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This book investigates the philosophical path that took Heidegger through phenomenology to the question of the meaning of Being, from his initial encounter with Husserl´s texts in phenomenology in 1909 to his definition of phenomenology as ´fundamental ontology´ in Being and Time (1927). It explains how Heidegger comes to the conclusion, around 1919, that this question had been left ´unthought´ by Husserl in phenomenology and phenomenological research and why he had go in search of an alternative method of enquiry to Husserl´s in order to retrieve this issue for phenomenology. The study identifies three methods of enquiry that Heidegger uses and that are of most relevance to his effort of ´raising anew´ the question of the meaning of Being in phenomenology. These are: Dilthey´s historical-hermeneutic method, Kierkegaard´s existentialist method, and Schleiermacher´s biblical-hermeneutic method. It also investigates the centrality of Heidegger´s existential-phenomenological analysis of ´being-for-death´ in Being and Time in terms of its unique contribution to philosophy and phenomenological research and as a radical immanent philosophical critique of Husserl´s version of post-Kantian transcendental idealism defended in Ideas I (1913).

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Cyril McDonnell is Lecturer in Philosophy at Maynooth University, Ireland.

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