Throw away the ladder: Phenomenology as therapeutics

Abstract

The present article aims to show, through the careful interpretation of Heidegger's early works, that the hermeneutic version of phenomenology, as exposed in Being and Time and later writings, should not be understood as a philosophical theory of human existence, but as a therapeutic praxis of facticity. In order to do so, I examine the impossibility of the categorical use of language to express the living phenomena. I also investigate its formal-indicative usage, which expressive primary function is not to explain or clarify, rather, it is to urge the existing historical concrete Dasein towards a comprehensive appropriation of itself. In a second moment, this must shed a light on the fact that phenomenology is not another possible philosophy among others. Instead, it is a way of being of Dasein; a way out of which, only then, philosophy itself as theoretical activity is allowed to come into existence. Keywords: Heidegger, phenomenology, formal indication, theory, praxis.