Rather, there are no special problems in it because and so long as there are concrete problems in it. The two are not the same. Phenomenology first lets it be seen that, in place of the nebulous, within which conventional philosophy moves, the concrete, what is ultimately concrete, can and must be made phenomenologically comprehensible, and, to be sure, that this concretization of such "abstract" problems first actualizes itself both in and through the phenomenological method. The joints and tendencies of construction, layers, horizons—these ways of speaking imply a very particular aspect.
The "origin" is not an ultimate simple sentence, an axiom out of which everything would be derived, but rather something entirely different; nothing mystical or mythical, but rather something that we are trying to approach in a consideration that is becoming more and more strict and which, at the same time, always preserves itself in these ways, and this happens along various entrances—and, indeed, we are approaching it with a scientific, primal scientific method and only with it. This is not something that one could experience in some other way, insert into life experientially, and then bestow a function upon it there. The origin and the original region have as a correlate a wholly original mode of living experiential apprehension [erlebendes Erfassen].' We now still stand "far" from it. We shall have to learn to understand what this "farness" [Ferne] means for the subject-matter [Gegenstand] of phenomenology and what "bringing near" [Nahebringen], "coming nearer" [Näherkommen] mean. We are even standing so far from the matter of phenomenology that we still do not even know where it lies—a spatial way of speaking, its meaning is now already roughly understandable.
The famous and "notorious" "immediate givens" of phenomenology and phenomemological science [27] are "in the first place" "familiarly" never and nowhere given even if we were to thoroughly search life in the current direction of its streaming in all of its dimensions. Perhaps the original region is now not yet given to us—but when phenomenology is further along? Not even then—and never. Yes, if it were absolutely complete, it would still be totally hidden from current streaming life in itself.
1. Original region not in life in itself (whose basic aspect is "self-sufficiency," which likewise renders questionable whether an original region of life is accessible at all).
2. Original region only accessible to radical, scientific method, generally objective, not experientially apprehensible in another way.1
22 BASIC PROBLEMS OF PHENOMENOLOGY