The Use of the Subject–Object Distinction: On the Status of Existential Phenomenology

In the framework that I have been advocating in response to a dissatisfaction with the most valiant theological and philosophical attempts to solve the problem of ineffability, our necessary starting point is existential phenomenology, rather than the subject–object dichotomy. As critical engagement with Jaspers's philosophical system has shown, the validity of the idea of a measure beyond this dichotomy cannot be shown in that dichotomy's binary terms. Nor, even if we accept the validity of the notion of such a measure for argument's sake, can a convincing account be given of how what is unconditioned by that dichotomy can nonetheless be manifest in it. In addition, a dichotomous or dualistic construal of the subject–object distinction entails apparently insoluble philosophical problems, the difficulty of some of which initially prompted the practitioners of existential phenomenology to embark on their project of phenomenological description in the belief that the terms of subject and object would never be wholly adequate. This turn to phenomenology is not made arbitrarily but with rational defence.

To give one example, criticizing what he takes to be the Cartesian insistence on the use of the terms of subject and object, Heidegger claims that it is only when there is such insistence that a difficult epistemological problem arises.