Consciousness and Existence

Abstract

The notion of intentionality implies that human consciousness is essentially an openness towards what is other than itself. In the pure phenomenology of Husserl, however, the conscious ego is taken to be the absolute source of its own being, and then regarded as the self-sufficient source of the world.
While thus to Husserl ego's subjectivity is assumed to be an interiority closed on itself, Heidegger undertakes to shift the center of gravity of phenomenology by making human being its hinge. Heidegger's reason for replacing consciousness by humanDa “sein” consists in unhinging the selfsufficiency of conscious ego with his emphasis on the notion of existence. But his concept of “Erschlossenheit” does not refer to the unlockedness for the other who is different from myself, though certainly so for “my” world arranged around myself. Both Heidegger and Husserl fail to grasp the meaning of the other-as-other.