海德格尔的形式指引及《存在与时间》的方法

Man and World30:413–430,1997.413 c1997Kluwer Academic Publishers.Printed in the Netherlands.

Heidegger’s formal indication:A question of method in Being and Time

RY AN STREETER

Department of Philosophy,Emory University,Atlanta,GA30322,USA

Abstract.For Heidegger,phenomenological investigation is carried out by“formal indica-tion,”the name given to the methodical approach he assumes in Being and Time.This paper attempts to draw attention to the nature of formal indication in light of the fact that it has been largely lost upon American scholarship(mainly due to its inconsistent translation).The roots of the concept of“formal indication”are shown in two ways.First,its thematic treatment in Heidegger’s1921/22Winter Semester course,“Phenomenological Investigations into Aristo-tle,”is examined to make clear what Heidegger silently assumes in Being and Time.Second, Heidegger’s adaptation of Husserl’s use of the term,“indication,”is outlined to clarify the concept even more.The enhanced understanding of formal indication granted by these two points leads to a better grasp of Heidegger’s concept of truth,for formal indication and truth are mutually implied for Heidegger.Finally,it is suggested that the reader of Being and Time, on the basis of what formal indication demands,approach the work not as a doctrine to be learned but as a task always requiring further completion.

We must be content,then,in speaking of

such subjects and with such premisses to

indicate the truth roughly and in outline.

Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics,1094b19–211

1.

It is by now well known that for Heidegger the main problem with the occidental philosophical tradition is that it has forgotten Being itself and even how to ask about Being.In the sense of the Greeks’usage of the word,lethe, forgetfulness is the vice that has bound us to constant misappropriations of the philosophical project.For in our inability or unwillingness to take up the question of Being,we contaminate the project of thinking from the start if we do not clarify what“to be”means.Thus,getting at the question of Being requires an uncovering and a destruction of those accrued layers of philosophic misappropriation:lethe needs to be deprived of its hegemony. And in this very deprivation,there is the privative a-letheia,the action of getting to the truth of the matter about Being by uncovering what has been forgotten.2

414RY AN STREETER

Therefore,right at the outset,Heidegger isolates hiddenness as the pre-condition for his investigation into the meaning of Being,an investigation that must be phenomenological if it is to be ontological(SZ35).More than that,this phenomenological investigation that goes back to the matter(Sache) of Being itself,in obedience to Husserl’s battle cry,must also be,as Paul Ricoeur notes,hermeneutical in character.Because the matter of Being has been covered up,phenomenology does not have simple ocular access to it and thus“becomes part of the struggle against dissimulation.”3In an attempt to successfully uncover what has been covered up,Heidegger situates himself closer to the original sources of Western thought,approaching ontological clues in a“hermeneutic of the logos”after the fashion of Aristotle’s disman-tling of the Platonic dialectic(SZ25).A hermeneutical phenomenology is wary of the solidification of original experiences of factic life into assertions that can be handed down(¨u berliefert)as something present-at-hand,such that access to those experiences gets blurred or even completely shrouded in obliquity.4Thus the problem of trying to raise Being to the level of a phenom-enon,given that‘covered-up-ness’is the counter-concept to‘phenomenon’(SZ36):how does one gain access to the question of the meaning of Being without also engaging in the corruption of covering it up,especially since one must put into words–and thusflirt with the possible corruption that attends the mere recitation of assertions–the very investigation that seeks to do the uncovering?

Any how-question is a question of method.Heidegger has never been lauded for an explicit and clear usage of method,and rightfully so.For,as his most illustrious pupil,Hans-Georg Gadamer–taking cues from Heidegger–has evinced,method is contraposed to any successful approach to the truth.5 Nevertheless,Heidegger is acutely aware,on the one hand,that he needs a method–at least for a way to structure the approach to his problematic–but,on the other hand,that his project requires,in the very employment of method,that our eyes not be diverted away from our fundamental topic to methodical conclusions–in short,that we do not cover up what we are trying to uncover.He developed a method to suit this dual complexity.

This method has a name:formal indication(formale Anzeige).In coming to terms with Heidegger’s use of formal indication(Section II),we shall see its relation to his notion of truth(by way of the assertion)as well as the implications that it conveys to the reader of Being and Time(Section III). 2.

In recent American scholarship the notion of formal indication has begun to receive attention,the reason being that it sheds significant light on just how