The aim of the paper is to show the role and meaning of Descartes’s philosophy in the context of Heidegger’s way of philosophizing, focusing on his metaphysics of subjectivity. According to Heidegger the latter is marked by a transformation in understanding the being of existence. By this he meant the fact, that the in representation of being is determined by the subject. What really is and is valid as existing, is only the object in the re-presentation of the re-presenting person. (...) Heidegger argues that the modern history of being, from its understanding as re-presentation up to the will to power can be conceived as the history of metaphysics of subjectivity. For Heidegger Descartes’s metaphysics is an instantiation of thinking which is limited by the existence without recurring to the most fundamental aspect, namely its being. (shrink)

Similarly to Husserl’s gradually developing view of the decisive phenomenological questions also his relationship to the philosophy of R. Descartes and to the history of philosophy as a whole underwent several changes. We witness a shift from stressing universal attempt at doubt to misunderstanding of Descarte’s own discovery of ego. Husserl sees Descartes’ methodical skepticism as a crucial historical impulse for articulating his own conception of epoché. Descartes’ methodical skepticism and Husserl’s putting in brackets the general thesis about the existence (...) of the world show the closest parallel between their philosophical doctrines. Further, similarly to Descartes Husserl also aims at reforming the philosophy of his time; in Descartes’ Meditations on first philosophy he finds the way leading to transcendental phenomenology. However, there are also differences in their projects of universal philosophy. While for Descartes the model of his mathesis universalis is mathematical science, Husserl aims – with far reaching consequences – at creating transcendental phenomenology as a strictly scientific philosophy which must offer a fundamental organon to all other sciences and thus enable them to undergo a reform. (shrink)

The appearance of the transcendental motif in the history of philosophy is, so Husserl, related to the situation, in which the naive determination of the world became problematic. By the universal character of this motif we cast doubt on the world and also on the sciences, which examine it. Descartes, however, does not comprehend the object in its meaning; hence the main Husserl’s reproach against Descartes: instead of the meaning of the object Descartes sees in cogitatum a visual object. Husserl (...) sees this „self-misinterpretation“ as Descartes’ misunderstanding of his own promising origins. This self-misinterpretation culminated in identifying ego, which Descartes discovered due to reduction, with I – the human being. Husserl made use of Descartes in transcendental phenomenology to justify the claim of phenomenology to be a universal strict science. Thus we get a picture of Descartes for phenomenology , while the historical character of Descartes’ philosophy is diminishing. It is one of the deformations caused by Husserl’ effort to get foundation for a strictly and apodictically transcendental phenomenology. One of its victims was also Descartes’ philosophy, whose greatness is in being this victim. (shrink)