Phenomenology as the Original Science of Life in Heidegger’s Early Freiburg Lectures

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe aim of this essay is to introduce an original and radical phenomenology of life into Heidegger’s earliest lectures at Freiburg University that stands independently from and in contrast to fundamental ontology. The motivation behind this aim lies in the exclusion of life from the existential analytic of Dasein despite Heidegger’s preoccupation with the question of life during this very early period. Principally, the essay demonstrates how Husserl’s phenomenological insight into the intentionality of life has the potential to be transformed into a living aporia. Although this demonstration is set within the general context of obtaining knowledge in and of life, it is achieved via a reciprocal critique of both the possibility of a philosophy of life and Husserlian phenomenology that reveals the congruence life philosophy has with the project of phenomenology. The essay ends by exposing Heidegger’s own latent and inexplicit formulation of phenomenology as the original science of life in terms of a radical correlation that holds aporetically between living and unliving experience.