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| ISBN-13: | 9781786610508 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2019 |
| Series: | New Heidegger Research |
| Pages: | 302 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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CHAPTER 1
Into the Happening of Being
Heidegger's move away from Being and Time is overdetermined, and any reconstruction of what is happening in his work of 1927–1930 must beware of retrospective oversimplification. His own accounts of his transition (e.g., GA 66: 411–17) and his later interpretations of Being and Time (e.g., in GA 82) must also be read with some reservations, since they are typically couched in his later language and emphasize only certain features of the development.
I, too, will be selective in this chapter and will trace just three threads in the tangle, including some little-known strands — but these threads lead us to some of the most distinctive and crucial themes of the thirties. First, Heidegger comes to focus on certain intense moments when human temporality itself can be said to arise; this will lead him to a conception of history centered on such "inceptions." Secondly, he comes to view such times as moments of crisis or emergency, and identifies the lack of explicit emergency as the implicit emergency of his historical moment. Finally, he associates both of these themes with the question "Who are we?" — the experience of becoming a problem for ourselves.
These are not the themes most commonly discussed in accounts of the shift from "Heidegger I" to "Heidegger II," or of the faltering of the project of Being and Time. More frequently, commentators emphasize Heidegger's attempt to overcome subjectivity and his turn toward "being itself." This issue is important, but if one understands the "turn" too simplistically, as a pivot from being-there to being, this may obfuscate the fact that Dasein continues to play a central role in Heidegger's thought in the thirties. In fact, individual and collective selfhood becomes a burning issue for him, because it is through becoming ourselves that we become open to being. "Because the inquiry into being is grounded most intimately in the inquiry into Da-sein and vice versa ... the inquiry into Da-sein must be made anew" (GA 66: 414/367). The "that-it-is [Daß] of being-there" is also "the birth of being" (GA 73.1: 11). This double happening is Heidegger's most distinctive concern in the thirties — a happening in which politics is not incidental to philosophy.
BEING AND TIME ON TIME AND BEING
Some essential points from Being and Time and related texts will set the stage for these developments.
The title of Being and Time expresses what Heidegger later described as his "sole lightning bolt" of insight (GA 82: 355; cf. GA 98: 279): presence stems from the present. Being is available thanks to time; temporality is the context in terms of which we can encounter anything as something that is, instead of nothing at all. This thesis is not fully developed in the work as it stands, but the book does show that there are several distinct ways of being: what it means for a "present-at-hand" entity to be is to be given as an object to a theoretical gaze; a "ready-to-hand" entity, such as a tool, is when it fits into a meaningful network of purposes and functions, or a "world"; and we ourselves are by existing as "being-there" — we are entities for whom our own being is at issue as we go about inhabiting the world, and who are thoroughly temporal. That is, we have always already been "thrown" into some situation, we "project" possibilities, and we dwell among other beings in a present world. Our temporality is also historical, as each of us is a member of a community. Heidegger suggests that through "communication and struggle," a group may find a way to forge a destiny from its heritage (SZ 364).
These points are all linked to the insight that our temporality gives us access to being. Our projective reach into possibilities, our thrown dependence on what we have been given, and our engagement in a current world make it possible for anything to make sense to us as what is, rather than what is not. Presence-at-hand, which the Western metaphysical tradition has generally identified with all being, should be unmasked as only one type of being — a narrow, objectified mode that is made available within the present. An insight into the broader dimensions of temporality should make it possible for us to acknowledge and comprehend more types of being, including our own, in some unified way.
Let us look more closely at this idea and its elements: (a) beings, (b) being, (c) Dasein and its temporality, (d) time as the horizon for being.
(a) Das Seiende, often translated as "beings" or "entities," or more literally as "that which is," embraces everything that is something at all, and not nothing. It is not limited to "things" in the narrow sense (individual objects or substances). Nearly everything with which we concern ourselves, theoretically or practically, is a being. This would include a particular cat, the species cat, the cat's act of running, the number pi, absolute monarchy, the religion of the Hittites, Baroque music, cryptocurrency, quasars, a love affair, and so on.
(b) It is considerably harder to explain what Heidegger means by "being" (das Sein), sometimes translated as "Being" to distinguish it more clearly from an entity. Serious interpreters disagree. In order to have a truly clear concept of being, we would need to have completed the project of Being and Time itself, which remains unfinished. However, as Heidegger emphasizes from the outset, we already have an implicit, vague understanding of being that we can work with. The following remarks, then, are inexact elucidations of his usage of the word Sein, not strict definitions.
First, he often uses "being" as one might use "essence" or "nature": to examine "the kind of being that belongs to living things as such" is to establish what characterizes something as alive (SZ 10). Heidegger calls this "what-being" (Was-sein, SZ 42).
He also refers to Sosein, being-such or being-thus (SZ 5, 7, 14). This seems to be a broader category, including not only essences but also nonessential qualities or predicates, as when we say that the cat is asleep.
"Being" also has the sense of "that-being" (Daß-sein, SZ 5, 7, 14). An entity, something that is, is something instead of nothing. In traditional (medieval and modern) terms, this sense of being is existence, as contrasted with essence (GA 24: 108–71).
These usages of "being" cohere as long as we are willing to challenge the doctrine (found in Kant and frequently repeated in analytic philosophy) that the term "being" conflates several logically distinct operations. In particular, universal quantification ("every platypus is a mammal") is distinguished from existential quantification ("here is a platypus"). The problem with this doctrine is that what it is for something to exist (that-being) may depend on the sort of entity it is (what-being), and vice versa. "What-being is that-being" (GA 74: 6); or more precisely, for different kinds of entities, there is a special sort of "actuality which is prescribed for [their] respectively determined what-being" (GA 33: 223/192). A platypus does not exist in the same way as a number, freedom, or Paradise Lost exists. The differences among their ways of existing are precisely the essential differences among these kinds of entities. Admittedly, describing what it means for something to exist is distinct from asserting that it actually exists; but the point is that there is no single, simple sense of existence or actuality. If we keep what-being and that-being utterly separate, we easily end up assuming that that-being (existence, actuality) applies in just the same way to all kinds of entities (GA 6.2: 374–75/EP 11). That is precisely the unquestioned, reductive understanding of being that Heidegger finds pernicious. Partly in order to avoid such reductionism, Being and Time reserves the term "existence" for Dasein's distinctive way of being, in which we are concerned with our own being and inhabit a world.
Heidegger also emphasizes that being is not an entity. It "is" not, but it is given to Dasein as the entity who understands being (SZ 183). Being is essentially related to Dasein's understanding; it is that in terms of which Dasein understands entities as entities (SZ 6). For instance, we understand the cat in its catness, or being-a-cat; this being-a-cat is not itself an entity that forms part of the cat, but the context in which the cat makes sense to us as a cat.
Thus, without Dasein, being would not be given (SZ 212). No entities can be understood without an entity who can understand them. Without that entity, there is no understanding and thus no context for understanding. This may sound viciously relativistic, but Heidegger insists that interpretations of being can be better or worse: they can either impose a restrictive, misleading framework on beings or provide a context that allows beings to display themselves richly (SZ 150).
In order to suggest the multiple yet related senses of "being" and being's essential relation to Dasein, we can gloss being as the difference it makes that there is something instead of nothing. There is no such difference without someone (Dasein) to whom the difference can be made. The difference has an "existential" sense but also an "essential" one, for entities display their various essences in the particular sorts of difference it makes for them to be something instead of nothing. As we tease apart their ways of being, we discover the differences it makes that there are, for instance, artworks rather than nothing, or atoms rather than nothing.
Even though "we are always already operating within an understanding of being" (SZ 5), being usually goes unrecognized. At first and for the most part, it does not show itself directly, but lies in the background of the overtly self-showing phenomena. But being can be brought out: it can be revealed as having already been showing itself indirectly as the "sense and ground" of the overt phenomena, and as "belonging" to these phenomena (SZ 35). The sense of a phenomenon is the context that allows it to be understood (SZ 151).
One of Heidegger's favorite techniques for revealing being is the interpretation of certain overt phenomena as "deficient modes" of a more fundamental phenomenon. The absence of historical research is a deficient mode of historicity (SZ 20). The essential usability of shoes becomes clear when my shoes do not fit (SZ 73–74). Indifference to others is a deficient mode of caring for them (SZ 121). These are exceptions that prove the rule: their function is to extrapolate an ordinary "ontic" concept, which pertains to entities, into an "ontological" one that grasps their being. Heidegger hopes that his redescription of the ontic negatives (lack of usability, history, or caring) as deficient ontological positives will draw our attention to underlying phenomena that have always already been making it possible for the overt positive and negative phenomena to show themselves. Then "care," for instance, no longer refers to a particular state that we may or may not be in, but to the human condition as such, and we may recognize that it is only thanks to this condition that we can become careless, carefree, or uncaring. (A shoe is neither caring nor uncaring, but altogether lacks ontological care.)
However, uncovering being is not just a matter of performing a few dialectical tricks, for we inevitably draw on a tradition that makes it difficult to acknowledge and articulate some distinctive aspects of entities (SZ 20–22). In particular, traditional philosophy, science, and common sense often assume that to be is to be present-at-hand — to subsist as an actual object with given properties that can be theoretically specified. But this assumption cannot do justice to the many dimensions of what there is: the utility of tools, the familiarity of a dwelling, or the oppressive endurance of a tradition, to name a few. One more point about being: according to Being and Time, there cannot be anything that lies hidden "behind" being (SZ 35–36, 152), because being is not the partial disclosure of some nonmanifest entity, but what enables the manifestation of entities in the first place. If there were no manifestation, then being would not go into hiding, like an undiscovered entity, but simply would not occur at all. However, there is something "behind" being in another sense: we can ask what gives being, or makes it possible. Again, the thesis of Being and Time is that being is given by temporality. In the thirties Heidegger will try to push past this answer, but the question endures. He is interested not only in describing how we understand entities, but in finding what enables us to understand them at all. This question is not just about the being of beings, but about the source of "being as such."
(c) Dasein and its temporality can be properly understood only if we free being from its restriction to presence-at-hand. Again and again, well-meaning attempts to distinguish soul from body, or subject from object, have ended up merely positing a different kind of present-at-hand thing, because such theories fail to rethink what it is to be in the first place. Dasein is not a present-at-hand thing with present-at-hand properties.
Dasein is not a thing: it is the "there," an opening or disclosure (SZ 133, 135, 220–21). In this sense, Dasein is its own world (SZ 364): it provides the meaningful forum, the illuminated space within which all entities can be discovered. To be the "there" is to engage with what is, to exist as the field in which beings can make a difference. Such an opening cannot be understood as if it were simply one item available within the opening.
Dasein has no properties: it has possibilities that engage with its situation. Our being is an issue for us: we have always adopted a position on who we are, and are perpetually challenged to renew our position. Our existence remains a problem, and our selfhood never crystallizes into a rigid identity. To own up to this condition is to exist in a self-owned or authentic way (eigentlich) — not with properties, but properly. To evade or forget this condition is to fall, to exist inauthentically.
Dasein is not present-at-hand: it is temporal. The point is not just the truism that we change — philosophies of becoming are among the most hackneyed metaphysical standpoints. Dasein's time is better understood in terms of three "ecstases" (SZ 329).
(1) Deliberately or not, we are engaged in possible ways to be. Heidegger calls this our understanding, our projection of possibilities. Futurity essentially involves our concern with who we are: Dasein is "being out toward what it is not yet, but can be" (GA 64: 46/CT1 38 tm). Thus we always understand ourselves and our surroundings in terms of the possible (SZ 43, 86). The future is marked, however, by the constantly looming possibility of the extinction of possibilities — mortality, or "being-toward-death" (SZ 262).
(2) In turn, we are claimed by our circumstances, which are thrust upon us as given. This is our thrownness, our past as a having-been that we are challenged to take over or reclaim.
(3) Through projecting possibilities while being claimed by the past, we arrive at the present: we dwell at home in the midst of things in our current world.
These three "ecstases" allow us to "stand out" from any determinate spatiotemporal point. Temporality is the original "outside-itself" or ekstatikon (SZ 329). "The human being is a creature [Wesen] of distance" (GA 26: 285/221, cf. GA 9: 175/135) who reaches past current confines into a broader and richer space and time. "Man is not a thing that stops at its skin." It is impossible to understand anything human simply by inspecting a particular cross-section, as it were — its properties at an instant — or even a massive set of such facts ("big data," as we say). Dasein is always more than it factually is: it cannot be reduced to its present-at-hand characteristics, but demands to be understood in terms of the world it inhabits and the possibilities it pursues (SZ 145, 236).
We are not just in time, then; "each Dasein is itself 'time'" (GA 64: 57/CT1 47). Dasein is its own present, in which it encounters and deals with present entities, and it is also its having-been and its to-be. It is "thrown possibility through and through" (SZ 144). Since we inhabit time with others, participating in a heritage and destiny, it can also be said that "Dasein is history" (GA 64: 86/CT1 73). Time and history are neither obstacles to our fulfillment nor simply arenas in which we happen to act; they are the heart of our own being. To avoid a misunderstanding: Heidegger's terms "fate" (Schicksal) and "destiny" (Geschick) have a non-"fatalistic" meaning. They are not inevitable outcomes, but senses of individual or shared selfhood that provide some clarity and purpose by finding an appropriate connection between what we irrevocably have been and what we can still be.
The threefold ecstatic structure of time can be summed up as the future that presences as having-been (SZ 326, 350). Although the ecstases are interconnected, the future is primary (SZ 329, 339). By virtue of the future, Dasein is confronted with its own being as an issue. It is faced with the question of who it is because it must adopt some possible way of being. In terms of this ultimate possibility, or "for-the-sake-of-which," our more immediate options gain their sense, as do the possible ways of being of the other entities we encounter (SZ 43, 86, 145).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Time and Trauma"
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Copyright © 2019 Richard Polt.
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