As Hyde concludes, “Phenomenology can always have a future; what it cannot have is a past.” I see the point here, even though I disagree. But philosophical disagreement is not what I want to engage in here. More interesting to me is the way that Hyde justifies his point–by quoting Heidegger. Or rather, to be more precise, by quoting Heidegger quoting Heidegger. Here’s Hyde’s reference, used to justify his conclusion above:

Or as Heidegger puts it in “My Way to Phenomenology,” quoting himself from Being and Time, phenomenology’s “essential character does not consist in being actual as a philosophical school. Higher than actuality stands possibility. The comprehension of phenomenology consists in grasping it as possibility.”

This is the kind of appeal to authority that we find too often in phenomenology’s secondary literature. But it is not just any appeal to authority. This particular quote demonstrates so well, quite ironically, the defensive game that is in many ways the norm of phenomenological criticism. Not only is this an appeal to authority that is somehow supposed to satisfy the demands of argument, it is an appeal to an authority whose very authority is authorized by none other than himself!

¶ 5:11 PM