Who has difficulty making which aspect of the world intelligible to whom?

Abstract

Abstract Following Hubert Dreyfus, this paper takes up the debate over the limits on what can be articulated by means of intentional analysis. Section 1 reviews the contrast between Husserl's position and Heidegger's position. Husserl's is an ‘inexhaustibility theory’ of the inarticulable, according to which, although it is in principle impossible to articulate everything, there is not anything that it is in principle impossible to articulate. Heidegger's is a genuine ‘inarticulability‐in‐principle theory’ of the inarticulable, according to which it is, in principle, impossible to articulate the whole of what makes human understanding possible. On this view, it is, in principle, impossible to articulate the background of skills and practices presupposed by and taken for granted in all our everyday human activities. Whereas Dreyfus has been largely interested in this debate for the sake of its parallels to developments in cognitive science, this paper aims, in Section 2, to consider the political importanc...