The Concept of Motivation in Young Heidegger’s Hermeneutical Phenomenology

Abstract

This paper deals with the methodological role played by the term «motivation» in young Heidegger’s early hermeneutic transformation of phenomenology. To that effect, I shall start analyzing the concept of motivation in Husserl’s phenomenology so as to better understand its hermeneutical variation in young Heidegger’s philosophy. Subsequently, I will pay special attention to the relevance exhibited by motivation in the emergence of the most important methodological notions of hermeneutical phenomenology as «destruction» (Destruktion), «formal indication» (formale Anzeige) and «preconception» (Vorgriff). To conclude, I shall explore the possibility of reshaping the phenomenological problem of the motivation to reduction in hermeneutical terms. That is to say: a motivation to reduction in factical life experience is always needed to access to the primordial sphere of meaning. Accordingly, I will finally suggest that the philosophical basic experience of radical questioning (Fraglichkeit) can be read as a hermeneutical epoche, which is, however, directly linked to the concern for one’s own existence.