the-world of Daseinto be the proper starting point of phenomeno-logical work and not a sense behind which weshould seek to burrow. To seek to get behindexisting Dasein, for Heidegger, implies a be-trayal of the promise first offered by the phe-nomenology of the Logical Investigations.20

But if this is so, how can we speak of aphenomenological reduction in relation to thework of Heidegger as we are attempting to dohere? Heidegger’s insis tence on theprimordiality of Being-in-the-world of Daseinis suggestive of a phenomenology without re-duction to the noetic-noematic structures ofconsciousness in favor of one in which themotto “to the things themselves” involves at-tention not to the conscious life of the subjectbut to it’s way of existing. Furthermore, no-where in Sein und Zeit is the notion ofreduction mentioned.

In spite of this, there is more than enoughevidence to justify speaking of a reduction inrelation to Heidegger. For example, in a lecturecourse from the summer semester of 1927,Heidegger explicitly employs the notion of thereduction. He even acknowledges adopting theliteral wording of Husserl’s reduction, albeitwithout the latter’s substantive intent.21 That is,he rejects Husserl’s understanding of the re-duction as leading back to the transcendentallife of consciousness in which things and per-sons are constituted, preferring to define thereduction as follows:

For us, the phenomenological reduction means

leading phenomenological vision back from the

apprehension of a being, whatever may be the

character of that apprehension, to the under-

standing of the being of this being.22

In terms of phenomenological method, here,reduction proves to be inadequate such that itmust be augmented by a phenomenologicalconstruction (konstruktion) which brings thebeing of beings into view in a free projection(GA 24 30/BPP 22) and a phenomenologicaldestruction (destruktion) in which the con-cepts used to lay hold of the meaning of beingin the tradition are deconstructed down to thesources from which they were first drawn (GA24 31/BPP 23).The complex tripartite natureof Heidegger’s understanding of phenomeno-logical method in this text is beyond the scopeof the present investigation though it seemsclear that what is at stake is the addition of aprinciple of hermeneutics (konstruktion) and aprinciple of historicality (destruktion) to theHusserlian edifice. What is interesting,though, is the fact that he seems willing to usethe language of reduction at all in relation tohis phenomenological thinking. Yet given thatit is present here in a lecture course presentedafter the writing of Sein und Zeit, is it not rea-sonable to assume that the reduction is alsopresent in Sein und Zeit itself, even if it notnamed as such?

At a first glance, it might be tempting tothink of Heidegger’s insistence on the onticpriority of the ontological question—namely,the irreducibility of factically existingDasein—as a way of conceptualizing the re-duction insofar as it bars the way to and there-fore takes the place of the “onlooker” con-sciousness in Fink. However, Heidegger’sinsistence on the priority of Dasein and the on-tological question in §7 of Sein, und Zeit, forexample, is not intended to do any more thanlay out in advance the conditions in which thepractice of phenomenology is meaningful. Initself, it is a rather vague and indefinite startingpoint which does not enable us to move out ofthe natural attitude and into the phenomeno-logical (in Husserl’s terms) or anything analo-gous to this move. For Husserl, the reduction isa happening which opens the way to philo-sophical insight so if there is a reduction inSein und Zeit, it must at the very least fulfillthis minimum requirement. What is offered in§7 of Sein und Zeit prefigures, to be sure, theanswer Heidegger will give regarding the situ-ation of the clearing of being in the structuresof existing Dasein, but it does not yet tells us

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how this answer will properly be brought intoview.

According to Rudolf Bernet, there are infact two reductions evident in Sein und Zeit;one that takes place within inauthentic existingand another which enables authenticity.23 Thefirst of these, says Bernet, has to do with thevarious ways in which the tool world draws at-tention to itself by being unready-to-hand(Unzuhanden). Thus, when a tool becomes un-usable (unverwendbar), obtrusive (Aufdring-lich), or obstinate (Auffässig), it reveals the re-lational totality of the tool world which untilsuch an occurrence was concealed by its famil-iarity (PR 260). The second reduction is car-ried out in the mood of anxiety (§40) in whichDasein is called out of its “lostness” in dasMan and brought “before itself” (SZ 182; BT226; PR 264). These reductions have in com-mon that they both reveal the phenomenon ofworldhood but while the first discloses theworldhood of the world (as intersubjectivephenomenon one might say) the second dis-closes the irreplaceable singularity of Daseinas Being-in-the-world. At stake in the reduc-tion, then, is not the “pure conscious life of theEgo”24 but precisely Dasein’s individuatedBeing-in-the-world in terms of its ownmostpossibility for being (Ausgezeichnete Mög-lichkeit).

Anxiety and the Phenomenological

Reduction

Let us look more closely at the second ofthese reductions.25 The sections of Sein undZeit that deal with anxiety are among the dens-est of the work and yet they are absolutely cru-cial to Heidegger’s overall project inasmuchas, even beyond the four major existentialia(Befindlichkeit, Rede, Verstehen and Verfallen-heit), anxiety discloses Dasein to itself in themost primordial of manners.

But if Heidegger’s discussion of anxiety isto be treated as a way into the phenomeno-logical reduction, one of the first points to noteis the fact that the reduction is here understoodmore in terms of an undergoing than a volun-tary act of reflection as is so often the case withHusserl. Heidegger’s use of reduction then, tothe extent that it is legitimate to speak of this, isplaced firmly in the context of the attunement(Befindlichkeit) of Dasein. In the Fundamental

Concepts of Metaphysics lectures of 1929/30,Heidegger says that attunement is the “funda-mental way in which Dasein is as Dasein”26 inthe sense that Dasein’s Being-in-the-worldwith entities and with others is always giventhrough some mood or other that is determina-tive of Dasein as existing. To exist as subject isto be attuned and it is crucial for Heideggerthat the investigation of subjectivity can onlybe fruitful as long as it remains phenomeno-logically attentive to this attuned nature ofDasein’s “being-here.” As such, Heideggerwould be in principled opposition to Fink’s di-alectical speculations that start at the point atwhich the subject ceases to show itself. But ifthe subject is always attuned in some way orother, on what basis do we consider anxiety aprivileged attunement? More importantly,how does it bear upon the problem of the wayback into the realm of mundane acting after theperformance of the phenomenological reduc-tion?

In §40 of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger de-scribes anxiety as the basic state-of-mind ofDasein, because “in anxiety, Dasein getsbrought before itself through its own being, sothat we can define phenomenologically thecharacter of the entity disclosed in anxiety”(SZ 184; BT 228). In anxiety, one feels “un-canny” (SZ 188; BT 233), a sense which pointsto a peculiar relationship with entities and theworld inasmuch as worldhood itself becomesconspicuous. Dasein is literally “not at home”(Unheimlich) with itself in anxiety in the sensethat that the familiarity of the world of every-day comportments is disturbed and dis-rupted.27 Heidegger maintains that “that in theface of which one has anxiety is Being-in-the-world as such” (SZ 186; BT 230), which is tosay that it is not the obtrusiveness of this or thatentity that emerges, or even the world of enti-ties in itself as relational totality, but Dasein’svery being in the world that is obtrusive. Inother words, anxiety reveals Dasein to itself interms not of what is encountered but in termsof the possibility of encounter. The bewitchinghold of the determinative is broken in this fun-damental attunement such that Heidegger in-sists that both readiness-to-hand and entitieswithin-the-world sink away (SZ 187; BT 231)and the world is encountered as “utterinsignificance” (SZ 187; BT 231).

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The “falling away” of the world is, paradox-ically, necessary for Dasein itself as the groundof the manifestation of the world to come intoview inasmuch as Dasein is thrown back uponitself and forced to see its average mode of be-ing as a flight into the self of the “they” whichis a refusal to take up its “being free for the au-thenticity of its being” (SZ 188; BT 232) as fi-nite Being-in-the-world. But this is not the endof the story since the notion of anxiety is, ofcourse, intimately tied to the discussion ofconscience that is taken up at §§55f. of Seinund Zeit. In the call of conscience (Ruf des

Gewissens), as Heidegger understands it,Dasein calls itself back from “lostness” towarda resolute taking over of its being.28 Here,Heidegger is keen to develop the phenomenonof conscience along ontological lines and toavoid the traditional moralistic interpretationof this phenomenon. We pervert the meaningof the call of conscience, he says, if we inter-pret it in terms of a debt or deficit in relation toa moral law or even other Daseins (SZ §58).29

The call does not come from without but fromwithin. It is Dasein itself that calls to itself inthe call of conscience and yet Heidegger is ea-ger to point out here that this identity of callerand called in the phenomenon of conscience isnot an empty formalism (SZ 277; BT 322). Infact, the structure of this identity is highlycomplex insofar as the call comes from Daseingripped by the mood of anxiety while it calls toDasein as lost in the “they” self which is “cap-tivated by the world,” as Fink might put it. Thesplit between caller and called here is such thatHeidegger likens the call to an alien voice (SZ277; BT 322) because what could be morealien to the “they” self that lets itself be carriedalong in the anonymous non-individuatedaverageness of the everyday than “the self thathas been individualized down to itself in un-canniness [Unheimlichkeit] and been throwninto the nothing?” (SZ 277; BT 322). The call,in other words, is a transcendence in imma-nence, that addresses Dasein as “Guilty” (SZ281; BT 326) because, in its fallen, inauthenticstate of everydayness, lost in the “they,”Dasein fails to “recognize itself” (SZ 277; BT322) as singular and instead lives in a state of“going along with things.” Everyday Daseinreneges upon its potentiality for being becauseeverything is decided for it in advance.

When Dasein properly attends to the call, itbecomes radically individualized for the firsttime such that it calls itself back from“lostness” towards a resolute taking over of itsbeing. Heidegger insists that what the call re-veals is the nothing of the world, or the onto-logical “nullity” at the basis of Dasein’s being(SZ 283; BT 329), which is to say that it revealsno greater context into which the existence ofDasein can be inscribed. Dasein must answerfor its own “being here” and this is why the calldoes not report any event (SZ 277; BT 322)since to have a content in this way would re-in-scribe the call in the idle chatter (das Gerede)of the “they.” Rather, the call summons by re-maining silent, “nothing ensues” (SZ 279; BT324), it has nothing to tell. Dasein is simplyconfronted with the fact of its not being athome in the world such that it is called out ofthe immortal anonymity of the “they” and intothe radical individuality of its finite exis-tence.30

Put otherwise, anxiety and the call discloseDasein’s Being-in-the-world as a whole whichis to say that the world is bounded and dis-closed as a meaning totality for Dasein. This isnot to say, of course, that Dasein and world areseparated from one another in anxiety, but onlythat the disclosure of Being-as-a-whole is anontological significance which cannot betranslated into ontic terms since the latter areonly possible within the world. This is why thecall has no content and compels no particularaction.31 Anxiety and the call of consciencecan properly be thought of as a phenomeno-logical reduction inasmuch as the disclosure ofDasein’s Being-as-a-whole is directly analo-gous to the disclosure of transcendental sub-jectivity that occurs in Husserl’s version of thereduction.32 For Husserl, transcendental phe-nomenology is not a science that stands along-side other sciences (be they human or natural)because these other sciences all make up thecontent of the natural attitude. Transcendentalsubjectivity, by contrast, discovers the naturalattitude and thus relativizes what was taken forabsolute by the natural attitude sciences. Assuch, transcendental subjectivity is under-stood as the ground on which all other sciencesultimately derive their justification. Just asHusserl insists that transcendental constitutionmust not be read as offering a psychologicalinsight into the empirically living ego’s mental

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process, Heidegger insists that the call of con-science enjoins no particular engagementsince what it discloses is the very possibility ofengagement. The call has nothing to tell be-cause it is an ontological and not an ontic dis-closure.33

It is important, however, for Heidegger toavoid the impression that the uncanniness ofDasein entails something prior to its Being-in-the-world.34 The notion of the uncanny seems,to all appearances, to entail a ground beyondBeing-in-the-world which makes the latterpossible. Were this the case, then Heideggerwould be closer to Fink’s notion of Vorseinthan he would like. Yet, Heidegger goes togreat lengths in the discussion of anxiety andconscience to obviate any such impression.The “not at home” nature of the Dasein in anxi-ety that calls to the Dasein lost in the “they”self does not lead to a turning away from theworld but is, in fact, a call to exist. This is be-cause even though the call discloses nothingspecific, it discloses existence as a whole.Thus, Heidegger says that

When the call is rightly understood, it gives us

that which in the existential sense is the “most

positive” of all—namely, the ownmost possibil-

ity which Dasein can present to itself, as a call-

ing-back which calls it forth into its factical po-

tentiality-for-being-its-Self at the time. To hear

the call authentically signifies bringing oneself

into a factical taking-action. (SZ 294; BT 341)

Thus understood, the uncanniness of the callthat individualizes Dasein draws it out ofinauthentic existing and inaugurates the possi-bility of authentic existing. Again, there is ananalogy with Husserl here insofar as whileHusserl insists that the disclosure of the naturalattitude does not entail a turning away from thenatural attitude but a turn toward it as phenom-enon,

35so Heidegger claims that the disclosure

of Dasein’s inauthenticity in anxiety leadsonly in a turning away from inauthentic exist-ing and not existing as such. As Bernet notes,“the Dasein that undergoes the disclosure of itsown being is very far from having broken allties with the world” (PR 265). Instead it en-gages with its world for the first time in reso-lute authent ic i ty . And resoluteness(Entschlossenheit), as Heidegger says,

does not detach Dasein from its world, nor does

it isolate it so that it becomes a free-floating “I.”

And how should it, when resoluteness as au-

thentic disclosedness, is authentically nothing

else than Being-in-the-world. (SZ 298; BT 344)

Here we see Heidegger clearly and explicitlyinsisting that the reduction that leads us backto the ground of all manifestation most assur-edly enables a way back into the realm of con-crete acting and existing. Elsewhere, he ex-presses the same point by insisting thatphilosophy’s true role is to bring the existingsubject to the point at which authentic acting isdemanded (GA 29/30 257/FCM 173). Thepurpose of philosophy, then, is “not to de-scribe the consciousness of man but to evokethe Dasein in man” (GA 29/30 258/FCM 174).In this sense, anxiety and conscience as enact-ing the Heideggerian reduction not only leadback from naïve everyday engagement to thatwhich makes such engagement possible butlead forth into the possibility of authenticengagement in light of its condition ofpossibility.

So there is a double movement in this pur-ported Heideggerian reduction inasmuch asthe mood of anxiety and the call of conscienceconstitute a “calling back” that “calls forth.”This is, of course structurally identical to thedoubleness of reduction and construction thatwere mooted but never properly explored inthe Grundprobleme lectures of 1927 (GA24 29/BPP 22) in the sense that what is dis-closed by the reduction is incomplete until it isfreely projected upon the horizon of what arefactically the possibilities of existing Dasein.An analogy can also be drawn with the doublemovement of the regressive and constructivephenomenology described by Fink. And it is indrawing this analogy that the discordance be-tween these two approaches to the reduction ismost clearly flagged. While Fink’s construc-tive phenomenology is explicitly designed toexplore the implications of the reduction be-yond the domain of the given and therefore be-yond any question of the actual existence ofthe reflecting phenomenologist, Heideggercrucially ties his constructive phenomenologyor the “calling forth” to the existential chal-lenge to resolutely answer for oneself in be-ing.36

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Transcendental Insight and

“Saving the Appearances”

It seems, from all of this, that Heidegger hasvery little in common with Fink’s notion that afully worked out reduction, which gives aproper archaeology of the transcendental,leads to a region of pre-being which cannot re-enter the sphere of the mundanely existing in-dividual. For Heidegger, not only can Daseinbring the disclosure given in the reduction intothe world but it is as though this disclosure al-lows it (Dasein) to properly be in the world forthe first time. The disclosure gives Dasein itscurrent factical situation and brings Daseininto that situation (SZ 307; BT 354). Nor doesthis disclosure result in an idealization ofDasein’s existence but rather, it “springs froma sober understanding of what are facticallythe basic possibilities of Dasein” (SZ 310; BT358). Thus, the reduction does not take us pastthe human to a shadowy dimension of subjec-tivity that constitutes it but leads us back towhat is most genuinely possible for a humanbeing.

Here, as always, then, it was most certainlyHeidegger’s intention to use the reduction as away of bringing the irreducible facticity ofDasein into view as an antidote to the tendencyin Husserl to view subjectivity either as an em-pirical datum or as ground anterior to the con-stitution even of the meaning of being hu-man.37 At stake here is not a subordination ofthe transcendental to the existential but an un-derstanding of the transcendental in terms ofthe existential.38

In what remains of this article, however, Iwould like to investigate how successfulHeidegger’s intentions can really be in light ofwhat is disclosed in anxiety. It is my conten-tion that the experience of anxiety involves aradical isolation that perhaps makes Dasein’sre-engagement with the world of the everydaymore problematic than Heidegger is suggest-ing. If this is so, then Heidegger’s position, inthe cruelest of ironies, moves much closer toFink’s than initially appeared to be the case. Inhis treatment of the matter, Rudolf Bernetbrings Fink and Heidegger close to one an-other too but he does this by pointing to the factthat, for both, the different dimensions of sub-jectivity revealed in the reduction—Vorseinfor Fink and the radical isolation of anxious

Dasein for Heidegger—are not to be under-stood as discoveries of the “real” nature ofsubjectivity such as might supersede the sub-jectivity of mundane existence but strata of theone life of the subject.39 Thus, for Heidegger,what is revealed is the equiprimordiality of au-thentic and inauthentic aspects of its subjectiveexistence in the sense that the reduction doesnot dispel inauthenticity but reveals the impos-sibility of being quit of it. Neither is authentic-ity a state that can be definitively achieved butcalls for repetition (wiederholung) (SZ 308;BT 355) in the sense of a continuous attempt tocall itself back from fallenness and intoresolute existing.

Yet what can this really mean in practice?Let us return for a moment to what in fact oc-curs when Dasein is visited by anxiety.Heidegger says that, in anxiety, the world “col-lapses into itself; (it) has the character of com-pletely lacking significance” (SZ 186; BT231). We know that this does not mean that theworld disappears entirely, as was once sug-gested by Husserl, but rather remains in obtru-siveness.40 Furthermore, this collapse has to dowith all of Dasein’s ontic commitments (boththe ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand)which are disclosed as inauthentic orientationsrooted in the world of the “they” self. The col-lapse of significance discloses Dasein’s Being-as-a-whole which is to say it discloses Da-sein’s Being-towards-death or the fact that itsbeing is limited such that it must not simplytarry along with the world but must decide themeaning of its being. In turn, this gives sense tothe notion of anticipatory resoluteness (vor-laufende Entschlossenheit) or the idea of act-ing in anticipation of one’s death which, asvorlaufende, is always ahead of itself such thatit discloses the essentially futural nature ofDasein’s temporal structure. In this way, thecollapse of the world must be understood as amodification of Dasein’s self in the sense thatit is not that the world disappears but that theway I see myself in terms of the world has beenaltered. In anxiety, I see myself in terms ofwhat is essential, which is to say that I am radi-cally individualized as this finitely existing in-dividual, here and now, for whom worldhoodis inalienable. I am referred back to my facticalbeing here as the ground of my possibility to beand which I cannot renege. Thus, anxietybrings me before myself as the ground of my

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possibility to be as well as the principle of myresponsibility to be.

In any case, Heidegger is aware of the diffi-culty of uniting insight into the bounded (bynothing) and limited nature of Dasein and res-olute acting (SZ 302; BT 349)41 but perhapsthis problem is deeper than he imagines forhow can the collapse of the world be rescuedand in what if any way is it like the world priorto collapse?

When conscience calls, it pushes the worldof the “they” into insignificance (Bedeutungs-losigkeit) (SZ 273; BT 317) in calling Daseinforth to take over its own potentiality-for-be-ing. This means, we have seen, that Dasein“must qualify itself as Being-towards-death”(SZ 306; BT 354) or act in the consciousnessof its own finitude. This does not, of course,entail a new or second world but the sameworld only now engaged from the standpointof individualized Dasein. The point is to inte-grate what is communicated in anxiety intoacting but given that what is communicated is acomplete dissimulation of the world, it is diffi-cult to see how this is possible. Insight into thewholeness structure of Dasein in Heidegger’sanalyses does not open the world as a field ofresearch as it had done for Husserl putprecisely pushes it into insignificance.

There are no answers to be found in theworld as such to the extent that there can benothing like what Husserl describes as the infi-nite call of the world that ignites a striving thatmarries the disclosive power of transcendentalsubjectivity with the manifesting power of theworld.42 For Heidegger, there is no call of theworld but only the revelation of my finite beinghere as given by the essential nullity of theworld. Of course, it was never Heidegger’s in-tention to open a field of research with his ver-sion of the reduction but it is difficult to see anyway back when the reduction stops me in mytracks and discloses not the relative nature ofthe everyday (or natural attitude) but its com-plete insignificance. Nowhere is this clearerthan in Heidegger’s characterization of curios-ity (Die Neugier) as an inauthentic moment inwhich Dasein flees from itself. Curiosity, orthe desire to know how things are for the sakeof knowing itself, is the very essence of the sci-entific spirit which seeks to transcend itself ina joyful understanding of other being. In otherwords, curiosity entails the openness of the

scientist to think about that which is remoteand not immediately connected with her ownexistence. In this sense, curiosity is a mode ofthe desire for truth that opens us to the questionof the truth of things. But this must beinauthentic for Heidegger because “things”have nothing to contribute and merely distractfrom Dasein’s attempt to bring itself before it-self in its wholeness structure.43 Of course he isright insofar as this is taken to mean thatDasein must not understand its being as“thing” being in the sense of being one of a se-ries of possible objects of scientific research.However, it seems that there lurks here anequivocation between self-understanding inthe terms of scientific mind and scientific mindper se. Heidegger becomes guilty of throwingout the baby with the bath water here inasmuchas it is not only the scientist’s self-interpreta-tion but her very activity of seeking to knowhow things stand in the world that is character-ized as inauthentic self evasion.44

Contra Fink, Heidegger is most certainly tobe commended for his placement of the reduc-tion in the context of existing Dasein. What ismore, his analyses of anxiety (and also of bore-dom in the Grundbegriffe lectures) are master-ful examples of phenomenological analysiswhich lay bare the way in which Dasein isbrought before itself in these specific attune-ments. However, while the way back to thegrounding fundament of constitution may notbe in question the way forth certainly is. What Imean is that while anxiety certainly bringsDasein before itself as itself, it does so in aquite specific way. As with phenomena such asgrief or falling in love—which interestinglyare less self-centered than those chosen byHeidegger—anxiety brings me before myselfin a somewhat narrow way precisely becausewhat it discloses is my sheer factical, finite ex-istence and nothing more. Now, it may appearpeculiar to seek to indict Heidegger on thisscore given that the disclosure of Dasein as fi-nite existence is precisely his point. Yet thequestion is how exactly the realm of ontic en-gagements is supposed to be illuminated bythis ontological disclosure. Heidegger is clearthat he intends precisely such an illuminationthrough his notion of conscience that calls usto act in the light of our ownmost being butsince our ownmost being is disclosed in anxi-ety and since anxiety is a mood that discloses

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only to the extent that ontic engagements arereduced to insignificance, this seems problem-atic. In spite of Heidegger’s claims that it is Be-ing-in-the-world as such that is given in anxi-ety, it becomes clear that this groundingstratum of subjectivity is not manifest throughDasein’s mundane/ontic comportments butonly at their expense. Being-in-the-world assuch becomes visible not when the ontic realmis relativized but when it is pushed into insig-nificance by an attunement that brings me be-fore myself as sheer existing. Thus, anxietyinitiates a loop of self-reference that is difficultto break free from and despite Heidegger’s de-sire to think of insight into finitude as a motiva-tion for concrete re-engagement in the worldof the ontic, it is not clear exactly how this in-sight is supposed to motivate such action.Finally, it is difficult to see how resolutenesscould entail anything other than contemplationof one’s own death.

The problem can also be thought of in thefollowing way. We have seen that Heideggerdoes not intend—as certain casual readings ofSein und Zeit have often implied—to placephenomenological vision of the fundamentalontological question in opposition with the lifeof ontic comportment. Rather he intends toshow precisely how the life of ontic comport-ment is made possible through attention to theontic-ontological structures of Dasein’s being.Thus, while we will always and inevitably fallback into inauthentic “going along withthings” in the life of ontic comportment, suchinauthenticity is not to be defined as the es-sence of the ontic life since Heidegger isclearly making a case for the appropriation ofthis life of ontic comportment in the light of theontological. And yet, there is an unfortunatelack of description of what this renewed or re-appropriated ontic sphere would actually looklike when seen with the new eyes thatphenomenological insight offers. Husserl, wemay recall, tended to situate his phenomenol-ogy in the context of the adventure of reasonthat was determinative of mankind’s being inthe world at both the mundane and transcen-dental levels. As such, while the transcenden-tal logic of phenomenology was most certainlyof a different order than the mundane logic as-sociated with the life of ontic discovery, theformer was nevertheless to be understood as anunfolding of what was implied in the latter.

Thus, subjectivity comes back to itself in asense inasmuch as the true import of ontic dis-covery is revealed as subjective accomplish-ment. This situation is more problematic inHeidegger’s text as we have seen because hesimply does tend to describe the ontic realmnot as a realm of discovery that must be placedin context but as a realm of almost mindlesscoping that is swept away in phenomeno-logical seeing. He does intend this realm to bere-appropriated but this re-appropriation takesthe form of an almost primordial investiturerather than a more thoughtful re-engagementof what was already underway. Perhaps toomuch of the substance of the ontic is lost, then,in order for phenomenological seeing toproperly bring Dasein, as existential ground,into view.

If this is the case, then it is perhaps attribut-able to the phenomenon of anxiety itself as away into reduction insofar as giving Dasein toitself “as a whole,” it precisely “traumatizes”Dasein leading to the dissimulation of signifi-cance in the world of the everyday. As such,the chasm that separates the world of everydayacting from phenomenological seeing is thusshown to be nigh on abyssal45 such that tophenomenologize involves more than simply aHusserlian “shift of focus” between a naturaland a phenomenological attitude,46 but rathertakes the form of a traumatized subjectivitythat retains the possibility to confront itself be-yond its fallen everydayness but struggles tobear witness to the disclosure given inphenomenological seeing in the world ofconcrete engagements.

It might be tempting here to respond to thisobjection by saying that if this outcome per-tains to Heidegger then it does also to Husserlin the sense that the latter too would be in-dicted as initiating a reduction that destroysthe possibility of meaningful engagement inthe world. I believe that this counter-objectionfails precisely because the reduction in Husserldoes not give transcendental subjectivity “as awhole” in the way it does for Heidegger and itis this latter that “traumatizes” Dasein leadingto the dissimulation of significance in theworld of the everyday. The reduction inHusserl gives the natural attitude as and infi-nite stream of possible experience and whilethis stream is relativized and indexed to tran-scendental subjectivity, it can stay in focus in

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the terms of its own meaningfulness in a way

that is more problematic in Heidegger’s reduc-

tion. Anxiety does not point to the meaning-

fulness of the world but only to the finitude of

Dasein’s own being.In this way, there is a schism in transcen-

dental life not so different from the one present

in Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation. For both

Heidegger and Fink, there is initiated a prob-

lem of communication resulting from the per-

formance of the reduction. For Fink this is be-

cause the reduction leads us into a region of

pre-being which lacks the language to express

itself in the mundane sphere. There is no such

region of pre-being for Heidegger and yet the

riveting insight into the solitary nature of

Dasein also suggests a zero point in the reduc-

tion which cannot shed light on the world of

the everyday (in spite of Heidegger’s best ef-

forts). Rudolf Bernet is right, of course, to

point out that the phenomenological onlooker

and the Dasein in anxiety are strata of subjec-

tivity and not subjectivity itself in Fink and

Heidegger respectively, but this cannot alter

the fact that in leading back to these strata, the

reduction for both Fink and Heidegger leads to

a stratum that disturbs the capacity of the mun-

dane or everyday world to be meaningful on its

own terms. For Fink, this is because the mun-

dane or ontic realm is completely dis-

analogous to the depths of the pre-ontic tran-

scendental realm while for Heidegger, the

reason is that all ontic commitments do not

simply show themselves as ontic but fall away

into irrelevance in the face of my ownmost

possibility of being.

Back to Husserl?

Does this mean that the phenomenologicalreduction by definition undermines attach-ment to the world of the everyday to the extentthat the “way back” becomes a problem? I be-lieve that it need not and while this issue can-not be explored in detail here, the solution tothis problem may lay partially, at least in theesteem in which Husserl held the mundane sci-ences. For Husserl, phenomenological insightoffers “the possibility of a new, higher human-ity” (SCM 130)47 as we have seen. Rather thaninsisting on an absolute break between the fi-nite knowing of the mundane sciences with theinfinite knowing of the transcendental (as Finkdoes—SCM 140) or indeed, rejecting the in-finity of experience for the experience of fini-tude (as Heidegger does), Husserl suggeststhat the natural sciences find their place in phe-nomenology (SCM 109) by removing theirdogmatic blinders such that they realize thevalue of their own work in the context of tran-scendental constitution (SCM 115). Onceagain, this limits the scope of mundane sciencebut it simultaneously elevates rather than de-stroys its significance. The phenomenologist,in Husserl’s mind, may often be alienated fromthe self-interpretation of the non-phenomeno-logist or the natural attitude scientist but he isnever alienated from this region as such. Thisis less straightforward for Fink and Heideggerwho are both led, in their respective versions ofthe reduction, to a solitary realm in which thebreakdown of our captivation with the world ispurchased at the price of this very world losingits flavor such that we are condemned, likePlato’s prisoner, to stumble blindly in a worldwhose significance can no longer speak to us.48

ENDNOTES

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1. On the continuity between the transcendental and

the mundane, Eugen Fink notes that for Husserl,

“the ‘transcendental ideality’ of beings is not only

compatible with their ‘empirical reality’but also the

latter is directly grounded in the former and is only

comprehensible with reference to it.” See Eugen

Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of

Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,” in

The Phenomenology of Husserl, ed. and trans. R. O.

Elveton (Seattle: Noesis Press, 2000), 87. Hence-

forth, this article will be referred to as PHC.

2. Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation Teil 1:

Die Idee einer Transzendentalen Methodenlehre

(Husserliana Dokumente II), hrsg. von Hans

Ebeling, Jann Holl, and Guy van Kerckhoven

(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988); Sixth Cartesian Medita-

tion: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of

Method, trans. Ronald Bruzina (Bloomington: Indi-

ana University Press, 1995). All future reference is

to the English translation. Cited as SCM.

3. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 18 Aufl.

(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001); Being and Time, trans.

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261

John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1995). Henceforth SZ; BT.

4. A detailed history of the genesis and intent of Fink’s

text can be found in Ronald Bruzina’s excellent

“Translator’s Introduction” to Sixth Cartesian Med-

itation, vii-xcii. See also the same author’s Edmund

Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in

Phenomenology 1928–38 (New Haven: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 2004).

5. Eugen Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of

Edmund Husserl.” This article, which originally ap-

peared in Kant Studien 38 (1933), 319–83, with the

title, ”Die Phänomenologische Philosophie

Edmund Husserls in der Gegenwärtigen Kritik,”

was a reworking of the Sixth Cartesian Meditation.

On this, see Bruzina’s “Translator’s Introduction,”

xx.

6. Steven Crowell, “Gnostic Phenomenology: Eugen

Fink and the Critique of Transcendental Reason,” in

Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of Meaning:

Paths Towards Transcendental Phenomenology

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001),

253. Henceforth GP. According to Crowell, it is un-

clear whether the kind of investigation Fink has in

mind here can still be considered ‘phenomenology’

or whether it leaves phenomenology behind for the

sake of dialectic metaphysical speculation. This

question is pressing because the principle of all

principles was formulated precisely to avoid this

kind of speculation in favour of a return to a study of

conscious experience as it is in fact given.

7. On the three-way spl i t , see Fink, “The

Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund

Husserl,” 109–10, in addition to Sixth Cartesian

Meditation, 12–13.

8. This would seem to entail the possibility of an infi-

nite regress in the sense that a fourth ego would be

needed in order to reflect on the activity of the tran-

scendental onlooker. Fink, however, rejects this pre-

cisely because the onlooker does not constitute but

merely observes such that there is no ground upon

which a further distinction could be made. See Sixth

Cartesian Meditation, 26.

9. Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of

Edmund Husserl,” 119.

10. I owe this insight to Steven Crowell who points to

Husserl’s confrontation with Heidegger at the time

of the Encyclopaedia Britannica article in which

Heidegger was uncomfortable with Husserl’s pre-

sentation of the human subject as a constituted sense

whose being was to be thought of as naturally pos-

ited. On this see Steven Crowell, “Husserl,

Heidegger and Transcendental Philosophy: An-

other Look at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Arti-

cle,” in Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of

Meaning, 172. Henceforth HH.

11. On the notion of the appellation ‘human being’ as a

constituted sense, see, for example, Husserl’s

“Amsterdamer Vorträge” (“Amsterdam Lectures”),

in Edmund Husserl , Phänomenologische

Psychologie, Hua IX, hrsg. von Walter Biemel (The

Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 314. A translation

of this text can be found in Edmund Husserl, Psycho-

logical and Transcendental Phenomenology and the

Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–31), trans. and

ed. Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer

(Dordrecht: Springer, 1997), 224. Henceforth PTP.

This work is largely a translation of Husserliana IX.

On the notion that grounding phenomenology in hu-

man existence misses the point of the reduction, see

Husserl’s essay “Phänomenologie und Anthro-

pologie” (“Phenomenology and Anthropology”) in

Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922–37, Hua XXVII, hrsg.

von Thomas Nenon and Hans-Reiner Sepp

(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), where he revealingly

states that:It seems all too obvious to say to oneself: “I, this

human being (dieser Mensch), am the one who is

practicing the method of a transcendental alter-

ation of attitude whereby one withdraws back into

the pure ego . . .” But clearly those who talk this

way have fallen back into the naïve, natural atti-

tude. (Psychological and Transcendental Phe-

nomenology, 193)

12. With regard to the issue of self-understanding, it is

clear that the separation between the transcendental

and the mundane sphere is not, of course, absolute

given that natural language is part and parcel of the

world-constituting that is the very activity of tran-

scendental subjectivity. However, this constituting

goes on anonymously in the sense that it does not

know itself as constituting until the performance of

the reduction. The challenge for the theory of

method to show transcendental subjectivity to itself,

as such, is enormous because there are no appropri-

ate terms. Unfortunately, this issue is not one that can

be developed further in the present context.

13. Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of

Edmund Husserl,” 120.

14. In his preface to the Kant Studien article (“The

Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund

Husserl”), which is very similar to the Sixth Carte-

sian Meditation in terms of content, Husserl states

that the article “contains no sentence which I could

not completely accept as my own or openly acknowl-

edge as my own conviction” (“The Phenomeno-

logical Philosophy of Edmund Husserl,” 71). This is

perplexing given Husserl’s obvious displeasure with

certain of Fink’s conclusions.

15. Fink’s claim that “Absolute science, towards which

phenomenologising is organised, is, as the actuality

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

262

of the being-for-itself of the Absolute, the system of

living truth in which it knows itself absolutely”

(Sixth Cartesian Meditation, 152) sounds extraordi-

narily Hegelian.

16. Crowell, “Gnostic Phenomenology,” 249.

17. It is generally agreed that the reduction first appears

in Husserl’s writings in the five lectures delivered at

Göttingen in 1907, which are published as Die Idee

der Phänomenologie: Fünf Vorlesungen, Hua II,

hrsg. von Walter Biemel (Dordrecht: Springer,

1973); The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee

Hardy (Dordrecht: Springer, 1999).

18. See for example Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische

Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Hua I, hrsg.

von Stephan Strasser (The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff, 1963), 60; Cartesian Meditations, trans.

Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,

1973), 20. Henceforth Hua I/CM.

19. In a letter to Husserl from 1927, Heidegger states

that: “We are in agreement on the fact that entities in

the sense of what you call ‘world’ cannot be ex-

plained in their transcendental constitution by re-

turning to an entity of the same mode of being.” It

was Heidegger’s contention, of course, that

Dasein’s worldhood or Insein forms the ground of

what it can mean for an entity to be worldly

(Vorhanden) and he contended also that Husserl did

not understand this point. See Psychological and

Transcendental Phenomenology, 38.

20. Heidegger described the Logical Investigations as a

text that continued to captivate him even after the

publication of Ideas. See “My Way into Phenomen-

ology” in On Time and Being, trans. Joan

Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2002), 78. It is noteworthy also that when discussing

in detail the breakthrough concepts of phenomenol-

ogy in the 1925 lecture course Prolegomena zur

Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, GA 20, hrsg. von Petra

Jaeger (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,

1979), 34f.; History of the Concept of Time: Prole-

gomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: In-

diana University Press, 1985), 27f., Heidegger re-

stricts himself to the notions of intentionality,

categorial intuition, and the a priori which are de-

veloped in the earlier work and makes almost no

mention of the Ideas. See also Sein und Zeit, 38; Be-

ing and Time, 62, where Heidegger says that his

Sein und Zeit investigation “would not have been

possible if the ground had not been prepared by

Edmund Husserl , with whose Logische

Untersuchungen phenomenology first emerged.”

For a detailed discussion of the relationship be-

tween Heidegger and the Logische Untersuch-

ungen, see also Jacques Taminiaux, “Heidegger and

Husserl’s Logical Investigations,” in James Decker

and Robert Crease, eds., Dialectic and Difference

Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985),

91–112, and leads inevitably to the sort of “gnostic”

move evidenced by Fink’s text such as would jettison

the very furniture by which living is known for the

sake of a flight into the kind of speculative forms that

are impossible, in principle, to experience.

21. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der

Phänomenologie, GA 24, hrsg. von Friedrich-Wil-

helm von Hermann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio

Klostermann, 2005), 29; The Basic Problems of Phe-

nomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1975), 21. Henceforth GA

24/BPP.

22. Ibid. When Heidegger says here that “we are led back

from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be

the character of that apprehension” (my italics), he

means to stress that the Husserlian emphasis on the

constitution of noema through noetic, meaning-in-

tending acts is derivative of a more fundamental ori-

entation.

23. Rudolf Bernet, “Phenomenological Reduction and

the Double Life of the Subject,” in Theodore Kisiel

and John van Buren, eds., Reading Heidegger From

the Start: Essays in his Earliest Thought (Albany:

SUNY Press, 1994), 256. Henceforth PR.

24. Cartesianische Meditationen, 60/Cartesian Medita-

tions, 21.

25. For reasons of focus, it is best not to pursue discus-

sion of the first reduction identified by Bernet. In ad-

dition to drawing attention away from our central

purpose here, there are grounds to question the use of

the terminology of reduction in Bernet’s argument.

While he is certainly correct to point out that

unusability, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy draw atten-

tion to the phenomenon of the world, it is by no

means clear that there is a corresponding alteration

(Spaltung or ego-splitting in Husserl’s terms) in the

life of the subject brought about by this interruption.

Thus while Husserl’s reduction (and Heidegger’s

second reduction) entail both disclosure of the phe-

nomenon of the world and of a dimension of subjec-

tivity that was not previously accessible, Heidegger’s

first reduction entails only the first of these condi-

tions.

26. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Meta-

physik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit, GA 29/30,

hrsg. von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann (Frank-

furt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), 101;

Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Fini-

tude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas

Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1995), 67. Henceforth GA 29/30/FCM.

HEIDEGGER AND FINK

263

27. For an analogous discussion of boredom, see Die

Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 207–08/Fundamen-

tal Concepts of Metaphysics, 137–38.

28. See also Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 216/

Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 143 on the

“calling.”

29. Heidegger’s discussion of the notion of the debt in

regard to conscience has to do with the fact that con-

science address Dasein as “Guilty” (Sein und Zeit,

281; Being and Time, 326). In German, the word for

guilt (Schuld) usually also has the connotation of a

debt that is owed to someone. Heidegger insists that

any ontic interpretation of the ontological import of

the call of conscience “perverts” the true meaning of

the call.

30. Because das Man is everyone and no one, it is not

Dasein (only a possible comportment of Dasein)

and so can neither be born nor die.

31. Heidegger’s understanding of conscience is remi-

niscent of the Socratic daimon which never en-

joined any particular action but only made itself felt

to reprove. See Plato, Apology 31d.

32. One important difference remains however, and that

is to do with the fact that while Husserl’s reduction

is an act of my freedom, the mood of anxiety and

even the call of conscience are events that are under-

gone by Dasein. To be sure, Heidegger discusses the

notion of ‘wanting to have a conscience’

(Gewissenhabenwollen) (Sein und Zeit, 270; Being

and Time, 314) as that which makes us open to the

communication of the call but there remains for all

that, a passivity in this version of the reduction that

has little analogue in Husserl’s discussion.

33. Of course the ontological disclosure of the call re-

lates precisely discloses the ontically existing

Dasein. It is at this point that the inseparability of the

ontic and the ontological in Sein und Zeit is most

clearly in view in the sense that neither is explicable

without reference to this grounding centre point in

which they converge.

34. This is especially the case in relation to the German

Unheimlich which gives greater expression to

Dasein’s “not being at home” than “uncanny” can.

35. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer Reinen Phä-

nomenologie und phänomenologischen Philoso-

phie: Erstes Buch, Husserliana III, hrsg. von Karl

Schumann (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 94;

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a

Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, trans.

Fred Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983), 113.

36. It should be noted, furthermore, that this under-

standing of the reduction is more than simply a prin-

ciple of self-concern for Heidegger but actually

forms the basis of what might be called a proto-eth-

ics in his thought. Thus, he says that authentically

resolute Being-in-the-world is not a mere call to self-

concerned action but also makes possible an authen-

tic being with others (Sein und Zeit, 298; Being and

Time, 344). That is, the undergoing of anxiety allows

us to genuinely be with one another in a way that was

never possible in the amorphous anonymity of the

“they.”

37. That is to say, Husserl’s distinction between the em-

pirical and transcendental egos tends to point to a

paradox in the relationship of philosophizing and hu-

man existence in the sense that while the empirical

ego is often treated as a mere object of anthropologi-

cal or psychological study, the transcendental ego is

often, and certainly in Fink’s text, presented as tran-

scending the human. We have seen from Husserl’s

marginal notes on the Sixth Cartesian Meditation

that he did not, of course, intend the transcendental

ego to be read as escaping the domain of the human

but he struggled, at least as far as Heidegger was con-

cerned, to satisfactorily resolve this issue. It is in this

context that Heidegger’s identification of the tran-

scendental with existing Dasein is to be understood.

38. Here I am broadly following Steven Crowell’s analy-

sis of the relation between Husserl and Heidegger.

According to Crowell, we misunderstand the

Husserl/Heidegger relation if we present it as involv-

ing a dispute over whether phenomenology should

be transcendental or ontological since the real ques-

tion that separates them is whether transcendental

phenomenology should be epistemological

(Husserl) or ontological (Heidegger). On this see

“Husserl, Heidegger, and Transcendental Philoso-

phy,”169.

39. Bernet says that “there is no Dasein whose being

could epitomise authentic existence, no more than

there was a pure phenomenologising spectator for

Husserl and Fink” (“Phenomenological Reduction

and the Double Life of the Subject,” 266).

40. Ideas I §49. The meaning of the discussion “world

annihilation” or Weltvernichtigung is too complex a

matter to be discussed here. Suffice it to say that this

much maligned chapter of the Ideas was never meant

to suggest that the transcendental ego could survive

the actual annihilation of the world nor that con-

sciousness in isolation could provide a Cartesian first

principle. Husserl’s point was simply to underline

the inconceivability of the manifestation of the world

in the absence of subjectivity. Admittedly, Husserl

could have been clearer in making this point. For

useful discussions of this point, see Rudolf Bernet,

“Husserl’s Concept of World,” in Arleen B. Dallery,

Charles E. Scott, and P. Holley Roberts eds., Crises

in Continental Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press,

1990), 3–22, and also Søren Overgaard, “Epoché

and Solipsistic Reduction,” Husserl Studies

18 (2002): 209–22.

Bodø University College, Bodø 8049, Norway

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

264

41. Heidegger here asks rhetorically, “What can death

and the ‘concrete situation’ of taking action have in

common?”

42. On this issue of striving and the infinite call of the

world see, for example, Edmund Husserl,

“Erneuerung als Individualethisches Problem,” in

Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922–1937, 34.

43. This issue of Heidegger’s position regarding the sci-

entific enterprise is masterfully discussed by

Karsten Harries in “Truth and Freedom,” in Robert

Sokolowski, ed., Edmund Husserl and the

Phenomenological Tradition, (Washington, D.C.:

Catholic University of America Press, 1988),

131–55.

44. Ibid., 147. Harries notes that Heidegger states that

science has “its source in authentic existence” but

correctly questions whether this claim is at all sus-

tainable in light of the identification of scientific ac-

tivity with inauthentic curiosity.

45. Søren Overgaard makes the point that the everyday

is bracketed more by Heidegger than by Husserl in

the sense that Husserl takes the concerns of the ev-

eryday more at face value. See Overgaard, Husserl

and Heidegger on Being in the World (Dordrecht:

Springer, 2004), 19.

46. See, for example, Edmund Husserl, “Inaugural Lec-

ture at Freiburg-im-Breisgau” (1917), trans. Robert

Welsh Jordan, in Husserl: Shorter Works, ed. Peter

McCormick and Frederick A. Elliston (Notre Dame,

Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1981), 13.

47. All reference to the Sixth Cartesian Meditation from

here on is to Husserl’s marginalia unless otherwise

stated.

48. Plato, Republic 517a.