Hence and Thence Phenomenology’s Borderline

Abstract

In the preceding chapters, we have had the opportunity to see how we can avoid several key misunderstandings in the phenomenological thought of Husserl and Heidegger with regard to fundamental questions of doctrine and teaching. Hopefully, enough justice has been done to the original concerns of these two founding figures of this philosophy. We have discovered that despite various severe critiques (mutual, and from both within and without the phenomenological camp), these concerns can be made intelligible for phenomenologists of all particular persuasions—and, with some luck, not only for phenomenologists. The basics of the phenomenological methodology and research results restored in the previous chapters can thus be combined to constitute a well-standing teaching and way of philosophizing. This, then, may form part of the ground of a joint phenomenological program that could be called “Normalized Phenomenology.” Of course, it is not only Husserl’s and Heidegger’s Phenomenologies that could contribute to this endeavor, but also those of Scheler, Merleau-Ponty, Hannah Arendt, and many others. What has been realized here can be saved for Phenomenology’s future—if not for philosophy as a whole. But this can be done only under a certain further condition. It is this additional condition that will be our main concern in this final chapter. After the analyses developed in what follows, a new beginning will have been prepared for Phenomenology.