Ontology and transcendental phenomenology between Husserl and Heidegger

Steven Crowell

pp. 13-36

in: Burt C. Hopkins (ed), Husserl in contemporary context, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

In 1983 Timothy Stapleton advanced the interesting claim that Husserl's transcendental phenomenology was largely motivated by an ontological problematic and not, as is more commonly thought, an epistemological one.¹ Critical examination of this claim provides a convenient framework for what I would like to do in this essay, viz., start to clarify the new sense of "ontology" demanded by phenomenological philosophy so far as it is genuine "first philosophy," in which (as Husserl always claimed) "the total sense of philosophy, accepted as "obvious' throughout all its historical forms, [is] basically and essentially transformed."' My question is whether or not there can be an ontological transcendental philosophy, and it concerns the systematic relations between Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. I believe that too much has traditionally been made of their differences. Though there are obvious places where the two positions are incompatible, I would argue that Heidegger is better seen as developing and advancing Husserl's transcendental philosophy, than as rejecting it altogether.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Heidegger Martin