Transcendental versus Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Being and Time

This chapter analyzes the relationship between hermeneutic phenomenology and transcendental philosophy in Heidegger's Being and Time. This work exhibits conflicting tendencies. On the one hand, it aims to single out the essential structures of any human existence and in so doing exemplifies the ahistorical mode of philosophizing characteristic of transcendental philosophy. On the other hand, its substantive claims demonstrate the radical facticity, historicality, and situatedness of human existence. The chapter argues that hermeneutic phenomenology is indeed a variety of transcendental philosophy: it aims to show that the hermeneutic conditions of understanding anything as meaningful are the ultimate transcendental conditions of any human experience whatsoever. However, once these hermeneutic conditions are finally revealed, they turn out to be very different from traditional transcendental conditions, since they disclose the radical facticity and situatedness of all human experience.