Abstract

Drawing an analogy with Kant, Carman argues that Being and Time is a transcendental analytic of the hermeneutic conditions of the possibility of intelligible experience. In defense of this thesis Carman makes a well-stated case for the implementation of the phenomenological attitude in the philosophy of mind. Against thinkers like Daniel Dennett, who insist on interpreting consciousness as a thing among things, Carman argues that intentionality, the defining feature of consciousness, can be properly accessed only as it shows itself, that is, from within intentional experience itself. This leads to a solid critique of contemporary analytic interpretations of intentionality, whether objectivistic or subjectivistic. Intentionality is neither objectively explicable nor merely subjective; the phenomenon shows the inadequacy of the objective/subjective distinction. This, according to Carman, is the main contribution of Being and Time: intentionality is only possible on the grounds of an a priori belonging to the world. Being and Time’s archeology of the “situatedness” of understanding breaks with Husserl’s naive Cartesian approach to consciousness, for it shows how the human being always understands things in historical contexts: first, the pragmatic contexts of everyday human activities; second, the social contexts of received beliefs and interpretations. It follows that the analytic of Dasein is utterly unlike the investigation of any natural phenomenon; it requires a sensitivity to historicity typically foreign to metaphysics.