Abstract

The dissertation begins with an examination of Husserl's Logical Investigations in the light of its role as philosophy of science, with special attention to an interpretation of Dallas Willard's, who sees it as continuing work on problems Husserl encountered in earlier works, including especially Philosophy of Arithmetic. This serves to interpret the origins of phenomenology, in order to clarify central Husserlian themes in the light of that origin and to indicate how these same themes become relevant to Heidegger's destruction of modern ontologies. The second chapter is an exposition of Husserl's part/whole theory, with emphasis on those aspects of the theory that Heidegger relies upon in his development of the concept of worldhood, especially the important fundamental distinction between moments and pieces with the special qualities distinctive of each type of part. There is also discussion of the ideality of part/whole relations and the central phenomenological concept of categorial intuition, the part/whole constitution of meaning, intuitive and signitive components of entities, transcendence and the systematic character of phenomenology as a Wissenschaftslehre. The third chapter begins with an account of how Heidegger became involved with Husserl and phenomenology, drawing mostly from History of the Concept of Time and the short essay "Mein Weg in die Phanomenologie," from Zur Sache des Denkens, as well as what Heidegger says of the phenomenological method in S7 of Being and Time. The second section of this chapter deals with how Hediegger's orientation to the ontological problem takes its departure from the issue of human existence , as well as with how authenticity pertains to our access to the things themselves. And the third section deals with how the peculiar partiality of innerworldly parts poses a confrontation with Descartes analysis of things in terms of extensive properties. The concluding chapter summarizes up the research in terms of the central thesis of the dependence of Heidegger's famous "destruction of the history of ontology" on Husserl's part/whole theory, with contemporary consequences