Phenomenology and Deconstruction, Volume Three: Breakdown in Communication: 03 - Hardcover

This text argues that the differences between Husserl and Heidegger involve differences in method; whereas Husserl follows a "method of clarification", that eliminates ambiguities, Heidegger rejects the criterion of "clarity" and embraces ambiguities as exhibiting overlapping relations.

The most notorious breakdown in communication in twentieth-century philosophy was between Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Husserl had earlier been fond of saying to Heidegger, "You and I are phenomenology," but their break came with the publication of Heidegger's Being and Time, which Cumming argues cannot be understood itself simply as a deconstruction of the philosophical tradition at large, which is how it is presented by Heidegger (and usually by his interpreters). Rather, at crucial junctures, it is specifically the deconstruction of Husserl's phenomenology.

Cumming not only brings out the differences between Husserl's and Heidegger's conceptions of phenomenological method, he also clarifies his own interpretative procedure by comparing it with Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl.