FRIEDRICH-WILHELM VON HERRMANN “HERMENEUTICS AND REFLECTION: HEIDEGGER AND HUSSERL ON THE CONCEPT OF PHENOMENOLOGY” Trans. by K. Maly, Toronto: University of Toronto Press November, 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1442640092

The review provides an outline of the book and critically examines the Heideggerean hermeneutic phenomenological approach developed by F.-W. von Herrmann to the refutation of Husserl's phenomenology. Reviewer traces four essential differences in author's critical analysis of the two phenomenological approaches by Heidegger and Husserl, and problematizes several difficulties in the author's interpretation of Husserl's phenomenology. On the one hand, the reviewer shows that Husserl's phenomenology, at least, can be interpreted in two ways, namely the static approach and the genetic approach. Husserl's genetic phenomenology, especially in Crisis, explicitly expresses his hermeneutic character. Therefore, Herrmann's interpretation may not be faithful to Husserl's phenomenology as a whole. On the other hand, Herrmann develops Heidegger's idea of the primacy of a-reflective hermeneutics, which is a pre-theoretical primordial science. With reference to K. Popper's and K. Jaspers' criteria of science, the reviewer doubts that the development, which aims at going beyond reflective and theoretical science, can still be regarded as a science because it cannot meet any established criterion.