In the Midst of Being: The Journey into the Internality of Reality in Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Metaphysics

Abstract

This article delineates the main milestones in the trajectory to the internality of Being in HCM’s thinking against Husserl’s transcendentalism. It starts by uncovering the multi-aspect duality that characterizes the real being, continues in encountering the limitations and constraints that are imposed by a study anchored in the appearances of the real external world, and culminates in the articulation of the internality of Being as “selfness” (Selbsthaftigkeit or Selberkeit) that typifies real beings and the spiritual-I. This trajectory is not marked by HCM herself, but like any phenomenological journey it is personal and can be best carried out in the first person. The following discussion delineates the path to the internality of Being in Husserl’s phenomenology, in which the gap between the internal and the external is intensified to the point of the reduction of the external world. As a result, the world is eliminated and sometimes even seems entirely forgotten. In contrast, for HCM, there is no such opposition. On the contrary, in her thinking the simultaneous gaze to the internal and the external aspects of reality is preserved and the thematization of the gap between the two transpires as a useful hermeneutical tool for achieving an abundant and complex perception of the internality of Being that in no way leaves behind its external dimensions and the world in general.