Abstract
In his lecture Der Satz vom Grund, Heidegger claims that, “death as the most extreme possibility of Dasein achieves the greatest clarification [Lichtung] of being and its truth” and adds, “Death is the as-yetunthought-of measure of the immeasurable, that is, of the greatest game into which man is earthly brought, upon which he is put” (SG 186f.). This demonstrates that death continues to be central for Heidegger’s theory of truth even after the publication of his magnum opus Being and Time (= BT). This centrality, however, is based completely upon that which I term Heidegger’s performative ontology. This ontology respects Heidegger’s reinterpretation of Husserl’s idea of the “fullness of the originary Givenness of something” as the idea of “care” (Sorge.) In the following hermeneutical essay I will trace out Heidegger’s reconstruction within the context of phenomenological ontology.
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Notes
Numbers alone in parentheses refer to page numbers in the German edition of BT. Thus (234.12) refers to p. 234, line 12 of Sein and Zeit. I have used John Macquarrie’s and Edward Robinson’s translations whenever possible. References without the name of an author refer to other works of Heidegger’s. Thus (B19 206) refers to p. 206 in Volume 19 of the Gesamtausgabe. Additional abbreviations are listed in the “List of Abbreviations” at the end of this text.
Husserl, E., VI. Log. Unt. §§22–24. As most of my references are based on well-known Husserlian concepts, I only cite Husserl’s text for the most important points of my argument.
I have limited myself here to a presentation of the most basic aspects of Heidegger’s performative ontology and have refrained from demonstrating the important results of this performative ontology for the concepts of the action-and-limit-situations with regard to the concept of death, results which yield the political consequences of this ontology. For these topics, see my forthcoming dissertation, Heideggers “Sein and Zeit” oder die ontologische Fundierung des politischen Partikularismus.
This assumes, of course, that it is possible to differentiate between the two.
Husserl therefore repudiates the givenness of “individuals” in imagination. See EU ¡ì40. The expression “thisness” could be replaced in the following argument by “singularity” or “individuality.”
Husserl typically puts the idea thus: experience, precisely speaking, is always the experience or originary givenness of individuals which takes place in various types of perception (Husserl, EU ¡ì6; Ideen 3, pp. 1–20).
One must, in this case, keep in mind that the element of “thisness” ¡ª also in its connotation of “that in Dasein which is, in each case, mine” ¡ª is decisive for Heidegger. He therefore refers, for example, to “the general determination of each and every thing as an `individual this’: the individual-thisness [Jediesheit] (…)” (FD 12).
Husserl, Log. Unt. I111, pp. 168.8–11, 44.28–33.
Compare: “The table there is in the room there (not `a’ table…)” (B61 90).
See Husserl’s third concept of truth in Log. Unt. I112, p. 123.
“Dasein” is meant here in Heidegger’s sense: “Dasein is (…), in each case, Being that I myself am” (53.20.
See: “entities themselves turn out to be (…) questioned as regards their Being. But if the characteristics of their Being can be yielded without falsification, then these entities must, on their part, have become accessible as they are in themselves” (6, emphasis mine), and “the signification of phenomenon, as conceived both formally and in the ordinary manner, is such that any exhibiting of an entity as it shows itself in itself, may be called `phenomenology’ with formal justification” (35.12–15, emphasis mine).
I refrain here from discussing the demonstrative formulation, “as that, which it is” (84.2f., 68.25 and 354.20).
Recall that “Dasein is (…), in each case, Being that I myself am” (53.2f.).
Bracketed matter within quotations are always my additions.
Volume 19 of the Gesamtausgabe is the publication of Heidegger’s lecture in WS 1924/25. See also: note 40.
This answer is central to the complex of themes relating to Heidegger’s conception of language, a subject which cannot be treated here.
See: Husserl, Log. Unt. 11/2, p. 25, emphasis mine.
This represents the structure of that which Heidegger calls the “apophantic as” (the copulative “to be”).
Heidegger had worked through this concept a number of times long before BT; it appears in a number of passages in BT, but is not developed thematically. The problem is stated more clearly in a number of lectures ¡ª for example, in the lectures of SS 1925: “We do not really see objects and things primarily and primordially, rather we first speak about them, more precisely, we do not verbalize that which we see, on the contrary, we see that which one says about the subject in question. This unusual determination of the world [is caused] by its expressedness, by the already-said-and-already-spoken-about (…) (B20 75, emphasis mine). In BT this is the ”sensory experience [Vernehmen] of the already-known“ (62.19, 62.27). In the lectures from WS 1923/24 this is stated even more clearly: ”Language does not only have a s.y in sensory experience [Vernehmen], rather it leads sensory experience [Vernehmen]; we see through language. Insofar as language has not been primordially learned, it covers things up (…)“ (B 17 30, underlining mine).
Heidegger provides a number of presentations of this idea in his lectures. In most of these it is quite clear that he is polemicizing against Husserl’s conception of truth as identification in recognition [Erkennen] (Log. Unt. 11/2, particularly 6). Husserl argues that “the thought is based on intuition and thus directed toward its object. For example, I speak about my inkwell, and the inkwell itself stands before me” (Log. Unt. II/2, p. 24, underlining mine) and further, “this relationship, as namely, is carried not only by acts of signification, but also by acts of identification (…). The perceived object is recognized as an inkwell (…). (…) The experience [is] the identification of this thing as my inkwell” (Log. Unt. II/2, p. 25). Clearly, there is an inconsistency in Husserl’s presentation: the classification of the thing “itself” as an inkwell is completely different from the identification of something as my inkwell. Nevertheless, Husserl generally holds to the idea of classification, and it is exactly this which Heidegger will not accept. In the lectures from SS 1923, for example, Heidegger begins by presenting a typically Husserlian “description,” having left no doubt that he sees such description as “a false description of the everyday environment” (B63 88), and proceeds by presenting his own description: “The table there is in the room there (not `a’ table among many others in other rooms and houses) (…)” (B63 90). Thus rejecting the idea of classification, Heidegger proceeds to introduce the situational “in order to” from BT, namely, through the intentional overuse of demonstratives: “This side [of the table] is not that side which points east, and not this narrow side which is so much shorter than that other side, rather it is hit side at which the woman sits, evenings, when she wishes to read; at th table her we had this or that discussion on that occasion; we reached that decision here with a friend, we wrote that paper, celebrated that party, there” (B63 90, underlining mine). Heidegger introduces his demotion of predication in an aside: “the characteristic of `to something’ will not be pushed upon it due to a comparative relationship to something else that it is not” (B63 90, italics mine). Heidegger is also very frank in the lectures from WS 1919/20, to which he explicitly refers with regard to the continuity of the analyses of environment and equipment in BT (72n.): “What is the meaning of this `existence’? [That is, Dasein in its connotation of the originarily given.] (…) While drinking tea I take my teacup in my hand [not: I perceive my teacup]; during a conversation/have my teacup before me there [before.., there represents here Da-stehen as originarity]. It is not as though I conceive of something colored as a thing [a priori `as’ of the region of material objects] and this thing as [a] teacup [empirical, that is, predicative, `as’ of a classification] which is determined in space and time (…). `My teacup from which I am drinking’ ¡ª its reality [originarity], which it itself is, completes itself in meaningfulness [earlier term for the in-order-to or readiness-to hand]” (B58 104, italics mine). In the previously mentioned lectures from WS 1923/24, Heidegger claims (see: Footnote 21) that language does not only have a say in sensory experience [Vernehmen], rather it leads sensory experience [Vernehmen] in such a way as to cover things up. More precisely, this means that “for every Being-there [Da-seiende] [originarily given] as such, there is exactly one logos with which I can address the things themselves in their being (…). Additionally, there are lógoi with which I can address things from many differentpers cne tives. (…) Now such lógoi with which I address things in such a way that I have not obtained that which I say to them purely from them themselves but, rather, with respect to something else, which I already know ¡ª such perspectives themselves, from which I can address things, lie outside. (…) Such a logos is not simple [compare BT 34.14; synthetic pointing-out]. The simple logos is that with which I determine the things themselves, with which I do not move away from them. (…) Aristotle argues that there is exactly one way of addressing each entity (…). Apart from this single logos which is designated for entities, there are a number of lógoi which are free-floating. This leads to (…) deception. (…) In every instance it is possible to address a Dasein [phenomenologically speaking: originarily given] not only in the way in which it itself is available, but also in another way from any other perspective. One can say that the many lógoi deceive in every situation (…)” (B17 34, underlining mine). Heidegger is thinking here of the correctness of the proposition as opposed to purely “allowing sight” in “circumspect speech,” as may be seen in the following passage: “It is assumed that truth is validity (…). A phenomenon of decay was made absolute up through Plato’s `ideas.’ Validity is a characteristic of spoken sentences, of finished knowledge, as soon as it becomes public. Validity is the way in which truth is publicly there. (…) The possibility of preserving the primordiality of encounters with entities (…) belongs to truth (…). The conflation of truth and validity is not that readily apparent” (B17 98, underlining mine). Language, Heidegger claims, exerts an unusual influence, “insofar as it drives us away from the relationship to objects [Umgang mit den Sachen]. A multifaceted interconnection of potentialities for deception, as of a potentiality for Being with the Dasein of speaking, thus demonstrates itself (…). We notice that our very language hides objects. Insofar, then, as our access to that which is initially there is, as a matter of fact, led through speaking [sensory experience (Vernehmen) as recognition] (…) insofar is the existent world hidden and approached in a certain presenting-oneself (…): presenting oneself as something. That which appears, in the primordial sense of showing-oneself, becomes a semblance” (B1940, underlining mine). Bergson’s influence on Heidegger, namely, in Bergson’s view of “concepts” as “perceptives” rather than “simple intuition,” is unmistakable here: “It thus follows, that an absolute can only be given in an intuition, whereas everything else belongs to the realm of analysis. (…) Analysis [is] the operation which reduces objects to elements which are already known, that is, to elements which these objects share with other objects. Analysis relies, ‘then, on expressing an object as a function of something which is not the object itself. Every analysis is thus a translation (…) an image which one can obtain from many perspectives, perspectives from which one attempts to find as many correspondences between the new object which one is examining and the other objects which one believes that one already knows” (H. Bergson, DW 183f., underlining mine). “Thinking consists of moving from concepts to things (…). Knowing [Erkennen] a reality means (…) employing concepts which are already established (…). What we are seeking to establish insofar as the object to be known is a this or that, in which well-known type it fits into (…)” (Bergson, DW 199, underlining mine). “These different concepts were, then, only so many external perspectives (…) according to which I judge” (Bergson, DW 191, underlining mine). “The concept (…) alters it [the object], then, through the expansiveness which the concept gives it [the object]” (Bergson, DW 189).
See below, the concept of “care.”
For Bergson’s influence on this Heideggerian thought see above (Note 22): the contrast between intuition and analysis.
Heidegger uses this term, before BT, in his lectures. In SS 1923, for example, he refers to an “object (…) as an everyday Being-there (…)” (B63 95).
See below.
Heidegger claims in his lectures from SS 1925 that “Neglect only exists because Dasein is determined as care” (B20 185). In his lectures from WS 1925/26 he says, “If I neglect something, it is not though I do nothing, rather, I do something in the mode of Nothingness (…). Neglect only exists there, where care is” (B21 225).
Heidegger derives this structure from Kierkegaard, who claims that every argument, every thought is merely an excuse for putting-off the decision, a contenting-oneself by comparing oneself to others rather than seizing hold of oneself (K30 120; K13 118; K14 76n., 246n.; K4 174).
This is nothing other than the established differentiation between the “apophantic” and the “hermeneutic as” (158).
One may see this in a number of Heidegger’s lectures, beginning at the latest in the lectures from WS 1923/24, and this remains a recurrent theme. In Heidegger’s text Vom Wesen and Begriff der Physis (WS 1930/31), for example, in the collection Wegmarken: “We already translate dynamis as unity and suitability for…; alone in this respect lies the danger that we are not Greek enough in our thinking and that we are freeing ourselves of the responsibility of making the suitability for… clear to us as the way of the yet restrained and controlled coming-out into the appearance in which suitability is fulfilled. Dynamis is a way of had-presence [originarily given]; enérgeia (entelécheia), however, is próteron, ”earlier,“ than dynamis according to Aristotle; ”earlier,“ namely, with respect to ousía (…). Enérgeia fills the essence of purely had-presence [the fullness of the originarily given] more primordially, insofar as it means the having-oneself-in-awork-and-an-end which has left every `not-yet’ of the suitability for… behind, or, better, which has taken the suitability for… with it toward the completion of full-’filled’ appearance. (…) Entelécheia is `more’ ousía [originarily given] than dynamis (…)” (WM 284., emphasis mine). Similarly: “Enérgeia means, when thinking in Greek: standing-in-a-work: the work as that which stands wholly at an `end’ (…)(WM 282). Compare BT: ”Hence ending, as stopping, can signify either passing over into no-presenceat-hand or else Being-present-at-hand precisely in the moment in which the end comes. The latter kind of ending, in turn, may (…) constitute the `finishedness’ of something present-at-hand, as the painting is finished with the last stroke of the brush“ (244f.). For further discussion of ”finishedness as a particular type of potentiality“ for living as well as in its connotation as ”power (…) entelechy“ see the lectures from WS 1929/30 (B29/30 322ff.).
The practical is, without a doubt, pre-eminent in BT, but the reason for this is not self-explanatory. It is, logically speaking, a side-effect of Heidegger’s conception of “care.” Indeed, Heidegger himself claims repeatedly that “care by no means claims a privileged status for practical, as opposed to theoretical, comportment” (193, 57, 300). The concern here is not praxis, but “care” as the archetype of the forms of the givenness of oneself (“disclosedness of oneself,” see below).
I cannot deal here with the problem of “resoluteness” as “wishing-to-have-a-consciousness.” The following may, perhaps, be of use as a guideline for further investigation. Seizing-upon determines that which Heidegger terms “ `genuine’ understanding,” but “genuineness” has no influence over whether this understanding is “authentic” or “inauthentic” (146.12f., 148.30). In the case of “inauthentic” concern, for example, the actor “possesses himself in that which he undertakes” (cf. 126, 221), or, to put it another way, the actor experiences himself “in relationship to that which he undertakes” (cf. 388). This holds, for example, for the setting of a goal, as in hammering `for the sake of protection against bad weather“ (cf. 84). Every action which is determined by one’s own setting a goal falls under a purely formal concept of heteronymity: the actor ”did not himself, alone and in solitude, make“ the particular action ”possible for himself“ to perform (cf. 263.29–37; 188). Heteronymity, however, also means falsehood in a strict phenomenological sense. The ”covering-up“ character of sensory experience [Vernehmen] and its related theoretical concepts (the terms of types) becomes extended to cover action which relates, even very loosely, to practical criteria. The covering-up character of the determinative proposition becomes, very loosely speaking, taken over in practical contexts by explicated action. This relates to merely reactive action which is affectively motivated ”by something else“ as well as ¡ª and, in particular ¡ª all moral criteria. When an individual does this or that because he believes his action to be good, or correct, he puts himself in a relationship to criteria ¡ª however questionable they may be ¡ª which always imply a ”comparing oneself“ to others and leads, simply put, to ”alienation“ (178). In contrast, resoluteness ¡ª as groundless, fully indeterminate readiness for action (298)¡ª is the criterion for the Being-”authentic“ of seizing-upon, for example, of the potentiality-for-hammering: ”angst“ is a part of ”resoluteness,“ and angst ensures the ”insignificance“ of ”readiness-to-hand“ and of the ”Dasein-with of others“ (187.32–35, 343). This ”insignificance“ means, finally, that resoluteness is fully empty, as the resolute actor does not need any reason or motive for acting; indeed, a reason or motive would necessarily refer to ”something else“ which the actor himself is not (the concept of ”individualization“). Heidegger defines a higher plane of his unusual ”phenomenon“-concept through the use of this ”individualization“-accomplishment: Dasein in the angst of resoluteness ”becomes accessible to itself as it is in itself,“ that is, without any affective or comparative reference ”to something else,“ ”which it itself is not.“ It may be shown on the basis of this, that ”resoluteness“ thus becomes an equivalent of the seizing upon of seizing-upon itself ¡ª that is, leaving aside the concrete potentiality-for-Being which is to be seized hold of, as it has become ”a matter of indifference“ (352 1 1f.). Hence the term ”resolute seizing-upon“ (of a concrete potentiality-for-Being, as, for example, the potentiality-for-hammering).
Resoluteness is used here in the manner of its narrower connotation in BT.
I make use here of Hubert Dreyfus’ suggested translation of Vorlaufen zum Tode as “forerunning to death,” as opposed to Macquarrie’s and Robinson’s “anticipation of death.”
See Note 33.
Heidegger’s word-play “disclosedness”-“resoluteness” (Erschlossenheir-Entschlossenheit) has a supposed basis in “the things themselves” through the phenomenological idea of being as presence ¡ª only, of course, insofar as one thinks of BT not in terms of the Greek tradition (much to the dismay of its author!), but in terms of the Latin tradition. Praesens means bodily, present, contemporary (Heidegger: disclosedness as Being-there [Da-sein]), as well as resolute (Heidegger: Being-there as resoluteness).
In the same passage, Heidegger claims that “the phenomenon by no means claims a privileged status for `practical,’ as opposed to theoretical, comportment” (193.30–34).
See also: “Equipment is `in order to.’ This sentence has an ontological meaning (…), that is, entities are not what and how they are, a hammer, for example, and, further, also something `with which to hammer,’ rather, that what and how it as this entity is, its Being-what and -how, is constituted (…) through this in order to as such” (B24 415, underlining mine).
For these consequences, see my aforementioned dissertation.
I can only agree completely with K. Löwith’s rejection (1929) of a division of BT into a purely phenomenological and a purely constructive section: “(…) in Heidegger’s `Analysis of Being,’ for example, the systematic concepts of the `world’ or the `They,’ or even that of the `totality of equipment’ are, philosophically speaking, not a whit less reliant upon a wide range of presuppositions as the concept of `authentic existence,’ `freedom,’ `death,’ `guilt’ and `conscience.’ Not only the `additional construction’ (…) stands in Heidegger’s system of Dasein (…) in the shadow of the contrast between either authentic or inauthentic existence, rather, through this basic and questionable differentiation between authentic and inauthentic Dasein (a differentiation which is no less reliant on presupposition as Kierkegaard’s ”Either-Or“), the positive, central concept of existence, namely in the sense of `authenticity,’ is, from the start, formally indicated, and runs through the whole construction from its very beginning (…). (…) The construction with regard to a particular existential ideal necessarily determines consistently [Heidegger’s phenomenological vision] from its very beginning (Löwith, SS3 p. 4). The individual determinations of Heidegger’s systematic phenomenological philosophy [are] without exception equally reliant upon presupposition (…).”
This is the situation of the runner and the potentiality-for-running which Heidegger describes in his lectures from SS 1931. “He [the runner] is in a position to start running; only the cry `go!’ is lacking. It only takes this cry and then he is already off running, in a run, that is, in performance. (…) Then all that is present of which he is capability; he runs, and nothing remains behind of which he is not capable; running, he exploits [ausführt] capability [Vermögen]. This exploitation of capability, however, is not the exhaustion of capability (…), rather the bringing forth of capability itself into that to which it pushes itself, as capability. The performer is simply he who, with regard to capability, does not leave anything unexploited (…). To be sure, this is only the case when he, as the capable one, comes forward in the complete readiness to run, when he fully extends himself within this readiness (…). In a position to… really-Beingcapable is the Being-in-a-position-to which is filled with readiness, for whom only the uninhibitedness in the performance is lacking, so that, when uninhibitedness (…) sets in, that is, when the capable starts running, the performance is truly an effectuation [Ausübung] ¡ª and only this. The performance is nothing other than (…) enérgeia” (B33 218f., underlining mine). Nothing has yet been established about the “authenticity” or “inauthenticity” of this seizing-upon of one’s own possibility for running, unless the “cry” is interpreted as the “cry of consciousness” ¡ª or “resoluteness” in the narrower connotation from BT.
Heidegger takes the structure of one’s-comportment-to-oneself with the primacy of seizing-hold-of-oneself from Kierkegaard. He reinterprets this structure in terms of the Aristotelian-Thomistic actus purus and, finally, formalizes the “existentialized” actus purus into the phenomenological schema of truth.
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Canán, A.C. (1998). Considering Die and Death. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outburst in Creative Virtualities. Analecta Husserliana, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4900-6_13
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