Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Jun., 1994), pp. 775-795.
Dahlstrom as one of the few people who describe the formal indication as a method (776), starting with the gloss that Western philosophy “repeatedly passed over the world as a phenomenon” 776.
Its logical dimension: “the logical prejudice to privilege assertions or judgments as the distinctive forms of logos capable of bearing truth.” (777)
Against Heidegger’s critique of science, Dahlstrom suggests the easy self-referential one: isn’t the fundamental ontology of BT also a science? isn’t it also relying on assertions, thereby objectifying the meaning of what it means to be? (778) how is his method different?
As Dahlstrom asks: “Why, indeed, should Heidegger’s method of investigating what “to be” means be different from any other?” (778) cf. GA 20, 251 “we shun every theory and precisely this extreme objectification”? and GA 61, 198
“he does not have a methodology but he certainly does have a method (779) – refernece to GA 63, 79. (lets check) – and methodological reflections (GA 61, 157)
in order to remedy the objectification through words, Heidegger employs the formal indication (GA 29/30, 422 and 430)
in the Jaspers-Review: Formal Indication (FI) as pointing to and deflecting (780)
Dahlstrom summarizes the GA 61 descriptions of the FI as follows: “philosophizing is nothing but a way of comporting oneself to an original, unreflected or unthematic (unabgehobenen) comportment, an attempt to ‘have’ or ‘understand’ the latter authentically.” (781) (footnote 20 clarifies that this comportment is prepropositional)
“The task of philosophy is to determine what ‘to be’ means in the case of any of the latter and this determination is possible only by understanding or ‘retrieving’ the precise and fundamental way in which a human being exists and related to each of them respectively (where this existing and relating are in an important sense logically equivalent).” (781) “philosophy must itself carry out or enact (reenact) that original, unthematic ‘having,’ so as to appropriate it explicitly” (782)
“Being and Time is not a depiction of some fact (Sachverhalt), but rather an indication of a way of approaching what ‘to be’ means.” (782)
II.
Dahlstrom then, in part II, delinates two functions of the FI: pointing in a way that prevents drifting away from the phenomenon (hinweisend-prohibitiv). As an example, Dahlstrom refers to Heidegger’s “Phenomenology and Theology,” and more specifically, what is said there about the Korrektion and Mitleitung.
The second function, according to Dahlstrom, is to reverse the customary ways of objectifiying — and thereby transform the individual who philosophizes (783). In a footnote, Dahlstrom interprets this as a “theological” – an interpretation we only agree with insofar as it is understood in a phenomenological way (not Christian, etc.).
To avoid the misunderstanding that the meaning of philosophical concepts are arbitrary, Dahlstrom clarifies that the first function is “binding” as it binds the content of the concepts to principles (785).
Important also his reference to philosophy as “authentically re-trieving life, taking it back from its downfall” (which is Heidegger, GA 61, 80 and 88), which makes clear that the reversal of the normal tendencies of life lead to a transformation: “one cannot thematize what is initially unthematic without putting oneself in question” (787): “what philosophy deal with generally discloses itself only in and on the basis of a transformation of human Dasein.” (GA 29/30, 423).
Science: Philosophy as a science of truth in GA 20, 2-3, 184, 190, and GA Logik, 10-11.
In BT: Phenomenology as a science of being (SZ 27, Wegmarken 48, GA 24: 15-17, 459-60, 466), — in GA 24: as the absolute science of being, – and objectification of being – in GA 27: philosophical science (GA 26, 11, 70)
Heidegger’s changing stance on philosophy as a science is discussed in Dahlstrom (1988, 593-6)