have the function of concepts of expression. In psychology, provided as well that it is not Kantian, the opposition "form—content" determines the entire concept-formation. In Stumpf it appears as that between "appearances and functions:"3 The "functions" are thereby a particular manifold of variables and basically stand on the same level with the "appearances:' It is seen as a task of psychology to find the relationships between the variables and to the psychical. In Stumpf's "Psychology" and "Division of the Sciences" the danger of the conceptual pair "form—content" appears.-We dispense with formal and transcendental considerations and start out from factical life. -


17. Phenomenological reduction

We only want to point to Husserl's "phenomenological reduction:' Its basic sense is the Errox~ over and against all transcendent objectifications. It critically rejects false attitudes. But one must also emphasize its positive side. [250] Its positive function is: to delimit the sphere of the intelligible, of pure self-sufficiency. (The contemporary critique of the phenomenological reduction unjustly opposes its alleged "simply negative" character.)-

From out of factical life, we want to understand the form of apprehending life itself: How does life experience itself? We want to uncover [freilegen] the improminent relations in factical life and pursue them in all their modifications. From there we then want to apprehend the basic sense of the object-region that is experienced in this way. Therefore, this is determined by these relations, since the phenomenological comportment (to itself) is more than a merely formal comportment. It is not cognition of an object at all.


18. The "worldly" direction of tactical life

In factical life, we always live in contexts of meaningfulness, which have a self-sufficient measure [Ausmaß], i.e. which speak to themselves in their own language. If we transfer ourselves into such experiences, vitally going along, then we notice that in the context of meaningfulness in which we live, we somehow have ourselves. In the mode and manner in which experience gives itself, the rhythm of our own existence expresses


188 BASIC PROBLEMS OF PHENOMENOLOGY


Basic Problems of Phenomenology - Winter Semester 1919-1920 (GA 58) by Martin Heidegger