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FRIEDRICH-WILHELM VON HERRMANN
“HERMENEUTICS AND REFLECTION:
HEIDEGGER AND HUSSERL ON THE CONCEPT OF PHENOMENOLOGY”
Trans. by K. Maly, Toronto: University of Toronto Press November, 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1442640092

Abstract
The review provides an outline of the book and critically examines the Heideggerean hermeneutic phenomenological approach developed by F. W von Herrmann to the refutation of Husserl’s phenomenology. Reviewer traces four essential differences in author’s critical analysis of the two phenomenological approaches by Heidegger and Husserl, and problematizes several difficulties in the author’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology. On the one hand, the reviewer shows that Husserl’s phenomenology, at least, can be interpreted in two ways, namely the static approach and the genetic approach. Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, especially in Crisis, explicitly expresses his hermeneutic character. Therefore, von Herrmann’s interpretation may not be faithful to Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole. On the other hand, von Herrmann develops Heidegger’s idea of the primacy of a-reflective hermeneutics, which is a pre-theoretical primordial science. With reference to K. Popper’s and K. Jaspers’ criteria of science, the reviewer doubts that the development, which aims at going beyond reflective and theoretical science, can still be regarded as a science because it cannot meet any established criterion.

Key words
Husserl, Heidegger, von Herrmann, hermeneutics, phenomenology, reflection, a-phenomenology, givenness.

References

• Jaspers, K. (1963). General Psychopathology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Popper, K. (2002). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Rouledge.
• Heidegger, M. (2009). History of the Concept of Time. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Heidegger, M. (1999). Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie (orig. 1919) (GA 56/57). Frankfurt a. Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
• Husserl, E. (1994). Randbemerkungen Husserls Zu Heideggers “Sein und Zeit” und “Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik”. Husserl Studies, 11 (1-2), 3–63.
• Herrmann, F.-W. von (2013). Hermeneutics and Reflection: Heidegger and Husserl on the Concept of Phenomenology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.