1 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER:

PHENOMENOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY

Reviewing the Husserl-Heidegger controversy on the question of the

nature of phenomenology and the possibility of its grounding is nowa-
days one of the main ways of gaining understanding of phenomenology
and its place in contemporary philosophy and culture.
Having as its core the conception of the intentionality of conscious-
ness and transcendental subjectivity, Husserl's phenomenology aims to
show that the constitutive activities of consciousness underlie every
cultural formation, whether it be the field of science, aesthetics, ethics,
common sense knowledge, and even religion. What is the possibility
and the ground of phenomenology itself? If phenomenology refuses to
seek external grounding and undertakes self-grounding, is it possible to
leave the realm of transcendental subjectivity and gain access to Being
which is not the Being of transcendental consciousness?
For Heidegger the intentionality of consciousness is not our final
reference when raising and solving philosophical problems. According
to Heidegger it is necessary to pose the question of intentionality's own
ways of Being. In Being and Time Heidegger examines the intercon-
nection of phenomenology and ontology explicitly. He considers the
phenomenological method to be the only relevant method of philoso-
phy: "Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible"' It is evident that
despite this effort to find the deeper foundation of Husserl's phe-
nomenology, phenomenology in the Heideggerian sense has no external
foundation either. 2 There are rather different ways of self-grounding
phenomenology in Husserl and in Heidegger, and, respectively, dif-
ferent ways of understanding the interconnections between phenomen-
ology and ontology.
The Husserl-Heidegger controversy is rather sharp: each of them
supposes his opponent's concept to be "a particular case" of his own
concept. Husserl wrote on the margins of Being and Time: "H. trans-
poses or transverses the constitutively phenomenological clarification of
all regions of beings and the universal, of the total region World,
into the anthropological. The whole problematic is transposition, the
Ego there corresponds to human existence {Dasein), etc. Thereby

643
A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, VolXXVII, 643670.
1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
644 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

everything becomes profoundly unclear and, philosophically, loses its

values." And elsewhere: "What is here expressed, is my own teaching,
only without a deeper grounding." 3 Thus, Husserl has evaluated his
disciple's work as a distortion of phenomenological problems. Can we
hold this reproach to be correct when taking into consideration the
essentially new kind of problems posed by Heidegger?
Husserl's phrase quoted above surely expresses his emotional reac-
tion to Heidegger's book but it can be interpreted in a wider context:
according to Husserl, philosophy must be based on the "clara et
distincta" principle, i.e., the principle of self-reflecting subjectivity. For
Husserl it is naive to adopt Dasein (human existence) as the initial
point of philosophy: "Naturally, it would be naive to say that a human
being is a being that is conscious of all other beings as his horizon of
Being or that there exist in advance understandings of Being that come
from everything, that is, from oneself and any other beings (namely, if
one is willing to avoid the words "to be conscious of"). The under-
standing of Being is something wholly empty as long as we do not
comprehend it as self-apperception and other-apperception." 4 Husserl
regards entering the sphere of one's apperception as a necessary
element of "transcendental turning," and from his point of view, to
transpose Ego into human existence (Dasein) is to introduce an un-
elucidated premise.
Nevertheless, Heidegger deliberately assumes as the initial point of
analysis that which is "vague" and "average," i.e., the understanding of
Being and Dasein's way of being-in-the-world. Heidegger rejects the
Cartesian ideal of knowledge which greatly influenced Husserl: to
achieve evidence, to go from the known to the unknown, etc. Not a
cognitive and reflecting subject but the unknown that reveals itself
the human being's self-revelation to the world and the world's self-
revelation to the human being that is prime theme of Heidegger's
ontology. Thus, Dasein is not a distortion of Ego but is essentially a
different initial point for philosophizing.
Heidegger makes an effort to lay a foundation for the main "postu-
late" of Husserl that: "Intentionality is grounded in transcendence of
Dasein and is possible only on its base." 5 He pretends to operate on a
higher level of criticism, i.e., to show the point which phenomenology is
based on and which Husserl did not manage to see. Heidegger agrees in
his letter to Husserl that "a being in the sense of what you call 'world'
cannot be clarified in its transcendental constitution by means of a
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 645

return to being of the same kind of Being [Seinart ]." "But," he writes, "it
is not thereby asserted that what makes up the place [Ort] of the
transcendental is in general not a being [nicht Seiende] but there
arises precisely the problem what is the kind of Being of the being in
which "world" is constituted? That is the central problem of Sein und
Zeit i.e., a fundamental ontology of Dasein "6
Here we will take up Husserl's phenomenology in the form of the
conception of constitution wherein the interdependence of the founda-
tion problem and of the ontological status of the natural and the
spiritual is most evidently elucidated. This will besides provide the
necessary minimum of terminological compatibility since Heidegger
used the term "constitution" in his critical notes.
According to Husserl's project phenomenology can and must answer
the following questions: How do the structures of consciousness trans-
form themselves in their dependence upon the character of things
intended and the modi of intending (in perception, memory, etc.)? The
object must be taken only as a meaning grasped by consciousness. But
this does not mean that the objects are "constructions" of conscious-
ness. "Everything remains as it was."; there exist natural things given
in a sense-perception; there exist objective matters of fact and the
problem is to elucidate a meaning for the objectivity of the latter; there
exist human bodies which we comprehend as animated ones; there exist
lived-experiences and consciousness of other persons which are not
given directly but which can be grasped by means of analogy to our
own living consciousness. Each of these kinds of objects (in the
broadest sense) is given to and exists for consciousness in quite specific
forms: "And the object is not a thing which is put into cognition as into
a sack, as if cognition were a completely empty form, one and the same
empty sack in which now this, now that is placed. But in givenness we
see that the object is constituted in cognition, that a number of different
basic forms of objectivity are to be distinguished, as well as an equal
number of different forms of the given cognitive acts and of clusters
and interconnections of cognitive acts." 7
Husserl distinguishes four main levels of constitution: material thing,
human body, soul {Seele), and spirit (Geist). Constitution of a material
thing includes a grasping of the so-called "sense-data schema," i.e.,
interconnections of all appearances of a thing given in sense-perception.
According to Husserl, in order to distinguish a thing from a phantom it
is necessary to constitute the unity of "sense-data schema" itself. In this
646 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

unity one can reveal "the real property of a real substance in its
corresponding temporal point." 8 To be real means to be causally
dependent on another reality; the constitution of the material presents
itself as the unity of sense-experience in a definite causal relationship.
The constitution of a material thing as something external and
objective can be achieved by introducing "the absolute point" the
human body whereby "the pure Ego contemplates the space and all the
sense-perceptible world." 9 The material thing is given only through
sense-perception and the human body is the locus of all sensations. The
body itself is no longer constituted as a material thing. The body is
animated and the constitution of a soul, the differentiation of pure Ego
and real Ego, forms the next and the higher level of constitution. In its
turn, the constitution of the real human Ego implies the constitution of
the spiritual world.
Phenomenology takes the form of a hierarchy of constitutions, for
one of the main aims of Husserl is to distinguish "the natural" and "the
spiritual" in human existence, and respectively the natural sciences and
the Geisteswissenschaften. "The spirit," Husserl declares, "is not an
abstract T of act which takes a position, but is a full Personality, an
Ihuman being which takes a position, which thinks, evaluates, acts,
creates." 10
Just as in the constitution of the psychic, it is not the soul, but the
unity of soul and body (the psychic subject), that is contrasted with
nature, so in constitution of the spiritual Husserl makes a distinction
between the unity of spirit, soul, and body on one side, and nature on
the other. Precisely, the body is the point where spirit and nature adjoin
each other: "it is the point of the transformation (Umschlagstelle) of
spiritual causality into natural causality." 11
A step-by-step introduction of the levels of constitution creates the
illusion of a gradual approach to a "personal position" which is neces-
sary for the constitution of the spiritual. In fact, this position was
already adopted in constitution of the material thing, the body, and the
soul. According to Husserl, the spiritual world has an ontological
advantage over the natural. "Nature is the X and in principle nothing
other than the X, which defines itself in general definitions. And the
spirit is not X, but it is the given itself in spiritual experience." 12 Nature
(the material thing) is constituted through its appearances, i.e., in the
way in which it is perceived by the cognitive subject, while the spirit is
constituted in self-revelation, and therefore, in self-constitution. Husserl
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 647

insists upon the absoluteness and irrelativity of spirit and the relativity
of nature. When touching upon the problems of the natural sciences
and the humanities in his Vienna lecture, Husserl stressed more firmly
the inequality of the natural and the spiritual: "The spirit and indeed
only the spirit exists in itself and for itself, is self-sufficient; and in its
self-sufficience and only in this way, it can be treated truly rationally,
truly and from the ground up scientifically. And as for nature in the
sense of natural science it is a product of the spirit that investigates
nature and thus presupposes the science of the spirit." 13
The spirit is possible only in intersubjective experience. Its sphere is
the sphere of meanings, and the spirit-personality is not the appear-
ances of an X, but a stream of meanings which creates its own environ-
ment (Umwelt). There is no natural or even psychic causality in this
Umwelt, the causality of the spiritual is nothing other than inner
motivation.
One essential difference between the spiritual and the psychic is that
one can apply the concept of reality only to the latter (and, of course, to
the human body and to material things). Since to be real means to have
the unity of permanent characters, causal connections take also place in
the sphere of the psychic. "The unity of the soul is real unity," Husserl
writes, "because as the unity of psychic life it is bound to the body as
the unity of the bodily stream of being which is in its turn a member of
nature." 14
For "the spiritual subject" the world is not a psychical, psychical, or
social world, but is a thematical world. The spirit as a constitutive and
self-constitutive non-substantial "substance" is an intentional subject in
the proper sense. It turns things and relations, alien and his own psychic
life to nothing but meanings. Husserl illustrates the difference between
psychic (real) lived-experiences and intentional (unreal) ones with the
following abstract example: if the object really does exist, then inten-
tional experiences pass away "parallel" to real ones; if the object is
unreal then the intentional experiences do not vanish; they just become
consciousness of unreality. We cannot grasp the psychic or spiritual life
of other persons primordially, and we are conscious of "the unelucida-
tible" of alien mental life.
Pure Ego is a pecular organon of the constituting and self-constitut-
ing spirit. It has the so-called Habitus, i.e., identifying retention of
definite themes taken up by the human subject (experience, judgement,
love, friendship etc.). "Pure Ego (Ich) must be able to accompany all of
648 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

my presentations. This assertion by Kant has a true sense, if by presen-

tation we mean here any vague consciousness," Husserl writes. 15 Pure
Ego is not the self-identical center of consciousness; it can "come
forward" and "step back"; pure Ego as the possibility of primordial self-
apperception always reveals itself in various acts of consciousness:
"There are as many pure Egos as real ones." 16 Despite such cor-
respondence, the constitution of pure Ego differs essentially from the
constitution of a real psychic subject. The latter is constituted through
multiplicities of lived-experiences as a transcendent object, i.e., an
object, which differs from constitutive consciousness. Pure Ego has no
multiplicities, it is constituted as an immanent givenness immediately
grasped in every act of consciousness. Pure Ego functions as the unique
means by which the spiritual penetrates into the unspiritual; namely
pure Ego betrays the presence of the spiritual in the constitution of a
material thing and of the human body; and the correspondence of the
real ego to the pure Ego shows clearly that the psychic does contain
potentially the spiritual. The psychic as the potentially spiritual and the
spiritual itself are based on the same structures of time-consciousness.
In phenomenology, Aristotle's question "What is being?", and the
question of traditional ontology and metaphysics "What are the
pretersensual principles of being?", are reformulated into the question
"How is every kind of being constituted?" This last question implies
the next one: "What is the nature of the 'generator' of constitution
itself?" And more concretely: "Is the spiritual subject the only generator
of any kind of constitution?" The answer is important for the under-
standing of phenomenology especially in its methodological perspec-
tives.
L. Shestov recalls Husserl's urgent request to read and to study
Kierkegaard: "How did it happen that he who devoted all his life to
glorifying ratio, could incite me to read Kierkegaard, who sang hymns
to Absurdity?" 17 Shestov found the answer in the following words of
Husserl's: "Your ways are not mine, but I comprehend and appreciate
your problems.'" 8 However, Shestov did not tell why Husserl himself
was interested in Kierkegaard's thought.
Kierkegaard's paths are paths to the religion of absurdity, his main
problem is the leap to the absolute, which seeks immediate unity with
the inner-absolute. Husserl's paths are paths to philosophy as a rigorous
science, but it is not accidental that Husserl compares phenomeno-
logical epoch to a "religious conversion" 19 : the shift to the phenomen-
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 649

ological attitude is the result of a leap which cannot be explained by

causality. On the contrary, this leap itself is a primary phenomeno-
logical principle which can be justified only through its realization.
In contrast to any kind of phenomenalism which simply identifies
phenomenon with the data of consciousness (with the latter going un-
analysed), Husserl regards phenomena as the process and the result of
the activity of consciousness. Husserl's imperatives: "To study to see."
and "Backwards to things themselves." are intended to make eidetic
contemplation accessible. But phenomena is not only the goal of
phenomenological activity but is in a sense its initial point. To reach
phenomena one must already be inside the phenomenological attitude:
"Looking back over the flow of phenomena in an immanent view, we
go from phenomenon to phenomenon . . . and never to anything but
phenomena." 20 Phenomena are impossible outside of immanent con-
templation, just as immanent contemplation is nothing other than the
contemplation of phenomena. This situation resembles Kierkegaard's
"either-or" principle: there is no intermediate position between the
natural and phenomenological attitudes.
It is necessary, however, to differentiate the methods or ways of
transition into the phenomenological attitude (reduction or epoch)
from the methodological significance of the phenomenological method.
For it is possible to research the outlines of the natural attitude from
the phenomenological point of view. In this sense there is no gap
between them. The concept of constitution is the connecting link
between the internal problems (self-grounding) of phenomenology and
its possible applications.
If one admits that every kind of constitution is exclusively the result
of phenomenological reflection, and as a consequence that the phe-
nomenological method can describe only phenomenologically-reduced
consciousness, then phenomenology looks like a closed sphere of
investigation concerned exclusively with its own problems. In my
opinion, this is the main presupposition of Heidegger's criticism
Husserl's phenomenology.
Heidegger writes in the above-mentioned letter to Husserl: "First of
all the transcendental problem is in its explication an elucidation of
what is meant by 'the ununderstandable' in being. In what respect is
being ununderstandable, i.e., what higher claim of understanding is
possible and necessary? Where should one return to reach this under-
standing?" 21 For Heidegger understanding ( Verstehen) is not a pure
650 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

epistemological procedure which satisfies the requirements of a cogni-

tive subject. Understanding is the primordial projection of Dasein
(human existence); it has ontological character, it is rooted in Dasein's
way of Being. While Husserl believes Dasein to be a "transposition" of
Ego to anthropology, for Heidegger, on the contrary, pure Ego is a
groundless abstraction from Dasein that lives-in-the-world.
The flse/fl-phenomenon is distinctive in that it is not a result of
constitution and reflection. Dasein as an ex-sisting being is created by
itself; it transcends any thingness and presence-at-hand, and thus distin-
guishes itself from other beings. It makes the Dase/zz-phenomenon a
fundamental one, and an endeavor to define Dasein's way of Being
assumes the title of "fundamental ontology," the primary principle of
which is the "ontological difference" "between Being and being" (Sein
und Seiende)-. "Only the soul that can accomplish this difference has the
ability to become a human soul above and soul of animal." 22 For
Heidegger Being is not a sort or a kind of being; Being is beyond any
being or its definitions. "Being is the transcendens pure and simple."23
Heidegger thinks of transcendence in accordance with the literal
sense of the word: "To transcend . . . means to overstep, to cross, to go
through, sometimes to exceed." 24 Only sometimes does transcend mean
to exceed; the main meaning is to overstep, to cross, to go through, but
not to lose touch with the ground. Heidegger's transcendence differs
essentially from Husserl's horizon and constitution. Husserl's demand
for acceptance of "hie et nunc" as the initial point of phenomenological
description means only fixation on and awareness of the initial horizon
of meanings. For Heidegger "here and now" means in-der-Welt-sein,
that is, living in such and such world.
Dasein is not a cognitive subject and its relation to reality is not a
cognitive one at all. Reality in its turn is not a set of objects and their
properties which are to be investigated. For Dasein reality is the
aggregate of things present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. The relatedness
of the proper and non-proper, of "freedom" and "submission," is the
basic relatedness between Dasein and reality. Dasein has two funda-
mental possibilities: either to submit to the non-proper and to dissolve
in the thing-like or "to go through," to transcend reality, i.e., to modify
everydayness into the Existential. Since reality in the Heideggerian
sense lies beyond cognitive (subject-object) relations, that is precisely
why beings (Seiende) can be "ununderstandable" and "incomprehen-
sible." Thus, the "higher claim of understanding" concerns not the effort
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 651

to acquire any kind of new knowledge but the possibility of doing one's
duty by oneself, i.e., of following the imperative: "Become what you
are."
The working out of questions about Being is the distinctive charac-
teristic of Heidegger's philosophy in comparison with Husserl's. For
Gadamer the questions Heidegger poses about Being provide the pos-
sibility of overcoming the groundlessness of Husserl's transcendental
subjectivity. 25 If we adopt this point of view then we must really believe
Husserl's phenomenology to be a particular case of Heidegger's. But
what question about Being is Heidegger's phenomenological question?
Is it a question about the Being of being that is capable of asking
questions about its own Being? Or is it a question about Being as such?
The first of these questions, at least, would ground not transcendental
consciousness but Dasein's being-in-the-world.
Husserl's transcendental subjectivity does not receive a foundation in
Heidegger, and, what is more, it is eliminated altogether. In Heidegger's
ontology there is no place for Husserl's intentional analysis which A.
Camus named very well "abstract polytheism": every essence (eidos),
every eidetic variation, every correlation of noesis and noema, every
kind of intentionality has its unique temporal forms, has its own
absolute, and discloses its own object as phenomenon.
Heidegger's ontology can be named "concrete monotheism." The
temporal structure of Dasein's Being is defined as the structure of Care;
the main and in essence the only problem of Dasein is the relatedness
of the proper and non-proper. The hierarchy of constitutive levels
vanishes in transcendental ontology, and the only absolute is conscience
which "summons Dasein's Self from its lostness in the "they." 26 Thus
Heidegger in fact loses the wealth of Husserl's intentional analysis and
respectively the wealth of the phenomena-world constituted by tran-
scendental subjectivity rather than grounds it in an ontological way.
It is evident that Husserl's and Heidegger's teachings are mutually
irreducible in their ultimate points: "constitution" and "being-in-the-
world." An attempt to represent one teaching as a particular case of
another leads to infinite regress: in Husserl Being is constituted in a
special intention, and in Heidegger it requires the foundation of inten-
tionality in Being. Further: the Being of intentionality can be compre-
hended as a result of a higher level of constitution, and in contrast to
this, the constitution of the Being of intentionality must be grounded in
the "deeper" Being, etc.
652 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

One can raise an objection to that: for Heidegger the Being of

intentionality is not an abstraction, it is being-in-the-world as a pri-
mordial fact for Dasein. But again, for Husserl Heidegger's choice of
starting point for philosophizing and his analytic of Dasein as a whole
can be interpreted as a special kind of constitution.
Heidegger believes thought to be able to eliminate the difference
between itself and life-in-the-world. The analytic of Dasein tries to
represent Dasein's Being as it is in itself, without any analysis of
representational consciousness. According to Husserl it is a necessary
task for philosophy to differentiate between constitutive consciousness
and what is constituted by consciousness.
If two philosophical conceptions are irreducible to each other in
their ultimate principles, the question arises, as to what is their real
point of intersection? To what extent can we believe Heidegger's
philosophy to be phenomenology? To what extent can we speak about
a phenomenological movement at all? And if we adopt this movement
as a real fact of contemporary philosophy and culture, why then is it
precisely in phenomenology that attempts at "grounding" Husserl's
phenomenology take place? Not only Heidegger but Sartre, Ricoeur,
Merleau-Ponty, and others are involved in attempts to discover a self-
sufficient ontological region (Dasein's Being, irreflexive consciousness,
will, perceptual consciousness, etc.) which pretends to be the founda-
tion of transcendental subjectivity.
These attempts have at their origin a myth (and they support its
existence) that transcendental subjectivity is something "floating above
many experiences." Despite Husserl's warning, 27 to his critics tran-
scendental subjectivity looks like a special kind of substance which is
out of touch with concrete phenomenological descriptions. Meanwhile
transcendental subjectivity is nothing more than the self-grounding
foundation of phenomenology that exists in and through descriptions.
It is commonplace that reflection is the foundation of Husserl's
phenomenology. But transcendental subjectivity is not a totally reflec-
tive consciousness but rather a continuous interrelation of reflection
and consciousness.
Reflection elicidates first of all that which is its object; the object of
reflection is not consciousness in general, not consciousness taken
abstractly, but it is consciousness already comprehended in a definite
way. This primary comprehending or understanding of consciousness
does not depend on reflection, it defines the way of reflection but it can
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 653

elucidate itself only in reflection. The "consciousness-reflection" circle

is a constitutive principle of phenomenology and the "structure" of
transcendental subjectivity.
The problem of the interrelation of reflection and consciousness is
not exclusive to phenomenological philosophy, but it is precisely for
phenomenology that it has great significance.
When Locke defines reflection as "that notice which the mind takes
of its own operations," 28 he already comprehends these operations in
some definite way, for example, as composing complex ideas from
simple ones. And again, we can achieve this comprehension explicitly
only through definite modes of reflection.
Kant's comprehension of reflection "It is the consciousness of the
relation of given representations to the different sources or faculties of
cognition." 29 depends on his primary marking out of the sources of
cognition: pure understanding (Verstand) and sensuous intuition. In
Kant the faculty of cognition (Erkenntnisvermgen) is a synthetic
activity of consciousness ensuring the growth of knowledge. And reflec-
tion is nothing other than the transcendental cognition which recon-
structs the unity of pure understanding and the sensuous intuition and
elucidates the fundamental role of the pure imagination and Time in
cognition a priori. Obviously we can see in Kant the interrelation of
consciousness and reflection, of a priori and transcendental cognition
respectively. Time plays here the role of a connecting link: time is both
the object of transcendental cognition and the means of description of
the synthesis of consciousness.
Husserl comprehends consciousness as a meaning-formation pro-
cess, as a constitutive activity, as a structural stream of living experi-
ence. In that case acts of reflection can be nothing but living experience
of special kind, "acts in which the stream of experience (Erlebnis), with
all its manifold events (phases of experience, intentionalities) can be
grasped and analysed in the light of its own evidence." 30 Consciousness
is immanent temporality in Husserl, respectively, "reflection is . . .
primordial disclosedness of 'now' and 'just now,' therewith reflection is
primordial disclosedness of time and temporality . . . Reflection is
temporality . . . ." 3I Thus, the temporality of phenomenological reflec-
tion is its distinctive character.
It is necessary that temporality be a mediator between consciousness
and reflection. Only in temporality does the structure of phenomena
coincide with the manner of its description, and owing to this coinci-
654 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

dence we have a chance at phenomenological insight: the object as a

phenomenon shows itself in itself and from itself. Phenomenological
reflection is not only a fixing of impressions and other "data of con-
sciousness," it contains nothing of introspection. Reflection grasps a
stream of consciousness in its unity, and consequently reflection can
constitute consciousness as a stream. In other words, phenomenological
reflection has as its goal the release of consciousness from the causality
of outer objects: reflection does not kill a "living presence"; on the
contrary, reflection is a necessary condition of its possibility. Tem-
porality is an indispensable element in the "consciousness-reflection"
circle. Properly speaking, it is the "consciousness-time-reflection" circle.
One can see an important turning-point in Kant's philosophy which
is congenial to phenomenology. Kant criticizes the substantialistic
conceptions of Time and refuses to answer the question "What is
Time?" but takes Time as a prime subject-matter of transcendental
aesthetics and logic. In his Critique of Pure Reason philosophical reflec-
tion encounters the stratum of primary temporal relations: the succes-
sion and simultaneity which predetermines completely the manner of
their own description. Succession cannot be described other than as
succession, or simultaneity other than as simultaneity. These primary
structures of consciousness are both the subject-matter of reflection and
its means. Kant describes the main synthesis of consciousness, taken
as subjective sources of cognition, categories, and their schemes, as
various correlations between succession and simultaneity. The descrip-
tion of consciousness comes into contact with the real activity of con-
sciousness which is independent of the way of its description, but this
"reality" becomes a reality for consciousness only in and through
description.
As a subject-matter of research, consciousness differs essentially
from any subject-matter of natural science. According to Kant under-
standing "prescribes laws to nature" but reflection does not prescribe
but elucidates the "laws" of consciousness bringing to light and reveal-
ing its own specific character.
The "consciousness-time-reflection" circle is elucidated more expli-
citly in Husserl's phenomenology. The phenomenological conception of
consciousness shows that a question about consciousness can be asked
only in an indirect way, i.e., as a question about time; the phenomeno-
logical conception of time shows, in its turn, that the question of the
nature of time can be asked only as a question about consciousness. In
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 655

other words to ask questions about time is to ask questions about the
temporal forms of the various modi of consciousness, the various kinds
of intentionality, and not only about awareness of the various forms of
temporal relations. To raise the question of consciousness means to ask
questions about coexistence of living experiences in the unity of the
temporal stream of consciousness.
The same is true of reflection. To raise the question of reflection
means already adopting a definite understanding of consciousness and
time. To raise a question about consciousness means to ask questions
about the interconnection of consciousness and reflection. For reflec-
tion obtains access to consciousness only through the temporal struc-
tures of consciousness: "It is thanks to retention . . . that consciousness
can be made an Object." 32 And retention is known to be one of the
main structures of time-consciousness.
Phenomenology seeks immediate access to consciousness "an sich"
by means of consciousness modified, i.e., reflection. Time is the mirror
of consciousness by which it reflects its "essence." In truth the "essence
of consciousness" is its intentional existence. The fundamental stratum
of time-consciousness (the constitutive quasi-temporal flux of con-
sciousness as absolute subjectivity) is a primordial phenomenon for
phenomenology which is a foundation of the highest level of constitu-
tion the constitution of the spirit and of self-appearing spiritual
experience. When breaking the "syncretism" of this flux or stream,
phenomenology becomes an investigation-, this means that the spiritual
is not an enclosed scope but contains an intention to research manifold
kinds and levels of the non-spiritual.
Heidegger's circle in Being and Time,33 i.e., "Dasein's Being-time-
transcendence" differs in essence from Husserl's "consciousness-time-
reflection" circle, nevertheless they have a certain point of contact: time
is an unalienable moment and the principal means for the explication of
the "meaning of Being." To what degree is this intersection a point of
substance and to what extent is it formal?
Whereas in Husserl the structure of phenomenon and the manner of
its description coincide "in time," in Heidegger we see the coincidence
of the structure of fundamental phenomenon Dasein and the manner
of its self-revelation. The point common to both philosophers is that
time is not applied from outside to the description of consciousness and
is not something external to the way of existence of Dasein. Therefore,
the difference between Husserl and Heidegger in their understanding of
656 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

time cannot be reduced simply to differentiation of the objects they aim

at; it is not simply that in Husserl time is necessarily involved in the
description of consciousness and in Heidegger that of Being, of Dasein
because the difference between these "objects" themselves can be
explicated only through temporal descriptions.
Whereas in Husserl reflection reveals primary temporal relations
such as "now," "before," "just now," etc. in multiform types of inten-
tionalities, in Heidegger temporal relations are from the very beginning
given preassigned as relations of the past, present, and future. The
problem of time as the problem of orientation towards and by various
modes of time is, thus, the specification of relations between the proper
and non-proper Dasein's Being. The main temporal point of everyday-
ness (the non-proper) is the present; the on-coming, death, and the past
as the historicity of Dasein fall into oblivion here. In contrast to that,
the Existential is the unity of the "proper future" and the "proper past,"
and it makes possible the "proper present." The condition for proper
Being is, according to Heidegger, temporality as the totality of finite
time, the experience of the totality of time. Heidegger considers the
future as Being-towards-death to be the starting point for this experi-
ence: "We have in view the coming ( K u n f t ) in which Dasein, in its
ownmost potentiality-for-Being, comes towards itself." 34
Reorientation towards the future and the singling out of a "privil-
eged" point in time, i.e., of death is not accomplished by means of
reflection which Heidegger understands, along with transcendence, in
the literal sense: "Reflection in the sense of turning back is only a mode
of grasping oneself, but not the mode of primary self-revelation . . . .
Dasein does not need any turning back towards itself as a first step as if
it had at first stood before things motionlessly turned toward them,
keeping itself behind its own back; and nowhere but in the things
themselves and then in those which surround, human existence every-
day does it find itself." 35
"Everydayness" does not have in Heidegger any negative valuation
characteristics. Dasein as being-in-the-world finds itself from the very
beginning in everydayness, in things, in the non-proper. Submergence
into the non-proper is not a psychological characteristic of the human
being, according to Heidegger the non-proper is not identical with the
non-genuine if the genuine is understood as a feeling of existence "in
full" which results from actions which are adequate to circumstances.
"This non-proper (Uneigentlich) self-understanding of human existence
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 657

does not at all mean non-genuine self-understanding," writes Heidegger.

"On the contrary, this everyday finding of oneself inside the existing
actuality, this passionate submergence into things may be, apparently,
very genuine, whereas all the extravagent rummaging in one's soul may
be to the highest degree non-genuine and even exaltedly pathological." 36
The possibility of the non-proper's being genuine corresponds to the
possibility of adopting the so-called "gnosiological Weltanschauung,"
i.e., of gaining a foothold in things and of identifying oneself through
things.
The gnosiological position is not, in Heidegger's view, a position
taken solely in the framework of a "purely theoretical" epistemology.
Having a claim on ultimate evidence the subject for the purpose of
gaining knowledge identifies Being with the objects of cognition or, in
other words, turns Being into an object. The gnosiological position is,
thus, the basis for a certain Weltanschauung attitude incorporated into
a man's activity, according to which the world is the infinite totality of
objects. Being becomes in this case redundant. The subject as a sub-
stance of an infinite number of cognitive and reflective acts proceeds
from universal and invariant principles and is aimed at the infinite
processing of beings. In the world as a totality of objects, the wholeness
of man's modus vivendi is "modeled" in accordance with the systemic
character of objects cognized or practically "processed" by him.
Turning to the proper is not the acquisition of genuineness through
reflection, it is rather a resolve to overcome the very reflection which
does not lead to the primary disclosure of the selfness, precisely for the
reason that it is a refraction of the selfness in things and a return to
oneself from the non-proper. Philosophical reflection does not have any
special status in this respect since it has to do with perceptions and
other data of consciousness which are the result of intending this or
that type of beings.
Differentiating the non-proper and the non-genuine emphasizes
Heidegger's efforts to get away from psychologism in the description of
the phenomenon of human existence. The genuine and the non-genuine
as psychological characteristics express the oscillations of Dasein in the
non-proper. The differentiation between the proper and the non-proper
is the concretization of the ontological differentiation between Being
and beings. Not the psychological restructuring of the "internal world"
but the reorientation of being-in-the-world is the basis for the turn to
the proper. "The proper," writes Heidegger, "is only the modification of
658 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

the non-proper, but not the total elimination of the non-proper." 3 7

Neither "rummaging in the soul," nor "espionage on Oneself," tran-
scendence is, according to Heidegger, the condition for the possibility
of such a turn.
While in Husserl reflection and intentionality are "coherent" and
phenomenology is understood as an infinite task of reflective descrip-
tion of spontaneously functioning intentionality, in Heidegger the rela-
tionship between reflection and transcendence is substantially different.
Reflection is the basis of transcendence, but transcendence is the over-
coming of reflection: "passing through" is the overcoming of the return-
ing mirroring of "impenetrable" being, of being deprived of Being.
In Heidegger's view, Being is in no way the result of cognition or
even phenomenological reflection; on the contrary, the fact that Being
occurs always even though it can fall into oblivion and the belief that
Being does occur underlies thought. In other words, it is not that cogni-
tion reveals Being, but that the revealability of Being is a necessary
condition for knowledge.
According to Heidegger, the problem of the proper and the non-
proper is not a problem of consciousness or cognition. This problem
requires not a solution but a resolution to modify (Entschlossenheit)
the non-proper into the proper. Modification of the non-proper is as
much a reorientation in the world as a modification of the world itself.
The world becomes transcendent to the same degree that Being tran-
scends Dasein.
Does not Heidegger's transcendence thereby end up in the trap of
the gnosiological position with the only difference that the gnosiological
subject already possesses certain social and cultural landmarks whereas
the transcending being relinquishes in principle these landmarks? Is not
in this case the principle of transcendence a principle of nihilism? And
is not nihilism the "gnosiological position" turned inside out?
It is obvious that the principle of transcendence is fairly remote from
the phenomenological principle "Back to things themselves." It is also
obvious that in spite of the author's proclaimed phenomenological
methodology, a distancing from phenomenology begins to show in
Being and Time, one that may be contrary to his own will. This
warrants the question, the discussion of which is outside the scope of
the present article, of to what extent is the range of problems taken
up by existentialism is compatible with phenomenology? Maybe L.
Shestov was right in thinking that Kierkegaard (in our case, the
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 659

Heidegger of the Being and Time period) and Husserl in moving away
from the "average layers of Being" followed opposite roads and that the
relationship between their philosophical attitudes could be expressed by
the principle "either-or." 38
The differences to be discerned in their understanding of time
and reflection show more clearly the irreducibility of Husserl's and
Heidegger's philosophical conceptions. Apparently, the problem of the
proper and non-proper is not among the range of problems addressed
by Husserl's phenomenology since this problem is canceled upon
passing over to the position of the phenomenologically reflecting
person who is immersed in the horizon of culture and does not doubt
its values. For Heidegger the problem of the proper and non-proper
cannot be overcome through reflection. Since Heidegger consider
reflection not in Husserl's sense (for Husserl reflection is not refraction
in things or objects but is the primary disclosure of the stream of
consciousness and, in this sense, primary awareness of one-self, i.e., the
phenomenological Ego), their philosophical conception concerning the
formulation of initial and basic problems prove to be incommensurable.
The history of his own thought figures essentially in the Heidegger's
later work. Of special importance is his attitude toward Husserl's
phenomenology and toward phenomenology in general. The turn in
Husserl's philosophical thought began, in Heidegger's opinion, much
earlier than most researchers think; they see it emerging in the notion of
life-world in his Crisis of European Sciences.
Recalling the philosophic atmosphere of the period in which he
wrote Being and Time, one which saw the predominance of neo-
Kantianism, Heidegger speaks of difficulties in the formulation of the
question of Being: "Ontology was a prohibited term. Husserl himself,
who in Logical Investigations first of all in VI was close to the
proper question of Being, was not able to hold his ground in the
atmosphere of that day; he fell under Natorp's influence and made a
turn to transcendental phenomenology which reached its first peak in
Ideas. Thus, the principle of phenomenology was abandoned to the
mercy of fate." 39 Heidegger means that the principle "To things them-
selves" receives in Ideas a "gnosiological formulation" emphasizing the
superiority of the method (but not of things and problems): "Every
primordial dator Intuition is a source of authority (Rechtsquelle) for
knowledge . . . ," 40
The later Heidegger thus assumes the role of a critic exposing
660 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

Husserl's deviations from the original principles of phenomenology.

This critique is, however, conducted not from a position of involve-
ment with existential problems, but from the position of "true phe-
nomenology" whose only guardian Heidegger claims to be. Though
phenomenological philosophy as a philosophical school is now pass,
says Heidegger, phenomenology remains as a permanent possibility for
thought, and "in this case it may vanish as a name in favor of the
subject-matter of thought (die Sache des Denkens) whose revelability
remains a mystery." 41
The alternative which presented itself to Heidegger after Being and
Time and especially in his later period is paradoxical from the tradi-
tional point of view: either ontology or Being! Ontology feels its way
towards Being, but misses it; ontology deals with beings and under-
stands Being by way of beings which leaves their imprint on Being. The
term "fundamental ontology" should, in Heidegger's opinion, be given
up in view of its false interpretation: "The foundation of fundamental
ontology is not a foundation upon which something could be con-
structed, is not a fundamentum inconcussum but rather a fundamentum
concussum,"42 This mobile foundation remains, however, a foundation
and the reduction of Dasein s existence to its ultimate groundwork, to
conscience, poses the threat that philosophical problems may be turned
into psychological and anthropological ones.
"The attempt to think Being without being becomes indispensable,"
writes Heidegger, "because there is, it seems to me, no other possibility
of bringing the Being of that is on Earth properly before one's sight, not
mention of defining sufficiently the relation of the human being to what
hitherto was named 'Being.'" 43 According to Heidegger "the necessity
of understanding contemporaneity," i.e., the totality of socio-economic,
political, and other problems is not motivation for this attempt. But
does not his evaluation of the present time as the "midnight of the
miserable epoch of the universal night" which has lost ontological
differentiations and is minting Being in various forms of beings force
Heidegger to give up the search for being through which one can see
Being? Thought (Denken) has now at its disposal only the possibility of
turning to the Event (Ereignis) which presents Being as a gift and
brings it to the proper. This does not mean that the relation between
Being and beings becomes nonessential; this rather indicates an attempt
to get rid of the attempts to ground Being in beings.
Upon this refusal to overcome metaphysics (such attempts, accord-
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 661

ing to Heidegger, lie inside metaphysics, which must be left to itself)

and upon the relinquishment of fundamental ontology, the phenomeno-
logical method is also changed. The method is no longer aimed at
fundamental phenomenon, at Dasein, but at Being as the Event which
is just the phenomenon in the original sense showing itself in itself. The
event is not the Being of beings, it is not that at all: "The Event
eventuates." ("Das Ereignis ereignet."). 44 Thought on the Event touches
upon and transforms into the poetic, which is the only alternative to the
domination of the gnosiological attitude, the "irrepressible insanity of
rationalization and cybernetics."
One of the places Heidegger's philosophical work takes us is thus a
Utopia of Being where an attempt is made to return to a premeta-
physical way of thought which is a kind of escapism that turns away
from the hottest problems of our time which, Heidegger thinks, lie
exclusively on the plane of "beings encountered within-the-world."
For the explication of Being and Time or rather to indicate what is
not Being and not Time, the later Heidegger uses a dash instead of "is"
{ist) and plays on the different meanings of the German word "geben":
"Being Some-thing, but nothing of the being (Sein eine Sache, aber
nichts Seiendes), Time Some-thing, but nothing temporal (Zeit
eine Sache, aber nichts Zeitliches)."45 "We do not say Being is, Time is,
but Being is there {gibt Es) and Time is there {gibt s)." 4 6 The meaning
of "Es gibt" is known to be "there is," or "it takes place"; Heidegger
tries to fuse this meaning with the literal one "It gives," and add to this
meaning "Given" {Geben) and "Gift" {Gabe). The encounter of these
meanings creates the possibility of giving utterance to Being: "Being as
the Gift of this It gives belongs into the Given {Sein gehrt als die Gabe
dieses Es gibt in das Geben.) . . . ." "Being is not. Being gives It (is
there) as the disclosure of presence {Sein ist nicht. Sein gibt Es als das
Entbergen von Anwesen)!'47
If we return to relation of Being to beings (entities), or to the Being
of beings, it is obvious that Being as Ereignis is not how being (entity) is
manifested, that this "how" is just the mode of the being itself. Being
does not dictate that a being show up in this or that way; Being "allows"
the being's disclosure through the itself that it is. The being deprived of
Being would always be determined by another being and could not
show itself in itself. Thus, Being, in the Heideggerian understanding of
it, is the basis of each being as a phenomenon.
In the world-view of the later Heidegger a peculiar circling back to
662 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

intuitions of the early Husserl becomes apparent. Being in the later

Heidegger manifests a surprising closeness to the Husserlian absolute
quasi-temporal stream of consciousness. The stream of consciousness
as an absolute subjectivity does not exist objectively; it "takes place", it
is the "place of the event" or the "happening" of any configuration of
meaning. Absolute subjectivity does not determine, nor does it con-
struct an object, rather it allows the object to manifest itself just so as it
manifests itself "here and now." "It gives" to the object the possibility of
being a phenomenon. The absolute stream of consciousness is, as
Husserl says, quasi-temporal and constitutive; in the stream of con-
sciousness are constituted the primary temporal phases which are the
primary forms of meaning-formation. Absolute subjectivity (the tem-
poral constitutive stream of consciousness) occurs as a unity of Being
and Time, but is not something that exists objectively or temporally.
Thus, the concept of absolute subjectivity functions in Husserl's phe-
nomenology as the deepest groundwork of the phenomenological view-
ing of the world: the object is disclosed just so as it is constituted by
consciousness and, what is even more important, consciousness con-
stitutes the object just as it discloses itself in itself, and from itself.
In this sense, phenomenology cannot help being ontology, since
phenomenological reflection is an ontological procedure showing the
mode of being of the object grasped in intentions of a certain kind.
Nevertheless the "gnosiological tension" necessary for philosophical
investigation is maintained in Husserl unlike in the later Heidegger
whose distinctive feature is, so to speak, a "Buddhism of Being." 48
Whereas Heidegger in his later work attempts to point out the pos-
sibility of thought lying outside of metaphysics and philosophy, Husserl
maintains in the course of his entire "creative evolution" the ideal of
philosophy as a rigorous science.
The levels of constitution singled out by Husserl are nothing other
than a reflective-ontological hierarchy, the highest level and highest
principle ("mobile foundation") of which is the self-manifestation of
spiritual being. Each level of constitution is grounded in a certain
activity of consciousness owing to which the object acquires a certain
ontological status. Constitution is not cut out according to the measures
of cognition (subject-object relations) since the problem is not about
properties of a concrete object but about what status of existence can
be assigned to the object. Moreover, the process of cognition must be
itself constituted.
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 663

It goes without saying that the description of a definite level of

constitution and even the singling out of these levels is possible only
because of reflection. However, the activity of consciousness underlying
each particular level does not result from reflection: there is a certain
type of consciousness behind every reflectively described procedure of
constitution; any process of constitution is neither a wholly reflective
nor a wholly spontaneous activity of consciousness. The specificity of
phenomenology consists precisely in the fact that to the layers of Being
which have been singled out there always corresponds a certain under-
standing of consciousness or a problem of consciousness formulated in
a certain way.
In Logical Investigations Husserl notes three types of understanding
of consciousness: "(1) consciousness as the entire real phenomenological
being of the empirical ego, as the interweaving of psychic experiences in
the unified stream of consciousness; (2) consciousness as the inner
awareness of one's own psychic experiences; (3) consciousness as a
comprehensive designation for 'mental acts', or 'intentional experiences'
of all sorts." 49 This classification concerns the higher levels of constitu-
tion, those of the psychic and spiritual "I" psychic and spiritual not
being strictly differentiated in Logical Investigations.
However, the correlation between a certain mode of existence of an
object and a certain understanding of consciousness also occurs at two
lower levels of constitution.
At the level of the constitution of a material thing the question is not
only how something is given to consciousness when this something is a
material thing, but also what consciousness it is that intends something
which is a material thing. In other words, we must decide not only how
consciousness constitutes a material thing, but also how consciousness
constitutes, in this case, itself.
The constitution of material thing in the above described sense
corresponds to the understanding of consciousness as a mirroring of
the causal relationship involved in a "real substance" by means of
sensual experience. The interests of consciousness are directed out-
ward: the question is only about the constitution of the causality of
objects in which there is not a single grain of consciousness. Here it
should once more be stressed that constitution is not the cognition, in
this case, of material things, it is rather a pre-theoretical procedure of
providing the status of a material thing for objects grasped with the aid
of a "sensual scheme," etc. Time is, in this case, considered to be the
664 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

time of the world of things ("eosmological" time) and there is no place

at all for reflection inside this constitution. The problem of the relation-
ship between consciousness and the world is, in this context, a problem
of the objectivity of the world, of the independence of the material
world from consciousness, etc.
The solution to the problem of objectivity can, according to Husserl,
be accomplished only through the introduction into the constitution of
the human body as a localization of all sensations. But in this case,
another understanding of consciousness is instituted as a regulator for a
complex system of kinestheses owing to which the space and time of
the interaction of human beings is structured. Time (as well as space)
figures also here as the time of the world of things, but now it is
credited with functions providing orientations in the world of man. The
problem of consciousness assumes the form of a psycho-physical or
psycho-physiological problem, and reflection is here conceived as the
study of certain forms of mutual influence between psychic and physio-
logical processes.
The constitution of a material thing depends on the constitution of a
human body, but the latter, in its turn, also depends on a higher level of
constitution, namely, that of the psyche or the soul. Consciousness is
regarded here as totality of concrete states of consciousness. Despite
the fact that these states of consciousness have as their basis concrete
physiological processes and are functionally related to a system of
kinestheses owing to which it is possible to constitute "by analogy"
another person's body as animated, they are considered to be subject to
causality of a special type. Here, too, time is regarded as objective time,
as a "measure of the motion" of psychic processes, and reflection as the
introspective observation of the states of consciousness and their causal
interdependence. The problem of consciousness is, at this level of
constitution, the problem of the "essence of consciousness," the prob-
lem of determining the specificity of the internal causality of psychic
processes and of describing the various forms of their interconnections.
The most important distinction introduced by phenomenology is the
distinction between the psychic and the spiritual. At the level of the
constitution of the spirit, the understanding of consciousness radically
differs from all those ways of understanding which correspond to the
constitution of material thing, then body, and then soul.
The significant similarity of the described modes of the self-constitu-
tion of consciousness consists, first of all, in that consciousness always
 HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 665

depends on something else, the constitution of the psychic where the

state of consciousness depends on another state being no exception.
And, secondly, no understanding of consciousness at these three levels
is self-sufficient and self-referential; it always refers itself to the under-
standing of consciousness of a higher level of constitution. In any case,
one can speak here about self-constitution and about consciousness
understanding itself only in relative terms.
The distinction between the psychic and the spiritual is, in a certain
sense, identical to phenomenological reduction. The understanding of
consciousness corresponding to spiritual Being is a self-revealed and
self-referential stream of consciousness possessing the inner motivation
for self-description.
At three lower levels of constitution the "consciousness-time-reflec-
tion" circle is not closed for time is not the time of consciousness and
reflection is a retrospective procedure for studying in the broadest
possible sense the effect of the external world on consciousness or for
studying causal relationships between the states of consciousness. In the
constitution of the spirit, the corresponding understanding of con-
sciousness is grounded on the "consciousness-time-reflection" circle.
Time is here no longer the time of the external world, it is the tem-
porality of the very stream of consciousness. This, however, does not
mean that time is something internal: time as the primary structure of
intentionality and a mediator between consciousness and reflection is
the condition of the possibility of any meaning-formation. The problem
of consciousness is, at the level of spiritual being, identical to the
problem of reflection. The problem of consciousness can no longer be a
theoretical problem since consciousness is not "explained" with the aid
of something else, e.g., of some preassigned scheme. On the contrary,
the constituting and self-constituting stream of consciousness is itself
the source of any explanation and any scheme. Thus, the problem of
consciousness assumes an imperative character. At the level of the
spirit there must be the will to reflect, to achieve clarity and obvious-
ness, the will to disclose a certain understanding of consciousness
behind any kind of constitution, any kind of everyday, scientific,
aesthetic, religious, etc. experience.
The constitution of the spiritual can be regarded as an attempt by
Husserl to describe the mode of existence of the spiritual being as such.
In this sense, the constitution of the spiritual can be called an ontology
of the spirit. The distinctive feature of phenomenology consists pre-
666 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

cisely in that no kind of experience traditionally attributed to the

spiritual is taken as a starting point of the phenomenological position.
The phenomenological position presupposes the constitution of any
form of traditional spiritual experience, and is the revelation of a
certain type of consciousness, which is behind each of these forms.
The spiritual possesses inner motivation for self-description and
does not exist without this motivation. The mode of the existence of the
spiritual is the description of consciousness as such, i.e., consciousness
as a temporal-intentional stream. Thus, in the constitution of the
spiritual consciousness coincides with the description of consciousness.
In would be naive to think that the stream of consciousness is
something analogous to a river stream, that it moves without any efforts
on the part of consciousness. As with any form of spiritual experience,
the existence of the stream of consciousness must be supported by
certain efforts of consciousness which are in fact nothing other than a
description of the stream in a definite "genre." We may speak of the
stream of consciousness in Joyce or in Proust having in mind their
works, in which, incidentally, reflection is an indispensable element, but
we may not speak of the stream of consciousness with regard to a
certain individual completely absorbed in everyday affairs. This does
not mean that outside of literature, art, or philosophy the stream of
consciousness, i.e., the spiritual life understood phenomenologically,
cannot occur, however, for this life to take place, people communicat-
ing with one another must live an advanced psychic life and be resolute
in reflection.
The phenomenological position is often thought to be impossible
because it is regarded as an end of itself. In this light, phenomenology
appears to be a closed system of idealistic philosophy and the levels of
constitution to be eliminations of the absolutely reflecting mind. It
should be admitted that Husserl himself provides a certain basis for this
tendency to so understand phenomenology. When he leaves the field of
phenomenological descriptions and begins formulating the purely
methodological principles of phenomenology, he frequently advances,
as the main principle, the monism of reflection, thereby removing so to
speak, the problematic of consciousness and time into the background.
This is especially conspicious in Cartesian Meditations where phe-
nomenology is understood as the sphere of universal self-investigation
and any consciousness as a modification of the phenomenological.
In post-Husserlian phenomenology explicit or less explicit rejection
 HUSSERL AND H E I D E G G E R 667

of this last principle is apparent. The broadening of the sphere of

influence of phenomenology has become possible because of this rejec-
tion of the premise that phenomenology can describe only phenomeno-
logical consciousness. This broadening of the sphere of phenomeno-
logical studies is mainly due to the search for the methodological
relevancy of phenomenology with respect to the various disciplines of
the humanities and the physical and other sciences. Here, however, a
trend of another kind arises: phenomenology directed outwards forgets
its own foundations. Yet the methodological relevancy of phenomenol-
ogy is inseparably linked with its basic principles. In this context we
single out the "principle of the revelation of the primary understanding
of consciousness in the constitutive activity of consciousness" or "the
principle of consciousness behind."
Husserl does not at all try to single out the spiritual being which
would be placed outside psychic and psycho-corporeal being. Never-
theless, spiritual Being-consciousness understood in the phenomeno-
logical sense serves as a basis for the ontological hierarchy of constitu-
tion. "Serves as a basis" denotes here that the phenomenological
position is aimed at, as it were, involvement in the sphere of the
phenomenological spiritual, of all levels of constitution, viz., nature, the
human body, and, particularly, the psychic life. In other words, the
phenomenological position is aimed at the reconstruction of these levels
by means of reflection. Reconstruction requires, in its turn, criticism of
certain types of constitutive consciousness, but to this end they must be
explicated. Phenomenological reflection becomes thus reconstruction
and criticism. Whereas within the lower levels of constitution the
"consciousness-time-reflection" circle is open, phenomenological reflec-
tion closes the circle of each constitution by demonstrating that to a
certain understanding of consciousness there corresponds a certain
understanding of time and a certain mode of reflection.
The principle of "consciousness behind" is the reverse side of the
intentionality principle if intentionality is understood not as a privilege
of the phenomenologically reduced pure consciousness, but as a phe-
nomenological principle for the investigation of any kind of conscious-
ness: any constituted object, an adopted position, or a problem posed
all contain "traces" of the consciousness which intended them.
Levels and kinds of constitution are much more varied than is
evident from Ideen II where Husserl examined mainly the problem of
the separation between the spiritual and the natural. As a matter of fact,
668 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

they are as multiform as the world of contemporary culture. The

principle of the reconstruction of consciousness of various types has
unquestionable methodological value for studies in many fields of the
humanities and the history of science, although this principle, like the
phenomenological method in general, is not the universal method for
the investigation of culture. The principle of the reconstruction of
consciousness and of the understanding of time and reflection has a
certain methodological significance for phenomenology itself. Owing to
this principle phenomenology maintains the status of research whereas
the Heideggerian method of the destruction of ontology seeks to effect
a turn from philosophy as investigation to philosophy as thought. The
contradiction between and the irreducibility of philosophy as investiga-
tion and philosophy as thought is a constant source of the Western
mode of philosophizing.

Rostov-on-Don

NOTES

1
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans, by J. Macquarie and E. Robinson (New
York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 60. (Hereafter: )
2
J. C. Morrison holds that "for Heidegger phenomenology has a secondary place and
significance in that it is merely a method and in that it is situated in the context of a
problem which is itself of secondary importance." (James Morrison, "Husserl and
Heidegger: The Parting of Ways," in Heidegger's Existential Analytic, ed. by F. Elliston
(The Hague: Mouton Publ., 1978), p. 49. However, for Heidegger phenomenology is
not simply a method for gaining access to Being. Being is not something external with
respect to phenomenology; Being is itself a phenomenon, and this is conspicious in the
later Heidegger.
3
See: Alwin Diemer, Edmund Husserl: Versuch einer systematischen Darstellung seiner
Phnomenologie (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain KG, 1956), p. 29.
4
Ibid., pp. 3 0 - 3 1 .
5
Martin Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie. Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 24
(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1975), p. 230. (Hereafter: GP)
6
Husserliana IX (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff), 1962, p. 601. (Translation here by J.
. Morrison, op. cit., p. 55)
7
Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans, by W. P. Alston and G.
Nakhnikian (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 59.
8
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie und phnomenologischen
Philosophie, Vol. II. Husserliana IV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), p. 43.
(Hereafter: Ideen II)
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid., p. 280.
11
Ibid., p. 286.
 HUSSERL AND H E I D E G G E R 669

12
Ibid., p. 302.
13
Edmund Husserl, "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity," in: Edmund
Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences und Transcendental Phenomenology, trans, by
D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1970), p. 279. (Hereafter: C)
14
Ideen II, p. 139.
15
Ibid.,p. 108.
16
Ibid., p. 109.
17
Lev Shestov, Umozreniey otkrovenie (Paris: YMCA Press, 1964). p. 306.
18
Ibid.
19
C,p. 137.
2(1
Edmund Husserl, "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," trans, by Q. Lauer in
Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (New York: Harper and
Row, 1965), p. 108. (Hereafter: CP)
21
Husserliana IX, p. 602.
22
GP, p. 454.
23
BT, p. 62.
24
GP, p. 423.
25
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tiibingen: J. . . Mohr, 1960), p.
243.
26
BT, p. 319.
27
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans, by J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1970), Vol. 2, p. 541. (Hereafter: LI)
28
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Dent and Sons,
1974), Vol. 1, p. 78.
29
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: J. Bell and Sons, 1930), p. 190.
30
Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans, by
Royce Gibson (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1931 ), p. 219.
31
See: Gerd Brand, Welt, Ich und Zeit (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), p. 68.
32
Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Interna! Time-Consiousness, trans, by J. C.
Churchill (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 164.
33
Heidegger points out that in posing the question of Being there is no logical circle,
for "one can determine the nature of entities in their Being without necessarily having
the explicit concept of the naming of Being." (, p. 27). "In the question of the
meaning of Being there is no 'circular reasoning' but rather a remarkable 'relatedness
backward or forward' which what we asking about (Being) bears to the inquiry itself as
a mode of Being of an entity." (Ibid., p. 28) Relatedness of such a kind we prefer to call
in both Husserl and Heidegger a circle.
34
BT, p. 373.
35
GP, p. 226.
36
Ibid., p. 228.
37
Ibid., p. 243.
38
Lev Shestov, op. cit., pp. 314317.
39
Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969), p. 47.
40
Ibid., p. 70. (Ideas, p. 92)
41
Ibid., p. 90.
42
Ibid., p. 34.
43
Ibid., p. 2.
44
Ibid., p. 24.
670 VICTOR MOLCHANOV

45
Ibid., p. 4.
46
Ibid., p. 5.
47
Ibid., p. 6.
48
According to one disciple of Heidegger, he, having read D. T. Suzuki's book Zen
Buddhism said: "If I understand this man correctly . . . this is what 1 have been trying to
say in all my writings (Chung-Yuan Chung, "Reflections," in Erinnerungen an Martin
Heidegger (Pfulingen: Neske, 1977), p. 67,
49
LI, p. 535.