Mood and the burden of DaSein
Abstract • In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that disposi1on is one of
the ways through which “Being-‐there” [Da-‐Sein] is cons1tuted. DisposiBon, through moods, reveal “Being-‐in-‐the-‐World” as a whole, as well as enable intenBonal directedness. Moods also disclose fac1city as the burdensome character of Da-‐Sein. In this context, Heidegger someBmes appears to take an essenBalist posiBon whereby disposiBon is a way of rela1ng to fac1city, which is something like a “state-‐of-‐affairs” that essenBally a burden, difficult, painful, and threatening. Dasein's normal moods avoid this burden, and this must be reversed. Thus, it seems unavoidable that Heidegger must turn to an analysis of fear and Angst. In this talk, I will idenBfy certain problems with this interpretaBon and try to resolve them by paying aMenBon to the twofold meaning of burden, as well as a deeper analysis of the noBon of fac1city.
Chapter V of Being and Time [BT] • ExistenBal analyBc of Dasein turns towards the
consBtuBon of “Being-‐In” (a part of Dasein’s unitary primordial structure of ‘Being-‐in-‐the-‐World’)
• DisposiBon [Befindlichkeit] is one of the equiprimordial ways through which “Being-‐there” [Da-‐Sein] is cons1tuted
• DisposiBon is a fundamental existen1ale revealing “Being-‐in-‐the-‐World” as a whole, as well as makes possible direcBng oneself towards something
• The onBc equivalent of disposiBon is mood [SBmmung] • Moods disclose Daseins burdensome thrownness
[Geworfenheit]/fac1city [Fak1zität] • How do moods disclose? By either turning away from, or
turning towards. This disclosive movement is disposiBon.
Theses in §29 • 1) DisposiBon is a binary way of rela1ng to a relatum: fac1city
• 2) FacBcity is a burden • 3) In everydaynness, disposiBon turns away from the burden, through moods of ela1on that alleviate the burden
• 4) These moods of elaBon are “distorBng moods” [Vers1mmungen]
• 5) These distorBng moods depend on, and betray, more fundamental (negaBve) moods (e.g. the mood of joy is dependent on a more primordial fear which is truer to the burdensome character of being-‐there).
Hence?
• Hence, the existenBal analyBc must turn to fear and the grounding mood (GrundsBmmung) of Angst, which “indicates” the burden of thrownness/facBcity of Da-‐Sein
Problem? • 1) Heidegger seems to hold that “facBcity” and “disposiBon” are not the same phenomenon. He seems to say that “facBcity” is like Da-‐Seins “state-‐of-‐affairs”, like an “essenBal”, “factual” correlate, which disposiBon can either turn towards or avoid. Hence: DisposiBon is not cons1tu1ve of facBcity; disposiBon merely conceals or unconceals it. (Thus mood loses its ontological import/force, and retains only an epistemological role)
• 2) In addiBon: Heidegger seems to say that “being-‐there” is always already (i.e. necessarily) a burden: difficult, painful, and threatening. This is supported by the monopoly of Angst in BT, but also by its later “replacement” by shock [Erschrecken].
DisposiBon cons1tutes • Heidegger argues that moods are not epiphenomena but
rather ontologically significant. They are fundamental existen1ale, i.e. necessary for the consBtuBon of Da-‐Sein. They co-‐consBtute “Being-‐In” (176/137)
• DisposiBon [Befindlichkeit] is one of the equiprimordial ways through which “Being-‐there” [Da-‐Sein] is cons1tuted
• DisposiBon reveal “Being-‐in-‐the-‐World” as a whole, as well as makes possible direcBng oneself towards something (Ibid.)
• The fact that something can maHer to Dasein, “becomes ontologically possible” in disposiBon (Ibid.) (Dasein can only be affected by the world because it is disposed)
How does disposiBon disclose?
• Mood is manifested as a “turning towards” or “turning away” [An-‐und Abkehr] (174/135)
• Heidegger here sBcks to the tradiBon: Aristotle’s noBon of movement as μεταβολή, and Aristotle’s account of πάθη in the Rhetoric, as movement between two axes: the “calming” [ἡδύ] and the “upsehng” [λυπηρόν] (the “beneficial” [συμφέρον] and the “harmful” [βλαβερόν])
The priority of “turning away”
• Turning away = fleeing • In our everydaynness, we find ourselves “there” not through percepBon but rather primarily through the movement of “fleeing”
• “Ontologically, we thus obtain as the first essenBal characterisBc of disposiBons that they disclose Dasein in its thrownness, and—proximally and for the most part—in the manner of an evasive turning-‐away.”(175/136)
“Turning away” alleviates
• For the most part, mood turns away from the burdensome character of Dasein.
• Moods of ela1on [Enthobensein] are exemplary of this “turning away”
• Moods of elaBon alleviate the burden (174/135)
AlleviaBon conceals • Some moods conceal the facBcity of the “there” (i.e. the burden). ElaBon conceals.
• Heidegger call this Vers1mmtheit (M&R translate this as “bad moods”. Awful translaBon. I would translate it as “distorBng mood”)
• “The ‘bare mood’ discloses the “there” more primordially, but correspondingly it closes it off more stubbornly that any not-‐perceiving” (175/136)
“What” does Vers1mmtheit conceal? • “What” does mood conceal? “Being-‐There” as Thrownness. The burden [Last] of thrownness/fac1city (“the burdensome character of Dasein” [das Lastcharakter des Daseins]
Three problems
• We have three problems: a) if some moods conceal facBcity, this is inconsistent with the general argument that moods reveal/consBtute “Da-‐Sein”; b) we are len with a bleak posiBon of Da-‐Sein that abolishes importance of moods such as joy; c) facBcity is a “relatum”, an “essence”. “Burden” is like a “state-‐of-‐affairs”: the essence of Da-‐Sein
Delusion as concealment • “[E]ven though Befindlichkeiten are primarily disclosive, everyday circumspecBon goes wrong and to a large extent succumbs to delusion because of them” (177/138)
• Resolving the 1st problem by looking at how concealment has the potenBal to also unconceal.
• We must not “fail to recognize the existenBal posiBve character of the capacity for delusion.” (177/138)
Beyond the logic of either/or
• Heidegger asks us to overcome binary logic of either/or, despite the fact that he himself described the way moods operate in terms of posiBve/negaBve (towards or away)
• If we idenBfy moods of elaBon with established everyday norms (hoi polloi, doxai), and accept this as evasion of what is underlying it, we can see how elaBon indicates the “upsehng”
• Hence, we start from the “given” movement and go the opposite way to unconceal what the given movement conceals.
• Unconcealing that which is concealed is not a maMer of “beholding” [Anschauen]. The way disposiBon discloses remains an “inexorable enigma” from the perspecBve of “theoreBcal cogniBon” and “beholding” (175/136)
• This resolves problem number one: “if some moods conceal facBcity, this is inconsistent with the general argument that moods reveal/consBtute ‘Da-‐Sein’”
Is Da-‐Sein essen1ally burdensome? • Even if moods of elaBon are useful because their concealment also unconceals, they are sBll “secondary”, i.e. they are reacBonary, they depend on that which they “negate”. The burdensome upsehng moods are more primordial, and the moods of elaBon are deriva1ve, “founded”.
• We are len with a bleak posiBon of Da-‐Sein that undermines posiBve moods, such as joy. Is Da-‐Sein necessarily bleak?
Thrownness is facBcity
• Mood discloses thrownness. Thrownness is facBcity: We are thrown “there”. Heidegger further elaborates on the phenomenon of thrownness by referring to the phenomenon of fac1city [Fak1zität]: “The expression ‘thrownness’ is meant to suggest the fac1city of its being delivered over.” (174/135)
The twofoldness of “burden”
• “Burden” has two senses: • 1) Indeed, the essence of “upsehng” [λυπηρόν]. “Burden” as a “weight” that is always there and means being upset, content-‐based suffering.
• 2) Burden not as a constant presence, a state, but rather as a metabolism that resists, up-‐sets and frustrates understanding and ra1onal obliga1ons for grounds of ac1on (“burden of responsibility”)
Burden as fac1city • FacBcity is not a “state-‐of-‐affairs”. It is not a “content” or a “state”, so it cannot be equated with a constant feeling (such as being upset)
• What is facBcity? Thrownness and fac1city are the same aspect of Da-‐Sein. The former is Heidegger’s own word for referring the old philosophical noBon of German Idealism, fac1city.
“What” is fac1city?
• Burden that is not “sadness” or “fear” or “anxiety”, or “being upset”
• FacBcity is the “there” as sheer “that-‐it-‐is”, and this “sheer fact” is disclosed in a way that the “from where” (the source, the reason) and the “where to” (the purpose) remain in darkness.
• FacBcity is a “veiledness” of the “there” that clouts the source and purpose of the “there”.
German Idealism and facBcity
• FacBcity was a noBon firstly used by Fichte and widely employed by German Idealists and Neo-‐KanBan philosophers, as well as Dilthey. Schelling used the noBon as pertaining to the disBncBon between the “what” of being and the “that” of being .
• “What” refers to being qua essence whilst “that” refers to being’s conBngent existence.
• ExistenBality is the facBcity of coming into being; this is in tension with raBonal philosophy, which is concerned with the essence, the ‘what’.
• It seems to me that facBcity, as it was employed by German Idealists and appropriated by Heidegger, and the kind of “understanding” associated with mood and facBcity in BT
• mood would sBll always already be necessarily accompanied by (the equiprimordial) understanding, and hence that which is disclosed by mood must be taken to have understanding always accompanying it, and hence a complementary, corresponding,
• character of being, and posiBve philosophy is concerned with the pure actuality of the existence of “that” being which comes into its being.
• Insofar as this coming into being is not a finished enBty but sBll becoming and conBngent, it cannot be conceptually grasped and explained. Existence and movement cannot resolve into a logical category because they cannot be grasped by conceptual understanding.
DisposiBon and Understanding • Burden of Da-‐Sein only makes sense in relaBon to understanding, because it arises as tension with “raBonal self-‐understanding of grounds”
• Remember: disposiBon is not the only fundamental existenBale. It is equiprimordial with Understanding [Verstehen] (and Talk [Rede]).
• Understanding operates on the basis of grounds, reason, purpose. Fac1city is a burden to Understanding.
Burden and moods • Fear and Angst, moods CAN reveal and consBtute this burden.
• Key quesBon: Can other moods indicate/consBtute the burden of fac1city? Can moods of elaBon be those moods that “turn towards” (not away!) the burden of facBcity and unconceal it?
• YES. Insofar as they can up-‐set what the established [doxai/hoi polloi] mood, then they can. AND: they sBll are a burden to autonomy.