Heidegger's ontology and his contemporaries: Husserl and Cassirer

Abstract

Research into the history of understanding Heidegger's ideas allows to reveal how different thinkers were likely to grasp the specific subjective positions that defined the meaning of philosophizing as a cultural practice posited by modern era of intellectual history. The figure of Heidegger is crucial because it shed light on the more general context of the evolution of philosophizing within the system of scientific knowledge. A clear contrast between scientific rationalism and philosophical thinking, inherent for Heidegger's philosophy, is now hardly perceived within general coordinates of scientific philosophy of the last century, combining directions of phenomenology, Neo-Kantian tradition and positivism. Understanding the nature of synthesis of phenomenological method with the principles of the philosophy of life that formed the core of Heidegger's thought was the point of reference of such thinkers like Edmund Husserl and Ernst Cassirer. The problem of how to reconstruct the contours of delineation between the aforementioned philosophical trends remains relevant today and, as the latter define the contours of contemporary philosophy so that the barriers between different traditions of philosophy only intensified. Heidegger's desire to find premises of philosophizing, deeper than principles for a positivist and phenomenological science, would find support from Neo-Kantian thinkers, who also stood for autonomy of philosophy. But radical ontologism of Heidegger refused any possibility of dialogue. Husserl and Cassirer made critical remarks on ontologization as the leading motive of Heidegger's thought, which gave starting intention to further reception of Heidegger's work. It is ontology of time that has a threat of all consuming relativism and opportunism, since it deprives ethics from opportunities that would not fit the immanent structure of Dasein. Ontology of language fell prey to similar criticism, as Heidegger suggested lingual turn of existential analytics of Dasein. Cassirer in his own philosophy of symbolic forms forsaw the opportunity of linguistic totalization of being and developed his theory of generic symbolic forms.