~Samir Mahmoud
“To the things themselves” is Husserl’s well-known maxim for a phenomenological approach to reality that gains access to the pre-reflective given-ness of things and avoids the subjectivism of modern thought. However, in contrast to Husserl who bracketed the ontological and reduced phenomena to consciousness, Heidegger proposed a phenomenology that was more essential and basic. His aim was to uncover, through an analysis of Dasein, those hidden meanings of existence that were prior to reflection and thought itself. To understand Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, we must first understand what he means by phenomenology and hermeneutics.
In Being and Time, Heidegger provides a lucid exposition of what he means by phenomenology. First, the very concept of ‘phenomenon’ is to be understood in its Greek sense of phainomenon, which is derived from the verb phainesthai “show itself”, “come to light.” Thus, phenomenon signifies “to show it self.” In Heidegger’s own words, “the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest.” The phenomenon does not show itself through anything other than itself and in this sense, Heidegger’s ‘phenomenon’ is to be distinguished from the ‘phenomenon’ of Kant who uses it in the sense of an appearance as opposed to the thing itself, the ‘noumenon.’54