16000-14

The covering-up itself, whether in the sense of hiddenness, burying over, or disguise, has, in turn, two possibilities. There are accidental coverings-up; some are necessary, grounded in what the thing discovered consists in. Whenever a phenomenological concept is drawn from primordial sources, there is a possibility that it may degenerate if communicated in the form of an assertion. It gets understood in an empty way and is thus passed on, losing its indigenous character, and becoming a free-floating thesis. Even in the concrete work of phenomenology itself, there lurks the possibility that what has been primordially ‘within our grasp’ may become hardened so that we can no longer grasp it. Moreover, the difficulty of this kind of research lies in making it self-critical in a positive sense.

16000-13

How Being and its structures are encountered in a phenomenon must first be wrested from phenomenology objects. Thus the very point of departure for our analysis requires that it be secured by the proper method, just as much as does our access to the phenomenon, or our passage through whatever is prevalently covering it up. The idea of grasping and explicating phenomena in a way which is ‘original’ and ‘intuitive’ is directly opposed to the native of a haphazard, ‘immediate’, and unreflective ‘beholding’.

16000-12

Now that we have delimited our preliminary conception of phenomenology, the terms’ phenomenal’ and ‘phenomenological’ can also be fixed in their signification. That which is given and explicable in how the phenomenon is encountered is called ‘phenomenal’; this is what we have in mind when we talk about “phenomenal structures”. Everything that belongs to the exhibiting and explicating species and makes up the way of conceiving demanded by this research is called ‘phenomenological’.