phainomena

SEBASTJAN VÖRÖS & PETER GAITSCH
and could therefore be easily remedied if the scientific community were
suitably motivated to do so. Again, in the final analysis, this is an empirical
matter. However, we believe that their prevalence and significance are quite
telling, which leads us directly to our second concern, one whose implications
may be much more grievous for the whole embodiment movement (at least
for its most radical, and thereby philosophically most interesting, currents).
To get to the crux of the matter, it may prove worthwhile to consider one of
the reasons Heidegger may have been reluctant to deal with the question of
embodiment in his philosophical work.
According to one prominent interpretation, 9 the answer goes as follows.
We have seen above that the Husserlian epoché enables us to get a fresh view
of phenomena as they give themselves to us in experience. It ‘puts eyes in our
head’, as Heidegger, who in general was not the one to shy away from criticizing
his mentor, once said approvingly of Husserl’s phenomenology (in Overgaard
2003: 167). However, if we then try to pour this new experiential wine into old
terminological and conceptual wineskins, serious misconstruals may ensue.
The situation is somewhat analogous to attempts at communication between
advocates of two different scientific paradigms in the Kuhnian model of science.
To use a common example: although an advocate of the phlogiston theory (e.g.
Joseph Priestley) and an advocate of the oxygen theory (e.g. Antoine Lavoisier)
may use the same word (e.g. “air”), they come from such staggeringly different
methodological, conceptual, and theoretical frameworks that any attempt at
communication is likely to end up not in their disagreeing, but in their talking
past each other. They both assume to know what the other is saying, but are in fact
using the same word in radically different (incommensurable) ways. Similarly,
Heidegger feels that, when choosing terminology that would authentically
convey what was gained by means of epoché and transcendental reduction,
we must exert utmost caution so that not only we are not misunderstood by
others but, perhaps even more importantly, that we ourselves do not fall into
old habits of thinking and speaking.
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9 It should be emphasized that the exact reason for said reluctance on Heidegger’s
part has been a matter of some dispute, and that, in what follows, we focus only on
one possible, if quite compelling, interpretation of this observation, as propounded by
Søren Overgaard (2003, 2004, 2005).