If we start from the perspective of von Herrmann’s overall contributions to Heidegger-thinking, we have to focus primarily on his interpretations and elucidations ofSein und Zeitand his intensive work of interpretation and elucidation ofBeiträge zur Philosophie(Vom Ereignis). Regarding the first, his three hefty volumesHermeneutische Phänomenologie des Daseinsprovide the most extensive and in-depth reading and interpretation of Heidegger’s first major work. Regarding the second, his bookWege ins Ereignis. Zu Heideggers “Beiträge zur Philosophie,”along with his many essays on being-historical thinking, provide one of the most stalwart and reliable readings and rereadings of Heidegger’s...

As is clear from its subtitle, the text presented here,Hermeneutics and Reflection,is dedicated to the ways of phenomenology as they are tied to the names Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. For one of these philosophers, it is the way of reflective phenomenology; for the other, that of hermeneutic phenomenology. This book’s three chapters systematically pursue both concepts of phenomenology, but they do not present a historical development of either concept, notwithstanding that the chapters are presented in the order of their writing.

Chapter 1, “The origin of Hermeneutic Phenomenology from within the Primordial Experience of the A-Theoretical,” was...

“Hermeneutics and Reflection” is the perspective that will be discussed in the following investigations of the concept of phenomenology in Heidegger and in Husserl.¹⁶ Belonging to both concepts of phenomenology is Husserl’s maxim “going back to the things themselves,” which Heidegger changed slightly to “to the things themselves!”. The phenomenological method requires a way of doing philosophy that proceeds only from within the look of and gaze at the things themselves as they are determined in thinking. It is also what Husserl formulates as the “principle of all principles,” according to which philosophy has to deal with the intuition in...

Heidegger’s lectures from the war emergency semester of 1919, “The Idea of Philosophy and the Problem ofWeltanschauung,”²⁰ programmatically outline the idea of future philosophy according to its thematic object and methodological way of proceeding. Thematically, future philosophy is grasped as pre-theoretical primordial science of the domain of pre-theoretical life and experience. According to this thematic field of investigation, the methodological way of proceeding is defined as hermeneutic phenomenology, which is likewise not of a theoretical nature, but rather an a-theoretical one. But, insofar as the theoretical is at the same time reflection, primordial science and hermeneutic phenomenology have an...

In the winter semester of 1923–4, Heidegger began his Marburg teaching appointment with the lecture course “Introduction to Phenomenological research,”²⁹⁴ motivated by the intention “to understand and to further phenomenology as possibility.”²⁹⁵ For Heidegger, phenomenology as method finds expression solely in the maxim coined by Husserl: “to the things themselves.” The emphasis on thepossibility-characterof phenomenology indicates that the interpretation that Husserl gave to this maxim is onlyonepossibility of what phenomenology as a philosophizing that is determined by the self-giving of the things can be. In Husserl’s phenomenology this one possibility hasde factobecome descriptive,...

The launching ofhermeneuticphenomenology in the war emergency semester lecture course happened from within athematic-methodological primordial experience.Thematically it was the primordial experience of a-theoretical life and living-experience – which simultaneously included the methodological primordial experience – that access to the realm of the a-theoretical cannot be reflection, but rather only hermeneutics, which must first be cultivated. Linked to this thematic-methodological primordial experience is the fundamental insight that a-theoretical life – and correlatively, the a-theoretical life-world – is not a grounding-interconnection, in which sense experience and the sensorily experienced corporeal world is what grounds all higher-level life of consciousness. Thus, what belongs...