Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

Abstract

Phenomenology, as was indicated in part two of this book, originated in Germany with the work of Edmund Husserl, who wanted to lay a new foundation for philosophy as a rigorous science. Through the phenomenological reductions he sought to set aside the presuppositions of every day consciousness until we have before us the unbiased outlook upon transcendental pure phenomena. By locating meaning in the intentional relation between consciousness and its object Husserl sought a rigorous foundation for knowledge. If Husserl’s concerns were primarily epistemological, Heidegger’s concerns, as was shown in the chapter on Existential Philosophy, were more ontological. Husserl bracketed the question of Being and Heidegger called for revisions in the phenomenological method which would make it appropriate for asking the question of the meaning of being, or what it means to be. In his early work Heidegger approached the question of the meaning of being through that being which is ontologically distinctive, the being of human existence or Dasein. Phenomenology becomes for him a description of the basic structures of Dasein. Since, however, the meaning of being is hidden and Dasein finds itself in a hermeneutical circle, phenomenological description is interpretation. According to Heidegger, “Phenomenology of Da-sein is hermeneutics in the original signification of that word, which designates the work of interpretation.”1