Heidegger and Being and Time, Second Edition - AHS History

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to

Heidegger and Being and Time

Review of the first edition

lsquoMulhallrsquos text is an impressive feat of exegesis It will be seized uponby those facing the daunting prospect of reading Being and Time forthe first timersquo

Jim Urpeth Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology

Heidegger is one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentiethcentury His writings are notoriously difficult they both require andreward careful reading Being and Time his first major publicationremains to this day his most influential work

Heidegger and Being and Time introduces and assesses

bull Heideggerrsquos life and the background to Being and Timebull The ideas and text of Being and Timebull Heideggerrsquos enduring influence in philosophy and our contem-

porary intellectual life

In this second edition Stephen Mulhall expands and revises his treat-ment of two central Heideggerian themes ndash scepticism and deathHe also explains and assesses the contentious relationship betweenthe two parts of Being and Time

This guide will be vital to all students of Heidegger in philosophy andcultural theory

Stephen Mulhall is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New CollegeOxford

ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHY GUIDEBOOKS

Edited by Tim Crane and Jonathan WolffUniversity College London

Plato and the Trial of Socrates Thomas C Brickhouse and Nicholas DSmith

Aristotle and the Metaphysics Vasilis Politis

Rousseau and The Social Contract Christopher Bertram

Plato and the Republic Second edition Nickolas Pappas

Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations A D Smith

Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling John Lippitt

Descartes and the Meditations Gary Hatfield

Hegel and the Philosophy of Right Dudley Knowles

Nietzsche on Morality Brian Leiter

Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit Robert Stern

Berkeley and the Principles of Human Knowledge Robert Fogelin

Aristotle on Ethics Gerard Hughes

Hume on Religion David OrsquoConnor

Leibniz and the Monadology Anthony Savile

The Later Heidegger George Pattison

Hegel on History Joseph McCarney

Hume on Morality James Baillie

Hume on Knowledge Harold Noonan

Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason Sebastian Gardner

Mill on Liberty Jonathan Riley

Mill on Utilitarianism Roger Crisp

Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations Marie McGinn

Spinoza and the Ethics Genevieve Lloyd

Heidegger and Being and Time Second edition Stephen Mulhall

Locke on Government D A Lloyd Thomas

Locke on Human Understanding E J Lowe

Heidegger and Being and TimeSecond Edition

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Stephen

Mulhall

First edition published 1996

Second edition published 2005 by Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Ave New York NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

copy 1996 2005 Stephen Mulhall

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprintedor reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronicmechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or in anyinformation storage or retrieval system without permissionin writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataMulhall Stephen 1962ndash

Routledge philosophy guidebook to Heidegger and Being and timeStephen Mulhall ndash 2nd ed

p cm ndash (Routledge philosophy guidebooks)Includes bibliographical references (p ) and index1 Heidegger Martin 1889ndash1976 Sein und Zeit

I Title Heidegger and Being and timeII Title III SeriesB3279H48S46654 2005111 ndash dc22 2005004675

ISBN 0ndash415ndash35719ndash5 (hbk)ISBN 0ndash415ndash35720ndash9 (pbk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2005

ldquoTo purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcoukrdquo

ISBN 0-203-00308-X Master e-book ISBN

CONTENTS

PREFACE viiPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi

Introduction Heideggerrsquos Project (sectsect1ndash8) 1The Question of Being 1Reclaiming the Question 8The Priority of Dasein 12Philosophy History and Phenomenology 18Conclusion Heideggerrsquos Design 26

1 The Human World Scepticism Cognition and Agency (sectsect9ndash24) 35The Cartesian Critique (sectsect12ndash13) 39The Worldhood of the World (sectsect14ndash24) 46

2 The Human World Society Selfhood and Self-interpretation (sectsect25ndash32) 60Individuality and Community (sectsect25ndash7) 61Passions and Projects (sectsect28ndash32) 73

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3 Language Truth and Reality (sectsect33ndash4 43ndash4) 89Language Assertions and Discourse (sectsect33ndash4) 90Reality and Truth (sectsect43ndash4) 94

4 Conclusion to Division One the Uncanniness of Everyday Life (sectsect34ndash42) 106Falling into the World (sectsect34ndash8) 106Anxiety and Care (sectsect39ndash42) 110Anxiety Scepticism and Nihilism 114

5 Theology Secularized Mortality Guilt and Conscience (sectsect45ndash60) 120Death and Mortality (sectsect46ndash53) 122Excursus Heidegger and Kierkegaard 134Guilt and Conscience (sectsect54ndash60) 138The Attestation of Being and Time 143

6 Heideggerrsquos (Re)visionary Moment Time as the Human Horizon (sectsect61ndash71) 152Mortality and Nullity the Form of Human Finitude (sectsect61ndash2) 153Philosophical Integrity and Authenticity (sectsect62ndash4) 155The Temporality of Care Thrown Projection (sectsect65ndash8) 159The Temporality of Care Being in the World (sectsect69ndash70) 170Repetition and Projection (sect71) 178

7 Fate and Destiny Human Natality and a Brief History of Time (sectsect72ndash82) 181History and Historicality (sectsect72ndash5) 181The Lessons of History (sectsect76ndash7) 191On Being within Time (sectsect78ndash82) 198

8 Conclusion to Division Two Philosophical Endings ndash the Horizon of Being and Time (sect83) 207Human Being and the Question of Being in General 207

BIBLIOGRAPHY 214INDEX 216

C O N T E N T Svi

PREFACE

Martin Heidegger was born in Messkirch on 26 September 1889 Aninterest in the priesthood led him to commence theological and philo-sophical studies at the University of Freiburg in 1909 A monographon the philosophy of Duns Scotus brought him a university teachingqualification and in 1922 he was appointed to teach philosophy atthe University of Marburg The publication of his first major workSein und Zeit (Being and Time) in 1927 catapulted him to prominenceand led to his being appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at Freiburgin 1928 succeeding his teacher and master the phenomenologistEdmund Husserl From April 1933 until his resignation in February1934 the early months of the Nazi regime he was Rector of FreiburgHis academic career was further disrupted by the Second World Warand its aftermath in 1944 he was enrolled in a work-brigade andbetween 1945 and 1951 he was prohibited from teaching under thedeNazification rules of the Allied authorities He was reappointedProfessor in 1951 and gave occasional seminars in his capacity asHonorary Professor until 1967 as well as travelling widely and partic-ipating in conferences and colloquia on his work He continued to

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write until his death on 26 May 1976 He is buried in the local grave-yard of his birthplace Messkirch

This brief biographical sketch leaves much that is of importance inHeideggerrsquos life (particularly his destructive and ugly relations withNazism) unexplored but it gives even less indication of the breadthintensity and distinctiveness of his philosophical work and its impacton the development of the discipline in Europe The publication of Beingand Time transformed him from a charismatic lecturer well known inGerman academic life (Hannah Arendt said that descriptions of hislecture series circulated in Germany as if they were lsquorumours of a hiddenkingrsquo) into a figure of international significance A steady stream of lectures seminars and publications in the following decades merely broadened and intensified his influence Sartrean existentialism thehermeneutic theory and practice of Gadamer and Derridean decon-struction all grew from the matrix of Heideggerrsquos thought and thecognate disciplines of literary criticism theology and psychoanalysiswere also importantly influenced by his work To some his preoccu-pations ndash and more importantly the manner in which he thought andwrote about them ndash signified only pretension mystification and char-latanry For many others however the tortured intensity of his proseits breadth of reference in the history of philosophy and its arrogantbut exhilarating implication that nothing less than the continuation ofWestern culture and authentic human life was at stake in his thoughtsignified instead that philosophy had finally returned to its true con-cerns in a manner that might justify its age-old claim to be the queenof the human sciences

This book is an introduction for English-speaking readers to thetext that publically inaugurated Heideggerrsquos life-long philosophicalproject ndash Being and Time1 It aims to provide a perspicuous surviewof the structure of this complex and difficult work clarifying its under-lying assumptions elucidating its esoteric terminology and sketchingthe inner logic of its development It takes very seriously the idea that it is intended to provide an introduction to a text rather than athinker or a set of philosophical problems Although of course it isnot possible to provide guidance for those working through anextremely challenging philosophical text without attempting to illum-inate the broader themes and issues with which it grapples as well

P R E F A C Eviii

as the underlying purposes of its author it is both possible and desirable to address those themes and purposes by relating them veryclosely and precisely to the ways in which they are allowed to emergein the chapter by chapter section by section structure of the textconcerned This introduction is therefore organized in a way that isdesigned to mirror that of Being and Time as closely as is consistentwith the demands of clarity and surveyability

This book is not an introduction to the many important lines ofcriticism that have been made of Heideggerrsquos book since its first publi-cation Those criticisms can be properly understood only if one hasa proper understanding of their object and their force and cogencycan be properly evaluated only if one has first made the best possibleattempt to appreciate the power and coherence of the position they seek to undermine For these reasons I have concentrated onproviding an interpretation of Being and Time which makes thestrongest case in its favour that is consistent both with fidelity to the text and to the canons of rational argument My concern is toshow that there is much that is well worth arguing over in Heideggerrsquosearly work but I do not attempt to judge how those arguments mightbe conducted or definitively concluded

As Heidegger himself emphasized no interpretation of a text canbe devoid of preconceptions and value-judgements Even a basic and primarily exegetical introduction to the main themes of a philo-sophical work must choose to omit or downplay certain details andcomplexities and to organize the material it does treat in one of manypossible ways But my interpretation of Being and Time takes up anunorthodox position on a highly controversial issue in Heideggerscholarship the reader unfamiliar with that scholarship should bewarned of this in advance Particularly with respect to the material inthe second half of Being and Time I regard Heideggerrsquos treatment ofthe question of human authenticity as necessarily and illuminatinglyapplicable to his conception of his role as a philosopher and so tohis conception of his relation to his readers In other words I readhis philosophical project not only as analysing the question of whatit is for a human being to achieve genuine individuality or selfhoodbut as itself designed to facilitate such an achievement in the sphereof philosophy As will become clear Heidegger does not conceive of

P R E F A C E ix

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human authenticity as a matter of living in accord with some partic-ular ethical blueprint and to this degree my interpretation cannotproperly be thought of as a moralization of Being and Time It doesimply however that the tone of spiritual fervour that many readershave detected in the book is internally related to its most centralpurposes and that Heidegger makes existential demands on himselfand his readers This is something that many careful students of Beingand Time have been eager to deny The legitimacy of my interpreta-tive strategy must of course ultimately depend upon the convictionit elicits as a reading of Being and Time but I feel it right to declareit in advance and in so doing to declare further that I cannot other-wise make sense of the structure of the book as a whole and of itsunremitting concern with its own status as a piece of philosophicalwriting

I would like to acknowledge the help various people have given mein the course of writing this book My colleagues at the University ofEssex ndash particularly Simon Critchley and Jay Bernstein ndash have gener-ously allowed me to draw upon their extensive knowledge of Heideggerand Heideggerian scholarship and Jay Bernstein also commented indetail on an early draft of my manuscript The editors of this seriesndash Tim Crane and Jo Wolff ndash kindly invited me to take on this projectin the first place and provided much useful advice as it developedTwo anonymous readersrsquo reports on the manuscript arrived at a latestage in its preparation Both helped to improve the book significantlyand I would like to thank their authors Finally I would also like tothank Alison Baker for her forbearance and support during my workon this project

1 All quotations and references are keyed to the standard Macquarrieand Robinson translation of the original German text (Oxford BasilBlackwell 1962) The location of all quotations is given by specifyingthe relevant section and page in that order eg (BT 59 336)

P R E F A C Ex

PREFACE TO THE

SECOND EDITION

It is now more than a decade since I began work on the first editionof this book Since then I have continued to think about Heideggerrsquosphilosophical writings in general and Being and Time in particularand although I continue to believe that the fundamental aspects ofmy original interpretation of it are sound I have gradually come tofeel that various issues might usefully be explored in more detail or introduced into a discussion that wrongly omitted them

First I now realize that my original analysis of Heideggerrsquos treat-ment of scepticism in Division One of Being and Time was importantlyincomplete In the first edition I concentrated on drawing out hisreasons for thinking that a proper understanding of Dasein as Being-in-the-world would render scepticism inarticulable and thus eliminatewhat he called the scandalous fact of philosophyrsquos endless andendlessly unsuccessful attempts to refute scepticism by revealing itsessential emptiness More recently I have come to believe that thisline of argument in Being and Time is counterbalanced by a secondmore recessive but also more radical one This depends upon appre-ciating that scepticism can be understood as having not only a putative

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cognitive content or thrust but also (as with any mode of under-standing according to Heideggerrsquos own analysis) a specific mood ormode of attunement ndash that of anxiety or angst And Heideggerrsquos argu-ment in Division One is that angst is capable of pivoting Dasein fromits lostness in lsquodas manrsquo to an authentic grasp of itself the world andBeing From this it would seem to follow that philosophical scepti-cism is inherently capable of disclosing a vital dimension of DaseinrsquosBeing and so of Being as such and hence that Heidegger cannotavoid thinking of scepticism as an essential moment in any philo-sophical recovery of the question of the meaning of Being

Second I have come to see more clearly the peculiar nature andthe absolutely fundamental importance of the relation Heideggerconstructs between Divisions One and Two of Being and Time Theargument of Division Two begins from a sense that the analysis ofDivision One overlooks an essential aspect of the totality of DaseinrsquosBeing ndash its relation to its own end This turns out to involve Daseinrsquosmultiple and determining relationship to its own nothingness andhence to negation or nullity more generally and by the time of hisdiscussion of Daseinrsquos conscience it becomes clear that Division Twointends to draw out the full implications of the relatively glancingclaim in Division One that angst reveals Daseinrsquos Being to be essen-tially uncanny or not-at-home in the world I now think of this asDaseinrsquos failure or inability to coincide with itself and this in turnsuggests that what Heidegger means by Daseinrsquos inauthenticity is its various attempts to live as if it did coincide with itself ndash as if itsexistential potential coincided with its existentiell actuality Henceauthenticity is a matter of living out Daseinrsquos essential non-identitywith itself and accordingly any authentic analytic of Daseinrsquos Beingmust manifest a similar failure of self-identity Its construction or formmust reflect the fact that any account of Daseinrsquos Being must indi-cate its own inadequacy its own ineliminable reference to that whichis beyond Daseinrsquos and hence its own grasp

I would now argue that this is the function of Division Two in relation to Division One the former is precisely designed to unsettleour confidence in the latter our perhaps unduly complacent sensethat it concludes with a genuinely complete however provisionalaccount of Daseinrsquos Being (in terms of care) In other words Division

P R E F A C E T O T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O Nxii

Two does not (or not only) amount to a deeper exploration of thestructures established in Division One it is also an attempt to revealthe ways in which those structures in fact point towards Daseinrsquosessential dependence upon that which exceeds its own limits ndash andin particular the limits of its own comprehension One might say thatit ensures that Being and Time as a whole does not coincide withitself and thus meets the criterion it establishes for authenticity

If this view is right then Division Two cannot be dismissed asconcerning itself with more or less marginal matters of ethics andtheology ndash the essentially optional existential side of Heideggerrsquosphenomenology In particular the idea that one can give an accountof the core of the whole book while limiting oneself to the materialof Division One (as Hubert Dreyfusrsquos highly influential commentaryBeing-in the-World1 in effect does) becomes completely untenable Aproper appreciation of that fact alone would radically put in questionthe ways in which Heideggerrsquos early thought has been appropriatedin the Anglo-American philosophical world It would also illuminatethe degree to which the insights of Being and Time prefigure the claimsHeidegger makes at the beginning of the 1930s (in for example hisfamous inaugural lecture What is Metaphysics2) about an internalrelation between Being and lsquothe nothingrsquo ndash claims sometimes takento herald a fundamental turn in his thinking And as a result it wouldsignificantly alter our sense of the internal relation of Heideggerrsquosearly work to that of Sartre for if this way of understanding Being andTimersquos purposes is correct then a book entitled Being and Nothingnessmight come to seem far less distant from its acknowledged sourcethan is often assumed to be the case

The publication of this second edition has given me the chance torevise the whole of my commentary in the light of these two mainshifts in my thinking about Being and Time This means that Chapters4 5 and 8 have been very significantly revised and expanded and thatmany matters of fine detail in Chapters 6 and 7 have been slightlybut importantly altered to accommodate a very different way of viewingDivision Two as a whole I have also taken the opportunity to correcta number of minor flaws throughout the book ndash almost always I believe matters of style rather than of content In the end then this is a very different text to that of the first edition but these

P R E F A C E T O T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O N xiii

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discontinuities in fact grow rather directly from the main emphasesof my initial reading of the text ndash most obviously from its insistencethat the results of Heideggerrsquos existential analytic of Dasein mustnecessarily apply to its author and his philosophical activities andhence will directly inform his conception of the standards againstwhich his own writing must measure itself and of the transformationit must aim to effect upon its readers In that sense I would like tobelieve that the second edition of this book is essentially a moreauthentic version of the first

Stephen MulhallNew College Oxford

January 2005

1 Cambridge Mass MIT Press 19912 In D F Krell (ed) Basic Writings 2nd edn (San Francisco Calif

Harper 1993)

P R E F A C E T O T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O Nxiv

INTRODUCTIONHEIDEGGERrsquoS PROJECT

(Being and Time sectsect1ndash8)

THE QUESTION OF BEING

According to Heidegger the whole of Being and Time is concernedwith a single question ndash the question of the meaning of Being Butwhat does he mean by the term lsquoBeingrsquo What if anything does itsignify It is no accident that Heidegger provides no clear and simpleanswer to this question ndash neither at the opening of his book nor atany later point within it for in his view it will take at least thewhole of his book to bring us to the point where we can even askthe question in a coherent and potentially fruitful way Neverthelesshe also takes a certain preliminary understanding of Being to be implicit in everything human beings say and do so it should be possible even at this early stage to indicate at least an initialorientation for our thinking

Late in William Goldingrsquos novel The Spire1 its medieval protag-onist ndash a cathedral dean named Jocelin ndash has a striking experienceas he leaves his quarters

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Outside the door there was a woodstack among long rank grass A scent struck him so that he leaned against the woodstack care-less of his back and waited while the dissolved grief welled out ofhis eyes Then there was a movement over his head He twisted his neck and looked up sideways There was a cloud of angels flashingin the sunlight they were pink and gold and white and they wereuttering this sweet scent for joy of the light and the air They broughtwith them a scatter of clear leaves and among the leaves a longblack springing thing His head swam with the angels and suddenlyhe understood there was more to the appletree than one branch Itwas there beyond the wall bursting up with cloud and scatter layinghold of the earth and the air a fountain a marvel an appletree Then where the yard of the deanery came to the river and treeslay over the sliding water he saw all the blue of the sky condensedto a winged sapphire that flashed once

He cried outlsquoCome backrsquo

But the bird was gone an arrow shot once It will never come backhe thought not if I sat here all day

(Golding 1964 204ndash5)

Jocelin as if for the first time is struck by the sheer specificityof the appletree ndash its springing branches and trunk the cloud and scatter of its leaves and blossom everything that makes it theparticular thing that it is He is struck by what one might call the distinctive mode of its existence or being The kingfisher in thesingular sapphire flash of its flight conveys rather a sense of contin-gency of the sheer transient fact of its existence or being Togetherthen the appletree and the kingfisher impress upon Jocelin a fusedsense of how the world is and that the world is they precipitate animmeasurable astonishment and wonder at the reality of things atthe fact of there being a highly differentiated world to wonder at It is just such a sense of wonder that Heidegger thinks of as aresponse to the Being of things a response to Being and he aimsto recover in his readers a capacity to take seriously the questionof its meaning or significance

I N T R O D U C T I O N2

For some philosophers the fact that a passage extracted from anovel can so precisely articulate the ground of Heideggerrsquos ques-tioning might suggest new ways of connecting philosophy literatureand everyday human experience and of recovering the sense ofwonder with which the ancient Greeks held that the true impulseto philosophize originates but for many others it suggests that totake such questioning seriously is to succumb to adolescent Roman-ticism Despite these widespread qualms however it is perfectlypossible to detect in Heideggerrsquos own introductory remarks a wayof providing a more obviously lsquolegitimatersquo derivation or genealogyfor his question ndash a more philosophically respectable birth certificate

In everything that human beings do they encounter a widevariety of objects processes events and other phenomena that goto make up the world around them Taking a shower walking thedog reading a book all involve engaging with particular things inparticular situations and in ways that presuppose a certain compre-hension of their presence and nature In taking a shower we showour awareness of the plastic curtain the shower-head and the dialson the control panel our understanding of the way in which theyrelate to one another and so our grasp of their distinctive poten-tialities We cannot walk the dog ndash choosing the best route allowingtime for shrub-sniffing shortening the lead at the advent of anotherdog ndash without revealing our sense of that creaturersquos nature and itsphysical expression Enjoying a thriller on the beach presupposesbeing able to support its bulk and focus on its pages to grasp thelanguage in which it is written and the specific constraints and expec-tations within which novels in that particular genre are written and read

In short throughout their lives human beings manifest an implicitcapacity for a comprehending interaction with entities as actual andas possessed of a distinctive nature This capacity finds linguisticexpression when we complain that the shower curtain is split orwonder aloud what Fido is up to now or ask where our novel is Since this comprehending interaction seems to be systemati-cally registered by our use of various forms of the verb lsquoto bersquoHeidegger describes it as an implicit understanding of what it is for an entity to be and so as a capacity to comprehend beings

I N T R O D U C T I O N 3

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as such to comprehend beings qua beings In other words it is a capacity to comprehend the Being of beings

Many of our cultural practices in effect amount to rigorous thematizations of particular forms of this comprehension and itscorresponding objects they constitute modes of human activity in which something that is taken for granted and so remains unde-veloped in other parts of our life is made the explicit focus of our endeavours For example our everyday concern for hygienemay lead us to explore the cleansing properties of water soap andshampoo and so to a more general study of the structure of matterOur life with pets may lead us into a study of domestic species andthen of animal life more generally Our ordinary reading habitsmay lead us to examine a particular authorrsquos style and developmentand then to investigate the means by which aesthetic pleasure canbe elicited from specific literary genres In other words such disci-plines as physics and chemistry biology and literary studies take astheir central concern aspects of phenomena that remain implicit inour everyday dealings with them and the specific theories that areproduced as a result go to make up a body of what Heidegger wouldcall ontic knowledge ndash knowledge pertaining to the distinctive natureof particular types of entity

However such theory-building itself depends upon taking forgranted certain basic ways in which the given discipline demarcatesand structures its own area of study and those foundations tend toremain unthematized by the discipline itself until it finds itself ina state of crisis Relativity theory precipitated such a crisis in physicsin biology similar turmoil was caused by Darwinian theories ofnatural selection and in literary studies theoretical attacks uponprevailing notions of the author the text and language have recentlyperformed an analogous function Such conceptual enquiries are notexamples of theories that conform to the standards of the disciplinebut rather explore that on the basis of which any such theory couldbe constructed the a priori conditions for the possibility of suchscientific theorizing In Heideggerian language what they reveal arethe ontological presuppositions of ontic enquiry

Here philosophical enquiry enters the scene For when physicsis brought to question its conception of matter or biology its concep-

tion of life or literary studies its conception of a text what isdisclosed are the basic articulations of that disciplinersquos very subjectmatter that which underlies all the specific objects that the disci-pline takes as its theme and that is not and could not be withinthe purview of intra-disciplinary enquiry because it would bepresupposed by any such enquiry What is needed is a reflectionupon those articulations an attempt to clarify the nature and validityof the most basic conceptualizations of this particular domain andsuch a critical clarification is the business of philosophy In theserespects philosophical enquiry is at once parasitic upon and morefundamental than other modes of human enquiry There could be no philosophy of science without science and philosophy has no authority to judge the validity of specific scientific theories Butany such theory is constructed and tested in ways that presupposethe validity of certain assumptions about the domain under inves-tigation assumptions that it can consequently neither justify norundermine and which therefore require a very different type ofexamination The scientist may well be the best exponent of thepractices of inductive reasoning as applied to the realm of naturebut if questions are raised about the precise structure of inductivereasoning and its ultimate justification as a mode of discoveringtruth then the abilities of the philosopher come into play

This is a familiar view of the role of philosophical enquiry in the Western philosophical tradition particularly since the time ofDescartes ndash at least if we judge by the importance it has assignedto the twin ontological tasks of specifying the essential differencesbetween the various types of entity that human beings encounterand the essential preconditions of our capacity to comprehend themTo learn about that tradition is to learn for example that Descartesrsquoview of material objects ndash as entities whose essence lies in beingextended ndash was contested by Berkeleyrsquos claim that it lies in theirbeing perceived whereas his view that the essence of the self isgrounded in the power of thought was contested by Humersquos claimthat its only ground is the bundling together of impressions andideas Kant then attempts to unearth that which conditions the possi-bility of our experiencing ourselves as subjects inhabiting a worldof objects Alternatively we might study the specific conceptual

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

presuppositions of aesthetic judgements about entities as opposedto scientific hypotheses about them or interrogate the distinctivepresuppositions of the human sciences ndash the study of social andcultural structures and artefacts and the guiding assumptions ofthose who investigate them as historians rather than as literarycritics or sociologists

In a terminology Heidegger sometimes employs in other textssuch ontological enquiries broadly focus on the what-being of enti-ties2 ndash their particular way or mode of being Their concern is withwhat determines an entity as the specific type of entity it is with that which distinguishes it from entities of a different typeand grounds both our everyday dealings with such entities and ourmore structured and explicit ontic investigations of the domain theyoccupy Such a concern with what-being is to be contrasted with aconcern with that-being lsquoThat-beingrsquo signifies the fact that somegiven thing is or exists3 and an ontological enquiry into that-beingmust concern itself with that which determines an entity of a specifictype as an existent being ndash something equally fundamental both toour everyday dealings with it and to our ontic investigations of itsince neither would be possible if the entity concerned did not existA general contrast of this kind between what-being and that-beingis thus internal to what Heidegger means by the Being of beingsit is a basic articulation of Being something which no properly onto-logical enquiry can afford to overlook And indeed the Westernphilosophical tradition since Plato has not overlooked it but the wayin which that tradition has tended to approach the matter has forHeidegger been multiply misleading

With respect to the traditionrsquos investigations of what-beingHeidegger will quarrel with the poverty and narrowness of itsresults For while human beings encounter a bewildering varietyof kinds of entity or phenomena ndash stones and plants animals andother people rivers sea and sky the diverse realms of naturehistory science and religion ndash philosophers have tended to classifythese things in ways that reduce the richness of their differentia-tion The effect has been to impoverish our sense of the diversityof what-being to reduce it to oversimple categories such as theCartesian dichotomy between nature (res extensa) and mind (res

cogitans) ndash a set of categories which on Heideggerrsquos view obliter-ates both the specific nature of human beings and that of the objectsthey encounter Similarly the basic distinction between what-beingand that-being has been subject to over-hasty and superficial concep-tualizations In medieval ontology for example it was taken up in terms of a distinction between essence (essentia) and existence(existentia) ndash a distinction which still has great influence overcontemporary philosophical thinking but which embodied a highlyspecific and highly controversial set of theological presuppositionsand which overlooks the possibility that the Being of certain kindsof entity (particularly that of human beings) might not be articu-lable in precisely those terms And of course if this basic distinctionhas been improperly conceptualized then the philosophical tradi-tionrsquos various attempts at comprehending the that-being of entitieswill have been just as erroneous as its attempts to grasp their what-being

Accordingly when Heidegger claims that the philosophical tradi-tion has forgotten the question with which he is concerned he doesnot mean that philosophers have entirely overlooked the questionof the Being of beings Rather he means that by taking certainanswers to that question to be self-evident or unproblematicallycorrect they have taken it for granted that they know what thephrase lsquothe Being of beingsrsquo signifies ndash in other words they havefailed to see that the meaning of that phrase is itself questionablethat there is a question about the meaning of lsquoBeingrsquo By closingoff that question they have failed to reflect properly upon a precon-dition of their ontological conclusions about the articulated unity of Being and so failed to demonstrate that their basic orientationis above reproach and this lack of complete self-transparency has led their investigations into a multitude of problems As Heideggerputs it

The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a prioriconditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examineentities as entities of such and such a type and in so doing alreadyoperate with an understanding of Being but also for the possibilityof those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

and which provide their foundations Basically all ontology no matterhow rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposalremains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim if it has not firstadequately clarified the meaning of Being and conceived this clarificationas its fundamental task

(BT 2 31)

RECLAIMING THE QUESTION

Nonetheless apart from its earliest incarnation in ancient Greecethe philosophical tradition has tended to pass over this latter typeof question in silence As Heidegger begins his book by pointingout lsquothis question has today been forgottenrsquo (BT 1 21) largelybecause philosophers take themselves to have a multitude of reasonsfor dismissing it Heidegger accordingly undertakes to counter each of those reasons and although he does so very briefly thestrategies he employs shed important light on his own provisionalunderstanding of what may be at stake in the question

First then it might be argued that the question of the meaningof lsquoBeingrsquo can easily be answered it is a concept just like any otherdistinctive only in the sense that it is the most universal concept ofall In other words Being is not a being not a particular phenom-enon we encounter in our active engagement with the world ratherwe arrive at our concept of it by progressive abstraction from ourencounters with specific beings For example from our encounterswith cats dogs and horses we abstract the idea of lsquoanimalnessrsquo fromanimals plants and trees we abstract the idea of lsquolifersquo of lsquolivingbeingsrsquo and then from living beings minerals and so on we abstractthe idea of that which every entity has in common ndash their extantnessor being What more need be said on the matter

Heidegger is happy to accept the claim that Being is not a beingindeed that assumption guides his whole project He also acceptsthat our comprehension of Being is nonetheless bound up in someessential way with our comprehending interactions with beingsBeing is not a being but Being is not encounterable otherwise thanby encounters with beings For if Being is as Heidegger puts itlsquothat which determines entities as entitiesrsquo (BT 2 25) the ground

of their articulability in terms of what-being and that-being thenit is necessarily only to be met with in an encounter with somespecific entity or other In short lsquoBeing is always the Being of anentityrsquo (BT 3 29) But he rejects the idea that Being relates tobeings in the particular manner we outlined above for the univer-sality of lsquoBeingrsquo is not that of a class or genus and so the termlsquoBeingrsquo cannot denote a specific realm of entities that might be placedat the very top of an ontological family tree Membership of a classis standardly defined in terms of possession of a common propertybut the lsquomembersrsquo of the lsquoclassrsquo of beings do not manifest suchuniformity the being of numbers for example seems not to be thesame as the being of physical objects which in turn differs fromthat of imaginary objects In other words if Being is not a beingneither is it a type or property of beings it is neither a subject ofpredication nor a predicate

Some philosophers have concluded from this that Being is unde-finable the very generality of the term lsquoBeingrsquo the fact that thereis nothing ndash no entity or phenomenon ndash to which it does not referfor them precisely demonstrates that there is nothing specific towhich it does refer that the term lacks any definable content ForHeidegger however this is a failure of philosophical imaginationan illegitimate leap from the perceived failure of a certain type ofdefinition to the assumed failure of all types of explanation Thefact that lsquoBeingrsquo cannot be defined by delimiting the extension of a class shows only that a form of explanation suited to the analysisof entities and their properties is entirely unsuited to the clarificationof lsquoBeingrsquo it merely confirms that Being is neither an entity nor atype of entity It does not show that some alternative clarificatorystrategy one that does not employ an inappropriate definitionaltemplate could not shed some light on the matter

Here Heidegger cites approvingly Aristotlersquos suggestion that theunity of the realm of Being is at best one of analogy He certainlydoes not think that this notion makes the meaning of Beingcompletely transparent But by conceiving of the relation betweenmathematical entities physical objects and fictional characters as aunity of analogy Aristotle at least takes seriously our sense ndashevinced among other ways in an inclination to apply the term lsquobeingrsquo

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

across such a variety of types of entity ndash of underlying intercon-nections between the various types of entity we meet while avoidingthe obviously mistaken preconceptions we rejected earlier Hethereby acknowledges the differences between the ontological struc-tures grounding different domains of Being without denying thepossibility of uncovering a unified set of presuppositions groundingevery such ontological structure It is Aristotlersquos grasp of the articulated unity-in-diversity of Being ndash his sense of the categorialdiversity implicit in our grasp of what-being the categorial unityimplicit in our grasp of that-being and their mutual dependence ndashfrom which Heidegger wishes us to learn

Anyone familiar with the work of Kant and Frege may howeverfeel that Heidegger has so far succeeded only in making very heavyweather of relatively simple insights For the Heideggerian claimthat Being is neither an entity nor a property of entities might wellbring to mind the lapidary phrase lsquoexistence is not a real predicatersquondash often used to summarize the core of Kantrsquos objection to the onto-logical proof of Godrsquos existence If we claim that God is omnipotentwe predicate a property of a type of entity we assert that entitiesof this ndash divine ndash type satisfy the conditions for application of theconcept of lsquoomnipotencersquo If however we claim that there is a Godwe are not attributing the lsquopropertyrsquo of existence to a type of entitybut rather adding a type of entity to our tally of the furniture ofthe universe in effect we assert that the concept of a divine beingdoes not lack application

The difference is perspicuously captured in the Frege-inspirednotation of first-order predicate calculus Attributing existence to atype of entity is done by using the existential quantifier rather thana predicate letter that corresponds to the putative lsquopropertyrsquo of exist-ence in just the way that the letter lsquoOrsquo might be used to capturethe property of omnipotence or the letter lsquoDrsquo that of divinity ThuslsquoAny divine being is omnipotentrsquo becomes forall x [Dx rarr Ox] whereaslsquoThere is a [ie at least one] divine beingrsquo becomes exist x [Dx] Inother words the supposedly mysterious and portentous meaning ofBeing the significance of our use of the word lsquoisrsquo to denote exist-ence is in fact fully captured in any competent explanation of thefunction of the existential quantifier

We might think of this as a modern-dress version of the generalclaim that the meaning of Being is self-evident and once againHeidegger would be happy to go along with some of its implica-tions It does for example provide one clear way of illustrating theclaim that Being is not a property of beings that the term is not alabel for a specific class or type of entities However to think thatinvoking the elements of a logical notation is the best or even theonly way of clarifying such a fundamental philosophical issue is tomisunderstand the relation between logic and ordinary language

The point of a logical notation such as the predicate calculus is to provide a perspicuous articulation of relations of deductiveinference between propositions thus permitting rigorous analysisof argumentative structures This makes it a valuable tool for philo-sophical enquiry but it means that the notation is designed tocapture only one aspect of the propositions and arguments trans-lated into it Those aspects of the meaning of ordinary words andsentences deemed irrelevant to questions of deductive validity aresimply lost in translation leading to the usual warnings in logictextbooks that the propositional connectives associated with suchterms as lsquoandrsquo or lsquoifrsquo must not be taken as synonyms for them Forexample if I claim that lsquoX hit Y with the baseball bat and Y fell tothe floorrsquo I imply that the first event preceded and brought aboutthe second but an analysis of my claim that employs the conjunc-tion sign lsquoandrsquo carries no such implication Given such discrepancieshowever why should we believe that the existential quantifiercaptures every aspect of the meaning of our term lsquoisrsquo when it isemployed to denote existence On the contrary we have good reasonto believe that potentially crucial aspects of its meaning will notsurvive the translation into logical notation

Moreover even with respect to those aspects of linguistic meaningthat logical notation does capture why should we regard them asin any way philosophically trustworthy In a logical notation thepropositions lsquoPeabody is in the auditoriumrsquo and lsquoNobody is in the auditoriumrsquo will appear as symbolic strings with very differentstructures but the precise form of those differences simply reflectsour everyday understanding of the differences between the originalpropositions (eg the differences in the conclusions we can draw

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

from their everyday utterance) In other words our logical notationis only as good as our pre-existent everyday understanding of our language and so of the form of life in which it is ultimatelygrounded and Heidegger will argue in Being and Time that thatunderstanding is not to be trusted on matters of fundamental ontol-ogy On the contrary for Heidegger as for many other philosopherswhat seems obvious or most readily available to reflection may welllead us astray

THE PRIORITY OF DASEIN

In short Heidegger rejects the sorts of reasons standardly offeredby philosophers for dismissing the question of the meaning of Being it is neither unanswerable nor possessed of a simple or self-evident answer Nonetheless that question has been systematicallypassed over in the discipline to the point at which it now seemsobscure and disorientating to most philosophers ndash and so to mostof Heideggerrsquos readers Accordingly before attempting to answerthe question an adequate or appropriate way of formulating it isrequired We need to remind ourselves of what is involved in theasking of such a question ndash which means that we need to remindourselves first of the fundamental structure of any enquiry andthen of this enquiry in particular

Any enquiry is an enquiry about something This means firstthat it has a direction or orientation of some sort however provi-sional from the outset without some prior conception about whatis sought questioning could not so much as begin Second it means that any enquiry asks about something ndash the issue orphenomenon that motivates the questioning in the first place Inasking about this something something else ndash some entity or bodyof evidence ndash is interrogated and the result of its interrogation theconclusion of the enquiry is that something is discovered But mostimportantly of all any enquiry is an activity something engagedin by a particular type of being It is thus something capable ofbeing carried out in various possible ways ndash superficially or care-fully as an unimportant part of another task or as a self-conscioustheoretical endeavour ndash all of which nonetheless must reflect beunderstood as inflections of the Being of the enquirer

Seen against this template certain distinctive aspects of our partic-ular enquiry into the meaning of Being stand out First it is not acasual question but a theoretical investigation one that reflects uponits own nature and purpose attempting to lay bare the character ofthat which the question is about But it too must be guided at theoutset by some provisional not-yet-analysed conception of what it seeks Our questioning of the meaning of Being must begin (as ours did begin) within the horizon of a pre-existing but vagueunderstanding of Being for we cannot ask lsquoWhat is ldquoBeingrdquorsquowithout making use of the very term at issue There is accordinglyno neutral perspective from which we might begin our questioningthe idea of a presuppositionless starting point even for an exercisein fundamental ontology must be rejected as an illusion Our priorunderstanding of Being may well be sedimented with the distor-tions of earlier theorizing and ancient prejudices which must ofcourse be identified and neutralized as quickly as possible but theycan only be uncovered by unfolding that prior understanding withthe utmost vigilance not by avoiding contact with it altogether

What of the threefold articulation of questioning that we laid outearlier In our enquiry that which is asked about (obviously enough)is Being ndash that which determines entities as entities that on thebasis of which entities are always already understood Since Beingis always the Being of an entity or entities then what is interro-gated in our enquiry will be entities themselves with regard to theirBeing And the hoped-for conclusion of the enquiry is ndash of coursendash the meaning of Being But if our interrogation is to deliver whatwe seek then we must question those entities in the manner thatis most appropriate to them and to the goal of our enquiry Wemust find a mode of access to them that allows them to yield thecharacteristics of their Being without falsification

We therefore need to choose the right entity or entities to inter-rogate to work out how best to approach them and to allow thereal unity-in-diversity of Being to emerge thereby In order to dothese various things properly we must clarify their nature and struc-ture make it clear to ourselves what counts as doing them well anddoing them badly But choosing what to interrogate working outhow to interrogate it relying upon a preliminary understanding of

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Being and attempting to clarify it these are all modes of the Beingof one particular kind of being the kind for whom enquiring aboutentities with regard to their Being is one possibility of its Being ndashthe entity which we are ourselves the being Heidegger labelslsquoDaseinrsquo If then we are to pose our question properly we mustfirst clarify the Being of Dasein it is from our everyday under-standing of our own Being that we must attempt to unfold a moreprofound understanding of the question of the meaning of Being

Heideggerrsquos reasons for introducing the term lsquoDaseinrsquo ndash whichtranslated literally simply means lsquothere-beingrsquo ndash where it wouldseem natural to talk instead about human beings are manifold Firstin everyday German usage this term does tend to refer to humanbeings but primarily with respect to the type of Being that is distinctive of them it therefore gives his investigation the rightontological ring Second it permits him to avoid using other termsthat philosophers have tended to regard as synonymous withlsquohuman beingrsquo and have concentrated upon to the point at whichthey trail clouds of complex and potentially misleading theorizingTime-hallowed terms such as lsquosubjectivityrsquo lsquoconsciousnessrsquo lsquospiritrsquoor lsquosoulrsquo could only be prejudicial to Heideggerrsquos enquiry Thirdand consequently an unusual term such as lsquoDaseinrsquo is a tabula rasadevoid of misleading implications it can accrue all and only the significations that Heidegger intends to attach to it The rest ofHeideggerrsquos analysis of the Being of Dasein is thus in effect anextended definition of its core meaning ndash a working-out of the fur-thest implications of the intentionally uncontroversial assumptionthat human beings are beings who ask questions

With these words of warning we can return to Heideggerrsquos mainline of argument He has already identified Dasein as the object ofan enquiry that must precede any proper posing of the question ofthe meaning of Being But he also claims that Dasein is the mostappropriate entity to be interrogated in the posing of that questionie that working out an ontological characterization of Dasein is notjust an essential preliminary to but forms the central core of funda-mental ontology In so doing Heidegger makes certain claims aboutthe Being of human beings claims that can only be fully justifiedand elaborated in the body of Being and Time but which must at

least be sketched in here First and most importantly then Daseinis said to be distinctive among entities in that it does not just occurrather its Being is an issue for it What might this mean

All entities exist in the sense that they are encounterable in the world some exist in the sense that they are alive but of them only Dasein exists in the sense that the continued living of its life as well as the form that its life will take is somethingwith which it must concern itself Glasses and tables are not aliveat all Cats and dogs are alive but they do not have a life to leadtheir behaviour and the ways in which they encounter other enti-ties (as harmful satiating productive of pleasure and pain) aredetermined by the imperatives of self-preservation and reproduc-tion they have no conscious individual choice as to how they wantto live or whether they want to continue living at all Only humancreatures lead their lives every impending moment or phase of theirlives is such that they have it to be ie they must either carry on living in one way or another or end their lives Although thispractical relation to onersquos existence can be repressed or passed overit cannot be transcended for refusing to consider the questions itraises is just another way of responding to them a decision to goon living a certain kind of life After all if Dasein is the being whoinquires into the Being of all beings the same must be true of itsrelation to its own Being its existence necessarily confronts it withthe question of whether and how to live In Heideggerrsquos termsDaseinrsquos own Being (as well as that of other beings) is necessarilyan issue for it

The Being of Dasein cannot then be understood in the termsusually applied to other types of entity in particular we cannotthink of Dasein as having what we have called what-being a specificessence or nature that it always necessarily manifests Such termsare appropriate to physical objects and animals precisely becausehow and what to be is never a question for them they simply arewhat they are But for Dasein living just is ceaselessly taking astand on who one is and on what is essential about onersquos being andbeing defined by that stand In choosing whether or not to worklate at the office to spend time with the family to steal a purse totravel to a rock concert one chooses what sort of person one is

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

In identifying with certain activities character traits life styles andvisions of the good and in rejecting others we reveal our concep-tion of what it is to flourish as a human being and so of what it isto be a human being and make it concrete in our own existence

In so doing of course the precise nature and array of physicaland mental capacities that human beings possess and their naturalimpulses towards self-preservation and reproduction must be takeninto account but just how a given individual does so ndash how sheinterprets their significance ndash remains an open question The humanway of Being is not simply fixed by species-identity by member-ship of a particular biological category Dasein is not homo sapiensSimilarly the array of lifestyles and interpretations of human possi-bilities and human nature available in our culture will set limits onour capacity for self-interpretation (becoming a Samurai warrior issimply not a possibility for a citizen of early twenty-first-centuryLondon) But which feasible self-interpretation is chosen and howit is adapted to person-specific circumstances remains an issue foreach individual and since each choice once made could be unmadeor otherwise adapted in the future each new moment confronts uswith the question of whether or not to stick with choices alreadymade Hence the issue of onersquos existence is never closed until oneno longer exists

One could conclude that Daseinrsquos essence must lie in this capacityfor self-definition or self-interpretation and in one sense this wouldbe right since that is what most fundamentally distinguishes Daseinfrom other entities It would be misleading however for this partic-ular capacity is unlike any of those used to define the what-beingof other entities its exercise fixes who and what the entity is ratherthan being one manifestation of the entityrsquos already fixed natureIt seems better to stick with Heideggerrsquos formulations namely thatDaseinrsquos essence lies in existence that for it alone existence is aquestion that can be addressed only through existing and so thatit alone among all entities can be said properly to exist In line withthis he invites us to think of the particular self-interpretation thata given Dasein lives out the existential possibility it chooses toenact as an existentiell understanding which he regards as deter-mining its ontic state and he thinks of any ontological analytic of

Dasein any attempt to uncover the structures which make any andall existentiell understandings possible as an existential analytic

This distinctive characteristic of Dasein will be examined in moredetail later4 but we can already see why Heidegger thinks that Dasein is the type of entity which must be interrogated in any exer-cise in fundamental ontology For the aim of any such exercise is tointerrogate Being as it makes itself manifest through the Being ofan entity and the fact that Daseinrsquos essence is existence makes therelationship of its Being to Being a peculiarly intimate one in at leastthree respects First unlike any other entity every ontic or exis-tentiell state of Dasein embodies a relationship to its own Being ndashin so far as it exists every Dasein relates itself to its own Being asa question Second every such relationship embodies a comprehend-ing grasp of its Being ndash a particular answer to the question that itsBeing poses its every existentiell state is thus implicitly lsquoontologicalrsquomaking manifest an undertanding of Dasein in its Being and so anunderstanding of Being Third in enacting any given existentiellstate Dasein necessarily relates itself to the world of entities aroundit I canrsquot take a shower or read a thriller without engaging with the tools of my chosen project so Dasein is always already relatingitself comprehendingly (and questioningly) to other entities as theentities they are and as existent rather than non-existent lsquoDaseinhas therefore a third priority as providing the ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of any ontologiesrsquo (BT 4 34)

Given this threefold priority of Dasein the provision of an exis-tential analytic of Dasein would inevitably provide the richest mostcomplete and so most revelatory way of engaging in fundamentalontology Being is only encounterable as the Being of some entityor other and entities come in a bewildering variety of forms Soif the fundamental ontologist chooses to interrogate an entity otherthan Dasein she will emerge at best with a deeper grasp of theBeing of that kind of being alone and then the task of graspingBeing as such or as a whole will seem ndash impossibly ndash to require thatshe interrogate every specific kind of being in its Being in order tocombine the individual results But if she can understand the Beingof Dasein the only entity for whom Being as such is an issue shewill grasp what it is for an entity to relate itself comprehendingly

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

and questioningly towards the Being of any and every entity(including itself) ie towards any manifestation of Being whateverShe will in other words acquire an understanding of what it is tounderstand Being and since what is understood in an understandingof Being is indeed Being to grasp the constitutive structure of thatunderstanding (that which permits it to take the Being of any andall beings as its object) will be to grasp the constitutive structure of that which is thereby understood (what it is for Being in anyand every one of its ways shapes and forms to lsquobersquo) As I suggestedearlier then an existential analytic of Dasein is not merely anessential preliminary to the task of fundamental ontology ratherlsquothe ontological analytic of Dasein in general is what makes upfundamental ontologyrsquo (BT 4 35)

PHILOSOPHY HISTORY AND PHENOMENOLOGY

Having determined the appropriate object of interrogation for hisenquiry Heidegger then outlines the way in which he proposes toapproach it He does not for example want his enquiry to be guidedby the most obvious or widely accepted everyday understanding ofDaseinrsquos Being Since Daseinrsquos own Being is an issue for it it alwaysoperates within some particular understanding of its own Being andin that sense Heideggerrsquos enquiry is simply the radicalization of atendency that is essential to Daseinrsquos Being But it doesnrsquot followthat the self-understanding with which Daseinrsquos ordinary modes of existence are imbued will provide a fundamental ontological investigation with its most suitable orientation for all we know atthis stage radicalizing that self-understanding may ultimatelyinvolve reconstructing it from the ground up Neither howeverdoes Heidegger want to rely upon the deliverances of any onticscience although Daseinrsquos nature and behaviour have been studiedover the years by a multitude of disciplines we have no guaranteethat the existential underpinnings of their existentiell investigationswere reliably derived from Daseinrsquos true nature rather than fromdogmatically held theoretical prejudices rendered lsquoself-evidentrsquosolely by the cultural authority of a particular ideological traditionor philosophical school

We need therefore to return to the object of interrogation itselfunmediated (as far as that is possible) by already existing accountsand theories and we need to study it in resolutely non-specializedcontexts in order to avoid assuming that aspects of this entityrsquosbehaviour or state that are specific to such atypical situations are infact manifestations of its essential nature For Heidegger this meansthat Dasein must be shown lsquoas it is proximally and for the mostpart ndash in its average everydayness In this everydayness there arecertain structures which we shall exhibit ndash not just any accidentalstructures but essential ones which in every kind of Being thatFactical Dasein may possess persist as determinative for the char-acter of its Beingrsquo (BT 5 37ndash8) Heidegger is not assuming thatDaseinrsquos ordinary or usual state is the one that most fully andauthentically expresses Daseinrsquos possibilities ndash any more than he isinclined to rely upon the self-understanding that informs that stateas we shall see he thinks that precisely the reverse is the case Buthe does think that this state like any other state of Dasein mustmanifest those structures that are constitutive of its Being and thephilosophical traditionrsquos tendency to overlook or ignore it makes itmore likely that we will be able to characterize it in a way that isnot distorted by misleading preconceptions The realm of the ordi-nary is thus our best starting point it may not provide the last wordon the philosophical issues with which we are concerned but it canand ought to provide the first

Nevertheless no enquiry into Daseinrsquos average everydayness canbegin without a preliminary conception of its overall goal or purposeand of the specific aspects of the object of interrogation that willprove to be most illuminating or revelatory As we saw earlier a truly presuppositionless enquiry would lack all direction Ifhowever this enquiry is to be completely transparent to itself andto those reading its results its preconceptions must be explicitlydeclared and acknowledged Accordingly Heidegger announces thatlsquowe shall point to temporality as the meaning of the Being of thatentity which we call ldquoDaseinrdquorsquo (BT 5 38) His existential analyticwill attempt to show that the constitutive structures of Dasein mustultimately be interpreted as modes of temporality and that conse-quently whenever Dasein tacitly understands something like Being

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(whether its own or that of any other entity) it does so with timeas its standpoint If however all ontological understanding is rootedin time it follows that the meaning of Being cannot be understoodexcept in terms of temporality against the horizon of time lsquoIn theexposition of the problematic of Temporality the question of themeaning of Being will first be concretely answeredrsquo (BT 5 40)

We must of course wait until this programme is carried out indetail before attempting to evaluate its success and its significancebut this preliminary declaration is indispensable for understandingthe approach that Heidegger will adopt in the first stage of hisenquiry ndash his provision of an existential analytic of Dasein Forengaging in such an enquiry is itself an ontical possibility of Daseinan endeavour that only Dasein among all entities is capable ofcarrying out so its basic structure must necessarily conform to thelimits set by Daseinrsquos existential constitution And if that constitu-tion is essentially temporal then any enquiry into that constitutionought to understand itself as rooted in time and so as historical ina very specific sense Rocks and plants have a history in the sensethat they have occupied space and time for a certain period duringwhich certain things have happened to them Dasein howeverexists it leads a life in which its own Being is an issue for it Butthen events in its past cannot be thought of as having been leftbehind it or at most carried forward as memories or scars Daseindoes not merely have a past but lives its past it exists in the termsthat its past makes available for it ndash the question that its Being poses for it is always and ineliminably marked by its historicalcircumstances As Heidegger puts it

Whatever the way of being it may have at the time and thus withwhatever understanding of Being it may possess Dasein has grownup into and in a traditional way of interpreting itself in terms of thisit understands itself proximally and within a certain range constantlyBy this understanding the possibilities of its Being are disclosed andregulated

(BT 6 41)5

If however this is generally true of Dasein it must also be true of Dasein as an ontological enquirer Heideggerrsquos preliminary under-

standing of Dasein therefore commits him to understanding his ownenquiry as emerging into a tradition of ontological enquiry and so as attempting to advance that tradition to project it into thefuture but also as ineliminably marked by the history of that tradi-tion as the place in which that history is lived out in the presentThis inherent historicality has many implications First it meansthat Heidegger is attempting to pose a question whose true signif-icance has been doubly distorted over the centuries On the onehand the tradition of ontological enquiry has attempted to coverup or pass over the question of the meaning of Being altogetherand on the other it has developed ontological categories in termsof which to understand specific regions of Being that have come toappear as self-evident and so as effectively timeless deliverances of reason (here Heidegger has in mind such notions as Descartesrsquoego cogito or the Christian conception of the soul as categories forunderstanding Dasein) If therefore Heideggerrsquos question is to be answered properly he must break up the rigid carapace withwhich this tradition confronts him He must find a way of posingit that recovers its profundity and difficulty and he must reveal the historical contingency of seemingly self-evident philosophicalcategorizations of various types of entity show that these lsquotime-lessrsquo truths are in fact the fossilized product of specific theoristsresponding to specific historically inherited problems with thespecific resources of their culture

Heidegger does not however regard the philosophical traditionpurely as something constraining or distorting What he inheritsfrom the past that which defines and delimits the possibilities withwhich he is faced in engaging with his fundamental question is notsimply to be rejected After all the complete and undiscriminatingrejection of every possibility that his tradition offers would leavehim with no orientation for his enquiry with no possible way ofcarrying on his questioning In fact the philosophical past withwhich he must live is a positive inheritance in two central respectsFirst if Daseinrsquos understanding of Being is constitutive of its Beingthen it can never entirely lose that understanding It must there-fore be possible to recover something potentially valuable for anontological enquiry from even the most misleading and distortive

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

theoretical systems of the philosophical tradition And secondHeidegger never claims that every contribution to this tradition wasbenighted on the contrary he stresses the positive elements of rela-tively recent philosophical work (such as Kantrsquos emphasis upon timeas a form of sensible intuition) and he places particular emphasisupon the value of work done at the very outset of this tradition inancient Greece (unsurprisingly since if such work did not containa fundamentally sound initial grasp of the question of the meaningof Being nothing resembling a tradition of ontological enquiry couldhave originated from it)

Thus Heideggerrsquos persistent concern with the historical matrixof his existential analytic is not just a scholarly and dramatic butessentially dispensable way of illuminating issues that might easilybe examined in other ways it is the only way in which this kindof enterprise can find its proper orientation and grasp the mostfruitful possibilities that are available to it There can be no funda-mental ontology without the history of fundamental ontology nophilosophy without the history of philosophy And Heideggerrsquosconception of the relationship of his own enquiry to its history isneither simply negative nor simply positive it is neither destruc-tion nor reconstruction but rather deconstruction It thus forms thepoint of origin of the recently popular and controversial strategiesin the human sciences that have come to be known by that labeland that are perhaps most often associated with the name of DerridaIt may be that if we relate Derridarsquos work to its (often explicitlyacknowledged) Heideggerian origins we might come to see that itsrelation to the history of philosophy is no less nuanced and complexthan Heideggerrsquos own in other words we might appreciate thatdeconstruction is not destruction

But if deconstruction is one inheritor of Heideggerian funda-mental ontology and is one of the future possibilities it opens upfor the discipline of philosophy its most immediate ancestor ndash thatelement of the philosophical past of which Heidegger deems hiswork to be the living present ndash is Husserlian phenomenology GivenHeideggerrsquos own sense of the need to understand the immediatecircumstances of a theoryrsquos production if one is to grasp its mostprofound insights and errors it would seem essential to comprehend

the Husserlian background of his own enquiry However when at the very end of his introduction to Being and Time he claimsthe title of lsquophenomenologyrsquo for his work he acknowledges Husserlrsquosinfluence and originality but deliberately fails to provide any detailedanalysis of his relation to the Husserlian project Instead he offersan etymological analysis of the term itself and derives his ownproject therefrom

This omission (or better displacement) is a puzzle6 But it wouldbe foolhardy to assume in advance that the mode of derivation withwhich readers of Being and Time are confronted is inadequate forits authorrsquos purposes On the contrary the most appropriate inter-pretative principle to adopt must surely be that Heideggerrsquos decisionin this respect has an internal rationale ndash that it gives him preciselywhat he perceives to be required and does so in a more satisfactorymanner than any alternative available to him Only if this assump-tion turns out to generate a manifestly inadequate interpretation ofthe book as a whole can it be justifiable to turn our attention toissues that its author excluded from the text itself Accordingly Iintend to observe Heideggerrsquos own circumspection and concentrateon the central points that his employment of the label lsquophenome-nologyrsquo in Being and Time itself seems intended to highlight

First Heidegger asserts that lsquophenomenologyrsquo names a methodand not a subject matter It is therefore unlike its cousins lsquotheologyrsquoor lsquomethodologyrsquo which offer an articulated systematic account ofwhat is known about a particular type of entity region or mode ofBeing Phenomenology according to Heidegger does not demarcateany such region it

expresses a maxim which can be formulated as lsquoTo the things themselvesrsquo It is opposed to all free-floating constructions and accidental findings it is opposed to taking over any conceptionswhich only seem to have been demonstrated it is opposed to thosepseudo-questions which parade themselves as lsquoproblemsrsquo often forgenerations at a time

(BT 7 50)

Unfortunately this seems little more than a set of empty platitudesNo one is likely to declare themselves in favour of pseudo-questions

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

or free-floating constructions the issue is how one might best avoidthem However Heidegger provides a more precise definition of his method by etymological means ndash by analysing the two semanticelements from which the term lsquophenomenologyrsquo has been con-structed namely lsquophenomenonrsquo and lsquologosrsquo What matters most forour purposes of course is not the accuracy of these derivations butwhat is derived from them

We will take lsquologosrsquo first As Heidegger points out this Greekterm is variously translated as lsquoreasonrsquo lsquojudgementrsquo lsquoconceptrsquo lsquodefi-nitionrsquo lsquogroundrsquo or lsquorelationshiprsquo (and we might add to this lsquolawrsquoand lsquowordrsquo ndash or lsquoWordrsquo as the term is translated in the Prologueto St Johnrsquos Gospel) He claims however that its root meaning islsquodiscoursersquo ndash but lsquodiscoursersquo understood not as lsquoassertionrsquo or lsquocommu-nicationrsquo but as lsquomaking manifest what one is ldquotalking aboutrdquo inonersquos discoursersquo (BT 7 56) For the fundamental aim of discursivecommunication is to communicate something about the topic of the discourse what is said is ideally to be drawn from what isbeing talked about and to be displayed as it truly is More modernemphases upon truth as a matter of agreement or correspondencebetween judgement or assertion and its object fail to consider whatmust be the case for such agreement to be possible In particularthey fail to see that a judgement can only agree or disagree withan object if the object has already been uncovered or discovered inits Being by the person judging This is no more than a sketch ofan argument that Heidegger will develop later in his book so itsvalidity can hardly be assessed here7 Nevertheless it is this funda-mental uncovering or unconcealing of entities in their Being towhich he claims that the Greek term lsquologosrsquo originally refers andit is this with which the phenomenologist concerns herself

A similar significance is held to accrue to the Greek term lsquophenomenonrsquo on Heideggerrsquos account of the matter Here the pointthat we must bear in mind is that lsquothe expression ldquophenomenonrdquosignifies that which shows itself in itself the manifest Accordingly phenomena are the totality of what lies in the light of day orcan be brought to the lightrsquo (BT 7 51) Of course entities can showthemselves in many different ways they may appear as somethingthey are not (semblance) or as an indication of the presence of

something else that does not show itself directly (symptoms) or asthe manifestation of something that is essentially incapable of ever manifesting itself directly (the Kantian idea of phenomena asopposed to noumena of the content of empirical intuition under-stood as an emanation of the necessarily non-encounterablething-in-itself) The distinctions between these different kinds ofappearances are important but they all show themselves in them-selves in accord with their true nature and so they all count asphenomena in the formal root sense Heidegger identifies

However the phenomenological sense of the term lsquophenomenonrsquois more specific than this It is best illustrated by an analogy withan element of Kantrsquos theory of knowledge within which space andtime are conceived as forms of sensible intuition According to Kantspace and time are neither entities nor properties of entities and sonot discoverable as part of the content of sensible intuition but ourexperience of the world is only possible on the assumption that theobjects we thereby encounter occupy space andor time ie on theassumption that experience takes a spatio-temporal form On thisaccount space and time constitute the horizon within which anyobject must be encountered and so in a certain sense necessarilyaccompany every such entity but they are not themselves encoun-terable as objects of experience and neither are they separablecomponents of it A sufficiently self-aware and nuanced philosoph-ical investigation of their status however can make them the objectof theoretical understanding and thus thematize what is presentand foundational but always unthematized in everyday experience

Heidegger defines the lsquophenomenarsquo of phenomenology in termsthat suggest that they occupy a place in human interactions withentities that is strongly analogous to the Kantian conceptions ofspace and time

That which already shows itself in the appearance as prior to the lsquophe-nomenonrsquo as ordinarily understood and as accompanying it in everycase can even though it thus shows itself unthematically be broughtthematically to show itself and what shows itself in itself (the lsquoforms of the intuitionrsquo) will be the lsquophenomenarsquo of phenomenology

(BT 7 54ndash5)

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The Kantian analogy makes it clear that the lsquophenomenarsquo ofphenomenology are not appearances in any of the three senses wedistinguished above for the forms of sensible intuition do not appearas what they are not and they are not signs of something else thatis or must be non-manifest But neither are they something neces-sarily non-manifest for space and time can be brought to showthemselves as what they are by the Kant-inspired philosopher andaccordingly not only count as phenomena in the formal sense ofthat term but also as a fit subject for discourse or lsquologosrsquo in theroot sense of that term and so for phenomenology itself

But these considerations tell us only what the object of phenom-enology is not they shed no light on what it is What exactly is alsquophenomenonrsquo in the phenomenological sense

Manifestly it is something that proximally and for the most part doesnot show itself at all it is something that lies hidden in contrast tothat which proximally and for the most part does show itself but atthe same time it is something that belongs to what thus shows itselfand it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning andits ground Yet that which remains hidden in an egregious sense orwhich relapses and gets covered up again or which shows itself onlylsquoin disguisersquo is not just this entity or that but rather the Being of enti-ties as our previous observations have shown This Being can becovered up so extensively that it becomes forgotten and no questionarises about it or about its meaning

(BT 7 59)

If lsquophenomenologyrsquo has to do with the logos of phenomena if itlets that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way inwhich it shows itself from itself then it is and must be our way ofaccess to the Being of entities ndash its meaning modifications and deriv-atives Fundamental ontology is possible only as phenomenologyonly that method fits that subject matter Phenomenology is thescience of the Being of entities

CONCLUSION HEIDEGGERrsquoS DESIGN

We can now see how Heideggerrsquos preliminary reflections on theproper form of his enquiry into the meaning of Being delivered the

specific plan for its treatment that we find at the end of theIntroduction to Being and Time Since Being is always the Being of an entity any such enquiry must choose one particular type ofentity to interrogate and locate the most appropriate means of accessto it Since such an enquiry is a mode of Daseinrsquos Being it can befully self-transparent only if preceded by an existential analytic ofDasein But Daseinrsquos Being is such that its own Being is an issuefor it and it can grasp the Being of entities other than itself Sucha peculiarly intimate relationship with Being in all its manifesta-tions implies that an existential analytic of Dasein should also formthe centrepiece of that enquiry That existential analytic will revealthat the constitutive structures of Daseinrsquos Being are modes oftemporality and since Dasein is the ontico-ontological preconditionfor any understanding of Being time must be the horizon for under-standing the meaning of Being But if Daseinrsquos Being is essentiallytemporal the enquiry which reveals this must itself be essentiallyhistorical a living-out in the present of the tradition of philosoph-ical investigations into Being It must therefore free itself for afruitful future by deconstructing its own history ndash rescuing thequestion of Being from oblivion revealing the historically specificorigins of seemingly timeless interpretations of Being and beingsand recovering their more positive possibilities

Accordingly Heideggerrsquos project falls into two parts each con-sisting of three divisions In the first part an existential analytic of Dasein is provided (Division One) which is then shown to begrounded in temporality (Division Two) and time is explicated asthe transcendental horizon for the question of Being (DivisionThree) In the second part a phenomenological deconstruction ofthe history of ontology is worked out by means of an investigationof Kantrsquos doctrine of schematism and time (Division One) Descartesrsquoego cogito (Division Two) and Aristotlersquos conception of time(Division Three) In reality however only the first two divisionsof Part One were originally published under the title Being andTime and the missing divisions were never added in subsequentreprintings In other words Heideggerrsquos magnum opus containsonly his interpretation of Daseinrsquos Being in terms of temporality

This fact about the book ndash its status as part of a larger whole ndashis absolutely critical to a proper understanding of it but it requires

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

very careful handling Placing undue stress upon the scope ofHeideggerrsquos original design for the book can contribute to a profoundmisreading of it for our attention can thereby be focused upon themismatch between intention and execution in such a way as to implythat because Being and Time is an unfinished book the larger projectadumbrated in its opening pages was also left uncompleted Specu-lation then abounds concerning the reasons for this lack of closureDoes it mean that Heidegger simply never got around to workingout what he wished to say under the four missing general head-ings or rather that he came to realize that those elements of hisproject and so the wider project as a whole were fundamentallyunrealizable

However it is simply wrong to assume ndash as such speculationpresupposes ndash that the other four divisions of Being and Time orat least a set of texts whose manifest topic and general method-ological spirit approximate to them are unavailable Heideggerpublished his detailed analysis of Kantrsquos doctrine of schematism andtime as a separate book (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics)8 in1929 His explication of time as the horizon of the question of Beingtogether with an investigation of Cartesian ontology and theAristotelian conception of time were made public in the form oflectures at the University of Marburg in 1927 (the year of Beingand Timersquos publication) and have now been published under thetitle The Basic Problems of Phenomenology9 If we put these threevolumes together then we have the entire treatise that Heideggerhad originally wished to call lsquoBeing and Timersquo ndash even if not in theprecise form he envisaged10 Although therefore Heidegger maylater have come to believe that his initial conception of the task ofphilosophy was in some ways inadequate it is wrong to think thathe abandoned its execution at the point at which the extant text ofBeing and Time ends

The existence of these complementary texts also deprives us ofany excuse for failing to read Being and Time as part of a widerproject it acts as a salutary reminder that if we must not over-interpret the fact that Being and Time is unfinished neither mustwe underplay it In particular we must not take the de facto sepa-ration between Divisions One and Two of Part One and Division

Three as evidence of a conceptual or methodological separationbetween the work done in these two places for Heidegger alwaysunderstood his existential analytic of Dasein to be part of his widerenquiry into the meaning of Being The exclusive focus of Beingand Time upon the Being of Dasein is thus not a sign thatHeideggerrsquos understanding of his central project is anthropocentricndash at least in any obvious or simple way His primary concern isalways with the question of the meaning of Being so we must never forget that what we know as Being and Time comes to us ina significantly decontextualized form

One final word of warning is in order concerning the sense inwhich Being and Time is an unfinished work It is at least possiblethat the unfinished appearance of the text is in fact deceptive a func-tion of the expectations with which we approach it rather than areflection of its true condition By presenting us with a text thatappears to be incomplete it may be that Heidegger is attempting to question our everyday understanding of what is involved in com-pleting a philosophical investigation ndash of what it might mean tobring a line of thought to an end After all he certainly questionsour everyday understanding of how a philosophical investigationshould begin on his account no type of human enquiry can con-ceivably take the essentially presuppositionless form that is oftenheld up as the ideal for philosophical theorizing And if Daseinrsquoscomprehending grasp of beings in their Being is always a question-ing one ndash embodying an understanding that is not only the resultof prior questioning but that will itself engender further ques-tions and hence always be open to modification ndash then Dasein could not conceivably attain an understanding of anything that wasbeyond any further question So the very idea of an absolutely finalresult of human inquiry makes no more sense for Heidegger thanthat of an absolutely pure starting point both the origins and thetermini of a temporal beingrsquos questioning cannot be other than conditioned and conditional

It would therefore be the very reverse of surprising to discoverthat the concluding pages of Being and Time ndash with their air of incompletion their references to work as yet undone and theiremphasis upon reformulating questions rather than providing

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

definitive answers to them ndash are as conclusive as exemplary of whatit is to achieve a terminus in philosophy as could coherently bedesired For the idea that a philosophical project is complete onlywhen it has definitively answered all the questions it sets itself andthe idea that a text is complete only when it no longer calls for itsown continuation are not so much ideals to which all philosophersshould aspire as illusions with which they must learn to dispenseWe will return to this issue in the concluding pages of this bookbut readers should bear in mind from the outset that Being andTimersquos seemingly self-evident failure to carry through the task itsets itself does not necessarily mean that its philosophical work isincomplete

Before we turn to an examination of that work however I wantto stress what is philosophically distinctive about Heideggerrsquosconception of his general project His focus upon the particularnature of human existence is not of course unusual in the historyof philosophy particularly in the modern period it has beenabsolutely central to the discipline What is unusual however isthe wider framework of Heideggerrsquos analysis Indeed the very ideathat there might be such a thing as a question about Being itselfone which underlies any questions about specific regions of Beingand their ontological underpinnings is one that Heidegger needs torescue from oblivion before he can work towards any sort of answerto it And this involves him in the salutary task of getting his readersto see that a question can be asked at a level that is normally immunefrom interrogation Philosophers typically force non-philosophersto ask questions that disrupt the assumptions upon which theireveryday activities are based sceptical problems about induction andother minds exemplify this to perfection It is therefore intriguingand potentially educative to see the same procedure directed at theunthinking assumptions of philosophers themselves Even if in theend we were to dismiss Heideggerrsquos question his attempts to raise it would at least have forced us to reflect upon something weotherwise take for granted

It is this sort of heightened self-awareness that is the most distinc-tive aspect of Heideggerrsquos work his investigation is permeated withan awareness of its own presuppositions First he makes explicit

from the outset the preconceptions about his subject matter that areorienting his analysis they are not left in obscurity to be unearthedby disciples and exegetes but are themselves made the subject ofanalysis ndash an analysis which identifies the essential role of suchpreconceptions in any enquiry Second he is sensitive to the factthat his enquiry forms one part of a long tradition of philosophicalendeavour from which in part it inevitably derives its orientationand which necessarily furnishes him with tools and traps ndash withessential conceptual resources and rigidified seemingly self-evidentcategorizations Perhaps more than any other philosopher (Hegelexcepted) Heidegger understands that the present and so the futureof his subject cannot be understood apart from its history that thehistory of philosophy belongs to philosophy and not history heworks in the knowledge that all such work can be fruitful only byacknowledging its past Third Heidegger writes in the constantawareness that such writing is a human act the enactment of ahuman possibility he is a being whose ways of being are the subjectof his work so its results must feed back into and inform its conduct

The implications of this last point are multiple and profound Tobegin with it suggests an important methodological principle forthis and any other discipline whose topic is Dasein Only an enquirythat is informed by the richest and most accurate understanding ofwhat it is for Dasein to exist as an enquirer can itself be rich andaccurate but that understanding can only be achieved by an enquiryinto Daseinrsquos Being For Heidegger this does not spell contradic-tion ndash with the enquirer into Dasein unable to begin until shefinishes it reveals the existence of what is called the hermeneuticcircle in the human sciences Its implication is not that beginningan enquiry is impossible but that it cannot be presuppositionlessaccordingly presuppositions ought not to be eschewed but ratheracknowledged and used to best effect We must enter the circle byinitiating our enquiry on the basis of some preconception (provi-sional but worked out with maximal care) and then when we reacha provisional conclusion return to our starting point with the benefitof a deeper understanding which can then render onersquos next set ofconclusions more profound ndash and so on around the circle This isone reason why Division Two of Being and Time works over again

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

the material generated by Division One deepening its insights onHeideggerrsquos second tour of his own particular circuit

This awareness of the humanity of all enquirers into Dasein andthe meaning of Being leads to a second important methodologicalprinciple ndash the need for a diagnostic element in philosophical criti-cism For Heidegger claims both that Dasein is the being uniquelypossessed of an understanding of Being and that its enquiries intoBeing constantly and systematically misunderstand it ndash claims whichtogether imply that Dasein is constantly and systematically out oftune with that with which it is nonetheless most fundamentallyattuned Such a persisting and fundamental misalignment an incom-prehension that is not merely intellectual but must rather informDaseinrsquos existentiell states clearly requires explanation And seenagainst this background Heideggerrsquos own avowed ability to avoidthose errors to perceive the grains of truth in seemingly self-evidenttraditional categorizations and to resurrect and reorient enquiriesinto Being itself needs accounting for How can he see what somany others have missed and persist in missing In other wordsin Heideggerrsquos philosophy philosophical misunderstandings call not only for identification but for the provision of an aetiology adiagnosis of how and why the human beings who elaborated themmight have gone wrong about something so close to their ownnatures

And the necessary diagnostic tools are provided by the existen-tial analytic of Dasein itself For Heidegger because Daseinrsquos Beingis such that its own Being is an issue for it any given mode of itsexistence can be assessed in terms of what he calls authenticity orinauthenticity We can always ask of any given individual whetherthe choices she makes between different possible modes of existenceand the way she enacts or lives them out are ones through whichshe is most truly herself or rather ones in which she neglects orotherwise fails to be herself The full significance of this terminologywill emerge in the following chapter but if its general pertinenceto human life can be properly established it must apply to the wayin which individuals have prosecuted the specific task of enquiringinto the meaning of Being If philosophers have not done so in the most authentic possible way if they have not properly seized

upon such enquiry as an existentiell state of their Being their resultswill be correspondingly inauthentic As Heidegger puts it

the roots of the existential analytic are ultimately existentiell thatis ontical Only if the enquiry of philosophical research is itself seizedupon in an existentiell manner as a possibility of the Being of eachexisting Dasein does it become at all possible to disclose the existentiality of existence and to undertake an adequately foundedontological problematic

(BT 4 34)

This is Heideggerrsquos basic diagnostic assumption about the errors ofhis predecessors and his colleagues their failure to pose the ques-tion of Being correctly is caused by and is itself a failure ofauthenticity It follows of course that the task of posing it correctlywill only be achievable by an existentially authentic enquirerHeidegger has the arrogance to think that this is what he has atleast begun to achieve but he has the humility to know that anyerrors he accrues along the way will reveal his own inauthenticityAnd his achievement if it is indeed real is one which will not benefithim alone for what he then offers to his readers in his existentialanalytic is at once the means to diagnose their own inauthenticityand the means to overcome it Indeed in the course of this book itwill gradually become clear that the work Heidegger intends toaccomplish in Being and Time can only be understood if we appre-ciate his constant attentiveness to the relationship that his words at once allow him and compel him to establish and maintain withhis readers

To invoke questions of authenticity within the precincts of philo-sophical endeavour was once a commonplace to engage in philos-ophizing was long understood as a way perhaps the way ofacquiring wisdom about the meaning of human existence and thusof leading a better life Nowadays the idea that onersquos success orfailure at philosophizing can legitimately be assessed at all inpersonal terms is not often considered and the idea that onersquos philo-sophical position might be criticized as existentially inauthenticmight appear either ludicrous or offensive Such reactions betoken

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

a conception of the subject that represses the fact that it is humanbeings who produce philosophy that philosophizing is a part of a human way of living It is of course perfectly possible to act out such a repression nothing is easier than to write philosophy in a way that represses the fact of onersquos own humanity But asKierkegaard pointed out such forgetfulness ndash particularly whenonersquos very topic is what it is to be human ndash is liable where it isnot comic to be tragic in its consequences In Being and TimeHeidegger attempts to trace out the tragi-comic effects of this repres-sion in the history of the subject and to demonstrate the fertilityand power that is released when that repression is lifted

1 W Golding The Spire (London Faber and Faber 1964)2 See the Introduction to The Basic Problems of Phenomenology trans

A Hofstadter (Bloomington Ind Indiana University Press 1982) p 18 At BT 2 26 Heidegger uses the term lsquoSoseinrsquo (translated assomethingrsquos lsquoBeing as it isrsquo) to gesture towards a broadly similar idea

3 See the reference to The Basic Problems of Phenomenology in note 2At BT 2 26 Heidegger uses the term lsquoDaszlig-seinrsquo (translated as lsquothefact that something isrsquo) to pick out this aspect of the Being of beings

4 See particularly Chapter 2 Some readers will already have detectedthat this account of Heideggerrsquos conception of Dasein bears a closefamily resemblance to Charles Taylorrsquos explicitly Heideggerian accountof human beings as self-interpreting animals Taylor works out thedetails of this account in various places see particularly his lsquoInter-pretation and the Sciences of Manrsquo and lsquoSelf-interpreting Animalsrsquo (inPhilosophical Papers [Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1985])and Part One of Sources of the Self (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1989)

5 We will examine Heideggerrsquos grounds for this claim in greater detaillater in this commentary see especially Chapter 7

6 I will have more to say about this issue in Chapters 5 and 77 For a more detailed discussion see Chapter 38 Trans R Taft (Bloomington Ind Indiana University Press 1990)9 See note 2

10 See the introductory remarks of the editor of The Basic Problems ofPhenomenology

1THE HUMAN WORLD

SCEPTICISM COGNITIONAND AGENCY

The first division of Being and Time presents a preparatory funda-mental analysis of Dasein It is fundamental in so far as Heideggerrsquosconcern is ontological or more precisely existential He does notaim to list all of Daseinrsquos possible existentiell modes or to analyseany one of them or to rely upon assumptions about human naturethat have hitherto guided anthropologists psychologists or philoso-phers Instead he offers a critical evaluation of those assumptionsby developing an existential analytic of Dasein that truly allowsDaseinrsquos Being to show itself in itself and for itself However thisfundamental analytic is also preparatory its conclusions will notprovide the terminus of his investigation but rather a starting pointfrom which it can be deepened revealing the fundamental rela-tionship between the Being of Dasein and temporality In this sensethe first division prepares the way for the second

The overall structure of this first division is reasonably perspic-uous An account of Daseinrsquos average everydayness is used to

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

demonstrate that the Being of Dasein is Being-in-the-world whichis an essentially unitary or holistic phenomenon Heidegger therebycontests the Cartesian understanding of the human way of being asessentially compound a synthesis of categorially distinct elements(ie of mind and body) in a purely material world Nonetheless thehyphenated elements of Being-in-the-world are relatively autono-mous so Heidegger provides separate analyses of the notion oflsquoworldrsquo then of the being who inhabits that world with others ofits kind and finally of the element of lsquoBeing-inrsquo itself He concludesby revealing that the Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world isfounded upon and unified by what he calls lsquocarersquo This chapter willfocus upon the critique of Descartes that follows from Heideggerrsquosanalysis of the worldhood of the world Chapter 2 will examineDaseinrsquos relations with others and with its own affective and cogni-tive states and Chapter 3 will elucidate the conceptions of languagereality and truth that follow from this conception of human exist-ence as essentially conditioned by its world and by those with whom it occupies that world Our discussion of Division One as awhole will conclude by elucidating the notion that Daseinrsquos Beingis essentially care (Chapter 4)

Two assumptions about the distinctive character of Dasein orientthis analysis from the outset ndash assumptions which Heidegger ini-tially presents simply as intuitively plausible but later tries to elaborate more satisfactorily The first (already introduced) is thatDaseinrsquos Being is an issue for it The continuance of its life and theform that life takes confront it as questions to which it must findanswers that it then lives out ndash or fails to The second is this lsquothatBeing which is an issue for this entity in its very Being is in eachcase minersquo (BT 9 67) In part this merely draws out one implica-tion of the first assumption for any entity that chooses to live ina particular way makes that existential possibility its own ndash thatway to be becomes its way to be that possibility becomes its ownexistentiell actuality This is why Heidegger glosses his talk ofDaseinrsquos lsquominenessrsquo by saying that one must use personal pronounswhen addressing it It is his way of capturing the sense in whichbeings of this type are persons but without employing such prej-udicial philosophical terms as lsquoconsciousnessrsquo lsquospiritrsquo or lsquosoulrsquo he

S C E P T I C I S M C O G N I T I O N A N D A G E N C Y36

thereby asserts that they have if not individuality then at least thepotential for it

These two characteristics sharply distinguish Dasein from materialobjects and most animals As I emphasized earlier tables and chairscannot relate themselves to their own Being not even as a matterof indifference They have properties some of which (what Heideg-ger will term their lsquocategoriesrsquo) go to make up their essence butDasein has ndash or rather is ndash possibilities in so far as it has an essenceit consists in existence (whose distinguishing marks Heidegger labelslsquoexistentialiarsquo) But this means that human lives unlike those ofother creatures are capable of manifesting individuality Birds andrabbits live out their lives in ways determined by imperatives and behaviour patterns deriving from their species-identity theyinstantiate their species However entities whose Being is in eachcase mine can allow what they are to be informed by or infusedwith who they are (or can fail to do so)

[B]ecause Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility it canin its very Being lsquochoosersquo itself and win itself it can also lose itselfand never win itself or only lsquoseemrsquo to do so But only insofar as itis essentially something which can be authentic ndash that is somethingof its own ndash can it have lost itself and not yet won itself As modesof Being authenticity and inauthenticity are both grounded in thefact that any Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness

(BT 9 68)

Since tables and rabbits do not in the relevant sense exist theycannot be said to exist authentically or inauthentically but sinceentities with the Being of Dasein do exist they can do so eitherauthentically or inauthentically Inauthentic existence is not a dimi-nution of Being it is no less real than authentic existence Nor isHeideggerrsquos talk of (in)authenticity intended to embody any sort of value-judgement it simply connotes one more distinguishingcharacteristic of any entity whose Being is an issue for it

Nevertheless this particular characteristic of Dasein motivatestwo other aspects of Heideggerrsquos procedures in this part of his bookThe first is the initial focus of his analysis As we saw earlier in

S C E P T I C I S M C O G N I T I O N A N D A G E N C Y 37

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

order to minimize the prejudicial effects of culturally sedimentedhuman self-understandings he intends to orient his existentialanalytic around an account of Dasein in its most common averageeverydayness ndash an essentially undifferentiated state in which nodefinite existentiell mode has typically been made concrete How-ever as one mode of Daseinrsquos existence average everydayness mustalso be subject to evaluation in terms of authenticity and accordingto Heidegger it is in fact inauthentic Although it can thereforeperfectly legitimately be analysed in order to reveal Daseinrsquos basicexistential structures it must not be thought of as somehow moreauthentic or genuine than the existentiell states typically focusedupon by philosophers ndash states appropriate to theoretical cognitionor scientific endeavour for example

The second thing worth noting here is Heideggerrsquos observationthat despite the distinctiveness of Daseinrsquos mode of Being it isconstantly interpreted in ways that fail to acknowledge it in partic-ular the ontological structures appropriate to the Being of substancesand physical objects are projected upon the Being of Dasein Wetend to understand Dasein in terms of what-being as if it werepossessed of an essence from which its characteristics flow in theway that a rockrsquos properties flow from its underlying nature weinterpret ourselves as just one more entity among all the entitieswe encounter Heideggerrsquos analysis of Dasein as Being-in-the-worldreveals the misconceptions underlying this interpretation but itsvery prevalence the fact that a misunderstanding of its own Beingis so commonly held by the being to whom an understanding of its own Being properly and uniquely belongs requires explanationAnd his claim that authenticity is an existentiale of Dasein (ie thatit is one of its existentialia) helps to provide it For if Daseinrsquosaverage everyday state is inauthentic then the self-understandingit embodies will be equally inauthentic indeed one of the distin-guishing marks of Daseinrsquos being in such a state will be its failureto grasp that which ought to be closest to it to be most fully itsown And since philosophical enquiry is itself something that ordi-nary human beings do an aspect of practical activity in humanculture the conceptions of human nature that emerge from it arelikely to be similarly inauthentic

This diagnostic move does not completely solve Heideggerrsquosproblem for any entity capable of inauthentic existence must alsobe capable of authentic existence so we still need to know why wetypically end up in the former rather than the latter state ndash whetherin philosophy or everyday life Nonetheless recognizing the possi-bility of inauthenticity at least makes it intelligible that beings towhom an understanding of their own Being belongs might enacttheir everyday existence within an inauthentic self-understandingand proclaim that understanding as the epitome of philosophicalwisdom

THE CARTESIAN CRITIQUE (sectsect12ndash13)

The question of the human relationship with the external world has been central to Western philosophy at least since Descartes andstandard modern answers to it have shared one vital featureDescartes dramatizes the issue by depicting himself seated before afire and contemplating a ball of wax when searching for the expe-riential roots of causation Hume imagines himself as a spectator ofa billiards game and Kantrsquos disagreement with Humersquos analysisleads him to portray himself watching a ship move downriver Inother words all three explore the nature of human contact with theworld from the viewpoint of a detached observer of that worldrather than as an actor within it Descartes does talk of moving hisball of wax nearer to the fire but his practical engagement with itgoes no further Hume does not imagine himself playing billiardsand Kant never thinks to occupy the perspective of one of thosesailing the ship Being and Time shifts the focus of the epistemo-logical tradition away from this conception of the human being asan unmoving point of view upon the world Heideggerrsquos protagonistsare actors rather than spectators and his narratives suggest thatexclusive reliance upon the image of the spectator has seriouslydistorted philosophersrsquo characterizations of human existence in theworld

Of course no traditional philosopher would deny that human life is lived within a world of physical objects If however theseobjects are imagined primarily as objects of vision then that world

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is imagined primarily as a spectacle ndash a series of tableaux or a playstaged before us and the world of a play is one from which its audi-ence is essentially excluded ndash they may look in on the world of thecharacters but they do not participate in or inhabit it Such a picturehas deep attractions A world that one does not inhabit is a worldin which one is not essentially implicated and by which one is notessentially constrained it is no accident that this spectator modelattributes to the human perspective on the world the freedom andtranscendence traditionally attributed to that of God But there arealso drawbacks for the model also makes it seem that the basichuman relation with objects is one of mere spatial contiguity thatpersons and objects are juxtaposed with one another just as oneobject might be juxtaposed with another As Heidegger puts it itwill be as if human beings are lsquoinrsquo the world in just the way thata quantity of water is in a glass and this distorts matters in twovital respects

First it makes this inhabitation seem like a contingent orsecondary fact about human existence rather than something whichis of its essence the water in a glass might be poured out of itwithout affecting its watery nature but the idea of a human lifethat is not lived lsquoinrsquo the world is not so easy to comprehendAstronauts travelling beyond our planet would not thereby divestthemselves of a world in the sense that interests Heidegger EvenChristian doctrines which posit a continuing personal life after our departure from the world of space and time conceive of it asinvolving the possession of a (resurrected) body and the inhabita-tion of another (heavenly) world ndash an environment within whichthey might live move and otherwise enact their transfigured beingHeideggerrsquos use of the term lsquoDaseinrsquo with its literal meaning oflsquothere-beingrsquo or lsquobeing-therersquo to denote the human way of beingemphasizes that human existence is essentially Being-in-the-worldin effect it affirms an internal relation between lsquohuman beingrsquo andlsquoworldrsquo If two concepts are internally related then a complete graspof the meaning of either requires grasping its connection with theother although the two concepts are not thereby conflated Forexample pain is not reducible to pain-behaviour but no one couldgrasp the meaning of the concept of pain without a grasp of what

counts as behaviour expressive of pain Heideggerrsquos view is that thehuman way of being is similarly incomprehensible in isolation froma grasp of the world in which it lsquoisrsquo

The second problem with the lsquospatial contiguityrsquo model of therelation between human beings and their world is that it obliter-ates its distinctive nature ndash the proper significance of the lsquoinrsquo inlsquoBeing in-the-worldrsquo For Heidegger a human being confronting anobject is not like one physical object positioned alongside anotherA table might touch a wall in the sense that there may be zerospace between the two entities but it cannot encounter the wall asa wall ndash the wall is not an item in the tablersquos world Only Daseinthe being to whom an understanding of Being belongs can touch awall in the sense that it can grasp it as such

The ambiguity of this last phrase is instructive Heidegger is notsuggesting that philosophers such as Descartes ignored the compre-hending nature of human relations to objects ndash after all Descartesholds up his ball of wax precisely in order to demonstrate that humanreason can penetrate to the essence of reality But human beingscan attain not only a mental or theoretical grip on objects but alsoa physical or practical one ndash they can literally grasp them The thingsDasein encounters are usable employable in the pursuit of itspurposes in Heideggerrsquos terms they are not just present-at-handthe object of theoretical contemplation but handy or ready-to-hand That is the way in which Dasein encounters them when itlooks after something or makes use of it accomplishes somethingor leaves something undone renounces something or takes a restDasein not only comprehends the objects in its world but alsoconcerns itself with them (or fails to) and Heidegger feels thatphilosophers not only tend to pass over this phenomenon but arealso unable to account for its possibility

A Cartesian philosopher might respond to Heideggerrsquos charge byarguing that although she may not have paid much attention topractical interactions with the world she can perfectly well accountfor readiness-to-hand on the basis of her understanding of presence-at-hand True Descartesrsquo ball of wax lies on his palm detached fromany immediate practical task and from the complex array of otherobjects and other persons within which such tasks are pursued The

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features which make it so handy for sealing letters and making candlesappear as its present-at-hand characteristics the focus of the phil-osopherrsquos speculative gaze But that gaze reveals the properties whichaccount for its handiness for letter-writers and churchwardens andthe practical contexts within which it is so employed can be under-stood as compounded from a complex array of similarly present-at-hand objects and their properties together with a story about howvalues and meanings are projected upon the natural world by thehuman mind Such an account would demonstrate that presence-at-hand is logically and metaphysically prior to readiness-to-hand andif it is explanatorily the more fundamental concept philosophersshould be concentrating their attention upon it

A more detailed account of how such a strategy might work willemerge later It is important however to be clear in advance aboutwhat Heidegger is and is not claiming against its proponents Hedoes not argue that the primacy such philosophers accord to theo-retical cognition and presence-at-hand should instead be accordedto practical activity and handiness ndash as if building a chair were more imbued with the Being of Dasein than sitting in it to contem-plate a ball of wax Readiness-to-hand is not metaphysically priorto presence-at-hand He does claim that focusing exclusively on theoretical contemplation tends to obscure certain ontologicallysignificant aspects of that mode of activity which stand out moreclearly in other sorts of case and which underpin both For if weconcentrate on cases where an immobile subject contemplates anisolated object then our reflections upon it are likely to be signifi-cantly skewed First in a situation in which the human capacity foragency is idling and our understanding is preoccupied with cate-gories appropriate to the Being of the object before us we will tendto interpret our own nature in the terms that are readiest-to-handndash as that of one present-at-hand entity next to another And secondwe will tend to see the relationship between these two isolated enti-ties as itself isolated as prior to or separable from other elementsin the broader context from which we have in theory detached it but within which that theoretical activity (just like any otheractivity) must in reality occur In other words certain featuresintrinsic to theoretical cognition encourage us to misinterpret its

true nature to overlook the fact that it is a species of activity amodified form of practical engagement with the world and so onlypossible (as are other more obviously practical activities) for envi-roned beings beings whose Being is Being-in-the-world But byoverlooking our worldliness we overlook something ontologicallycentral to any form of human activity theoretical or otherwise and if this notion of lsquoworldrsquo grounds the possibility of theoreti-cally cognizing present-at-hand objects it cannot conceivably beexplained as a construct from an array of purely present-at-handproperties and a sequence of value-projections What is ontologi-cally unsound is thus not theoretical cognition or presence-at-handas such but rather the (mis)interpretations of them ndash and the consequent (mis)interpretations of non-theoretical modes of activityndash that have hitherto prevailed in philosophy The true ontologicalimportance of readiness-to-hand is that a careful analysis of it can perspicuously reveal the crucial element missing from those(mis)interpretations ndash the phenomenon of lsquothe worldrsquo

Heideggerrsquos discussion of Being-in-the-world therefore has acomplex structure First he must show that practical encounterswith ready-to-hand objects are only comprehensible as modes ofBeing-in-the-world ndash thus revealing the fundamental role of thehitherto unnoticed phenomenon of lsquothe worldrsquo Second he mustshow that theoretical encounters with present-to-hand objects arealso comprehensible as a mode of Being-in-the-world ndash thus demon-strating that the species of human activity seemingly most suitedto a Cartesian analysis can be accommodated in his own approachAnd third he must show that a Cartesian account of readiness-to-hand is not possible ndash thus demonstrating that the phenomenon oflsquothe worldrsquo is not comprehensible as a construct from present-at-hand entities and their properties but must be taken as ontologicallyprimary In the sections under consideration Heidegger outlines his attack under the second and third headings ndash indicating how aphenomenological account can and why a Cartesian account cannotmake sense of a purely cognitive relationship with entities

He begins by pointing out that our dealings with the world typi-cally absorb or fascinate us our tasks and so the various entitieswe employ in carrying them out preoccupy us Theoretical cognition

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of entities as present-at-hand should therefore be understood as a modification of such concern as an emergence from this familiarabsorption into a very different sort of attitude

If knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature ofthe present-at-hand by observing it then there must first be a defi-ciency in our having-to-do with the world concernfully When concernholds back from any kind of producing manipulating and the likeit puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-inthe mode of just tarrying-alongside In this kind of lsquodwellingrsquo as aholding-oneself-back from any manipulation or utilization the percep-tion of the present-at-hand is consummated

(BT 13 88ndash9)

To call lsquoknowingrsquo a deficient mode of Being-in-the-world does notamount to accusing it of being less real or authentic It implies onlythat it ndash like neglecting or taking a rest from a task ndash can usefullybe contrasted with other sorts of activity that involve making useof objects to get something done Only in so far as it involves holdingback from interaction with objects is it lsquodeficientrsquo in all other senses(and necessarily so since it is a mode of Being-in-the-world) it isitself a fully-fledged perfectly legitimate and potentially importantway of engaging with objects Properly understood knowing ndashwhether this amounts to staring at a malfunctioning tool oranalysing a substance in a laboratory ndash is an activity carried out ina particular context for reasons that derive from (and with resultsthat are however indirectly of significance for) other human activ-ities in other practical contexts In short knowing is simply onespecific mode of worldly human activity and so one node in thecomplex web of such activities that make up a culture and a society

If however it is not properly understood if we conceptualize itas an isolated relation between present-at-hand subject and present-at-hand object then we face the challenge of scepticism without any way of accommodating it For then knowledge must be conceivedof as a property or possession of one or the other entity Since itis clearly not a property of the object known and not an externalcharacteristic of the knowing subject it must be an internal

characteristic ndash an aspect of its subjectivity In this way the lsquoclosetof consciousnessrsquo myth is born and the question inevitably ariseshow can the knowing subject ever emerge from its inner sanctuminto the external public realm whose entities with their propertiesare the supposed object of its lsquoknowledgersquo How can such a subjectever check the supposed correspondence between its idea of an objectand the object itself when its every foray into the material realmcan result only in more ideas with which to furnish its closet Howindeed can it ever be sure that there is an object corresponding to its ideas As Hume famously discovered no such demonstrationis possible and when the very concept of an object begins tocrumble it takes with it the companion concept of an external realmthe world within which we claim to encounter objects with a lifeindependent of their being observed by us

Heideggerrsquos claim (a claim that the history of philosophicalattempts to refute scepticism seems to bear out) is that no answerto these sceptical challenges is possible if the subjectndashobject rela-tionship is understood as the being-together of two present-at-handentities If however knowing is understood as a mode of Being-in-the-world the challenge is nullified For lsquoif I ldquomerelyrdquo know aboutsome way in which the Being of entities is interconnected I am no less alongside the entities outside in the world than when I originally grasp themrsquo (BT 13 89ndash90) In short an analysis of Dasein as essentially Being-in-the-world deprives the sceptic ofany possibility of intelligibly formulating her question whereas a Cartesian analysis deprives us of any possibility of intelligiblyanswering it

This may seem like a transparent attempt to beg the questionagainst the sceptic by dismissing the Cartesian model because it failsto refute scepticism and then helping oneself to the very conceptsthat scepticism places under suspicion but it is not For rememberthe Cartesian investigation is meant to provide an ontologicallyadequate account of knowing but if the terms of that account makescepticism irrefutable then they exclude the possibility of know-ledge ndash and thereby annihilate the very phenomenon they wereintended to explain In other words the irrefutability of scepticismin Cartesian terms constitutes a devastating internal obstacle to the

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Cartesian model of the human relationship to the world It is unableto characterize coherently the very mode of human engagementwith objects that it takes to be the logical and metaphysical foun-dation of all our interactions with the world And of courseHeideggerrsquos diagnosis locates the root of this inability in a morefundamental weakness in the Cartesian model ndash its failure to takeaccount of the phenomenon of the world For its initial interpreta-tion of human knowledge as an isolated relation between twopresent-at-hand entities entirely omits that phenomenon and theconsequent irrefutability of scepticism is in effect a demonstrationthat it is not possible to arrive at a viable concept of the world ifone begins from that starting point ndash a demonstration that theconcept of the world cannot be constructed One must thereforeeither reconcile oneself to the loss of the concept altogether orrecognize that any account of the human way of being must makeuse of it from the outset

The Cartesian can of course protest that whatever the lessonsof the history of philosophy it is possible to refute the scepticalchallenge from within the Cartesian perspective and construct aviable concept of the world And to be sure Heidegger cannot relyupon past failure as a guarantee of future failure Nevertheless theball is very much in the Cartesianrsquos court and as we delve furtherinto Heideggerrsquos own account of Dasein as Being-in-the-world andgain a clearer understanding of exactly what the phenomenon ofthe world really is we will discover further powerful reasons fordoubting that she will be able to make good her claim

THE WORLDHOOD OF THE WORLD (sectsect14ndash24)

According to Heidegger the notion of lsquoworldrsquo can be used in at leastfour different ways

1 As an ontical concept signifying the totality of entities that canbe present-at-hand within the world

2 As an ontological term denoting the Being of such present-at-hand entities ndash that without which they would not be beingsof that type

3 In another ontic sense standing for that wherein a given Daseinmight be said to exist ndash its domestic or working environmentfor example

4 In a corresponding ontological (or rather existential) senseapplying to the worldhood of the world ndash to that which makespossible any and every world of the third type

Heidegger uses the term exclusively in its third sense although hisultimate goal is to grasp that to which the term applies in its fourthsense Consequently the adjective lsquoworldlyrsquo and its cognates areproperly applicable only to the human kind of Being with physicalobjects or other entities described as lsquobelonging to the worldrsquo orlsquowithin-the-worldrsquo Thus although the world must be such as to accommodate the entities encountered within it it cannot beunderstood in the terms appropriate to them The world in this third sense is one aspect of Daseinrsquos Being and so must be under-stood existentially rather than categorially (to use the Heideggerianterminology we defined in the third section of the Introduction)

Accordingly to get the phenomenon of the world properly intoview we must locate a type of human interaction with entities thatcasts light on its own environment Since certain features of theo-retical purely cognitive relations to objects tend to conceal itsworldly background Heidegger focuses instead upon a more ubiq-uitous and non-deficient form of human activity ndash that in which we make use of things encountering them not as objects of thespeculative gaze but as equipment or more loosely as gear or stuff(as in lsquocricket gearrsquo or lsquogardening stuffrsquo) In such practical dealingswith objects they appear as ready-to-hand rather than present-at-hand and this is where Heideggerrsquos famous hammer makes itsappearance

[H]ammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammerrsquoscharacter as equipment but it has appropriated this equipment in away that could not possibly be more suitable [T]he less we juststare at the hammer-Thing and the more we seize hold of it anduse it the more primordial does our relationship to it become and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is ndash as

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

equipment The hammering itself uncovers the specific lsquomanipula-bilityrsquo of the hammer The kind of Being which equipment possessesndash in which it manifests itself in its own right ndash we call readiness-to-hand

(BT 15 98)

Descartesrsquo ball of wax lies on his palm the qualities that make ithandy for sealing letters and making candles manifest as occurrentproperties But Heideggerrsquos hammer is caught up amid a carpenterrsquoslabours one item in a toolbox or workshop something deployedwithin and employed to alter the human environment its proper-ties of weight and strength subserve the final product the goal ofthe endeavour

Thus the notion of readiness-to-hand brings with it a fairlycomplex conceptual background that is not so evident when objectsare grasped in terms of presence-at-hand and that Heidegger aimsto elucidate ndash handicapped as always by the fact that philosophershave hitherto ignored it and so constructed no handy widelyaccepted terminology for it He first points out that the idea of asingle piece of equipment makes no sense Nothing could functionas a tool in the absence of what he calls an lsquoequipmental totalityrsquowithin which it finds a place ndash a pen exists as a pen only in relationto ink paper writing desks table and so on Second the utility ofa tool presupposes something for which it is usable an end productndash a pen is an implement for writing letters a hammer for makingfurniture This directedness is the lsquotowards-whichrsquo of equipmentThird such work presupposes the availability of raw material thehammer can be used to make furniture only if there is wood andmetal upon which to work and from which the hammer itself canbe made ndash that lsquowhereofrsquo it is constituted And fourth the endproduct will have recipients people who will make use of it and sowhose needs and interests will shape the labour of the person pro-ducing the work ndash whether that labour is part of craft-based highlyindividualized modes of production or highly industrialized onesThis is the most obvious point at which what Heidegger calls thelsquopublic worldrsquo invades that of the workshop here it becomes clearthat the working environment participates in a larger social world

A piece of equipment is thus necessarily something lsquoin-order-torsquoits readiness-to-hand is constituted by the multiplicity of reference-or assignment-relations which define its place within a totality ofequipment and the practices of its employment In this sense anysingle ready-to-hand object however isolated or self-contained itmay seem is encountered within a world of work Even in a work-ing environment however this equipmental totality tends to beoverlooked For anyone concentrating on the task at hand will be focusing her attention primarily on the goal of her labours thecorrectness of the final product and the tools she is employing toachieve this will of course be caught up in the production processrendered invisible by their very handiness Paradoxically enoughobjects become visible as ready-to-hand primarily when they becomeunhandy in various ways of which Heidegger mentions three If atool is damaged then it becomes conspicuous as something unus-able if it is absent from its accustomed place in the rack it obtrudesitself on our attention as something that is not even to hand andif we encounter obstacles in our work things that might have helped us in our task but which instead hinder it they appear asobstinately unready-to-hand ndash something to be manhandled out ofthe way

In all three cases the ordinary handiness of equipment becomesunreadiness-to-hand and then presence-at-hand as our attempts atrepair or circumvention focus more exclusively on the occurrentproperties with which we must now deal Such transformations canof course occur in other contexts ndash in particular whenever we refrainfrom everyday activities in order to consider the essential nature ofobjects ndash which helps explain why we then tend to reach for thecategory of presence-at-hand but in the present context it can alsobestow a certain philosophical illumination For the unhandiness of missing or damaged objects forces us to consider with what andfor what they were ready-to-hand and so to consider the totalityof assignment-relations which underpinned their handiness and itreveals that handiness as ordinarily inconspicuous unobtrusive andnon-obstinate In short precisely because we cannot perform ourtask the task itself and everything that hangs together with it isbrought to our explicit awareness

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

[W]hen an assignment has been disturbed ndash when something is unus-able for some purpose ndash then the assignment becomes explicit When an assignment to some particular lsquotowards-thisrsquo has been thuscircumspectively aroused we catch sight of the lsquotowards-thisrsquo itselfand along with it everything connected with the work ndash the wholelsquoworkshoprsquo ndash as that wherein concern always dwells The context ofequipment is lit up not as something never seen before but as atotality constantly sighted beforehand in circumspection With thistotality however the world announces itself

(BT 16 105)

However although with most pieces of equipment the world onlyannounces itself retrospectively ndash when that object becomes some-how unhandy and its assignment-relations are disturbed ndash one typeof tool is precisely designed to indicate the worldly context withinwhich practical activity takes place the sign Heideggerrsquos exampleis a car indicator and if we substitute a flashing amber light forhis outmoded red arrow his discussion becomes perfectly clear In one sense such a sign is simply one more piece of equipment atool whose proper functioning presupposes its place in a complexequipmental totality ndash one including the car road-markings conven-tions governing how to alter the direction of a carrsquos travel withoutdisrupting that of other cars and so on Only within that social orcultural context can the sudden appearance of a flashing amber lighton the right rear bumper of a car signify that it intends to turnright But that flashing light also lights up the environment withinwhich the car is moving When pedestrians and other driversencounter it they are brought to attend to the pattern of roads andpavements crossings and traffic lights within which they are movingtogether with the signalling car and to their position and intendedmovements within it In short the light indicates the present andintended orientation not only of the signalling car but also of thoseto whom its driver is signalling it provides a focal point aroundwhich a travellerrsquos awareness of a manifold of equipment in theenvironment through which she is moving can crystallize Heideggerputs it as follows

A sign is an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality ofequipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldlycharacter of the ready-to-hand announces itself

(BT 17 110)

And what the world announces itself as is clearly neither somethingpresent-at-hand nor something ready-to-hand For it is not itself anentity but rather a web of socially or culturally constituted assign-ments within which entities can appear as the particular types ofobject that they are and which must therefore always be laid out(lsquodisclosedrsquo as Heidegger phrases it) in advance of any particularencounter with an object Growing up in or otherwise coming toinhabit a specific culture involves acquiring a practical grasp of thewidely ramifying web of concepts roles functions and functionalinterrelations within which that culturersquos inhabitants interact withthe objects in their environment Learning to drive a car or to makefurniture is a matter of assimilating that network within whichalone specific entities can appear as the entities that they are ndash assteering wheel gearstick and kerb or as tool handle or chair Thistotality makes up what Heidegger means by the world and preciselybecause it is not itself an object it is not typically an object of cir-cumspective concern even when it emerges from its normal incon-spicuousness in ordinary practical activity In general it can onlybe glimpsed ontically in the essentially indirect manner we havejust outlined But Heideggerrsquos concern is ontological rather thanontic he wants to utilize such experiences as a means of access tothat which underpins and makes possible the now conspicuous webof assignment-relations to get a secure grasp on the essential naturendash the worldhood ndash of the world

Any piece of equipment is essentially something lsquoin-order-torsquo itis encountered as part of a manifold of equipment deployed in theservice of a particular task and so as something essentially service-able and involved But the widely ramifying system of reference-relations which go to make up this serviceability has a terminus

With the lsquotowards-whichrsquo of serviceability there can again be aninvolvement with this thing for instance which is ready-to-hand and

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

which we accordingly call a lsquohammerrsquo there is an involvement inhammering with hammering there is an involvement in makingsomething fast with making something fast there is an involvementin protection against bad weather and this protection lsquoisrsquo for thesake of providing shelter for Dasein ndash that is to say for the sake ofa possibility of Daseinrsquos Being

(BT 18 116)

Any given ready-to-hand entity is always already involved in an(actual or potential) task which may itself be nested in other largertasks but such totalities of involvement are always ultimatelygrounded in a reference-relation in which there is no furtherinvolvement ndash a lsquofor-the-sake-of-whichrsquo that pertains to the Beingof Dasein The handiness of a hammer is ultimately for the sake of sheltering Dasein the handiness of a pen is ultimately for the sake of communicating with others In other words the modes ofpractical activity within which entities are primarily encounteredare by their nature contributors to Daseinrsquos modes of existence inthe world ndash to specific existentiell possibilities In this sense theontological structures of worldhood are and must be existentiallyunderstood The world is a facet of the Being of Dasein DaseinrsquosBeing is Being-in-the-world

In this way Heideggerrsquos detailed phenomenological analysis ofDasein as Being-in-the-world dovetails perfectly with his initialcharacterization of Dasein as the being whose Being is an issue forit each implies the other For if distinctively human being is notonly life but activity then Dasein always faces the question of whichpossible mode of existence it should enact and answering that ques-tion necessarily involves executing its intentions in practical activityBut this in turn presupposes that Dasein exists in a world ndash that itencounters a manifold of material objects as a field for such prac-tical activity If then Daseinrsquos practical relation to its own existenceis essential to its Being its practical relation to the world it inhabitsmust also be essential Encountering objects as ready-to-hand (andso as referred to a particular possibility of Daseinrsquos Being) is thefundamental ground of Daseinrsquos Being-in-the-world

This notion of lsquoworldrsquo is of course not at all familiar to thoseacquainted with the Western philosophical tradition ndash as Heideggeremphasizes when he contrasts his phenomenological understandingof space with the Cartesian alternative For Descartes space is essen-tially mathematicized spatial location is fixed by imposing an objec-tive system of coordinates upon the world and assigning a sequenceof numbers to each and every item in it and Daseinrsquos progressthrough this fixed array of present-at-hand items is a matter of measuring off stretches of a space that is itself present-at-hand OnHeideggerrsquos view however Dasein most fundamentally understandsits spatial relations with objects as a matter of near and far closeand distant and these in turn are understood in relation to its prac-tical purposes The spectacles on my nose are further away from methan the picture on the wall that I use them to examine and thefriend I see across the road is nearer to me than the pavement undermy feet my friend would not have been any closer to me if she hadappeared at my side and moving right up to the picture would infact distance it from me Closeness and distance in this sense are amatter of handiness and unhandiness the spatial disposition of themanifold of objects populating my environment is determined bytheir serviceability for my current activities In Heideggerrsquos termi-nology Cartesian space is an abstraction from our understanding ofspace as a region or set of regions an interlinked totality of placesand objects that belong to an equipmental totality and an environ-ing work-world Objects are in the first instance handy or unhandyand it is their significance in that respect ndash rather than a pure coor-dinate system ndash that most fundamentally places them in relation to one another and to Dasein Space and spatiality are thus neitherin the subject nor in the world but rather disclosed by Dasein in itsdisclosure of the world Dasein exists spatially it is spatial

On the basis of this account of Dasein as Being-in-the-world andof the worldhood of that world Heidegger regards the logical ormetaphysical priority given to presence-at-hand over readiness-to-hand in the philosophical tradition as getting things precisely thewrong way around For him encountering objects as present-at-hand is a mode of holding back from dealings with objects a speciesof provisional and relative decontextualization in which one is no

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

longer absorbed in a task to which those objects and their proper-ties are more or less handy means Similarly encountering Naturendash the substances stuffs and species of the natural world ndash is under-stood as primarily involving a task-based encounter with naturalresources which appear as the source of useful materials rather than as something that stirs and enthrals us through its own powerand beauty and which might then become the object of scientificspeculation As this last example makes clear however recontextu-alization is as fundamental to Heideggerrsquos analysis here as decon-textualization For since such encounters with entities are legitimatemodes of Daseinrsquos existence and since Dasein is necessarily Being-in-the-world they too must be understood as essentially worldlyphenomena Concentrating upon them may lead us to overlook theworldly character of our existence but that does not mean that theyare really unworldly or any less reliant upon a (modified) totalityof assignment-relations

Accordingly in addition to the argument from scepticism that weexamined earlier Heidegger has at least two main lines of attackagainst those who would assign logical and metaphysical priority to presence-at-hand claiming that readiness-to-hand can be under-stood as a construct from ndash and so as reducible to ndash presence-at-handFirst he could argue that in so far as encountering objects aspresent-at-hand is itself a form of worldly engagement with themsuch a reductive analysis would presuppose what it was claiming toaccount for Any such analysis of readiness-to-hand requires anaccount of the worldhood of the world but any such account whichbegins from the conceptual resources supplied by present-at-handencounters with objects would already be presupposing the phenom-enon of the world It seems evident that an understanding of aparticular landscape in terms of the resources it provides for carpen-ters or millers is no less dependent upon a particular culturallydetermined way of conceptualizing its elements its form and theirrelation to human perception and human life than is an under-standing of it in terms of its natural beauty But precisely analogouspoints can be made about the various ways in which one canencounter objects as present-at-hand A carpenter who studies theoccurrent properties of a hammer with a view to repairing it does

so against the background of a particular set of assignment-relationsto which she wishes to return it and which accordingly informs thedirection of her gaze and efforts Even the scientist whose goal instudying the hammer is to comprehend its molecular structure can do so only within the complex web of equipment resourcestheory and cultural understanding (and the corresponding totalityof assignment-relations) within which anything recognizable as a chemico-physical analysis of matter could even be conceived letalone executed1 And when someone ndash perhaps a philosopher ndashachieves a state of genuinely disinterested attention to the objectsin front of her simply staring at them the very disinterest sheevinces is itself only possible for a being capable of being interestedAs Heidegger would put it she can tarry alongside entities onlybecause she can also have dealings with them so even holding backfrom manipulation does not occur entirely outside the ambit ofworldliness In short even when decontextualizing really means justthat ndash even when no recontextualization is implicitly presupposedndash it cannot be understood except as a deficient mode of Being-in-the-world so encounters with present-at-hand entities cannot intel-ligibly be regarded as a jumping-off point from which a conceptionof worldhood might be constructed

Heideggerrsquos second line of argument amounts to the claim thatthe species of worldly understanding drawn upon in encounters withobjects as ready-to-hand simply could not be reduced to the speciesof understanding that is manifest in theoretical cognition of occur-rent entities The worldhood of the world is not comprehensible inthe terms developed by speculative reason for the comprehensionof present-at-hand objects and their properties This argument isin fact fairly well buried in Heideggerrsquos text and even when itcomes to the surface it is formulated extremely cautiously

The context of assignments or references which as significance isconstitutive for worldhood can be taken formally in the sense of asystem of Relations But one must note that in such formalizationsthe phenomena get levelled off so much that their real phenomenalcontent may be lost especially in the case of such lsquosimplersquo relation-ships as those which lurk in significance The phenomenal content

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

of these lsquoRelationsrsquo and lsquoRelatarsquo ndash the lsquoin-order-torsquo the lsquofor-the-sake-of rsquo and the lsquowith-whichrsquo of an involvement ndash is such that they resistany sort of mathematical functionalization

(BT 18 121ndash2)

In fact however as certain influential interpreters of Heidegger havestressed (perhaps most famously Hubert Dreyfus2) the basis ofHeideggerrsquos argument here licenses the far stronger conclusion thatthe worldhood of the world is simply not analysable in such terms

The argument rests on two tightly interlinked points the inde-finability of context and the difference between knowing how and knowing that First the point about context The capacity toencounter a pen as a handy writing implement or a hammer as acarpentry tool depends upon a capacity to grasp its role in a complexweb of interrelated equipment in certain sorts of context but spellingout its relations with such totalities is far from simple A hammeris not just something for driving nails into surfaces anyone whounderstands its nature as a tool also knows which kinds of surfaceare appropriate for receiving nails the variety of substances fromwhich a usable hammer can be made the indefinite number of othertasks that a hammer can be used to perform (securing wedges loos-ening joints propping open windows repelling intruders playinggames of lsquotoss-the-hammerrsquo and so on) of other objects that mightbe used instead of a damaged hammer or adapted so as to be usablein these ways ndash the list goes on Knowing what it is for somethingto be a hammer is among other things knowing all this andknowing all this is an inherently open-ended capacity ndash one whichcannot be exhaustively captured by a finite list of precise rules Ourpractical activities always engage with and are developed in specificsituations but there is no obvious way of specifying a closed set of all the possible ways and contexts in which our knowledge of ahammer and its capacities might be pertinently deployed In so faras any attempt to reduce readiness-to-hand to presence-at-handnecessarily involves reducing our understanding of an objectrsquosserviceability to a grasp of a finite set of general rules together witha precise specification of a finite set of situations in which they applythen it is doomed from the outset

This brings us to the second of the issues mentioned above ndash thedifference between knowing how and knowing that Encounteringa hammer as ready-to-hand is as we have seen intimately relatedto a capacity to make use of it as the piece of equipment it is ndash thecapacity to hammer This is a species of practical ability manifestin the first instance in competent action in what we might call know-how but theoretical cognition as understood by the philosophical tradition is primarily manifest in a grasp of truepropositions in what might be called knowing that (such-and-suchis the case) To argue that the readiness-to-hand of a hammer canbe understood as a construct from its occurrent properties togetherwith certain facts about its relations with particular contexts of actionthus amounts to arguing that know-how can be understood in termsof knowing that ndash as the application of knowledge of facts about theobject the situation and the person wishing to employ it in thatsituation Ever since the time of Rylersquos Concept of Mind3 howeverthis idea has been under severe pressure since its proponents facea dilemma For the propositional knowledge they invoke must beapplied to the situations the knower faces a process which mustitself either be based on further propositional knowledge (a know-ledge of rules governing the application of the theorems cognized)or entirely ungrounded If the former option is chosen it followsthat applying the rules of application must itself be governed byapplication rules and an infinite regress unfolds If the latter ispreferred the question arises why the original practical abilitycannot itself be ungrounded if the theorems can be applied withoutrelying upon propositional knowledge why not the actions that the theorems were designed to explain In short the idea that know-how is based upon knowing that involves assigning a role topropositional knowledge which it is either impossible or unneces-sary for it to perform so the idea that the knowledge manifest inour encounters with ready-to-hand objects can be reduced to know-ledge of the sort appropriate to encounters with present-at-handobjects must be either vacuous or superfluous

Putting these two lines of argument together with the argumentfrom scepticism suggests that Heidegger can meet the challengeposed by the Cartesian philosopher to his analysis of Dasein as

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Being-in-the-world His concept of lsquoworldrsquo does not illegitimatelygive priority to systems of value that are merely subjective pro-jections upon an ultimately meaningless but metaphysically funda-mental realm of matter it rather constitutes the ontological underpinning of any and every mode of human engagement withobjects including the seemingly value-neutral theoretical encountersof which philosophers are generally so enamoured

Even here however a worry can resurface about the strength ofHeideggerrsquos case the worry that it is undermined by a perfectlyobvious fact about material objects ndash namely their materiality Forsurely no object can be encountered as ready-to-hand or as present-at-hand unless it is actually there to be encountered and possessedof certain properties a hammer could not be used for hammeringunless it had the requisite weight composition and shape and itcould not even be contemplated unless it was actually there beforeus But if so if any form of human encounter with an object presup-poses its material reality must not the whole web of culturallydetermined assignment-relations that constitutes the world ofhuman practical activity be conceptually or metaphysically depen-dent upon the material realm within which human culture emergesand without which it could not be sustained Is it not obvious thatlsquothe worldrsquo in the third and fourth senses of that term presupposeslsquothe worldrsquo in the first and second senses

This worry should not be dismissed lightly but it is one thatHeidegger only confronts in convincing detail much later ndash in hisreflections on truth and reality (which we will examine in Chapter3 of this book) He does however attempt to assuage the worry atthis point so I will conclude this chapter by outlining his strategyThe crucial move is to distinguish the ontic and the ontological levelsof analysis and to suggest that the worry I have just articulatedconflates the two Heidegger never denies that a hammer could notbe used for hammering unless it had the appropriate material prop-erties and was actually available for use in this sense the materialityof any given object is needed to explain its functioning But this isan issue on what he would call the ontic level ndash the level at whichwe concern ourselves with particular (types of) human practices andthe particular (types of) objects that are involved in them and simply

take it for granted that there are such practices and that within themobjects are encountered as ready-to-hand unhandy and present-at-hand At the ontological level however we put exactly thoseassumptions in question we enquire into the Being of human prac-tical activity and of material objects asking what must be the casefor there to be a human world of practical activity and what thereadiness-to-hand unhandiness or presence-at-hand of an objectreally amounts to It is to this task that Heidegger has devoted theseopening sections of his book His line of argument entails that if we are to understand the essential nature (the Being) of any ofthese phenomena then we must invoke the notion of lsquoworldrsquo andits ontological presuppositions Those presuppositions are not onlyimpossible to account for in terms of the categories appropriate tospecies of theoretical cognition but must themselves be invoked toaccount for the ontological presuppositions of theoretical cognitionitself By overlooking or downplaying the concept of lsquothe worldrsquo inits third and fourth senses therefore philosophers have preventedthemselves from understanding both the mode of human activityin which we most often engage and also that to which they accordthe highest priority and they thereby deprive themselves of anyproper understanding of the Being of Dasein

1 Heidegger sketches in further details of such an account of scientificendeavour in sect69 of Being and Time which we will discuss in Chapter 6

2 See especially ch 6 of his Being-in-the-World (Cambridge Mass TheMIT Press 1991)

3 G Ryle The Concept of Mind (London Hutchinson 1949)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

2THE HUMAN WORLD

SOCIETY SELFHOOD ANDSELF-INTERPRETATION

It should already be becoming clear that Heidegger conceives of thehuman way of being as essentially conditioned The Western philo-sophical tradition has often presupposed that the human subject canin some way transcend the material realm upon which it fixes itsgaze and so that human beings are only contingently possessed ofa world but for Heidegger no sense attaches to the idea of a humanbeing existing apart from or outside a world This does not howevermean that human beings are somehow imprisoned in the worldforcibly subjected to the essentially alien limits of embodiment andpractical interaction with nature for those limits are not essentiallyalien If no recognizably human existence is conceivable in theabsence of a world then the fact that human existence is worldlycannot be a limitation or constraint upon it just as someone canonly be imprisoned if there is a world outside her prison from whichshe is excluded so a set of limits can only be thought of as limita-tions if there exists a possible mode of existence to which those

limits do not apply Since that is not the case here the inherentworldliness of human existence must be thought of as an aspect ofthe human condition It is a condition of human life not a constraintupon it

But on Heideggerrsquos account human existence is not only condi-tioned by worldliness ndash or rather worldliness conditions humanexistence in ways that we have not yet examined This chapter willexamine two of them the way in which the world is inherentlysocial or communal and the ways in which it conditions humanaffective and cognitive powers

INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY (sectsect25ndash7)

So far it may have seemed that Daseinrsquos world is populated solelyby physical objects or entities what J L Austin called lsquomedium-sized dry goodsrsquo But Heidegger emphasizes that there is at leastone other class of beings that must be accommodated by anyadequate analysis of that world those with the kind of Beingbelonging to Dasein ndash in short other people And if we cannotunderstand Dasein in the terms appropriate to objects then neithercan we understand other human beings and Daseinrsquos relations withthem in that way

But of course many philosophers have tried to do just that Thevery title under which this set of issues is commonly known in thediscipline confirms this lsquoThe Problem of Other Mindsrsquo It impliesthat while we can be certain of the existence of other creatures withbodies similar to our own justifying the hypothesis that these bodieshave minds attached to them is deeply problematic Here a dual-istic understanding of human beings as mindndashbody couples combineswith a materialist impulse to suggest that our relations with otherputatively human beings are in effect relations with physical objectsof a particular sort to which we are inclined to attribute variousdistinctive additional characteristics ndash which inevitably raises thequestion of our warrant for such extremely unusual attributionsAnd any attempts to solve this lsquoproblemrsquo inevitably share thosepresuppositions since they will be couched in the terms in whichthe problem itself is posed

S O C I E T Y S E L F H O O D A N D S E L F - I N T E R P R E T A T I O N 61

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

The argument from analogy for example tells us that our justi-fication lies in the similarities of form and behaviour between ourbodies and those of other humanoid creatures Given that we knowfrom our own case that such behaviour is associated with mentalactivities of various sorts we can reliably infer that the same is truein the case of these other entities This is a species of inductiveinference drawing a conclusion about what is correlated with thebehaviour of other bodies on the basis of our acquaintance withwhat is correlated with the behaviour of our own But of necessityour observations relate solely to correlations between mentalphenomena and our own behaviour and so provide no basis what-ever for conclusions about what (if anything) might be correlatedwith the behaviour of others ndash a correlation that it is in principleimpossible for us to observe directly It may seem that such anextrapolation is justified by observable similarities between our ownbodies and behaviour and the bodies and behaviour of others butthe key issue is which similarities That the bodies and the behav-iour are similar in bodily and behavioural respects is not in questionBut the similarity that matters is that a mind be similarly attachedto those other bodies and their behaviour and no amount of simi-larity between our bodily form and behavioural repertoire and theirscan establish that To think otherwise ndash to think that a correlationestablished between body and mind in my own case can simply beextrapolated to the case of others ndash is to assume that comprehendingthe essential nature of others is simply a matter of projecting ourunderstanding of our own nature onto them But it is precisely thelegitimacy of such empathic projection ndash of regarding (onersquos rela-tion to) another humanoid creature as if it were just like (onersquosrelation to) oneself or in more Heideggerian language viewingBeing-towards-Others in terms of Being-towards-oneself ndash that isat issue

This I take it is Heideggerrsquos point in the following passage

The entity which is lsquootherrsquo has itself the same kind of Being as DaseinIn Being with and towards Others there is thus a relationship ofBeing from Dasein to Dasein But it might be said that this relation-ship is already constitutive for onersquos own Dasein which in its own

S O C I E T Y S E L F H O O D A N D S E L F - I N T E R P R E T A T I O N62

right has an understanding of Being and thus relates itself towardsDasein The relationship-of-Being which one has towards Others then become[s] a Projection of onersquos own Being-towards-oneselflsquointo something elsersquo The other would be a duplicate of the Self

But while these deliberations seem obvious enough it is easy tosee that they have little ground to stand on The presupposition whichthis argument demands ndash that Daseinrsquos Being towards an Other isits Being towards itself ndash fails to hold As long as the legitimacy ofthis presupposition has not turned out to be evident one may stillbe puzzled as to how Daseinrsquos relationship to itself is thus to bedisclosed to the Other as Other

(BT 26 162)

Thus the argument from analogy appears to work only if the ques-tion it is designed to answer is begged ndash only if it is assumed fromthe outset that all the other humanoid bodies I encounter are similarto mine not only physically and behaviourally but also psycho-physically ie that they are similarly correlated with minds Thesimilarity that legitimates the inductive inference thus turns out tobe the similarity that it is supposed to demonstrate the argumentfrom analogy assumes what it sets out to prove In this respect aCartesian understanding of other minds faces the same difficulty as a Cartesian understanding of the external world in both casesno satisfactory answer is available to the sceptical challenge that theterms of such understandings invite Heidegger concludes that weshould therefore jettison an essentially compositional understandingof other persons the scepticrsquos ability to demolish our best attemptsto treat that concept as a construction from more basic constituents(eg as resulting from the projection of the concept of a humanoidmind on to that of a humanoid body) reveals that such treatmentseither presuppose or eliminate what they set out to analyse Wemust rather recognize that the concept of the Other (of otherpersons) is irreducible an absolutely basic component of our under-standing of the world we inhabit and so something from which ourontological investigations must begin To adapt Strawsonian termi-nology it is the concept of other persons (and not that of otherminds plus other bodies) that is logically primitive1 And in so far

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

as others are primordially persons creatures with a perspective uponthe world and whose essence is existence then their Being must beof the same kind as Dasein

But Heideggerrsquos point is anti-solipsistic as well as anti-dualist Itis not just that the concept of another person must be understoodnon-compositionally (ie as Dasein rather than as the juxtapositionof two present-at-hand substances) That concept is also essential toany adequate ontological analysis of Dasein (ie the Being of Daseinis essentially Being-with-Others) After all the Being of Dasein isBeing-in-the-world so the concepts of Dasein and world are inter-nally related But the structure of the world makes essential refer-ence to other beings whose Being is like Daseinrsquos own So Daseincannot be understood except as inhabiting a world it necessarilyshares with beings like itself

And just what are these essential references to Others

In our description of the work-world of the craftsman theoutcome was that along with the equipment to be found when oneis at work those Others for whom the work is destined are lsquoencoun-tered toorsquo If this is ready-to-hand then there lies in the kind of Being which belongs to it (that is in its involvement) an essentialassignment or reference to possible wearers for instance for whomit should be cut to the figure Similarly when material is put to usewe encounter its producer or supplier as one who lsquoservesrsquo well orbadly The Others who are thus lsquoencounteredrsquo in a ready-to-handenvironmental context of equipment are not somehow added on inthought to some Thing which is proximally just present-at-hand suchlsquoThingsrsquo are encountered from out of the world in which they areready-to-hand for Others ndash a world which is always mine too inadvance

(BT 26 153ndash4)

This suggests three different senses in which other people areconstituents of Daseinrsquos world First they form one more class ofbeing that Dasein encounters within its world Second what Daseinworks upon is typically provided by others and what it produces istypically destined for others in other words the lsquowhereofrsquo and the

lsquotowards-whichrsquo of equipmental totalities relate the work-world toother people Third the readiness-to-hand of objects for a partic-ular Dasein is not (and could not conceivably be) understood as theirreadiness-to-hand for that Dasein alone if any object is handy fora given task it must be handy for every Dasein capable of performingit In this sense readiness-to-hand is inherently intersubjective andsince a parallel argument applies to the recontextualized world ofpresent-at-hand objects it entails that Daseinrsquos inherently worldlyBeing is essentially social

Note that Heidegger is not claiming that Dasein cannot be aloneisolated from all human company whether or not that is the caseis a purely ontic question to do with a particular individual in aparticular time and place The claim that the Being of Dasein isBeing-with is an ontological claim it identifies an existential char-acteristic of Dasein which holds regardless of whether an Other ispresent and for two reasons First because if it did not the possi-bility of Daseinrsquos encountering another creature of its own kindwould be incomprehensible For if ontologically Daseinrsquos Beingwas not Being-with it would lack the capacity to be in anotherrsquoscompany ndash just as a table can touch a wall but can never encounterit as a wall so Dasein could never conceivably encounter anotherhuman being as such Second it is only because Daseinrsquos Being isBeing-with that it can be isolated or alone for just as it only makessense to talk of Dasein encountering an object as unready-to-handif it can also encounter it as handy so it only makes sense to talkof Dasein as being alone if it is capable of being with Others whenthey are present In other words aloneness is a deficient mode ofDaseinrsquos Being lsquoThe Other can be missing only in and for a Being-withrsquo (BT 26 157)

The same distinction between ontic and ontological matters under-pins Heideggerrsquos further claim that just as Daseinrsquos basic orientationtowards ready-to-hand objects is one of concern so its orientationtowards Others is one of solicitude For of course lsquoconcernfulrsquo deal-ings with objects can take the form of indifference carelessness andneglect the term captures an aspect of Daseinrsquos ontological statehighlighting the fact that Dasein finds itself amid objects with whichit must deal and is not only compatible with but ultimately makes

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

possible specific ontic states of unconcern (since it is only to a beingcapable of concern that one can attribute lack of concern) Similarlytalk of Daseinrsquos Being-with-Others as solicitude is an ontologicalclaim it does not deny that Dasein can be and often is indifferentor hostile to the well-being of others but rather brings out the onto-logical underpinning of all specific ontic relations to onersquos fellowhuman beings whether they be caring or aggressive

Heidegger sees no conflict between his claim that Daseinrsquos Beingis Being-with and his earlier characterization of Daseinrsquos Being asin each case mine rather the former constitutes a further specifica-tion of the latter That notion of lsquominenessrsquo encapsulates two mainpoints first that the Being of Dasein is an issue for it (that everychoice it makes about which existentiell possibilities to realize is achoice about the form that its own life will take) and second thateach Dasein is an individual a being to whom personal pronounscan be applied and to whom at least the possibility of genuine orauthentic individuality belongs To go on to claim that the Being ofsuch a being is Being-with does not negate that prior attribution ofmineness for to say that the world is a social world is simply to saythat it is a world Dasein encounters as lsquoourrsquo world and such a worldis no less mine because it is also yours Our world is both mine andyours intersubjectivity is not the denial of subjectivity but its furtherspecification And this further specification deepens our under-standing of the condition under which each Dasein must develop (orfail to develop) its mineness or individuality For if Daseinrsquos Beingis Being-with an essential facet of that which is an issue for Daseinis its relations to Others the idea is that at least in part Daseinestablishes and maintains its relation to itself in and through its relations with Others and vice versa The two issues are ontologi-cally inseparable to determine the one is to determine the other

This understanding of the relationship between subjectivity andintersubjectivity determines Heideggerrsquos characterization of Daseinrsquosaverage everyday mode of existence For it entails that Daseinrsquoscapacity to lose or find itself as an individual always determines and is determined by the way in which Dasein understands andconducts its relations with Others And the average everyday formof that understanding focuses upon onersquos differences (in appearance

behaviour lifestyle and opinion) from those with whom one sharesthe world regarding them as the main determinant of onersquos ownsense of self Our usual sense of who we are Heidegger claims ispurely a function of our sense of how we differ from others Weunderstand those differences either as something to be eliminatedat all costs thus taking conformity as our aim or (perhaps less com-monly) as something that must at all costs be emphasized and devel-oped ndash a strategy which only appears to avoid conformity since ourgoal is then to distinguish ourselves from others rather than to dis-tinguish ourselves in some particular independently valuable wayand so amounts to allowing others to determine (by negation) theway we live The dictatorship of the Others and the consequent lossof authentic individuality in what Heidegger calls lsquoaverage every-day distantialityrsquo is therefore visible not just in those who aim toread see and judge literature and art as everyone reads sees andjudges but also in those whose aim is to adopt the very opposite ofthe common view Cultivating uncommon pleasures thoughts and reactions is no guarantee of existential individuality

Dasein as everyday Being-with-one-another stands in subjection toOthers It itself is not its Being has been taken away by the OthersDaseinrsquos everyday possibilities of Being are for the Others to disposeof as they please These Others moreover are not definite OthersOn the contrary any Other can represent them One belongs tothe Others oneself and enhances their power The Others whom onethus designates in order to cover up the fact of onersquos belonging to them essentially oneself are those who proximally and for themost part lsquoare therersquo in everyday Being-with-one-another The lsquowhorsquois not this one not that one not oneself not some people and notthe sum of them all The lsquowhorsquo is the neuter the lsquotheyrsquo

(BT 27 164)

In other words this absence of individuality is not restricted to somedefinable segment of the human community on the contrary sinceit defines how human beings typically relate to their fellows it must apply to most if not all of those Others to whom any givenDasein subjects itself They cannot be any less vulnerable to the

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

temptations of distantiality and so cannot be regarded as havingsomehow avoided subjection to those who stand as Others to themlsquoThe Othersrsquo thus cannot be thought of as a group of genuinelyindividual human beings whose shared tastes dictate the tastes ofeveryone else and neither do they constitute an intersubjective orsupra-individual being a sort of communal self The lsquotheyrsquo is neithera collection of definite Others nor a single definite Other it is not a being or set of beings to whom genuine mineness belongsbut a free-floating impersonal construct a sort of consensual hallu-cination to which each of us gives up the capacity for genuineself-relation and the leading of an authentically individual lifeConsequently if a given Daseinrsquos thoughts and deeds are (deter-mined by) what they think and do its answerability for its life has been not so much displaced (on to others) as misplaced It hasvanished projected on to an everyone that is no one by someonewho is without it also no one and leaving in its wake a compre-hensively neutered world As Heidegger puts it lsquoeveryone is theother and no one is himself The ldquotheyrdquo which supplies the answerto the question of the ldquowhordquo of everyday Dasein is the ldquonobodyrdquoto whom every Dasein has already surrendered itself in Being-among-one-anotherrsquo (BT 27 165ndash6)

In short the average everyday mode of Dasein is inauthentic Itsmineness takes the form of the lsquotheyrsquo its Self is a they-self ndash amode of relating to itself and to Others in which it and they fail tofind themselves and so fail to achieve genuine individuality Andthis cultural critique also accounts for the prevalence of ontologicalmisunderstandings in the philosophical tradition For Heideggerneeds to explain how a creature to whom (according to his ownanalysis) an understanding of Being essentially belongs can havemisunderstood its own Being so systematically But of course ifDasein typically loses itself in the lsquotheyrsquo it will understand both itsworld and itself in the terms that lsquotheyrsquo make available to it andso will interpret its own nature in terms of the categories that lieclosest to hand in popular culture and everyday life and they willbe as inauthentic as their creators They will embody the sameimpulses towards levelling down the avoidance of the unusual orthe difficult the acceptance of prevailing opinion and so on And

since philosophical enquiry will typically be the work of those same inauthentic individuals the philosophical tradition will containsimilarly inauthentic ontological categories that are unhesitatinglyaccepted by its present representatives Any attempt to retrieve anauthentic ontological understanding will accordingly appear tosubvert obvious and self-evident truths to overturn common senseand violate ordinary language

Two words of warning are in order about this notion of in-authenticity First such an inauthentic state is not somehow ontologically awry as if Dasein were less real as an entity less itselfwhen its Self is the they-self On the contrary any Being capableof finding itself must also be capable of losing itself Second authen-ticity does not require severing all ties with Others as if genuineindividuality presupposed isolation or even solipsism Heideggerrsquosview is rather that Daseinrsquos Being is Being-with in other wordsjust as with Daseinrsquos worldliness its inherently social forms of exist-ence are not a limitation upon it but a limit ndash a further conditionof the human way of being So authentic Being-oneself could notinvolve detachment from Others it must rather require a differentform of relationship with them ndash a distinctive form of Being-with

Unfortunately Heideggerrsquos way of stating this last point raisesmore questions than it answers For he says that lsquoauthentic Being-oneself is an existentiell modification of the ldquotheyrdquo ndash of theldquotheyrdquo as an essential existentialersquo (BT 27 168) If the they-self isan essential existentiale of Dasein it is not just a particular exis-tentiell possibility that Dasein commonly tends to actualize butrather a lsquoprimordial phenomenon [which] belongs to Daseinrsquos posi-tive constitutionrsquo (BT 27 167) part of its ontological structure Butsince submission to the they-self is an inherently inauthentic modeof Daseinrsquos Being Heidegger seems to be claiming that DaseinrsquosBeing is somehow inherently inauthentic In other words whereaspreviously he has claimed that Dasein is ontologically capable ofliving either authentically or inauthentically and that which itachieves depends upon where when and how it makes its existentiellchoices now he wants to claim that Daseinrsquos very nature mires itin an inauthenticity of which such authenticity as it may sometimesachieve is merely an existentiell modification

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

It is hard to see what sense might be attached to the idea thatauthenticity is an existentiell mode of an ontologically inauthenticbeing how can Dasein be both authentic and inauthentic at once ndashauthentically inauthentic More generally Heideggerrsquos claim lookslike a simple confusion of his own categories a blurring of the verydistinction between ontic and ontological levels of analysis to whichhe constantly makes reference and his analysis in this chapterprovides no support for the conclusion he wants to draw For itsfocus is Daseinrsquos average everydayness which is an existentiell state and so can reveal only that the Self of everyday Dasein is thethey-self If this licenses any ontological conclusion ndash a conclusionconcerning structures of Daseinrsquos Being regardless of its particularontic state ndash it is that Daseinrsquos Being is always Being-with Itcertainly does not license the conclusion that that Being-with musttake the inauthentic form of submission to the lsquotheyrsquo

Can Heideggerrsquos seeming waywardness here be justified or atleast accounted for Two passages provide a clue the first from thebeginning of section 27

We have shown earlier how in the environment which lies closest tous the lsquopublicrsquo environment already is ready-to-hand and is also amatter of concern In utilizing means of transport and in making useof information services such as the newspaper every Other is likethe next This Being-with-one-another dissolves onersquos own Daseincompletely into the kind of Being of lsquothe Othersrsquo in such a wayindeed that the Others as distinguishable and explicit vanish moreand more

(BT 27 164)

In one sense this passage gets us no further forward since the phenomena it picks out (prevailing arrangements for transport andnewspapers) are features of Daseinrsquos world that one can easilyimagine being altered more or less radically there seem to be noontological implications here On the other hand it plainly links theidea of one Dasein being just like the next with that of the environ-ment that lies closest to it which is of course the work-world ndash asif for Heidegger there is something inherently public or impersonal

about that world something that no more acknowledges the indi-viduality of those who inhabit it than a public transportation systemacknowledges the individuality of each of its lsquocustomersrsquo or a news-paper that of each of its readers What might this something be

The second passage appears a little earlier

[W]hen material is put to use we encounter its producer or lsquosupplierrsquoas one who lsquoservesrsquo well or badly When for example we walk alongthe edge of a field but lsquooutside itrsquo the field shows itself as belongingto such-and-such a person and decently kept up by him The bookwe have used was bought at so-and-sorsquos shop The boat anchoredat the shore is assigned in its being-in-itself to an acquaintance thatundertakes voyages with it but even if it is a lsquoboat which is strangeto usrsquo it is still indicative of Others

(BT 26 153ndash4)

At first this passage seems only to emphasize the multitude of waysin which Daseinrsquos world reveals the presence of Others but readingit with our problem in mind what might strike us instead is justhow those Others appear to Dasein They appear as producers sup-pliers field-owners and farmers booksellers and sailors ndash in shortas bearers of social roles and they are judged in terms of how wellor badly they carry out their roles Their identity is thus given pri-marily by their occupation by the tasks or functions they performwho they are to us is a matter of what they do and how they do itBut these are defined purely impersonally by reference to what therelevant task or office requires given the necessary competencewhich individual occupies that office is as irrelevant as are any idiosyncrasies of character and talent that have no bearing on thetask at hand In so far then as Others appear in our shared worldprimarily as functionaries they appear not as individuals but asessentially interchangeable occupants of impersonally defined rolesSince our appearance to them must take a precisely analogous formwe must understand ourselves to be in exactly the same position

We can see why this is an ontological rather than an ontic matterif we recall Heideggerrsquos earlier analysis of the worldhood of theworld It constitutes a widely ramifying web of socially defined

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

concepts roles functions and functional interrelations within whichalone it was possible for human beings to encounter objectsHeideggerrsquos analysis of Daseinrsquos Being as Being-with simply under-lines the fact that human beings no less than objects are part ofthat same web after all their Being is Being-in-the-world Sincethe environment closest to them is the work-world the identityclosest to them is their identity as workers as people performingsocially defined and culturally inherited tasks whose nature is givenprior to and independently of their own individuality and whichtypically will not be significantly marked by their temporary inhab-itation of them Just as the objects with which we deal must be understood primarily in relation to purposes and possibilities-of-Being embedded in cultural practices so we must understandourselves primarily as practitioners ndash as followers of the normsdefinitive of proper practice in any given field of endeavour AndHeideggerrsquos point is that such norms ndash and so such practices ndash arenecessarily interpersonal and so in an important sense impersonalIt must be possible for others to occupy exactly the same role toengage in exactly the same practice apart from anything else societyand culture could not otherwise be reproduced across generationsBut more importantly a practice that only one person could engagein simply could not count as a practice at all Such a thing wouldbe possible only if it were possible for someone to follow a rule thatno one else could follow ndash to follow a rule privately ndash and asWittgenstein has argued that is a contradiction in terms2

For Heidegger then since Daseinrsquos Being is Being-in-the-worldit will always necessarily begin from a position in which it mustrelate to itself as the occupant of a role in a practice and so mustbegin by understanding itself in the essentially impersonal termsthat such a role provides ndash terms which have no essential connec-tion with its identity as an individual but rather define a functionor set of functions that anyone might perform Such roles do notas it were pick out a particular person even if they do require partic-ular skills or aptitudes they specify not what you or I must do inorder to occupy them but rather what one must do ndash what must bedone The role-occupant thus specified is an idealization or constructan abstract or average human being rather than anyone in particular

it is in other words a species of the they-self In this sense and thissense alone is the lsquotheyrsquo an essential existentiale of Dasein

But of course just because such roles are defined in entirelyimpersonal terms the individual who occupies them need not alwaysrelate to them purely impersonally A social role can be a vitalelement in an individualrsquos self-understanding (as a vocation forexample) but although the role can be appropriated authenticallyin such ways its essential nature does not ensure or even encouragesuch appropriations Heidegger does not deny the possibility ofauthentic existence to beings who must begin from such a self-understanding He simply claims that the position from which theymust begin necessarily involves a self-interpretation from whichthey must break away if they are to achieve authentic existenceand that any such authentically individual existence since it mustbe lived in the world must be a modification rather than a tran-scendence of the role-centred nature of any such life Authenticityis a matter of the way in which one relates to onersquos roles not arejection of any and all roles In short Dasein is never necessarilylost to itself but it must always begin by finding itself authenticityis always an achievement

The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self which we distinguish fromthe authentic Self ndash that is from the Self which has been taken holdof in its own way As they-self the particular Dasein has been dispersedinto the lsquotheyrsquo and must first find itself If Dasein discovers theworld in its own way and brings it close if it discloses to itself itsown authentic Being then this discovery of the lsquoworldrsquo and this disclo-sure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away ofconcealments and obscurities as a breaking up of the disguises withwhich Dasein bars its own way

(BT 27 167)

PASSIONS AND PROJECTS (sectsect28ndash32)

After examining the notion of lsquoworldrsquo and the species of selfhoodDasein typically exhibits Heidegger turns to the notion of lsquoBeing-inrsquo ndash the third and final element in the structural totality of Being-in-the-world His aim is to deepen his earlier introductory remarks

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

about this third notion going beyond their primarily anti-Cartesiananimus towards a more positive ontological analysis that draws uponhis accounts of worldhood and selfhood For of course each elementin Daseinrsquos ontological structure is only relatively autonomousanalytical clarity is furthered by examining each with some degreeof independence but analytical accuracy demands that we recognizethat they are internally related ndash the significance of each ultimatelyinseparable from that of the ontological whole they make up Withrespect to lsquoBeing-inrsquo that means recognizing that the way in whichDasein inhabits its world reflects and determines the nature of theworld thus inhabited and in particular that it is a world in whichDasein dwells together with others just like itself ndash a social world

The more particular focus of this new investigation of lsquoBeing-inrsquohowever involves the fact that Daseinrsquos relation to its world itsbeing-there or there-being is a comprehending one Heideggerunderlines this in a potentially misleading but nonetheless illumi-nating way by claiming that in so far as we think of our commercewith the world as a relation between subject and objects then Daseinis the Being of this lsquobetweenrsquo In other words he recognizes thatDasein is not trapped within a mind or body from which it thenattempts to reach out to objects but is rather always already outsideitself dwelling amid objects in all their variety Daseinrsquos thoughtsfeelings and actions have entities themselves (not mental represen-tations of them) as their objects and those entities can appear notmerely as environmental obstacles or as objects of desire and aver-sion but in the full specificity of their nature their mode of existence(eg as handy unready-to-hand occurrent and so on) and theirreality as existent things This capacity to encounter entities as enti-ties is what Heidegger invokes when he talks of Dasein as the clear-ing the being to whom and for whom entities appear as they are

Only for an entity which is existentially cleared in this way does thatwhich is present-at-hand become accessible in the light or hidden inthe dark By its very nature Dasein brings its lsquotherersquo along with it Ifit lacks its lsquotherersquo it is not factically the entity which is essentiallyDasein indeed it is not this entity at all Dasein is its disclosedness

(BT 28 171)

In this section we shall examine Heideggerrsquos claim that the exis-tential constitution of Daseinrsquos Being-in has two elements ndash state-of-mind and understanding ndash both of which constitute limits orconditions of distinctively human existence

What Heidegger labels lsquoBefindlichkeitrsquo is an essentially passive ornecessitarian aspect of Daseinrsquos disclosure of itself and its worldThe standard translation of lsquoBefindlichkeitrsquo as lsquostate-of-mindrsquo is seriously misleading since the latter term has a technical signifi-cance in the philosophy of mind which fails to match the range ofreference of the German term Virtually any response to the ques-tion lsquoHow are yoursquo or lsquoHowrsquos it goingrsquo could be denoted bylsquoBefindlichkeitrsquo but not lsquostate-of-mindrsquo The latter also implies thatthe relevant phenomena are purely subjective states thus repressingHeideggerrsquos emphasis upon Dasein as Being-in-the-world lsquoFrameof mindrsquo is less inaccurate but still retains some connotation of themental as an inner realm Consequently it seems best to interpretlsquoBefindlichkeitrsquo as referring to Daseinrsquos capacity to be affected bythe world to find that the entities and situations it faces matter toit and in ways over which it has less than complete control

The most familiar existentiell manifestation of this existentialeis the phenomenon of mood Depression boredom and cheerfulnessjoy and fear are affective inflections of Daseinrsquos temperament thatare typically experienced as lsquogivenrsquo as states into which one hasbeen thrown ndash something underlined in the etymology of ourlanguage in this region We talk for example of moods and emotionsas lsquopassionsrsquo as something passive rather than active somethingthat we suffer rather than something we inflict ndash where lsquosufferingrsquosignifies not pain but submission as it does when we talk of ChristrsquosPassion or of His suffering little children to come unto Him Moregenerally our affections do not just affect others but mark ourhaving been affected by others we cannot for example love andhate where and when we will but rather think of our affections ascaptured by their objects or as making us vulnerable to others opento suffering

For human beings such affections are unavoidable and theirimpact pervasive They constitute a further and fundamental condi-tion of human existence We can of course sometimes overcome

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

or alter our prevailing mood but only if that mood allows and only by establishing ourselves in a new one (tranquillity and deter-mination are no less moods than depression or ecstasy) and oncein their grip moods can colour every aspect of our existence In sodoing of course they determine our grasp upon the world theyinflect Daseinrsquos relation to the objects and possibilities among whichit finds itself ndash one and all being grasped in relation to the actual-ized possibility-of-Being that Dasein is In this sense moods aredisclosive a particular mood discloses something (sometimes every-thing) in the world as mattering to Dasein in a particular way ndash asfearful boring cheering or hateful and this reveals in turn thatontologically speaking Dasein is open to the world as somethingthat can affect it

It is however easier to accept the idea that moods disclose some-thing about Dasein than that they reveal something about the worldSince human beings undergo moods the claim that someone is boredor fearful might be said to record a simple fact about her But hermood does not ndash it might be thought ndash pick out a simple fact aboutthe world (namely that it is or some things within it are boringor fearsome) for moods do not register objective features of realitybut rather subjective responses to a world that is in itself essentiallydevoid of significance In short there can be no such thing as anepistemology of moods Heidegger however wholeheartedly rejectsany such conclusion Since moods are an aspect of Daseinrsquos exist-ence they must be an aspect of Being-in-the-world ndash and so mustbe as revelatory of the world and of Being-in as they are of DaseinAs he puts it

A mood is not related to the psychical and is not itself an innercondition which then reaches forth in an enigmatical way and putsits mark on things and persons It comes neither from lsquooutsidersquonor from lsquoinsidersquo but arises out of Being-in-the-world as a way ofsuch being

(BT 29 176)

Heidegger reinforces this claim with a more detailed analysis of fearIts basic structure has three elements that in the face of which we

fear fearing itself and that about which we fear That in the faceof which we fear is the fearful or the fearsome ndash something in theworld which we encounter as detrimental to our well-being or safetyfearing itself is our response to that which is fearsome and thatabout which we fear is of course our well-being or safety ndash in shortourselves Thus fear has both a subjective and an objective face Onthe one hand it is a human response and one that has the exist-ence of the person who fears as its main concern This is becauseDaseinrsquos Being is an issue for it the disclosive self-attunement that such moods exemplify confirms Heideggerrsquos earlier claim thatDaseinrsquos capacity to encounter objects as ready-to-hand involvesgrasping them in relation to its own possibilities-for-Being On theother hand however Daseinrsquos Being is put at issue here by some-thing in the world that is genuinely fearsome that poses a threatto the person who fears This reveals not only that the world Daseininhabits can affect it in the most fundamental ways that Dasein isopen and vulnerable to the world but also that things in the worldare really capable of affecting Dasein The threat posed by a rabiddog the sort of threat to which Daseinrsquos capacity to respond tothings as fearful is attuned is not illusory

This argument against what might be called a projectivist accountof moods is reminiscent of one developed by John McDowell3 Inessence the projectivist is struck by the fact that when we charac-terize something as boring or fearful we do so on the basis of acertain response to it and she concludes that such attributions aresimply projections of those responses But in so doing she over-looks the fact that those responses are to things and situations inthe world and any adequate explanation of their essential naturemust take account of that So for example any adequate accountof the fearfulness of certain objects must invoke certain subjectivestates certain facts about human beings and their responses It mustalso however invoke the object of fear ndash some feature of it thatprompts our fear-response in the case of a rabid dog for examplethe dangerous properties of its saliva Now of course that saliva isdangerous only because it interacts in certain ways with humanphysiology so invoking the human subject is again essential inspelling out what it is about the dog that makes it fearful but that

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

does not make its fearfulness any less real ndash as we would confirmif it bit us

The point is that there are two senses in which something mightbe called subjective it might mean lsquoillusoryrsquo (in contrast withveridical) or lsquonot comprehensible except by making reference tosubjective states properties or responsesrsquo (in contrast with phenom-ena whose explanation requires no such reference) Primary qualitieslike length are not subjective in either sense hallucinations aresubjective in both senses and fearfulness (like secondary qualitiesand moral qualities in McDowellrsquos view) is subjective only in thesecond sense In other words whether something is really fearfulis in an important sense an objective question ndash the fact that wecan find some things fearful when they do not merit that response(eg house spiders) shows this and in so far as our capacity to fearthings permits us to discriminate the genuinely fearful from thenon-fearful then that affective response reveals something aboutthe world

Moreover the relation of moods to those undergoing them ndash whatwe have been calling the subjective side of the question of moodsndash is not to be understood in an unduly subjective way For Heideggersince Daseinrsquos Being is Being-with its individual states not onlyaffect but are affected by its relations to Others This has two veryimportant consequences First it implies that moods can be sociala given Daseinrsquos membership of a group might for example leadto her being thrown into the mood that grips that group findingherself immersed in its melancholy or hysteria This point is rein-forced by the fact that Daseinrsquos everyday mode of selfhood is the they-self lsquoPublicness as the kind of Being that belongs to theldquotheyrdquo not only has in general its own way of having a mood butneeds moods and ldquomakesrdquo them for itselfrsquo (BT 29 178) A politi-cian determining judicial policy on the back of a wave of moral panicis precisely responding to the public mood

The socialness of moods also implies that an individualrsquos socialworld fixes the range of moods into which she can be thrown Ofcourse ontically speaking an individual is capable of transcendingor resisting the dominant social mood ndash her own mood need notmerely reflect that of the public but even if it does not the range

of possible moods open to her is itself socially determined This isbecause Daseinrsquos moods arise out of Being-in-the-world and thatworld is underpinned by a set of socially defined roles categoriesand concepts but it means that the underlying structure even of Daseinrsquos seemingly most intimate and personal feelings andresponses is socially conditioned

This Heideggerian idea underpins Charles Taylorrsquos notion ofhuman beings as self-interpreting animals4 Taylor follows Heideg-gerrsquos tripartite analysis of moods arguing that an emotion such as shame is related in its essence to a certain sort of situation (alsquoshamefulrsquo or lsquohumiliatingrsquo one) and to a particular self-protectiveresponse to it (eg hiding or covering up) Such feelings thus cannoteven be identified independently of the type of situations that giverise to them and so can be evaluated on any particular occasion interms of their appropriateness to their context But the significanceof the term we employ to characterize the feeling and its appro-priate context is partly determined by the wider field of terms forsuch emotions and situations of which it forms a part each suchterm derives its meaning from the contrasts that exist between itand other terms in that semantic field For example describing a situation as lsquofearfulrsquo will mean something different according towhether or not the available contrasts include such terms as lsquoterri-fyingrsquo lsquoworryingrsquo lsquodisconcertingrsquo lsquothreateningrsquo lsquodisgustingrsquo Thewider the field the finer the discriminations that can be made bythe choice of one term as opposed to another and the more specificthe significance of each term Thus the significance of the situa-tions in which an individual finds herself and the import and natureof her emotions is determined by the range and structure of thevocabulary available to her for their characterization She cannotfeel shame if she lacks a vocabulary in which the circle of situationfeeling and goal characteristic of shame is available and the precisesignificance of that feeling will alter according to the semantic fieldin which that vocabulary is embedded

It is not that the relationship between feeling and available vocab-ulary is a simple one In particular thinking or saying does notmake it so not any definition of our feelings can be forced uponus and some that we gladly take up are inauthentic or deluded But

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

neither do vocabularies simply match or fail to match a pre-existingarray of feelings in the individual for we often experience howaccess to a more sophisticated vocabulary makes our emotional lifemore sophisticated And the term lsquovocabularyrsquo here is misleadingit denotes not just an array of signs but also the complex of conceptsand practices within which alone those signs have meaning Whenone claims that for example no one in early twenty-first-centuryBritain can experience the pride of a Samurai warrior because therelevant vocabulary is unavailable lsquovocabularyrsquo refers not just to aset of Japanese terms but to their role in a complex web of customsassumptions and institutions And because our affective life is condi-tioned by the culture in which we find ourself our being immersedin a particular mood or feeling is revelatory of something about ourworld ndash is cognitively significant ndash in a further way For then our feeling horrified for example not only registers the presenceof something horrifying in our environment it also shows that ourworld is one in which the specific complex of feeling situation andresponse that constitutes horror has a place ndash a world in whichhorror has a place

This is why Taylor and Heidegger claim that the relationshipbetween a personrsquos inner life and the vocabulary available to her isan intimate one And since that vocabulary is itself something theindividual inherits from the society and culture within which shehappens to find herself the range of specific feelings or moods intowhich she may be thrown is itself something into which she isthrown How things might conceivably matter to her just as muchas how they in fact matter to her at a given moment is somethingdetermined by her society and culture rather than by her ownpsychic make-up or will-power It is this double sense of thrownnessthat is invoked when Heidegger says lsquoExistentially a state-of-mindimplies a disclosive submission to the world out of which we canencounter something that matters to usrsquo (BT 29 177)

If states-of-mind reveal Dasein as thrown Being-in-the-worldunderstanding reveals it as carrying forward that momentum it corresponds to the active side of Daseinrsquos confrontation with itsown existentiell possibilities For if Daseinrsquos Being is an issue forit then each moment of its existence it must actualize one of the

possibilities which its situation makes available to it or fail to do soand thereby fall into one of those possibilities (including of coursethe possibility of remaining in the state in which it finds itself) Inother words Dasein must project itself on to one or other existen-tiell possibility and this projection is the core of what Heideggermeans by lsquounderstandingrsquo But any such projection both presupposesand constitutes a comprehending grasp of the world within whichthe projection must take place It involves grasping the possibilitiesfor practical action which that specific situation allows and sograsping the world in relation to Daseinrsquos own possibilities-for-BeingJust as with states-of-mind then understanding is a matter ofcomprehending the world as a context of assignments or referencesa totality in which any given object relates to other objects and ultimately to a possibility of Daseinrsquos Being

In the way in which its Being is projected both upon the lsquofor-the-sake-of-whichrsquo and upon significance (the world) there lies thedisclosedness of Being in general Understanding of Being has alreadybeen taken for granted in projecting upon possibilities thoughnot ontologically conceived

(BT 31 187)

It is easier to accept that projective understanding has a genuinelycognitive dimension than that moods possess an epistemology but that makes it all the more important to understand the natureof the knowledge involved As we saw when we analysed readiness-to-hand this knowledge is essentially practical a matter of know-how rather than knowing that understanding is a matter of beingcompetent to do certain things to engage in certain practices Andthis practical competence is essentially related to certain existentiellpossibilities How I relate to the objects around me is determinedby the task for the sake of which I am acting (eg making a chair)but I perform that task for the sake of some more general existen-tiell possibility (eg being a conscientious carpenter) that serves todefine who I am In this way the more general for-the-sake-of-which directs and constrains the more local My self-understandingshapes the way in which I carry out ndash project myself upon ndash the

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

more localized tasks with which I am confronted More preciselyprojecting myself in a particular way upon the latter just is to projectmyself in a particular way upon the former But then living as acarpenter means continually projecting oneself in a certain way Oneis at present a carpenter because one projected oneself on to thatpossibility in the past and in the absence of such continued projec-tion the present substance of onersquos existence as a carpenter woulddissolve And that in turn implies that Daseinrsquos true existentialmedium is not actuality but possibility

[A]ny Dasein has as Dasein already projected itself and as long asit is it is projecting As long as it is Dasein always has understooditself and always will understand itself in terms of possibilities As projecting understanding is the kind of Being of Dasein in whichit is its possibilities as possibilities

(BT 31 185)

Here the question of authenticity re-emerges For in choosing toactualize one existentiell possibility rather than another Dasein caneither project itself upon a mode of existence through which its indi-viduality can find proper expression (through which it can lsquobecomewhat it isrsquo) or entirely fail to do so (lsquofail to find itselfrsquo perhaps by allowing the they-self to determine its choices perhaps by[mis]understanding itself in terms of the categories appropriate toentities within its world ndash so that it loses its sense that finding itselfis even a possibility) In short projective understanding can be eitherauthentic or inauthentic although it is typically the latter but pro-jective inauthenticity is no less ontologically real than its authenticcounterpart Losing oneself or failing to find oneself are no lessmodes of Daseinrsquos selfhood than finding oneself if Daseinrsquos Beingis Being-in-the-world then its understanding itself in terms of thatworld cannot amount to losing touch with itself ontologically

The human capacity for projection is not of course entirely unan-chored or free-floating A particular Dasein cannot project itself uponany given existential possibility at any given time First the contextmight actually make it very difficult or even impossible to live inthe way to which one has committed oneself the conscientious

carpenter may find herself working in a factory which entirelyignores the conceptions of good work by which she wishes to liveSecond someone who wishes to take on a certain social role maylack the necessary talents or never be offered the necessary educa-tional opportunities or find herself in a state-of-mind in which apresented opportunity no longer possesses the attractions it onceseemed to have And third the range of existential possibilitiesupon which someone can project is determined by their social con-text I could no more understand myself as a carpenter in a culturethat lacked any conception of working with wood than I can under-stand myself as a Samurai warrior in early twenty-first-centuryEurope

This shows that understanding always has only a relativeautonomy our projective capacities are as conditioned as our affec-tive states The freedom to actualize a given existential possibilityis real but it is not absolute since what counts as a real possibilityis and must be shaped by the concrete situation and the culturalbackground (and their respective prevailing moods) within whichthe decision is taken and these factors are largely beyond the controlof the individual concerned As Heidegger puts it

In every case Dasein as essentially having a state-of-mind has alreadygot itself into definite possibilities As the potentiality-for-Being whichit is it has let such possibilities pass by it is constantly waiving thepossibilities of its Being or else it seizes upon them and makesmistakes But this means that Dasein is Being-possible which hasbeen delivered over to itself ndash thrown possibility through and through

(BT 31 183)

Dasein always faces definite possibilities because it is always situ-ated (in the world) No situation reduces the available possibilitiesto one but unless a situation excluded many possibilities altogetherit would not be a situation (a particular position in existential space)at all Just as thrownness is always projective (disclosing the worldas a space of possibilities that matter to us in specific ways) soprojection is always thrown (to be exercised in a field of possibili-ties whose structure it did not itself project) These are in fact two

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

analytically separable faces of a single ontological structure Daseinis thrown projection and as such is subject to limits that must notbe understood as limitations because one cannot conceive of anymode of human existence that lacked them

If however we further explore the ontological underpinnings ofunderstanding we will see that it does not just essentially relateDasein to the realm of possibility it too has such a relation ndash ourcapacity for projective understanding itself possesses certain possi-bilities of self-development and self-realization And when they areactualized those possibilities provide an important mode of accessto the precise ontological structure of the capacity and so to thatof the being whose capacity it is

Sometimes the smooth course of our everyday activities isdisrupted ndash when for example we are forced to stop in order torepair a broken tool or to adapt an object for a given task or evenwhen a sudden access of curiosity leads us to contemplate an itemin our work-world In so doing we engage in what Heidegger char-acterizes as lsquointerpretationrsquo and the structures of our everydaycomprehending engagement with these objects thereby become ourexplicit concern Such interpretation is not something superimposedupon our practical comprehension but is rather a development ofit ndash the coming to fruition of a possibility that is inherent in projec-tive understanding but which is not necessary for its usual morecircumspect functioning In interpretation we might say the under-standing appropriates itself understandingly taking a practicalinterest in how it guides practical activity And what then comesexplicitly into sight is the following

All preparing putting-to-rights repairing improving rounding-outare accomplished in the following way we take apart in its lsquoin-order-torsquo that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand and we concernourselves with it in accordance with what becomes visible throughthis process That which has been circumspectively taken apart withregard to its lsquoin-order-torsquo and taken apart as such ndash that which isexplicitly understood ndash has the structure of something as something

(BT 32 189)

This connection between seeing something as something and projec-tive understanding is obvious in retrospect for the types of categorylsquoas whichrsquo we see things (as doors hammers pens) are of coursespecifications of the ways in which they can be woven into Daseinrsquospractical activities Seeing-as is simply the fundamental structure of the totality of reference- or assignment-relations that make upthe world But it also specifies how objects in the world make themselves intelligible to Dasein it elucidates their fundamentalsignificance or meaningfulness In other words Daseinrsquos projectiveunderstanding and the intelligibility of ready-to-hand objects arerelated in just the way the concept of seeing-as is bound up withthat of being-seen they are two aspects of the same thing Thefoundation or ground of Being-in-the-world is thus a unified frame-work or field of meaning with a very specific nature

Once again Heidegger is rejecting any interpretation of the worldas essentially meaningless and of our relation to it as a matter ofprojecting subjective values or meanings upon it To the Cartesianmodel of a present-at-hand subject juxtaposed with a present-at-hand object he opposes his conception of Dasein as essentiallyworldly or environed and of meaning as belonging to the articu-lated unity of Being-in-the-world

In interpreting we do not so to speak throw a lsquosignificationrsquo oversome naked thing which is present-at-hand we do not stick a valueon it but when something within-the-world is encountered as suchthe thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosedin our understanding of the world and this involvement is some-thing which gets laid out by the interpretation

(BT 32 190ndash1)

And what the interpretation lays out is the fact that it is alwaysalready grounded in a particular conceptualization of the object ofour interests We conceive of it in some particular way or other(our fore-conception) a way which is itself grounded in a broaderperception of the particular domain within which we encounter it(our fore-sight) which is in turn ultimately embedded in a partic-ular totality of involvements (our fore-having) The example of the

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

broken tool illustrates the idea When we stop to repair a hammerour grasp of it as needing a particular modification emerges fromour broader grasp of the particular work environment to which itmust be restored which is itself grounded in our basic capacity to engage practically with the world of objects Similarly my inter-pretation of this passage in Being and Time presupposes myinterpretation of the book as a whole and that interpretation is inturn guided by my particular interests in philosophy and my concep-tion of what philosophy is and so is ultimately dependent upon myassimilation of that particular facet of modern Western culture

Whether or not this multiple embedding has three basic layersor aspects is unimportant What matters is that there can be nointerpretation (and so no understanding) that is free of precon-ceptions and that this is not a limitation to be rued but an essentialprecondition of any comprehending relation to the world The secondpart of this claim is what gives Heideggerrsquos position its bite for itopposes him not only to any interpreter who claims to have achievedor even to be aiming at a reading of a text that is entirely untaintedby preconceptions but also to any critic of an interpretation whotakes the mere fact that it depends upon a preconception to demon-strate its prejudiced or distorted nature If all interpretation neces-sarily involves preconceptions the relevant task of such a critic isnot simply to determine their presence in any particular case butto evaluate their fruitfulness or legitimacy On Heideggerrsquos accountsuch evaluations will themselves be based on preconceptions whichmust in turn be open to evaluation and so on but if this is takento demonstrate the existence of a vicious circle then understandinghas been misunderstood from the ground up

What is decisive is not to get out of the circle but to come into it in the right way This circle of understanding is not an orbit in which any random kind of knowledge may move it is the essentialfore-structure of Dasein itself In the circle is hidden a positivepossibility of the most primordial kind of knowing To be sure wegenuinely take hold of this possibility only when in our interpreta-tion we have understood that our first last and constant task isnever to allow our fore-having fore-sight and fore-conception to be

presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves

(BT 32 195)

No interpretation of an object could conceivably be free of precon-ceptions because without some preliminary orientation howeverprimitive it would be impossible to grasp the object at all we wouldhave no sense of what it was we were attempting to interpret Butthis does not mean that all interpretations are based on prejudicefor it is always possible to uncover whatever preconceptions we areusing and subject them to critical evaluation For example withrespect to this interpretation of Heidegger we might ask how it isanchored in identifiable features of the text whether a particularunderstanding of what philosophy is ndash an understanding which mayperhaps lead us to reject Heideggerrsquos work as philosophy ndash shouldnot in fact be put in question by that work and so on The pointis that we can and do distinguish between good and bad interpre-tations and between better and worse preconceptions We can onlydo so by allowing text interpretation and preconception to ques-tion and be questioned by one another but that essentially circularprocess can be virtuous as well as vicious In short there is a differ-ence between preconceptions and prejudices and we can tell thedifference

This is not just a point about interpretations of texts ndash of literarycriticism Bible studies history and the like For Heidegger it alsoapplies to every sphere of human knowledge the natural sciencesand mathematics included as aspects of Daseinrsquos comprehendingrelation to the world they must presuppose the fore-structure ofunderstanding which is simply more evident in the human sciencesEven mathematicians can approach their business only if they havesome preliminary conception of what that business is ndash how it is tobe conducted what its standards of achievement are which of itstechnical resources are legitimate and so on Mathematicians maydraw upon a very different and less broad totality of involvementsthan do students of history but their efforts are no less based upona prior comprehending grasp of the world lsquoMathematics is not more

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

rigorous than historiology but only narrower because the existen-tial foundations relevant for it lie within a narrower rangersquo (BT 32195) In short in so far as interpretation lays bare the structures ofunderstanding it reveals something about every aspect of Daseinrsquosexistence in the world

1 See P Strawson Individuals (London Routledge and Kegan Paul1959)

2 See L Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (Oxford Blackwell1953) sections 185ndash243

3 See J McDowell lsquoValues and Secondary Qualitiesrsquo in T Honderich(ed) Morality and Objectivity Essays in Honour of J L Mackie (LondonRoutledge 1985)

4 See the works cited in the Introduction note 4

3LANGUAGE TRUTH

AND REALITY(Being and Time sectsect33ndash4 43ndash4)

So far Heideggerrsquos account of the human way of being has isolatedseveral of its defining limits or conditions ndash Daseinrsquos worldlinessits communality and its thrown projectiveness It has also sketchedin their interconnectedness ndash Daseinrsquos world being intersubjectivelystructured and determinative of the available range of individualpassions and projects However this picture of human conditioned-ness needs one further element an element that derives from anddetermines the communal structures of Daseinrsquos world ndash languageAnd Heideggerrsquos analysis of language generates a distinctive accountof the nature of truth and reality ndash one that overturns some of the pivotal assumptions of the post-Cartesian philosophical tradi-tion We will therefore break off from a purely linear treatment of Heideggerrsquos text and devote this chapter to the two separatesequences of sections in which he examines these complex andtightly intertwined matters

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LANGUAGE ASSERTIONS AND DISCOURSE(sectsect33ndash4)

The topic of language follows naturally on from Heideggerrsquos treat-ment of understanding and interpretation because the linguisticphenomenon of assertion is intimately connected with both Moreprecisely just as interpretation is grounded in understanding soassertion is grounded in interpretation it is a species of that genusbut an extreme or specialized example of it

Heidegger defines an assertion as lsquoa pointing-out which givessomething a definite character and which communicatesrsquo (BT 33199) Assertions therefore partake of the structures manifest inwordless interpretative activities such as repairing a tool Consider-ing how to modify a hammer so as to return it to use involves aninterpretative fore-structure that brings to light the fore-structureof our understanding of it in use Similarly if we describe our diffi-culty ndash by saying lsquoThe hammer is too heavyrsquo ndash we pick out an objectas having a certain character thereby articulating a specific fore-conception of it which is recognizably related to the fore-structureof our wordless attempts to modify it (our focus upon a particularfeature of the hammer) as well as the particular fore-sight and fore-having in which those efforts were embedded Our assertionthus has a structure of the same type as that which grounded ouroriginal practical interaction with the object and was appropriatedmore explicitly in our subsequent interpretation of it lsquoLike anyinterpretation whatever assertion necessarily has a fore-having a fore-sight and a fore-conception as its existential foundationsrsquo (BT 33 199)

By giving expression to our fore-conception of the object wemake it more broadly available after all assertions are usually madeto communicate something to others In this way assertoric speechacts reflect the fact that Daseinrsquos Being is Being-with But accordingto Heidegger assertion also narrows down the focus of our concerns

In giving something a definite character we must in the first instancetake a step back when confronted with that which is already mani-fest ndash the hammer that is too heavy In lsquosetting down the subjectrsquo

L A N G U A G E T R U T H A N D R E A L I T Y90

we dim entities down to focus on lsquothat hammer therersquo so that bythus dimming them down we may let that which is manifest be seenin its own definite character as a character that can be determined

(BT 33 197)

Making an assertion about an object restricts our openness to it injust the way that interpretation restricts our pre-interpretativeunderstanding When a tool needs repair our grasp of an object as ready-to-hand in an equipmental totality is narrowed down tothe object itself now understood as unready-to-hand And when weencapsulate some information about what makes it unready-to-handfor the benefit of others we further restrict our concern to a specificoccurrent property of an object now understood as present-at-handIn short such assertions are if not theoretical at least proto-theoretical they transform our relation to the object by severing itfrom its place in a work-world of practical concern and situating itsolely as a particular thing about which a particular predication canbe made As Heidegger puts it lsquoour fore-sight is aimed at some-thing present-at-hand in what is ready-to-handrsquo (BT 33 200) in asingle movement what is ready-to-hand is covered up and what ispresent-at-hand is discovered

Thus linguistic meaning (as manifest in assertion) is doublydistanced from meaning per se ndash the field of significance that groundsthe human understanding of the world Despite sharing the basicstructure of all understanding an assertionrsquos fore-conception of entities as present-at-hand subjects of predication reductively trans-forms the interpretative fore-conception of entities as unready-to-hand in some particular way which itself is a restriction of our pre-interpretative understanding of entities as part of a totality of involvements This gap is not of course unbridgeable After all just as what interpretation grasps is nothing less than the fore-structures of pre-interpretative understanding so what assertionsarticulate is what concerns us in our interpretations ndash that whichmakes the given tool unready-to-hand Assertions may tend todisclose entities as present-at-hand but it is a presence-at-handdiscovered lsquoinrsquo their readiness-to-hand Moreover assertions modifyrather than annihilate the significance-structure of interpretation ndash

L A N G U A G E T R U T H A N D R E A L I T Y 91

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

it dwindles or is simplified rather than being negated (cf BT 33200ndash1) Since making an assertion is a possible activity for Daseinit is a mode of Being-in-the-world and so grounded in the seeing-as structure that underpins the meaning of entities Even with thesequalifications however the meaning of assertions (narrow reduc-tive levelling decontextualizing) remains very different from themeaning that is articulated in the field of significance from whichit ultimately derives Accordingly employing our understanding of assertions as a model or blueprint for human understanding ofmeaning per se could only result in error

It is not by giving something a definite character [in an assertion]that we first discover that which shows itself ndash the hammer ndash as suchbut when we give it such a character our seeing gets restricted to it

(BT 33 197)

Why then does Heidegger link language to the existential con-stitution of Daseinrsquos disclosedness After stressing that the foundational fore-structure of assertion covers up the totality ofinvolvements and signification that underlies our understanding of the world he immediately introduces the term lsquoRedersquo (whichmeans lsquodiscoursersquo or better lsquotalkrsquo) as at once the existential-ontological foundation of language (including assertions) and theArticulation of intelligibility claiming that lsquothe intelligibility ofBeing-in-the-world expresses itself as discoursersquo (BT 34 204)Since assertion is reductive lsquodiscoursersquo must denote some other aspectof the existential-ontological foundations of assertoric (and of course non-assertoric) utterances something genuinely disclosive of entities in their Being But what might this be

When we assert that a hammer is too heavy this encourages aview of the hammer as an isolated present-at-hand entity becausethe subjectndashpredicate structure of the assertion detaches it from itsworldly environment laying stress only on the question of whetheror not it has a certain occurrent property Even so however inmaking that assertion we use a linguistic term to categorize it as a particular kind of thing (namely a hammer) to employ such acategorization then just is to see something as something ndash which

is of course the foundational structure of significance or meaningand so of practical understanding and interpretation In short theconcepts and categories utilized in asserting something ndash what onemight call the articulations of language ndash correspond to the articu-lations of the field of meaning And this correspondence is not justa happy chance rather the inexplicit articulations of our under-standing of the meaning of things which are first appropriatedexplicitly in interpretations find their most fitting fulfilment theirmost explicit (and so in a sense most comprehending) appropriationin recountings of the articulations that underlie language

Heideggerrsquos distinction between assertion and discourse mightthus be understood as a distinction between a type of speech act andthe conceptual framework upon which that speech act (along withevery other speech act) must draw and the latter can plausibly bethought of as the Articulation of the intelligibility of things Forfirst it is precisely a framework of meaning it articulates the senseof the terms employed in specific speech acts to do certain thingsand so functions as their enabling precondition One could not assertthat a hammer is heavy if the constituent terms of onersquos assertionhad no meaning only a grasp of that meaning allows one to pickout certain entities as hammers and to determine whether theymight correctly be described as heavy Whether or not that asser-tion is true is determined by certain facts about the entity concernedBut any investigation of the world intended to make that determi-nation must itself be guided by a grasp of what it is for somethingto count as a hammer and as heavy ndash and that does not itself derivefrom an investigation of the world (which would generate an infi-nite regress) but from a prior acquaintance with the conceptualframework of language Nonetheless since this framework articu-lates what it is for something to count as a specific type of entityit specifies the essential nature of things to know the criteriagoverning the use of the term lsquohammerrsquo just is to know what mustbe true of an entity if it is to count as a hammer to appreciate thecharacteristics without which it would not be what it is To graspthis framework is thus not just to grasp certain facts about our usesof words it is also to grasp the essence of things At this levellinguistic meaning and the meaning of entities are one and the same

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

thing the former discloses the latter and thereby articulates thebasis of Daseinrsquos capacity to disclose entities in their Being

None of this entails that language and discourse are identicalRather language ndash understood as a totality of words ndash is the worldlymanifestation of discourse the ready-to-hand (and sometimespresent-at-hand) form of the Articulation of intelligibility Discourseitself is not a worldly totality but an existentiale of Dasein as much a facet of Daseinrsquos disclosedness as are state-of-mind andunderstanding

Consequently the Being of discourse reflects these other facetsof Daseinrsquos Being Since Daseinrsquos Being is Being-with language is essentially oriented towards others it is a medium for commu-nication an essentially common inheritance from the culture orsociety in which a given Dasein finds itself thrown This reflects oneway in which discourse hangs together with state-of-mind anotherlies in the way language is a medium within which Dasein expressesitself giving utterance to its inner states or moods by the intona-tion modulation and tempo of its talk What reflects discoursersquosequiprimordiality with understanding is even more evident in thatlanguage allows us to communicate about things in the world tosay something about something In short discourse state-of-mindand understanding must be understood as three internally relatedaspects of Daseinrsquos existential constitution ndash the three fundamentalfacets of its disclosedness its Being-there

REALITY AND TRUTH (sectsect43ndash4)

Since Daseinrsquos capacity to disclose the Being of beings is the onto-logical underpinning of the human ability to grasp the true natureof reality Heideggerrsquos analysis of that capacity inevitably raisesquestions about reality and truth More precisely it raises the ques-tion of whether the concepts of reality and truth can be given ananalysis adequate to their nature and yet consistent with the natureof Dasein Heideggerrsquos answer depends importantly upon the aboveaccount of the human relation to language

In the modern Western philosophical tradition lsquorealityrsquo ndash under-stood as the realm of material objects deemed to exist lsquooutsidersquo and

independently of the human subject ndash appears as a problem theproblem is to demonstrate that reality is real that there is such aworld But for Heidegger the real problem here is not that we havehitherto failed to demonstrate this but that we persist in thinkingthat any such demonstration is needed lsquoThe ldquoscandal of philosophyrdquois not that this proof has yet to be given but that such proofs areexpected and attempted again and againrsquo (BT 43 249) For thisexpectation arises from a failure to comprehend properly the natureof Daseinrsquos relation to its world a failure that is itself based upona misinterpretation of the Being of Dasein and the Being of lsquotheworldrsquo

This misinterpretation is inevitably presupposed by any attempteven to state the problem of the external world Those formulatingit take for granted the existence of the human subject and askwhether any of our beliefs about a world existing beyond our presentmoment of consciousness can be justified But this presupposes thatthe human subject is such that the question of its own existencecan coherently be bracketed off from the question of the exist-ence of the world in which it dwells ndash and that conflicts with thefact that the Being of Dasein is Being-in-the-world If however wethink of persons not as essentially present-at-hand immaterialsubstances but as inherently worldly then it becomes impossible tostate the problem of reality coherently for the latter conceptionembodies precisely that transcendence of the lsquosphere of conscious-nessrsquo that is ineradicably problematic for the former The sameweakness emerges when the world whose existence is in questionis conceptualized as an array of present-at-hand entities If enti-ties can only appear as such within a world and if that world isfounded upon the totality of assignment-relations that make up the worldliness of Dasein then once again a proper ontological under-standing of the world removes the logical distance between subjectand world that is required to make their connectedness so much asquestionable

Heideggerrsquos critique here does not take the form of answeringthe sceptic On the contrary if his analysis is correct attempting to solve the Cartesian problem would be as fully misconceived asattempting to demonstrate its insolubility the sceptic is no more

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

deluded than the philosopher who aims to construct a refutation ofscepticism For a problem can be solved and a question answeredonly if problem and question can be stated coherently so to treata problem as requiring a solution to regard a question as worthyof an answer would amount to presupposing that they arise froman intelligible conception of their subject matter If then we respondto the sceptic by asserting that the world really does exist or thatwe can know of its existence with certainty or that our certaintyabout its existence is based upon faith we would be leaving unques-tioned the terms of the Cartesian problematic and would thusreinforce rather than reject the misconceptions of subject and worldthat they presuppose

We can see the point of this warning if we look a little moreclosely at the Cartesian conception of the relationship betweensubject and world For in formulating the lsquoproblem of realityrsquo asone of establishing whether we can know with certainty that theexternal world exists and then claiming that this cannot be estab-lished the sceptic presupposes that the lsquorelationrsquo between subjectand world is rightly characterized in cognitive terms as one ofknowing As Heidegger points out however lsquoknowing is a foundedmode of access to the Realrsquo (BT 43 246) and is therefore doublyinapplicable as a model for the ontological relation between subjectand world First because knowing is a possible mode of DaseinrsquosBeing which is Being-in-the-world knowing therefore must beunderstood in terms of and so cannot found Being-in-the-worldSecond because knowing is a relation in which Dasein can standtowards a given state of affairs not towards the world as suchDasein can know (or doubt) that a given chair is comfortable or thata particular lake is deep but it cannot know that the world existsAs Wittgenstein might have put it we are not of the opinion thatthere is a world this is not a hypothesis based on evidence thatmight turn out to be strong weak or non-existent1 Knowledgedoubt and faith are relations in which Dasein might stand towardsspecific phenomena in the world but the world is not a possibleobject of knowledge ndash because it is not an object at all not an entityor a set of entities It is that within which entities appear a field orhorizon ontologically grounded in a totality of assignment-relations

it is the condition for the possibility of any intra-worldly relationand so is not analysable in terms of any such relation What groundsthe Cartesian conception of subject and world and thereby opensthe door to scepticism is an interpretation of the world as a greatbig object or collection of objects a totality of possible objects ofknowledge rather than as that wherein all possible objects of know-ledge are encountered And for Heidegger such an interpretationconflates the ontic and the ontological assuming that a specific existentiell stance of the subject towards something encountered inthe world might stand proxy for the existentiale that makes all suchstances and encounters possible

As we shall see in Chapter 4 this is not Heideggerrsquos last wordon the philosophical significance of scepticism But even if werestrict ourselves for the moment to this aspect of his strategy itplainly presupposes the cogency of his analysis of Daseinrsquos Beingas Being-in-the-world and since that classifies the worldhood of theworld as an aspect of Daseinrsquos ontological structure it may seem tobe open to the charge of subjectivizing reality of quietly ceding its objectivity and independence while claiming to have preservedit from sceptical molestation For if the world is ontologicallygrounded in the Being of Dasein must it not follow that whenDasein does not exist neither does the world And what reality isleft to a world that is dependent for its own existence upon thecontinued existence of human creatures within it If such a worldis all that the Heideggerian analysis leaves us is there any realdifference between him and the sceptic

This worry fails to take seriously the distinction between ontic andontological levels of analysis in Heideggerrsquos work The significance ofthis omission is implicit in what he actually says about the matter

Of course only as long as Dasein is (that is only as long as an under-standing of Being is ontically possible) lsquois therersquo Being When Daseindoes not exist lsquoindependencersquo lsquoisrsquo not either nor lsquoisrsquo the lsquoin-itself rsquoIn such a case this sort of thing can be neither understood nor not understood In such a case even entities within-the-world can be neither uncovered nor lie hidden In such a case it cannot be saidthat entities are nor can it be said that they are not But now as

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

long as there is an understanding of Being and therefore an under-standing of presence-at-hand it can indeed be said that in this caseentities will still continue to be

(BT 43 245)

Note that Heidegger does not claim that lsquoentities exist only as longas Dasein existsrsquo he claims that lsquoonly as long as Dasein ldquoisrdquo ldquoisthererdquo Beingrsquo In other words he invokes what he sometimes callsthe ontological difference he distinguishes between entities and theBeing of entities between material things and their nature and actuality as things But of what help is such a distinction

Dasein encounters material things as phenomena that exist inde-pendently of its encounters with them Part of what we mean whenwe claim to see a table in the room is that we are seeing somethingthat was there before we entered the room and that will continue tobe there after we leave Part of what we mean by lsquothe real worldrsquo isa realm of objects that existed before the human species developedand which is perfectly capable of surviving our extinction In thissense to talk of objects just is to talk of real objects objects whichexist independently of human thought and action and we distin-guish such things from such subjective phenomena as illusions hal-lucinations and misleading appearances on the one hand and frommoods emotions and passions on the other ndash types of phenomenawhich are dependent for their existence upon aspects of the humanconstitution

Accordingly given what the term lsquoentityrsquo means (what Heideggerwould describe as its what-being) it is simply incoherent to assertthat entities exist only as long as Dasein exists ndash for that amountsto claiming that when Dasein is absent entities vanish or that thereality of a table in a room is dependent upon its being encounteredby a human creature But if Dasein were to vanish then what wouldvanish from the world would be the capacity to understand beingsin their Being the capacity to uncover entities as existing and asthe entities they are In those circumstances it could not be assertedeither that entities exist or that they do not ndash for then there couldnot be assertions about or any other comprehending grasp ofentities any encounter with them in their Being

We must distinguish between what can be said about entities-in-a-world-without-Dasein and what can be said in-a-world-without-Dasein about entities-in-a-world-without-Dasein Heidegger doesnot say it cannot be said of entities existing in a world withoutDasein that they exist (or that they do not exist) He says in aworld without Dasein it cannot be said of entities that they exist(or that they do not exist) In so far as anything can be said aboutentities existing in such circumstances (ie in so far as there existsa being capable of assertion) then the only correct thing to say isthat they will continue to exist as the entities they are but in thosecircumstances it would not be possible to state anything and so it could not be said either that entities continue to be or that theydo not

Heidegger underlines this distinction in the very way he formu-lates his position For when he claims that lsquoonly as long as Daseinis ldquois thererdquo Beingrsquo and that lsquowhen Dasein does not exist ldquoinde-pendencerdquo is not eitherrsquo he deliberately encloses the crucial verbsin quotation marks By simultaneously mentioning them and usingthem he alerts us to the fact that the question of what it would betrue to say about entities in a world without Dasein must not beconflated with the question of whether that truth could conceivablybe uttered in such a world And by stressing the fact that truthsare not just propositions that correspond to reality but the contentof assertoric speech acts he reminds us that an essential conditionfor the possibility of truth is the existence of Dasein

In one sense of that claim few would deny it For it is triviallytrue that no truths could be enunciated in a world without crea-tures capable of enunciation but the conditions for their enunciationare entirely independent of the conditions for their truthfulness ndashthe latter simply being a matter of their fit with reality somethingwhich the presence or absence of human creatures leaves entirelyunaffected But Heidegger means to claim something more His point is that if truth is a matter of the correspondence between ajudgement and reality then the existence of Dasein is a conditionfor the possibility of truth ndash not because there can be no judge-ments without judgers but because there can be no question of ajudgementrsquos corresponding (or failing to correspond) with reality

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

without a prior articulation of that reality and there can be no sucharticulation of reality without Dasein

He discusses the case of someone who judges that lsquothe picture onthe wall is askewrsquo After first stressing that the truth of this judge-ment is a matter of its corresponding to the picture itself and notto some mental representation of it he then argues that whatconfirms its truth is our perceiving that the picture really is the waythe judgement claims that it is

To say that an assertion lsquois truersquo signifies that it uncovers the entityas it is in itself Such an assertion asserts points out lsquoletsrsquo the entitylsquobe seenrsquo in its uncoveredness The Being-true of the assertion mustbe understood as Being-uncovering Thus truth has by no means thestructure of an agreement between knowing and the object in thesense of a likening of one entity (the subject) to another (the Object)

Being-true as Being-uncovering is in turn ontologically possibleonly on the basis of Being-in-the-world This latter phenomenon is the foundation for the primordial phenomenon of truth

(BT 44 261)

What is the basis for these claimsHere we need to recall the distinction between assertion and

discourse An assertion is the utterance of a proposition a state-ment that aims for truth and whether it meets its aim is determinednot by Dasein but by reality ndash by whether things are as it claimsthem to be But in order for a proposition to be true or false ndash tofit or fail to fit its object ndash it must be meaningful Before it can bedetermined whether it is true that the picture on the wall is askewwe must know what the terms lsquopicturersquo lsquowallrsquo and lsquoaskewrsquo meanWe must in short grasp the concepts of a picture a wall and ofspatial orientation from which that proposition is constructed Butto grasp those concepts to understand the meaning of the relevantterms one must be able to distinguish between correct and incor-rect applications of them to reality ndash be able to grasp what (in reality)counts as a picture and what doesnrsquot and so on So these concep-tual structures are not just articulations of language (what we earliercalled lsquodiscoursersquo) but articulations of reality in their absence it

simply would not be possible for a particular proposition to corre-spond or to fail to correspond to a particular piece of reality Thequestion of truth can only arise within the logical space created bya framework or field of meaning

The opening up of this space of intelligibility is what Heideggermeans by his talk of lsquouncoveringrsquo which draws upon the Greekconcept of truth as a-letheia (un-concealing) But if it is right tothink of questions of truth as being settled within this space byassessing the correspondence between a proposition and its objectwhy does not the very same question arise with respect to the articulation of this logical space itself What determines the valid-ity of the framework of meaning if not its correspondence with the essential structures of the reality to which we apply it Whythen should Heidegger claim that uncoveredness is not a matter ofcorrespondence

Letrsquos look again at the language side of the issue The truth-valueof a proposition may well be a matter of its correspondence withreality but the significance of the conceptual categories in terms of which the proposition is articulated (ie the meanings of itsconstituent terms) are established by the norms or standardsgoverning their use and such norms do not stand in a relationshipof correspondence (or of non-correspondence) with reality Take theconcept of water as an example and assume that we define it aslsquoliquid with chemical composition H2Orsquo That definition is not itselfa claim about reality something that might be true or false It isthe articulation of the following rule if a liquid has the chemicalcomposition H2O then it is water It doesnrsquot claim that any partic-ular liquid does have that chemical composition or that any suchliquid is to be found anywhere in the universe It simply licensesus to substitute one form of words (lsquowaterrsquo) for another form ofwords (lsquoliquid with chemical composition H2Orsquo) It doesnrsquot claimthat the latter form of words is now or is ever applicable it merelydetermines that whenever that latter form of words is licitly appliedso is the former

In other words definitions are not descriptions although theyare an essential precondition for constructing descriptions since they confer meaning on the terms used in the description In so far

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

then as a conceptual framework is a specification of meanings (anarticulation of intelligibility in Heideggerrsquos terminology) it simplyis not a candidate for correspondence with reality It does not embodya set of hypotheses or factual claims rather it determines what anygiven entity must have if it is to count as an instance of the relevantconcept It is not therefore possible for an examination of realityto show that our concepts fail to correspond to its essential naturefor any such examination would presuppose some framework orfield of meaning some set of categories in terms of which to describewhat is discovered and so could neither undermine nor justify thatframework The discovery that a given liquid does not have thechemical composition H2O or that there is no such liquid wouldreveal not that our concept of water has misrepresented reality butrather the local or global inapplicability of that concept And ofcourse if a conceptual framework is incapable of misrepresentingreality it is also incapable of representing it accurately Representa-tion is not the business of concepts but of the empirical propositionsconstructed by deploying them conceptual frameworks make corre-spondence between language and reality possible but their relationto reality is not to be understood on the correspondence model

Heidegger thinks of the human capacity to construct and applyconcepts as manifesting our capacity to disclose entities because ourconceptual framework embodies the fundamental categories in termsof which we encounter entities as entities of a particular sort andindeed as entities (phenomena that continue to exist independentlyof our encountering them) at all They determine the essential natureof phenomena in that they make manifest the necessary features ofany given type of thing ndash those without which they would not countas an instance of that type at all they articulate the seeing-as struc-ture of meaning within which all encounters with entities must takeplace But if that structural aspect of language cannot be under-stood on the correspondence model then it cannot be thought of asa discursive reflection of articulations in reality Indeed the veryidea of reality as being already articulated in this way independentlyof discourse is incoherent For if the propositions that give expres-sion to that structure do not state truths or falsehoods about realitythen the structure itself cannot be thought of as true or false to

reality ndash which means that reality cannot coherently be thought ofas inherently possessed of a structural essence to which these artic-ulations of discourse might correspond and which would exist inthe absence of discursive creatures

In other words whereas the truth about reality must continue tohold even in the absence of Dasein its essence cannot The essen-tial nature of reality is not simply one more fact about real thingsone more aspect of the truth about the world that human beingscome to know but which would continue to hold in their absenceEssence is not empirical and so cannot persist independently ofDasein in the way that genuinely empirical matters do The essen-tiality of a given feature of things ndash its status as necessary to theidentity of the entity concerned ndash is not a function of the way thingsare in the world but of the way the conceptual framework is struc-tured2 which is in turn dependent upon the field of meaning thatunderpins Daseinrsquos understanding of entities in their Being Thesearticulations are thus ultimately ontologically grounded in DaseinrsquosBeing as Being-in-the-world

Accordingly a world without Dasein would not simply be a worldwithout beings capable of making true judgements but a world with-out the ultimate source of the categories in terms of which true andfalse judgements must be articulated and so in which those articu-lations themselves are non-existent It can and must be said (givenour understanding of what it is to be an entity) that in such circum-stances entities and the real world they make up would continue to exist It could not be said however that Reality Being or Truthwould exist for those terms denote reality in its essential naturethe articulation of the Being of things the categorial conditions for the possibility of truth ndash and no sense can be attached to the ideathat those articulations could exist in the absence of Dasein It is thisTruth with a capital lsquoTrsquo to which Heidegger refers when he claimsthat lsquoldquoThere isrdquo truth only in so far as Dasein ldquoisrdquo and so long asDasein ldquoisrdquorsquo (BT 44 269) and that all truth is relative to DaseinrsquosBeing (not to Dasein)

Does this relativity signify that all truth is subjective If one Interpretslsquosubjectiversquo as lsquoleft to the subjectrsquos discretionrsquo then it certainly does

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

not For uncovering in the sense which is most its own takesasserting out of the province of lsquosubjectiversquo discretion and bringsthe uncovering Dasein face to face with the entities themselves Andonly because lsquotruthrsquo as uncovering is a kind of Being which belongsto Dasein can it be taken out of the province of Daseinrsquos discretionEven the lsquouniversal validityrsquo of truth is rooted solely in the fact thatDasein can uncover entities in themselves and free them Only socan these entities themselves be binding for every possible assertionndash that is for every possible way of pointing them out

(BT 44 270)

There can be no disclosure without Dasein but what is disclosedare entities as they are in themselves and so as the entities theyalways were before Dasein encountered them and the entities theywill continue to be thereafter

Nonetheless if disclosure is the existential condition of the possibility of truth and disclosedness is a mode or aspect of the Being of Dasein then the most primordial understanding of truthis existential Dasein is lsquoin the truthrsquo And since Dasein is the kindof being whose Being is an issue for it questions of authenticityand inauthenticity will apply to this mode of its Being as to allothers In other words the being who alone can be said to be in thetruth can also be in untruth being capable of uncovering entities(including itself) as they are in themselves means that Dasein canfail to do so can cover up the Being of beings And which of thoseexistential alternatives is that in which Dasein typically exists Sincewe have had to overcome a strong philosophical tendency to treatthe doubly derivative relation between present-at-hand propositionsand states of affairs as the fundamental model for truth in orderto uncover a properly primordial understanding of it as rooted indisclosedness and existentiality it seems that the inauthentic modetends to prevail But we need to examine the issue in more detailand in more generality What is the everyday mode of Daseinrsquosdisclosedness its Being-there

1 See L Witttgenstein Philosophical Investigations (Oxford Basil Black-well 1953) part 2 section iv for a parallel remark about our relationto other people

2 For a parallel view see Wittgensteinrsquos Philosophical Investigationssections 371ndash3

111123456789101111231456789201111234567893012345167111

4CONCLUSION TO

DIVISION ONE THEUNCANNINESS OF

EVERYDAY LIFE(Being and Time sectsect34ndash42)

The question posed at the end of the previous chapter demands thatwe add a further element to the ontological web that constitutesHeideggerrsquos account of the human way of being It will show howaverage everyday social relations involve a particular kind of absorp-tion in or preoccupation with the world and so a particular kind ofdisclosure of it But this addition permits Heidegger to conclude hispreliminary investigation of human conditionedness by providing asingle overarching characterization of human existence that revealsthe unity of its ontological underpinnings

FALLING INTO THE WORLD (sectsect34ndash8)

Dasein as Being-with typically maintains itself in the Being of thethey-self so our question about Daseinrsquos everyday mode of there-

Being amounts to asking how the they-self manifests itself fromthe perspective of disclosedness Heideggerrsquos answer focuses on threephenomena idle talk curiosity and ambiguity

lsquoIdle talkrsquo is the form of intelligibility manifest in everyday lin-guistic communication ndash average intelligibility All communicationnecessarily involves both an object (that which the conversation isabout) and a claim about it In idle talk our concern for the claimeclipses our concern for its object Rather than trying to achievegenuine access to the object as it is in itself we concentrate uponwhat is claimed about it taking it for granted that what is said isso simply because it is said and passing it on ndash disseminating theclaim allowing it to inflect our conversations about the object andso on We thereby lose touch with the ostensible object of the communication our talk becomes groundless And the ease withwhich we then seem to ourselves to understand whatever is talkedabout entails that we think of ourselves as understanding every-thing just when we are failing to do so By suggesting such completeunderstanding idle talk closes off its objects rather than disclosingthem and it also closes off the possibility of future investigationsof them An impersonal uprooted understanding ndash the understand-ing of lsquothe theyrsquo ndash thus dominates Daseinrsquos everyday relation to theworld and Others

An uprooted understanding of the world detached from anyparticular task that might have focused Dasein upon objects in itsimmediate environment tends to float away from what is ready-to-hand and towards the exotic the alien and the distant And if itsfocus is upon the novel its primary concern tends to be with itsnovelty It seeks new objects not in order to grasp them in theirreality but to stimulate itself with their newness so that novelty issought with increasing velocity In short Dasein becomes curiousdistracted by new possibilities it lingers in any given environmentfor shorter and shorter periods floating everywhere it dwellsnowhere Being systematically detached from its environments itcannot distinguish genuine comprehension from its counterfeitsuperficial understanding is universally acclaimed as deep and realunderstanding looks eccentric and marginalized This ambiguity isnot the conscious goal of any given individual but in a public world

C O N C L U S I O N T O D I V I S I O N O N E 107

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

dominated by idle talk and curiosity it permeates the understandinginto which Dasein always already finds itself thrown its inheritancefrom its fellows and its culture

These three interconnected existential characteristics reveal a basickind of Being that belongs to Daseinrsquos everydayness ndash falling

This term does not express any negative evaluation but is used tosignify that Dasein is proximally and for the most part alongside thelsquoworldrsquo of its concern This lsquoAbsorption in rsquo has mostly the char-acter of Being-lost in the publicness of the lsquotheyrsquo Dasein has in thefirst instance fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality forBeing its Self and has fallen into the lsquoworldrsquo

(BT 38 220)

In short Daseinrsquos average everyday disclosedness is inauthentic Uprooted by its absorption in the lsquotheyrsquo from any genuine concernfor its world and solicitude for its fellow human beings it is alsouprooted from any genuine self-understanding ndash any grasp of which possibilities are genuinely its own as opposed to those whichlsquoonersquo has

This falling detachment from genuine self-understanding perme-ates Daseinrsquos philosophical activities as well as those of its everydaylife Indeed it constitutes Heideggerrsquos central explanation for thefact that a being to whom an understanding of its own Being natu-rally belongs can nonetheless have a philosophical tradition whichsystematically represses any proper understanding of the humanway of being We saw earlier that philosophers tend to interpretthe Being of Dasein in terms more appropriate to entities We alsosaw that such misapplications of the category of presence-at-handemerge naturally both from pre-theoretical absorption in our prac-tical tasks (when objects lie temptingly ready-to-hand as paradigmsof what it is for anything to exist) and from the peculiar circum-stances of theoretical contemplation (in which both objects andhuman beings appear as entirely detached from their worlds)Daseinrsquos inherent sociality and its tendency to lose itself in the lsquotheyrsquosuggested further that once such misinterpretations were estab-lished in the philosophical culture new generations of philosophers

C O N C L U S I O N T O D I V I S I O N O N E108

would tend unquestioningly to accept them as self-evident truthsas what everybody knows to be common sense We can now seethat philosophers who reject what is taken to be common sense infavour of ever more novel theoretical constructions whose convo-lutions confer a thrill of the exotic or the intellectually advancedupon its proponents are no less in thrall to the consensual hallu-cination of the they-world Such philosophical inclinations aresymptoms of a more general falling away from authentic self-concern and self-relation Just as in other modes of human activityphilosophers become absorbed in the world of average everyday-ness because they have lost touch with themselves and with anyawareness that they have a self with which they might lose touch

But Heidegger does not just claim that falling is a general phe-nomenon ndash one to which any and every facet of human culture is always vulnerable He also emphasizes that its ubiquity (and sothe predominance of its effects in the philosophical tradition in particular) is not accidental For if falling is internally related toDaseinrsquos absorption in the lsquotheyrsquo it must be just as much a part of Daseinrsquos ontological structure as the they-self falling is not aspecific ontic state of Dasein but lsquoa definite existential characteris-tic of Dasein itselfrsquo (BT 38 220) The ontological structures ofBeing-in-the-world do not make authenticity impossible but neitherdo they leave the question of which specific ontic states Dasein might find itself in entirely open If Dasein is always thrown intoa world whose roles and categories are structured in inherentlyimpersonal ways in which idle talk curiosity and ambiguity pre-dominate then absorption in the they-self will be its default position It may then be able to find itself but only by recoveringitself from an original lostness In this sense authenticity alwaysinvolves overcoming inauthenticity lsquoIn falling Dasein itself as fac-tical Being-in-the-world is something from which it has alreadyfallen awayrsquo (BT 38 220) The world into which Dasein finds itselfthrown inherently tempts it to fall away from itself and part of that fallen state part of the ambiguity inherent in it is a prevail-ing assumption that its fallenness is in reality fully authentic and genuine The they-world thus tranquillizes Dasein but this tranquillization finds expression in frenzied activity a constant

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

curiosity-driven search for the novel and the exotic and a con-sequent alienation from the immediate environment and fromoneself ndash a self-alienation that sometimes takes the form of inces-sant curiosity-driven self-analysis And this applies to Daseinrsquosphilosophical activities as well the various errors of self-understanding to which the philosophical tradition is subject aresimply localized symptoms of this more general human state

In short then Daseinrsquos everyday state (within and without philosophy) is one in which it finds itself thrown into inauthen-ticity lsquoDaseinrsquos facticity is such that as long as it is what it is Dasein remains in the throw and is sucked into the turbulence ofthe ldquotheyrsquosrdquo inauthenticityrsquo (BT 38 223) It can achieve authen-ticity but when it does it lsquois only a modified way in which [falling]everydayness is seized uponrsquo (BT 38 224) Ontologically speakingauthenticity is a modification of inauthenticity

ANXIETY AND CARE (sectsect39ndash42)

One way of characterizing this average everydayness Daseinrsquos beingin untruth would be as self-dispersal Dasein is scattered amid theconstantly changing objects of its curiosity caught up in the collec-tion of selfless selves that make up the lsquotheyrsquo and fragmented byits self-dissections It is therefore curious that up to this pointHeideggerrsquos analysis of Daseinrsquos everydayness has suffered the samefate Although we are constantly reassured that Being-in-the-worldis a single unified whole we have so far been presented with whatseem like decontextualized fragments of that totality ndash the worldBeing-in Being-with and Being-there ndash each itself subject to furtherdissection And just as an authentic mode of Daseinrsquos existencerequires overcoming its self-dispersal so a genuinely integratedunderstanding of Daseinrsquos Being requires gaining a perspective on those fragments that demonstrates their overall unity Oneparticular state-of-mind helps to solve both problems As a modeof existence it forces inauthentic everyday Dasein to confront thetrue structure of its existence and as an object of phenomenolog-ical analysis it gives us access to a single unifying articulation ofDaseinrsquos Being That state-of-mind is anxiety or dread (lsquoAngstrsquo)

Anxiety is often confused with fear Both are responses to theworld as unnerving hostile or threatening but whereas fear is a response to something specific in the world (a gun an animal agesture) anxiety is in this sense objectless That in the face of whichthe anxious person is anxious is not any particular entity in theworld Indeed the distinctive oppressiveness of anxiety lies preciselyin its not being elicited by anything specific so that we cannotrespond to it in any specific way (eg by running away) ForHeidegger what oppresses us is not any specific totality of ready-to-hand objects but rather the possibility of such a totality we areoppressed by the world as such ndash or more precisely by Being-in-the-world Anxiety confronts Dasein with the knowledge that it isthrown into the world ndash always already delivered over to situationsof choice and action which matter to it but which it did not itselffully choose or determine It confronts Dasein with the determiningand yet sheerly contingent fact of its own worldly existence

But Being-in-the-world is not just that in the face of which theanxious person is anxious it is also that for which she is anxiousIn anxiety Dasein is anxious about itself not about some concreteexistentiell possibility but about the fact that its Being is Being-possible that its existence necessarily involves projecting itself upon one or other possibility In effect then anxiety plunges Daseininto an anxiety about itself in the face of itself Since in this state particular objects and persons within the world fade away andthe world as such occupies the foreground then the specific struc-tures of the they-world must also fade away Thus anxiety canrescue Dasein from its fallen state its lostness in the lsquotheyrsquo it throwsDasein doubly back upon itself as a being for whom its own Beingis an issue and so as a creature capable of individuality

[I]n anxiety there lies the possibility of a disclosure that is quite distinctive for anxiety individualizes This individualization bringsDasein back from its falling and makes manifest to it that authen-ticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of its Being These basic pos-sibilities of Dasein (and Dasein is in each case mine) show themselvesin anxiety as they are in themselves ndash undisguised by entities within-the-world to which proximally and for the most part Dasein clings

(BT 40 235)

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By confronting Dasein with itself anxiety forces it to recognize itsown existence as essentially thrown projection but its everydaymode of existence as fallen ndash completely absorbed in the lsquotheyrsquo Itemphasizes that Dasein is always in the midst of the objects andevents of daily life but that typically it buries itself in them ndash inflight from acknowledging that its existence (as Being-possible) isalways more or other than its present actualizations and so that itis never fully at home in any particular world

Through this experience of uncanniness anxiety lays bare thebasis of Daseinrsquos existence as thrown projection fallen into the worldDaseinrsquos thrownness (exemplified in its openness to states-of-mind)shows it to be already in a world its projectiveness (exemplified inits capacity for understanding) shows it to be at the same time aheadof itself aiming to realize some existential possibility and its fall-enness shows it to be preoccupied with the world This overarchingtripartite characterization reveals the essential unity of DaseinrsquosBeing to be what Heidegger calls care (lsquoSorgersquo)

The formally existential totality of Daseinrsquos ontological structuralwhole must therefore be grasped in the following structure the Beingof Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (-the-world) asBeing-alongside (-entities-encountered-within-the-world) This Beingfills in the signification of the term lsquocarersquo

(BT 41 237)

The proliferation of hyphens indicates that these provisionally sepa-rable elements of Daseinrsquos Being are ultimately parts of a wholeAnd by labelling that whole lsquocarersquo Heidegger evokes the fact thatDasein is always occupied with the entities it encounters in the worldndash concerned about ready-to-hand and present-at-hand entities andsolicitous of other human beings The point is not that Dasein isalways caring and concerned or that failures of sympathy are impos-sible or to be discouraged it is rather that as Being-in-the-worldDasein must deal with that world The world and everything in itis something that cannot fail to matter to it

Heidegger recounts an ancient creation myth ostensibly to showthat his interpretation of Daseinrsquos nature is not unprecedented In

it Cura shapes human beings from clay (donated by Earth) infusedwith spirit (donated by Jupiter) the three quarrel over its nameand Saturn determines that it shall be lsquohomorsquo (purportedly fromlsquohumusrsquo ie soil) This myth however is also a perspicuous repre-sentation of everything preceding it in the first division of Beingand Time ndash an emblematic condensation of Heideggerrsquos fundamentalontology of Dasein For example the temporal precedence of Curarsquosactions over those of Jupiter and Earth represents Daseinrsquos Being asessentially unitary rather than compound and as based in its concernfor beings in their Being rather than in any one element of thatputative compound Nevertheless the fact that Dasein is named afterlsquohumusrsquo suggests that the distinctively human way of being arisesfrom its worldly embodiment rather than from any other-worldlycapacity

The myth also provides two other pointers that are important forour purposes First Curarsquos shaping of Dasein implies that Dasein is held fast or dominated by care throughout its existence Thissignifies not only that care is the basis of its Being but that this issomething to which Dasein is subject ndash something into which it is thrown and so something by which it is determined After allif Cura is Daseinrsquos creator then Dasein is the creature of care andany creature is doubly conditioned ndash conditioned in that it is createdrather than self-creating and conditioned by the mode of its creationThus in saying that Dasein is indelibly marked by its maker thefable implies that care is the unifying origin of the various limitsthat characterize Daseinrsquos distinctive mode of existence So byinvoking this tale Heidegger emblematizes the conditionedness ofhuman existence ndash the human condition ndash as fundamentally a matterof being fated to a self and to a world of other selves and objectsabout which one cannot choose not to be concerned

The fablersquos second lesson points forward rather than backwardas well as surveying what has gone before in Being and Time itshows not only that more is to come but also what that lsquomorersquo maybe For of course the character in the fable to whose authority evenCura must submit is Saturn and Saturn is the god of Time But ifthe creator of Dasein is herself the servant or creature of Saturnthen the most fundamental characterization of Daseinrsquos Being must

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

invoke not care but that which somehow conditions or determinescare ndash time In other words Heideggerrsquos invocation of this fabledeclares his conviction that uncovering care as the unifying onto-logical structure of human existence is itself only a provisionalterminus for his existential analytic and prepares the reader for thebasic orientation of his investigations in Division Two ndash his sensethat time as that which conditions care is itself the basic conditionfor the human way of being

ANXIETY SCEPTICISM AND NIHILISM

Before we move on to Division Two however I want to suggestthat Heideggerrsquos analysis of angst has a further moral ndash one whichdeepens our understanding of his relation to expressions of scepti-cism in philosophy In Chapter 3 we saw that Heidegger considersit a scandal of philosophy that disproofs of scepticism about theexternal world are expected and attempted again and again and thisis because any proper conception of Daseinrsquos worldliness makes the scepticrsquos questions inexpressible Yet as Heideggerrsquos own formu-lation of the situation implicitly acknowledges the scandal isapparently perennial ndash anti-sceptical expectations and attempts ariseagain and again and a genuine understanding of the sceptical threatremains to be properly established in philosophy Moreover he hasearlier recognized that if the world is conceived of in Cartesianterms sceptical doubts are not only articulable but also irrefutableand such understandings of the world have pervasively informedthe Western philosophical tradition particularly in modernity For Heidegger then scepticism is both evanescent and permanent the sceptical impulse is certainly self-subverting (since its doubtsannihilate a condition for the possibility of their own intelligibility)and yet also self-renewing (an apparently ineradicable human possi-bility which affects those possessed by it with a near-unshakeablefaith in their own insight) How then should we understand thisparadoxical state of affairs

Since the sceptical stance is a particular human possibility a wayof understanding and grasping onersquos worldly existence it must beanalysable in terms of the existentialia Heidegger has identified in

his analytic of Dasein and that means in particular that it shouldbe inflected by a particular mood The true sceptic as opposed tothe straw figure of epistemology textbooks (and as Heidegger sayslsquoperhaps such sceptics have been more frequent than one wouldinnocently like to have true when one tries to bowl over ldquoscepticismrdquoby formal dialecticsrsquo [BT 44 272]) is someone beset by gnawingdoubts she is in effect in the grip of anxiety Scepticism one mightsay just is how angst makes itself manifest in philosophy But aswe have seen Heidegger characterizes anxiety as a fundamentallyrevealing existentiell state lsquoone of the the most far-reaching andprimordial possibilities of [Daseinrsquos] disclosurersquo (BT 39 226) inwhich Dasein reveals itself as a worldly being whose Being is anissue for it So one should expect sceptical anxiety to embody exactlythat kind of illumination Does it

For Heidegger angst finds its clearest expression when someonegripped by it says that what makes her anxious lsquois nothing andnowherersquo (BT 40 231) This formulation highlights the fact thatanxiety has no particular object ndash that neither that in the face of which one is anxious nor that about which one is anxious has aparticular intra-worldly location Anxiety is thus responsive to andhence revelatory of the world as such ndash that is to the worldhoodof the world and thus to Daseinrsquos own inherently worldly beingMore specifically it reveals Dasein as uncanny it suggests that atroot Daseinrsquos way of Being-in-the-world is that of being not at home in the world How might sceptical anxieties be thought toconfirm or underwrite this paradoxical perception

The lsquoexternal worldrsquo sceptic feels an abyss to open up betweenherself and the world a sense of its insignificance or nothingnessshe experiences a hollow at the heart of reality and a sense of herselfas not at home in the world The lsquoother mindsrsquo sceptic feels an abyssto open up between herself and others as if their thoughts and feel-ings were withdrawing unknowably behind their flesh and bloodas if she truly were confronted by hollowed out bodies mere matterin motion she experiences herself as alone in the world In eithermode scepticism finds itself opposed to common sense to the truths that average everyday human existence with its absorptionin phenomena and in the opinions of others appears to confirm us

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

in taking for granted and in this opposition the sceptic at oncefalsifies and discloses the underlying realities of human existenceFor on Heideggerrsquos account we are essentially worldly but we arealso always more than any particular worldly situation in which wefind ourselves we are essentially Being-with but we are also indi-viduated Hence the intellectual (call it the traditional philosophical)expression of scepticism in its argumentative denials of our world-liness and commonality conceals the truth of Daseinrsquos Being ndash asdo familiar philosophical attempts to oppose those denials by argu-ment but the human anxiety of which philosophical scepticism isthe intellectual expression in its unwillingness to accept worldlyabsorption reveals that truth

Furthermore the inarticulacy to which the scepticrsquos thwarted desirefor connection with reality drives her makes manifest something vitalabout the discursive attunements upon which Daseinrsquos capacity tograsp beings in their Being depends For if the sceptic can (howeverunknowingly) repudiate these articulations of meaning then thecommon human attunement to the field of discourse must itself becontingent the fact of scepticism shows that these articulations ofmeaning can exist only if Dasein continues to invest its interest or concern in them and that Dasein can effect such withdrawals of interest in the guise of the most passionate investment of that interest In other words the self-subversiveness of scepticism shows that human responsiveness to the articulations of discoursein which the issue of Daseinrsquos own Being is most fundamentally at stake is not something with which Dasein is automatically endowedndash as if part of a pre-given essence that determines its existence It israther an inheritance for which Dasein must take (or fail to take)responsibility in and through its existence

There is however a third aspect to the notion of Daseinrsquos uncan-niness that sceptical anxiety helps to bring out For Heideggerpreviously showed that the worldhood of the world (to which anxietyas such is responsive) is a system of assignments of significance ndasha field of meaning and he thereby suggested that the sense ormeaning of our existence is ultimately to be understood as an aspectof Daseinrsquos Being And if that is the case then his analysis under-cuts the possibility that the significance of our lives is anchored in

a wholly external source or authority ndash whether that source isthought of as God or as a range of Platonic Forms or as a struc-ture of values that is written into the independent reality of thingsin some other way But how then can we regard the structures ofsignificance that give orientation and meaning to our existence ashaving any genuinely objective authority any real claim on usMust they not be essentially anthropocentric constructions designedto cover up the intrinsic meaninglessness of the world we inhabitndash its inherent lack of sense The anxious disclosure of the world asa domain in which we are ultimately not at home might then seemto be a wholly apt expression of this realization that the meaningof our lives lacks any external ground

We might think of this aspect of Daseinrsquos uncanniness as capturingthe ontological root of what Nietzsche famously calls the problemof nihilism ndash that form of philosophical scepticism concerned withthe reality or substance of value and meaning But once again wewill have to distinguish between the truth in such scepticism andthe falsity or distortions embodied in its intellectual expression Forjust as Heidegger argues in sections 43ndash4 that to acknowledge theinternal relation between discourse and the Being of Dasein doesnot entail subjectivizing or relativizing our conceptions of truth and reality so he seems committed to the claim that any authenticresponse to the problem of nihilism must find a way to acknowledgethat lifersquos meaning lacks any external grounding without denyingits authoritative claims upon us And the beginning of wisdom inthis respect lies in seeing that on his account of Daseinrsquos Being thevery idea of a kind of meaningfulness that was wholly external inthe relevant sense is empty

Why Because such an absolutely external structure of signifi-cance would have to be constituted in ways entirely independent ofthe ontological structure of Daseinrsquos Being-in-the-world but howthen could it provide its inner articulation ndash how could it constitutethe worldhood of the world and thus orient and motivate Daseinrsquospractical activities within it On Heideggerrsquos view the thought thatonly a wholly external structure of meaning could make any author-itative claims on Dasein is the very reverse of the truth it is ratherthat the only structures of meaning that could possibly make claims

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

on Dasein are ones to which its worldly Being is inherently openand by which it is articulated In other words the idea of objectivitythat fuels nihilism does not specify a kind of authority that Daseinrsquosfields of meaning could have but unfortunately lack it is the sheerestfantasy But if structures of significance could not conceivably beexternal in this sense it cannot be right to think of the structuresof significance in which we do and must exist as lsquomerely internalrsquoThey are all the meaning there is or could be for creatures whoseBeing is that of Dasein they are not limitations or constraints butrather limits or conditions ndash essential determinations of any beingwhose Being is worldly and hence finite

The truth in nihilism is thus that Daseinrsquos Being is essentiallyfinite or conditioned the truth is that Dasein is not unconditionednot infinite or Godlike and not entirely reducible to its determiningconditions either Dasein is not possessed of a wholly externalground nor is it wholly self-grounding Accordingly in this respectas in the other two respects I specified earlier to say that Daseinrsquosworldliness is uncanny is to say that it must be understood in relation to nullity or negation to what it is not and to that whichis not ndash hence in relation to nothing or nothingness This is thefirst (admittedly implicit and obscure) indication in Division One ofa theme that will quickly come to full expression in the openingchapters of Division Two and in doing so it radically alters oursense of what has been achieved in Division One as a whole Thistoo must inform our approach to the second half of Being and Time

In all these ways then the sceptic truly suffers the reality of herexistence as Being-in-the-world even if she does not properly artic-ulate that reality or make an issue of how her passionate anxietymight best be understood That however is a vital part of the taskof authentic phenomenology As an activity engaged in by Daseinphenomenological investigations of Being must be informed by someparticular mood and if the phenomenologist opens herself up tosceptical angst ndash if she not only subjects it to serious phenomeno-logical analysis but also allows its unpredictable advent in her ownexistence to inform her sense of what matters in the distinctive fieldof her practical activity ndash then she will become receptive to the most far-reaching and primordial existentiell disclosure of the Being

of Dasein What could more properly facilitate her attempts to graspDaseinrsquos Being in as transparent a manner as possible ndash to makethe existentiell possibility of investigating Daseinrsquos Being truly her own

But of course it is critical that the phenomenologist adopt a ques-tioning attitude to her sceptical mood ndash and in particular that shenot take scepticismrsquos interpretation of its own significance forgranted She cannot for example accept the scepticrsquos over-anxiousclaim to know that the world is not knowable without acknow-ledging that the world cannot therefore be doubtable either Authen-tically sceptical phenomenology will rather wrest the disclosuresmade possible by its own mood from that moodrsquos self-concealmentsand dissemblings it must overcome scepticism from within by beingsceptical about its self-understandings It must in short dwell inthis mode of Being-in-the-world without being at home in it Onlythus will it discover what is truthful about scepticism and so whatit is about scepticism to which philosophy must remain indebted

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5THEOLOGY SECULARIZED

MORTALITY GUILT ANDCONSCIENCE

Heideggerrsquos use of the ancient creation fable at the end of DivisionOne ensures that his readers begin the second division of Being andTime knowing that its analysis of Daseinrsquos underlying ontologicalstructure will aim to connect the concept of care and that of timeIt soon becomes clear that he wishes to forge that connection througha process of methodological self-reflection He claims that his inter-pretation of the Being of Dasein hitherto ndash or more precisely itsunderlying fore-having or fore-sight ndash has been doubly restrictedFirst by concentrating on Daseinrsquos average everydayness he hasfocused upon inauthentic modes of Daseinrsquos Being to the detrimentof its capacity for existentiell authenticity And second by concen-trating on the existential structure of specific moods and states ofmind he has downplayed the general structure of Daseinrsquos lifeunderstood as a whole or a unity Division Two makes good theseomissions and in a way which contributes to his overarching attemptto demonstrate the fundamentality of time to Daseinrsquos Being In

effect the tripartite thematic concern of Division Two is authen-ticity totality and temporality This chapter follows Heideggerrsquosinitial development of the first two themes the two following chapters examine his treatment of the third

Given Heideggerrsquos emphasis on the circular hermeneutic struc-ture of understanding it is natural to envisage Division Two asdeepening our understanding of the claims made in Division Oneby drawing out their implications The relevant image of their rela-tion would be that of two turns around a spiral each turn returnsus to our starting point but at a deeper level of ontological under-standing and each return opens the possibility of a new turn at adeeper level Thus Division One begins from a provisional concep-tion of Dasein as the being who questions and by unfolding thearticulated unity of the worldly existential structure implicit in thatconception it returns us to a deepened understanding of Dasein interms of care this is the first turn around the spiral Division Twobegins from that deepened conception of Dasein as care and unfoldsthe articulated unity of temporality implicit in it thus revealingthat the care-structure presupposes an internal relation between theBeing of Dasein and time this is the second turn The image of aspiral further incorporates Heideggerrsquos rejection of the idea ofabsolute starting points and termini in human inquiry for it impliesthat each new turn of ontological discovery presupposes its prede-cessors (and ultimately an initial leap into the circling process) andthat the results of each turn will engender another turn

Such an image of the bookrsquos progress is not exactly wrong butit becomes clear by the end of the first two chapters of DivisionTwo that it does not capture the full complexity of its internal struc-ture For the results of Heideggerrsquos study of mortality guilt andconscience do not simply deepen our understanding of the claimsadvanced in Division One and summarized in the characterizationof Daseinrsquos Being as care by providing an uncanny background orhorizon against which to re-articulate them they also destabilizeand even in a sense subvert them It will be an important part ofthis chapterrsquos business to try to understand the deep but creativeand even revelatory tension that this creates between the twoDivisions of Being and Time

M O R T A L I T Y G U I L T A N D C O N S C I E N C E 121

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

DEATH AND MORTALITY (sectsect46ndash53)

Any philosophical attempt to grasp Daseinrsquos existence as a totalityor whole faces the problem that in so far as Dasein exists it is ori-ented towards the next moment of its existence and so is incompletebut once its existence has been brought to an end once its life asa whole is over and so available for examination Dasein itself is no longer there to prosecute that examination In more existentialterminology Dasein always already projects upon possibilities andso is oriented towards the not-yet-actual so that structural incom-pletion is overcome only when Dasein becomes no-longer-Being-there Thus the idea of Dasein grasping its existence as a totalityseems to be a contradiction in terms for Dasein to be a whole is forDasein to be no longer and so to be no longer capable of relatingto itself as a whole

The problem is death Death brings human existence to an endand so completes it but no one can experience her own death AsWittgenstein put it unlike dying onersquos death is not an event inonersquos life ndash not even the last one1 It seems therefore that no Daseincan grasp its own existence as a whole But this is not just a stum-bling block for every human individual trying to make sense of herexistence it is a profound challenge to Heideggerrsquos sense of whathe has achieved in Division One and of what he can achieve withhis phenomenological method For remember his concluding char-acterization of Daseinrsquos Being as care in Division One was meantto allow us to grasp Daseinrsquos Being as a whole and thus provide astable even if provisional resting-place for his existential analyticBut one aspect of the care-structure is Being-ahead-of-itself and itis precisely this articulation ndash that is Daseinrsquos orientation towardsthe not-yet-actual ndash that hides within it the problematic of deathand hence conceals an essential incompleteness in the analysis And the prospects of filling that analytical gap do not look at allpromising if one further recalls that Heideggerrsquos phenomenolog-ical method relies upon Daseinrsquos capacity to allow phenomena todisclose themselves as they are in themselves in its encounters with them But we have just seen that no Dasein ever encountersits own death so how even in principle could there be a genuinely

M O R T A L I T Y G U I L T A N D C O N S C I E N C E122

phenomenological understanding of death and so a genuinelycomplete existential analytic of Dasein

Dasein can of course relate to the death of others whether asdying or as dead But this does not mean that we can grasp anotherrsquoslife as a totality and thereby gain a proper understanding of theBeing of Dasein in its wholeness We can experience the transitionfrom another Daseinrsquos Being (-as-dying) to their no-longer-Beingwe relate to their corpse as more than just a body ndash it is rather abody from which life has departed and as we can continue to relateto the dead person as dead ndash through funerals rites of commemo-ration and the cult of graves ndash our lives after their death can involvemodes of Being-with them (as dead or no longer with us) But theseare aspects of the significance of this personrsquos dying and death tothose of us still living they are modes of our continued existencenot of theirs To grasp the life of the dead person as a whole wemust grasp the ontological meaning of her dying and death to herit is the totality or wholeness of her life that is at issue Our accessto the loss and suffering that this personrsquos dying signifies for othersbrings us no closer to the loss-of-Being that she suffers and so nocloser to what it is for an individual Daseinrsquos existence to attainwholeness or completion

Nevertheless this false trail carries an implication that will turnout to be crucial for our purposes namely that no one can repre-sent another with respect to her dying and death that death is inevery case ineliminably mine unavoidably that of one particularindividual But before pursuing this we must gain a more detailedunderstanding of the phenomenon of death and its role in the lifeof Dasein ndash uncover its existential significance Death is the end ofa personrsquos life ndash but what sort of lsquoendrsquo Presumably that in whichDaseinrsquos distinctive lack of totality finds its completion ndash but whatsort of totality is that

Death for Dasein is not a limit in the way that a frame is thelimit of a picture or a kerbstone the limit of a road The pictureends at the frame but it is not annihilated by it in the way thatdeath annihilates Dasein the kerbstone marks the end of the roadand the beginning of a new environment into which one can stepfrom the road whereas the death of the body is not another mode

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of its life Such disanalogies demonstrate the futility of modellingany aspect of Daseinrsquos existence on present-at-hand things andready-to-hand things are equally inappropriate We might forexample think of a human life as the accumulation of elements(moments events experiences) into a whole ndash as a sum of moneyis an accumulation of the coins and notes that make it up Deaththen appears as the final element the piece that completes the jigsawBut of course when death comes to Dasein Dasein is no longerthere life is no almost-complete edifice to which death can providethe coping stone

The life of vegetable matter of plants or fruit might prove abetter analogy death would then signify the natural culmination ofDaseinrsquos existence in just the way that the mature state of a plantor the ripened state of a fruit completes its life cycle But maturityis the fulfilment of the growing plant just as ripeness is the endtowards which the unripe fruit tends whereas death is not the fulfil-ment of Dasein ndash Dasein may and often does die unfulfilled withmany of its distinctive possibilities unexplored its telos unattainedThe same is true of non-human animals dogs and cats live and dieand they can often die without having actualized many of the possibilities that their nature leaves open to them But Heideggerdistinguishes sharply between the death of animals (which he callstheir lsquoperishingrsquo) and that of Dasein He acknowledges that Daseinis vulnerable to death in just the way that any living creature is sovulnerable so that its biological or organic end (what Heideggercalls Daseinrsquos lsquodemisersquo ndash cf BT 49 291) is open to medical studyEven its demise however is not identical with the perishing of non-human animals because Daseinrsquos biological or organic identity isnecessarily inflected by its distinctively existential mode of Being ndashin other words by the fact that its life can be imbued with a know-ledge of its own inevitable end that it can relate to death as suchDogs and cats must die but that fact is only coded into their livesat the level of their species-identity They strive to avoid death byobtaining nourishment and avoiding predators and they contributeto the survival of their species by reproducing themselves But these are not decisions that they take as individual creatures butrather patterns of behaviour that they inherit and enact with as little

consideration or awareness as little scope for individual choice asthey have with respect to their bodily form

In short an animalrsquos relation to death is as different from Daseinrsquosrelation to death as animal existence is different from human exist-ence Dasein has a life to lead it exists ndash it must make decisionsabout which existentiell possibilities will be actualized and whichwill not Deathrsquos true significance as the end of Dasein as its comple-tion or totalization thus depends upon the significance of Daseinrsquosexistence as thrown projection as a being whose Being is care Henceto understand death we must attempt to undertand it existentiallyndash that is as one possibility of Daseinrsquos Being Since no Dasein candirectly apprehend its own death we must shift our analytical focusfrom death understood as an actuality to death understood as apossibility only then can we intelligibly talk of death as somethingtowards which any existing Dasein can stand in any kind of substan-tial comprehending relationship In other words we must reconceiveour relation to our death not as something that is realized when wedie but rather as something that we realize (or fail to) in our life

What then is the distinctive character of this possibility of ourBeing as opposed to any other (such as eating a meal or playingfootball or reading philosophy) Heidegger gives us the followingsuccinct summary

Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein Thusdeath reveals itself as that possibility which is onersquos ownmost which is non-relational and which is not to be outstripped As such death issomething distinctively impending

(BT 50 294)

Death impends it stands before us as something that is not yetbut unlike any other possibility of Daseinrsquos Being it can only standbefore us A storm or a friendrsquos arrival can impend but they canalso arrive be made actual By contrast we cannot relate to ourdeath as anything other than an impending possibility ndash for whenthat possibility is actualized we are necessarily no-longer-Daseindeath makes any Daseinrsquos existence absolutely impossible Hencewe can comport ourselves towards death only as a possibility and

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further it stands before us as a possibility throughout our exist-ence A storm or a friendrsquos arrival does not impend at every momentof our existence but there is no moment at which our death is notpossible ndash no moment of our existence that might not be our lastHence death ndash unlike any other possibility of Daseinrsquos Being ndash isalways and only a possibility our fatedness to this purely impendingthreat makes concrete the articulated unity of our existence asthrown projection our being always already delivered over to beingahead of ourselves

Since what impends is Daseinrsquos utter non-existence and sinceDasein must take over that possibility in every moment of its exist-ence Heidegger claims that in relation to death Dasein standsbefore its ownmost potentiality-for-Being ndash that possibility in whichwhat is at issue is nothing less than Daseinrsquos Being-in-the-worldSince Dasein is certain to die at some point he further claims thatdeath is a possibility that is not to be outstripped And to completehis characterization Heidegger (recalling his earlier claim that noone can take anotherrsquos death away from her) also claims that in Daseinrsquos comportment towards its death lsquoall its relations to anyother Dasein have been undonersquo (BT 50 294) ndash in other wordsthat death is a non-relational possibility

Of course the non-relationality of death is hardly unique to itamong our existential possibilities if no one else can die my deathit is also true that no one else can sneeze my sneezes Howeversneezing fails to exemplify the other two elements in Heideggerrsquostripartite existential characterization of death (our very existence asBeing-in-the-world is not at issue when we catch a cold and at thevery least it makes sense to imagine a human being who neversneezed) But in another sense it is precisely Heideggerrsquos point thatthe non-relational nature of death highlights an aspect of Daseinrsquoscomportment to any and all of its existential possibilities for inmaking concrete Daseinrsquos Being-ahead-of-itself the fact that no onecan die our death for us merely recalls us to the fact that our lifeis ours alone to live

But before examining this implication of Heideggerrsquos analysismore closely it is important to see that we have so far passed overa critical complication in Heideggerrsquos approach to death It may seem

that by treating death from an existential point of view ndash that isas a possibility of Daseinrsquos Being to which it must relate from withinits existence ndash Heidegger has overcome deathrsquos obdurate resistanceto any phenomenological grasp of its being But such a conclusionwould involve overlooking one remarkable feature of death under-stood as an existential possibility ndash the fact that it is not really anexistential possibility at all For any genuine existential possibilityis one that might be made actual by the Dasein whose possibilityit is I might eat the meal Irsquom cooking or play the game for whichIrsquom training But our own death cannot be realized in our existenceif our death becomes actual we are no longer there to experienceit In other words death is not just the possibility of our own non-existence of our own absolute impossibility it is an impossiblepossibility ndash or more frankly an existential impossibility But if itamounts to a contradiction in terms to think of death as an exis-tential possibility of however distinctive a kind then it would seemthat Heidegger must be wrong to think that he can gain phenom-enological access to death even by analysing it in existential terms

This is where the real elegance of Heideggerrsquos strategy for over-coming deathrsquos resistance to human understanding becomes clearFor if death cannot coherently be regarded as even a very unusualkind of existential possibility (since an impossibility is not one genus of the species lsquopossibilityrsquo any more than nonsense is a kindof sense) then we cannot understand our relation to our own death on the model of our relation to any genuine possibility of ourBeing ndash as if our death stood on the same level (the ontic or exis-tentiell level) as any other possibility upon which we might projectourselves Heideggerrsquos point in calling our relation to our own endour lsquoBeing-towards-deathrsquo is precisely to present it as an ontolog-ical (that is existential) structure rather than as one existentiellstate (even a pervasive or common one) of the kind that that struc-ture makes possible In short we cannot fully grasp Heideggerrsquosaccount of death except against the horizon of his account of theontological difference ndash the division between ontic and ontologicalmatters

Why then call death an existential possibility at all Doesnrsquot thischoice of terminology actually encourage forms of misunderstanding

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that Heidegger must then attempt to avert ndash by for example empha-sizing that an appropriately authentic relation to onersquos death is not a matter of actualizing that possibility (say by suicide) or ofexpecting it to be actualized at every next moment or of meditatingupon it in those terms There is however a compensating andfundamental advantage in Heideggerrsquos view For his terminologyunderlines his key insight ndash namely that although we canrsquot coher-ently regard death as an existentiell possibility neither can weunderstand our relation to our own end apart from our relation to our existentiell possibilities and thereby to our Being-ahead-of-ourselves More specifically Heideggerrsquos suggestion is that weshould think of our relation to death as manifest in the relation we establish and maintain (or fail to maintain) to every genuinepossibility of our Being and hence to our Being as such

Precisely because death can be characterized as Daseinrsquos ownmostnon-relational and not-to-be-outstripped possibility and hence asan omnipresent ineluctable but non-actualizable possibility of itsBeing which means that it is an ungraspable but undeniable aspectof every moment of its existence it follows that Dasein can onlyrelate to it in and through its relation to what is graspable in itsexistence ndash namely those genuine existentiell possibilities thatconstitute it from moment to moment Death thus remains beyondany direct existential (and hence phenomenological) grasp but itis shown to be graspable essentially indirectly as an omnipresentcondition of every moment of Daseinrsquos directly graspable existenceIt is not a specific feature of the existential terrain but rather alight or shadow emanating evenly and implacably from every suchfeature it is the ground against which those features configure them-selves a self-concealing condition for Daseinrsquos capacity to discloseits own existence to itself as it really is

In other words just as Heidegger earlier reminded us that deathis a phenomenon of life so he now tells us that death shows uponly in and through life in and through that which it threatens to render impossible ndash as the possible impossibility of that lifePhenomenologically speaking then life is deathrsquos representativethe proxy through which deathrsquos resistance to Daseinrsquos grasp is at once acknowledged and overcome or rather overcome in and

through its acknowledgement Death can be made manifest in ourexistential analytic only through a thorough recounting of thatanalysis in the light of the possible impossibility of that which itanalyses Or to put matters the other way around Being-towards-death is essentially a matter of Being-towards-life it is a matter ofrelating (or failing to relate) to onersquos life as utterly primordiallymortal

What might this amount to Systematically transposing Heideg-gerrsquos distinguishing predicates for death on to life we might saythe following For Dasein to confront life as its ownmost possibilityis for it to acknowledge that there is no moment of its existence inwhich its Being as such is not at issue This discloses that Daseinrsquosexistence matters to it and that what matters about it is not justthe specific moments that make it up but the totality of thosemoments ndash its life as a whole Dasein thereby comes to see that itslife is something for which it is responsible that it is its own to live(or to disown) ndash that its existence makes a claim on it that is essen-tially non-relational not something to be sloughed off on to OthersAnd to think of onersquos life as fated to be stripped out rendered hollowor void by death is to acknowledge the utter non-necessity of itscontinuation and hence its sheer thoroughgoing contingency Thehardest lesson of our mortality is its demand that we recognize thecomplete superfluity of our existence Our birth was not necessarythe course of our life could have been otherwise its continuationfrom moment to moment is no more than a fact and it will cometo an end at some point To acknowledge this about our lives issimply to acknowledge our finitude ndash the fact that our existence has conditions or limits that it is neither self-originating nor self-grounding nor self-sufficient that it is contingent from top tobottom But no representation of ourselves is harder to achieve orenact than this one nothing is more challenging than to live in sucha way that one does not treat what is in reality merely possible oractual or conditionally necessary as if it were absolutely necessaryndash a matter of fate or destiny beyond any question or alterationAuthentic Being-towards-death is thus a matter of stripping outfalse necessities of becoming properly attuned to the real modalitiesof human existence

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This last perception is what most clearly connects Heideggerrsquosproject of representing Dasein to itself as a whole and his desire toinclude the possibility of Daseinrsquos authenticity in his general portraitof human everydayness For an authentic grasp of Daseinrsquos exist-ence as mortal will inflect its attitude to the choices it must make(to its Being-ahead-of-itself) in four interrelated ways A mortalbeing is one whose existence is contingent (it might not have existedat all and its present modes of life are no more than the result ofpast choices) whose non-existence is an omnipresent possibility (sothat each of its choices might be its last) a being with a life to lead(its individual choices contributing to and so contextualized by thelife of which they are a part) and one whose life is its own to lead(so that its choices should be its own rather than those of determi-nate or indeterminate Others) In short an authentic confrontationwith death reveals Dasein as related to its own Being in such a wayas to hold open the possibility and impose the responsibility ofliving a life that is genuinely individual and genuinely whole ndash alife of integrity an authentic life

But of course Heidegger does not think that Dasein typicallydoes relate authentically to its own end and hence to its own lifeOn the contrary we typically flee in the face of death We regarddeath as something that happens primarily to others whom wethink of as simply more cases or instances of death as if they weremere tokens of an essentially impersonal type We encourage thedying by asserting that it will never happen and on those occasionswhen it does we often enough see it as a social inconvenience orshocking lack of tact on the deceased personrsquos part ndash a threat to ourtranquillized avoidance of death Although we may never actuallydeny that it will happen to us we are happy to contemplate coursesof action that might promise to hold it off (whether temporarily aswith fitness schemes or indefinitely as with cryogenics) and wetend to regard it as a distant eventuality as something that willhappen but not yet and hence as an impending event rather thanas the omnipresent impending possibility of our own non-existencethat impossible but ineluctable possibility without which our existence would lack its distinctively finite significance

This kind of tranquillizing alienation bears the characteristicmarks of Daseinrsquos average everyday existence in lsquodas manrsquo and itsuggests that lostness in lsquodas manrsquo is best understood as entangle-ment in a misplaced sense of the necessities of finite life For it ispart of this everyday mode of Daseinrsquos Being that we regard thearray of existential possibilities presently open to us and the specificchoices we make between them as wholly fixed by forces greaterthan or external to ourselves We do what we do because that iswhat one does what is done what lsquodas manrsquo does we displace ourfreedom outside ourselves existing in self-imposed servitude to lsquodasmanrsquo unwilling not only to alter that fact but to acknowledge thatit is a fact (but no more than that an actuality and not a necessity)The reality is that we alone are responsible for allowing ourselvesto be lost in the range of possibilities that our circumstances havethrust upon us and we alone are capable of and responsible foraltering that state of affairs

This is why Heidegger characterizes authentic Being-towards-death as a mode of anxiously resolute anticipation It is essentiallyanticipatory because death (the impossible possibility) can only beanticipated and it is essentially anxious because to live in the lightof a proper awareness of onersquos mortality is to make onersquos choicesin the light of an extreme and constant threat to oneself that emergesunwanted and unbidden from onersquos own Being it is to choose inthe face of the nothing ndash the possible impossibility ndash of onersquos ownexistence And for Dasein to be oppressed by its own existence byBeing-in-the-world as such just is ndash as we saw earlier ndash for Daseinto be anxious And Heideggerrsquos portrait of death as an ungraspablepossibility reinforces this connection by underlining the fit betweendeath and the essential objectlessness of angst For no object-directedstate of mind could correspond to an existential phenomenon thatutterly repels any objective actualization within Daseinrsquos worldlyexistence putting matters the other way around to apprehend ourworldliness as essentially uncanny as a matter of not-at-homenessjust is to apprehend the mortality of our existence

Here ndash in this conjunction of Daseinrsquos non-necessity and its not-at-homeness ndash we can see the first appearance in Division Two ofa theme which binds Heideggerrsquos analysis of death together with

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his analyses of guilt conscience and temporality the internal rela-tion between Dasein and nothingness nullity or negation Our graspof its full significance must thus wait upon a proper account of theremainder of Division Two But even at this early stage we cansee that it suggests a rather more complex relationship betweenDivision Two and Division One than could be captured by the imageof two successive turns around a hermeneutic spiral For that image tends to suggest that Division Two simply deepens our graspof what is established in Division One ndash as if the issues broachedin Division Two simply take the articulated unity of the care-structure entirely for granted and concentrate on unfolding itstemporal implications But if death is essentially implicit in oneaspect of the care-structure (as well as in the mood that reveals thatstructure) and if it lies essentially beyond direct phenomenologicalrepresentation then it follows that to acknowledge death philo-sophically is to put in question our sense that the care-structuregives us even a provisional grasp of Dasein as a whole as well asour sense that any such grasp is possible even in principle

More precisely in so far as Heidegger succeeds in attaining aproperly phenomenological grasp of death only by conceding theimpossibility of ever doing so he implies that we cannot under-stand Daseinrsquos Being without understanding that it is internallyrelated to that which lies beyond phenomenological representationHe thereby invokes a new horizon or broader context for the wholeof his existential analytic of Dasein as presented in Division One ndashthe requirement to relate every element of it to that which is neithera phenomenon nor of the logos to that which (phenomenologicallyspeaking) cannot appear as such or be the object of a possible discur-sive act For nothingness is not a representable something and notan unrepresentable something either hence it can be representedonly as beyond representation as the beyond of the horizon of therepresentable ndash its self-concealing and self-disrupting condition

Since this horizon is that of lsquothe nothingrsquo then to invoke it as abroader context for the analysis of Division One is in one sense toadd nothing whatever to that analysis ndash for it provides no specificanalytical ingredient in addition to those laid out in Heideggerrsquosinitial characterization of the care-structure and so nothing in

Division Two implies that this characterization is essentially incom-plete In another sense however introducing this relation to lsquothenothingrsquo as internal to Daseinrsquos Being means introducing thethought that every element in the articulation of the care-structureis related to lsquothe nothingrsquo and so must be reconsidered in its uncannylight In that sense by introducing this unthematizable theme of nothingness Heidegger alters nothing and everything in hisexistential analytic

One might say if lsquothe nothingrsquo really is the self-concealing andself-disrupting condition of Daseinrsquos comprehending and question-ing relation to Being then phenomenological philosophy can onlyacknowledge it as such (that is allow it to appear as it is) by allowinglsquothe nothingrsquo first to conceal itself and then to disrupt its conceal-ment in the phenomenological analysis itself ndash that is to appearwithin the analysis as that upon which the analysis as a whole isshipwrecked Only in this way could an existential analytic of Daseinachieve the kind of completeness that its condition allows and itsobject discloses ndash by presenting itself as essentially incompletebeyond completion as completed and completeable only by thatwhich lies beyond it

If so then Division Two shows that the analysis of Division Onewhile lacking nothing is essentially incomplete and essentiallybeyond completion in a sense that goes beyond the idea that essen-tially finite human understanding is always capable of further anddeeper spirals of articulation Division Two rather suggests thatthere is something essentially beyond representation in the beingwhose Being is structured by care hence something about Daseinthat is beyond the grasp of Division One or of any conceivablesupplementation or deepening of the analysis it contains In effectthe bookrsquos internal division returns us to a claim Heidegger makesin its opening pages ndash lsquothat in any way of comporting oneself towardsentities there lies a priori an enigmarsquo (BT 1 23) The functionof Division Two is thus to disrupt the apparent completeness ofDivision One thereby allowing Being and Time as a whole to repre-sent the self-concealing and self-disrupting condition of DaseinrsquosBeing and hence of its relation to Being as such The peculiar wayin which Division Two alters nothing and everything in Division

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One is thus Heideggerrsquos way of ensuring that Being and Timesuccessfully represents Daseinrsquos essentially enigmatic relation to lsquothenothingrsquo

EXCURSUS HEIDEGGER AND KIERKEGAARD

Heidegger introduced his discussion of death as part of his searchfor theoretical perspicuity Human mortality appeared to pose aninsuperable obstacle to grasping the ontological structure of humanexistence as a single unified whole But the discussion itself teachesus that a proper understanding of human mortality is also theprecondition for any individual human life attaining existentialintegrity only by relating to death understood as an impossiblepossibility can my existence become at once genuinely individualand genuinely whole In other words wholeness ndash properly under-stood as the unity and integrity belonging to essentially finiteenigmatic beings and their endeavours ndash has both a theoretical andan existential significance Being-a-whole is not just the fundamentalmark of a good phenomenological analysis but the touchstone ofan authentic relation to death and so to life

This emphasis upon integrity or wholeness in human existencemay appear unmotivated To be sure acknowledging onersquos ownmortality must involve acknowledging that death is a threat to exist-ence as such It thereby highlights that what is at issue in life isnot just the content of any given moment but the course of thatlife But even if onersquos life as such is at stake in onersquos existentiellchoices must one choose in such a way as to make that life into asingle integral whole Would it not be equally authentic to live alife of multiplicity and diversity aiming to include as many differentactivities achievements and modes of life as possible before deathintervenes Why should the fact that our individual life choicesmust be seen against the background of the single life of which theyare a part mean that we should aim to confer upon it a narrativeunity as opposed to a narrative disunity

Addressing this question properly requires a grasp of Heideggerrsquosaccount of conscience (the topic of the next two sections) so I willdefer delineating his full answer until then But his seemingly

unargued conjunction of the concepts of authenticity wholeness and death is partly determined by the work of the philosopher withwhom these sections on guilt and conscience are implicitly indialogue ndash Kierkegaard For in effect Heidegger is offering an alter-native answer to a question that Kierkegaard posed and therebyattempting to distinguish his account of authenticity from the theo-logical competitors with which his idiosyncratic use of ethico-religious concepts such as guilt and conscience might seem to alignhim Heideggerrsquos proximity to Kierkegaard is thus far more signif-icant than his glancing critical references to him in the footnotesto sections 40 and 45 would suggest

Kierkegaardrsquos philosophical pseudonym Johannes Climacus2

shares the Heideggerian view that human beings continuouslyconfront the question of how they should live and so must locatesome standard or value in relation to which that choice might mean-ingfully be made Moreover in so far as that standard is intendedto govern every such moment of choice it confers significance onthe whole life that those moments make up ndash if each choice is madeby reference to the same standard the life which grows from thatseries of choices will necessarily manifest an underlying unityClimacus thus presents the question of how best to live as a ques-tion about what gives meaning to onersquos life as a whole makingexactly the conjunction between authenticity and wholeness thatHeidegger deploys In taking over this question in roughly the formin which Climacus poses it it seems that Heidegger is also takingover his justification for so formulating it

Climacus goes on to suggest that only a religious answer to thequestion of lifersquos meaning will do Suppose that we start by aimingat a specific goal or achievement to give our life meaning ndash thepursuit of power or wealth the development of a talent Since suchgoals have significance only in so far as the person concerned desiresthem what is giving meaning to her life is in reality her wants anddispositions Climacus calls this the aesthetic form of life But suchdispositions can alter which means that no such single dispositioncan confer meaning on my life as a whole it may change or disap-pear but the question remains for as long as I live so staking mylife upon a desire could deprive it of meaning The only alternative

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in such circumstances would be to choose another desire upon whichto found my life ndash to aim for power instead of riches for examplebut this would show that the true foundation of my life is not what-ever desires I happen to have but my capacity to choose betweenthem

According to Climacus then we can avoid self-deception only by explicitly grounding our lives on our capacity to choose thustransforming the conditional array of our desires into unconditionalvalues We might for example relate to our sexual impulses bychoosing an unconditional commitment to marriage or choose toview a talent as the basis of a vocation We thereby choose not to permit changes in these contingencies to alter the shape of ourlives maintaining its unity and integrity regardless of fluctuationsin the intensity of our desires and thereby creating a self forourselves from ourselves This is a condensed version of a Kantianwill-based understanding of the ethical form of life and Climacusrsquosargument for it implies a second reason for connecting authenticityand wholeness If ndash as Heidegger suggests ndash authenticity amountsto establishing and maintaining genuine selfhood the fluctuationsof individual desires and dispositions cannot form an adequate basisfor it The resulting multiplicity of essentially unrelated existentialfragments could not cohere into a life that anyone could acknowledgeas her own

Shifting from the aesthetic to the ethical mode of life mayhowever be less fundamental than it seems For the latter under-stands the human will the human capacity to hold unconditionallyto a choice as the source of lifersquos meaning but that capacity is stilla part of the personrsquos life and so a part of that which has to be givenmeaning as a whole But no part can give meaning to the whole of which it is a part With respect to it as with respect to any of apersonrsquos given desires and dispositions we can still ask what justi-fies the choice of the capacity to choose as the basis of onersquos lifeWhat confers meaning on it

This implies that the question existence sets us is not answerablein terms of anything in that life life cannot determine its ownsignificance in terms of (some element of) itself Meaning can onlybe given to onersquos life as a whole by relating it to something outside

it for it is only to something outside it that my life can be relatedas a whole Only such a standard could give a genuinely uncondi-tional answer to the question of the meaning of onersquos life Only byrelating ourselves to such an absolute Good and thus relativizingthe importance of finite (and so conditional) goods can we properlyanswer the question existence poses And such an absolute Good is for Climacus just another name for God we can relate properlyto each moment of our existence only by relating our lives as awhole to God

Against this background Heideggerrsquos interpretation of death gainsin significance For by accepting the Kierkegaardian conjunctionbetween authenticity and wholeness but arguing that this conjunc-tion can be properly forged by relating appropriately to onersquosmortality Heidegger in effect argues that the theological terminusof Climacusrsquos argument is avoidable By understanding death asonersquos ownmost possibility and anticipating it in every existentialchoice one makes human beings can live authentic and integral liveswithout having to relate those lives to a transcendent Deity Foron Heideggerrsquos understanding of human mortality while a propergrasp of human existence as conditioned does require that one relateit to that which lies beyond its grasp it does not require that onerelate it to some essentially unconditioned thing or being The rele-vant horizon is not that of a transcendent Deity but of nothingnessKierkegaard is thus right to believe that the question of lifersquosmeaning is an inescapable part of human life and that it can befaced properly only by acknowledging the conditionedness or fini-tude of that life but he is wrong to think that acknowledging thisfinitude requires acknowledging a realm or an entity which liesbeyond that finitude Such talk of a lsquobeyondrsquo implies that humanconditionedness is a limitation rather than a limit a set of constraintsthat deprive us of participation in another better mode of life ratherthan a set of conditions that determine the form of any life that isrecognizably human Existential wholeness thus requires only anacknowledgement of human mortality and only those forms oftheological understanding that acknowledge this fact ndash that under-stand conditions as limits rather than limitations ndash are compatiblewith a proper ontological understanding of human existence3

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GUILT AND CONSCIENCE (sectsect54ndash60)

Heideggerrsquos reflections on death have so far shown that DaseinrsquosBeing-a-whole is ontologically possible ie that this possibility isconsonant with the basic structures of Daseinrsquos mode of Being Butit is one thing to demonstrate that it is logically possible for Daseinto individualize itself in an impassioned freedom towards death andquite another to show that and how this possibility can be broughtto concrete fruition in the everyday life of a being whose individ-uality is always already lost in the lsquotheyrsquo Accordingly Heideggernext attempts to locate the ontic roots of this ontological possibilityndash to identify any existentiell testimony to the genuine realizabilityof Daseinrsquos theoretically posited authenticity

In its average everyday state of inauthenticity Dasein is lost toitself So for it to achieve authenticity it must find itself But itcan only begin to do so if it comes to see that it has a self to findif it overcomes its repression of its potentiality for selfhood In shortits capacity for authentic individuality must somehow be attestedin a way which breaks through its average everyday inauthenticityHeidegger claims that what bears witness to this possibility forDasein is the voice of conscience This existentiell phenomenon isopen to and has been given a wide variety of interpretations ndash reli-gious psychoanalytical socio-biological Heidegger neither endorsesnor condemns any of these but rather explores the ontological or existential foundations of the phenomenon to which they referHis concern is with what makes it possible for Dasein to undergothe experience to which each of these interpretations lays claim Hissuggestion is that this experience is the existentiell realization ofDaseinrsquos primordial capacity to disclose itself as lost and to call uponitself to attain its ownmost potentiality for selfhood

As the term lsquocallrsquo suggests Heidegger thinks of the voice of con-science as a mode of discourse ndash a form of communication thatattempts to disrupt the idle talk of the they-self to which Dasein isordinarily attuned to elicit a responsiveness in Dasein that opposesevery aspect of that inauthentic discourse It must therefore dowithout hubbub novelty and ambiguity and provide no footholdfor curiosity Indeed if it is transformed into the occasion for endless

self-examination or fascinated narcissistic soliloquies this voice hasbeen entirely lost one more victim of the they-selfrsquos repressions

Dasein is its addressee but its mode of address is not determinedby what Dasein counts for in the eyes of others what its public roleand value may be nor by what it may have taken up as the rightway to live its life It addresses Dasein purely as a being whoseBeing is in each case mine ie for whom genuine individuality isa possibility Accordingly its call is devoid of content it assertsnothing gives no information about world events and no blueprintsfor living ndash it merely summons Dasein before itself holding upevery facet of its existence each aspect of its life choices for trialbefore its capacity to be itself It calls Dasein forth to its ownmostpossibilities without venturing to dictate what those possibilitiesmight or should be for any such dictation could only further repressDaseinrsquos capacity to take over its own life In short lsquoconsciencediscourses solely and constantly in the mode of keeping silentrsquo (BT56 318)

Who then addresses Dasein in this way Whose is the voice ofconscience We cannot specify the callerrsquos concrete features for it has no identity other than as the one who calls the summonerexists only as that which summons Dasein to itself But this voiceis one that Dasein hears within itself and is usually understood asan aspect of Dasein itself so can we not conclude that in the voiceof conscience Dasein calls to itself For Heidegger matters are morecomplex He agrees that the voice of conscience is not the voice ofsomeone other than the Dasein to whom the call is addressed notthe voice of a third party But neither are Dasein-as-addressee andDasein-as-addresser one and the same For the Dasein to whomappeal is made is lost in the lsquotheyrsquo whereas the Dasein who makesthe appeal is not (and could not be if its silent voice is to disruptthe discourse of the they-self) After all on Heideggerrsquos accountpart of Daseinrsquos lostness in the they-self is its being lost to anyconception of itself as lost as possessed of a capacity for authenticindividuality This fits our everyday experience of conscience as avoice that speaks against our expectations and even against our willits demands are ones to which we have no plans or desire to accedeBut then the voice of conscience both is and is not the voice of the

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Dasein to whom it speaks ndash lsquothe call comes from me and yet frombeyond mersquo (BT 57 320) How are we to make sense of Daseinrsquospassivity in relation to this voice How can its being the voice of Dasein be reconciled with the fact that it is characteristically experienced as a call made upon rather than by Dasein

This passive aspect of the voice of conscience suggests that itrelates to Daseinrsquos thrownness ndash that the voice of conscience issomehow expressive of the fact that Dasein is always already deliv-ered over to the task of existing placed in a particular situation thatit did not choose to occupy but from which it must neverthelesschoose how to go on with its life This is Daseinrsquos fundamentaluncanniness the state in which it finds itself is never all that it isor could be and so never something with which it can fully iden-tify or to which it can be reduced ndash so that Dasein can never regarditself as domesticated fully at-home with whatever state or formof life and world it finds itself inhabiting It is from this thrown-ness into existential responsibility that the they-self flees but thevoice of conscience recalls Dasein to this fact about itself and therebythrows the individual into an anxious confrontation with its ownpotentiality for genuine individuality In short the voice of con-science is that of Dasein in so far as it lsquofinds itself in the very depthsof its uncanninessrsquo (BT 57 321)

This is why the one who calls through the voice of conscience isdefinable by nothing more concrete than the fact of its calling it is the voice of Dasein as lsquonot-at-homersquo as the bare there-Being (Da-sein) in the nothingness which remains when it is wrenchedfrom its familiar absorption in the world and that world standsforth as the arena for Daseinrsquos projective understanding Nothingcould be more alien to the they-self than the self that confronts itspotentiality for authentic existence nothing is more likely to beexperienced by the they-self as at once within and without the selfAnd since the voice of conscience is the voice of Dasein as thrownprojection the voice which summons it from its lostness to confrontits inescapably personal abandonment to the task of existing it canbe thought of as the call of care In other words the call of conscienceis ontologically possible only because the very basis of DaseinrsquosBeing is care

This is Heideggerrsquos ontological explanation for the ontical factthat the voice of conscience is often heard as accusing us as iden-tifying the one it addresses as being guilty Conceptually guilt isconnected with indebtedness and responsibility A guilty person is responsible for atoning for herself making reparation for somedeprivation or lack that she has inflicted on others which in turnpresupposes that she herself is lacking in something ndash that she hasbeen and is deficient in some way and is responsible for that defi-ciency In short being guilty is a matter of being responsible forbeing the basis of a nullity But then the ontic phenomenon of guiltreflects the fundamental ontological structure of Daseinrsquos existenceas thrown projection

Through existing Dasein realizes one of the existentiell possibil-ities that its situation determines as available to it it acts on thebasis of the particular state of self and world in which it finds itselfBut of course it never has complete control over that state and therestrictions it imposes the capacity for projective commitment mustalways be deployed from within some particular context or horizonand so could never wholly determine its structure

In being a basis ndash that is in existing as thrown ndash Dasein constantlylags behind its possibilities It is never existent before its basis butonly from it and as this basis Thus lsquoBeing-a-basisrsquo means never tohave power over onersquos ownmost being from the ground up Thislsquonotrsquo belongs to the existential meaning of lsquothrownnessrsquo

(BT 58 330)

However nullity is integral to Daseinrsquos capacity for projection aswell as to its thrownness For in projecting upon one particularpossibility Dasein thereby negates all other possibilities the real-ization of any existentiell choice is the non-realization of all otherslsquoThus ldquocarerdquo ndash Daseinrsquos Being ndash means as thrown projection Being-the-basis of a nullity (and this Being-the-basis is itself null)rsquo (BT58 331) In short human existence as such amounts to the nullBeing-the-basis of a nullity Dasein as such is guilty

The authenticity to which conscience calls Dasein is thus not an existentiell mode in which Dasein would no longer be guilty

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Excuses or acts of reparation and reform might eradicate the onticguilt of a specific action but ontological guilt being a condition ofhuman existence is originary and ineradicable Authenticity ratherdemands that one project upon onersquos ownmost potentiality for beingguilty The aim is not to overcome or transcend guilt since thatwould amount to transcending onersquos thrownness it means takingresponsibility for the particular basis into which one is thrown andthe particular projections one makes upon that basis to make onersquosnecessarily guilty existence onersquos own rather than that of the they-self A readiness to take on responsibility in this way to be indebtedto oneself amounts to a willingness to be appealed to by the voiceof conscience ndash a readiness to make existential decisions in the light of onersquos ownmost authentic potentiality for Being-guilty Itamounts in short to choosing to have a conscience as opposed torepressing it The response for which the voice of conscience isseeking is thus not the adoption of some particular schedule of moralrights and wrongs some specific calculus of debt and credit Theresponse it seeks is responsiveness the desire to have a conscienceTo cultivate such a desire is to put oneself in servitude to onersquoscapacity for individuality it is to choose oneself

Since wanting to have a conscience amounts to Daseinrsquos project-ing upon its ownmost potentiality for Being-guilty we can think ofit as a mode of understanding But in the tripartite care-structureof Daseinrsquos Being to every mode of understanding a particular state-of-mind and a particular mode of discourse belong We saw that theannouncement of Daseinrsquos uncanniness elicits anxiety and as theindefiniteness of the call conscience makes and the response itdemands makes clear the mode of discourse which corresponds tothis anxiety is one of keeping silent of reticence The particular formof self-disclosedness that the voice of conscience elicits in Dasein isthus a reticent self-projection upon onersquos ownmost Being-guilty inwhich one is ready for anxiety Heidegger labels it lsquoresolutenessrsquo

As a mode of Being-in-the-world resoluteness does not isolateDasein or detach it entirely from its world Rather it returns Daseinto its particular place in its world to its specific concernful relationswith entities and solicitous relations with others in order to discoverwhat its possibilities in that situation really are and to seize upon

them in whatever way is most genuinely its own Resoluteness istherefore inherently indefinite if the concrete disclosures and projec-tions which make it up must be responsive to the particularity of its context then no existentiell blueprints for authenticity canarise from a fundamental ontology In fact it is only through thedisclosive understanding of a concrete act of resolution that a partic-ular context ndash hitherto volatilized by the ambiguity curiosity andnovelty-hunger of the they-self ndash is given existential definition at all The constitution of Daseinrsquos place in the world as a locus ofauthentic existentiell choice ndash as what Heidegger calls a lsquosituationrsquondash is thus not something resoluteness presupposes but rather some-thing it brings about To be resolute involves not simply projectingupon whichever existential possibility from a given range is mostauthentically onersquos own but projecting onersquos context as possessedof a definite range of existential possibilities in the first placeResoluteness constitutes the context of its own activity

THE ATTESTATION OF BEING AND TIME

It seems then that Heidegger can marry the various componentsof his analysis of Dasein into a coherent whole His various char-acterizations of human existence as thrown projection care Being-towards-death and Being-guilty dovetail rather than conflict withone another They are complementary specifications of the sameontological structure from differing depths and angles of analysisBut one of his declared goals in this particular chapter remains unfulfilled

For his account of conscience is supposed to provide some exis-tentiell proof that a being typically mired in inauthenticity mightnonetheless attain authenticity In one sense of course it does justthat if the account is accurate then that voice articulates the callof Daseinrsquos uncanniness and so constitutes a trace within everydayexistentiell inauthenticity of that aspect of Dasein which is anxiousabout its ownmost potentiality for authentic existence But forHeidegger the voice utters a call that Dasein makes from itself toitself it is the voice of Daseinrsquos repressed but not extinguishedcapacity for genuine selfhood And yet if that capacity is genuinely

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repressed how can it possibly speak out If it can its repressionmust already have been lifted but it is just that lifting that transi-tion from inauthenticity to authenticity which the call of conscienceis supposedly invoked to explain

The central difficulty is that Heidegger conceives of Dasein asinherently split or doubled4 All human beings are capable of livingauthentically or inauthentically either they are lost in the distrac-tions of the they-self (while retaining the capacity for wrenchingthemselves away from it) or they have realized the existentiellpossibilities that give expression to their real individuality (whileremaining vulnerable to a falling back into loss of self ) The tran-sition from inauthentic to authentic existence therefore involves ashift in the internal economy of these dual-aspect beings thecapacity for genuine individuality must come to eclipse the capacityfor non-individuality which has hitherto eclipsed it But Heideggerconceives of this transition as brought about by Daseinrsquos ownresources ndash lsquothe call undoubtedly does not come from someone elsewho is with me in the worldrsquo (BT 57 320) ndash and such a vision ofthe self-overcoming of self-imposed darkness is difficult to rendercoherent Heidegger claims that the transition is brought about bythe very aspect of the self that benefits from it ndash by its eclipsedcapacity for authenticity lsquo[Daseinrsquos] ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self functions as the callerrsquo (BT 57 320) But this amountsto claiming that a capacity in eclipse can bring about its own emer-gence from eclipse The only available alternative explanation is that the capacity at present eclipsing the selfrsquos capacity for authen-ticity might place itself in eclipse ndash which seems no less incoherentIn short the transition with which Heidegger is concerned seemsinexplicable in his own terms

The difficulty is fundamental and I believe insuperable withoutsome modification of the model Heidegger has offered But there isone obvious modification that might solve the difficulty whilepreserving the basic outlines of his understanding of conscience wecan drop the claim that the call of conscience does not come fromsomeone else who is with us in the world What if we claimedinstead that the call of conscience is in fact articulated by a thirdparty by someone else who diagnoses us as lost in the they-self

and has an interest in our overcoming that inauthenticity and freeingour capacity to live a genuinely individual life The intervention of such a person would constitute an external disruption of thehermetic self-reinforcing dispersal of Dasein in the they-self a wayof recalling the self to its own possibilities without requiring anincoherent process of internal bootstrapping She would in a sensebe speaking from outside or beyond us but Heidegger has stressedthat a perceived externality is one characteristic of the voice ofconscience Moreover if this personrsquos aim is to help us recover ourcapacity for selfhood our autonomy she could not consistently wishto impose upon us a specific blueprint for living or in any otherway substitute a form of servitude to herself for our present servi-tude to the lsquotheyrsquo In fact her only aim would rather be that ofrecalling us to the fact of our capacity for individuality and urgingus to listen to the specific demands it makes upon us In so doingshe would function as an external representative of an aspect ofourselves her voice going proxy for the call of our ownmost poten-tiality for authenticity a call that has at present been repressed butwhich nonetheless constitutes our innermost self in that sense hervoice would be speaking from within us

In short the voice of a third party whose reticent appeal acknow-ledged the logic I have just outlined would be perceived by us aspossessing just the phenomenal characteristics Heidegger uses todefine the voice of conscience lsquoThe call comes from me and yetfrom beyond mersquo (BT 57 320) It then seems significant that whenHeidegger briefly refers to the voice of conscience in his discussionof language he talks of lsquohearing the voice of the friend whom everyDasein carries with itrsquo (BT 34 206)5 and that he should note inpassing that lsquoDasein can become the conscience of Othersrsquo (BT60 344)

If however inauthentic Dasein is incapable of uttering the callof conscience how can it be capable of hearing that call when it ismade by another If part of Daseinrsquos lostness in the they-self is itsloss of any conception of itself as lost as capable of anything otherthan its present state how could the friendrsquos call to recognize thatits present state is inauthentic (and hence alterable) actually pene-trate its repression of any such awareness If it could then surely

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

its addressee must already in part have made the very transitionthat the reception of the call is supposed to explain Clearly thenif the friend is to be heard she must create the conditions for herown audibility But how

Inauthentic Daseinrsquos selfhood is lost in the they-self ontologi-cally speaking there is no selfndashother differentiation in the lsquotheyrsquoand so no internal self-differentiation in its members ndash lacking anyconception of being other than it is Dasein conflates its existentialpotential and its existentiell actuality and represses its uncanninessWhen however Dasein encounters an authentic friend her modeof existence disrupts the undifferentiated mass of the lsquotheyrsquo herselfhood is not lost in a slavish identification with (or a slavish differentiation from) others so she cannot confirm Dasein in itsanonymity by mirroring it and she prevents Dasein from relatinginauthentically to her For Dasein could mirror another who exists as separate and self-determining and who relates to othersas genuinely other only by relating to her as other and to itself asother to that other ie as a separate self-determining individualThis amounts to Dasein acknowledging the mineness of its existenceand so its internal self-differentiation (the uncanny non-coincidenceof what it is and what it might be) In short an encounter with agenuine other disrupts Daseinrsquos lostness by awakening otherness in Dasein itself Daseinrsquos relation to that other instantiates a modeof its possible self-relation (a relation to itself as other as not self-identical) Put otherwise it induces an anxious realization of itselfas a separate self-responsible being with a life that it must leadand so of its existence as its own non-relational and not-to-be-outstripped This amounts to an anxious acknowledgement of itsmortality the anticipatory state that Heidegger earlier defined asthe existentiell pivot from self-dispersal to self-constancy This ishow the sheer fact of the friendrsquos existence creates in those to whomshe relates herself the conditions for the audibility of her call toindividuality

This leaves one final problem if Daseinrsquos transformation toauthenticity presupposes an authentic friend how did the friendachieve authenticity Does not our lsquosolutionrsquo to Daseinrsquos boot-strapping problem simply displace it on to this third party and so

leave us no further forward This important question is one thatcan only be addressed using the material examined in Chapter 7 sowe must defer its resolution until then What I can spell out herehowever is the reflexive potential of this modified version of theHeideggerian model of conscience ndash its applicability as a model forunderstanding the role of the text in which it is developed

For of course Heideggerrsquos conception of Dasein as split with itscapacity for authenticity eclipsing or being eclipsed by its capacityfor inauthenticity is intended to apply to his readers As studentsof philosophy they will be immersed in the prevailing modes ofthat discipline and since philosophizing is a mode of Daseinrsquos Beingits everyday enactments will be as imbued with inauthenticity aswill those of any human activity In short Heidegger conceives ofthe readers of Being and Time as inauthentic although capable ofauthenticity Since however outlining an insightful fundamentalontology of Dasein would necessarily be an achievement of authenticphilosophizing and since that is exactly what Being and Time claimsto develop Heidegger must regard the author of Being and Time ndashhimself ndash as having achieved an authentic mode of human exist-ence (while not being immune to the temptations of inauthenticity)Add to this the fact that providing such a fundamental ontology to his readers amounts to an attempt to facilitate their transitionfrom inauthentic to authentic philosophizing and we have a pictureof Heideggerrsquos relations to his readers that precisely matches themodified model of conscience I just introduced

Heidegger appears as the voice of conscience in philosophyoffering himself as an impersonal representative of the capacity for authentic thinking that exists in every one of his readerspresenting them not with blueprints for living but with a portraitof themselves as mired in inauthenticity in order to recall them to knowledge of themselves as capable of authentic thought andthereby to encourage them to overcome their repression of thatcapacity and to think for themselves In short Heideggerrsquos wordsoffer themselves as a pivot for their readersrsquo self-transformation asat once a mirror in which their present inauthenticity is reflectedback to them and as a medium through which they might attainauthenticity

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Why then should Heidegger emphatically exclude the possibil-ity of our modified model of the voice of conscience by declaringthat it can never be the voice of an actual other a third party Onepossible answer is that he is attempting to preserve the idea that thetransformation from inauthenticity to authenticity can be broughtabout through the relevant individualrsquos own resources ndash that Daseincan originate its own rebirth But of course in claiming the capac-ity to present a fundamental ontology of Dasein (of which thisanalysis of conscience forms a part) the author of Being and Timelays claim to a position of authenticity as a philosopher and soimplicitly identifies himself as having managed the transition froman inauthentic to an authentic mode of existence His unmodifiedmodel of conscience allows him to present himself as having doneso entirely out of his own resources as having single-handedlycreated his fundamental ontology and his deconstruction of thephilosophical tradition he inherited His achievement appears assolely and exclusively his as if it had sprung fully formed from hisown forehead In particular it provides a subliminal justification ofhis otherwise puzzling decision to repress entirely the role that histeacher Husserl played in the origination of his own thinking andhis own investigations ndash to repress the voice of conscience thatHusserl clearly represented for him

Of course such a mode of self-presentation makes it difficult forHeidegger to acknowledge that his model of conscience can alsoaccount for the relation in which he stands to his readers that thevoice of his text is the voice of conscience the call of care ndash for howcan he explicitly declare that while others require the interventionof his voice to reactivate their potentiality for authenticity he alonestood in no such need that he benefited from no one in the wayhis readers will benefit from him And what this shows I believeis the frightening depth of Heideggerrsquos need to think of himself asself-originating It is not necessarily a constant need or at least one that constantly overwhelmed him indeed as Chapter 7 of thisbook will argue other stretches of his text implicitly deny that hisideas are entirely self-originated But at this point it is difficultto avoid the conclusion that Heideggerrsquos need to deny his own dependence upon others has led to a fundamental mutilation of the

potential wholeness and integrity of his text ndash a distortion of thefit between its form and its content that amounts to a distortion ofits authenticity

But I want to end this long and complex chapter by underlininga respect in which the form and the context of this text do achievea genuinely authentic fit To see this we first need to recall theextent to which Heideggerrsquos analysis of conscience and guilt confirmsthe implication of his analysis of death ndash namely that Dasein isinternally related in its Being to nothingness nullity and negationTo say that Dasein is Being-guilty just is to say that it is the nullBeing-the-basis of a nullity and hence that something about theground of our projections will always exceed our comprehendinggrasp and the voice of conscience is Dasein discoursing to itself inthe mode of keeping silent ndash that is it reveals the being of discourseas paradigmatically manifest in saying nothing or rather in a dimen-sion of significance that goes beyond the specifiable content of aspeech act For this silent voice does not demand that anythingspecific happen in the world and so nothing specific could consti-tute its satisfaction More precisely beyond any specific existentielldemands we interpret it as making the voice of conscience alwaysmakes the further demand that we regard our subjection to demandas such as unredeemable through the satisfaction of those specificdemands

What the voice of conscience speaks against therefore is ourinveterate tendency to conflate our existential potential with ourexistentiell actuality so what it silently opens up is Daseinrsquos internalotherness its relation to itself as other as not self-identical butrather transitional or self-transcending And this implies that inau-thenticity is a matter of Daseinrsquos enacting an understanding of itselfas essentially self-identical as capable of coinciding with itself andfulfilling its nature But if Heidegger means his text to be the voiceof conscience for his readers then in order to meet the standardsthat its own analyses set it must at all costs avoid coinciding withitself Can it be so understood It can if we interpret the apparentcompleteness and self-sufficiency of Division One as the textrsquos enactment of exactly the inauthentic absorption in specific work-environments (the selfrsquos untroubled identification with its world)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

and the undifferentiatedness of the they-self (the selfrsquos untroubledcoincidence with Others and hence with itself) that it identifies assignals of average everyday concern and solicitude On this inter-pretation it is the internal differentiation of Being and Time betweenDivisions One and Two that grounds its overall claim to be providingan authentic existential analytic of Dasein and hence a way ofturning its readers from inauthenticity to authenticity as philoso-phers and as individuals It is Division Tworsquos refusal to coincidewith Division One ndash its refusal to accept that its predecessorrsquos char-acterization of the care-structure is complete and self-sufficientsimply coinciding with the Being of the being under analysis ndash that gives Being and Time its authentic unity the bookrsquos internalself-transcendence or self-negation is its way of Being-a-textual-whole For the irruptive advent of Division Two ndash at once unfoldingfrom certain specific aspects of the analysis of Division One(involving angst and Being-ahead-of-oneself) and entirely reori-enting every aspect of it ndash enacts the way in which an authenticself-understanding is to be wrenched from the inauthentic grasp ofourselves with which the book tells us we will always already beginboth as individual Dasein and as philosophers Hence an authenticgrasp of Heideggerrsquos existential analytic depends upon seeing it asdeliberately unavoidably disrupting itself from within (by strivingto represent Daseinrsquos internal relation to what is beyond represen-tation) and thereby aiming to achieve the non-self-coincidence thatis the mark of anxious anticipatory resoluteness

1 See L Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London Routledgeand Kegan Paul 1922) 64311ff

2 See S Kierkegaard Concluding Unscientific Postscript trans H V andE H Hong (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992) Thequestion of the significance of Kierkegaardrsquos use of pseudonyms iscontroversial and particularly so in the case of this book for safetyrsquossake I will attribute the views expressed in it to its pseudonymousauthor

3 Whether Heidegger is right to think that Climacusrsquos account of whatit is to relate human finitude to the Absolute falls into the trap of

misinterpreting human conditionedness is a moot point See my Faithand Reason (London Duckworth 1994) for an argument that Climacusis not guilty as charged see M Weston Kierkegaard and ModernContinental Philosophy (London Routledge 1994) for a Kierkegaardiancritique of Heidegger

4 In articulating this difficulty coming to see its significance andattempting to develop a way of accommodating it that is not whollyalien to Heideggerrsquos self-conception I am drawing upon a specificset of terms and a general conception of the philosophical enterprisedeveloped in the work of Stanley Cavell see in particular his Caruslectures Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (Chicago Universityof Chicago Press 1990) In so doing I hope to convince the readerthat the perfectionist model of philosophical writing that Cavell claimsto find at work in the texts of Emerson Thoreau and Wittgenstein(among others) can also be seen to control the early Heideggerrsquosconception of his endeavours

5 Derrida makes much of this point in his essay lsquoHeideggerrsquos earPhilopolemologyrsquo in J Sallis (ed) Reading Heidegger Commemorations(Bloomington Ind Indiana University Press 1994)

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6HEIDEGGERrsquoS

(RE)VISIONARY MOMENTTIME AS THE HUMAN

HORIZON(Being and Time sectsect61ndash71)

Our brief discussion of the friend as the voice of conscience implieda connection between Daseinrsquos willingness to attend to that voiceand its anticipation of its death In the sections to be examined nextHeidegger argues that these two elements of Daseinrsquos authenticityare simply different facets of one and the same mode of existenceThis prepares the ground for outlining the ontological preconditionsof Daseinrsquos Being as care thereby definitively establishing aninternal relation between the Being of Dasein and time In so doingHeidegger explicitly develops two other themes also highlighted atthe end of the previous chapter first that to understand DaseinrsquosBeing is to understand another aspect of its internal relation to thenothing and second that the conclusions established in his textcontrol the ways in which that text is written and should be readhence that the content and the form of authentic philosophicalwriting must be properly related to one another

MORTALITY AND NULLITY THE FORM OFHUMAN FINITUDE (sectsect61ndash2)

The connection between anticipation and resolution depends on the internal relation between Heideggerrsquos dual characterization ofDaseinrsquos Being as Being-towards-death and as Being-guilty (Being-the-null-basis of a nullity) for both characterizations invoke differ-ent inflections of a single conception of negativity at the heart ofhuman existence Together they entail that human beings properlyunderstand the significance of their existentiell choices only if theymake them knowing that each such moment of decision might be their last and that each constitutes a situation into which theywere thrown and from which they must project themselves

These are simply two interrelated marks of the conditionednessor finitude of human existence ndash finitude as mortality and finitudeas nullity they envision each moment of human existence as shad-owed by the possibility of its own impossibility by the absence of total control over its own antecedents and by the negation ofcompeting but unrealized possibilities Accordingly human beingscannot authentically confront their concrete moments of existentialchoice unless they grasp the full complexity or depth of their fini-tude They cannot resolutely confront them as the null basis of anullity without acknowledging the possibility of their utter nullifi-cation (ie without anticipating death) and they cannot properlyanticipate their own mortality without confronting their choice-situations as themselves doubly marked by death ndash the death of thepreceding moment (no longer alterable but forever determinative)and the death of their other unrealized possibilities (no longer actualizable but forever what-might-have-been) In short the onlyauthentic mode of resoluteness is anticipatory resoluteness the only authentic mode of anticipation is resolute anticipation

The desired impact of the voice of conscience on an attentiveDasein confirms that anticipation is the authentic existentiell modi-fication of resoluteness That voice wrenches Dasein away from itslostness in the lsquotheyrsquo and returns it to its ownmost potentiality for selfhood It individualizes Dasein forcing it to confront its under-lying non-relationality and it recalls Dasein to a conception of its

T I M E A S T H E H U M A N H O R I Z O N 153

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

own existence as essentially and inescapably Being-guilty Theresoluteness it calls for involves establishing and maintainingconstancy with respect to the real lineaments of Daseinrsquos situationbut avoiding the a priori imposition of specific blueprints for livingBut the particular mode of existence that best answers to these veryprecise demands ndash the mode of projection that best responds to thevoice of conscience ndash would be Daseinrsquos ownmost non-relationalnot-to-be-outstripped certain and yet indefinite possibility and thatis simply a description of Being-towards-death In other wordslsquoresoluteness is authentically and wholly what it can be only asanticipatory resolutenessrsquo (BT 62 356)

It follows that anticipatory resoluteness will give any Daseincapable of achieving it the only species of unity or wholeness attainable by a being with its distinctively existential mode of BeingHere Heideggerrsquos analysis explicitly touches on and supplementsKierkegaardrsquos reasons for connecting authenticity with wholenessFor any human being whose resolute grasp of her choice-situationinvolves projecting herself upon a given possibility against a back-ground awareness of her own mortality will view the relevantmoment not simply as if it were her last but also as a particularnon-repeatable moment in the wider context of her life Seen interms of her own possible impossibility any given moment in apersonrsquos existence is revealed not just as utterly contingent in itselfbut as part of an utterly contingent life ndash one with a very specificorigin and history one which will end at a specific point in a specificway a sequence which might have been different but whose partic-ularity is now the horizon within which she must either attain orfail to attain true individuality But individuality is not just a matterof making decision after decision each of which is genuinely expres-sive of herself rather than of the lsquotheyrsquo it means leading a life thatis genuinely her own

Accordingly placing any particular moment of decision withinthe context of a single and singular life must be the goal of anygenuine act of resolution Resolutely grasping onersquos existentialresponsibilities means disclosing the true lineaments of onersquos decision-making context determining it as a situation for existen-tiell choice and that is a matter of contextualizing it of properly

T I M E A S T H E H U M A N H O R I Z O N154

grasping the moment as emerging from the constraints and free-doms of the preceding moment and as providing a basis for projectingupon the available possibilities of the coming moment But fullycomprehending the specificity of that moment would involve placingit in a context wider than the immediate past and future It wouldmean seeing it as the point to which onersquos life has led and fromwhich the remainder of onersquos life will acquire a specific orientation

Such a contextualization must of course acknowledge that onersquoslife cannot be grasped as a whole in any absolute or unconditionalsense for it must be grasped by the being whose life it is and sofrom a point within it rather than from some fantasized point out-side it which means that Daseinrsquos comprehending grasp of itselfwill necessarily encounter constitutive limits reflecting the fact thatits Being is the null basis of a nullity Nor does such contextual-ization require that onersquos life as a whole should have a singleoverarching plot ndash with everything in it subordinate to a single goalnarrative unity need not be monomaniacal But resolute anticipa-tion would require avoiding the complete fragmentation implicit inthe Kierkegaardian portrait of the aesthetic life it would requirecontinually striving to understand the twists and turns of onersquos life as episodes in a single story Relating oneself to all momentsof decision in this way would accordingly mean viewing everymoment as one in which the significance of onersquos life as a whole isat stake and that simply reformulates Heideggerrsquos conception ofliving in the full awareness of onersquos mortality So by actualizingits potential for Being-a-whole Dasein would enact an authenticmode of Being-towards-death

PHILOSOPHICAL INTEGRITY ANDAUTHENTICITY (sectsect62ndash4)

At this point however Heidegger acknowledges a significant shiftin the focus of his investigation

The question of the potentiality-for-Being-a-whole is one which is facticaland existentiell It is answered by Dasein as resolute The question ofDaseinrsquos potentiality-for-Being-a-whole has now fully sloughed off the

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character indicated at the beginning when we treated it as if it werejust a theoretical or methodological question of the analytic of Daseinarising from the endeavour to have the whole of Dasein completelylsquogivenrsquo The question of Daseinrsquos totality which at the beginning wediscussed only with regard to ontological method has its justifica-tion but only because the ground for that justification goes back toan ontical possibility of Dasein

(BT 62 357)

Attaining a perspective upon Dasein as a totality or whole origi-nally appeared as a methodological imperative Heideggerrsquos overtconcern was to demonstrate that the seemingly disparate elementsof his analysis of Being-in-the-world in fact formed an articulatedwhole that his ontological analysis was a comprehensive integratedand surveyable treatment of the human way of being Now we aretold that its covert inspiration lies in its relation to an ontical possi-bility of Dasein Heideggerrsquos supposedly impersonal methodologicalinterest in wholeness is in reality a personal interest in a particularexistentiell possibility ndash attaining anticipatory resoluteness

He thereby acknowledges one implication of the generally reflex-ive nature of his enterprise For of course Heidegger is a humanbeing writing an analytical account of the underlying structures ofthe human way of being so every element of that analysis mustapply to himself and in particular to his way of engaging in philo-sophical analysis and composing philosophical prose But a keyinsight of that analysis is that the human way of being is groundedin care and the care-structure has a very specific character

Because it is primordially constituted by care any Dasein is alreadyahead of itself As Being it has already projected itself upon definitepossibilities of its existence and in such existentiell projections ithas in a pre-ontological manner also projected something like exist-ence and Being Like all research the research that wants to developand conceptualize that kind of Being that belongs to existence is itselfa kind of Being which disclosive Dasein possesses can such research bedenied this projecting which is essential to Dasein

(BT 63 363)

The ontological investigation of which Being and Time is a recordis itself a mode of Daseinrsquos Being an enactment by a human indi-vidual of one existentiell possibility It must therefore be guided by a fore-conception of that Being and as the realization of a possibility by a given individual it must involve that individualprojecting upon a particular existentiell option Heideggerrsquos confes-sion identifies the particular existentiell option he aims to realize asthat of anticipatory resoluteness Being-a-whole In other words heis projecting upon the specific ontic possibility of authentic Being-in-the-world and his writings are an essential component of thatprojection The seemingly impersonal philosophical activity of whichBeing and Time is the articulate record is in fact part of Heideggerrsquosattempt to make his own life an integral and singular whole ndash thelife of an authentic individual And as we have seen the only alter-native to a philosopherrsquos grounding her activity upon an authenticexistentiell possibility is her grounding it upon an inauthentic one In short since a philosopher is a human being whose life isnecessarily structured by the projective understanding of care herpractice and her conclusions cannot transcend or avoid the questionof personal authenticity

So much for professional philosophical detachment For Heideg-ger the very idea is an illusion rooted in Daseinrsquos average everydayrepression of its capacity for authenticity and in philosophyrsquosaverage everyday repression of its knowledge that ndash with respect toinvestigations of human ontology ndash the investigator is also thatwhich is investigated In this respect Kant stands as exemplary Hisunderstanding of the selfhood of human beings avoids the obviousmodes of inauthentic human self-understanding He opposes theCartesian conception of the human subject as a present-at-handthinking substance with his claim that the lsquoI thinkrsquo represents apurely formal unity the transcendental unity of apperception (therelatedness of all subjective representations in and to one conscious-ness) But he conceives of those representations as empirical phe-nomena constantly present to the lsquoIrsquo while the lsquoIrsquo is constantlypresent to them and so models their mutual relatedness in termsentirely inappropriate to an entity with the Being of Dasein Whiledimly perceiving the inherent directedness of human perceptions ndash

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their necessarily being perceptions of something subjective percep-tions of an objective world ndash he fails to follow up this glimpse ofDaseinrsquos inherently worldly existence because his model of thatdirectedness derives from a particular mode of the being of objectsAnd it is the distinguishing characteristic of inauthentic Dasein tointerpret itself in just those terms they are the handiest availableto a creature that has fallen into its world immersing itself in theobjects which thereafter absorb it If even so great a philosopher asKant cannot struggle free of such misconceptions then the inau-thenticity of average everyday philosophizing must be as pervasiveand deep-rooted as in any other human activity

But Heideggerrsquos general diagnosis of philosophers as systemati-cally denying both the fact and the nature of their own humanityis not purely a manifestation of his own personal attempt to overcome that professional deformity The authentic ontology ofDasein recounted in Being and Time is not presented to his fellow-philosophers purely to confirm his own authenticity (although itinevitably attests to precisely that) It is also designed to disrupt theinauthentic self-understandings and modes of existence of itsreaders to remind them that they too are capable of authenticityand thereby to serve as a fulcrum upon which they might shift theirown lives from lostness to reorientation from constancy to the not-self of the lsquotheyrsquo to constancy to themselves and to a life thatis genuinely their own

If as readers we fail to acknowledge Heideggerrsquos conception ofhis relation to us then in effect we simply continue to flee fromthe voice of conscience and its demand for resoluteness For authenticresoluteness must grasp the true lineaments of every moment oflife understood as a situation for existentiell choice and sitting fora certain number of hours reading Being and Time is itself such achoice ndash a particular way of enacting onersquos existence and one whichplaces us in a certain field of existentiell possibilities to which wecan relate either authentically or inauthentically Studying phil-osophy is not an alternative to existing but a mode of existing andwhen it takes the form of studying a philosophical text doing soauthentically must involve acknowledging the fact that the wordswe are reading were chosen and ordered by another human being

and that our reading those words is not an accident or a necessitybut a specific choice that we have made To pass over the fact thateven philosophy books are written by human beings to be read byhuman beings amounts to repressing the knowledge that studyingthis philosophical text is a mode of existing a choice to spend onersquostime in a particular way with a particular other so it amounts todenying onersquos own humanity ndash denying the fact that even readersand writers of philosophy are human beings

THE TEMPORALITY OF CARE THROWNPROJECTION (sectsect65ndash8)

The full significance of both the existentiell and the ontologicalaspects of Heideggerrsquos analysis of Being-a-whole depends upon afurther step in that analysis ndash laying bare the underlying ontologicalmeaning of Daseinrsquos Being as care

Heidegger thinks of this step as articulating the meaning ofDaseinrsquos Being as care where lsquomeaningrsquo signifies lsquothe upon-whichof a primary projection in terms of which something can be conceivedin its possibility as that which it isrsquo (BT 65 371) In effect thenhe is exploring the conditions for the possibility of the articulatedstructural whole that is care Anticipatory resoluteness being a modeof human existence must be an inflection of the care-structure soany fundamental ontological presuppositions pertaining to authenticresoluteness must also be fundamental to the care-structure Theywill in effect provide an indirect route to Heideggerrsquos primary goal

It quickly becomes evident that authentic resoluteness presup-poses Daseinrsquos openness to time It transforms Daseinrsquos potentialfor authenticity into actuality ndash a transformation that is inevitablyoriented towards the future towards a future state of the self thatDasein will (and wills to) be Such authentic projection requiresgrasping Dasein as the basis for that projection which meansgrasping it as null ndash as essentially Being-guilty But that is a matterof Daseinrsquos acknowledging itself as it has already been acknow-ledging its past as an ineradicable part of its present existence Andsince resoluteness discloses the current moment of Daseinrsquos exist-ence as a situation for choice and action it also presupposes Daseinrsquos

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openness to the present ndash its capacity to let itself be encounteredby that which is present to it in its existential context (its lsquotherersquo)Resoluteness thus implies a triple but internally related opennessto future past and present No single openness could exist withoutthe others but in so far as resoluteness is anticipatory a certainpriority for Daseinrsquos openness to the future is implied The limita-tions determinations and opportunities bestowed by past andpresent are grasped so that Dasein might project itself upon itsownmost existentiell possibilities might open itself to that which ismost truly itself as it comes towards it from the future

Coming back to itself futurally resoluteness brings itself into theSituation by making present The character of lsquohaving beenrsquo arisesfrom the future and in such a way that the future which lsquohas beenrsquo(or better which lsquois in the process of having beenrsquo) releases fromitself the Present This phenomenon has the unity of a future whichmakes present in the process of having been we designate it astemporality

(BT 65 374)

In other words temporality is the meaning of care ndash the basis of the primordial unity of the care-structure That totality was previously defined as ahead-of-itself-already-Being-in (a world) asBeing-alongside (entities encountered within the world) it reflectsDaseinrsquos existence as thrown projection living a moment that isgrounded in previous moments and that in turn grounds momentsto come and so implicitly presupposes openness to time lsquoAhead-of-itselfrsquo presupposes Daseinrsquos openness to the future lsquoalready-Being-inrsquo indicates its openness to the past and lsquoBeing-alongsidersquoalludes to the process of making present Once again the threeaspects of temporal openness are internally related but theirordering in Heideggerrsquos definition registers the relative priority offuturity which reflects the fundamental ontological fact that exist-ence is a matter of projecting thrownness through present actionJust as resoluteness finds its authentic flowering in anticipation sothe primary meaning of existentiality is the future

Heideggerrsquos conclusion therefore is that the meaning or under-lying significance of the Being of Dasein is temporality It is whatmakes possible the unity of existence facticity and falling to whichthe tripartite structure of care alludes We have finally arrived atthe theme registered in the title of his book If Daseinrsquos capacity torelate itself to Being (its own and that of any other being) is of itsessence and if that essence is grounded in its relation to time thenany proper answer to the question of the meaning of Being willinevitably relate Being to time But what that relation might signifydepends upon what Heidegger means by lsquotimersquo and his provisionalunderstanding of the term is far from orthodox

First since temporality is the meaning of the Being of Dasein itcannot be a medium or framework to which Dasein is merely exter-nally or contingently related something whose essence is entirelyindependent of Dasein Heideggerrsquos idea is not that human beingsnecessarily exist in time but rather that they exist as temporalitythat human existence most fundamentally is temporality Secondsince the care-structure is an articulated unity the same must betrue of that which makes it possible in other words temporalitydoes not consist of three logically or metaphysically distinct dimen-sions or elements but is an essentially integral phenomenon Thirdthe terminological shift from talk of lsquotimersquo to talk of lsquotemporalityrsquofrom what sounds like the label for a thing to a term that connotesa condition or activity is significant For Heidegger temporality is not an entity not a sequence of self-contained moments thatmove from future to present to past and not a property or featureof something but is rather akin to a self-generating and self-transcending process And since that process underpins the Beingof Dasein it must be the condition for the possibility of its ecstaticquality ndash the distinctively human capacity to be at once ahead behindand alongside oneself to stand outside oneself to exist (in graspingthe Being of other present beings ndash its inherent worldliness ndash andin its self-projective thrownness) In other words if Daseinrsquos unityas an existing being is literally lsquoecstaticrsquo (a matter of Daseinrsquos Being-outside-itself hence being internally related to what it is not beingnon-self-identical) then temporality must be thought of in similarlyecstatic terms On such a model past present and future are not

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coordinates or dimensions but lsquoecstasesrsquo ndash modes of temporalityrsquosself-constituting self-transcendence lsquotemporalityrsquos essence is a pro-cess of temporalizing in the unity of the ecstasesrsquo (BT 65 377)

These claims are only provisional pointers to the full meaning ofHeideggerrsquos notion of temporality which will emerge in later chap-ters but they make it clear that this notion bears little relation tocommon sense or orthodox philosophical conceptions of time Evenif we take it seriously then accepting it will violently disrupt oureveryday understanding but such disruption is hardly surprisingAfter all the ready glosses or interpretations of time with whichour ordinary experience and the philosophical tradition supplies usare all too likely to be the products of inauthenticity ndash further symp-toms of Daseinrsquos flight from an understanding of its own naturerather than useful insights into it Uncovering an authentic under-standing of time and its significance for human life positivelyrequires a violation of such average everyday interpretations

Nevertheless no authentic understanding can entirely leavebehind its inauthentic rivals Since they have been embodied in along history of human thought and human modes of life theycannot be entirely ungrounded in the ontological realities of DaseinrsquosBeing And since Dasein cannot entirely lose touch with themeaning of its own Being without ceasing to be Dasein even itsinauthentic conceptions of phenomena cannot be wholly erroneousA truly ontological investigation of time must therefore show howsuch inauthentic conceptions ndash and lives lived out in accordance with them ndash can emerge from a being to whose Being an under-standing of its own nature necessarily belongs It must show howtemporality can temporalize itself inauthentically as well as authen-tically The final three chapters of Being and Time are devoted tojust this task

First however Heidegger must show that his new conception ofthe internal relation between care and temporality is consistent withand capable of deepening the insights contained in his earlieranalysis of the various elements that make up the care-structureHe must in fact demonstrate that those elements can only be prop-erly understood if they are seen as founded in the tripartite unityof the temporal ecstases ndash even if the peculiarly ecstatic self-negating

mode of that unity will also put in question any lingering overlysimple conception of Daseinrsquos care-structure as self-identical At thesame time given that Daseinrsquos existence takes either authentic orinauthentic forms he also aims to show that both are founded intemporality ndash indeed that authentic modes of existence are mostfundamentally to be distinguished from inauthentic ones accordingto the precise mode of temporalizing they manifest He thus goesover ground that he covered in much detail in the second half ofDivision One of Being and Time to achieve an even more basiclevel of understanding ndash one that changes no specific element but at the same time radically recontextualizes the entirety of thatearlier analysis

In following these revisions we must therefore bear in mind thevery different nature of his two aims For although both are onto-logically oriented (the first dealing with the existential groundingof such constitutive elements of Being-in-the-world as understand-ing and state-of-mind the second with the existential grounding ofDaseinrsquos capacity to take its own Being as an issue for it) the latterrsquosfocus upon the distinguishing temporal marks of authentic asopposed to inauthentic modes of existence naturally requires the use of specific examples of the two modes and so involves ontic or existentiell analysis We must be careful not to conflate these two analytical dimensions we must not confuse the ontic with theontological the existentiell illustration with the existential insight

The elements of the care-structure with which Heidegger concernshimself are understanding state-of-mind falling and discourseEach is treated separately but since they comprise an articulatedtotality their internal relations are strongly emphasized and guidethe discussion as a whole

Every understanding has its mood Every state-of-mind is one in which one understands The understanding which one has in sucha state of mind has the character of falling The understanding whichhas its mood attuned in falling Articulates itself with relation to its intelligibility in discourse

(BT 68 385)

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It isnrsquot difficult to see the most obvious sense in which these relatedaspects of the human way of being have particular facets of tempo-rality as their condition of possibility The projective nature of theunderstanding ndash Daseinrsquos capacity to actualize its existentiell possi-bilities ndash is itself possible only for a being that is open to the futureThis corresponds to the Being ahead-of-itself of care Daseinrsquosfinding itself always already thrown into moods shows how itspresent existence is determined by and as what it has previouslybeen and so presupposes its openness to the past This correspondsto the already-having-been of care And the idle talk curiosity andambiguity of Daseinrsquos fallenness understood as modes of its rela-tions with the beings in its environment could only be attributedto a being that is open to that present environment and so to thepresent as such This corresponds to the Being-alongside of careDiscourse completes the picture as the articulation of the structuresof intelligibility in terms of which the world of this thrown fallingprojective being is disclosed It thus lacks any links with one partic-ular temporal ecstasis But the tensed nature of the languages inwhich discourse has its worldly existence (and which forms so funda-mental an aspect of grammatical structures) as well as their capacityto embody truthful claims about the world would not themselvesbe possible if the Being of the being who deploys these languageswere not rooted in the openness of the temporal ecstasis

However even though most elements of the care-structure areprimarily associated with a particular temporal ecstasis properlyelucidating the role of that ecstasis will inevitably bring in the other two and thus an internal relation between any given ecstasisand those which it is not For example Daseinrsquos capacity to projectitself upon a particular existentiell possibility requires that it utilizethe resources of its present environment to do so and its attune-ment to the opportunities and constraints that this environmentpresents is a product of the mood in which it finds itself thrownElucidations of moods and falling would take precisely parallel formsconsequently Heidegger constantly stresses the unity of his concep-tion of temporality and so the unity of his conception of thrownprojective Being-in-the-world

Temporalizing does not signify that ecstases come in a lsquosuccessionrsquoThe future is not later than having-been and having-been is not earlierthan the Present Temporality temporalizes itself as a future whichmakes present in a process of having been

(BT 68 401)

Similarly the vocabulary of lsquopresuppositionsrsquo and lsquopreconditionsrsquodoes not mean that temporality provides a kind of framework ormedium in which Dasein pursues its existence Heideggerrsquos idea isnot for example that Daseinrsquos projections of itself must necessarilybe projections into some region or field that we call lsquothe futurersquoRather just as Daseinrsquos existence is projective (projection is not somuch something it does as something it is) so its existence is futural(openness to the future is not one of its properties it is what it is)We are not listing the essential features of a present-at-hand entitybut characterizing a creature who lives a life ndash a being whose essenceis existing

These ideas prepare the ground for Heideggerrsquos second task ndash thatof distinguishing authenticity from inauthenticity in terms of themodes of temporalizing distinctive to each Once again he developshis view with respect to each element of the care-structure in turnand thus focuses on distinguishing authentic from inauthentic modesof the temporal ecstases with which each is primarily associatedBut since the three ecstases are internally related Heideggerrsquosremarks on each element of the care-structure inevitably contain aportrait in miniature of that which distinguishes authentic frominauthentic modes of temporality in general (in their threefoldunity)

Thus in his examination of understanding Heidegger definesauthentic temporalizing of the future as lsquoanticipationrsquo and its inau-thentic counterpart as lsquoawaitingrsquo The former draws on his earlieranalysis of anticipatory resoluteness and amounts to Daseinrsquos letting itself come towards itself out of the future as its ownmostpotentiality-for-Being ndash projecting itself upon whichever possibilitybest releases its capacity for genuine individuality By contrastsomeone who awaits the future simply projects herself uponwhichever possibility lsquoyields or denies the object of [her] concernrsquo

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(BT 68 386) the future is disclosed as a horizon from which possi-bilities emerge that are grasped primarily as either helping orhindering onersquos capacity to continue doing whatever one is doingin the essentially impersonal manner prescribed by the lsquotheyrsquo

Both anticipation and awaiting however presuppose modes oftemporalizing the present and the past To anticipate the futureDasein must wrench itself away from its distraction by the presentobjects of its concern (and in particular away from an understandingof its own Being in terms of the Being of such entities) andresolutely determine the present moment as the locus of a concreteexistentiell choice Heidegger talks of this as experiencing a lsquomomentof visionrsquo in which the resources of the present situation are laidbefore Dasein in their individual reality and in relation to its ownpossible individuality But no such visionary moment is possiblewithout an authentic relation to Daseinrsquos thrownness ndash withoutrecognizing that one ineliminable aspect of the present situation isthe present state of Dasein and in particular its present attunementto that situation There can be no authentic appropriation of thefuture without an authentic appropriation of the past as determi-native of the present and determinative in specific ways Daseinmust acknowledge the past as something not under its control butnonetheless constitutive of who it is and so as something it mustacknowledge if it is to become ndash to genuinely exist as ndash who it isHeidegger labels this lsquorepetitionrsquo and thus defines authentic tempo-ralizing as an anticipating repetition that holds fast to a moment of vision

By contrast the inauthentic mode of awaiting the future presup-poses a mode of making present in which Dasein remains absorbedby and dispersed in its environment disclosing its world in a waydictated by the lsquotheyrsquo which thereby dictates an inauthentic modeof projection In so doing it forgets its past ndash not in the sense thatit lacks any awareness of or overlooks what has happened to itbut in the sense that it flees from any awareness that what hashappened to it is part of who it is Dasein represses the fact thatthe existential trajectory which is its life is in large measure deter-mined by the momentum of its particular thrown attunement tothe world It also represses the fact of this repression ndash the fact that

its present dispersal in the lsquotheyrsquo results from its own flight fromacknowledging the true basis of its potential for individuality Inthis way inauthentic temporalizing appears as the awaiting whichforgets and makes present

Heideggerrsquos discussion of the other elements of the care-struc-ture attempts to flesh out these general characterizations In the caseof states-of-mind for example he contrasts fear and anxiety as illus-trative of inauthentic and authentic modes of temporalizingrespectively It might seem that fear is essentially future-orientedand so is a counter-example to the claim that moods primarilypresuppose openness to the past after all fear of a rabid dog issurely a fear of the threatening possibility that the dog will infectus The relatedness of any one ecstasis to the other two howeverallows plenty of room for acknowledging that moods must involvea particular relation to the future but since moods embody anattunement ndash a mode of Daseinrsquos openness to its world ndash they alsoand more fundamentally involve a relation to the past For examplefear implicates a human being in a mode of forgetfulness Whensomeone relates fearfully to the future what she fears for is ofcourse herself and when she allows such fearfulness to dominateher the desire for self-preservation dominates her life She leapsfrom one possible course of action to another without concretelyrelating to any of them her grasp of her present environmentdissolves (at best resolving itself into a bare understanding of enti-ties as handy or unhandy for evading the threat) and she pays noheed whatever to her past Indeed the very notion that she has apast that who she is is determined by who she was and the worldin which she found herself drops away as entirely superfluous inrelation to her present goal which amounts to subordinating every-thing to the task of continuing to exist and thus to abdicating entirelyfrom the task of determining precisely how that existence might beconducted She thereby represses the fact that she is delivered overto her own Being as something that is an issue for her ndash or rathershe reduces that aspect of her thrownness to its most nearly animalform In effect she allows the possibility of a threat to her life toshatter it entirely For Heidegger this is the epitome of inauthen-ticity the polar opposite of what is required to live in anticipation

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

of the possibility of onersquos death an extreme form of the awaitingwhich forgets and makes present

Anxiety by contrast makes possible an authentic grasp of onersquosexistence as Being-in-the-world It is that mood in which Dasein isanxious about its existence in the world in the face of its own worldlyexistence Dasein confronts not a concrete threat to its well-beingbut nothing in particular and this objectlessness confers a mercilessperception of the lsquonothingnessrsquo of the world of the uncanniness atits core and so at the core of Dasein When Dasein finds itself in aworld whose entities have at present lost any involvement or sig-nificance for it two things are revealed First that no given arrayof entities and circumstances in a given mode of life in itself exhauststhe possible significance of Daseinrsquos existence And second thatDasein is nonetheless always already in a world and so forced tochoose one existentiell possibility from the array that the worldoffers Once again then a mood illuminates the essentially enig-matic thereness of Daseinrsquos existence its existence as thrown and soas open to the past But in revealing the actual insignificance of anygiven world and so the impossibility of Daseinrsquos ever fulfilling itselfby clinging to the present arrangements of its world anxiety alsolights up the world itself as a realm of possible significance and sothe possibility of Daseinrsquos projecting itself upon an authentic modeof existence In other words anxiety confronts Dasein with the pos-sibility of its thrownness as something capable of being repeatedand any such repetition is the hallmark of authentic temporalizing

It is vital to recall here the distinction drawn earlier between exis-tentiell illustrations and the existential insights they illuminate Thisanalysis of moods does not entail that fearfulness is always inau-thentic and anxiety authentic Although Heidegger does say at onepoint that lsquoHe who is resolute knows no fearrsquo (BT 68 395) it wouldplainly be absurd (and contrary to the whole thrust of his earlieranalysis of moods as genuinely and importantly revelatory of theworld) to claim that the authentic man never meets situations inwhich fear would be the only intelligible response To fail to takeavoiding action when faced with a rabid dog for example would bea sign not of resolution but of insanity The point is rather thatone type of fearful response to genuinely threatening situations is

to allow oneself to be entirely overwhelmed by it ndash to respond likea headless chicken letting onersquos attunement to onersquos world as threat-ening entirely annihilate onersquos capacity to grasp its presentlydefinitive lineaments and project the necessary action from amongthe options available In so far as fear induces such self-repressionor self-forgetfulness it is inauthentic but not all states of fearful-ness fit this description Similarly Heidegger never claims that beingin a state of anxiety is a criterion for living authentically On thecontrary he stresses that an anxious grasp of the nothingness atthe heart of the world is not in itself a moment of vision lsquoAnxietymerely brings one into the mood for a possible resolution ThePresent of anxiety holds the moment of vision at the ready as sucha moment it itself and only itself is possiblersquo (BT 68 394) It isonly if a human being responds to anxiety by actually openingherself to a moment of vision and thereby to anticipating the futureby repeating herself from out of the past that authenticity is attained

Whether this same distinction can be applied to the third mainelement of the care-structure ndash falling ndash is a moot point Heideggerconcentrates upon the mode of temporalizing that underliescuriosity which he earlier defined as distinctive of falling This turnsout to be an inauthentic temporalizing of the present To be drivenby curiosity is to leap continually from phenomenon to phenom-enon no sooner alighting upon something before definitivelyconsigning it to the past as outmoded and replacing it with some-thing else that attracts onersquos present concern only because it is newrather than because of any aspect of its true nature This is a para-digm case of the awaiting that forgets and makes present and so aparadigm of inauthentic existence If however falling so definedwere an essential element of the care-structure on the same levelas understanding and states-of-mind that would seem to amountto claiming that Dasein was inherently inauthentic ndash that no modeof its existence could be truly free of lostness in the lsquotheyrsquo Wemust therefore recall the interpretation argued for earlier whenwe examined Heideggerrsquos original treatment of falling Human exist-ence as worldly thrown projection and in particular the fact thathuman beings are primarily located in that world through theiroccupation of impersonally defined roles means that lostness in the

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

lsquotheyrsquo is the inevitable default position for Dasein It can emergefrom its lostness by relating to its roles in ways that manifest itsindividuality but in order to do so it must resolutely wrench itselfaway from curiosity In other words the point of Heideggerrsquos spec-ification of falling as an element of the care-structure is to stressthat there is nothing purely contingent or accidental about the preva-lence of curiosity idle talk and ambiguity in Daseinrsquos everyday lifeit is not intended to suggest that immersion in these existentiellphenomena is somehow necessary or irredeemable Neverthelessno one ever finds themselves to have been always already authenticAuthenticity is an achievement

Dasein gets dragged along in thrownness that is to say as some-thing which has been thrown into the world it loses itself in thelsquoworldrsquo in its factical submission to that with which it is to concernitself The Present which makes up the existential meaning of lsquogettingtaken alongrsquo never arrives at any other ecstatical horizon of its ownaccord unless it gets brought back from its lostness by a resolution

(BT 68 400 my italics)

THE TEMPORALITY OF CARE BEING IN THE WORLD (sectsect69ndash70)

With this account of the temporal basis of falling Heideggerrsquosdoubly motivated analysis of the various elements of the care-structure is in one sense complete But each element has only a rela-tively autonomous life so he ends by stressing the priority of thearticulated unity of the care-structure This returns us to an evenearlier stretch of his analysis of the human way of being For thefirst division of Being and Time showed that the care-structuregrounds Daseinrsquos existence as Being-in-the-world ndash its alwaysalready being in a world in which it can encounter entities as thekind of entities they are So if the basis of the care-structure as awhole is temporality Daseinrsquos openness to beings in the world ndash itscapacity to reach beyond itself to that which is not itself ndash mustitself have an essentially temporal grounding In short Daseinrsquosexistence as ecstatic Being-in-the-world must be based upon thethreefold ecstasis of temporality

Heideggerrsquos earlier analysis of Daseinrsquos everydayness focusedupon its relations with objects as handy or unhandy for its practicalactivities It also stressed that encountering any object as a piece ofequipment presupposed an equipmental totality ie that no indi-vidual tool could be encountered as such except against the back-ground of an array of other items ndash a pen exists as a pen only inrelation to ink paper table and so on Such arrays are themselvesgrounded in a set of assignment-relations the utility of a tool pre-supposes something for which it is usable (its lsquotowards-whichrsquo)something from which it is constructed and upon which it isemployed (that lsquowhereofrsquo it is made) and a recipient for its endproduct This web of socially constituted assignments ndash lsquothe worldrsquondash founds the readiness-to-hand of an object but it is itself foundedin a reference to particular projects of Daseinrsquos ndash the handiness of ahammer for example being ultimately a matter of its involvementin building a shelter for Dasein In short the ontological basis of theworld (its worldhood) lies in specific possibilities of Daseinrsquos BeingBut Daseinrsquos relations with specific existentiell possibilities presup-pose its existence as thrown projection ndash possessed of understand-ing possessed by moods and these elements of the care-structurehave temporality as their condition of possibility It follows that thebasis of Daseinrsquos openness to entities is its openness to past presentand future for Dasein to disclose entities is for it to manifest apresent concern for them which grows from its having taken on a project and being oriented towards its future realization Daseinrsquosworldliness is thus grounded upon the temporalizing of temporality

Of course Heideggerrsquos earlier account focused upon Daseinrsquosaverage everyday modes of encountering objects as ready-to-handand so upon an inauthentic mode of its existence ndash one in whichDasein has succumbed to its inherent tendency to lostness to a fasci-nation with the objects of its concern which elides its non-identitywith them So the specific mode of temporalizing presupposed inaverage everydayness is fundamentally inauthentic Average every-day Dasein relates to its work by forgetting itself entirely subor-dinating its individuality to the impersonal requirements of its taskSo it represses its pastness rather than repeating or recovering itits concern for the objects in its environment makes them present

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

in entirely irresolute ways rather than facilitating a moment ofvision and the goal of its labours is determined by the anonymousexpectations of the public work-world rather than by its responsi-bility to become a genuine individual In short average everydayBeing-in-the-world is a making-present which awaits and forgetsbut not all Being-in-the-world ndash and in particular not every interaction with objects as ready-to-hand ndash is so grounded

The temporal basis of Daseinrsquos Being-in-the-world is equallyevident when Dasein holds back from practical engagements withentities and encounters them instead as present-at-hand ndash forexample in the context of scientific study For the objects concernedare not then encountered outside or independently of the world andits ontological structures True in such a transformation of Daseinrsquosrelations with objects the specific work-world and the specific exis-tentiell project that provided the original context for its concernwith them disappears a hammer originally encountered as a toolfor building a house is then confronted as a material object possessedof certain primary and secondary qualities But this is not a matterof de-contextualizing the object but of re-contextualizing it thescientist embeds it in a very different web of assignment-relationsbut it remains no less embedded in a world for all that As wesuggested in Chapter 1 and as Heidegger now emphasizes

Just as praxis has its own specific kind of sight (lsquotheoryrsquo) theoreticalresearch is not without a praxis of its own Reading off the measure-ments which result from an experiment often requires a complicatedlsquotechnicalrsquo set-up for the experimental design Observation with amicroscope is dependent upon the production of lsquopreparationsrsquo even in the most lsquoabstractrsquo way of working out problems and estab-lishing what has been obtained one manipulates equipment forwriting for example However lsquouninterestingrsquo and lsquoobviousrsquo suchcomponents of scientific research may be they are by no means amatter of indifference ontologically

(BT 69 409)

In other words scientific investigation is not a purely intellectualmatter it does not require the complete suspension of praxis Rather

it substitutes one mode of praxis ndash one mode of concern for objectsone mode of letting them be involved in Daseinrsquos projects ndash foranother Encountering objects as present-at-hand is a particularmode of Being-in-the-world The disclosure of entities as physicalobjects does not reveal that which makes possible the existence ofDasein in a world (by revealing the essential nature of that world)but is itself only possible because Daseinrsquos existence is worldly (and thus capable of disclosing entities at all) Science too involvesmaking objects present in a particular kind of way (thematizingthem as present-at-hand) in the context of a specific human enter-prise (that of grasping the truth about beings understood as physicalphenomena) and so in relation to a particular possibility of DaseinrsquosBeing (namely its Being-in-the-[scientific-]truth) It thereforepresupposes the seeing-as structure of disclosedness which is itselfgrounded in some mode or other of temporalizing lsquoLike under-standing and interpretation in general the ldquoasrdquo is grounded in theecstatico-horizonal unity of temporalityrsquo (BT 69 411)

There is thus more to the human way of being than is manifestin any particular encounter with or thematization of specific entitiesndash it is Being-in-the-world And Heideggerrsquos final question in thischapter is what must be the case for this ontological truth aboutDasein to be possible What kind of existence or Being must theworld have if Daseinrsquos Being is inherently worldly What is the true nature of the link between Dasein and the world The short version of his answer is this Dasein exists as Being-in-the-world because the Being of Dasein is transcendence and so is thatof the world and the basis of that transcendence in both cases istemporality The longer answer goes as follows

As thrown falling projection Dasein is transcendent in the sensethat it is always more or other than its actual circumstances andform of life it relates itself to possibility rather than actuality ndash itspresent state is the basis for projecting upon an existentiell possibilityonce it has appropriated the past as determinative of what it now isThe world is transcendent in the sense that it is something more or other than the Being of any actual entities within it It is not an entity but a web of assignment-relations within which any spe-cific object is encounterable as ready-to-hand or as present-at-hand

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

and without reference to which neither readiness-to-hand nor presence-at-hand as such could be understood The basis of Daseinrsquostranscendence is temporality thrown projection is the mode of exist-ence of a being open to past present and future The basis of theworldrsquos transcendence is also temporality since the world consti-tutes an arena for disclosing objects in terms of (ie assigning themto) a particular mode of practical activity it must be capable of accom-modating the essentially temporal references of any praxis ndash in whichobjects are presently taken up in the course of an already initiatedtask and in a manner determined by its projected completion In other words the world as entity-transcendent exists as the fieldor horizon within which Dasein realizes itself as a self-transcendingactualizer of possibilities And what underwrites the complementar-ity of Daseinrsquos horizon-presupposing transcendence and the worldrsquoshorizon-providing transcendence is the ecstatic (ie horizonal) threefold unity of temporality

Thus the temporal ecstases play a role in Heideggerrsquos analysisthat parallels Kantrsquos invocation of schematism in the TranscendentalDeduction of his Critique of Pure Reason1 Having defined the cate-gories (pure concepts of the understanding) in terms of logicalprinciples and having argued that no experience of objects is possibleunless the manifold of intuition is synthesized by means of thosecategories Kant needs to show how such pure concepts mightconceivably be commensurable with what seems entirely heteroge-neous to them namely the chaotic matter delivered up by the sensesHe engineers this transition from pure categories to categories-in-use by positing the existence of a set of schemata each of whichis what he calls a lsquomonogram of pure a priori imaginationrsquo ndash a puresynthetic rule couched in terms of temporal ordering (the mostgeneral form of sensible intuition on Kantrsquos account) Each suchschema in so far as it is a rule has a recognizable kinship with apurely logical relation and in so far as it is a rule of temporal orderit also has application to sensibility Schemata are therefore essen-tially Janus-faced ndash at once possessed of the purity of the a prioriand the materiality of intuition as the nexus of concepts and intu-itions they form the junction-box through which the Kantiansystem relates mind and matter subject and world

Heidegger registers these Kantian echoes by claiming that to eachof his three temporal ecstases there belongs a lsquohorizonal schemarsquo ndasha lsquowhitherrsquo to which Dasein is carried away or dragged out Withthe future it is lsquofor-the-sake-of-itselfrsquo with the past it is lsquowhat-has-beenrsquo with the present it is lsquoin-order-torsquo These glosses recallelements of the structure of significance that constitutes the world-hood of the world upon which Dasein projects itself and so confirmthat Heideggerrsquos schemata are a response to precisely the difficultyfacing Kant ndash that of demonstrating the essential complementarityof human subject and objective world To this degree Heideggeracknowledges that Kant preceded him in identifying a significantontological problematic and in at least pointing towards the keyconcept needed to address it But he does not take himself to beaddressing the problem in exactly the way Kant does

To begin with in so far as Kantrsquos account rests upon his analysisof time as a form of sensible intuition it draws upon his moregeneral assumption of a distinction between the form and the contentof experience its content is elucidated in terms of present-at-handrepresentations and its form as something imposed by the syntheticactivities of the transcendental subject Heidegger explicitly rejectsthe terms of this account

The significance-relationships which determine the structure of theworld are not a network of forms which a worldless subject has laidover some kind of material What is rather the case is that facticalDasein understanding itself and its world in the factical unity of thelsquotherersquo comes back from these horizons to the entities encounteredwithin them

(BT 69 417)

For Heidegger the Kantian account of experience entirely fails todistinguish between entities and the world within which they areencountered and so loses any chance of coming to understand Daseinas Being-in-the-world Heideggerrsquos temporal schemata are not entities or structures that mediate between the otherwise inde-pendent elements of Dasein and world For him human Being andworld are primordially and indissolubly united and his account of

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temporality as its basis is rather an attempt to locate the single rootfrom which the twofold articulation of Being-in-the-world mustgrow if that hyphenation truly registers a differentiation within afundamental unity rather than a conjunction

Moreover the ground (and so the nature) of that fundamentalunity must be understood in ecstatic rather than static terms WhereKant compares his schemata to monograms Heidegger talks of hisas horizons whither Dasein is always already carried away or draggedout since it could not otherwise come back to confront entities thatnecessarily appear within those horizons Each horizonal schemathereby indicates an aspect of Daseinrsquos worldly Being as standing-outside-itself one respect in which Daseinrsquos distinctive mode ofidentity (and hence that of its world) is one of non-self-coincidenceAccordingly one must understand the fundamental unity of Daseinand world with which Kant was so concerned ndash their inherent aptness for one another ndash as a function of their individual non-self-identity the internal relation between Dasein and world is gener-ated by the internal self-differentiation of Dasein and of its worldOne might say Daseinrsquos failure to coincide with itself and its open-ness to what it is not are ultimately indications of one and the samephenomenon ndash its temporality

These connections and contrasts with Kantrsquos investigation aresufficiently important for Heidegger to conclude his analysis ofeverydayness and temporality by developing a further analogy ndashone involving Daseinrsquos spatiality The fundamentality of time in hisaccount of Being-in-the-world might suggest that Heidegger hasoverlooked or insufficently appreciated the deep importance of thenotion of space to our conception of the world But Heideggerrsquos viewis that although Daseinrsquos spatiality is indeed fundamental it isnonetheless subordinate to its temporality

The Kantian echo here is of the priority Kant famously assignsto time over space Kant defines both as forms of sensible intuitionndash not elements within that manifold but rather the two modesthrough which those elements are always and necessarily experi-enced by us as interrelated But while our experience of the externalworld is both spatially and temporally ordered our experience ofour inner world of the ebb and flow of our thoughts emotions and

desires is ordered only temporally Since our representations of theexternal world are themselves necessarily a part of our inner world(consequences of our being affected by the senses) time as the formof inner (and therefore of outer) sense trumps space which is merelythe form of outer sense

Once again Heidegger implicitly acknowledges the grain of truthin Kantrsquos analysis by vehemently condemning the details of itsworking out

If Daseinrsquos spatiality is lsquoembracedrsquo by temporality then thisconnection is also different from the priority of time over spacein Kantrsquos sense To say that our empirical representations of what ispresent-at-hand lsquoin spacersquo run their course lsquoin timersquo as psychicaloccurrences so that the lsquophysicalrsquo occurs mediately lsquoin timersquo also isnot to give an existential-ontological Interpretation of space as a formof intuition but rather to establish ontically that what is psychicallypresent-at-hand runs its course lsquoin timersquo

(BT 70 419)

Unlike Kant who fails to attain a genuinely ontological level ofanalysis because he assumes that our experience of objects consistsof present-at-hand representations of them Heidegger sees thatDaseinrsquos spatiality is existentially founded upon its temporalityAlthough practical activity in the world presupposes spatiality the modes of spatiality thereby disclosed can only be elucidated byreference to the temporal foundations of the worldhood of the world

Whenever one comes across equipment handles it or moves itaround or out of the way some region has already been discoveredConcernful Being-in-the-world is directional ndash self-directive [But]relationships of involvement are intelligible only within the horizonof a world that has been disclosed Their horizonal character more-over is what first makes possible the specific horizon of the lsquowhitherrsquoof belonging somewhere regionally a bringing-close (de-severing)of the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand [is] grounded in amaking-present of the unity of that temporality in which direction-ality too becomes possible

(BT 70 420)

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Daseinrsquos spatial existence is primarily a matter of placing itselfin relations of proximity to and distance from objects according tothe demands of its practical activities so it presupposes the disclo-sure of a work-world and so of the world as such which is foundedin the horizonal ecstases of temporality

REPETITION AND PROJECTION (sect71)

Heidegger concludes his chapter by declaring that he has not yetfully penetrated the existential-temporal constitution of Daseinrsquoseverydayness ndash a deflating declaration for any reader who has strug-gled with what seemed to be exhaustive (and exhausting) revisionsof the provisional insights into everydayness expressed in DivisionOne But it is undeniable that the very term lsquoeverydaynessrsquo hastemporal connotations which are as yet unexplored It variouslysuggests an idea of human existence as a sequence of days of thedaily or the diurnal progress of time of its being marked by habitualcustomary or repetitive experiences attitudes and practices that bothmaintain themselves and alter across the wider stretches of timethat make up the periods of human history In other words Daseinrsquosrelation to temporality necessarily involves it in the daily round ofeveryday life and in the passage of time more broadly understoodin history and these are the topics of Heideggerrsquos final two chapters

The present chapter thereby acquires a very distinctive patternone which emerges when we step back from its details and view itas an articulated whole The chapter begins from a sense that ourgeneral investigation of the Being of Dasein has reached a pivotalpoint ndash a moment of insight into the temporal grounding of thecare-structure and so to a view of the various elements of humanconditionedness or finitude as themselves conditioned by tempo-rality It presents that insight as requiring a return to the materialoutlined earlier in Being and Time a return that the chapter itselfenacts in order to show that this insight at once deepens unifiesand radically recontextualizes our understanding of the claim thatDasein is Being-in-the-world And it ends by outlining the ways inwhich this repetition of past claims delivers a fruitful direction forfurther investigation

The emphasis upon retracing onersquos steps that this chapter struc-ture enacts is exactly what one should expect from a philosopherwho has made much of the essentially circular nature of under-standing and interpretation For if all human comprehension isalways already inside a hermeneutic circle motivated by someparticular structure of fore-having fore-sight and fore-conceptionsthen one can only make progress in onersquos philosophical under-standing by retracing onersquos steps within the circle and deepening ormodifying onersquos grasp of the elements of onersquos fore-structure Butthen the second time around the circle (being temporally distinctfrom its predecessor) is in fact the second turn of a spiral and henceshould not be thought of as a simple retracing of onersquos steps Afterall such retracings are always the act of a being whose Being isBeing-guilty hence the null basis of a nullity so no Dasein couldever completely sweep up its earlier past steps into its own presentcomprehension And it is precisely this lack of absolute coincidencebetween past and present that opens up the possibility of graspingnew reaches of significance absolutely exact recapitulations of pastunderstandings would make progress in human understandinginconceivable

Hence Heideggerrsquos restatements of his earlier provisional conclu-sions can never exactly coincide with them he could never succeedin simply saying again even if at a deeper level exactly and onlywhat they said but will rather say them otherwise placing themin a new context of considerations ndash above all in the context providedby a realization of the general significance of this phenomenon of non-self-coincidence (and hence of Daseinrsquos internal relation tonothingness) for any proper grasp of Daseinrsquos Being Hence theuncanny sense that Heideggerrsquos revisioning of his earlier vision ofthe human way of being at once confirms and subverts that visionfor it shows us that his earlier vision missed nothing in particularand yet that everything in the initial vision seems utterly differentwhen grasped in its inherently enigmatic relation to that nothing

However the structure of this chapter is more distinctive thanhermeneutic circularity or spiralling would require or at least itsdistinctiveness is overdetermined For if one had to summarize thatstructure in a single sentence a structure through which Heideggerrsquos

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

key insight into the grounding role of temporality generates arewriting of his earlier discoveries with a view to moving his projectforward one might say that it is an anticipating repetition whichholds fast to a moment of vision In other words the experience ofreading it has an underlying ecstatic temporal structure thatprecisely fits Heideggerrsquos definition of authentic temporality Thecomposition of the chapter enacts the structure of its topic the move-ment of Heideggerrsquos prose declares its own authenticity as a pieceof writing and attempts to elicit an act of authentic reading fromthose it addresses Once again the form and the content of Beingand Time are mutually responsive the understanding of humanexistence to which its propositions lay claim determines a concep-tion of the proper relation between author and reader that is reflectedand enacted in its form

1 Kant Critique of Pure Reason trans N Kemp Smith (LondonMacmillan 1929)

7FATE AND DESTINY

HUMAN NATALITY AND ABRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

HISTORY AND HISTORICALITY (sectsect72ndash5)

Heidegger claims that everyday human existence is diurnal ndash livedout daily from day to day every day Dasein is stretched along inthe sequence of its days The notion of Dasein being stretched alongis implicit in the care-structure and the temporality-structure thatunderlies it Since Dasein exists as thrown and projecting (not assomething initially self-identical that is then stretched out but rathera being that is always already ahead of itself and always alreadyhaving been) Heideggerrsquos earlier claim that Dasein exists as lsquotheBeing of the betweenrsquo must have a temporal connotation The humanopenness to the world depends upon an openness to time ndash uponthe fact that human beings exist as temporality that the humanway of being is ecstatic temporalizing Now however Heideggerreformulates this claim

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

The specific movement in which Dasein is stretched along and stretchesitself along we call its lsquohistorizingrsquo To lay bare the structure ofhistorizing and the existential-temporal conditions of its possibilitysignifies that one has achieved an ontological understanding of historicality

(BT 72 427)

Why this shift from talk of temporalizing and temporality to talkof historizing and historicality Heideggerrsquos account of Daseinrsquostemporality has thus far accorded a certain priority to its existenceas futural to lsquoBeing-ahead-of-itselfrsquo in outlining the structure ofanticipatory resoluteness and so of authentic human existence heplaced the human capacity to project to relate oneself to onersquos ownend at centre stage If everydayness is a stretching along betweenbirth and death an emphasis on death has tended to eclipse birthBut if Dasein really is the Being of this between then it is just as fundamental to its Being that it exists as born as that it exists asalways already dying If no temporal ecstasis can be separated fromthe other two then Daseinrsquos pastness must inflect its relation topresent and future and so inflect its temporalizing more generallyBut then what it is for Dasein to exist as a historical being whatit might mean to say that Dasein has a past or can relate to thepast or to say that in so far as Dasein exists it historizes must beelucidated in the terms of our earlier analysis of temporality Foronly a creature whose way of being is essentially temporal couldlive a life that is essentially historical in these several ways

Particular historical findings will cast no light on the question ofDaseinrsquos historicality ndash for any results of historical investigation willpresuppose precisely what is at issue here namely the human abilityto explore the past Furthermore on Heideggerrsquos view no previousstudy of history as a science or discipline (no historiology) has prop-erly engaged with its subject matter because none has taken a fullyexistential-ontological perspective on this activity of Dasein Nonehas asked about the conditions for the possibility of history andunderstood that discipline as one activity of a being whose way ofbeing is inherently worldly Accordingly he intends to elucidate thetemporal significance of Daseinrsquos existence as thrown projection byprobing the significance of its existence as historical

F A T E A N D D E S T I N Y182

This means breaking up the average everyday understanding ofDaseinrsquos historicality and of historicality more generally Wheninauthentically oriented human beings interpret the question oftheir own historicality as a matter of explaining the possibility of their own connectedness through time ndash showing how a singlecontinuous self can persist unscathed through a sequence of temporalmoments that appear from the future become the present and thendisappear into the past This is certainly the form in which thisquestion has been posed in the modern tradition of philosophy fromHume to Parfit1 For Heidegger such interpretations assume thattime is a collection of self-contained units that begin by being notyet present-at-hand become momentarily present-at-hand and thenbecome no longer present-at-hand and human beings are seen asdispersed in them scattered across a sequence of past present andfuture nows and in need of unification Similar atomistic assump-tions are at work when the historicality of events and objects isunder consideration A past event is one that has happened and is now irretrievably lost a historical object something that was once at hand but is so no longer Even if a given event continuesto have significance for our present world it is understood as a pieceof the past that has consequences in the present (in the way that apast cause can have contemporary effects) ndash just as a historical arte-fact in a museum is thought of as a piece of the past that remainspresent-at-hand

Heidegger attacks this picture of historicality at what might seemits strongest point ndash the claim that the historicality of an object (forexample a household implement in a museum) is a matter of itsbeing something that belongs to the past but is present-at-hand inthe present For if the historicality of an object is a matter of itsbelonging to the past and the past is understood as those momentsof time that are no longer present-at-hand to us how can an objectthat is still present to us nonetheless be something historical Suchantiquities must somehow embody pastness must be marked byand so manifest the passage of time But what is this mark of past-ness An ancient pot or plate is likely to have altered over time ndashbecoming damaged or perhaps simply more fragile but such wearand tear cannot be what makes them historical since contemporary

F A T E A N D D E S T I N Y 183

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

objects suffer the same indignities and an undamaged object fromthe past is not thereby rendered contemporary Nor can their past-ness consist in the fact that they are no longer used for the purposesfor which they were originally designed a dinner plate passed downfrom generation to generation is no less an heirloom simply becauseit is still used on special occasions to serve food Nonetheless sucha plate used in such a way is somehow altered no longer what itwas something about it belongs to the past ndash but what

Nothing else than that world within which they belonged to a contextof equipment and were encountered as ready-to-hand and used bya concernful Dasein who was-in-the-world That world is no longerBut what was formerly within-the-world with respect to that world isstill present-at-hand

(BT 73 432)

The dinner plate belongs to the past because it belongs to a pastworld It constitutes a trace of a particular conceptual and culturalframework within which it fitted as one element in a totality ofequipment suitable for one type of human activity ndash one involvingthe ingestion of sustenance but also the provision of hospitalitythe maintenance of family life the preservation of a complex ofcultural practices and so on It remains present to us as an objectwithin our world and ndash whether used to serve food or displayed ina cabinet ndash as a ready-to-hand item within that world (ready-to-hand as a piece of domestic crockery or an antiquity) But it is stillan heirloom still an historical object because it is marked by theworld for which it was originally created and within which it wasoriginally used Even for the family for which it is an heirloom itis not used for serving food in just the way their contemporarydinner service is used ndash the heirloom is for special occasions

If the worldliness of historical objects is what constitutes theirpastness then that pastness is doubly derivative the condition forits possibility is the past existence of a world and the condition forthe possibility of such a world is the past existence of Dasein (thebeing whose Being is essentially worldly) In other words the histor-icality of objects and events is derivative of the historicality of

Dasein Dasein is what is primarily historical But the pastness of Dasein cannot be understood in terms of presence-at-hand orreadiness-to-hand lsquoPastrsquo Dasein is not an entity who was but is nolonger either present-at-hand or ready-to-hand It is a being whoexisted but no longer does so a being who has been ndash a being whoseBeing is existence So human beings do not become historical onlyin so far as they no longer exist historicality is not a status theyachieve only when they die On the contrary a being who exists asBeing-in-the-world must exist as ecstatic temporalizing as tran-scending itself in the threefold unity of the ecstases and so as opento the past A worldly being is something futural that has been andis making present and so is a being that always already has beenIn short for Dasein to exist at all is for it to be historical

Heideggerrsquos exploration of this issue is dominated by the ques-tion of Daseinrsquos authenticity Since Daseinrsquos Being is an issue forit its modes of existence are either inauthentic or authentic andif its existence is inherently historical there must be inauthenticand authentic modes of its historizing The authentic mode mustembody anticipatory resoluteness ndash a projecting which is reticentand ready for anxiety But any projecting presupposes a range ofavailable existentiell possibilities upon which to project and thisraises the question of whence Dasein can draw these possibilitiesThey cannot be provided by its death by Daseinrsquos Being-toward-its-end projecting upon that possibility guarantees only the totalityand authenticity of its resoluteness We must look instead towardsthe other pole or dimension of Daseinrsquos stretching along ndash to itsbirth rather than its death or more precisely to its thrownness

As thrown Dasein is delivered over to a particular society andculture at a particular stage in its development in which certainexistentiell possibilities are open to it and certain others not becom-ing a Samurai warrior a witch or a Stoic are not available optionsfor early twenty-first-century Westerners whereas becoming apolice officer a social worker or a priest are Dasein is also throwninto its own life at a particular stage in its development whichfurther constrains the range of available choices Onersquos particularupbringing previous decisions and present circumstances may makebecoming a social worker impossible or becoming a priest almost

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

unavoidable In other words the facts of social cultural and personalhistory that make up an individualrsquos present situation constitute aninheritance which she must grasp if she is to project a future forherself and part of that inheritance is a matrix of possible ways ofliving the menu of existentiell possibilities from which she mustchoose She can do so inauthentically ndash understanding herself lsquointerms of those possibilities of existence which ldquocirculaterdquo in theldquoaveragerdquo public way of interpreting Dasein today [and which] havemostly been made unrecognizable by ambiguity [although] they arewell known to usrsquo (BT 74 435) or authentically ndash in which caseshe resolutely lsquodiscloses current factical possibilities of authenticexisting and discloses them in terms of the heritage which thatexistence as thrown takes overrsquo (BT 74 435)

Defining authentic appropriations of onersquos thrownness as takingover a heritage carries a field of interlocking connotations First theaverage everydayness from which everyone always begins is itselfpart of onersquos heritage Dasein is always delivered over to lostness inthe lsquotheyrsquo and so to the average public way of interpreting the available existentiell options that its social and personal culturebequeaths The prevailing modes of ambiguity and curiosity makethese options unrecognizable ndash covering over their true contourseither by making them the focus of an endless debate fuelled bysuperficial curiosity or by taking one superficial interpretation ofthem for granted Thus to inherit them properly means seizing uponthat heritage in a manner which discloses its true lineaments itmeans reacting against onersquos heritage in order to uncover it prop-erly reclaiming it But Dasein must also relate those options to itsown individual circumstances and life it must reclaim itself as its heritage Lostness in the lsquotheyrsquo involves a dispersal of oneselfamid the currents of ambiguity and curiosity So resolutely takingover onersquos heritage means rejecting the possibilities that seem closest(where that proximity is a function of their ease or acceptability toothers) and grasping those that relate to onersquos ownmost potentiali-ties ndash the possibilities that resoluteness reveals to be non-accidentallyclosest to one in the light of an anticipation of onersquos death

The heritage of onersquos culture and the heritage of oneself thus fusein a mutually revivifying way An individualrsquos self-constancy in

actualizing certain forms of life at once renews the life of thoseforms and so of the culture that they constitute and reveals themas capable of defining genuinely authentic individual lives as possi-bilities for which individuals are destined and to which they canrelate as fateful for themselves and others

Once one has grasped the finitude of onersquos existence it snatchesone back from the endless multiplicity of possibilities which offerthemselves as closest to one ndash those of comfortableness shirkingand taking things lightly ndash and brings Dasein in to the simplicity ofits fate This is how we designate Daseinrsquos primordial historizingwhich lies in authentic resoluteness and in which Dasein hands itselfdown to itself free for death in a possibility which it has inheritedand yet has chosen

(BT 74 435)

This is a vision of the freedom available to a conditioned or finitebeing ndash a vision of mortal freedom as essentially finite or conditioned(what Heidegger would call an aspect of Being-guilty) Daseinrsquoscapacity to choose how to live and who to be is real and distinctiveBut it cannot choose not to have that capacity it must exercise it in circumstances that it has not freely chosen upon a range ofpossibilities that it has not itself defined and on the basis of anunderstanding of its situation that is itself situated (hence inher-ently subject to limitations) So it is a power that is necessarilyrooted in powerlessness ndash a freedom founded in abandonment Itsfulfilment thus comes not through any attempted abolition or tran-scendence of those constraints but through a resolute acceptance ofthem as they really are ndash through a clear acknowledgement of thenecessities and accidents of onersquos situation as onersquos fate

And since fateful Dasein as Being-in-the-world is also Being-with-others its authentic historizing is also what Heidegger calls a lsquoco-historizingrsquo The world it inherits is a common and a communalworld the existentiell possibilities that the world offers arebequeathed to individuals through essentially social structures andpractices and typically can only be taken up by them in concertwith others But by the same token those structures will only

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

persist if individuals continue to commit themselves to the possi-bilities they embody and the culture they constitute will only persistin a vital and authentic way if individuals grasp those possibilitiesauthentically In other words Daseinrsquos historizing is at once an indi-vidual and a communal affair To the individual driven about byaccident and circumstance there corresponds a community persistingas the homogenized aggregation of the lsquotheyrsquo and to the fate of anindividual there corresponds the destiny of a people

Our fates have already been guided in advance in our Being withone another in the same world and in our resoluteness for definitepossibilities Only in communicating and in struggling does the powerof destiny become free Daseinrsquos fateful destiny in and with its lsquogener-ationrsquo goes to make up the full authentic historizing of Dasein

(BT 74 436)

The risk of emphasizing the natality rather than the fatality ofDasein is that it will appear essentially backward-looking and thusconservative ndash as if taking over onersquos heritage is a matter of mechan-ically reiterating forms of life and formations of culture lying inthe past of the society concerned thus condemning both individ-uals and their culture to a living death There seems little room forreform innovation or responsiveness to altered circumstance Butthis interpretation forgets that hermeneutic understanding takes a spiralling form so that no new turn around it coincides with itspredecessor and it assumes that historizing is a substitute or asynonym for temporalizing rather than one aspect of that processAs such it is inextricably related to the other two temporal ecstasesand so forms part of an articulated unity that also involves a resolutegrasp of the present situation and an anticipatory projection intothe future Consequently what Heidegger calls lsquothe struggle ofloyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeatedrsquo(BT 74 437) does not mean binding the present to what is alreadyoutmoded Any reclaiming of onersquos heritage must flow from aresolute projection into the future based on a moment of vision withrespect to the present So it is better thought of as a reciprocativerejoinder to a past existentiell possibility ndash a dialogue between past

and present a creative reworking of that possibility in the light ofan essentially critical disavowal of the superficialities and ambi-guities of what passes for the working out of the past in averageeveryday life

Nevertheless the entanglement of historizing with projectiondoes not entail a simple endorsement of progress authentic Daseinis as indifferent to novelty as it is to nostalgia Authentic projec-tion into the future presupposes the taking over of onersquos heritageand so is essentially constrained and guided by that inheritance Butthe ultimate purpose of reclaiming the past is to project it into thefuture and this involves a mode of repetition that acknowledgesboth the necessities of the present and the genuine potential of thefuture Such repetition is an essential component of anticipatoryresoluteness the authentic mode of human temporalizing We cantherefore say with Heidegger that lsquoAuthentic Being-towards-deathndash that is to say the finitude of temporality ndash is the hidden basis ofDaseinrsquos [authentic] historicalityrsquo (BT 74 438) Or rather moreelaborately but in a way that manifests the underlying unity of thewhole of Heideggerrsquos analysis of temporality in Division Two ofBeing and Time

Only an entity which in its Being is essentially futural so that it isfree for its death and can let itself be thrown upon its factical lsquotherersquoby shattering itself against death ndash that is to say only an entity whichas futural is equiprimordially in the process of having-been can byhanding down to itself the possibility it has inherited take over itsown thrownness and be in the moment of vision for lsquoits timersquo Onlyauthentic temporality which is at the same time finite makes possiblesomething like fate ndash that is to say authentic historicality

(BT 74 437)

So much for authentic historizing The typical mode of Daseinrsquoseveryday existence however is inauthentic ndash and such lostness inthe lsquotheyrsquo is no less historical When human beings are lost in thelsquotheyrsquo their historicality and the historicality of their world is notannihilated but repressed ndash and in two stages First Dasein under-stands its own historicality in terms of the historicality of that with

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which it is absorbed in its world (ie it understands itself world-historically rather than understanding world-historicality as a func-tion of its own historicality) and second it interprets that world-historicality in terms of presence-at-hand Inauthentic Daseinunderstands the historicality of objects as the appearance and disap-pearance of present-at-hand entities and then interprets its ownexistence according to that model ndash as a sequence of moments thatbecome present-at-hand and then slip away into the past

Accordingly when the question of Daseinrsquos historicality getsraised in philosophy it is formulated as a matter of determiningthe connectedness of a series of experiential atoms over time Thisis wholly inappropriate to a being whose temporal unity is really amatter of its stretching along and being stretched along betweenbirth and death But it is an appropriate response to the existentiellsituation of a Dasein lost in the lsquotheyrsquo ndash for such lostness is in onesense a matter of self-inconstancy of the self being dispersed ordissipated in the shifting currents of ambiguity curiosity and idletalk In that sense a recovery of unity a pulling oneself togetheris required if inauthentic existence is to be transformed intoauthentic individuality but any such transformation must be basedon an understanding of that unity as the articulated unity of thecare-structure which must itself be grasped in terms of inherentlyecstatic temporalizing Thus there is more than a grain of truth inthe inauthentic conception of the self as requiring connectednessfor whether the individual will take over her fate and the destinyof her people or instead forget her heritage and the possibilities itopens up is in reality a question of whether or not she will achieveself-constancy But self-constancy is not self-identity and in partic-ular it is not a matter of the selfrsquos aspiring to or achieving identitywith its past but rather of its finding openness to a genuine futurein its non-coincidence with its past

With the inconstancy of the they-self Dasein makes present its lsquotodayrsquoIn awaiting the next new thing it has already forgotten the old oneThe lsquotheyrsquo evades choice Blind for possibilities it cannot repeat whathas been but only retains and receives the lsquoactualrsquo that is left overthe world-historical that has been the leavings and the information

about them that is present-at-hand Lost in the making-present ofthe lsquotodayrsquo it understands the lsquopastrsquo in terms of the lsquoPresentrsquo When onersquos existence is inauthentically historical it is loadeddown with the legacy of a lsquopastrsquo which has become unrecognizableand it seeks the modern But when historicality is authentic it under-stands history as the lsquorecurrencersquo of the possible and knows that apossibility will recur only if existence is open for it fatefully in amoment of vision in resolute repetition

(BT 75 4431)

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY (sectsect76ndash7)

Heidegger next shifts the focus of his investigation from historicalityto historiology ndash the science of history His immediate aim is todemonstrate that it is only because Daseinrsquos existence is historicalthat it can engage in historical investigation In one sense of coursethis conclusion follows immediately if Daseinrsquos existence is histor-ical then everything it does is grounded in its historizing and thatwill be as true of the historianrsquos activities as it is of the carpenterrsquosor the musicianrsquos But for Heidegger historiology is more closelyand distinctively linked to historicality than this

If the pastness of phenomena is derivative of the pastness of theirworld then an understanding of the past is available only to beingscapable of understanding worlds and understanding them as pastand that is possible only for beings whose Being is worldly and opento pastness ndash that is for human beings

Our going back to lsquothe pastrsquo does not first get its start from theacquisition sifting and securing of [world-historical] material theseactivities presuppose historical Being towards the Dasein that has-been-there ndash that is to say they presuppose the historicality of thehistorianrsquos existence

(BT 76 446)

In other words Daseinrsquos capacity to engage with the past is depen-dent upon its historicality the very possibility of historiologydepends upon the historicality (and so the temporality) of the humanway of being

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But the picture Heidegger paints is more complicated than thisFor the historicality of objects events and institutions is itself deriv-ative of the historicality of Dasein Their pastness depends upon thepast existence of a world which is in turn dependent upon Daseinrsquoshaving lived in a certain way at a certain time in the past Thusthe primary object of historical investigations is really Dasein itselfndash Dasein as past remains monuments and records are in effectpossible material for the concrete disclosure by existing Dasein ofthe Dasein which has-been-there The disclosure of the past is thedisclosure of a past world and thus of a past disclosure of the worldengaging in history is a matter of Being-in-the-world recovering or recreating a past mode of Being-in-the-world and doing thathistorical task properly means capturing that past mode of Being-in-the-world as it really was ndash understanding the past in terms of the real potentialities and limitations of then-prevailing forms ofhuman life

Accordingly the true object of historical investigation is not thefacts of a past era but a possible mode of existence true historyconcerns not actualities but possibilities But the genuine disclosureof what has-been-there the recovery of the real potential of a pastexistentiell possibility is precisely what Heidegger has been sketch-ing in as the core of authentic human historizing To understandthe Dasein which has-been-there in its authentic possibility just isto repeat its mode of worldly existence ndash to make it available assomething handed down to Dasein in its present situation

This implies that authentic human existence presupposes authen-tic historiology For if Dasein can exist as authentic historizing only by repeating one of its inherited existentiell possibilities thenwhatever mode of life it enacts it must have recovered its authenticlineaments from the past of its culture Whether Dasein existsauthentically as a historian a carpenter or a musician it can do so only by either possessing or drawing upon the skills of the truehistorian Since authentic temporalizing involves tearing oneselfaway from the falling anonymity of the lsquotheyrsquo and its superficialinterpretations of available modes of life in the name of a genuinelydestined future its critique of the present must be guided by a disclosure of the true heritage of existentiell possibilities from

which an individual and a community can project that future butsuch a disclosure is precisely what a properly conducted historical investigation can alone provide

If however authentic historizing presupposes authentic histori-ology authentic historiology also presupposes authentic historizingTo realize the true potential of historical investigation the histo-rian must reveal by repetition the Dasein which has-been-there inits essential possibility But any such repetition must be guided bycorrespondingly authentic modes of openness to past and future todisclose that past possibility as it really was is to reveal it as some-thing other than the past is typically taken to be in the present andno such resolute reclamation of the true lineaments of past andpresent can be enacted except by grasping the future in the light ofonersquos fate as an individual and the destiny of onersquos community Soif an historical investigation is to reveal the true heritage of thepresent those prosecuting it must themselves embody an authenticmode of human historizing

Heideggerrsquos idea is that true history allows past present andfuture reciprocally to question and illuminate one another and isthus at once a manifestation of and a preparation for anticipatoryresoluteness By doing her job authentically the historian revealsthe past as harbouring the real potential of her present and thusprepares the way for herself and her community to struggle withtheir destiny But since she is herself a historizing (ie a tempor-alizing) being her selection of an object of historical study will bedetermined by her orientation to present and future so her capacityto grasp the particular past possibility which embodies the bestdestiny of her community and to disclose it as such presupposesthat she has a resolute grasp of her own present and an anticipatorygrasp of her own future

Only by historicality which is factual and authentic can the history ofwhat has-been-there as a resolute fate be disclosed in such a mannerthat in repetition the lsquoforcersquo of the possible gets struck home intoonersquos factical existence ndash in other words that it comes towards thatexistence in its futural character

(BT 76 447)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

If historizing and historiology are related in a circle of mutualpresupposition it is always either vicious or virtuous Either theabsence of authentic historizing blocks off the possibility of authentichistoriology and is reinforced by so doing or its presence bringsabout authentic historiology and thereby reinforces its own realityand wider dissemination But this circularity suggests a paradox if authentic historizing presupposes authentic historiology but only an authentically historizing Dasein can engage in authentichistoriology how can authentic historiology ever get started Theimmediate answer is by the historian shattering herself againstdeath as her ownmost possibility and thereby being brought toapproach the task to which she has dedicated her life with antici-patory resoluteness She would then understand that her ability toaccept her own individual fate cannot be separated from her commu-nity accepting its destiny and that this joint acceptance is madepossible only by the successful exercise of the skills that she andher colleagues possess and the widespread dissemination of theresults of their exercise In other words what allows Dasein to breakinto the circle of authentic historiology and authentic historizing isjust what allows authenticity to break in upon any human beingthe impact of the voice of conscience the reticent anxiety inducedby Daseinrsquos confrontation with the true depths of its own finitude

But this returns us to the paradox we diagnosed when examin-ing Heideggerrsquos earlier treatment of conscience If inauthentic Daseinhas repressed its capacity for authenticity how can it utter or hearthe call of its conscience which is the voice of that repressed capac-ity My suggested resolution was to modify Heideggerrsquos analysisso as to allow that the voice of conscience might emanate from anexternal source ndash from someone else with an interest in her inter-locutorrsquos overcoming her inauthenticity and freeing her capacity tolive a genuinely individual life someone prepared to offer herselfas an exemplar of what such an authentic mode of existence mightbe like At that earlier stage I had to admit that Heidegger seemedexplicitly to reject this modification but it did dovetail smoothlywith much of what he actually said about the voice of conscience

Now I think we can say that Heideggerrsquos discussion of histori-cality and historiology deliberately commits him to just such a

resolution of the paradox For he ends it with a sudden (and withinthe precincts of Being and Time unique) cluster of predominantlyrespectful references to other thinkers Nietzsche takes the stage assomeone whose analysis of the lsquouse and abuse of historiology forlifersquo contains in embryo the core of Heideggerrsquos own analysis andmost prominently the chapter ends with an admiring six-pagediscussion of Wilhelm Diltheyrsquos and Count Yorck von Wartenburgrsquosconceptions of the human sciences in general and the science ofhistory in particular

Looked at in itself the location structure and content of thisconcluding discussion is deeply puzzling First and assuming forthe moment that Heidegger correctly represents the thought ofDilthey and Yorck therein it adds nothing to the conclusions alreadyestablished earlier in the chapter at best it shows only that theywere in some very dim and indirect ways presaged in the work ofthese two men Second despite the fact that Heidegger interpretsYorck as merely clarifying the underlying message of Diltheyrsquoswork the quotations Heidegger assembles from Yorckrsquos letters toDilthey have a continuously critical tone Third the discussionfocuses upon what seem very marginal texts instead of examiningDiltheyrsquos more famous works Heideggerrsquos attention is on Yorck ndashand Yorckrsquos letters at that And finally Heideggerrsquos own voice virtu-ally disappears from these concluding pages his purported discussionof Diltheyrsquos and Yorckrsquos thought is in fact little more than a sequenceof quotations from Yorck

If however we place this discussion in the context of the voiceof conscience these difficulties disappear What Heidegger is offeringis an example of how the voice of conscience can break in uponhistoriology Yorckrsquos letters to Dilthey are his attempt to point outfor his friendrsquos benefit how he might break free from a broadlyinauthentic understanding of historiology and historicality by devel-oping those aspects of his views that are closest to what Yorck seesas the truth of these matters His critique is thus not coercively andfutilely external (which would amount to his failing to respect hisfriendrsquos autonomy) but calibrated to those aspects of Diltheyrsquos ownworldview that have the most potential for positive internal devel-opment And by presenting himself as disclosing points that are

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

already implicit in Diltheyrsquos own work as in effect his friendrsquos bestinterpreter Yorck shows that his own position is not based uponsuperior expertise On the contrary he implies that he could nothave attained the position from which he criticizes his friend withoutstanding on his friendrsquos shoulders In this sense the position towhich Yorck is attempting to attract Dilthey is nothing more thanDiltheyrsquos own best possibility ndash his unattained but attainable self2

This implies more generally that progress towards authenticityin any part of human existence including historiology is essen-tially historical Yorckrsquos further progress towards the existentialtruth about the science of history and human existence is itselfproduced by critically appropriating possibilities disclosed by thepast His position is the result of repeating the past in a momentof vision about the present that is oriented towards the best destinyof himself qua historian the discipline of which he is a memberand the culture of which that discipline is such an important compo-nent Putting these points together the final implication of Yorckrsquosexample is that for an historian to be authentic is for him to act asthe voice of conscience to the past (and thus to the present) of hisdiscipline and its culture To work with anticipatory resoluteness asan historian amounts to criticizing the past from the perspective ofits own best possibilities with a view to galvanizing the present fromthe perspective of its destined future And Yorckrsquos example therebyconfirms that genuine repetition of the past is no mere reiterationof it Precisely because the situation of the historian differs fromthat of those inhabiting the past world he strives to understand hisgrasp of the past could never simply coincide with theirs but itremains nonetheless an understanding of what they understood(since it reveals a possibility inherent in it)

But of course this example of the voice of conscience in histo-riology and of an historianrsquos authentic enactment of his historicalityis one that Heidegger provides for his readers and he does so bypresenting Yorckrsquos own position as an unresolved precursor of hisown insights In other words by placing his account of Dilthey andYorck at the end of his own investigation of historiology and histor-icality he places Yorck in exactly the position that Yorck himselfplaced Dilthey Heidegger offers an implicit critique of Yorck but

one which presents itself as internal devoted to developing Yorckrsquosown best possibilities and so as one to which Heidegger himselfcould not have attained without Yorckrsquos own work and example He thus offers himself as the voice of conscience to Yorck as anexample of authentic historiology (someone capable of renewing thediscipline of history by recovering the most fruitful of its past possi-bilities even from such unpromisingly marginal documents asprivate correspondence and projecting it into the future) and asattempting thereby to befriend his culture ndash to tear it away fromits present forgetfulness of its past and to awaken it to its destinyBut in so doing Heidegger implicitly acknowledges that his ownbest insights into historiology and historicality did not spring fullyformed from his own intellect He presents Dilthey and Yorck asthe voice of conscience that awakened him from inauthenticity andthus bolsters his implicit claim to be the authentic voice of conscienceto his readers by implicitly denying that he occupies any positionof personal superiority or expertise He thus avoids suggesting thathis readers are somehow in an inferior position to his own a sugges-tion which seemed to be encoded into his earlier discussion of thevoice of conscience and which implied that he was not sufficientlyrespectful of the autonomy of those he was addressing and claimingto befriend We can therefore conclude that the modifications to themodel of the voice of conscience which we offered earlier were simplyan anticipation of Heideggerrsquos own self-criticism Even the authorof Being and Time is not capable of escaping inauthenticity entirelyby his own efforts

However when I introduced the idea of the friend to solve theproblem of bootstrapping inauthentic Dasein into authenticity Inoted that it appears simply to displace the problem it attempts tosolve on to the friend For if inauthentic Daseinrsquos transformationto authenticity presupposes a friend how did that friend attainauthenticity Heideggerrsquos discussion of Dilthey and Yorck suggeststhe following answer through the intervention of another friend ndashYorck can befriend Heidegger because he was befriended by DiltheyBut such chains of friendship must surely have a beginning a first link and a first friend would necessarily be an unbefriendedfriend someone who managed the transformation into authenticity

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

unaided But it was the impossibility of such a self-overcoming ofself-imposed lostness that caused our problem in the first place

This worry is misplaced A first or self-befriending friend wouldbe required only in a world in which human inauthenticity wasuniversal and absolute and Heideggerrsquos conception of human exist-ence neither entails nor permits such a possibility He does claimthat lostness in the they-self is Daseinrsquos typical position even thatit inherently tends towards fallenness because its social roles areessentially impersonal but this makes authenticity a rare and fragileachievement not an impossible one And no community of beingsto whom an understanding of their own Being necessarily belongscould utterly lose a sense of themselves as capable of authenticityWhether in disregarded texts moribund institutions or marginal-ized individuals (like Dilthey and Yorck) some vestiges of thatself-interpretation will survive for as long as human beings do andthereby make it possible for chains of friendship to maintain anddevelop themselves The friendship model of conscience does nottherefore require the self-defeating invocation of a self-befriendingfriend the human world could never be entirely incapable ofdisrupting the inveterate repressions of inauthenticity

ON BEING WITHIN TIME (sectsect78ndash82)

In his final chapter Heidegger concludes his analysis by relating hisexistential understanding of time to that which prevails not just inDaseinrsquos ordinary life but in disciplines devoted to theorizing aboutthe fundamental structures of that life (eg philosophy) In everydaylife for example we talk of entities as something we encounter in time and describe our own activities in ways which imply thattime is something we can possess or lose ndash as when we say that wehave no time to do something or that doing something will take acertain amount of time These formulations suggest a conception oftime as something objective ndash either a medium in which things areimmersed or a substance or property that we can grasp take or loseThis conflicts with the existential conception of temporality as theontological foundation of Daseinrsquos Being as care In additionprevailing philosophical conceptions of time (on Heideggerrsquos view

still rooted in the work of Aristotle) portray it as a sequence of self-contained units a series of lsquonowsrsquo that emerge from the futurepresent themselves to the individual and disappear into the pastThis flatly contradicts the existential conception of temporality asan articulated ecstatic unity If however all modes of human exist-ence are grounded in temporality then the lives of those who adoptan average everyday conception of time as well as the interpretativestructures presupposed by its theoretical thematization and devel-opment must be modes of temporalizing ndash however inauthenticBut how is it possible for beings whose relation to time is of thesort Heidegger has been claiming to misunderstand the nature oftheir own existence in just these ways How might such misunder-standings have developed and how can their existential realizationbe understood in terms of temporality

Our everyday understanding of time is manifest in the way welocate events and other phenomena in temporal terms we talk ofthings happening now of something that has not yet happened butis to happen then and of things that happened previously or on a former occasion Clearly these three broad types of reference totime form a single interrelated framework ndash what Heidegger callslsquodatabilityrsquo what is awaited or expected to happen (at a certain time)does indeed happen and thereafter can be referred to as somethingthat happened on that former occasion But the datability of eventsis at least implicitly founded upon the present moment the lsquonowrsquothe lsquothenrsquo is understood to be the lsquonot-yet nowrsquo and the lsquoon thatformer occasionrsquo is a reference to the lsquono-longer nowrsquo This isbecause in everyday life Dasein is typically concerned with the enti-ties among which it finds itself and with the task for which theyare ready-to-hand or unhandy so it is naturally primarily orientedtowards that with which it is presently concerned with future andpast events primarily regarded as phenomena which either will beor were the focus of its present concern

Datability does not however immediately imply an exclusivefocus upon time as comprising a succession of moments or instantsfor tasks occupy periods of time as much as they do moments Whenwe talk of having no time to do something or of having lost trackof the time while doing something we articulate a sense of time as

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

something that spans moments something which endures or lastsMoreover what lsquonowrsquo means will often vary according to our currentpreoccupations ndash lsquonowrsquo might pick out the instantaneity of a matchbeing struck or the hours occupied by dining at a restaurant Andthe datability and spanning of time is essentially public When wetalk of somethingrsquos having come to pass lsquonowrsquo the time we therebypick out is equally accessible to others the beginning of the SecondWorld War the time at which the dinner party moved on to dessertthe time it took for someone to repair her roof ndash these are notprivate or inherently subjective matters but issues of public disputeand agreement It is this which most firmly grounds our everydaysense of time as something objective or autonomous ndash a frame ofreference to which we adjust ourselves rather than one we imposeupon our experience

These three elements of the everyday conception of time are thustightly interwoven and at least the first two can be interpreted asrooted in temporality The very fact that the three dimensions ofdatability are inherently interrelated reflects the interarticulation of the three temporal ecstases while the notion that time is peri-odic or spanned manifests the fact that Daseinrsquos existence is a matterof its stretching along and being stretched along its days Pointingto a structural analogy between the two conceptions however doesnot amount to providing a derivation of the former from the latterndash a proof that only an existential understanding of time as tempo-rality can account for the everyday conception of time And whatof its inherently public nature How does the possibility of ourorienting ourselves by reference to such datable spans of time ourseeming ability to come across time in our dealings with the worldrelate to the temporalizing roots of Daseinrsquos Being Heideggerrsquosanswer utilizes the inherent worldliness of human existence todevelop a highly speculative but peculiarly powerful brief historyof the development of Daseinrsquos reckonings with time ndash what onemight call an enabling myth of chronology

According to that myth Daseinrsquos most primitive mode of reck-oning with time is astronomical and this is because its Being is careAlways already thrown into the world and typically lost in a kindof fascinated absorption with the entities it encounters there human

beings relate to those entities in terms of their possible and actualinvolvement with their own tasks or projects But they can hardlyengage in practical activity if they cannot perceive their world ofwork They must therefore reckon with periods of darkness andlight awaiting the passage of night and the arrival of the dawn andthis means reckoning with dawn and dusk as the time to begin workand to put it aside

Dasein dates the time which it must take and dates it in terms ofsomething it encounters within the world as having a distinctiveinvolvement for its circumspective potentiality-for-Being-in-the-worldConcern makes use of the Being-ready-to-hand of the sun which shedsforth light and warmth The sun dates the time which is interpretedin concern In terms of this dating arises the most lsquonaturalrsquo measureof time ndash the day

(BT 80 465)

The time-cycle reckoned with in everydayness is thus essentiallydaily or diurnal ndash the cycle of days and of months as well as thedayrsquos internal divisions are measured in accordance with the sunrsquosjourneying across the heavens Thus the diurnality of everydayDasein embodies a definite kind of periodicity or spanning Andsince the basis of this time-reckoning is astronomical it is inher-ently public the rising progress and setting of the sun are notexclusive to any particular individual or world of equipment Ineffect then the sun is Daseinrsquos first and most fundamental clockbut this mode of reckoning with time as public spanned and datablehas an obvious relation to Daseinrsquos projects The position of the sunis to be reckoned with because given degrees of its brightness andwarmth are variously appropriate to a given task early summermornings are best for harvesting but a winter dusk is perfectlysuited to feeding cattle Thus reckoning with the sun presupposesthe network of lsquoin-order-torsquo and lsquofor-the-sake-ofrsquo relations whichmake up the interpersonal structures of significance grounding allof Daseinrsquos practical activities ndash the worldhood of the world In otherwords the time with which Dasein is reckoning is inherently worldlyndash it is world-time

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

So the first clock becomes accessible only because human exist-ence itself is inherently worldly inherently a matter of encounteringentities the sun is a clock that is always disclosed to Dasein as aready-to-hand part of Nature and the common social environmentAnd human worldliness is founded upon the care-structure whichis itself founded upon temporalizing temporality In short the acces-sibility of a clock is not the precondition for time human temporalityis the precondition for any and every form of clock-time

In Heideggerrsquos myth all future developments of clock-time ndash theuse of shadows cast by the sun sundials clocks and pocket watchesdigital and atomic clocks ndash build upon the datability spannednessand publicity established by the first uses of the sun as a clock Evenmethods of time-measurement that make no explicit reference tothe sun necessarily draw upon knowledge of the processes of thenatural world which is first illuminated by and disclosed simultane-ously with this natural clock The inherently public nature of every-day time is thereby reinforced but this is achieved not by detachingclock-time from its worldliness but by relying upon that connec-tion Reckoning with electrical impulses or the decay of atomic nucleiis no less dependent upon the human beingrsquos disclosedness of itsworld and the time thus measured is accordingly no less world-time And since such modes of reckoning presuppose timersquos inherentworldliness they presuppose the essentially temporal foundation ofhuman existence as Being-in-the-world

This means that both the theorizing and the forms of life thatpresuppose the everyday conception of time (however technicallyadvanced the modes of time-reckoning they involve) are enactmentsof a specific form of Daseinrsquos threefold ecstatic temporality But ifevery mode of the care-structure is either authentic or inauthenticthe same must be true of this mode of temporalizing And accordingto Heidegger it is deeply inauthentic ndash a reflection of Daseinrsquos lost-ness in the lsquotheyrsquo The mode of datability involved is spanned andpublic but its publicity is understood as something entirely objec-tive ndash something to be met with in the world something humanbeings must confront and which has no relation to their own existen-tial foundations Similarly its being spanned is understood primarilyin relation to the period of time required for the completion of a

task rather than as something which most basically relates toDaseinrsquos existence as stretched along the sequence of its days timersquosperiodicity is thus detached from the fundamental question ofDaseinrsquos challenge to establish and maintain self-constancy Andboth ways of levelling-off or repressing the true significance of time as temporality derive from the basic form of everyday timersquosdatability ndash the priority it gives to the lsquonowrsquo

As we saw earlier the lsquothenrsquo and the lsquoon a former occasionrsquo areunderstood in terms of the now ndash the former as a lsquonot-yet nowrsquoand the latter as a lsquono-longer nowrsquo That amounts to emphasizingthe temporal ecstasis of the present and enacting that ecstasis inthe form of making-present ndash something that goes together with aforgetting of the past and an awaiting of the future People caughtup in this mode of datability are completely absorbed in the presentobject of their concern and so entirely dismiss that which is nolonger present (since it can be of no use to this concern) whilecomprehending what is to come entirely in terms of its usefulnessfor their present concern The significance of the future and the(in)significance of the past are thus determined solely by what ispresently preoccupying them the past becomes instantly obsoleteand the future more and more eagerly (but more and more unques-tioningly) leapt upon as grist to contemporary mills The result isan effective dispersal or dissolution of the selfrsquos individuality in thepublicly dictated demands of the task with which it is fascinated

The irresoluteness of inauthentic existence temporalizes itself in themode of a making-present which does not await but forgets He whois irresolute understands himself in terms of those very closest eventsand be-fallings which he encounters in such a making-present andwhich thrust themselves upon him in various ways Busily losinghimself in the object of his concern he loses his time in it too

(BT 79 463)

What is missing here is any possibility of relating to the present inand as a moment of vision ndash a grasp of its resources as a contextfor existentiell choice the scene for a penetrating repetition of thepast that might liberate real but hidden possibilities for the future

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Someone adopting this mode of temporalizing someone gripped byanticipatory resoluteness breaks through the levelling-off of tempo-rality as time and thereby tears herself away from lostness in thelsquotheyrsquo re-establishing self-constancy by having time for what thesituation demands and having it constantly But the individual whois absorbed by and enacts the everyday conception of time is entirelyclosed off from any such understanding of time and of her ownrelation to it ndash and so from any possibility of wrenching herselftowards an enactment of it Living in accord with the databilityspannedness and publicness of everyday time is a mode of tempo-ralizing that represses any possibility of understanding itself as such

Accordingly when the task of thematizing an understanding oftime emerges and is addressed in such disciplines as philosophy itis done in such a way that even the basic structure of everyday timeis overlooked For any would-be philosopher of time naturallyabstracts her conception of her topic from those modes of time-reckoning with which she is most familiar ndash from circumspectiveconcernful clock-using And since these clocks are typically non-natural or non-solar what appears central to our telling the time isour making-present a moving pointer ndash following the sequence ofpositions that a pointer moves through on a dial But when onefollows such a pointer one checks off a successive series of lsquonowsrsquoone would say lsquoNow itrsquos here now herersquo and so on And thus emergesa conception of time as a successive flow of self-contained andpresent-at-hand lsquonowsrsquo It is not built into our unthematized reck-onings with time in the public work-world but developments withinthat world designed to make time-reckoning more ready-to-hand(ie the development of clocks) make it all but unavoidable when wethematize time as such When we do so not only the idea of clock-time as grounded in temporalizing but also that of time as publicspanned datability is repressed For the datability of time presup-poses the interrelatedness of its three dimensions and their involve-ment with structures of significance (ie lsquothenrsquo means both lsquonot-yetnowrsquo and lsquothen when I tried torsquo) but no sequence of atomizedinstants could manifest such interrelatedness or such significance

Thus in the philosophical tradition even an accurate under-standing of everyday time ndash let alone a properly existential

conception of time as temporality ndash is covered over Heidegger offersAristotlersquos and Hegelrsquos analyses of time and the human relation totime as paradigms of such repression This is symptomatic ofDaseinrsquos more general tendency to misunderstand its own Being ndasha tendency deriving from the nature of Daseinrsquos Being as care ForDasein tends to interpret everything it attempts to thematize in theterms appropriate to that with which it is most familiar ndash that isin terms of readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand And just asthe readiness-to-hand of entities is mistakenly interpreted byaverage everyday Dasein in terms of presence-at-hand so the samefate befalls time

Thus the lsquonowsrsquo are in a certain manner co-present-at-hand that isentities are encountered and so too is the lsquonowrsquo Although it is notsaid explicitly that the lsquonowsrsquo are present-at-hand in the same wayas Things they still get lsquoseenrsquo ontologically within the horizon of theidea of presence-at-hand

(BT 81 475)

On this understanding of time of course there are only two waysof conceiving its ontological status Either it is objective in the waythat material objects are or it is subjective in the way that psychicalexperiences are it is present-at-hand in the world or it is present-at-hand in the subject Whereas for Heidegger time is both objectiveand subjective ndash but not at all in the way philosophers envisage itIt is objective in the sense that it is inherently worldly world-timeis more objective than anything we might come across within theworld because it is the ecstatico-horizonal condition for the possi-bility of coming across entities in the world And it is subjective inthe sense that the ontological roots of its worldliness lie in thehuman way of being it is more subjective than anything in the psychic life of an individual because it is the condition for thepossibility of the existence of any being whose Being is care

On this account there is a clear sense in which both Dasein andthe entities it encounters are in time (since entities are datable intheir comings and goings and Dasein is stretched along temporally)and there is an equally clear sense in which they are not (since the

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datability of entities is ontologically derived from the temporalityof Daseinrsquos Being while the temporality of Daseinrsquos Being meansthat Dasein is [or exists as] time rather than existing in time) Inother words only an account of the existential foundations of timeas temporality grasps the underlying structure of world-time in away that avoids the Scylla of vicious reification and the Charybdisof subjectivist volatilization Only an account of the human way ofbeing as temporality can explain the sense in which human beingsand the entities they encounter are (and are not) within time

1 Cf D Parfit Reasons and Persons (Oxford Clarendon Press 1984)2 This marks another point at which my implicit broad reliance upon

Cavellrsquos model of perfectionism brings me to the point of finding hisown terminology ready-to-hand for my purposes see the referencescited in Chapter 4 note 4

8CONCLUSION TODIVISION TWO

PHILOSOPHICAL ENDINGSndash THE HORIZON OF

BEING AND TIME(Being and Time sect83)

HUMAN BEING AND THE QUESTION OF BEING IN GENERAL

Heidegger concludes his phenomenological investigation of thehuman way of being by making it absolutely clear that his uncov-ering of temporality as its basis is both an end and a beginning Itis an end in that it provides the most fundamental understandingthat he has been able to develop of the nature of human existenceOver five hundred closely argued pages he has argued that Daseinis essentially worldly that this worldliness is founded upon thetripartite care-structure and that this care-structure is itself foundedupon the threefold ecstatic temporalizing of temporality But thisanalysis of Daseinrsquos conditionedness or finitude was never an end

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

in itself It was rather his way of addressing the broader and morefundamental question of the meaning of Being in general and Beingand Time ends by re-posing that question

Heidegger offered three reasons for regarding an existentialanalytic of human being as a way of working out the question ofthe meaning of Being in general Human beings can encounter otherentities in their Being and are fated to confront their own Being asan issue so they are doubly related to Being in everything that theydo and since any investigation of the meaning of Being is itself apossible mode of human existence a proper understanding of itslimits and potentialities requires a prior grasp of the nature of humanexistence as such This ontico-ontological priority of Dasein asHeidegger calls it means that an investigation of human existenceis not just a convenient starting point from which to address thequestion of the meaning of Being in general ndash it is indispensable

By the very same token however even a provisional answer tothe question of the meaning of the Being of Dasein cannot in itselfamount to an answer to the question of the meaning of Being ingeneral The two questions are internally related but not identicalThe latter asks for an account of the underlying differentiated unityof whatever it is that is made manifest through the manifestationof any and every being in its Being ndash not just that of the beingwhose Being is Dasein Nevertheless since human beings can graspany and every entity in its Being understanding the ontologicalgrounds of that capacity might at least equip us to pose the ques-tion of the meaning of Being in a fruitful manner In this sensethe existential analytic of Dasein puts us on the way to answeringthe question with which Heidegger is primarily concerned And ofcourse the critical term required for posing this question fruitfullyturns out to be that of time ndash or rather temporality

Something like lsquoBeingrsquo has been disclosed in the understanding-of-Being which belongs to existent Dasein as a way in which it under-stands Being has been disclosed in a preliminary way thoughnon-conceptually and this makes it possible for Dasein as existentBeing-in-the-world to comport itself towards entities ndash towards thosewhich it encounters within-the-world as well as towards itself as

C O N C L U S I O N T O D I V I S I O N T W O208

existent How is this disclosive understanding of Being at all possible forDasein Can this question be answered by going back to the primor-dial constitution-of-Being of that Dasein by which Being is under-stood The existential-ontological constitution of Daseinrsquos totality isgrounded in temporality Hence the ecstatical projection of Beingmust be made possible by some primordial way in which ecstaticaltemporality temporalizes How is this mode of the temporalizing oftemporality to be Interpreted Is there a way which leads from primor-dial time to the meaning of Being Does time itself manifest itself asthe horizon of Being

(BT 83 488)

When thematized Daseinrsquos understanding of Being its openness toits world is shown to depend upon the care-structure which is inturn grounded in ecstatic temporality The horizonal structure of the world (the inexhaustible self-concealing clearing within which Being is manifest as the Being of some entity or other) isgrounded in the horizonal structure of temporality (Daseinrsquos endlessstanding-outside itself in the three interlinked temporal schemas)temporality is the fundamental condition for the possibility ofgrasping beings in their Being Heidegger is not here identifyingBeing and time His book has shown that temporality is the groundof Daseinrsquos understanding of beings in their Being and an under-standing of beings in their Being is not the same as an understandingof Being ndash any more than an understanding of Being is Being itselfNevertheless Being and time cannot be entirely distinct becausethe concept of Being and the concept of an understanding of Beingas manifest in beings are internally related Being itself can neverbe encountered except as the Being of some being or other and inso far as any attempt to answer the question of the meaning ofBeing will be the act of some particular human being it must artic-ulate an understanding of the meaning of Being AccordinglyHeidegger ends his book by asking the question of the meaning ofBeing in the form that his existential analytic of Dasein suggests ndashby asking whether time manifests itself as the horizon of Being

To find that this complex dense and difficult text ends with theposing of the very question with which it began rather than with

C O N C L U S I O N T O D I V I S I O N T W O 209

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any attempt to answer it may seem a profoundly unrewardingconclusion for its readers But the book as a whole has provided agreat deal of information about the human mode of being on theway to re-posing this question and some of that information madeit inevitable that Being and Time would end in exactly this way Tobegin with author and reader have been collaborating in an onto-logical investigation ndash developing a particular interpretation of Beingas it manifests itself in and through Dasein and according to thatinterpretation interpretations generally move within a hermeneuticcircle or spiral But this means not just that there can be no inter-pretation-free point at which to commence the hermeneutic taskbut also that there can be no definitive end to it Any text actionor practice under interpretation forms part of a complex network ofobjects and activities that is in turn founded upon structures ofsignificance which are not reducible to a finite list of elements orrules so each step forward in the interpretative enterprise inevitablyopens up new vistas of meaning that call for further exploration Inthis sense interpretation is essentially horizonal and so in principleincapable of attaining absolute completion Indeed if interpretationcan never be absolutely terminated the fact that a text ends byposing further questions does not show that it is essentially incom-plete For if there can be no conclusions that do not raise furtherquestions then an interpretative textrsquos final posing of a questioncannot show that it has not reached a conclusion or been broughtto a perfectly adequate terminus Accordingly for Heidegger to endin any other way than by pointing out the new vistas of meaningthat his interpretation of the Being of Dasein has opened up wouldbe for the form of his text to contradict and so to indict its content

Even if we acknowledge this however we might think that thetask of exploring the new vistas that are visible from this textualterminus is primarily Heideggerrsquos and we might then be temptedto search out the other texts that Heidegger authored in which(scholars claim and not wrongly) he does just that As I mentionedin the Introduction there are a number of texts from the late 1920sthat might justifiably be regarded as providing the essential elementsof the four further divisions that are mentioned in Heideggerrsquosopening delineation of his project but are absent from Being and

Time itself But there are also texts from the same period ndash perhapsmost obviously his inaugural lecture at Freiburg entitled What isMetaphysics ndash which explicitly take up and elaborate a connectionthat we have seen to be implicit in and deeply determinative ofthe course of Being and Time itself for if Dasein is the Being forwhom Being is an issue and if there is an uncanny intimacy betweenthe Being of Dasein and nullity negation and nothingness thenthere must be a deep affinity between Being and lsquothe nothingrsquo

As we saw most explicitly in Chapter 5 however Heideggerrsquosrealization of the internal relation between Dasein and nothingnesswas also a realization that this relation placed the very possibilityof a phenomenological analysis of the Being of Dasein in questionFor nothingness is neither a phenomenon nor of the logos ndash neitheran entity that might appear to us as it is in itself nor the object ofa possible discursive act Heideggerrsquos response to this problem inBeing and Time is to attempt to represent the nothing as the beyondof phenomenological representation ndash as the unrepresentable condi-tion for the possibility of Daseinrsquos comprehending and questioninggrasp of beings in their Being He aims to achieve this goal bypresenting Division Two as pointing towards that which lies beyondDivision One it neither identifies some specific feature(s) of DaseinrsquosBeing omitted by Division One nor merely reiterates Division Onersquos conclusions about Daseinrsquos Being in a more ontologicallypenetrating manner but rather repeatedly brings us up against theunrepresentable horizon of every element of the analysis in DivisionOne In this respect Division Two does not simply illustrate thehermeneutic insight that no matter how much we say aboutDaseinrsquos Being there is always more to be said it rather enactsthe thought that there is something inherently enigmatic about theBeing of Dasein ndash something necessarily beyond the grasp of thatbeing itself and hence necessarily beyond the grasp of any existentialanalytic of its Being

One might say that for Heidegger any adequate account ofDaseinrsquos Being must embody a continuous or pervasive acknowl-edgement of its ineluctable inadequacy hence the uncanny non-coincidence of Division Two with Division One hence his blatantlyself-subversive talk in Division Two of impossible possibilities of

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

unrepayable debts and silent voices of repetition without reitera-tion hence his emphasis on Daseinrsquos self-transcendence its non-self-identity its inability to coincide with itself its essentially ecstaticunity But such a sense of Daseinrsquos Being as inherently enigmaticwould not encourage the thought that further turns around thespiral of understanding initiated in Division One might bring us toan ever-deepening grasp of that Being It would rather suggest theneed to be sure that what phenomenological analysis discloses asenigmatic really is enigmatic and not just indicative of the repre-sentational limitations of phenomenology And that would meandevoting more explicit reflection to the means of representation atDaseinrsquos disposal ndash perhaps by paying closer attention to the natureof language perhaps by looking at the variety of modes of humanlinguistic and non-linguistic communication perhaps by fashioninga variety of alternative modes of philosophical discourse in order todiscover whether each is fated to subvert itself in the manner ofphenomenology when it attempts to probe (what phenomenologycalls) the Being of Dasein and hence Being as such Those familiarwith Heideggerrsquos writings after the supposed lsquoturnrsquo in his thoughtmight recognize each of these possibilities as actualized in that vastarray of texts

There is one further moral that might be drawn from Being andTimersquos open-ended ending To appreciate it we must recall hisdiscussions of what might constitute human authenticity apply theirconclusions to ourselves as human beings presently engaged in thetask of reading philosophy and also recall that the words orderedto form the text we are reading implicitly claim to be articulationsof the voice of philosophyrsquos conscience Then we might interpret itsauthor not as posing a question to which he intends to provide aconcrete answer elsewhere in some other arrangement of words atsome other time and place but as posing a question which he expectsus to answer After all a question is typically posed because thequestioner would like the hearer to supply an answer by no meansall questions are rhetorical or otherwise posed solely in order thatthe questioner may provide the answer And as Heidegger under-stands his role as the voice of conscience in philosophy his mostimportant responsibility is to restore the autonomy of his readers

to wrest them away from an unquestioning reliance upon the deliv-erances of the tradition and their colleagues He would hardly liveup to that responsibility if he merely substitutes a reliance uponhim for their previous reliance upon others In other words animportant part of his reason for concluding Being and Time with aquestion might well be that it constitutes a rebuke to its readers away of warning his would-be followers against relying upon himto provide all the answers they seek in their philosophical investi-gations ndash without realizing that such a reliance upon others is anabdication of self-responsibility as a thinker a refusal of the veryinsight about self-reliance that they claim to have acquired In shortthe constituent terms of Heideggerrsquos concluding question indicatethe way to go on from his words but the fact that they constitutea question indicates that it is a route we should be prepared to traceout for ourselves In this sense the conclusion of Being and Timedemonstrates that the path of true thinking is one that each readermust take for herself

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS BY HEIDEGGER REFERRED TO IN THE TEXTBeing and Time trans J Macquarrie and E Robinson (Oxford Basil

Blackwell 1962)The Basic Problems of Phenomenology trans A Hofstadter (Bloomington

Ind Indiana University Press 1982)Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics trans R Taft (Bloomington Ind

Indiana University Press 1990)

COMMENTARIES ON BEING AND TIME(AND OTHER HEIDEGGER TEXTS)Dreyfus H Being-in-the-World (Cambridge Mass MIT Press 1991)Philipse H Heideggerrsquos Philosophy of Being (Princeton NJ Princeton

University Press 1998)Poggeler O Martin Heideggerrsquos Path of Thinking trans D Magurshak and

S Barber (Atlantic Highlands NJ Humanities Press International1987)

Polt R Heidegger An Introduction (London UCL Press 1999)Richardson J Existential Epistemology (Oxford Clarendon Press 1986)Steiner G Heidegger (London Fontana 1978 revised edition 1994)

COLLECTIONS OF ARTICLES ON HEIDEGGERDreyfus H and Hall H (eds) Heidegger A Critical Reader (Oxford

Blackwell 1992)ndashndashndashndash and Wrathall M (eds) The Blackwell Companion to Heidegger

(Oxford Blackwell 2005)Guignon C The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge

Cambridge University Press 1993)Sallis J Reading Heidegger Commemorations (Bloomington Ind Indiana

University Press 1994)

OTHER BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THE TEXTCavell S Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (Chicago Ill Chicago

University Press 1990)Golding W The Spire (London Faber and Faber 1964)Honderich T (ed) Morality and Objectivity Essays in Honour of J L

Mackie (London Routledge 1985)Kant I Critique of Pure Reason trans N Kemp Smith (London Macmillan

1929)Kierkegaard S Concluding Unscientific Postscript trans H V and E H

Hong (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992)Mulhall S Faith and Reason (London Duckworth 1994)Parfit D Reasons and Persons (Oxford Clarendon Press 1984)Ryle G The Concept of Mind (London Hutchinson 1949)Strawson P F Individuals (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 1959)Taylor C Philosophical Papers Vols I and II (Cambridge Cambridge

University Press 1985)ndashndashndashndash Sources of the Self (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1989)Weston M Kierkegaard and Modern Continental Philosophy (London

Routledge 1994)Wittgenstein L Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus trans C K Ogden

(London Routledge and Kegan Paul 1922)ndashndashndashndash Philosophical Investigations trans G E M Anscombe (Oxford Basil

Blackwell 1953)

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 215

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

aesthetic sphere 135ndash6 155agency 39ndash41aletheia 101ambiguity 107ndash8animals 15ndash16 124ndash5 164 186anticipation 142ndash3 153ndash4 160

165ndash6 180 193anxiety 110ndash12 115 131 169Arendt H viiiargument from analogy 62ndash3Aristotle 9ndash10 27 28 205Articulation 92ndash4 99ndash102assertion 90ndash2 99ndash101assignment-relations 49ndash52 53

55 85attunement 32 116Austin J L 61authenticity 32ndash3 37ndash9 69ndash73

104 109ndash10 130ndash1 138ndash42

143ndash50 157 165ndash70 185ndash6194ndash8 212ndash13

awaiting 165ndash6

Being 1ndash12 26ndash30 97ndash8 207ndash13

Being-a-whole 122 134ndash8 154ndash5

Being-guilty 140ndash3 179Being-in 41ndash2 73ndash5Being-in-the-world 35ndash88 102ndash3

117ndash18 170ndash8Being-outside-oneself 75 161

173ndash5Being-possible 83 108 126ndash7

192Being-there 14 40 75 94Being-towards-death 125ndash9

153ndash5

Being-with 64ndash74 123 187Berkeley G 5 39

care 112ndash14 132 140 142 156159ndash78

categories 37 47Cavell S 151 (fn) 206 (fn)circumspection 49 85clearing 74 209clock-time 202ndash6co-historizing 187ndash8conceptual framework 93 100ndash2concern 65ndash6 112conditionedness 60ndash1 69 75 83

89 113 118 129 137conscience 138ndash41 143ndash50 194ndash8

212ndash13conspicuousness 49context 153ndash5correspondence model of truth

100ndash4culture 50ndash1 79ndash80curiosity 107 164 186

Dasein 12ndash18 27 31ndash3 36ndash940ndash1 62ndash8 98ndash104 108ndash9138ndash43 183ndash5 207ndash13

datability 199ndash200 204death 122ndash34 137ndash8 153ndash5 167deconstruction viii 22 27decontextualisation 53ndash5 110

172ndash3deficient modes 44 65demise 124Derrida J viii 22 151 (fn)Descartes R 5 6ndash7 21 27 28

36 39 52ndash3 62ndash3 86 95ndash6157

destiny 188 193Dilthey W 195ndash7

disclosedness 53 74 76ndash8 94103 122ndash3 128 157 192ndash3

discourse 24 92ndash4 116 138diurnality 181 201Dreyfus H xiii 56dwelling 41

ecstasisecstases 161 165 174ndash6Emerson R W 151 (fn)equipment 47ndash8 56ndash7equipmental totality 47ndash52essentia 7ethical sphere 136everyday theeverydayness 18ndash19

70 106 178 195ndash200 averageeverydayness 19 38 66ndash9106ndash9 113 171ndash2 186

existentia 7existential quantification 10ndash11existential structures 16 38existentialeexistentialia 37 38

70ndash4 94existentialism viiiexistentiell possibilities 16 33 82

111 125ndash8external world 94ndash5

fallenness 106ndash10 164 169ndash70fate 112 188 194fear 76ndash9 111 167 168ndash9finitude 118 129 136ndash7 153ndash5

186 189for-the-sake-of-which 51ndash2 56 201fore-conception 85ndash6 90 179fore-having 85ndash6 90fore-sight 85ndash6 90fore-structure 87ndash8founded modes 96freedom 134 187Frege G 10

I N D E X 217

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

friend the 145ndash50 194ndash8fundamental ontology 14 18 26

208ndash13

Gadamer H-G viiiGod 40Golding W 1ndash2grammar 93Greece 2 21 24guilt 141ndash3

Hegel G W F 31 205heritage 186ndash7hermeneutic circle 31 86ndash8 121

132ndash3 179 188 210hermeneutics viii 179ndash80 210ndash11historicality 183ndash91historiology 87ndash8 191ndash4 195ndash6historizing 182ndash97history 20ndash2 182ndash5 191ndash4horizonal schema 174ndash7 209ndash10Hume D 5 39 45 183Husserl E vii 22ndash3 148

idle talk 107 164in-order-to 49 51ndash2 56 85 201inauthenticity 32ndash3 37ndash9 68ndash70

82 104 109ndash10 130ndash1 138165ndash70 185ndash6 189ndash90 202ndash3

individuality 66ndash9 111 142 144inhabitation 40ndash1integrity 134ndash6internal relations 40interpretation 84ndash8intersubjectivity 65ndash7 72ndash4

Kant I 5 10 22 25ndash6 27 28 39157ndash8 174ndash6

Kierkegaard S 34 134ndash7 154ndash5knowing 44ndash6 96ndash7

knowing how vs knowing that56ndash7 81

language 90ndash4 100ndash4 164 212logical notation 10ndash12lsquologosrsquo 24

McDowell J 77ndash9materiality 58ndash9mathematics 88meaning 85 91ndash3 101 116ndash17 159mineness 36ndash8 66moment of vision 166 180 196

203moods 75ndash80 115 164 167mortality 122ndash34 136ndash8 155

natality 188Nature 54Nazism viindashviiinegation see nullityNietzsche R 117 195nihilism 115ndash19non-self-identity 122ndash34 138ndash50

161 176 179 190 211ndash12nothingness see nullitylsquonowrsquo the 199ndash200nullity 68 115 118 131ndash4 137 140

141ndash3 149ndash50 153ndash5 168 179211

obstinacy 49obtrusiveness 49ontic 4 32 46 51 58ndash9 97

108ndash9 163ontological 4 46 51 58ndash9 97

108ndash9 163ontological difference 97ndash8 127other minds 61ndash4Others 62ndash3 64ndash73 129

I N D E X218

Parfit D 183passions 76ndash7perfectionism 145ndash50 193ndash8perishing 124phenomena vs noumena 25phenomenology 23ndash6 120ndash1

132ndash3 143ndash50 155ndash9 211phenomenon 24ndash6philosophy 3ndash6 29ndash34 38ndash9

69ndash70 86ndash8 108ndash9 114118ndash19 147ndash50 155ndash9 190194ndash9 204ndash5 211ndash13

practical activity 52 57 85ndash6161ndash3

preconceptions 13 18 30ndash1 36ndash8

predication 10 90ndash1prejudice 87ndash8presence-at-hand 41ndash6 53ndash9 91

123ndash4 172ndash3 175 185 190 203

presentness 186ndash9 making-present 191 203

projection 81ndash4 141ndash3 157 164178ndash80

projectivism 41ndash2 77ndash9 85publicness 79 199ndash201

questioning 12ndash14 119 136 192ndash3209ndash10

readiness-to-hand 41ndash6 47ndash5052ndash9 65 124 185

reading 27ndash30 33 147 156ndash8209ndash11

reality 94ndash104reference-relations 49ndash52 85regions 53 177relativism 94ndash105religious sphere 136ndash7

repetition 166 168 178ndash80 196203

res cogitans 6ndash7res extensa 6ndash7resoluteness 142ndash3 150 153ndash5

159ndash60 193 204reticence 142roles 72ndash3Romanticism 3Ryle G 57

Sartre J-P viii xiiiscepticism 44ndash6 62ndash3 95ndash7

114ndash19schematism 174ndash6science 54 172ndash5seeing-as 84ndash5 92 102 173self-constancy 146 158 186 190

203self-dispersal 74 110 146 166ndash7

186 190 203self-interpretation 14ndash16 79ndash81self-understanding 81ndash3selfhood 74ndash88 144 146 149 190semblance 24sensible intuition 21 25shame 80significance 81 91 175signs 50ndash1situation 83 143 160society 50ndash1 71ndash2solicitude 65ndash6 112 133ndash4solipsism 65 70space 21 25 53spannedness 201spatiality 53 176ndash8state-of-mind 75ndash80 84 164Strawson P 63subjectivism 205ndash6symptoms 24ndash5

I N D E X 219

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Taylor C 34 (fn) 79ndash80temporality 19 161ndash2 171ndash8

198ndash206 209temporalizing 165 183ndash4that-being 6ndash7 8ndash9 75theology 7 134ndash8theoretical cognition 41ndash4 47lsquotheyrsquo the 67ndash9 79 131they-self 67ndash9 70ndash3 78 107

109ndash10 140 146Thoreau H D 151thrownness 76ndash80 83 113 140

141 164 173 184ndash5time 19 21 25 114 161

198ndash206towards-which 48 50 64ndash5tradition 20ndash2 189ndash91transcendence 173ndash6truth 94ndash104 173

uncanniness 112 115 121 131ndash3140 179

understanding 80ndash8 164unreadiness-to-hand 49

value 42 58 87von Wartenburg Y 195ndash6

what-being 6ndash7 8ndash9 38 75 98

whereof 48 64within-the-world 47Wittgenstein L 72 96 103 122

131work-world 49 65ndash6 70 85

182world 39ndash40 46ndash51 61ndash2 65

71ndash2 96ndash7 173ndash4 184world-historicality 190world-time 201ndash2worldhood of the world 51ndash9

71ndash4 171writing 31 149ndash51 155ndash7 179ndash81

209ndash11

I N D E X220

BOOK COVER

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

INTRODUCTION HEIDEGGERrsquoS PROJECT

1 THE HUMAN WORLD SCEPTICISM COGNITION AND AGENCY

2 THE HUMAN WORLD SOCIETY SELFHOOD AND SELF-INTERPRETATION

3 LANGUAGE TRUTH AND REALITY

4 CONCLUSION TO DIVISION ONE THE UNCANNINESS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

5 THEOLOGY SECULARIZED MORTALITY GUILT AND CONSCIENCE

6 HEIDEGGERrsquoS (RE)VISIONARY MOMENT TIME AS THE HUMAN HORIZON

7 FATE AND DESTINY HUMAN NATALITY AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

8 CONCLUSION TO DIVISION TWO PHILOSOPHICAL ENDINGSndashTHE HORIZON OF BEING AND TIME

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heidegger and Being and Time

Review of the first edition

lsquoMulhallrsquos text is an impressive feat of exegesis It will be seized uponby those facing the daunting prospect of reading Being and Time forthe first timersquo

Jim Urpeth Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology

Heidegger is one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentiethcentury His writings are notoriously difficult they both require andreward careful reading Being and Time his first major publicationremains to this day his most influential work

Heidegger and Being and Time introduces and assesses

bull Heideggerrsquos life and the background to Being and Timebull The ideas and text of Being and Timebull Heideggerrsquos enduring influence in philosophy and our contem-

porary intellectual life

In this second edition Stephen Mulhall expands and revises his treat-ment of two central Heideggerian themes ndash scepticism and deathHe also explains and assesses the contentious relationship betweenthe two parts of Being and Time

This guide will be vital to all students of Heidegger in philosophy andcultural theory

Stephen Mulhall is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New CollegeOxford

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Stephen

Mulhall

CONTENTS

1111234567891011112311145678920111123456789301234567111

C O N T E N T Svi

PREFACE

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

P R E F A C Eviii

P R E F A C E ix

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

P R E F A C Ex

PREFACE TO THE

SECOND EDITION

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

January 2005

Harper 1993)

1111234567891011112311145678920111123456789301234567111

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 2 31)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 6 41)5

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 50)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 54ndash5)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 59)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 4 34)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

1THE HUMAN WORLD

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 9 68)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 13 88ndash9)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 15 98)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 16 105)

(BT 17 110)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 18 116)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 18 121ndash2)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

2THE HUMAN WORLD

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 26 162)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 26 153ndash4)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 164)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 164)

(BT 26 153ndash4)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 167)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 28 171)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 29 176)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 31 187)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 31 185)

(BT 31 183)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 32 189)

(BT 32 190ndash1)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 32 195)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

3LANGUAGE TRUTH

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 33 197)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 33 197)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 43 245)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 44 261)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 44 270)

111123456789101111231456789201111234567893012345167111

4CONCLUSION TO

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 38 220)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 40 235)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 41 237)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 50 294)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 58 330)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

6HEIDEGGERrsquoS

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 62 357)

(BT 63 363)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 65 374)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 68 385)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 68 401)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 69 409)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 69 417)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 70 419)

(BT 70 420)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

7FATE AND DESTINY

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 72 427)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 73 432)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 74 435)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 74 436)

(BT 74 437)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 75 4431)

(BT 76 446)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 76 447)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 80 465)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 79 463)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 81 475)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 83 488)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blackwell 1953)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

awaiting 165ndash6

153ndash5

care 112ndash14 132 140 142 156159ndash78

I N D E X 217

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

208ndash13

I N D E X218

123ndash4 172ndash3 175 185 190 203

I N D E X 219

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

141 164 173 184ndash5time 19 21 25 114 161

209ndash11

I N D E X220

BOOK COVER

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS

PREFACE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Stephen

Mulhall

CONTENTS

1111234567891011112311145678920111123456789301234567111

C O N T E N T Svi

PREFACE

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

P R E F A C Eviii

P R E F A C E ix

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

P R E F A C Ex

PREFACE TO THE

SECOND EDITION

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

January 2005

Harper 1993)

1111234567891011112311145678920111123456789301234567111

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 2 31)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 6 41)5

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 50)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 54ndash5)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 59)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 4 34)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

1THE HUMAN WORLD

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 9 68)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 13 88ndash9)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 15 98)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 16 105)

(BT 17 110)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 18 116)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 18 121ndash2)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

2THE HUMAN WORLD

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 26 162)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 26 153ndash4)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 164)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 164)

(BT 26 153ndash4)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 167)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 28 171)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 29 176)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 31 187)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 31 185)

(BT 31 183)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 32 189)

(BT 32 190ndash1)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 32 195)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

3LANGUAGE TRUTH

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 33 197)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 33 197)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 43 245)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 44 261)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 44 270)

111123456789101111231456789201111234567893012345167111

4CONCLUSION TO

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 38 220)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 40 235)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 41 237)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 50 294)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 58 330)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

6HEIDEGGERrsquoS

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 62 357)

(BT 63 363)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 65 374)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 68 385)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 68 401)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 69 409)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 69 417)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 70 419)

(BT 70 420)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

7FATE AND DESTINY

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 72 427)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 73 432)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 74 435)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 74 436)

(BT 74 437)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 75 4431)

(BT 76 446)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 76 447)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 80 465)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 79 463)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 81 475)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 83 488)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blackwell 1953)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

awaiting 165ndash6

153ndash5

care 112ndash14 132 140 142 156159ndash78

I N D E X 217

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

208ndash13

I N D E X218

123ndash4 172ndash3 175 185 190 203

I N D E X 219

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

141 164 173 184ndash5time 19 21 25 114 161

209ndash11

I N D E X220

BOOK COVER

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS

PREFACE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

Stephen

Mulhall

CONTENTS

1111234567891011112311145678920111123456789301234567111

C O N T E N T Svi

PREFACE

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

P R E F A C Eviii

P R E F A C E ix

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

P R E F A C Ex

PREFACE TO THE

SECOND EDITION

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

January 2005

Harper 1993)

1111234567891011112311145678920111123456789301234567111

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 2 31)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 6 41)5

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 50)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 54ndash5)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 7 59)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 4 34)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

1THE HUMAN WORLD

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 9 68)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 13 88ndash9)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 15 98)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 16 105)

(BT 17 110)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 18 116)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 18 121ndash2)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

2THE HUMAN WORLD

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 26 162)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 26 153ndash4)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 164)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 164)

(BT 26 153ndash4)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 27 167)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 28 171)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 29 176)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 31 187)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 31 185)

(BT 31 183)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 32 189)

(BT 32 190ndash1)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 32 195)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

3LANGUAGE TRUTH

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 33 197)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 33 197)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 43 245)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 44 261)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 44 270)

111123456789101111231456789201111234567893012345167111

4CONCLUSION TO

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 38 220)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 40 235)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 41 237)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 50 294)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 58 330)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

6HEIDEGGERrsquoS

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 62 357)

(BT 63 363)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 65 374)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 68 385)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 68 401)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 69 409)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 69 417)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 70 419)

(BT 70 420)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

7FATE AND DESTINY

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 72 427)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 73 432)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 74 435)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 74 436)

(BT 74 437)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 75 4431)

(BT 76 446)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 76 447)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 80 465)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 79 463)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 81 475)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

(BT 83 488)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blackwell 1953)

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

awaiting 165ndash6

153ndash5

care 112ndash14 132 140 142 156159ndash78

I N D E X 217

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

208ndash13

I N D E X218

123ndash4 172ndash3 175 185 190 203

I N D E X 219

11112345678910111123145678920111123456789301234567111

141 164 173 184ndash5time 19 21 25 114 161

209ndash11

I N D E X220

BOOK COVER

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS

PREFACE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heidegger and Being and Time, Second Edition - AHS History

Documents