Winter, Week 10 Meeting (Part I)

I.6 : Reality (§43) and Truth (§44)

Last time we saw that dasein's being can be grasped in its unity as care: being-ahead-of-itself-already-in-(a world) as being-amidst (intraworldly-entities). Recall that the goal of BT is to raise the question of what it means to be, and that the analysis of dasein's being is designed to help us do this. We noted that BT’s initial question ‘what does it mean to be?’ gets pursued through the investigation of dasein, the entity that understands being, and therefore gets transformed into the question ‘what does it mean to be dasein?’ – or, put another way, ‘what is it to be able to understand being (at all, in general)?’. So, having established that dasein's being is care, it seems we should now be in a position to say something about being itself.

However, we noted that Heidegger concludes these sections (as he often does) with a question: have we really grasped all of dasein? The answer is no, and this shows that dasein's existence needs to be interpreted further before we can say anything more about the meaning of being.

But we are already in a position to re-think two phenomena that have traditionally been closely associated with being: reality and truth. We discussed some of Heidegger’s claims to the effect that the existential understanding of truth and reality is different from – and in fact grounds – the ways truth and reality have traditionally been understood in their connection with the phenomenon of being.

Winter, Week 10 Meeting (Part II)

Reality (§43)

We discussed four questions (or “problems”) Heidegger finds associated with the traditional conception of being and reality: (1) whether entities independent of (“external to”) dasein are at all, (2) whether it’s possible to prove the (“external”) world is real, (3) whether entities and the world independent of dasein can be known as they are “in themselves,” and (4) what it truly means to be real, in the first place.

We explained the sense in which reality, according to Heidegger, has been traditionally construed in terms of the presence to the mind of a substance possessing essential and accidental properties. We pointed out the counterintuitive consequences of construing the real as essentially ‘subjective’ or mind-dependent, on the one hand (since we think that reality is distinct from and independent of our own mental representations of it), or as simply ‘objective’ in the sense of material and non-mental, on the other hand (since we are inclined to believe there are mental phenomena distinct from material phenomena). Heidegger inveighs against the traditional concept of reality because it makes it seem like the four problems above are genuine problems. The strict, ontological division of 'subjective' and 'objective', 'internal' and 'external' implies that there is a general philosophical problem of how to bridge the ontological (and epistemological) 'gap' between these, a problem whose solution constrains what we can coherently say about the meaning of being. Heidegger, in contrast, wants to reject these problems as philosophically illegitimate, and this, we concluded, is something that motivates his contrasting view of dasein as being-in-the-world. Heidegger argues that neither dasein nor ready-to-hand, intraworldly entities (nor, for that matter, present-at-hand entities) can be made intelligible on its own, independently of the intelligibility of the other, so there is no such ‘gap’ between them to be bridged. We briefly discussed two places Heidegger makes (something like) this argument: (1) in his claim that human life (existence, projection onto abilities-to-be-dasein) is intelligible if and only if the equipment with which (and the others with whom) human life is lived are also intelligible, and (2) his claim that when dasein’s possibilities cease to be intelligible in the face of Angst, the entities in one’s world also cease to be intelligible as the entities they are.

Winter, Week 10 Meeting (Part III)

What depends on Dasein?

We began the second hour of our meeting by juxtaposing passages from §43 and §44 to show that there is a structural similarity between the way that reality does and does not depend on Dasein and the way that truth does and does not depend on Dasein. We read passages from SZ 212 and SZ 226.

To get clear (or perhaps less clear) on this, we discussed the popular philosophical problem of whether a tree makes a sound if it falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it. We agreed that there is some brute event taking place, and that in order to make sense of this as a noise consisting of sound waves (as physicists might) or as a meaningful sound (as hikers might), we have to have dasein (as the entity that makes sense of things) in the picture. This does not mean that there must be someone with appropriate organs around to hear the noise in order for it to happen, but rather that there must be cases of dasein (with an understanding of being) around in order for the event to be intelligible as any kind of event. This applies retrospectively: we can make sense of a tree falling in the Jurassic period as making a noise in the sense (at least) of emitting sound waves, because we do so from our perspective, as currently existing cases of dasein, and because we have at our disposal a way of making sense of things (namely, physical science) that makes human-independent occurrences intelligible for us.

Heidegger's point is that what's going on with entities doesn't depend on dasein, but that any kind of making sense of this – including making sense of an occurrence as dasein-independent – does depend on dasein.

Winter, Week 10 Meeting (Part IV)

Truth (§44)

We didn't have time to discuss Heidegger's account of truth in detail. We did note that, according to Heidegger, truth is traditionally construed as a correspondence or agreement between assertions and entities (or ‘the world,’ or ‘reality’). By contrast, and for similar reasons as were involved in his repudiation of the traditional conception of reality, Heidegger argues that the traditional concept of truth as correspondence or agreement depends on the ability of dasein to discover entities and disclose being. Thus, he calls dasein's discovery of entities 'truth,' on account of the entities’ being ‘set free’ or ‘uncovered’ by dasein so that they can show up to it (rather than remaining covered up, in obscurity). Truth, for Heidegger, is a way of being: being-true, being-uncovering. But this is only part of Heidegger's account of truth, and it leaves out his argument. For further discussion of this section and the reality section, you should look at Richard Polt's Heidegger: an Introduction (pp. 80-84).

Next Quarter: Invited Speakers

Next quarter we will have two guest speakers from the University of Chicago. John Haugeland will visit us first, to discuss death and dasein. Then Jonathan Lear will visit a bit later, to discuss authenticity. Prof. Lear's discussion will spring from one of his most recent books, Radical Hope, which you could read over break (it's short and compelling) if you want some background for his talk.

As of the end of winter quarter, we plan to meet again on Thursday, April 3, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. We'll try to find a room in Cobb, as usual. This will likely be our meeting with Prof. Haugeland, so prepare your thoughts about what it is to be towards death and what in the hell 'dasein' means!


Have a good break,
Kate and nate

Winter, Week 8 Meeting - Part I

Care (§39, §41, §42)

In the first hour of the meeting, we put together all of the concepts that Heidegger has used to illuminate dasein’s being throughout Division I of BT. We began with an overview of Division I thus far: Heidegger aims to reawaken the question of the meaning of being (Introduction), and proceeds through an analysis of dasein’s being (the existential analytic) because dasein is the entity that understands being (I.1). Since dasein’s basic constitution of being is being-in-the-world (I.2), Heidegger analyses world (I.3), the ‘who’ (I.4) and being-in as such (I.5). Now, in I.6, the task is grasp the unity of dasein’s being, which Heidegger calls ‘care.’

To demonstrate and understand this unity, we produced the following chart, which collects most of the major concepts that Heidegger has introduced (click the chart to see it full-size):


We noted the following thing about Heidegger’s (ridiculously) hyphenated version of ‘care’ (“ahead-of-itself-being-already-in(-the-world) as being-amidst (encountering, intraworldly entities))”: The ‘as’ in that formulation signifies that dasein’s being—its disclosedness, its being the ‘there,’ its understanding of being, its existence, its being-in-the-world—must happen through its dealings with particular entities, that is, through its everyday, fallen being-in (in the same way that a basketball game must happen through particular plays, players and equipment). This parallels something we noted in describing the structure of dasein’s disclosedness, following Haugeland, as a coin, with ‘being-in’ being the metal of which ‘the who’ and ‘the world’ are sides: To be dasein is to be-in, to be-amidst, to be-with, to relate to entities; and being a self and having a world are not separate entities or events from this being-in, they are rather two aspects of it, two ways of bringing it into view. We also recalled that dasein’s comportment toward entities as entities involves both (1) comporting toward (or discovering) entities as entities, having entities encounter it or show up to it in their being, which is ontic-ontological, and (2) disclosing being, which happens on the ontological level. Accordingly, the second and third columns of the chart reflect the ontological level of dasein’s disclosedness and of care, while the right-most column reflects the ontic-ontological level, and being-in-the-world as a whole happens through these two basic structural aspects together.

We also noticed that it is relatively easy to see how these three dimensions will map onto time, although Heidegger will be appealing to a conception of time radically unlike our ordinary one.

We wondered why Heidegger calls this structure ‘care’ – particularly given that he rejects many of the ordinary connotations of ‘care’ as inappropriate. We suggested that ‘care’ refers to something like ‘taking life seriously.’ Even if a case of dasein leads an ironic life or is a carefree slacker, they still take their ironic or slacker lifestyle seriously. The slacker is invested in being a slacker, and guides his life in terms of slacker-values. So ‘care’ is supposed to capture the fact that human life always occurs as immersed and invested, and is never first of all a matter of a neutral subject confronting an objective world.

Winter, Week 8 Meeting - Part II

Angst (§40)

The limit-experience of Angst is supposed to reveal the unity of dasein’s being in care. Recall that to identify the being of an entity, we need to look at dasein’s disclosure of its being, since dasein is the entity that understands being. So to get at the being of dasein, we need to consider dasein’s self-disclosure. However, because it is falling, dasein has a tendency to misunderstand its own being. We need an experience in which dasein discloses itself in a way that does not involve misunderstanding, and so an experience which disrupts its falling. Angst is such an experience because it involves a breakdown in the everyday, public world into which dasein falls.

Angst is a mood or mode of findingness, and so involves the same three structural moments as fear (§30). But unlike fear, the in-the-face-of-which that threatens in Angst is not an innerworldly entity approaching from a definite region. It is completely indefinite and poses an indefinite threat. (Compare the anxious portions of horror movies before the bad guy is revealed, in contrast to the fearful scenes following this revelation). Since it is no thing, what threatens is nothing. And since it does not approach from anywhere specific in the world, it is nowhere. There is nothing in particular that we are anxious about; rather, we are anxious in the face of everything and nothing. In colloquial language, we might say that we are anxious in the face of the fact that there are meaningful things and that we have to deal with them. This is to say that the in-the-face-of-which of Angst is the (everyday, fallen) world. Thus Angst discloses the ‘amidst-innerworldly-entities,’ or falling, dimension of care.

The about-which of Angst is dasein’s authentic ability-to-be-in-the-world. Consider fear again: that about which one fears is oneself – one is afraid for one’s specific lifestyle, bodily integrity, or property. But in Angst, that which threatens is indefinite, so that to which it poses a threat is also indefinite. One is not anxious about any of the particulars of one’s fallen, worldly life, but about the fact that one has such a life at all. This reveals that cases of dasein are in the business having lives – that is, of projecting themselves onto possibilities. (We suggested that one might have such an anxious realisation after graduating, or at any point at which one must make ‘life choices’). This is the revelation of dasein’s authentic self, and so of the projective or ‘ahead-of-itself’ moment of care.

The final moment in the structure of moods is the mood as such – fearing itself, or Angst itself, as disclosive. Although Heidegger barely mentions it, since Angst is a mood it involves the disclosure of moodedness itself, and so the ‘already-in-a-world’ or finding aspect of care.

There was some discussion in the meeting about whether to map this last moment of Angst onto ‘amidst-innerworldly-entities’ / falling (on the grounds that the mood of Angst is an experience within a life that disrupts falling). If we did this, the in-the-face-of-which of Angst (the world) would go with the ‘already-in-a-world’ moment of care (on the grounds that already-being-in-a-world belongs to thrownness and facticity). We decided that the reading outlined above is more compelling, although Heidegger does not make it clear exactly what he has in mind.