A Study On Heidegger’s Thought Of Formal Indication

Formal indication is a phenomenological method which is put forward byHeidegger in his early academic career. As a fundamental method of Heidegger’sphilosophy, formal indication is not only a method, but also an understanding aboutwhat is philosophy. The central problem which formal indication tries to resolve is theproblem of the relation between philosophy and life. In Heidegger’s view, manyprevious kinds of philosophy distort life when they explain it. Such distortion exists inphilosophical tradition from Plato, and expresses through various dualisms, such asform and material, general and individual, essence and phenomenon. Husserl’sphenomenology makes a contribution to eradicating such dualism and making therelation between philosophy and life healthier. His method of category intuition breaksthe ready existing form of category in traditional philosophy, and explores itsoccurrence in intuitive field. Heidegger’s formal indication is an inheritance anddevelopment of category intuition. They take the same kind of thought, that is to say, athought of genealogy which returns to original field. However, Heidegger rejectedHusserl’s intuition, because he thought it’s a theoretical seeing, a presence, and such aintuition can’t catch the truth of life. Heidegger substituted bodily enactment withtheoretical seeing in using the method of formal indication, and through going aheadtowards death the original temporality was unfolded, the presence was not only. Soformal indication can indicate life’s striving exactly as it is, instead of stipulating lifeor distorting life with a general logical form.Heidegger only analysed what is formal indication in his early Freiburg lectureintroduction to the phenomenology of religion. He never analyse it directly later in hisacademic career, but as a fundamental method formal indication run through thedevelopment of his thought. Formal indication first of all reflects in Heidegger’sdestruction of traditional thoughts in his early days. We can say that destruction as amethod of reading traditional thoughts is a variant of formal indication. Throughdestruction, traditional thoughts enwrapped with many layers of concepts can bereturned to original life situation from where Traditional thoughts have grown up. Originally, traditional thoughts are the enactment itself of existence. So, we can saydestruction is a method that can indicate previous enactment in the history, and that isformal indication at once. In Heidegger’s view, Christianity thought and ancient Greekthought are the two fundamental parts in our traditional thoughts, so they became thefocus of Heidegger’s destruction. Through this destruction formal indication gotfurther improvement, and Heidegger’s entire thought became more mature, and beingand time is the mark of this mature. Being and time is the concentrated expression ofHeidegger’s early thought, and is also the application of formal indication. What is theenactment in formal indication and how to maintain this enactment got investigationand resolution in this works. However, Heidegger’s early philosophy is aDasein-centered existence philosophy, and the enactment only means Dasein’sexistence. The center of Heidegger’s later philosophy was turned from Dasein toenowning. Formal indication was not abandoned, but has been changed accordingly.Enactment not means existence, it means enowning.This paper is divided into four chapters: chapter I is the thematic analysis offormal indication, and expounds its history and its connotation. This part first of alldefines preliminarily formal indication according to the relevant chapters inintroduction to the phenomenology of religion. Heidegger considered that there arethree directions of sense in an entire phenomenon: content-sense, relational-sense andenactment-sense. Ancient Greek philosophy emphasizes content-sense, and Kant’s andHusserl’s transcendental subject philosophy emphasizes relation-sense, and formalindication emphasizes enactment-sense. Traditional philosophy seeks universal.Ancient Greek philosophy seeks universal by generalization, and transcendentalsubject philosophy seeks universal by formalization. Formal indication is differentfrom them, because it doesn’t seek universal, and it only indicates concrete enactmentin factical life experience. Such concrete enactment is the human existence. So, if onewants to do philosophy by formal indication, one should go deep into factical lifeexperience, and should understand the way of human existence. Heidegger revealedthe way of human existence is bodily, historical and temporal. Through such reveal,what is enactment became more explicit, and what is formal indication also becamemore explicit.Chapter II shows Heidegger’s destruction of traditional thoughts. That is to say,we apply formal indication to original train of the thought by the way of removing the cover. The first section of this chapter analyses Heidegger’s destruction about originalChristianity which including Heidegger’s comprehension on Paul’s letters and theliterary form of them. These letters are original accounts of Paul’s Missionarybehaviors and present the life situation of original Christianity in vivid. We should notabstract conceptual doctrine but grasp all kinds of concrete enactment of situationswhich emerging from them. In Heidegger’s opinion, the lives of Paul and the followersare filled with the strength of enactment and become authentic because they anticipatethe return of Christ and transform themselves with it. The return of Christ opens theoriginal horizon of temporality which is crucial for motivating the strength ofenactment.The second section of this chapter analyses Heidegger’s destruction aboutAristotle’s thoughts. For the sake of his particular purpose, Heidegger wants to obtainan original comprehension of the existence of human being, that is, a comprehensionembedded into lives from Aristotle. As a result, Heidegger’s interpretation on Aristotleis alternative. He chooses the interpretation not on the portion of Aristotle’s thoughts inaccording with Plato’s idea but on Aristotle’s practical wisdom because practicalwisdom is changeable wisdom from the concrete lives, not any rules to obey, that weget it only relying on authentic enactment. Heidegger also interprets Aristotle’sdiscussion on rhetoric activity of human being and emotional experience etc. byconcentrating on the human existence. These contents are hackled and analyzedsystematically in this chapter.Chapter III analyses the application of formal indication in Being and Time whichis Heidegger’s early writings. Being and Time is a fruit of early writings. In this book,in which its discussion is about the existence of human being, Heidegger expounds theexistence of human being through the method of formal indication. He calls theexistence of human being Dasein and defines its structure as care. Care is a structure oftemporality in which Dasein unites future, having-been and present as a whole. Daseinis defined as ecstasies of temporality that means Dasein is enactment. If this enactmentwant to be true, it will make Dasein transform from inauthentic to authentic and betoward death.Chapter IV talks about the turning of Heidegger’s philosophy and application offormal indication in Heidegger’s later writings. The turning manifests that it transfersfrom emphasizing the existence of Dasein to the occurrence and appearance of Sein itself. Because the occurrence of Sein is still an enactment with concrete situation, themethod of formal indication is not with disutility in Heidegger’s later writings. So themethod is still on operation, only supporter for it transfers. The occurrence of Seinneeds platform which is language. Language, as poetic saying regarding as anenactment of Sein, makes way for Sein. That is to say, the later Heidegger not focuseson the existence of Dasein but brings formal indication to a broader field in which allthe world occurrence.