"Heidegger's Hermeneutic Phenomenology" (4 of 4)

In chapter IV, Ferrara is careful to point out that while Heidegger's debt to Edmund Husserl's conceptions of phenomenological analysis in his own philosophical ideas was great, Heidegger cannot be considered a student, or follower, of Husserl.  Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology is distinct to the point of being called a "turn," as in "turning away from" Husserl's idea of transcending the ego and bracketing out all personal judgements.

This is key, because while Heidegger and Husserl agree in their approach to analyses through descriptive means often excluded from traditional analysis, in Heidegger's opinion it is quite impossible to "bracket out" your personal judgements.  He argues that every person is born into a certain ontological world, and that thing - that "dasein" - that being-in-the-world cannot come to understand anything except through the pre-judgements and biases given it by its ontological and historical circumstance.  It is by embracing and recognizing these prejudices that the thing itself (Heidegger embraced Husserl's early phenomenology and greatly focused on going "back to the things themselves") to show itself.

I tend to agree with Heidegger on this point.  I am quite fascinated by the way our respective cultures and life-worlds, along with all those other amazing words we've borrowed from the Germans to describe the same things - dasein, Lebenswelt, Zeitgeist - shape and inform our ways of thinking in ways that are very often completely invisible to our consciousness.  I wonder if it is even possible to make oneself aware of all of the ways the world we have been born into automatically shapes our minds and personalities, and the way we approach, view, and judge other things?  I wonder if it may be impossible.  We can see it for ourselves to an extent, but without completely transcending our own time and minds, there is no way to view ourselves objectively - and that is the same thing I think Heidegger thought about Husserl's method of analysis!  I feel like if I were to truly rid myself of all pre-judgements, I would lose myself entirely, lose my identity, and cease to exist.  And if I reach a state where my own identity does not exist, why should I care to contemplate other things in the world?