Reduction, Construction, Destruction

Of a three-way Dialogue: Natorp, Husserl, and

Heidegger1

Jean-Franois Courtine

In order to introduce the question of the given and of its elaboration with respect to
the motifs of reduction, construction and destruction, I shall take as a point of departure
the state of the dossier established by Heidegger on the occasion of the first two courses
that he gave as Husserls young assistant at the University of Freiburg in the years 19191920.

In these courses, Heideggers aim is to take up and to radicalize Husserls

phenomenological enterprise while remaining free from any concerns with an

orthodoxy or allegiance to a school. Framed by a sustained debate with the different
figures of Neokantianism that occupied the forefront of the philosophical scene in
Germany at the time, it is this project of taking up Husserls enterprise and radicalizing
it that will lead Heidegger to reopen the (ongoing) debate between Husserl et Natorp.2

The Bibliographie relative to the Heidegger-Husserl-Natorp debate: Christoph von Wolzogen, Es

gibt. Heidegger und Natorps Praktische Philosophie , in Heidegger und diepraktische Philosophie, hrg.
Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Otto Pggeler, Suhrkamp, stw., 1988, pp. 313-337; Jrgen Stolzenberg,
Ursprung und System. Probleme der Begrndung der Philosophie im Werk Hermann Cohens, Paul
Natorps und beim frhen Heidegger , in Neue Studien zur Philosophie, hrsg. R. Bubner, K. Cramer, R.
Wiehl, vol. IX, Gttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995, pp. 207 sq.; Jrgen Stolzenberg, Lultimo
Natorp. Fondazione ultima e teoria della soggestivit, in Neokantismo e fenomenologie. Logica, psicologia,
cultura e teoria della conoscenza, a cura di Stefano Besoli, Massimo Ferrari, Luca Guidetti, Quodlibet,
Macerata 2002, pp. 173-186; M. Ferrari, Husserl, Natorp e la logica pura , in Besoli-Ferrari, Guidetti,
op.cit, pp. 91-108; Riccardo Lazzari, Ontologia della fatticit. Prospettive sul giovane Heidegger, Husserl,
Dilthey, Natorp, Lask, Milan, Angeli 2002; Karl-Heinz Lembeck, Neokantismo e fenomenologia.Logica,
psicologia, cultura e teoria della conoscenza, a cura di S. Besoli, M. Ferrari, L. Guidetti, in Quaderni di
discipline filosofiche , Macerata, Quodlibet 2002, pp. 109-120. Cf. also Jean-Luc Marion, Remarques sur
les origines de la Gegebenheit dans la pense de Heidegger , in Heidegger Studies, vol. 24, 2008, pp. 167-179
; Sophie-Jan Arrien, Natorp et Heidegger: Une science originaire est-elle possible ? in Heidegger 19121930, Rencontres, affinits, confrontations, ed. S. Jollivet, Cl. Romano, Paris Vrin 2009 (forthcoming).
2
The main documents of this debate include: P. Natorp (1887), ber objektive und subjektive
Begrndung der Erkenntnis, Philosophische Monatshefte, pp. 139-168; Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen I,
Prolegomena zu reine Logik, 1900, Hua XVIII (ed. Holenstein), Nijhoff, La Haye 1975; Husserl, Briefwechsel,
Bd. V. Die Neukantianer, ed. E. Et K. Schuhmann, Husserliana Dokumente, Kluwer, 1994, pp. 39-165; P.

To this dossier, already complex in itself, one should add Heideggers Habilitationschrift
devoted to Duns Scotus, as well as the two first lectures in Freiburg, Ga., 56/57, Zur
Bestimmung der Philosophie, and Ga. 58, Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie. With the
debate between Husserl and Natorp, as it is reopened by the young Heidegger, one
should also integrate Emil Lask, and in particular his work from 1911/1913, Die Logik
der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre, which is of considerable importance for the
Habilitationschrift, as well as for Rickerts works and the for the Neokantianism of the
Baden School in general.3
I would like to dwell for a moment longer on this Heideggerian point of
departure, characterized, as I have indicated, by the attempt to radicalize
phenomenology defined as the archi-science of the origin, as a pre-theoretical science of
the Ur-etwas, as Vorwissenschaft, and even as an inquiry into factical life It is, in effect,
within the framework of this determination of phenomenology as science (in the 1911
article in Logos, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science), and from a perspective that it is
permissible to characterize as architectonic and foundational (the guiding question is:
What is at the foundation of the system of knowledge? In particular, what are the roles
of logic and of psychology?), it is from such a framework and such a perspective that
Heidegger takes up again the discussion about the question of the given (of the
Gegebenheit, and of the es gibt). These themes are central in the Husserl Natorp
Rickert Lask debates, and by emphasizing them, Heidegger brings them to the
forefront in a resolute way.
Naturally, it is beyond the scope of this paper to consider this dossier in all its
richness and complexity (it has already given rise to a secondary literature that is just as
rich). It is also beyond our present aims to examine its relation to other later debates

Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie, 1912, J.C.B. Mohr, Tbingen Reprint in E. J. Bonset, Amsterdam 1965 (in
particular XI, 11-14); Husserl, Ideen I, 1913, ed. K. Schuhmann, Hua III, I, Nijhoff, La Haye 1976;
Husserl, Entwruf einer Vorrede zur Zweiten Aufgabe der Logischen Untersuchungen, in Hua. XX/I,
Logische Untersuchungen, Erznzungsband, Erter Teil, ed. U. Melle, Kluwer 2002, in particular pp. 276-292;
P. Natorp, Husserls Ideen zur einer reine Phnomenologie, in Logos, VII (1917-1918), pp. 224-246 reprint in
Husserl, ed. H. Noack, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1973; To this we shall add the essay
of 1901: Zu den logischen Grundlagen der neueren Mathematik, to be found (in Italian) in the excellent
volume, of which the main focus is admittedly different: Natorp, P. Forma et Materia dello spazio, Dialogo
con Edmund Husserl. A cura di Niccol Argentieri, Bibliopolis, Napoli 2008.
3
On this point, see Heideggers global exposition in Ga. 58, Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie, pp. 224 sq:
``Das Probleme der Gegebenheit Kritik Natorps und Rickerts.

centered around the given or the myth of the given.4 At this initial stage, I will limit
myself to consideration of the Husserl-Natorp debate; subsequently, I shall return to
Heideggers clarification and its radicalizing effect.
*
At the beginning of his 1919 course (Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie, 1919-1920),
Heidegger gives a clear formulation of the guiding question and its stakes:
What does given and givenness mean? This magic word of phenomenology
and the stumbling block of other philosophical orientations? [Was heit
gegeben, Gegebenheit dieses Zaubertwort der Phnomenologie und der
Stein des Anstoes bei den anderen?]5
In a sense, it is as a phenomenologist, attentive to the methodological question or to the
first definition of phenomenology as a method that the young Heidegger proposes to
re-raise the question of givenness and of the given, insofar as this question is at the very
center of Husserls project of a descriptive psychology indexed to intuition. But while
Heidegger does begin by a declaration of fidelity with regard to Husserl, and to the
phenomenological school in general, his critical freedom, geared towards the repetition
and radicalization of the phenomenological project, is also clearly formulated from the
outset:
It is in the most radical way that the radicalism of phenomenology must be
exercised, against itself and against everything that presents itself as
phenomenological knowledge. [Am radikalisten hat sich aber der Radikalismus
der Phnomenologie auszuwirken gegen sie selbst und alles, was als
phnomenologische Erkenntnis sich uert.]6
Heidegger continues, in a free variation on the Aristotelian motif of the amicus Plato:
There is no jurare in verba magistri within scientific investigation, and the
constitution of an authentic generation of investigators and of subsequent

See notably the discussion opened in the anglo-saxon world by Wilfrid Sellarss series of lectures in
1956, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Harvard University Press, 1997.
5
Ga., 58, 5.
6
Ga., 58, 6.

generations depends on this: that scientific enquiry does not lose itself in the
marginal domain of special questions, but rather finds a genuine way back to the
original sources of the problems in order to be led ever deeper. [Es gibt kein
jurare in verba magistri innerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, und das
Wesen einer echten Forschergeneration und Generationsfolge liegt darin, da sie
sich nicht an die Randbezirke der Spezialfragen verliert, sondern neu und echt
auf die Urquellen der Probleme zurckgeht und sie tiefer leitet.]
In the first rank of these problems, drawn from the source, figures the problem of the
delimitation of the domain of phenomenology, of its scientific character, and most
importantlyand this is the point on which we shall focus hereof the ultimate
instance on which its legitimacy depends, its assignment to the given or to the presentgiven in an irresistible evidence.

However, to put to the test the magic word,

Gegebenheit, which could serve as a slogan, is also to enter into the debate with other
schools, in the first place the neo-Kantians, the Marbourg School, represented mainly by
Herman Cohen and Paul Natorp, and the Baden School, here represented by Heinrich
Rickert and Emile Lask. It is also clear that outside of this initial debatebut we wont
be able here to consider all its elementsthe Gegebenheit still remains a stumbling
stone for other debates, anchored in other schools. I have in mind notably the Carnap
of the Aufbau in 1928, who reopens the debate with Husserl regarding the status that in
the foundational enterprise is commonly assigned to the flux of experience, and who
reopens the debate regarding the choice of an ultimate given under the heading that
Carnap then calls the auto-psychological basis (eigenpsychische Basis).

The question of the given, of givenness, is naturally taken up in a course devoted to the
determination of philosophy (Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, which is divided in two parts:
1. Die Idee der Philosophie and das Weltanschauunsproblem, 2. Phnomenologie

und

transzendentale Wertphilosophie), and, moreover, to its determination as Urwissenschaft,

archi-science of the originary. The guiding question, which will eventually be taken up
again in the 1919-1920 course (Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie), is substantively the
following: What is phenomenology? And the answer comes immediately: Its very idea is

established as: the originary science of life in and for itself.7 Although it would of course be
necessary to pause over this decisive shift from the Erlebnis to the an und fr sich, I must
leave this question aside, and point out that it is in terms of this idea that the question
of the given emerges, in the first instance, in direct connection with this other query:
What is the domain of investigation of phenomenology (Forschungsgebiet)? Is this
domain given or pre-given itself (gegeben, vorgegeben)? Is it given directly or purely
and simply, without intermediaries, without mediation? Or, inversely, is this originary
domain (precisely the domain of the origin: Ursprungsgebiet) never given, but always
only and foremost a domain that must be conquered8?
The manuscript of the first Freiburg course is at present incomplete, but we can
read in a Nachschrift, due to the auditor O. Becker,9 this even more striking formulation:
The originary domain of philosophy could not be an ultimate proposition, an
axiom. [] This originary domain is not given to us. [] It is never given in life
in itself. It must always be grasped anew, at a new cost.10
This question of access and this requirement of a grasp of a field in need of constant
renewal, of a given that is never entirely given, and most importantly, never definitely
given, is undoubtedly one of the main motifs of what Heidegger will eventually come
to characterize expressly in the immediately succeeding courses under the headings of

Was ist phnomenologie? Als ihre Idee ist angesetzt: absolute Ursprungswissenschaft von Leben an
und fr sich (Ga. 58, 171).
8
Ibid, 29.
9
Ibid., 203.
10
Das Ursprungsgebiet der Philosophie ist kein letzter Satz, keine Axiom. [...] Das Ursprungsgebiet ist
wesentlich nie gegeben im Leben an sich. Er mu immer von Neuem erfat werden. See also Ga. 58, 2627: Die bermten und berchtigten unmittelbaren Gegebenheiten der Phnomenologie und
phnomenologischen Wissenschaft sind zunchst bekanntermaen nie und nirgends gegeben, wir
mgen das Leben in seiner aktuellen Strmungsrichtung nach allen Dimensionen durchsehen. Vielleicht
ist das Ursprungsgebiet uns jetzt noch nich gegeben aber wenn die Phnomenologie weiter ist ? Auch
dann nicht und nie. [] Das Gegenstandsgebiet der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie mu also immer
wieder neu gesucht, die Zugnge neu geffnet werden. - the famous and acclaimed immediate
given of phenomenology and of a phenomenological science is not foremost and as we all know
ever given, even if we were to examine it in all its dimensions and if we were to live it in its actual course
and direction. Perhaps this originary domain is not yet given to us but what will happen when
phenomenology will have moved ahead? It will not be any more given then. The domain of objects of
scientific philosophy must consequently be always sought again, the ways of access that lead there must
be opened anew.

repetition and destruction (Wiederholung, Destruktion). I shall return to this briefly when
I conclude this presentation.
The question of givenness and of the conditions of access to the given is even
more important and decisive, as I have already indicated, to the extent that one
purports to give consistency to this idea of phenomenology as Urwissenschaft. What
about the archi- or the arkh, the Ur- of this original scienceor science of the origin? Is
it possible, and if it is, then how is it possible, to establish methodically the way that
leads from the non-original back to the original, to the Ursprung? (This is also the central
theme of the Logik der Erkenntnis of H. Cohen). If the young Heidegger resists at the
outset the theoretical, or even the pre-theoretical, character of this originary science,
Ursprungswissenschaft, i.e. always governed by the theoretical,11 he nonetheless
preserves the idea of a genuine originary science (eine echte Ur-wissenschaft), from which
even the theoretical itself would draw its origin. This science of the origin must be
apprehended in such a way that not only it will not stand in need of making
presuppositions, as is already required by Husserls principle of Voraussetzunglsigkeit,
indicated in the introduction to the Logical Investigations, but also in such a way that it
will not be able to involve any presuppositions, to the extent that it will not be itself a
theory.
The decisive moveor if one prefers, Heideggers decisive blowwhich will
direct the entire development of the problem of the ultimately given, goes through
another meaningful shift, from a question which no longer bears so much on what there
is, as it bears on the elucidation of the Frageerlebnis itself, of the experience-of-thequestion that is proper to the ultimate question: gibt es etwas? Is there something? Or is
something given? An apparently minimalistic or elementary questionwhose
insignificance and poverty (Kmmerlichkeit) Heidegger himself underscoresbut
which is nonetheless a crucial question, one that decides the life or death of philosophy!
A question that allows finally, and for the first time, a leap to be accomplished into
the world. I cite this quite striking passage:

11

See Ga. 56/57, 59: Diese Vorherrschaft des Theoretischen mu gebrochen werden... (This prevalence
of the theoretical must be broken).

We are here before the crossing of the paths, before a choice that decides the life
or death of philosophy, as before an abyss: either it is nothing, i.e. in absolute
objective positivity (Sachlichkeit), or it succeeds in springing into another world, or
more exactly, absolutely for the first time into the world.12
We find the same set of problems concerning ultimate givenness as a question, again
accentuated in its radicality, in the courses of the following year (Grundprobleme der
Phnomenologie, 1919-1920).13 I have already cited the beginning of this passage, which
continues as follows:
The problem of givenness, (of being-given, Gegebenheit) is not a special problem,
resulting from a specialized investigation (Spezialistisches Sonderproblem). With
the problem of givenness, the pathways of the modern theory of knowledge split
[hear: the path of the Marbourg School on the one hand, and the Baden School on
the other], and at the same time they split from phenomenology, upon which it is
incumbent to detach the problem from the inadequately narrow context of the
theory of knowledge.14
In order to move forward in the development of the field of questions related to
Gegebenheit, Heidegger, in way of proceeding that is critical of Natorp on the one hand,
and of Rickert on the other, begins by bringing back to mind the classical Husserlian
distinctions between the different modes of givenness that correspond also to the
different modalities of intentional directedness:15 a distinction will thus be made
between that which is self-given (sebstgegeben) in the flesh (leibhaftig), that which is
given-itself (in its ipseity), but not in the flesh (leibhaftig), and finally that which is
neither self-given (selbstgegeben), nor given in the flesh, namely that which is given blo
symbolisch, merely symbolically. One will also distinguish the given in the sense of
what I give (to) myself (that is in effect, as we shall see, the von mir gesetzes and the

12

Ga. 56/57, 63: Wir stehen an der methodischen Wegkreuzung, die ber Leben oder
Tod der Philosophie berhaupt entscheidet, an einem Abgrund : entweder ins Nichts, d.h. der
absoluten Sachlichkeit, oder es gelingt der Sprung in eine andere Welt, oder genauer : berhaupt
erst in die Welt
13
Ga., 58, Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie (1919-1920), 131.
14
See Nachschrift Ga. 58, 224 das Problem der Gegebenheit ist kein spezialistisches
Sonderproblem. An ihm scheiden sich die Wege der modernen Erkenntnistheorie unter sich
und zugleich von der Phnomenologie, die das Problem vor allem au seiner verengenden
erkenntnistheoretischen Problematik loslsen mu (See also Oskar Beckers Nachschrift,
ibid., 221).
15
Ich kann im Leben auf etwas gerichtet sein, ohne da ich das, worauf ich gerichtet bin,
im Charakter der Gegebenheit, des Prsentseins mir gegenber stehend habe.

given in the sense of what is given to me from the outside (the mir von auen
Vorgegeben;16 in other words, the given in the sense of I give myself the given, as
layed out or posited, and the given as found outside, pre-given.17
To these distinctions may also correspond what Heidegger characterizes as the
two typical treatments of the problem of givenness, in the Marburg School and by
Rickert.18 For the members of the Marburg School: one would never be able to speak
of an object completed and given. Before any givenness there is thought and its
particular lawfulness, for which an object alone can be given. In this way a given object
is never primary or first, its being posited is always indexed to an originary function of
thought. The object is understood from then on as object = x, that is as the task
(Aufgabe) of a positing that progresses ad infinitum.
In a different appendix to the same course,19 in reference to the review that
Natorp had recently published in Kanstudien of Bruno Bauchs book on Kant,20
Heidegger drastically summarized the position of the Marburg School in the following
manner: To be conscious, consciousness (Bewutsein), that means: to think, to
determine, to posit an object. Each given is such only insofar as it is determined in
thought.

It is only on the basis of this determination that givenness (Gegebenheit)

emerges for the first time. The positing-of-thought thus retains absolute primacy. To
know is to determine an object, to posit it in thought. Thus, there is no pre-given (es gibt
nichts Vorgegebenes). There are (es gibt) objects only in thought, and since knowledge is
a process which, as a matter of principle, knows no end, the object is never given, but
only its idea.
Nonetheless, and this is another decisive point, on which Heidegger never
ceased insisting since the time of his Habilitationschrift, although in this context the
direct reference is to Emil Lask, it remains a fact that thought, thus characterized as a
positing or determining, necessarily requires a something (etwas) to determine,
some thing that constitutes, as it were, an ultimate irreducible pregiven, a final

16

Ibid 224.
See. Ga. 58, the notes of O. Becker, 224 : Es ist zu scheiden : a) Gegebensein im Sinne
des von mir Gesetzten, d.h. der Fall, wo ich mir etwas gebe . b) Gegeben im Sinn des mir (von
auen) Vorgegeben.
18
Ga 28, 131.
19
Appendice A : Gegebenheit in der Marburger Schule Givenness in the Marburg School.
20
Kantstudien, XXII, pp. 426-459.
17

remainder (ein letzter Rest). In this connection, it is not irrelevant that Natorp himself,
in the notes that he writes down after reading Cohens Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (Logic
of Pure Knowledge), reacts negatively to this all but complete elimination of every given
or pre-given. He notes that for Cohen, in effect: it is in itself and exclusively that pure
thought must produce pure knowledge, and moreover: Only thought itself can
produce that which is able to count as being. That is what in the end amounts to the
complete elimination of every given. Accordingly, even if Natorp grants that the
given can only have a sense as Aufgabe, as task, it is only to add immediately after
this capital restriction: but according to the sense itself of the task thus establisheda
task that thought itself must first accomplishthe given nonetheless remains, and it
remains in all certainty under the heading: given in advance (voraus Gegebenes). In his
undoubtedly legitimate aversion to the pseudo-given, Cohen ends up running the
risk of missing the authentic sense and significance of givenness.21
This criticism is thus internal to the Marburg School, and one finds it also in the
1910 work: The Logical Foundations of the Exact Sciences (Die logischen Grundlagen der
exakten Wissenschaften),22 where Natorp asks still more precisely: What then should this
given in advance to knowledge be?23 And after having rejected the standard answers,
he writes: Vorstellung, Empfindung, even Mannigfaltiges; representation, sensation,
manifold which itself in turn always already requires an act of determination. He
continues:
It is rather this x which as manifold, and also as unity, is what is determined by
thought. For thought, there is (es gibt) no being that has not been posited within
thought itself. To think means nothing other than: to posit that something is.
As for knowing what is outside and anterior to this being, that is a question that
has absolutely no acceptable meaning.24

21

See the volume Cohen und Natorp, t. 2, p. 21, ed. H. Holzey, Schwabe, Ble-Stuttgart 1986
(extrait de Zu Cohens Logik) : aber im Sinne der gestellten Aufgabe, die vom Denken erst zu
lsen, bleibt es doch das Gegebene, und zwar voraus Gegebene. In der begrndeten Abwehr
gegen das falsche Gegebene kommt Cohen in Gefahr auch diesen echten Sinne der
Gegebenheit zu bersehen.
22
1910, p. 48 (reprint Edition Classic Verlag Dr. Mller, Saarbrcke, 2006).
23
Was sollte das voraus Gegebene der Erkenntnis denn sein?
24
My emphasis.
Es ist vielmehr dasjenige X, welches als Mannigfaltiges, ebenso wie andererseits als Einheit, durch das
Denken erst zu bestimmen ist. [] Es gibt fr das Denken kein Sein, das nicht im Denken selbst gesetzt
wrde. Denken heit nichts Anders als : setzen, da etwas sei ; und was auerdem und vordem dies Sein
sei, ist eine Frage, die berhaupt keinen angebaren Sinn hat.

In his older study, Objective and Subjective Foundation of Knowledge (1887),25 Natorp
related this determinable x to the Aristotelian dynamei on:
The given is not the concrete of the phenomenon except insofar as it is to be
determined in advance, that is, insofar as it is a determinable x, and to this extent
the analogue of Aristotles dynamei on. It is only given in the sense that a task to
be accomplished is given. It is not given as a datum of knowledge, on the basis of
which something else, still unknown, would let itself be determined.
It becomes increasingly clear that the positive, the allegedly initial given, is in
fact what is sought. This is why it is preferable to speak in terms of what is
ultimately sought. [] But of this absolutely last one has made a first. One has
taken the quaesitum for the datum and one has thereby denatured the task of
knowledge.
[But] if every determination is first and foremost a production of knowledge,
then one cannot avoid reflecting on this: prior to this production, something
must have been given, something like a subjective originary, like an immediate
which must be determined and which thereby must be brought to objectivity.
Indeed, something is given prior to the production of knowledge: namely the
task. We could also say: the object would be given; that is, given as that which
initially requires determination as an x, and not as a known magnitude.
Natorp raises the question: Would the ultimate given be an originary subjective, a
phenomenon of the last instance, wherein it would be permissible to see the
immediate of (subjective) consciousness? Is it permissible to posit this immediate of
consciousness as an immediate and originary datum of knowledge? To which Natorp
objects: it is more advisable to ask oneself whether this orginary can itself be attained
by consciousness. Subjectivity as such does not let itself be grasped in its immediacy.26 It
could not be apprehended except after the fact, in its accomplishment (Leistungen) or in
its products, in a procedure that must accordingly be characterized as a
reconstruction.
Thus, before any concept, the level of pure subjectivity would be the level of
absolute indetermination. One may certainly go back to such subjectivity as to
originary chaos, but one may not apprehended it in itself. The constructive,
objectifying production of knowledge is absolutely antecedent. It is from an anterior

25

Philosophische Monatshefte, 1887, pp. 164-165; French translation in Nokantismes et thorie de la

connaissance, Paris, Vrin, 2000, 136-137.
26
My emphasis.

production that we reconstruct, to the extent that it is possible, the level of originary
subjectivity. Originary subjectivity may not be reached in any other way or attained by
any knowledge other than by the objective construction initially carried out.
Heidegger, in turn, summarized the Marburg thesis faithfully but in a drastic
way, in the following terms:
Theoretical thought, and in particular mathematical thought, is the true sense of
consciousness. Consciousness is thinking, determining, positing an object.
Every given is given only insofar as it is determined in thought. It is only on the
basis of this determination that givenness emerges. Thought, accordingly, has an
absolutely privileged position. Knowledge is objectual determination, it is
positing in thought. Nothing is pregiven. There are no objects except in thought
and because knowledge is, as a matter of principle, a process without end, the
object is never given; only its Idea (only the fiction of a process of knowledge that
has arrived at its term gives the object).27
And :
We can never speak of a finalized and given object. Thought and its lawfulness
remain prior to every given, for which only an object may be given.28

*
I will now turn to my second main point: Husserl-Natorp, by considering more closely
the two reviews written by Natorp bearing on Husserls Prolegomena to Pure Logic, and
on Ideen I. In the Logical Investigations, Prolegomena to Pure Logic, Husserl made reference
to the 1887 article ber objektive und subjektive Begrndung der Erkenntnis (On the
Objective and Subjective Foundations of Knowledge), as well as to the 1888 Einleitung
in die Psychologie (Introduction to Psychology), and paid tribute to Natorp, praising
his contribution to the delimitation of the domain of pure logic. He also quoted a

27

Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie Ga. 58, 224 : Denken, Bestimmen, Setzen eines Gegenstandes. Jedes
Gegebene ist nur als im Denken bestimmt gegeben. Aus dieser Bestimmung entspringt erst die
Gegebenheit. Die Denksetzung hat einen absoluten Vorrang. Das Erkennen ist Gegenstandsbestimmung,
Setzen im Denken. Es gibt nichts Vorgegebenes. Es gibt Gegenstnde erst im Denken und weil das
Erkennen ein prinzipiell endloser Proze ist, ist der Gegenstand nie gegeben, sondern nur seine Idee (erst
die Fiktion des ans Ende gelangten Erkenntnisprozesses gibt den Gegenstand). My emphasis.
28
Es ist nirgends von einem fertigen und gegebenen Gegenstand zu reden. Vor allen Gegebenheiten
steht das Denken und seine Gesetzlichkeit, fr welche allein ein Gegenstand gegeben sein kann. Ibid,
132.

slightly later remark of Natorp,29 according to which the laws of logic say as little
about the way we actually think, in such and such situation, as they say about how one
ought to think, and he underlined the stimulating influence that the two
aforementioned texts had exerted on him.30 In the important 1887 article,31 Natorp had
criticized Ernst Mach and rejected Machs old project of a phenomenological physics32
which purported to take as its point of departure an ultimate subjective datum with
respect to which it was legitimate to ask: What does given mean here? Is the given
known? Far from representing an ultimate element, this purported given must be
determined beforehand: it is a determinable, an x, analogous to Aristotles
. And here we find something that is going to play the role of a
leitmotiv in the Natorpian critique of the immediacy of givenness: the given (das
Gegebene) is not given except in the sense of a task (Aufgabe) that is there to accomplish:
it is not a datum of knowledge, on the basis of which something else, still unknown,
would allow itself to be determined. The general structure of the argument is here
clearly established, one which opposes some indeterminate thing = x, to the process of
knowledge and of thought as Bestimmung, determination or, more precisely, production.
One need only recognize in the positivism defended by Ernst Mach33 a fair
presentiment: if every determination is a production of knowledge, it is important
that one take into account the fact that prior to any production, something should be
given as a subjective originary,34 an immediate given, but one which must, precisely, be
led back to objectivity. That is the task! The fundamental error of positivism is just to
posit this originary of knowledge as a datum that is immediate and originary,
although it is precisely subjectivity as such which does not let itself be determined in
its immediacy. In its immediacy, it is nothing other than absolute indetermination
or, as Natorp again says, orginal chaos. In order to gain access to this level of

29

Sozialpsychologie, Stuttgart, 1899, 4.

Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (1ed.), p. 156.
31
ber objektive und subjektive Begrndung der Erkenntnis, Philosophische Monatshefte, 1887.
32
See the definition of the project in the piece of 1872 : Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des
Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit.
33
See. Mandfred Sommer, Denkkonomie und Empfindungstheorie bei Mach und Husserl Zum
Verhltnis von Positivismus und Phnomenologie, in Ernst Mach, Werke und Wirkung, Rudolf Haller et
Friedrich Stadler d., Hlder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienne, 1988, pp. 309-328.
34
Here I am drawing attention to a passage already quoted.
30

originary subjectivity, what is required is precisely a mediated work of production

and of construction, which is always objectivation.
Other than through this reconstructive way, and on the basis of the
construction carried out initially, subjectivity cannot be attained by any
other kind of knowledge The subjective isnt primary except insofar as
the task of knowledge is presented from the outset as already
accomplished; but even this subjective would not be a given in the sense
of a datum for knowledge.35
In his 1887 article, Natorp evidently does not at all have Husserl in mind; the target,
easy to identify even though the author isnt cited explicitly, is indeed Machs antimetaphysical positivism; Mach, who would have not characterized in egological
terms this subjective originary, since one of the peremptory fundamental thesis of The
Analysis of Sensations36 is that das Ich ist unrettbar (the I cannot in any way be
recovered).
It is nonetheless permissible to wonder whether and to what extent this
Natorpian criticism does not anticipate and bear legitimately on the Husserl of Ideen I
when on behalf of phenomenology he lays claim to the very term positivism:
If positivism is tantamount to an absolutely unprejudiced grounding of
all sciences on the positive, that is to say, on what can be grasped in an
original way, then we are the genuine positivists.37
A positivism that then takes as its point of departure what is anterior to every
point of view: from the total realm of whatever is itself given intuitionally and prior to
all theorizing, from everything that one can immediately see and graspif one does

35

See also ber objektive und subjektive Begrndung der Erkenntnis, Philosophische
Monatshefte, 1887: It is not at all in the objectwhich is not given but is precisely what is at stakethat
one must find the origin and, on its basis, establish the conceivability of subjective knowledge. On the
contrary, one must first and foremost limit oneself to the point of view of knowledge and ask how
knowledge itself understands objectivity, how knowledge posits this and that, and what it means for
knowledge to pose the object in front of itself as something independent of the subjectivity of knowledge.
[] The object (Gegenstand), the object (Objekt) means first and foremost that which is posited before (or
in front of) knowledge; thus it is knowledge itself which, first and foremost, will be able to indicate and
account for what that positing before itself may be.
36
Analyse der Empfindungen, Jena, 1903.
37
Husserl: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy. Vol. 1. 20. Kluwer
Academic Publishers. Dordrecht, 1998.

not let oneself be blinded by prejudices and prevented from taking into consideration
whole classes of genuine data.38
Beyond the review of Husserls Prolegomena to Pure Logic, which Natorp
published under the title Zur Frage logischen Methode (On the Question of Logical Method)
in Kantstudien in 1901, it is above all in the Allgemeine Psychologie (General Psychology) of
1912, and in the review of Ideen which he published in 1917-1917,39 that Natorp returns
to the question of the given and of the double foundation, objective and subjective, of
knowledge. In chapter XI of the General Psychology, devoted to the critical assessment of
a number of theories, Natorp discusses (11) the Logical Investigations in order to
underline what, at the time of the first review, he had characterized as the logical
malaise, namely the tension that subsists between the formal, pure, or ideal and
the real, understood as a residual that is not understood, irrational (unbegriffener,
unvernnftiger Rest); an extraneous residue, condemned and yet ineliminable.40
In order to break away from this logical malaise, one would have had to
reestablish a logical link between these two antagonistic instances, which are the
supra-temporal existence of the logical on the one hand, and its temporal factuality in
psychological experience on the other; this logical link would make way for the
possibility of bestowing sense on the idea of a Realisierung des Idealen (a realization of
ideals), understood as a rigorous logical transition from one mode of consideration to
the other; this transition that Natorp will name, on his part, objectivation,
reconstruction. In 1912 Natorp had become acquainted with the Logical Investigations
as a whole, which wasnt the case when he wrote the review of the Prolegomena; at this
time, the criticism became more acute: Husserl, who seemed to require, and rightly so,
a strictly objective foundation of logic and of objective knowledge in general, had
proposed only a phenomenological foundation of knowledge, that is, a subjective and
psychological foundation.41 But Natorp raised the question: Even limiting oneself to
description, how could the latter escape the objectivation that is characteristic of all

38

Ibid.
Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode, Tbingen 1912 ; Husserls Ideen zu einer
reinen Phnomenologie , Logos, Internationale Zeitschrift fr Philosophie der Kultur, VII, 1917/1918,
pp. 224-246.
40
das Reale bleibt als fremder, verworfener, und doch nicht wegzuschaffender Rest
Stehen (p. 14, reprint of the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft).
39

41

P. 280.

theories? If reflection on a psychological experience necessarily makes it an object, how

can this experience, how can the intentional acts themselves (die meinende Akte) be
apprehended in abstraction from the expressions that are valid only for the realities that
are aimed at or intended? According to Husserl, Natorp concludes, subjectivity is
manifestly a second objectivity of the same nature as the first objectivity, the objectivity
about which one thinks habitually, and which is coordinated with it.
However, this is precisely what Natorp wants to reject: subjectivity, the
counterpart of objectivity, is not a second objectivity, the objectivity of the acts of
consciousness. Far from every description, subjectivity, insofar as it is the counterpart
or the counter-image (Gegenbild), could not be attained except by an indirect route;
precisely a route which one must not name Reducktion, but Rekonstruktion. The
procedure must here remain essentially indirect, to the extent that the reflective
objectivation of the acts or of the subjective in general can be nothing other than an
absolutely not immediate and to the extent that reflective objectivation remains in all
cases totally dependent on the primary act of specific and originary objectivation42
Though he grants that the strong opposition of the subjective and the objective is
likely to be dimmed down as soon as the processual character of being is brought
into consideration, Natorp remarked ironically, in relation to Husserl: grasping the
subjective and the acts purely in themselves, this is what I have not succeeded in doing
up to this point. When one examines a particular cognitive experience, on realizes that
there isnt in general the subjective and the objective in itself; rather, in the pursuit of
the process of objectivation and thus also the process of subjectivation, the character of
the subjective and of the objective is transferred stage by stage to more and more
members, the subjective becomes the objective, and the objective becomes subjective
again.43 This opposition of the subjective and the objective, as Natorp had pointed out
at the beginning of the General Psychology (Allgemeine Psychologie, p. 71), is in fact
entirely relative: it sends us back in the end to a single movement of thought, one that
may be accomplished now in one of its directions, now in the other:
The relation of opposition (Gegensatz) becomes a reciprocal relation
(Gegenseitigkeit) that has the sense, at the same time, of a necessary

42
43

Ibid. 281.
Ibid, p. 283.

correlation (Korrelation). [] What is here decisive, is that the face to face

of the subjective and the objective, which at first seemed fixed, dissolves
entirely in the living process of objectivation on the one hand and
subjectivation on the other, in which processes there is neither objective
nor subjective in an absolute sense, but always only relative degrees of
objective and subjective that one may also and as legitimately characterize
as a difference in degree of objectivation or, inversely, of subjectivation.44
Naturally, it is consideration of this processual character of this beinga term which
Natorp can from then on use only in quotation marksthat is decisive: knowledge
must be envisaged as a process in relation to which the object, always determinable,
requires a function of knowledge which is not clear itself save after the fact, by the
complementary route of the subjectivation which itself in turn is pursued within the
indeterminate, and ad infinitum. This is what Natorp presents as a genetic or
dynamic examination of knowledge, in contrast to any ontic or static
examination.

This is what defines the point of view of method, in contrast to any

perspective organized around the idea of a fixed or settled result; or what defines
even the perspective of a fieri, in contrast to all pretensions to approach an ultimate
factum or datum.
To avoid turning the object into an in itself or a choriston, standing on its own
by itself on the exterior, is also to refuse delving deeper in the direction from which
the given, the subjective would purportedly emerge when thought in a fixed or
unconnected way, independent of the thinking process.45 At this point, the criticism of
Husserl becomes more nuanced. As Natorp indicates:
Husserl does not envisage the relation between the content and the object,
between the presentation (Prsentation) and the representation
(Reprsentation) in a way fundamentally different from my way of
envisaging it. He acknowledges, at least [] as an ideal case, that the
meaning intention and its fulfillment are absolutely one, so that the
object itself is encompassed in the phenomenological content.46 We
overcome this position by underlining the fact that such fulfillment does
not take place once, but again at every stageby underlining that there
never is and never could be an absolute fulfillment. We acknowledge that
Husserl comes close to idealism when he makes the perceptual content

44

See also: Bruno Bauchs: Immanuel Kant und die Fortbildung des Systems des
Kritischen Idealismus, Kantstudien XXII, 1918, pp. 432-433.
45
46

Allgemeine Psychologie, pp. 286-287.

Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen. A, p. 549, 588-590. Hua. XIX, 2, 608, 645-648.

dependent on thought, the fulfillment dependent on the intention, the

presentation on the representation, and when he determines essentially the
first term by the second---but with this restriction: the identification is
accomplished, but is not itself aimed at [intentionally].47
The genetic perspective thus leads to a radical assessment of the very idea of an
experience, and even more of the idea of an originary experience which, as Natorp
does not fail to point out, is already characterized by Husserl himself as that which is
perceived or apprehended in reflection.48 The purported originary experience
thereby becomes in turn a problem: no longer merely the theme of a description,
but rather of a reconstruction.49 In this new dynamic conception, he remarks further:
There is no longer the settled givenness of a content and therefore there
is no longer the possibility of a direct description of the contentsuch a
description being nothing but the concept correlating to such settled givenness.
Instead, what emerges is the reconstruction that is only the reverse side
of the construction of the object, and which shares with it the genetic or
methodological character, and thereby also the sense of the intention,
and, to be sure, of the intention that is never fulfilled.
The critical part of the General Psychology concerning the unquestioned privilege
assigned by Husserl to intuition and in particular the motif of eidetic intuition is taken
up again and developed further in Natorps review of Ideen I shortly thereafter. In
direct reference to the well-known 24, where Husserl formulates the principle of
principles, Natorp insists on the Cartesian strand in Husserlian phenomenology,
ultimately indexed to the directly given offered in intuition. In his answer to the
question of the grounds of certainty, which could not empirically be referred back to
experience, Husserlas Natorp points outlimits himself to Descartess position:

Knowledge of the essence is grounded first and foremost in intuition.

Intuition is characterized as an immediate seeing, an intuitioning, an
evidence [ 3, p. 12], a vision of the essence, a grasping within an
immediate intellectual evidence. [] All that phenomenology establishes
thus appears as purportedly finally given directly in intuition [18, p.
33], without the adjunction of any hypotheses, without any exegetical

47

Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen. A, p. 622.

Husserl: Die Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, Logos, 1911 = Husserliana XXV, 29-30.
49
Description becomes, necessarily, reconstruction. Allgemeine Psychologie, p.
290.
48

work (ohne jede

Hindeutung).50

hypothetische

oder

interpretierende

Auslegung

oder

Without halting to raise any questions here about the legitimacy of this criticism, I want
to indicate in passing that in the rewriting of the principle of principles that he
proposes,51 this characterization may have played an important role for the young
Heidegger.52
Whatever the case may be, this same Natorp evidently does not fail to give a
more nuanced form to this criticism by drawing attention to the fact that Husserl writes
not so much of the given or of given being (Gegebensein) as he writes of the originary
giving act, or of giving intuition, thereby excluding the idea that there might be
some given in the sense of simple receptivity. If the giving (das Geben) thus leads
back to an act or if it is an act entirely specific, one may wonderand Natorp
evidently goes as farwhether the fundamental act of knowledge isnt rather an act
of positing (Akt des Setzens), and conclude, at the end of analysis that this time goes
through the Platonic and Kantian determinations, that (I cite the somewhat long
although crucial passage):
the act of giving must be able toand can effectivelymean nothing
other than: the foundation of singular positings of thought, first and
foremost isolated, from the continuity of thought and through it. In other
words, the fixity (Starrheit), the punctual character of insight (Einsicht)
taken in isolation, must be abolished and surmounted, but at the same
time they must be explained by this surmounting. Thought is movement

50

Reprint Darmstadt, p. 38.

KNS, 20, pp. 109-110.
52
Das methodische Grundproblem der Phnomenologie, die Frage nach der Weise der
wissenschaftlichen Erschlieung der Erlebnissphre, steht selbst unter dem Prinzip der
Prinzipien der Phnomenologie. Husserl formuliert es so : Alles, was sich in der Intuition
originr darbietet, [ist] einfach hinzunehmen als was es sich gibt. Das ist das Prinzip der
Prinzipien , an dem uns keine erdenkliche Theorie irre machen kann. Verstnde man unter
Prinzip einen theoretischen Satz, dann wre die Bezeichnung nicht kongruent. Aber schon, da
Husserl von einem Prinzip der Prinzipien spricht, also von etwas, das allen Prinzipien
vorausliegt, woran keine Theorie irre machen kann, zeigt, da es nicht theoretischer Natur ist,
wenn auch Husserl darber sich nicht ausspricht. Es ist die Urintention des wahrhaften Lebens
berhaupt, die Urhaltung des Erlebens und Lebens als solchen, die absolute, mit dem Erleben
selbst identische Lebenssympathie. Vorlufig, d.h. auf diesem Weg vom Theoretischen
herkommend, in der Weise des immer mehr Sichfreimachens von ihm, sehen wir diese
Grundhaltung immer, wir haben zu ihr eine Orientirung. Dieselbe Grundhaltung ist erst absolut,
wenn wir in ihr selbst leben und das erreicht kein noch so weit gebautes Begriffssystem,
sondern das phnomenologische Leben in seiner wachsenden Steigerung seiner selbst.
51

and not repose; the halting points can be nothing but processes, just as the
point can only be determined by the tracing of the line and cannot be
determined on its own before the line is traced. []
If thought is movement, one must interrogate the factum from the perspective of the fieri
and only recognize it insofar as the fieri is in turn foundation.
This is the reason why we do not accept any finished givenness (fertige
Gegebenheit), no tout-fait [ready-made], regardless of whether it is a priori
or empirical. The purported fixed stars of thought must be recognized
as the wandering stars of a higher order, the purported fixed points of
thought must be resolved, they must be liquefied in the continuity of the
process of thought. Therefore nothing is given, but some thing merely
becomes given (So ist nichts, sondern wird etwas gegeben)53
Accordingly, it is the very idea of givenness or of an ultimate given that needs to be
absolutely rejected: even a positing could not be considered as ultimately and
absolutely given. There is only givenness in the process of thought and through it. It
is thus legitimate to conclude that Der Proze selbst ist das Gebende (the process itself
is the given), that, strictly speaking, there is no giving instance, and what does the
giving is the process itself.
In the paper that he devotes, in 1918, to the Kant of Bruno Bauch, Natorp will
equally bring to light this active character of the giving in the background of all
givenness: Es mu der Gegebenheit ein aktives Geben entsprechen.54 To every beinggiven, to every givenness must necessarily correspond an active giving. Nur so gibt
es, gibt sich Gegebenes. Only in this way is there the given, only in this way does it
give itself. The wordplay will also have drawn Heideggers attention, who radicalizing
the question in his first lecture of 1919 a few months later, will ask: gibt es etwas? is
there something [given]? Gibt es das es gibt? Is there the there is?55
If according to the reductive procedure of Husserlian phenomenology in the
Ideen, pure consciousness, or more accurately the region of consciousness becomes
the last sphere of absolute positing (46), which is separated by an abyss of sense
from reality, this ontological region where being sketches itself, without ever being
absolutely given (49), in contrast to the region of consciousness that remains, as the

53

Review, Ideen I, p. 42.

Kantstudien, XXII, art. cit., p. 440.
55
Ga. 56/57 ; 62-63.
54

outcome of the phenomenological reduction, as the final phenomenological residuum

absolutely given, then it matters, in Natorps eyes, to replace this reduction, that is in
truth only the simple omission of the act of objective positing (das bloe Unterlassen
des gegenstndlich setzenden Aktes), with the reconstruction: the latter, contrary to every
attempt aimed at gaining access to consciousness attained in its purity, as a system
of being closed upon itself, a system of absolute being into which nothing can break
and from which nothing can escape ( 49), presents itself as another specific task,
requiring a corresponding method. Natorp may grant Husserl that this method is
exactly the inverse of the method of objectivation. Nonethelessand it is by virtue of this
that the separation from the phenomenological procedure is definitivethis method
must remain in the strictest correspondence with it [with objectivation]; whereby,
Natorp adds, it opens a way within the infinite.56 It is thus and only thus that it
becomes possible to redirect all objectivations to an originary consciousness, which
(we have seen) would never be absolutely given or constitute a source strictly
speaking, since even its alleged originarity (Ursprnglichkeit) is intertwined with its
character of being grounded in itself (in sich-selbst-Gegrndetheit), a character which
strictly speaking only belongs to pure thought, it being understood that the being in
itself here means and can only mean: im Proze sein, being in the process. We find
again here, in a richer sense, the formula cited above: the absolutely and ultimately
given, cannot be given except in and by the process of thought: Der Proze selbst ist
das Gebendethe process itself is that which gives.
In laying emphasis on the processual character of thought in this way, in
providing a reminder of the radical difference that Husserl would have missed between
the presentation (Darstellung) of pure consciousness on the one hand, and clarification
of that which can be presented (dargestellt) in actual knowledge on the other hand,
Natorp can even luxuriously afford to insist, against the abstraction of the Husserlian
way of proceeding that is in reality a refusal to take into account the whole of the
world of objectivity, on the infinite intertwining

or intrication (Verflechtung) of

consciousness and of objectifying acts, thus becoming the defender of a flux that
Husserl would be constrained to halt or fix, without succeeding in remaining

56

Op. cit. p. 49.

faithful to the nonetheless acknowledged thesis that originarily, it is time that is in

consciousness, and not consciousness in time.57
Before leaving Natorp behind, I would still likeand it is not a point prompted
only by curiosityto evoke the position of the later Natorp relative to the question of
the given, of the there is (es gibt), of the factum, which is no longer the factum of
constituted science, from which it would be important to return, by reconstruction, all
the way back to the unassignable foyer of objectifying and constituting consciousness.
In his Marbourg Lessons of 1922-1923, published posthumously in 1958 under the
title Philosophische Systematik,58 an entire section is devoted to the categories of
individuation.59 Natorp still takes as his departure point a singular Faktum, but this
time it is the factum that there is, or better still the factum of the there is: es gibt das
Factum, es gibt: das es gibt. What about the factuality (Faktizitt) of this singular fact,
now intertwined with an ultimate and irreducible givenness: there is, this there is
that simultaneously gives and is given? The there is, is here also the ultimate it is:
es ist, das es ist. What about this Sein (being) that seems from then on to gain priority
over every process, over all fieri? Natorp underlines its irreducible singleness
(Einzigkeit): singleness that it is no longer possible to produce or to present (aufweisen)
through any development, regardless of how contrived it is; singleness which does not
let itself be grounded in reason or fathomed (begrnden, ergrnden), since it is this
singleness itself which constitutes the ultimate sense of being (Sinn des Seins), the last
sense one may be able to access and bring to the fore. Natorp also characterizes this
ultimate singleness somewhat enigmatically as the ultimate singleness of the Sache, the
thing die Sachedie letzte Einzigkeit.60
This single Thing, writes Natorp, is the most astonishing wonder, which
governs through and through the whole of being and of sense; which wonder is also
the consequence of this, namely that that which is the furthest is equally, in a sense,
the closest, which would never know to be attained through any mediation, even the
most sublime one, and which is rather like das unmittlebar Vorliegende (the immediate
at hand), that which is present immediately in front, that which calling everything into

57

Allgemeine Psychologie, 228.

Philosophische Bibliothek, Meiner Verlag, Hamburg.
59
Section C, 62, pp. 223 ff.
60
Op. cit. 227.
58

question (dies alles unter Frage Stellende) remains itself definitely unquestionable (das
schlechthin Unfragliche). Sache (thing), once again single and unique, which is destined
to remain the true point of departure, our only unavoidable way out (Ausgang):
das schlichte Da, das schlichte es ist: das Faktum61 (the pure and simple
quod, the pure and simple it is, the factum.
Nothing, simply nothing entitles us to think that the young Heidegger who begins his
teaching career in Freiburg with Husserl in 1919, might have been acquainted with the
reflections of the latter Natorp, reflections whose degree of inconsequentiality or
incoherence with respect to the criticism to a specific version of the myth of the given
that had been formulated 20 years earlier, would have to be assessed. Whatever the case
may be with respect to this last point, which I will not pursue any further, it is not
necessary to formulate a hypothesis of that kind, a highly implausible one, in order to
understand how the young Heidegger, in a gesture of critical reappropriation of
Husserlian phenomenology, was able to take up again the question of the given, of the
es gibt, through renewed formulations and within a renewed horizon.
On the level of sources, if some such thing exists and has some importance
here, the reference to Emil Lask should suffice; in particular to his 1911 work Die Logik
der Philosophie und Kategorienlehre, massively present in the Habilitation work devoted to
Duns Scotus, to his doctrine of categories and of meaning. In effect, Emil Lask there
develops a number of long analyses of the es gibt under the title of categories of
reflection. But this is another chapter that I will not take up today. Ill rather limit
myself to venture one last hypothesis, according to which the Heideggerian theme of
Destruktion destruction or deconstruction, if it does inherit a sense from the
Husserlian Abbau (destruction), from the de-sedimentation of accumulated strata that
have come to obstruct the grasp of insight (Einsicht), this theme could all the same be
understood as the taking up againin a practical reversalRekonstruktion, Natorpian
reconstruction. As for the general project of reconstruction, Heidegger indicates that
with reconstruction, we have a total and complete reversal of the procedure of
objectifying knowledge, a procedure aimed at gaining access to the flux of
experience, to the ultimate subject of consciousness, to immediate experience and

61

Ibid, 227.

of the concrete context of originary experience. By the same token, the

reconstruction seems to present more than loose affinities with what Heidegger starts
out naming the method of destruction, insofar as the latter aimed at leading
philosophy back into itself taking its exteriorization as the staring point.
Deconstruction (Abbau) aims, in effect, to to free itself from an inauthentic tradition
that imposes itself upon us in a non-originary way (nicht ursprnglich zugeeignet),62 and
far from being a purely negative destruction (Zerschlagen und Zertrmmern), it is
dijudication:63 the destruction consists essentially in an act of discernment: its first
function is to operate the discernment between that which, from a phenomenological
perspective, must be regarded as originary and non-originary (ursprnglich
nichtursprnlich). But when we come to the decisive question,64 which Heidegger
formulates thus: We raise the question: does the method of destruction achieve what it
is meant to achieve? Is it generally capable of achieving it? the answer is clearly: No,
since one has never left the domain of objectivation: Reconstruction is also
construction, and this being constructive, that is precisely what properly characterizes
objectivation, which as such is theoretical.65
This is why, as Heidegger continues to point out: The destructive consideration,
which characterizes Natorps position, is necessary and fertile for a number of reasons.
[] This position investigates, according to its own sense, the origin, with an intensity
and a radicality that is commensurate with its misleading character. We will take it
that that is a compliment! The problem that must be taken up again or repeated where
Natorp has left it, is precisely the problem of description assigned by Husserl to
intuition. If one may assert that a decisive step has been taken by phenomenology: the
emphasis laid upon originary intuition (originre Anschauung)evidence!and the idea of
the adequate description,66 it is nonetheless convenient to oppose to the privileged status
assigned by Husserl to intuition the idea of an undissociable co-belonging of intuition
and understanding, the idea of a verstehende Anschauung. It is from this perspective that

62

Ga. 59, 5.
Ga. 59, 74.
64
Ga. 56/57, 108.
65
Ibid. See also Ga., 59, 105 : Die Psychologie kann nichts rekonstruieren, was nicht zuvor
konstruiert ist. Inhaltlich und umfnglich decken sich bezglich des zu Erforschenden
Objektivierung und Subjektivierung, nur die Richtung ist diametral entgegengesetz. Das
Logische (Objektive) bleibt immer die Gegenseite alles Psychischen (Subjektiven).
66

63

the way of Destruktion imposes itself resolutely, since what is characteristic of factical
life is precisely the fading of significance (das Verblassen der Bedeutsamkeit)67 that
looms over it like a permanent threatFading of significance, loss of concrete and
contextual meaningfulness, which stems from the fact that a sense is no longer
accomplished, that it is thus amputated from the specific intentional dimension that
in every instance confers on it its fulfilled sense (Vollzugssinn). It is at this Vollzug
(fulfillment), at this effective accomplishment, that deconstruction attempts to arrive. In
this way, it undertakes a return upstream, a going back up all the way to the giving
source; but the latter remains unattainable as a matter of principle; or rather, it would
be approachable only in the horizon of a path that goes not so much through
objectivations as it goes through sediments, the layers of fixed or theoretically settled
sense, faded and thus dissimulating no longer a process, but rather a Vollzug (a
fulfillment), an effectuation in every instance concrete and factical, which constitutes the
true entry-way of all significance: das Bedeutsame, die Bedeutsamkeit (the significant,
significance).

Jean-Franois COURTINE,
Universit de Paris-Sorbonne,
Archives Husserl de Paris

67

Ga. 59, 37.