ABSTRACT
Heidegger uses phenomenology both to interpret everyday experience and to retain its dynamic context. Heidegger's own use of phenomenology is derived from his close association with Edmund Husserl, his early mentor, who raised the method to prominence at the beginning of the twentieth century. Heidegger was Husserl's pupil and his debt to Husserl he readily acknowledged. Heidegger uses phenomenological methods and insights to aid him in his own elucidation of fundamental ontology and in the process of this work necessarily leave Husserl, and phenomenology, behind. The point of origin of Heidegger's work in Being and Time and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology is the rejection of the Cartesian position in the most fundamental sense. Heidegger's term Dasein will become increasingly prominent in the setting out of his argument. The problem of knowledge as encountered in the work of Descartes, Hume and Kant is a product of the search for a foundation for human knowledge.
