Heidegger And The Phenomenological Ontology Steering

Husserl's phenomenology is the cannon of phenomenology. At the same time that he is regarded as the most faithful inheritor, Heidegger is also the most radical critic of Husserl's phenomenology. The degree that the tension between the philosophy of Husserl and that of Heidegger has reached is rarely seen in the histroy of western philosophy.The manifestion of continuity between Heidegger's philosophy and Husserl's concentrated on Heidegger's appreciation and absorption of the three important discoveryof Husserl's phenomenology_____the discovery of intentionality, categorial intuition andthe original sense of the apriori. The difference between Heidegger and Husserl is reflected in that Heidegger had not only refused Husserl's transcendental idealism but also had difined renewly phenomenology as a science of being, which is also called ontology. This is what we called as "the ontological shift of phenomenology."Heidegger's attitude to Husserl's phenomenology has something to do with his view on western traditional philosophy, especialy the modem subjectivistic philosophy that is initiated by Descartes. As held by Heidegger, although Husserl's phenomenology had challenged dualism of Descartes' type as well as had surmounted the traditional views about the implication of such concept as "being" and "truth", on the foundation it can still be looked upon as a type of subjectivistic philosophy. For Heidegger, this means that Husserl had neglected the problem of being and caused an ontological devoid of his system as a result just as Descartes, Kant and others had done. The ontological devoid of subjectivistic philosophy constituted firstly by the neglect of the problem of the mode of being of subject, which conversly was caused by the lack of the definition of the meaning of being.It can be concluded that there are two defects of subjectivistic philosophy. One is the neglect of the mode of being of subject and the other is the neglect of the meaning of being itself.In order to remedy the first defect of subjectivistic philosophy, especially that of Husserl's transcencental phenomenology, which on the one hand regarded consciousness as the point of departure, on the other hand neglected the being of consciousness. This means that the problem of the being of consciousness or subject, which had been neglected by Husserl's phenomenology, became the urgent problem for Heidegger's phenomenology. Now the point of departure is no longer the consciousness or subject itself (Bewusstsein), but the being of consciousness (Dasein). This transformed"phenomenology of consciousness" into "phenomenology of Dasein", which constituted the first aspect of the ontological shift of phenomenology.To remedy the second defect of subjectivistic philosophy, especially that of Husserl's phenomenology, which had neglected problem of the meaning of being itself, Heidegger advocated that "the greatest riddle of all riddles" is not the riddle of cognition but the riddle of being and that phenomenology should regard the being of beings but not the cognition of beings as the object of study. This means that for Heidegger phenomenology is not epistemology but is ontology. This constituted the second aspect of ontological shift of phenomenology.It is thus clear that Heidegger has transformed Husserl's "transcendental phenomenology" into his own "ontological phenomenology" by his criticism of the ontological defect of subjectivistic philosophy. Heidegger's criticism of subjectivistic philosophy is realized through his criticism to the explanation given by subjectivistic philosophy of such concept as subject,world,truth, temporality, being,etc., which constituted a magnificent scenery of a confrontation of ideas.