heidegger

Now, what if Others were encapsulated in Things, in a way that Being towards Things were not ontologically severable, in Heidegger's terms, from Being towards Others? What if the mode of Dasein of Others were to dwell in Things, and so forth? In the same light, then, what if the Thing were a Dublette of the Self, and not what is called the Other? Or more radically still, what if the Self were in some fundamental way becoming a Xerox copy, a duplicate, of the Thing in its assumed essence?

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error. For this reason no amount of scientific rigor attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of the idea of science.If the question of the nothing unfolded here has actually questioned us, then we have not simply brought metaphysics before us in an extrinsic manner. Nor have we merely been "transposed" to it. We cannot be transposed there at all, because insofar as we exist we are always there already. "For by nature, my friend, man's mind dwells in philosophy" (Plato, Phaedrus, 279a). So long as man exists, philosophizing of some sort occurs. Philosophy__hat we call philosophy__s metaphysics getting under way, in which philosophy comes to itself and to its explicit tasks. Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which he is wont to go cringing; and finally, that we let the sweep of our suspense take its full course, so that it swings back into the basic question of metaphysics which the nothing itself compels: 'Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?"__rom_What is Metaphysics?_

Metaphysics thinks about beings as beings. Wherever the question is asked what beings are, beings as such are in sight. Metaphysical representation owes this sight to the light of Being. The light itself, i.e., that which such thinking experiences as light, does not come within the range of metaphysical thinking; for metaphysics always represents beings only as beings. Within this perspective, metaphysical thinking does, of course, inquire into the being which is the source and originator of this light. But the light itself is considered sufficiently illuminated as soon as we recognize that we look through it whenever we look at beings.In whatever manner beings are interpreted__hether as spirit, after the fashion of spiritualism; or as becoming and life, or idea, will, substance, subject, or *energeia*; or as the eternal recurrence of the same events__very time, beings as beings appear in the light of Being. Wherever metaphysics represents beings, Being has entered into the light. Being has arrived in a state of unconcealedness (aletheia). But whether and how Being itself involves such unconcealedness, whether and how it manifests itself in, and as, metaphysics, remains obscure. Being in its revelatory essence, i.e., in its truth, is not recalled. Nevertheless, when metaphysics gives answers to its question concerning beings as such, metaphysics speaks out of the unnoticed revealedness of Being. The truth of Being may thus be called the ground in which metaphysics, as the root of the tree of philosophy, is kept and from which it is nourished.Because metaphysics inquires about beings as beings, it remains concerned with beings and does not devote itself to Being as Being. As the root of the tree, it sends all nourishment and all strength into the trunk and its branches. The root branches out in the soil to enable the tree to grow out of the ground and thus to leave it. The tree of philosophy grows out of the soil in which metaphysics is rooted. The ground is the element in which the root of the tree lives, but the growth of the tree is never able to absorb this soil in such a way that it disappears in the tree as part of the tree. Instead, the roots, down to the subtlest tendrils, lose themselves in the soil. The ground is ground for the roots, and in the ground the roots forget themselves for the sake of the tree...Metaphysics, insofar as it always represents only beings as beings, does not recall Being itself. Philosophy does not concentrate on its ground. It always leaves its ground__eaves it by means of metaphysics. And yet, it never escapes its ground...Insofar as a thinker sets out to experience the ground of metaphysics, insofar as the attempts to recall the truth of Being itself instead of merely representing beings as beings, his thinking has in a sense left metaphysics. From the point of view of metaphysics, such thinking goes back into the ground of metaphysics."__rom_The Way Back to the Ground of Metaphysics_

Philosophy is metaphysics. Metaphysics thinks beings as a whole__he world, man, God__ith respect to Being, with respect to the belonging together of beings in Being. Metaphysics thinks beings as being in the manner of representational thinking which gives reasons. For since the beginning of philosophy and with that beginning, the Being of beings has showed itself as the ground (arche, aition, principle). The ground is that from which beings as such are what they are in their becoming, perishing, and persisting as something that can be known, handled, and worked upon. As the ground, Being brings beings to their actual presencing. The ground shows itself as presence. The present of presence consists in the fact that it brings what is present each in its own way to presence. In accordance with the actual kind of presence, the ground has the character of grounding as the ontic causation of the real, as the transcendental making possible of the objectivity of objects, as the dialectical mediation of the movement of the absolute Spirit and of the historical process of production, as the will to power positing values."__rom_The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking_

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error. For this reason no amount of scientific rigor attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of the idea of science.If the question of the nothing unfolded here has actually questioned us, then we have not simply brought metaphysics before us in an extrinsic manner. Nor have we merely been "transposed" to it. We cannot be transposed there at all, because insofar as we exist we are always there already. "For by nature, my friend, man's mind dwells in philosophy" (Plato, Phaedrus, 279a). So long as man exists, philosophizing of some sort occurs. Philosophy__hat we call philosophy__s metaphysics getting under way, in which philosophy comes to itself and to its explicit tasks. Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which he is wont to go cringing; and finally, that we let the sweep of our suspense take its full course, so that it swings back into the basic question of metaphysics which the nothing itself compels: 'Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?'"__rom_What is Metaphysics?_

Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein__ kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself.Idle talk controls even the ways in which one may be curious. It says what one "must" have read and seen. In being everywhere and nowhere, curiosity is delivered over to idle talk. These two everyday modes of Being for discourse and sight are not just present-at-hand side by side in their tendency to uproot, but *either* of these ways-to-be drags the *other* one with it. Curiosity, for which nothing is closed off, and idle talk, for which there is nothing that is not understood, provide themselves (that is, the Dasein which is in this manner [*dem so seienden Dasein*]) with the guarantee of a 'life' which, supposedly, is genuinely 'lively'. But with this supposition a third phenomenon now shows itself, by which the disclosedness of everyday Dasein is characterized."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, p. 217

Thus with the question of the Being of truth and the necessity of presupposing it, just as with the question of the essence of knowledge, an 'ideal subject' has generally been posited. The motive for this, whether explicit or tacit, lies in the requirement that philosophy should have the '*a priori*' as its theme, rather than 'empirical facts' as such. There is some justification for this requirement, though it still needs to be grounded ontologically. Yet is this requirement satisfied by positing an 'ideal subject'? Is not such a subject *a fanciful idealization*? With such a conception have we not missed precisely the *a priori* character of that merely 'factual' subject, Dasein? Is it not an attribute of the *a priori* character of the factical subject (that is, an attribute of Dasein's facticity) that it is in the truth and in untruth equiprimordially?The ideas of a 'pure "I"' and of a 'consciousness in general' are so far from including the *a priori* character of 'actual' subjectivity that the ontological characters of Dasein's facticity and its state of being are either passed over or not seen at all. Rejection of a 'consciousness in general' does not signify that the *a priori* is negated, any more than the positing of an idealized subject guarantees that Dasein has an *a priori* character grounded upon fact.Both the contention that there are 'eternal truths' and the jumbling together of Dasein's phenomenally grounded 'ideality' with an idealized absolute subject, belong to those residues of Christian theology within philosophical problematics which have not as yet been radically extruded.The Being of truth is connected primordially with Dasein. And only because Dasein is as constituted by disclosedness (that is, by understanding), can anything like Being be understood; only so is it possible to understand Being."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, p. 272

Dasein *is authentically itself* in the primordial individualization of the reticent resoluteness which exacts anxiety of itself. *As something that keeps *silent*, authentic *Being*-one__-Self is just the sort of thing that does not keep on saying ___; but in its reticence it _*is*_ that thrown entity as which it can authentically be. The Self which the reticence of resolute existence unveils is the primordial phenomenal basis for the question as to the Being of the ___. Only if we are oriented phenomenally by the meaning of the Being of the authentic potentiality-for-Being-one__-Self are we put in a position to discuss what ontological justification there is for treating substantiality, simplicity, and personality as characteristics of Selfhood. In the prevalent way of saying __,_ it is constantly suggested that what we have in advance is a Self-Thing, persistently present-at-hand; the ontological question of the Being of the Self must turn away from any such suggestion.*Care does not need to be founded in a Self. But existentiality, as constitutive for care, provides the ontological constitution of Dasein__ Self-constancy, to which there belongs, in accordance with the full structural content of care, its Being-fallen factically into non-Self-constancy*. When fully conceived, the care-structure includes the phenomenon of Selfhood. This phenomenon is clarified by Interpreting the meaning of care; and it is as care that Dasein__ totality of Being has been defined.___rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, pp. 369-370

What is the motive for this __ugitive_ way of saying ___? It is motivated by Dasein__ falling; for as falling, it *flees* in the face of itself into the __hey._ When the ___ talks in the __atural_ manner, this is performed by the they-self. What expresses itself in the ___ is that Self which, proximally and for the most part, I am *not* authentically. When one is absorbed in the everyday multiplicity and the rapid succession [*Sich-jagen] of that with which one is concerned, the Self of the self-forgetful __ am concerned_ shows itself as something simple which is constantly selfsame but indefinite and empty. Yet one *is* that with which one concerns oneself. In the __atural_ ontical way in which the ___ talks, the phenomenal content of the Dasein which one has in view in the "I" gets overlooked; but this gives *no justification for our joining in this overlooking of it*, or for forcing upon the problematic of the Self an inappropriate __ategorial_ horizon when we Interpret the ___ ontologically.Of course by thus refusing to follow the everyday way in which the ___ talks, our ontological Interpretation of the ___ has by no means *solved* the problem; but it has indeed *prescribed the direction* for any further inquiries. In the __,_ we have in view that entity which one is in __eing-in-the-world_.Being-already-in-a-world, however, as Being-alongside-the-ready-to-hand-within-the-world, means equiprimordially that one is ahead of oneself. With the ___, what we have in view is that entity for which the *issue* is the Being of the entity that it is. With the ___, care expresses itself, though proximally and for the most part in the __ugitive_ way in which the ___ talks when it concerns itself with something. The they-self keeps on saying ___ most loudly and most frequently because at bottom it *is not authentically* itself, and evades its authentic potentiality-for-Being. If the ontological constitution of the Self is not to be traced back either to an ___-substance or to a __ubject_, but if, on the contrary, the everyday fugitive way in which we keep on saying ___ must be understood in terms of our *authentic* potentiality-for-Being, then the proposition that the Self is the basis of care and constantly present-at-hand, is one that still does not follow. Selfhood is to be discerned existentially only in one__ authentic potentiality-for-Being-one__-Self__hat is to say, in the authenticity of Dasein__ Being *as care*. In terms of care the *constancy of the Self*, as the supposed persistence of the *subjectum*, gets clarified. But the phenomenon of this authentic potentiality-for-Being also opens our eyes for the *constancy of the Self*, in the double sense of steadiness and steadfastness, is the *authentic* counter-possibility to the non-Self-constancy which is characteristic of irresolute falling. Existentially, _*Self-constancy*_ signifies nothing other than anticipatory resoluteness. The ontological structure of such resoluteness reveals the existentiality of the Self__ Selfhood."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, pp. 368-369

The ___ is a bare consciousness, accompanying all concepts. In the ___, __othing more is represented than a transcendental subject of thoughts_. __onsciousness in itself (is) not so much a representation_as it is a form of representation in general._ The __ think_ is __he form of apperception, which clings to every experience and precedes it.__ant grasps the phenomenal content of the ___ correctly in the expression __ think_, or__f one also pays heed to including the __ractical person_ when one speaks of __ntelligence___n the expression __ take action_. In Kant__ sense we must take saying ___ as saying __ think._ Kant tries to establish the phenomenal content of the ___ as *res cogitans*. If in doing so he calls this ___ a __ogical subject_, that does not mean that the ___ in general is a concept obtained merely by way of logic. The ___ is rather the subject of logical behavior, of binding together. __ think_ means __ bind together_. All binding together is an _*I* bind together_. In any taking-together or relating, the ___ always underlies__he _οκείμενον [hypokeimenon; subjectum; subject]. The *subjectum* is therefore __onsciousness in itself_, not a representation but rather the __orm_ of representation. That is to say, the __ think_ is not something represented, but the formal structure of representing as such, and this formal structure alone makes it possible for anything to have been represented. When we speak of the __orm_ of representation, we have in view neither a framework nor a universal concept, but that which, as εἶδο [eidos], makes every representing and everything represented be what it is. If the ___ is understood as the form of representation, this amounts to saying that it is the __ogical subject_.Kant__ analysis has two positive aspects. For one thing, he sees the impossibility of ontically reducing the ___ to a substance; for another thing, he holds fast to the ___ as __ think_. Nevertheless, he takes this ___ as subject again, and he does so in a sense which is ontologically inappropriate. For the ontological concept of the subject *characterizes not the Selfhood of the ___ qua Self, but the self-sameness and steadiness of something that is always present-at-hand*. To define the ___ ontologically as _*subject*_ means to regard it as something always present-at-hand. The Being of the ___ is understood as the Reality of the *res cogitans*."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, pp. 366-367

To clarify the existentiality of the Self, we take as our __atural_ point of departure Dasein__ everyday interpretation of the Self. In *saying* _*I*,_ Dasein expresses itself about __tself_. It is not necessary that in doing so Dasein should make any utterance. With the ___, this entity has itself in view. The content of this expression is regarded as something utterly simple. In each case, it just stands for me and nothing further. Also, this ___, as something simple, is not an attribute of other Things; it is not *itself* a predicate, but the absolute __ubject_. What is expressed and what is addressed in saying __,_ is always met as the same persisting something. The characteristics of __implicity_, __ubstantiality_, and __ersonality_, which Kant, for instance, made the basis for his doctrine __f the paralogisms of pure reason_, arise from a genuine pre-phenomenological experience. The question remains whether that which we have experienced ontically in this way may be Interpreted ontologically with the help of the __ategories_ mentioned.Kant, indeed, in strict conformity with the phenomenal content given in saying __,_ shows that the ontical theses about the soul-substance which have been inferred [*erschlossenen*] from these characteristics, are without justification. But in so doing, he merely rejects a wrong *ontical* explanation of the ___; he has by no means achieved an *ontological* Interpretation of Selfhood, nor has he even obtained some assurance of it and made positive preparation for it. Kant makes a more rigorous attempt than his predecessors to keep hold of the phenomenal content of saying ___; yet even though in theory he has denied that the ontical foundations of the ontology of the substantial apply to the __,_ he still slips back into *this same* inappropriate ontology. This will be shown more exactly, in order that we may establish what it means ontologically to take saying ___ as the starting point for the analysis of Selfhood. The Kantian analysis of the __ think_ is now to be added as an illustration, but only so far as is demanded for clarifying these problems."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, p. 366

But how does it come about that while the __ think_ gives Kant a genuine phenomenal starting-point, he cannot exploit it ontologically, and has to fall back on the __ubject___hat is to say, something *substantial*? The ___ is not just an __ think_, but an __ think something_. And does not Kant himself keep on stressing that the ___ remains related to its representations, and would be nothing without them?For Kant, however, these representations are the __mpirical_, which is __ccompanied_ by the _____he appearances to which the ___ __lings_. Kant nowhere shows the kind of Being of this __linging_ and __ccompanying_. At bottom, however, their kind of Being is understood as the constant Being-present-at-hand of the ___ along with its representations. Kant has indeed avoided cutting the ___ adrift from thinking; but he has done so without starting with the __ think_ itself in its full essential content as an __ think something_, and above all, without seeing what is ontologically __resupposed_ in taking the __ think something_ as a basic characteristic of the Self. For even the __ think something_ is not definite enough ontologically as a starting-point, because the __omething_ remains indefinite. If by this __omething_ we understand an entity *within-the-world*, then it tacitly implies that the *world* has been presupposed; and this very phenomenon of the world co-determines the state of Being of the __,_ if indeed it is to be possible for the ___ to be something like an __ think something_. In saying __,_ I have in view the entity which in each case I am as an __-am-in-a-world_. Kant did not see the phenomenon of the world, and was consistent enough to keep the __epresentations_ apart from the *a priori* content of the __ think_. But as a consequence the ___ was again forced back to an *isolated* subject, accompanying representations in a way which is ontologically quite indefinite.*In saying __,_ Dasein expresses itself as Being-in-the-world*. But does saying ___ in the everyday manner have *itself* in view *as* being-in-the-world [*in-der-Welt-seiend*]? Here we must make a distinction. When saying __,_ Dasein surely has in view the entity which, in every case, it is itself. The everyday interpretation of the Self, however, has a tendency to understand itself in terms of the __orld_ with which it is concerned. When Dasein has itself in view ontically, it *fails to see* itself in relation to the kind of Being of that entity which it is itself. And this holds especially for the basic state of Dasein, Being-in-the-world."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, pp. 367-370

Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

For Heidegger, boredom is a privileged fundamental mood because it leads us directly into the very problem complex of being and time.

The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established on the European scene. Away from the novel, in our real lives, we know very little about our parents as they were before our birth; we have only fragmentary knowledge of the people close to us: we see them come and go and scarcely have they vanished than their place is taken over by others: they form a long line of replaceable beings. Only the novel separates out an individual, trains a light on his biography, his ideas, his feelings, makes him irreplaceable: makes him the center of everything.

Heidegger is the philosopher to whom especially postmodernists chiefly appeal in their radical rejections of metaphysics and of any and every conception of the entirety of actuality, of Being as such and as a whole. To be sure, their appeals to Heidegger are as a rule extraordinarily superficial ones. These authors come nowhere near to providing adequate interpretations of or appropriations from Heid

On the other hand, it is also characteristic of the state of philosophical inquiry today and has been for a long time that, while there has been extensive controversy about whether or not the *a priori* can be known, it has never occurred to the protagonists to ask first what could really have been meant by the fact that a time-determination turns up here and why it must turn up at all. To be sure, as long as we orient ourselves toward the common concept of time we are at an impasse, and negatively it is no less than consistent to deny dogmatically that the *a priori* has anything to do with time. However, time in the sense commonly understood, which is our topic here, is indeed only one derivative, even if legitimate, of the original time, on which the Dasein's ontological constitution is based. *It is only by means of the Temporality of the understanding of Being that it can be explained why the ontological determinations of Being have the character of apriority*. We shall attempt to sketch this briefly, as far as it permits of being done along general lines.We have just seen that all comportment toward beings already understands Being, and not just incidentally: Being must necessarily be understood precursorily (pre-cecently). The possibility of comportment toward beings demands a precursory understanding of Being, and the possibility of the understanding of Being demands in its turn a precursory projection upon time. But where is the final stage of this demand for ever further precursory conditions? It is temporality itself as the basic constitution of the Dasein. Temporality, due to its horizonal-ecstatic nature, makes possible *at once* the understanding of Being and comportment toward beings; therefore, that which does the enabling as well as the enablings themselves, that is, the possibilities in the Kantian sense, are "temporal," that is to say, Temporal, in their specific interconnection. Because the original determinant of possibility, the origin of possibility itself, is time, time temporalizes itself as the absolutely earliest. *Time is earlier than any possible earlier* of whatever sort, because it is the basic condition for an earlier as such. And because time as the source of all enablings (possibilities) is the earliest, all possibilities as such in their possibility-making function have the character of the earlier. That is to say, they are *a priori*. But, from the fact that time is the earliest in the sense of being the possibility of every earlier and of every *a priori* foundational ordering, it does not follow that time is ontically the first being; nor does it follow that time is forever and eternal, quite apart from the impropriety of calling time a being at all._ __rom_The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_

As a method however, the *method of ontology* is nothing but the sequence of the steps involved in the approach to Being as such and the elaboration of its structures. We call this method of ontology *phenomenology*. In more precise language, phenomenological investigation is explicit effort applied to the method of ontology. However, such endeavors, their success or failure, depend primarily, in accordance with our discussion, on how far phenomenology has assured for itself the object of philosophy__ow far, in accordance with its own principle, it is unbiased enough in the face of what the things themselves demand. We cannot now enter any further into the essential and fundamental constituent parts of this method. In fact, we have applied it constantly. What we would have to do would be merely to go over the course already pursued, but now with explicit reflection on it. But what is most essential is first of all to have traversed the whole path once, so as, for one thing, to learn to wonder scientifically about the mystery of things and, for another, to banish all illusions, which settle down and nest with particular stubbornness precisely in philosophy.There is no such thing as *the one* phenomenology, and if there could be such a thing it would never become anything like a philosophical technique. For implicit in the essential nature of all genuine method as a path toward the disclosure of objects is the tendency to order itself always toward that which it itself discloses. When a method is genuine and provides access to the objects, it is precisely then that the progress made by following it and the growing originality of the disclosure will cause the very method that was used to become necessarily obsolete. The only thing that is truly new in science and in philosophy is the genuine questioning and struggle with things which is at the service of this questioning." __rom_The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_