Abstract

EXISTENCE AND LIFE. ERWIN STRAUS’S CRITICISM OF HEIDEGGER’S DASEINSANALYTIK Erwin Straus was a German psychiatrist and phenomenologist generally known as the author of Vom Sinn der Sinne, a book published in 1935. However, in what follows I will rely almost exclusively on Psychiatry and Philosophy, an essay he wrote in 1963, almost thirty years later. My main goal is to present Straus’s contribution to a phenomenological ontology of life. I will begin by presenting Straus’s criticism of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein and then I will try to sketch Straus’s positive contribution to a phenomenological theory of the living.