Phenomenological reduction in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit: a new proposal

Abstract

This article considers whether Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit contains a reduction comparable to Husserl’s transcendental reduction. Various recent attempts to locate such a reduction in Sein und Zeit are surveyed and critically reviewed. The article then offers a new reading that identifies two levels of reduction in the text. The first level, it is argued, leads the inquiry back to the horizon of “Existenz” and the second leads the inquiry back to the horizon of “Zeitlichkeit”. The author argues that each of these reductions may be termed a “transcendental” reduction with some justification but that Sein und Zeit anticipates yet another change of standpoint, an even more radical “transcendental” reduction. However, the latter, which would ostensibly lead the inquiry back to the horizon of “Temporalität”, is not accomplished in the published text.