2 - Phenomenology: Heidegger after Husserl and the Greeks

Summary

Heidegger's anonymization and universalization of phenomenology

In one of the last texts that Heidegger published, he sketches his “way to phenomenology” and at the same time reflects on the future possibilities for phenomenology:

The age of phenomenological philosophy seems to be over. It is already taken as something past which is only recorded historically along with other schools of philosophy. But in what is most its own phenomenology is not a school. It is the possibility of thinking, at times changing and only thus persisting, of corresponding to the claim of what is to be thought. If phenomenology is thus experienced and retained, it can disappear as a designation in favor of the matter of thinking whose manifestness remains a mystery.

(“My Way to Phenomenology”, TB 82)

Thus, “in what is most its own”, phenomenology does not necessarily have to be realized; it remains what it is, even as a possibility that is only waiting for its realization. But above all, this “ownmost” possibility of phenomenology persists without being bound to a philosophical programme or a philosophical method. As Heidegger characterizes it, it is nothing but the very possibility of thinking. As thinking articulates itself, this possibility takes on various colours – just as, according to Heraclitus, fire takes on the scent of the incense that is mixed with it (fr. B67). Considered in regard to its “ownmost” possibility, phenomenology becomes anonymous.