This is highly dense stuff. Each page was a struggle for me to read. And not just because the book was written by a Nazi. Nonetheless, there were more than a few valuable nuggets sprinkled throughout which rewarded careful parsing. More importantly, the overall framework gave a new sense of seeing the subjective Self as embedded within a world in which it is forced to live. The most important concept for Heidegger is Dasein. “There is some way in which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s Being…. Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence—in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself.” Further along in his introduction he continues, “Dasein is in such a way as to be something which understands something like Being…. It does so with time as its standpoint. Time must be brought to light—and genuinely conceived—as the horizon for all understanding of Being and for any way of interpreting it…. The fact remains that time, in the sense of ‘being [sein] in time’, functions as a criterion for distinguishing realms of Being.”
Heidegger next defines what he means by phenomenology. Hegel is always implicit in this analytical dive, eventually coming to the fore in Heidegger ’s final pages. “Thus the term ‘phenomenology’ expresses a maxim which can be formulated as ‘To the things themselves!’ It is opposed to all free-floating constructions and accidental findings; it is opposed to taking over any conceptions which only seem to have been demonstrated; it is opposed to those pseudo-questions which parade themselves as ‘problems’, often for generations at a time.” Next, Heidegger defines philosophy, “Ontology and phenomenology are not two distinct philosophical disciplines among others. These terms characterize philosophy itself with regard to its objects and its way of treating that object. Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein.”
Moving forward, we have to define the ‘world’ (or not), as according to Heidegger. “Neither the ontical depiction of entities within-the-world nor the ontological Interpretation of their Being is such as to reach the phenomenon of the ‘world.’ In both of these ways of access to ‘Objective Being’, the ‘world’ has already been ‘presupposed’, and indeed in various ways.” Moving in the world we are bound to encounter others. “The Others, moreover, are not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can represent them. What is decisive is just that inconspicuous domination by others which has already been taken over unawares from Dasein as Being-with. One belongs to the Others oneself and enhances their power. ‘The Others’ whom one thus designates in order to cover up the fact of one’s belonging to them essentially oneself, are those who proximally and for the most part ‘are there’ in everyday Being-with-one-another. The ‘who’ is not this one, not that one, not oneself [man selbst], not some people [einige], and not the sum of them all. The ‘who’ is the neuter, the “they” [das Man]…. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of ‘the Others’, in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more…. Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the “they”…. This care of averageness reveals in turn an essential tendency of Dasein which we call the “leveling down” [Einebnung] of all possibilities of Being.”
Heidegger moves back to the purpose of authentic Being and care. “Cognition [for the ancient Greeks] was conceived in terms of the ‘desire to see’…. The care for seeing is essential to man’s Being…. Being is that which shows itself in the pure perception which belongs to beholding, and only by such seeing does Being get discovered. Primordial and genuine truth lies in pure beholding.” However, inauthentic Being happens to the fallen Dasein. “Dasein has… fallen away [abgefallen] from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the ‘world’. “Fallenness” into the ‘world’ means an absorption in Being-with-one-another, in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity…. “Inauthenticity” does not mean anything like Being-no-longer-in-the-world, but amounts rather to a quite distinctive kind of Being-in-the-world—the kind which is completely fascinated by the ‘world’ and by the Dasein-with of Others in the “they”…. In falling, Dasein itself as factical Being-in-the-world, is something from which it has already fallen away. And it has not fallen into some entity which it comes upon for the first time in the course of its Being, or even one which it has not come upon at all; it has fallen in the world, which itself belongs to its Being. Falling is a definite existential characteristic of Dasein itself…. Falling Being-in-the-world is not only tempting and tranquilizing; it is at the same time alienating…. This alienation drives it into a kind of Being which borders on the most exaggerated ‘self-dissection’, tempting itself with possibilities of explanation…. This alienation closes off from Dasein its authenticity and possibility…. Dasein plunges out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness…. This downward plunge into and within the groundlessness of the inauthentic Being of the “they”, has a kind of motion which constantly tears the understanding away from the projecting of authentic possibilities.”
Heidegger next gets into Dasein and its possibilities. “In every case Dasein exists for the sake of itself. ‘As long as it is’, right to its end, it comports itself towards its potentiality-for-Being…. The ‘ahead-of-itself’, as an item in the structure of care, tells us unambiguously that in Dasein there is always something still outstanding, which, as a potentiality-for-Being for Dasein itself, has not yet become ‘actual’. It is essential to the basic constitution of Dasein that there is constantly something still to be settled [eine standige Unabgeschlossenheit].” These possibilities lead inextricably towards death. “Death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s ownmost possibility—non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped. Death is, as Dasein’s end, in the Being of this entity towards its end…. When we say that Dasein is factically dying, we are saying at the same time that in its Being-towards-death Dasein has always decided itself in one way or another. Our everyday falling evasion in the face of death is an inauthentic Being-towards-death. But inauthenticity is based on the possibility of authenticity. Inauthenticity characterizes a kind of Being into which Dasein can divert itself and has for the most part always diverted itself; but Dasein does not necessarily and constantly have to divert itself into this kind of Being…. Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be ‘actualized’, nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing…. Anticipation turns out to be the possibility of understanding one’s ownmost and uttermost potentiality-for-Being—that is to say, the possibility of authentic existence…. Here it can become manifest to Dasein that in this distinctive possibility of its own self, it has been wrenched away from the “they”. This means that in anticipation any Dasein can have wrenched itself away from the “they” already…. All Being-alongside the things with which we concern ourselves, and all Being-with Others, will fail us when our ownmost potentiality-for-Being is the issue. Dasein can be authentically itself only if it makes this possible for itself of its own accord…. Dasein is authentically itself only to the extent that, as concernful Being-alongside and solicitous Being-with, it projects itself upon its ownmost potentiality-for-Being rather than upon the possibility of the they-self…. When, by anticipation, one becomes free for one’s own death, one is liberated from one’s lostness in those possibilities which may accidentally thrust themselves upon one; and one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead of that possibility which is not to be outstripped.”
Heidegger moves on to conscience and the call that we all must deal with as Dasein moves through the possibilities towards death. “Conscience gives us ‘something’ to understand; it discloses. By characterizing this phenomenon formally in this way, we find ourselves enjoined to take it back into the disclosedness of Dasein. This disclosedness, as a basic state of that entity which we ourselves are, is constituted by state-of-mind, understanding, falling, and discourse…. The call of conscience has the character of an appeal to Dasein by calling it to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self…. The call discourses in the uncanny mode of keeping silent. And it does this only because, in calling the one to whom the appeal is made, it does not call him into the public idle talk of the “they”, but calls him back from this into the reticence of his existent potentiality-for-Being…. The call of conscience, existentially understood, makes known for the first time what we have hitherto merely contended: that uncanniness pursues Dasein and is a threat to the lostness in which it has forgotten itself.”
Heidegger looks at resoluteness and guilt as integral parts of authentic Dasein. “We have characterized resoluteness as a way of reticently projecting oneself upon one’s ownmost Being-guilty, and exacting anxiety of oneself. Being-guilty belongs to Dasein’s Being, and signifies the null Being-the-basis of a nullity. The ‘Guilty!’ which belongs to the Being of Dasein is something that can be neither augmented nor diminished…. The existential way of taking over this ‘guilt’ in resoluteness, in its disclosure of Dasein, has become so transparent that Being-guilty is understood as something constant…. By “resoluteness” we mean “letting oneself be called forth to one’s ownmost Being-guilty”…. Being-guilty is not just an abiding property of something constantly present-at-hand, but the existential possibility of being authentically or inauthentically guilty.”
Here Heidegger returns to the nature of Being and care. “The entity which in every case we ourselves are, is ontologically that which is farthest. The reason for this lies in care itself. Our Being alongside the things with which we concern ourselves most closely in the ‘world’—a Being which is falling—guides the everyday way in which Dasein is interpreted, and covers up ontically Dasein’s authentic Being, so that the ontology which is directed towards this entity is denied an appropriate basis…. The laying-bare of Dasein’s primordial Being must rather be wrested from Dasein by following the opposite course from that taken by the falling ontico-ontological tendency of interpretation…. Existential analysis, therefore, constantly has the character of doing violence [Gewaltsamkeit], whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation, or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness.”
Heidegger concludes with some words on the nature of science. “The existential conception understands science as a way of existence and thus a mode of Being-in-the-world, which discovers or discloses either entities or Being…. The meaning of Being and the ‘connection’ between Being and truth have been clarified in terms of the temporality of existence…. The explicit suggestion that scientific behaviour as a way of Being-in-the-world, is not just a ‘purely intellectual activity’, may seem petty and superfluous. If only it were not plain from this triviality that it is by no means patent where the ontological boundary between ‘theoretical’ and ‘atheoretical’ behaviour really runs!” He continues, “When the basic concepts of that understanding of Being by which we are guided have been worked out, the clues of its methods, the structure of its way of conceiving things, the possibility of truth and certainty which belongs to it, the ways in which things get grounded or proved, the mode in which it is binding for us, and the way it is communicated—all these will be Determined. The totality of these items constitutes the full existential conception of science…. Science has its source in authentic existence.”
Heidegger circles back on some themes, but now with the emphasis on temporality and historicality. He begins, “All our efforts in the existential analytic serve the aim of finding a possibility of answering the question of the meaning of Being in general…. Our analysis of the authentic potentiality-for-Being-a-whole has revealed that in care is rooted an equiprimordial connectedness of death, guilt, and conscience…. But death is only the ‘end’ of Dasein; and, taken formally, it is just one of the ends by which Dasein’s totality is closed round. The other ‘end’, however, is the ‘beginning’, the ‘birth’. Only that entity which is ‘between’ birth and death presents the whole which we have been seeking…. Dasein has been our theme only in the way in which it exists ‘facing forward’, as it were, leaving ‘behind it’ all that has been…. The ‘connectedness of life’, in which Dasein somehow maintains itself constantly, is precisely what we have overlooked in our analysis of Being-a-whole.” It is birth that we must circle back to in completing the analysis of the whole of Dasein. “Understood existentially, birth is not and never is something past in the sense of something no longer present-at-hand; and death is just as far from having the kind of Being of something still outstanding, not yet present-at-hand but coming along. Factical Dasein exists as born; and, as born, it is already dying, in the sense of Being-towards-death. As long as Dasein factically exists, both the ‘ends’ and their ‘between’ are, and they are in the only way which is possible on the basis of Dasein’s Being as care…. As care, Dasein is the ‘between’.”
Finally, we come explicitly to the nature of Dasein and Time. “When Dasein talks of time’s passing away, it understands, in the end, more of time than it wants to admit; that is to say, the temporality in which world-time temporalizes itself has not been completely closed off, no matter how much it may get covered up…. The awaiting of inauthentic existence—the awaiting which forgets as it makes present—is the condition for the possibility of the ordinary experience of time’s passing-away…. In the kind of talk which emphasizes time’s passing away, the finite futurity of Dasein’s temporality is publicly reflected…. In the ordinary interpretation, the stream of time is defined as an irreversible succession. Why cannot time be reversed? Especially if one looks exclusively at the stream of “nows”…. The ordinary way of characterizing time as an endless, irreversible sequence of “nows” which passes away, arises from the temporality of falling Dasein.”
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