Spring, Week 4 Meeting

Our fourth-week meeting picked up from our first-week discussion of dasein and death. We had a looser discussion ranging over several tough questions. Here is a quick description of most of those questions:

(1) We discussed whether there can be dasein without human beings, if, as John Haugeland argues, dasein is a way of life that embodies an understanding of being. We also wondered whether there can be persons without dasein. We did not, however, come to a consensus on the answers to these questions, but instead took up another question: (2) Supposing that some person ‘survives’ the death of her way of life and comes to adopt some other way of life (we might say, ‘comes to be born into’ some other dasein), how should we conceive of what, or who, persisted ‘in between’ the death of the one and the incipient existence of the other? What makes it intuitive to ask this question is the thought that someone whose way of life is dead may nevertheless ‘subsist’—move from place to place, cook and eat, have a partner and a children (would this count as a ‘family’?), etc. If, ‘in between’ the one dasein and the other, there is no overarching context in which to make sense of the person’s activity, how are we to understand what the person is doing? Do we have to make recourse to merely physical, biological, neurological explanations? Is there a minimal, ‘dasein-like’ intelligibility to the person’s activity, even in the absence of a robust milieu in which to make sense of her? (3) We also puzzled over the appropriate ‘scope’ or level of generality for locating the phenomenon of dasein. Can something as specific as ‘fourth-year Heidegger reading group participants at the University of Chicago in 2007-2008’ count as dasein? Does something as general as ‘the Western European way of life’ have enough of a particular sense to bring anything dasein-like into view? Finally, we discussed various things that seem to count as misunderstanding being. One might, more ‘locally,’ understand the being of spatial (extended) entities in terms of location at a discrete, determine position in absolute space, rather than in terms of whatever quantum probability function (or whatever) constitutes the contemporary, accepted conception of the spatial. A different example would be understanding one’s own being in terms of the ‘anyone’ self [das Man] and one’s factical, worldly concerns, rather than in terms of one’s ownmost ability-to-be. A more egregious form of misunderstanding seems to be ‘crossing levels’ or regions of being, for example, by understanding mental phenomenon in terms appropriate to physical or neurochemical phenomenon (assuming this counts as a mistake!), or, to give a clearer example, understanding something ready-to-hand as merely present-at-hand. We did not elaborate on this question, but it was raised in connection with the description of dasein as an entity that essentially understands being—if dasein dies, is that because it embodied a fatal misunderstanding of being?

Next week we will meet with Jonathan Lear and discuss his book Radical Hope, in which he describes something very much like Heidegger’s notion of authentic existence. We hope this will give occasion to reflect on and further discuss our questions from this meeting.

Social Thought Colloquium: Richard Polt

The Committee On Social Thought invites you to a Colloquium:

Speaker: Richard Polt

Title: "When Time Comes to Be: Heideggerian and Arendtian Inceptions"

Date: Monday, May 5th
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Room: Social Sciences 302 (Shils Room)


Richard Polt is Professor of Philosophy at Xavier University, Cincinatti. He is the author of Heidegger: An Introduction - which Charles Guignon described as "the best general introduction to Heidegger ever written" - as well as The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger's 'Contributions to Philosophy'; he has edited collections of essays on Being and Time and Introduction to Metaphysics; and he has co-translated the latter work. He is also an alumnus of the Committee On Social Thought, where he received his Ph.D. in 1991 under the supervision of Leszek Kolakowski.

Heidegger terminology on Wikipedia

Just for kicks, I added a link in the "Heidegger on the Web" section to Wikipedia's entry on Heideggerian terminology. Given our nitpickiness in the group so far about the meaning and translation of his terms, I think you are each equipped to go into the guts of that page and start some editing wars over their proper explication. Already, for instance, I see 'present-at-hand' and 'ready-to-hand' described as "attitudes toward to things in the world [sic]." Sic indeed ...

Dreyfus on White on Heidegger on Death

Browsing around the web, I found an online pdf of the Forward that Prof. Dreyfus wrote for a new book on Heidegger, Carol J. White's Time and Death: Heidegger's Analysis of Finitude. I'm linking to it because Prof. Dreyfus makes (especially in section IV of the paper) an interesting and relevant attempt to map out different possible interpretations of Heidegger's notion of death (Prof. Haugeland's included). It's worth looking at in light of our most recent meeting. You can read it here.

Post any reactions in the comments!

Spring, Week 1 Meeting -- Part I

Background

We were very lucky to have Professor John Haugeland as our guest speaker at this meeting. Prof. Haugeland contributed to the renewed interest in Heidegger’s philosophy amongst English-speaking philosophers in the late 20^th century by arguing that Division II of Being and Time – with its discussion of death, conscience and guilt – is not peripheral (as many readers initially thought) but is instead central for understanding Heidegger’s claims about dasein, being and time. You can find links to some of Prof. Haugeland’s articles on Heidegger here.

We began by situating ourselves in the text: we have seen, in Division I, that dasein's being is to be grasped in its unity as care. But before we begin to draw conclusions about being from this, we need to be sure that we have all of dasein in view. Heidegger begins Division II by pointing out that we haven't considered either dasein's authenticity or its totality. II.1 analyses death, which is dasein's ‘end,’ so as to determine how dasein can be a whole.

Why analyse death? We know that death is a significant feature of human life, but we also know that the existential analytic is preparatory for working out how being can be intelligible. This means that only those phenomena that shed light on what it takes for Dasein to understand being are included in the existential analytic. So death must be connected to the understanding of being – but how?

Prof. Haugeland answers this question by interpreting death as the breakdown of an understanding of being. He holds that if Being and Time is a book about how being makes sense, then it must consider how being can fail to make sense or be misunderstood. Death is this failure. This reading is in contrast to the usual "existentialist" interpretation of II.1, which takes death as the mortality of human beings. Prof. Haugeland's interpretation requires a novel reading of several of the key concepts explored in Division I, including 'dasein' itself. (Note that in summarising the discussion, we have retained much of Prof. Haugeland's evocative and idiosyncratic language).

Spring, Week 1 Meeting -- Part II

Others and Dasein

We first recalled the analysis of 'others' in I.4. The idea was to prepare to understand what it would be for dasein to die by contrasting this with something more familiar, but distinct: what it is for others to die. Others, Prof. Haugeland argued, are intraworldly entities, just like equipment – and indeed, the discussion of others in I.4 can be seen to have a structure that is neatly parallel to the discussion of the ready-to-hand in I.3. Since others, like equipment, are entities that show up within the world 'cleared' or 'opened' by dasein's disclosedness, others are not dasein. Furthermore, Prof. Haugeland argued, we should not read ‘others’ [die Anderen] as ‘every other person but me,’ since the role of ‘another’ is one that, in each case, I myself can play (particularly when my existence is public). When I call someone on the telephone, for example, my use of the phone and my ways of greeting and conversing are for the most part the same as others’ – I dial the string of numbers, I begin with “Hello,” etc. ‘Others,’ then, are people (myself included). If others are people and others are not dasein, then dasein is neither identical to, nor coextensive with, people. Thus, the death of others – the death of people – is not the death of dasein. To understand what it is for dasein to die, we need to look at phenomena different than those associated with the demise of persons (more about ‘demise’ in the next section). And this makes sense, given what we know so far of Prof. Haugeland’s understanding of ‘dasein’ – if dasein is a way of life that embodies or incorporates an understanding of being, then the death of a way of life or an understanding of being tout court would seem to be something different than the demise of some one case of dasein who understands being.

Spring, Week 1 Meeting -- Part III

Death

With these distinctions in mind, we can better understand Heidegger's distinctions between perishing, demise and death. These three ‘death-like’ phenomena are distinct because they are exhibited in distinct kinds of entities. Perishing is what happens to living things; it is their ceasing to be alive. It has nothing to do with Dasein or being-towards-death. Demise applies to people, and it is a social event – the event at which your possessions pass to your heirs, at which your spouse becomes a widow/er, and so on. We can think of demise as a ‘legal death,’ as ceasing to be a person in society. Typically, such demise is concurrent with perishing. This is because it just so happens that for every person (who can demise) there is a "biological specimen" (a homo sapiens) which can perish. Nonetheless, people and homo sapiens are distinct kinds of entities, so perishing and demise are distinct ways of ending.

'Death' is the term reserved for the ending of dasein. What would it be for a way of life to end? We considered the example of the ending of the way of life of the Jewish community in pre-war Western Europe. In some sense, this becomes a "dead" way of life, where this means that Jewish weddings, brisses, celebrating Passover, and so on, end – not because someone is literally, physically preventing these events from happening, but because they no longer make sense as a way of life. Death, then, is the coming-undone or failing of a whole rich fabric of mutual intelligibility.

To make this more precise, we contrasted the examples of the coal man on a coal-powered train and the superfluous elevator operator who can no longer pursue their professions. Although there are difficulties in spelling out exactly why these don't count as the death of dasein, we can see that the elevator man experiences a breakdown in his situation with respect to entities, given his understanding of being, rather than a breakdown in his understanding of being per se. This suggests that being an elevator man doesn't quite count as a way of life (as dasein), because it is in some way insufficiently rich, complex and internally integrated.

Nikhil suggested that even when the Jewish way of life died, those who used to live it might have still found themselves (in Heidegger’s technical sense of Befindlichkeit) as Jews, might have still felt compelled to make sense of their lives in those terms. This brings out what, on the existential level, is so traumatic about the death of a way of life, where one cannot – yet cannot help but – make sense of oneself in terms of the way of life that has died.

We also considered the situation of classical physics at the beginning of the 20^th Century. In this case, the whole intelligibility of physical things came unglued – as it did with the Copernican revolution (where, as Prof. Haugeland put it, “the world got literally turned upside down”). Unlike the elevator man or the coal man, this is not a breakdown in relating to entities, but a breakdown in how the world itself works or makes sense, and how we understand our place in that world. In this breakdown, everything comes apart and we don't know how to project entities at all.

Spring, Week 1 Meeting -- Part IV

Being-towards-Death

These examples of the death of dasein should make it clear that death is not an event. As Heidegger says, death is only in being-towards-death. Death, as the breakdown of a way of life, consists in realising that you can't go on living that way of life, that you can no longer project entities onto those possibilities that constitute your understanding of being. This can be contrasted to the biological event of perishing, in which there can be no such realisation of an inability to go on (or for which such realisation is irrelevant). The death of dasein happens only when the breakdown of the understanding of being is confronted – when you confront the fact that your understanding of being might be a misunderstanding.

Accordingly, being-towards-death is a matter of existing in the face of the possibility that one might have misunderstood being all along. To put it another way, it is understanding that one’s understanding of being is finite, and living one’s life in light of this understanding. One form this way of living can take is taking responsibility for the viability of one’s way of life. This does not mean that you take it as your job to ensure that the way of life continues to be viable no matter what, but rather that you take it as up to you to tell whether or not it remains viable (i.e. whether or not you can keep living it).

This is (at least a hint at) 'authentic' being-towards-death. Prof. Haugeland – and Kate and Nate – think that since the term 'authentic' usually means 'real' or 'genuine,’ this word can give the wrong impression about what Heidegger means by ‘eigentlich.’ (Not only do 'real' and 'genuine' belong to the vocabulary of the present-at-hand, but they also imply that 'inauthentic' cases of dasein are somehow fake or counterfeit.) We prefer to translate 'eigentlich' as 'owned' (picking up on its root ‘eigen,’ 'own'). (Thus uneigentlich dasein is unowned or disowned.) The vocabulary of 'ownedness' connects to the in-each-case-mineness of dasein, since it implies that someone has taken over dasein as his or her own, as ‘mine.’ This 'taking over' ("on purpose mineness") is a modification of 'in-each-case-mineness' (which applies to both owned and unowned dasein). It consists in making dasein, my way of life, my own in the sense that I take responsibility for it and won't put up with things not making sense in it, with incompatibilities or “contraries” in my understanding of being. So for dasein to be one's own 'on purpose' is for one to commit to both trying to keep one's way of life (and the understanding of being it embodies) still viable when things go awry, and recognising when things are going awry because that way of life is no longer viable.

Spring, Week 1 Meeting -- Part V

The Features of Death

We ended the discussion by briefly covering some of the features of death that Heidegger discusses, with particular emphasis on how the seemingly 'personal' character of these features fits with Prof. Haugeland's interpretation of death. We saw that (being-towards-)death is 'non-relational' in the sense that each person who confronts the death of dasein, the breakdown of his or her way of life, confronts it as a breakdown for him or her, and so takes the responsibility for that upon him- or herself. This also shows how (being-towards-)death can be individualising: an individual case of dasein has to take responsibility for his or her way of life. If dasein is a way of life, then it is not the kind of thing that can take responsibility. But the people who lead that way of life can take responsibility for it, and when they do so, they are individualised as people who lead that way of life.

We did not discuss all of the features of death in detail, although we did touch on most of them. Here is the chart we had on the board summarising these (click on the chart to see it full-size):

Being-In Discussion

As requested, here is Kate and Nate's discussion about being-in and the care chart.

The issue is how to construe being-in on the chart; initially, Kate and Nate differed on this. Here are the two options, with the relevant differences marked in bold in the asterisked row (click on the charts to see them full-size):

What's at stake in this?

The different ways of describing the chart's columns raise the question of how we are to understand being-in as such – that is, disclosedness itself. Option (i) is motivated by the thought that being-in as such is supposed to explain how dasein comports towards entities (in their being). Option (ii) is motivated by the thought that being-in as such addresses how dasein understands (the) being (of entities). Thus the issue is about whether we take what is important about dasein to be the fact that it relates to entities (in their being) or the fact that it relates to being (as the being of entities). Clearly, this is a question of emphasis. Although there may be philosophical consequences of reading SZ in one way rather than the other, our suspicion is that the stakes are primarily pedagogical.

Discussion

On option (i), all of the columns together show dasein as ontico-ontological. The first two show the ontological and third shows the ontic dimension of dasein. On option (ii), the third column names fallen dasein as ontico-ontological, and the first two columns show dasein as ontological. There are two related issues here: first, whether the third (right hand) column should be characterised as (i) ontic or (ii) ontico-ontological; and second, whether the third column should be characterised in terms of (i) comportment towards entities or (ii) comportment towards entities as entities. This latter also affects how we fill out the left hand columns.

Our first concern was that describing the third (right hand) column as (i) ontic / comportment towards entities might be misleading in two ways. First, it may imply that there is a 'comportment towards entities' (ontic) that can be distinguished from 'comportment towards entities as entities' (ontological). But dasein's comportment towards entities just is comportment towards entities as entities (= comporting towards entities in their being). Putting these in separate columns may thus invite the following misunderstanding: dasein has an access to entities that is distinct from its comporting towards entities in their being; its understanding of being is mysteriously tacked on to an independent (perceptual, physical) access to entities, as a soul is tacked on to an animal body.

The second way in which option (i) might be misleading lies in the way that the left hand columns are described. On option (i), being-in as such is glossed as comporting towards entities as entities. But this obscures the fact that we only get entities in the picture when being-in is fallen (the third column). Being-in as such (the first two columns) is Dasein's disclosedness (projecting possibilities, finding thrownness, articulating intelligibility), which is its openness to being.

Option (ii) attempts to avoid both of these problems, but runs into equally serious problems of its own. First, it addresses the second problem by describing being-in as openness to being rather than comportment towards entities as entities (i.e. in their being). But this risks severing dasein's openness to being from its comportment towards entities, and so implying that dasein's disclosure of being is some kind of mystical communion distinct from its everyday dealings with entities. Being is always the being of entities, so an openness to being is always an openness to entities in their being.

Option (ii) addresses the first problem by describing fallen dasein not as ontic, but as ontico-ontological. Dasein never simply relates to entities apart from its comportment towards them as entities (i.e. in their being), so is never merely ontic. Identifying the right hand column as ontico-ontological makes clear that it is a modification (via falling) of the left hand columns, rather than an addition to or substratum for them. It emphasises that the columns cannot be understood separately. The problem with this is that it might not be clear what the 'ontological' columns add to the picture, if the right hand column is in itself (ontico-)ontological.

So the problem is basically this: given that the chart is supposed to show dasein as ontico-ontological, and given that it is through falling (the right hand column) that dasein's understanding of being connects up with the ontic, do we characterise this right hand column in terms of the "whole" that is realised in it (ontico-ontological) or the "part" that is contributed by it (ontic)? Similarly for the left hand columns. In other words: given that in making a chart we have to draw lines through the insoluble unity of dasein's being, where do we put the lines? Do we take Dasein as the (ontic) entity that understands the being of entities (ontological), or as the understander of being (ontological) that grasps being through entities (ontico-ontological)?